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The arbitration committee "assuming good faith" with an editor.

ArbCom 2019 election voter message

Hello! Voting in the 2019 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23:59 on Monday, 2 December 2019. All eligible users are allowed to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.

The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.

If you wish to participate in the 2019 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. If you no longer wish to receive these messages, you may add {{NoACEMM}} to your user talk page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:07, 19 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Why are we still persisting with this mass mailing nonsense? This isn't an election for the Presidency of Wikipedia; anyone who's interested enough in the Arbcom elections to have an opinion, already knows that they're taking place, while anyone who's so detached from the back-office administration of the wiki that they aren't aware of the elections and haven't noticed the watchlist notice, almost certainly isn't familiar enough with what Arbcom actually does (and in particular, the unique-to-Wikipedia definition of "Arbitration") that their input would be of any particular use. ‑ Iridescent 11:50, 20 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Probably because nobody managed to successfully object to it so it stayed per "we already did this last year so why not this year too". Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 12:26, 20 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

This is the RFC for this years elections. The ruling Mass Message - eligible voters, have edited last 12 months before nominations was included in the "pre-determined items which we're going to carry over from the previous year" preamble at the start; the only thing that was up for discussion was whether blocked accounts and bots would receive the mailing. ‑ Iridescent 13:11, 20 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

As I understand it, any editor can put an item on the agenda for the annual RfC, so you should feel free to raise this issue next year if you care to. (I don't have a strong view on it one way or the other.) Regards, Newyorkbrad (talk) 16:56, 20 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Life's too short to waste any time tilting at that particular windmill. The mass mailing increases participation roughly four times (from ≈500 to ≈2000). Since presumably those people who watch the (small-a) administrative pages are already aware of the election, that means that with the mass mailing in place 3⁄4 of voters are relatively unfamiliar with the candidates. Consequently, the mass mailing hugely skews the process in favor of (a) incumbents, (b) guide writers, (c) the inner core of hyperactive editors who get about enough to be widely recognized, and (d) people fluent enough in bullshit to write particularly flowery self-nomination statements. Since those four groups are also the only people likely to participate in something as inside-baseball as the RFC on the administration of elections, the mass mailing is essentially now hard-wired into Wikipedia's processes as the only people who could stop it are the same people who currently benefit from it. ‑ Iridescent 14:10, 8 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Declined CSD

Hello!

I Noticed that you have declined my CSD here. However, I think that the text, the username, and the edit summary clearly indicate that the intention was self-promotion. However it is also possible that I am mistaken on this one, so I would like to ask your thoughts on it for future reference.

Best regards, Kostas20142 (talk) 17:56, 24 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

It was a potential role account so was correctly softblocked pending a rename request, but it read in full we are are a small town wrestling company. It's always been considered perfectly acceptable for Wikipedia users to include a brief description of themselves on their userpage, and that description was as neutral as they come; there's no remotely promotional language there. (There's no plausible way any reader could think "wow, a small town wrestling company, I'd better check them out".) The {{db-spamuser}} template with which you tagged it even explicitly says "simply having a page on a company or product in one's userspace does not qualify a userpage for deletion". ‑ Iridescent 19:44, 24 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

It seems you are right, thanks! --Kostas20142 (talk) 19:51, 24 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

There are way too many people who seem to think that merely discussing a company or a product makes something spam. I see them at AFD all the time, PR being a key giveaway. Sometimes I write a closing statement emphasizing notability based arguments as a response. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 19:54, 24 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Jo-Jo Eumerus: Yeah I know, merely discussing it doesn't constitute spam. It was just the whole thing that gave me the impression that the only intention was self-promotion. Anyways, thanks for the comment! --Kostas20142 (talk) 19:57, 24 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Meh, if a closer feels the need to decide the tension of NOTSPAM vs. GNG in a closing statement, they likely should be voting rather than closing. We have no consistent notability guideline, and what we keep or delete largely depends on historical practice in a topic area. What the GNG means for some random 11th century religious figure vs. what it means for a BLP vs. what it means for a corporation are very different and we do not at all apply the guideline the same, nor should we. Not really relevant to this particular instance, but the idea that we have a consistent notability rule that reigns supreme and that it is not frequently balanced with other concerns, and that other concerns can never trump it is also incorrect. TonyBallioni (talk) 23:42, 24 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Well, no, because in many cases we end up with "delete, it's PR""keep, it's notable" arguments and then someone either decides - no consensus, keep or delete or something else - or the XFD stays open for all eternity. But since WP:ATD is a policy such cases tend to end up as keep or no consensus in many cases, unless notability is questionable or the promotion severe enough. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 09:20, 25 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Plus, although WP:ATD is policy and WP:TNT is just someone's personal opinions, with the marginal topics the latter comes into play. The random religious figures differ from the small businesses in that they serve a different purpose to readers. An article that reads in full Ketill Þorsteinsson was the bishop of Hólar between 1122 and 1145. would still be a valid article (albeit one that IMO would be better served as a redirect to a list) provided one could verify that it was accurate since it's something someone could conceivably be looking for, and there's de facto automatic notability since by definition the holder of a position like that was someone that people at the time considered important and notability is not temporary. (We have lots and lots of articles like Mahalath and Hegai about minor Biblical figures about whom nothing more than their brief mention will ever be known, and whose stories aren't so interesting that they'll ever form the basis of significant commentary or artworks* so will never be expandable. Yes I know Mahalath appears in a few paintings of Ishmael or Esau, but AFAIK nobody ever depicts her as anything other than part of a group. We'd never delete them—although again, IMO they should form a single list, same as List of supporting Harry Potter characters—since multiple major religions consider them important enough to mention.)

Re: permanent stubs -- which articles like Mahalath and Hegai are. That's an issue we Wikipedians are going to have to face. IMHO, we should only have an article on a given subject if & only if there is potential content to turn it into a Featured Article; otherwise merge it into a relevant article. Yes, there are some subjects which are more difficult to find a path to FA for than others. But consider Manuel II of Trebizond, of whom there are very few facts: his young age as emperor, the brief length of his reign, & that he was murdered a year after being deposed. I thought about that hard, then realized that what made him worth more than a few sentences was the fact he was a rare example of (1) a child emperor in the Romano-Byzantine tradition, & (2) he was killed after his deposition. I put him in some kind of context, which is something a lot of our articles lack, & is how I expanded this article. That said, I suspect there are many permanent stubs out there that will never lend themselves to either a merge or possibly ever becoming an FA. -- llywrch (talk) 18:30, 25 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

You're preaching to the converted here—I've always believed that most articles are more use to readers as entries in a list where they can be compared at a glance to the rest of the topics in the series, and only broken out when their entries are so long they make the list unwieldy. Having a single list also means that the background section, which is necessary for most articles to be comprehensible to non-specialists, only needs to be given once rather than repeated across a dozen articles which just annoys the readers. Infrastructure of the Brill Tramway is usually my go-to example of what I think most Wikipedia pages ought to look like. Unfortunately, the Great God Consensus doesn't agree with me, which is why (to stick with that Brill Tramway example) we have half-a-dozen near-identical pages at Wood Siding railway station, Westcott railway station etc. The "every grain of sand needs a separate page" brigade is small but is noisy enough to disrupt any attempt to rationalize any attempt to clean things up. You've been here since 2003—you presumably remember just how much time and effort it took to gain consensus even for the idea that each of the 900 pokemons (pokemen?) didn't need it's own full-length stand-alone biography. (Just gonna put this here.) ‑ Iridescent 18:53, 25 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Something like List of seamounts in the Marshall Islands would be my idea of such a list article - only a few of the articles on it are so long as to deserve their own page such as Wōdejebato and Limalok which are at FA level. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 22:12, 25 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I somehow missed that circus about the Pokemon stubs, although I heard about it later. (Odd none of the standard histories of Wikipedia ever retell that story.) But I did witness similar struggles to merge stubs into larger unified articles, so I know what you mean. I expect that historical forces (to steal a phrase from a political philosopher currently out of favor) will favor combining many of these stubs into lists -- or list-like articles. I base this on the fact that I haven't encountered anyone deconstructing any lists into groups of articles, thus there is a tendency for these articles to combine into larger ones. So over the long run this will succeed; it's just going to take a bit a patience & perseverance. (In my experience, I've found it effective to dealing with irrational objections to the right decision by simply waiting out those who object. Even if it takes years. No need to lose one's temper & start accusing the other party(s) of bad faith.) -- llywrch (talk) 08:18, 26 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Fictional topics have been on a long arc of merging to lists or wholesale deletion since the early expansion days in 06/07, after WP:NFICT failed and we got to a reasonable consensus about how to write about fiction. I expect questionably-notable topics elsewhere to follow a similar arc (where noticed, of course). That said, such lists do end up going the other direction when an editor interested in the topic and willing to put the time in expands it back out which IMO generally appropriate. --Izno (talk) 15:28, 26 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Writing a useful article on a work of fiction that follows Wikipedia guidelines is & likely always will be a difficult task. Part of the reason is that even people who graduate with a degree in Literature don't always learn of resources like the MLA Bibliography or Year's Work in English Studies -- which would greatly aid in finding reliable sources. But an even more challenging problem is that many notable works of fiction lack a discussion in a reliable secondary source, & may never be the subject of one. One example of this would be the works of Jim Thompson; another would be V.C. Andrew's Flowers in the Attic. If there was a way around the WP:NOR rule, the lack of secondary sources would not prevent us from actually discussing the work (e.g., themes, influences, characterization, etc.), which is just one more unintended side-effect of that fundamental policy. -- llywrch (talk) 17:21, 26 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

When it comes to current businesses. the one-liners that just say something exists are a different kettle of fish. As well as the burden of expectation that the author explain why it qualifies as notable, there's also the "even if this is notable, does this page serve any useful purpose?" question; sometimes a redlink is better than a one-sentence stub since a redlink makes it more likely someone will write something better. The whole thing is a gray area, which is why we have deletion debates rather than a straightforward set of rules. On the subject of deletion and gray areas, if any passing deletionist wants a happy hunting ground, try both the articles and redirects brought up by Special:PrefixIndex/List of tall which should be enough to keep both RfD and AfD running for a month. ‑ Iridescent 10:57, 25 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Sure, but WP:DELREASON is also policy as is WP:NOTSPAM, and notability is only one of the reasons listed. We agree on all the minor biblical figures, and roads, and train stations and how we shouldn’t delete them. The tension between not being a vehicle for promotion while also not being a paper encyclopedia is difficult, which is why we have those discussions. I fall on the other side than JJE, and consider arguments based on promotionalism to be significantly stronger arguments to delete than notability based arguments are to keep if we’re talking about some random startup where the claim to notability is borderline at best. This is why we have the discussions rather than G11ing everything on sight, but I was more challenging the idea that notability based arguments are superior in corporate discussions. It depends on the case, but in many cases involving corporations, there’s a significantly stronger case to delete than keep even when notability is taken out of the picture. TonyBallioni (talk) 13:09, 25 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The problem I often see is that deletion nominations citing the spam rules at AFD tend to be rather vague on explaining why the listed article qualifies as spam, and WP:NOTSPAM is not a blank cheque. It's especially a problem because a spammy article can be rewritten so WP:ATD comes into play whereas one cannot really make a non-notable topic notable during the course of an AFD discussion. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 22:12, 25 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The deletion pages in general are a mess, as they've had 18 years to accumulate people repeating things they heard somewhere about how things "should be done", which in turn get seen by newer editors who (reasonably) assume that because these are arguments they've seen made by experienced editors, they must have some validity. The rules around paid editing are a particularly problematic one which even experienced admins and WMF employees struggle to understand. My personal bugbear is people who proudly cite WP:USEFUL as if it proves arguments based on utility are forbidden, when in fact it's an especially stupid and very outdated personal essay and in reality "is this article/file/page actually of any potential use to readers?" should be the primary criterion when judging if something should be kept—ironically this is something which the legendarily dysfunctional Commons do manage to grasp instinctively when it comes to their own deletion processes. If I had my way the entire deletion process would be deleted and rebuilt from scratch based on which criteria are both useful and practical and on a practical definition of notability rather than "it's in a book so it must be important", with particular emphasis on destroying with fire and salting the ludicrous Wikipedia:Arguments to avoid in deletion discussions. ‑ Iridescent 23:27, 25 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I'm slightly less critical of our deletion processes, and don't often see WP:USEFUL cited myself, but I do find it silly that the number of pageviews a page gets is regarded as completely beside the point. The bio of an Indian actor with a role in a newish hit tv drama (also Indian) was nominated for deletion despite getting around 200 views a day over a couple of weeks. Johnbod (talk) 02:37, 26 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Johnbod:Huh - I am pretty certain I don't see pageviews frequently cited at AFD, either by keepers or by deleters (in portal discussions on the other hand...). OTOH I often see people saying "keep, it's useful" with little explanation of why it's useful. I wonder what practical definition of notability because while the current WP:GNG is mostly "these are topics that we can write policy compliant articles about" "practical definition" to me sounds like it'd turn into a list of all topics that someone likes. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 14:25, 5 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

You and I differ on our views of paid editing, which I view as an issue of utility via credibility, but I'd agree generally with what you've said above. I'd also delete arguments to avoid with fire. It's basically an essay that random people have created overtime to make it easier to shout down people who are raising valid points.

I guess if you had to sum up my views on the deletion process it would be delete things that harm our credibility and/or cause harm in the real world, keep everything else. I'm sure I could find a way to fit utility in there, though I view credibility and utility as going hand-in-hand. It's why I find the GNG so moronic: it means whatever you want it to mean and provides no real guidance as the internet and information sharing have substantially evolved over time. TonyBallioni (talk) 02:51, 26 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

You say it means whatever you want it to mean and provides no real guidance, which I think is true of many of our notability guidelines. Or, rather, experienced editors tend to roughly agree on what they mean but that understanding is not actually codified in the text so it's quite a learning curve for newbies. The exception is WP:NBOOK, which is crystal clear for some reason. Haukur (talk) 07:27, 26 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The curious thing about deletion debates is that, if you look at it in a certain way, they are irrelevant. On the one hand, any experienced editor knows well to provide sufficient details & citations to any article they might create in order to prevent it from ending up at WP:AfD. On the other, if an article that should fail notability somehow sneaks in under the radar (e.g. practically any biography of a social networking consultant), it survives yet no one knows/cares it exists, like the proverbial tree falling in a forest without anyone to hear if it makes a sound. (And eventually someone will stumble across it & mark it for deletion years after this social networking consultant moved on to a more lucrative career as a barista or grocery store clerk.) -- llywrch (talk) 08:03, 26 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

New biographies are certainly scrutinised, but if they survive say a fortnight are then fairly safe. Many of them are carefully referenced, just not with independent RS. There is often a genuine disagreement about who/what is and is not "notable". The list question is part of the wider issues around most of our editors preferring to start new articles rather than improve old ones. Johnbod (talk) 16:18, 26 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Which I’ve always found interesting (on the start vs. improve point.) I’ve basically been non-existent in mainspace the last year (tl;dr change in life circumstances made that less enjoyable/feasible) but I always preferred improving existing articles over creating new ones, in part because I find it easier and in part because I find the end result is better. TonyBallioni (talk) 16:23, 26 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

There are certainly some things that make starting a new article from scratch easier than expanding an existing one. Citation formatting is an obvious one, when whoever started the article used some kind of goofy citation format like "hand-typed list defined referencing" but WP:CITEVAR means you can't change it to something more sensible so are stuck trying to replicate it on 200+ references in a 10,000 word article just because whoever wrote the original 200-word stub in 2005 happened to use it. (I fairly frequently invoke IAR to completely ignore CITEVAR and overwrite the existing referencing to make the style of an article consistent with others in the series as it makes it easier for reusers and future editors to cut and paste material, and have never been challenged on it, but invoking IAR is always playing with fire.)

The other obvious issue is the sourcing; if one's writing from scratch, then one has all the sources in front of one (or at least, knows which library you borrowed it from and thus where to go to double-check things) and knows what they all say. If one expands on an existing article then quite often one is taking it on faith that "website that no longer exists", "book that has been out of print since 1950 and isn't available in any library on your continent" or "academic paper behind a $300 paywall" actually said what User:EditorWhoResignedIn2004AndIsn'tAvailableForComment claimed it said. Wikipedia's whole AGF culture means it's considered bad form to say "even though this is referenced I can't verify the reference so it comes out". Indeed, Some reliable sources may not be easily accessible. For example, an online source may require payment, and a print-only source may be available only in university libraries. Rare historical sources may even be available only in special museum collections and archives. Do not reject reliable sources just because they are difficult or costly to access. is formal Wikipedia policy; it's technically blockable disruption to say "you claim this book in the sealed section of the Vatican Secret Archives proves your point, but since nobody else can verify that I'm removing it until you can find another source". This isn't some abstract hypothetical point; it was a questionable source used in an early version of the article that had been retained after the article was expanded that set off the string of events at Moors Murders that got Eric Corbett banned. ‑ Iridescent 10:11, 29 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

CITEVAR when expanding stubs from a decade ago is probably the best use case of IAR. TonyBallioni (talk) 14:47, 29 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Aye. When I expand articles, I usually install a form of sfn format. Then again I've noticed that in most if not all cases Wikipedia:Citing sources#Generally considered helpful comes into play as the previous citation format either lacked page numbers or inline citations. Or for that matter, because it was a different citation format but it was me who installed it originally such as at Uturuncu/Uturunku and Coropuna. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 14:51, 29 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I always believed WP:IAR was another way to express Rem tene, verba sequentur. Instead of getting hung up on ruleswanking & arguing over the meaning of is, obey the spirit of the rule. If you have to ignore a given rule, have a good argument why you ignored it in this specific case prepared first. And be prepared to take full responsibility for acting like a cowboy when you invoke that clause, instead of expecting everyone to bow down before your 73373ness. -- llywrch (talk) 22:05, 29 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

TFA

It seems TFA is passively accepting random standards by editors of questionable ability and sense, and rather than face up to debate, is pushing the most active volunteers, and FAC nominators to the wolves. I would appreciate your view at this discussion.link. Note the whole thing is rather painful, and it basically implies that some of our most respected editors have been asleep at the wheel. Ceoil (talk) 13:11, 1 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I'll comment there when I get the time, although I assume Dank and co are already well aware of my opinions of Kevin and his general insistence that he's some kind of indispensable power-user whose whims everyone else is obliged to indulge without question. Looking at Special:Contributions/Kevin_McE it looks like he may have finally got the message that his "corrections" aren't helpful, so hopefully this has resolved itself. ‑ Iridescent 10:03, 3 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

(Belatedly) replied there. ‑ Iridescent 18:39, 21 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Coropuna/archive1

Pinging you to this discussion as you previously commented on the topic at peer review and the FAC has not received that much input in terms of "support","oppose" or "no opinion". Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 15:25, 1 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I will when I get the chance. I've put a placeholder comment asking the delegates not to archive the nomination until I've had a chance to re-read it. ‑ Iridescent 09:51, 3 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

List of cities with defensive walls

I don't normally go WTF at long lists, but I did pause for thought at List of cities with defensive walls... Carcharoth (talk) 14:26, 12 December 2019 (UTC) To be fair, List of town walls in England and Wales does show what is possible. Carcharoth (talk) 14:28, 12 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Oh for pity's sake. Might just as well make a list of "cities that existed before 1700" or something like that; it would be nearly the same thing. And the article is far, far too long. Risker (talk) 16:50, 12 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I agree about the main article. The more contained ones are interesting. Ones like: Austrian walled towns, and Chinese city wall, and Spanish Colonial Fortifications of the Philippines, or the eight articles in Category:City walls in Malta. Sadly nothing on fortified towns in the Netherlands (what I was looking for), so back to the main article for the Netherlands subsection. Carcharoth (talk) 17:20, 12 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Aye, that kind of list is a nuisance. And I can tell you right away that it is incomplete - no mention of Catania, for example. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 17:24, 12 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

There are a few cities founded before 1700 that lacked walls. Sparta was famous for lacking one. Another is Axum. (That list Carcharoth mentions includes Harar but omits Gondar; & with that, I've listed all of the Ethiopian cities founded before 1700.) Given time, I bet I could name a few more. (I think Cirencester never had walls in the post-Roman era, but I'd have to check my library.) -- llywrch (talk) 22:44, 12 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I would venture that an ancient city built without defensive walls, that's rather better known to Wikipedia readers, is Westminster. If you consider kremlins as big castles rather than as small city walls, a sizeable swathe of eastern Europe also qualifies. 195.27.18.67 (talk) 03:47, 20 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Westminster isn't a good example. You can't tell from the modern layout, but before the construction of the Embankment and the culverting of the Tyburn, the historic centre of the City of Westminster was an island. For an invader to capture it they'd either have to have sailed a navy up the Thames and fought their way past all the Thames defences and somehow bypassed London Bridge, fought a land campaign along the north bank past the Tower of London, or invaded from the South Coast and crossed the Thames at Brentford or Oxford and taken Westminster from the west. The reason Westminster doesn't have walls is that by the time any invader reached it, the war would have already been lost. No army ever captured Westminster; William the Conqueror, the assorted Lancastrians and Yorkists, and King Billy won their battles elsewhere and marched into Westminster unopposed, while neither Matilda nor the Royalists ever reached it. (Plus, although it had symbolic value, it wasn't particularly strategically important; the King would have had ample time to flee by the time the barbarians reached the gate, so any conquering army would have found themselves governing an abandoned palace, a abbey-full of irate monks, and a gaggle of surly tenant farmers. Any self-respecting barbarian horde in the Middle Ages would have gone for London, Winchester, York or Norwich.) There are some examples of important medieval English towns that didn't have city walls, such as Cambridge and Manchester, but they tended to use ditches and dykes coupled with natural water features. Someone will probably pop up to correct me, but I can't think of any significant medieval English settlement that didn't have any kind of fortification. ‑ Iridescent 18:42, 20 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

(adding) And a kremlin is definitely a small city wall, not a big castle. ‑ Iridescent 19:59, 20 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Season's Greetings

		Season's Greetings
		Wishing you (and all lurkers) a Happy Holiday Season, and all best wishes for the New Year! Mystical Nativity (Filippo Lippi) is my Wiki-Christmas card to all for this year. Johnbod (talk) 16:39, 17 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Donations to wikipedia

My boomer dad recently asked me, "What do you think about donations to wikipedia?".

Since he's not at all familiar with Wikimedia, how would be a good way to explain to him in simple terms the controversy, and my mixed feelings about it?

Would it be good to suggest donating to a local affiliate instead?

Benjamin (talk) 10:15, 18 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Say "OK doner" :) ——SN 54129 15:16, 18 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I am not sure what controversy we are talking about... Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 10:21, 18 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Ditto. There's certainly a school of thought that the WMF is expanding too quickly because they feel obliged to spend the money as it comes in and donations outstrip running costs (see Guy Macon's essay), but that's not a controversy but a dispute over whether incoming cash should be treated as running costs or endowment. (In most jurisdictions, cash donated for charitable purposes needs to be spent on those purposes within a reasonable timeframe, and can't be hoarded as an endowment unless the money was explicitly given as endowment, so we end up spending money on things it could be argued are unnecessary.) @Benjaminikuta, I'm not sure what controversy you have in mind nor why donating to local affiliates directly instead of donating to the WMF so they can distribute the funds to the local affiliates would make a difference. If you're not sure about whether the WMF is deserving of your money, just give your money to your local women's refuge, donkey sanctuary, cancer research trust, or whatever other cause you feel is deserving—it's not as if the WMF is going to fall apart for want of your and your dad's donation. ‑ Iridescent 2 15:10, 18 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. I've been toying with an essay that argues not to give money to the WMF. Since it's likely the opinion of a long-time Wikipedian might be newsworthy, I have been thinking hard about what points I should make & how to make them. (Since I doubt saying "Don't give them money because they're all meanie-butts" will persuade many people.) -- llywrch (talk) 20:26, 18 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I'd personally be reluctant to donate any cash to the WMF at present. Slightly cynically, I get the impression that the annual fundraising drive is more a case of a publicity campaign to ensure the general public remain aware that Wikipedia is (at least theoretically) independent, non-profit, and not subject to external editorial control, and a class-consciousness exercise to try to create a sense of a bond between the WMF, editors, and readers.

The latter is a very common tactic; when you pay your £3 membership of a political party, or mail off your $5 to the charity of your choice, it likely costs them more than that in the administrative costs of processing your donation and in the ongoing costs of sending you future mailings, bumper stickers, membership cards etc. The charities, campaigns, political parties etc treasure these small donors nonetheless, as it creates a base of loyalists who feel—both literally and emotionally—invested, and are more likely both to actively participate in the cause, and to proselytise for the cause. (There's a reason Trump sells those MAGA hats rather than give them away even though he doesn't need the money, a reason the British Labour Party charges idealistic young students for the privilege of carrying out unpaid labour, a reason historic buildings charge admission fees even though it costs more to hire the ticket collector than they make in ticket sales…) In reality, it would take 200,000 donors making the suggested $5 donation for US readers, or 380,000 donors making the suggested £2 donation for UK readers—and that's not taking into account the processing fee for each transaction—just to match the money the WMF has received from Amazon this year. Despite all the "We need the cost of your daily coffee to defend Wikipedia's independence!" hype, if we removed the "Donate to Wikipedia" link from the sidebar altogether I doubt Finance and Administration would even notice; the fundraising is an editor recruitment and retention tool.

I'm not really the best person to be talking to about this side of things, as I've never been particularly involved in either the financial or the recruitment-and-retention side of things. user:Risker and Whatamidoing (WMF) are probably best placed to give the WMF's side on why the small donations are important and where the money goes, as previously mentioned Guy Macon has written a lot on inefficiency and overexpansion, and GorillaWarfare has put in a lot of thought in the past into what does and doesn't work (but is probably busy with the Arbcom transition). If you can dig Somey and Kelly Martin out, they've had quite interesting things to say on the topic as well in the past from a pure-blood HTD perspective.

If you do write any kind of public "the WMF has too much money" story, be prepared for a full-on attack from the brogrammers at the WMF. See Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2017-02-27/Op-ed for a taste of how the good ol' boys have reacted in the past, even in the context of an obscure and largely unread article buried in the Signpost, when it comes to anyone questioning the necessity of their constantly raising ever more money so they can keep awarding grants to themselves for their pet projects. ‑ Iridescent 18:09, 20 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not worried overmuch about the "brogrammers". For one thing, I've been around here a lot longer than most of them. For another, I've worked with computers & the web long enough to know well that even in the most professional surroundings something like 75% of all computer-related projects fail. (It's just that the big technology companies are able to hide their failures far more effectively than a minnow like the Foundation.) In any case, it appears their cowboy days with the software are over so there is little to gripe about on that side of the business. (I have ideas about how they could do their jobs better, but I'm content to wait until they ask for my opinion. Which might happen before the heat death of the universe.) And lastly, I've spoken truth to Jimmy Wales in the past & I'm still here; if he can't drive me away I doubt someone like Jorm can.

No, what I have to say should come as no surprise to anyone who read what I wrote in relation to my ArbCom campaign. The non-technical side of the Foundation has no idea how Wikipedia or any of the projects actually functions, so many -- if not most -- of them pursue commendable but vague goals that accomplish nothing concrete although arguably justifying their paychecks. (The curious can read my recent comment to Guy's excellent essay.) For the last decade or so I've been content to dismiss the Foundation as little more than a honeypot to divert the incompetent while the rest of us actually achieved something, but I was angered to learn this summer just how much Foundation grant money is floating around. Many volunteers who are creating the content that attracts readers are paying for that content out of their own pockets. meanwhile, one individual managed to create a nice little existence on Foundation grants while producing little more than crap articles. If there is enough money to provide volunteers with some level of income, that should go to the people who are creating the content. (Or at least fighting to keep the spam, vandalism & trolling to tolerable levels.) -- llywrch (talk) 19:31, 20 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The non-technical side of the Foundation has no idea how Wikipedia or any of the projects actually functions isn't entirely fair. It's not always obvious because they tend to use their real names on the Foundation website and a pseudonym on the projects (plus, some of them are active but in other language projects so en-wiki folk aren't aware of them), but quite a few of them have long and active histories on the projects. (As an example, Sherry Snyder, the WMF-er regular editors are most likely to encounter as the WMF's de facto ambassador to the human race, is the alter ego of WhatamIdoing who's been active for years.) ‑ Iridescent 19:49, 20 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Fair point. There are several noteworthy exceptions. What if I amended that to read "Most of the non-technical side"? -- llywrch (talk) 21:30, 20 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The Internet Archive is running an appeal right now and they have a 2-for-1 arrangement with matching funding. I've no idea how much they need the cash but I found that more tempting than WMF. Johnbod (talk) 15:36, 18 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I wouldn't be totally surprised if Internet Archive becomes absorbed by the WMF at some point—taking it over would seem to me to be an eminently sensible use of spare cash and server capacity. (It wouldn't quite tally with empower and engage people around the world to collect and develop educational content under a free license or in the public domain, and to disseminate it effectively and globally, but wouldn't be a million miles away either.)

It's also the worst kept secret in Silicon Valley that SmugMug is considering shutting down Flickr because they can't make it profitable, and a Flickr/Commons merger would also seem to make complete sense—the Creative Commons stuff could be moved to the Commons name with the holiday snaps and amateur porn retained on an arms-length residual Flickr to prevent it contaminating the Sum Of All Human Knowledge, and importing the Flickr community en masse would give us an instant and massive boost to the editor base, comprised almost entirely of knowledgable and friendly people with a demonstrable interest in working in collaborative online communities. I don't think even the most rose-tinted WMF loyalist would deny that Commons is dysfunctional and would be improved by a mass influx of new blood. ‑ Iridescent 18:09, 20 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the ping. Aside from the obvious (that the "small" donations actually make up most of the donations when viewed in aggregate), getting individuals to donate gives them a sense of partial ownership and increases what some corporation would undoubtedly call "brand loyalty". That, by itself, is a valid reason for seeking out those small donations. Generally speaking, active participants in the Wikimedia projects (who make millions of hours of donations in time and effort) aren't making enough monetary donations in relation to the grief they cause when asked to cough up, and it's the reason that logged-in users don't normally get more than one message (if that). Something to bear in mind is that the enwiki campaign essentially pays for the infrastructure of the entire system. Could it be done better or differently? No doubt. And yes, I'd like to see more resources dedicated to areas where Wikimedia projects are just starting to make inroads (particularly in terms of editors), and that means more money. We have to remember that the overwhelming majority of those editors are going to gravitate toward the existing major-language projects, so maintaining and improving the infrastructure that supports those projects is the key to expanding both the editor and reader cores outside of the global north. (The reason that the community tech project is working on "small" projects only this year is that a goodly chunk of those "other language" editors have focused on things like Wikisource because it's their version of low-hanging fruit.) I'm not going to defend the budget in any way, since bluntly put it was never released to the community, and I question how much information even the Board was given this year. Risker (talk) 18:39, 20 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

That's pretty much what I meant by a class-consciousness exercise to try to create a sense of a bond between the WMF, editors, and readers—I'm not saying this is a bad thing, there's a reason groups ranging from major political parties down to your local stray cats' home solicit donations even when they don't actually need them. I'm not convinced by the "small" donations actually make up most of the donations when viewed in aggregate once you factor in the costs in terms of time and admin of running the fundraising campaign and processing all the donations, but I still agree that it's important, if nothing else so we have the option of telling Google, Amazon et al that we no longer want their money should it become necessary. (If there is a controversy—and I'm still waiting for the OP to explain what he meant—I suspect "the enwiki campaign essentially pays for the infrastructure of the entire system" is one of the causes. The WMF is not great at saying where the money actually goes, and I'm quite sure that most of the donors to e.g. French Wikipedia assume that their money is going on improving coverage on French Wikipedia and maybe closely associated projects like Commons, not on vanity projects like Faroese Wikisource or translating Wikipedia into Old Church Slavonic.) ‑ Iridescent 19:23, 20 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I think I'll have to disagree with the thought that "editor recruitment and retention tool" is a goal for fundraising. If it were, then they'd be able to tell me what percentage of donors are also editors, and they have no idea. (I'm curious whether editors are equally likely as others to donate.)

Having a lot of small donors does provide a certain level of independence from major donors and other funders. In grant-speak (i.e., ignoring the fact that money is fungible), grant money is usually restricted to a particular project (software or otherwise), so the small donors are largely paying for ongoing/operating costs – such as funding the affiliates. Most chapters get 50% or more of their total budget from the WMF.

What I'm hearing about strategy is that there is push for decentralization. I'm not sure how it's supposed to work at a practical level, but I think that I finally understand the problem they're trying to solve. Some (potential and current) affiliates find that receiving funds from a US charity either can't be done, or causes problems for them. So they seem to be looking at ways to make global/movement-wide money be accessible to the whole movement. (That push for decentralization makes it seem unlikely that the WMF would merge with the Internet Archive, or any other group, for that matter.) Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:01, 20 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Related to this, and cross posted to the mailing list:

My dad recently said to me:

"I was solitated by them after looking something up. I thought it strange the way they were pleading for donations. They made it sound like they might be shutting down if we the general public didn't donate."

Has there been any research into how common it is for readers to get the wrong impression from the marketing messaging?

(I know the fundraising team has done plenty of research on which messages bring in the most money.)

I've heard of this sort of thing happening before, and I think it's highly antithetical to our values to be deceptive.

Benjamin (talk) 23:34, 25 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Cheers

Damon Runyon's short story "Dancing Dan's Christmas" is a fun read if you have the time. Right from the start it extols the virtues of the hot Tom and Jerry

This hot Tom and Jerry is an old-time drink that is once used by one and all in this country to celebrate Christmas with, and in fact it is once so popular that many people think Christmas is invented only to furnish an excuse for hot Tom and Jerry, although of course this is by no means true.

No matter what concoction is your favorite to imbibe during this festive season I would like to toast you with it and to thank you for all your work here at the 'pedia this past year. Best wishes for your 2020 as well I. MarnetteD|Talk 11:28, 18 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Merry Christmas!

A very happy Christmas and New Year to you!
May 2020 bring you joy, happiness – and no trolls, vandals or visits from Krampus! All the best Gavin / SchroCat (talk) 07:48, 20 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Io Saturnalia!

		Io, Saturnalia!
		Wishing you and yours a Happy Holiday Season, from the horse and bishop person. May the year ahead be productive and distraction-free. Ealdgyth - Talk 16:30, 20 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

To save repeated replies, thanks to all the above and the same to you all. ‑ Iridescent 17:06, 20 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

For lack of a natural science themed greetings...

Hello Iridescent: Enjoy the holiday season and winter solstice if it's occurring in your area of the world, and thanks for your work to maintain, improve and expand Wikipedia. Cheers, Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 19:46, 20 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Spread the WikiLove; use {{subst:Season's Greetings}} to send this message

Thanks; I haven't forgotten about the Coropuna review and will get around to it. ‑ Iridescent 17:29, 21 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Season's Greetings!

Faithful friends who are dear to us

... gather near to us once more.

May your heart be light

and your troubles out of sight,

now and in the New Year.

SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:55, 23 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, and the same to you… ‑ Iridescent 15:50, 23 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Be well at Christmas

	Have a WikiChristmas and a PediaNewYear
	I was a little irritated earlier this year, and for that I am sorry. Be well. Keep well. Have a lovely Christmas. SilkTork (talk) 16:05, 23 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

If that was during Framageddon, then don't worry, we were all snappy. If it wasn't, then whatever it was I've already forgotten it. ‑ Iridescent 16:40, 23 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

2 more sleeps

🔔🎁⛄️🎅🏻 ^Atsme _Talk 📧 17:52, 23 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. same to you ‑ Iridescent 16:32, 24 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Happy holidays!

Hi Iridescent! All the warmest wishes for this seasonal occasion, whichever you celebrate - or don't, while I swelter at 27℃ (80.6℉), and peace and prosperity for 2020. Seriously hoping that you'll join me for a cool beer in Bangkok in August when it will be even hotter! Seriously hoping that the WMF will use their surplus funds to finance the trip for a lot more people - Bangkok is a heck of a long way away for most people.
Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 11:50, 24 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, and the same to you. Very unlikely I'll make BKK; per my longstanding gripes to the WMF, while scheduling Wikimania over the summer vacation may be great for the professional-student PhD types who dominate WMF decision-making, it makes the event virtually impossible for ordinary people to attend; not only is it always the most expensive time of year to travel, but workplaces are invariably short-staffed making it very difficult for people to get time off, and kids are off school so it's impractical for people with families to travel (I very much doubt that anyone's children would welcome losing the chance to visit SeaWorld so that mommy or daddy could attend The process of upload, disseminate and report a GLAM and how wikidatifying it improves it: a Brazilian experience and Attribution: Laws and Norms within Open Communities and Communicating to the Public, nor would I want to be the one explaining to a child that they won't be able to meet Mickey and Minnie but instead if they're lucky they might meet Andy Mabbett). I didn't attend Wikimania when it was held a ten minute walk from my house. This is the point at which someone from the WMF pipes up to say that all their research shows that the core editor base doesn't find this a problem, to which my reply remains the same; if that's what your sample is saying, then it's a problem with your sample as the quickest "who is actually doing the heavy lifting on the wikis and what do I know about their personal circumstances?" exercise shows that people aged 30-50 (who logistically can't fly around the world in July), and retirees (who generally can't afford to travel peak-season) are the glue that holds the wikis together. There's a subthread on this up above which I still stand by. ‑ Iridescent 16:48, 24 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Nothing like reading a spot-on rant. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:36, 24 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

They always bring back the classics for Christmas! But the new bit in the middle certainly made me laugh. Johnbod (talk) 18:41, 24 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

It's the time of year for repeats. If you're lucky you might get "Wikipedia's notability rules are confusing and contradictory", "List-defined references are a barrier to entry for new editors", "Wikidata is more trouble than it's worth", "90% of the Manual of Style could be deleted and nobody would even notice let alone miss it" and "What does Katherine Maher actually do?" as well. ‑ Iridescent 21:10, 24 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

As a dissenting voice, I'll note that the one time I attended Wikimania I found it very informative & rewarding. However, the choice of talks & presentations were far different all those years ago than what is offered now. And some noteworthy people in the area of Internet & knowledge were invited to speak too, although Richard Stallman showed up anyway. Sometimes I miss the old days, despite its Wild West environment. -- llywrch (talk) 21:18, 24 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

That was in the days when the WMF consisted of CBD and a couple of Jimmy's drinking buddies and the annual budget was $1,508,039 (compared to $104,505,783 last year). Now, per a couple of WMF-ers (including the now-notorious Jan Eissfeldt) a few threads up), "the statistical correlation between Wikimania and onwiki editors is terrible" and It's more affiliate folks and edit-a-thon folks than everyday editors; as far as I can see it's nowadays mainly a bunch of insiders gathering once a year to slap each other on the back and network with an eye on future grants. The informal local meetups are likely a much better place if you just want to share knowledge about getting things done. Plus, those were different times when it came to networking; it's now much more efficient to film your presentation and pop it on YouTube where anyone who's interested can see it, or even just post a transcript on-wiki, and if you want senior people to hear your opinions you have a much better shot tweeting at Katherine Maher than you do trying to buttonhole her in a room full of 1000 people. ‑ Iridescent 21:40, 24 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Which is why I referenced my one Wikimania I attended, not any of those in the last few years. I have noticed that the occasional interesting session does slip in, & yes one can learn from the transcript/video of the session, but it's not the same. Any more than watching a TEDx presentation is the same as actually being there & able to interact with the presenter. Or reading about a writers' conference is not the same as attending Bread Loaf.

But I will agree without reservation that recent sessions are designed for "affiliate folks & edit-a-thon folks". It's the eternal search for the best paying job that requires the least amount of work: the Foundation -- & apparently the affiliates -- attract people who are looking for a paycheck, but really aren't into writing (or research, or even sorting out data), so they look to wriggle their way into a job working for a thing no one claims to understand ("it doesn't work in the theory, but it works in practice"), look like they're doing something productive for a few years, use that on their resume to get a better-paying job, & repeat. The folks who are doing the work that put Wikipedia in the top 10 most visited websites, on the other hand, are not only interested in presentations that are more tangible, they aren't that driven about networking to advance their careers. (Yes, I got to talk to some interesting people at my Wikimania session, like the reporter from Nature who did the comparison of reliability between Encyclopaedia Britannica & Wikipedia, & met other Wikipedians like Paul August in the flesh, but the point was to exchange ideas & experiences, not to buff up one's professional network.)

As for Katherine Maher, Twitter, & getting the attention of the alleged bosses of all this... I do sometimes wonder if my profanity-laden rant at her on Twitter did prompt her to start actually looking into FRAMgate, but it's not important that I had. Rather, it's that one had to use a non-Wiki medium to get the attention of the head of a Foundation known for Wiki software. And that instead of courting burn-out by confronting this, I simply focus on writing content; it's simpler & more satisfying. -- llywrch (talk) 00:36, 25 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

A lot of people, including the WMF who consulted me over Skype two years ago about holding Wikimania in Bangkok, don't realise that despite it's excellent geolocation, cheap flights, and really low cost of the hospitality industry, due to the climate the Academic year in Southeast Asia is almost the opposite to that of traditional Western countries: August is slap bang in the middle of term time. Attending university here is more like a continuation of Grade 12, and a lot stricter than a UK 6th form centre, with uniforms, attendance registers, etc. Unless they are in Grad Sch doing a PhD or post grad teaching diploma they are very much treated like children (I do know, I taught in a leading Thai uni). Hence attendance figures from Thailand won't be amazing, and it remains to be seen how many come from neighbouring Laos, Cambodia, and Burma. There will be a few from former British colonies Malasia & Singapore, and of course with their cheap flights the Phillipinos will arrive in force, and it's not too far from HK and Western Australia, and there are about 300,000 US and European expats living here who might be curious enough to pay a visit (but most of them are not in Bangkok), so the WMF is going to have to cut a chunk out of Maher's luxury travel budget and use it for scholarships if Wikimania in Bangkok is going to see much more than me and Risker, and a few other regular Wikimania old timers from Europe and North America who go not to hobnob, but to stir things up in the hope of some better recognition for the work the volunteers do - something that it seems a high-flying, tweeting ED ostensibly hasn't got a clue about as this page would appear to demonstrate. Anyway, I'll be there and gladly buying the beers for anyone who can put up with my company for a few minutes. Someone needs to come and help dilute the overwhelming/overbearing presence of WMF staff on their major annual junket (or publicity stunt). Maybe we can twist Guy Macon's arm. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 03:30, 25 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Heh. I'm planning to skip Bangkok, unless I have to go there to work on something specific like Comms Committee or the last remnants of the strategy stuff. I went to Hong Kong on a partial scholarship and, well, let's say I didn't find the 40-degree temperatures all that enjoyable. (I don't think it ever got below 30 degrees, even at 6 a.m.) Iridescent is at least partly right; there aren't that many English Wikipedians who are ground-level volunteers in attendance. I have to say that there's a rather interesting and much more varied representation from outside of the English/European world, though; probably less than half of the attendees from Asia/South America/Africa are "the usual suspects, if for no other reason than that the chapter culture hasn't really taken hold there yet. In Cape Town, I'd say probably 60-70% of people there were front-line editors first, and anything else they did was extra; it was the first Wikimania I was at that had so many people who would describe themselves as editors first. The Wikimedia Conference/Summit (in March/April of each year in Berlin) is hardcore insiders, though. I confess that, with the exception of the first Wikimania I attended, I have always gone with an "agenda" - whether it be representing a particular group (mostly FDC or Strategy), seeking out support/volunteers on a particular issue (a lot of the infrastructure work for the Orangemoody case was arranged at Wikimania Mexico City). I do think there's something to be said for learning more about the technical changes and improvements that have been made or are coming down the pipeline, and for getting frontline editors sitting beside the developers to better highlight real software issues, and this is pretty much the only big conference where there's a sufficient cadre of both to really have an impact. (Developers don't go to most editing or interest group meetings, and non-tech editors aren't usually invited to hackathons and technical conferences.) As to flights to Bangkok being cheap...well, not from here. Six months out, and I'd be looking at airfare that is about 45% more than my *total* expenses (flights, lodging, food, etc) for the Italian Wikimania. I just can't justify spending that much out of my own pocket.

So yes, I have been to a pile of Wikimanias (and other WMF-related conferences/meetings), and I suppose in some senses I'm something of an insider. Ironically, I keep being asked to do things because the "real" insiders think I'm not one of them. Risker (talk) 05:01, 25 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I can’t go for RL reasons anytime soon, but even my friends on non-Western wikis have been less than impressed in the past. One comment I got from a steward who went to the one in Montreal (or maybe South Africa?) was that it focused too much on the in-person stuff and not enough on the actual editing communities, and this was from a steward who is highly involved RL in his language group. TonyBallioni (talk) 05:20, 25 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Bangkok, from it's actual geolocation as practically the region's major hub, two airports close to the very modern city, excellent rapid mass transportation systems, and extraordinary low cost nice, budget hotel accommodation (from $20 a night with en suite - yes, there is not a '0' missing), and restaurants with an amazing diversity of affordable food (give the $1 street food a miss), and $3 for a beer, is an ideal location for SE Asia, India, Indonesia, Philippines, and even furthest cities in Australia for only $450 round trip. The downside is the low Wikipedia penetration in Thailand, and with the Philippine WMF handling communications and content with 0 knowledge of local culture and media, I'm not quite sure how they think they are going to do it.

Note that culturally, the Philippines and the rest of SE Asia have nothing in common - a total cultural dichotomy. I am very wary of what's going to happen, following my experience in terrible accommodation in Washington D.C., a chaotic venue spread across the steep slopes of an Italian alpine village, the lack of food and catastrophic organisation of peripheral events in Hong Kong, and the stogy picnic-packed lunches and and sour red wine in London (although there was a nice grand piano in the Barbican...). If the WMF can release enough budget to get things done properly and not 'on the cheap' as they usually do, and confide the organisation to truly experienced people, it could be a success. At least I'll already be here and I won't be wasting upwards of $2,000 on travel and accommodation like I have in the past when/if things go wrong. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 10:06, 25 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

It's still prohibitively expensive to get to for most of the Wikipedia userbase, who like it or not are primarily in Europe and the Americas, from which travel to Thailand is eyewateringly expensive both in terms of money and in terms of environmental impact. (A quick dip into Skyscanner quotes £800/$1100 for a return trip from London to Bangkok arriving August 4 and departing August 10; that's less than the £794 for a round trip to Auckland on the same dates.) The prices you quote don't seem particularly cheap to me; outside the bubble around London $20 for a room and $3 for a drink isn't significantly different to what you'd pay even in the notoriously expensive UK—if "cheap lodging", "cheap high-quality food" and "ease of access from as many places as possible" were the primary considerations, Wikimania would permanently rotate between Las Vegas, Istanbul and Buenos Aires. ‑ Iridescent 16:03, 25 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Happy Holidays

Hello Iridescent: Enjoy the holiday season, and thanks for your work to maintain, improve and expand Wikipedia. Cheers, DBig Xrayᗙ Happy Holidays! 18:39, 24 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Spread the WikiLove; use {{subst:Season's Greetings1}} to send this message

Thanks, same to you ‑ Iridescent 21:10, 24 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Happy Holidays

	Season's greetings!
	I hope this holiday season is festive and fulfilling and filled with love and kindness, and that 2020 will be safe, successful and rewarding...keep hope alive....Modernist (talk) 02:13, 25 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Good luck

豊かな十年へようこそ/WELCOME TO THE D20s

Miraclepine wishes you a Merry Christmas, a Happy New Year, and a prosperous decade of change and fortune.
このミラ PはIridescentたちのメリークリスマスも新年も変革と幸運の豊かな十年をおめでとうございます！
フレフレ、みんなの未来！/GOOD LUCK WITH YOUR FUTURE!
ミラ P 03:38, 25 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

TPS query

Iri, I am hoping you can direct me, and if not, one of your talk page stalkers can. What is our current thinking on edit summaries? (Remember the olden days, when non-use of edit summaries was enough to crater an RFA?) My watchlist is being hit extensively by edits from an experienced editor who is not using edit summaries, I have asked the editor on user talk to please use edit summaries and explained why, they have removed the message and yet continue editing without edit summaries. What next? It is not clear to me if we have a guideline in this area (well, don't be a dick applies, but I digress). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:18, 25 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

It's "accepted practice" rather than "enforceable policy" so it's not something that's actually enforceable by anything other than social pressure. It's still considered unacceptable enough to at the very least dent an RFA (see Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Hawkeye7 3 for a high-profile recent example). Looking at the contribution history in question there seem to be no truly blank edit summaries but instead the auto-generated /* Section header */ type, so Ozzie may have fallen into the same trap Hawkeye fell into of thinking that because there's something in the edit summary field it doesn't count as blank, and being genuinely confused at why people considered it disruptive. (Help:Edit summary cautions against leaving the field blank, but doesn't explain that most editors consider an auto-created summary to be equivalent to blank; I'm not surprised that even experienced editors like Hawkeye find it confusing.) That said, given that Ozzie currently has over 200 sections on their talkpage I'm not inclined to take the whole AGF thing too far; one "well, it's technically not forbidden so you can't force me" is one thing but two is the start of a pattern. Some of the people who complained at Hawkeye's RFA (or Hawkeye himself) might be better placed than me to discuss how seriously people actually take the edit summary issue; I've been largely absent from Wikipedia other than periodically checking this talk page for quite a long time now. ‑ Iridescent 19:36, 25 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Very helpful, Iri, and exactly answers my query. Considering your mention of AGF and pattern, I don't know what to do next in this situation. More and more, I am realizing that I just need to unwatch every single medical article I watch, and give up on my area of editing focus on Wikipedia; it has become a special-agenda warzone, and productive editing is no longer possible. Thanks for informing me on whether this was enforceable, which is all I really wanted to know. Best, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:52, 25 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think your guy has much of a special agenda, but he has his own way of editing & sticks to it. He's busy on the MED project talk page, & a section there might have an effect. Johnbod (talk) 22:05, 25 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I doubt it, but I know a post there will result in retaliation. If this is not enforceable, there is nothing I can do. I can only continue to do what I have been doing now since 2015: unwatch more and more medical articles that I once tended. I don't want to sit here and click over and over and over to figure out what an edit is and whether I need to check it. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:30, 25 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

...but doesn't explain that most editors consider an auto-created summary to be equivalent to blank. I added some note about that at Help:Edit_summary#Section_editing. However I am not sure whether experienced editors are even reading that page to learn using edit summary though. – Ammarpad (talk) 10:07, 26 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Pedantic I know but the main concern in Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Hawkeye7 3 were temperament/behaviour issues, not really edit summary usage, at least from my reading of the Oppose section. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 10:21, 26 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the bcc ping, Jo-Jo (I didn't know such a thing existed). Not to worry. Although I rarely weigh in on RFAs anymore (an interesting bit of history can be found at User talk:SandyGeorgia/arch95#June 2013, and as a once very-high-profile editor, I have to take care not to become a target for trigger-happy admins), I don't miss much in that department. I understood Iri's response in the context of edit summaries. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:22, 26 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

If you don't want to use the {{bcc}} template to force a notification without mentioning the person's name in the text, you just need to link the person's username in the edit summary. If for some reason you want to ping someone without drawing attention to the fact you're pinging them, pipe the username to a punctuation mark (as I've done with the comma and period in the summary to this edit). By playing around with pipelinking to invisible unicode characters in the edit summary it's probably theoretically possible to make the notification completely invisible, although I can't see why that level of secrecy would ever be necessary since by that point you presumably wouldn't be having the discussion in public.

Be aware that in the past some people have got very annoyed at being bcc-pinged, as it means they get a notification saying they've been mentioned in a discussion but when they do a ctrl-f on that discussion to see where they've been mentioned, they don't see their names. I can't find any of the complaints off the top of my head but I know there has been wailing and gnashing of teeth about it in the past. ‑ Iridescent 09:14, 27 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I see, thanks Iri! I'm still trying to adjust to this new-fangled pingie thingie (and so far hating it). Since I watchlist evey FAC I review, and once had half of our medical content watchlisted (hyperbole alert), and once had the second busiest talk page on the 'pedia (behind Jimbo), these pingie thingies mean I will need a new daily processing style. Until/unless I give up on improving medical content and disappear again, I guess I will have to adjust the way I used to organize my daily activity. I used to process my talk page first (in case there was an urgent FAC need or something I had to know before reading FAC), my regular editing next (to get my "fun" editing done before I "went to work"), and last, I "put on my FAC hat" (which put me in a whole different mode, since I had to be battle ready with my iron-clad asbestos suit on, fully focused, and leave behind my colorful and colloquial vocabulary for a much more professional tone). Now, when I get these blooming pings, I have to go check them in case they're important. I feel like I need to take Ritalin or something (as if I don't have the ability to hyper-focus), being pulled different directions in the middle of work, and it seems as if FAC nominators are used to instant gratification now (not Jo-Jo, whose conduct is quite impressive). Thanks again, Iri, best, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:38, 27 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

PS, I can't imagine how the delegates (errr, coordinators) keep up with FAC/FAR these days, with the global @FAC ping going off all the time. When nominators or reviewers needed my immediate attention (to withdraw, for example), they had to come to my talk page or WT:FAC to request it. My TPS and other FAC followers were then able to help me get all my work done, as they often saw my talk requests before I did, and could answer many of them. Other editors don't see pings to the coords, so can't help them process their workload-- maybe another one of the (many) factors slowing down FAC processing, and another reason that FAC talk is dead, and there is no healthy discussion of issues affecting the process? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:44, 27 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think the {{@FAC}} batsignal to the coordinators is activated unreasonably often—at the time of writing it's been used 297 times since its creation in 2013, which is less than once a week. The only people who are aware of its existence are experienced enough to know not to abuse it. I doubt it has much to do with the decline of activity on FAC talk; I suspect that has more to do with the fact that assorted Defenders Of The Wiki began using the talk pages of FAC and TFA as a happy hunting ground for 'civility patrol', making people reluctant to participate there. Plus, a lot of the disputes that used to generate the most verbiage—to what extent writers retain control, infoboxes, referencing styles, the role of WikiProject local consensuses, main page protection, whether and when the MOS can be disregarded…—have largely reached at least a grudging consensus over the years. (It may be a statement of the obvious, but for better or worse we no longer have Eric, Tony, Mattisse, ILT and the infoboxers picking fights, and the small handful of remaining Formatting Consistency Is More Important Than Accuracy Or Readability en-dash warriors and date format hardliners are largely restricting themselves to grumbling at each other on Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style, so there are fewer arguments to have. Declining activity isn't always a sign of stagnation, sometimes it's just a sign that there's less of a need for tinkering.)

I still dislike the Echo system ("pings") intensely, but recognize that it's not going to go away. If you find you're being flooded with notifications, go to Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-echo where you can disable any notifications in which you're not interested, and also mute notifications from anyone in whose opinion you know you're not interested. It's still formal policy that pings can't be assumed to be received, so anyone who genuinely needs to solicit your opinion will still notify you on your talkpage in the old-school way. ‑ Iridescent 14:07, 27 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, my. More cans of worms to unpack! By checking my preferences, I solved one irritation (Cross-wiki notifications), but "Muted users" raises another TPS question. Since pinging is so standard nowadays, is it fair for Editor A to demand that Editor B never ping them again? Why can't Editor A mute Editor B in their preferences? Why should Editor B be charged with "harassment" if they are doing standard pinging, and why should Editor B be charged to remember not to ping, when pinging is so commonplace and Editor A could simply mute Editor B in their prefs? If Editor A edits too fast, makes an extreme number of errors, and rarely returns to discussions about those editing errors, yet forbids talk page posts or pings, what next? Another pingie-thingie problem. I yearn for the days when we had Requests for comment/User conduct/Editor name, so we could calmly analyze editor behaviors outside of the circus that is ANI.

Back on topic, seriously, Iri, look at what it must be like to be a FAC/FAR Coord these days. Even if the @FAC template isn't engaged often, add those once-a-week occurrences to the times an individual coord gets an individual ping, and extend this across all of FAC. Consider that I could process the volume at FAC that I did because of the TPS effect: nominators and reviewers posted issues to my talk or FAC talk, and the whole blooming FA community (hyperbole alert again) would dig in, often before I could respond, and often meaning I didn't need to respond. Even when I was a single delegate, and still when I had help from Karanacs, I had a cadre of editors who knew the processes well, and could be trusted to do basic things, like archiving a withdrawal and more. It strikes me that the pingie-thingie has reduced the amount of collaboration that resulted from more open talk page usage.

I believe (could be wrong?) that the infobox wars post-dated my time at FAC, so I didn't see that problem on talk. But what is in abundant evidence after only one week of FAC reviewing is that prose has seriously deteriorated without the likes of Tony and Eric. It is not hard to see why the promotion rate has escalated from the 50% range to the almost-70% range, with a decrease in FA production, and why we have the GOCE combing through FAs; prose that is getting through is problematic. I reviewed one-third of these archivals; most of those were going through without my review. Tony launched the RFC that did away with an FA director, without prior discussion, and the FA process has itself to blame that it is floundering IMO, but that's another can of worms. Nonetheless, Tony's prose reviews were helpful, and no one has replaced the serious prose review we once had. You can look at the same archivals above to see what today's prose reviews look like: long strings of nit-picking followed by an eventual Support, even though I later showed real prose problems.

A problem I see affecting the FA process is the utter lack of respect shown to delegates/coords. In catching up on history after "The Incident" which you posted to my talk earlier this year, I see Coordinators being forced to strike perfectly rational commentary from a FAC, as if a Coord isn't in good position to know what is actionable and what is not. In recent discussions, I see Coords being forced to withdraw from a discussion after their judgment is called into question. I see involved editors shutting down FAC talk discussions before a Coord has even weighed in. On FAC talk, we see one editor trying to force me into personalizing a discussion by pointing fingers at individual articles or writers, as if a delegate who processed around 5,000 FACs and FARs is not positioned to offer a well-qualified opinion in a way that attempts to avoid personalization. To that editor, I offer the monthly FAC archive for perusal, since a former delegate should not be pointing fingers at specific editors' work. I could ask a competent copyeditor to look at the recently promoted examples that I mention, but how does personalizing help here? Current examples should suffice, and avoid the need to personalize. Again, overall, I don't see how the Coords can be effective with this kind of disrespect in evidence.

On the MOS issues, there are some things that are always tipoffs to more serious underlying issues. Just as an article search for instances of "however", "in total", "subsequently" and the like often gives indications of weak writing, examination of hyphens and dashes often turns up grammatical errors. In number-dense topics, it is important to know the difference between a hyphen and a dash, when hyphens are required on modifiers, and how to re-cast sentences to avoid convoluted constructs involving hyphens, dashes and convert templates, which can be dreadful to read through. Many of the other significant MOS issues are easily fixed (I often just do them myself), but for content areas that are dense with numbers, it's important that the writers learn to use hyphens and dashes correctly. Since the writers' and researchers' talents may be wasted in applying dashes and NBSPs, they can also be encouraged to bring in a collaborator who will do that for them before they approach FAC. We should not be seeing repeat nominations from experienced writers that are not MOS-ready.

No, I don't think that FAC talk is dead because the infobox and MOS warriers have moved on: I think it's dead because the three processes no longer work together, with each becoming the turf of sub-segments of the FA community, and no leader for a rudderless ship. Best, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:14, 27 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

(ec) I get more pings from the TFAcoord template than I do from the FACcoord template, at least so far. As for the troubles with FAC ... I honestly lost a lot of heart/etc when Eric was forced out of the whole project. I've long felt that too much emphasis is placed on prose and not enough on the actual content - and I'm frankly scared to dig into any of the sourcing on some of the FACs ... which I know I need to do. I've been less active in the last few years because... well, yeah. Moving. I'm finally settled in one place, and we're going down next month to empty one of the two storage units still remaining to move from the old town to the new place. Hoping to be able to unearth a pile of the book boxes too... and get them into the house .. I feel lost without all my books around me. I do have the most important ones, but it's always the obscure one that you need most. I don't like the habit that's current at FAC of insisting on a huge long list of problems before a nominator will take a reviewers word for the fact that there are enough issues with the candidate that it needs archiving/withdrawing. I can't really blame most nominators for it either... there really isn't anyone to go to for a good copyedit before FAC... Eric's gone, John's gone, Tony's.. well, cranky. Dank's busy with TFA. I have no idea who I'd get to copyedit anything I was likely to bring to FAC. And I will say that WP:ERRORS isn't helping ... the insanity that was going on there where folks couldn't see that their own preferences in prose styling are not the same as prose errors. I'm happy if the prose is understandable and clear to a non-expert. I think we expect too much sometimes on prose and also have too many folks who can't see that prose styles vary and that just because you think something works better doesn't necessarily MAKE it objectively better. Prose is often subjective ... and we need to stop kowtowing at the idea that we please everyone all the time with prose styles.

I'm girding my loins for some digging into sourcing/content after we get the storage unit emptied ... I'll be on the road with hubby for a couple of weeks mid-January... me let loose with a computer, internet, and time to sit and be annoying... we should all be worried.

And as an aside, I'm mad at both of you, SG and Iri. I woke up at 2am last night and made the mistake of poking my head in here and ... well, next thing I knew I was deep in the FAC talk page archives dealing with TCO/Pumpkin/JM/etc. Never did get back to sleep... and I'm blaming you both. Ealdgyth - Talk 16:33, 27 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I agree entirely with I'm happy if the prose is understandable and clear to a non-expert. My approach to reviewing (and writing) has always been "if I were a reasonably bright 14-year-old with no prior knowledge of this topic, would I understand it?" and "What is being omitted here and why?"; I think MOS compliance is virtually irrelevant provided the article is internally consistent and there's no ambiguity in what's meant. (Something like Ceilings of the Natural History Museum probably breaks more MOS rules than it adheres to, and the world hasn't come to an end.) I respectfully disagree regarding the importance of the hyphen/endash/emdash distinction; there's a legitimate aesthetic argument for keeping them consistent within any given article, but unless you're using some weird font intentionally designed to exaggerate the difference then —, – and - are virtually indistinguishable onscreen unless you're literally measuring pixels. The conservatism of the MOS guardians and of the style guides from which the MOS is drawn means we have far too many arbitrary rules inherited from the days of metal type which just aren't relevant to a wholly onscreen—and increasingly, wholly on-speaker—environment. ‑ Iridescent 19:04, 31 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict) Not interested Sandy. I don't have rose-tinted spectacles about the past, and don't think I am God's gift to FAC, unlike the way some people obviously do. You have yet to provide any examples of any actual problems; this isn't about claiming that there are no problems, or about "personalisation", as you well know. (Except in the way that that you are trying to personalise it against certain people without naming them - I note that some of the "examples" of heinous crimes you refer to concern me. I stand by them all, and I don't need someone who embarrassed themselves so staggeringly by once accusing me of being Merridew to try and pick a fight when I have better things to do). I'm not interested in whatever games you're playing at, and will continue to do what I do before the diminishing sense of enjoyment I get from editing WP is sucked out of me for good. Big claims require big evidence. If you can't be bothered with the evidence then stop pinging people when they don't need to be. - SchroCat (talk) 16:39, 27 December 2019 (UTC) Addendum: I was not the only person asking for evidence of the problems you keep claiming, so I'm not entirely sure why I was the one you decided to ping. I suggest you either ping the others or drop your suggestion onto the long and meandering wall of text on the FAC talk page. Or you could just do what several people have asked and provide examples. Without proof of the problems, there will be no agreement on what the problems are (I may have missed it in the over-long thread, but it's still not clear what the problems are), and if we don't know what the problems are, no-one is going to suggest ways to improve whatever you think the situation is. - SchroCat (talk) 19:17, 27 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@ Ealdgyth, Oh, you poor thing! For THAT, I should offer to get in a car and come help you unpack books!! Seriously, Ealdgyth, you are right that the sourcing issues could be more significant than the prose issues. I am sure I told you many times that I frequently threatened Raul to never even consider naming you as delegate, because we could not survive without your sourcing reviews. Although I once had to write to ArbCom because of a bad COI issue involving Awadewit, including a very personal attack on me, we are also missing her serious source work wrt comprehensiveness-- I don't think anyone does that anymore. I would really Really REALLY like to see you recuse from a FAC, put on the Ealdgyth source review hat, and show 'em how it should be done. On TCO/JM etc, when I reread those messes, I see that Raul's approach was so right. He let those discussions rage until everyone had aired everything, and then came in with the gavel. I let those nimwits bother me too much; today I am much more inclined to ignore the unhelpful. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:46, 27 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Iri, so back on the pingie thingie, I guess we have evidence of the problem :) You're faulted if you ping 'em (stop bothering me), and you're faulted if you don't (talking behind my back). I won that discussion about the problems with this pingie-thingie :) :) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:55, 27 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Back to the original point, if anyone wants an illustration of irony in action I doubt you'll do better than this. ‑ Iridescent 20:42, 1 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Well, with that laugh, my New Year is off to a grand start! I don't think I should add that to my wall of fame. Or should I? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:50, 1 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Looking at that wall, I'm more worried by the fact that in 2012 I apparently wrote a 174-word sentence. I'm surprised Malleus didn't spontaneously combust. ‑ Iridescent 20:59, 1 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe he did, and it's all your fault? Holy Mother of All Run-ons! SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:02, 1 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

PS, some medical editors these days are forcing 12-word sentences into leads of articles, which has totally ruined the possibility of a well-written lead for a Featured article. At 174, you'd be sacrificed and your body donated to medical research. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:05, 1 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I'll guess the people pushing for a 12-word maximum are all American? The Flesch–Kincaid cult is one of those pseudoscientific oddities like polygraph tests which is taken as gospel in the US and almost totally unknown everywhere else. (Don't get me wrong, short sentences are generally more readable than long ones, but not at the expense of sacrificing meaning. It's keeping the number of clauses in each sentence reasonably low that matters, not the word count.) ‑ Iridescent 21:26, 1 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

bzzzzt ... the three main advocates are from three different, non-US countries. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:28, 1 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, found the discussion in question. Two of those editors are crazy and the third I'm unfamiliar with; you can safely ignore whatever they come up with. Where there is a global consensus to edit in a certain way, it should be respected and cannot be overruled by a local consensus is arbcom-mandated policy, and patience is already wearing thin at the attempts by WP:MED (and by one WP:MED editor in particular) to try to issue a unilateral declaration of independence from consensus whenever he disagrees with a guideline. The infobox wars may have ground to an inconclusive stalemate, but if there's one definite change they brought about it's that both Arbcom, and the community in general, are no longer going to put up with whatever bunch of people happen to comprise the membership of a project declaring that they're the sole style arbiters over whatever articles they decide fall into their remit. ‑ Iridescent 21:59, 1 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Edit summaries

I've mostly stopped using edit summaries outside the mainspace, and I'm not sure that anyone's any worse off as a result. Most of my talk-page summaries were single characters – r or c for the most part, and sometimes I'd spell out reply or comment if it occurred to me that a new editor mightn't guess what I meant – and almost none of them were actually helpful.

Then the devs finally implemented a way to get your previous edit summaries into the edit-summary dialog box in VisualEditor, and that killed it for me. It turned out that I got what I (we) asked for, but not what I (perhaps only myself) want. I've just given up, and except for now having to actually remember to type an edit summary when it matters (I've missed a few), the Sun still seems to be rising each morning.

But work-me is going to take advantage of this conversation to ask: for a (new) reply on a talk page, do you really care what the edit summary says? If it should exist at all, is there a way to automate their addition? I can think of a couple of options:

Add a simple pre-determined edit summary, such as one that says "Reply" (ideally, in addition to the section name). This is one step up from my r or c, or the re and fix and typo that other people frequently use, but it's not much better than nothing.
Auto-paste the (beginning of the) contents of the reply into the edit summary.
Omit edit summaries entirely (just use the section name).
Give up on automating edit summaries, and encourage people to continue supplying cryptic and pointless comments.

What do you all think? Perhaps even more importantly, can you think of any other options that should be in my list? WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:57, 29 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I couldn't care less on talk pages, unless something significant has changed (for instance, if you are altering an old post). I kind of like your first list of suggestions, but don't want edit summaries eliminated on talk pages for the times when it is important to say something. I hate the auto-fill option. I often realize after the fact that my edit summary was auto-filled to a previous reply in bad ways. I guess I would dislike auto-paste for similar reasons. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:47, 29 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I used to paste my replies into the edit summary (“the first bit of the comment”) but people said they found it annoying. Now it’s just “re” or “fix” etc. I do find it helpful when the summaries distinguish between a reply and adding a sig or minor fix. –xeno^talk 13:51, 29 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I mostly either do "re", "ce" or "add" in articles (or "rvt", usually with a bit more), partly because I like to edit in a string of edits, so only the last will appear on most watchlists. On talk I mostly either do "re", "cmt" or copy a headline from my comment. I still expect to see something on other people's edits. Johnbod (talk) 15:26, 29 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

For talk pages, 80% of my edit summaries are "comment", "reply" "question" or "editing myself". For subpages in my own user space, the summary tends to always be "." (It's my scratch area, no one needs to know what I'm doing.) Everywhere else, I try to provide a clue about what I did to help other people when they trudge thru the diffs to see what I did. And the more trivial my edit, the more cryptic my edit summary tends to be. (Sorry, but I get annoyed when I'm forced to write an edit summary longer than the actual amount of text effected.) -- llywrch (talk) 10:03, 30 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Pet peeve, someone makes a tiny punctuation correction with no edit summary, and you spend ten minutes trying to figure out what they changed! On Featured articles, I don't want them messing with my logical quotation or citation style. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:32, 30 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

It's very easy to see punctuation diffs with WikEdDiff, which is a gadget you can enable in your preferences. --Izno (talk) 14:49, 30 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, Izno. [1] SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:54, 30 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

MOS:POINTS might be interesting on that specific diff. But yes, both full stop removals jump out with WikEdDiff (whereas the one in the middle of the paragraph does not with the normal diff). --Izno (talk) 15:35, 30 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Well, fiddlesticks. I only wrote the medical portions, and left the ENGVAR and other writing to two now-gone editors. I see there is inconsistent usage of Dr v Dr. throughout the article. On my own there, and unsure which way to go. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:12, 30 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I take it back. The promoted version was consistent with Dr except in one direct quote and one image caption, so I'm going back to that. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:14, 30 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Which is why you'll find I have edit summaries consisting of "+,", "-;" or "&->and". Cryptic, unless you've wasted 5 minutes over a diff only to find someone did no more than fiddled with the punctuation. FWIW, I will usually mark an edit as minor, even if it a substantial change, as a way to indicate IDGAF if someone changes it back. (I will not mark an edit as minor if I have reason to suspect I'm treading on a matter some editors care deeply about. No gain in accidentally triggering a WikiFeud over something trivial, e.g. the misuse of the word "comprise".) -- llywrch (talk) 18:06, 31 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I write a concise version of the main points to which I want to draw attention, so someone reading the history can get a sense of what the entire comment is about. I appreciate, though, that very few do this (I'm not sure I can recall any others, off the top of my head). Since copy edits don't add any new points, typically all I'll say is "copy edit". isaacl (talk) 17:57, 30 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I consider it a courtesy thing to at least briefly indicate what I'm doing, even if it's a mini-summary like "re" or "typo". Otherwise, it makes it impossible for anyone reviewing the history to know whether my edit is one they ought to be looking at, short of actually viewing the diff itself; by not using a summary, one is essentially saying "I'm so much more important than you that saving the time it would take me to type one word outweighs the time it will take you to view the diff". Obviously I don't see this as relevant to such things as userspace sandboxes where there's no reasonable expectation that anyone else will have a reason to view the history, but on anything public-facing or community-facing it just seems like basic courtesy. (When it comes to talk and collaboration pages—especially high-traffic pages like the admin noticeboards and Arbcom cases—there's a special circle of wikihell reserved for people who delete or overtype the auto-generated /* Section header */ part of the edit summary, making it impossible for someone viewing the page history to see if the comment was made on a discussion you're following or not so you have to read the whole thing.) ‑ Iridescent 19:17, 31 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@@ Line 336: / Line 336: @@
 :::::I'll guess the people pushing for a 12-word maximum are all American? The [[Flesch–Kincaid readability tests|Flesch–Kincaid]] cult is one of those pseudoscientific oddities like polygraph tests which is taken as gospel in the US and almost totally unknown everywhere else. (Don't get me wrong, short sentences are generally more readable than long ones, but not at the expense of sacrificing meaning. It's keeping the number of clauses in each sentence reasonably low that matters, not the word count.)&nbsp;&#8209;&nbsp;[[User:Iridescent|Iridescent]] 21:26, 1 January 2020 (UTC)
 :::::: bzzzzt ... the three main advocates are from three different, non-US countries.  [[User:SandyGeorgia|'''Sandy'''<span style="color: green;">Georgia</span>]] ([[User talk:SandyGeorgia|Talk]])  21:28, 1 January 2020 (UTC)
+:::::::
+:::::::Ah, found the discussion in question. Two of those editors are crazy and the third I'm unfamiliar with; you can safely ignore whatever they come up with. [[Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Infoboxes#Levels_of_consensus|Where there is a global consensus to edit in a certain way, it should be respected and cannot be overruled by a local consensus]] is arbcom-mandated policy, and patience is already wearing thin at the attempts by WP:MED (and by one WP:MED editor in particular) to try to issue a unilateral declaration of independence from consensus whenever he disagrees with a guideline. The infobox wars may have ground to an inconclusive stalemate, but if there's one definite change they brought about it's that both Arbcom, and the community in general, are no longer going to put up with whatever bunch of people happen to comprise the membership of a project declaring that they're the sole style arbiters over whatever articles they decide fall into their remit.&nbsp;&#8209;&nbsp;[[User:Iridescent|Iridescent]] 21:59, 1 January 2020 (UTC)
 === Edit summaries ===