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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by 75.144.246.14 (talk) at 19:31, 28 March 2013 (→‎Is this neutral phrasing?: oh my god.). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

    (Manual archive list)

    Did you realize that ...

    All this is worth reading, but I'm hatting it to refocus the discussion, i.e. to cut down on some extraneous threads. What I want to do here is keep focussed on a factual look at what has happened here, so that I'm prepared to talk about this intelligently. Your help is much appreciated.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 11:45, 21 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

    About 40% of Wikipedia's article on BP (British Petroleum) was written by a BP employee, and the the source of this text is not disclosed to our readers? BP was also the source of the horrific Deepwater Horizon oil spill. It recently pleaded guilty to lying to Congress and to lying to its own investors, but those facts are not included in the article, nor is there anything in the article about BP misleading our readers.

    If you'd like to know why independent editors are leaving Wikipedia, please read User talk:Slim Virgin#Re: BP <Retired>

    Smallbones(smalltalk) 02:14, 21 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

    How do you know this as fact and how is that an issue? Are you claiming a conflict of interest? Is there an attempt to remove well sourced information or to add false claims etc?--Amadscientist (talk) 02:41, 21 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • 44% was an estimate calculated by User:SlimVirgin based on the amount of text in User:Arturo at BP's user files that was added to the article.
    • Check the BP page - there's no footnote or similar stating that the material was written by a BP employee
    • BP pleaded guilty and paid a $4 billion fine for lying to Congress and for causing the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and $525 million for lying to its investors see, e.g. NYTimes Nov. 15, 2012 BP Will Plead Guilty and Pay Over $4 Billion
    • Check the BP page - nothing on lying to Congress or pleading guilty.
    • I think anybody should realize that BP writing 40% of our article without disclosing it to readers, when they are involved in billion dollar lawsuits on the oil spill, and are convicted liars - anybody should realize that this is a problem for Wikipedia's credibility.
    • User:Arturo at BP admits the conflict of interest.
    • There has been a certain amount of bullying - see the talk page entry above. Smallbones(smalltalk) 03:22, 21 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    We don't add a footnote just because someone works for a person or has in the past and is an editor here contributing to an article. Where is that in policy or guidelines? That alone is not a concern. Again, is there an attempt to compromise the article in some manner or are you just trying to discuss the editor in a public forum? --Amadscientist (talk) 03:27, 21 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

    Arturo at BP works for BP now and has written about 40% of the text of our BP article and that is not disclosed to our readers. Are you saying that that is not a problem for Wikipedia's credibility? Surely you must realize that many people will question Wikipedia's credibility over this. Remember that 5 months ago - while this material was being added to the article - BP pleaded guilty to 2 counts of lying (to Congress and their investors).

    I actually have no complaint about Arturo at BP. He is just doing what his bosses have told him to do and his livelihood depends on it. He is very upfront about it. I do have a complaint about folks who don't see this as a problem - they are ruining the credibility of Wikipedia. Smallbones(smalltalk) 04:00, 21 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

    I think you need to make some retractions and apologies. You are claiming that Arturo at BP is responsible for, between 40 and 44% of the BP article and that is just an outright falsehood. [1] Further more Arturo has not admitted to a conflict of interest. He has disclosed his relationship in his username to policy and, even though he may still edit the actual article, has stipulated on their user page, that they will not write in the article space but just the talk page. This is a reasonable manner to edit under the circumstances (even though, as I said, they can still edit the article as long as they stick to our guidelines and policies). This really is just a lot of drama for absolutely no reason. You do not strike me as a disinterested editor yourself by the way. You seem quite outraged by the lack of information you feel should be in the article. OK...source it and add it.--Amadscientist (talk) 04:40, 21 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    And the accusation that the editor is doing something because his bosses told him so is pretty outrageous with no actual proof of such.--Amadscientist (talk) 04:43, 21 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    Pshaw! Check your facts. Smallbones(smalltalk) 04:52, 21 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    I did, now you check yours. I think this is outrageous and melodramatic.--Amadscientist (talk) 04:55, 21 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

    Cue piano music... --Amadscientist (talk) 04:58, 21 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

    Well, I just read the article and found this text:
    "On 14 November 2012, BP and the Department of Justice reached a $4.5 billion settlement, the largest of its kind in U.S. history. BP also agreed to plead guilty to 11 felony counts related to the deaths of the 11 workers. Beyond the 11 counts of manslaughter, the government charged several individuals as well. David Rainey, who worked for BP during the spill response, was indicted on charges of obstruction of Congress and false statements. He alledegedly cherry-picked pages from some documents and withheld others "to make the spill appear less catastrophic than it was.” Two other BP supervisors on board the rig when it exploded were charged with manslaughter and other counts[16][17] The settlement has not resolved the fines under the Clean Water Act, which could be as much as $21 billion.[17] Speaking at a news conference, a U.S. federal official said, “The explosion of the rig was a disaster that resulted from BP’s culture of privileging profit over prudence.” The total amount paid out by BP by November 2012 was $42 billion.[287][18] In November 2012, the U.S. Government temporarily banned BP from bidding any new federal contracts.[288][18] Estimates of the total amount of penalties that BP may be required to pay have reached as high as $90 billion.[289]"
    So, I am not sure what Smallbones is saying is lacking in the article. It also links to four additional articles about the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, including the one Smallbones linked. Cullen328 Let's discuss it 05:36, 21 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    I am just guessing but it seems to me the OP didn't do a lot of reading.--Amadscientist (talk) 05:44, 21 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    Well, I did. Cullen328 Let's discuss it 05:47, 21 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    👍 Like--Amadscientist (talk) 05:48, 21 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

    I think it's very problematic (if true, although note that it is disputed and hard to define/measure) if 40% of any article about a company is written by someone representing that company. Let's note very well: it's as problematic for the company as it is for us, as they are at very strong risk of getting negative headlines about it. I'm happy to hear that the editor in this case has resolved to follow my "bright line" advice and not to edit in article space directly, and I invite the editor (and anyone else in a similar situation) to post here for advice in case it's hard getting heard elsewhere.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 09:30, 21 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

    Addendum: I hadn't noticed but the negative headline I predicted above has already appeared: BP accused of rewriting environmental record on Wikipedia.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 09:46, 21 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    Second Addendum: Can someone confirm for me that the account in question did not directly edit the article but instead only interacted on the talk page? If that's right, then I intend to contact CNET and ask them to retract the article.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 09:53, 21 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    On what grounds? The article makes it very clear that the account did indeed not directly edit the article, but provided "BP-approved" texts on the talk page, which some editors apparently then copied willingly into the article. I have not checked whether any of this is correct or not, but I don't see any grounds for a retraction on this basis (if there are actual clear errors in the article, you may have an argument, but retracting it because it is correctly reporting the situation seems bizarre). Fram (talk) 10:03, 21 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    I think it will be up to CNET's editors as to whether this kind of article is up to their standards. I think that accusing Arturo of "skirting" Wikipedia's rules in this case is fairly ludicrous - unless "skirting" means "going above and beyond what is required in order to be very clearly in compliance with best practice". So, I would consider that a blatant factual misrepresentation.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 10:12, 21 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    I get the impression that the article author considers this "best practice" a quite dubious approach, and that in this case it has failed to achieve the intended result. Having COI editors note errors on a talk page is hardly the same as having COI editors completely rewriting major parts of the article, certainly on such rather controversial subjects. To me, assuming that the story has any basis in facts, the main problem is not so much a COI editor declaring his COI and posting "BP-approved" versions at the talk page, as it is the other editors then posting these versions wholesale into the article. Our rules and policies only work as long as editors are actively following or enforcing them. Fram (talk) 10:27, 21 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    (edit conflict)Honestly, in my experience, POV editors are far more damaging to Wikipedia than COI editors. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 10:28, 21 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    Terrible reporting from CNET. They don't give a single instance of biased editing by the alleged BP employee, let alone a careful examination of the totality of these edits to determine if there are any POV issues. Instead, they rely on assumption that simply because the editor is a BP employee, they must have had ulterior motives. Shame on CNET. But hey, they got people to click on their article and generate more ad revenue. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 10:38, 21 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    It gets even worse. I took a quick skim at this editor's last 500 contributions,[2] and all of them related to BP are to the talk page. I don't see any edits to the actual article. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 10:54, 21 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    Can someone please double check that I did this correctly? According to this,[3] this editor has never edited a single Wikipedia article, let alone the BP article. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 11:04, 21 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    ...which is both what is clearly stated in the CNet article, and was already discussed right above your post (see the posts from Jimbo Wales and me). Fram (talk) 11:11, 21 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    The CNet article says the account did not edit the article directly. Alanscottwalker (talk) 11:15, 21 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    Then there's nothing to see here[4] other than CNET's lousy reporting. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 11:17, 21 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

    What I'd like to see us do now is analyze his suggested edits, i.e. the actual content, to see if they warrant characterization as POV pushing or biased about their environmental record, and to see whether the incorporations by Wikipedians of his suggestions were inappropriate. I know that in many cases this might be a judgment call of the usual sort that we make in the content record, and I'm not likely to get an easy answer. But a thoughtful discussion is worthwhile here.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 11:45, 21 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

    Here is some of what we have established so far (but please check my facts):
    1. Arturo openly identified as an employee of BP.
    2. He never made any edits to articles relating to BP, nor indeed, to any articles whatsoever.
    3. Concerns have been raised whether Wikipedians were too quick to incorporate his suggestions in the article, and whether those suggestions biased the article.
    4. Evidence has been offered that the article covers in a quite direct and clear way the oil spill situation. It's difficult to say in light of that, that any whitewashing actually took place.
    More discussion, particularly of this last point, is warranted.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 11:48, 21 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    Essentially all correct, although you may want to add they have also been active on the article's talkpage and engaging with editors. Which is exactly what we want COI's to do. Only in death does duty end (talk) 16:22, 21 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    Jimbo, my real concern is that some editors, with a particularly obvious hostility to the company, have made an effort in the opposite direction and are generally proving successful, removing all but a sentence about BP's positive environmental record in the lede in favor of an intense focus on environmental disasters such as Deepwater Horizon. See the following examples: [5] [6]. As far as what has been inserted from Arturo, here is a diff of Arturo's material regarding the Prudhoe Bay spill being inserted by another editor. There has also been material added regarding the company's stock and the company's American operations. Here are some of the discussions of the content proposals: Talk:BP/Archive 4#US operations Talk:BP/Archive 6#Stock history.--The Devil's Advocate tlk. cntrb. 17:48, 21 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    Editor in question here for the Prudhoe Bay section. Yeah, if you look at the diff supplied by TDA, you can see that Arturo's draft actually made the section, if anything, more negative, because he properly filled out the details on the incident that were missing. And, sure, he added in some things that one could call positive information, like when BP finished their cleanup efforts, but that certainly seems like relevant information to have. In fact, the most positive added line I can find in that section is, "The spill was cleaned up and there was no impact upon wildlife", but that's directly from the government report and is wholly accurate.
    I find it hard to see how anyone could think whitewashing was happening here. SilverserenC 20:16, 21 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • Jimbo, what do you think of our current COI policies? I think that reactive policy-making is worse than exploitable policy-making; and sadly, we at Wikipedia prefer to do the former. It is time we also insert important paragraphs in our COI policy which make it clear that any COI editor, paid or not, do not enjoy any less standing than any normal editor, provided that they follow the rules in place, and are non POV-pushing on the topic under question.
    I also further would like if some sort of penal action (warning followed by short term blocking) could be used against the editors whose actions go brazenly against any such view. While such editors on Wiki do not directly break any rules [and hence go scotfree of any reprimanding], their actions on the whole poison the entire atmosphere on this delicate issue, forcing those with COI to turn to anonymous third-party paid-editing. If we as an encyclopedia were more forthcoming to actually work alongside the article subjects than shoo them away (at least in practise), then we would be saving a lot of time policing and hunting those with a COI. TheOriginalSoni (talk) 19:20, 21 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    That would be a drastic change to Wikipedia policy. We do not punish editors. We discourage them and try to guide them. That way of thinking is to controlling. One thing we could...and should do is clarify what an actual conflict of interest is. Right now people are making accusations of COI editing when none exist and it is creating more issues than the editor themselves. This is a good example of that. Someone starts screaming their head off about another editor and then when you look there appears to be nothing.--Amadscientist (talk) 20:16, 21 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    That tends to happen with a lot of issues, and not just COI. Some editors simply link an irrelevant policy/essay than post an argument, and try to defend their original posting of the link. It is really sad to see how many times such policies are mis-interpreted and mis-quoted to try and defend the arguments. Regardless, it is indeed imperative to have a much more clear cut stand towards COI editing, and the relative status of the COI editors with respect to any ordinary editor. TheOriginalSoni (talk) 21:06, 21 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    I should also reply to Jimbo's point, that I really don't think a white washing has happened. I don't have a lot of edits at the articles, but someone did ask for my input a while back and I felt that there were enough articles to create a series template to let editors know about all of the articles within that subject. It appears to have grown a bit sine it was conceived and I have gone ahead and added the BP article, although I am not sure about adding the template to the BP article. I will leave that to the more involved editors. But here is the template:
    This article is part of a series about the
    Deepwater Horizon oil spill

    --Amadscientist (talk) 21:17, 21 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

    We do actually have a Deepwater navbox already, which is on the BP article:

    .

    Rangoon11 (talk) 22:42, 21 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

    Yes, but the Navbox is for the bottom of the article and doesn't have all the articles in the Series template, which is meant as "at a glance" information under the infobox.--Amadscientist (talk) 23:11, 21 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • Let's start by acknowledging the obvious: no serious, reputable reference work on Earth would allow a member of a corporation's PR team to play a substantial role in drafting coverage of that corporation. That would be out of the question. The fact that this role is undisclosed to the casual reader makes the situation even worse. It's not a question of specific diffs or navboxes - it's a question of credibility, which is the lone currency of any value to a serious reference work. We can't ask our readers to invest us with credibility if we have such a cavalier attitude toward conflicts of interest. MastCell Talk 22:47, 21 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • Nor would such a work allow anyone to edit it, especially random people. Nor would such a work allow anti-company activists to edit it, which is clearly what must have happened to the BP article, considering the state it was in previously. So I fail to see your point. SilverserenC 22:57, 21 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • Wrong. Reputable outlets such as the Financial Times, Reuters, Bloomberg, Whitakers Almanack and many others use company sources for coverage on the same companies. Companies are very often the most knowledgable experts on themselves. Read the FT and you will constantly see "Source: company". 92.24.131.19 (talk) 22:58, 21 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • What's missing here, of course, is that we don't inform the casual reader that a particular piece of information came directly from the company's PR department. Which is the key point. MastCell Talk 23:05, 21 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • My point is that every serious, reputable reference work takes conflicts of interest seriously. We don't. Insofar as we aspire to create a serious, respectable reference work (a goal which, admittedly, seems increasingly irrelevant to the community), that's a problem. I get that our editorial process is different from that of every other reference work, but I don't see how that frees us from worrying about conflicts of interest. On the contrary, I think it makes the problem even more pressing and relevant. MastCell Talk 23:05, 21 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    Sigh...so you believe the editor is a part of the PR team Mastercell? I disagree with you strongly that our credibility is in question over this. That is just doesn't take into account the efforts of all those editors that have been overseeing these articles and working for neutrality. So, you are in favor of adding specific attribution for other editors adding material that they felt was relevant because someone you don't trust proposed it. That doesn't seem logical. How would this work exactly? How would you determine who the attribution belongs to? How would it be added to the actual article space? Would that violate any current policies and guidelines and what happens if the editor objects? Is this a privacy issue? Is this even credible itself?--Amadscientist (talk) 23:07, 21 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    Do I trust a handful of pseudonymous Wikipedians to be able to filter the efforts of a billion-dollar corporation's PR department? No, not really - especially when they seem totally oblivious to the problem presented by these sorts of conflicts of interest. I get that you're offended, but pride is a handicap to dealing with these things effectively. As to dealing with the problem, I don't have a handy solution, but we haven't even reached The First Step - admitting that there's a problem. MastCell Talk 23:14, 21 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    (edit conflict)The tone on that was too harsh and I have edited it. But the issue is, this is an encyclopedia that anyone can edit. Not an encyclopedia that only the "correct" editors are allowed to edit.--Amadscientist (talk) 23:18, 21 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    That's a rhetorically compelling but utterly meaningless statement.Struck as unconstructive. We make judgements all the time about who can edit. See Special:BlockList, or the long list of editing restrictions at WP:RESTRICT. Also, I would prefer that you not retroactively edit your comments after I've already responded (e.g. [7], [8]). MastCell Talk 23:29, 21 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    Please note the (edit conflict). If you want to be hard headed here I can as well.--Amadscientist (talk) 23:32, 21 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    The encyclopedia admitted there was a problem a long time ago, but too many people simply do not know what an actual conflict of interest is on Wikipedia. That is the main issue here.--Amadscientist (talk) 23:19, 21 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

    convenience break

    I've just noticed in the media " "Arturo at BP," is the head of BP's Wikipedia engagement team, which interacts with Wikipedia editors to improve BP's Wikipedia page, according to ... a BP spokesman."

    Wikipedia engagement team?

    This raises all sorts of questions. How big is a team? Who's on it? What are they editing? How do they get paid? What are they doing all day? Have they also declared COIs?

    Smallbones(smalltalk) 23:38, 21 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

    Who cares? A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 23:40, 21 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    The last question is a valid question. All the rest are who cares. Though I think Arturo might be the only one that actually edits. SilverserenC 23:46, 21 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    My first encounter with a COI editor was a producer of a small theatre company that had created and edited his own page, theater page and the cities arts section. Without realizing it, the editor had disclosed who he was through their Wikimedia Commons account for attribution of their images. Their edits used a number of their own non RS websites and contributions to them and not their actual official website (although they did have one). I raised the issue and was simply told that the consensus of editors was that he should be able to edit as he would know more about himself than others (a bit of an over simplification but that was the nutshell of it). Simply put, editors didn't feel the editor was compromising Wikipedia's integrity. I still disagree with that...but the community has spoken and I just don't touch the articles with even a ten foot pole now.--Amadscientist (talk) 00:07, 22 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    Not everyone with a conflict of interest is incapable of editing objectively. It may be rare, but it is also rare to find anyone capable of editing objectively. Many of the editors crying so loudly about this BP issue are themselves not objective about the subject because of their political leanings. We should be chiefly concerned with the content itself, and not who adds the content. Not to say who adds it is not relevant, but only insomuch as it affects the content. If the content is good and is exemplary with regards to our content policies then I fail to see the issue with who adds it.--The Devil's Advocate tlk. cntrb. 00:14, 22 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

    Clearly we are seeing the Streisand effect move fast here because that article (mentioned above by Smallbones) is 2 hours old and is about THIS thread which is only a few hours old itself. I sure hope it is just a coincidence that the source got this information so quickly and was on their own. I also note they post personal information there so I will not mention where this was.--Amadscientist (talk) 00:16, 22 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

    Oh, you mean at Wikipediocracy? Volunteer Marek 00:30, 22 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    Nope.--Amadscientist (talk) 00:40, 22 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    Let's start cleaning house by banning all the Doctor Who fans who edit our Doctor Who articles. Clearly, they are a danger to the integrity of Wikipedia and must be stopped. Off with their heads! A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 00:17, 22 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    You may not know this, AQFK, but at least some of the people commenting here think that Wikipedia has far too much coverage of Dr Who as it is, and that any drop in editor numbers on those topics would be a good thing. It takes all sorts, or so they don't think. btw Hi Marek :) --Demiurge1000 (talk) 00:23, 22 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

    Reply to Smallbones

    Smallbones, I am the only representative from BP on Wikipedia. I understand the rules about that, and I agree it would be bad if we were doing otherwise. I am a member of the Corporate Communications team, and I've had help with research, and making sure everything is accurate, but on Wikipedia it's just me. Arturo at BP (talk) 00:47, 22 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

    So when "Scott Dean, a BP spokesman" says that you head the "Wikipedia engagement team" what did that mean? Smallbones(smalltalk) 01:01, 22 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    I've awarded a barnstar[9] to Arturo at BP as have a couple other editors [10][11] A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 01:02, 22 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    Smallbones, he's referring to help I have with research and verification.Arturo at BP (talk) 01:10, 22 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

    Thanks for the prompt answer. I'll also thank you for your Dec. 19 talk page suggestion to put in:

    “In November 2012, BP reached an agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice, admitting culpability for criminal charges relating to the oil spill including manslaughter and obstruction of Congress, as part of which it agreed to pay a $4 billion fine, the largest penalty of its kind in U.S. history.”

    in place of the clear falsehood that BP had only been indicted.

    Now I think “admitting culpability” should have been “pleaded guilty” and "lying to Congress" would have been more direct than “Obstruction of Congress” but that's just being picky about words.

    • More seriously, why did you leave out BP’s admission to lying to its investors and the additional $525 million fine (3rd highest in history, Goldman has the record of $550 million)? and
    • why did you just forget about this when your suggestion was ignored, leaving in the "indictment only" falsehood until today (when I changed it)?

    Smallbones(smalltalk) 01:42, 22 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

    Drop the stick and walk away from the carcass.--Amadscientist (talk) 01:59, 22 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    Smallbones, I haven't put a great deal of focus on the lead section. As I recollect, there was previously discussion about including only the most salient details in the lead, and discussing more details in the body of the article. I was trying to help them find consensus, although I'm afraid we didn't succeed. I still think the introduction needs work, and other editors should weigh in with their views. I can't speak for them. Arturo at BP (talk) 02:07, 22 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    Smallbones, just so you understand how nuanced this can all be, here's why saying "pled guilty" in November would have been technically incorrect: http://articles.latimes.com/2013/jan/29/nation/la-na-nn-bp-pleads-guilty-to-manslaughter-in-2010-gulf-oil-spill-20130129 Arturo at BP (talk) 02:24, 22 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    So it should have been "agreed to plead guilty"
    When you wrote "In the 1990s and 2000s, BP has had a mixed environmental record" at User:Arturo at BP/Environmental record did you mean to suggest that BP doesn't have the worst environmental record of all time? "Mixed" suggests "average" or maybe "slightly below average". Do you think that there is anybody with a worse environmental record? (Don't worry, I won't ask you to name names) Smallbones(smalltalk) 02:43, 22 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    No, "mixed" mean exactly what the word means. BP has had a very positive environmental record at times and a very negative environmental record at other times. That is a "mixed" record on the matter.--The Devil's Advocate tlk. cntrb. 03:37, 22 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    Pshaw! I'd like to see Arturo answer this. Smallbones(smalltalk) 04:06, 22 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    "Pshaw"? Really? You don't need Arturo to tell you the how the word "mixed" is defined or how it applies. Does my explanation for how the company's record can be accurately described as "mixed" not satisfy you?--The Devil's Advocate tlk. cntrb. 04:13, 22 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    Half the time, I just think your explanation is ignorant, the other half I think you must have spent a lot of time thinking up the dumbest thing you could possibly say. So you'd probably describe my reaction as "mixed". :-) Smallbones(smalltalk) 04:36, 22 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]


    Well, it doesn't look like Arturo at BP is going to answer. In fact he cannot answer honestly. In an honest answer, he'd have to say that BP's environmental record is not "mixed", it's absolutely terrible. And then he'd be fired.

    The point is that when a corporate PR guy writes text that that gets put word-for-word into an article, we are for certain biasing the article. And we are not telling our readers the source. He can't quite bring himself to write "Pleaded guilty to lying to Congress." He writes that a terrible environmental record is "mixed." He leaves out little things like a $525 million fine for lying to investors. He's willing to accept that an absolute falsehood - saying that BP was only indicted, rather than pleaded guilty - stays in the article for over 4 months.

    So is he whitewashing our article? I have a great deal of sympathy for Arturo at BP. It appears that he tried to follow the letter of our rules. I don't think he intentionally put falsehoods into the article and in fact tried to get some removed (unsucessfully). He's got a team of helpers that can check facts but also put subtle corporate spin into his drafts, and volunteer editors like Petrarchan - who's only got a couple of hours a day to edit - simply get overwhelmed. He's probably not doing it intentionally, but the end result is that our article looks like it's been whitewashed. Arturo's just doing his job, so I don't blame him. Rather I think our rules can be unclear and a small group of our editors have just abdicated all responsibility and for whatever reason enjoy passing his drafts word-for-word into our articles without citing the source.

    Jimbo - you asked for an intelligent discussion on this page - where do you see it? It looks more like a mob of hecklers than anything else. I don't think they are paid shills pretending to be ordinary editors - though it's likely some of that that goes on in Wikipedia. Rather, I think that it's a small group with the same idealogical blindness that led Mitt Romney to say during the Presidential campaign that "Corporations are people too." Corporate PR spokesmen are not the same as the ordinary people who edit Wikipedia in their spare time. The PR guys are paid to represent their company's interests, not to be unbiased. The corporation's goal is to maximize their shareholders' wealth, not to tell the unvarnished truth. They can overwhelm our ordinary editors with the resources their team can throw at an article. They cannot easily participate in an open honest conversation. We cannot assume good faith, certainly not at the same time they are pleading guilty to lying to Congress and lying to their investors.

    If Wikipedia does not police this, then it's clear that the press will. They know how to recognize bias, and both the company and Wikipedia end up looking terrible. To be fair to the corporation we should tell them that this is going to happen.

    There's an easy way out of this problem. We just need a simple rule that says if the words of a paid editor are to be used in an article, those words need to be published off-Wikipedia first, and cited. That way when people read that BP has a "mixed environmental record" they can check it out on the BP website, and laugh at BP rather than at Wikipedia.

    I have nothing left to say - the ball's in your court now Jimbo.

    Smallbones(smalltalk) 15:19, 22 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

    Once again, the same could be said for BLPs. The BLP subject represents his own interests just like someone paid represents their employer's interests; like the PR guy, he's not there to be unbiased. Yet he's allowed to suggest text and even to edit directly, and we are required to assume good faith with him. Ken Arromdee (talk) 17:57, 22 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    An individual, presumably without billions of dollars backing him, is nothing like a large corporation. For example, s/he doesn't have a multitude of ways of getting his/her message to the public: press conferences, adverts, etc. We can at least hope that s/he'd try to be unbiased. We have special rules for BLPs, but we still discourage them from editing their own articles. Smallbones(smalltalk) 19:15, 22 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    Smallbones, I would recommend reading the "Environmental record overview" discussion on the BP Talk Page, where you'll see that I used "mixed" based on several sources from the 2000s, including Bloomberg, the New York Times, and the BBC. On the BP discussion, The Devil's Advocate wrote: ""Reality is that "mixed" is a pretty good way to describe the record of a company that has been a pioneer in terms of environmental advocacy in the corporate world and alternative energy research that also has been responsible for numerous severe ecological disasters, including the worst oil spill in history." It's fine if you disagree, but it's open for discussion.
    And I'm sorry, but I think you're mischaracterizing my role with BP and on Wikipedia. I have demonstrated in other replies on this page that more often than not my suggestions were not added "word for word" but instead were changed through community discussion. I supplied sample text, but other editors here have exercised their views and the language that eventually makes it into the article has no bearing on my employment. Sometimes I've agreed with the changes and sometimes not. My draft for the Prudhoe Bay section included more negative information about BP than what was originally in the article, and editors continue to discuss and change minor aspects of language in it. Overall the article has become much more informative since early last year.Arturo at BP (talk) 19:38, 22 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    I'm sorry but I really have said all that I have to say on this matter. I shouldn't have even answered the direct question above yours. It's all rehash at this point.
    I would like to thank you, you've been a gentleman through a pretty difficult wiki-process. I think you've tried to follow the rules and I hope that you haven't taken anything I've said personally. I just think that you're on the wrong side of this issue. Hopefully we can agree to disagree.
    Thanks again and have a good weekend.
    Smallbones(smalltalk) 22:14, 22 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    PS. I love to get in the last word - but go ahead if you'd like.
    It's true that a corporation can have more resources than an individual. Yet it's also true that our rules about BLP editing aren't affected by how many resources the living person has. If the president of the company were to come on Wikipedia right now, you would be required to assume good faith when dealing with him, and he would be permitted to suggest text (and edit), no matter how rich he is, no matter what his COI is, and no matter how much he is interested in wealth as opposed to truth. Ultimately, a PR person is just the mouthpiece for one or more people who actually own and/or run the company. Ken Arromdee (talk) 22:42, 22 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    Smallbones, not a problem. Hope everyone enjoys their weekend.Arturo at BP (talk) 23:00, 22 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    Ken Arromdee, you're confusing what you would like to be with what is. You think BLP should apply to corporations, and maybe you're right, but it seems that few agree, for better or worse. If more people agreed then someone could take something like User:Herostratus/Articles about extant organizations and push it through. But that hasn't happened. Herostratus (talk) 08:34, 23 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    I'm pointing out that the *arguments* used against corporations also apply to BLP. This implies that the arguments are not valid. If all you're saying is that you don't need reasons why BLP and corporations have to be different, because it's policy, then I can't really dispute that, but most of us expect our policies to have reasons. And if all you're saying is that it's policy, and arguments don't matter, why is anyone even giving any arguments?
    Also, while we don't treat BLP and corporations completely the same, we do treat them the same in some of the ways mentioned here. Proposed above was 1) that we should assume bad faith for corporations, and 2) we should not permit corporate representatives to suggest text. These are not in fact current policy for corporations and current policy treats BLPs, corporations, and everything else the same in that regard. Ken Arromdee (talk) 14:54, 23 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

    Analyze this

    Please enjoy Spin Checking BP's Tar Sands Entry petrarchan47tc 01:04, 22 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

    Hi, Petrarchan. I'm afraid your analysis is misleading. I think editors should be aware of what "Canadian oil sands" looked like before the community discussion, and here is what it looks like after. In fact, if you look at my drafts (here), I had suggested adding much more information about the controversy. Following discussion on the BP Talk Page there was consensus to rewrite it to the version that Beagel added. And it still includes criticism from the Cree tribe, with more context. You were active on the page at the time as well, although it doesn't seem that you commented at the time. Meanwhile, I hope other editors who evaluate this would agree the latter version is better. Thanks, Arturo at BP (talk) 01:53, 22 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    Arturo, to the extent that this is a policy discussion, private entities are not encouraged to influence Wikipedia policy for gain. To the extent that the discussion is about this particular article, it would not be possible to convince you through logic, argument, or any other means that you're wrong. Because you are being paid not to be convinced or at any rate to admit it if you are. Who knows if you think that Petrarchan47's analysis is misleading? For all we know you're thinking to yourself "Wow, he makes some cogent points, he kind of nailed me". Because even if you believe that you'd still write "I'm afraid your analysis is misleading". You have to. You don't really have a choice, you'd be guilty of malfeasance otherwise. So what is the point of discussing these issues with you? There isn't any. I'm willing to engage and have engaged zealots who believe that all civilization came from Serbia and whatnot. I'm not willing to engage someone who is literally forbidden from changing their mind. Herostratus (talk) 02:43, 22 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    He is paid to properly represent his company on Wikipedia. That means following our rules, all of our rules, including on writing neutral material. SilverserenC 03:31, 22 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    He is paid to properly represent his company on Wikipedia. That means being unable to engage in honest conversation as between colleagues. So he shouldn't pretend. But never mind about that.

    what about Petrarchan47's vetting? Herostratus (talk) 04:40, 22 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

    Crickets... Herostratus (talk) 16:39, 22 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

    I already responded with my opinion about it below. And several other people have also responded to it, just not in this section. SilverserenC 19:27, 22 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    Right, you did. With your indulgence I'll copy your response over here: "Everything he raised was either incredibly minor or it was along the lines of 'if any single source discussing something negative was missing, then it's spin! Because BP must know about every single negative article about them in all of history and all of it is relevant!' Not to mention that the section in question was clearly not meant to be a finished draft, but just an improved section from the horrible mess it had been previously."
    I'm reluctant to comment because I don't know how much credibility as a Fair Witness I'd carry on this exact matter at this time. I didn't see where any other people responded to it. Anyone besides Silver seren want to take a look at it? Herostratus (talk) 06:28, 23 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

    I feel Arturo/BP's comment is misleading. He appears to claim that anyone can make a suggestion for changes or additions to his draft, and while true, I have not seen evidence that additions BP doesn't approve of will be added to the draft. After my comments about the Greenwashing Section, the draft and talk page section were abandoned and sit, without explanation, in limbo to this day. That seems strange in contrast with the urgency the editors and Arturo have shown with regard to getting other drafts into the article. After that, I stopped paying much attention to the draft discussions. I found it strange to be arguing with a BP employee about what could be added to the article. It has always felt like BP's article rather than Wikipedia's.

    The spin in these drafts is both subtle and inevitable. As such, I feel it is too much to ask volunteer Wikipedians to spin-check giant companies or special interests. It's meant to be the other way around.

    As Gandydancer said, "It is not just a simple matter of checking [drafts] for "issues". Information can be presented in a manner that accents the positive and minimizes the negative, to say nothing of just leaving some things out completely." She further states after spending a lot of time checking Arturo's latest draft, "I have felt that his edit suggestions have been, as far as I could tell, accurate and fair. It's only when Arturo rewrote this more controversial section that I have become very concerned. And then when editors that have never worked on the article began to arrive to place it in the article for him I began to wonder why I have spent so many hours and endless pages of talk when a paid editor and his crew can come and insert anything they want into the article. When I saw that Silverseren had even posted a few links so that that his posse could do a quick BP for Dummies read to bring their level of understanding of what they were about to vote on up to snuff--well who wouldn't wonder if some editors had not taken the "anybody can edit" slogan too far."

    This entry by Gandydancer should be read by anyone wanting to truly assess the BP drafts and talk page situation. These are the words of an independent editor who experienced the process. Although the 'rules' are being followed, Wikipedia is being easily gamed in my observation. Supporters for a positive spin at the BP page are many (and can exhaust an independent editor quite easily).

    The tar sands, or Canadian oil sands, project has caused tremendous controversy for BP. A careful examination of the section is warranted. The original draft written by Arturo/BP as well as the discussion where it was whittled it down to three sentences speak volumes when examined, especially in light of other facts and possible evidence of teamwork amongst editors who aren't reviewing the articles on behalf of the readers of this encyclopedia. Note that the first reference is a PDF from BP's website that quotes a greenhouse gas emission increase of 5-15% per barrel as compared to crude; while a peer reviewed Stanford study, accepted by the EU, found a 23% increase. The Stanford ref. is one I would expect to find in a Wikipedia article.

    BP choose to highlight only the Cree Nation's protests, and mention that tar sands is "said to" damage the environment. A NASA scientist is quoted as saying that if these tar sands are developed, it's "game over for climate". Further, scientists say the SAGD method BP is using to extract the oil/tar/bitumen poisons underground aquifers. A report, ‘Does the Alberta Tar Sands Industry Pollute?’ in the Open Conservation Biology Journal notes a 30% increase in rare cancers, and elevated levels of mercury and arsenic in the local fishes. Also not mentioned, BP's own shareholders revolted over the tar sands project. Along with indigenous people of Canada, 15% of BP's stockholders do not support the project. According to the Independent, BP faced a "showdown with environmental campaigners and shareholders". The Cree nation example does seem cherry picked, as if the goal was to say "We DID mention a controversy!", but in no way was it to give an encyclopedic look at the issue.

    If I were BP, this is the section I would want to write. And I would do it exactly as it was done. petrarchan47tc 01:38, 24 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

    Harassment of Arturo at BP needs to end

    Despite all the sound and fury, nobody has provided a single diff that Arturo at BP edited the BP article. In fact, none has been alleged. Arturo fully disclosed their relationship with their employer and only made suggestions on the talk page. There is nothing to see here, and the harassment of Arturo at BP needs to end. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 01:18, 22 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

    He's a witch! Burn him!--Amadscientist (talk) 01:24, 22 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    Sorry Jimbo, I know you wanted an intelligent conversation, but we can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.--Amadscientist (talk) 01:38, 22 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    I have a silk purse barnstar. Do you accept refunds? SilverserenC 02:43, 22 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

    Guys, cut it out. A Quest For Knowledge and Amadscientist and Silver seren, you need to stop saying that it's not legitimate to even be concerned here, that it's not possible to have an intelligent conversation about this, and that editors who are concerned about this are idiots or deranged zealots (or whatever "He's a witch! Burn him!" and accusing editors of harrassment and the silk purse snark is supposed to mean.)

    Here (Spin Checking BP's Tar Sands Entry) Petrarchan47 was kind enough to provide a detailed vetting of one section, for free, as a volunteer editor. A discussion of this on its merits would be useful. A discussion of whether this constitutes harassment for which Petrarchan47 should face penal sanctions wouldn't. But it's your call which way to go. Herostratus (talk) 02:51, 22 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

    I already read it. Everything he raised was either incredibly minor or it was along the lines of "if any single source discussing something negative was missing, then it's spin! Because BP must know about every single negative article about them in all of history and all of it is relevant!" Not to mention that the section in question was clearly not meant to be a finished draft, but just an improved section from the horrible mess it had been previously. SilverserenC 03:23, 22 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    Oh sure, an editor can make unfounded accusations that are splattered across the internet within hours and yet we are supposed to stop. I don't think so. However, if Mr. Wales asks us or even just me to stop I will. Frankly I am a little surprised by this witch hunt. This page has become finger pointing central and it has cost us at least one arbitrator for no reason and you want us to take this seriously when not one single ounce of legitimate issues have been raised? This is a serious conversation and some times you take it as serious as it is presented.--Amadscientist (talk) 04:48, 22 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    Petrar has already made some dubious claims regarding this matter on Slim's talk page when he declared his "retirement" from Wikipedia.--The Devil's Advocate tlk. cntrb. 03:24, 22 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    You have yet to provide diffs for this claim. I advise you stop making accusations without bringing proof. And, I am retired from Wikipedia, though I was invited back especially to help with this situation by Slim Virgin (see my talk page). petrarchan47tc 03:30, 22 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    You made a bunch of serious accusations on SV's page without diffs yet you are advising me about doing such a thing? Still, I have already done the work over at Wikipediocracy so here you go.--The Devil's Advocate tlk. cntrb. 03:35, 22 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    'And, I am retired from Wikipedia, though I was invited back especially to help with this situation by Slim Virgin Geez, Wikipedia really *is* like Days of Our Lives with characters from past seasons coming back again or resurrected in new circumstances. Are you another editor's alien baby by any chance? No wonder Wikipedia's addictive - it's just another version of a cheap soap opera.Volunteer Marek 03:39, 22 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    And so it begins. petrarchan47tc 03:45, 22 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    Don't feed them Petrarchan47. And I'm sorry to see you retire. This whole situation is very sad. I don't know what to say. There may be no solution to all this... we are a very top-ranked website, and there's a lot at money at stake. This may be an important nail in the coffin of the idea of an encyclopedia run and written by amateur volunteers. It's too bad. But nothing lasts forever, and after all the business of America is business. I wish I had some answers. I don't. Anyone who does is welcome to come to Wikipedia:WikiProject Integrity. Meanwhile, can we be done with the character assassination and all, and consider Petrarchan47 vetting.

    We've heard from Silver seren. Thank you Silver. Are there any other editors, hopefully reasonably disinterested, willing to consider the matter? Herostratus (talk) 04:57, 22 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

    No one has asked for penal sanctions against Petrarchan47 and we don't punish editors....well, I guess we do as this thread shows....but we punish them for doing the right thing.--Amadscientist (talk) 05:05, 22 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    I really have looked at all of this Herostratus. I have been discussing and asking questions since the very first post. I was not actually given direct answers to very direct questions and was even given a "Pshaw" and told to check my facts, pretty much just blowing me off. So, I will repeat what I have brought to this discussion in terms of actual facts and bullet point everything I feel needs to be addressed.
    • User:Smallbones has made the accusation:"About 40% of Wikipedia's article on BP (British Petroleum) was written by a BP employee". Jimbo Wales then asked: " Can someone confirm for me that the account in question did not directly edit the article but instead only interacted on the talk page?". The accusation of editing the page has been demonstrated to be false here, here and here.
    • Jimbo Wales stated: " I think that accusing Arturo of "skirting" Wikipedia's rules in this case is fairly ludicrous - unless "skirting" means "going above and beyond what is required in order to be very clearly in compliance with best practice". So, I would consider that a blatant factual misrepresentation". I concur...vehemently.
    • There have been accusations that have been repeated in the media that an editor working for BP has had their contributions added to the article without any mention that the content was from a BP employee so that readers could see that. That is right because there is no process to attribute any information about us as editors on the article itself, but from what I understand the editors that placed the information actually did indeed properly attribute their "copied" content in the edit summary so editors have attributed the work properly.
    • Does Wikipedia take conflict of interest seriously? I have to say we do. I have seen the discussions, taken part in them and made suggestions, everything from a green colored usernames to signify paid editing to agreeing with Jimbo about the best practice of paid editors to disclose there association (not conflict, association. If they are editing within our guidelines they are not in conflict of interest) and restrict their editing to the talk pages.
    • Finally, does this mean the end of our all volunteer encyclopedia? No, but maybe it is a CLEAR indication to all those companies with paid editors how we expect them to work.--Amadscientist (talk) 05:34, 22 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    Actually I think it worth noting a few last things here. There are all levels of advocacy editing that go on at Wikipedia. Even some fans of film and television have financial or promotional goals by adding information and referencing the content with their non-RS websites to gain hits to their sites and add revenue from advertisers or sell their t-shirts, trinkets or coffee mugs or promote their amateur performance groups at a midnight cult movie. They will add their fan sites to the body of the article or external links that last for a very long time. Combating this is a risk. Trust me it is. We should be thankful that people are willing to edit those pages and remove that stuff, but we are looking far to closely at an editor because a handful of other editors think that the rules need to be changed and the best way to do that is to create an issue when none exist. As a community we don't all agree on how to handle paid, advocacy editing. Some want an outright ban on all paid editing and others want to hand the entire site back over to paid experts. I think it important to mention the analogy I just saw on the BP talk page is just way off. We are not the New York Times. We are not a newspaper. It is not our place to take a stand on any subject. Encyclopedias have been written by paid experts in all kinds of fields for hundreds of years. The issue seems to be that if we are amateurs then we must limit all editing here to amateurs. Sorry, but it doesn't work that way here. We strive to find experts on all levels, but not all experts know how to edit Wikipedia. We have had university professors banned from Wikipedia because they don't know how to edit here. Now we are attempting to chase off someone just because of a political view that, in itself, is extremely biased. Come on. The whole issue is because some editors are not disinterested and can't step back and have to become warriors to prove a point.--Amadscientist (talk) 06:24, 22 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    Well, "Some want an outright ban on all paid editing and others want to hand the entire site back over to paid experts" is kind of an interesting statement. It's obviously a false dichotomy and not true. Since it's not true you shouldn't say it. Nobody of consequence "want[s] to hand the entire site back over to paid experts", and saying something so ridiculous so as to position yourself as a moderate centrist is... pretty lame. As to the rest, I see we disagree, so OK, lets get back to the previous subsection re vetting the content on its merits. Herostratus (talk) 16:49, 22 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    Don't try to mediate this discussion, you are horrible at it. LOL!--Amadscientist (talk) 20:48, 22 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • I read about this controversy on CNet and just wanted to make this point. I don't think that the question is whether the BP employee's edit's are good or not. The issue is that BP is involved at all. I can see a company wishing to correct errors. By all means, they should be encouraged to contact Wikipedia or post on the discussion page to do so. But they should not be suggesting language. I don't think it's sufficiently appreciated how damaging that would be to Wikipedia's reputation. It would be like a newspaper allowing a source to suggest language in articles. A similar issue is coincidentally arising at another article and I think the whole thing is a big black eye for the wiki. Coretheapple (talk) 17:17, 22 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    So what's your opinion on BLP subjects editing or suggesting language?
    Think about what your position logically implies. Ken Arromdee (talk) 18:02, 22 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    We've generally tried to show leniency toward private individuals who find objectionable material in their Wikipedia biographies, particularly if the individual is an otherwise relatively low-profile private figure. Here we're talking about giving the public-relations department of a billion-dollar multinational corporation a substantial (and undisclosed) role in drafting our coverage. Those are two very different situations; concern for the former does not imply disregard for the latter. MastCell Talk 18:23, 22 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    Yes, that's my position. I think that it's shocking and impermissible that BP is responsible for so much of the text of the BP article. I don't care if that text is "good" or not. For all I know, it may be better than what us mere amateurs might write. Multinational corporations could hire the best writers in the world for their Wiki articles. But if you allow that you destroy the editorial independence of the wiki. Coretheapple (talk) 20:14, 22 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    Let me be clear that if BP feels it is getting ripped in its article, it should have the right to raise its objections in the discussion page or anywhere. I don't want to limit their ability to complain about poor treatment. But the actual writing of the article should be left to uninvolved people. Coretheapple (talk) 20:19, 22 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    Every time I write about this it goes the same way: I point out that the reasons given to not permit companies to do anything also apply to BLP subjects, and someone responds by responding that the company is really bad. The response universally fails to answer the objection, because we don't reject BLP subjects who are bad in similar ways. Yes, of course you can argue that letting companies suggest text "destroys the editorial independence of the wiki". Letting BLP subjects suggest text is equally capable of doing so, but we allow it anyway, so it's clearly not a dealbreaker. Ken Arromdee (talk) 22:47, 22 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    No, it's pretty simple. We distinguish between individual living people (no matter how good or bad) and organizations or corporations (no matter how good or bad). In fact, we already do this as a matter of widely accepted policy: WP:BLP applies to individuals, but not to corporations, so I don't understand why you're treating this distinction as something unheard of. MastCell Talk 23:15, 22 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    The point is that the fact that these concerns exist for BLP and yet we don't have similar restrictions shows that we do not consider these concerns to justify the restrictions.
    And "automatically assume bad faith" and "cannot suggest text" is unheard of for either companies or people. Ken Arromdee (talk) 06:52, 23 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • You are talking about the appearance of impropriety, and I certainly get that, I just don't support that. For one, I know for a fact that what you suggest about the news is wrong and naive. Big corporations and moneyed institutions have long had influence over the content of major news reports, in addition to the long-standing influences of governments. It is part of the drawback of having large news outlets dependent on outside sources for financing. This is just the normal process of information production and dissemination with greater transparency and more checks as the content is not permanent or unchanging, but dynamic and open.--The Devil's Advocate tlk. cntrb. 20:28, 22 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    We can't prevent corporations from distorting the news in the media, but hopefully we can do a better job here. Coretheapple (talk) 20:33, 22 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    Thankfully, there is an easy way to prevent that. It is called reviewing the content and editing the page.--The Devil's Advocate tlk. cntrb. 20:58, 22 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • "What I'd like to see us do now is analyze his suggested edits, i.e. the actual content, to see if they warrant characterization as POV pushing or biased about their environmental record, and to see whether the incorporations by Wikipedians of his suggestions were inappropriate." I think another approach would be to read both versions, before and after, and see if the article is net improved or made worse. Everyone has inherent biases, even unintentionally, so I think what is more important is if the vetting system worked. IRWolfie- (talk) 18:06, 22 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    "[A]nalyze his suggested edits, i.e. the actual content, to see if they warrant characterization as POV pushing or biased about their environmental record" Really? And then who do you want to blame if you "believe" there is some sort of POV...Oh that's right, we want to blame BP. The fact that others are the ones that placed the information into the article and there is already both a consensus for the content and community consensus for the way Arturo edited means nothing here. Everyone...get your pitch forks and torches together...we have a monster loose! Get'em! And no, this mad scientist did not create this monster. In fact, he's just a figment of many editor's imagination!--Amadscientist (talk) 20:57, 22 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

    Proposal

    Several concerns here refer to verbatim copying of Arturo's version of the article, and the fact that there is nobody to monitor that. Would anyone be open to having a voluntary group of editors who specifically deal with COI issues, and help COI-affected editors change their own articles? In my opinion, it is simply not possible for us to think there will be no COI editing - open or otherwise, if we continue to blame editors like Arturo for providing a better (if not perfect) version of the article. We have to allow some direct and open way to monitor such edits, as well as to promote open COI editing.

    So would anyone here be open to such a specific group? Moreover, would anyone be open to joining such a group? TheOriginalSoni (talk) 20:12, 22 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

    One of the several problems with that is, the orgs can pay $$$ for people to keep their articles as they want them; we have no $$$ to keep 'em in check. 88.104.27.2 (talk) 21:10, 22 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    I am afraid that's going to be a problem forever (or until Wikimedia Foundation starts paying me). Even then, such a system will help the friendly ones, and encourage the other non-friendly COIs to follow our "best-practise policy" TheOriginalSoni (talk) 21:16, 22 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    I already created a Wikiproject to help with paid editors specifically. It's Wikiproject Cooperation. And we created a noticeboard, similar to the COI noticeboard, to allow those with such a COI to post their concerns there so they can be reviewed. You can find that noticeboard here. So, if you want to be part of the group, feel free to join the Wikiproject. SilverserenC 21:54, 22 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    Then half the thing is already done. What remains to be done, however, is to spread the word and make sure anyone with possible COI knows about this project. If there are visible results of articles being constructively improved by this project, it would encourage others to disclose themselves too. TheOriginalSoni (talk) 22:42, 22 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    I'm been keeping such a list here. It only includes notable achievements though, such as Featured, Good, DYK, or new article, so simple improvements to an article aren't listed on there, but they are still pretty good examples of what accomplishments have been made. As for outreach, CREWE has been a big help with that thus far, but finding other ways to let companies and people know about proper policy and processes is always helpful. SilverserenC 23:37, 22 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    The problem is that there are are lot of different types of editors here. Some appear (based on my observations) to go through a two-step process for deciding how to deal with suggestions from paid agents, something like this:
    • Step One: Is the material written by a paid agent of a company?
    • Step Two: If yes, copy and paste the material into the article.
    Why? Who knows. It may be ideology, it may be something else, but no way to really know. As I say, there are a lot of editors here, so its not surprising to find a wide range of attitudes about how to handle this kind of material. What to do about it I don't know, but it seems like the WikiProject described above is probably less than rigorous in policing this situation, maybe. Herostratus (talk) 03:01, 23 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    Can you please keep your ABF assumptions to yourself? SilverserenC 06:34, 23 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    I'm not assuming anything, I'm describing something based on my observations and the wit that God gave me. Diffs abound. Herostratus (talk) 08:26, 23 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

    Another Proposal (Disclosure)

    In the spirit of full disclosure to Wikipedia readers, a Note be added to such articles: eg. "Arturo at BP (talk · contribs) an employee of British Petroleum has participated in the creation of portions of this article, in accordance with Wikipedia:Best practices for editors with conflicts of interest".

    Let the reader decide. Alanscottwalker (talk) 21:08, 22 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

    You know what? There's a special {{connect contributor}} template for this. It is standard practice to add it when someone is connected to the subject of the article. It is an aid to readers and fellow editors and not a badge of shame. It would have been sensible for Arturo at BP or anyone else involved with this to have added that template, but no one did. It is there now. Better late than never. Delicious carbuncle (talk) 03:41, 23 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

    Oh that. Sure. I think I have seen that used before. It goes on the talk page. I support that templates usage on the talk page.--Amadscientist (talk) 05:52, 23 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    Good idea. I totally forgot about that one. I've used it quite a few times myself in the past, much better way to deal with notification of COI. SilverserenC 06:36, 23 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    Ah, interesting how it is so similar to this proposal. Looks like the shame and punishment stuff was baseless. Thanks. Alanscottwalker (talk) 09:45, 23 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]


    Somewhat related, but peripherally: Some question has at least been raised about the copyright status of work done for hire. I could be dead wrong about this, but I think that it might be an issue, and it's possible that an we ought to be including something like this:

    This paragraph ©2013 BP p.l.c. All rights reserved

    in the appropriate places. I opened a thread (here) to discuss this, if anyone's interested. Herostratus (talk) 06:15, 23 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

    But I'd much rather see contributions to the thread User talk:Jimbo Wales#Analyze this regarding the Petrarchan47's Spin Checking BP's Tar Sands Entry. This it a lot closer to what Jimbo asked for and better use of our time. Herostratus (talk) 06:22, 23 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

    I already asked Moonriddengirl about the copyright issue. You should know, you were there. And she's the public face of the legal team (more or less, though only in copyright matters perhaps) and she said it was fine. Several other users well versed in copyright matters also pointed out that there wasn't any issue here. Thus, there is no issue. SilverserenC 06:39, 23 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    Forgive the interjection, please. I just noticed this, and I need to clarify that while I may speak for the legal team sometimes, it's only when I'm in this account and only when I'm specifically saying so. When I'm Moonriddengirl, I'm speaking as a volunteer and only for myself, unless I'm linking to a policy or explicitly reporting what somebody else said. :) --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 20:19, 26 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    I was there. My take was that Moonriddengirl said that it might well be a problem but not to worry about it as a practical matter, which is quite possibly good advice, and also not to discuss it publicly per WP:BEANS, which is also possibly good advice, but odd advice for a policy matter. "Yes it is a copyvio but no one will actually be hurt" is actually pretty fine with me (I'm easy), but would certainly be an exception to the approach we generally take to copyvio, so I dunno, maybe somebody else has a useful take on the matter. If not, not, and that's fine too. Herostratus (talk) 08:16, 23 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    My gawd...people are trying everything to keep this going. For heavens sake, do editors even read our polices and guidelines? The editor made their draft contributions on Wikipedia and therefore are releasing them as CC by 3.0. Attributions were made correctly in the edit summaries. Give it up already people. There is no issue here. If you don't like our policies either propose new ones or work with what we have--Amadscientist (talk) 08:19, 23 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    You can't release the rights to something you don't own. Herostratus (talk) 08:47, 23 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    I take it you are saying that Arturo does not own the copyright because it is owned by his employer? Except here, his employer has paid him to contribute under a free license, so his work would be free from their standpoint also. Now, if he is adding other people's work in the company, that is a more complicated issue, but assuming that that is also within his employer's mandate to him, than that would also be contributed under free license from their standpoint. Alanscottwalker (talk) 10:07, 23 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

    Herostratus, I am the author of the proposed text I have submitted for consideration on the BP article, and I am authorized by the company to release it under Wikipedia's Creative Commons license, so I think your concern about copyright status is misplaced. Additionally, readers who review Petrarchan's take on the "Canadian oil sands" entry should also see my reply in the thread you point to. It gives a clear overview of how the new version of that section was developed. Arturo at BP (talk) 14:41, 23 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

    Alanscottwalker and Arturo, you may very well be right. I'm just raising the question. So, Aturo, who retains the actual copyright? (Even donating text via CC-BY-SA 3.0 does not end the fact that the one retains copyright, one just gives broad permission for others to use it, subject to certain fairly minor restrictions.) Either 1) you the typist own the text or 2) BP does, and if so I think we might need proof via Wikipedia:Requesting copyright permission that BP has relinquished (most of) its rights via CC-BY-SA 3.0. You have course pointed out to BP that this gives anyone to right use all of the text in derogatory, sarcastic, or even obscene context.
    The other side of this is, then, is BP releasing this (if they are; written proof requested) sight unseen? If they are I applaud their trust in you and lack of bureaucratic red tape. It'd be pretty surprising to a large corporation to release text like this with with no oversight, and color me skeptical. We can't know what goes on inside BP but we may make reasonable inferences. And it may matter a great deal, because of the concept that accounts must be controlled by a single person.
    I once made a stupid joke where I pretended that I didn't have access to a computer and had to write up my contributions for someone else to type in. I was informed that this absolutely not allowed and and fact I was blocked for this ("Account owner not in control of account") until this was cleared up. Per Wikipedia:User account policy, "Usernames should not be shared between more than one individual", and this brings up the question of what is meant by "shared". I am not a Wikilawyer, but if your brief is "Write whatever you think best", you're probably in the clear. If the deal is "Type it up first and run it by legal/the boss/whomever", the account is arguably shared, this is pretty problematic, maybe. Not sure, but maybe.
    It seems that likely that either you don't have authority to donate the text, or if you do then you're likely not in complete control of the account. These are murky waters you are getting into Aturo. Herostratus (talk) 16:51, 23 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]


    Since there is no mechanism for disclosing to casual readers of the BP article that BP helped write the article, I think that BP contributions are problematic. If allowed by policy, then the policy needs to be changed. If BP feels the article is wrong or unfair, it can certainly say so, but uninvolved editors need to write the text or proposed text. I think that the fact that BP would engage in this activity, which is causing such a furor and negative publicity for all concerned, is emblematic of this company's tin ear when it comes to dealing with the public. Coretheapple (talk) 15:37, 23 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

    Doesnt appear to be causing a 'furor', most of the news articles from reputable sources (I dont count bloggers with axes to grind who are clearly being agitated by editors who are not getting their way here) appear to be quite neutral in tone, the comments are fairly balanced and pretty much explain both sides of the issue. Much as the BP articles are.... shock horror.... neutral and balanced. My god! Wikipedia is working! That IS something to cause a furor! I suggest if you dont like policy, feel free to attempt to change the policies while quoting the situation where a company rep has followed all of our guidelines - resulting in much better articles. I can really see that being persuasive to change policy! Only in death does duty end (talk) 15:57, 23 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    Why change policy when all one has to do is misinterpret it and claim everyone else is wrong! LOL!--Amadscientist (talk) 00:14, 24 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

    edit break

    @Jimbo. As wonderful and cooperative as Arturo from BP is, he has no alligiance to WP or its rules or guidelines whatsoever. His allegiance is to his paycheck and the bills it pays and the lifestyle it affords him. His allegiance is to BP and his Corporate Communications Team of simalarly paid-to-edit BP employees. One major consideration when formulating policy and then maintaining it must have been "How does this policy effect our reader". Most readers of the our articles would like to know who wrote them, who had input: common John Doe's or paid corporate employees. ```Buster Seven Talk 13:29, 24 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

    Uhm...Buster, I have no allegiance to WP. No one does. No one is required to make such a pledge, nor should they ever be required. I have known a PR guy who has written articles here and made contributions (they are no longer employed by that company however) and they were actually never asked to make those articles by anyone within the company or edit Wikipedia for any reason. They just enjoyed the site, had an interest in the area and felt the company was notable enough to write about. Yes, I did have to clean up a good amount (needed some sourcing and history improvements) but there was no allegiance to the company he was working for and money really didn't paly into it for them. Arturo from BP is clearly a paid advocate who's role is to represent a company on Wikipedia. We allow this, and have for some time, whether that is because they wish to do it on their own or they are paid to do it. Why should the reader be hand held and lead down directly to an editor just because others felt his drafts were worth using? We don't do that for editors. Why would we do that for readers. They have the same ability to click the history section and follow the same paths laid out for contributors. What I am saying is: No one has a special allegiance to the project. We are all volunteers, just because there are others who get paid to "represent" the interests of a corporation does not mean we have to place a spotlight on the in a manner that in itself would compromise the integrity of Wikipedia. I hope that makes some kind of sense.--Amadscientist (talk) 22:35, 24 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    A VAST majority of our readers do not know about the interesting talk pages behind every article. All they know about is the mainpage. Every other possible place they could go to help their investigation is completely unknown to them. And I'll bet 99% of our readers never look beyond the article they came to look up. The "page history' is an editing tool that readers have absolutely no knowledge of. They come, get their info, and leave. During the recent Republican primary for POTUS, one of Newt Gingrich's campaign people (who, after becoming aware of the need to acknowledge his affiliation, included his title in his signature) edited the article and then, when confronted, shifted to making "suggestions" on the talk page as to items to be included into or removed from the article. And most of his suggestions were implemented within an hour of posting with no discussion, debate or consensus gathering. If other editors were not "on watchlist duty" his version of the facts (or his gentle phrasing of the facts) were what was contained in trhe article. His ONLY desire, his ONLY purpose for editing Wikipedia was to get his Boss elected. His allegiance was to Gingrich. The mortgage on his house was paid by Gingrich. His car and the gas he put in the tank was paid by Gingrich. Should I really believe that he cared one iota for WP's rule and guidelines. His objective, what he was paid to do, was to get support for his boss. He knew that WP is the most visited site and that readers would come in droves to get information. It was his job to make sure they didn't get wind of anything negative about his boss. Arturo at BP has the same dilemma. Allegiance means loyalty and I think you DO have an allegiance to WP. If you didnt, you wouldn't be the quality editor that you are. Arturo's loyalty is to BP. Not to our reader. ```Buster Seven Talk 05:55, 25 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    Hey...I passed that article to GA a few years back and its still on my watch list (nope, it wasn't. I was monitoring it on my own) and I watched it during the primaries. I see nothing that was done really wrong there. You are over-reacting and assuming that just because someone has some perceived stake in the subject that they have the same stake in the Wikipedia article. He may not have cared one iota but I did and so did a number of other editors. The guy must have done a miserable job then...because Gingrich didn't get elected. Buster, I like you. I respect you and even admire you as an excellent editor....but you are making assumptions. How is this different than trying to fend of the fan base of, say "The Rocky Horror Picture Show"? Some stuff is relevant and acceptable and some isn't. The difference is that, generally speaking, these paid advocates have better sources. Just being paid is the only real issue, but it isn't the most important issue.--Amadscientist (talk) 08:29, 25 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    Think of it this way. Do the readers deserve to know who passed the article to GA? What their political affiliation is (A liberal, gay Democrat passed it to GA by the way) and any other detail about that editor? I hope not or I have wasted a hell of a lot of time volunteering on this project.--Amadscientist (talk) 08:34, 25 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    Please see use of quoting? and on energy policy. And there are other dicussions during that period at an article about Gingriches third wife. These are not assumptions. This is what happens when a paid editor is involved in the daily re-tooling of an article about his boss or the company he is specifically tasked, by that company, to defend. Had the campaign manager not self-identified, the articles would have been filled with the spin directly from the Gingrich Campaign. And no one would have known. Are you saying that our reader was not intitled to know that? I'm glad that Arturo self identifies himself as a member of BP's Communication team. But that happens on the talk pages...to inform other editors. It doesn't happen on the Main page...to inform our reader. ```Buster Seven Talk 16:29, 25 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    I did not take part in any of the discussion there. I watched the content on the article. Yes, actually I am saying that our readers are not entitled to know about the accusations and concerns we may have with other editors for whatever reason. In the 2010 election, when Meg Whitman was running for Governor I discovered a person editing with what I felt was extreme bias and was an admitted ex employee. They were even touched on in the article but not by name but after all was said and done, that editor was not really doing anything really wrong. There might have been some ownership issues at first but they loosened up. On another article I have been watching, there has been a constant flow of advocacy edits from the fan base from people with a financial stake in their organization of conventions and other money making endeavors attempting to list themselves, their websites, their performance groups etc. One person even tried to tell us that they should be able to use their own Wikifan site interviews with figures as sources for their claims because they own the site and have been editing it for years. What right do we have to make sure the readers are aware of their actions? What real good does it serve? How would it improve the encyclopedia?--Amadscientist (talk) 20:45, 25 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    Just to be clear. I didnt say, nor do I desire, that our readers are entitled to know about the accusations and concerns we may have with other editors for whatever reason. I think we are duty bound to let our reader know that BP or the Gingrich Campaign or officials from the country of Gibraltar had heavy involvement in the construction of the article they are reading and depending on. Pro or Con. Let the reader decide how to respond. But let the reader know that the article, more than likely, has a favorable slant and should be read and interpreted with a "grain of salt".```Buster Seven Talk 21:12, 27 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

    An arch observation

    Some readers here will recall the perhaps-apocryphal WWII story of how additional armor was added to bombers by carefully examining the locations of bullet holes on returning bombers.

    We appear to be eagerly up-armoring the most bullet-holed areas on those bombers. Choess (talk) 15:28, 24 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

    A good analogy, but perhaps this is more like providing the pilots with thick and complicated instruction manuals on how to avoid getting hit in the places where there were bullet holes found on the returning bombers, and then blaming the pilots of non-returning bombers for not having memorized the manuals. --SB_Johnny | talk✌ 22:31, 27 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

    Lua speeds medical pages under 9 seconds

    After years of "watching paint peel" and "pulling teeth" the Template:Cite_journal is finally using Lua script, as 6x faster (9x faster than last year). Now, most major medical articles or science articles, which heavily repeat {cite_journal}, can edit-preview, or reformat, within 9 seconds, rather than the prior 20-35 seconds for the first time in years. The article "Lyme disease" (in 2011-2012 Top 1000 most-viewed pages) formerly reformatted in 22 seconds, and now edit-previews within 9 seconds. That article has over 247 citations, as wp:data hoarding of sources, but at least, some of the extra footnotes can be removed now that it edit-previews over 2x times faster. Once {cite_web} is also transitioned to Lua, then most articles will edit-preview within 7 seconds, just like a major computer system from the 20th century. We are finally back to the future. -Wikid77 (talk) 18:05, 23 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

    Amazing. My thanks to all those who made this happen. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 13:10, 24 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    It is amazing, when considering the entrenched, vast wp:CS1 citation system in 1.8 million articles, and for over 3 years, numerous editors (with many admins) debated, analyzed, modified, rewrote, corrected, and tested the 430 parameters of the CS1 cite templates, in both markup and Lua-based forms. And now we approach the next phase of WP evolution: the "7-second Wikipedia" to edit or reformat any article with any image-size setting. -Wikid77 14:19, 24 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    I hope that Template:citation is also speedied up. Cold fusion currently takes 15 seconds to preview.... --Enric Naval (talk) 13:15, 24 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    Yes, the Lua version of {citation} has been written/corrected and tested by editors who know the many details in actual use. It can be transitioned to Lua within a few days. -Wikid77 14:19, 24 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • Now 174,000 articles entirely use Lua cites: By watching the delinking of the gigantic, markup-based wp:CS1 helper Template:Citation/core, we can track the count of articles which have "broken the shackles" of the prior technology to run, now, over 9x times faster than last year. As of today, more than 174,000 articles are using only the Lua-based citations, and we expect the count to exceed 1 million pages after {cite_web} is transitioned to use Lua, as running 125 cites/second. Also, the developers have found a method to quicken the Lua Scribunto #invoke interface 2x faster, in the next MediaWiki software release, which might speed the reformat to over 200 cites per second. -Wikid77 14:19, 24 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • Template {cite_book} transitioned to Lua: As of 23:24, 24 March 2013‎, the Template:Cite_book has been upgraded to use the Lua script module, to run 6x faster in over 466,000 articles. The prior COinS metadata has been restored in the Lua version, to allow User:DASHBot to check for dead-link URL addresses in those pages and insert some archive-links instead. Some rare bugs were also fixed, which had omitted the access-date on some citations, and many double-dots ".." were fixed after "Inc.." or author initials. Many articles can now edit-preview, or reformat, within 8 seconds, compared to 15-35 seconds in prior years. -Wikid77 (talk) 14:19, 25 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    After about 24 hours, another 220,000 pages delinked the markup-based helper Template:Citation/core, as now nearly 394,000 pages which use only the Lua-based cites. After {cite_web} is upgraded, in a few days, then expect about 1 million pages to delink from {Citation/core}. At that point, {Citation/core} can be upgraded to provide better features for the remainder of the 23 {cite_*} fork templates, and the additional overhead to process those features would be neglible because most cites would be formatted by the Lua versions instead. -Wikid77 (talk) 17:29, 26 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    All sounds good, but I'm not quite sure I'm following this. Is the {{citation}} template now Lua based? Malleus Fatuorum 17:34, 26 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    No, {{cite book}}, {{cite news}}, {{cite journal}}, and {{cite encyclopedia}} are now Lua based. {{cite web}} is next for transitioning to Lua, later this week. At that point well over half of all citations will be using Lua. {{citation}} will probably be the next one after {{cite web}}. Dragons flight (talk) 19:03, 26 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

    Peter Damian & WMUK

    All, there's been a bit more discussion on Peter Damian in a thread above. I really want to make this clear, however, to everyone, so I'm starting a new section: Peter Damian is not banned from any Wikimedia UK events. We were, in late 2011, worried about his attending an event at the British Library, and we reacted to that by banning him from attending it. This evolved into a 'general ban from events'. However, it was pointed out to us that this ban was perhaps an overreaction, and indeed after having met with Peter in person over a cup of tea, we are quite happy that he is not a 'threat to security'. As a result, we rethought the ban - it was, shall we say, a decision made in haste. We retracted it, and issued an apology for the phrasing. I'm happy to repeat that: Peter is not a threat to our member's security.

    The whole issue did raise a big question, however, as to how we could deal with concerns like these in future. Obviously, banning anyone is not the best thing to do - it's quite firm and final - and as a result, we wrote a Participation Policy, which is much more sensible and covers practically all eventualities. I'm more than happy to chat with people about this, but I don't keep an eye on this talk page. If anyone has any questions, or wants a chat, drop me an email at richard.symonds@wikimedia.org.uk and we'll sort something out. Richard Symonds (WMUK) (talk) 13:50, 25 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

    Clearly another situation where the longstanding UK tradition of a Nice Cup of Tea and a Sit Down has resolved a problem. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 15:00, 25 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    I'd never heard that expression. I know the expression "sit down" from American mafia films - a different sort of thing altogether, but also used for conflict resolution. :-) Oddly I noticed in a google search that Wikipedia uses the expression pretty often but apparently doesn't have an article about the expression itself.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 19:31, 25 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    I was introduced to the phrase (in the context of some rather troublesome disputes) by User:Chzz, who you'll be pleased to hear is editing again today. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 20:01, 25 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    I thought only a judge can make the decision that he is a threat and impose control orders banning him from attending certain events. Count Iblis (talk) 19:37, 25 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    In the UK, at a private function, the organisers can permit or deny entry to whomever they choose. (Much like, contrary to amusing opinions pontificated on certain websites, the provision of alcohol does not affect whether people under the age of 21 or indeed 18 can legally be permitted to attend private functions - that would make organising weddings rather awkward, to say the least.) In practice, most similar private functions I've organised have tended to have an entrance door that isn't guarded by anyone at all, and while there were some people whose presence would not be generally welcomed, they either never found the cojones to show up, or didn't make a nuisance of themselves. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 19:55, 25 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    I see! Count Iblis (talk) 12:17, 26 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    All the same, there are quite a number of individuals who would rather not be present where Peter Damien is, because of his habit of posting derogatory character sketches of people he's met on WR/W-cracy, not to mention his supposed forthcoming book. This has put off some people (not including me) from coming to events where he has threatened to be present. In fact, I think he has only been to one event in recent years, plus a visit to the WMUK office - both were written up in this fashion. The "security" issue was in terms of outing etc. Johnbod (talk) 12:51, 27 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    The first rule of Fight Club is: You do not talk about Fight Club. Delicious carbuncle (talk) 13:13, 27 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    Not followed by Damien, that's for sure. Johnbod (talk) 18:54, 27 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    How true. I can personally testify to being harassed by Buckner/Damian back in July 2010, blatantly for shit'n'giggles rather than any high-flown principles; he seems to be driven primarily by ego rather than principle. As far as I'm concerned, he shouldn't be unblocked before the heat death of the universe, though even that's probably too soon. I can understand why people have been put off attending WMUK events. Speaking for myself, I would prefer to stay away from any event at which he was also present. I think that if someone has been banned for certain conduct offences – specifically making legal threats or harassment – they should automatically forfeit their WMUK membership and any right to attend WMUK events, because of the chilling effects they can cause to others. WMUK members in good standing shouldn't have to feel that they need to look over their shoulders because of what one of their fellow attendees may intend doing. Frankly, it feels like this individual is being given preference by being allowed to attend events despite the evident upset that it's causing multiple people. Prioryman (talk) 19:46, 27 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

    Contributors banned over conduct

    We banned user who showed no constructive effort and we banned users who didn't meet our standards for pleasant conduct. I had the fascinating idea that just because talking failed to the point where we want no further discussion with the user, this really says nothing about the quality of their contributions. I know it sounds crazy...

    Most contributions happen without any talk. We can filter out such contributions with the pending changes machinery. While pending changes is very unattractive compared to free editing, it doesn't compare unfavorably to not being allowed to contribute. Banning people would be that much more relaxed. Loosing the discussion privileges for a few months isn't a big deal, having other editors approve your contributions isn't a big deal and backlogs are not that big of a deal either. When people tell you to go away, that is a big deal if your intention was to help.

    It may takes years to finally find the context where the user crosses the line. With pending changes he could impress us with elaborate sourcing and accurate citation. The sense of punishment is minimal. Banning users over civility becomes much less of a hassle. Currently if a user makes tons of good contributions it is very hard to decide to ban him over small civility offenses. It can be a big loss.

    Talk is necessary but not for the majority of content. If one stays away from the controversies and cites good sources there is nothing worth talking about. If editors run into a pending vandalism they can press a button, then an Admin looks at the rejected contribution before removing the user privileges. Even with abuse, pending changes gives useful context to any unblock request. I mean, do we want people to work on wikipedia, or have them write us a story about what great editor they are going to be in the future? The later doesn't seem very useful. It doesn't really tell us much about the editor. It makes a nice cache 22, the editor cant contribute because he is under review and the reviewers cant review because the editor cant contribute. The pending content would give us an idea what the user is worth as a contributor.

    As a community we decided not to be rude to people, some think it doesn't go far enough, for some it is really hard to stick to the rules, there are also people who cant do it. Hell, we have a whole minefield of special articles waiting to systematically ban poorly informed editors. Not necessarily bad editors, just annoying in an already annoying context. If they are completely mystified by the situation doesn't matter much. If we are going to require endless patience we exclude a very high percentage. In the process we've created a new kind of expert who writes wikipedia. That was not the plan.

    I think the prevailing logic must be that when it is obvious a guy really wants to help to the point that he is still here after we upset him and banned him, then there is no good excuse to deny the projects it's content. In stead of dropping the user in a bottomless pit hoping he will never return we give him a brand new interface that is going to convince him that talk is unnecessary. One might find the new interface frighteningly more productive than endless arguing over tiny contributions.

    These pending changes can just sit there for years. Eventually editors will get to it when they get to it. Could ask the user to review a pending change when their contribution breaks it. I imagine a user who just edited that same article section to be a most sophisticated reviewer. With almost no extra effort we can have many additional contributions. People who would otherwise have to write anti-wikipedia essays, what normal people should be expected to do when their best was not good enough. At least some of the essays are really funny but I would prefer they would invest that energy helping out.

    Is there something I'm missing?

    84.106.26.81 (talk) 23:56, 25 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

    As I understand it, you are saying (at incredibly boring length) that edits from banned editors should not be reverted. Is that correct? Looie496 (talk) 01:44, 26 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

    My proposal in short:

    • Create a user level below unregistered.
    • Users banned over their discussion qualities are promoted to the new user level.
    • Unregistered ip users and registered users can approve the contributions. (and flag them as vandalism)
    • The pending changes submitted by the user make up a significant part of the unblock requests.
    • By having another user approve the pending contribution they become responsible for it.
    Wikipedia users, page protections, and page edits
      Restricted Unregistered, New Autoconfirmed, Confirmed Reviewer Administrator Appropriate for
    No protection can edit;
    changes will go live after being accepted by a reviewer;     		can edit;
    changes go live immediately
    can accept pending changes    		 The vast majority of articles
    Pending changes
    protection         		cannot edit can edit;
    changes will go live after being accepted by a reviewer;     		can edit;
    changes go live immediately (if no previous pending changes remain to be accepted)     		can edit;
    changes go live immediately*;
    can accept pending changes    		 Articles experiencing high levels of vandalism or BLP violations from unregistered and new users
    Semi-protection cannot edit can edit;
    changes go live immediately;
    no acceptance required    		 Articles experiencing high levels of vandalism or edit warring from unregistered and new users
    Full protection cannot edit can edit;
    changes go live immediately    		 Articles experiencing persistent vandalism or edit warring from (auto)confirmed accounts and for important templates
    *When editing articles with un-reviewed pending changes, Administrators and Reviewers are prompted to review the pending changes before saving their edit.

    Note "go live" means the edits will be visible to readers who are not logged in. In all cases, edits are always visible to readers logged into Wikipedia.

    84.106.26.81 (talk) 03:34, 26 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

    "I think the prevailing logic must be that when it is obvious a guy really wants to help to the point that he is still here after we upset him and banned him, then there is no good excuse to deny the projects it's content." I don't think it is at all the prevailing logic. I also disagree that it is "obvious" that just remaining after a ban means that there is no good excuse to deny the project that content. If the content was what got the editor banned it would have been removed and just sticking it out after becoming upset doesn't mean we include whatever was deleted.--Amadscientist (talk) 01:49, 26 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    I'm sorry my post is a bit vague. I was specifically referring to conduct bans. We do a lot of those, it takes a lot of patience to be a wikipedian. 84.106.26.81 (talk) 03:07, 26 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    Not nearly enough and this comes from someone very much concerned with editor retention. But frankly we chase off far better contributors by allowing these editors the right to run rough shot over the project.--Amadscientist (talk) 03:13, 26 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    People come from different places, they have different views, different hobbies. How nice the wikipedia is for them depends much on these things. Over time people get in all sorts of different situations on the wiki. I'm not suggesting to let editors run rough. If the sense of punishment is minimal it is much easier to ban people.84.106.26.81 (talk) 04:44, 26 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    Well, there you have it. This is what is missing 84.106.26.81, your basic understanding that Wikipedia does not punish editors.--Amadscientist (talk) 04:53, 26 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    Wikipedia is not in a position to talk for the user. The user may experience his ban as a punishment. Thats why I wrote "sense of punishment", to exclude intension. 84.106.26.81 (talk) 11:57, 26 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • Strong oppose Why create an entire new level of participation just to appease banned or blocked editors for conduct issues? Couldn't they...I don't know...act with within our behavioral guidelines? --Amadscientist (talk) 03:42, 26 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    Agreed, one thing that really grinds my gears is that some editors are able to tell other editors to "fuck off" on an almost constant basis, and do so only to be foul-mouthed prats, and constantly nothing is done about this. The time has to come when such editors are shown the door, because it truly is not helping with editor retention and helping to build a nice environment in which to edit. Russavia (talk) 04:13, 26 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    Currently administrators can chose between the permaban or a warning. Making the bans less harsh would make the decision easier and it would be much less of a drama.84.106.26.81 (talk) 04:44, 26 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    No they can't. Bans are not supposed to be implemented by administrators unless they are over article probation issues. They have no authority to strengthen or weaken an Arbcom or community ban.--Amadscientist (talk) 04:50, 26 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    I'm not sure what you are trying to say. The general blocking policy for civility is here Wikipedia:Civil#Blocking_for_incivility.
    There are also topics with special rules like: Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Abd-William_M._Connolley/Proposed_decision#Discretionary_sanctions
    84.106.26.81 (talk) 11:27, 26 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    I tried to limit the idea to (what I thought was) the most obvious cases. Perhaps it would work better with users banned over contributions. There is only one way to be sure. 84.106.26.81 (talk) 22:49, 27 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • Oppose It's bad enough that some editors already wear their rude conduct as a badge of honor and admins tell their victims to chill, the rude one is just being themselves. I don't see that we need more levels of complexity to accommodate those who can't conduct themselves with propriety, unless I missed something. We would do better if we simply enforced civility. If you use "f**k", asterisked or not, you start at a one week block which doubles at every infraction thereafter: 1 week, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128,... VєсrumЬа ►TALK 23:21, 26 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    The community is a means to write the encyclopedia. We need it for a tiny percentage of content. Usually these things take much more time than they should and the outcome of the debates isn't always useful. We all agree editors who are going to make it even harder for us have no place in this area. If you are missing anything, it might be that it leaves them 99% of mainspace to work on? 84.106.26.81 (talk) 22:49, 27 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • Pending Changes is a never-ending train wreck. Having just popped over to the talk page, we have all manner of irregularities - articles under Level 2 though there was no consensus for it, autoconfirmed and I think even reviewers' contributions being rejected anyway because a reviewer "deprecated" the revision later, and a there's also VPT thread about some kind of rejection of edits by editors if they duplicate former IP edits, which makes me wonder if reviewer status is license to win an edit war. Having any variety of Pending Changes affecting an article, however limited, is therefore highly undesirable. Wnt (talk) 07:21, 27 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    After the incident one should focus on non-controversial stuff. So yes, the reviewer would have a license to win any edit war if the editor makes controversial edits. The reviewer may also refuse things he doesn't want to be responsible for. But if the reviewer crosses the line it does deal damage to mainspace. And we do ban users for that. But but but but..... Doesn't your opinion involve refusing all of these content suggestions? You want to refuses millions of contributions without even reading them? What makes your opinion so reasonable compared to a perhaps biased reviewer? 84.106.26.81 (talk) 22:23, 27 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

    Well, Rich Farmbrough just got blocked for a year

    See Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement#Rich_Farmbrough - he's been blocked for a year for what was arguably, IMHO, manual editing with typos. I don't like that fact one bit, and Jimbo, you shouldn't either. Time to reign in ArbCom and the anti-Farmbrough zealots, somebody, please. I make typos, and I've screwed up articles, and some of those errors have been committed with (gasp!) search (f3)/replace (ctrl-V), right in the edit window. But I'll be damned if I'm going to let the precedent stand that two editors can block a long-standing, productive, enthusiastic, skilled (ok, sometimes overenthusiastic) editor for a year, based on guesswork and an exaggeration of a now years-old ArbCom decision that didn't make sense in the first place. --Lexein (talk) 16:19, 26 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

    It's quite obvious that he did a global search and replace and didn't bother to check the results, leaving other editors to clean up the mess. Leaving the mess for others is the recurring problem, and there seems to be no way to prevent him from doing it except a total block from editing. Looie496 (talk) 16:44, 26 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    Lexein, it's obvious you're angry about this and it's understandable that you would be if you feel an injustice was done, but this is now the fourth place you've attempted to get action on this issue. Please, pick one spot, have a discussion, and stop running around to a new place each time you don't get an answer quickly or don't get the one you want. A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 16:53, 26 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    No, three, I undid one. Actually two, since one is merely an advisory of discussion occurring elsewhere. This IMHO deserves wide exposure. If I have to take a little friendly fire for posting in the most appropriate venues for active discussion, I'll take it. And Looie496, I don't think it's obvious at all, since I've made that very same class of mistakes without using global search and replace. However, I agree that editors should not leave messes for others to clean up, but I don't think Farmbrough has refused to clean up when asked. So why not leave it at asking? That's my whole point. --Lexein (talk) 17:10, 26 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    The main problem is this Wikipedia notion of trying to require editors with an identified issue to become paragons. To ask him to avoid automated edits that would start other users on the road to trouble ... fine. But to demand he not use tools that everyone else can, and hold even a single slip-up as reason to ban him for a year? You've deliberately set yourselves up to fail, and congratulations! You succeeded. Wnt (talk) 19:44, 26 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    I was pretty surprised to see rich banned again so quickly so I wanted to see what for. I can't really figure it out. Can someone please explain in detail what it was for exactly.--Amadscientist (talk) 23:01, 26 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    apparently, screwing up using semi-automated tools (which he was forbidden to use), copy-pasting the edits in. i assume they mean like reflinks and checklinks. -- Aunva6talk - contribs 00:44, 27 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    Lexein is not the only one that thinks a 1 year block is too severe, if a block is even warranted at all, which it isn't. I really wasn't surprised at all personally Amadscientist. The same editor that opened the AE thread has been trying to get Rich blocked for years. The one who imposed this block tried to block Rich for a year when he imposed the last 2 month block but backed down when a year block didn't have community support then. Apparently it still doesn't and for good reason. A 1 year block (the limit of the admin tools as far as I know) should be reserved for severe cases like Copyright violations and vandals. Not longterm editors for frivolous edits. KumiokoCleanStart (talk) 01:49, 27 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    Ah. I see. Involved admin finding a way to get their way. LOL! No wonder admin are looked at with suspicion most of the time.--Amadscientist (talk) 01:57, 27 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    Wnt, Rich was not blocked a year for "a single slip up". He was blocked for a year for what was only the latest error from an editor with a multi-year history of errors that have inevitably been left for everyone else to clean up. Wikipedia editors don't need to be paragons, but frankly, competence is required. Perhaps it is time we stop putting up with Rich's incompetence. Resolute 02:06, 27 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    Errors can be fixed by others. That is a policy or guideline as well. Now demonstrate that those errors constituted a lack of competency. I am dead serious.--Amadscientist (talk) 02:10, 27 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    Any editor who is responsible for 5 million edits is going to make mistakes. I would rather fix somee mistakes of someone who would do 5 million edits to make this place better than zero defects from the editor who would do 5 edits and leave me nothing to fix. KumiokoCleanStart (talk) 02:13, 27 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    There isn't much else you can call nine blocks for problematic, erronious and/or unsupported automated edits, Amadscientist. The simple fact is, neither restrictions nor short blocks have had any effect on his editing behaviour. Errors can be fixed by others, but others should not be expected to put up indefinitely with an editor who produces so many. He was given numerous chances, and blew every single one. Resolute 02:22, 27 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    I can think of a couple things. Hounding, Stalking, shall I go on! A couple of those 9 blocks are valid, at least 6 are complete bullshit. KumiokoCleanStart (talk) 02:26, 27 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    Whatever good a person has done, whatever experience he can gain, it floats away on the breeze, without substance. But all his demerits go on his permanent record. It is enough to make a person wonder if all of the good done by any of us is only an illusion. Wnt (talk) 07:14, 27 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    A year in the briar patch for Ixian collaborators -- what could possibly go wrong? This bodes well for collaboration, even if not the sort that was intended. 75.166.194.35 (talk) 02:45, 27 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    Well Resolute, there is your basic argument....and then there is the argument that is proposed by the above IP user. If you look at my block log you will see a number of blocks. Some are indeed not worth the efforts to block me. The first one was my own stupidity and ignorance with Wikipedia policy and when given the chance not to be blocked ( the blocking admin gave me a chance not to be blocked at all over the issue) for the 3RR situation I found myself in I was stupid enough to state that I should be blocked even if I did not understand what I had done, thinking I was being the better person. No...I was being the "stupider" person. Something I have vowed never to do again. Another block was a mistake made by the Admin who blocked me over a single edit that all parties involved (even the reverted editor) explained was a legitimate revert and that I was working with the editor to resolve the content in question. Block logs don't say much. They simply state that a block was made...not that they were justified.--Amadscientist (talk) 07:15, 27 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

    He is a top editor and template expert

    For people unaware of his background, User:Rich Farmbrough (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) is a long-term user (and admin) who is among the top few editors with the highest edit-count, over 1 million edits, and not just minor changes, but large rewrites, plus 1,572 new articles. He is also a template expert, and years ago, he began developing fast-cite templates to generate wp:CS1 cites (with COinS metadata) which ran 10-15x times faster than old Template:Cite_web, to reduce a 20-30 second edit-preview down to just 2-3 seconds of reformatting. That was at a time when most major nation articles each reformatted over 25 seconds, such as "Israel" often running over 45 seconds to edit-preview. Due to Rich's successful fast-cite ideas, the new Template:Cite_quick was developed and improved and has cut 20-30 seconds off the reformat times of massive articles, even avoiding fatal page-size limits, another issue which Rich had solved years ago. However, instead of following his wise advice, or trying to compromise, other people fought his advancements for over a year. At the time of the recent 1-year block, when editing numerous articles, he had made hundreds of corrections and updates, during several edits, to new article "Mohan Deep" where he was accused of making 3 apostrophe errors by use of search-and-replace editing (see "Madhubala" in edit of 180 changes: dif-82). Anyway, the deterioration of talks between Rich and other admins gives evidence that Wikipedia has serious collaboration problems in the admin ranks. The Swedish Wikipedia, since 2006, has used 1-year term limits to remove admins, as easier to avoid bitter feelings, and I think enwiki is seeing more evidence of the dangers of the "imperial admin" elite class. -Wikid77 (talk) 11:08, 27 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

    8 very similar apostrophe errors, not 3. The "hundreds of corrections and updates, during several edits" were only made after the errors in the first one were pointed out at the ArbCom enforcement, when he suddenly returned to the Mohan Deep page two days after his sole edit to it. And Rich isn't an admin anymore, he was desysoped on 15 May 2012. Fram (talk) 13:43, 27 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    Really, wow, 8 whole errors. That certainly does change things and makes a 1 year block warranted. (sarcasm intended). I also find it more thana little suspicious that its the same Admin/editor who seems to always find these problems. On obscure articles no less. The only plausible way that could happen is if said admin (thats you by the way Fram) watched a certain editors edits constantly just checking to see what was done on the article. Only a couple days after being unblocked no less. That seems a whole lot like Houdning, Harrassment and Stalking to me. But what do I know. i'm not an admin right. Only an admin would be able to recognize those things and only an admin would be able to interpret violations of those. KumiokoCleanStart (talk) 16:36, 27 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    Oh, shut up already. If all you're going to do is toss into the mix intentionally-sarcastic bombs, then this discussion would be much better served by your absence. Farmbrough is a very well-known and notoriously problematic editor, it is not surprising or even unusual if the same admin or admins are the ones to highlight misdeeds, as they are the ones most familiar with the matter. It isn't "stalking" or "houdning" [sic] to check in on an editor with the history that Farmbrough has. It isn't even an admin-exclusive thing...if say by some staggering miracle Grundle2600 was ever let back in, you can be damn sure I'd be clicking on Special:Contributions/Grundle2600 once in awhile. Tarc (talk) 16:45, 27 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    Sure I get that some editors have a problem with his edits. But not all of us, probably not even a majority, that's why the case went through the Arbitration committee so they could make an Arbitrary decision about a situation that failed to gain consensus in the community. As I have stated before. Any editor who is responsible for 5 million edits is going to have some problems. I would also counter that the majority of the complaints about Rich's editing were not about the "problems" but about the minor edits. Some editors feel that minor edits are important enough to ban an editor from the community or that 1000 easily fixable errors out of millions is a valid reason to block. I don't and never have denied that there were problems with some of his edits. We all make mistakes. What I am saying is that we should not be doling out 1 year blocks to an editor who has done by far more good than harm because a couple editors with the admin tools are butt hurt that he wouldn't respond to their comments and continual harrassment. KumiokoCleanStart (talk) 22:57, 27 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • Need better ways to work with highly intelligent people: In many cases, after working with highly intelligent people, I have found that they "do not suffer fools gladly" so it is important, when working with them, to be alert and not "waste their time" with potentially petty issues. Perhaps we need an essay "wp:How to work with intelligent people" so that the social dynamics can be better understood. In general, Wikipedia's rules for "crowd control" seem naive, or sophomoric, and many intelligent people will not react well under such conditions, merely pretend while they roll their eyes. There needs to be tolerance for trivial "8 errors" among "200 corrections" made in a single edit, and nitpicking at that level, is likely to breed contempt with intelligent people. I suggest we develop a core of "gradmins" as people with advanced degrees in various fields and advanced social skills, and have them interface with the highly intelligent people, to try to establish a common dialogue. -Wikid77 00:51, 28 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    I thought you (Wikid77) were taking credit for the {{Cite_quick}} templates. If Rich had been responsible for installing even one, he would have been immediately blocked.... — Arthur Rubin (talk) 22:27, 27 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • Rich had created "Template:Cite_web_quick" in October 2011, which was used in some articles, but it was later "removed without incident" and was wp:TfD-deleted on 7 January 2012. It ran 10x-15x times faster than old Template:Cite_web (in reconstructed comparisons) but was not fully understood for its future potential, to quicken large articles to edit-preview within 5 seconds rather than 20-45 seconds. Also, it would have been perfect in translating articles to other-language wikipedias, where they could have formatted the copied citations which are often accepted as-is in preparation to find native-language sources later. -Wikid77 00:51, 28 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • No, he didn't. Amalthea created the template in March 2011; in October 2011, Rich Farmbrough made one edit to the template, and self-reverted one minute later. He essentially didn't create and didn't contribute anything to that template (which isn't a problem, of course; but he shouldn't get credit or blame incorrectly). Fram (talk) 09:35, 28 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    It apparently started with "8 apostrophes" overlooked in Bollywood author article "Mohan Deep" (see 180 changes: dif-82)), and then Rich was threatened with a block, so he continued editing and made about 1,343 repetitive changes to "List of Other Backward Classes" where a footnote reftag was added into 1,343 entries. Issuing threats is not very effective with intelligent people. Anyway, it was considered a violation of his prior ban against using search-and-replace, or even copy/paste, when he was limited to using keyboard characters only, during edits. I cannot even think of trying to edit in that manner. Imagine getting an edit-conflict and not allowed to copy/paste the prior inserted replies, into the current conversation text. It is such cruelty that it could be considered inhuman, so I would recommend to reduce the restrictions to a workable compromise, such as 300 changes per article (or such). Anyway, the final conclusion, about using "automated edits" (for 3 articles) is in wp:AE section "WP:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement#Result concerning Rich Farmbrough". -Wikid77 05:19, 28 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    He edited Mohan Deep, mixing improvements with errors in a way that violated his arbcom restriction. He only went back to edit the article again after the errors were pointed out. Similarly, he added the same ref to some 1000 entries in a list, but made an error with it, so that the ref didn't show up but created one of those big red cite ref errors in the ref section. Again, he didn't notice this and only corrected it after I had noticed it. Considering that this is the same pattern that lead to his community and arbcom restrictions and previous blocks, taking swift action instead of letting this go on and on is the normal solution (and exactly what AE is intended for). "It is such cruelty that it could be considered inhuman" qualifies for the over-the-top statement of the year though. Fram (talk) 07:50, 28 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    So, let me get this straight. We blocked the second highest contributor the encyclopedia has for a year over making errors so that it would have the appearance of being "swift" due to arbcom sanctions even after he corrected them. Yep...this project has some serious problems that may well end very badly. Very badly indeed. Meanwhile we have an editor making unsubstantiated claims about others that are being taken seriously in the media making us all look like asses, and that same editor is deeply involved in both the article they are making claims about and the policy page that it involves and no one gives a flying bleep about that. Wow....just freaking WOW.--Amadscientist (talk) 08:07, 28 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    Do you know any of the backstory, Amadscientist? One of the elements in the earlier cases was that he doesn't check his automated edits (the results of his automation), and that it is up to others to check them (and usually, those people then get flak for hounding him, and are told to leave it alone and that others will do it, even though those others never materialize). One of the reasons for the restrictions is that we don't want an editor using automation but needing one or more nannies to clean up after him. The result is that now, after years of patience, chances, more chances, ..., he is on a much shorter leash than other editors, and was lucky to even have that instead of a full ban. Fram (talk) 08:39, 28 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    Would you mind clarifying, Fram, what percentage of edits made by Rich Farmbrough since he came off his last block contain errors? --Epipelagic (talk) 08:19, 28 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    Yes, I would mind. I'm not going to spend even more time on this, to give you figures which are unrelated to this case. If someone has e.g. an interaction ban, we don't count the number of edits he makes that don't violate the interaction ban. Why would we treat this restriction differently? Fram (talk) 08:39, 28 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    I take from your reluctance to disclose the percentage that it is infinitesimally small. I can't edit without occasionally making an error. So this is very disconcerting. --Epipelagic (talk) 09:03, 28 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    You can take whatever you want, whether it involves ABF or not. But I don't think you have e.g. made 500 identical errors when running a bot (at first on your own account, then as a bot), then found out that you made the error, correct your bot, continue with the task but never bother to go back to correct those 500 errors? Rich Farmbrough did, I corrected them two months later. This is not about error-free editing. Fram (talk) 09:30, 28 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    I'll give you some errors added between his block expired and the AE case was filed. These are only some examples of uncorrected errors, he also made some errors which he corrected in a further edit, seems a bit pointless to include these as well. I don't see what the relevance of this is for this discussion, but since you seem to find it important enough to ask but not important enough to research for yourself, a few examples:
    • [12] changes "LISTE DÉFINITIVE DES DÉPUTÉS ÉLUS À L’ISSUE DES DEUX TOURS" in "Liste Définitive Des Déeputés Élus À L’issue Des Deux Ttours", adding an error in "Députés" and in "Tours".
    • [13] adds "perecntqage"
    • [14] changes a "prorector" in a "proctor", even though they are not the same and a prorector was correct here
    • [15] adds a badly formatted piece of WP:OR to the article at the bottom. I reverted it some 2 1/2 days later, and the article was subsequently semi-protected by Bearian with the reason "Addition of unsourced or poorly sourced content: Recent need to rv WP:OR, important article"
    I haven't checked all his edits, only some of those in the mainspace, but I think it is pretty clear that despite what you incorrectly inferred from my reluctance to waste my time on hardly relevant sidetracks, the percentage is clearly not "infinitesimally small".
    Note that I'm not claiming that these involve automation, that I'm also not claiming that these warrant any further action, and that I only searched for and added these because people started drawing incorrect conclusions from my reluctance to do so. I would prefer if people would ignore this section and focus on the core aspects of the AE enforcement (or drop it altogether of course). Finally, this is a sample, not a definitive, exhaustive research. I'm not going to try to make a definitive, complete list so people can find the exact percentage. If anyone wants that anyway, they can do the work as well. Fram (talk) 10:21, 28 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

    Fram you don't have to repeat anything but if you could point me in the direction of where I can find the backstory that would be a start.--Amadscientist (talk) 09:15, 28 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

    Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Rich Farmbrough Fram (talk) 09:30, 28 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

    If someone has a restraining order, e.g. to stay at least 500 m away from the house of his former wife and children, and he violates that restraining order, he will get arrested, even if he was cleaning graffiti or helping old ladies cross the street at the time. The offense for which he was arrested may seem very minor, but the backstory explains a lot. (Obviously, neither the situation nor the result here are of a criminal nature, it's just an analogy, before anyone reads this the wrong way). Fram (talk) 09:30, 28 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

    It turns out I was familiar with some of the back story, if even just a small amount. It also does appear, at the very least, that Rich can't seem to let go of the use of automated tools to make huge amounts of edits. Which does at least illustrate the point that high edit count does not mean quality editing.--Amadscientist (talk) 10:27, 28 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    There was a lot more to the Rich F Arbcom case than what Fram presents above. For one, the Arbs decided that he should be desusopped largely because he unblocked his own bot which was and still is common practice among Admin bot operators. Next there is the issue of Fram's involvement. Rich and others including myself repeatedly asked Fram to walk away and quite hounding. Rich couldn't even log in without Fram commenting about some edit. If things are that bad then there are more than enough editors and admins who will comment. After a while Rich just stopped responding to Fram altogether. If Fram would have been willing to accept he was involved (something that he still refuses to do) things would be much smotther and there would be a whole lot less drama. Another factor in Rich's case was that of creating categories. Most of which still exist by the way and are perfectly fine. Some folks just didn't like them because they act as a marker for Sockpuppets and vandals. Then there was the issue of minor edits, not errors but minor edits that really don't amount to anything so whether the bot does or doesn't do them is completely irrelevant to anything unless someone is looking for a reason to argue and block another user. Then we get to the issue of errors. Very few of these were caused by the bot, most of them (still rather few comparitavely speaking) were done by Rich while testing new code to add to the bot. Then there is the issue of complaints from people about him and his bots doing too many edits and filling their wathclists. They didn't like seeing all these edits done to their favoriate articles so they asked him to slow down. Really? Too many edits are filling up my watchlist is just about the stupidest argument possible and yet it was one of the justifications used. When you wrap all this up into one package, Rich was banned for trying to do to much, too fast. He as too willing to use technology to make this place better and some of the purists that don't like bots or would prefer bots don't edit got annoyed. Some editors got annoyed at their watchlists filling up and some others though that a zero defect mentality is necessary for bot operators. 99% of all these arguments are complete, utter bullshit. Pure and simple. KumiokoCleanStart (talk) 19:10, 28 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

    Jimmy Wales

    Mr. Jimmy Wales

    I am a writer and IT specialist and Brazil, and I would like to invite you to participate in my book with one article/review about Social networking..

    What do you think about my invitation ? please, contact me at heverton@heverton.com.br

    Regards

    heverton Anunciacao www.heverton.com.br — Preceding unsigned comment added by 189.33.191.53 (talk) 20:27, 26 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

    The best way to contact Mr. Wales for press, is to go to WP:Contact. Thanks — nerdfighter 02:51, 27 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    User:Jimbo Wales# Contacting me is a touch more relevant, methinks. Graham87 09:07, 27 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    Interesting, as I have noticed a trend of companies to take control of their social networking. Some companies have filed with OTRS a declaration that such-and-such an agency has the authority to add connect on their behalf to social networks, including Wikipedia. I'm trying to respond that Wikipedia is not like Twitter, Linked-In, or Facebook, and they cannot control the content. I fear we will be fighting this battle for some time. Wikipedia isn't a social network, although I've long felt that there was a need to create a parallel project to serve as a formal social network for editors with like interests.--SPhilbrick(Talk) 16:10, 27 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

    Wikipedia (and me by name) attacked on the History Channel

    Just found this after a post at Talk:Melungeon quoted it. www.examiner.com/article/scandal-at-wikipedia "Wolter added that immediately prior to the premier of "America Unearthed," several articles he had written or contributed to in Wikipedia had been simultaneously “gutted” or deleted by a self-appointed Wikipedia editor in rural England named Doug Weller." This is submitted by Richard Thornton, a regular contributor to examiner.com who has emailed me with insults in the past (he has an account here but not under his name). I used to be an active amateur archaeologist, hence the bit about me claiming to be an archeologist. I have no idea what a purple editor is, does anyone? Nor did I realise our management is now appointing editors. Dougweller (talk) 15:30, 27 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

    Just read the last sentence of the article. Although he has emailed me and I did give him a warning, I never emailed him saying “If you attempt to change another article or submit another article without my approval, you will be permanently blocked from Wikipedia.” nor did I say that on his talk page. Dougweller (talk) 15:42, 27 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    What was the result when you contacted them about this? --Onorem♠Dil 16:20, 27 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    Since examiner.com blog authors get paid according to the number of page views their blog receives, I'd be careful encouraging more attention to the Thornton blog than it deserves. LuckyLouie (talk) 16:31, 27 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    Damn, I know that but forgot the implications. And I only emailed HC an hour or so ago. Dougweller (talk) 16:55, 27 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    Also note that most of the article isn't about Wolter, though I'm mentioned a couple of times by the Thornton, who I believe is an architect and who wrote the article. Dougweller (talk) 17:50, 27 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    IP editors seem to promote (?) that article in strange places; see Talk:America Unearthed#Examiner article. Huon (talk) 18:08, 27 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    That's not so bad though, as like me he can't find evidence of biassed editing by me at Bartow County, Georgia, Gordon County, Georgia and Murray County, Georgia. Thornton wrote "this columnist re-inserted the deleted paragraphs in the Bartow, Gordon and Murray County, GA Wikipedia articles from the original sources in the New Georgia Encyclopedia. Within two hours, the re-insertions had been deleted by a man named Doug Weller, with a UK email address." But that didn't happen. If I've ever edited those articles it isn't recent and not in the first page of the contributors's list. Ironic that he sees his column as proof Wikipedia is inaccurate when his column is so inaccurate. Dougweller (talk) 18:42, 27 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • Wolter, the 'forensic geologist', only has a bacherlor's in geology and his professional expertise is in concrete testing. His books are self-published, which is why and I others don't see him as a reliable source and removed use of them as sources. His main edits here were to remove criticism of him by a former colleague from his biography. Dougweller (talk) 05:15, 28 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

    Do interviews with someone about themselves count towards notability?

    There have been discussions in the past but it keeps coming up. I'm not talking about an interview with a random stranger about a news event, but instead an interview with someone about themselves and/or their work. Sometimes in AFDs people accept this proves the person is notable, if reliable sources interviewed them, while at other times they claim all interviews are primary only and you must be secondary sources to count towards meeting the notability guidelines. So random results of keep or delete do happen. Dream Focus 16:48, 27 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

    I don't see how that's at all "primary". A primary source is something that comes from the person or organization which obviously doesn't inherently say much about notability. An interview, as a secondary source, will tend to indicate notability to a degree that depends on things like: the reputability of the interviewing publication/show/organization, the topic of the interview, etc. At one end of the scale we might have the kind of example that you've correctly identified as not giving any real evidence of notability - an interview with a random stranger about a news event. Along the way, we might have a social media expert interviewed by a mid-range business publication for an opinion about Facebook. (Probably not sufficient to establish notability in the Wikipedia sense, although if there are dozens of them, it's not nothing.) And then we might have a cover story profile interview about the person, their life, their work, etc., by a major publication, which is probably enough on its own to establish notability (with some exceptions of course!).
    But none of that means that an interview is a "primary source" from the perspective of notability discussions.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 18:08, 27 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    Thank you. This keeps coming up. I made a note at Wikipedia:Notability (people) to hopefully stop the same arguments from constantly happening. Dream Focus 18:55, 27 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    Hey Jimmy. My issues with interviews stem from the fact that the majority of the contents are produced by the interviewee, not by the interviewer. While the interviewer may be a reliable journalist, the interviews are very rarely edited for truth or clarity, it's just whatever the interviewee wishes to say to the interviewer. For this reason, 90% (probably more) are going to fail the "editorial oversight" and "not by person topic is about" tests. However, interviews with someone from HP about a computer science topic may be okay, as they aren't interviewing the topic of the article directly. Just my opinions, would like to hear your thoughts on it. gwickwiretalkediting 19:12, 27 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    The title of this section refers to notability. An interview may indeed be a useful source for establishing notability, but it is definitely a primary source with regard to the statements made by the person who is being interviewed. Looie496 (talk) 22:37, 27 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    Someone can't have an interview with a secondary source, the document is the source not the person. You can have an interview, the transcript and interview itself would be a primary source and a write up about the interview (by the journalist say) would be the secondary source. The interview is primary because it's original material. The analysis of the interview is secondary source because it is deriving from the primary materials. Interviews (and thus the transcripts) are listed as an example of a primary source in the references at primary source [16][17][18]. IRWolfie- (talk) 19:19, 27 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    Pretty sure we have the same idea there. The transcript of the interview is the primary source, but a writeup of the interview (i.e. discussion by a reporter on the interview) is not always a primary source. By default, it's not defaultly a reliable source, it still would have to meet the not-a-blog and other requirements :) gwickwiretalkediting 19:57, 27 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • The guidelines were written and changed constantly, and this was obviously not with the intention of disqualifying such obvious evidence of notability. Being interviewed in reliable sources has always been proof someone was notable. Just need to change the guideline to clarify that. Dream Focus 20:01, 27 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    It is not as simple as "Interviews do/don't count towards notability", and I do not agree with your change to the guideline simply saying that they do. (I see it has been reverted - if any new wording is needed, it should be agreed on the talk page).
    It depends: at one end of the scale an interview in a major newspaper like the NYT or the Economist certainly counts; but at the other, there are countless "lifestyle" and similar magazines which are happy to interview anyone and let them talk about themself (often in conjunction with an advertisement or "advertorial" feature) and interviews like that are a common means of self-promotion. If notability is in doubt, the nature of the source and the interview has to be taken into account. JohnCD (talk) 23:43, 27 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    Seems to me extremely unlikely that an article on anybody genuinely notable would have to rely for its only source of a claim of notability, on an interview with the subject as primary focus. Interviews about your life and/or work in reliable sources don't generally happen unless the person is already considered notable by that source, and that doesn't often happen in a vacuum. Only an idiot would assert that "Joe Soap, an 19-year-old-student, saw the event and described it to us" as being biographical or a claim to notability. Guy (Help!) 02:10, 28 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

    Billboard

    Billboard.com recently underwent major surgery. Chartbot (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) has been working around the clock trying to repair the damage the changes caused, and has managed to repair about 50,000 links to Billboard so far. I expect that it will be able to successfully repair about 20,000 more, leaving us with approximately 18,000 dead links to Billboard.

    Billboard isn't all that excited about helping with this endeavour. Friendly, yes, but while they "appreciate that Wikipedia requires citations, we are not in the business of supporting Wikipedia." Currently at issue is a list of 668 articles that they intentionally deleted from the site. They have the text, and they have the ability to restore them. They can even restore them to a special section devoted to archaic articles if they wanted to, but they "are not in the business of supporting Wikipedia.".

    With all the places in the world crying for higher recognition from Wikipedia, I find this frustrating. Any chance of using some political muscle to get someone at Billboard assigned to help poor Chartbot?—Kww(talk) 18:13, 27 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

    If we're going to spend foundation resources battling linkrot, I would think that finding ways to keep more newspaper/mass media articles online would be more valuable to Wikipedia than Billboard. Resolute 18:56, 27 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    No argument that there's a general problem to be solved, but this is one of those moments where they have staff working on the revamp (that could fix this particular glitch in a few hours) and I'm still actively working on getting the remaining links repaired. Not being able to fix the entire problem doesn't mean that one should pass up an opportunity to fix a small part.—Kww(talk) 19:06, 27 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    Nothing on the internet is permanent. As has been demonstrated countless times, books, parchment, papyrus last 1000s of years, a page on the internet ~77 days. John lilburne (talk) 19:54, 27 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    I'm building a catalog of links as I go to support archiving, and building a templating system to support a rapid response when the next change to link formats inevitably occurs.—Kww(talk) 19:59, 27 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    What are you going to archive? Nothing on the internet is permanent. John lilburne (talk) 21:50, 27 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • An excellent reminder that web footnotes should include the author, title, publication, publication date, and page number (if possible), not just a raw URL. This is probably one of the most pervasive problems at Wikipedia, with histrionics about little things getting all the attention. Carrite (talk) 19:00, 27 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • Unfortunately, Billboard.com and Billboard Magazine are only tangentially related. A lot of the online content has no physical counterpart. I have the information I need to go trawling Google Books, and most of the missing information was never printed.—Kww(talk) 19:06, 27 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • Most of the 686 articles that they won't restore were advance notices of chart positions. Not particularly notable in themselves, but they do document the entry position of a recording on the charts, a fairly typical statistical item for an article about a single or album. I feel like I'm on the defensive here, and I don't understand why. No, Billboard isn't the New York Times, but 87,000 links spread across 16,000 articles was a lot of linkrot to allow to occur at one time, and I think it was worth the effort to prevent.—Kww(talk) 14:14, 28 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • Perhaps they have a more permanent record of such data. What happened before the internet? I recall that years before websites people talked about chart positions for songs from the 60s, 70s, 80s how were they getting that information? Don't they produce year books or something? John lilburne (talk) 15:18, 28 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • Absolutely they do. The physical magazine is still published on a weekly basis. Care to manually research a replacement for the links? It's a herculean task that can be avoided with an hour of effort on Billboard's part, followed by a few hours on my part to backup the page content in an archive.—Kww(talk) 15:52, 28 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

    Giovanni di Stefano convicted of fraud

    Jimbo, you may recall that a few years ago Giovanni Di Stefano, who represented Saddam Hussein and Slobodan Milosevic as their lawyer, made threats to sue Wikipedia for defamation over his article, which stated that he was not licensed to practice law in the UK or Italy. [19] You might be interested to know that he was convicted today of 25 counts of money laundering, fraud, and deception for falsely charging millions of pounds of legal fees, as he was indeed not licensed to practice law in the UK or Italy. He's now facing a lengthy jail sentence.[20] Shades of our old friend Edward Davenport... Prioryman (talk) 20:28, 27 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

    Huh.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 23:11, 27 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    Couldn't happen to a nicer fellow. I have been chatting with some of his victims. He is every bit as unpleasant as you think he would be. A thug, in fact. Guy (Help!) 02:04, 28 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    Are we now allowed to make personal attacks against people who are committed for crimes and have acted against Wikipedia? Perhaps we should add that exception to the NPA and civility pages... Fram (talk) 08:43, 28 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    That is mild compared with what judges have said. He is a convicted fraudster, a liar and a thug who bullied people into suppressing the truth about him, in order to sanitise his public profile and enable him to keep on committing fraud, ensuring that information which would have caused his victims to think twice was removed from the public domain. And that includes threats against individual Wikipedia editors, including at least one for whom I hold no brief whatsoever, but still feel they should not have been subject to the coercion which was forced on us. Guy (Help!) 10:17, 28 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    Ah, the original post had "made threats to sue Wikipedia", which while not allowed for editors is in itself not a crime (and may be justified in some cases, though obviously not this one). Since you now add that he made "threats against individual Wikipedia editors", the situation is IMO quite different. Feel free to call him a thug or worse as much as you like; principles are all fine and good, but some people and some actions aren't worth defending. Fram (talk) 10:37, 28 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

    We should watch out, because in some prisons the inmates have limited internet access. Count Iblis (talk) 13:04, 28 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

    Read-only access is my understanding and then only on a very limited basis. He won't be posting here any time soon; in the last hour he's been sentenced to 14 years, which means he'll serve at least 9 years 4 months before being eligible for parole. He also admitted committing another £150,000 fraud while on bail for fraud, which shows chutzpah, if nothing else. Regarding his conduct on Wikipedia, the article's talk page archives are full of angry statements from Di Stefano attacking editors for reporting (completely accurately) that he had multiple fraud convictions (see e.g. Talk:Giovanni Di Stefano (fraudster)/Archive 1#Complaint received from Giovanni di Stefano and subsequent archives). Ironically he had boasted that he "only" faced a maximum of 10 years if he was convicted of fraud. I guess he forgot about the 14-year maximum for money laundering... Prioryman (talk) 13:30, 28 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

    By the way, I should note that the issue of describing him as a fraudster has been raised on the BLP noticeboard at Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons/Noticeboard#Fraudsters. Jimbo, I've quoted your words on the Davenport article naming - you may have a view on this one as well. Prioryman (talk) 13:50, 28 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

    One more thing - for the Wikipediocracy clowns who are complaining about Guy's description of Di Stefano, I suggest you read the judge's comments quoted here, which are far harsher than anything Guy has said. Prioryman (talk) 14:01, 28 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

    • Precisely. This is his third time in court, his third conviction, and this time he's been sent down for 14 years. That is rather more than you get for fiddling your expenses. I had no idea that the comments above were from Wikipediocracy users, but I can't say it would surprise me since that site appears to be the usual shoulders bearing the usual chips. Guy (Help!) 16:03, 28 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • Who cares what the clowns at wikipedi-idiot-ocracy "think"?--MONGO 16:26, 28 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

    BP and Wikipedia redux - looking more closely at the content

    Jimbo, I'm not sure if you've seen Violet Blue's follow-up to her recent piece on BP's involvement in writing their own article: Big Oil's Wikipedia cleanup: A brand management experiment out of control. This article looks more closely at some of the content supplied by an employee of BP's PR department. While BP may not have been editing the BP article themselves, it appears that at least some of the content supplied was less than objective or complete. From reading over the talk page, it is clear that the suggested edits were only reviewed by one or two editors and received very little discussion before being added to the article. These edits were replacements of whole sections of the article, not suggestions about changing a word or sentence. More concerning is that an employee of Chevron Corporation has apparently been editing their articles since 2009, with little success in getting editors to review their changes. I hope you would agree that any content supplied by PR professionals should be thoroughly vetted by unbiased Wikipedia editors. That does not seem to have happened in these cases. Can I suggest that a full review of affected articles be conducted by editors not normally associated with those articles? Delicious carbuncle (talk) 22:45, 27 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

    The Chevron case is a failure on our part, but not a failure on their part as far as I can tell. Violet Blue is sufficiently biased that her analysis is just useless to consider. The important point is that Arturo did exactly the right thing - he suggested changes, not all of which were accepted, and they were generally good. Did he suggest things that we might modify? Sure, why not? To beat up BP and Wikipedia for this is vicious nonsense.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 23:01, 27 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    So let's not beat up on BP or Arturo. He followed our rules. The real question is whether those rules make sense if we aspire to be a serious, respectable reference work. Do you think it's OK for a company's PR staff to play a substantial role in drafting our coverage of that company? A role which is entirely undisclosed to the casual reader? If so, then we're setting ourselves outside the boundaries that have normally defined credible, reputable reference works. MastCell Talk 23:18, 27 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    We have failed in our duty to our readers and we deserve whatever criticism we get. Allowing PR agents and company employees to rewrite sections of articles without thoroughly vetting that content is both naive and foolhardy. It would be premature to say that BP's edits were "generally good". While BP is at the center of this latest episode, I think this applies equally to any other editor with a similar conflict of interest. We should learn from this rather than shooting the messenger again. Delicious carbuncle (talk) 23:25, 27 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    I share your view of Violet Blue's trashy analysis but sadly, Jimbo, the plain fact is that a segment of the editor community (I'm not sure how large; I get the feeling that they are more noisy than numerous) have an ideological objection to any commercially oriented organisation getting involved with Wikipedia. They see it as commercialising Wikipedia. BP is admittedly a particularly inviting target because of its awful environmental record, but we seem to have these spasms of outrage periodically. Remember when you wrote up a restaurant once, and the reaction that got? You have done a lot of work with PR groups to try to work out a modus vivendi that ostensibly works for all concerned, but the problem is that you haven't been able to sell this to the entire community (and I'm not even sure that the ultras would buy into it at any price). I don't know what the solution is to this problem, but I do think there's more that you personally can do to minimise the impact of such disputes. For instance, in the BP case, you could have involved yourself directly with the editing and given ongoing feedback on what Arturo was doing, which would have lent it a lot more public legitimacy. What people are doing now is trying to review things in hindsight, which I rarely find a satisfactory approach. There should also perhaps be more community-wide transparency about the activities of legitimate COI editors like Arturo. Perhaps we need to have some kind of centralised "register" of legitimate COI editors to make it easier to review what they are doing and where they are active, and I could also see a role for some kind of "PR interchange" WikiProject where experienced editors and COI editors could discuss issues and assist each other. Prioryman (talk) 23:31, 27 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    The editors that reviewed that content and added it to the article are established editors who have a good amount of experience. Arturo, by or behavioral guideline, is not a COI editor. To be considered such, one must be advancing their own interest above that of the project. Arturo does not fit that bill. He is certainly closely associated with the subject, but that alone is not a conflict of interest at Wikipedia.--Amadscientist (talk) 23:44, 27 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    That is simply and flatly incorrect. Arturo does fit our definition of a "COI editor"; see WP:NOPR. I'm pretty pessimistic about our ability to have a serious discussion on this topic when we don't appear to inhabit a shared objective reality. MastCell Talk 23:49, 27 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    I have a lot of respect for you MastCell, but on this you are so off base it astounds me. NOTHING in that links suggest that Arturo is a COI editor. Because, he is not. That link you provided has guidelines that only show Arturo to be a "paid advocate" and that editors that fall under that definition are strongly discouraged from editing the article directly. Arturo has not edited the article directly. Could please stop exaggerating the situation because very time you refer to an editor as a "COI editor" incorrectly you are only name calling.--Amadscientist (talk) 00:00, 28 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    If that's not a conflict of interest in Wiki's eyes, then Wikipedia has a far more serious problem defining and dealing with conflicts than i could possibly have imagined. Coretheapple (talk) 01:07, 28 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    It is not a conflict of interest. Your imagination isn't the issue. Our guidelines make it clear what a COI editor is and if you follow those guidelines and do everything right, one should not be dragged through the mud because other editors have convinced themselves or been convinced by others that there is a conflict when one does not exist. There is no problem defining a conflict of interest. Our COI behavioral guideline does that. The serious problem is getting editors to understand it and apply them in a disinterested way. Right now editors are truly on a witch hunt, pointing fingers and complaining because British Petroleum has a paid advocate making drafts that some editors agreed to use. Sorry that I don't see the project burning down from that.--Amadscientist (talk) 02:06, 28 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    Just to make my view clear, I have no idea if a BP employee editing about BP constitutes a conflict of interest in the cloud-cuckoo land of Wikipedia COI rules. Coretheapple (talk) 02:15, 28 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    Well, if the BP employee was editing the article itself, it would indeed constitute a conflict of interest. However, he isn't. User:Arturo from BP has followed our guidelines completely. He is using the talk page and making suggestions. He has no control over what goes into the article. That is still in the hands of established and experienced editors.--Amadscientist (talk) 02:27, 28 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    BP, through that editor, its employee, drafted text that was incorporated in the article. That he didn't directly edit the article is a distinction without a difference anywhere but in the aforementioned cloud-cuckoo land. Coretheapple (talk) 02:36, 28 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    And actually I also forgot to mention that even editing the article itself would not necessarily put the editor in Conflict of Interest unless their edits removed well sourced content or added content that showed their outside interest to be more important than Wikipedia's aims and goals. Welcome to Cloud-cuckoo land then Coretheapple, because that is indeed the distinction with a true difference as set by a number of different policies and guidelines of Wikipedia.--Amadscientist (talk) 02:43, 28 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

    When I joined Wikipedia, the rule was that every editor's edits were their own, and on their own recognisance. Arturo posted some suggestions that were pro-BP. He did that completely openly, acknowledging that he is a BP employee. I had a similar email from a celebrity, a household name, who made suggestions by email. In both cases a Wikipedia editor decided to make the changes. In my case I did not make all the changes requested, and explained why (they were not in MOS style, or whatever). In this case someone else made the edits - and they didn't apply enough critical judgment when doing so. Their bad, nobody died, we just fix it up and explain it to them. It's no different to someone finding a version of events on a company website, bringing it to Wikipedia, and then being pushed back (partway at least) because others with wider knowledge know it's not the whole story, or is a glossed-over version of events. All this is perfectly routine. It's how virtually every article on any commercial entity has been written, albeit this time without the usual round 1 of conflicted edits to the actual article which then involves us in educating the company rep to do exactly what Arturo did form the outset. Arturo has done nothing wrong, in fact quite the opposite. He has, it seems to me, played a completely straight bat. Any fault is with our own people - us, in other words - for failing to edit rather than copy and paste. Editing is a skill. The takeaway here is that we still ave a lot to learn, as a community, about the editing process. I think we could usefully try to run some workshops maybe even asking editors of actual dead tree products for input. Guy (Help!) 16:30, 28 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

    (ec) The segment of the editing community that works to protect the environment for our reader is in the majority. Our readers are entitled to know and we are duty bound to let our reader know that BP or Chevron or the Gingrich Campaign is over-bearingly involved in the construction of the article they are reading and depending on. They expect an impartial view not one from the top of Corporate Hearquarters. Our readers depend on us to protectr their interests. ```Buster Seven Talk 23:51, 27 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    Speaking as a new user, more of a reader than a Wiki editor, I can tell you from an outside perspective that this entire affair is jaw-dropping amazing. I agree with Delicious Carbuncle and MastCell. The difference between COI best practices on Wikipedia and in the real world is humungous. The refusal of some editors to acknowledge COI in a BP employee, editing Wikipedia within the scope of employment, is astonishing. I agree with the observation that Wikipedia deserves a horse-whipping in the press over this, and I'm frankly disappointed that I haven't seen it. Coretheapple (talk) 23:58, 27 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    What astounds me is how many editors really don't understand....no, REFUSE to understand our policies just so they can hurl mud within our own community. There is no COI editing by Arturo and is the very reason many editors refuse to acknowledge that blatant misinterpretation of our guidelines.--Amadscientist (talk) 00:05, 28 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    Speaking as an editor of a decade's experience, I can tell you that flaps about supposedly "selling out to commercialisation" really aren't anything new - we seem to have one at least every year. Gibraltar ran into the buzzsaw last year, before then Jimbo's restaurant article caused a flap that was covered in the media (e.g. [21]). Yes, COI is a significant concern; yes, Arturo obviously does have a COI. But what we have here is an ideological divide between editors who believe that any hint of commercial involvement in Wikipedia is anathema and those who accept that commercially oriented outside organisations can be useful contributors as long as they act within strict parameters. (There are also a few people who argue that there should be a free-for-all, but their is a fringe view and can safely be ignored.) I don't see how you can bridge that divide; all you can do, it seems to me, is to create a situation where there are far more people on one side than the other. Marginalise the opposition, if you like, or at the very least persuade them to cross the divide. Prioryman (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 00:19, 28 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    Too bad that decade worth of experience hasn't helped you understand our guidelines. Arturo is not a COI editor.--Amadscientist (talk) 02:00, 28 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    I don't know what you mean by "a COI editor". I said that he has a COI, by which I mean that his editing on Wikipedia is on behalf of his employer, which is a self-evident COI - his employer's interests are not necessarily Wikipedia's. But that's not a bad thing in itself! The dispute is not whether he has a COI but whether it is being properly managed. Prioryman (talk) 13:37, 28 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    I'm not familiar with the "flaps" that you mention, but if you are having regular issues of a similar nature, perhaps you have a recurrent problem that needs to be addressed? I know that this is a volunteer organization and not a business venture, but Wikipedia has a public image and it is not great. Perhaps an occasional outside view, not affected by years of being steeped in the Wiki culture, would be helpful at a time like this. Coretheapple (talk) 00:26, 28 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    I wouldn't disagree that it needs to be addressed, and in fact Jimbo has been trying to do so by opening a dialogue with the PR industry to work out avenues of discussion (see past articles in PR Week here). The fundamental problem is that a chunk of the editing community is not reconciled to any interaction with PRs other than, essentially, saying "piss off". This is where Wikipedia's biggest weakness comes into play - its lack of effective leadership. The way this community works, it's far easier to block things through noisy objections than to advance them through persuasion. Prioryman (talk) 00:35, 28 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    I haven't been physically able to read through all of the many thousands of words on the BP issue that have appeared in various places on Wikipedia, but my impression is quite the opposite. That is, that Wiki people are unwilling to recognize the serious problem posed by corporate involvement in Wikipedia articles. In perusing what's been written I found one comment, I forget where or by whom, by an editor who pointed out that Wiki people are vulnerable to being manipulated by corporate operatives, that editors feel they can "outsmart" and control involvement of public relations professionals in articles about their companies. I agree with that perspective. If that attitude is more common than I have come to realize, than it is all for the good. My personal attitude is that PR people/corporate reps should be welcome in pointing out errors and omissions in articles, but should not be permitted to draft text. To me that would be akin to a newspaper or print encyclopedia doing the same thing. I.e., a disreputable practice. To be sure, that is what happens among small newspapers. There are "canned" travel and business articles to be found among bad newspapers. There are press releases and promotional articles that are published verbatim in newspapers but are written by companies. But I hope that Wikipedia is better than that, and that it does not fashion its policies after the very worst of American journalism. Coretheapple (talk) 00:56, 28 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    Coretheapple, do you notice that you are now talking about Wikipedia editors, not Wikipedia readers? Why does Wikipedia exist - so that people can edit it, or so that people can read it? Painting the community as polarized into two camps is an attempt to blame someone for the situation, not an attempt to address it. Delicious carbuncle (talk) 01:13, 28 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    COI rules aren't about the reader, they're about the institution. Their purpose is to protect the integrity and reputation of the institution. In this case, the reader is affected to the extent that the BP article may have been slanted by the fact that four-tenths of its written or drafted by BP. But I think the main victim here is Wikipedia, because this incident exposes a flaw in Wikipedia's structure. Coretheapple (talk) 02:15, 28 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    Oh...there's a flaw showing alright....but is not what you think. Can we make something true on Wikipedia by just repeating the circular reference begun on a user's talk page, picked up by the media and then repeated as an absolute truth? If this is really possible...then we do have a very troublesome issue.--Amadscientist (talk) 02:49, 28 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    The problem is not that there is misinformation circulating about Wikipedia, but information. Delicious Carbunkle said above that readers were being ill-served, but the problem is with the affect on editors who don't have COI, who aren't paid to write here, who are just doing this as a hobby. Why should they utilize their precious spare time to work on articles as a hobby when companies are allowed to have an active role in the drafting of articles about them? I suspect that antagonizes a lot of editors, as Prioryman alluded to earlier. Volunteer editors may feel less interested in contributing to Wikipedia if they feel that Wikipedia collectively lacks integrity by tolerating this kind of thing. That's the problem that arises from BP being quite this active in the BP article and the widespread acceptance of that by Jimbo and others as being allowed by COI rules. Coretheapple (talk) 03:08, 28 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    Who said anything about misinformation about Wikipedia. The misinformation is about an editor who is complying with our policies and guidelines. If someone is editing in a manner that goes against the encyclopedia's core principles, or even attempting to edit in a manner that would compromise the project they are warned then banned or blocked. Yes, I am sure the editor, Arturo of BP (who does not have a COI) is probably feeling a little confused by all of this. Just like everyone else however, he may choose to stay or leave at anytime on his own. Being antagonized by the fact that someone is doing the right thing and using best practice, getting upset and leaving over that reason is not a concern at all. I would rather people who don't get it stop editing and those that do get it remain. We lose far more editors over those that can't figure out the policies, procedures and guidelines and use their misinterpretations to go after innocent contributors.--Amadscientist (talk) 03:42, 28 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    You keep acting as if this is about vilifying Arturo or BP. It's not, at least not for me. I think Arturo followed our rules. I'm not out to get him. I'm asking a bigger question, about whether our rules make sense or serve our goal of creating a serious, reputable reference work. I'd actually like to hear Jimbo's thoughts on the matter, if he's willing to comment: do you think it's OK for a company's PR staff to play a substantial role in drafting our coverage of that company? A role which is entirely undisclosed to the casual reader? MastCell Talk 04:19, 28 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    In the edit summary to the above comment it states: "sometimes i wish wikipedians were capable of discussing abstract issues, rather than personalizing literally everything; However the comment left here was filled with "You keep", and "not for me" and "I think" and "I'm not" and "I'm asking". The last thing stated was "I'd actually like to hear Jimbo's thoughts on the matter, if he's willing to comment: do you think it's OK for a company's PR staff to play a substantial role in drafting our coverage of that company? A role which is entirely undisclosed to the casual reader?" Jimbo Wales made the first reply to this thread. He said point black: "The important point is that Arturo did exactly the right thing - he suggested changes, not all of which were accepted, and they were generally good. Did he suggest things that we might modify? Sure, why not? To beat up BP and Wikipedia for this is vicious nonsense." I agree with that completely.--Amadscientist (talk) 04:37, 28 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    And if you read the other thread, Mr. Wales has said even more. If he would like to comment further, of course that would be great as always...but I feel editors keep asking the same things over and over almost expecting a different answer or a sudden reversal by just wearing him down.--Amadscientist (talk) 04:43, 28 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    If Arturo is confused and decides to leave, someone else from the BP Corporate Communications Team will take his place. This is not about one editor. Or a team of editors. This is about millions of readers who are being protected from knowing too much about BP's or Company A's business. ```Buster Seven Talk 06:15, 28 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    Buster, it may not be a good idea to make such accusations. That sounds a lot like you are claiming BP is involved with a cover-up on Wikipedia.--Amadscientist (talk) 06:41, 28 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    Well, this certainly explains my experience here. petrarchan47tc 07:11, 28 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    How so?--Amadscientist (talk) 08:24, 28 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

    @ Amadscientist. What does that mean? Do you think BP will be sending out the Corporate Communications Enforcement team? Why isn't it a good idea to defend Wikipedia and its readers? I'm not claiming a cover-up. It's more like a "smother-up". ```Buster Seven Talk 07:39, 28 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

    @Buster: There is no more conflict here than if BP had placed text on their own website released under GFDL and someone had copied and pasted it here. All articles are a work in progress, it rarely takes long for puff to be pruned back. A major issue here is that for some people the BP article will never be balanced until it makes them look like a cross between the Inquisition and the Mongol hordes. NPOV says that BP is an oil company, better than some, worse than others, pretty much normal for the breed. Some people don't like that: they think all oil companies are global supervillains. They are entitled to that view and I tend towards it myself, but it's not NPOV. Guy (Help!) 16:36, 28 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    It means exactly what it says. You should not be making accusations of this kind. It could be a BLP issue when it concerns individuals.--Amadscientist (talk) 08:18, 28 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    I noticed earlier this comment "if we aspire to be a serious, respectable reference work", this isn't compatible with "anyone can edit anonymously", you have to pick one, and its pretty obvious that wikipedia has made its pick. Wikipedia is too popular to hope that companies will ignore it, so they either participate openly like Arturo/BP, or they do it (or pay someone to do it) covertly without disclosing their CoI. Completely preventing companies from affecting content is not simply possible with the way wikipedia currently functions.--Staberinde (talk) 09:35, 28 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    Yes. That is apparent. But what seems to be going on, in part, is that some want to pretend it does not happen (eg., that having company x suggest copy is, it is pretended, not influencing articles); some want to argue that it should not happen (with no way to implement the should); and some want more upfront disclosure of what happens. Alanscottwalker (talk) 11:42, 28 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    I get an uneasiness with companies providing "copy" to be used by editors on Wikipedia. It however is better than allowing PR firms to edit directly. I guess Wikipedia is simply becoming too popular for commercial interests to ignore. I recently had a PR professional from a large biotech firm (and the group of editors he had brought with him) inform me that they had to "correct" the Wikipedia article in question as if the US government read it they might no longer agree to spent $1 Billion in tax dollars on coverage of the procedure. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 12:38, 28 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    Ques: Currently, is the surreptitious PR substantive edit, subject to sanctions against that covert activity? Doing so would at least state where the Pedia stands on such things. Alanscottwalker (talk) 13:36, 28 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    Several editors have raised an important point, which is company officials surreptitiously editing Wikipedia. In my brief time here I've already encountered what I think is probably such a situation. Very little can be done about that apart from enforcing the rules against biased content. However, in situations in which a company does overtly seek to influence content by exploiting loopholes in the COI rules, the solution is to place a notice in the article saying that the subject of the article played a role in the creation and shaping of the article. That notice should be done whenever a company goes beyond correcting errors in the article, but seeks instead to shape the article in general. Current procedures allow a similar notice but only under narrow circumstances. That way, casual readers could be informed that the article has been influenced by the company. This should not harm the subject of the article in any way. After all, the company wants to participate in Wikipedia. If the rules allow, why should it be ashamed of telling the public, including shareholders and customers, that it does so? This would, of course, have the impact of curbing the practice. In the real world, COI rules are disclosure rules, and on Wikipedia the disclosure is wanting, and is made only internally and not commonly to readers. That loophole is being exploited. Coretheapple (talk) 13:08, 28 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    Funny, I could have sworn there was some sort of interaction ban between Prioryman and Delicious Carbuncle. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 101.118.47.34 (talk) 13:20, 28 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • I've left a note at Arturo at BP's user page, asking him if he would voluntarily consent to the COI notice appearing on the top of the article. The COI notice is not required by current rules, but that is the only way to inform readers that the subject of the article is influencing content. I think that this would be an enormously helpful indication of good faith and I urged him, as BP's representative to Wikipedia, to consent to it as a voluntary gesture of disclosure to Wikipedia readers. I think that agreeing to it would go a long way to diffusing the situation. Let's see what he says. The ball is in BP's court. Coretheapple (talk) 13:51, 28 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • No it wouldn't and no, the ball is not in BP's court. There is no way a notice like that is going to appear on the top of the article. I for one would remove such a notice if anyone was foolish enough to add one. Prioryman (talk) 14:11, 28 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    This entire argument mystifies me. When company reps email OTRS asking what they can do to fix up issues with their company article, we give them the following advice: register an account, declare who you are and that you are making comments on their behalf, suggest changes on the talk page, do not edit the article directly other than to correct obvious vandalism, ask for help on-wiki if there is any problem with another editor, perhaps trying to push an anti company POV. As far as I can tell, that's pretty much exactly what Arturo did. What do people think he should have done differently? Most of the crap that's been kicked up seems to me to be agenda-serving by people who, it seems to me, only care whether any particular incident can be used as a stick with which to flog a dead horse one more time. In some ways the nature of the coverage and the identities of those involved is pretty good evidence that we got it pretty much right - not perfect, but definitely not evil. Guy (Help!) 16:21, 28 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    I don't think Arturo should have done anything differently. He followed our rules as they currently exist. I'm trying to get a sense of whether people are comfortable with those rules. If a reference work routinely allows a company's PR staff to play a substantial and undisclosed (to the casual reader) role in developing coverage of that company, I'd be very hesitant to extend credibility to that reference work. That approach violates every basic precept governing how serious, reputable reference works handle conflicts of interest. I understand your point about OTRS, but I also think there's a practical difference between a small company which finds itself vilified on Wikipedia, versus BP which has a public-relations budget of $5 million per week ([22]). In the latter case, I don't think we can reasonably rely on a handful of pseudonymous volunteers to vet the material produced by a massive, dedicated, well-funded professional PR operation.

    And while I don't think the mainstream press or the world at large cares a whit about various internal Wikipedia machinations and politics, I do think that it will look very bad for this project if/when the mainstream press (as opposed to, as you rightly point out, a handful of people with axes to grind) gets ahold of this. If we seriously expect to defend our practices by saying that we relied on a handful of pseudonymous volunteers to vet material provided by BP's public-relations department, and that we didn't disclose BP's role in drafting the content to the casual reader, then I think we're going to take a pretty big, and well-deserved, hit in terms of credibility. MastCell Talk 16:44, 28 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

    Mastcell, thank you for this comment. I think you hit the nail squarely on the head. Delicious carbuncle (talk) 17:46, 28 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    Mastcell. Hammer...nail...head. ```Buster Seven Talk 18:44, 28 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    Guy, I think you're seriously mistaken about the concerns that have been raised, both on Wikipedia and in the real world, about BP's involvement in its article. If you think those concerns are somehow wacky or agenda-driven, or otherwise worthy of being summarily dismissed, you definitely have another think coming. Personally I'm horrified by the porosity of Wikipedia's conflict of interest rules. All the reassurances that BP's rep here has played by the rules simply underline my concern. Coretheapple (talk) 16:53, 28 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    One thing that this incident shows is that the method BP/Arturo used, following our suggested guidelines of openly stating their COI and only making talk page suggestions, is not a good approach from a PR point of view. What BP has learned is that if you try to be honest, upfront, and open about your COI, you and your company will still be vilified. However, if you are surreptitious and stealthily edit your article, you may still be vilified if you get caught, but at least you have a chance to stay under the radar and get what you want. Deli nk (talk) 18:25, 28 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

    Anyone interested in vetting the BP and Chevron additions?

    My interest here is in having the contributions of oil company employees properly vetted, not vilifying particular editors or discussing paid editing in general. The most recent article has pointed out some specific concerns with just one of the sections rewritten by BP, as well as suggesting that several sections of Chevron Corporation were replaced with no review at all. Looking at the discussions on the BP talk page, my impression is that the suggestions from Arturo at BP were not discussed in any detail. The page view stats suggest that the talk page was surprisingly quiet for such a large and controversial company (at least until the story broke in the press). Can we please stop bickering and trying to assign blame and start looking at the articles under discussion here? I know very little about this topic area or I would do it myself. Until we undertake this exercise, much of the discussion here is pointless. Is anyone here willing to organize a thorough review of the changes (comparison of before and after, validation of sources, and correction of omissions)? Delicious carbuncle (talk) 16:22, 28 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

    • No, Delicious carbuncle, No one is. I'm not, and you're not, and probably no one else. After all, former editor Petrarchan47 (she's retired in disgust, a result I expect we'll be seeing more and more of in future) took five hours away from playing with her children, watching TV, practicing the flute, or whatever else she might have done with the time and vetted a small section. It's here. No disinterested editors could be bothered to even look at it (I did, and so did Silver seren and Arturo, but none of us are disinterested) and no result or change was obtained. This is even for this highly publicized incident, so you can image the cricket chirping for less famous cases.
    This is very understandable and to be expected. No one is willing to take time away from enjoyable and productive activities, here or in real life, to spend time working as an unpaid drone doing the scutwork of vetting press material from Big Oil, for free, and likely to no result anyway.
    If we want this to be done, it'll probably have to be with editors paid to counter BP (and similar actors). Where the money might come from I don't know. I have some ideas, but I'm not going to digress into that now. Probably the sun is beginning to set on the day of the volunteer on the internet, which is a challenge to be faced. After all, you can buy Reddit upvotes and Facebook likes and friends and Twitter followers and Yelp reviews and so on, so there's no real reason why the Wikipedia should be exempt. All this is too bad IMO but life is change and I'm hopeful that this challenge can be dealt with if the Foundation is willing to be a little forward-looking. Herostratus (talk) 18:35, 28 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

    Round Two done, Round Three in progress

    Round Two of the Requests for Comment (RfC) on the Requests for Adminship (RfA) process was a success by any measure, and has now been closed. The final round is a one-week vote on two proposals that got support, but relatively few votes, so we're advertising widely and hoping for broader participation in Round Three. - Dank (push to talk) 23:39, 27 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

    Sue Gardner stepping down

    Wow...this hit me like a ton of bricks! [23] I don't think I have interacted very much with Ms. Gardner but she has done a lot for the project and her stepping down will be a huge loss for Wikipedia!--Amadscientist (talk) 04:54, 28 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

    Time to fill out an RfCEO. What percentage support do you think I'll need? (seriously, what a surprise).--SPhilbrick(Talk) 12:32, 28 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

    How many readers?

    Mr Wales. I've read that Wikipedia has upwards of 500 million visitors per month. Let's make a broad assumption and say that half (250 million) of those are Wikipedia editors busy doing their "duties"... which leaves us with 250 million readers per month. Let's assume that 90% of those are just casual readers, quick answer-looker-uppers. That leaves us with 2.5 million readers that may, by chance, (because they use Wikipedia as an imformation source to keep appraised of whats happening and because they TRUST us) go to the BP article for impartial information about BP. That's 2.5 million readers that come to us because our words are well trusted. Don't you think that those 2.5 million readers will be more than a little bit uncomfortable finding out that BP Corporate is editing the BP article? Whether its 5% or 44%. This is an issue of honesty to our reader. If we don't maintain our honesty, the integrity of our articles, we are doomed. ```Buster Seven Talk 06:00, 28 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

    If you are going to use numbers, then perhaps it is best to use real numbers. BP had nearly 100,000 visitors in the last 30 days [24]. You can follow that link and get numbers for other articles as well. Also, there are roughly 5000 readers for every one editor. Dragons flight (talk) 06:10, 28 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    WP, not BP. But you make your point that someone could mis-read so I have edited. Thanks for pointing out some surprising numbers. I'm not implying BP has 2.5 million readers. I'm saying there are that many readers that are more than just casual visitors. They come to us for information about cruise ships, and shootings, and political information. and Companies like BP or Microsoft or facebook. They need to trust our articles. ```Buster Seven Talk 06:23, 28 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

    (edit conflict) That is far too generous Buster. Currently there are only 77,000 active contributors. That would be something along the line of just below 0.16% of that figure (and even that would be lower as all these editors are not all editing every single month). Of the remaining readers we would not be able to assume that they are all going to end up at the BP article to begin with, but lets use the 250 million figure as your starting point. What we end up with are 2.5 million serious readers. Not casual, but serious readers. How many of those 2.5 million do you really think are going to end up at the BP article? Not all of them. Lets be generous and say that half of that amount or 1.25 million end up at the article. Do you really think that these serious readers are going believe that BP is editing the article when all the information has been transparent and discussed at such great length that these serious readers would not be able to understand that BP is not actually editing the article? So lets say half of the 1.25 (or just over 600,000) believe BP is editing the article from the unfounded accusations of a handful of editors. Of those, how many do you think are going see anything wrong based on the misinterpreted information? OK, so lets say half again. So 300,000 believe something from the misinterpreted information. If the issue is honesty then perhaps we should not be lying to our readers by telling them someone is editing the article when they are not. Lets start with being honest with ourselves before we attempt to do so with the readers.--Amadscientist (talk) 06:34, 28 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

    • 1) Active editors make repeated contributions, some make hundreds a day.
    • 2) Unfounded? What about editing by proxy, with little or no discussion rather than "discussed at great length".
    • 3) Misinterpreted? BP is editing the article. I don't understand why you dont acknowledge that. If our reader misinterprets anything it's because of the sad fact that he doesnt know who the author is. He thinks its you and me. He doesnt know whats behind the article, he doesnt know about the talk page and the view history page. There is no tag on the article page to forewarn him.
    • 4) I think it was President Reagan who said, "We can not play innocents in a world that is not innocent".
    • 5) I'd prefer to wait for Jimbo to reply, if you don't mind. ```Buster Seven Talk 07:27, 28 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    BP IS NOT EDITING THE ARTICLE. And you want to discuss honesty issues with Wikipedia Buster? Seriously? Editing by proxy? That's an accusation towards the editors that added the information and is outrageous. I don't know if Jimbo will reply here or not, but why wait?

    Some conclusions and lessons to learn

    This is not the right venue to repeat the discussion which has been during the last week all over the Wikipedia but some of the claims are incorrect. BP (that means Arturo) has made no edit to the BP article (or as the matter of fact—to any article at all). What he did, was making proposals at the talk page. Not all of his proposals were implemented and there are only few proposals which were implemented without changes. All editors who used these proposals are responsible for these edits like they are responsible for all edits they are making in Wikipedia. So, I don't see how this is more damaging to our integrity that dealing with all other potentially POV edits. But I agree that we should thing and discuss about the outcomes of this case. The outcomes and conclusions and probably lessons to learn are:

    • There was real witch hunt to the editor who followed all our policies by the book. The lesson for companies/PR people is that following rules does not protect you. So, it why do follow the rules and take a risk to be blamed while ignoring the COI rules (disclosure of COI connections) gives less attention to your edits and if caught the result is the same—you are blamed.
    • There were accusations that editors who implemented these proposals dis not review/were not able to review the proposed edits; however, no evidence for this was provided. As a result, the good name several editors where put under question. The sad thing is that there is no procedure to clean your name in the cases like that. I think that this should be a part of the code of conduct that you are very careful when making accusations; however, it was sad to see that even some very long-time and well established editors violated that rule. I would like to draw conclusion that we need more work to promote ethics of editing.
    • At COI talk page a proposal was maid that COI editors should be not allowed to make proposals while there is an ongoing court process to avoid impacting the court decision. Ironically, we have a vice-versa situation. Based on false accusations (44% of rewriting etc) there were news stories repeating the false information. At the same time, there is an ongoing court process against BP. Lets hope that there is no impact to the court ruling but it shows clearly that Wikipedia has gained a lot of power to impact the outside world and therefore we should be more responsible when letting a word out. We should to understand that our little games and fights here may have an impact to the outside world. This is again one aspect for promoting some ethical standards. Hopefully the spreading false information into media was an accident. Otherwise, we have some very serious ethical problems to deal with.

    Beagel (talk) 06:54, 28 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

    More importantly, the editor that made that 44% accusation is editing the COI policy page with an active conflict of interest themselves. How ironic and disturbing at the same time.--Amadscientist (talk) 07:35, 28 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    Meanwhile the project trugdes on.--Amadscientist (talk) 08:19, 28 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    As I suggest a few sections above, it is premature to look at learning lessons from this and drawing conclusions until the issues brought up in the recent press reports have been investigated. We should be trying to ensure that our readers have accurate and complete information rather than throwing around accusations of "witch hunt". Until the sections supplied by BP and Chevron have been thoroughly vetted (ideally by people not normally associated with these articles), we should not attempt to draw any conclusions. Delicious carbuncle (talk) 16:30, 28 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

    English names of forergin cities etc, Phonetics

    Hello ! I've found Your answer concidering my little point ,that there is a distinct line between latin-based alpabets and f.i. japanese signs etc. I understand and do appriciate Your answer. But the question about English names of f.i. Polish or German cities was not quite what I ment. However this part of Your answer is more interesting. If an English name do exist, this clearly overrides any local name in English. And this is English Wikipedia. I even think that, if a city (or other geographical term) outside the English-speaking world has a name in English, this proves that the city in question is fairly well-known to English speaking people. And is supposed to be reguarded as an honour, rather than offence. This is simular in all other languages aswell, I think. By the way, phonetic signs , I wonder how many Wikipedia users that really understand them correctly. I concider myself as a fairly educated person in general. When it comes to languages I'm fluid in Swedish, Danish and English. I can make myself understandable in German - and understand this language better text. This applies also to Dutch and Norwegian. In wrighting, I can to certain limits also understand Latin based languages. And talk Castellian Spanish at very basic level. But phonetic signs still just looks like "chinese" to me. (Perhaps I was ill the day this subject was teached in my schools ?...) And I do not think I'm alone in this matter. My question is, to the general English Wikipedia user, that reads an article like "Danish language" - which do You think help most readers in following example, the Danish-Norwegian letter "Ø" ? A. - a phonetic sign, or B. - an explination with example such as f.i. Danish letter "Ø" is pronounced like an English "i" in "bird" or "u" in "church" ? I'm unsure of which method that's most helpful. I notice You have lots of questions to answer, but this subject is of general interest, I belive. Best reguards Boeing720 (talk) 17:17, 28 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

    Is this neutral phrasing?

    I'm absolutely serious. Is this a legitimate way to begin an article on an historical figure?:

    "Mr. Smith held the position of (insert job title here) with (insert company name here). Although the man had horrible character flaws, including accusations of treating his wife horribly, he was notable for the following educational and cultural accomplishments..." 75.144.246.14 (talk) 18:56, 28 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    No. But the claim that one of his character flaws was a tendency to accuse himself of treating his wife horribly is delightful. Writegeist (talk) 19:16, 28 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    "Have I stopped beating my wife?" Prioryman (talk) 19:25, 28 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    Oh my god. My bad. But that IS funny!. Hopefully this is a better attempt:
    ''Mr. Smith held the position of (insert job title here) with (insert company name here). Although he was a jerk who picked fights and treated his wife horribly, he was notable for the following educational and cultural accomplishments...'' 75.144.246.14 (talk) 19:31, 28 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
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