User talk:Jimbo Wales

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Community-sourcing, NOT Crowdsourcing: A blog post I hope Jimmy will appreciate

Hello Jimmy and all. Due to our shared disdain for likening Wikipedia to crowdsourcing, I wanted to share a blog post that I just wrote for the New Media Consortium titled, "Why You'll Never Hear Me Call Wikipedia Crowdsourcing." I speak a lot about the nuance of crowdsourcing and its role on a wider spectrum of Open Authority. (This is a term I established through my graduate research, and it was inspired by Wikipedia. I'll be speaking on it at Wikimania.) This blog was written within my role as a contributing editor for the New Media Consortium, an organization that aggregates information on ed-tech in schools and museums. Enjoy! LoriLee (talk) 14:54, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

[Once in paragraph 5 and once in paragraph 6, your blog post has the word "asks" where apparently the word "tasks" was intended.

—Wavelength (talk) 15:47, 26 June 2014 (UTC) and 15:53, 26 June 2014 (UTC)]

Nope, I mean "asks." You're making "asks" of the community. Sometimes these can be tasks, sure. I do appreciate the feedback! LoriLee (talk) 16:06, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

Traditional thinking will get you killed, Wavelength. Ha! Seattle (talk) 18:53, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

See http://www.createadvantage.com/glossary/traditional-thinking

and http://www.createadvantage.com/glossary/analytical-thinking.

—Wavelength (talk) 03:55, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

Yes, that confirms the suspicion. Seattle (talk) 15:47, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

[Please see User talk:Seattle#Traditional thinking.

—Wavelength (talk) 15:56, 30 June 2014 (UTC)]

There is a useful noun "request" (pl. requests) which should be employed by anyone over the age of four, instead of the verb "ask". All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 20:40, 2 July 2014 (UTC).

• Small group of people wrote/formatted most of WP: A major point, not mentioned in the blog post, is how the bulk of Wikipedia was written by a relatively small group of people, not as text sourced to a rambling "crowd". Many thousands of articles were copied from the 1911 Britannica or Catholic Encyclopedia and updated. In fact, many of the edits added by general users, from the crowd, are often reverted, and that results in an edit-ratio of 90% of edits are typically hack edits+reverts, where only 10% of edits are actually kept in many pages. Then the remaining text is copy-edited for grammar, NPOV-neutral tone, and clarified phrasing, as a ragged-to-refined transformation; otherwise, pages would (and some still do) remain as rough, awkward text and piled images. The blog post adds a misleading end comment, "it's not inaccurate to label Wikipedia as an example of crowdsourcing" (wait, that's extremely wrong), which completely derails the view for WP written by a select community, not a crowd at all. Perhaps say, "Wikipedia is crowdhacked but corrected" by new-page patrollers and others. Otherwise, just say, "Clean streets are an example of crowdsourcing" (ya right), where the crowd adds most trash and cleanup crews quickly clear the street but leave road patches. Whatever <g>. -Wikid77 (talk) 16:15, 29 June 2014 (UTC)
  • I'm sorry, what did you pull that 90% figure out of? — Coren ^(talk) 23:59, 30 June 2014 (UTC)
    • The 90% as hack edits+reverts is only for some pages, perhaps "75%" is more common, as with Aspartame?action=history, or reverts in other popular pages. Of course, rare pages are almost never edited beyond the Bot updates. Compare the reverted edits, to see what the "crowd" was putting in those pages. -Wikid77 (talk) 11:44, 2 July 2014 (UTC)
    • It varies form Wikipedia to Wikipedia. Before Wikidata many of the smaller Wikipedias were 90% interwiki edits. Also there was a massive decrease in vandalism as edit filters came into play, as has been pointed out by WereSpielChequers (talk · contribs). All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 20:44, 2 July 2014 (UTC).
      
      • That's a good point about edit-filters rejecting many hack edits, as the "crowd" is not allowed to edit all pages any way they wish. I guess it could be said, "The country club is crowdsourced, depending on entry restrictions for membership or decorum". However, even proper edits are reverted by some users who have their own rogue notions of "crowd control" to reject new text, often due to lack of source footnotes. -Wikid77 (talk) 08:30, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

Quality from Deletists Point of View

there ru:Обсуждение проекта:Добротные статьи#Фил Вечеровский и притча о недополняемости ДС discussed a proposal from a deletists' leader (who has a medal from other deletists for "improving" quality of Wikipedia by deleting junks) that Wikipedia must have only full articles and all stubs must be deleted and not allowed to be created as low quality "junk"
Jimbo, what do you think about that tendency? (Idot (talk) 11:31, 27 June 2014 (UTC))

That is a matter for the Russian Wikipedia, not us. The English wiki does not have a bias against stubs just because they are stubs. Tarc (talk) 11:48, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

Not so fast Tarc. I had the great pleasure of meeting Sue Gardner at a London meetup. Even back in early 2010 an excessive concern for quality was apparent to the Foundation across all the different languages. Sue suggested this excessive concern may have originated from English Wikipedia, and to an extent, from Jimbo himself.

If I remember correctly, her exact words were "Once Jimbo began siding with the deletionists on grounds of quality, this sent ripple effects out to the satellite Wikipedias across all the different languages. Projects that were once relaxed and welcoming to newcomers and new content began adopting the same over strict approach as we see on the English wikipedia" Here is Sue addressing similar themes in one of her later death spiral videos. It might have made sense to focus on quality before 2010, when the trade offs were less apparent. With hindsight, it would be most interesting to see whether Jimbo might favor a return to a less critical, more inclusive and tolerant approach? FeydHuxtable (talk) 14:10, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

I haven't watched that whole long video but at the beginning anyway she does not say that a "focus on quality" is driving newcomers away, but bots leaving templated warnings and instructions on their talk pages. Are there really people who think that quality is not something to aim for?Smeat75 (talk) 15:50, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

Sadly, yes, there are. Resolute 15:53, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

Well, the idea that stubs should be deleted because they are stubs is nonsense. The stub template exists because stubs have a purpose. There is a difference between non-notable stubs and notable stubs. Robert McClenon (talk) 15:29, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

The bias towards destroying stubs is maybe a side issue. It does seem to exist however even on English Wikipedia. Checkout this search for the word "permastub". Often deletionists give being a permastub as a reason to delete even when the subject passes GNG. FeydHuxtable (talk) 15:38, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

Agree with FeydHuxtable. I've seen even many PRODs with the reason "too short". --cyclopia^speak! 15:45, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

I believe de:wp has a no-stubs policy. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 20:54, 2 July 2014 (UTC).

Well there is much to be said on this topic. But the first thing that must be said is that I'm not a deletionist in the sense proposed. I think a great many stubs can be valuable. I also think that "permastub" while a not very helpful word, is an effort to reach a valid concept: that while topic X may be a valid topic for a hypothetical encyclopedia with infinite resources, we actually do have finite resources, and we can't responsibly maintain everything. This is particularly troublesome in the context of BLPs.

I very much agree with Sue that bots leaving templated warnings is a very bad thing and we should stop it completely. We could reintroduce it very carefully and slowly but only with serious A/B testing to make sure it isn't causing more harm than good. But as for right now, it seems clear that it is causing more harm than good. Of course, it has to be replaced with something, and that something has to be a serious focus on genuine community-building - meeting and greeting newcomers in a friendly and human way, rather than rely on bots warning them. For that, I think we need some ideas to pass to the developers about better notification mechanisms. I think lots and lots of people would be willing to take on a couple of newcomers a day, if we had a way to surface the opportunities to them. For example. I think this is the route that we should be thinking, and I think that the new direction of the Foundation towards a stronger product and engineering focus and away from some of the kinds of outreach programs that have not proven to be very successful, is an exciting thing.

The idea that more quality means less participation is just obviously false. The only way to get more quality is to engage more kind and thoughtful minds. The way to do that is to welcome them, and to protect them from various kinds of trouble makers, including paid advocates (who have a vested interest in minimizing participation).--Jimbo Wales (talk) 19:27, 28 June 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for replying Jimbo. Couldn't be more enthusiastic about pursuing quality by means of thoughtfulness and kindness. Im halfway through researching a major article rewrite and that's the only reason Im not inspired to go on an immediate newbie welcoming & helping spree.

As an example of a model editor who rather than using templates, always writes newbies concise, friendly and easy to understand messages, there is Dream Focus. When Dream can see improving an article with sources would not likely be enough to save it from destruction, he often advises peaceful compromises. Over the years I often click on the contribs of Dream & The Colonel to lift my moral with examples of good sense and kindness, and Dream helps newbies out in this sort of way time after time.

While I like recent improvement like VE and the sadly abandoned article feedback tool, your comment about a stronger product and engineering focus was music to the ear. The stunning early success of Wikipedia, despite its relatively low dev costs, possibly masked the fact that significant further progress in terms of accessibility may not be possible without giving product managers budgets that at least half way compare to those enjoyed at FB/ Twitter etc. Better tech along with a kinder attitude would help ensure Wikipedia achieves its full potential for good. FeydHuxtable (talk) 09:55, 29 June 2014 (UTC)

An observation that I saw Kelly Martin make recently was that the start of the drop-off in editing figures in 2007 coincides with the appearance of script-assisted editing tools - Huggle and the like. We've all seen "patrollers" script-tagging new articles for deletion within minutes of their creation by new users, and I agree with Kelly that that is specifically one of the worst things to happen to this project. Thoughtless humans leaving templated warnings do far, far more harm than bots. — Scott • talk 09:47, 1 July 2014 (UTC)

Whilst agreeing with your concerns about the easiness of tool-clicking making it a literally mindless task, I see the CSD cleanup aspect as being even more damaging than the bill-sticking. We have a regular situation where a NFC (or simply WP-hosted) image is removed from an article, GF or vandalism, and within moments it's then tagged for CSD as unused. There is no attempt to manually check if it ought to be used, or even if there's still a FUR in place pointing to an article from which it has just been vandalised. There is a lot of this (and mostly from the same handful of editors). It's a serious problem where bureaucracy and the opportunity to do more serious admin bizniz has taken over completely from the direction of improving the encyclopedia. Andy Dingley (talk) 10:11, 1 July 2014 (UTC)

"...we actually do have finite resources, and we can't responsibly maintain everything." While this is true it is also misleading. Specifically the volume of vandalism is not proportional to the amount of content, but to the number of vandals. Similarly redirects are being deleted with the argument "think of the maintenance" - some of these redirects are 8, 9 or 10 years old and have required zero maintenance in that time. There are other areas where we do have resource issues, and we are failing to address those. Sadly my hands are tied in so many ways that I could assist with these issues. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 20:53, 2 July 2014 (UTC).

Regarding improving Wikipedia's reliability

Tell us what you think of this article.

I've put this at the top of Cancer pain. Since the article went live three years ago, no newbie has edited it or left a comment on the talk page. As its main author (95% of the text) I'm very conscious of my own intellectual and educational shortcomings, and so I'm very conscious of the article's unreliability. I badly want scrutiny and feedback from people with knowledge of the topic, and I hope this invitation to comment will generate some of that.

Some significant moves toward making (at least some of) Wikipedia a reliable, cite-able source:

• This discussion that began with a regular medical editor quitting due to frustration with the GA or FA process, ended with the adoption of medical A-class articles, which are defined as articles that have passed expert review for accuracy, completeness and weight.

• User:Johnbod, Wikipedian in residence at Cancer Research UK, has arranged initial peer-review of a number of our cancer-related articles and editors have begun responding to the critiques. Once that process is complete, the articles will be submitted to subject-matter experts (chosen by CRUK) for fact-checking and other review (completeness, weight, etc.).

• Doc James has submitted a version of Dengue fever to the journal Open Medicine and it has passed their review process and been accepted for publication.

• User:FloNight, Wikipedian in residence at Cochrane collaboration, is looking for a way for Wikipedia(s) to collaborate with Cochrane medical experts to evaluate the quality of medical articles.

  --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 10:18, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

I think that reliability should not be our only consideration. Wikipedia should be a broad collection of knowledge that goes beyond what is most broadly accepted. For example, I would expect this article to address the medicinal use of cannabis and the phenomenon of assisted suicide. Wnt (talk) 16:23, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

But you agree it should be a consideration. I, and those editors mentioned in the above bullet points, believe en.Wikipedia should, where possible, be reliable. The best (but still imperfect) model for reliability is the one we use to identify our best sources - independent, rigorous expert review. It's great to see these scholarly bodies helping to make the top Google result for queries on their topic reliable. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 06:44, 1 July 2014 (UTC)

To me, reliability means giving an accurate impression of the degree of support for various ideas, rather than suppressing those that don't have "the best" support. Wnt (talk) 02:50, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

Me too. Though I'd say "degree and nature of support". There is significant lunatic support for the notion that vaccines cause autism. It would be a mistake for Wikipedia to ignore that view, and a mistake not to make very clear the nature of its support.

However, you frequently argue we should report insignificant theories and primary studies. I think we must rely on high quality secondary sources to determine the noteworthiness of a theory or finding, not the opinions of anonymous Wikipedians. We need to edit, not just plaster every report we like into articles. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 03:30, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

There's no shortage of editors dismissing this and that as "cruft" in whatever field they care about, but these dismissals are merely an expression of their bias. Remember, the more scientific people in the audience are more interested in the new and still not well proven theories than in the well established medical practice! If there is reliable sourcing for something, and an editor cares enough about it to edit, the presumption should be that it is worth respecting their effort and keeping the data somewhere. (Per the usual summary style, that need not be in a top-level medical article) I've been discussing these things recently at [1], and as I said there I don't see a very strong distinction between primary and secondary peer-reviewed journal articles; I don't think that this constant focus on "secondary sources" is in line with the levels of evidence actually used by professionals; nor are arbitrary time limits; we should seriously consider reports that suggest company funded research is less reliable (a distinction banned by MEDRS) but not let editors come up with arbitrary lists of journals that you can and can't use (as is discussed at WP:MED currently). If I imagine the balance of medical opinion as a grand piano we'd like moved up to our Wikipedia residence, then I picture MEDRS Movers sawing off the legs to get it in the door, then cutting it in half to make it up the stairs and tacking it together with roofing nails at the top. (Or perhaps throwing out the legs because they're insignificant...) And the thing is... I know WP:MED isn't the Three Stooges. Have they just gotten that accustomed to working alongside the Three Stooges? Wnt (talk) 04:22, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

This is where the subtlety of WP:UNDUE comes in. I saw an interesting programme last night which drew the conclusion that Mrs Beeton covered bottle feeding (vs breast feeding) in detail, because it was complex, not because she wished to promote it, nonetheless the extent of coverage was read as support, arguably resulting in substantial unnecessary infant mortality. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 21:03, 2 July 2014 (UTC).

WP:Summary style is the answer to that. Also, it seems like a very remote argument in time and space, hard to verify what she or her readers were thinking. Was she ever popular in the U.S., which also was taken over by the practice of bottle feeding with the ensuing losses? Wnt (talk) 06:10, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

Kelly Martin's observation about script assisted editing is interesting, but another thing that began around 2007 was escalating pressure on IP editors to enroll accounts. Prior to that, according to Aaron Swartz's famous old study,[2] most Wikipedia content was contributed from IP addresses. With the change came increased factionalization, long term personality conflicts, etc. It's actually difficult to repeat Aaron's study with current data (I've looked into trying this) because of amount of bot edits cluttering up article histories. Just saying. 173.228.123.145 (talk) 07:02, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

Checklinks question

Jimbo,

I was trying to use the Checklinks tool to see if articles had any dead references, and found the tool is down. Is there anything coming up to replace/repair it? Please let me know.

SNUGGUMS (talk · contribs) 02:26, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

I have no idea, actually.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 02:58, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

If you do find out, just say so. SNUGGUMS (talk · contribs) 03:28, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

This message was left on WP:VPT a couple of days ago by Silke WMDE. Quote:

On July 1st 1:00 am UTC, the Toolserver accounts will be expired and tools which haven’t been migrated yet to Tool Labs will stop working. More information can be found here. To get an overview, we started a collection: Do you miss any tools or have you observed any broken redirects? Would you like to maintain a orphaned tool? If so, please post them here. Thank you very much!

Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 03:37, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

Hi! Anthonyhcole is right: The Toolserver has been shut down yesterday. Not all tools' developers migrated to the new platform Tool Labs. Please add the tools you miss most to the list Anthonyhcole mentioned. There are people around on that page who are willing to bring over some of the missing stuff. Best, Silke WMDE (talk) 10:28, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

FYI - there's a discussion about this at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Toolserver shut down. GoingBatty (talk) 00:04, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

Ironic that a couple of days after the above discussion about newcomers being discouraged by bots leaving templated warnings on their talk pages, the DPL bot is now leaving messages on user talk pages "check to confirm", "fix with DAB solver" which when you click on them you are taken to a page which says "dead end" "My tools weren't aligned with the Wikimedia Foundation's priorities, so they didn't make the transition to Labs." which I sort of understand, being a fairly experienced editor, but what a newbie would make of it I don't know. Example [3].Smeat75 (talk) 02:17, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

Annual "Silly Season" post

Already rather silly edits are being made, especially to BLPs of political figures (including such massively important trivia as music preferences etc. of possible candidates for office). IMHO, the use of BLPs for campaign purposes is one of the vilest of uses of Wikipedia, and the practice has gotten so widespread that it might be better to simply protect all such articles for the duration of "silly season" than to fend off the drive-by edits. Wikipedia should not be used for political purposes, period. Cheers. Collect (talk) 11:42, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

I take it you're aggrieved about Rubio and Tupak Shakur [4]. How was that an attempt at campaigning?? As for "silly season" -- you use that term a lot, and I'm curious: when (in your view) isn't it "silly season"? Nomoskedasticity (talk) 11:57, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

Actually it is an annual post. I do find it useless to give Rubio's musical tastes in a BLP, but it is far from the most egregious example. We have the annual edits calling people Nazis and the like showing up already. Usually "silly season" is from about the start of July until the second week in November in major election years -- when would you find the most campaigning likely to occur on Wikipedia? Rubio has been labelled as "Christian" instead of "Catholic", political campaigning [5], [6] and simple irrelevancies to a BLP. The same types of edits occur in NZ and UK political articles - it is not just a US phenomenon. Cheers. Collect (talk) 12:19, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

But how was it "campaigning" to add something re Tupak Shakur? I'm not saying it was a good edit -- but how was it "campaigning"? Nomoskedasticity (talk) 13:06, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

Please read what I actually wrote -- I said the music bit was "useless." Saying I said something I did not say is actually worse than "useless". Cheers. Collect (talk) 13:36, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

But darling I did read what you wrote -- "use of BLPs for campaign purposes", right after "music preferences" and following a revert by you on Rubio re Tupak Shakur. So once again: how was the edit you reverted "campaigning" (or, more precisely, "campaign purposes")?? Nomoskedasticity (talk) 14:15, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

Um -- first of all, drop the idiotic cutesy-pie "darling" as it is of no rational civil use on Wikipedia. Second read my effing post. This faux umbrage game is of nil value whatsoever on your part. Collect (talk) 14:42, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

There's no "umbrage", false or otherwise -- just curiosity. But if you didn't mean it, then never mind… Nomoskedasticity (talk) 15:03, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

Let's keep some perspective. I don't know whether there is any value in ranking the vileness of Wikipedia edits, but if we did so, I am sure that my list would have many things ahead of adding a music preference to a BLP of a political figure. I've deleted an attack page and several copyvios in the last few minutes, both of which rank higher. THat said, we can debate, what, if anything ought to be done, without having to do a ranking. This is clearly not the right place to propose a new policy, although I grant that ascertaining whether Jimbo is supportive is a useful piece of information. If you are serious, and not simply frustrated, Wikipedia:VPI is a good place to discuss such an idea. Not WP:VPP, it isn't yet ready.--S Philbrick(Talk) 15:22, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

[7], [8], [9] etc. are specifically "campaign edits" AFAICT. The Rubio edit basically sourced to videos and gossip mags is just simple trivia at best. Cheers. Collect (talk) 16:15, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

I am not averse to the notion that we should afford special consideration to edits of articles about political figures. But I would like to see a proper case made. You are suggesting preemptive protection. The community generally has rejected such suggestions. I don't automatically reject it, but in view of the historical community norms, it requires some careful homework to make a case for restriction of our usual mandate to allow editing to be as open as possible. An incomplete list of issues to address;

• Define the time frame. It used to run Labor day to election day in even numbered years in the US. I grant that it is longer now, but I fear it is has extended to be virtually all times. A tightly restricted time period is easier to accept than an open period.
• Define the targets. Is this a US only issue? All offices, or only "major"?
• Define the protection. Semi? Why not Pending Changes?

I hope my listing of questions here does not provoke answers here. If addressed, it should be in a proper place. This is a good place to get some general feedback, but if you want to make a proper proposal, there are better venues.--S Philbrick(Talk) 16:36, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

Time frame: July 1 to November 15th (latest) in election years (for foreign elections more typically from date election is called until election occurs - say ~3 months in many cases). Stop IP edits with semi-protection or PC (did that ever get officially settled? <g>). Suggest that "opinion stuff" be kept to a minimum (including stuff from campaign sites and pamphlets), and not have "single issue campaign issue articles" created on political candidates. It covers candidates and campaigns in general, and for differing times it also applies to many foreign campaigns and candidates. And it basically includes all offices -- some of the most egregious defamations occur for local offices. And ("If I were King of the Forest ..." - movie allusion for those who never heard the term) I would stop the "allegations of possible criminal activity" stuff which creeps in every election season. The Wikipedia deadline does not require we include such stuff in material falling under WP:BLP and I would suggest that COI be emended to include political campaign workers, as they can provide a very pernicious effect on any article. Too much? Collect (talk) 13:17, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

• Terrible idea. If Wikipedia can be used to provide timely information useful for voters, that is not a bug. And from the encyclopedic point of view, we do far better by allowing people to update biographies when their subjects are in the news and they are deciding how to vote than by asking them to hold off until they drop from their awareness (and Google's News search) then ask them to reconstruct their research. Even if we made the sacrifice of being out of date and losing editor interest, I am not even convinced that we would avoid POV or vandal edits better anyway, because fewer people would be reading and scrutinizing the articles in the off season. Just because you can make up some cute phrase like "silly season" does not mean you get to abolish the core mission or assert, without statistical evidence, that things are different during an arbitrarily defined period of time. Oh, and why the heck shouldn't we document a biography subject's musical preferences, if reliable sources saw fit to print them? Wnt (talk) 18:56, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

  Silly season, is established usage, though somewhat different form the OPs. and in the US it has almost precisely this pre-elction meaning Silly season#Politics. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 21:32, 2 July 2014 (UTC).
  

  I have volunteered in U.S. political campaigns for 45 years, and the only person I have ever heard use the phrase "silly season" is Collect, who seems to think that it has enormous persuasive power. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 06:42, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

  Well, at least around Wikipedia parts, it is a common expression by no means limited to Collect. I don't know of any academic studies of the phenomenon, but anecdotally it does seem to be true that in the run up to elections (not just in the US) there is a greater tendency to see newcomers show up (either campaign workers or just excited members of the general public) to disparage or praise candidates. I'm not 100% sure that the Tupac/Rubio edit counts, though, as I'm having a hard time understanding if it is a positive or negative. Perhaps that's because of my own horrific and embarrassing musical tastes. :-) --Jimbo Wales (talk) 12:42, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

(ec)I did not coin the term at all. It is found in British dictionaries as well. It was ancient when Brewer mentioned it in 1895 - though usually it referred to "fluff" while Parliament was not is session. For modern usage see [10], [11], in Britain. Urban Dictionary [12] Political silly season. In politics, the time, especially just before the election, when undeliverable promises and wild accusations are the order., [13] showing widespread US usage. [14] used by Barack Obama in 2007. Used in the New York times from 1865 on. 1874 for "political silly season." [15] Unless I am on the order of two hundred years old, I did not coin the term. Nor did I create several hundred thousand usages of the term. That an editor does not know a term does not mean the other editor created it <g>. Collect (talk) 12:58, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

Very common term here in the UK - and at the moment, obscure Merkian politicians are getting touch ups to their BLP's left right and centre. -Roxy the dog (resonate) 13:25, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

I note the Farage BLP has had edits on the order of Nigel Farage is responsible for promoting hate against Romanians in the UK., Nigel Farage is a colossal racist and the like (and I doubt he is the only victim in UK political BLPs.) The problem is quite international is scope, and the horrid fact is that actual official campaign workers are and have been active on Wikipedia. Collect (talk) 13:33, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

I neither thought nor said that you coined the term, Collect, but instead observed that in my experience, the term is not common political parlance in the United States, even if Obama said it in 2007. I agree with you 100% that political biographies are subject to an increased risk of promotional or derogatory edits during campaign season. But a media controversy can and does trigger that crap at any time. The same is true of bios of top ranked college athletes at the time of a professional draft, starlets when a new film is being released, tech start-ups when an IPO is imminent, and so on. If specific articles are being messed with, protect those specific articles. But I oppose blanket pre-emptive protection of an entire class of articles. Silly season, after all, is 365.25 days a year, every year. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 04:48, 4 July 2014 (UTC)

It has been in common usage in the US for a hundred and fifty years or more. Hundreds of thousands of usages, in fact. That you had not known it is not particularly relevant, alas. And the issue includes deliberate usage of Wikipedia for political campaigns - which is rather a different category than your examples of college athletes. Yes -- sports figures also have trivia in articles, but those articles do not have national political impact. Such usage is damaging to Wikipedia and to the political process and thus should be dealt with rather than covering our heads with blankets. And some of the "controversies" are contrived by campaign workers, and they routinely abuse Wikipedia to promote them. Collect (talk) 12:28, 4 July 2014 (UTC)

It certainly seems like a silly term, because American political news is silly all year round. Literally, the closest thing we have to fair and in-depth analysis of the issues on television are performances by stand-up comedians. But none of this argues that Wikipedia should strive to some sort of monastic purity in how we present the information that is not sustained by how we obtained it. All we should be doing is harvesting and presenting the information that is out there - it's like agriculture. You don't send a truck of migrants out to pick an orchard of juice oranges and expect them to come back with jumbo navels. Anyone who pretends to be "improving" the product by carving what he thinks looks like a little navel into each orange is not actually helping. Wnt (talk) 18:51, 4 July 2014 (UTC)

? Collect (talk) 18:54, 4 July 2014 (UTC)

We're only as good as our sources. We can't improve on the information by cutting out what someone thinks is 'trivial' any more than you can improve a document by photocopying it. All we can do by that means is to lose information. Wnt (talk) 19:16, 4 July 2014 (UTC)

In short -- you believe that adding campaign pamphlets to BLPs of politicians is reasonable. I demur. Just as I do not believe advertising of any kind - for or against any person or product belongs on Wikipedia. Period. As for "cutting out material" I suggest you look at Joseph Widney after cutting, and Joseph Widney before cutting Collect (talk)

Feeding the bears

Ha, yes, the vandals who altered the United States Secretary of Defense to celebrate Tim Howard made me chuckle too as I stepped in with my mop to help clean up the mess, but why did you have to publicly celebrate the vandalism? Even with your disclaimer, it will only encourage the next wave of vandals who also want to make national headlines to target more popular articles. Or, far worse, see how long they can get away with vandalizing little-watched articles (like this bit of damage I discovered nearly 11 months after it was done). Parks put up "do not feed the bears" signs because feeding the bears only encourages them to come around more often, placing campers in greater danger. Praising the vandals, even the clever ones, is like feeding the bears. - Dravecky (talk) 06:35, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

I don't disagree with you. I've struggled with this in the past and often decided not to comment at all. Being dour and sour isn't really the Wikipedia way, but feeding the bears is a bad idea too. :-)--Jimbo Wales (talk) 08:36, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

I've saved the funny version in case anybody wants to have a look, User:Jehochman/United States Secretary of Defense. It might be good is to teach people to copy pages into userspace, and then make humorous edits. Jehochman ^Talk 14:49, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

Would it not make more sense to just post a link to the diff of the "funny" version rather than creating a copyvio fork in your userspace? At the very least, put an edit in pointing to the original for proper attribution. Resolute 22:27, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

One final note on this: the bear, uh, editor who made the "famous" edits is proud of his work and the recognition and not at all remorseful. - Dravecky (talk) 00:24, 4 July 2014 (UTC)

Unfortunate demise

I wonder if you ever used the Reflinks tool?

It was widely used, widely respected, widely referred to, and helped improve the quality of WIkipedia's referencing against vulnerability to linkrot as well as enhancing the look and feel of the references, and pretty much ensuring our readership could track down or check references easily.

At midnight on 30 June it died, causing those many of us who found it of tremendous value to wail and gnash our teeth. It died because reports suggest its creator was unable or unwilling to migrate the tool from Toolserver. I have no interest in the reasons behind the death, but I hope to influence you to investigate from WMF's position the best way of reviving or replacing this tool.

For some things we cannot just rely upon the wisdom of crowds. Sometimes we have to consider spending money. Fiddle Faddle 13:10, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

Who was the creator of that tool, anyway? If there was ever someone who deserved a barnstar for providing such a service... Anyway, hopefully a solution can be found as it was a very valuable tool. Resolute 13:37, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

It has reappeared, now migrated. I have no idea if this is a temporary solution or permanent. I only found out because I had not removed the code from my code place and clicked it absent mindedly. Fiddle Faddle 14:23, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

Another reason Wikipedia should not be allowed to depend on closed source infrastructure code. All such tools (bots etc). should only be allowed to run from WMF-hosted publicly-readable repositories, so they can always be ported/forked/whatever if the original maintainer becomes unavailable. 173.228.123.145 (talk) 15:48, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

That is exactly what Toollabs is. What we're experiencing now is the painful transition. Resolute 22:23, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

Toollabs requires publicly accessible code? That's good to hear, as Toolserver didn't require it. I wonder if any Toolserver users have quit over that (if they did, I don't care). Meanwhile we still have tons of closed-source bots running from the bot programmer's own machines instead of from Toollabs. That should also stop as it has resulted in recurring headaches when the operator has issues and the bot can't be smoothly handed over to a new operator. Plus there are many unauthorized bots messing things up, not only from over-enthusiastic editors who think they are doing good, but now from flat-out abusers such as spammers. That should be stopped at the server side if the bot is not running from Toollabs. 173.228.123.145 (talk) 02:49, 4 July 2014 (UTC)

Probability of COI or PAE among WMF visitors

Whatever
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
Closing per [16] JoeSperrazza (talk) 16:29, 3 July 2014 (UTC) Jimbo, if you took a sample of all the businesses and organizations that sent representatives to visit the Wikimedia Foundation headquarters in person, of those entities that have a Wikipedia article, what percentage of those articles do you think would have evidence of substantial conflict of interest or paid advocacy editing present in the revision history (regardless of whether or not that content endures in the current article)? Would you say less than 10%, between 10% and 25%, between 26% and 50%, between 51% and 75%, between 76% and 90%, or more than 90%? - 2001:558:1400:10:C2:2B3:2D1A:CB69 (talk) 16:03, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

Commons opens door to welcome undisclosed paid editing.

The initial draft of this policy was restricted to uploads, which made sense, but somewhere along the way the wording was changed to "contributions". Now paid editors can participate in policy matters as well. Until this point I was a strong believer Commons was headed in the right direction. Now I am left shaking my head. Saffron Blaze (talk) 04:33, 4 July 2014 (UTC)

I too had no problem with not disclosing that photos were being uploaded by people with a financial interest in doing so, e.g. professional photographers. But the changed wording is extremely problematic since it says (by omission) that policy and guidelines can be edited by paid editors, even editors who are being paid to edit that particular policy. As a non-profit, the WMF cannot allow the policy of its projects to be bought and sold.

The change in wording was made after almost half the !votes were in and folks began asking for a snow-close. One editor says that this was the work of @Odder: and Russavia - can anybody track this down?

The question is what to do about it? I'll suggest an RfC first, to change it back to just photo uploads. But it should be stated upfront that that is not the only step that might be taken.

This problem is not unique to Commons. There is a sentence in WP:COI stating that "Any editor who discusses proposed changes to WP:COI or to any conflict of interest policy or guideline, should disclose in that discussion if he or she has been paid to edit on Wikipedia." An administrator, who has bragged on this (Jimbo's) talkpage that he has done paid editing - has refused to make that disclosure on the COI talk page, even after he was gently reminded of the requirement. He is proposing that the ToU disclosure requirements be removed,and I believe it would be relevant to everybody participating to know that he is a paid admin. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 14:34, 4 July 2014 (UTC)

When another editor raised the point, he hatted it. Figureofnine (talk • contribs) 15:04, 4 July 2014 (UTC)

@Smallbones: you said "As a non-profit, the WMF cannot allow the policy of its projects to be bought and sold." but surely you realise the WMF already did this themselves when they sold their name, and everything the projects supposedly stand for, when they endorsed the paid-editing position at Belfer, which essentially saw pro-US government propaganda being inserted into the encyclopedia. 176.61.24.55 (talk) 21:07, 4 July 2014 (UTC)

Same ol' BS from the same ol' paid editors. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 21:30, 4 July 2014 (UTC)

@Smallbones: I can assure you that I am not a paid editor, and the only one peddling the same ol' BS is you. Not only was the Belfer position a total sell-out on the part of the WMF, but did you know that it also included the inclusion of terrorist propaganda into this very encyclopedia. Anyone familiar with Mojahedin-e-Khalq will know precisely what I am talking about. And Sue Gardner stated there was nothing of any concern in any of their endorsed paid editors' editing. WOW! And you are worried about an admin not disclosing some paid editing on some article somewhere in the encyclopedia. Really, Smallbones, really? 89.101.75.216 (talk) 23:39, 4 July 2014 (UTC)

Reddit IAmA

Hey Jimmy - I was wondering if you'd be interested in hosting an AMA (Ask Me Anything) session at http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/? For a brief overview, an AMA involves you posting something along the lines of "I am Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia: AMA". Users then post questions, upvote/downvote them, and you'd have the pleasure of answering the questions (preferably the most popular ones).

I believe the last time you were asked on your talk page was back in 2011, and you didn't show much interest. Seeing that you've since posted a bit on reddit (most notably by making comments on /r/Bitcoin), I think hosting an IAmA would be a nice chance to discuss Wikimedia, answer questions, and hell, maybe even spark some interest with potential editors/donators. I don't doubt that there'll be strong interest there. Thanks, ~SuperHamster Talk Contribs 05:42, 4 July 2014 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) If you have the time Jimbo I would love to see it too. I'd love to see both what is asked and your responses :-) ♥ Solarra ♥ ^{♪ 話 ♪} ߷ _{♀ 投稿 ♀} 07:43, 4 July 2014 (UTC)

Ernest Shackleton

Did you know there's big,big love from a single user towards Ernest Shackleton that is threatening the neutral point of view of all depictions of the history of antarctic exploration?--37.230.17.60 (talk) 19:38, 4 July 2014 (UTC)

Robert Falcon Scott

Quite similar to the love towards Ernest Shackleton that has already been mentioned, the same person that has been adulating Ernest Shackleton on all Wikipedias has substituted the portrait photograph of his rival Robert Falcon Scott used on all Wikipedias around the world

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/62/Scott_of_the_Antarctic_crop.jpg

with this one:

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Falcon_Scott#mediaviewer/Datei:RFScott.jpg

...--37.230.17.60 (talk) 20:26, 4 July 2014 (UTC)

Information on Wikipedia in North Korea

A child in Pyongyang engaging in computer training

Dorood! I read a week or so ago on your talk page about North Korea, and I was very interested to read about your information on Wikipedia being used in North Korea by teenagers to do their homework. It is very interesting to me, as I too live in a country which sees strict censorship of information, although not as bad as in the so-called Hermit Kingdom. I have added this information to the "Education in North Korea" article, it will certainly be interesting information for Wikipedia readers. Any more information you can add to this would be fantastic; I would like to hear more about it.

Also, congratulations to you and your fantastic country on it's most auspicious of days. I am sure you are very proud of your country, and your country of you. You both have much to be proud of. Kodafez, Muhammed 151.245.61.39 (talk) 20:38, 4 July 2014 (UTC)

So, assuming this is a troll, does anybody have any idea how an IP address can be made to appear to come from North Korea or Iran like this? It's a pretty nifty stunt. Carrite (talk) 20:48, 4 July 2014 (UTC)

Dorood Jimmy. It would appear that User:Smallbones didn't like my edit to that article for some reason. I hope it isn't because he has a problem with you personally or doesn't believe you said those words. The onus is on editors who wish to remove neutrally worded, sourced information into articles to state why. I am not too sure why, because he didn't leave an edit summary or hasn't discussed it. Such reverts discourage editors such as myself from editing the encyclopedia, and some might see it as disruptive. Perhaps Smallbones can explain why he has removed this information from the article. I will revert him in the meantime.

Jimmy, I look forward to hearing more from you on the North Korea USB story, it is very interesting to many of us, especially to editors such as myself here in Iran. I will check in again when I go back to the net cafe, as this connection is expensive to use for internet. Kodafez, Muhammed 130.255.249.227 (talk) 00:02, 5 July 2014 (UTC)