Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2013-10-30/News and notes

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Considering that a siteban was proposed for Tony1 on the English Wikivoyage, that does call into question the objectivity of this story: voy:en:Wikivoyage:User ban nominations/Archive#User:Tony1 --Rs chen 7754 21:47, 2 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Tony1 and I don't always see eye to eye, but that block, and the discussion leading to it, is one of the most pathetic things I've ever seen on a WMF project. Wikivoyage blocked a user for criticizing the project, plain and simple. His word choice was just the excuse that the blocking admin used. Could he have been nicer? Sure. Would that have mattered? After seeing that discussion, I seriously doubt it. Really, really sad. Sven Manguard Wha? 22:56, 2 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Rschen, since you're so keen to raise it, I am one of many—small fry—and it didn't matter to me personally; the worrying aspect was that it suggested the existence of a certain block-happy behaviour by a few admins (among others, you were named). Indeed, a Wikivoyager has pointed the Signpost to a number of recent instances of apparently gratuitous blocks. A weird one is this one just days ago, as intimidation against writing this. Given its falling numbers, the site can ill afford to turn away editors who lobby for change. You're welcome to continue this on my en.WP talk page; but the broader phenomenon is really for others, not me, to discuss. I just present the facts. Please note that I have authored or co-authored four substantial coverages of Wikivoyage over the past 15 months. Tony (talk) 23:50, 2 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Tony, just to make sure I don't misunderstand - in response to Rschen7754 claiming you have a COI due to being blocked, you are responding with the claim you don't have a COI because there exists another user on wikivoyage who has been blocked. Is that accurate? Bawolff (talk) 00:11, 3 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Well it's that, and also the use of quite provocative images that are used nowhere on Wikivoyage (knowing that most people won't read the captions)... just to prejudice the reader. I'm very disappointed. --Rs chen 7754 00:13, 3 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Those images are especially yellow journalism-esque. They clearly imply that they come from Wikivoyage, or relate to it in any way, but are really just random salacious images from Commons. - AdamBMorgan (talk) 04:25, 3 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

A discussion of whether Wikivoyage's policies on illegal activities, drugs, etc need updating, and how to improve monitoring of edits for problems, would be welcome at voy:Wikivoyage talk:Illegal activities policy. However, I would ask that anyone who is concerned about this issue to please read the relevant section(s) of the articles that are being referenced, as some of the quotes used in the Signpost article seem to lack context - for example, the quote from the Amsterdam article is three sentences here, but those three sentences come from different places within a six paragraph section in voy:Amsterdam#Cannabis and other drugs, and those six paragraphs are strongly slanted towards addressing safety concerns for the large number of visitors who choose to experiment with available drugs there. -- Wrh2 (talk) 22:04, 2 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict) This article on WikiVoyage is a rotting load of holier-than-thou tripe. All the puritan attacks on Commons sexual content were not enough. I suppose there is still a need to go all tut-tut on the fact that -gasp!- people do pay for sex and like to smoke pot? What about instead dealing with it, and acknowledging that we're not all Boy Scouts? I don't do drugs nor I hang out with hookers, yet I do not feel the need to judge who does or to censor information that they may find useful. --cyclopia ^speak! 23:58, 2 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

"This user has been a thorn in our side almost from Day 1". Wow, WikiVoyage is becoming a trolling den more and more, as it's hate of Wikipedia and Wikipedians, as well as of any criticism, keeps on growing. In this case I don't support censorship, but it's a very interesting issue that Tony should be commended for bringing more light to. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 02:52, 3 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Bounty and Reward Boards

Its good that the mention of these two boards being up for deletion are on here. I personally called to have both closed. Though with this, there can be more discussion so progress can be made towards the final outcome. GamerPro64 21:14, 2 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

signpost being used as a stick to beat other projects with

I'm kind of getting tired of all these attack the sister project stories on the signpost. Now please don't get me wrong, there are important issues involved, and its important to discuss them. However this type of one sided editorializing does not do this. Combined with the other lets beat on the sister projects with a stick articles that the signpost has published in the past (but never a negative article about wikipedia using this type of tone) seems mostly to foster an us vs them mentality then anything else. Bawolff (talk) 23:13, 2 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

+1 - Commons and Wikinews have been recent targets. --Rs chen 7754 23:15, 2 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

+1 Legoktm (talk) 23:16, 2 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

VW page views

Stating "Its page views have dropped 12% from the levels in January when the new site was launched" needs to be put into context. I would say it is a sign of just how well WV has done. In January WV was getting international media attention. After that its viewership fell and now is nearly back to the level it was when it was getting this attention. That this occured after only 6 months is amazing. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 23:48, 2 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

There's also bugzilla:52688 which is probably throwing a wrench into it. Legoktm (talk) 00:06, 3 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

"Citation needed". How were those stats obtained? --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 02:52, 3 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

And what is wrong with sex/drug tourism, exactly?

Everyone seems to be taking it as a given that something wrong is happening here. So long as nothing illegal (both de facto and de jure) is going on then more or less everyone benefits from sex and drugs tourism. Women are lifted out of poverty, relatively speaking*, and drugs are either provided by the government in a couple of countries, or are cannabis - and the two obvious places to go for cannabis are either Christiana in Cophenhagen or most of the Netherlands.

I actually find this cultural imperialism of red state us hypocritical puritanism much worse than any so-called exploitation.

*yeah, they may still have pretty unpleasant living conditions by western standards, but relatively speaking it's a pretty decent deal.

Egg Centri c 01:17, 3 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

This really should have been an op-ed

This raised some interesting points, and it's not as bad as the Farmbrough piece in the Arbitration Report a while back, but The Signpost really needs to do a better job drawing the line between articles and opinion pieces. Furthermore, it was a breach of basic journalistic ethics for Tony to not disclose his personal involvement here. I understand that The Signpost has a lot of work to do with relatively little resources, but I expect better than this. — PinkAmpers &^{(Je vous invite à me parler)} 01:48, 3 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Fair point. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 02:53, 3 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The search engine problem

As the unnamed editor indicated, Wikivoyage is not attacting enough readers and new editors because search engines virtually always rank its articles below Wikitravel's. And it's not just Google. Until that changes, WV will struggle. Can the wider WMF community not help with this? Nurg (talk) 03:12, 3 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Tony1 is following a long tradition of Australian journalism in trying (successfully) to sensationalise the ordinary and non-controversial.

However, he does raise, if only briefly and at the end, two important issues:

When is it appropriate to censor prima facie good faith contributions that are not libellous/legally controversial, gross personal attacks, obscene or hateful (either by excising "offending" contributions or by blocking editors) in WMF projects? And, even more importantly,
How can WMF get more bang for the bucks it has (nobly) expended on the Wikivoyage project by ensuring more eyeballs on their pages. The teutonic "Master of Puppets", Frank, has given Wikivoyage good advice as to how to achieve this, but most of the admins (Ikan Kekek, Nurg, Pashley, Peter Southwood and a few others nobly excepted) seem more interested in amateur sleuthing than taking up Frank's challenge. The bald fact remains that, as I write this, his test article still has the highest Google search ranking of any Wikivoyage article bar none. Just use a typical search phrase such as 'guide somerset tasmania' with the anonymised, non-personalised results from Google obtained by using the US site: https://startpage.com to check that for yourself, dear reader... --118.93.67.66 (talk) 05:01, 3 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Vikivoyage

Excuse me Viki Voyage, your Freudian slip is showing. Nurg (talk) 03:17, 3 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]