User talk:Jimbo Wales

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)

And I note that you continue to ignore the substantive complaint. Par for the course, of course. Resolute 16:55, 26 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)

So you feel that making vague insinuations here on Jimbo's talk page every six months when Square Enix happens to be mentioned in a TFA about an old computer game, has more chance of achieving something useful than helping to forward the candidacy of the noncommercial articles that you have specifically said should be favoured for TFA? Hmm. As for "picayune complaints", in the first noncommercial FA candidate that I'm working on, one of the problems that I raised, now fixed, had the entire animal upside down. That's not trivial. MPS1992 (talk) 14:21, 27 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)

Ahahaha, how much misunderstanding can we have in just this one small topic? I interpreted Coretheapple's comment as meaning that he might soon try to bring Joan McCracken, Michael Kidd, LeRoy Prinz or Johnny Broderick from GA to FA status. Of course, if he succeeds with any one or several, all of those that succeed are then almost guaranteed an appearance at TFA. MPS1992 (talk) 21:33, 25 February 2016 (UTC)

Yes, I had those articles in mind for elevation. They are totally noncommercial, and if someone is planning to bring out a Joan McCracken Brand Toothpaste I am not involved in it. Coretheapple (talk) 21:38, 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 [1] and [2]). 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: [3] and [4] 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)

Wow. Your true spirit is showing. You obviously don't trust the ordinary randomly selected editor to review the evidence (WP:RS) and make the right decision. They apparently can't be bothered to follow our rules. They obviously don't know the Truth™ and won't find it even if you show them the RS. You on the other hand do have access to the Truth™, and you have admin. tools and the threat of using them to prove it. Those who disagree with you are just pushing WP:Fringe views and are a bunch of advocates who don't get it, pretty much like the other average ordinary users who can't be trusted either. It would probably be better if none of these clueless people were here and you and those who think like you do took over. In fact, the entire project of Wikipedia is in question with the presumption that "anyone" can edit, because after all, as you said, they can't be trusted to look at the RS: they will just favor their beliefs instead. This looks to me like the classic fallacy of Argument from authority, where you are the self-identified authority and everyone else who doesn't think like you do, well, we can't be trusted... --David Tornheim (talk) 04:58, 26 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)

Where did I say I know what's best? The issue is as I stated. Consider an analogy: state leigslatures may pass laws banning gay marriage, but the Supreme Court, which has no jury, has ruled that this is unconstitutional. So if you are going to have juries to rule on content, you'd have to have an overarching system which examines whether the decision of the jury is actually in line with policy. You can't qualify the jury by credentials, because (a) credentialled editors are every bit as susceptible to bias as lay editors - hence Citizendium nuking a big chunk of its expert-generated content a while back, because the experts in question turned out to be fringe POV-pushers rebuffed from Wikipedia - and (b) lay editing is a foundational principle.

The accusation of McCarthyism is hyperbolic and frankly irrelevant. Wikipedia is, by its very nature, inclusive. A few people get sanctioned or banned, but only a few, and mainly in areas where there is a well-documented real-world collision between fact and ideology (climate change, creationism, homeopathy, psychic phenomena and the like). Wikipedia is a reality-based project. If it ever ceases to be a reality-based project, it will lose its credibility and it won't be Wikipedia any more. If Wikipedia said that reiki works, rather than it being so obviously nonsense that a nine-year-old student could devise a test that shows it doesn't work, then we would have failed. Being neutral and accurate does not mean giving parity to belief and empirical fact. Guy (Help!) 23:26, 25 February 2016 (UTC)

JzG/Guy: Your claim that "only a few" people get banned is a bit disingenuous. At the GMO ArbCom Case, a single editor Tryptofish proposed having 7 editors site-banned [5], including me, SageRad, DrChrissy who have spoken here, Prokaryotes (whose successful topic-ban you later supported, resulting in a voluntary 6-month site ban.) You did not oppose any of the 7 proposals for site bans, and indeed spoke up in support of the proposed site ban of Petrarchan47. To say site bans are uncommon is not consistent with your willingness to let 7 of them move forward in just that single proceeding. --David Tornheim (talk) 04:33, 26 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)

You are promoting pseudoscience and woo. Pseudoscience-pushers have always said exactly the same things you are saying ("it's conspiracy and corrupt politics"), they do now, and they always will. However, this phrase, "establishment troll" is a new one for me. It is great, in its bizareness! And it could not make your stance outside the mainstream more clear. Jytdog (talk) 21:36, 25 February 2016 (UTC)

No i am not promoting "pseudoscience" and "woo", and stop the god damn personal attacks, man. There are dynamics going on, some of which serve establishment ends. That's observable. There are indeed real conspiracies in the world, too -- there are warranted conspiracy theories and unwarranted one. The idea of "the mainstream" is a term of control, and conformity to "the mainstream" is used to promote ideological conformity. That is not what Wikipedia is about. It's about getting things right. If there is a solid source that says a certain chemical causes a certain harm in humans or in animals, with due weight, then it belongs in an article about that chemical. Those who push it out of the article do seem to be "establishment trolls" when they do that systematically and round-the-clock as if their life depended on it. Stop your vile personal attacks and speak with integrity, Jytdog. SageRad (talk) 13:15, 26 February 2016 (UTC)

I support what SageRad says. There is a group of "establishment trolls" who have a strong POV and impose their POV on Wikipedia. Any opposition to their POV is labelled "pseudoscience" and any references which do not support their POV are labelled "unreliable". The result is that Wikipedia is heavily biassed in one direction and is losing credibility. Biscuittin (talk) 13:59, 26 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)

• Comment I don't think this is a practical idea and I think it is problematic make demands of volunteers who freely giving their time and attention to work on areas of the project that they find rewarding. Pulling them away from improving articles or fighting vandalism and insisting they serve on a jury if their number comes up will likely find some editors simply disappearing from Wikipedia for a few weeks or months. Since I think that the very active editor pool on Wikipedia is around 3500 individuals, I think you are overestimating the number of editors who regularly edit and would want to participate in this process.

But that's just my opinion. As in all major changes on Wikipedia, try an RfC rather than a talk page discussion and see what kind of support this has. In general, editors don't like major changes but the RfC on RfA reform succeeded and maybe this one would too. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 21:52, 25 February 2016 (UTC)

• Comment A very interesting idea. Being selected as a jury member should not be related to number of edits. My own style of editing is multiple, brief edits, meaning I have a high frequency. I would not really like to think this makes me more likely to be selected, although I would be willing to complete my community service. If editors were to avoid jury service, perhaps a sanction that makes editing problematic e.g. 3 edits/day until engagement in jury service, rather than an outright block might be an encouragement. Randomly-selected jury service for matters of behaviour is fine - we should all know what is appropriate behaviour on here and what is not. Matters of content is slightly different. What if editors were requested to state their areas of interest (limited to, e.g. 5) - many of us already do this on our user page - and the jury members were selected from this group of knowledgeable (expert?) editors?DrChrissy ^(talk) 22:56, 25 February 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for the brainstorming! Yes, reduced editing fuctionality might be better than a complete block. I think reduced function would be preferable to some of the black/white punishments we have for other issues as well. It could also be used like plea bargain. --David Tornheim (talk) 23:52, 25 February 2016 (UTC)

Drawing people from the pool of those who identify as interested in a subject is the exact opposite of what this proposal is trying to achieve. You would pretty much guarantee that the "jury" would be comprised of partisans. I am sure many of those topic-banned in the GMO arbitration case consider themselves experts, or at least knowledgeable and interested, but it turned out that the more "expert" they were, the more they were pushing a POV. Hence bans for partisans in both camps. Imagine trying to adjudicate on the validity of claims in an article on a subject rife with pseudoscience - acupuncture, homeopathy, whatever - with a jury of people who self-identify as experts in that field. You'd end up with the situation they had at Citizendium, where they had to nuke great swathes of citable articles because they had been hijacked by "experts" like Dana Ullman. Guy (Help!) 23:12, 25 February 2016 (UTC)

It would actually depend on the size of the pool. If the pool is big enough, the selection would be random (within the confines of the subject matter) and this would prevent the sharks in the pool from chomping on the others to POV, or playing tag with other sharks. That is why I suggested a limited number of categories - so that editors would have to think about where they wanted to have influence and this would be limited.DrChrissy ^(talk) 23:23, 25 February 2016 (UTC)

The idea of users selecting categories is interesting. I agree with JzG that allowing self-professed experts to limit categories of jury participation might allow continued advocacy in that topic area. In particular, when it comes to health articles, we have an embarrassing problem with the influence of "sketpic" partisan activists promoting Skeptic magazine and Quackwatch through their Wikipedia editing as a way of proselytizing and recruiting to their their radical ideology regarding science and "truth" as witnessed by this video of Susan Gerbic. A skeptic I met in real life had a poor understanding of science and very little training. Science was more like some "fad diet", that the person had jumped on and thought would save the world. I notice that many skeptics are people who turned away from Christianity [6], [7], [8], [9] from one dogma to another, using all the same methods of promoting the dogma.

But I also think it would be unfair to force someone to participate in something they really feel they have no knowledge of the RS that may be fairly complicated and have no interest in learning it. That's why I would propose that editors be permitted to opt-out of certain discussions if they feel they are not up to it, rather than the other way around. I would rather users be randomly pushed into topics that are new, but interesting to them rather than having a big say in choosing the topic to participate in.

That said, I have close family members who are professors in science, and if they ever were to edit, they might prefer their entire editing experience was only related to science and/or their area of true expertise. I'm not sure that would be an unreasonable thing to ask, and hence, asking to have their jury service restricted to science (or other subject they feel somewhat knowledgeable on the RS) does not seem entirely crazy. So I'm a bit on the fence with your idea on self-selecting categories. Keep in mind that establishing a category will require the person requesting a jury to chose one, and there could be a big disagreement about what category the dispute fit into best. --David Tornheim (talk) 01:08, 26 February 2016 (UTC)

It is a mistake to characterise skeptics as "partisans" in this way: skepticism is the default in the scientific method, and it is skeptics who have led the way in exposing the fraudulent nature of homeopathy, the lack of credible evidence for acupuncture, the entirely bogus claims of reiki and other "energy medicine" modalities, the fatalities caused by chiropractic manipulation of the neck (a procedure with no demonstrable benefit to offset the risk), the activities of anti-vaccination activists and so on. Skeptics played a prominent role in Kitzmiller, too. Skeptics have exposed the reality behind several paranormal claims, and exposed fraudulent claims around bigfoot and other cryptids, including tracing the origin of the chupacabra.

You seem to think that all skeptics are like the newbies Susan Gerbic trains. That's not true. My skeptic friends in real life include several professors, many medical doctors, a ton of PhDs - I am ofetn well outclassed with my humble BEng. Sure, soe skeptics are clueless. But most aren't. The thought leaders of the movement included people like Martin Gardner, Carl Sagan, Robert L. Park and others. Oh, and of course Randi, who, as a stage conjurer, is very adept at spotting sleight of hand, so nailed Peter Popoff and Uri Geller to name but two out of many frauds and charlatans he has exposed.

Skeptics are basically just science advocates. Read Voodoo science some time. Sometimes science says things that people don't want to hear (the earth is warming, GMOs are safe, vaccines are safe and effective and so on). Wikipedia does not work like the news media and sees no need to give parity of esteem to science and nonsense. This is, as far as I can tell, a feature, not a bug, and any attempt to change it through the back door, by allowing votes to override policy-based arguments, would degrade the project. Guy (Help!) 23:38, 26 February 2016 (UTC)

Regarding juries, I'm not sure why you keep talking about majority. Juries often require unanimous verdicts [10]. If you have not seen the famous movie 12_Angry_Men_(1957_film), it would be well worth a view. It makes a strong case for why it might be okay to allow one juror to block a questionable decision of the other 11. My guess is that if juries are implemented, they would continue to follow the long established Wiki-consensus rules/principles, but I assume that the consensus would be of just the jurors rather than including those in the dispute--just as is done in the courts. I would prefer a super-majority or close to unanimity, but I would probably not want a single defiant juror the ability to stonewall the decision.

Thank you for the long explanation of your thoughts on Skeptics. If you got a BEng, then I'll bet you had to take some liberal arts classes and some in the humanities. Most engineers in my program (and that I have known since) hated liberal arts classes, thinking the courses were too "touchy-feely", too mooshy. They strongly preferred math, science, logic and other left brain thinking which they saw as grounded in verifiable "fact", formula and rules of nature, and did not see much need or value for the other wishy-washy foolishness. But if you take a little philosophy (especially regarding Epistemology), the solidity of science in finding all "truth" is not all that it is made out to be by science advocates who hold it on a pedestal. Empiricism has always had its limits pointed out by Plato in his Allegory of the Cave [11], David Hume in An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Descartes' Meditations on First Philosophy and Immanuel Kant's novel metaphysics and the unknowability of the thing-in-itself. Science may be great for designing motors and predicting the movement of planets, understanding DNA, evolution, measuring and predicting temperatures, understanding many things about living beings, etc., especially the concerns that come up with pure materialism. But if you want to understand abstract concepts, history, the nature of morality and beauty, culture, good writing, power, etc., science and its reliance on the scientific method and use of induction have limits in explaining power and experts in many academic fields would wisely not rely solely on science for all "truth". And those were many of the well established fields the engineers who loved science tried to avoid. Imagine an architecture class based solely on science. --David Tornheim (talk) 04:05, 27 February 2016 (UTC)

David I am a humanities and a science person and the way you are mixing up po-mo and science is garbage that will never get traction in WP. Jytdog (talk) 05:23, 27 February 2016 (UTC)

You sure had me fooled by your edit history that is only about pharma, medicine, science, chemicals, etc. Of the many posts of yours I have seen in different venues, never once have I seen even the slightest interest in humanities, philosophy or epistemology. You might take a look at our article space just mentioned here. Science is just a wee percentage of the articles we have. It's funny how you brought up Postmodernism. All of the well respected philosophers I mentioned died centuries before the concept came into being. After all, science is just a branch of philosophy (see Natural philosophy) with a fairly recent and dramatic rise in interest during and since the Renaissance and Industrial Revolution (History_of_science). --David Tornheim (talk) 13:31, 27 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)

• It is good to see that whateverthehell it was that happened in December was a temporary blip... The count for Very Active Editors (100 edits/mo.) across all projects topped the 11,000 mark and was the highest since Jan. 2012. On En-WP the count of 3,492 was up 5.8% from the same month of the previous year and topped the figures for January 2015, 2014, 2013, and 2012. Reports of Wikipedia's demise have been greatly exaggerated. I know that there is a way to check the percentage of edits attributable to VE, which had been running about 4% of total edits last I heard. Can anyone provide that figure for Jan. 2015 from the available data? (That would be a good number series for WMF to generate in tabular form, just saying...) Carrite (talk) 18:12, 26 February 2016 (UTC)

• Actually that is not right, there has been "a steady overall decline in active editors" up to today's date (26 February 2016), according to this article in The Register by Andrew Orlowski. MPS1992 (talk) 22:05, 26 February 2016 (UTC)

The Register is a secondary source, if you go to the primary sources and things appeared to decline from 2007 to 2014 then bottomed out and have recovered a little. One measure is the time between 10 million edits; that peaked at 37 days in 2007, dropped to 73 days at the slowest point in 2014 and is now running at about 66 days. Another measure at the other end of the scale is the editors doing over 100 edits per month in mainspace, that seems to have peaked in 2007 but rallied in 2015. So if you look at raw figures the English Wikipedia is below the 2007 peak, but that ignores the effect of the abuse filters, faster vandalism reversion and blocking and the migration of intrawiki links to Wikidata. All of those improvements have reduced raw edit count and we don't know what it would now be if they hadn't happened. ϢereSpielChequers 17:47, 27 February 2016 (UTC)

Yes there was a processing glitch re the December figures. Also there does seem to be a problem with editors reaching their tenth edit, that has stopped rising and started dropping again since July, especially recently. I'm in discussion with a number of people at WMF and elsewhere to work out why. It could be just a glitch. ϢereSpielChequers 17:50, 27 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)

I recommend being really careful about accuracy. Don't carelessly slide from "challenge" to "crisis". There are many challenges which are not crises. I recently joined the board of The Guardian. They face a big challenge - revenues are much less than expenses, and the trust fund which covers the difference won't last forever. By some estimates, there are 8-10 years of money left. That's a big existential challenge, but it isn't (yet) a crisis.

Our movement - dedicated originally to creating a free encyclopedia for everyone, in their own language, and dedicated more broadly to "a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge" faces real existential challenges. They are not (yet) crises, so we should not run around in panic. But we should be serious and aware of changes in the world which will impact, negatively in some cases, our mission.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 19:13, 26 February 2016 (UTC)

• The Knowledge Engine by Wikipedia™ idea was all about creating an app or a function that would drive readers to the Wikipedia website, where they would be exposed to donation banners saying that unless people donated money there would be engineers going without coffee and the servers would stop running, or whatever the A/B tested winning nonsense line of the year was. And then the money would continue to flow and the engineering staff would continue to grow, and the sun would never set on the San Francisco empire. Of course, we the core volunteers care little about empire building. We want the software to continue working, to be improved in an evolutionary manner without disruptive bugs, for our backs to be covered if we are sued for trying to maintain NPOV, for research resources to be made available for us, and for filters and bots to be developed to help us perform our work. This is a big element of the fallout over the Knowledge Engire — we have no intrinsic need as encyclopedists to take on Google's commercial search engine just because they've figured out how to monetize our non-commercial work in a way that perhaps endangers the multi-millions that WMF rakes in each year. Carrite (talk) 15:26, 26 February 2016 (UTC)

@Carrite: I wouldn't belittle it like that - bypassing our site means that there are fewer new editors, not just less in donations. Still, I think we should have pinned our hopes on hooking, not crooking - only a solid web of quality content ensures that search engines continue to find it necessary to deliver readers here. I'd rather Wikipedia have fewer restrictions, cover less notable events, allow more social media like use of the site by individuals to encourage their interest - compete more with Yelp than Google, even. I mean, if we wanted, we could throw out WP:NOT, literally have a map of your hometown with pictures of all the local businesses - while that of course invites unwholesome influences, they would be on a smaller scale than the ones that have "notable" products. We could have a hierarchy of content, some of which is more personal experience and unreliable reference than the hardcore encyclopedia, with proper disclaimers and warnings. There's no reason why you should have to be born a robot to be allowed to snarf up content on the web that isn't suitable for a proper encyclopedia article! Wnt (talk) 17:26, 26 February 2016 (UTC)

Speaking for myself, I don't think of improving internal search and discovery to be primarily about revenue and page views. Those things are important, to be sure, but they are never the most important things. As Wnt says, the visibility of our work, the usability of our site, the usefulness of our navigation, impacts our work in lots of different ways direct and indirect, including attracting quality editors and retaining quality editors. (I'm not saying I agree with all of Wnt's suggestions - I don't, although I encourage people to brainstorm openly like this.)--Jimbo Wales (talk) 19:13, 26 February 2016 (UTC)

Actually, one could make a statistical argument that the growth of Google's "Knowledge Boxes" or whatever they call them is positively correlated to editor growth, not negatively correlated. There is no statistical evidence whatsoever for a negative correlation. The very early thinking about "Knowledge Engine by Wikipedia" (the actual first name!) revolved almost entirely around needing to come up with a compelling feature that brought readers to the WMF site (implicitly, so they could eventually be solicited to donate money). I'm not being cynical, this is historically accurate. Carrite (talk) 17:53, 26 February 2016 (UTC)

I don't agree. I think it there is very clear and compelling evidence that improvements in the quality of Google's search results has resulted in decreasing traffic for us. 10 years ago if you typed "How old is Tom Cruise?" (or variants on that) Google didn't know the answer, but they sent people to Wikipedia. Now, they just tell people the answer - because their machines have read and digested Wikipedia. On one level, that's totally great - that's part of why our work is freely licensed - we want people to use it to make the world better in ways big and small. We aren't a commercial business trying to maximize page views. On another level, we need to be objective and acknowledge what it means for attracting editors and - yes - donors.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 19:13, 26 February 2016 (UTC)

Speaking only as a sample of one, I click through from Google to Wikipedia much less often now because of their knowledge box and Google Graph info box. (I missed a flight from London to SF because Google's "knowledge" box sent me to the wrong terminal.)

Yes, if our work gets pushed so far back behind re-users' portals that readers almost never land on wikipedia.org sites, Wikipedia as such will become a failed experiment. But that won't happen. People will always want thorough coverage of topics and issues. It seems inevitable, though, that our traffic will decline significantly. The best counter to that is to make our articles even more awesome - by that, I mean improve the quality and rigour of our offering. I don't support Wnt's notion of becoming more like Yelp.

By the way, Wikidata is taking information from Wikipedia and feeding it to Google, Bing etc. without requiring attribution. At least now, when I see Wikipedia content in Google's Knowledge Graph box, I can click the link to Wikipedia for more. With Wikidata just raiding our data and pouring it into commercial portals via the back door with no attribution required, they seem to be accelerating the process you describe as a "real existential challenge" to Wikipedia and the movement. Good for Denny's employer, not so good for the WMF that relies on the rivers of gold flowing to it through Wikipedia banners. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 07:26, 27 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:[12] --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)

I continue to advocate for that.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 19:18, 26 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)

Well, I partly agree. The drama has been sadly much higher than normal, and that's unfortunate. But it is also really important that we stay wildly open. Democratic institutions are often noisy, and not all the rhetoric is always helpful. But that's a lot better than a closed approach where dissent is discouraged or eliminated.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 19:18, 26 February 2016 (UTC)

The WMF has lost a lot of great people - see [13] - 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 don't think Mike Godwin's departure had anything at all to do with the article about the FBI! I've never even heard such an idea.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 19:18, 26 February 2016 (UTC)

@Jimbo Wales: I remembered he took a lot of heat in this discussion and related offline commentary in August 2010, and when he left in October 2010 I think there was some speculation along that line, neither more nor less convincing to me than a lot of the speculation we're hearing now about why various WMF employees left recently. I apologize if this impression was mistaken. Wnt (talk) 01:54, 27 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)

In general, I am, subject to the caveat that I don't think we should try to shut down discussions that people want and need to have. I do encourage dignity and that people be forward looking. The fundamental question is "How can we improve things?" - This necessarily involves some element of looking back on "What went wrong?" But we shouldn't get bogged down in only "What went wrong?"--Jimbo Wales (talk) 19:18, 26 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 [14]

-- 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 Wikipedia community 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)

I think Liz's comment hits the mark. It all comes down to whether Wikimedia is a movement or an entity. Process is paramount with a movement and results is paramount with an entity. Most movements seem to evolve or devolve into entities within a decade or two, or else evaporate. But a few, a very few, last long enough to give evidence that a movement can possibly continue indefinitely. In this tiny category I think of movements which have an indefinite "live the movement" or, to be dramatic, "live the revolution" mantra and ever present commitment among the participants, with the goal of continuing ad infinitum as opposed to say, working towards IPO day. Right now the only examples I can think of are major religions and one or two long lasting political movements, but I see no reason why there could not be a "movement", dedicated to something as simple as spreading free knowledge, that could continue ad infinitum. If that is the purpose, then perhaps its best to accept that process must rule, and quantitative results should be seen as icing, or not, on the cake. Nocturnalnow (talk) 05:54, 26 February 2016 (UTC)

Let us put in perspective the assertion "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 will garner a different response than it would at a startup". From the Knight Grant document, the average paycheck of the WMF technical people is 125K$ per year. Asking for some results doesn't seem so cruel. Pldx1 (talk) 19:29, 26 February 2016 (UTC)

Sticking with perspective, employee retention in San Francisco is a huge priority because of a supply shortage in the tech sector. Also, San Francisco/San Jose are beyond expensive, like average house prices of a million. 125 there is like 15 in Waco. Context, Context, Context. Nocturnalnow (talk) 04:53, 27 February 2016 (UTC)

Results and process are both important. Lila was there because the previous regime were not producing technical results. Failure after failure. Do I need to list them? Sue Gardner narrowed her focus on getting technical results, and sensibly passed as many non-technical functions as possible across to the community, like the North America education program and the Funds Dissemination Committee. She should have replaced the C-level technical team, and a number of others, before she left. Leaving that to the new ED was a poison chalice in my opinion.

Presently, on wikimedia-l and Andrew Lih's Wikipedia Weekly Facebook group, the discredited, discarded tech team, who treated us with such contempt and whom Sue failed to flush away, are rewriting the narrative. It seems there were no serious tech issues. Expecting them to treat us with respect is unreasonable - we're too rude and luddite to deserve it. Expecting them to generate and monitor key performance indicators is too much to ask of underpaid missionaries. It must have been a shock to these people, who had a job for life under Sue, to realise their jobs depend on them actually producing desirable results.

Perhaps Lila did the right thing in resigning, given the transparency issues around the Knowledge Engine and staff complaints that she was not communicating with them enough. Only a rigorous independent enquiry can clarify that.

Regarding the other frequent complaint, the persistent rethinking on the strategy, I think it was a good thing, though obviously very uncomfortable for the staff. Under her, the WMF was moving closer and closer to a responsive (to the community and readership) strategic planning process - including the 2015 Strategy Consultation, a project that collected input from the wider volunteer community (not just the most vocal few) and, most importantly, the readership. (Off topic but: surprisingly, although there were some different priorities in those two groups, there was a lot of congruence. If you define reliability as neutrality and accuracy, for readers and the wider volunteer community alike, the biggest concern is the unreliability of our offering.) --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 06:26, 27 February 2016 (UTC)

Well, it is funny in a sad way, that one heard so many criticisms of Sue, and then she steps down, in part in response to that criticism and it's de ja vu, someone new to beat-up on - Sue, at least, had the benefit of hiring, hiring, hiring, and it necessarily became 'now what' with all these people. Alanscottwalker (talk) 15:23, 27 February 2016 (UTC)

@Nocturnalnow: According to [15], maintaining the WMF at SF rather than moving to LA is yet another way for bullying the poor underpaid staffers. Wouldn't they be more productive when being paid half an house each year, with a boat anchored at the rear of the garden ? Pldx1 (talk) 15:13, 27 February 2016 (UTC)

I'm late as usual but am disappointed to hear this. Anthony makes some very good points. I also had the impression that Lila was actually willing to listen to and engage with the community, in stark contrast to Sue. Shock Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 15:35, 27 February 2016 (UTC)

Gee, you mean Lila Tretikov never demeaned the community as in Sue Gardner's comment of "filthy T-shirt eating Doritos" (CBSnews.com); when I heard Sue say that comment, I was shocked at first, and then it made my blood run cold, as no wonder the MediaWiki software had major bugs unfixed for years because not only did she not care about Wikipedia, she evidentally deeply despised the editing community, even if she was lying to herself or others to claim otherwise. It makes you wonder what kind of mean-spirited leader would stereotype users in a biased way by saying, "in a filthy T-shirt eating Doritos". That was a giant "RED FLAG" and thank God she said it to reveal her true mindset, but she even had many WMF staffers fooled to think she was nice (to this day?). -Wikid77 (talk) 18:06, 27 February 2016 (UTC)

Boris, the wider volunteer community has not really been aware of this drama (as opposed to the staff, the activists and the inner circle of volunteers who engage regularly with staff). A lot of it has played out on wikimedia-l and the Wikipedia Weekly Facebook group. Yes, Lila did give a damn about the communities, and also about the reliability of our content. But she lost a very important constituency - her staff. I really hope the WMF gets someone independent, with the right qualifications and experience, to undertake a rigorous, deep inquiry into how this all happened - including the Doc James dismissal and the hiring of Arnnon Geshuri. If they don't, I see more than just Lila's head rolling here. Those afore-mentioned players are fairly united in their desire for such an inquiry. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 16:23, 27 February 2016 (UTC)

An inquiry. That's a great, no downside, idea.... a rigorous independent inquiry might be really helpful going forward. Just brainstorming here and thinking that maybe the most experienced and respected volunteer community members, perhaps administrators and past ArbCom members, can make up the Board of Inquiry? Nocturnalnow (talk) 18:05, 27 February 2016 (UTC)

I nominate Risker as chair of the inquiry. She's pretty awesome with investigative projects. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 01:18, 28 February 2016 (UTC)

This is an interesting idea. But I doubt the WMF would give a group of volunteers the unfettered access to confidential information needed for a meaningful inquiry. On the other hand it couldn't hurt to ask. Shock Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 03:30, 28 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 thousand characters long). -Wikid77 (talk) 21:27, 25 February 2016 (UTC)

Yes, I have been noticing the diff problem, and it is really a pain to figure out what the change is when it does that! --David Tornheim (talk) 23:24, 25 February 2016 (UTC)

There have been considerable advances in computing minimal edit differences since the days of "diff". See Edit distance. Wikipedia should be using them. Wikimedia diffs displayed often indicate much larger changes than were actually made. John Nagle (talk) 23:29, 25 February 2016 (UTC)

I suggest that we wait a bit until the WMF management issues sort themselves out, then start with a small, easy-to-implement, and noncontentious change. If we can actually open up a line of communication that results in the change either being implemented or rejected, then we can move on to larger things. Something really small, like changing the CR+LF to LF in the HTML we output. See Newline. --Guy Macon (talk) 00:21, 26 February 2016 (UTC)

Diff must span newlines & use multi-line resync

Naturally, the Community Tech team could become overwhelmed by diff problems because the current tactic of matching line-by-line will abandon phrase comparisons when a line is split with more newlines as manual line breaks. Instead, the diff program must be radically altered (eventually) to compare text across multi-line breaks, to show how one line was split into parts and then text altered in those separated parts. Also, the resync tactic will need to match partial (modified) lines, plus multiple lines as a look-ahead tactic for wp:wikitables where lines seem repeated for "|-" plus column styles "|valign=top|" as otherwise the diff would mismatch rows of a table as if all subsequent rows had changed, rather than just the fewer actual changes. As a phase-one improvement, just increase current diff to show changes between 10,000-character lines, which currently highlights the whole line as completely new text. Because of the complexity involved, the WP community needs to help explain the long-term solutions so the wp:developers don't give-up in frustration and go work some easier issues to avoid the workload pressures of fixing the vital diff operations. -Wikid77 (talk) 15:16, 26 February 2016, revised 11:52/12:31, 28 February 2016 (UTC)

Example diff of line over 10,000 characters

The megadiff problem was noted in pop singer's article "Tishma" of 28 Sep 2015 (later rewritten to have shorter lines), as an example diff of a line over 10,000 characters long, which could not pinpoint the phrases changed but instead showed the entire massive altered line as if totally new text (see: dif6701). To handle such long lines, the diff utility might need to be expanded with much larger line buffers to compare all 10,000 characters across the line. Meanwhile, splitting long lines can help diff of future revisions; here I split that long line in User:Wikid77/Tishma_test, as 7 parts in 2 revisions, to reveal the changed text was removal of a Bot-generated cite parameter: "|unused_data=@ http:/ /www.bangladesh-pratidin.com" (see: dif7822) hidden in the original long line. -Wikid77 (talk) 09:41, 27 February 2016, revised 11:39/12:31, 28 February 2016 (UTC)

Have submitted a phabricator bug for this? Most diff programs work on a line by line basis so this is quite expected output. There is a bug T123110 which seems to be for this exact problem. Adding this example to that bug might help gain some traction on the bug. --Salix alba (talk): 12:18, 28 February 2016 (UTC)

The WMF Community Tech team is working to fix diff, as a high-priority project for Spring 2016. -Wikid77 (talk) 12:31, 28 February 2016 (UTC)

I've mentioned this thread in that bug.--Salix alba (talk): 14:22, 28 February 2016 (UTC)

San Francisco trips

On the Wikimedia-l mailing list you have said you will be traveling to WMF's San Francisco offices to have discussions with staff. Will this opportunity be made available to all Trustees, particularly the community-selected ones? If only certain Trustees will be visiting the offices, which ones will they be, and how will those Trustees be selected? --Regards, James(^talk/_contribs) 21:51, 25 February 2016 (UTC)

Board members visit and meet with staff, and talk to staff, on a regular basis. I would personally like to see more of that, within certain sensible bounds that I've discussed here before. It's really important that board members be aware of what is going on with staff, and one of the biggest causes for the recent problems, I believe, has been a disconnect from the staff which has made it hard for the board to come to rapid understanding of noise.

In my case, I'm going to visit the Foundation at my own expense, as usual, as a volunteer, as usual. I claim no special privilege.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 19:22, 26 February 2016 (UTC)

More to the point, does this mean that the WMF's (ill-conceived) internal rule that staff contact must take place only with the chair of the Board of Trustees has been removed? Beyond that I won't draw the parallel to Doc James' proscribed activity, but should. Carrite (talk) 15:47, 26 February 2016 (UTC)

I am unaware of any such rule.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 19:22, 26 February 2016 (UTC)

I'll look and see if I can find it again, I did read something to that effect recently. There needs to be a more fulsome communications channel, I believe. Carrite (talk) 02:54, 27 February 2016 (UTC)

There are numerous mentions of "going out of process" at Heilman's page compiling statements made on the removal. The most direct appears to be this one: With respect to Denny's statement that I acted out of process, yes I spoke with staff at staff's request. However, so did the majority of the rest of the trustees. And the chair and vice chair were aware of these conversations. Additionally the situation in question justified these conversations IMO. [...] With respect to the "disruption" I do not feel I can take responsibility for the engagement survey results. I did bring staff concerns forwards to the board but I was simply reporting these concerns. --Regards, James(^talk/_contribs) 05:43, 27 February 2016 (UTC)

Jimbo Wales, when you say that "I claim no special privilege", does that mean that you are abandoning your bizarre "lifetime trustee" claim? If so, I commend you for a wise decision and look forward to a fully democratic procedure for electing a new WMF board, to replace the current board which has clearly failed in its responsibilities. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 07:34, 27 February 2016 (UTC)

Jim, it's not a matter of working towards a "fully democratic" board; recent events have revealed that there is no democracy on the board. The community does not elect trustees, it only "makes recommendations" and these 3/10 "recommended" candidates can be removed by the majority vote of the mostly unrecommended board. The replacement need not be "recommended" by the community via a vote, they can appoint whomever they wish. Two more of the board members are "recommended" by the narrow circles of connected Wikimedians in the organized user groups and are equally removable by the board. Four of ten they can pick from the sky based on any criterion whatsoever and they don't even have to know that ~~~~ will sign your name... None of these seem to appreciate that their role is of general oversight and strategic direction of WMF operations, they hire a director and obligingly defer everything. The other seat on the board is more or less a position for life for JW — the others rotate in and out with the wind (now even term-limited). There is no democratic election, period, and there is no mechanism of democratic control — no shareholders and no shareholders meeting. It is a weak, self-perpetuating institution that has one instrument of authority that it takes seriously, the hiring of an Executive Director. After that, there is a lot of nodding and voting yes, as nearly as I can tell — and Doc James is an object lesson of what happens if anyone takes their role differently. Carrite (talk) 12:50, 27 February 2016 (UTC)

Where we left the discussion

copied out of archive, as I just posted this today. will let this go if it gets archived again Jytdog (talk) 03:31, 26 February 2016 (UTC)
Jimmy, 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.Jytdog (talk) 19:26, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

Hello Jytdog, I can't speak for Jimmy, but since he has some quite pressing things to deal with at the moment, and I appreciate your concern, I thought I would respond to points that I can. I was not on the board when this grant was submitted, but was until July. – SJ + 05:19, 26 February 2016 (UTC)

Sj That is super nice of you. Yes I imagine Jimmy has his hands very full in SF and I hope he is bringing comfort, and learning. Thanks! Jytdog (talk) 07:35, 26 February 2016 (UTC)

• 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. Jytdog (talk) 19:26, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

Sure, I will if he will, but I continue to think that this isn't really going to be the most effective way forward. What I continue to advocate for at the board level is the freedom to talk openly about why we voted James off the board. I think I've been the most open amongst the board members, and that isn't a criticism of other board members - we've been advised to be cautious about what we say, and I'm just a little more empowered by my position to be blunt. I've advocated for something that is probably a bad idea - publishing a whole whack of internal board emails. Ok, so that's probably extreme, so I am not pushing hard for it. But the current situation is not where I would like it to be.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 19:33, 26 February 2016 (UTC)

Doc James, would you please reply here, to the "I will (commit to trying) if he will" from Jimmy? Thanks, Jimmy, and thanks in advance, Doc James. Again, I encourage use of a mediator due to everything that has transpired. Jytdog (talk) 23:19, 26 February 2016 (UTC)

I am supportive of an independent review of these matters as I have stated a number of times already. I am also happy to go over the issues and documents publically following the publishing of "a whole whack of internal board emails". Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 04:58, 28 February 2016 (UTC)

Thanks James. Yes, independent people being involved is important if the community is going to something that makes sense of all this. Jytdog (talk) 05:02, 28 February 2016 (UTC)

• 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. Jytdog (talk) 19:26, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

I think I've answered with all that there is to know, as I've said. Sj's comment, next, is quite good. I think you're looking for something much more grand. To really understand all this, you have to really grasp that there was never a grand plan to fundamentally change everything. There was what I think is great - a discussion of a challenging but achievable project to improve search and discovery on the site.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 19:33, 26 February 2016 (UTC)

• First, the Board did not specially approve a $2.5M budget for 'stage 1' of the grant proposal. Financial approvals by the board happen in bulk every May-June when it reviews the annual plan. The board approved the 2015-16 annual plan, with funding for the entire staff, in June. This included funding for the discovery team. The board had not seen any version of this grant at that point; the team's budget was funded based on its public projects and targets. The budget mentioned in the grant proposal seems to be the annual budget for that team. [Trying to fit the realities of an annual planning cycle into the requirements of a funding proposal is not unusual in the grants world.]

  Second, the vision for the discovery team was only part of the total technical vision (and technical budget). The overall vision was most concisely defined earlier in 2015 by the Call to Action. Portions of that call that this grant might touch on [I am speculating here]: a simplified user experience, new models for knowledge creation, and strengthening partnerships with orgs that use or contribute free knowledge. The only discussion the board had about the development of a Discovery roadmap and vision, before the grant was submitted, was around a presentation at the July meeting. It seemed a piece of the scaffolding in the call to action, facilitating curation. It did not seem like a dramatic shift for the projects or tech infrastructure overall. – SJ + 05:19, 26 February 2016 (UTC)

I hear all that. This is more detail that what Jimmy provided in the first go round (now in the archive). You have focused tightly on the Knight grant, and that was not really what I was asking about. It is more about the the vision/long term strategy that produced the Knight grant - the story that would have been told while the three-year Discovery deck was being delivered - the arc that would WMF from where it is now to being a really innovative tech company, centered around delivering value in the form non-commercial knowledge that readers could get only through the wikipedia.org portal. That thing. The thing that Doc James said he was told had a multi-year, multi-tens-of-millions of dollar cost. Was any of that vision solidifying while you were on the board? Jytdog (talk) 07:35, 26 February 2016 (UTC)

Ah, I see. "Arc to a really innovative tech company" – interesting question. I think there are some great innovations now, in individual teams. An overall arc is an open question; every plan and strategy thinks about / touches on that, but I didn't sense a grand arc tied to "changing the tech essence of the foundation" tied to Discovery. (That said: it is a new team, with a new lead, and tackling fairly new use cases, so as with all such teams, a chance for something different to develop.)

I don't recall discussing a three-year Discovery plan; just the ideas around 'Year 0' with some general thoughts about how this could have excellent feedback w/ wikidata and maps. The greater detail seems interesting, and might have spurred useful board discussion - but it didn't come up while I was on the board.

Even in the three-year plan, I may have missed something, but I don't see anyone aiming for 'things readers could only get through wp.org' – the project seems committed to connecting many different free knowledge sources and making them all more visible. I hope it is possible to learn more about these ideas this year, in the public strategic brainstorming. I think it's essential for the projects and the foundation to look outwards, form partnerships, and think+work at this scale, and hope this series of communication failures doesn't discourage such brainstorming in the future.

Finally: I may draw the line at three-indent discussions :) I don't want to belabor these points & trying to support the current changes in other ways. But thanks for these patient questions. – SJ + 22:34, 27 February 2016 (UTC)

I hear you. Thanks very much. Jytdog (talk) 22:50, 27 February 2016 (UTC)

• 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. Jytdog (talk) 19:26, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

I don't think long term vision should ever be confidential. My point is that you're looking for something that, in my opinion, doesn't exist and didn't exist. Indeed, one of the major staff criticisms of Lila and one thing she acknowledged as problematic, is that formalizing a long term strategy was taking much too long.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 19:33, 26 February 2016 (UTC)

This is hard to hear. Saying "vague" and not defining further, is not helping. I feel like you are relying on a narrow interpretation of "strategy" here and above to not tell the story. There is a story. Things happened with regard to planning. I can only conclude that the board considers the evolving story confidential. I'm sorry. Jytdog (talk) 23:40, 26 February 2016 (UTC)

No, I'm telling you everything. SJ's comments are pretty thorough.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 10:06, 27 February 2016 (UTC)

Gorillawarfare's timeline makes it clear that things were first pitched to Knight in April and the KE was actually presented to the board at the end of June. The board sat there and heard that, and there was a story that was told as the slides were presented. We don't know what was in either of those pitches, nor if that was in the main stream of what Lila had been talking about or if she and her team went rogue. Please tell the story. If you actually don't know the story, please say that. If you consider the story confidential, please say that. Jytdog (talk) 17:49, 27 February 2016 (UTC)

• This was never the case when I was on the board; I do not think that this has changed. It is more likely that the vision was simply unclear, than that it evolved into something confidential that could not be shared. – SJ + 05:19, 26 February 2016 (UTC)

I hear that and this is also what Jimmy said - about it being vague. This is hard to understand because things like the 3-year discovery plan was actually presented and the Knight foundation people were told something about the bigger story that the grant application is the first stage of. In my professional life I don't pitch things that are not well thought out and that I have buy in from my management for. The WMF - the entity - seems to have had some story definitive enough to tell. How can I hear that story - and the variations on it as it changed? That is what I am after. I know I am nobody and nobody owes me anything. But not getting an answer (or being told - hey go ask over there) is making it ~feel~ like this is stuff that is considered confidential. That's all. Thanks again! Jytdog (talk) 07:35, 26 February 2016 (UTC)

"How can I hear that story - and the variations on it as it changed? That is what I am after. I know I am nobody and nobody owes me anything. But not getting an answer (or being told - hey go ask over there) is making it ~feel~ like this is stuff that is considered confidential." Well, if this is all about wanties not needies, and all based on feelies, why not back off and end it here? AnonNep (talk) 10:41, 26 February 2016 (UTC)

Because it is important to me at least, and I think to others. And I like Sj and want to explain myself. I don't know who you are, and based on what you wrote here, I am good with that. Jytdog (talk) 11:06, 26 February 2016 (UTC)

"Because it is important to me" Hence my point - ego based discussions are rarely constructive. "I don't know who you are, and based on what you wrote here, I am good with that." Ditto. Meow, girlfriend. AnonNep (talk) 11:16, 26 February 2016 (UTC)

You may consider it weak, but I am trying to keep this conversation human, and own what i know and don't know, and be clear that I am only speaking for me, and not making Grand Statements like people tend to make here. I am not climbing the reichstag; I am trying to have a conversation. Now shoo kitty. Jytdog (talk) 23:48, 26 February 2016 (UTC)

You wanted respectful discussion & answers? Look at your own behaviour & don't howl about how you didn't get it (in more ways than one) *whoosh* (sound of conversation sliding above your head). AnonNep (talk) 08:36, 27 February 2016 (UTC)

• 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. Jytdog (talk) 19:26, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

As far as I know, there was never any pressure from the board nor any individual board members to not communicate with the community about long term vision and strategy. Indeed, the sentiment from the board - both community-selected members and other members - has always been broadly to encourage open discussion and disclosure.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 19:33, 26 February 2016 (UTC)

Yes this is what you said before and it is still high level, as it was before. Please be aware that all the information in GorillaWarfare's timeline is there for everyone to see. The lack of transparency, and the criticism given directly to the board over the lack of transparency from many quarters (and not from flakes) is very very clear. Please address the question. Thanks. Jytdog (talk) 23:40, 26 February 2016 (UTC)

Yes, I've read the timeline. What I'm telling you is that as far as I know, there was never any pressure from the board or any individual board members to not communicate with the community about long term vision and strategy. I'm not sure what you think is wrong with that statement. I think I've asked the question - you asked me about Lila acknowledging that not engaging the community sooner being a mistake. You asked me what the board's role in that was. I'm telling you: the board has broadly encouraged open discussion and disclosure, and I'm unaware of anyone individually giving her advice to hide anything about long term strategy about Discovery from the community. How is that not addressing the question - it seems like a very direct answer to me.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 10:06, 27 February 2016 (UTC)

[16] interesting read--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 13:29, 27 February 2016 (UTC)

it is not answering the question because it leaves a perfect hole where a direct response would be; my sense is you are asking me to read between the lines of "broadly encouraged open discussion and disclosure" and "no one told her not to" and the only things I can put there are things like: "Lila refused to bring this to the community although the board told her to do so, and we didn't make it clear enough that her job depended on her doing that and doing it well" or "we actually didn't know the kind of plans that were being pitched in the WMF's name; and if we had, we would have driven community engagement sooner". Please don't ask me to read between the lines. I am asking you to please tell me where the board was, on overseeing Lila as she made the ongoing mistake of not engaging the community. Jytdog (talk) 17:23, 27 February 2016 (UTC)

The board has broadly encouraged open discussion and disclosure, and I'm unaware of anyone individually giving her advice to hide anything about long term strategy. Going into slightly more depth than that, I didn't see anything particularly unusual or controversial about the concepts being presented to us about the evolving ideas around improving search and discover, and I simply assumed that there was community discussion and consultation about it. The grander concept which, as I now understand, Damon was pitching via cloak-and-dagger PGP encrypted files (one employee told me that he had to give his PGP key on a USB stick because Damon didn't trust the public keyservers), didn't really get traction and was quickly abandoned. By the time of the board meeting in Mexico City, we specifically discussed that this would not be anything like a "Google competitor". As to the exact details of every single discussion with funders, obviously the board is not privy to those as a practical matter. Certainly had we understood that a disconnect was going on, and that the community was not being consulted, we absolutely would have pushed harder for community engagement sooner. As it is, I think most likely other board members, like me, simply assumed that it was being talked about and not treated as some kind of super top secret thing. Is that helpful?--Jimbo Wales (talk) 23:25, 27 February 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for replying. With all of the sturm und drang that is detailed in the Timeline - much of which concerns transparency (which includes engaging the community of course) - and it is all right there, from the funds dissemination committee in May, to James email in October, to Asaf's response to Lila in November, especially the Funds Dissemination Committee note on November 23 ("They state that they are "appalled by the closed way that the WMF has undertaken both strategic and annual planning, and the WMF's approach to budget transparency (or lack thereof)" ..... all the evidence says that Board was well aware that Lila was not engaging the community. I started this in the hope that this could be an authentic engagement and you could move toward regaining the community's trust. You. are. lying. You are displaying the arrogance of power and demonstrating the reality that you and the Board are not accountable to the community. And that is where we are. Jytdog (talk) 03:23, 28 February 2016 (UTC)

Jytdog re: "You. are. lying." You need to take a break. Please come back when you can discuss matters politely. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 05:34, 28 February 2016 (UTC)

Calling a lie a lie, is not rude. It is completely disrespectful to pretend to have a conversation, which is what Jimmy has been doing. This will all come out eventually. I was trying to open the door wide for him to walk through. I am not taking a break. I am done. Jytdog (talk) 08:50, 28 February 2016 (UTC)

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

I truly hope that Jimbo Wales will not try to wriggle away from addressing in detail the damning sequence of events described so clearly in the timeline written by GorillaWarfare, and thanks to her for taking the time to compile it. There are many things that could be said, but haven't yet been said, though the slanderous "utter fucking bullshit" originated right here on this talk page, from Jimbo himself. The time to apologize and explain is right here right now, but board members say they need to consult with lawyers first, and the lawyers are just too busy. Why not do the right thing, and resign from the board now instead? Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 07:51, 27 February 2016 (UTC)

I fully stand by that comment. I continue to urge the board towards full publication of the details.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 10:01, 27 February 2016 (UTC)

Tons of weasling here. Why, for fuck sake, didn't the board or yourself come up with this on your own account but hide behind such nonsense like urging towards full publication, encouraging open discussion and other non-content sentences, when you could do this stuff all by yourself? You simply ditched the responsibility you have as a board by staying non-open and thus encouraged the secrecy. Come out in the open with everything, nobody needs to be asked, as openness is one of the fundamental principles here, you have to have very good reasons not to be completely open, and up to now not a single one was given. Grüße vom Sänger ♫ ^(talk) 10:40, 28 February 2016 (UTC)

Group norms and psychological safety

With everything that's going down, Jimbo might like to read this recent paper: What Google Learned From Its Quest to Build the Perfect Team. It raises as many questions as it answers but the main message seems to be that making a successful team requires attention to human factors which are difficult to get right. The concepts that it presents include group norms and psychological safety. The latter seems relevant to Wikipedia as well as the WMF as I recall Jimbo explaining how, in the early days, he was rather intimidated by the prospect of writing an encyclopedia article which would be read and critiqued by the world. This may be useful food for thought as we try to perfect our processes. Andrew D. (talk) 18:03, 26 February 2016 (UTC)

Very interesting read. Somewhat more relevant to WMF, as much of it relates to physical meetings, but there are lessons to be learned. I would like to see that research extended to groups (such as editors working together) where there is very little face-to-face time and mostly asynchronous conversations.--S Philbrick(Talk) 18:19, 26 February 2016 (UTC)

On WP, for "group norms", WP has has "language competence" (people writing words/concepts as others understand them, and being reasonably adept at understanding others). For "psychological safety", we have AGF. Alanscottwalker (talk) 19:24, 26 February 2016 (UTC)

We are supposed to have WP:AGF and WP:Civility but they aren't enforced well or equitably, so in my experience we really don't have them. The article says that psychological safety is "a sense of confidence that the team will not embarrass, reject or punish someone for speaking up," which would be really nice to actually have culturally in Wikipedia. We have instead a lot of abusiveness. SageRad (talk) 00:19, 27 February 2016 (UTC)

I'm sorry you find abuse, but at some point you have to understand an idea or approach is rejected by others - it's not incivil to have an idea or approach rejected. As for punishment, it's also not punishment to have an idea or approach rejected. If one persists, however, insisting to have their way after it has been rejected than there is nothing left to do except say, no, in increasingly process oreinted ways, in short, find something else to be involved in. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 15:04, 27 February 2016 (UTC)

"If one persists, however, insisting to have their way after it has been rejected..." It is relevant to ask who is doing the rejection. In my experience, the rejection is done by a small number of editors who claim (without any evidence) to be speaking on behalf of the Wikipedia community. Biscuittin (talk) 19:13, 27 February 2016 (UTC)

Thanks. Saved as PDF. I can't read it right now as I'm having dinner with friends in a few minutes, but hopefully I can read it on my flight to San Francisco tomorrow.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 19:34, 26 February 2016 (UTC)

For group norms: An intense connection with the editing community will help keep our "group norms" grounded in reality, because the core problems have not changed for us; for over 5 years we have been discussing wp:edit-conflicts in talk-pages as well as busy hot-topic articles where a typo or factual error gets "edit-conflict" and "edit-conflict", plus the diff-utility has been so bad that back in Oct 2012, the page "Help:diff" was expanded to warn users to split paragraphs (or add blank lines) as a separate edit; how many years have categories sorted alpha 1, 10, 11..., 2, 20, 21 (or German WP would sort umlaut "Übersetzung" after "Z" not correctly under "U"!) and people are fed-up now; we have known reliability was an issue and we have long needed per-article watchdog filters and templates to ensure Jeb Bush is NOT an "avid rock climber" nor did Hurricane Katrina make first landfall in "Kansas" rather than "Louisiana"; meanwhile people will always flock to WP to find the latest info about movies, sports, game shows, awards, and new songs but we need smarter cite templates to wp:autofix cite parameters inside a megapage such as "Hello (Adele song)" rather than scar pages with trivial red-error messages for weeks or 2.5 years (see: Cogito ergo sum, rev. 79759); hence all these long-term issues can ground our shared "Group norms" with the WMF staff and other-language wikipedias. -Wikid77 (talk) 20:46, 26 February 2016 (UTC)

Not just WMF but bugs in Lua templates & phones

Of course there are bugs and design flaws in software around the world, not just the WMF MediaWiki software. So, I don't want to be sending the wrong message about WMF software quality, as meanwhile the WMF Community Tech team has agreed to fix difficult long-term problems such as the diff utility showing long lines as entirely different rather than a few words changed (or vandalized) hidden within a line of several hundred letters.

For the major Lua script templates (locked down so only admins can change them), some bugs have persisted for years, with refusals to fix them, such as journal cites with slashed months; for example:

• {{cite journal |title=Article |journal=Computer Futurism |page=132 |date=May/June 2015}}, gives:
  "Article". Computer Futurism: 132. May/June 2015. {{cite journal}}: Check date values in: |date= (help).

Compare that error message to date-autofixing in the French Wikipedia where cites formatted by fr:Template:Lien_web will even auto-translate some English date formats into French, such as July 14, 1789 shown as "14 juillet 1789" with no red-error messages. The template limitations in enwiki are issues of refusal to form broader consensus, not unlike WMF leaving German umlaut sort order as Z-Ü rather than correctly U-Ü. So here with enwiki we have trouble getting consent to fix the everyday frustrations, and bugs in major Lua templates have persisted for years (since 2013).

Similarly, severe bugs in some smart phones might erase entire words upon a few backspace keys, or else jump the edit-cursor several lines away while entering new text. Hence, major bugs in software are left unfixed regardless of charity, or foundation, or commercial business, or academic institution. The problem is an organizational culture that allows poor quality to remain for years, whether that's blamed on a director, the programmer staff or admins, or companies hoping planned obsolescence with bad software will make customers want to buy the new, corrected model. -Wikid77 (talk) 00:24/01:02, 27 February 2016 (UTC)

@Wikid77: I don't think that's a fair criticism this time. Lua scripts are user generated content - we wanted users to be able to do scripts in a safe, public environment, and that's what we got. Now the users aren't perfect. The administrative system here isn't perfect either, but the motivation behind it is obvious - if someone vandalizes the cite templates they'll wreck every article on Wikipedia! Not knowing a word of Lua, I was able to learn enough of the language to do scripts here and play around with them quite freely, and was even offered a chance to become a WP:template editor at one point (as it happened, I stopped doing Lua around then because I was trying some other stuff in Javascript at the time and kept getting the details of the two languages mixed up ... I really should get back to it, but I don't have the stones to play with the cite module just now!) You're a computer-savvy person, more than I am - I don't see any reason why you couldn't play with the cite module in sandboxed mode, propose a patch, and even get template editor status to apply it. As far as I see it, Lua comes as close to the way I want Wikipedia software development to work as I am capable of imagining at this time. Wnt (talk) 01:43, 27 February 2016 (UTC)

Major Lua scripts are software controlled by admins not developers: It's not the Lua scripts themselves that are the problem, because the French cite templates were also changed to Lua in 2013. With French cite fr:Template:Lien_web, if a user enters slash months for "May/June" even as invalid upcased French "date=Mai/Juin 2015" then the template autofixes (or autocorrects) the date to show typical French lowercase months, "mai/juin 2015" without a red error "Check date values" as enwiki {{cite_web}} has done for years.

In fact the French cites also allow sub-titles and notes after the title as parameters "sous-titre=" and "description=" to show a note after the title, not possible in English Wikipedia, but the French templates have had these features for 10 years. Hence community software problems are not only with the WMF wp:developers in the MediaWiki software, but also with the enwiki admins forcing a culture of red-error messages while the French templates autofix the cite parameters as enwiki formerly did when I had permission to write the Lua Module:Citation/CS1 in 2013.

The smart French cite templates, including fr:Template:Ouvrage (which autofixes many dates such as "6 August 2015" to show French "6 août 2015"), are perhaps an issue of "Group norms" where our admins have been trying to force red-error messages and limited cite parameters for 10 years. We need some type of random-jury decision to allow better cite templates, after 10 years of stagnation. -Wikid77 (talk) 08:42, 27 February 2016 (UTC)

Take time to extend your life & telomeres

Jimbo, I am beginning to think this talk-page is likely to shorten your life, so beyond drinking plenty of fluids, perhaps also take more time here to read about health issues, such as:

• "Regenerative medicine" - as with organ transplants from cloned tissues
• "Life extension" - the general topic about living longer
• "telomeres" - the "null padding" after genes to survive DNA truncation

Please take more time, for yourself, to benefit from (re-)reading various acticles here to improve your life. There have been so many scientific advances in the past 15 years, the progress has been amazing, and you can check each article "History" tab to track the updates. As you know, many other users will add replies in other threads on this page, so you never need worry if other people can't get enough key answers. Just sayin'. -Wikid77 (talk) 01:41, 27 February 2016 (UTC)

Thanks, that's very kind of you. Actually, since December 1st I have been on a health kick. I lost 5 lbs in December and 5 lbs in January - February has not been as productive, but I have maintained my weight. I still need to lose a fair amount of weight to get to what is considered medically optimal, but I already feel much better. A big part of that has been watching my food intake, but another big part is a dedication to trying really hard to average 10,000 steps a day - I haven't quite hit the target for February I'm afraid but I'm damned close and hope to get there in March.

Also, in large part because my 50th birthday is coming up, I've had a fair number of health tests since October and I'm happy to report that I'm in decent shape. Not quite in need of organ transplant from cloned tissues just yet. But I'll read the articles you mention anyway - it's an interesting topic.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 10:00, 27 February 2016 (UTC)

It might interest you to know (if you don't) that the "medically optimal" weight might not actually be optimal. If weight is classified using body mass index (the usual way), then statistics show that people in the "overweight" range actually have slightly better life expectancy than people in the "normal" range -- people in the "obese" range have substantially reduced life expectancy, and even more so for people in the "underweight" range. (Citations can be found in Body mass index#Variation in relationship to health.) Anyway it's still a very good idea to be aerobically fit -- fitness is probably a more important predictor of heath than weight, overall. Looie496 (talk) 22:54, 27 February 2016 (UTC)

Thanks. Yes, I've read that sort of thing. I'm currently at 190, down from 200 (actually down from like 208 last summer). Certain charts say I should be 158-159 based on my height - I think that's pretty unlikely! But I think 175 (my first long term goal) is a good starting point, and increasing aerobic fitness is important too. My sister has challenged me to run a half-marathon and so I've been easing into aerobic fitness.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 00:37, 28 February 2016 (UTC)

Some friends of mine have switched to using vegetable soups to stay full, or so-called "negative calorie foods" (celery, apples) which burn calories to chew, but that can be difficult when dining out. I've heard waiters in the U.S. will serve "half-portion" meals when asked, otherwise dining out can derail the meal plan. -Wikid77 (talk) 11:11, 28 February 2016 (UTC)

Genius: Wikipedia's competitor?

To continue from a comment I made above under "WMF mission", here is an example of the sort of thing that Wikipedia could have been doing, which we've instead left to a "web 2.0" type private competitor. According to a recent article, ProPublica is trying to track down records about what 700 U.S. Navy ships were doing in Vietnam, primarily to assist soldiers exposed to Agent Orange to pursue medical claims. Dating back to Wikipedia:September 11 victims and the WP:NOT restrictions, Wikipedia doesn't provide a place for this kind of data collection, and so the people at ProPublica have turned to Genius.com to track the data via annotations on their article page (using various scripts such as at genius.codes). Despite being featured on Google News, it doesn't look like they are getting a lot of response - it's a pretty arcane thing to request help for, especially in a transient news article. Still, it seems like a wake-up call, because as you can see at the genius.com site, the company is trying to get crowdsourced annotations on historical documents in a way that competes directly with WMF projects.

My feeling is that Genius is deeply handicapped by programmer sensibilities - it looks like what Wikipedia might look like if the people who designed Flow had had a chance to write and carry out a complete wish list. Just try reading "Heart of Darkness Part I" scrolling up and down one little column of text riddled with white space. More to the point, the text is filled with contiguous blocks of text that seem to be claimed by the first person to post, apparently, who puts up the wrong kind of picture for the ship for example, and then you read the most-upvoted response for why he's wrong. All this depends on a huge amount of slow scripting from aites all over the web, including one I remember mostly for the time it was hacked and readers of major American newspapers were being sent to the Syrian Electronic Army.^[17] It is not exactly a beguiling site, but the rule of crowdsourced projects is that whoever actually does something is the best person for the job.

I'll indulge a moment to gripe about the ill fate of my attempt to do a similar annotation project for Charter 08 at Wikisource (s:Charter 08). I simply linked various terms to what articles I could find about the relevant Chinese history terms, nothing fancy, but I thought it was a good way to add value to something that to me was not very easy to understand. Well, you'll see it's a dead link now because someone over there decided that the charter - which people went to prison to disseminate to the world - was not "public domain", even though the translation I cited referenced itself as GFDL. There are people who say that deletionists are not a conspiracy seeking to destroy Wikipedia, but they would be wrong. Technically, we have a vastly better medium to do this kind of annotation, but the question is, can we harden our resolve to use it? Wnt (talk) 19:24, 27 February 2016 (UTC)

With regard to Charter 08, the deletion log states: "Note that translation has GFDL release, if/when the orginal comes back into PD, the translation can be used." The status of the translation is irrelevant if the original is copyrighted and (presumably, unless you can show us evidence) unlicensed, because it is a derivative work. Are you advocating that Wikimedia projects should host more unlicensed copyrighted material? (This is a more general question.) That would destroy us, because we are about free knowledge, which is why we use free licenses. BethNaught (talk) 19:39, 27 February 2016 (UTC) And before you ask, yes, I do think fair use material is overused on enwiki. BethNaught (talk) 19:37, 27 February 2016 (UTC)

@BethNaught: It's a request for more information than I should need to have. When you find a respectable website that has a copy or adaptation of a document and says the copy has a specific free license, you should be able to take that at its word. It's not feasible to investigate and second-guess further. For example, Wikimedia Commons will host content found free-licensed on Flickr, without trying to track down each and every person who put the photo on Flickr and verify where they got it etc. Especially when it is so implausible that its distribution would be restricted in any way, and many people - such as Marco Rubio, currently a leading candidate for U.S. president - currently host copies of this document.^[18] — Preceding unsigned comment added by Wnt (talk • contribs) —Preceding undated comment added 22:51, 27 February 2016 (UTC)

I didn't think that anybody was blaming you. But if it has emerged that the source document is non-free, no amount of reasonable assumptions can change the truth. If someone uploaded a Flickr file to Commons in good faith, and it was later found to be a copyvio, nobody should blame them (I can't say if this happens in practice) but it should still be deleted on copyright grounds. As for other people hosting it, I do not see how that is relevant for our purposes. BethNaught (talk) 22:56, 27 February 2016 (UTC)

This is kind of a tail wagging the dog here, but to go into it a little further, AFAIK nobody ever provided any reason to think the original was not free-licensed. It was discussed here - I think (can't see myself) that after I uploaded the translation with its license, someone added a tag saying it was public domain in China because it was censored - then China changed its law in 2010 to say that censored works didn't lose copyright - then in 2012 someone noticed and deleted the whole thing because under URAA it might not be PD in the U.S. even if it remained PD in China because there was no retroactive change there. If that seems a little crazy, well, the impression I have is that Wikisource will do just about anything to get rid of manifestos, Dylann Storm Roof, that shooter from Finland and so forth - you should see the veritable river of nonsense they tapped into to suppress Ted Kaczinski's manifesto based on a claim that a government auction of stuff in his shack years afterward retroactively took it out of the public domain. There's really no ideological or practical distinction in this kind of thing; anyone who decides to censor the Unabomber's manifesto is bound to censor for the government of China, once they've had a few years to work it through in their head. Just ask the leading Internet corporations... Wnt (talk) 02:56, 28 February 2016 (UTC)

Important

You have email from me that you should read. — Ched :  ?  12:40, 28 February 2016 (UTC)

Jerking off

Please excuse the section title but I'm not sure of the technical term for this and the pun may help attract attention.

I just experienced a common aggravation with the Wikipedia browser interface. What happens is that I loaded a Wikipedia page into a browser. The page happened to be a stub but it can happen with any page and is more likely with long pages. As the page started loading, I spotted a link that I wanted to click on and so stabbed at it with my mouse pointer. But, as the page completed loading, the alignment of the visible portion changed, jerking the position of the link to a different place on the screen and so I actually clicked on a different link. I then had to back up and do over. This happens frequently and it's quite annoying.

My impression is that happens because there's a layer of secondary content presented by javascript or templates and this is only parsed and formatted after the primary page content. This would include banners, menu options and other material which appears at the top of the page display.

My device or browser may be a factor. In this case, it was a Chromebook which has a slow processor and so takes time to digest a complex page. I also observe similar behaviour on my tablet which likewise has a comparatively slow processor and so takes time to finish loading a page.

The WMF developers in SF may not notice such effects if they are using powerful workstations with high-speed internet connections. When Jimbo is over there, please can he find out what is done to check that Wikipedia works smoothly on a variety of common devices – both fast and slow.

Andrew D. (talk) 13:08, 28 February 2016 (UTC)

Reverted the edit on this. Content is useful feedback & title is 'roll the dice' on that feedback. No need for an over-zealous delete. AnonNep (talk) 13:23, 28 February 2016 (UTC)

Happens to me frequently. But usually on Watchlist, where I end up reverting or rolling back useful edits (obviously with no edit summary) or even thanking anon editors for vandalism (even though it may be really good vandalism, of course) Martinevans123 (talk) 13:31, 28 February 2016 (UTC)

I'm fascinated. What is "really good vandalism"? 81.149.218.171 (talk) 15:41, 28 February 2016 (UTC)