User talk:Jimbo Wales

Why no answer on the permissions question?

Jimbo, why aren't you responding at the #Your opinion at "The Guardian" site question to extend permission so a translation of your essay won't be deleted, or explain why you can't? It seems so unlike you. I hope you've just missed the question and don't have an actual reason for not answering. 184.96.135.200 (talk) 14:49, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

A more polite request than this one would have sufficed. I'm not sure you or most other folks who contribute here are in a position to judge what Jimbo is or isn't like. I JethroBT ^{drop me a line} 20:36, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

I apologize for not answering. Clearly I'd be happy to see the essay translated and distributed far and wide, why not? I don't know the Guardian policy on such things at all, and I haven't had the time to research it or ask them. At the same time, I saw what Ithink is a version of the essay in another language already (though I can't find that now so perhaps I'm mistaken), and so perhaps the Guardian sells the rights to such things? I honestly don't know. I will ask.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 06:28, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

The original discussion is now at User talk:Jimbo Wales/Archive 217#Your opinion at "The Guardian" site. Graham87 10:48, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

Just another crazy idea here. I know you are interested in spreading the use of CC licenses. My idea is that many news organizations might be interested in delayed CC licensing, e.g. "(C) Jimbo Wales, after March 1, 2017 this material licensed CC-BY-3.0". Clearly the vast majority of the benefits from copyrights to news organizations is in the first few days after publication. Almost no for-profit newspaper would want to let anybody anywhere copy their material the day after publication. But the benefit of copyright is very short-lived. 2 weeks after publication very few people would want to copy most stories, and the original publisher would have little hope of capturing any revenue from those folks. The cost of selling old stories, in almost all cases, would be more expensive than the revenue expected. There are exceptions of course, but most of this revenue would usually go to the writers, e.g. columnists such as Art Buchwald, Mike Royko, or Andy Rooney might print books of their columns, usually with a free copyright release from the original publishers, and make some money. Except for a very few cases, publishers would not lose anything from delayed CC licenses. Wikipedians and a few others might benefit.

But who should I ask to get material released by delayed CC licensing? It would have to be somebody high up in the organization, probably somebody who writes something for publication fairly regularly, and is committed to free culture. This has got your name written all over it, Jimmy. Would you ask the folks at the Guardian about this possibility? Smallbones_(smalltalk) 19:39, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

Note several issues. First, many publications derive income from archives. Second is that publications may not legally be able to give copyright to material which they publish but to which other persons may hold a copyright claim. Thirdly, of copyright is an asset of any legal person which has their assets used as collateral for any loan, or where copyright is an asset of a publicly held corporation, it may be a violation of law for them to simply relinquish such an asset. Hence relinquishing copyright may be neither financially prudent nor legally proper. Collect (talk) 19:54, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

The substance of this post seems reasonable enough, but seriously what is up with the use of italics? --JBL (talk) 04:14, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

Funny. The italics are used to denote "terms of art" or terms closely akin to such "terms of art" in order to emphasize such "terms of art", although, as you will note, quotation marks are occasionally used for that purpose. I apologize if that purpose was insufficiently clear. See also Copyright Ownership: Who Owns What? from Stanford University Press. Collect (talk) 14:10, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

I'm not saying that all news sources in all cases should impose delayed CC licenses. Rather going forward they allow these licenses to be used in some cases. e.g columnists or op-ed writers would be given a choice to have the Guardian own the copyright, or the writer could retain the copyright and allow the paper exclusive use for 2 weeks, and then the CC license would kick in. Of course, if they fully owned the copyright to their archive, then I wouldn't object to them licensing those as well. The business certainly can give away some of its assets without breaking any laws or violating any contracts if there is a business reason for doing so, e.g. goodwill for charitable donations. As far as the value of archives - my guess is that, except for big organizations (NYT, WaPo) and structured data (sock prices, birth and death notices), there's very little value to most of their archives. How much revenue do you think the Emporia Gazette gets from its archive? Smallbones_(smalltalk) 04:28, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

It's technical and I might be misreading it but it seems that Jimbo's article in the Guardian comes under the conditions at https://www.theguardian.com/info/standard-terms-for-written-contributions, in which case he has given the Guardian exclusive rights for first use and maybe for three months after that, and non-exclusive rights for re-use. It seems that apart from that he retains all copyright and licensing rights and I think that means he could put it under a CC licence after 3 months at most. 79.73.244.79 (talk) 13:21, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

I'll ask. That would be wonderful, if true, and might provide us with a very interesting opportunity for some free content for Wikisource.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 14:04, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

How much more blatant FAKE NEWS headlines by mainstream media are we going to take as reliably sourced?

Jimbo Wales, now mainstream media are in unison publishing headlines which misrepresent, by omitting the term "fake news", what the President said in a heavily reported tweet! Instead of reporting the fact/reality that the tweet clearly says "the FAKE NEWS media is the enemy of the American people", they are mostly headlining " media is the enemy of the American people". Their headlines are lieing ( by omission of crucial qualifying words) to the world by inferring that Trump called all media the enemy of the American people. Here we have the headline and the actual tweet both on the front page, but as you hopefully are aware, headlines matter (that's all a lot of readers see or remember)! And this is not the first time. Main stream US media have been aggressively conflating the term "immigrants" with "illegal immigrants" ever since Trump announced his candidacy. Jumbo Wales , what are we as Wikipedians going to do about mainstream fake news in terms of using these articles as reliable sources? Nocturnalnow (talk) 15:22, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

This is a general discussion about the media not particularly relevant to Wikipedia, but I'll answer because I think you're just wrong and ignoring something important. I'd like you to reflect on this and let me know if you see my point.

If Trump had tweeted exactly this: "The FAKE NEWS media is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American People!" and if the media then interpreted this as him saying "the media is the enemy of the American people" then there would be a very justified complaint. The initial meaning of the term 'Fake News' referred to a spate of what are unarguably and uncontroversially termed as fake news site - literally made up websites with false and misleading headlines designed to be viral with names such as Denver Guardian. If Trump meant that such sites were enemies of the American people, and people in the mainstream media pretended that he meant the media in general, then I think your complaint would have some validity.

As it is, Trump didn't tweet just that. He clarified it in a parenthetical: "The FAKE NEWS media (failing @nytimes, @NBCNews, @ABC, @CBS, @CNN) is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American People!" This represents, rather obviously, an attempt to smear the bulk of the mainstream media, not just with potentially justifiable complaints like 'biased' but actually "FAKE NEWS". He knows what he is doing, and so do you. Pretending that he isn't directly claiming that these serious high quality media outlets are literally the enemy of the people would be misleading.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 14:01, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

Trump also attacked BBC News, "Just like CNN" at solo press conference (see: full transcript, at "impartial"). -Wikid77 (talk) 17:18, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

Keep grinding that ax. Wow, that's some kind of fantastic contribution history you're showing for February... NOTHERE, anyone? Carrite (talk) 15:30, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

• Carrite, Ad hominem is next to the bottom on the chart, you know that. Nocturnalnow (talk) 16:34, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

  I think what Carrite meant was what you have written is nonsense, perhaps just poorly reasoned SOAPBOX. Alanscottwalker (talk) 16:39, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

Fake news is a strong contender for Cliché of the Year and it is only February. I propose a swear box for anyone who uses it, and Donald Trump and his supporters would probably fill it in no time.--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 15:34, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

Actually, factually, it was the Democrats who first started talking about it as something Russia used to help Trump in the election, and the Democrats then used that term, as well as "alt right" to put down Breitbart etc. Trump just jumped on the 'fake news" bandwagon, I think. I don't remember who inseted the Fake News topic in the most recent archived Jimbo talk page discussion, but I'd be surprised if it was a Trump supporter. Nocturnalnow (talk) 16:41, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

here it is, would you put that contributor into a swear box, or most likely you're being facetious? Nocturnalnow (talk) 16:47, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

Trump has previously called all of the major news outlets "fake news", so this seems to be a reasonable condensation for headline purposes. "Trump declares Media except for InfoWars, Breitbart and Rush Limbaugh the enemy of the American People" does not make the best headline. Of course, we can't be sure what Trump means anyways. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 16:10, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

I am surprised that you, whose work here I admire, would offer that explanation. That condensation might be reasonable for an overtly left of center publication but not for so many mainstream publications. The widespread omission of such crucially qualifying words, i.e. "media" as opposed to actual quote "FAKE NEWS (even in caps) media", as well as my second reference to the widespread reference to illegal immigrants as simply "immigrants", makes me positive that we have a really big problem of misrepresentation, in our mainstream media. Nocturnalnow (talk) 16:55, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

Stephan Schulz, even accepting your argument, the headlines should read "Trump declares "Major" media the enemy of the American People". There is a huge difference between most and all, but more importantly is the ethical integrity to not misquote ( by omission) a short one sentence statement...and this misquote is incredibly widespread among mainstream media today. Nocturnalnow (talk) 17:06, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

The "President" is using "fake news" as a pejorative against media outlets who report critical things about him. "Fake news" is correctly defined as people or organizations who knowingly publish or disseminate false narratives. Inforwars' continued assertions that the Sandy Hook massacre was fake is a prime example of fake news. TheValeyard (talk) 17:01, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

I definitely think that many major news organizations are knowingly publishing and disseminating a false narrative about Trump and Trump's attempts to govern through negative spin about 90% of every thing he says and does. And I am asking right here if we should link to articles ( by using them as sources ) which have such obviously misleading headlines. Nocturnalnow (talk) 17:14, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

90% of everything he says or does is absolutely atrocious so that just falls under reliable reporting. That press conference the other day was the most terrifyingly embarrassing political spectacle I've every witnessed in over 40 years on this planet. Capeo (talk) 17:27, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

And it continues to get worse - see here[1] for a BBC interview where his deputy assistant attempted to defend Trump's actions and whenever he was asked a difficult question by the reporter, he claimed the BBC/reporter were creating false news. DrChrissy ^(talk) 18:21, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

I'm sure it will get even worse before it gets better. The only silver lining at this point is that seems that it will be sooner rather than later that Trump does something so wildly unconstitutional that even the Republican controlled Congress won't be able to save him from being impeached. Capeo (talk) 16:29, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

Headlines are not reliable sources, so there should be no problem. TFD (talk) 18:30, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

• I disagree that there is a real problem here. The press is not lying when they omit that phrase, because it's not relevant to the central part of the story: Trump made a sensational claim to manufacture and promote distrust. You can sensationalize the omission however you want by using claims of "crucially qualifying", bold print, and capital letters to make it seem important, but whether it's in there or not is truly inconsequential in terms of building an encyclopedia. If that is what is most bothering you, I encourage you to focus your attention on real harm from this administration, not the imagined kind. I JethroBT ^{drop me a line} 18:40, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

• On 24 December 2015, OP Nocturnalnow was topic-banned from American Politics after 1932.[2] Their opening of this section seems to be very much about American politics, as do many previous comments on this page, for example [3], [4]. 79.73.244.79 (talk) 20:05, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

• Unfortunately the collapsing of settled cases tends to mess up links. This link seems to work better; you can uncollapse the relevant section. In any event my understanding is that Jimbo's talk page is the one place on the project where editors can disregard their topic bans. Shock Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 20:21, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

• I would say that's a common misunderstanding. It's a place where someone can appeal a topic ban, not somewhere where bans are disregarded (WP:BANEX). -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 20:46, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

• Reminded/warned here. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 21:04, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

You guys realize that silencing his would-be "voice of truth" with over-the-top Wikipedia process is not actually winning the argument, right? I'd say only that we don't reference headlines, we reference articles - it doesn't matter if the headline is a bunch of numbers as long as the article text is a RS that includes stuff like the actual Twitter posting in question. Well, that and that people have long been bemoaning the concentration of ownership of the media, so if someone names five big corporations as all being "enemies of the people" they practically have denounced all the media.

Nor will I say Trump is wrong, because ... without their incessant, infuriating wall of political correctness and identity politics and Clinton-can't-lose propaganda, we never would have been stuck with Trump! Wnt (talk) 21:09, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

If this is addressing enforcing the topic ban, you realize he's banned from making any arguments related to post-1932 American politics, right? --NeilN ^{talk to me} 21:15, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

I don't like seeing this ban at all: prohibiting editors from discussing any American politics is not something that a free-thinking site does, and if enough editors are so penalized it will clear the way for an official political platform to be imposed on Wikipedia from above. This editor did a bit of edit warring about Huma Abedin at a contentious time. First, for deleting others editors' contributions without discussion, he was hit with a 0RR on one article in a discussion that blamed other editors about as much. Then he restored some unobjectionable text a few times and they hit him with a ban on all American politics since 1932. Where did they get that huge scope of restriction? Hmmm, let me feel around, it might be somewhere behind those peanuts I should have chewed better last night... no, wait, it was from an arbitration case that he wasn't involved in! And the discussion there had a lot of opposition to the idea. But now... the seed was planted, and the farmers at Wikipedia begrudge the loss of any grain of haughty proceedings and enduring rancor that can be harvested from it. You could just accept that a ban like this is incredibly overbroad and impossible for anyone to follow 100% indefinitely, and allow that a Jimbo talk page discussion is not really anything to do with it, provided it is not itself out of bounds by normal policy. Instead you're planting another seed for another harvest. I want Wikipedia to have a saner admin process where editors get progressive warnings with narrow scope and without radical escalations, and where action taken is genuinely interpreted to keep them within the bounds of what normal editors do rather than being designed as a method of exit processing. Wnt (talk) 12:31, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

On this note, Google News Search lately seems less useful for finding reliable sources. Over at Israel on Campus Coalition, there was a minor problem. So I used Google news search to look for better sourcing. The top three search results in Google news search (not logged into Google, private browsing) [5] are Algemeiner (Jewish), Breitbart News (alt-right), and Mondoweiss ("progressive and anti-Zionist"). That's a miserable set of choices. There's nothing on the entire first page of news search results which is a neutral reliable source. It's discouraging to see Google putting such sources at the top of search results. John Nagle (talk) 20:43, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

Well, that's Google for you. In my experience it's hard to find reliable sources by casting a wide net, as you have found. It's actually easier to search known reliable sources, like "site:bbc.com israel campus coalition". Unfortunately there's no way to specify multiple sites within a single query as far as I know. Shock Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 21:07, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

Sigh... that is the least of it. The main problem is that news sources are getting very good at spamming all their current headlines back into their older stories, so that most Google News results don't even include the story you searched for. Asking for it to sort "best" is more than I hope for (or even really want - am I writing the article or is Google?). But it's getting to the point where my usual approach is no longer sure to work. I had been date-sorting the results and paging through ten or twenty result pages at a time, then smaller increments, to the first stories that came out that actually reference the event. It is my general belief that the first story is usually the best story, and the rest are just middlemen looking for a stray penny; or if not the first story, then generally one not much after. But when there is newsspam mixed all up through the results in large amounts, it can be hard to find the first story at all. Wnt (talk) 21:09, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

As I recall, the first time I heard the phrase "fake news" in a political context was with regard to stories on Hillary Clinton's health. Candidate health is legitimate topic but speculative stories were labeled "fake news." This was separate from regular click-bait stories that most news outlets now have right next to news. Labeling inquiries into legitimate topics such as health as "fake news" began the now continuous assertion of fake news. Students of politics and current affairs know where stories of Clinton's health were on sound footing whereas others were unfounded. In politics, fake news is not black or white and like we've seen with political fact checkers, there is always an ideological taint that shades all conclusion. There are backstories and grains of truth whether it's a story speculating on a stroke or about immigrant sexual assaults in Sweden. Virtually all claims that a story is "false" or "fake" has grains of truth and it includes claims made by Trump, Clinton, their aids and spokespeople, the media of every outlet and everyone squishing their thoughts into a tweet. Everyone who edits Wikipedia has come across alternative sources for facts even in scientific fields and we incorporate these points of view into the encyclopedia without a second thought about deciding who is correct. What is most alarming is that people are asserting their ideological beliefs with more authority than they are asserting reasoned facts or reporting reasonable dissension. Editors are using ideology as reason to squelch views not palatable or label views as false, fake or untrue. --DHeyward (talk) 23:38, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

Hillary Clinton did not give away U.S. uranium

WP might need a guideline about Trump's attack-speeches. Also in Trump's solo press conference, he seemed obsessed (unhinged?) with attacking Secretary Hillary Clinton, mentioning her a peculiar 25 times[!] and claiming a uranium giveaway (see: full transcript of 76-minute U.S. telecast, at "uranium"). Next day he left for a small campaign rally in Melbourne, Florida, and seems still trying to get elected President by the American people, where Hillary won the 2016 popular vote by a staggering 3 million more votes. Trump's U.S. approval rating is still dismal, at 41% while 55% disapprove of his performance. See fact-checking in "Donald Trump claims — falsely — that Hillary Clinton gave Russia 20% of US uranium" at CNBC.com. -Wikid77 (talk) 17:18, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

Alas, poor Sweden, too, but can't we just say 'he's wrong, according to, like, everyone' every-time it is relevant. Alanscottwalker (talk) 17:26, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

Well, for a few weeks, we could be removing disputed text, but after a few months, sources which quote Trump's speeches against Secretary Hillary Clinton or Senator Charles Schumer (etc.) should be directly linked to opposing sources which debunk Trump's peculiar comments, as a guideline to maintain wp:NPOV coverage in the Trump pages. Otherwise, I see Trump as this generation's "President Nixon" (Tricky Dicky) claiming "Peace with Honor" to end Vietnam, but 6 years later, the War was not over, while another +21,000 of classmates/relatives have been killed in battle, and each year the wait for the U.S. draft lottery to pick your number next; also instead of protests over Nixon's racial "integration", now there are protests over Trump's restricted "immigration" (combat refugees, but not from Vietnam now). It is amazing how fast the years pass, and instead of Watergate being a building, it becomes a sequence of Watergate hearings, and sources who warned about Watergate before the 1972 U.S. presidential election would have been linked in each page as events unfolded. It takes many years to uncover facts and remove a rogue President. -Wikid77 (talk) 22:02, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

There have been suggestions that we could still accept the Daily Mail for theatre or sport. Need there be any exceptions to a ban on using Donald Trump as a reliable source? 92.19.26.31 (talk) 00:06, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

Appeal to Jimbo re: my topic-ban from American Politics after 1932

Jimbo Wales, I'd like to appeal re; the indefinite topic ban on me re: American Politics after 1932. I will rely upon the arguments made by Wnt in his edit above Nocturnalnow (talk) 16:00, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

You would have to head to WP:AE I think, for appeals. TheValeyard (talk) 16:23, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

Nocturnalnow, you may appeal your topic ban here - I have tried that - however, historically, Jimbo rarely gets involved, let alone supports an appeal. I suggest, in a friendly way, you do not expend too much energy here but save that for the relevant noticeboard if you decide to go there. DrChrissy ^(talk) 16:33, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

Yelling "FAKE NEWS" in MOS:CAPS isn't helpful, though. There is a need to tone it down.--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 16:36, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

Ian, would you mind if I re-threaded your post - It could be interpreted that I have been yelling "fake news"? DrChrissy ^(talk) 16:40, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

No problem. I think that Nocturnalnow has a tendency to go over the top when discussing American politics, and would need to tone down the rhetoric on this topic for the ban to be lifted.--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 16:43, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

Yeah, I'm definitely not going to attempt to change this ban as I think it's a very good idea. Nocturnalnow, I've encouraged you to email me privately - I think a chat in private will be more productive.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 16:54, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

ok, I'll continue to contribute on other topics from time to time. Nocturnalnow (talk) 22:28, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

The Slow Professor (2016 book)

I have started an article about the book The Slow Professor: Challenging the Culture of Speed in the Academy.
—Wavelength (talk) 18:04, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

Wikipedia Audio

I have just discovered, in the last few minutes, Wikipedia Audio at http://wikipediaaudio.com.
—Wavelength (talk) 01:11, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

It looks good and sounds good. Take a listen to Jimi Hendrix. I wonder whether we can link to this in our articles.

The website owner, Michael DeMichele, says he worked with the WMF, so I'm guessing everything is cool, or could be made so pretty easily. A couple of questions though a) Is wikipediaaudio.com a trademark violation? and does the site need an explicit CC-BY-SA license statement?

If those are problems, I hope they can be worked out smoothly. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 02:35, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

I put a link to the WikipediaAudio version in the external links of the Jimi Hendrix article. It doesn't feel like the right place to put it and would be pretty hard to find by people who might need it. Any better suggestions? Smallbones_(smalltalk) 02:56, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

I have left a message at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Spoken Wikipedia.

—Wavelength (talk) 04:34, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

I've reverted the link addition per my edit summary. It's a good start, but it'd be nice if it worked in every major browser. Graham87 07:56, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

Andrea James, Wikipedia, and deletionism

I wanted to direct the readers of this page to this article recently written by Andrea James, a trans woman who used to edit Wikipedia as Jokestress. The article explains how multiple WP pages have been deleted because, in some cases, the editors who created the pages left the project long before the pages were nominated for deletion, and in other cases, the page was replaced with copyrighted text and then speedied as a copyvio. Specific examples of these cases cited by James include Chickenhead (song) (the former) and hemovanadin (the latter). James also asserts in the article's title that 40% of WP pages could also be deleted this way because they are stubs. I am curious what other editors think about her criticisms of the way WP works, e.g. her allegation that these deletions represent "misuse of Wikipedia's deletion policies." Everymorning (talk) 04:02, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

An obvious remedy would be to write a bot that goes to archive.is and archives pages as soon as they are marked for deletion. (sample archive: [6]) A caveat being that it would have to be fast, and ideally should have some way to search back before any recent large deletions, since some deletionists take a two-track approach, nominating articles because they don't have enough sources or don't assert notability while editing out large chunks of content to make that be so. Wnt (talk) 04:34, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

There's also Speedy Deletion Wikia, which archives copies of WP pages that have been speedied. Everymorning (talk) 04:35, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

How does that work anyway? For example, there is a nice little article on there about Rashi Singh, but I don't see an obvious notice or log telling me there ever was a deletion let alone why. How did speedydeletionwikia find it? Wnt (talk) 04:44, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

There was a follow-up article by James that I couldn't find right now, plus a summary with comment by AV Club. I understand the concerns, it sometimes seems that some good things get deleted. My usual experience with this involves photos, both here and at Commons. The methods described to delete seem pretty devious, and I've seen some of that. OTOH, a part of editing that many Wikipedians seem to forget is removing bad or even just sub-par content. Anytime I've graded student papers, I'd get the urge to say "edit this down to half the size, and then add some real content."

We do have a lot of bad content on Wikipedia. A bit more than half our articles are stubs. About half of those are "substubs" Use the ORES ratings to see what I mean. [7] The 4 articles rated there are Raja Khishtasub Khan, Seel, Central Java, Showgirl (album) and Coleophora impercepta. These aren't hard to find. Hit the random article link 10 times and you'll find 2-3 of these (or similar).

There are certainly some substubs that I think are worth keeping. A lot of them are biology or species articles. They don't add much, they may not have been edited by a human in years, but I can't see where the hurt anything. But there are substubs that can be very harmful, e.g. poorly thought out 1 paragraph OR. A lot of them could also be merged into a real article that could use another paragraph. So among the 20-25% of our articles that are substubs we could easily edit out , merge or delete at least 10% of our articles. And these articles would account for much less than 1% of our page views.

The only problem I'd see with doing this is that it would take a huge amount of time - because we all like to argue so much. Here's a modest proposal. Find the 5% of our articles every year that meet the following conditions: 1) ORES "Stub probability" in the highest 10% (probably greater than 90%), 2) less than 30 page views per month avg., and 3) hasn't been edited by a human in at least 2 years. Have a bot tag them for speedy deletion. Find 1,000 editors who will consider, edit, merge or delete one of these every day (250 per year). Do this forever. After 2 or 3 years, we might have to reconsider if we find that too many "real articles" are being deleted. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 05:25, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

What exactly is the point of deleting an article nobody reads? The deleted article is still stored on the server and still available to certain special people who are better than me. The number of page views ... doesn't change much. The only difference is that if someone wanted to try to do something with it, they would have more work. Wnt (talk) 13:51, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

While the stuff that gets caught in that sort of net probably qualifies as 'not very important' or 'likely to be missed by a fairly small fraction of readers', as with Wnt I have trouble seeing how one justifies the leap from there to 'harmful and in need of deletion'. Copyvios should obviously go. Totally unsourced (or extremely-poorly sourced) articles should be remediated or deleted, as they fall afoul of WP:V. Promotional cruft won't be missed; Wikipedia's not a webhost or a marketing platform.

Otherwise-sound articles – even stubs – that are merely obscure or of interest to a narrow audience? Merge where appropriate, sure. (I'm a big fan of reducing duplication, keeping information in context, and making it easier to maintain our content.) But speedying content that doesn't have any problems just because not very many people use it? Really? TenOfAllTrades(talk) 14:35, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

I'll just note, that a recent experience of mine, just confirms for me that this argument you often see in many different types of discussions that a whole lot of stuff no one watches (from promotionalism to 'no one cares about this') is "not harmful" is wrong. I just by serendipity happened on an article of a major church in Munich - if I try to reconstruct how I got there, I just happened to be reading the Munich Cathedral article because for some vague reason I had a slight interest, and it popped into my head that knowing Bavaria was historically Catholic with a long history of inter-confessional violence, I was slightly curious what Lutheran establishment might exist in Munich - through some twists (again at each step only being very slightly motivated to continue) I wound up at a notable "Catholic" church article. At first, I just thought I wound up at at an article, I was not looking for - and was going to quickly move on -- but I just happened to press on about it and discover the problem that I ultimately figured out after some digging -- it was vandalized over two months ago with the first-half everything "protestant" having been changed to "catholic". That's just too much relying on total luck, and kismet that I cared, and then cared to research and correct it. Now, multiply such things over 1000s upon 1000s of articles . . . -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 15:14, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

It's an interesting question of balance. Of course, if an article only gets one page view per day, and it stays vandalized for two months, then sixty people were served the vandalized version of the article. If we take a moderately popular article (at this moment, Aziz Ansari is at the bottom place on WP:5000, with just shy of 28 000 page views last week) and it stays vandalized for thirty minutes...we also serve the vandalized version of the article to about sixty people. Is it meaningfully 'better' or 'worse' if the people who see the vandalism are closer together or more spread out in time? TenOfAllTrades(talk) 16:04, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

The thing that is concerning is my "correction" was so random - and there is no real reason I should have happened on it to correct it. FYI, I went back now in my editing history, and it was a month and a half (not two months, sorry), and for the record, here is the diff. I did not bother with anything else about the article that might be wrong, I know little to nothing about the subject (and, yes, kind-of-don't-care about it). Alanscottwalker (talk) 16:58, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

• Generally I tend to ignore criticisms raised by professional axe-grinders who think its fair game to post pictures of their ideological opponent's children on their own website implying their father sodomises them. And after reading the above article, I feel this policy has worked well for me so far, said article being full of hyperbole, slurs on other editors, distortions, attacks on editors, unsubstantiated declarations (yes its usually women and ethnic people who have their stubs deleted according to James) and borderline complete falsehoods. Only in death does duty end (talk) 15:17, 20 February 2017 (UTC)
  • I'm not sure what article OiD is talking about. Hopefully it's not somebody involved in this discussion!
  • IMHO, it's best to talk about specifics in this discussion. I hit the random article link 5 times this morning. The fourth article was a substub, but not one that would fit the conditions in my modest proposal. Chaeron of Pellene had a "stub probability" of 91.7%, 3 short sentences, 2 offline references. Though a reference had been added in 2014, it was really only edited by it's original author in 2009. It took me about an hour, but I was able to add 2 more sentences plus a long quote from ancient Greece, as well as 3 online references. It's actually kind of interesting now and its stub probability was reduced to 88.6%. I think that's the more likely type of outcome from tagging these articles than deletion, at least if people take the possibility of deletion seriously.
  • My fifth use of the random article link took me to Ityopp'is which has one sentence and 1 offline link. It's stub probability is 96.3% - there are a lot of articles worse than this! In this case I will probably merge it into Book of Aksum, a stub (not a sub-stub) that could use another sentence. Looking at real cases makes clear that the encyclopedia will be improved by doing such a review. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 17:12, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

Slavery and rape

Hi Jimbo. What do you think of Professor Jonathan A.C. Brown's comments on slavery and rape? Do you think Wikipedia is covering them accurstely? FloridaArmy (talk) 14:13, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

I have never heard of Professor Jonathan A.C. Brown nor about his comments on slavery and rape. You didn't link me to where Wikipedia covers them, so I'm not sure where to start looking. Normally it is fairly straightforward to check the reliability of such a thing by looking at what we say, following the link to the source, and assessing whether we accurately report what the source says. In some cases, there can be a subtlety that makes that less straightforward, of course. If you give me more information, then I may be able to offer some helpful comments, but more importantly, people can discuss it here.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 17:33, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

Me neither. Google spit out this (at the WaPo), which makes it seem like some ill-considered words and a mob that was ready to run with it. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 17:44, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

This in all likelihood has to do with this. It is being discussed on the Talk page here. Karst (talk) 17:50, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

What do you think about ads on Wikipedia?

Really, what do you think about putting ads on the wiki? Are you against it? What are your thoughts? Ry00001 (talk) 18:21, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

It would be self destructive. Nocturnalnow (talk) 23:15, 20 February 2017 (UTC)