User talk:Jimbo Wales

Knight Foundation Grant continued

(continued from "#The Knight Foundation Grant")

This is a continuation of the prior thread, above, to allow archiving earlier posts from 2 weeks prior. -Wikid77 (talk) 00:56, 25 February 2016 (UTC)

The purpose of the Knowledge Engine

What is the true goal of the search engine? The search engine will be designed to access a mix of Wikimedia content and content from other sources. Unlike other search engines, a major part of the search results for the Knowledge Engine will direct people to Wikipedia-related projects. I think that may be the main purpose of the search engine. They want to create a search engine to encourage people to Wikimedia owned content. The Wikipedia community does not want banners ads on Wikipedia articles. But with the new search engine there can be ads with each search result to make money for the WMF. The world does not need another search engine. But this search engine can be used to indirectly make money off of Wikipedia content without the ads being on Wikipedia. If the search engine will not have any ads then it would be extremely expensive to run. How will the search engine be funded once it is running? This question should be answered now rather than later. If the search engine was only for editors it would not have a mix of Wikimedia content as part of the search results. It will be for anyone person that wants to find public information on any topic. Correct me if I am wrong. It is important to ask who benefits from the search engine. QuackGuru (talk) 19:02, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

This is all very confused, as are most press reports. We are not building a separate new project. We are not building a search engine to compete with Google. There has been no discussion of putting ads on anything, and I would very firmly and publicly oppose it, and I don't see any possible way that it is going to happen. We do not have the resources, nor the interest, nor the engineering resources, to build a search engine to compete with Google or anyone else. All suggestions that we are planning to do so, that we have ever planned to do so, are completely and totally false.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 13:45, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

Probably its purpose is to keep WMF projects' content relevant in a world where screens and attention spans are too small for parsing an encyclopedia. There is already [1] that bills itself as a "knowledge engine", it mines public databases for facts in response to natural language queries, and it monetizes those searches. Wonder what sources it uses? Not surprising if the WMF wanted to make one of these themselves. Geogene (talk) 19:17, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

We are not planning to do anything like this, and especially not planning to monetize searches.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 13:45, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

User:Geogene, something is not quite right about this. According to a news article "Wales and the Wikimedia Foundation have said externally that the Knowledge Engine will primarily improve search within Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects, but leaked documents and the grant application itself paint a different picture."[2] Is this true? Has Wales and the WMF have not been totally honest with the Wikipedia community? The search engine will have its own website. It appears the search engine is not directly intended for editors to improve Wikipedia content. QuackGuru (talk) 20:58, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

That news report, like many, is false. The search engine will not have its own website, unless you count www.wikipedia.org as a new separate website. (It has always been a front end to our internal search and I know of no plans to change that.) It is not directly intended for editors to improve Wikipedia content, although that is one design possibility that I personally think is quite important.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 13:45, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

Did you read the FAQ? Alanscottwalker (talk) 21:07, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

Asked and answered. Note that Jimbo made a commitment to let me know in the unlikely event that the answer ever changes so that I can lodge an objection. --Guy Macon (talk) 21:29, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

That's right.Guy Macon has been given that commitment. That is important, imo. Nocturnalnow (talk) 23:23, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

Please show evidence that "The Wikipedia community does want banners ads on Wikipedia articles." I seriously doubt that is the case. I certainly do not want Wikipedia degraded by advertising; that has always been one of its major appeals. --David Tornheim (talk) 22:00, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

Im pretty sure there's a missing "not" in the OP. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 23:31, 16 February 2016 (UTC). Y

Now that that has been fixed, to the point I wanted to make... --David Tornheim (talk) 19:19, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

I find it quite troubling that rumors such as these are circulating: "But with the new search engine there can be ads with each search result to make money for the WMF. The world does not need another search engine." There has been no evidence I have seen that WMF plans to make a search engine TO MAKE MONEY. These false and destructive rumors needs to stop. One only need to look at the documents recently uncovered and discuss the knowledge engine here to see that its purpose is being misrepresented. --David Tornheim (talk) 19:19, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

I think that what may be happening is that a kind of conspiracy theory is developing, based upon a bad-faith interpretation of what is happening with this knowledge engine. I've always felt the search function is clunky and can be improved. I don't see anything sinister, though I suppose a case can be made that there are higher priorities for devotion of resources. Coretheapple (talk) 17:29, 20 February 2016 (UTC)

That's how I read it too. As for priorities of resources, that *is* a legitimate complaint. But that is not what I am hearing in these complaints. As a "user" of Wikipedia and Google, I would like a better search engine when what I am looking for is not a commercial in nature. So I am delighted by this project, and I think others should be too--unless as you say, they think it is part of some "sinister" conspiracy that they have provided no evidence for. And FYI, more of my thoughts on this matter and other discussion are taking place here. --David Tornheim (talk) 01:24, 21 February 2016 (UTC)

Yes there is a lot of bullshit swirling around. But Doc James is not a crazy person and according to him there were big plans at one point per the Knight grant itself which talks very clearly about a search engine to compete with commercial search engines, and per insiders like this. Doc James has said there was a huge amount of secrecy around that, and that has been verified by insider people per comments like this. It seems that the WMF has moderated those plans but what is bugging me is the lack of acknowledgement of what actually happened in the summer/fall/winter. A clear statement from the board/Jimbo and Lila of what they were doing then would be amazing helpful and I cannot see why they will not out with it. Lila has at least acknowledged that they made a mistake by not talking to the community. Jytdog (talk) 02:45, 21 February 2016 (UTC)

You say "the Knight grant itself which talks very clearly about a search engine to compete with commercial search engines". (See Grant]). I never saw such language in the grant, and I read all of it. As I argued on SlimVirgin's talk page here, there was an obvious need for secrecy (undermined by Doc James) stated in the grant here:

Risks: Two challenges could disrupt the project:

1. Third-party influence or interference. Google, Yahoo or another big commercial search engine could suddenly devote resources to a similar project, which could reduce the success of the project. This is the biggest challenge, and an external one.

2. ...attrition...

And the need for secrecy as I explained there was because it does things that the other search engines, including things like Google Scholar do not do, and hence the other search engines might want to devote resources to a similar novel project and get credit for it and get new users because of it. Not because WMF was trying to create a full Internet search engine to compete directly with theirs. Google has a market capitalization close to $500 Billion [3], while Wikipedia has an annual budget of $65 Million. Behemoths like Google can crush, co-opt or duplicate little projects like the Knowledge engine. Those who work on projects in Silicon Valley know this.

Please share with us the part where it says it is trying to "compete" with the commercial search engines. --David Tornheim (talk) 19:22, 21 February 2016 (UTC)

I found this very helpful in seeing why the rumors have been swirling around that the "Knowledge Engine" was going to compete with Google. Apparently a high level person named Damon had brainstormed some big plans that got ditched. I am guessing they got ditched because staff and other people who know Wikipedia knew it would never fly. Those in the Discovery team meeting seem to have a lot of common sense and expertise, and I have the sense they understand the community. And all seem eager to be more transparent and avoid secrecy, but also to honor secrecy when appropriate. I have confidence in them, and I really appreciate their willingness to share the meeting notes. I think this incident will be a wake-up call for the future for leadership of the organization, and we will see further improvements with communication from the top from now on. Until this happened, I never paid any attention to what was going on at the top. --David Tornheim (talk) 12:09, 25 February 2016 (UTC)

"I do not want to build a search engine"

Hi Jimbo, above you stated that you don't want to build a search engine. [4] However in the past you have said "It’s something I care about deeply. I will return again and again in my career to search, either as an investor, a contributor, a donor, or a cheerleader." [5] Could you tell us more about when and why your views changed? the wub "?!" 21:32, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

+1 Seddon ^talk 22:39, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

@Jimbo Wales: still curious about this... the wub "?!" 11:03, 19 February 2016 (UTC)

Sorry I missed the question. Why do you think something has changed? I would gladly be an investor in an open source search project if I thought it looked promising. I would gladly contribute as an advisor or whatever the organizers might find useful. I would gladly donate money to an effort. I would gladly be a cheerleader. So, nothing about that has changed. I do not think the WMF should create a general purpose search engine - indeed, I find that idea completely far-fetched, and I don't have any interest in doing it myself.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 14:33, 20 February 2016 (UTC)

How do you feel about usability experiments where ordinary people recruited through, e.g. neighborhood postbill flyers or Craigslist gigs ads, come in to some office without any Wikimedia or Wikipedia branding (but with usability studies branding), are offered payment for their agreement to be observed answering questions requiring general reference information with a web browser on low-end phones, laptops, and tablets, with their behavior analyzed to identify deficiencies in Wikimedia search and default search engines' interface with Wikimedia projects? EllenCT (talk) 15:39, 21 February 2016 (UTC)

I strongly support usability experiments with various classes or categories of users on a variety of devices. We have a poor understanding, mostly anecdotal and not sufficiently systematic, about how people find us, what they are looking for when they do, and also importantly how they fail to find us when they are looking for what we provide. I just went to Wikivoyage and looked at recent changes. Someone just edited the entry on Lapu-Lapu, the section about arriving by plane. Then I went to Google and searched for "Lapu-Lapu by plane" - we are the 8th link, and the ones above us are all selling plane tickets. I think that's interesting, but what I don't know is whether people who do searches like that are looking for knowledge resources or if they are shopping. This is a totally random example. I think we - in the communities - would like to know more, and I hope that the Foundation, which is uniquely positioned to have the resources to do this kind of research, does a lot of it and shares it widely.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 15:55, 21 February 2016 (UTC)

How do we move forward placing the needs of the community ahead of boardmember aspirations?

The community should poll each member of the Board of Trustees, asking when they became aware that the Foundation was accepting large grants with strings attached that were not being characterized correctly in public statements. But to move forward, how does the community get engineering resources assigned to the projects which the community actually wants, without regard to the aspirations of members of the Board? EllenCT (talk) 01:55, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

For me that was early Oct of 2015. The community tech team is a great step forwards. An idea first put forwards by Sue I think. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 07:32, 20 February 2016 (UTC)

If the Board passed a resolution saying that engineering resources should be directed to the projects requested by the community tech team within some quantified measurable margin, would that solve the problem going forward? EllenCT (talk) 15:25, 21 February 2016 (UTC)

Nothing about the current situation could be described as "aspirations of members of the Board".--Jimbo Wales (talk) 14:34, 20 February 2016 (UTC)

@Jimbo Wales: I didn't think so, but I hope it's clear that having us elect a board member, then immediately ejecting him and appointing a replacement (from among previous board members) instead of having us elect another, is going to convey the impression that the board has a low "you lot don't matter" regard for the community, whether they really do or not. It was a poor move both strategically and tactically. It's clear that much of the negativity and suspicion above about KE is a direct result (causally, not just correlated). This has come at a bad time.

I have a lot of experience at such organizations (9 or 10 years at EFF, several more at CRF). At EFF I "survived" five different management changes and top-to-bottom major organizational shifts that affected the internal culture, the relationship between the board and the rest of the organization, and the nature of the mission and the work to accomplish it. I've seen it all, including what works and what is like organizationally punching yourself in the face. Whatever the underlying rationales for it at the time, much of what's been going on comes across as closer to the latter, and looks a bit like insisting that continuing to self-pugilize is very important for reasons that an outsider isn't privy to.

Which kind of brings us full circle: Why is the editing community being treated like outsiders? I've been in a enough boardmeetings to know how they work for a group like this. Of course they don't want cameras in the boardroom so that every idle thing they say can be picked apart by people looking for something to vent about. But that is not the only way to increase transparency, responsiveness, accountability, and connectedness between the community and the board. The current situation is not tenable. Especially not when WP and presumably WMF are on the cusp of an (overdue) transition into a new phase of the organizational lifecycle. There are so much bigger fish to fry, and the community having more awareness of and input into how these issues are dealt with is going to be necessary and beneficial.

Top on that list for me is organized PoV editing (which is often not commercial, but ideological). Our present "assume good faith and keep assuming it in face of all but the most damning mass of evidence to the contrary" collective mindset is being ruthlessly exploited by WP:CIVILPOV gamers. The current administrative approach amounts to a belief that being obsequiously nice to one another is the most important thing on WP. It's not. Rather, it is being an encyclopedia with reliable, readable information instead of a firehose of nonsense and trivia-wankery. It's time that WP grew up a little more and took WP:ENC, WP:COMPETENCE, WP:5THWHEEL, and WP:NOTHERE more seriously. [End mini op-ed.]
PS: I posted essentially the same comment last night, but do not see it in the edit history or in the page's text. I've been having this edits-not-actually-going-through problem fairly often lately at en.WP, and I have a 170 Mbit connection.
 — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  20:27, 20 February 2016 (UTC)

Voters often select candidates based on the extent to which they believe the boardmember will aspire to propose and dispose of resolutions according to the voters' preferences. If there is a different way representation is supposed to work, please let us know. EllenCT (talk) 15:28, 21 February 2016 (UTC)

Honestly, for this soap opera drama to have dragged on for so long, in my opinion, there's only one former board member still feeding his aspirations (& this isn't his talk page). AnonNep (talk) 16:06, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

Sponsorship and product placement

Today's featured article is 2012 Budweiser Shootout and so it gets top billing on the main page. This topic is about a race and the mention of Budweiser is a bit of commercial sponsorship which is intended to promote that brand by associating it with such events. This bothers me as our policy WP:SOAP indicates that we should not be assisting such promotional activity. This trend is spreading from the US to the UK and it bothers me even more to find the Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race billing itself as the The Cancer Research UK Boat Race and the BNY Mellon Boat Race. To what extent should we resist this infiltration of commercial sponsors into our topic titles? The BBC has a general policy of down-playing such promotions in their public-service broadcasting. Should we follow their example? Andrew D. (talk) 13:42, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

The BBC doesn't work by user consensus, and doesn't have a policy derived in that way called WP:COMMONNAME. That should decide how we title things. --Dweller (talk) 14:02, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

To be clear, most "topics" retain their non-sponsored name (e.g. The Boat Race(s), contrary to the implication above) and highlight the sponsorship names in the lead (e.g. "... (also known as The Cancer Research UK Boat Races) ...")). The Football League Cup and the FA Cup are other good examples of this. But these events have very clear, easy to identify names. What is the suggested alternative name for 2012 Budweiser Shootout for instance? Are you aware of WP:COMMONNAME? The Rambling Man (talk) 14:06, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

P.S. It's Boat Races by the way. The Rambling Man (talk) 14:07, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

I tend to agree with Andrew that we should be cautious in this area, but I don't think we should have a firm and out-of-context rule against it. Without inviting an edit war about it, please, I just looked at an example that came to my mind that I'm familiar with. I sometimes use what nearly everyone in London calls "Boris bikes". Certainly in everyday speech that's the common name. I don't know about sources, but I suppose most news reports refer to them in the same way. This is likely annoying for the sponsors, who used to be Barclays bank and now is Santander bank. Anyway, our article is currently titled by their official name Santander cycles with Boris Bikes as a mere redirect. I'm unsure that's correct, although the sponsors must be happy about it.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 14:50, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

Well, we are being cautious about it, and we do have a guideline that helps, it's the common name. All of the examples above where sponsorship isn't in the common name, the sponsorship doesn't appear in the article. It's up to the community to decide on the most appropriate names for these articles. And if we start to strip out the common names for some of these NASCAR races, what are we left with? Something like 2012 Aaron's 499 becomes 2012 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Race 10? Nifty. The Rambling Man (talk) 14:55, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

Yeah I checked a few NASCAR ones and I think our answer is reasonable there. But what you do think of the Santander cycles example? I am pretty sure it isn't the common name (though of course real research into what reliable sources say is warranted).--Jimbo Wales (talk) 15:14, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

Well, Boris Bikes is certainly how I know them, and I was completely unaware that they had changed from Barclays to Santander, I guess they're all red now, and not blue? Either way, it'd be a reasonable shout for a WP:RM. The Rambling Man (talk) 15:15, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

• I'm not often with Andrew D., but in this case I certainly agree with the sentiment. Sure, it's probably not something we can do something about, and rules and regulations blah blah. But it's pretty sad that we have to go along with it. BTW, I had to click on the article link to find out that this was a car race. So it's a pretty unhelpful title as well. Drmies (talk) 15:05, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

Commercial products should not be featured on the front page

I think the problem is deeper than this - I don't think we should feature commercial products on the front page period. I complain bitterly about once every 180 days when Square Enix gets another one of its products advertised here. (People tell me that some of them are old games, but so what? What company doesn't like seeing its name up in lights?) I think Main Page feature articles should be weighted toward more general articles - things that almost never make it through the process because they can never be "complete", unlike an ad for a single company's product. Now a sponsored event isn't necessarily a commercial product, but I think we would consider excusing some of the exceptions. Wnt (talk) 22:04, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

By "excusing some of the exceptions", do you mean putting articles into the Today's Featured Article space on the Main Page, that are not Featured Articles? MPS1992 (talk) 18:15, 19 February 2016 (UTC)

@MPS1992: I mean that if an article is not about a commercial product, but bears the name of a sponsor, I think we'd be OK with excusing it from a potential ban on commercialism and let it have a shot (a fair consideration like any other article) for TFA featured status. Ronald MacDonald House, that kind of thing. So I'd prefer not having a ban on sponsor names with the articles, and having only/instead a ban on commercial products as TFA. To be clear what I mean though, I think a NASCAR race is very clearly a commercial product - unless they have free admission and let people distribute footage of their race for free! Wnt (talk) 20:17, 19 February 2016 (UTC)

Well, such a ban would certainly make choosing Today's Featured Article a lot easier. Once we have rendered ineligible all cars, airplanes and other forms of transport whether still produced or long obsolete, all buildings constructed by or for commercial companies, all tourist attractions and also historical locations that still have any tourist element, individuals mainly notable for involvement with a product or company, and any events that have or had commercial involvement apart from your few exceptions, the TFA slot on the main page will mainly be a rich diet of politicians, soldiers, and tropical weather systems. MPS1992 (talk) 20:44, 19 February 2016 (UTC)

Well, if Rihanna didn't have a TFA today it wouldn't mean that she isn't a very good singer, but I might have taken it to mean she didn't have very good PR people, since after all, you'd think someone good at PR would have the skill and be willing to spend the resources to make something like that happen, to the point where it would seem out of place if they did not. Still, are there not enough animals, plants, countries, tourist attractions not behind a toll gate, astronomical bodies, wars, widgets sold by more than one company, minerals, ligaments, genes, kinds of fermented beverage, meteorological phenomena, firefighting techniques, gods, varieties of edged weapon, musical instruments, chemical weapons, retired locomotives? I know we see such things so infrequently they start to seem out of place, like how did this mook get on the stage?, but we could present a more more encyclopedic encyclopedia if we would feature more things that aren't actively being marketed. Wnt (talk) 18:23, 20 February 2016 (UTC)

That's true. So let us both head over to Wikipedia:Featured Article Candidates and get started. Just in Wikipedia:Featured Article Candidates#Older nominations I have counted more than a dozen candidates that meet your criteria. Sadly Passenger pigeon would not due to its mention of the commercial Cincinnati Zoo in its lead, which might be carried over into a TFA appearance, and Margaret Murray likewise for the numerous mentions of tourist destinations. But there is plenty to do there; please report back on how you get on.

I think your apparent implication that Rehab (Rihanna song) was brought to FA status by Rihanna's PR people, is a little unwise if not backed by evidence. MPS1992 (talk) 19:09, 20 February 2016 (UTC)

I think a ban on brand names from being featured articles is a good idea. Coretheapple (talk) 18:53, 20 February 2016 (UTC)

It would be possible to propose such a thing. But the discussion of Wnt's extreme approach perhaps will give ideas as to possible pitfalls. MPS1992 (talk) 19:09, 20 February 2016 (UTC)

Yes, and while we are at it, lets ban everything else someone doesn't like because they don't like how the world works. Because if you are going to allow your bias to harm this project, you might as well go whole hog. Resolute 19:21, 20 February 2016 (UTC)

@MPS1992: I did not actually propose a ban on articles that mention commercial entities in their lead paragraph ... though perhaps that can be gamed ... I was only speaking of articles about commercial products above. Also, I did not say that Rihanna's PR people got that article featured; nor will I say that DC Comics got their character featured today. It's entirely possible that, as Einstein would say, chance favors the prepared PR guy, and that all these companies hire people to sit around and do nothing and their products just appear in movies, news fluff etc. because they are really fundamental to society. Can't rule it out. Now as for the argument (@Resolute:) about censorship and bias, well, I am not a fan of censorship. I do note, however, that not every article gets to be on the front page; we choose them somehow, according to a bunch of criteria, and right now those criteria seem to be delivering a heavy mix of commercial products. I don't think it's really so censorious to feature articles about genres of music, or yearly reviews of music that mention multiple awards, rather than individual singers. I think the criteria are making it too easy to be 'comprehensive' about one little bit of nothing and pushing away higher-level content. Wnt (talk) 02:05, 21 February 2016 (UTC)

Wnt! Welcome back. So, how have you been getting on? I have been working on Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Hartebeest/archive2#Comments by MPS1992 and of course on the noble Hartebeest. I hope that the Hartebeest is not disqualified due to its meat being "highly regarded" as a commercial product in the lede, nor its "Relationship with humans" section advertising how healthy Hartebeest meat is due to its polyunsaturates to saturates ratio. Does this remind you of your favourite commercially advertised margarine? Are you OK with it? Do remember that the noble Hartebeest is actually an antelope-related critter, not a brand name.

Anyway Wnt, which "things that aren't actively being marketed" Featured Article Candidate did you pick to work on? (They're all at Wikipedia:Featured article candidates if you lost the link.) How is it going? MPS1992 (talk) 02:22, 21 February 2016 (UTC)

I never denied that the people editing about commercial products do good work; they can be very professional. But... is that what we want? (I didn't get what you mean about the hartebeest) Wnt (talk) 14:49, 21 February 2016 (UTC)

@Wnt: - Yes, articles are picked for TFA on the basis of article quality. If you want to see more articles on genres of music, get to writing FAs about them. But yearly reviews are out, because we would be relying on commercial publications to compile those. Resolute 14:43, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

Most of the people who work at FAC as reviewers and whatnot are fair, helpful, and competent. If anyone has a different view, please tell anyone involved or post a note on a relevant talk page. If no one has a different view, then I'm not seeing how you can substantiate the argument that more suitable articles are being deliberately excluded from the Today's Featured Article section of the Main Page. - Dank (push to talk) 03:04, 21 February 2016 (UTC)

I should note that I originally made a comment, not a full proposal; the heading above this section was added by someone else. So I hadn't really decided every detail of how a TFA product ban would work. But since I keep getting asked about it, I'll run through the current contents of FAC briefly. Among the "current nominations", obvious noncommercial entries (10) are: Huguenot-Walloon half dollar, Gudovac massacre, Typhoon Nabi, Port Phillip v Van Diemen's Land, 1851, Canadian National Vimy Memorial, Operation Ironside, Heterodontosaurus, William Sterndale Bennett, Ben Crosby, and Briarcliff Farms. (The last appears to be defunct and therefore is no longer a commercial entity) PR to hype individuals might be an issue we also need to deal with, but I did not propose restricting biographies; doing so would require some kind of distinction between a person who is recognizable as a "product" vs. not, unless we banned them all. These happen to be from the 19th century anyway. Obvious commercial entries (3) are 2007 Coca-Cola 600, Ride the Lightning, and The Good Terrorist. I can picture having some kind of exception that allows the last item, perhaps even the last two, based on some kind of documented and impartial standard of "importance", but I have not proposed it and could live without it. Among the older entries I sometimes grudgingly would have to permit (5) people Courtney Love, Misty Copeland, Margaret Murray, Sonam Kapoor, Monroe Edwards (as people, not products, per above). Clear commercial entries (8) are CMLL World Heavyweight Championship, Ancient Trader, I'm Not Your Hero, Persona (series), History of York City F.C. (1980–present), Rejoined, Hex Enduction Hour, Jumping Flash!. I think it is relatively clear that the following (16) are noncommercial: Hartebeest, Persoonia terminalis, Philippine Constabulary Band, 7th Army (Kingdom of Yugoslavia), Boise National Forest, Isopogon anemonifolius, Tibesti Mountains, Christ lag in Todes Banden, BWV 4, Imperial Gift, Passenger pigeon, Serpin, Sexuality after spinal cord injury, Calutron, Westminster Assembly, The Oceanides, House of Plantagenet. I should note that the commercial/noncommercial status of some of these depends on public domain laws - The Oceanides might be thrown back to some owner by some ill-conceived copyright extension plan, whereas there is a chance that something like Jumping Flash might have been released under a public license by now, and this would change how I think their status should be counted. Additionally, I would categorize notable real estate (3) as noncommercial provided there was no clear indication there was a push on to hype it for sale: Literary Hall, Etchmiadzin Cathedral, U.S. Route 25 in Michigan. From this, it appears that 3/13 and 8/32 of the entries are what I would class as commercial, i.e. roughly 25%. Wnt (talk) 15:52, 21 February 2016 (UTC)

Thank you for going through these in such detail. But there are so many inconsistencies and illogicalities in this that I do not think it could ever work as a proposal. You used the example previously of a Square Enix game that was published decades ago, is not for sale and has no commercial value. Here in this thread you explained that such items should not be permitted on TFA because, "What company doesn't like seeing its name up in lights?" But now, you say that if a game has been released under a public license, it would then be acceptable on TFA, even though that obviously will mean the publisher's name will be "up in lights" just as much as the previous example. And then you have an exception for people, so if Richard Branson or Elon Musk or Steve Jobs were brought to FA, they could appear in TFA bringing onto the Main Page a cascade of the brands, products, and services associated with them, but if someone brought the 1977 vintage technological landmark Apple II to FA, that would not be acceptable for TFA.

A proposal that bans from TFA as "too commercial" a historical article about a small loss-making football club founded in 1908, owned by its own supporters for a period of the history in question, is doomed to failure. That article went straight in your "clear commercial entries" list presumably because, of course, football clubs sell admission tickets to their games. But "notable real estate" is acceptable on TFA from your point of view apparently, even if the location in question is a museum that charges a fee for admittance or makes a profit from its attached souvenir shop or tea shop. And a featured article about a culturally significant but commercially irrelevant punk album from 1982 drops straight into your list of unacceptable items, and presumably still would even if the band itself were defunct. It's just not sensible.

It is all very well railing against popular culture and the crassly commercial nature of it, but we do also need to consider the readers. They currently get a useful and educational sprinkling of wars and warships and long-dead bishops and politicians, and to me it does not seem sensible to deny them topics in which they might have more interest alongside that.

Above, when you said we should "feature more things that aren't actively being marketed", I suggested that we should contribute to exactly that, by working on featured article candidates that are not commercial. You don't seem to have contributed - do you plan to? MPS1992 (talk) 19:39, 21 February 2016 (UTC)

Like I said, I didn't claim to have this to the stage of a formal proposal - and it is true that some of the nuances would need careful investigation. If enacted, the policy would be a major part of TFA, and what aspect of TFA policy has not felled virtual forests with debate? It is possible I misclassified the football club - what I went by was that I read in the article the club had been sold back in the early 2000s; what you can sell is a commercial product. Also, as I said, people aren't really an exception - the problem is, they simply are not products. How would you categorize Donald Trump? Banning vanity coverage of particular people, based on some criteria or another, is simply a whole different proposal that I don't want to figure out at this time. Lastly, I think defunct products could be excepted from such a proposal, but we'd have to be careful. Defunct products that are still owned can still form part of someone's "brand" and have stringent copyright restrictions to match. Only when the products are genuinely defunct - in the sense that you can claim "abandoned work" status - or have been free-licensed for the world to play with, would I really like to see them showcased on the Main Page. Wnt (talk) 00:50, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

Here's the problem. You didn't mis-classify the football team. It is still operating, and it still tries to sell a product. So does every other sports team. Every singer, even every politician. Every book. Every song. Every author. Even every politician. Donald Trump is easy. The man exists to sell himself, ergo he is out. When you talk about "nuance", you are really only talking about making exceptions designed to apply your bias in a ham-fisted ban on what specific "commercial products" you don't like while allowing the "commercial products" you do. And undermining all of this is the fact that this proposal is hostile to the dissemination of information, which runs counter to the mandate of a project that aims to spread information. Resolute 15:26, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

I agree with you Resolute. This seems to be more about excluding topics that someone doesn't think are high brow enough to be on the main page (NASCAR, Video Games, Pop Music) than anything else. --In actu (Guerillero) | My Talk 15:32, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

As I understand what Wnt is suggesting, what he means is that Wikipedia should not be utilized to promote commercial products. I think that's a good general principle. Execution is another matter. If we have an article on Coretheapple Self-Whitening Toothpaste and it is worked up to GA and then FA status, perhaps with the always-helpful assistance of paid editors, does that go on the main page? That's the kind of situation I would envision, which can be handled on a case-by-case basis. There is no reason for editors to get all defensive and for their underwear to get into a twist over this. Coretheapple (talk) 15:36, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

The genesis of this debate was an auto race. That the race has a corporate sponsor is incidental to the race. But you know what? If someone takes the time to make Budweiser a FA, it deserves its day on the main page, just like any other FA. Resolute 17:50, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

I have no opinion on the auto race, but the issue is interesting: where does one draw the line in terms of commercial exploitation of the main page? Does one draw a line at all? In the case of my hypothetical toothpaste, I've utilized the services of the finest paid editors around, drafting entire sections of the article as is permitted, to guide the formation of an article of FA quality on my toothpaste. Does that deserve its day on the main page? Coretheapple (talk) 18:18, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

If someone writes an article about your toothpaste company that reaches FA status, it deserves to eventually be featured as TFA. I don't think your efforts to slant the question by integrating the possibility of paid editing or PR shills aids debate on whether or not something with commercial interest or sponsorship deserves to be TFA. Those are separate questions. Resolute 19:47, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

No, they're related, as paid editors congregate in articles about brands and commercial products. I think the way to deal with them is on a case-by-case basis, as indeed the article about my toothpaste may not be written by me or my reps. But it needs to be carefully scrutinized for that possibility, and if I have heavily participated it needs to be taken into consideration. As for NASCAR etc., I don't know enough about that subject to comment on it. Coretheapple (talk) 13:45, 23 February 2016 (UTC)

I see a big difference between an article being about being about a commercial product and an article be written or promoted to featured article status by people directly working for the company that produced said product. With the exception of the fictional toothpaste the only commercial products mentioned in this discussion so far have been the NASCAR race and Square Enix video games. Up to this point no evidence has been presented that employees of either company or people paid by them have been involved in either getting the articles promoted to feature article status or on the main page so I don't think the toothpaste example works here. If there was evidence that would be a different story though.--67.68.20.86 (talk) 19:43, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

To put it another way I don't think we should be basing this hypothetical articles but actual evidence that something like paid editing is actually happening on specific articles.--67.68.20.86 (talk) 19:48, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

(ec) The possibility of an article being promoted through paid editing is entirely feasible, and I think it's helpful to prepare for that eventuality, and also to set some common-sense boundaries in lesser cases. I don't know much about NASCAR and video games so I can't really speak to those examples. Coretheapple (talk) 19:52, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

The issue here is that the original proposel was to prevent all commercial products from being put on the Main Page not only articles about commercial products that have been created and promoted via paid editing. No one opposing the proposal has indicated that the support articles written by paid editors as a TFA and I am confident that if if there is evidence to this nature in a real article it would not become one.--67.68.20.86 (talk) 20:06, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

Considering that the large number of articles on corporations and people that have involvement by the subject, in particular by PR firms that operate openly and do a good job, I think it's only a matter of time before those articles get promoted. Coretheapple (talk) 20:11, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

It seems to me that if it were likely to happen, we would already have examples of it. Regardless, you are still conflating two separate issues. Resolute 21:48, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

I think it's a good idea to make sure everyone is on the same page so I do have a question for Coretheapple. Are you suggesting that we need to be vigilant about the possibility of companies paying editors to write and promote articles to feature article status or are you agreeing with Wnt's proposal to ban articles on commercial products from being at TFA based on the hypothetical possibility that this could happen in the future?--67.68.20.86 (talk) 22:15, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

Yes to both. I think that Wikipedia needs to not be commercially exploited, even unintentionally. It's bad enough that we have corporate PR people drafting entire sections of articles, and sometimes entire articles. It's a slippery slope before those entire articles to FA, and then on the main page. This is not some ditsy theoretical possibility. Coretheapple (talk) 13:41, 23 February 2016 (UTC)

Then you should have little trouble showing all the examples of PR-written FAs that made the main page... Resolute 15:39, 23 February 2016 (UTC)

It doesn't matter. The point is to head off such a possibility, to be proactive, not to close the barn door after the cows have gone. Coretheapple (talk) 14:53, 25 February 2016 (UTC)

It very much does matter, because nobody should be expected to even consider blacklisting of hard work editors put in to topics Coretheapple doesn't like over nebulous fears. What you are doing is similar in principle to the "but terrorism!" arguments our governments have made to place every greater restrictions on us. I am not willing to entertain rule creep that has an objectively negative impact on our mission on the basis of some nebulous boogeyman. Resolute 20:33, 25 February 2016 (UTC)

I appreciate that you've ratcheted up the rhetoric to an absurd level, as it indicates to me that this is an area that bears careful watching. I thank Wnt for raising the issue. Coretheapple (talk) 21:00, 25 February 2016 (UTC)

@Resolute: The ham-fistedness of what I suggested (and it is, really) is not the result of my bias, but the result of my attempt to make the line as clear as possible. I'm not saying that the race should be kept off the page because it is sponsored, but because the race itself is a commercial product, by which I mean, something with a price that can be bought and sold. Donald Trump may seem like a commercial product, but at least until he repeals some constitutional amendments he can't really be bought and sold, so he would not be affected by a ban on articles about commercial products. Whereas a sports team, however local and unimportant, that has been sold from one party to another really is a commercial product. What I suggested is also meant to have nothing to do with a ban on paid editing. That ban assumes that you can figure out who is paid editing - I'm assuming we can't, and that PR people will (and perhaps do) get their products featured on the Main Page every week and we can't prove a damn thing about it. So I'm not accusing; it doesn't even matter. What difference does it make if a company really does have die-hard fans who want to work on pushing its products every six months without getting paid to do so? It still distorts the range of Main Page content. Wnt (talk) 17:21, 23 February 2016 (UTC)

Without wishing to interrupt or set aside the very valid challenge that User:Resolute has set Coretheapple above, I wish to extend the same suggestion and request to Coretheapple that I earlier extended to Wnt. (Wnt has still not contributed as far as I can tell.) I believe that changes can be made, and that they can most easily be made by introducing a systemic bias in favour of totally non-commercial topics at WP:TFA. The simple way to achieve this is to work on such topics and their candidacies. I am currently working on Hartebeest, which has become even less commercial as the candidacy has proceeded. That article now has sufficient active reviewers, but Coretheapple or anyone else who feels like helping, can take any non-commercial and non-brand topic in WP:FAC#Older nominations and either improve the article based on the suggestions provided, or else add their own comments on how the article might be perfected. This is where articles gain their right to be on TFA, so it's important. Coretheapple, would you like to help? MPS1992 (talk) 23:09, 23 February 2016 (UTC)

The problem with your idea is I feel like you're asking the volunteers to play John Henry (folklore). On one side, there may be paid but unknown company editors bound and determined to get their products featured. On the other, volunteers playfully competing against one another. The competition is to see who can best answer the most picayune complaints about this or that article. I don't think it is possible to overwhelm commercial influence by this means indefinitely, though there are indeed some dogged feature article writers who put up a good fight. As for me, I prefer beginnings to endings - but just because I don't frequent FAC doesn't mean I can't see when we have the same company on the front page every six months. Wnt (talk) 13:50, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

I hope that this same bias against noncommercial candidates is extended to me when I try to promote my GAs, as they are noncommercial and I feel ripe. Meanwhile I need to explore further the process to ascertain how to guard against commercial abuse. Coretheapple (talk) 16:14, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

What bias against noncommercial candidates? Is there an unintentional double negative there? MPS1992 (talk) 08:40, 25 February 2016 (UTC)

Yes, sorry I meant "commercial." Was a bit shell-shocked after spending an hour hunting diffs in an SPI. Coretheapple (talk) 14:51, 25 February 2016 (UTC)

I think that indicating GA- or FA-level quality rating is something different. Yes, getting on the lists of GAs and FAs provides some commercial advantage, but compared to the number who browse to Wikipedia.org, how many people really browse through the GAs and FAs daily? The Main Page seems maybe ten thousand times more valuable from a marketing perspective, so I limited my suggestion to TFA appearances only. Wnt (talk) 20:26, 25 February 2016 (UTC)

The big questions, for me at least

(Jytdog made some refinements to this after he posted, but I was in the middle of in-line reponses. I hit save and of course there was an edit conflict. :-( I decided to just overwrite those refinements, and I'm sorry about that, but the cutting and pasting to fix it all up seemed like it would take enough time that I would probably hit another edit conflict. Our software for facilitating discussions depresses me.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 21:37, 20 February 2016 (UTC))

Thanks for noting that. no big deal... that is what i get for hitting 'save" too soon. Jytdog (talk) 02:57, 21 February 2016 (UTC)

Hi Jimmy. In response to your invitation, here are questions. I would be grateful if you would please try to understand the heart of each question, and if you would try to respond to that. If there is anything unclear or invalid about what I am asking, please ask me to clarify it or tell me why the question is invalid to you.

What I am looking for is how to move past all this and start looking forward. To do that, however, like any reconciliation process, there needs to be an explanation and acknowledgement of what happened, apologies given where needed, repairing whatever damage can be repaired, and an understanding about how things will be different in the future. I am trying to encompass all the things that folks have been saying, that appear to me (to me) to be the key issues.

Thanks again.

• Looking backward

1. About Doc James being dismissed from the board, I am looking for an explanation that goes beyond the he said/she said we have been provided to date. In my view, a joint statement is what is needed, and would probably contain difficult things for both parties to acknowledge. I would like to understand what the Board has been doing about trying to arrive at a joint statement with James about what happened. What efforts have been made? Have you tried a mediator? Is there anything ongoing, and if not, would you please consider starting to try? There is a lot at stake in such a statement being issued for me, and I reckon for others. If you are not aware of it, this issue, and specifically Doc James claims about what happened and why he was dismissed, are for me and others a key sticking point that makes us unable to let go of the Search issue and makes us believe there is much more there than what has been disclosed to date. Doc James is not a crazy person. He is not. He is in fact respected. Please try to understand what position that leaves many of us in. Maybe he misunderstood something, and misunderstandings got compounded into a really poisonous situation. That is the most sympathetic perspective on what you have been saying that I can muster. But a set of misunderstandings by him that profound, seems very unlikely. I hope you can understand that. I would really love it if efforts to arrive at a joint statement led to a reconciliation and James' re-appointment, but I recognize that is a very long shot. (this is damage that i am hoping can be repaired) But the questions are - what is the board doing about getting a joint statement together, and if the answer is "nothing", would you please commit to working on that? Jytdog (talk) 19:11, 20 February 2016 (UTC)

   I don't think a joint statement is really possible, nor at this point something that I think is worth working towards. James has publicly stated beliefs about why he was removed from the board which have been completely refuted by everyone who was there at the time. He has put forward a view to the community that this was some grand struggle for greater transparency which he lost with disastrous consequences for his board seat and presumably the rest of us. That wasn't true. Indeed, given how often I press for greater transparency and openness far more radical, I'd be the first on the chopping block if that were the case. The fact that he would lead the community down this path after leaving the board was, I'm afraid, entirely predictable and illustrates in my view why people lost trust in him in the first place.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 21:32, 20 February 2016 (UTC)

   First, thanks for answering this and the other questions and for generally making more ...moderate statements than you have in the past.

   On this one, I hear what you are saying, and this echoes what you have said all along. I understand that things got very bad. But I don't feel like you are hearing me, that James remains very respected in the community, and what you are saying makes no sense in light of my (and I think many other people's) experience with him. And the distance between what each of you are saying is almost impossible to bear, to anybody who really cares and thinks about what each of you are saying with respect for both sides. I am asking you to commit to trying, perhaps with a mediator. Maybe this is something I need to do an RfC on, to see if a joint statement is something the community really wants. Would you find this request more compelling if it had an RfC behind it? Do I need to go there for you to understand that this is something that is tearing up the community and that has done a lot of harm to the relationship between the board and the community? I don't even hear from you, that you understand that. Do you? Jytdog (talk) 23:42, 20 February 2016 (UTC)

   I understand that. I'm open to trying, but I don't see how it is possible. Perceptions seem radically different.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 15:11, 21 February 2016 (UTC)

   Why is a joint statement desirable? I would rather have new elections. EllenCT (talk) 15:59, 21 February 2016 (UTC)

   Jimbo Wales that is a step in the right direction. What I am asking is that you actually commit to trying, perhaps with a mediator. Dispute resolution processes are available in the real world, as you well know. And that you let us know when that process actually commences. Will you please do that? Jytdog (talk) 20:26, 21 February 2016 (UTC)

IOW the board has failed to communicate to James, as well as to the wider world, why he was dismissed. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 00:55, 22 February 2016 (UTC).

an aside, trying to get to the heart of the matter

Jimmy, I want to add something here, and I am saying this with regard to where I stand on all this stuff - the picture I have put together, based on what everyone (especially you, Lila, and James) has said, and importantly - what has not been said. I do see that the board got to a point where it felt it couldn't function with Doc James there; I do see that Doc James expected much more transparency than some of the people he dealt with were willing to consider. I cannot ignore either side of that.

Jimmy I want you to know, that every... single... response... that you have given to the community to date with regard to technology strategy and commitments, has only re-inforced the perception I have, that the board considers the WMF's technology strategy and budgetary commitments to be confidential. Your answers have either been more or less friendly but high level, or fairly curt negatives with regard to specifics (along the lines of "We are not doing x"; that is silly") There is a big hole where I am looking - namely, disclosure of what the technology strategy and budgetary commitments have been, as they evolved. The presence of the absence, as it were, is not ambiguous - it is clear. (of course, the questions I and others have posed about that, remain standing, and can be answered at any time)

So again, what I am seeing, is that to arrive at a joint statement with Doc James would mean acknowledging in public that at least part of where he has come from is valid - that the technology strategy and related commitments of the WMF board and ED are confidential, and will not be disclosed to anybody, including the community. (and maybe that is just perhaps Lila's perspective and some board members, and not anything as unified as the actual stance the board and Lila have decided to take) I understand that if this is the case, for you to acknowledge that might be expensive with regard to the good faith of the community, and that if you are unwilling to acknowledge that in public, a joint statement with Doc James does seem to be impossible right now. (One thing I am hoping is that good faith discussion, and even perhaps mediated discussion, can help things... evolve.)

I also think there would probably be some hard things for James to acknowledge in making a joint statement with the board. I can imagine that maybe he got frustrated and said or did things that he maybe shouldn't have. I don't see anybody as an angel here.

But this is the only picture that I can put together that makes sense of everything, trying to treat both sides with respect. I imagine that others have arrived at this picture as well.

Keeping things confidential is consistent with my experience of working with high tech and biotech companies that are developing new products - of course you keep all that stuff confidential as much as you can. It is a bit surprising to find the WMF taking that approach. (And as far as I can see, that is the approach that has been taken - there has been no disclosure of the strategy and budget, despite repeated requests by many people, not just me. Please don't treat that as an accusation; it is just a fact. If it is incorrect, please don't just say it is wrong, please provide a link to the clear disclosure of the strategy and budget commitments as they have evolved)

I could see Lila trying to drive a culture change in that regard, as an experienced tech executive stepping into the ED role (which is what the board wanted), and I could see the board being open to it and supporting it. There are arguments that could be made to support that, even for the WMF.

Anyway, that was bold of me, and I do not want to derail this discussion. But I do want to try to get to the heart of the matter with you. If you like, would you please let me know - does the WMF board and the ED consider its technology strategy and related budgetary commitments to be confidential? Or has there been some "culture clash" around confidentiality as Lila has come in? Anyway, I look forward to hearing from you on this - which seems to be the underlying set of issues here. Jytdog (talk) 20:26, 21 February 2016 (UTC)

resuming the thread

1. Would you please recount what transpired among the executive leadership and the board with regard to this whole "search/Knowledge Engine" thing over the course of the last year or so? If you are not aware, please be aware that very focused questions have been asked about this, like here and it would be great if your response makes the major decisions clear - especially executive, board and budget decisions. The budget decisions are really important, as they go to how much money the WMF was intending (and is intending) to commit to this. I understand it is probably messy and that there seem to have been competing visions. But the actual decisions that were made, is what I am after. Jytdog (talk) 19:11, 20 February 2016 (UTC)

   Sure, but keep in mind that "among the executive leadership" in great detail is not something that I, or any board member, would have direct knowledge of. And as to what the vision was or is, yes, it's "messy" as you put it. What that means is that it's preliminary, that the kind of big picture strategic decision that people seem to be afraid of, and that you've talked about explicitly several times, just isn't there. Nor, in my view, with respect to "Discovery", should it be there. Obviously different people will have different ideas about it, and brainstorms, and proposals, and that's all good. But it's too early to make a really big decision. One of the things that's great about the Knight grant is that it's some small steps in the direction of learning more so that we can get to the point where a bigger vision can be intelligently articulated - not blue sky thinking, but an actual plan.

   Lila gave us a run down at the board meeting in Mexico and we encouraged her to move forward. One of the things discussed in that meeting was explicitly that this is not a "Google competitor". And it wasn't. I've only just learned (yesterday) that Damon was circulating to some people under extreme cloak-and-dagger secrecy with GPG keys and all that, an idea of his to build a Google competitor, but that idea never got real traction. What did get traction is that one of the things (not the only thing and, in my view not even the most important thing) we should be investing resources in is "Discovery" - improving internal search, thinking more about what www.wikipedia.org should be, etc.

   That's pretty much all there is. If some were fearing (or hoping) that the board had approved some massive project and budget which would radically change the nature of how Wikipedia works, or how people interact with Wikipedia content, well, no. It's a lot more mundane than that.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 21:32, 20 February 2016 (UTC)

   Thanks for replying, and for acknowledging that there are some valid bases for concern in the community based on what Damon was circulating. Based on this you are either unwilling or unable to be more detailed, about what the board actually committed to, with regard to various decisions made along the way and budget allocations that were made. I guess we will have to wait until someone is willing/able to reply to this. This is unanswered. Hopefully Lila will disclose more at her AMA/FAQ. But do let me ask - would you please be more detailed? I asked a concrete, answerable question.... Jytdog (talk) 23:46, 20 February 2016 (UTC)

I'm not unwilling, my point is that you seem to me to be asking for something that doesn't exist. That isn't how it works. The board is not consulted along the way regarding various specific decisions, budget allocations, at that level of detail. The formal decision taken by the board was to approve the Knight grant, as you know led by James moving to approve after his confusions were corrected and his objections answered. What I can tell you is that it was, and is, too early to approve a specific budget for tens of millions of dollars or whatever - there's the Knight grant and support for the "Discovery" team, and I've already talked about what that means.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 15:11, 21 February 2016 (UTC)

Jimmy, hm. The current tech budget is larger than 250K and the board must be aware of the programs that the larger budget is for. Can you please talk about that? And again, even though Lila and the board have apparently not settled on long term strategies, it is really clear that planning has been done. As you noted the board approved the Knight grant, and the grant itself has projections in it, that the WMF was comfortable enough with to submit. Will you please talk about that stuff? I and others are looking to understand the story of what has unfolded - will you please tell it? Thanks. Jytdog (talk) 01:05, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

If it is helpful, here is the budget from the Knight grant, from page 9 of the pdf:

• Search Engine by Wikipedia Budget 2015-2016 (Board approved)
• Position...........................................................................Cost
• 8 Engineers (Software,Relevance,Services).....................$1,021,000
• 2 Data Analysts ...............................................................$180,000
• 4 Team Leads (Dir, VP, UX, PM)..................................... $586,000
• Associated costs (20%) (Medical, equipment, travel) ....$357,400
• Hardware ......................................................................$301,473
• Total............................................................................. $2,445,873

There you go. I can only take "board approved" for its face value. You all obviously accepted only 250K and you all have walked away, fiercely, from the "search engine by Wikipedia" thing, but we have no story from the WMF board, you, nor Lila, to make sense of all this, what other commitments you made to use the WMF funds, really important, how those commitments changed (from what to what), nor where you all thought it was going. Really. We would like to understand the story. Would you please tell it, concretely? Jytdog (talk) 01:56, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

1. A lot of the upset-ness has stemmed from the sense among some of us, that pretty big plans seem to have been made about expending significant resources to develop some kind of new technology, without engaging the community. Maybe I am misunderstanding, but Lila seems pretty clearly to acknowledge that not engaging the community was a mistake, on her meta user page here, in the section "Why didn’t you discuss these ideas with the community sooner?" Among other things she says : "However, I was too afraid of engaging the community early on. Why do you think that was?" That is a gorgeously human statement, in some ways, and calls us to try to stand in her shoes. But to me, it raises the question of where the board was on this, with respect to providing her guidance, direction, etc. So my question (I am trying to ask this in a non-accusing way)... Where was the board on engaging the community on this whole search thing as it unfolded? If (and that is real "if") the board supported Lila in not engaging, or even directed her not to engage, do you Jimmy, or the board also see that it made any mistakes here? Jytdog (talk) 19:11, 20 February 2016 (UTC)

   Yes, Lila does view not communicating more with the community about this as a mistake. But, speaking only for myself not for Lila or the board or anyone else, it was mainly a mistake because it led to the false impression that this was some big huge thing. There was no reason to be secretive about it. I don't know of anyone on the board who would ever encourage Lila not to engage with the community, but at the same time I'm very well aware of how frightened the staff can be of the community - and not for no reason, let's all be painfully aware of that. Engaging with the community, which I've been doing for a long time, isn't always rewarding. Some people are hostile and engage in name calling and insults. The staff are human and mainly very committed to the mission, and they are treated like evil parasites with a grand conspiracy to destroy the community on a regular basis. So they are fearful of engaging.

   Now, let me be clear about one thing: there are some historical reasons why the community can be so hostile. We've underinvested in software development for a long time, and we've had some disastrously bad rollouts of sub-par software. This has led to a dynamic where the community has been less willing to forgive bad software, which means that things have to be perfect at rollout or face a storm of criticism. This had led to a feeling among some staff that the community hate all change, regardless. It's not a healthy place to be.

   So it's in that context that we have to understand this. Investing more in "Discovery" is a good idea. It's not a radical departure, so speaking only for myself, it never occurred to me that the staff wouldn't be sufficiently engaging with the community about ideas for it, plans for it, etc. And it didn't occur to me that it would come to be viewed with such suspicion and hostility. It obviously could have been avoided with transparency from the start.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 21:32, 20 February 2016 (UTC)

   Thanks for all this, and I do hear your thoughts that it would have been wiser to engage, just to avoid the suspicion, and I hear you on the bad history. however, my main question here was: "Where was the board on engaging the community on this whole search thing as it unfolded?" Would you please respond to that? Please bear in mind what was written here, and other places, about disclosure in general. Thanks! Jytdog (talk) 23:50, 20 February 2016 (UTC)

The board has always been 100% (every single member) in favor of engaging the community in detail about every major initiative. I am personally unaware of any deviations from this. There are of course times when the community can't be consulted (legal matters are a common example, but there could also be matters of commercial negotiations on price for hosting services or similar, and other kinds of examples) but not around things having to do with the fundamental direction of the Foundation.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 15:11, 21 February 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for this general answer, and that is good to hear. Lila already acknowledged the mistake of not earlier engaging the community sooner on this whole discovery/search/KE thing. The Board signed off on the Knight grant so was well aware of it and discussed it in Mexico. So the question is still hanging there - where was the board on engaging with the community on this whole discovery/search/KE thing? Surely the board (and you) knew that Lila wasn't engaging the community. So what was going on? Please answer this specifically - please answer the heart of the question. Thanks! Jytdog (talk) 01:37, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

• That is looking backward, now a set of questions about where things are now, and where they are going in the future:

1. What is the current cluster of visions about technology at the board of the WMF? Where are you currently intending to take us? (I understand that several avenues may be under exploration, but I would hope there is some vision, currently). If this is a vision created without consulting us, that is what it is. I would just like to know what it is. I do see a valuable role for bot-generated content and I think that will only get more likely say 10 years from now as computing power grows, and I would hope the visions encompass this. Assuming they do, I would like to understand how that relates to the WMF's commitment to our traditional user-generated content. Jytdog (talk) 19:11, 20 February 2016 (UTC)

   I think it's very hard to characterize the vision of "the board" because we are a diverse set of individuals, and realistically speaking, the role of defining and leading and getting buy in to a longterm vision is really the province of the executive director. But I'll take a stab at it. I think there's a general view by the board that we've underinvested in software development in the past. This view was first articulated by Sue Gardner, who made finding a tech/product person to be CEO a cornerstone of the search for her successor. Things have improved on that front under Lila's leadership, but obviously not without some serious bumps along the road. Speaking more personally about my own views, I think we need to invest still more resources in technology and hire very good people who can help us become an organization that can actually turn out software features and products that the community needs and wants, on a regular basis. I think that "Discovery" is an important pillar of that effort, but not necessarily the most important. I think it needs to be easier for intelligent and smart and kind people to become Wikipedians, without having to learn so much arcane tech stuff. I think we need to stop wasting the time of volunteers who end up having to do stuff in convoluted manual ways rather than using tools that work. But I don't work at the Foundation, and my views on specific product ideas aren't any better than any other long time Wikipedian's views, so I don't think we should privilege what software I think should be built - we should all work together consultatively... but also decisively.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 21:32, 20 February 2016 (UTC)

   I love everything you said. But this is very high level, and doesn't really answer what I was asking. You hired Lila almost 2 years ago, and that is plenty enough time for her to propose a set of long term strategies to the board, with reasonably clear timelines and budgets to achieve them, and for her and the board to negotiate to get those proposals to a place where the board signs off on them. Would you please describe the current strategies? Thanks. Jytdog (talk) 00:00, 21 February 2016 (UTC)

It has taken too long to formulate a formal strategy. This is something that Lila acknowledges completely.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 15:11, 21 February 2016 (UTC)

This is a somewhat useful response and I appreciate that. Will you please discuss what has caused the delay? Jytdog (talk) 01:15, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

1. What are the WMF's plans (board and/or executives) plans to engage the community on really big picture stuff, like this whole "search" initiative and the technology-vision more broadly? Jytdog (talk) 19:11, 20 February 2016 (UTC)

   I think there are some excellent models that we should expand and follow more regularly. Geoff and the legal team have done some great consultations that led to generally well-received changes to the terms of use, etc.

   I also think, and have said many times, that we should not get into a bizarro world again where we think that the community should be literally voting on software features, only implementing things after they achieve wiki-consensus. As I mentioned above, we need to work together consultatively but also decisively. We've seen enough fiascos of committee-designed software that ends up being super complicated to the point of not working, only to be rejected by the community in the end. We need highly talented product people to understand the needs of the community, and execute on fulfilling those needs. If we can be agile, then initial problems can be iteratively fixed and improved.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 21:32, 20 February 2016 (UTC)

   Having seen (not nearly as much as you and others) the messiness of decisions-by-consensus here, I understand what you mean. I did ask concretely about what plans there are to actual consult with the community on this big picture stuff. Are there any concrete plans? Thanks. Jytdog (talk) 00:04, 21 February 2016 (UTC)

I think it best to leave that to staff to answer. There is a deep understanding that a big mistake was made in not consulting more with the community. As to concrete plans, that will of course depend on the specific context of the department and what they are working on and how much it involves the community and which parts of the community are involved. To give some examples: Something that impacts primarily GLAM work will involve mainly consultation with people working on GLAM stuff and with chapters who are affected. Something that primarily impacts heavy editors will involve mainly consultation with people doing that. It's not really for the board to direct that work, it's for management.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 15:11, 21 February 2016 (UTC)

OK I guess this is a question for Lila. Thanks. Jytdog (talk) 01:29, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

1. What might the WMF board be willing to consider, about making itself actually (not just ethically) accountable to the editing community? (example, some of us have been talking about how to set up "members" of the WMF... this is just an example, please don't get caught up on it) If the answer is "nothing", that is what it is. Jytdog (talk) 19:11, 20 February 2016 (UTC)

   I think we're willing to consider anything. I think that Erik Moeller has spoken eloquently (somewhere - I saw it yesterday but I don't remember where) about the history. In my view, there are some interesting ideas floating around that could help us move forward on our classic dilemma: we want to remain a strongly community focussed organization, but also need to have expertise on the board. The one thing I would like to add: based on my very long experience doing this, a lot of people imagine that the community-elected board members will somehow be more on the side of the community than the appointed board members. That has never really been true.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 21:32, 20 February 2016 (UTC)

   Thanks for this answer. We'll do some thinking and come back, I reckon. Jytdog (talk) 00:07, 21 February 2016 (UTC)

2. It seems that there is widespread unhappiness among the staff of the WMF, as reported in the staff survey results and as one can infer from the spate of recent high-profile departures. I realize that there are HR issues here, but whatever you can say about what the WMF board is considering about getting things on a better track, would be good to hear. Jytdog (talk) 19:11, 20 February 2016 (UTC)

   It's hard to say much in detail, so I'll just speak broadly. It is my belief that we need to be a lot better about hiring at the top levels. We've had too many C-level positions vacant for too long, and also situations in the past with C-level positions where the person in the role wasn't a great fit.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 21:32, 20 February 2016 (UTC)

For those wondering what "C level" means, it is explained at List of corporate titles. --Guy Macon (talk) 22:45, 20 February 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for that, Guy. :) I won't ask further about this, given the HR issues. Jytdog (talk) 00:07, 21 February 2016 (UTC)

That is enough for now. I reviewed all the discussions that have been going on and tried to capture the "mainstream" issues. I apologize to anybody if I missed something. It's all yours, Jimmy. Jytdog (talk) 19:11, 20 February 2016 (UTC)

Where this stands

Jmmy, in my professional life I generally wait three days before following up on an ongoing conversation. So I have here. Here is where we are.

• About James dismissal, I explained how the gap between what the sides are saying is tearing up the community, asked if you understood that, and asked if you would commit to work toward a joint statement, perhaps with a mediator. you wrote, I understand that. I'm open to trying, but I don't see how it is possible. Perceptions seem radically different.. I asked if you would actually commit to trying. That is unanswered.
• I've asked in several different ways for you to tell the story of how the vision for technology development has evolved over the past year - the vision that produced Discovery's three year plan and the long-term plans discussed in Knight grant including its board-approved $2,445,873 budget for Stage 1. I've also asked where this vision stands now. You have not provided that.
• I've asked you to let me know if the WMF board considers that vision and its evolution to be confidential and said that this appears to be the case. You have not responded to that.
• As Lila has acknowledged that not engaging the community sooner was a mistake, I've asked you about the board's role in that, as the body to which she is accountable. You have not responded.

That is where we are, from my perspective. Jytdog (talk) 19:26, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

WMF staff matters

I set this off in a subsection, to keep the above discussion clear. I hope that is OK... Jytdog (talk) 18:48, 21 February 2016 (UTC)
To me this sounds alarming! Trying to fill command or chief level positions to match those found in a typical corporation implies a degree of centralized command similar to that found in a corporation, which is to say, zero role for the community. These are expensive positions for ambitious people who are supposed to develop their careers by making a mark, and unfortunately, that mark is made on us the community. I think Wikipedia would do well to keep the C-level positions vacant, keep their salaries far, far below corporate standards, and task those holding any such positions with a much less commanding role than is typically expected. Wnt (talk) 16:09, 21 February 2016 (UTC)

I disagree with almost every aspect of what you are saying. I want ambitious people of very high levels of talent who are in great demand elsewhere, and i want them to make a mark - not "on us" (that's a terrible notion) but "for us". Imagine an incredible top executive who, 2 years into the job, is universally recognized in the community as having dramatically changed the functioning of the Foundation for the better. Consider the CTO position as an example: I want a CTO who can do a fantastic job of creatively engaging and inspiring the community and the developers to work together to jointly deliver improvements to the software that are meaningful and matter to us. I want to see software that meets the needs of experienced users and new users and takes away some of the many barriers to accomplishing our dream of a free high quality encyclopedia for everyone. Yes, we could attempt a radical (and very likely to be a complete failure) effort to not have executives, or to fill the positions with more junior people who are less qualified, but why? What would the advantage be of not having great leadership at the Foundation?--Jimbo Wales (talk) 16:26, 21 February 2016 (UTC)

I fully support this strategy. It is too easy to slip into the following thinking:

(Wikipedia volunteer:)

1. I am unhappy with something the WMF did.
2. Therefore the WMF should stop doing things and let the community of volunteers do them.
3. I am unhappy with the way the WMF has communicated what they are planning to do.
4. Therefore the WMF should get permission from the community of volunteers before doing anything.

The problem with this is that the community of volunteers lacks several attributes that are necessary to run the WMF. Attributes such as "the ability to make a tough decision without deadlocking" and "the ability to enter into legally binding contracts that the rest of the world recognizes as such".

I prefer this sort of thinking:

(Wikipedia volunteer:)

1. I am unhappy with something the WMF did.
2. Therefore the WMF should figure out whether they actually did something wrong and if so figure out how to do it better.
3. I am unhappy with the way the WMF has communicated what they are planning to do.
4. Therefore the WMF should communicate with (not get permission from) the community of volunteers whenever possible.

Doing this will be hard. It would be easy for the WMF to think "Well, the Knowledge Engine project ran into a shitstorm while in the 'blue sky, think about what we might want to do eventually, but only budget some preliminary studies' phase, so clearly we need to do a better job of keeping such things secret until the plans are pretty much agreed-upon and set in stone." Once you are in that mode of thinking, the community of volunteers are the enemy.

Watching the one unfirable WMF member (Jimbo) be viciously attacked and called a liar (still no shred of evidence that the accusation is true) really doesn't help. If I was part of the WMF I would avoid any communication with the community of volunteers for fear of ending up on the unemployment line. --Guy Macon (talk) 17:08, 21 February 2016 (UTC)

I'd suggest a somewhat different approach. In my view this should be a volunteer led organisation where the staff do things that volunteers want to have happen, but aren't volunteering to do. In the 2009 Strategy discussion the first priority was "keeping the servers running" and I hope we'd agree that this should still be the WMF's first concern. In the last few months the WMF consulted the community as to what software changes we wanted and what priority we gave them. This only involved a small part of the WMF's programming budget, but I think it could be the start of a much healthier relationship between the WMF and the community. ϢereSpielChequers 21:08, 21 February 2016 (UTC)

@Jimbo Wales: I really do appreciate your response to me ... still, I don't really understand why you feel this way. The whole idea of Wikipedia is that a bunch of unpaid amateurs can write a better encyclopedia than a smaller number of well-paid professionals. So why shouldn't this apply to software, or corporate governance? We live in a world where practically everything that regular people do, on the job or off, is presented as the accomplishment of a certain executive class, who are the ones paid for it. For a long time Wikipedia was, at least in part, a shining exception to this, and I don't see why that should change. Wnt (talk) 18:05, 21 February 2016 (UTC)

Wnt, for what it is worth, i think even nonprofits and government agencies need to be well run, including WP. Full time staff is needed to make WP function - the servers and underlying software that make all this go - and if the WMF has employees it should have competent management (just to be a decent employer). Don't you think? Jytdog (talk) 01:43, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

@Jytdog: Well, what's being described is a change from the past. If WMF did without many C-level employees before... why have them now? The notion that adding them will make something better seems at best a hypothesis; WMF is not just another employer, but something new in the world. Wnt (talk) 04:53, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for replying. I don't want to get into a big thing here, but there is a bunch of software and hardware that needs to be maintained and always improved and people need to do that (not to mention accounting people to pay them, etc, and all the other functions you need to build an organization that actually runs a technology enterprise). I don't want to demean what the WMF staff do in any way and they do a lot more than this, but at minimum they have to keep the site running while we part-time volunteer creators do our thing. You can start drafting today and come back tomorrow and it is all still there. Right? Randy from boise couldn't keep this place going - it takes an organization. And even among for-profits WMF is renowned for keeping the site up, and relatively quick to respond, even under the crazy-heavy traffic that readers create. And this is how it is at pretty much any company that relies on "user-generated content". Twitter has about 3500 employees, just so we can write 148 character tweets. What you are saying is just not realistic, in my view.... That is just my view. Jytdog (talk) 05:03, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

Jytdog, I had the pleasure of working at the WMF for six and a half years, and I think your analysis above is one of the most sane things I've read in a long time. Thank you for it. I am in full agreement. -Philippe (talk) 22:13, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

well that is super nice of you. happy to be found sane. :) (i also cleaned up what i wrote so it is english) Jytdog (talk) 04:31, 23 February 2016 (UTC)

@Jytdog: Perhaps a utopian notion of an all-volunteer WMF is a way off. But certainly the WMF employees have done everything you've said without the C-level hires currently under discussion. If you are skeptical of change in one direction, why not be skeptical of change in the other? Wnt (talk) 12:40, 23 February 2016 (UTC)

Staff afraid of the community -- and the problem with Incivility in general

The Incivility Problem

Hi Jimbo. Above you said:

I don't know of anyone on the board who would ever encourage Lila not to engage with the community, but at the same time I'm very well aware of how frightened the staff can be of the community - and not for no reason, let's all be painfully aware of that. Engaging with the community, which I've been doing for a long time, isn't always rewarding. Some people are hostile and engage in name calling and insults. The staff are human and mainly very committed to the mission, and they are treated like evil parasites with a grand conspiracy to destroy the community on a regular basis. So they are fearful of engaging. (21:32, 20 February 2016 (UTC)) [emphasis added.]

This does not surprise me at all. What I have seen since I first started editing on Wikipedia many years ago is that a high level of incivility is tolerated, in particular by admins. who often have free reign to act with impunity. Name calling (ad hominem attack) is used on a regular basis. Bringing the uncivil editor to a DR noticeboard is rarely helpful for those who happen to be on the "wrong" side of a POV dispute that has a large gang of editors backing them up. The gang will show up at any noticeboard and defend the uncivil behavior, write walls-of-text, confusion and distraction, point more fingers and threaten boomerangs. Neutral third parties are drowned out by the yelling, and are often too scared to enter into the fracas or appear to be "taking sides".

As an example of how futile it is to complain about incivility: Consider the dismissal of this complaint, which was used as a supplemental argument for the successful topic banning of the editor who complained about incivility. Softlavender made an excellent suggestion that got quite a lot of support to ask for more civility from both sides of the dispute, but those who wanted to continue the ad hominem argumentation won the day when the complaint was dismissed. Was anyone really surprised?

We need a system of justice and DR where neutral third parties make the final and binding decisions rather than those directly involved in a disagreement. The current set up makes no distinction. I would actually like to see something like jury duty or admins. assigned at random to make rulings on disputes, just like we have in the American court system. As it works now, it's more like mob rule with hanging judges, guilty until proven innocent and anything goes if a gang with admin. back up supports you. I have no doubt this is why there is a problem with editor retention and why the staff is afraid to interact with bullies who are never held accountable for their incivility. It is a very hostile place and works far too much like the Wild West. (That said, it's still better than allowing $ to drive the material everyone sees in the media, so I am still happy for your work in creating a more democratic system than we had prior to Wikipedia and I intend to continue to work here because of that.)

Do you have any thoughts on this problem and how it might be addressed? --David Tornheim (talk) 08:22, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

I think Jimmy has made it really clear in the past that he agrees with this. But also that he'd like to see the community solve it and not the foundation/board. I'm not sure we can wait for that however. Like Twitter we have a big social problem, and I'm not sure it's fixable without making changes to the software or at least intervention by foundation/board. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:11, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

The real problem here is that Wikipedia is the venue for a rearguard action by climate change deniers and their supporters, who wish to continue to represent climate science as being in a state of flux and disagreement, when in fact it has by now arrived at a point where the last survey found only one author rejecting the scientific consensus, out of nearly ten thousand publishing. Yes, we do need a mechanism to close down debate. Incidents like the one David Tornheim highlights are the inevitable result of endless querulousness on the part of often small numbers of editors who flatly refuse to accept the world as it actually is, and would rather we reflected the world as their highly selective view of the sources sees it. Just look at List of scientists opposing the mainstream scientific assessment of global warming. Back in the day, the Institute for Creation research maintained a list just like this, of scientists who reject evolution. The list contains a number of people who happen to work in science but have absolutely no expertise in climate science (e.g. David Bellamy, a botanist). The number of living climate scientists in this list is tiny, and represents dramatically undue weight because the majority of them are only notable due to media coverage of their denialism. Fox News does not produce profiles of mainstream climate scientists, and actually neither does The Guardian. As Brian Cox said on the radio last week, the universe has a liberal bias. Some people think that requires us to "balance" it with conservative talking points. They are this: wrong. Guy (Help!) 09:47, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

@JzG: The editor prokaryotes who got topic banned was not a "climate change denier". Prokaryotes' edits and expressed opinions on climate change are consistent with the scientific consensus expressed in our article on Global warming (i.e. that temperatures are increasing and that human activity is a significant cause.) Prokaryotes did almost all of the work on the Climate Action article [6]. (see also: [7], [8]) Although I have done little editing on the topic, my recent edits at Climate Action Plan were to add more information and support expansion of the article. Neither Prokaryotes nor I are anything like "climate change deniers" and we consider it deeply insulting to be equated with such unscientific thinking/editing. That's why it is an ad hominem. But the closer of the AN/I, basically concluded it is okay to equate an editor's work with such a disparaged group, such as "climate change deniers", Nazi's or KKK members. I don't think that is okay, and such ad hominemn attacks need to stop. --David Tornheim (talk) 03:20, 23 February 2016 (UTC)

Yes, Prokaryotes was pushing a different anti-science POV. Same shit, different day, basically. Have you read Merchants Of Doubt? That shows why people refer to tactics as being similar to those of climate change deniers or whatever. In fact the approach dates back to the 1950s and is also often referred to as the tobacco industry playbook. Many of the same people are involved, oddly. Guy (Help!) 10:01, 23 February 2016 (UTC)

Yes, I am well aware of the "tobacco industry playbook". This report cover its. And yes, I agree the playbook continues today in other industries like energy or food production: [9]. (<-- No I do not claim that to be RS.) Industry's ability to create science that matches their financial goals is well known as funding bias, as explained by Sheldon Krimsky here. Industry also is very good at affecting regulators with Politicization of science, with the George W. Bush administration having "installed more than 100 top officials who were once lobbyists, attorneys or spokespeople for the industries they oversee." (e.g. the FDA). Yes, tobacco science is a problem. And people who talk about it, like Prokaryotes get topic banned and called "climate change deniers" for doing so. --David Tornheim (talk) 12:12, 23 February 2016 (UTC)

We're obviously talking past each other. Prokaryotes was following an agenda and style which is legitimately compared to that of climate change deniers. Some people vehemently wish that there was robust science to oppose GMOs, but there isn't, and in fact the science shows very little evidence of anything other than benefit. Science is neutral, not all scientists are. Science is a process, scientific consensus is a conclusion. And climate change is a battleground, as are GMOs and several forms of quackery. We owe it to our readers to keep our content strictly in line with the scientific consensus view - otherwise we become Conservapedia, only with a less obnoxious god-king. Guy (Help!) 23:45, 23 February 2016 (UTC)

David, while human beings are naturally afraid of difficult conversations (and talking to the community is undeniably difficult), professionals are paid to do a job. Part of the Executive Director's job and the job of some key roles in the WMF staff -- part of what they are paid to do - is engaging with the community. A key function of any Board, is to see to it that the CEO or ED does their job. Yes the community could behave better (try herding that bunch of cats) and we can understand a human failing, but that does not make the professional failure - nor the failure of board oversight - any less a failure. It is what it is. The key thing for WMF leadership is doing their jobs, and playing their roles, going forward. Jytdog (talk) 10:19, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

Jytdog: You are totally missing my point, and illustrating what I said above about using a distraction to dodge the issue at hand--incivility on Wikipedia. I was not suggesting the staff was entitled to avoid engaging with hostile editors because of fear, any more than civil servants who are the brunt of anger of someone who thinks their vehicle was wrongly impounded. Yes, it comes with the job. What I was saying is that we have a problem--that incivility is tolerated and pervasive. And Jimbo was clearly articulating an example of how badly our editors do behavior, so badly that the staff is afraid of us. That really says something. It is unacceptable that we tolerate this behavior and we cannot present ourselves to staff in a more dignified way. SageRad hits the nail on the head in the next comment. --David Tornheim (talk) 03:43, 23 February 2016 (UTC)

David the thing you picked up from Jimmy, is something that he wrote in response to me asking him why Lila has not engaged the community. I stepped around it as it was off point and a rabbit hole, but you grabbed it, and climbed the reichstag with it (humans are generally predictable - someone was going to do it) In any case, this is not something you are going to solve here, and especially not now, when this house is burning down. The village pump is thataway where you will find many, many, many discussions about enforcing WP:CIVILITY (which I recommend you read before trying to reinvent the wheel). I brought the conversation back to something reasonably on point. Jytdog (talk) 04:17, 23 February 2016 (UTC)

You mean you tried to "hijack" the conversation?  :-) I appreciate your reminding me that if I speak on Jimbo's page, then I am "climbing the Reichstag", but if you do, well "that's totally different". --David Tornheim (talk) 05:11, 23 February 2016 (UTC)

As I noted at the top of my post, Jimmy asked me to post questions for him. So I did. Jytdog (talk) 06:40, 23 February 2016 (UTC)

There is a serious problem here, and David Tornheim nailed it. Jytdog and Guy are part of the problem -- some of the editors who will stop at nothing to push a point of view, being as nasty as they want to be, with near complete impunity. Guy is one admin who pushes POV and bullies constantly. So... consider the sources. I would love the community to be able to solve it, but i think it's gone below the critical mass required, and it's in a tailspin. It's deeply affecting the quality of the knowledge in Wikipedia, which is getting biased toward the "Skeptic" point of view daily. It's a hostile takeover. SageRad (talk) 10:32, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

There is a fundamental misunderstanding going on. Some people seem to believe that civil POV-pushing is civil, while a robust response is not. In fact, civil POV-pushing is an oxymoron. POV-pushing is inherently uncivil: it represents a refusal to accept consensus. In most places where this is an issue, the numbers involved are small. We have managed to maintain a neutral article on homeopathy for some time despite the endless procession of people determined to "fix" our "bias" towards empirically verifiable fact. In a small number of cases - those where politics is significantly involved especially - the numbers are larger. But we need to be really clear: advancing a POV that is contradicted by science, even if done with painstaking politeness, is still a problem. Science is the real-world Wikipedia: it works by consensus to incorporate all significant views and findings in proportion to their evidential support. It can be wrong, sometimes badly so, but it is inherently self-correcting and the quality assurance is vastly better than ours. That's why in articles on medicine and climate, to name just two examples, we defer to the scientific evidence. We can describe dissent from that, and note (as is usually the case) the motives for those who so dissent, but we do not pretend that dissent has any parity with scientific inquiry.

To be clear: there is a difference, which we recognise, between questions of fact and questions of policy. The climate is changing, it is due to human influence, and there's no real dispute about that. What to do about it? Ask ten people and you'll get eleven answers - some of them even valid ones.

It would be great if there were an editorial board who could draw a line under these long-running content disputes. It's not going to happen. So the inevitable result is groups of people getting increasingly pissed off with each other. Take a look at the archives at [[10]] - how many times do we have to go round the same loop before we decide that those who do not accept consensus are disruptive? Guy (Help!) 10:56, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

All i want is for actual policies to be enforced -- for everyone equally. Not with some being more equal than others which is how it is now. If someone can be mean, uncivil, and a bully with impunity then they get worse, and worse, and the environment becomes toxic, and this is what's happened. If i went diff-digging, i would be able to pull up about 100 examples of Guy bullying people and acting against policy, and yet he's ubiquitously still ruling this place with gusto as an admin who says "to hell with rules!" on a regular basis. SageRad (talk) 11:09, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

I support a "Knowledge Engine" or any new search tool, but the knowledge generated by Wikipedia through volunteer editing will be as good as the editing environment allows it to be. Currently the knowledge is under hostile takeover by people gaming the system. The knowledge is the wealth. If the knowledge is distorted, it's less valuable, to WMF and to the people of the world. It can in fact be harmful to the world. Part of it is simply sadistic people finding a place to enjoy schadenfreude, but much of it is a systemic Skeptic™ takeover. SageRad (talk) 11:23, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

Guy states: "last survey found only one author rejecting the scientific consensus, out of nearly ten thousand publishing". Guy simply picks surveys which support his POV. I can do that too: "More Than 1000 International Scientists Dissent Over Man-Made Global Warming Claims" [11] Why is it OK for Guy to do it, but not me? Biscuittin (talk) 17:18, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

Just to be clear, I'm not taking about climate change denial. I'm talking about real science being blocked POV pushing with an ideology under the rubric of a "Skeptic" movement. I'm talking about serious gang-like POV pushing in many topics with an establishment agenda, hiring the integrity of the knowledge in Wikipedia. Equitable enforcement of policy would help this. However the system is gamed. SageRad (talk) 19:39, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

Give an example. Guy (Help!) 09:42, 23 February 2016 (UTC)

Causes of Staff's fear of the community -and- how to address them

I don't follow the climate change fracas here, nor do I remember having any problems with Guy (unless I'm mixing him up with somebody else), but I do agree with many of the main points put forward here:

• WMF staff have good reason to be afraid of part of the community - in fact they are routinely vilified in off the cuff comments.
• Admins don't routinely follow the rules as written. Perhaps WP:Ignore all rules has been replaced with WP:Routinely ignore all rules.
• Gangs of interested parties do rove the noticeboards and engage in ad hominem attacks - another system would be much better.
• The current system of enWiki governance is very conservative since almost any group with more than a couple dozen devotees can derail any change.
• The current system of governance will have great difficulty in reforming itself.

If we can figure out a way around these problems, Wikipedia will be much better able to live up to its potential. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 19:49, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

There is no climate change fracas here (in this thread). This is a thread about civility. The climate change aspect is Guy's unbridled attempt to railroad yet another discussion about civility. Why Guy is repeatedly so destructive to discussions about one the 5 pillars is beyond me, but it is definitely becoming a repeat behaviour. DrChrissy ^(talk) 20:05, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

It might have something to do with the fact that the vociferous proponents of civility often turn out to be advocates of non-mainstream views, often with numerous sanctions against them, who want the nasty reality-based community to go away and let them get on with endlessly demanding "compromise" between empirical reality and fringe views, in a ratchet effect that would eventually see crank ideas and reality given equal weight. As I said above, civil POV-pushing is an oxymoron. I am happy to see strict enforcement of civility in a context where wheedling, querulousness and tendentious editing are acknowledged to be a major causal factor so are dealt with equally firmly. Somehow I do noty think that most of the vociferous "civility advocates" would like that. Guy (Help!) 09:47, 23 February 2016 (UTC)

@Smallbones: I appreciate your comments above. Perhaps we can assemble a Project to address the issue(s)? I do imagine process change is possible, because there used to be a different kind of DR before AN/I (some editors thought that was better). If you have seen decent attempts at reform of this issue that failed, you can point me to them, and maybe we can brainstorm a way around them. I have a hunch a super-majority of editors do want more civility, but are at a complete loss how to achieve it. And any attempts at reform will always generate fear of unknown change, just like the "Knowledge Engine" has. There are definitely huge obstacles, but I think it is possible to address the problem, or I would not have made the above post.

Also, DrChrissy is correct: There is no fracas about climate change. I explain above in response to JzG/Guy. --David Tornheim (talk) 04:08, 23 February 2016 (UTC)

Content is occupied and locked down by uncivil gangs with no integrity and seeking enforcement doesn't work. SageRad (talk) 07:16, 23 February 2016 (UTC)

I see the constant, unrelenting attacks by on editors like Guy who struggle to reflect scientific consensus, as being a major civility issue. In my opinion, losing editors like Guy would mean a rapid downward spiral of this encyclopedia into a pseudoscientific swamp without any credibility whatsoever. We would end up as vapid as the "New Age" section at the back of your trendy local bookstore. How catastrophic that would be. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 07:41, 23 February 2016 (UTC)

Agreed. JzG is not the problem here. POV pushers trying to bait reasonable editors into loosing their cool is the problem. — ArtifexMayhem (talk) 09:00, 23 February 2016 (UTC)

I don't want to make this personal. There are a number of people who are regularly very abusive toward others with impunity, and the ends don't justify the means, nor do bad means even result in good ends generally. The policies of Wikipedia work well if enforced equitably and fairly. The rationale that we need to allow abusive behavior to "keep out the woo" is like saying "we need to keep crime down" so let's accept that cops will act with impunity as the cost of solving the problem. In the end, the cops become the judge and jury and executor, and justice is not usually done anyway. With Wikipedia, certain editors become "czars of woo" with a free pass to be jerks, and it ends up distorting content, and hurting people, and I'm tired of it. I'm tired of accepting bad behavior. SageRad (talk) 23:03, 23 February 2016 (UTC)

Let's be clear, here: I am capable of being a rude obnoxious bastard, but I care quite deeply about this project and I have suffered bitter personal attacks as a result of defending biographies before WP:BLP was ever conceived. I can be wrong. I try really hard to admit it when I am. It would be stupid and dangerous to pretend that Wikipedia is not under constant assault form proponents of every form of bullshit known to humanity: this website is pretty much the most important place to get your delusion represented as fact. We have been round this loop more time than I can count: creationists, homeopathists, 9/11 "truthers", climate deniers - all, in the end, get shown the dorr, but rarely without taking a few good people down first. Burnout is a problem. Feel free to propose a solution that does not involve massively-rejected ideas such as an editorial board or expert review. In my view Wikipedia is a victim of its own success. I'd vote for term limits for new admins and arbitrators if I thought it would result in greater numbers coming forward. Jimmy has met me in that "real life" of which we hear, I think he would probably agree that I am not aosme two-headed fire-spitting monster - I am, as my original username had it, "just zis guy, you know?" As are we all. But here's the weird thing: in over half a century on the planet, and a decade of sysopping here, I have come across maybe half a dozen people I would not buy a beer if we met by chance. It's not personal, for me. Is it for you? Guy (Help!) 23:58, 23 February 2016 (UTC)

You're saying "I can be an asshole to others as long as it's for the right reasons" -- and who decides what are "the right reasons"? You and a few others. So essentially you're saying "I can strong-arm the content of Wikipedia"... on 95% of things i would agree with your positions and on 5% i would differ, yet your brand of strong-arming would prevent me from having a fair say in that 5%. "Civil POV pushing" happens in every direction, Guy. You don't have a monopoly on good judgment. We need to work together, which is the beauty of Wikipedia when it works, and how it arrives at very rich content when it works -- and conversely is the problem when it's not working, and the result is emotional harm to editors and simplistic POV content. SageRad (talk) 13:52, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

Well you seem to spend most of your effort here on that 5%. That's your choice. It affects a lot of things, including how you see this place and how editors here see you Jytdog (talk) 15:14, 25 February 2016 (UTC)

Wow, way to make that a personal attack. I spend time in contested topics because I care about NPOV and opposition that's POV pushing takes way too much time to deal with. That's not me causing the problem. That's me trying to deal with the problem, and this is why we need a revolution of integrity. SageRad (talk) 15:19, 25 February 2016 (UTC)

SageRad there are so many mainstream science articles that need work. The worst thing is that mainstream science editors have to take up their time with your 5%. Everybody loses. I would say that you care way more about your self-image as a person who tries to Save The World than you do about Wikipedia's mission to provide accepted knowledge to the world. I've stopped letting you waste my time. Jytdog (talk) 15:46, 25 February 2016 (UTC)

Staff should not be afraid of the community, they should be part of the community. Admittedly these two concepts are not mutually exclusive.

But let us consider why the staff may find the community unpleasant to engage with. As far as I can see it is because (some of) the community are annoyed with the WMF. This is because we have outstanding bugs from ten years ago, or minor feature requests that are declined as "Wikipedia is not in the business of" or "MediaWiki does not do this" - but features we don't want are regularly foisted upon us. We should always tried to separate annoyance at an organization from annoyance at the limbs. But the fact is the management should not be placing the staff in the invidious position of going against the community.

All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 10:15, 23 February 2016 (UTC).

Afraid is a rather big yet unspecific word. It's a tad more complex than that. From my interactions with staff it usually boils down to the following; when they say they are afraid it's a culmination of:

1. I'm new and don't understand how the community works
2. I need some 2 years to really learn to understand this complex landscape.
3. I realize that by making mistakes as a WMF employee, I will get crucified by the community.
4. There is thus no viable learning path for me.
5. I've heard stories of scolding, out'ing, wikipediocracy and stalking (or have been the target of one or more of these myself).
6. I'm not looking for the potential of such a negative experience in my personal and/or professional life
7. In light of this, I let more experienced staff interact with the community.

Many will notice that the majority of the more interactive (often unofficial) communication occurs by staff that has been sourced from the community. These people usually already carry 5 years of experience before they have been hired.

It should be noted that even among that more experienced part of the staff, there is a reluctance at times to interact with the community. The reason for that is that it is simply a time drain (even for me as a volunteer btw). You could spend 70% of your week interacting with the community for every remaining 30% of work that you actually do. That is highly distracting, and also an inefficient usage of your professional skills. This is one of the reasons the Community Liaisons were introduced at some point, to create a balance in some of these interactions.

And it should be noted that many 'community hires' actually initially start out doing this community interaction on their own volunteer time, but after several years, they usually realize that 'they need a life' and cap their volunteer time spent on wikipedia.

To some degree the problem here is that where usually managers and customer service get to 'shield the workforce' so they actually get stuff done, in our community this is not really possible, and the only people able to communicate with the 'customer' is that same precious/scarce resource that is the workforce. This creates a rather fundamental resource allocation problem. Not helped by the fact that upper management in the foundation has been unable to present a vision/strategy to the community, so you need twice the amount of communication than you might otherwise require. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 11:38, 23 February 2016 (UTC)

• • In my experience, community liasons make two mistakes in how they interact with the community (separate from community's opinions of products, projects and development methodology). First, they avoid the questions, dissimulate, or otherwise stonewall. This is either due to incompetence, for which they should be fired, or because they have been given a set of aims to fob off the community, which is their bosses' fault and for which I would not mind seeing the bosses fired. The second is that they display various character traits, such as being patronising ("we know change can be scary"), dismissive of the communities' needs (as with Flow, when the message was clearly that anyone who didn't like it could just leave, and see if we care - Jan-Bart de Vreede) saying they care ("we want to have a more collaborative relationship" - don't say that, dammit, do something meaningful to start such a relationship), and speaking in grand mission statements instead of real-life details. In parallel to User:Risker/Risker's checklist for content-creation extensions, someone needs to write a "WMF Staffers' Guide to community social expectations". BethNaught (talk) 12:50, 23 February 2016 (UTC)
    • The only response I have to this, is that to pick on the smallest pieces on this chessboard, is probably not the best way to win the game here... —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 15:02, 23 February 2016 (UTC)
      • Beth is picking on their behaviour. The behaviour is cultural, and we need to change the culture. I would not advocate firing liaisons or their managers for incompetence, just changing what they do.

WMF is effectively a head office. It is a canard that head offices can exist on the work they generate internally (accounts for the IT department, HR services for the legal department, legal support for the executive, facilities managing the graphics people). But that is not the head office function - it is to support the divisions - in this case the projects.

As such the projects are the internal customers of the WMF - no benefit is to be had by obfuscation or insult.

But unless the WMF is focussed on delivering support to our mission of creating open content and making it widely available staff will be placed in an invidious position, to which obfuscation is one response.

All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 15:36, 23 February 2016 (UTC).

I agree with many things said above, including that retraining will get better results than firing workers. Workers might reasonably believe they are doing their job, and even doing it well. One thing that I do hear coming up in the recent drama is this idea that the WMF's purpose is to serve the community (i.e. the editors) and/or the projects. To some extent, I agree yes, that is *part* of the Mission, but it bothers me when editors seem to feel like the WMF should be almost subservient to their wishes and think it is okay to throw a temper tantrum if their perceived needs of "the community"--which is composed of a very diverse group of editors who can hardly agree on anything :-) -- are not met, such as retaining a democratically elected board member who the other board members can't work with. Let's review WMF's mission:

The mission of the Wikimedia Foundation is to empower and engage people around the world to collect and develop educational content under a free license or in the public domain, and to disseminate it effectively and globally.

In collaboration with a network of chapters, the Foundation provides the essential infrastructure and an organizational framework for the support and development of multilingual wiki projects and other endeavors which serve this mission. The Foundation will make and keep useful information from its projects available on the Internet free of charge, in perpetuity.

See also our bylaws, vision, and values.

These are some very big goals. And, yes, supporting the projects is part of it, but so is development--so the "Knowledge Engine" is not a ridiculous idea. And let us not forget that those who donate money to Wikipedia are probably not doing so to make editors happy--my guess from knowing some is that they are far more interested in the other more idyllic aspects. Ideally we don't want the donors to set the agenda, but we also know that $ has a habit of doing that. So we have to be realistic about what we can expect from the Foundation. Cooperation is essential, and there are communications problems on both ends. Telling WMF what they have to do is IMHO not going to work any better than the other way around. --David Tornheim (talk) 01:08, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

Bethnaught's point about community liaisons is fair. The solution is simple: bring back user:Bastique. I know Cary now works for a boss who is even better known than Jimbo, but we need him. Guy (Help!) 23:40, 23 February 2016 (UTC)

Bottom line. There is no reason on WP to treat anyone else with disrespect. Because we as editors do not like a perceived POV we cannot allow ourselves the self-indulgence of behaviors that diminish another editor while often blind to the plank in our own eye. We can't treat those we agree with with respect while unleashing hurt on other editors because we think we have , or may even have the high ground. That is not the way collaboration works. I'm pretty sure there are many well meaning editors who have somehow decided that their position in a discussion is reason to attack, to behave in a way that is uncivil. I'm not talking about a few swear words here, I'm talking about deliberate and true incivility: harassment, bullying, name calling, creation of false narratives, using AE to remove people (POV Railroad), piling on editors while derailing discussion, and all in the name of protecting Wikipedia. There is no reason to damage or try to damage someone else; not, he's Jimbo Wales and he's used to it, and not he's paid to do a job here. Pay someone when you hire them, but don't expect any healthy person to tolerate for very long a work place that damages them. We have behavioral policies; we need to uphold them and abide by them. We have content policies. Abiding by them while respecting everyone we work with is how we collaborate and how we protect Wikipedia.(Littleolive oil (talk) 17:54, 25 February 2016 (UTC))

Timeline since Lila's hiring

• Timeline gathered by GorillaWarfare and others. Jytdog (talk) 01:19, 23 February 2016 (UTC)

Thanks. That was some interesting reading! The drama goes way beyond the "Knowledge Engine". I heard about staff discontent, but that timeline makes it sound far worse than I had ever imagined... But this may be only one side of the story. I have a feeling we'll be presented with another view soon that makes it sound like just a "small" bump in the road.  :-) --David Tornheim (talk) 05:05, 23 February 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for sharing this here, Jytdog. David Tornheim: I would be interested to hear such a presentation. I did not use the same standards of NPOV when writing this as I do with my Wikipedia articles. I do indeed have strong feelings about this—I see the Wikimedia Foundation falling apart, and I see my friends who work there miserable and afraid to say anything about it. But I did try to keep editorializing to a minimum, as I want people to also be able to view it and draw their own conclusions. I would be very curious to hear what Jimbo Wales and LilaTretikov have to say about it, though I also have seen so many questions go unanswered throughout these past ~two years that I would be shocked if this was one of the few that did not. GorillaWarfare (talk) 07:43, 23 February 2016 (UTC)

Thanks, GorillaWarfare and others for that condensed timeline (has been a struggle to read Jimbo's talk-page for the related details among all the rants). There are tons of good jobs out there, and it can be upsetting for some employees to change software plans. I myself have been through numerous software transitions or computer conversions, including the ultra-stupid "dotcom crash" when numerous web-master people were dismissed as absolutely "no future" for Internet-based marketing and sales [too funny!]. Years earlier, a software interface was radically altered to change all menu choices to numbers only, to avoid those difficult keyboard letters for top-management users, only to watch the Chief place his finger tips on the home keys– he was a touch typist. However, my biggest shock about employees leaving was a keypunch billing secretary who could not adapt to direct digital keyboard entry and loss of punchcards when we replaced her IBM 403 Accounting Machine with all-electronic databases; I was totally stunned when she learned all the new computer procedures but then quit. Software transitions are extremely difficult, and programmers think the super-human, mindboggling algorithms are the hard part. Some amount of secrecy can be helpful when changing software plans, but it can be a complex juggling act to keep all balls up in the air. -Wikid77 (talk) 01:29, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

Interesting stories. What was that interface about changing to numbers only? Never heard of that.

I didn't get the feeling from reading the timeline that people were leaving because of a software transition. I don't remember anyone saying that, although it can't be ruled out entirely. Reading between the lines, the finger is undoubtedly pointed at the hiring of the new CEO. I was a bit skeptical at first of the negative implications as I was reading, thinking this might just be normal change of management, where the new manager replaces the people that directly report to them with people they have worked with before or trust--no fun to be replaced like that, but it is not unusual. I also wondered What the turn over was before the hiring of the new CEO. And what was morale like? And was there a productivity or other major issue(s) the new CEO was expected to tackle, possibly requiring a shake up?

But the number of people who left with almost zero notice and young people supposedly because of health or other dubious reasons started to add up. I don't remember even one of these highly qualified workers said they left because they found a better job, which should be the most common reason for leaving.

As the number of unusual departures added up, considering a budget of only $65 Million budget, I was left convinced--unless I see further refuting evidence--that there must be either: a serious morale problem, an intentional shake up, a new direction that many long-term employees strongly dislike or something else unpleasant that employees are expected not to talk about. The inability of employees to speak frankly about what is wrong seems especially troubling and does seem to match the communication problems expressed by a number of editors about poor and one-sided communication from WMF to them. I haven't experienced that myself, but I have never tried to talk to WMF. I assumed they were too busy making sure the servers are working with all that content on such a low budget! (and defending us from lawsuits that might arise when anonymous editors add libelous statements in our articles and we don't take them out fast enough.) --David Tornheim (talk) 05:33, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Lawsuits seem minimal, as the legal warning shown before the Edit-SAVE button blames each anonymous editor for whatever text saved, and that seems to protect WMF from liability, but many editors or wp:edit-filters also remove links to notoriously bad websites. In the software transition(s), there were many radical changes beyond the wp:MediaViewer, wp:FLOW talk-pages, and superprotect as WMF-only pages (removed in Nov 2015). There had been talk of forcing editors to use VisualEditor (VE) and removing the wikitext source editor, before 2013 when VE was the default for new users and inserted numerous sets of <nowiki>...</nowiki> tags to allow strings of spaces or botched literal markup code all across any (major) article, plus VE allowed any user to overwrite a prior editor's many changes without warning (not good as the default for new users).

For years the wp:developers refused to help Wikipedia editors with software improvements, such as refusing to install fast text-string wp:parser functions to find substrings in parameters, or to save global variables between templates to pass mode-indicators or counters, and to this day, our templates cannot count how many template errors occur across a page, as a red-flag re widespread hack-edits vs. rare typos in a few templates. Then the nested wp:expansion depth limit was forced to stay 40/41 levels to limit if-else guarded command structures plus nested templates to only only 40 deep, when programming languages allow if-else over 200 deep.

The developers had refused crucial software improvements for many years, but tried to force their unwanted software products onto the WP editing community while denying core features such as string-handling which we emulated (before Lua script was installed) by coding hundreds of sequential if-functions comparing to every possible masked character to split a text-string into separate letters to detect quotemarks or end-dots to remove double-dot ".." punctuation, etc. Years of refusing useful software transitions. But now we have the Community-Tech team supposedly improving the MediaWiki software, per community requests, rather than tell us we're stupid for wanting those features to make editing much easier (diff that sees a blank line was added, not a shifted line marked as totally different) or to make templates faster (Dec 2014) or smarter. I get upset just thinking about those past years of no major improvements, but thankful for recent major improvements while Lila Tretikov was here. -Wikid77 (talk) 10:03, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

Sounds like you got into some pretty deep programming! I love programming myself. I looked at the templates and got interested in how they function. I was curious how the software dealt with infinite recursion and other problems like that. I do notice some templates could use some work: for example, the "for" {{for|...|...}} template only allows a maximum of 4 parameters. I think there should be no limit. But I am also surprised how many important templates act more like macros: e.g. the templates for vandalism (e.g. {{uw-vandalism1}}) just replace the template with a bunch of boilerplate text--that seems needlessly wasteful given how often those templates are used and the fact that they probably never (or almost never) need to change once standardized. I am always impressed with the bots that clean things up. Debugging those must be a nightmare, especially making sure they don't wreck every single article by some slight oversight. I'm guessing you worked on some of those? I think I know who to talk to if I have a template concern.  :-) I agree that the kinds of things you talk about above they should have attended to. --David Tornheim (talk) 11:06, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

And one more staff member leaving [12] "After 12 months of continual stress, losses and workplace fear, I no longer wish to work for the Wikimedia Foundation." The board really need to do something to sort the toxic atmosphere out. The first action they need to take is becoming rather clear. --Salix alba (talk): 07:11, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

Yeah some people would argue the 'toxic' atmosphere will have improved by that exit... Only in death does duty end (talk) 08:29, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

(edit conflict)

• Well, clearly Lila and Jimbo need to open a talk-page dialogue with the community, but the potential for uncontrolled rants will make communication difficult, and if Lila was not "scared" enough at angry developers, then pent-up rants for years of WMF ignoring the editing community will likely terrify her. There is no easy way to discuss years of botched software mismanagement, when people will want to blame her for 10 years of WMF problems with those developers. -Wikid77 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 10:04, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

• The particularly striking thing to me is the number of new high-level hires who departed after only three or four months on the job. Even a single event like that is a major failure; the time-line shows at least half a dozen over the past couple of years, and that's a huge red flag. Looie496 (talk) 15:51, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

• Software is hard, and Lila wanted that: It is difficult to say why people leave for higher-paying jobs with easier work than writing an entire wp:FLOW talk-page system, or fixing diff to show added blank lines, or auto-merging wp:edit-conflicts to append 2 replies at the same line, but people do prefer easier work with simple tasks for higher pay. Perhaps explain that some other way. In the U.S. Govt, numerous people are often dismissed after competitive procurement selects one contractor, and then the others lose all of those jobs. -Wikid77 (talk) 11:38, 25 February 2016 (UTC)

What's in Wikipedia and is it getting better?

Jimmy,

I know you are interested in the question of whether Wikipedia articles are improving, e.g. there was a long discussion here back in September on "Is Wikipedia getting better?" I've continued looking into this question, using a much larger random sample, which allowed me to more precisely answer a question I've wanted to see updated numbers on for a long time now: "What's in Wikipedia?"

Proportion of Wikipedia articles by category. Each book represents one article in the sample, or about 5,000 articles on Wikipedia. Graphic by User:Mliu92

For a subset of the biography articles, it's pretty clear that article quality, measured in 3 different ways, increases over 5 years,

See User:Smallbones/1000 random results for details

TLDR

What topics does Wikipedia cover? Has the coverage changed over time? These and similar questions are examined using 1001 random articles sampled in December, 2015. The 18 categories and subcategories are dominated by biographies (27.8% of all articles), with biographies of men (23.8%) being 5.8 times as common as women (4.1%). Sports biographies (9.5%) form over a third of all biographies. All articles on sports total 16.0% of the sample. Geography (17.8%) and Culture & Arts (15.8%) are other major categories, with Science & Math (3.5%) having the lowest proportion of the categories in the sample. These proportions are fairly stable over time. Almost 90% of page views go to the 20% of articles with the highest page views.

The sample is intended to be used to investigate additional questions as they arise, with additional data gathered as necessary. As an example, 27 matched pairs of biographies of men and women were formed and the growth, in bytes and words of text, of these articles was recorded over 5 years from their starts. The results suggest that, on average, all bios more than double in size over 5 years, but that bios of men start about 30% larger than bios of women, and that they grow at a slightly faster rate. Modified data from ORES was also examined and appears to be a useful resource for addressing these, and similar questions.

Smallbones_(smalltalk) 04:07, 23 February 2016 (UTC)

Wikidata Statistics of Wikipedia Type of content

Discussion

Interesting stats, Smallbones :-) Did you know the wikidata stats of WP content for comparison? --Atlasowa (talk) 09:15, 23 February 2016 (UTC)

I didn't know about those stats, thanks for the link. It deserves a close reading, but a couple of things off the top of my head follow. I do have difficulty reading multiple pie charts at the same time, so I'll suggest Wikidata rethink that display choice. There are a few things I just don't understand yet, e.g. "artificial entity: 434,920 (8.6%), other P31/P279: 521,992 (10.3%), no P31/P279: 834,250 (16.5%)." But so far so good. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 15:09, 23 February 2016 (UTC)

Proportion of Wikipedia articles by category. Spoof version on Wikimedia Commons, with one word removed.

Was this based on the spoof version on Wikimedia Commons?--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 11:40, 23 February 2016 (UTC)

Absolutely, yes. I've seen that graph for maybe 8 years and love it because it tells a very interesting story. However, I always wanted to know what the real story was and why nobody filled that in. Well, this is a wiki - ultimately there's no use complaining if you can do it yourself. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 15:09, 23 February 2016 (UTC)

It is getting better, but still a staggering number of super important articles which have been neglected and nobody wants to write properly. Look at WP:Vital articles for progress, it's not great. It's all well and good having millions of articles and having a broad choice of articles, but I think a lot of even the regular editors here have the tendency to work on the more obscure topics or ones which require less effort and research than some of the more important/well visited ones. I have noticed in the last year or two that more editors now seem to be tackling those really core articles, but we're still along way off having the number of editors working on them that we need. By now I think bare minimum we should have all the Vital articles listed up to minimum GA. Especially the Level 1 and 2 ones. I think we ought to have some Vital article drives and aim to get those at least all up to minimum GA status. I'll consider running something for the Vital articles later in the year if I have support.♦ Dr. Blofeld 12:11, 23 February 2016 (UTC)

• The problem of the path of least resistance is exemplified by the featured articles. The current one is the early life and military career of John McCain – an arbitrary fragment of a biography. Yesterday it was yet another Australian shrub. And before that, an obscure comic book character, a pop single, &c. These topics are not at all vital and aren't even top tier in their own field. You're not going to get more vital but difficult topics done until such processes give priority to them. Andrew D. (talk) 12:39, 23 February 2016 (UTC)

I agree - there are a ton of articles that would be of interest only to a tiny minority of people, and a lot of those are of very low quality. Concentrating on vital articles or featured articles or articles with very high page views is extremely important and it would be nice if many people concentrated on these areas. These are also some of the most difficult areas to work in. The run of the mill or typical article (a stub) is also important. Raising the general level of our work is also important. Different strokes for different folks. An overview such as I present here tends to concentrate more on the later. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 16:11, 23 February 2016 (UTC)

This might be an understatement. I think the Biology and Geography categories contain more of the mass-produced, sometimes even bot-written content (for genes and places, for example). Wnt (talk) 12:48, 23 February 2016 (UTC) (Actually, looking at the data, more species stubs than genes) Wnt (talk) 12:58, 23 February 2016 (UTC)

Yes that is a huge understatement. Most of the species articles are a couple of sentences or less, could have been written by a bot, and have few or no sources or external links of any type. (I'll ping Casliber here just so he can remind us that this doesn't apply to all species articles.) I'm not sure that these do any harm, in some ways it's nice having a huge series like this. But I'm also not sure that the sub-stub shrub series does anybody any good. It does take up some editor time and other websites probably do it better than we can hope to do.

Geography articles are similar. There are lots of bot created 1 liners about Eastern European villages of 100 people that just have never had any improvement. On the other hand, we've got articles on every municipality and census designated place in the US (maybe the UK also) and that is quite an achievement. I'd guess that the large majority of these were created by bots, and have also improved greatly over time. I'm thinking of following up with an investigation of how these articles have improved over time. It may seem obvious (but always be prepared for a surprise!) but I think the improvement will be related to a) the number of people who can get good info on the municipality (probably closely related to the muni's population), b) the number of people who have an interest in the general area (prob. related to being in a rural or metropolitan area), and perhaps news items or page view spikes, and native language (but of course Eastern European villages are another kettle of fish). Anybody want to help work on this and collect some data? Smallbones_(smalltalk) 16:38, 23 February 2016 (UTC)

• Also, notice that the path of least resistance has a banner tag complaining that it "does not cite any sources". That was placed over 5 years ago. It has been edited about 30 times since then and nobody has done anything about it. Again, it is easy to fiddle with grammar or engage in OR but adding properly cited facts is too difficult for most editors and the editing process does little to encourage such improvement. Andrew D. (talk) 12:51, 23 February 2016 (UTC)

• In 2007, the bird species articles that were not alrerady in existence were created by a bot with a reference to IUCN. Also, endangered species have been created by bots. Again with sources. I am aware of the narrow focus of many FAs and have written about it elsewhere, which was the main impetus in resurrecting the Core Contest. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 19:53, 23 February 2016 (UTC)

I wonder if it might be better to produce the pie charts without taxa and administrative territorial entities, and then to track those separately. Somehow the Waray Wikipedia has 1.1 million taxa - and not much else - while the Serbo-Croatian Wikipedia has only 2000 taxa. The rest of the comparisons tend to get lost after that when pie chart format is used. It would also be worth understanding how these articles are generated, and whether one language or another could be doing it better. Wnt (talk) 13:07, 23 February 2016 (UTC)

Andrew is spot on about the featured articles and what editors are working on!♦ Dr. Blofeld 14:41, 23 February 2016 (UTC)

I'm not convinced that simply because an editor is interested in something obscure she should be penalized. However there is scope for wikiprojects to set motivating goals such as "get every state capital in India to 'Good' level". How does that grab you? All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 15:56, 23 February 2016 (UTC).

I didn't say that. All quality articles count, however obscure. But there needs to be a stronger central focus/drive towards really getting the core articles which a written book encyclopedia would have up to Good Article status. We need to be consistant at least in the Vital articles field.♦ Dr. Blofeld 17:47, 23 February 2016 (UTC)

Meanwhile the tiny (even obscure) WikiProject Disability has set just such an ambitious goal; to create a "state of the nation" summary article about the status of disability in every country of the world. The navbox is mostly red but we're slowly but surely turning them blue. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 17:09, 23 February 2016 (UTC)

Thanks Smallbones - in your ever widening research you may also want to take a look at enWP;

Wikipedia:Vital articles/Level/1:

1. Earth
2. Life
3. Human
4. History of the world
5. Culture
6. Language
7. The arts
8. Science
9. Technology
10. Mathematics

(I do not know if those Icons are up to date) and see what the improvement history of those are. You could also compare those across projects or go deeper into the 1000 (which admittedly have a bit of serendipity in selection). Also maybe write it up for the internal notice. Alanscottwalker (talk) 16:37, 23 February 2016 (UTC)

That's an excellent suggestion Alan, though I'd go further than Level 1.♦ Dr. Blofeld 17:49, 23 February 2016 (UTC)

@Alanscottwalker: I am really tempted to take on the 10 Level 1 articles (the 100 Level 2 articles - not so much!) I mean, how much work can analyzing 10 articles be? (famous last words). Let me throw it back to you. What would you like to know about those 10 articles? I can (easily, in theory) collect data, say for the December 31 version every year, on size in bytes, the ORES score (article class prediction), number of words of text, and with some more difficulty page views (there's a new system that works great for the last 3 months only), other things that might be very difficult - number of edits in the last year, number of editors in the last year, even readability index! What would you like me to do with that data? What questions or theories do you have about that data? Can you think of any other data that might reflect on your questions? Can you help collect some of the data?

I'm not trying to give you a hard time, just seeing what is needed to be useful and to satisfy your curiosity. Here's something that I can promise within 2 weeks: I'll get bytes, text size, ORES, and maybe even readability index for 12-31-2010 and 12-31-2015. I might even get enough data to make a nice graph (ORES?). OK, but what would really float your boat? Smallbones_(smalltalk) 20:27, 23 February 2016 (UTC)

"Improvement" is however, you defined it - I don't really have an addition, although it is possible with those articles that the wikipedia "review scale" (as supposedly they are important) was applied decently over-time - and if no one reviewes it regularly that might say something - (also, if you want, you could randomize a selection of the 100). I also don't have a theory, but I am aware of claims that the important articles are stuck in a limbo of disinterest and lack of knowhow about how to generally and effectively cover a broad concept/thing (perhaps, in light of a tendency elsewhere for "smaller subjects" to sometimes go-on-and-on). Alanscottwalker (talk) 20:58, 23 February 2016 (UTC)

I'm probably going to talk myself into a lot of work here, so let me say anything that I agree to could take 6 months. Most of those series above could be gathered year-by-year for 5 or even 10 years. The 10 level 1 articles could be compared to 10 "randomly selected" Level X articles and maybe 10 other articles that were started about the same time (pretty early in most cases). The random article link in the left-hand column doesn't have a "in the vital articles" function but something could be more-or-less worked out. "Level X" might be the biggest broadest set of vital articles in order to empahsize the difference from the level 1 articles. The other articles - how would we select them to be comparable? There might be enough older articles in the data set of 1000, but there probably aren't enough in the Science, technology, and math category to match up.

Finally, there is a likely selection bias that would work against any clear cut results. It seems likely that the articles improve at a certain rate, not entirely because they are vital articles, but rather they are selected as vital articles because somebody thought they were important enough to improve to a large extent. In any case, this would only be an exploratory analysis.

Why don't I do the simplest stuff in my first answer, post some very basic stuff in 2-3 weeks? In the meantime you and others consider what you really want to be done and consider how much data you are willing to gather. Yes, that last part is important. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 23:49, 23 February 2016 (UTC)

• I was dismayed to see, as so often happens when Wikipedia statistics are presented, Engineering/Technology doesn't seem to exist or is assumed to be part of Science. --Guy Macon (talk) 18:27, 23 February 2016 (UTC)
  • • Sorry, I think this is mostly because it's very hard to summarize all of Wikipedia into 18 categories and subcategories, and it is even harder to display more than that on one graph. So some lack of precision is needed. The real hard truth is that hard science, technology, and math articles are about 3.5% of Wikipedia's articles, the smallest category, so dividing it up or giving it a longer name is very, very difficult. Do please see the write-up at User:Smallbones/1000 random results where at least the word "technology" is used to describe the category. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 19:29, 23 February 2016 (UTC)

It is part of STEM, which the scientific establishment have been busy pushing as a concept for some years. Johnbod (talk) 18:47, 23 February 2016 (UTC)

• If the problem is needing a short label, STEM works well, or if that's too opaque, "Sci-Tech" is another possibility. BethNaught (talk) 14:05, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

• Smallbones has made a very interesting analysis, in particular of the biographies of men vs. women over time. I believe one of the current primary objectives of Wikipedia is to improve the coverage of women, given the "systemic bias" against them. One of the main concerns expressed in the discussions in connection with WikiProject Women in Red is that women's biographies are often deemed unacceptable owning to the lack of secondary sources. This aspect seems to deserve wider attention.--Ipigott (talk) 18:31, 25 February 2016 (UTC)

Create tool for random-jury selection

Introduction

I agree with Lila Tretikov that software development is the key to massive improvement of Wikipedia and Wikimedia content. Besides using better AI techniques to detect/remove copyvio text which has been copy/pasted into pages, other smart tools could be developed. A major advance would be a "random-jury selection tool" to wikimail perhaps 50 people to debate an issue from pools of hundreds/thousands of interested regular users.

For years, WP issues have been decided by self-selected groups of intense users, due to inability to wp:CANVAS potential !voters in a random manner, without seeming bias in notifications. The result has been many wp:TAGTEAM gang decisions which have acted as a "jury of sneers" to denigrate editors such as myself, with 2 degrees in computer science, having completely written several macro text editors and graphics editors, as if I do not know what templates or software products would be useful. The decision to mandate wp:DASHes into hyphenated titles was also forced in a relatively small group of self-selected users, later claimed as too much trouble to reverse.

Instead, if whatever-language wikipedia had a random-jury selection tool, then perhaps a wider cross-section of their editing community could be involved in decisions. After a few years, then policies such as wp:CANVAS might be reduced to allow broader, randomized consensus on major issues, without hoping enough people would sacrifice months of time to obsess about a wp:RfC which relatively few people knew was pending. As evidenced by websites such as Google Search or YouTube, software can change the world, make an unknown person famous, or discover a little-known talent to become a cultural superstar. Some software tools can become "killer apps" in their impact to transform the workplace. -Wikid77 (talk) 11:09, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

Yes, I totally agree that we need jury selection (which I mentioned above in this comment) instead of the horrible state of affairs of self-selected users making the decisions and there being no differentiation between interested and disinterested parties in the decisions. I did not realize there were others who have been contemplating similar solutions. That's good to hear. Smallbones seemed to agree on the need for some kind of reform here. Can we start a project or task force to address this? It is something that bothered me from early on when I started working on Wikipedia and it seems as bad as ever. I thought that trying to participate more in the noticeboards as a neutral third party to break up petty disputes was the best way I could contribute to address the problem I saw that you describe above, but the gangs and their sympathetic admins immediately chased me off. And that's why I too have been thinking jury duty is the way to go. --David Tornheim (talk) 11:28, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

@Wikid77 - This is an excellent idea. Carrite (talk) 12:16, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

I've long favored this idea. There are some details I would suggest though. There's too much room for distrust when an issue has widespread political significance, and so the procedure needs to be designed to dispel all doubt.

• The random numbers have to be genuinely, provably random - i.e. we say in advance how the generation is going to be done, and base it on a public lottery drawing, or preferably two from different countries. Otherwise he who controls the pseudorandom number generator controls Wikipedia - whether anyone at Wikipedia knows it or not!
• Notification of selection should be as a public on-wiki comment, because emails sent by some individual out of public view conceivably could be selectively mislaid.
• The random selection should be per edit rather than per user. We never really know how many usernames someone has, and more to the point, I think that the people who contribute more should have more say. (Possibly, we might agree on some namespaces to be excluded from consideration, like User talk...) Selecting random recent edits also ensures we get active users.
• Users with certain administrative statuses at the time of selection subject to blocks or certain kinds of topic bans might be excluded from the pool, but we must agree not to allow any future administrative action - even blocking! - to disqualify the juror from voting. Otherwise, jury selection could come to be dreaded, as rogue admins watch the conversation and start digging into the background of any juror who makes a comment they don't like.

Wnt (talk) 13:38, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

I like the idea. I'll respond to just a few points.

• I don't think worrying about the provenance of the random number generator is a very sensible place to worry, other than that it be a typical random number generator in Linux. The vectors of attack on such a system to game Wikipedia surely lie elsewhere, so preventing implementation based on a fear that would involve requiring random numbers being generated from different countries is not really optimal.
• We should absolutely be aware that putting a call out for 50 random volunteers will not result in 50 people responding - active wikipedians will be much more likely to respond, for example, but often times even they will decide that they aren't sufficiently knowledgable or interested to weigh in on an issue.
• Rather than excluding admins, I think it will often make sense to include them more often. They tend to be highly experienced users trusted by the community. There are sometimes complaints that the admins are tyrants, etc., but these generally have little merit. Rogue admins are seldom the real issue.
• It would be good to limit the use of the tool somehow, in terms of sheer numbers. If people start getting bombarded with 20 requests a day, it will just be a nuisance and people will tend to opt out of it. It should be reserved for use such that most active users only receive 1 request per month max.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 14:50, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

• random # generator I agree with Jimbo that the nature of the random # generator will not likely be an issue, and that a typical pseudo-random # generator found in most programming languages should be sufficient and can be made publicly visible. The choice of seed would be key, such as date and time as received on a particular WMF server, to make it hard to know or control what seed would be used. Also easy to verify the results after the seed was chosen. Perhaps adding a layer of public key encryption between the editor requesting a jury and the jury administration bot would further make it impossible for anyone to know or control what the seed is before it is chosen. Is there a way for two people to flip a coin using public key encryption? I do not think there is such a thing as a "truly random # generator" or being able to prove one if you had it. I think you can prove something isn't random or how well it stands to randomized tests, but not the reverse.
• participation I agree that editors may not want to do jury duty. To address this I believe it should be made mandatory (just like if you want to vote in real life), if you want to continue editing. Once the system is implemented, each editor would be required to submit their name to the jury pool before making any more further edits. If they fail to show up for jury duty, they would lose editing privileges until they participate. There might be some liberal provisions to allow unavailable for jury duty, such as going on vacation, or deferring jury duty if selected at a bad time. Or asking to be taken off the case because of COI, or feeling lack of competence, etc., just like in real life, and having an admin. on duty required to rule on the request. And like in real life, the editor(s) of the dispute might be allowed a small # of pre-emptive disqualifications of jurors without a showing of cause. Yes, that could be pretty complex, but if done correctly most of it could be done by automatically under clear timelines.
• complexity/frequency What I described in the above paragraph could be fairly sophisticated and have a time line as long as an ArbCom case. For major issues, it might be worth it. There could be different levels, with different timings. One might ask for a simple jury, where only a few editors need show up, or a full blown case, like ArbCom. And maybe limit the # of requests for jury decision per editor.
• seniority/# of edits in selection I do not think selection should be based on # of edits or length of service. I disagree with Jimbo about putting admins. on--they have plenty of power/authority as it is. We need fresh neutral eyes for content disputes, not people with entrenched unshakable views to have extra power. Witnesses can always speak in the witness box area, and that can include anyone, regardless of experience--as we have now, but the jury would be making the call, not the involved parties and self-selected participants in a case. For policy issues, a jury is probably not the best way to handle things. Then I agree that experience would be more important.
• testing I agree such a model would need to be tested in a very limited venue, and some general agreement on those to be the guinea pigs would be advisable. With feedback, the system could be expanded. I think if we found an appropriate notice board. Or took every Nth case for that noticeboard, or let requesters opt for a jury would be a way to start.

--David Tornheim (talk) 00:37, 25 February 2016 (UTC)

This seems on the face of it like a good idea, provided there is some basic gatekeeping to stop it being used frivolously. Guy (Help!) 15:01, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

I will emphasize the points of both Jimbo and Guy that there should be some limitations. This ought to be natural as any rollout of any new idea ought to be tested in phases, and gradually ramped up. (Unfortunately, we haven’t always followed such rules, but we can this time.)--S Philbrick(Talk) 15:49, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

@Jimbo Wales: I don't think a random number generator attack is out of the question, especially if the jury mechanism ever gets used to decide things like whether to have a site blackout over some surveillance bill an order of magnitude worse than anything proposed before. Even ordinary hackers might have both the means and some obscure but compelling reason to influence how the site is maintained. Wnt (talk) 16:17, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

I think juries should primarily deal with behavioral and content disputes, not policy matters. --David Tornheim (talk) 00:53, 25 February 2016 (UTC)

Also, I apologize for being unclear above - I wasn't suggesting that admins be denied a chance to vote, but that they not be allowed to remove voters by finding something to block them about. (I'm assuming that these "votes" will be prolonged discussions where jurors get to make the ultimate decision, but will listen to one another and any parties involved first, thereby giving others some time to see which way they are leaning) Wnt (talk) 16:51, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

I am okay with limiting jurors to lay editors--admins. have a enough to do as it is. But I agree that there is reason to be concerned about "jury tampering" as you described. Blocks after jury selection should probably not apply to jury participation unless the admin. overseeing the jury finds them to be disrupting the jury process. One of the things I really don't like is that admins. are not assigned duties randomly but just chose to do whatever they feel like, in the same way that noticeboards are self-selected. A recent decision that I described above I found rather outrageous, where a major decision was made by an admin. that many--including myself--believed was involved and therefore had COI. I much prefer the American court system where docket #'s are assigned to cases and the selection of judge is neither up to the judge nor the person filing the case. That would really help here. --David Tornheim (talk) 00:53, 25 February 2016 (UTC)

While this may look like a good idea, it's also a way of leaving the decisions to people with no particular knowledge nor interest in a topic. Is that really what we want? In a "real" jury, people are forced to sit through a a long and complex legal process, guided by professional lawyers and judges, confronted with expert witnesses, and instructed by the the judge. And the results are still not very good. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 01:15, 25 February 2016 (UTC)

As someone who works in and studies law, I respectfully disagree. I think the legal system (dispute resolution system) we have in the U.S. is far better and fairer than its counterpart on Wikipedia, which looks far more like the Wild West. In the U.S. too many people think that what they see on TV has a reasonable connection with how the legal system actually works. (See [13] and [14]). My legal courses quickly showed me that the legal system is far different and more reasonable than what I saw on TV. I quickly realized the representations made about the McDonald coffee cup case could not be accurate based on what I was learning. With minimal research I quickly found that what the media said about it and what actually happened had little in common. The media made it sound crazy that someone would sue for >$1M because coffee is too hot--seems reasonable. Until you find out the feeble elderly woman, sitting in the passenger seat of a parked car, sustained 3rd degree burns, 2 weeks hospital stay and skin grafting, and that when she asked McDonald's to help her with the bills, they told her to piss off. And that it was not her, but the jury that was so upset with McDonald's callous attitude about it, that they wanted a punishment McDonald's with 1 day's sales of coffee. Should we be surprised that McDonald's and corporations whose advertisements fund the media are more than happy if the media makes the plaintiffs and their attorneys look unbelievably selfish and opportunistic and leave out the plaintiff's version when they can make it sound more outrageous? So, no the court system works far better than the general public realizes. But our dispute resolution on Wikipedia undoubtedly have serious problems. At least our coffee case article is far better than what I heard on TV! --David Tornheim (talk) 02:09, 25 February 2016 (UTC)

I don't think we'd get far with the McD coffee case. But what about O. J. Simpson vs. Albert Woodfox? The best justice money can buy? Yes, our system is not perfect. But I'm not convinced that leaving decisions to less informed "juries" will be an improvement. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 02:30, 25 February 2016 (UTC)

^The two cases you give are just typical media cases. Most cases are not like this. Please review the articles I provided above.

I'm not convinced the gangs of self-proclaimed "informed" editors are always as expert as they want us to believe. With anonymity and no provision for qualification of expertise, an anonymous editor can make up any b.s. they want about how "expert" they are (or that they have no COI) and it is unverifiable. These self-appointed experts also think it is okay to say others they disagree with on content are "incompetent", including people who are actual experts. In contentious cases, I trust a person who has never seen the RS before to read it and summarize it over the kinds of behavior I have seen by the "informed" and highly invested editors who have decided a priori what is in the WP:RS and throw a temper tantrum of numerous bogus allegations and distractions if you point out they are wrong or lying. Wikipedia is supposed to be verifiable, so in most cases lay people should be able to read and verify what is in the RS matches what is in the article.

Now, I will admit, material such as Maxwell's equations or Schrödinger equation, few people with a basic high school education would be able to read any of the RS for the article, or understand much of the article itself. I do wonder to what extent Wikipedia was designed to require such specialized knowledge for editing or reading articles such as these. Compare these with the treatment of Britanica: [15] and [16] which permits the high school reader to walk away with a minimal understanding of these extremely important equations. ---David Tornheim (talk) 13:39, 25 February 2016 (UTC)

@Stephan Schultz: Fair point, and this does also raise another risk. One of the advantages of current policy is that it doesn't matter how popular something is, if it is objectively wrong, we portray it as such. A "jury" of randomly selected Wikipedians may be inclined to vote on what they feel about the subject, rather than the actual evidence. Take GMOs: what would Wikipedia be like if, say, a "jury" voted to allow Séralini's findings to be represented as fact, despite the evidence that they are scientifically unsupportable? We know that things like homeopathy, reiki, chiropractic and so on are popular - we also know they are laden with bullshit. Currently Wikipedia does not do votes and does not allow numerical superiority to override verifiability. Would that change? Several of the people agitating for this kind of reform are known to support fringe views, and their problem with Wikipedia is that they perceive our reality-based bias as unacceptable - they characterise the reaction to their POV-pushing as bullying, uncivil, non-neutral and so on - it's everybody else who is the problem. There are definite risks in this proposal unless it is implemented in a way that ensures policy, not popularity, always wins. Guy (Help!) 14:23, 25 February 2016 (UTC)

Above we have a good expression of Guy's McCarthyism. The belief that you known what's correct about everything, and others can't be trusted. That we need the benevolent dictator, or otherwise we'll be drowning in bad content. That we need good hearted bullies to maintain the content. I say no. We have policies and we have editors who understand the policies. We represent reliable sources correctly, and voila, we have good content. We don't need philosopher kings. We need fair application of policy. Guy's approach sounds superficially convincing, but it's deeply flawed and harmful. In other words, we don't need to be protected from the Communists. We much moreso need to be protected from those who say they're protecting us from Communists. We are community with principles and policy that will suffice, and I certainly support any means to getting better peer review of edits and avoiding canvassing, rigging, and gang-based POV enforcement. SageRad (talk) 14:56, 25 February 2016 (UTC)

• Ruthless decisions and deletions are rampant: Evidentally many users are unaware of the ruthless decisions being made. Now non-admin closures of XfD discussions are commonplace, concluding clear "consensus" to delete templates or pages used for years, just waiting for an admin to delete the pages not wanted by non-admin decisions. The deletions have been horrific; just look at TfD of Template:Convert/flip2, which deleted 3 complex templates in use for 5 years, based on 1 "Delete" !vote while another user urged to save those templates for use on other MediaWiki websites not using Lua script versions of templates. What some people do is to systematically remove valuable templates, from hundreds or thousands of pages, then claim, "template unused" as justification to delete a page used for years to provide data not possible in any equivalent way. -Wikid77 (talk) 12:12, 25 February 2016 (UTC)

Perhaps have a quorum of noninvolved users

It might seem great to poll only 3rd-party, non-involved users, but that seems unrealistic because the basis of the not-vote (!vote) strategy is to debate on merits of issues, rather than sheer numbers, and the involved users typically know those details well; however, too often the count of Oppose vs. Support is used to determine consensus, and hence a minimum count of non-involved users could be set, as an outsider quorum, to ensure enough outside 3rd-party opinions to deter an insiders-only majority rule. -Wikid77 (talk) 20:42, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

Yes, I agree, that a quorum of non-involved editors' decisions should carry the weight. And their discussion should be separated from the involved parties--like at ArbCom. They can listen to involved parties comments as witnesses and say they agree with Witness X's comments, etc., ask questions of witnesses/parties, and anyone else who feels like showing up, etc. Their decisions can be based on the old consensus model, but the self-selected parties and witnesses do not get an !vote in that.

I'm not sure what is to be done if the 3rd party uninvolved can't seem to agree. Like a real jury, they could be required to come up with something that all or at least, say 2/3rd of them can live with before they are released from duty.

I think it essential that the 3rd party non-involved are selected randomly from editor space. Editors may claim not to be involved, and just show up. But they may have an interest, or a strong opinion on the subject matter, even if they have never edited the talk page or article space before. In fact, the editors who show up could have had their accounts created specifically for that purpose--to be able to show up on key decisions and to be able to claim neutrality, since they have up until then spent all their editing time on other subjects. I read a disturbing Wikipediocracy article that described such methods a group of COI editors could use to hijack a particular Wikipedia article(s) which sadly could easily be in place right now and very hard to detect or prove, even if suspected. The random jury selection process would make the methods described in that article ineffective. --David Tornheim (talk) 01:17, 25 February 2016 (UTC)

Jury tool as part of user-decision toolset

In terms of WMF budget allocations, I would recommend a 2-year minimum to develop a broader toolset with the "random-jury selection tool" plus some related tools, as a broader toolset, to help assure the wp:developers a longer-term employment, in case of fears of project cancellation would deter programmers from sticking with the user-decision tools project. -Wikid77 (talk) 20:42, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

What if you gave a trial and nobody came?

I think the proposal is well meant but impractical. For example, in the U.S. if you're selected for jury duty you have to serve under pain of legal sanction including fine or imprisonment, while Wikipedia has no such powers of compulsion. On the other hand there's much to be said for giving more weight to those who haven't previously been involved in the matter at hand -- or at the very least, giving them space to be heard above the din of partisan sniping. Shock Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 01:27, 25 February 2016 (UTC)

Simple, make it mandatory if you want to continue editing (as I described above under "participation"). How many people you know who went to jail or were fined for not attending jury duty?  :) Jury duty is only required if you want to vote. --David Tornheim (talk) 02:13, 25 February 2016 (UTC)

I've known people who were fined (though not jailed) for blowing off jury duty. The link between voting and jury duty is a misconception that holds over from the days when jury lists were taken from voter registration rolls. Nowadays the jury pool is often supplemented with other lists, such as licensed drivers.

As for the possibility that one could be blocked for not serving on the Wiki-jury, this has so many potential undesirable outcomes that the chance of it being accepted is zero to negative.

Outside-the-box thinking is good, but this idea just isn't going to fly. Shock Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 02:38, 25 February 2016 (UTC)

I'm not seeing any evidence for "so many potential undesirable outcomes" resulting from mandatory jury duty, any more than we have in real life. It's simply a civic responsibility to create a fair system of justice by a jury of one's peers who are neutral rather than having the disputes boil over to different forums with all the same self-selected editors continuing to dominate the discussion/decision. As it is, admins. have wide latitude to block or ban editors for anything they consider to be a behavioral issue if a POV gang has it in for that editor; likewise, admins. have wide latitude to do nothing, when, in fact, action is needed. I have seen admins. say they were "afraid" to take a stand. I have seen countless double-standards, even lying tolerated, but with no venue to address the problem. I really believe having juries would address some of these most serious problems that demoralize editors.

Failure to participate with jury duty could be enforced by a bot. Although editors might try to trick the bot with bogus edits to "prove" participation, the other jurors who took it seriously would complain. I don't see much potential for abuse even close to what we already have. --David Tornheim (talk) 12:45, 25 February 2016 (UTC)

I very much wish that this could work. I would be relieved to see some way to get truly random and not self-selected participation in reviewing contested issues about content. I've participated in many RfC call from Legobot out of a sense of duty, the same sense that would compel me to go to jury duty. However, i have seen too many RfC's gamed by the same few editors with a point of view to push. I've seen them canvassed for votes, and don't trust the RfC process anymore. I've seen the same things that David Tornheim writes about: editors blatantly lying, distorting things in strawman arguments, misrepresenting sources on talk pages, derailing through fallacious arguments intentionally, filibustering, etc.... the whole gamut of "Civil POV Railroading" techniques, and many times not so civil -- and nothing ever done to remedy it through AN/I or any other process. In other words, an ecology where a few editors with an axe to grind can take over articles and force a POV to be represented as reality, in Wikivoice. I've seen this ugly process too much here. I've pretty much given up on actually editing anywhere if a few bully editors show up, because i know it's their way or the highway, and they'll stop at nothing, whatever the reliable sources may say, whatever reason may say, until they get their way. They have an agenda and they force it upon Wikipedia nonstop. Wikipedia has a serious infection of establishment trolls. Do not reply and say that i am promoting "pseudoscience' or "woo" or whatever. I am not. It's political. It's not about science versus pseudoscience. It's about forcing one version of selective representation of science into many articles. SageRad (talk) 19:43, 25 February 2016 (UTC)

I've always recognized that our jury duty would need to be voluntary. I don't think this is a problem for us though, because think about the choices: with IRL jury duty, you go sit in a room and probably not get called, or go to work and get paid. With Wikipedia jury duty, we could assign you straight to a case that might interest you, and the alternative is doing other volunteer work on the site. Additionally, of course, we can simply notify more people - with (in)justice systems, people may worry about self-selection if you did that, but here, we'd be moving from an entirely self-selected system to one less so, and that's still progress. Wnt (talk) 17:46, 25 February 2016 (UTC)

Like I've suggested this a couple times. I did this: I used a jury of three for my second RfA, and it worked great -- 2-1 decision. Granted the jurors were picked by me, but I picked two of the essentially at random. Worked out great, and I always hoped it'd be a test case. Can we test this? Let's pick a not-terribly-important RfC or two and try it?

As to random numbers, back in the day of play-by-mail games (and I mean play by mail, we didn't have email yet) we'd write "Alcoa, shares traded, July 17" (July 17 being in the future, and "last digit" being assumed) to give the equivalent of a ten-sided-die roll (also works for even/odd). This gives a common number than anyone can check (due to an oddity of statistics, it actually only works with numbers not generated by human activity -- temperature (last digit) would do.) Herostratus (talk) 17:59, 25 February 2016 (UTC)

• Support Fantastic idea. I think something along the lines of Legobot that picks random editors for RFC's would work. I also think that Admins should be included, and perhaps a separate pool with random admins chosen to close noticeboard sections on AN, AN/I, and AE would be a good thing when dealing with behavior issues. AlbinoFerret 21:31, 25 February 2016 (UTC)

The Signpost: 24 February 2016

• Special report: WMF in limbo as decision on Tretikov nears

• Op-ed: Backward the Foundation

• Traffic report: Of Dead Pools and Dead Judges

• Blog: Wiki Loves Africa brings the continent’s fashion to the world

• Arbitration report: Arbitration motion regarding CheckUser & Oversight inactivity

• Featured content: This week's featured content

• Technology report: Tech news in brief

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 05:04, 25 February 2016 (UTC)

Jan 2016 edit-counts rebound from December

See: https://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesWikipediansEditsGt5.htm

January 2016 S M T W T F S 27 28 29 30 31 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31

As could be expected, the January 2016 edit-counts have rebounded right back up as usual. Even with the reduced edits of the Friday Xmas & New Years Day weekends, the broad edit-count activity (5 or more edits) is only about 3% lower than January 2015 (the prior Friday New Year was 2009). Typical pageviews were also low during the January 1-3 weekend, so I figure low pageviews predicts low edit-counts that weekend. The next common year starting on Friday is 2021, then 2027 and 2039, as likely lower January edit-counts.

Meanwhile, the Turkish Wikipedia is on fire, with now 800 active editors, as the highest in forever (previously 739). A low spot is the Vietnamese Wikipedia, down worse than Chinese, so perhaps China has targeted the Vietnamese site as well. That reminds me of President Lyndon Johnson with the quagmire in Vietnam, where supposedly his potential win in North Vietnam was stopped by China's threat to nuke a U.S. takeover and millions of people (hence later Nixon in China & detente). Anyway, the strong January-2016 edit-counts seem unaffected by any rumors about the WMF staff, or whatever complaints here. -Wikid77 (talk) 10:55, 25 February 2016 (UTC)

VisualEditor News #1—2016

Read this in another language • Subscription list for this multilingual newsletter

Did you know?

Among experienced editors, the visual editor's table editing is one of the most popular features.

If you select the top of a column or the end of a row, you can quickly insert and remove columns and rows.

Now, you can also rearrange columns and rows. Click "Move before" or "Move after" to swap the column or row with its neighbor.

You can read and help translate the user guide, which has more information about how to use the visual editor.

Since the last newsletter, the VisualEditor Team has fixed many bugs. Their workboard is available in Phabricator. Their current priorities are improving support for Japanese, Korean, Arabic, Indic, and Han scripts, and improving the single edit tab interface.

Recent changes

You can switch from the wikitext editor to the visual editor after you start editing. This function is available to nearly all editors at most wikis except the Wiktionaries and Wikisources.

Many local feedback pages for the visual editor have been redirected to mw:VisualEditor/Feedback.

You can now re-arrange columns and rows in tables, as well as copying a row, column or any other selection of cells and pasting it in a new location.

The formula editor has two options: you can choose "Quick edit" to see and change only the LaTeX code, or "Edit" to use the full tool. The full tool offers immediate preview and an extensive list of symbols.

Future changes

The single edit tab project will combine the "Edit" and "Edit source" tabs into a single "Edit" tab. This is similar to the system already used on the mobile website. (T102398) Initially, the "Edit" tab will open whichever editing environment you used last time. Your last editing choice will be stored as an account preference for logged-in editors, and as a cookie for logged-out users. Logged-in editors will have these options in the Editing tab of Special:Preferences:

• Remember my last editor,
• Always give me the visual editor if possible,
• Always give me the source editor, and
• Show me both editor tabs.  (This is the state for people using the visual editor now.)

The visual editor uses the same search engine as Special:Search to find links and files. This search will get better at detecting typos and spelling mistakes soon. These improvements to search will appear in the visual editor as well.

The visual editor will be offered to all editors at most "Phase 6" Wikipedias during the next few months. The developers would like to know how well the visual editor works in your language. They particularly want to know whether typing in your language feels natural in the visual editor. Please post your comments and the language(s) that you tested at the feedback thread on mediawiki.org. This will affect the following languages: Japanese, Korean, Urdu, Persian, Arabic, Tamil, Marathi, Malayalam, Hindi, Bengali, Assamese, Thai, Aramaic and others.

Let's work together

• Please try out the newest version of the single edit tab on test2.wikipedia.org. You may need to restore the default preferences (at the bottom of test2wiki:Special:Preferences) to see the initial prompt for options. Were you able to find a preference setting that will work for your own editing? Did you see the large preferences dialog box when you started editing an article there?
• Can you read and type in Korean, Arabic, Japanese, Indic, or Han scripts? Language engineer David Chan needs help from people who often type in these languages. Please see the instructions at mw:VisualEditor/IME Testing#What to test if you can help. Report your results on wiki (Korean – Japanese – all languages).
• Learn how to improve the "automagical" citoid referencing system in the visual editor, by creating Zotero translators for popular sources in your language! Join the Tech Talk about "Automated citations in Wikipedia: Citoid and the technology behind it" with Sebastian Karcher on 29 February 2016.

If you aren't reading this in your favorite language, then please help us with translations! Subscribe to the Translators mailing list or contact us directly, so that we can notify you when the next issue is ready. Thanks!

– Whatamidoing (WMF) 17:47, 25 February 2016 (UTC)

WMF mission - the unstated part about self-preservation

Just a quick thought. I think one of the key challenges for the WMF itself, is how it can stay relevant. Lila's long statement includes this:

As we matured, we encountered two fundamental, existential challenges. <snip> The other is external and is emerging from our own value of freely licensed content: Many companies copy our knowledge into their own databases and present it inside their interfaces. While this supports wider dissemination, it also separates our readers from our community. Wikipedia is more than the raw content, repurposed by anyone as they like. It is a platform for knowledge and learning, but if we don't meet the needs of users, we will lose them and ultimately fail in our mission.

I read that, and thought, "Really? Which part of the WMF mission is she talking about failing there?" I realized that it is the unstated part - that the WMF itself should persist, grow, remain relevant. Most every organization wants that. It is an unstated thing, generally.

And I thought - "existential challenge" to WMF? As in "live or die" crisis? What is that? What Lila doesn't say, is maybe that the way things are going, people get the content we create elsewhere, readers don't come to the WM/WP sites so much any more, donations fall, WMF itself cannot grow, maybe even shrinks.

I think that is a big deal to the WMF board and ED.

When there are existential threats, people think about self-preservation. So - how do they keep the platform relevant, is #1. I think that is what the "knowledge engine" is/was all about - making the wikipedia.org portal, and search results produced by it, why people come to Wikipedia. They want that, so the WMF itself can persist and remain relevant.

I think, that maybe that has nothing much to do, with supporting what we content-creators do. It is one reason I have been saying that I have this strong sense, that the WMF seems to be ready to throw the editing community under the bus (or push us to the back of the bus? bad metaphors) - to "hijack the platform", as I have written. (whether this is "paranoid" crazy talk or not, I don't know, as the WMF is not sharing its actual strategy with us in any clear way)

Does the editing community overall agree that the WMF is an "existential crisis"? (outside of the issue's with Lila's leadership - I mean bigger picture stuff that hiring Lila was meant to address in part)

Is what the WMF sees as a life-threat a bad thing to us at all? I don't know.

Personally I have just wanted the servers and software to work so we can publish our content and get it out there, and haven't even thought about the WMF much at all before James got dismissed. Not really part of the world I see, even - just something in the background. I am even unaware if donations are falling and the WMF is shrinking (outside of people leaving because they are so unhappy now) .

This is one place where I think there are not shared values or priorities, or even a shared sense of reality, between the editing community and the WMF leadership.

This may be obvious to tons of people here. It is just something I have been getting clarity on. Jytdog (talk) 18:26, 25 February 2016 (UTC)

Lila resigns

Within the last 20 minutes Lila Tretikov has announced her resignation as ED on wikimedia-l. BethNaught (talk) 19:04, 25 February 2016 (UTC)

Preliminary followup from Patricio:[17] --Guy Macon (talk) 20:04, 25 February 2016 (UTC)

Whew. Now we really have to try to reset and start over, somehow. A good starting point would be the WMF Board telling us the story of what has gone on, in a way that respects everybody's experiences, without further obfuscation. that would be amazing. Jytdog (talk) 19:30, 25 February 2016 (UTC)

And this validates all the "discussions" held on this and other pages in what way? I fear I do not see how any of this arm-waving and angry discourse actually benefits either Wikipedia (as an encyclopedia) or the WMF (as the legal entity behind Wikipedia), and it decidedly seems to make Wikipedia into the "tabloid capital of the Internet" with regard to what is, and what is not, actually important. Collect (talk) 19:37, 25 February 2016 (UTC)

The WMF has lost a lot of great people - see [18] - most recently User:Ironholds, as of the 23rd. Unfortunately, few of them are really explaining what's wrong well enough for some of us in the audience to understand exactly what has gone wrong. I am suspicious though this goes all the way back to when we lost Mike Godwin, seemingly over a minor spat involving the article about the FBI - and if that's true, the problem predates Tretikov, and will very likely continue under her successor. Wnt (talk) 19:55, 25 February 2016 (UTC)

• I hereby call for not commenting on the accuracy of the claims made in the resignation message, and for those who agree with me on this to completely ignore any such comments (any response just encourages further discussion) It would not be fair to do anything other than allowing Lila her final say and moving on to a discussion about how to move forward. Who is with me on this? --Guy Macon (talk) 19:58, 25 February 2016 (UTC)

While one could wish that the director of a foundation of this size and importance could use the word "equitably" correctly, and that her personal staff would in any case detect the mistake in a document of such importance to their director and to the foundation, I agree with Guy Macon that we ought to avoid a long wrangle here about the substantive claims. MarkBernstein (talk) 20:03, 25 February 2016 (UTC)

Agreed. There is no need to kick someone when they're down, or to shoot them from behind as they walk away. (Don't bite: metaphors.) The record can be left to speak for itself. BethNaught (talk) 20:07, 25 February 2016 (UTC)

This response seems to set the right tone:

. . . I know many people disagreed with your strategy and your decisions, but as I had the privilege to knew your personally during the last 2 years, I know each one of them were truly in the favor of the movement in your personal point of view. Thank you for all the works during the last two years. For being available to speak personally with each one of us. I learned a lot for each meeting or conversation with you. Thank you Lila, and good luck whatever will the roads will take you. -- Regards,Itzik Edri , Chairperson, Wikimedia Israel [19]

-- Alanscottwalker (talk) 20:19, 25 February 2016 (UTC)

From what I've gleaned over the stories and messages I've read, much of the clash seemed to be putting a business-oriented person in charge of a large non-profit where many of the employees work because they believe in the mission, not for the size of their paychecks and so demanding results (mentioned in an earlier email from Lila) will garner a different response than it would at a startup. I think she and the Board underestimated how much they need the support of the larger committee and how much a non-profit needs to care about process as much as the achieving results. Both are possible, of course, but the repeated calls for more transparency indicates that concerns about the process of governance and leadership might have suffered. Again, some of these incidents wouldn't have been an issue in a for profit company but in an organization that relies so much on volunteer labor, it's essential. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 21:00, 25 February 2016 (UTC)

We have to fix the software, nobody else will

As Jimbo has welcomed various software talks on his talk-page, and now, after 5 years, we need to take more-direct action to fix bugs in the MediaWiki software. In particular, the Community Tech team is ready to fix diff problems (an added blank line seen as the next line totally changed, or no specific differences shown when a line is several hundred characters long). -Wikid77 (talk) 21:27, 25 February 2016 (UTC)