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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by 99.50.188.77 (talk) at 13:29, 15 August 2011 (→Control user-page markup by splitting into subpages). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

(Manual archive list)

Why is Wikipedia losing contributors, part 2

(continued from above: "#Why is Wikipedia losing contributors? Thinking about remedies...") -Wikid77 11:58, 14 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Adrift in a sea of knowledge: a personal narrative

I have gone through various periods of activity and inactivity on WP. The two most active and enjoyable periods for me were fairly different. The first was editing the article Günther Blumentritt in order to bring it up to B-class. I had in fact created the stub a few years before and then abandoned it. I came back to it out of renewed curiosity and began to improve it. I have no formal training or special knowledge on the subject, but for completely random reasons it caught my interest and I saw that WP needed an article, so I made one. My work was done mostly in isolation and without any kind of communication with others.

We are all familiar with the "low hanging fruit" hypothesis about the decline in contributions to WP. As time passes there are fewer and fewer opportunities for the average person to contribute a new article on a subject that is easy to research and understand. So, opportunities like my experience with my first article become less and less common over time.

The second major period of activity centered around the Hoxne Hoard article and the drive to get it to FA status as part of the Hoxne challenge. In truth, my contributions were fairly minor, partly because I did not have access to the main sources used in the article, but my entire experience of editing WP was transformed by this event. The feeling of teamwork and collaboration was invigorating, and unlike anything I have taken part in before or since. The editors involved talked to each other extensively, but it was about the project.

Right now I make 10 edits on a good day. Mainly reverting vandalism and leaving welcome messages on new user pages. I have almost zero contact with anyone here outside of that. I have many interests, but I feel overwhelmed with the amount of work that needs to be done on literally MILLIONS of articles. I have searched for other opportunities for focused collaboration in a group, but I have not found any.

I am not a particularly social person, and I am fine with that. I don't need or want "like" buttons or small talk with people on WP. However, I do believe that creating and nurturing a more collaborative approach to editing would be a huge boon to WP. It would energize the contributors we have now, and make it far more likely that new editors would stick around. And it would be NOTHING like facebook in any significant way. If anyone reads "facebook" into this post they have missed the point.

Anyway, what do I know? *shrug* Revcasy (talk) 14:26, 12 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

  • The "low-hanging-fruit" hypothesis, which contends that the easy subjects already have enough articles, has overlooked how many simple articles are still needed, for numerous topics. I think many new, simple articles could be made by changing redirects into full articles, about some other WP:notable aspects of a larger subject. I recently wrote "Third-party sources" and other major easy topics, so it is important for people to realize the many major, simple topics which have been overlooked. Also, many easy articles are still too hollow: the "low-hanging fruit" was picked while not ripe, so put that fruit back on the tree, and rewrite those simple articles. There is a massive amount of easy work to do. -Wikid77 11:58, 14 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I don't buy for a minute the "low hanging fruit" hypothesis that there are "fewer and fewer opportunities for the average person to contribute a new article." We don't have an article on the 1952 Bolivian Revolution or an article about the Cuban Liberation Army that fought Spain, nor do we have an entry covering Latin America in World War II overall. We don't have an article on History of the Qing dynasty. Each of these are articles I'm working on building in my userspace, slowly and carefully. There are a ton of articles still needed, because Wikipedia's coverage of 19th century and earlier history is weak, and generally any history outside of Europe and the Anglosphere is thin at best. If you can't see all the low-hanging fruit out there, you've got a classic case of "fruit blindness," or aren't looking very far. —NickDupree (talk) 22:06, 14 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Valid criticism is one thing, but this isn't a soapbox. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 22:23, 14 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

A Novel Idea: Respect Facts and Follow Your Own Rules

You wonder why authorities on various subjects flee Wikipedia. You wonder why no respectable academic institution anywhere in the world will permit a student or faculty member to cite you as a source. You wonder why, in popular culture, "Wikipedia" is the punchline to a joke. I can tell you this much: Yes, your software is ridiculously hard to use, but your critical problems lie elsewhere.

We can start with the organizing principle of this pseudo "encyclopedia": that fact is whatever one of your child flashmobs says it is. Yes, child. One-third of your editors are high school students, and another one-third are college kids. Yes, flashmobs. Controversies are routinely dominated by a few editors with administrative privileges, most of them having no prior familiarity with the topic. A fact-free environment administered by roving gangs of children can be expected to end badly, as Wikipedia has done. You are routinely manipulated by governments, corporations, political ax-grinders, and p.r. flacks, the combination of which have turned much of Wikipedia into a wasteland.

From there, we can move to your "standards." When controversy erupts -- typically because someone with an interest wants to exclude one or more facts -- the very first thing you can expect at Wikipedia is wholesale flouting of your "standards." When standards are routinely ignored, they don't exist. The result is that Wikipedia's articles, to the extent that any material is a matter of controversy, are a political mishmash. It is only to be expected from an enterprise where, from the beginning, there is no such thing as "fact," but only "consensus."

The only way to rescue Wikipedia would be to make a fundamental change at the core: To put fact at the center of everything here, recognizing that it has independent validity and trumps everything else. Once you do that, you can go to work on your other critical flaw, i.e., the substitution of flashmob tactics for real process here. Until and unless you do those things, Wikipedia will quite appropriately be scorned, derided, and marginalized. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.227.188.7 (talk) 18:54, 12 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

mmm since this person gives no identifying information, its kind of hard to take this too seriously. After all, flash mobs work on the concept of anonymity as well. Since many participants, including myself have identities on Wikipedia, the flash mob analogy doesnt work so well. As far as being marginalized and non-citable, both are DOA. First of all, Wikipedia has NEVER looked to be a citable course... it is an encyclopedia, which is not supposed to be cited by academic rules. That students abuse WP by copying for assignements say a WHOLE lot more about the state of education than it does of Wikipedia. As for marginalization, if you mean that we arent invited to PhD cocktails in 71.227.188.7's social circle... well, I guess he is "right" However, it is easy to dismiss this elitist notion just by looking at the videos from the 2011 Wikimania were we have had speakers from various disciplines of academia as well as other sectors of society. Unlike elitist academics, Wikipedia does not feel the need to exclude in order to feel special.
Does WP have problems? Sure, but the best thing is that they are OPENLY acknowledged and discussed, even to the press and academics, which many of our so-called "betters" would never do. (hell, if the OP can stereotype, I can too). Go back to your comfortable clique, 71.227.188.7Thelmadatter (talk) 13:44, 13 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I am the "anonymous" writer above. New to Wikipedia. Which of course is something you insiders absolutely despise. You don't want any outsiders here, and if someone pops in without full knowledge of your ridiculously stupid software, all the better to dismiss their views. It is any wonder that five-sixths of your contributors are young male programmers and video gamers, and that two-thirds of your "administrators" are high school or college kids? It shows throughout Wikipedia. It repels serious contributors, and renders your children's encyclopedia a standing joke throughout the world. If not for the agreement with Google to highlight Wikipedia searches, this "reference" guide would be on the scrap heap where it belongs. The bottom line at Wikipedia is that you don't know or care what's true, and your children-insiders routinely ignore Wikipedia's own rules when editing articles -- which, I might add, they rarely know anything about. If all of this is acceptable to you -- and it obviously is -- then Wikipedia will continue and indeed accelerate its downward trajectory. Jacksonjake (talk) 19:23, 13 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
First, many of us do not despise new users. The vast majority of us, I'd say. If someone pops in without full knowledge of the community's software, I tend to jump in and help, as do many others. Heck, we even have a welcoming committee and a mentorship program for just such purposes. Now, while I rarely run into younger contributors (maybe 1/5th of them), I am not sure how that matters. We (the community) try to judge editors on their edits... not their age, hair color, interests or anything else. If you are interested in contributing here, and do need help, my talk page is right over here and is open to anyone. I'd be glad to help you along, and have a small handful of talkpage stalkers who will willingly jump in to assist as well. I'm always open to helping out anyone, or finding the right answers to questions I don't know the answer to. BTW, in case it matters, I haven't seen a college classroom in over 20 years. ;-) So, I hope that if you are serious about being able to contribute here (and improve things) that you take me up on my offer. Best, ROBERTMFROMLI | TK/CN 19:40, 13 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Judge on their edits? Hey, I've lurked in Wikipedia from time to time. The crap that goes on is appalling. Beyond the basic organizing principle that fact is whatever a Wikipedia flashmob says it is, your editors and administrators don't even bother to follow Wikipedia's own basic rules. Articles here lack facts; treat information in a wildly inconsistent manner; are frequently tendentious or whitewashed. Wikipedia is putty in the hands of governments, corporations, p.r. agents, and miscellaneous cranks of all sorts. You see it throughout the content here, and most of the problems boil down to a couple of issues: that Wikipedia thinks truth is something to vote on, and that Wikipedia doesn't take its own rules seriously. Until those basic issues are fixed, you'll be running around putting bandaids onto the patient while ignoring his brain cancer.Jacksonjake (talk) 20:02, 13 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Alas, I think you will find that verifiable claims cited to reliable sources is a lot easier to defend than uncited truth, in a court of law. As for governments, corporations and so on; sure they are a problem... one which various of us combat. I regularly file speedy deletion requests on numerous new pages created by such as advertising platforms or soapboxes, etc. And help remove such content from existing articles. Instead of complaining about the problem, join me (and numerous others) in being a part of the solution. I too have been on Wikipedia for ages... since almost day one. With so many contributors, things wont be perfect, but you can help get them closer. In this, the old adage "actions speak louder than words" definitely applies. Best, ROBERTMFROMLI | TK/CN 21:24, 13 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Things won't be perfect? How about this: Wikipedia is a joke around the world. Participation has fallen off a cliff. The organization is built on intellectual quicksand, and its administration is a chaotic mess driven largely by high school and college students who know nothing about the subjects on which they rule. They operate not according to their published rules, but by the whim of small crowds. There are no real "standards" at Wikipedia, whose "popularity" is mainly a function of an agreement with Google that gives it top billing in search results. Among other things, Wikipedia's chaos leaves it wide open for manipulation by small groups of people with axes to grind: governments, corporations, ideologues, and simple cranks. As such manipulations grow, Wikipedia's content is inexorably weakened, along with its reputation. The organization is incapable of dealing with the mess, because like most institutions, Wikipedia is defensive in the face of criticism, and loath to re-examine the basic premises on which it rests. Jacksonjake (talk) 08:49, 14 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Alright. I've been following your posts ever since you started this section. It becomes clear that the gist of your rants is nothing more than uninformed polemic. Since wikipedia absolutely sucks and we are all idiots, why don't you just leave? Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 > haneʼ 09:24, 14 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I just gave this user a warning for this attacking rant , "voices in your head" etc.. at a user on Talk:Pearl Harbor advance-knowledge conspiracy theory. The new account seems to have a likely previous grudge against the project, perhaps from a previous ban.Off2riorob (talk) 09:34, 14 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Off2riorob has vandalized an article, repeatedly ignoring Wikipedia's own rules. Now he's harassing me at my talk page. I can't say I'm surprised. Wikipedia's standard practice is to ignore its own rules until it encounters a fierce critic, at which point you become hyper-legalistic. None of this changes the underlying reality, which is that your project is an arbitrary, empty joke, where participation has fallen off a cliff and continued survival is ensured only by a prior deal with Google to hype the articles here. Given the mess at Wikipedia, I wonder how long that will last. Jacksonjake (talk) 19:04, 14 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Wait, valid criticisms were raised but need wider balance: Part of the issues raised by User:Jacksonjake seem to be valid concerns, but I think a wider view is needed, and mention current efforts to reduce those problems. Wikipedia is trying to reduce tendentious editing. For example, I recently wrote some essays to expand and re-balance WP's treatment of such issues:
  • Essay "WP:Avoiding POV funnels" is an attempt to balance concerns about WP:POVFORKs and slanting text.
  • Essay "WP:Avoiding untrue text in articles" (WP:TRUTHFUL) goes beyond the old "about verifiability, not truth" to explain how we do not put known false text into articles as if true, but rather quoted to sources (although the essay is still too simple to fully explain how and why).
  • Should we have WP:Gradmins, as a set of admins who have graduate degrees and are not the 66% of "young students" lacking expert knowledge?
  • The chaos does allow too much WP:POVPUSHing by small groups, so perhaps we could warn of suspected slant topics and tactics.
There are many areas of Wikipedia which need more study and analysis to offset the imbalance in how issues are emphasized. So, please avoid any gut reaction to "shoot the messenger" by trying to dismiss User:Jacksonjake as someone to discount or belittle. Let's listen to the concerns, and reply more constructively. Allow Jimbo some avenue to respond to those various concerns. -Wikid77 12:41, 14 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Unfortunately, jackonjake is more intersted in screaming that "Wikipedia sucks" more than making contructive criticism. In my initial response and others here, we do acknowledge that there are serious problems. But nothing that JJ writes is an attempt at working towards a solution, or even a better understanding of the problem. If we are "shooting the messenger" it is not because of the message, which we have heard before, but because of the tone. I do not think you are going to get much support in WP for the idea that it should just disppear because it is a joke or that the problems WP has are unsolvable or unmanagable. For example, it is true that you can find many articles that do not follow WP rules. That is because of the size of the encyclopedia and that fact that correcting these errors made by inexperienced or frankly POV pushers takes time. It is one reason why newbies encounter stiff resistance from regulars and the reason I posted in another thread that we need to develop chapters, student groups and other real world support systems (they exist but need to be bigger) to recruit and more importantly KEEP new editors. I also happen to believe in getting rid of IP (non account) editing, but I realize that is not going to happen anytime soon.Thelmadatter (talk) 12:56, 14 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
There is no use listening to someone who repeatedly hurls insults around and keeps calling you an infantile idiot. "Shooting the messenger" is a phrase used for a polite, innocent messengers, not for ranters. Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 > haneʼ 15:51, 14 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I don't expect Wikipedia to "listen" to any of this. Here's the reality: You are appropriately disrespected worldwide. You are based on the empty premise that fact is negotiatiable. Your "rules" and "standards" are applied so arbitrarily that they are nothing more than instruments of manipulation by the (mainly) children who run Wikipedia, along with the governments, corporations, ideologues, and others who find you such easy pickings. This is why your children's pseudo reference work has lost two-thirds of its contributors in four years. You are nothing more than the punchline to a joke; but for the critical assistance received from Google, you'd be long gone. Jacksonjake (talk) 19:04, 14 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Reminds me of a quote... :) --Yair rand (talk) 20:55, 14 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
True enough. No one will ever go broke underestimating the intelligence, attention span, or depth of the average techie. It's probably also worth mentioning that Wikipedia is, in practical reality, little more than a vehicle to advance "Wikia," the software company. In that vein, the more controversy the better, from Mr. Wales's point of view. Any publicity is good publicity. That's a famous quote, or maybe a paraphrase, too. So talking about corporate infiltration here is, well, quaint. Jacksonjake (talk) 21:26, 14 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Y'know, Jacksonjake, Wikipedia does have problems, and one of those is making newcomers feel welcome. But I'm sure you'll understand that people would be naturally suspicious of somebody who joins a project for seemingly no other purpose than to insult it. If you don't like Wikipedia, don't use it—don't read it, don't edit it. Go elsewhere, and register an account on a website you do like. Or, you can stop attacking it and help make it better. The choice is yours. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 21:39, 14 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
You'd have despised H.L. Mencken, or the anti-Vietnam War movement, or heck, the fight against polio. All negative. Very Wikinotpoliticallycorrect. So be Wikidefensive. It's what any entrenched, failing organization does. You're not different.Jacksonjake (talk) 21:44, 14 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
So if we're failing, why are you bothering to slag us off? HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 21:48, 14 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Do you realize that you can surf through Wikipedia virtually at random and find shoddy, tendentious, unfactual material that wouldn't have made it to the first draft stage of the 1956 World Book? Doesn't that kinda sorta bug you?Jacksonjake (talk) 22:03, 14 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Why is anyone bothering to respond to this troll? AndyTheGrump (talk) 21:30, 14 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Um, you for one. Actually, more than once. Doc, time to heal thyself.Jacksonjake (talk) 21:45, 14 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Because, unfortunately, he hasn't been blocked ... yet.--Bbb23 (talk) 21:49, 14 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Honestly, I am wondering who has stopped and thought about this, and come to the conclusion that he wants to be blocked; at which point, this will make some story someplace... ROBERTMFROMLI | TK/CN 21:54, 14 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Simplifying - ban the div tag?

Ok, I don't mean 'ban' in the sense of a project-wide ban, but here is what I am thinking about.

I just went to edit my own user page User:Jimbo Wales because I noticed someone had placed a photo on there that had nothing to do with me at all. (Lovely photo, but I thought I would just remove it.) And as I was editing, I thought about my keynote speech at Wikimania this year and how I think I should take a leadership role in coaching all of us to make editing easier for relative newcomers. (Think of a wonderful, smart person who would be a good writer, who has just made 2-3 edits and is thinking of getting more involved... but who doesn't know a lot about programming / coding / markup languages.)

My user page is quite pretty, but it is chock full of div tags (and much worse). Please go click on edit and see. Here's a sample of markup: {{#ifexpr: {{CURRENTMONTH}}=8 and {{CURRENTDAY}}=7 |{{!}}- {{!}} style="text-align: center; {{gradient|#ddddff|#eeeeff|vertical}} border: 1px solid #88a; {{box-shadow|1px|1px|6px|#445}} {{border-radius|1em}}" colspan="2" {{!}} [[File:Birthday cake (fun).png|left|200px]] [[File:Birthday cake (fun).png|right|200px]] <span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 16pt">{{Break|5}}Happy {{Ordinal|{{#expr:{{CURRENTYEAR}}-1966}}|sup=yes}} Birthday Jimbo, from everyone here at Wikipedia!!</span> }}

So, like, I'm a programmer and I can at least read the general gist of this. Once a year, on my birthday, this will magically change part of my userpage to give me a sweet birthday message. Great, I mean, that really is actually quite cool.

But what isn't cool is some of this markup. Ok, many people can probably roughly guess at what things like "text-align: center" might mean. But what the heck is "{{!}}"??? I know that the curly braces denote a template. Do we really have a template out there named as exclamation point? (The sad answer is yes, yes we do.) What does it do? Why? Why do I need to know this? If the benefit is some minor degree of flexibility/beauty in my userpage, but the cost is that a relatively new user such as myself (haha) feels intimidated from editing, not because I'm dumb and can't figure things out if I try (I am a programmer, after all), but because, jeez, I have a life, and I want to write an encyclopedia not get a diploma in wiki markup.

So here is what I am thinking about. I'm thinking about going through my user page with a chain saw and return it to a 'good old days' style... and to encourage others to do the same... and eventually to encourage the Foundation to develop the visual editing tools to allow a certain amount of beauty but without forcing people to learn this horrifying way of doing things.

But this is my own userpage, so of course within rational bounds I can do what I want. Slightly more controversially, I may start to go through articles on my watchlist that I edit for content (generally, UK peers and BLPs that I help monitor) with a general bias against including div tags and other such monstrosities. Not "with a chainsaw" mind you (that would be disrupting Wikipedia to make a point), but rather with a gentle eye towards making Wikipedia the encyclopedia anyone can edit.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 10:20, 12 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

To be fair, most of the really bad markup is outside of article space (like on your userpage) but we need it for places like portals or the main page. The worst markup in article space is usually in the references, unfortunately. —Kusma (t·c) 11:46, 12 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
There are many things in life many of us enjoy using without understanding exactly how they work, and certainly without feeling any necessity to create them from scratch. That's most people, not techies. Techies love to code from scratch and have a visceral dislike for anything anyone else has coded. Whatever it is, they feel an immediate name to 'improve' it. Some write their own word processors and spreadsheets. It's who they are. Go ahead and embrace your Inner Geek, but don't assume everyone has one. If I wanted to use that Birthday thing myself, I would copy and paste it. Why would I want to recreate it myself? The obvious fields to change are CURRENTDAY, CURRENTMONTH, CURRENTYEAR and the message. I can do that, no diploma required. So can everyone else. I can't create an infobox or a table either, but I can copy and modify ones that others have done. Which is a good thing, as it helps with consistency. Do you honestly want each UK Peer article to be 'creative and unique' in its formatting, or do you want the focus to be on the contents? I just don't buy the assumption that there are vast legions of potential Wikipedia contributors who are violently allergic to any and all code. They just want to use it, not write it. Most people have used Word and Excel in school or work and understand the concept of highlight and click an option. That implies knowing what the options are. What they need is to be able to mouse-over the more cryptic Wikipedia symbols and see an explanation of what they'll do. Unfortunately, Wikipedia steadfastly refuses to provide this in the editing box, so people are understandably frustrated trying to figure out what the various 'Wiki markup' symbols mean. They're not stupid, they just don't enjoy being jerked around by people who enjoy discouraging non-techies. Ten years, and no one has yet found the time to write a useful mouse-over for these? Really? They can find all sorts of time to create birthday cakes et al, yet a few minutes for the mouse-overs is simply not possible? Jimmy, it's insulting to see Click on the character or tag to insert it into the edit window for every single example of code. We know that. We get it. What we want is to know what the codes do, and we know very well that shouldn't require a video tutorial, endless reading, less-than-useful 'wizards', a personal mentor - or a diploma, as you put it. 99.50.188.77 (talk) 14:04, 12 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Unless the articles you maintain are different from the ones I do, I don't think you'll actually find much of that stuff. What would really be most valuable to new editors, I believe, would be to provide a simpler way of constructing references. For medical journal articles there is an excellent tool to do it automatically given a Pubmed index number, but for other types of references it is usually a huge pain in the ass, even for experienced editors. Looie496 (talk) 15:38, 12 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with you on the aim but not the priority. We have a team of people developing a WYSIWYG interface - I'd be inclined to wait until they announce they can't do it or they are doing all but templates x, y and z - then go round and see if the bits they can't do are really needed in articles. If you want to push the simplification agenda I'd suggest revisiting the maintenance templates. I suggested a while back that we work out which ones are needed to warn readers, and which others succeed in recruiting readers and newbies to fix things and replace all the rest with hidden categories. The only thing hindering such a move is that some people like these templates, but if we used a bot to replace all orphan templates with a hidden category of orphan it would be an easy and painless simplification of the pedia.
Oh and I love the idea of the diploma for wiki markup - how do I apply for mine? Wait, this could be sensible, how do we get an academic institution to start assessing editors and awarding diplomas? I'm thinking this could apply on a very broad range from badges in the scouts to points towards Open University courses. When I was in the scouts I got a badge for growing a bunch of vegetables, I'm sure we could agree criteria for a scout badge. ϢereSpielChequers 15:59, 12 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The orphan tag issue does need fixing... discussions at Wikiproject Orphanage seem to fizzle out but moving the tags to a talk page / hidden category / end-of-article template should be a priority. No reader or inexperienced editor needs to see them at the head of so many pages.
@Jimbo I would definitely sort your userpage out if you want to. It's become extremely bloated and has an outdated 'web 1.0' feeling. Userpages that work well often just have a single nice image from commons and a small amount of text Jebus989✰ 11:24, 13 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Looking at this code, the reason for its complexity is (a) it's trying to conditionally add rows to an HTML table, which requires the Template:! kludge to pass the "|" character and (b) it was a custom job, not using any template pages to break down the problem conceptually. The first I can't do anything about, but the second I can. I've apparently recreated the output using the following code (changing your birthday from 8-7 just to make it display today):
{{User:Wnt/Templates/Addrow|conditional={{User:Wnt/Templates/Dateconditional|8|13}}|style={{User:Wnt/Templates/Birthdaystyle}}|colspan=2|content={{User:Wnt/Templates/Birthdaycontent|name=Jimbo|from=everyone here at Wikipedia!!|byear=1966}}}}
If you'd like, I could substitute this code on your userpage; also you might prefer I move the templates to be subpages of your page. I've written them now to be generalizable to anyone. But likely one or more of these templates already exists somewhere, very likely the code could be written better ... and without a doubt, there must be a better birthday cake image and font.
I understand the frustration with this code, but I would bet money there's no way that any WYSIWYG editor is going to have a way to let you add a row to a table to display a custom message just on your birthday. You need some ugly programming like language to do that; but sorting it out into individual templates seems neater. Wnt (talk) 14:09, 13 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Control user-page markup by splitting into subpages

Here we go. There are many neat tactics to simplify markup (as in "defensive programming"). Remember, anyone can split their userpage into simpler subpages which are very fast to process, such as transcluding "User:Jimbo_Wales/xx" or "User:Jimbo_Wales/birthday" by "{{User:Jimbo_Wales/birthday}}" inside the main user-page. Copy the tedious markup into those fast subpages. Another trick is to then comment-out "<!-- -->" any subpages not needed all the time, so put "<!--{{User:Jimbo_Wales/birthday}}-->" when it is not August. The concept is related to changing a "procedural language" (with all the tedious details) into a "non-procedural language" which just invokes templates with parameters, not requiring procedural loops and branches. Dividing into subpages is a form of software encapsulation. Human factors studies confirm that markup is tedious, but often necessary for special formatting.

I have been working on computer-language design for decades (I might become a volunteer developer), and the design issues are so complex, I advise that markup designers should have advanced degrees in language design, along with human-language linguistics. Here, I must emphasize that the MediaWiki markup is a non-nestable mess, requiring exclamation "{{!}}" to indicate the vertical-bar "|" to bypass parsing restrictions (of nested markup structures), due to fundamental design flaws of the scanner tokens (here, the vertical-bar "|" also used for if/else clauses).

Kids don't do this: Don't ever write a markup language with special tokens in column 1 of each line. The colon-indent ":" should have been "<:>" or similar, to indent anywhere on a line, not just in column 1. Never indent block text by putting spacing before a line; a space should always indicate spacing and nothing else (ever). Such core design issues have been known for over 30 years, but programmers get burnout quickly and stop teaching others the master techniques, and so software such as MediaWiki gets "hacked" into existence, and then takes on a life of its own. This is analogous to "value-added taxes" being superior to income taxes (omitted in Florida/Texas or Europe), but the tax system typically incarnates a life of its own.
The same happens in computer software every decade, that's why HTML markup has tag "<center>" as a word-processing directive to auto-center text, but does not allow "<left>" or "<right>" even though it must know both the left-margin and right-margin in order to center text. Just techno-foolish. The World Wide Web was designed by a physicist (Tim Berners Lee), not a typesetter nor computer scientist who might know about "context-free grammar" (etc.), so HTML and MediaWiki have bizarre limits. Wouldn't it be great if all taxes had been designed by financial experts, rather than politicians. Same goes for software designed or marketed by college dropouts or other non-experts: beware the bizarre kludges.
I guess we need more essays to provide easier user-page formatting and "WP:Anticipating vertical-bar problems" to better explain the syntax nightmares in the MediaWiki markup language. The separators for if/else should never have been vertical-bar "|" to be confused with separators for template parameters. However, the best news (yes!) is that the MediaWiki markup language could be evolved, over years, into easier syntax forms, such as using #then and #else, rather than vertical-bar "|" to separate if/else clauses. Like many problems in Wikipedia, there are several easy long-term solutions. Computers become extremely enjoyable once the recurring simple nightmares are fixed. -Wikid77 14:24, revised 18:24, 14 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the good ideas, but if the point is not discouraging new contributors I don't think that's the problem. I would suggest most people join to contribute to the encyclopedia, not create a user page. (I note you have yet to address the simple issue of mouse-over descriptions for the Wiki Markup section of the edit box. I can't help but wonder if the techies here really do enjoy jerking non-techies around, while pretending to be helpful. Or if you just don't get it. Hard to tell.) 99.50.188.77 (talk) 17:04, 14 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
We hear you. Wikipedia focuses on words and help-desks and the WP:Village_pump, not mouse-over (we want people talking with other people). [However, there are mouse-over gadgets that advanced users can install.] Many issues are named exactly for the concept, such as "WP:Templates" or WP:Toolbar or "WP:Userpages" to explain many issues about user-pages. There is also WP:Help linked from typing "help" or try "huh" or HELP:template or HELP:DESK or HELP:HELP. Many topics cannot be explained in a mouse-over cloud, so there are whole pages, which sight-impaired readers can have read to them, or set browser TextSize larger. Meanwhile, the styling and customizing of user-pages is part of the social-networking aspect, so we want to encourage some experimentation and personalizing. After people expand their user-page, it provides experience and familiarity to create other user-space pages, such as for in-progress drafts of new articles or new WP:templates. Remember, the strategy is to use the name "WP:thing" for a thing people want to learn about. Feel free to help create more WP:things, or tell someone if something, obvious, seems to be missing. I hope this makes sense, as to how all the hundreds of issues in Wikipedia are being conveyed, by words and help-desks, to reach the various users. -Wikid77 (talk) 18:15, 14 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Are you really hearing me? What I'm hearing from you is that Wikipedia actively and intentionally tries to discourage contributors unless they're willing to devote endless (and unnecessary, imo) amounts of time towards making Wikipedia the focus of their existence and social life. Instead of providing a quick and simple explanation and/or term name in a mouse-over (e.g., 'strike-through'), you prefer to force a contributor to waste their valuable time wandering all over the place trying to figure out how to search for something they've seen an example of, but have no idea what it's called. And you brag about that as a good thing? I call it "jerking people around." I find it appalling, as well as counter-productive to the stated goals (building an encyclopedia, not social networking), but I'll wait to see what others might say. 99.50.188.77 (talk) 13:29, 15 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Anti-gay paranoia or legitimate BLP application?

There are several discussions on BLP/N where even sources like ABC [1] are wikiunreliable to some because they choose to quote an interview done by a gay "activist" (as labeled by the wikidetractors) source instead of doing their own. What is your opinion on this? FuFoFuEd (talk) 12:30, 12 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

WP:OTHERPARENT much?? (talk→ BWilkins ←track) 12:44, 12 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
While your going to Jimbo is certainly acceptable, I suggest Jimbo also look at Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard#Off2riorob_topic_ban_proposal and see precisly how much support your position has in the community. Cheers. Collect (talk) 12:50, 12 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Ok, I accept we know by wp:consensus that The Advocate is not re liable (and they practically think the same of Wikidpedia, duh [2], and OMG they getting parroted by E! Online [3]). The real question is whether ABC churnalism is any better. And by the way, that's a different article and different actor. It didn't involve the consensus decider Off2riorob yet, but I can presume what his AN-powered action will be given that his buddy Collect already weighed in. I guess Deep Throat would have had to wait for his name to be published before anything based on him could be included in Wikipedia, regardless where published. Shit, that took 30 years. Long live Nixon. FuFoFuEd (talk) 13:52, 12 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
FuFoFuEd, you seem to be grouping a couple of things that are not related except that both deal with the reporting of the sexual preferences of actors. The Luke Evans situation was mishandled from the start (there was no reason for that page to be fully protected, for one thing) but seems to be working itself out now. The thread I started on the BLP noticeboard about David Ogden Stiers (which uses the ABC source) is unrelated and no one has used the word "activist" (with any qualifier) in the discussion. The suggestion is not that ABC News is unreliable, but that ABC quoting an unreliable source does not magically make the original source into a reliable. That discussion is here if you would like to express an opinion. Delicious carbuncle (talk) 14:41, 12 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I wasn't the one mixing them, Collect was, on purpose I suspect. By the way, for those not getting what Nixon might have to do with this, here's a small history lesson [4]. I'm out of this madhouse for a while. Cheers, FuFoFuEd (talk) 15:30, 12 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
No, it was you. You did it in the first sentence of this thread. Delicious carbuncle (talk) 16:23, 12 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I think that this page is one of the worst examples I've heard of where Wikipedia has actually maligned someone with notable effect - but this is not be covering sources about someone being gay, but rather, by someone's awkward effort to downplay the issue. In particular this Wikipedia edit led to this gossipy news article, where the reporter seems to take this edit, deleted a little over a day later, as if it were serious. Now while Off2riorob didn't make that particular edit, his suppression of good, sourced material on the topic on several occasions immediately preceding this, including two days before this edit [5], led directly to the information-starved quality of the article and the poisonous editing environment which allowed such a blurb to get through posing as Wikipedia's view of the issue. Whenever he's deleting things Off2riorob poses as the defender of all things BLP, but I've commented before, at Talk:Anders Behring Breivik#Responses from those mentioned:section, that his deleting things from articles can also create BLP problems. The problem with the tiny but remarkably disruptive cabal of deletionists we're encountering here is that they don't recognize that editors need to be responsible about deletions - that deletions can be original research when you remove what you personally don't find plausible, they can violate NPOV when they remove one side's opinion, and that they can violate NOR when you remove the basic known facts about a person. Wnt (talk) 15:33, 12 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

What you call a "news article" is a blog post on a entertainment blog, which means "gossip column." Your comments here are not helpful Wnt, especially when you say things like "[w]henever he's deleting things Off2riorob poses as the defender of all things BLP." You're implying that he just likes to "delete things" and the BLP claims are just his cover. You go on to talk about a "remarkably disruptive cabal of delitionists," as if, again deletion is their prime objective as opposed to protecting or even to take a critical view, obsessing over BLP. Just because the end result has been the deletion of a few strings of text doesn't meant hat the objective is "deletion." Basically you're using this issue to further your own WP:BATTLEGROUND - fighting all the dirty rotten delitionists on Wikipedia at every turn - and like I said it's not helpful.Griswaldo (talk) 15:50, 12 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Wnt, the dispute started somewhat before the edit you linked. The AfterElton piece suggests that Evans' PR people are manipulating the article and it appears to me that they are correct. That aspect of this case has yet to be addressed. When stories of this type come out, Wikipedia tends to do their best to kill the messenger instead of looking at the message to see if there is any merit. We can benefit from looking at the perspective of outsiders, even if we do not agree with them. Delicious carbuncle (talk) 16:43, 12 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
For me, the question of whether to include someone's sexuality in an article is a complex matter requiring sophisticated and thoughtful judgment. Gossipy reporting of the sheer fact (or, often, claimed fact) is generally not enough - we need to know why it is noteworthy for someone's career. In this case, arguments have been put forward on both sides, and the discussion is both interesting, useful, and heading towards thoughtful consensus.
What isn't ok is what has also happened here, up to and including an angry email to me and the ridiculous headline of this section. And that is: the personal attack on other editors in the form of a claim that their position is based on anti-gay paranoia. The argument has been sometimes put in such a way that any argument against including information about someone being gay in an article must be grounded in anti-gay bias. That's as absurd as saying that any argument for including information about someone being gay in an article must be grounded in pro-gay bias.
Those who might argue in that fashion should consider that at least some of us might be so far beyond prejudice and bias on this issue, that we regard someone's sexual preference to be a pretty routine biographical fact like any other, about which we can make editorial judgment in the same way that we always do. Sometimes the fact is relevant to someone's life, career, etc., and other times it isn't. Activist magazines and blogs engaged in "outing" (or making a big deal out of it generally, even if it isn't technically "outing") only move the needle on that by a very tiny bit, if at all.
And finally, I'd like to recommend to Wnt that he strike his unfair comments about Off2riorob above. As someone else said, it could of course be possible to criticize Off2riorob for being overzealous or overcautious on BLP issues - he does take a strong stand, after all, and reasonable people may differ in specific cases - something I'm sure he is completely prepared to graciously acknowledge of reasonable opponents in particular debates.
But to characterize him as a "deletionist" as if his primary motive is to delete things from the encyclopedia really totally misses the point of his work.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 17:21, 12 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Little issues can serve as good windows into bigger ones, because there's less peripheral clutter. The article about the actor was good for that purpose. It illustrates the two critical flaws inherent in the Wikipedia pseudo reference source. The first is that, for Wikipedia, facts have no independent validity but are dictated by the Wikipedia flashmob of the moment. This means that, at the core, you have no standards and cannot have any. Which leads to the second point: What passes for editorial "standards" at Wikipedia are routinely ignored by your flashmobs. This is why, on any controversial issue, Wikipedia is unreliable. Which is why no respected academic institution will permit its use as a source; why Wikipedia is losing serious contributors; and why Wikipedia is commonly satirized and derided in popular culture.
In the article about the actor, the fact is that he gave three interviews discussing his sexual orientation. One in 2001, and two in 2004. It is also a fact that the motion picture industry has always encouraged public interest in the private and public romantic lives of its actors, and it's a fact that there has indeed always been considerable public interest in such things. Yet, Wikipedia allowed the censorship of the fact of the actor's interviews. In doing so, the one editor cited here used Wikipedia's so-called "NOTABILITY" rule to justify the censorship, even though that rule clearly states that "NOTABILITY" is not to be applied to the contents of an article. In the end, what this boils down to is that fact is just another piece of the mix here, and that Wikipedia's "editors" can ignore your rules whenever they want to. These are routine happenings at Wikipedia, and over time they have driven serious people to throw up their hands and leave. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.227.188.7 (talk) 20:32, 12 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Exercising good editorial judgment is not censorship. It is not Wikipedia's role to amplify ephemeral gossip. Johnuniq (talk) 00:48, 13 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Nor is it Wikipedia's role to even follow its own "standards." The editors and administrators of this pseudo "encyclopedia" continually ignore their own rules. It's a common, everyday feature here. Any real authority on a subject would need to have a screw loose to give Wikipedia his or her time. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.227.188.7 (talk) 01:16, 13 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Have you really got nothing better to do with your life than to post endless repetitive negative comments about Wikipedia? If you don't like it, and don't think anyone else does, then stop whining, and find something else to occupy your time. Your attendance here isn't compulsory... AndyTheGrump (talk) 01:23, 13 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I'm sorry, but I've looked over my comment above and I really don't think I was being all that unfair - not even with what I admit is a rather harshly worded remark about a deletionist cabal. That's because those three editors above, Off2riorob, Griswaldo, and Collect, are all parties to a current Arbcom case, Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Manipulation of BLPs, and I've found myself in opposition to several of the parties on their side of that case on quite a few occasions (even on an issue with no explicit connection to BLP). And in the Breivik article, I felt like keeping the strong disavowals of people like Fjordman was a nice BLP consideration to give them. So my feeling here (barring some details) remains similar to that of 71.227.x.x. Wnt (talk) 05:30, 13 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Um -- there are 21 "parties" to the ArbCom case. Yet you manage to single out 3? If you want to plead some sort of Cabal note the discussion about topicbanning Off2riorob -- Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard#Off2riorob_topic_ban_proposal which had a WP:SNOW result. Sorry -- I keep thinking about your earlier threads on this page [6] where you argue that WP:NOTNEWS should be deleted. [7] has you showing a clear POV about a BLP issue. [8] is an interesting colloquy about BLP as well. Cheers. Collect (talk) 09:14, 13 August 2011 (UTC) appending: You aver that "several" of us were involved in the Classified Documents discussion. That claim is errant. Exceedingly errant. Cheers. Collect (talk) 09:18, 13 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Half the 21 ArbCom parties on the that side (plus one whose case was separated but is running concurrently).[9] You're right that "three" was wrong - Griswaldo, Delicious carbuncle, and Collect commented directly above; Off2riorob makes four. Viriditas, JN466, ResidentAnthropologist were involved in the Wikileaks discussion. Wnt (talk) 11:01, 13 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Um -- Which of the 3 was involved in any way with the "Classified Documents" discussion? Try "none" as the answer instead of making the side claim that "half of the 21" is meaningful in any way. What you have is that there was ZERO intersection between the group you named and the group of 4 out of the 21 editors whom you aver were in the mini-cabal of some sort. In short - no connection whatsoever, and your imputations to the contrary do your case here no favour at all, but smell greatly of personal attacks. At least try to find some actual connection between editors whome you choose to categorize as being in the antiWnt group. Jimbo's page is not a great place to aver that some sort of group is involved in something you disagree with. Cheers. Collect (talk) 11:25, 13 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
My goal there was to respond to Jimbo Wales about my comment, but I've strayed off topic. You're right that you weren't in there, but that wasn't the point I was making. Wnt (talk) 11:37, 13 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
User 71, it may be permissible per policy to include the subject's sexual orientation in this instance. But that by no means makes inclusion compulsory. Inclusion of permitted content will be determined by consensus, based on considerations of relevance, noteworthiness, impact on living persons, and any other factors unique to the case. As for citing Wikipedia articles, I don't think anyone argues for citing a document that changes from one day to the next. Wikipedia is more an annotated bibliography than a source itself. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 06:43, 13 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
More typical Wikiweaseling. Fact (something you wouldn't recognize, because you don't believe in fact) is that Wikipedia has no rules. Not in practice, because whatever rules you do have can be, and routinely are, ignored by consensus. That is what makes your efforts worthless. It's why contributions are down by two-thirds from four years ago. It's why no one in academia takes you seriously, and why you're a joke in popular culture. The only thing that gives Wikipedia as many hits as it gets is its agreement with Google to put Wikipedia at or near the top of any search. Absent that, Wikipedia would be swept down the drain where it belongs. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.227.188.7 (talk) 07:22, 13 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Not just Google, but also Bing.com puts WP entries high in search-results. After studying SEO problems for years, I think any search-engine should do the same, to answer many reader questions faster (WP typically has the answers). Ignoring all rules is a problem, as WP:CONSENSUS states that groups of people cannot override long-term policies, but the argument is like saying police are a failure because criminals use their consensus to ignore laws. Also, some in Academia sneak into WP to update information, while a few others teach classes about the wiki-issues and slanting which some writers face. Please realize that a few criminals do not turn social norms into a "joke" and a few vandals, badmins or madmins do not force Wikipedia to be swept down the drain. However, a few bad apples, as POV-pushers or WP:TAGTEAMs of censorship, do have a poisonous effect on the overall system, so we need "wiki-medics" to recover from wiki-injuries and illnesses in the overall system. -Wikid77 16:11, 13 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Ignore the trolling. This IP hasn't had a new idea in ages at this point. Just ignore him.Griswaldo (talk) 10:33, 13 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
(ec) Nay, things aren't that bad - the consensus model can work as long as people's priorities are on getting the article together. The problem is that those looking to remove sourced content, even for "ethical" reasons, have had an unwarranted advantage in conflict resolution. I wasn't a part of this debate, but it looks like Off2riorob was opposed by consensus on the Luke Evans talk page, then things were taken to a noticeboard, where he was generally opposed,[10]; the overall consensus was 16 to 7 for including the information [11] though he claimed some were "SPAs" (without noticing Acerroad on his own side). He called for an RSN discussion but the RSN previously favored the 'blog post on a entertainment blog, which means "gossip column."' he just mentioned above. [12] Consensus itself isn't the problem here, only its failure to actually protect editors when they're working to build good articles. Wnt (talk) 10:42, 13 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Wnt you're like a broken record. Getting our articles to top form will usually require adding and removing information. To decide that no information should ever be deleted, for any reason gets us nowhere fast. It's a position not unlike that taken by the Tea Party Republicans in the US Congress regarding the deficit. While they gum up the works by refusing to accept any compromise that raises even a penny of revenue you gum up the works by refusing to delete even a byte of information. Good luck with that.Griswaldo (talk) 10:51, 13 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • I would like to point out that the anti-gay comments given above are likely in response to a myriad of repetitious comments by Off2riorob that there is a "off wiki homosexual promotional tagging group" involved. He has yet to show proof that this "group" exists and has instead tried to crowd all new-ish users and IP addresses involved in the discussion into this group, even if they have been editing since before this Luke Evans dispute began. SilverserenC 09:56, 14 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • Rubbish. Of course there's a vast gay conspiracy to manipulate Wikipedia! It's been going on for years. Here's the indisputable evidence: [13] FuFoFuEd (talk) 18:00, 14 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
      • Ah... no worse than the anti-gay "conspiracy" or the anti-Muslim "conspiracy" or the anti-Christian "conspiracy" then? I've noticed that on any controversial topic (whether social, about a person, scientific, etc), such things always seem to exist on both sides of the fence. I wouldn't call any of them vast - but yes, they do exist. That aside, such biases exist here as well; I wouldn't call such vast either - but they do exist. There are always people with agendas. There will always be people trying to push their agendas (or even use others to do so). That does not make it vast, nor does it make it a conspiracy. Best, ROBERTMFROMLI | TK/CN 18:18, 14 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
        • Of course there has been a vast gay conspiracy to manipulate Wikipedia. And a vast conservative Christian one. And a vast CIA one, and a vast corporate one, and on and on and on. All of these conspiracies can seize ground at Wikipedia, because Wikipedia was founded by people wholly ignorant of the Western intellectual tradition regarding truth. They, and this pseudo-reference site's (mostly) child editors and administrators, regard fact as negotiable. They routinely ignore Wikipedia's own rules, with impunity, and have driven away hordes of serious people. You are left with the dregs, that one-third of your original base, plus the various ax-grinders who appropriate view Wikipedia as the means to pump out their press releases or opinions under the guise of "reference." But it hasn't worked. Worldwide, your enterprise is seen for exactly what it is: A poser. You're not an encyclopedia, and you never will be. Not when you think 2 + 2 = 4 is debatable. Jacksonjake (talk) 19:13, 14 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
        • I would like to also point out, as was pointed out at BLPN as well, that all of the links given by Collect there in that diff are pertaining to other events in the past and have nothing to do with the current subject. There has yet to be any evidence given that there is a "conspiracy" in terms of the current subject, which is what Rob is using to paint a number of people with the same brush. SilverserenC 19:38, 14 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
          • I wouldn't go so far as to say there is a conspiracy, but it is true that someone purporting to be a Wikipedian posted a link to the BLPN discussion on AfterElton, that a number of people involved in the discussion since then have been single-purpose editors, and that they include an AfterElton journalist who disclosed his affiliation. All those editors are welcome to stay and contribute, and I respect their views, but it's reasonable to bear the demographics of those involved in the discussion in mind, especially since some of the new arrivals will be less familiar with BLP policy (whose correct interpretation in this case is subject to good-faith debate even among established Wikipedians). --JN466 20:07, 14 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
            • A link to the Wikipedia page has been made in a number of news articles, yes, so the new users are likely some result of that, though a few of them have been editing for longer than this dispute and a significant number of them, surprisingly, have been properly quoting policy. And if we're going to bring up the topic of SPAs in this discussion, I would also like to bring up Acerroad. Considering his editing and his stance of removal of information, I wonder if he is some sort of publicist or PR manager in relation to Evans. SilverserenC 20:29, 14 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]


"SPA" and Wikipedia's Wholesale Infiltration by Propagandists, Governments, Corporations, and Flacks

Look, kids, if Wikipedia were worth a damn, it wouldn't matter why people come here or who they were. Even if someone was a publicist, or a corporation, or the CIA, or some other government. If Wikipedia was organized on the primacy of truth and fact, and if it actually applied its own "standards" evenly to all comers, the motivation or source of a contributor would be irrelevant. These things only matter in a truth-free environment, where someone's motivation or identity is presumed to have a material impact on their contribution.

The accusation that this or that account is an "SPA" and therefore suspect, powerfully reveals the hollowness at Wikipedia's core. It is a tacit recognition that your founder(s) are uneducated people, unfamiliar with the nature of truth in a society that traces its intellectual roots back to the Greeks. They learned plenty of computer code, but not a lot else. So they, and the one-third of the insiders who have remained as this project has fallen off its cliff since 2007, are unable or unwilling to see or acknowledge the real issue, which is that Wikipedia cannot defend itself because there is nothing to defend.

When you don't believe in truth or fact, and hence have no recognition of the the difference between fact and opinion, and force serious people to spend inordinate amounts of time and energy defending basic fact, you drive them away. Furthermore, you judge content not on its own merits, but on who the contributor is. Is is a newbie making that sharp criticism? Not one of us. Must be an SPA. Easy to do that when you don't believe in facts as facts, but instead are organized around the idea that you can vote something a fact or not a fact. Same goes for your "standards." Once you've decided that truth doesn't exist and is whatever your roving flashmobs say it is, then your "rules" become arbitrary and meaningless, except as tools of retribution.

So keep focusing on who that new contributor is. Don't look at what he or she has contributed. Make it clear that the crowd will decide whether the sun will rise in the East tomorrow morning. And ignore your own rules, until your critic gets boisterous and it comes time for some serious Wikiwagoncircling. And then, as your participation keeps falling off the cliff and the level of world wide derision rises inexorably, tell yourself that your software is the issue, or that it's time to put smiley faces onto people's accounts. Yup, that'll do the trick. Jacksonjake (talk) 20:55, 14 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

His complaints were excessive in spots, but blocking him doesn't prove him wrong. I think that "SPA" is one of a number of Wikipedia jargon terms (like "meatpuppet" and "coatrack") that should be deprecated. And when using it you're effectively citing WP:SPA, which is an essay, not consensus. The main thing I don't like about it is that every new user is a SPA for some interval, and they get treated as such. Wnt (talk) 05:57, 15 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, if we followed your ideas - there would be no WP:BLP policy, anything with a reliable source would be unmovable and the place would be overrun with ranting users that dislike the project. Off2riorob (talk) 06:05, 15 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

20 million all-language articles by November 2011

13-Aug-2011: I know you have encouraged a focus on quality, over quantity, but the growth of new articles, in all languages combined, is proceeding at over 6,000 new articles each day (currently: 63,965,446), beyond the thousands of non-notable pages also being deleted. At this rate, we will see another major milestone soon:

  • 20,000,000 articles (all languages) by early November 2011.

That means people can type in 20 million topic names and get some kind of structured information about their subject, in their language(s). Of course, with redirects, there are already more than 20 million logged phrases, but the "official count" of 20 million separate articles will be a count that will be widely viewed, by many experienced readers.

With all the other busy activities, it is easy to get distracted and miss the history in the making, then look back as the moment has passed. So, instead, we can take some time, during the next 3 months, to appreciate the impact of having 20 million formatted articles, in all these hundreds of languages, by November of this year (probably 8 November 2011). As various complications continue to limit the rate of growth, it will probably be another 5 years to pass, before seeing a similar milestone, of 30 million all-language articles, perhaps in 2016. -Wikid77 (talk) 07:27, 13 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I actually bet we will see 30 million much sooner than that as growth accelerates in the languages of the developing world.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 07:37, 13 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
You are probably right about reaching 30 million sooner, and even English Wikipedia is reviving, from slower growth last year at 80% of 2009, while growth in 2011 is up to 83% of 2010. I am suspecting English Wikipedia will reach a "steady state" such as 300 new valid articles per day, forever. However, due to seasonal factors or bulk-loading of many articles, the monthly counts are likely to oscillate up/down around the long-term article-creation rate. Plus, the notices are helping to translate articles across languages. Physicists have noted the impact of Galileo's final writings was not just the Latin texts, but the common Italian texts which made him the "Father of Modern Physics". I recently wrote "Recovery of Aristotle" which is another famous example of translating texts into the common language(s) of other people. Helen Keller learned the manual alphabet first (after W-A-T-E-R), then learned Braille, and writing block text, and learned to create typewritten pages, which led to books in English and other languages; hence, her astounding international fame. Multiple languages was a key concept. -Wikid77 16:43, 13 August, revised 06:15, 15 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Check it out

Jimbo, you really have to do something about your Admins. They are corrupt and ruining your site, even going so far as to blacklist websites that raise concern, so that other users can't refer you to those sites. Surely you have power over them. In particular, users Either way and MLauba--Valkyrie Red (talk) 00:16, 14 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

See this essay. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 00:24, 14 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
File:Star wars Characters.jpg
Imperial Steward, surrounded by Imperial Bureaucrat and Imperial Admins
  • Ending the imperial admins (emperor-admins): In AD 64, Nero "fiddled" while Rome burned. There have been numerous discussions to remove troublesome admins, and many of us have heard, or seen, the horror stories. Way back in 2006, the Swedish Wikipedia changed to 1-year term limits for admins, where each quarter (4 times per year), they hold admin re-elections requiring a 75% approval (translate Swedish policy "sv:WP:Administratörer"). Otherwise, their adminship expires at the end of the election month. The reason for re-elections, with 1-year terms, was to reduce long-term hostilities where all troublesome admins formerly had to be (unpleasantly) debated, and even when removed, the bad feelings (perhaps from their friends) seemed to be poisoning other efforts. Instead, the re-elections do not need to "dish the dirt" in analyzing the past admin behavior, just count the negative votes to exceed 25%. Also, some admins tire and can easily drop out at the 1-year cycles. As I understand it, Swedish WP just treats it as a pure vote, so people are not required to explain the "horrid reason" to remove each admin. Please note, Swedish WP still has the emergency removal of severely rogue admins, just as English Wikipedia has desysoped several admins, but the Swedish WP allows the 1-year "clean-sweep" to quietly remove troublesome admins, with fewer unpleasant discussions. When users here discussed an admin re-election for enwiki, there were several intense (severe) complaints of "too much voting" but I think it could work well, especially fast for the well-known admins. However, there is the danger that a lesser-known, cooperative admin might lose a re-election, so I suggested extending terms to 2 years, if applicable, to reduce the number of re-elections each year. Another fix might be to adjust the process to protect lesser-known admins from a small band of enemies in a small voter turnout (perhaps have a minimum quorum of total votes, before the vote would apply). Just as with a hung jury, allow a re-re-election to seek more votes to reach the quorum count. History has shown (numerous times), "Absolute power corrupts absolutely" and hence, many societies have changed to using term-limits rather than the imperial "royal lifetime appointments".
However, the same concept of term limits could be used to control per-article edit-limits, where a single user cannot continue to edit an article every day for 2 years, so perhaps force a "timeout" and reject the editor's changes to that article/talkpage for a period of 3 or 4 months, after perhaps 6 months of editing. Use similar automatic term limits for other activities. No one needs to obsess in the same role on Wikipedia, for every month of every season of every year. -Wikid77 (talk) 06:34, 14 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The quorum/min vote number thing is a good idea.Volunteer Marek (talk) 07:19, 14 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
That crazy quorum idea might be a brilliancy! Instead of having tiresome arguments trying to prove that editor X is a POV-pushing SPA so they need to be topic banned from (say) editing articles related to race and intelligence, there should be a default limit to the number of edits per certain categories of topics per month. A central discussion could increase that limit for known-good editors, and POV pushers would need to get the community to actively endorse their edits to continue! It's nice to dream... Johnuniq (talk) 09:39, 14 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Meanwhile, I looked at a fairly large number of editors (recalling the Climate Change stats etc.) and produced a very tentative concept at User:Collect/counting edits. In addition to a brake on users making more than (say) 10 edits per week on a given article, perhaps a "hard brake" on editors exceeding these numbers on any contentious article might work? Clearly allowing for a 'crat to waive the limit for vandalism edits etc. Cheers. Collect (talk) 14:23, 14 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Of course this once again increases the benefit of socking for POV-pushers. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 15:07, 14 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
It would make them work a bit harder -- I do not think Wikipedia has any real means to totally prevent "alternate personas" currently - too many bad accusations are made at SPI (generally the worst ones are those made just because there is a content dispute), while the major abusers of "alternate personas" are not generally found. The principle here is that this system furnishes one means to identify some who clearly "over edit" a single article, and to discourage them from such practices. Cheers. Collect (talk) 15:17, 14 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah also lets hold strawpolls with battered fried butter sticks, petting zoos, and coverbands. I like this here place not being a democracy. I rather focus our energies on developing quality content and then worry about the rest. It is not power corrupting absolutely that has lowered our expected FA output by 25% in 3 years. It is the over-thinking and less editing that has. If anything, the problem we have is that we make it too hard to be admin, hence making it special and political, rather than what it used to be, not a big deal.

The only place I think politics are needed are the Foundation, Stewards, and Arbcom. The only truly corrupting power is Oversight. Admins are just editors with cooler tools and the ability to delete and block. Yeah its bad in bad hands, but nothing that is not self-correcting.--Cerejota (talk) 15:43, 14 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The gist of this thread seems to be that Wikipedia editors are spending too much time writing articles and not enough time voting on RFAs and bureaucratic procedures. I would disagree.   Will Beback  talk  21:36, 14 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

An idea

Hi Mr Wales, I've just thought of an idea, so I'm posting it here because I think it would receive more readership than other pages. I'm thinking that Wikipedia adopt a system where a page is set up for every WikiProject to allow increased one-on-one collaborations and teamwork, as well as easier venerability.

Essentially, an editor would come along, write down a scholarly book that he or she has access to, so that other editors can set up a joint effort in writing (or re-writing) an article. For example, let's say WikiProject Aircraft creates Wikipedia:WikiProject Aircraft/Books. User A writes down a list of books that he/she has, so User B, who owns those books, can communicate with User A and hopefully start a week-long collaboration effort. This system hopefully would abolish the need for an editor to fish around the Project to see if there are editors who have the same sources as him/her. This is one of my ideas which I think addresses the quality issue; a user would normally might be deterred from daunting task of re-writing a page because they think such task this too taxing and laborious. With this system, there is much more potential for an article to be revamped and, hopefully, get promoted to FA status. Furthermore, with the publication written down User C might called User A to verify sources on a particular page, which would otherwise be impossible because User C does not have any knowledge that User A has such sources.

This is only an infant idea – further clarifications to this idea will be carried out should it be adopted. I'd like to hear your comments on this. :D Sp33dyphil "Ad astra" 10:34, 14 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I've been thinking along similar but different lines. When I found Wikipedia:WikiProject Resource Exchange/Resource Request it got me thinking. I started wondering how I could let people know I was willing to share references (when possible) that I've used in articles, or that I wouldn't mind looking up the occasional not-online newspaper article for somebody else. I'd been considering two user boxes. One user box to create a category of people who were willing to either share or else (when sharing isn't practical or legal) help people find the sources they themselves had used in articles. And then maybe a variant user box that says you'd be willing to help find offline sources in general. (It could have a spot where you could write a very very brief comment about what resources you'd be willing to look for. In my case it would say something like newspaper database searches. Somebody else might list an archive they have access to.) Cloveapple (talk) 15:51, 14 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Has anyone thought of perhaps expanding this type of idea to an actual physical "Wikipedia storefront"? Or I guess "Wikipedia reference library" would be a better name. An actual place where physical references, like books, maps, newspapers, etc could be at for Wikipedians to use or borrow and have computers where they can go on Wikipedia and edit articles. There could be outreach programs to encourage at-risk youth to come in, for schools to have teachers bring their students in to work on articles as a project, etc. I realize actual libraries already exist that have similar resources, so maybe this isnt something viable or even needed. But maybe something along the lines of a physical real-world presence would help us with our "attracting new editors" problem. I would be willing to donate money to buy or rent for a storefront along those lines in St Louis.Camelbinky (talk) 23:28, 14 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
You might like Wikipedia:Wikipedia Loves Libraries. Perhaps partnerships could come out of it that could do some of the things you envision. Cloveapple (talk) 05:52, 15 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • I am not convinced of the theory of an "attracting-new-editors" problem. We have over 6,100 new registered usernames, per day, so I think the problem is getting them to join a Wikiproject, or some other collaborative group. That is why I mentioned the idea of announcing new users to consider joining "1 of 87 welcoming teams" which would lead to "989" Wikiprojects for the more-experienced editors to join. Meanwhile, we still have basic-skill issues, such as users who use the "spacebar" to start a new line, because they did not understand that the Enter/Return key puts newlines in an edit-window, rather than submitting the text, as when pressing Return in a Google-Search window. I am thinking the welcoming teams could help users see if they are ready to edit a variety of articles, rather than focusing on just one article which they had intended to edit. Also, this could steer editors into creating some of the WP:Requested articles. -Wikid77 06:42, 15 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • The whole aim from the above-mentioned idea was to start one-on-one collaborative efforts. Look, even if someone does join a WikiProject, there is a high chance that they would not start on any significant work, since revamping an article by yourself is crazy hard (I know it because I've done it, a few times). Sp33dyphil "Ad astra" 07:58, 15 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Y tus 300 wikipedistas

continuaran revirtiendo... hasta q encuentren algo mejor q hacer — Preceding unsigned comment added by 186.130.144.222 (talk) 22:17, 14 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

"And your 300 wikipedians -- continue reverting ... until they find something better to do" Looie496 (talk) 22:23, 14 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Please block the sock IP. (its Jacksonjake‎ for any who couldn't figure it out) :-) ROBERTMFROMLI | TK/CN 22:28, 14 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Is that an open proxy? His previous IP geolocates to Seattle; this one is from Argentina. Looie496 (talk) 22:37, 14 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Movistar Mobile (Buenos Aires), his location... ??? Best, ROBERTMFROMLI | TK/CN 22:40, 14 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
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