User talk:Jimbo Wales

BitClout

Jimbo, BitClout is a scam for users. (for reference: [1]). Would you encourage others to join, when they can't convert their BTCLT back into Bitcoin and will get stuck with the bag? They're also profiting off of persons' likeness without their consent. Therapyisgood (talk) 01:01, 22 April 2021 (UTC)

[2] and [3]. Therapyisgood (talk) 01:29, 22 April 2021 (UTC)

Therapyisgood, Wikipedia does not condone every organization or practice it has an article for. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 08:02, 22 April 2021 (UTC)

Just FYI, I wouldn't encourage (or discourage) anyone from joining.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 09:42, 23 April 2021 (UTC)

Strange. Your account there says it's verified and has posted messages. I don't trust them for one bit seeing as they already scraped 15000 accounts from Twitter without knowledge or consent of the account owners. Unless you can confirm here that you created an account there, it would seem they have taken it one step further and are impersonating you. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 10:58, 23 April 2021 (UTC)

Oh, I guess it is real. Impersonation seemed more likely. Oh well. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 11:04, 23 April 2021 (UTC)

No, it's real. I heard they received quite a lot of mainstream investment and thought I would check it out. I'm generally skeptical of crypto. The number of people who have said to me we should put Wikipedia on the blockchain so people could bid money to control the content of articles (the absolute worst idea ever) makes me dizzy. At the same time, I find blockchain technology interesting and in particular I'm interested in thinking about how to move from advertising models to other models and I think deeply understanding what's bad (and good) about new things is worth my time.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 11:51, 23 April 2021 (UTC)

Jimbo Wales, these crypto companies are generating value out of thin air. Which isn't a problem in and of itself. Or maybe it is, but we left the gold standard behind us a long time ago so if it is we have bigger problems. The problem is with all these dubious companies creating money that has no more value than V-Bucks is that trust will be lost. And paper money without trust equals toilet paper. For advertising models a major issue, I think, is transaction cost. A YouTube ad view pays between $0.01 and $0.03 or most channels get paid 0.5 USD per 1000 views. (I don't claim either of these sources is a valid RS, but you get the ballpark) I'd prefer paying 1 cent over wasting half a minute watching crap. (ads can be skipped, but the creator doesn't get paid if you do) But if I want to get rid of the ads in a legitimate way, my only option is getting YouTube Premium for €11.99/month. (not even sure if creators would get paid if I did as I wouldn't see ads) One cent multiplied by, say, a few dozen videos, is not €11.99/month. Where did the difference go? Why is ad revenue so much lower than the price to not see ads? Figure that out and you may be on your way to finding an alternative model. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 16:28, 23 April 2021 (UTC)

I'm not a customer of YouTube Premium, but I'm vaguely under the impression that it is more than just eliminating ads on youtube videos, but also similar to NetFlix or Amazon Prime in that it gives access to various additional content? That might explain the price premium.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 16:36, 25 April 2021 (UTC)

Yes, that's actually still true. MatPat's Game Lab for example is (beyond the first episode) only accessible for Premium users. But if you look at the YouTube Premium landing page, it doesn't even mention the premium content anymore. Even if the difference results from the option to download videos (which presumably increases music licensing cost), it raises the question: why isn't there a YT Premium option for, say, €2.99/month that just removes ads while still paying content creators? I'd pay for that, but no such option exists. And that's YouTube, where such a model would at least in theory be viable. It's not viable for a news website where you read 3 articles each month. It's fairly simple: Paypal, Credit card companies and payment processors make tiny transactions unprofitable. You can't donate less than €0.83144322027478 to Wikimedia (I'm not making that up, somebody forgot to truncate something) and I understand why. Things like Flattr exist but haven't really taken off. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 19:03, 25 April 2021 (UTC)

Therapyisgood, here's how you can tell when any cryptocurrency or NFT is a scam:

1. It's a cryptocurrency or NFT
2. Er...
3. That's it.

Hope this helps. Guy (help! - typo?) 07:56, 30 April 2021 (UTC)

JzG, not every cryptocurrency is a scam. Fool's gold, perhaps. Bad for the environment, certainly. But the main difference with government-backed money is that it isn't government-backed which has various implications. Buying cryptocurrency to get rich is foolish as it's pure speculation. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 10:57, 30 April 2021 (UTC)

Alexis Jazz, there is no cryptocurrency that is not a bubble. Guy (help! - typo?) 12:43, 30 April 2021 (UTC)

Re:The future of Wikipedia A free encyclopedia. --Inspiration provided by Wikipedia's 20 anniversary, an occasion worth celebrating

I am returning this thread since it has been almost 3 months. Wikipedians would like to know if you have changed your mind. Thanks. Life is short so let us live it to the fullest! (talk) 16:18, 3 May 2021 (UTC)

No, I haven't. I view my core role here as being to defend and strengthen the community against rogue powers of any form. This role requires me to do nothing stupid, in order to maintain the moral authority to do something when it is needed. It is a good system that works well to prevent a number of things that might happen otherwise. If a problem were ever to arise that made the good of the community require me to step aside, then I would do so. But in the meantime, I'm here to be a rather boring bit of traditional strength for the community.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 17:33, 4 May 2021 (UTC)

Hear hear. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 09:29, 5 May 2021 (UTC)

@Life is short so let us live it to the fullest!: Jimbo is the king of Wikipedia, and that's how it should be kept. StarshipSLS (Talk), (My Contributions) 17:35, 9 May 2021 (UTC)

Life is short so let us live it to the fullest!, I echo North8000 from the original thread. I'd trust Jimbo as an absolute dictator over the largely self-appointed WMF. Which, mind you, tried to kick Jimbo off the board because he wasn't doing what they wanted. In a just world we could kick everyone who supported those planned bylaw changes off the board instead. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 22:32, 10 May 2021 (UTC)

A thank you for 20 years of Wikipedia!

Although I've only been here, on and off for 17 of those 20 years... mid-2004, this site has been great, and let's hope that it continues on for another 2 decades!

A celebratory cake.

This is a celebratory post... thank you for your hard work creating this site and the Wikimedia Foundation!

~~--Chelston-temp-1 (talk) 13:26, 5 May 2021 (UTC)~~

--Chelston-temp-1 (talk) 13:26, 5 May 2021 (UTC)

For those who didn't know

User:Sarah/Slimvirgin has passed away. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 19:16, 10 May 2021 (UTC)

Wales acting as an independent country

Hi Jimbo - sorry, no idea if you can deal with this. There is a photo competiton called Wiki Loves Earth. Some users from Wales, a part of the UK, have taken it on themselves to enter Wales as a country. I don't think this should be allowed. Best wishes Charlesjsharp (talk) 17:37, 13 May 2021 (UTC)

This is a WP:UKNATIONALS issue and could no doubt lead to heated discussions. It isn't absolutely wrong to describe the Home Nations as countries and they are allowed to enter sporting events separately, although when it comes to citizenship, all of the people involved have a UK passport. You can't have English, Welsh, Scottish or Northern Irish citizenship, although this may change in the future.--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 18:03, 13 May 2021 (UTC)

Charlesjsharp, Wales is a principality, strictly speaking, but it is generally recognised as a country, just not one with independent sovereignty. It has its own language, parliament and flag. Guy (help! - typo?) 19:08, 13 May 2021 (UTC)

There's an internet encyclopaedia that says "Wales is a country that is part of the United Kingdom." Perhaps there is some confusion between country and sovereign state. The idea that "Wales is a principality, strictly speaking" is, to quote Ruth Davidson recently, "complete bollocks". Again, that pesky encyclopaedia says that for the last ~500 years "there has been no geographical or constitutional basis for describing any of Wales as a principality". It is up to Wiki Loves Earth to define the rules about how they want to group entries. Since the English border with Wales is not disputed, I don't anticipate any disputes arising over whether a photograph is in Wales or in some other country. I know Jimbo is best palls with some powerful people, but I don't think even he has the power to demote Wales to be merely "a part of the UK". -- Colin°^Talk 20:39, 13 May 2021 (UTC)

I'm not sure how trustworthy our articles are on this fact. The relevant second paragraph of Country appears largely unsourced. Wales sources the statement to a statistics.gov.uk page describing how they treat information for the purposes of the statistics they display. Similarly, Scotland sources the statement to: statistics.gov.uk, a blog post on 10 Downing Street, (independence aside, blog posts/press releases on UK government websites are notoriously inconsistent), and ISO which ironically, reading the document, says "WLS Wales [Cymru GB-CYM] principality". Our articles don't have good sources for the statements they make. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 21:00, 13 May 2021 (UTC)

ProcrastinatingReader, the lead of an article doesn't always provide citations for facts that are well cited in the body. For example Principality of Wales#After 1542: union with England goes into more detail. Your ISO source from 2007 is out-of-date, as the wiki article notes, ISO fixed their documentation after 2011. There's more on that here and here, which should give a flavour of the reaction that follows if one wrongly defines Wales. Which leads me to ask, leaving sources aside, why you think the many many Welsh Wikipedians would permit the world's biggest encyclopaedia to define their country wrongly? Surely even an un- or weakly-sourced lead sentence in a country-of-the-world article is likely to be correct, vs some random guy on Jimbo's talk page! -- Colin°^Talk 21:45, 13 May 2021 (UTC)

It's not my source, it's the source in the Scotland article. I'm just saying the sources, at least in the lead, aren't great IMO for the statement made. And although it doesn't relate to how we decide content here, Brittanica uses "consistent unit". afaics these issues were mainly discussed in 2007. But is "is Wales/Scotland/etc a country" really something one wants to debate? Even if I had sources to unambiguously claim otherwise, and I haven't really checked if they exist or not, that's not a hill I would want to die on. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 22:12, 13 May 2021 (UTC)

Colin, it's not complete bollocks, just ask Llywelyn ap Gruffudd. But, you know, language, flag, Senedd, country. Admittedly I'm not Welsh. Only my Mum, sister and five neicephews are Welsh. Guy (help! - typo?) 21:53, 13 May 2021 (UTC)

If it isn't complete bollocks, is it just a left bollock? Or perhaps a right bollock? :-) Sometimes it is important to know what kind of wrong something is. Since this conversation is about Wiki Loves Earth, I assume we are all discussing Wales as it is in 2021, with the internet and digital cameras, not a millennium ago, with tapestries and swords. The Welsh Government's website at Wales.com has this as the #1 entry of their FAQS page. -- Colin°^Talk 22:11, 13 May 2021 (UTC)

Yeah. Just, yeah. No. --Jimbo Wales (talk) 23:30, 13 May 2021 (UTC)

Half-formed stubs continue to be rejected even when the subjects are Black

It's a frustrating struggle and there are lots of excuses for it. But surely we can make room for Ben Wallace's high school, Draft:Central High School (Lowndes County, Alabama), as he enters the NBA hall of fame. It's a school in Alabama and has Black students, but that shouldn't make it less worthy of inclusion than Larry Bird and Jerry West's high school, or yours Jimbo.

Absolutely the article needs expansion. Photographs. Alumni. Extracurriculars. Demographics. It hasn't happened in the 15 or so years the subject has been excluded from mainspace and it's not going to happen while it's stuck in draftspace with so many important subjects the are being discriminatwd against in a continuation of a long and ugly history here and elsewhere. 21:03, 16 May 2021 (UTC)

Translation: Half-formed stubs continue to be rejected even when the subjects are Black. Also FloridaArmy continues to insist that any criticism or rejection of his articles is due to racism. Guy (help! - typo?) 22:55, 16 May 2021 (UTC)