User talk:Jimbo Wales

Welcome to my talk page. Please sign and date your entries by inserting ~~~~ at the end.
Start a new talk topic.

This is Jimbo Wales's talk page, where you can send them messages and comments.

Put new text under old text. Click here to start a new topic.
New to Wikipedia? Welcome! Learn to edit; get help.

Archives: Index, Index, A, B, C, D, E, F, G, 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, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111, 112, 113, 114, 115, 116, 117, 118, 119, 120, 121, 122, 123, 124, 125, 126, 127, 128, 129, 130, 131, 132, 133, 134, 135, 136, 137, 138, 139, 140, 141, 142, 143, 144, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149, 150, 151, 152, 153, 154, 155, 156, 157, 158, 159, 160, 161, 162, 163, 164, 165, 166, 167, 168, 169, 170, 171, 172, 173, 174, 175, 176, 177, 178, 179, 180, 181, 182, 183, 184, 185, 186, 187, 188, 189, 190, 191, 192, 193, 194, 195, 196, 197, 198, 199, 200, 201, 202, 203, 204, 205, 206, 207, 208, 209, 210, 211, 212, 213, 214, 215, 216, 217, 218, 219, 220, 221, 222, 223, 224, 225, 226, 227, 228, 229, 230, 231, 232, 233, 234, 235, 236, 237, 238, 239, 240, 241, 242, 243, 244, 245, 246, 247, 248, 249, 250, 251: 24 hours

This user talk page might be watched by friendly talk page stalkers, which means that someone other than me might reply to your query. Their input is welcome and their help with messages that I cannot reply to quickly is appreciated.

Archives

Index

–index–

This manual archive index may be out of date.
Future archives: 184 185 186

This page has archives. Sections older than 24 hours may be automatically archived by when more than 2 sections are present.

(Manual archive list)

Croatian Wikipedia controversy

I'm not interested in running any kind of "war" or crusade against Croatian Wikipedia, but I think that Wikimedia Foundation should seriously look into the current media allegations against its administrators. The controversy is covered by at least three of the five largest daily newspapers in Croatia.

Although the accusations against Croatian Wikipedia are nothing new, latest controversy began when Jutarnji list published an article (appeared on the front page of printed edition) which cited examples of "historical revisionism" and "right-wing bias" on Wikipedia and accused administrators for harassing and blocking all editors who tried to remove biased statements in articles. It is possible that the initial media coverage is driven by the facebook group Razotkrivanje sramotne hr.wikipedije (Exposing shameful Croatian Wikipedia). The story was then picked up by dozens of major newspapers and portals in Croatia and across the region (for example, in Croatia:Novi list ([1]), Index.hr ([2], Slobodna Dalmacija ( [3])...)

Administrators of Croatian Wikipedia issued a statement in which they "denied accusations", but if you read the statement carefully, you will see that they didn't deny anything. The first part of the statement is unrelated rant about political situation in Croatia, and the second part is a general talk about editing Wikipedia. They used "site notice" to post a link to this statement on every page of Wikipedia. Text of the message in "site notice" is "Official and public refutation of yellow journalism of the Jutarnji list".

Željko Jovanović, Minister of Science, Education and Sports in Croatian government, issued the following statement:

So according to Jutarnji.hr Jimmy Wales has said that the Serbs and the Croats "must not" have separate Wikipedias ^[1]? If that is indeed correct interpretation of what Jimbo said, then sadly this will be my last visit to any of the Wikipedia pages in any language. It is an absolutely disgusting and arbitrary viewpoint that is insulting for Croats as well as for many Serbs I would imagine.

We can only say with regret that the possibility of open and relevant source of information that Wikipedia can be and should provide, is completely undermined in the Croatian version, which surely has never, even now, been the goal of Wikipedia founders, nor the huge number of people around the world who generously share their time and knowledge with this media. Croatian Students are thus damaged and, unfortunately, we have to point out that much of the content in the Croatian version of Wikipedia is not only questionable, but also clearly falsified, and we invite them to use more reliable sources of information which includes English version and other language editions of Wikipedia.

Croatian Wikipedia is perhaps the worst offender (although we don't know for sure), but many other small Wikipedias have nationalistic tendencies, including all those in languages of Former Yugoslavia and Balkans. The Foundation should put more effort into monitoring the situation on smaller projects, so that they can timely respond in similar situations if necessary. Regards!--В и к и T 14:35, 13 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with you on every aspect of this. I will make sure the Foundation sees your notice and will ask them to look into it. To me it seems particularly damning that the Croatian Minister you reference has made such a strong statement - if the complaints were coming only from Serbian sources, it becomes more complex for an outsider to evaluate it. My long held view is that it was always a mistake to have separate Wikipedias in this part of the world, since the language would be regarded as the same language under any objective standard. (The way it is written is not relevant - there is nearly perfect machine translation because it is just a change of script between Latin and Cyrillic.)

However, I ask your help as well. Could you please help me to find English speaking people from Croatian Wikipedia to have a thorough conversation about the situation?--Jimbo Wales (talk) 15:49, 13 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

See Category:Wikipedians who contribute to the Croatian Wikipedia and Category:User hr.

—Wavelength (talk) 17:20, 13 September 2013 (UTC) and 17:25, 13 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not going to have time right away, but this seems urgent, can someone ask as many of them as is practical to pop here for a discussion? I'd like to see as many eyes on this problem as possible.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 17:28, 13 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I have opened: m:Requests for comment/Fascism on Croatian Wikipedia which mentions some more details. Cheers --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 20:09, 13 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I was asked by User:Wikiwind to respond here to Jimbo's call for Croatian editors to comment on the situation. I never edited much on Croatian Wikipedia and I can only speak for myself but from what I've seen as a reader and an editor, the situation looks bad over there and has been that way for years now. I might add that it is common knowledge that most Croatian editors active on en.wiki avoid hr.wiki like the plague, so I assume most of us here share a similar view. It is also common knowledge that a very large number of articles in the area of politics and history suffer from WP:UNDUE, WP:SYNTH, WP:OR and especially WP:OWN and WP:SOAP problems and are written with a heavy right-wing slant. It seems that not only is this not suppressed by admins, it is actually enforced by them, and from the reports in the media and from what I've seen on the mentioned Facebook group, it seems that many people over the years tried to voice their concerns and join the project but were driven away by aggressive admins and the generally hostile atmosphere. The guy who started the Facebook group said he only started it after he had written to Wikimedia but received no response. And even at Croatian Wikipedia's village pump some active editors publicly expressed agreement with criticisms published by Jutarnji list, while others responded with what looks like paranoid rants. The whole thing then got out of hand as Jutarnji list followed up the first report with a printed article publicly outing Croatian Wikipedia admin User:SpeedyGonsales labeling him as essentially a Neonazi, which was then followed the next day by Education Minister Željko Jovanović's statements urging pupils and students to use English-language Wikipedia instead of the Croatian version. I do feel sorry for Speedy as he does not seem to me to be the craziest of the bunch, but the open letter he composed and sent to all the media outlets on behalf of the Croatian Wikipedia after the first Jutarnji list article did not really help, as it was very belligerent and did not really address the issues raised. To make things worse, Jutarnji is required by law to re-publish his letter, which, once happens, is IMO likely going to further alienate the public.
To be fair, Jutarnji list is a sensationalist tabloid not exactly known for high quality journalism. However, many of the points it made seem to be true to to me, and in my personal experience there really is a huge problem with the Croatian Wikipedia and the way it operates, mainly due to the ineptitude of its admins. Jutarnji claims it interviewed several former editors who are quoted as saying that the whole situation got out of hand around 2009 when Croatian Wiki's ArbCom was apparently disbanded and several admins who had previously received long-term bans returned and took charge. I cannot confirm this firsthand but I guess the scenario sounds likely.
I also feel compelled to add that this is not the reason not to have a Croatian-language wiki, this is just an issue of a bad set of admins gone rogue. It could have happened anywhere in the world, and it could happen again at any time at any language version of this project. IMO this is something Wikimedia foundation should have predicted and prepared procedures for. And I am convinced that it can and should be fixed. I would also like to add that input from User:Joy (Croatian editor who is an admin on en.wiki) should prove to be valuable, as he used to be active on both wikis since probably day one, knows the situation far better than me or Jutarnji and has proved through years of adminning over here that his approach to touchy issues is level-headed and that his judgment can be trusted. Again, this is all just my two cents. Everyone is free to disagree. Timbouctou (talk) 22:46, 13 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
(BTW I took the liberty of notifying Croatian Wikipedia editors about this discussion.) Timbouctou (talk) 00:02, 14 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hi. The problem obviously exists, but merging croatian, bosnian and serbian wikipedia would kill the project in all of those 3 countries. We had a lot of language discussions *inside* croatian wikipedia, and I can't even begin to imagine what it would be like to have all of these languages in one project. Not to mention all the controversial articles! Media hype will probably calm down in a day or two, so better not to rush too much with decisions like this merge idea. --Ante Perkovic (talk) (the guy next to You here :) 23:20, 13 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Jimbo, Jutarnji List is a tabloid newspaper and as such they need to have sensationalist and controversial articles to keep their circulation up, in a time when they are loosing money hand over fist and are asking the government for help to keep the company afloat. You and I know that the Internet has turned the whole media business model upside down and that the "old ways" of newspapers, TV and radio where the rivers of gold in terms of advertising have all dried up. I have been a long time editor and administrator on the hr.wikipedia.org project and I will say one thing that this wikipedia project is inclusive and not an exclusive project. The wikipedia in the Croatian language is on of the most read wikipedias on the Internet and it has time and time again proven to be the most moderate and most neutral wikipedia project in the spectre of languages which make up the South Slavonic languages. As a matter of fact the hr.wikipedia.org is the most read wikipedia of the South Slavonic language family. The wikipedia in the Croatian language is a free wikipedia where everyone is welcome to contribute, but as you have seen in the whole wikipedia space that many times you, many other and I have to deal with individuals or groups that harass, bully and cause issues in the community. The whole point of the Wikipedia in general and in the Croatian Language is to advance the body of knowledge for humanity and to enable access to free and unencumbered information to anyone on this planet who has access to the Internet. Wikipedia is supposed to be free of barriers and free of political interference from different governments, pressure groups or individuals who are tyring to subdue or control a particular project. Imagine if the wikipedia in the English, German, Italian, French and other languages are taken over by a particular government after an article in a tabloid newspaper. Which country should take over the wikipedia in the English language: Great Britain, USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India????? This would be a dangerous precedent for the Wikipedia project and other projects that are connected with Wikimedia. For instance subjects and artciles in the Wikipedia would then be subjected to censorship and deletion because that article or subject is not in alignment with a certain governments view of the day. For instance all LGBT articles would be removed from the Wikipedia in the Russian language, and that the Wikipedia in the Russian language is given control or oversight to the Russian government. What about the Wikipedia in the Korean language, should control and oversight be given to the South or North Koreans, or should the Wikipedia in the Persian language be subjugated to the the Islamic Republic of Iran or should the Wikipedia in Arabic be subject to comments of the various religious leaders and fatwas that are issued by them. Wikipedia is supposed to be a place where ideas are exchanged freely and without prejudice or prosecution. Jimbo, as a wikipedian and as a person I plead with you to consider the view of keeping every Wikipedia as well as the Wikipedia in the Croatian language as independent projects and that no forced mergers are conducted based on the language group or regional belonging because that would cause problems with many other languages that have a similar problem with the groups and subgroups of languages. If we use that argument of Ante Perkovic we could "kill off" many other unnecessary language projects, wouldn't that be received well by the languages that are being merged. We can also imagine the outcry that would have around the globe. I also plead with you that before you consider any action that I would like to personally talk with you be that over a voice/video bridge or in person. In the end I would like to congratulate you on the Wikipedia project that opened and changed the world, where you have shown that many people with small contributions can change the way information and knowledge is collated and turned into content that will well accepted and respected. Please do not let sensationalistic journalism and government interference influence the Wikipedia project, please do not create a precedent that would allow government and other interference in other Wikipedia projects Vodomar (talk) 23:51, 13 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

When I provided a reference (150 of them) for the article on Stalin, I was banned by admin zeljko. This individual is clearly biased, as you can see from his facebook profile (link provided) that he is sympathetic to the fascist Ustashe regime and was member of HOS. https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=326552500782110&set=a.326541090783251.62821.100002820890724&type=3&theater 14 September 2013 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 46.35.148.45 (talk)

I think this response is a perfect example of how paranoid the administration of the Croatian Wikipedia is. It is beyond ridiculous that a Wiki administration that promotes homophobia, pseudoscience, xenophobia and nationalism then tries to present *itself* as the victim. To try and compare criticism of the former by making analogies with "censorship" is shameful, since it is the administration of the Croatian wikipedia that does the censoring, oftentimes when dealing with scientific facts. Fejstkajkafski (talk) 03:24, 14 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I completely agree--Pavlemocilac (talk) 09:25, 14 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

There is no homophobia on the hr.wikipedia.org project, if you look at the different articles the LGBT communities and subjects are written in fairly neutral langauage and I might say that this claim is wrong. You need to substantiate your claims before making such a general statement. Vodomar (talk) 03:01, 15 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Jimbo, Jutarnji list is not tabloid - not at all, it is not even just Jutarnji List it is all the media, including the national TV station HRT. Pavlemocilac (talk) 23:55, 13 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Jutarnji list is a tabloid. Which serious newspaper shows naked people or people in sexually provocative poses. Or asks their readership to have a look at a movie of a sexual act and a pornographic movie as a was of proving a point or making a comparison: http://www.jutarnji.hr/video--kako-izgleda-realan-seks--a-kako-onaj-u-porno-filmovima--pogledajte-edukativni-video-/1118027/ . Isn't it also the case that the national TV station HRT is the mouthpiece of the Croatian Government, and they are not unbiased in their reporting. It is also a known fact in Croatia that the Croatian Government has written off the debts of the parent company of Jutarnji List in the tune of close to $100 million (see http://www.index.hr/vijesti/clanak/eph-duguje-600-milijuna-kuna-fina-im-izasla-u-susret-i-odblokirala-ih/681584.aspx , http://www.hnd.hr/hr/homepage/vijest/66868). There is also proof that the current Croatian Government has a very close relationship with the parent company of Jutarnji List see: http://www.poslovni.hr/hrvatska/ostojic-da-zivim-u-pavicevom-stanu-to-je-normalna-praksa-219512 , where a Minister of Interior has been living the flat of the owner of Jutarnji List, and before he was a minister of interior he was an employee of the Europapress Holdings. There is a great conflict of interest here. Aren't there a few Facebook hate pages that criticise Facebook, and isn't there in general a whole article about criticism of Facebook? What is happening Jimbo, is that a smoke and mirrors campaign is being conducted so that the project hr.wikipedia.org project is put under the control of the Croatian Government and Jutarnji List / which is a unprecedented move that a wikipedia project is placed under influence or full control of a Government and/or Media enterprise. Vodomar (talk) 01:57, 14 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Vodomar, Jutarnji list is utterly irelevant here. To be honest, Jutarnji did exagerate some thing, but some things did not (eg. denial of existens of Serbs in Croatia). Here is an example what garbage a reader can found, written by a sysop!!!. Please, Vodomar, translate it to English if you dare. -- Bojan Talk 04:42, 14 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I have no problem, please mark the sections of text that need to be translated. Google translate does a decent job to start with. Anyway, e-mail it to me and I will do it and present it back. Vodomar (talk) 05:02, 14 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Jutarnji List is the major Croatian newspapers. Get over it. --Pavlemocilac (talk) 09:25, 14 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

No one said it is not a major newspaper in terms of circulation, however it is still a tabloid. Vodomar (talk) 03:12, 15 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Here is an official international statement made by us, a group people of tired of reading pro-fascist, clerical, extreme-right wing articles on Croatian Wikipedia gathered in a FB page Razotkrivanje sramotne hr.wikipedije: Holocaust deniers rule Croatian Wikipedia.

Facebook is a haven for hate groups of any time : from the extreme left to the extreme right and all the shades in between. If there is a problem it can be resolved on the hr.wikipedia.org project pages, what is happening now is just a case of over reaching and interventionist efforts. This is a case of over reaching. There would be many politicians, and other people, companies and organisations who probably do not like he article written about them on the different wikipedia projects that exists under the Wikimedia banner. What would happen if a Minister of any country wrote a few lines in protest, backed by a state sponsored media, we would not have a free Wikipedia. Vodomar (talk) 05:02, 14 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Well, maybe there are shit of crap on Facebook, but thanks to involved admins User:SpeedyGonsales, User:Roberta F., User:Zeljko and User:Kubura Croatian Wikipedia has become the worst possible neo-nazi, neo-fascist holocaust-denying, xenophobic, anti-LGBT and clerical place. Worst of the worst. Deference between Facebook and Wikipedia? No-one takes Facebook for serious, but everyone takes Wikipedia for serious. Thanks to User:SpeedyGonsales and User:Roberta F. no more in Croatia.

How did this has happen? Negative selection made by User:SpeedyGonsales and User:Roberta F. in order to create their own gang, clan that will protect them from any trouble. Mr. Wales, here you can see a deluge of people denying allegations. I suggest you to contact Croatian Minister of Education, Mr. Zeljko Jovanovic and have talk with him on the topic. --Pavlemocilac (talk) 09:25, 14 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Jimbo, i am zeljko, they are burdened (the haters) with their own hatred, I'm not, I do not hate anybody. They hate all non-communists. greeting --93.137.37.77 (talk) 17:25, 14 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

This is just hate speech, if there is to be a level headed discussion having such bias and prejudice does make an argument more credible. Vodomar (talk) 03:12, 15 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I suggest you to try to get as many as possible information from users on the Croatian Wikipedia themselves. However, I am not sure that the users will have courage to stand up in public with their own opinions, taken in count numerous cases of molesting and intimidation even off-line (Croatia is a small country, so users are met often personally), and this is also the reason why some administrators, due to the verdict of Arbitrary Council, year 2009, were blocked, the same those administrators, SpeedyGonsales and Roberta F, the same ones mentioned now in whole Croatian media. They have formed a right-wingers extremist clan within the Croatian Wikipedia community are protecting those users that are denying the Holocaust who are glorifying fascist regime etc. This has become a first class national scandal.

We have also informed the Simon Wiesenthal Center about this topic.

The best would be to permanently block, and remove from Croatian Wikipedia the worst abusers: SpeedyGonsales, Roberta F., Kubura, Croq and Zeljko, Starcevicanac. That is a minimum.

Pavlemocilac (talk) 00:02, 14 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Holokaust article seems limited: Especially in hr:Holokaust there are no photos of camp inmates (suffering), but happy photo of Oskar Schindler(!) because "many" Jews survived (among 6 million, 3M in Poland killed). Compare Hrvatski (hr) versions of: Auschwitz (hr), Buchenwald (none for hr), Bergen Belsen (none for hr), Dachau (hr), or Treblinka (hr). Claims of "deniers" seems reasonable, at least to understate the impact and omit photos of victims. -Wikid77 14:57, 14 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

There is no denial about the Holokaust, if some articles are limited in size or scope please write some more paragraphs to make it better. Vodomar (talk) 03:12, 15 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I've been contributing on Croatian wiki since 2007 and don't find it extreme right (user Ivan Štambuk seeing fascism!?? get real!). Some blocked users obviously hold a grudge.--Rovoobo Talk 00:25, 14 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

witchhunt

I'm really, really sad to see how easy is to discredit people and destroy all the efforts mainly because of political reasons. We had an "anonymous source" quoting out of context in Jutarnji list, and crusade has started. F.E. Here I read Mr Pavle Mocilac who I don't know, except from wikipedija.hr attacks and Jutarnji list commentary ("Croats are largely immature and uncivilized people unable to accept wings other and different". PM comm. It is pretty unacceptable to victimize complete wikipedia.hr, and whole group of admins because of very doubtful campaign. I understand fears, but in our country, the easiest way to destroy somebody is to put the "ustasa" label on them. I hope the thruth & justice are worth checking all the facts. Kind regards from Croatia.Vesta144 (talk) 00:59, 14 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

[User:Pavlemocilac|Pavlemocilac]] demands are unreasonable - how possibly can he demand a minimum set of actions.. Proof needs to be shown about the claims of: right wing bias, holocaust denial. If [User:Pavlemocilac|Pavlemocilac]] is claiming that he has abused and molested inside the hr.wikipedia.org project and outside as well why didn't [User:Pavlemocilac|Pavlemocilac]] start a legal process in the real courts if this was happening. Why bring material from 2009 into this discussion about an Arbitration Committee that existed as part of the hr.wikipedia.org to resolve issues between administrators of wikipedia who could not resolve issues as editors and administrators which in the end. But the Arbitration Committee instead of becoming an instrument of resolving conflict instead became a so called quasi legal body inside the project, behaving like a kangaroo court. As part of a group of users on the hr.wikipedia project I lead a community forum which under fair discussion and voting system in the end which end abolished the Arbitration Committee and overturned the harsh decisions. This abolishment of the Arbitration Committee was not welcomed by some of the users, which in the end left the project and the project was not marred with no major issues that required some special attention. The project has had 4 years of decent growth and decent work. In total the hr.wikipedia project has a large number of articles, and in all honesty like any other wikipedia project require constant work and renewal - the whole point with any wikipedia project is to create a neutral point of view and not to go in either side of the political spectrum. As said before, the hr.wikipedia.org project is one of the most read in the South Slavonic Language groups. The other point, who cares that a Minister is calling on students not to use Wikipedia as a source of research, because it is a fact that Wikipedia itself says under Wikipedia:Academic use: "Wikipedia is not considered a credible source. Wikipedia is increasingly used by people in the academic community, from freshman students to professors, as an easily accessible tertiary source for information about anything and everything. However, citation of Wikipedia in research papers may be considered unacceptable, because Wikipedia is not considered a credible or authoritative source" . Vodomar (talk) 05:32, 14 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Proof needed? Are you serious? Minister of Education has explicitly advised students to avoid Croatian Wikipedia due to its distortion of historical facts and an obvious right-wing bias. You keep playing down the media hype, as if it's only one tabloid newspaper - but why would a Minister waste time commenting cheap tabloids?! I personally found out about this by waiting for a haircut, where it's customary to read newspapers until it's your turn - I grabbed a copy of Jutarnji list and bam. This scandal has reached hundreds of thousands of Croatians by now, who are now being told that Croatian Wikipedia is not the place they should be exploring. You are a diaspora Croat and not aware how popular Jutarnji list is among real people here.

The 2009 case where Croatian Wikipedia's Arbitration Committee dissolved after it desysoped and blocked for a year two of the involved admins (User:SpeedyGonsales and User:Roberta F.) is relevant here, because it appears that after that the whole project took a radical Bolshevik swing whereby anybody mildly suspicious of not being "with us" is soon tagged and blocked with increasingly progressive blocks under some vague excuses. Even one of the Croatian admins (User:Flopy) admits that in their local discussion board, in a discussion over this issue. That is the reason why so many articles with such an obvious bias exist - there are no editors that would present the other side of the coin (the non-nationalist side) - they have all been blocked, harassed and eventually driven out.

The way the Croatian Wikipedia community currently handles this, by belittling and ignoring the issue (as you are doing it here) is indicative how problems are handled there in general. Controversial edits get general promptly reverted, unfinished discussions in Kafić (local community discussion board) that deal with hot topics are being "preemptively archived", articles that deal with controversial topics are locked for editing but with the content that is generally supportive of nationalist/right-wing agenda... This is all aftermath of such policy, and it will only get worse unless something is done. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 07:38, 14 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

A Minister is not a person with special powers, they are a human being who got elected as as part of the elected government are given a portfolio. Being a minister does not in some way resolve any other human issue a person has: anger, bad decisions or bias. If anything by being outside the tent and not contributing actively to the hr.wikipedia.org project, nothing is achieved in improving it's quality. Labeling me Ivan Štambuk is nothing but showing the bias you use when you approach a debate, but that is your sytle of playing the person and not the argument. Yes I know how Jutarnji is popular in Croatia, but it's popularity does not mean that the readership blindly agree with everything they are presented. The reason why the Minister is using Jutarnji list you will have to ask him, but i guess there are several reasons: Jutarnji has a high circulation, Jutarnji is a left leaning paper hence sympathetic to the cause of the current Government, EPH the owner of Jutarnji is very close to the current government and EPH was given a 600 million kuna reprieve from the Croatian Government, a Minister in the current government used to be an employee of EPH and was living in the flat of the owner of EPH. Enough said ? If you or anyone else wishes to improve the quality of a Wikipedia, then come and edit it because no matter how much yelling and writing is done on other wikipedia pages it will not improve if there are no volunteers and editors working on it. It is also the case if there is too much conflict on a specific wikipedia then not much can be done because members of the wikipedia spend more time in conflict then performing creative work. Vodomar (talk) 20:57, 14 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

So, according to you there is no problem, and instead we're dealing with a "conspiracy" against Croatian Wikipedia orchestrated by prominent government officials and media magnate Ninoslav Pavić in order to provide a cover story for the tax relief? Mmmkay, I think we're going to have to stop our little discussion now. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 22:01, 14 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I never claimed a conspiracy, I was just eluding to a conflict of interest between the current Government of Croatia and the EPH group. If you want to stop the discussion, that is your free choice. Vodomar (talk) 03:12, 15 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Jimbo, to help you make sense of all this, I've prepared an english translation and an analysis of a hr.wikipedia article "Jasenovac concentration camp" found here [4]. I've translated the problematic parts of the article and analysed the sources and references used. I do not believe mud slinging will help us here so I decided to present the facts. The text can be found on http://gist.io/6559476 for clarity --Imbehind (talk) 07:08, 14 September 2013 (UTC) This version on github seems more readable https://gist.github.com/imbehind/6559476 --Imbehind (talk) 07:34, 14 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

If you want to make a better article, you are free to contribute on the hr.wikipedia.org project. Vodomar (talk) 03:12, 15 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not free to contribute because I'm banned for 6 months just for voicing my opinion criticizing the admin's ban policy on MY USER PAGE. --Imbehind (talk) 17:18, 15 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Imbehind, I see you listed me as major contributor (and labeled me as naive commentator as I have some kind of agenda here). What's wrong with this edit? And the others I provided was after no sources was there at all (^{[citation needed]} Croatian=Nedostaje izvor) after user Megnut was raising questions at talk. [5], [6] (is Natasa Matausic, whos work is published by JUSP Jasenovac a questionable ref?), [7], (Here you can see how some questionable additions/rants was removed by admin Roberta F [8]). Whats wrong with Slobodna Dalmacija author questioning JRI inflated and wrong numbers? [9], here [10] I have added ref for number of names that appeared on the Jasenovac victims list that are in fact killed by Allied bombing. [11] a scientific work by Marica Karakaš Obradov, here you can see admin Flopy returning i logor smrti (and camp of death) after it was deleted by IP and again he deleted unsourced addition [12], and again [13], and again [14], and then admin Jure Grm [15] did the same thing removing unsouced. Then I have returned my previous ref that was somehow gone missing i logor smrti (and death camp), again when there was Nedostaje izvor I have added [16] is Antun Miletic biased ref? I don't see your name there contributing, Imbehind, you just criticize.--Rovoobo Talk 08:35, 14 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Rovoobo, So, if I understand your post correctly, you are basically confirming yourself as a major contributer, but one that does not see any problem in adding proper references and sources, however questionable, to the fascist propaganda that at the moment makes up almost half of the article itself? My point is exactly that - the article that has half of the content challenging its very existence is for sure HEAVILY BIASED. It is not the task for any contributer to prove that the Jasenovac concentration camp was any other than what it really was - a death camp. If you think it is your task, as I understand your position, you just disqualified yourself for any further civilized dialogue. And if you were German, because of their legislature, you would be charged, prosecuted and jailed just for playing the naive nazi. Please do not insult us any further with your quasi intelectual and presudo contributitive nature. --Imbehind (talk) 09:54, 14 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Looks to me, as per here and your talk page, you're the one insulting people.--Rovoobo Talk 10:16, 14 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Jimbo, the "partly" translation of Imbehind on https://gist.github.com/imbehind/655947 is greatly misleading. To start with, the "partly" misses the opening part of the article: "Jasenovac concentration camp", which goes:

"Jasenovac concentration camp was the greatest concentration camp and extermination camp in the Indepentend State of Croatia. Concentration camps were established as places of confinement, forced labour and killing for great number of victims: Serbs, Jews, Romani and Croats (opponents of Ustaša regime). Concentration camps were a result of the politics of racial and national discrimination in the Indepentend State of Croatia which was declared on April 10th 1941 under protection and direct influence of nazi Germani, by Ustaša home organization (the same day when German forces entered Zagreb)."

As we can see, this is not an article aimed to make Ustaša regime look better.

Extensive part of the article about the number of victims in the camp is not there because the authors do not agree with the numbers given by historian Tuđman (later, first president of the Republic of Croatia), and by US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington: it is because communist Yugoslavian historiography tended to use the numbers that are 5 - 12 times greater than the numbers of victims given by US Holocaust Memorial Museum. Even today, some authors use these communist sources very uncritically.--RadioElectrico (talk) 15:08, 19 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I want to first say hello Jimbo. The main problems of Croatian Wikipedia, the systematic bias. false information in the articles, glorifying and praising the Ustashe and their crimes on so forth. Several administrators used the death to Andrej Šalov scarves and cancel all decisions of the Arbitration Committee and users SpeedyGonzales, Robert F. and Ex13 who have deliberately misled people on the Croatian Wikipedia.

Arbitration Committee said the following resolution 2009th year:

SpeedyGonsales:

“

determines the prohibition of (blocking) a period of not less than 1 year

consuming additional user rights (administrator, bureaucrat, check user, patroler, Automatic patrolled) prohibits the assignment of additional user rights for a period of not less than 1 year after the expiration of the ban on Wikipedia (an exception may be right that facilitate the work of Wikipedia as autopatrol Rights)

”

Roberta F:

“

determines the prohibition of (blocking) a period of not less than 1 year

consuming additional user rights (administrator, bureaucrat, patroller, Automatic patrolled) prohibits the assignment of additional user rights for a period of not less than 1 year after the expiration of the ban on Wikipedia (an exception may be right that facilitate the work of Wikipedia as autopatrol rights)

”

Ex13:

“

The arbitration committee ruled that because of the above violation rules Ex13 determines ban (block) in the period of not less than 1 month.

Arbitration Committee notes associates not to disrupt the work of Wikipedia possible, sockpuppet accounts that would create during the blockade (or is created before the blockade) and would be used for an improper purpose. Associates can not prevent the creation sockpuppet during the blockade and opening a new user name, but it must be used only to improve Wikipedia project (writing articles, updating the existing and the like), and not for other things. Blockades will execute coordinator Arbitration committee, and ask od Meta remove additional status associates SpeedyGonsales and Robert F. accordance with this decision of the Arbitration committee by appointment of members of the Arbitration committee.

”

Jimbo, this part about "glorifying and praising the Ustashe and their crimes" is a patent falsehood.

Here is the opening part of the Croatian Wikipedia article "Independent State of Croatia" (Nezavisna Država Hrvatska):

"Independent State of Croatia" was a puppet state of the Axis powers. It was established on April 10th 1941 after dissolution and capitulation of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia on the initiative of national-socialist Germany and fascist Italy, on whom it depended entirely. ISC was also a territorial condominium of Germany and Italy. Under Roman treaty it was provided a position of Italian protectorate for ISC. The state was authoritary ruled by poglavnik Ante Pavelić, and titular king Tomislav II. had only a symbolical role which was abrogated after Italy capitulated in 1943. Northern and Middle Dalmatia, part of Croatian Littoral and Croatian Highlands were annexed by Italy, under whose control the were until the fall of Mussolini. Baranja and Međimurje were annexed by Hungary.

The state was not internationally recognized outside the German and Italian sphere of influence, incurred by the war. Although the establishment of the Croatian state, after breakeup of Kingdom of Yugoslavia, was greeted in the Croatian public, the same first steps of the government led to a widespread disappointment with such an incomplete ISC. Concurrently with enormous territorial losses in favor of Italy, Pavelić as poglavnik instituted a dictatorial repressive fascist regime with suppression of all political parties, save Ustaša movement. The leader of Croatian peasants party Vladko Maček was also arrested, and the Parliament also did not operate also."

If this is "glorifying and praising the Ustashe"...--RadioElectrico (talk) 15:49, 19 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

--Kolega2357 (talk) 07:59, 14 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

It all started when one new user was writing about WW2. He wrote from his point of view which wasn't neutral and made many mistakes to usual wikipedia rules including writing bad things about other wikipedia users and not waiting to accept wikipedia rules so he got red cards few times in little period of time. He was angry and made facebook page on which he wrote all the worst he could remember about Wikipedia on the Croatian language from his point of view. He told about that to media firstly Jutarnji list. In that newspapers they wrote terrible sensational article from only one point of view with many false information and with evil thought how to make big damage. They wrote terrible about one of the admins at our Wikipedia and without no proof. They wrote about him as fascist without no evidence. Wikipedia on Croatian language is going well for longer time. We have more and more good articles and after wikipedia on Serbian language, this is SouthEast European best wikipedia with signifacant growing in number and quality of articles the same in number of users. There is group of people who hate everything related with Croatia and they hardly wait opportunity to make somethimg evil to Wikipedia on Croatian language. They mostly look things from only one point of view and want weak admins on Wikipedia so that they can wrote what ever they want on Wikipedia without any sanctions. On Wikipedia on Croatian language, there are good admins who take good care of Wikipedia so that is problem for some people who would like to change it using opportunities like this.--Fraxinus Croat (talk) 08:36, 14 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Not everything is perfect, but Croatian Wikipedia is a special case, the kind of glorification of Pavelic and the Ustaše embarrassing. Jimbo, have admins Šokac121, but because everyone has something about Serbs is undesirable and it is unsuitable for user name, you understand. There was a clear situation for them, Mile Budak exemplary poet who writes fables and children's stories, and Pavelić and Francetić exemplary patriots and homeguards, not to mention all the lengthy. What continues to talk? --Kolega2357 (talk) 08:42, 14 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Dream. Do not need long to figure out that the administrators Kubura , SpeedyGonsales, etc.. irreconcilable serbsuspect laden wartime past and non-participation Croatian athletes at the World Championships in Yugo-period under the Croatian flag. For them, any changes made by the user with sr.wiki suspicious, regardless of whether it is based on literature or not. User Ashgabat was booked only because he brought information that a Montenegrin military commander was an ethnic Serb. User Ašhabat referred to the memoirs of the generals, but the user Zeljko is estimated that this literature unfit just because Serbian . In the absence of quality literature, assume nationalist websites as sources Migration and Refugees literature. In addition , shotguns is not a clear distinction between the sources and literature (it is the same thing). If Kubura for Mirjana Gross, Croatian historian, said it was not authentic, can not think what to say to Čedomir Popov, Sima ĆirkoviĆ, the ideological, Mihail Dinić, Nenad Lemajić, Dejan Mikavica... and so on. ? Serb-Croat conflict are not so easily removable. I learned the Croats without prejudice oldest allegation (9th century), which speaks of the Serbs as a people, "which is said to hold a large part of Dalmatia "(Sorabos, quae natio Magnam Dalmatiae partem obtinere dicitur) do not correspond to reality. Make reference to Mandic says the verb " dicitur " information is not reliable . Noun natio (nation), however ,not taken literally , but the next Nadu Klaić said you should place natio is cives (citizens). In other words, the per them this is not about the Serbs as a nation, but the residents of the Serbs. So, they deny the existence of Serbs in Croatia from the start. In addition, no Croats will not easily give up the Bosnian bans, which considers the Croatian rulers even though these are his subjects shared the Serbs and Vlachs. --Kolega2357 (talk) 09:07, 14 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Croatian Wikipedia and their administrators are one of worst in whole Wikimedia project. I am Wikipedian user for more than 6 years and I have great ideas which they dropped. Even Serbian, SerboCroatian, wiki have Wikinews, our admins did all which they could to stop my initiative. On our home page under news, only admins can add news and they must be only good and in Croatia. No words about Syria, US... They never translate Fundraising messages to Croatian, for more than 3 years only I translate that banners and messages on meta. As one of them said "Wikimedia doesn't need money from us". Here is not problem only in some articles, it is affected in much bigger view. For example, one year ago I edited Judith A. Reisman article to have more neutral view. In English and other wikipedias there were sentences that she is conservative, and more bad stuff about her. When we tried to add that on Croatian article multiple times, our administrators keep returning article to old version and on the end locking it without a word of controversy, article wasn't been neutral. I have a lot of examples like this and when even Croatian Minister of science and education tells kids not to use Croatian Wikipedia, you can tell that something is wrong in Croatian administrators or maybe in whole project. All medias in Croatia make fun of Croatian Wikipedia, even popular news satire magazine "News bar" (like Onion) make fun of Wikipedia saying that same people are admins on wiki and their site. Something needs to be change. --Anton 008 09:56, 14 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Things are way simpler. Minister Željko Jovanović has a few flaws (as does current government), These "flaws" (undemocratic behavior & suppression of professionals at various fields, especially sensitive to the national culture- he dismissed internationally acknowledged linguist Radoslav Katičić from an important position of the head of Croatian language council; dubieties about his (Jovanović's) professional academic degree and personal integrity etc.) have been noted on Croatian Wikipedia. In essence, in Croatia you got Putin-like rule, just of the sort that is not very fond of national majority culture and interests. So- would you back off because some Putin's minion has orchestrated a campaign against Russian Wikipedia ? It's not about some sensationalist press, but about a corrupt government and their policy aimed at suppression of free thought based on facts. And these facts do not favor Communist Yugoslavia's past that many in the current government are fond of. It all boils down to that. And- the data on Croatian Wikipedia users and visitors show that general public accepts and inform themselves mostly from Croatian Wikipedia, more than from Slovenian, Serbian, and "Serbo-Croatian" (which is term describing a "language" which does not exist, but that's another-crucial- question). If anyone tries to suppress Croatian Wikipedia, it will certainly result in Croatian Parliament's debates and accusation of "central" Wikipedia's integrity, reliability and socio-political neutrality. Mir Harven (talk) 09:43, 14 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Just a quick question - how does Minister's call for students to use the English-language Wikipedia fit into the narrative of his "Putin-style" government and "suppression of free thought"? Timbouctou (talk) 09:59, 14 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Demagogues use similar tactics. For instance, Mao Ze Dong/Mao Tse Tung had begun his "cultural revolution" (a few millions death toll) by "appeal" to the students. Demagoguery is frequently faux-populist. Mir Harven (talk) 10:49, 14 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

It is hysterical that you actually think you're doing yourself a service by posting in such a fashion (making mentions of communism, repression). The offences by the hr.wiki administrators have been well documented for anyone to see, there's no getting away from the fact that they actively promote a homophobic, nationalist and anti-science agenda. Comparing the critics of said administrators with "censorship" and "Putin" is a rather childish and very dishonest attempt at making your skewed world views relevant. Nationalism, downplaying nationalist crimes, homophobia, etc. will not suddenly become the correct view just because of your false accusations of "repression" or "censorship". The latter is done solely by the administrators who don't allow participants on the hr.wiki to add well-sourced, nuanced and worldwide accepted views into articles. If a world view - such as the one heralded by hr.wiki administrators - cannot be supported without resorting to censorship of foreign scientists, then perhaps such a world view ought to be reevaluated. Fejstkajkafski (talk) 11:27, 14 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

? Sorry commissary, cool off. Current Croatian government is- perhaps you forgot- involved in many breaches of international law (lex Perković, for instance), and is trying, at all costs (but unsuccessfully) to resurrect Communist ghosts & practice a sort of historical revisionism, which is dismissed by almost entire Croatian academic community, especially in historiography. As far as homosexuality goes, this is a controversial issue, and there is no "scientific" proof of anything, nor a consensus among psychiatrists. What can one say about current government ? They- minister Ranko Ostojić- have "indulged" in the Soviet-style repression by sending political adversaries to lunatic asylums (good ole Brezhnev's times). So, my friend: a) you're lying, b) you're....hmmm...hysterical ? Btw- poor Jimbo Wales. He has to read some stuff that is as alien to him as are US local political squabbles to me. Mir Harven (talk) 11:49, 14 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Timbouctou told me to comment here, but I have to say I see no real point to it, because this is still just your (Jimbo Wales') personal talk page; this kind of an incident needs to be resolved using the proper Wikimedia Foundation channels. That was my opinion before I even got here, but now that I've read your comments above, I'm convinced that this needs wider input - if you think that reopening the language issue is going to help with resolving this controversy, well, then I think you should not touch this thing with a ten foot pole. Conflating these two issues sounds as if you're saying Croatian is spoken only by people who promote far-right agendas on encyclopedias. That would be really insulting, and it would only contribute to an unnecessary escalation of this problem. meta:Requests for comment/Fascism on Croatian Wikipedia, mentioned above, sounds like a proper venue for this. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 11:10, 14 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hello Jimbo, I am User:Mostarac from croatian wikipedia. I think the main reason for the overall media campaign on Croatian Wikipedia is her exceptional attendance. Here are the numbers. http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/Sitemap.htm → Usage, Views per hour. There you can see, 27,973 people visit Croatian Wikipedia every hour. There are 6 million people speaking Croatian by that statistics. Croatian Wikipedia is visited more than Serbian (23,963, 12 M), Slovenian (14,525, 2 M), Serbo-Croatian (10,060, 23 M) and Bosnian (7,525, 3 M) Wikipedia. Croatian Wikipedia bother someone in Croatia because of her high attendance and political freedom. --MoBorac (talk) 11:38, 14 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

My observations, as someone who had an interest in Croatian Wikipedia, but who has contributed there only sporadically, as an IP user:

There is a pervasive far-right bias in Croatian Wikipedia, which is very apparent in key articles (i.e. chiefly those that would appeal to far-right editors).
The bias comes from a fairly small group of users. (At 700 or so active editors, Croatian Wikipedia is a small community, and a dozen or so highly active editors and admins can set the tone.)
Page protection and blocking is used in a rather heavy-handed way, and applied differentially: the "in-crowd" (defined both socially and ideologically) has free rein, while the "outsiders" are shut out.
Editorializing, personal essays, rants and completely unreferenced content is the norm. In key articles (as defined above), even mild efforts to fix these problems are reverted as "vandalism".
There is a tendency to politicize discussions, even in topics that have little to do with politics. Every discussion and dispute is thus turned into an ideological battle. This kind of tendency is apparent in some of the comments above.
For a nice example (I think of it as a "brain scan"), see hr:Razgovor_o_kategoriji:Jugoslavenski_glazbeni_sastavi Template:Hr icon. Note the comment by SpeedyGonzales.
The general climate is rather unlike the en wiki. It is sufficient to scan the talk pages of a dozen or so prominent collaborators to understand that this is not a happy place.
Consequently, while I have 130 thousand edits here, I have zero interest in contributing to the Croatian Wikipedia. I don't think I'd last two weeks there. I'm sure I'm far from unique in this sentiment.

While something definitely should be done, I absolutely disagree with the idea of merging the wikis into one. I could comment further on this, but it is sufficient to say that this is completely unworkable. GregorB (talk) 12:09, 14 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, but-although I highly value your work on English Wikipedia- I have to disagree with ca. 70% of your assertions. The crucial one is: your "far right" label. Most of the texts regarding controversial issues of recent history and culture are just rewritten texts from mainstream university manuals. For instance, Croatian Wikipedia text on Snježana Kordić is completely different -and heavily annotated by relevant texts & links- from the text on English Wikipedia which reads like a promo campaign article, with deliberate omission of Croatian linguists' disputes with the said lady. Mir Harven (talk) 12:33, 14 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The far-right bias - as displayed in key articles, some of which were quoted by the media - is probably the least disputable of my statements. "Mainstream university manuals" - that's kind of a stretch, I'd say. Also, Snježana Kordić is irrelevant here, even if I fully agree with you on POV problem in the article. GregorB (talk) 12:48, 14 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Jimbo. This attack on Croatian wikipedija is by ex YUGOSLAVIAN COMMUNISTS who cant accept Croatia and hates Croatians and Franjo Tuđman! They want COMMUNISM back in Croatia and kiking us out of Wikipedia.31.147.125.176 (talk) 12:21, 14 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

On the contrary. They are written from books which serve as university manuals: say, histories from authors like Dušan Bilandžić, Marijan-Bing-Radelić..etc histories of Croatia in various periods from 1918-1991, Stjepan Antoljak, Dragutin Pavličević and Hrvoje Matković; works on Serbian aggression by Nikica Barić, Ozren Žunec, Ante Nazor and Davor Marijan etc. There are no better, nor more qualified authors. So, I completely disagree with your "far right" label- it's common sense & rebuttal of neo-communist historical revisionism. On the other hand, I'd agree (although I'm not too present at any Wikipedia, including Croatian) that admins should have had exercised more self-restraint in dealing with "others" (I don't even know all this Wikipedia quasi-masonic lingo, but you'll understand what I mean). Anyway- we agree to disagree. Just- wouldn't you agree that this whole "affair" is not something stemming from internal struggles, so to speak ? Or, to put it bluntly: it's para-political "west Balkans" bullies who are behind this orchestrated media lynching. (this is a reply to Gregor's reply) Mir Harven (talk) 13:14, 14 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The Croatian Wikipedia has a serious problem. It is not sufficient (nor it is convincing, for that matter) to simply write off its critics as "para-political west Balkans bullies". GregorB (talk) 13:45, 14 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

OK then-you side with Jovanović & "lex Perković" bunch. Nice to have known you (at least through Wiki). Mir Harven (talk) 14:06, 14 September 2013 (UTC)ž[reply]

[Hrvatska wikipedija platforma kriptofasista (Croatian Wikipedia is a platform of crypto-fascists)]

[Jovanoviceva poruka ucenicima i studentima - ne koristite hrvatsku wikipediju (Jovanovic's message to pupils and students - do not use Croatian Wikipedija)]

[Jovanovic pozvao na bojkot hrvatske wikipedije - velik dio sadrzaja znanstveno dvojben i falsificiran (Jovanovic calls on boycot of Croatian Wikipedia - majority of articles are scientifically ambiguous and falsified)]

[Jovanovic Djeco ne baratajte hrvatskom Wikipedijom jer su sadrzaji falsificirani (Jovanovic: Children, do not use Croatian Wikipedia since the contents are false)]

[Hrvatska wikipedija - Istrijanstvom do odcjepljenja Istre (Croatian Wikipedija - from istrianship to secession of Istria)]

[Radikalni desnicari preuzeli uredivanje hr wikipedije - NDH nije svjesno bila-totalitarna a antifasizam se bori protiv svih sloboda (Radical right-wingers took over editing of Croatian Wikipedia: "NDH was not totalitarian, antifascism is against all liberties")]

http://www.h-alter.org/vijesti/ljudska-prava/tko-prepravlja-lgbt-hrvatsku-na-wikipediji Tko prepravlja LGBT Hrvatsku na Wikipediji (Who is changing LGBT Croatia on Wikipedia)]]

[Pristranost i ideoloska obojenost hrvatske wikipedije (Favouritism and ideological bias of Croatian Wikipedia)]

[Ustaštvo na hrvatskoj wikipediji (Fascism on Croatian Wikipedia)]

[Kako je hrvatsku Wikipediju uzurpirala ustasoidnadesnica (How Croatian Wikipeda got hijacked by pro-fascist right-wingers)]

[Mladi IDS-a Wikipedija obmanjuje javnost o antifasizmu i istrijanstvu.html (IDS Youth - Wikipedia is deceiving public on antifascism and istrianship)]

[Razotkrivanje sramotne hr.wikipedije (Debunking of shameful Croatian Wikipedia)]

[Djeco ne koristite hrvatsku wikipediju (Children, do not use Croatian Wikipedia)]

[Jovanovic je pozvao studente na bojkot hrvatske wikipedije (Jovanovic calls students to boycott of Croatian Wikipedia)]

[Jovanovic pozvao mlade na bojkot hrvatske wikipedije (Jovanovic calls youth to boycott of Croatian Wikipedia)]

And this problem was tackled before by some independet media: [Nezavisna Wikipedija Hrvatska (Independent State of Croatian Wikipedia)] Pavlemocilac (talk) 12:25, 14 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Irrelevant pamphlets, similar to "Pravda" Croatian copycats. By the way- you're not Croatian Wikipedia contributor. Why are you so obsessed about it ? Hmmm .. Mir Harven (talk) 12:41, 14 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Obviously Zelko Jovanovic dislikes some of the details about his CV. Please note that th emost media in Croatia is far left. By the way some information about the media in Croatia: As we all know in Croatia was never done a lustration as it was done in other former comunist countries. People who were educated and indoctrinated in comunist countries call many things "fascism" what we in the Western world we are not used to do. We have even this sad situaton with the goverment is playing "lex perkovic" Lex Perkovic, EU Inside. The administrators in Croatian Wikipedia are not doing a better and not a worse job than their collegue admins in other wikipedias. That´s all a very stupid campaign.--Croq (talk) 12:45, 14 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

But in ex comunist cuntries "antifascism" has not the same meaning as in western democracies. In Western world we do not fit in the "red star" as here http://www.sabh.hr/ By the way the red star is prohibited in many countries who suffered under comunism. --Croq (talk) 12:49, 14 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Your post talk for you ;) I think we need a mediation. You, Stambuk and Director are trying to push your POV through wiki, other opinions are not allowed. Same as in ex Yugoslavia... LoL. One party, one opinion LoL. Pure Yugoslaw vandalism and nationalism. --Croq (talk) 10:38, 12 July 2010 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 46.35.148.45 (talk)

Hi, Jimbo. Im ex-admin (2005-2009) on hr wiki. This is what i think:

I'm not sure if user:Vodomar understod what I meant with ...merging hr, bs and sr wikipedia would kill the project in all of those 3 countries. ... I can't even begin to imagine what it would be like to have all of these languages in one project, but I'm strongly against any merging. It would be unfair, and, most of all, unpossible to do. Let's keep each wikipedia as it is.
Forget about what our politicians think, they have their own agenda and have no clue about Wikipedia.
Jutarnji list is one of the biggest newspaper in Croatia, but they completely missed the point. Their journalist doesn't have a clue what role of bureaucrat is. It's not user:SpeedyGonsales's fault that hr:Ustaše article is in bad shape. The article was written in 2004 and was neglected since then. It's talk page shown no signs of edit war. BTW, the guy who started the article, and didn't found necessary to mention nazi-style concentration camps is user:Mir Harven, present on this very talk page.
There are other media articles who make emphasis not on the state of articles, but on futile attempts to change it. Allegedly, Kubura and Zeljko blocked any attempts to make it NPOV and SpeedyGonsales and Roberta F., 2 of the most experienced admins, supported them. Even journalist themselves reported having problems changing the obvious POV in the articles and always mentioned the same group of admins who make that impossible.
I have my opinion too, but You have no reason to trust me more then the other guys here. So, I'll keep it for my self. If you want to know the full truth, You should make a list of all the users wirth more then, let's say 500 or 1000 edits, and send automatic e-mails to all of them and ask them to participate in a confidental poll. Before the poll, You should collect all the accusations, and then include them in the poll. The pool should be something like Rate following claims from 1 (nonsense) to 5 (complete truth):
- admin XY frequently pushes his POV, missusing his admin status ... 1 2 3 4 5
- admin:XY used IRC channel to try to spread lies about other users in order to make comunnity against them ... 1 2 3 4 5
...You get the point. I'm not the poll expert, Wikimedia certainly can find one. So, You work out the details, just make sure that users can be sure that only Mediawiki stuff will know what they said.

Then, when You have the poll results, we can discuss what to do next.

--Ante Perkovic (talk) 14:01, 14 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Quote: "The project has had 4 years of decent growth and decent work. Vodomar (talk) 05:32, 14 September 2013 (UTC)" End quote (from this page and section). This graph here shows the number of croatian wikipedia users with 100+ edits per month. As far as i can see, contrary to Vodomar's claim, it shows systematic and drastic decline of users considered valuable, as they are "content" creators, and this rapid decline began as we can see in late 2009. John E. Pushkin (talk) 15:07, 14 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Well, Wikipedia in Croatian language can not be too bad, as you can see how some use it for other copy+paste http://sh.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Posebno:Doprinosi/OC_Ripper&offset=20130913105856&target=OC+Ripper "Preuzeto s hr wiki " means copy+paste from Croatian language. That´s the way it works. --Croq (talk) 15:38, 14 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Mr. Wales and dear colleagues, I am entirely convinced in hr.wikipedia's administrators' misconduct and poor judgement. My observations are:

Some admins do not behave in a civil manner and do breach neutrality.
Vengeful user blocking occurs. Even on Talk pages for trivial utterances. Demands for explanation often result in laconic answers.
Administrators do contribute substandard content. Substandard both in terms of content and form. Content-wise, the contributions tend to be dogmatic, unverified, unverifiable or referenced to unreliable third-party, oftentimes disregarding or removing better references. Considering form, weasel words and peacock words are common, while the orthography and syntax leaves a lot to be desired.
Some administrators consistently use offensive neologisms that target minorities, religious groups and political ideas.
Only several admins are ardent in these misconducts, the other admins fail to react.
Sysop actions page shows that hr.wikipedia human admins have blocked far more times than, for example, admins on the considerably bigger fr.wikipedia.
In discussions, editors do appear to be demoralized (paraphrasing: "they're not coming back" until the admins are removed, feeling that their time and effort has been repeatedly annulled, etc.)
At least in one occasion an administrator did refer to their position using a Croatian term "vlast", which is commonly used for governing bodies of the state or a dominion and translates as: those in power, those who rule. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Aleksandar Kovac (talk • contribs) 17:35, 14 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I would also like to add that, unlike other wikipedias, the croatian wikipedia does not have a sufficiently articulated page that would inform the editors and users about administrator's duties, status and conduct. Such page could provide the basis for the public evaluation of admins and bring the needed clarity in our own issue resolving processes. To provide such a basis, yesterday a direct translation from English article on expectations of adminship was submitted to the equivalently named article's [[17]] Talk page. The initial response from the current administrator SpeedyGonsales has been polite, yet not entirely promising. It is my sincere hope that such a fundamentally important content will be included in hr.wikipedia as soon as possible by the current admins and that it will lead to a better understanding. Aleksandar Kovac (talk) 16:23, 14 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Not long after the statement of Minister Jovanović, his biography on Croatian Wikipedia is "expanded" and now contains obvious lies and other content that violates WP:NOR (interpretation of primary sources and WP:SYNTH), WP:NPOV, WP:V and especially WP:BLP. After a brief edit war, when one user tried to remove these lies, administrator hr:User:Zeljko fully protected the page on his preferred version.

I will mention only the most obvious lies that can now be read on the page:

Although Željko Jovanović has the academic title of docent, he does not possess scientist identification number of the Ministry of Science like other docents, and without which obtaining of academic title should not be possible.

This is obvious lie and slander. It is also abuse of the primary sources, becouse reference for this claim is this database. But if you enter minister's name, surname and birthdate in this database, you will get following result: Matični broj za traženog znanstvenika: 339670 (Identification number for the requested scientist: 339670).

At the site of the Croatian scientific bibliography, there are no listed publications whose author or co-author is the person with this name or surname.

This is also obvious lie, by searching the Croatian scientific bibliography I found at least 5 works whose author or co-author is Minister Jovanović.

The rest of the added content is similar or even worse. The page is fully protected for one week.--В и к и T 20:13, 14 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Reason: Edit war See --93.137.58.19 (talk) 16:28, 16 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

After reading all that "discussion" above, and some articles on hr i sr wikipedia, I can understand Mr. Wales thinking about merging hr and sr wikipedia. It is the only way to resolve this nationalistic BS from both sides.--89.164.190.103 (talk) 22:04, 14 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I am fine with that, but then the same rule should be applied across the board to stop the BS around the World. Make it a rule that the article needs to be in the English version of the Wikipedia, and then for other languages (which ever that is decided what is a language by a committee of Wikimedia) then it is translated verbatum. For areas around the world where there is too much conflict, then only the English Wikipedia should suffice. The end user can utilise Google Translate to receive the article in their target language. All problems solved. Less storage used on Wikimedia servers and we only have the one source of truth. Vodomar (talk) 03:21, 15 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The links above are all related to Croatian left wing media. Why does nobody show any difflinks where would be proven that Croatian administrators support any far right ideologies? --Croq (talk) 08:29, 15 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

When I provided a reference (150 of them) for the article on Stalin, I was banned by admin zeljko. This individual is clearly biased, as you can see from his facebook profile (link provided) that he is sympathetic to the fascist Ustashe regime and was member of HOS. https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=326552500782110&set=a.326541090783251.62821.100002820890724&type=3&theater Have fun, to bad zeljko is ustasha on his facebook profile. 15 September 2013 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 5.133.156.31 (talk)

Hi Jimbo! Hi everyone else! I am a Serbo-Croatian/Croatian/Serbian/Bosnian/Montenegrin-speaking Wikipedia user and contributor from Bosnia and Herzegovina. Initially I wanted to contribute to the hr.wikipedia, but due to nationalistic tendencies of the administrators there, I moved to sh.wikipedia. I have tried to I would like to say that I fully support the merger of all the Wikipedia projects in the aforementioned variants of the same language into one Wikipedia project. It would be a slow and difficulty process, that is true, but it is something that has to be done on the long run. If Wikipedia wants to remain credible as a fact-based, scientific, objective, free encyclopedia it has to accept that all relevant non-biased linguistic data points to the fact that we are all speaking the same language here. Animosity between different ethnic groups cannot be an excuse for the existence of four different Wikipedias for a single language. In a way, those who make these kind of decisions implicitly support the nationalistic ideology that has produced the linguistic Balkanization of our common language. People simply have to learn to cooperate, to work with each other. -- Francis Christian (talk) 16:24, 15 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Why bother having any of the 5 lanugages anyway, placing them in the same project would be like hearding cats. The best thing is abolish them all, and if a native speaker of the above mentioned languages want's to use Wikipedia, you just simply go to the English version and use Google translate, or better learn English. If all countries instituted English as their official language, there would be less quarrels in the region! Vodomar (talk) 21:57, 15 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, Vodomar, thank you for your useful input. Btw, here's a funny story:

Although I don't usually edit or read CW, I tried changing some of the articles that had been mentioned in media reports in the past couple of days, since nobody over there is really doing anything about it, apart from a) talking a lot about how those who criticise should do the editing and b) expanding on elaborate leftist conspiracy theories (their village pump looks like a bonafide cross between a far-right forum and a mental institution's notice board). The state of the project is so abysmal it is almost a parody of what Wikipedia should be. Although some of the most criticised articles have been half-heartedly fixed, it is still a few hundred lawsuits waiting to happen - for example, the bio on Education Minister Jovanović contains blatant distortions and is heavily negative-slanted. (It is also fully protected and nobody but admins can edit it. Apparently they see it as some sort of a revenge for his statements on Wikipedia.)
Today I edited the article on The Holocaust in the Independent State of Croatia (English version of the article). The bottom section delves into a topic marginally connected with the topic of the article, about the Great Serbia ideology of the 1990s and its narrative of WW2 persecution of Jews. It only contained a single reference, masonicinfo.com, a site with pictures of Serbian WW2 stamps (yes, stamps) to basically illustrate that indeed Serbs persecuted Jews as well. Apart from being an obvious WP:COAT, the "source" used for the entire paragraph was clearly inappropriate so I removed the paragraph, explaining my edit in the summary. This led to an edit war with user Markus_cg1, which later led to a note from admin SpeedyGonsales on my talk page, basically explaining how "although this seems unrelated at first sight, and although the source is unofficial, the information presented there is correct, and a picture is worth a thousand words" (yes, that's a true quote from a long-time Wikipedia admin, talking about the usage of a website about stamps in an article about the Holocaust in Country X - where stamps are used basically to prove that country Y also killed Jews). Crazy, I know. Long story short, I commented on this at the village pump, where I ended up being called a "provocateur, a denier of war crimes and an anti-semite" by Markus_cg1 (literally just for saying that sites about postage stamps were not reliable sources), who called for "administrators to take measures". After apparently none of them did, probably the craziest of them all at CW, User:Mir Haven, whose eloquence you are already familiar with, posted a very nasty comment about me, telling me directly I was a "justifier of Yugo-unitarism, a snitch on English Wikipedia, not somebody who spreads knowledge but carefully selected half-truths, and a fan of Greater Serbia.".
Now I am not bringing this episode up because it is a unique event - I am bringing it up because it is not. This type of "discussion" is common at their village pump, and there's no reason not to believe this is the level of discussion in talk pages and all other places as well. Chauvinist remarks are the norm, as are the floods of insults directed towards the apparently non-patriotic government, the education minister, the communists, the press and whatnot. Even users who shyly admit they would like to discuss issues with the project - openly admitting they were afraid to do so before the scandal broke out - (like for example User:Dean72) can only expect to be harassed and belittled (in this particular instance by Mir Haven, but other regular editors and admins normally join on the belittling). You get editors responding to recent media criticism by talking about how the Serbian Wikipedia is way worse, you get admin User:Kubura who talks about how there's nothing wrong with saying life for Serbs had improved in WW2 Croatia (which is one of the statements from Wiki which the newspapers criticized as the most blatant forgery), you get anons who come out of the woodwork to express support for the project using Nazi-style salutes. A Bosniak-language Wiki editor even left a message for interested folks to join his project, to which Mir Haven replied with references to Muslim war crimes. Yes, that's the kind of atmosphere we are talking about here. Just ask any Croatian-speaking editor to take a look at the page without vomiting. I am being perfectly serious - it is beyond horrible. And all that time (and I'm talking about the last few days), not a single administrator reacted to this madhouse in any way. But hey maybe there's a Wiki policy somewhere saying village pumps are supposed to be anarchy. I don't frequent en.wiki pump so I don't really know.
And then there's the issue of actual editing. CW does not have any rules on weasel words, coat racks, synth. It is completely normal for any article, including BLP's, to have randomly inserted nationalist remarks or rants. Sourcing of articles is abysmal. Inline citations do not exist at all. Websites and books are accepted only if their content fits the preconceived idea what an article should say. The much talked about issue of the article on anti-fascism had contained a long paragraph in the lede section basically describing it as an abomination, entirely sourced to an essay from an anonymous author published on an obscure right-wing website. The basic process of editing boils down to editors (who have been judged patriotic enough) writing whatever feels "correct" (in both the factual and ideological sense) and then leave the referencing and sourcing for later (if ever). Serbian Wiki editors joke that that Croatian Wiki is not even capable of producing a baklava recipe without mentioning the Serbs and the Serb aggression of the 1990s. And I am afraid they are right. And with all that going on, the general consensus of both admins and seasoned editors at the village pump seems to be somewhere along the lines of "What problem? There is no problem. We are doing a great job, but for some magical reason everybody is against us." As a group, it seems a weird mini subculture developed there over the years, distinguished by - and I can't stress this enough - extreme paranoia, virulent nationalism and a strong belief in various conspiracy theories. (I can provide diffs for every detail I mentioned if you want, but since Croatian-speaking people here on en.wiki already know the atmosphere of that place, I won't bother). Editing CW is equivalent to muckraking, and there's no doubt in my mind the changes made to some articles due to recent media pressure will be reverted back in less than a week (because nobody over there really realizes there's anything wrong with them, and because they are all convinced the critics are all non-patriotic bastards who fail to appreciate that CW editors are doing this lovely work all for free).
In essence, Wikimedia should just torch the place. CW is no longer useful to anyone, it has made a name for itself as a complete piece of garbage and a refuge to some of the most pretty fucking deranged trolls on the internet. And each day that goes by with it online is a few dozen accidents/lawsuits/newspaper front pages just waiting to happen. Maybe Wikimedia should reflect on that. So yeah, I guess I'm a snitch on the English Wikipedia. Timbouctou (talk) 06:46, 16 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

My two cents... In my opinion, there should be a common core of an article, regardless of language. Then, there can be some language specific extensions. For example, an article on Medieval literature can have a common core and then an additional chapter on Croatian Medieval literature in the Croatian Wiki, on Turkish one in the Turkish Wiki etc. Now one looks into the English wiki and reads one article, then turns to Croatian wiki and reads another story, then to the Serbian wiki and yet another story. As for the common Serbian/Croatian wiki, it would never work. People would endlessly "correct" spellings and "wrong" words written by other side... dnik ► 07:49, 16 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Dnik- how would the problems you forsee on a Serbo-Croatian Wikipedia differ from what English Wikipedia has, for the most part, successfully handled? Could we be a model, given how we successfully handle the difference between American and British (along with other dialect differences globally). Some are significant differences (hood/bonnet, boot/trunk, lorry/truck, lift/elevator, pay rise/pay raise) some are minor spelling (labour/labor for example).Camelbinky (talk) 16:37, 16 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

We already have the Serbo-Croatian Wikipedia where could eventually the Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian Wikipedias be merged. Personally, I allways even found funny to see how some polemical issues are completelly differently edited in one Wikipedia than on another. But the fact that I find it "funny" really says about how much credibility I give to those Wikipedias. I´ve been thinking a lot about this latelly, and at beggining I was all but in favour of merging the Wikipedias, but now I beleave that merging the Wikipedias would actually help all people from the region to collaborativelly work together and edit the polemical articles together. A major challenge, but the correct one in my view. FkpCascais (talk) 17:42, 16 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

My opinion, merge all three (Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian) Wikipedias into one, and only allow translated articles from English Wikipedia to being introduced into the joint Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian wikipedia. If user wants to create an article on the joint Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian wikipedia, first it would had to be created on English Wikipedia, and then it should be translated word to word on Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian wikipedia. It is the only way to deal with this problem and nationalistic BS from Bosnian, Croatian or Serbian users. Best regards --Eversman (talk) 22:15, 16 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Come on Eversman, there are certainly fine editors in those Wikipedias just as there are in any others, so no reason to "prohibit" them to create articles on their own and make them copy and translate the English versions (after all, many articles here have also NPOV problems). The problem is that on sensitive issues, the nationalists bully the reasonable editors (in Croatian Wikipedia case, Croatian nationalists impose their views on sensitive subjects and block and eliminate neutral editors). That happends in other regional Wikipedias as well, and the only reason I backed the merge is because the nationalists would then be confronted with the other side, and perhaps then, the neutral editors, from wherever they are, would find themselfs in between radical views and maybe that way their voices would stand up as reasonable. It´s a crazy ideia, but a democratic one, where everyone would be forced to dialogue with eachother and reach consensus on sensitive issues. FkpCascais (talk) 02:27, 17 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

IMO merging is a bad idea. For one thing, I don't think anyone speaking those languages would want to read it. The differences are not only in script but also in vocabulary and for people who grew up after the breakup of Yugoslavia it would require some getting used to. On the other hand you could expect an exodus of editors from all editions who would probably set up their own independent Croatian/Serbian/Bosniak open encyclopedias, leaving Wikipedia's B/C/S/SC edition a ghost town. However, some sort of an inter-wiki committee designated to deliberate on controversial issues and align articles on controversial topics across all editions, debate sources, and so forth, would be a good idea. Kind of like a cross-wiki mediation board. Also, the problems these editions have stem from the much lower standard of editing and quality control compared to en.wiki. If those wikis had all the policies and guidelines en.wiki has, and if they had en.wiki style peer reviews, this situation would have never developed in the first place. Each ex-Yugoslav wiki on its own is too small to support all these processes but a centralized place for peer reviews, mediation, discussions about sources, etc., would probably help. Timbouctou (talk) 08:14, 17 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, I wasn't clear. I didn't mean merging the actual text, but content, what it says. In my opinion, Croatian Wiki should be more or less a translation of English Wiki to Croatian, likewise the Serbian Wiki, etc. with possible additional chapters reflecting specific interests. Currently, all language editions of Wiki are independently edited. It's not uncommon that e.g. Croatian wiki says quite the opposite than English Wiki. Besides, English Wiki prefers sources written in English, while Croatian Wiki prefers sources written in Croatian, and sometimes they don't agree. The main differences are bits of history, Croatian Language, etc. dnik ► 10:04, 17 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hello Jimbo! Wikiwind asked me to comment, but since I haven't been very active on the project I've waited a few days to get an idea of what's going on.

First, as far as the abuses on Croatian Wikipedia go, I think they're real and need to be systematically investigated. I've suggested a possible way to do so in the RfC thread.

Second, as far as merging the Wikipedias go, I've come to a conclusion that the best course of action is a cautious no. Out of several reasons why I think so, these are the most important:

A combined bs-hr-sh-sr Wikipedia would seriously reduce the usefulness of Wikipedia as an educational tool in the countries in question. Here I do not mean (just) the opportunity for students to copy their homework off Wikipedia, but that the language standards are different enough to be confusing to school age children. Specific sets of terms such as geometric shapes, chemical elements, computer parts, and months of the year (also kitchen utensils, military ranks, and more) can be different to the point of mutual unintelligibility. If Wikipedia is to be used in class, say, as a part of an exercise on how to research a topic, or how to create and/or edit pages, both the students and the teachers will expect the language to match that of the textbooks.
Separate Wikipedias are the stated preference of users such as Joy, Timbouctou, Ante Perkovic, Maria Sieglinda von Nudeldorf and others from whose comments I could infer the following: I find them balanced and well-informed, most don't seem to be Croatian language fundamentalists so personal political opinions aren't primary drivers of their judgment, all are active on Wikipedia (en and/or hr), are variously critical of the way Croatian Wikipedia is run, and seem committed to finding a solution to continue forward. They have more experience than myself with Croatian Wikipedia, and I trust their preferences as well as concerns about possible deleterious consequences of a merge.

There's more, and I'll share if need be, but these have tipped the balance for me.

One possible way to deal with political extremism on bs-hr-sh-sr Wikipedias would be to institute some more or less formal way of communication between them about any serious inconsistencies. There are two practical ways I can see this happening.

A less formal way would be to institute templates akin to Template:Contradict-other, except referring across Wikipedias. For example, these Wikipedias could have templates that say "This article and the same article in Serbian Wikipedia seem to contain contradictory information. Please reconcile them by editing and/or discussing the changes."
A more formal, and more cumbersome way, that would also involve new software development, would be to have some sort of a central clearinghouse acting as a version control system for all of the similar language Wikipedias. The language projects would still be kept separate, but one could access them through an interface that partially unifies search and editing. In article lookup, a user could set preferences which language versions they prefer in order. When editing, one could request to freeze the versions of an article across all languages, and then edit them in parallel until differences are reconciled.

Any such system, however, would bring up the question of why it isn't in place for other sets of languages that are mutually intelligible.

That's all for practical suggestions. Here's my 5c on why I think this case is so complex.

I'm no linguist but I don't think there's a way around the fact that decisions on what constitutes a language are always inherently political. For example, take standard Arabic, which often has little in common with locally spoken varieties of Arabic, which may be mutually unintelligible among themselves, so that Wikipedias in Moroccan Arabic, Egyptian Arabic, Levantine Arabic and Gulf Arabic could all be justified (are there any? I don't know). Then on the other hand, there are a number of other examples of pluricentric languages or language continua where users who speak and write one language could plausibly contribute to the other: Hindi/Urdu, Bokmål/Nynorsk/Danish/Swedish, Bulgarian/Macedonian, also some Turkic languages. In all these cases, separate languages are defined through standards that go back many decades and are supported by state institutions. There are separate academic institutions that set the standards, newspaper and publishing industries that employ them, and educational institutions that teach them, and so having separate language Wikipedias makes sense.

The reasons why I see the Bosnian-k/Croatian/Montenegrin/Serbian case as especially difficult are

Serbo-Croatian existed as a state-supported pluricentric standard until about 22 years ago. It continues as an informal but stateless standard, and maintains itself to a large extent because of the continuum among existing state-supported standard forms (see below). There is also a large population which understands all versions about equally well, and is often relaxed about identifying the language they speak interchangeably as Serbo-Croatian or as one of the varieties. This includes people who grew up in former Yugoslavia and were used to hearing different forms interchangeably, people from mixed marriages where parents speak different dialects, younger people who get exposed to other language varieties in the media and through travel, and foreigners who learn the language as Serbo-Croatian.
Current state-supported Croatian and Serbian standards are probably different enough to justify separate Wikipedias, but the Bosnian/k standard is literally a hybrid between the two: roughly, Serbian vocab, Croatian orthography & grammar. The result is a continuum of state-supported language standards that won't soon be broken. It is also one in which each extreme remains in place. All state, academic, and news publications in Croatia & Serbia remain wedded to their respective, different standards -- in fact, in part purposely different.
Because of the three state-supported standard forms, there are also significant populations that, while understanding other varieties, identify strongly with their particular form. They usually deny the existence of an informal, pluricentric koiné of the region, whether it's called BCMS or Serbo-Croatian.

Winston Churchill once said that the Balkans creates more history than can be consumed locally. Wikipedia has not been spared. Good luck.

– Miranche^T C 20:41, 18 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I don't have a dog in the fight, Miranche, but I'm not sure the thing about confusing schoolchildren with the odd foreign term here and there is a very convincing argument. It does sound very similar to the situation you have between, say, varieties of English or French. Formerip (talk) 18:27, 19 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Well, actually, as a former educator, I think the interests of the 6-18 demographic cannot be ignored :D. Actually, let me expand on this. I do think that schoolchildren are an important section of users on Wikipedia, especially small language Wikipedias that have good coverage on general topics, ie. those that one might learn in elementary school or high school, but are patchy otherwise.

Educational institutions in Croatia -- I assume Serbia as well, perhaps less fanatically so -- are pretty serious about keeping the respective language standards "clean" of "foreign" influences. If a Serbo-Croatian Wikipedia is all there is, any nationalist teacher / school administrator could, for example, ban the use of Wikipedia in instruction in their school and have a legal basis to do so, because the language standards of the Wikipedia would differ from language rules as set by the state and described in lesson plans.

English is different in this regard because there are no central institutions regulating it. French is different because it's got a center that provides regulation, France, and others, such as Quebecois, kind of have to put up with being dialects. Here there are several centers ("pluricentric") supporting several language standards. I don't know all issues regarding Norwegian, but I think the situation is more similar to Bokmål/Nynorsk, where there are two different language standards supported by the same state, and two different Wikipedias.

Here there are three standards supported by three states, and an informal koiné. I've thought about it quite a bit, and it doesn't seem to me like removing any of them would be a good idea. – Miranche^T C 22:19, 19 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I'm not saying its a good idea (or a bad idea, for that matter), just that I don't think this particular argument cuts it. Basically, there's a traditional view, although it is changing a bit because of the Internet, that children should be educated more or less exclusively in the local version of the language, where practicable. Ex-Yugoslavia isn't unique in this regard, and I'm not sure differences in the attitudes of teachers there can make it so, as far as the question of what WPs it ought to have goes. We might actually be better not to accommodate that to the extent that it is, as you mention, a political choice of the teacher. It might even be argued that, if they are being shielded from variants of their language at school, someone somewhere ought to provide them with that aspect of their education (I'm assuming that the media doesn't already do that). Formerip (talk) 00:14, 20 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I understand what you're saying. As a matter of fact, as far as visual & electronic media go the ex-Yugoslav borders are pretty porous, so young people get quite a bit of exposure. They also know that Wikipedias exist in different local languages & can seek out info there if they need. However, while there is a political aspect to the teacher choice of e.g. whether to use Serbian language materials in a classroom in Croatia, and I agree particularism in this sense should not be encouraged, there is also the practical aspect, and ultimately the choice (good or bad) should lie with the teacher. If I'm, say, teaching math to children of typical level of aptitude & interest, and I want to show them how to find info about elementary geometry on Wikipedia, I'd want it to be my choice if I'd also need to teach them a whole other set of terms to understand what they're seeing. The words for angle, theorem, line segment, line, plane, perimeter, surface area, volume, equation etc. all differ between the standards.

Note also that local standards reach beyond state documents, schools, & obsessions of language purists. Knowing these standards of course helps in university education, job applications, public speaking etc. While I'm quite relaxed about how many languages there are there in the BCMS area, it's good to have quality independent information sources that are reliably written in the local standard, no matter the audience. I think it'd be better to focus on how to ensure quality in small language Wikipedias as they are. But I guess I may be old-fashioned. – Miranche^T C 04:04, 20 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Croatian Wikipedia controversy - section

Two facts are clear:

those who are responsible for this (Speedy, Roberta, Kubura, Željko) don't have courage to explain themselves, so they sent Mir

Harven, grey eminence behind hr.wiki)

Mir Harven is a major troll who didn't even try to deny accusations (unlike Vodomar, who tells us fairy tales)

Having on mind this two fact, prolonging this controversy is pointless. So, I would like to know, who will make decision and when? -- Bojan Talk 17:15, 16 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Everbody forget to write down few facts.In short: 1.In Croatia goverment right now is formed by Social Democrat Party (SDP) which is direct succesor of Communist party which ruled 1945.- 1990. 2. Željko Jovanović, Minister of Science, Education and Sports in Croatian government, was indeed member of Communist youth organization in 1980's. http://www.dnevno.hr/vijesti/hrvatska/74489-jovanovic-je-1983-uime-partije-izbacivao-kolegu-iz-skole-jer-je-s-crkvom-isao-u-pariz.html There are newspaper article in croatian which accuses Jovanović for: "He took a red book and threatened, in the name of that book,to take counterpart M.Č. out of class. He spoke to over the 'Committee' cause to expel him from school, and said that colleagues are allowed go to church seminary, but to go with the Church abroad is treason od the state and the system" Witness od that 1983.event is minister's classmate Milivoj Antolović.He is at least controversial politician,and known for his encounter with catholic church,while on seat. 3. Current croatian goverment protects communist secret police agents accused in Germany for murder of political immigrants during communist regime in Yugoslavia. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/27/josip-perkovic-extradition-germany-croatia_n_3510326.html Jovanovic is member od that goverment.I guess he wants to present communist rule in Croatia and Yugoslavia,same as it was officialy presented in 1945-90 period. Also Jovanovic has Serbian heritage.So his comment is in a way from serbian sources. 4.Someone,in this talk, use argument that holocaust article in CW doesn't have any images of victims.Which is untrue.Article has total od 4 pictures. http://hr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holokaust_u_NDH picture since 2007. http://hr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datoteka:Odkritje_trupel.jpg since 2009. http://hr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datoteka:Executed_prisoners_in_Jasenovac.jpg 5. Daily newspaper "Jutarnji list" is known for manipulation,such as missing articles, misinterpreted and falsified facts, unprofesionalism etc. Removed article: http://www.dragovoljac.com.hr/index.php/novosti/politika-i-drutvo/1229-gdje-je-nestao-ovaj-clanak-sa-portala-jutarnji-list-pronicljive-autorice-snjezane-pavic These newspaper are considered left wing tabloid,even politicaly left wing readers make fun of them.When someone calls this newspaper serious,he is telling a lot about himself. 6. what's homopfobic in this article,can someone tell me? http://hr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gay_pride 7. interesting discussion developed on largest public internet forum in Croatia about these case. http://www.forum.hr/showthread.php?t=797091 and another one with questionnaire http://www.forum.hr/showthread.php?t=791184 8. someone write down here: "In English and other wikipedias there were sentences that she is conservative, and more bad stuff about her." I would like to know,since when been conservative alone, is a bad stuff? 9. Finally I would like to see proof for some serious accusation. Like denying holocaust? Or open homophobia? http://hr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holokaust Quote: Encyclopaedia Britanica procjenjuje broj žrtava na 5.700.000, a Encyclopaedia Judaica navodi brojku od 5.820.960. (Encyclopaedia Britannica estimates the number of victims at 5,700,000, and the Encyclopaedia Judaica cites a figure of 5,820,960.) http://hr.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBTIQ

TnQ for reading. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 185.18.62.107 (talk) 01:08, 17 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

This user is strongly against the independence of Kosovo. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:BokicaK ?! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 185.18.62.107 (talk) 01:41, 17 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

It is of no significance to us what a user's opinions are regarding the independence of Kosovo. That you seem to think it matters suggests to me that you fail to understand what Wikipedia is for, and why there is a problem with the Croatian-language Wikipedia. AndyTheGrump (talk) 02:17, 17 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Serbian nationalist's are strongly against Kosovo independence.Opinion about some issue's can tell us something more,or a lot more, about opinion holder. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 185.18.62.227 (talk) 02:44, 17 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

We do not exclude people from editing Wikipedia on the basis of their opinions - though if we did, I'm sure we'd start by excluding the petty-nationalist shits like yourself. AndyTheGrump (talk) 03:04, 17 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I guess insulting is also common part of debate on wikipedia? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 185.18.61.89 (talk) 12:48, 17 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Mr, wales, sorry for interupting. But just to inform you that the current government of Croatia is under sanction of the EU for violating international treaties and hiding communists criminals — Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.1.130.176 (talk) 16:30, 18 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

False, there are no sanctions. Best regards. --151.252.214.119 (talk) 18:39, 18 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/eu-plans-sanctions-against-croatia-over-extradition-law-a-922810.html — Preceding unsigned comment added by 185.18.62.211 (talk) 00:59, 19 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

A comment by Inoslav Bešker

Inoslav Bešker, a Croatian journalist and an occasional contributor to several Wikipedia editions, including Croatian Wikipedia, wrote about the recent controversy in a two-page article published yesterday (September 16) in Jutarnji list. Translated excerpts from the article are available here. GregorB (talk) 18:19, 17 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Blocking of political opponents continues on hr wiki

Just today, three users have been blocked because they expressed agreement with criticism of hr wiki:

1:55, 18 September 2013 Zeljko (talk • contribs) blocked Miranche (talk • contribs) with an expiry time of 3 months (account creation blocked, e-mail is blocked, can't edit own talk page) (assault and insulting of hr wiki)
1:28, 18 September 2013 SpeedyGonsales (talk • contribs) blocked Koryaksky (talk • contribs) with an expiry time of 3 months (account creation blocked, e-mail blocked) (personal attacks or offensive behavior)
1:07, 18 September 2013 Zeljko (talk • contribs) blocked Maria Sieglinda von Nudeldorf (talk • contribs) with an expiry time of 3 months (account creation blocked, e-mail is blocked, can't edit own talk page)

--В и к и T 05:20, 18 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

One need to look closer to the reasons why they are blocked. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 185.18.62.211 (talk) 01:10, 19 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Discussed on Meta (among other things, of course). GregorB (talk) 12:04, 19 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Fox News and Wikipedia porn again

This is on Fox News today.--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 16:53, 17 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

It's worth pointing out that any one person could create an image hiding script, and a few working together could make it fairly effective - provided they are willing to work on a voluntary basis with no top-level decisions by the site about what is inappropriate, which is where all the disputes lie. At [18] I pointed out that I had made an absurdly simple script [19] to block all the images of Muhammad in Muhammad, and described the overall way of doing this collaboratively at User:Wnt/Personal image blocking. But it is hard for me, the one person least interested in image blocking, to really get enthusiastic about scaling up this script to take on everyone's issues. I think each and every person calling for options to hide images on Wikipedia - whether they are experienced volunteers who can readily learn Javascript, or experienced media people who can easily learn Wikipedia - is individually responsible for failing to be the one to do this. Wnt (talk) 17:44, 17 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Compare and contrast "human male" in Google and WP. Oddly enough the Google images are both more diverse and educational. John lilburne (talk) 22:53, 17 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Actually that is a valid criticism; I'm not sure why the other sorts of results don't come up. Wnt (talk) 16:25, 18 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Except if you actually type that into the wikipedia search box you get Man and have done since 2008.Geni (talk) 01:21, 19 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

For "why the other sorts of results don't come up", see Fox News and Google porn (also: [20], [21], [22], etc). ʍ w 13:44, 20 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I am amused that FAUX News apparently believes its target audience needs the Simple English Wikipedia, rather than this one; but then, they know their viewership. It is of course no surprise that they talked first to the Wikipedia-hater community, Kohs and the like. --Orange Mike | Talk 19:12, 17 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

A story sourced to Kohs and Barbour is a case of garbage in, garbage out, frankly. Fox News clearly knew exactly what kind of story they wanted to write and went to people they knew would give them the quotes they wanted. Prioryman (talk) 20:12, 17 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

And it's clear that Fox News didn't contact Orange Mike or Prioryman for comment, because even Fox News has a certain level of Kohs/Barbour standards, beneath which they won't go. - 2001:558:1400:10:A9BF:7F88:B9AB:3366 (talk) 14:17, 18 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

That is actually the joke of the week. Fox News has a lot of standards – a different standard for every topic and article. But the average standard could not be measured as of today. No one had a long enough rope to go that deep and come back alive. --／人◕ ‿‿ ◕人＼署名の宣言 15:39, 18 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Slow news day at Fox? They can't even keep their position straight...the author seems to hold Wales responsible, then say "No, he's not", then he holds the board responsible, then he explains why the board couldn't decide on a solution and then he ends up with the conclusion that no matter what the powers that be did, that users would still be uploading racy content which the regular deletion procedures tries to address every day of the week. So, catchy headline, "Wikipedia abandons efforts to purge porn from online encyclopedia" and then an explanation of why this isn't a simple problem to solve. Awesome journalism, just awesome. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 20:50, 17 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Boy howdy, if those quotes from Jay Walsh are accurate, he's maybe not a great spokesman, although the way Fox casts things probably is a bigger problem (Fox: "...many new images were posted by Wiki users since 2010, Walsh admits"). Still, Walsh allows it to be made to look like we're a little dysfunctional and at odds with each other. If it was me, I'd say something along the lines of this: "The Wikipedia is run and run well by its thousands of volunteer editors. We cover very many subjects, including popular culture and sexuality, and that includes an encyclopedic coverage of pornography -- the pornography industry, the historical and cultural role of sexual imagery, and so on. We illustrate these articles. Some people think we illustrate them too freely, and some don't -- we disagree, discuss, and arrive at the best solution for thousands of issues here all the time, using the principles of free democratic decision-making. The Foundation is 100% behind that principle. The Wikipedia is a reference work for adults and the current state of illustrations of sexual topics is exactly what the editors of the Wikipedia want."

I don't agree with a lot of that, and it's also not exactly the whole truth, that'd be the kind of face we want to present, I'd think. Herostratus (talk) 00:00, 18 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

If "Wikipedia is a reference work for adults" we should probably start discouraging use by children, rather than encouraging it. Delicious carbuncle (talk) 00:33, 18 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

We already do. the reading level of your average wikipedia article is so high that your average pre-teen doesn't stand much of a chance.Geni (talk) 01:45, 19 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

"The Wikipedia is a reference work for adults." It should be, but it isn't. Wikipedia mentors and encourages children to edit, refuses to have an age limit for admins and bureaucrats and moderates neither language nor images with the presence of children in mind. Bielle (talk) 00:32, 18 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia doesn't even have a safe-search option. A multimedia search for "Prince Albert" still gives a penis as the second result. "Electric toothbrush" still shows a woman masturbating as the third result. Unlike Google, we have a community-driven process that could presumably make it easy to flag such images in a way that would make this less likely. I am not gung-ho against explicit imagery being included here, but this is a basic problem that nothing is done about. Many sites allow for, at a minimum, prompts to ask if someone is of a certain age before allowing them to view explicit content. We don't even have that. Although images can be disabled, that really isn't an effective solution, especially since people aren't given the option in an upfront manner and it doesn't change the fact that articles themselves can be just as explicit. The inclusion of explicit content is a concern that is secondary to insuring people can have a simple and viable option for avoiding such content when here.--The Devil's Advocate _{tlk. cntrb.} 01:00, 18 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Well, if someone bothers to set up a list of images to block as I did with the Muhammad images (likely transcluding the lists of several people into one document) you then could pretty easily make an interface where someone could browse Wikipedia with a ?userfilter1=User:Wnt/Blacklist sort of GET parameter. (To be clear, there should be choice of whose filtering script to use, just as whose list to use, so both the name of the parameter and its contents should be open to substitution, but I recognize that from a computer security point of view someone would want to vet the .js files and not have URLs that execute any arbitrary user Javascript with a GET parameter, unfortunately, so people would have to propose the scripts and accompanying filter parameter names in a developer-oriented forum before they went live) Wnt (talk) 01:59, 18 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

You don't even need someone to create a blacklist. We can tag images and categorize articles so that any filter just has to see those to know what to keep out of normal search results.--The Devil's Advocate _{tlk. cntrb.} 03:35, 18 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

No, that's where these things go wrong. Because people don't agree how to tag images. You have to keep all this stuff as a userspace activity if you're to avoid irresolvable conflicts. Wnt (talk) 06:32, 18 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Yes they do. There are a whole bunch of admins over on Commons lovingly tagging up the images into porn categories, and defending it against deletion. mattbuck and friends certainly do know porn when they see it, and that is all that is needed. John lilburne (talk) 08:27, 18 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The fallacy there is that anybody can start sorting out "porn" and get some things that a lot of people agree about. But it's a job nobody can finish. Even setting a Commons category purely for library use, rather than a hiding scheme, seems far more contentious than you'd imagine - there are still people doggedly holding down that Islamophobia is a form of racism, even to the point of placing an image of a person holding up a banner with a pig and an "islamophobic and proud of it" sign under racism. But when you couple that with a plan to hide content from users, things become even more contentious. Wnt (talk) 16:16, 18 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Interesting fact - I have created more nudity and sexuality deletion requests than anyone else. -mattbuck (Talk) 07:05, 20 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I wonder why this fox-tail stories remind me so strongly on this particular scene? --／人◕ ‿‿ ◕人＼署名の宣言 03:34, 18 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

It seems WMF is attempting to improve the discoverability of images. See Dschwen’s comment there. Hope it will help to push the craps to the tail end in search results. Fine tuning the Courtesy deletions policy will helps to eliminate some embarrassing contents too. J Kadavoor J e e 09:51, 18 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

That won't fix the problem. All you'll just get the better quality "nun with dildo up snatch" images when you search for "penguins" it won't eliminate the images. John lilburne (talk) 11:56, 18 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

You mean, that an improved search, that does not deliver unexpected results, will not relinquish your problem. So it has to be a fact that you are just against the porn topic in general, and like to discriminate opposite view points on or neutral coverage of the topic? Tank you. That is all i need to know. --37.221.193.131 (talk) 12:19, 18 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

An improved search will do what is needed, but in order to be 'improved' it needs to do more than be based on quality of image. As I said, which you seem to have ignored, a good quailty image of a "'nun' with dildo up snatch" will rank alongside a good quality image of of King Penguin. I want to control when "'nun' with dildo up snatch" is returned in a search for "Penguin" there may well be times when that is the sort of image I want, but not right this moment when I sat on the train, with a crowd of people looking over my shoulder. Also I want a simple control "Nudity/Sexual content - yes/no", "Violence yes/no", "Religious tat yes/no". I don't want "Christian tat yes/no", "Muslim tat yes/no", "Hindu tat yes/no", etc, etc. I want simple coarse choices. 91.231.145.253 (talk) 08:38, 19 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The real problem is that educated people, in 2013, still view sexual content as a problem. --cyclopia ^speak! 12:11, 18 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

+1 --37.221.193.131 (talk) 12:20, 18 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, kids should be encouraged to explore sexual content. It's wholly natural, after all. - 2001:558:1400:10:A9BF:7F88:B9AB:3366 (talk) 14:22, 18 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Whatever else you say about it, that image is educational. When I looked at this my first thought was that infection would get into the peritoneal cavity, but of course on consideration, what seems like a simple sac is actually a layer of skin over a layer of fascia and muscle, which apparently contains the infection with more reliability than I would have imagined, based on the number of rings! (Also it illustrates some folks are a little funny in the head, and it's amazing how much profit other folks can make from that) Wnt (talk) 15:13, 18 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

What harm do you consider that image will cause, 2001etc? Has there been a spike in children admitted to A&E after trying to stick curtain-rings through their cocks? Seriously, I'm curious as to why you have highlighted that image in particular as problematic? Formerip (talk) 15:34, 18 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Well, if you live in the United States, please arrange with your local police department to have their precinct captain accompany you to your local public junior high school, where you will arrange with the principal of the school to present a special assembly on "Personal hygiene". When you open the presentation, lead with that photo, and describe the skin, fascia, muscle, and risks of infection. Please report back to us how long it takes for the police officer to take you into custody and halt the presentation, as it would likely be in violation of any number of child protection and obscenity laws. If no criminal or civil harm comes to you personally, then I'll donate $100 to the Wikimedia Foundation. If you're confident in your position, then what do you have to lose? -- 2001:558:1400:10:A9BF:7F88:B9AB:3366 (talk) 16:16, 18 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Could you be more specific about what laws you're talking about. I'm not from the US and I'm having a hard time imagining what they could be. Formerip (talk) 16:24, 18 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Well, the secret is that there are no laws - there's something called "disorderly conduct" that is basically a license for police to arrest anybody for doing anything they don't like, provided they're within arm's reach. It is generally resolved by a period of time during which poor people are unable to make bail, after which they plea bargain for "time served", so there is never any trial either. Just some months in jail and a permanent mark on their record to show that some cop didn't like something they did. Wnt (talk) 16:27, 18 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Junior high schools have sex education, where so far as I know they still show repulsive images of penises eaten away by syphilis and such. Could it get you fired? Sure. Anything can get a teacher fired at an American school, unless it has been done exactly the same way in the past before by other teachers at that same school, or is mandated by the school administration or state or federal regulation. (And I don't give any guarantees about the federal part - there are some localities that don't hold by that) Wnt (talk) 16:21, 18 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

It's very hard to fire American teachers, who have union protection. Even for egregious malfeasance there's a full process with formal reviews (and for just being a piss-poor teacher, it's extremely difficult and takes years). As a whole, your post is so full of misinformation that it actually decreases the amount of knowledge in the universe, so cut it out, willya? Herostratus (talk) 16:49, 18 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

It's true that tenured teachers often have union protection, but even they are subject to removal. There's a limbo between the beginning and end of the process. If teachers aren't removed for poor performance, that's just because it's not a very high priority. (To understand why, consider how bothered some people are here about having porn vs. not having very complete articles!) Wnt (talk) 16:55, 18 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

See also [23][24][25][26][27][28] Wnt (talk) 17:03, 18 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I think the comments above sort of show the situation here. It's not that editors such as Formerip et al are being bad people on purpose. It's just ignorance. I can't explain child sexual development and so forth to editors like Formerip et al anymore than I could explain Native American culture to General Custer, and I'm not going to waste my time trying. That dog won't hunt and it's a depressing and pointless timesink to worry about it -- editors like that dominate here for various reasons (demographics and so forth) and probably always will, so it's time and past time to fall back to the next defensible ridge.

The next defensible ridge is to stress that the Wikipedia is for adults. People like Jay Walsh and others at the Foundation need to stop fighting lost battles, cowboy up, and admit to themselves "We had a vision of the Wikipedia as being for kids as well as adults. Others had a different vision. They won." It won't be easy, since kids take to encyclopedias like ducks to water, but quashing those misguided initiatives to get kids into the Wikipedia would be a place to start. Herostratus (talk) 16:43, 18 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I glad you ~~don't~~ think I'm a bad person, H.

I'm surprised to see that particular image raised as an example is all. I don't see why someone would look at it and see a killer example of an image that WMF should not be hosting. I don't see an image that is potentially very harmful. I'd agree that it should probably not be distributed as a poster to nurseries. The responses to my sincerely meant question seem to be "if you don't already know, I'm not going to tell you". I guess I shouldn't hold my breath for clarification.

I don't know much about Custer, but I would guess that if I ever met him, it would be him educating me about Native American culture, rather than the other way around. Formerip (talk) 17:25, 18 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I think the comments above sort of show the situation here. It's not that Herostratus beats his wife on purpose, I just think he's trying to deal with the traumatizing experience of seeing a bare boobie when he was a child. Thankfully we have brave patriots standing up to try to prevent other children's fragile minds from being destroyed like his was. --108.38.191.162 (talk) 17:05, 18 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Apparently the work was donated as part of a Chinese sculpture exhibition. It was made by Yu Chang, director of the Guangzhou Sculpture Academy. [29] We could use some documentation of this - I wonder if someone can manage to free-license an image to feature? Wnt (talk) 17:29, 18 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

You misunderstand me Formerip. I do think that you're a bad person. I just don't think you're a bad person on purpose. Also, I don't mean to pick on you particularly, I just picked you at random from the mass of editors of your general ilk.

I don't beat my wife, and the simile falls apart since I haven't said "Could someone please explain to me how wife-beating harms anyone? I'm genuinely curious." However, Formerip did say "What harm do you consider that image (File:Scrotal ladder 2.jpg) will cause... Seriously, I'm curious as to why you have highlighted that image in particular as problematic?" Guess what Formerip. I don't consider your questions to be cute or funny.

Also FWIW, it's extremely typical to see the kind of misdirection applied by User:108.38.191.162. I'm talking about graphic images of genital self-mutilation, and the reply is "Well, I think the female breast is beautiful" or "But why shouldn't children be able to see September Morn" or whatever. We're just talking past each other, and it's impossible to have a reasonable discussion on that basis, and these discussions almost always devolve to that kind of rhetoric eventually, so it's pointless. As I said, editors like Formerip and User:108.38.191.162 have the whip hand and always will, I guess, and we need to operate within that reality. That's all I'm asking: operate within reality, Foundation people. Is that so much to ask? Herostratus (talk) 23:34, 18 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

It wasn't intended as a cute or funny question, H. It was just a question. Seriously, I wouldn't be surprised or scandalised to find that image in a public library, so what is it about it that makes you think it's inappropriate for WMF to be hosting it? Formerip (talk) 09:11, 19 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Well, part of the problem here is that some people are playing a bait and switch. They talk about censoring "porn", but then the example is a figure of this scrotum ... does anybody really wank to that? Next thing you know they're infuriated because somebody uploaded a picture of a toothbrush that had been regurgitated by an albatross. Censoring a certain class of sexy and naked human imagery would be bad enough, but censoring anything they find "disgusting" is an even broader net. It's like alright, if you look at the picture and you find it really pleasant, it's censored. If you find it really disgusting, it's censored. And if you look at it and you don't care at all, why are we hosting it? Wnt (talk) 23:40, 18 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Well, you're right, the original article was about porn. Actual images of pornography (especially when presented as typical adult behavior rather than cinematic storytelling) are problematic if the Wikipedia is also for kids, and actual images of sexual self-mutilation (especially when presented as an adult sexual activity rather than a manifestation of madness) are also problematic if the Wikipedia is also for kids, but they're not exactly the same, and so the conversation drifted and broadened a little. You can characterize that as bait and switch if you want to. You don't need to employ such devices, though, because you already won. Why are you still arguing the merits of the case when you've swept the field and the other team is already in the locker room? We need to move on to the next steps. Herostratus (talk) 01:18, 19 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

It's about censoring information about sex, drugs, Santa Claus etc. from children. Some parents don't want their children to learn the truth about these topics. Count Iblis (talk) 00:42, 19 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

If we dont have a problem censoring images of Mohammed for the sake of cultural sensitivity, there should be no problem with censoring explicitly sexual images for similar reasons, especially since there are cultural objections to such across more than one culture/religion. I think that if we dont take some kind of step (a rating system with accompanying filters) something eventually will be imposed on us.AlejandroLinaresGarcia (talk) 02:13, 19 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

We don't censor images of Muhammad here, though. Tarc (talk) 02:35, 19 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Those objecting to images and content do have next steps they can take. As I said above, you can develop a user script with the existing WP interface if you simply don't want to have embarrassing things pop up on your screen that someone could see over your shoulder. If your objective is to make a "child safe" Wikipedia, then that is more involved, but it has to be, because if safety involves not seeing images at all (which I'd contest) that certainly is the least part of it. What you would need to do is:

Make a mirror Wikipedia with copies of current versions of every article.
Delete every article.
Have trusted admins undelete the articles they think are "suitable", perhaps with revisions.
Have some elaborate process to try to make sure your trusted admins aren't pedos. Good luck...
Have other trusted admins check and tag every undeleted article just in case...
Have no photo uploads by kids.
Have no article talk pages. Restrict user-class (i.e. child) discussions to one or two dozen pages total that you carefully patrol.
Have no Wiki email. (You might have a "parent" class of account that can email each other on behalf of kids, if it's not more trouble than it's worth)

Those last two are the most important, because it is kids meeting people that really gets into the danger zone. My point here is that there's a difference between a nice play school meant to be "kid safe" and the run-down warehouse district down by the docks. Wikipedia is in the warehouse district - it has to be, because we're in the business of wholesale import and trade, in an intellectual sense. Anybody can say anything to anybody here, because that's how you get work done. If you want 'safe', then somebody's got to come down here, pick out what they want, and set up the sort of environment they like somewhere else. Wnt (talk) 03:12, 19 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, your last points are cogent. It's reasonable to assert that the Wikipedia can't be child-friendly and child-safe if we're going to be in the business we're in (documenting and illustrating all human behavior and everything else). Whether we should be child-friendly and child-safe (at the cost of redacting some child-problematic material) is a reasonable debate, but it's maybe not a debate worth having because we're not and we're not gonna be, period.

However, it's not necessary or possible to do all the steps you describe above. We don't have to be perfect. A lot of things we can't "do" here because it's very difficult to get anything "done" on the Wikipedia, and it's designed that way. But the Foundation people can do things on the Foundation level. One thing they can do is to reconcile themselves to the Wikipedia as it is rather than how they wish it was, and think about the implication of that and how they can get on board with that. By quashing any active outreach to kids for a start, I'd say.

To my mind, it's a problem that to an extent -- to the extent that we have porn and so forth -- Jimbo and Jay Walsh and other Foundation folks don't seem to like the Wikipedia. That's a problem if Jimbo and Jay Walsh and so forth are going to present themselves as spokespeople for the English Wikipedia, n'est-ce pas? If nothing else, next time a reporter calls Jay Walsh he could say "I'm a spokesman for the Foundation and will be glad to discuss our servers and our fundraising and whatnot, but I'm not a spokesman for the English Wikipedia, and as a matter of fact by it's nature the English Wikipedia can't have a single spokesperson'; here's a list of Wikipedia admins and you can call some of them if you like". If he's not willing to do that, then even "No comment" would be an improvement, maybe. Herostratus (talk) 13:02, 19 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

We already discussed, over multiple years, what can be done and what should not be done. One of the main issues is, that "suitable for children" and "all human knowledge" don't go hand in hand, as well as "child safety" and an "open project" don't suite each other. In such situations (different long term goals) it is usually the worst decision to find a compromise. A compromise would neither be a Wikipedia suited for children nor a Wikipedia that is an open encyclopedia.

In the physical world we often have to make such a compromise, but this isn't true for non physical matter. We can easily duplicate the project and develop different variations. Thats why i would strongly support Wnt's opinion. It is the only way that makes actually sense for both parties, because we can continue to reach the different goals without making a bad compromise. --／人◕ ‿‿ ◕人＼署名の宣言 17:10, 19 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Message to mr. Wales

Sorry for interrupting, but mr. Wales I would just inform you that the current government of Croatia is under sanctions of the European Union for violating international treaties and hiding communist criminal.

The current government refuses to deport Josip Perković, a former member of the Yugoslav secret service (UDB) to Germany although according to the European arrest warrant which signatory is Croatia, Perković has to be extradite to Germany.

The truth is that the current Croatian government did not face it communist past and therefore it is doing some anti-democratic measures, like this media lynch on the Croatian wikipedia. Jutarnji list is known for being an unofficial spokesperson of the government and therefore I would suggest you to keep its "news" and "warnings" with a bit skepticism.

In a few days there will be a official statement of the European commission on Croatia. The Commission will put Croatia on a monitoring since the EU has no confidence on the justice system and general the (democratic) institution of Croatia.

Here are link that you should consider: http://www.vecernji.hr/vijesti/europska-komisija-vladi-stitite-komunisticke-zlocince-clanak-603606

http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/eu-plans-sanctions-against-croatia-over-extradition-law-a-922810.html — Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.1.130.176 (talk) 16:47, 18 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

So you're saying that Croatian government is secretly communist and anti-democratic, and attacks Croatian Wikipedia because of extradition law or something? Our article about Croatia should be updated, because it doesn't say anything about it.--В и к и T 18:08, 18 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I wouldn't put it past any government to content control our Wikipedias. Didn't we catch a senate IP trying to label Snowden in his article lead recently? Our job should be to maintain the pillar of neutrality as well as due weight. It is very difficult to keep the COI and paid editors from controlling content, but not impossible.--Canoe1967 (talk) 21:49, 18 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Let me be super-blunt: I don't care if the head of Croatian government is goddamn Joseph Stalin. When Croatian Wikipedia is criticized, the critics are either right (i.e. they make a valid point supported by facts) or wrong. Regarding content (a number of articles with long-standing and blatant far-right/fascist bias), there is no doubt whatsoever that the critics are right. Regarding their criticism of process (the admins are biased and directly responsible for said content), the jury is out, but this is in the end something that can be either confirmed with evidence or refuted. GregorB (talk) 14:22, 19 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

RfC to create template editor user right

Jimbo, I think you should be aware of Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Template editor user right. We currently have in excess of 8000 templates that may not be edited by anyone but administrators. This would seem to stand contrary to User:Jimbo Wales/Statement of principles, but your opinion would be welcome. --Hammersoft (talk) 15:00, 19 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Protected templates have had a chilling effect on new features: Of course, many unprotected templates have been hacked/vandalized over the past years and must remain protected to deter complex vandalism which has remained for months (or years). However, in several cases, I have noted gaps of about 3 years between updates to protected templates, often with features clearly, fully proposed years earlier, and would have worked years earlier if allowed into articles. Another alternative (beyond a "template-editor user right") might be to adopt-a-template-coder, where admins could agree to work closely with some interested users who are ready to update numerous templates, and just need a dedicated admin to follow them around and install the recommended/tested upgrades to various templates. In recent years, there have only been a few admins who install updates to protected templates, among the current 859 admins. I can confirm it is often easier to just install updates, as compared to the work expended for debugging and testing the changes prior to installation. Ironically, while users have noted the WMF might seem sluggish to install real improvements, the local Wikipedia editors have also delayed major improvements, for years, despite the local emphasis to expedite other improvements. -Wikid77 (talk) 20:02, 19 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Alternative to Bright Line Rule

Jimbo, your Bright Line Rule says that editors with a prevailing conflict of interest (especially corporate employees and PR professionals) should never directly edit article space. It isn't really working. Even your wife's own PR firm has been caught manipulating Wikipedia content for its client base, and some of your friends and associates have been shown to be doing the same for themselves. I have an alternative to the Bright Line Rule that would help expand Wikipedia in a neutral way and create a more welcoming atmosphere for conflicted editors. Let's call it the "3X Content" rule. If an editor such as User:Stiofan.walsh (LinkedIn) wishes to create an article about Kindle Banking Systems (where he was formerly an account manager), then he should be told he is welcome to do that, but only after he has asserted his conflict of interest and he has created 3 other unrelated articles that Wikipedia is currently missing, such that each article is as well-researched, well-written, well-cited, and of similar length as the article that he wishes to author about his employer. Since the Wikimedia Foundation's main goals always seem to be the expansion of the editor (and donor) base and the expansion of content on Wikipedia, this seems like a win-win-win. Wikipedia gets four articles, not one. Wikipedia gets a COI editor to disclose himself (so their edits can be more carefully scrutinized). And Kindle Banking Systems gets the article it always wanted on Wikipedia. A WikiProject could be set up to help newcomers understand if their desired topic even stands a chance of passing notability and verifiability thresholds, so that they don't waste their time writing three articles, only to have their most-desired one deleted. To me, this makes much more sense than the Bright Line Rule that few businesses are even following. - 2001:558:1400:10:6CB5:19A4:CF82:8444 (talk) 17:19, 19 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

It isn't a bright line rule.--Mark Miller (talk) 23:40, 19 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

It is a bright line rule, and it is the best solution I know of to the problem and the anonymous poster knows it - he just wants carte blanche to spam Wikipedia. (And he's absolutely distorting the facts in his description of history.)--Jimbo Wales (talk) 00:00, 20 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Currently, we do not have the bright line rule as a policy. We have a relatively weak Wikipedia:Paid editing part of W:COI. I am not sure if we really want to forbid e.g. a paid government employee to edit articles about their own country (or even Gibraltar government hiring a contractor to write articles about Gibraltar history and tourist attractions) but I would want two things: public acknowledgement of the conflict of interests (preferably both on the user page and in the edit summary), and zero reverts in the event of conflict of interests. I think it should be sufficient. Well, and I guess that as in the other areas paid editors are suppose to be held to higher standard than volunteers. Thus, they must meticulously follow all our policies or being blocked (no warnings required). Alex Bakharev (talk) 00:13, 20 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I've dealt with this area a lot. IME, when we're talking about the PR people who are actually capable of listening, it'll do as a guideline - because the real bright line rule is "don't cause a media disaster for you and your client a year from now", and the media and public are actually way harsher than Wikipedians are. Of course, "PR people" who are just spammers don't listen anyway - David Gerard (talk) 08:57, 20 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

A beer for you!

If you're anything at all like me, you'd want this talk page to be a happy place. Beer usually helps; I'm all out of Conecuh sausage, unfortunately. Happy days, and roll tide! Drmies (talk) 20:34, 19 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

If you want this to be a truly happy place.......try bacon. It works for me.--Mark Miller (talk) 23:39, 19 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

VisualEditor newsletter for September 19, 2013

Did you know?

You can edit a page's categories in VisualEditor. Click the "Page settings" button (next to Cancel/Save) in the toolbar to open the category tool. It will show you a list of the current categories for that page.

To add a category, type the name of the category you want to add in the search field. To remove an existing category, click on the category in the list and then, in the dialog that opens, click on the "Remove" icon (trash can). "Options" will allow you to set a default sorting key.

For more details, read VisualEditor's user guide.

VisualEditor has been updated twice in the last two weeks. As usual, what is now running on the English Wikipedia had a test run at Mediawiki during the previous week.

As announced, the toolbar was redesigned to be simpler, shorter, and to have the ability to have drop-down groups with descriptions. What you see now is the initial configuration and is expected to change in response to feedback from the English Wikipedia and other Wikipedias. The controls to add <u> (underline), <sub> (subscript), and <sup> (superscript), <s> (strikethrough) and <code> (computer code/monospace font) annotations to text are available to all users in the drop-down menu. At the moment, all but the most basic tools have been moved into a single drop-down menu, including the tools for inserting media, references, reference lists, and templates. The current location of all of the items in the toolbar is temporary, and your opinions about the best order are needed! Please offer suggestions at Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback/Toolbar.

In an eagerly anticipated upgrade to the reference dialog, newly added references or reference groups no longer need the page to be saved before they can be re-used (bugs 51689 and 52000). The 'Use existing reference' button is now disabled on pages which don't yet have any references (bug 51848). The template parameter filter in the transclusion dialog now searches both parameter name and label (bug 51670).

In response to several requests, there are some new keyboard shortcuts. You can now set the block/paragraph formatting from the keyboard: Ctrl+0 sets a block as a regular paragraph; Ctrl+1 up to Ctrl+6 sets it as a Heading 1 ("Page title") to Heading 6 ("Sub-heading 4"); Ctrl+7 sets it as pre-formatted (bug 33512). Ctrl+2, which creates level 2 section headings, may be the most useful.

Some improvements were made to capitalization for links, so typing in "iPhone" will offer a link to "iPhone" as well as "IPhone" (bug 50452).

Copying and pasting within the same document should work better as of today's update, as should copying from VisualEditor into a third-party application (bug 53364, bug 52271, bug 52460). Work on copying and pasting between VisualEditor instances (for example, between two articles) and retaining formatting when copying from an external source into VisualEditor is progressing.

Major improvements to editing with input method editors (IMEs; mostly used for Indic and East Asian languages) are being deployed today. This is a complex change, so it may produce unexpected errors. On a related point, the names of languages listed in the "languages" (langlinks) panel in the Page settings dialog now display as RTL when appropriate (bug 53503).

Looking ahead: The help/'beta' menu will soon expose the build number next to the "Leave feedback" link, so users can give more specific reports about issues they encounter (bug 53050). This change will make it easier for developers to identify any cacheing issues, once it starts reporting the build number (currently, it says "Version false"). Also, inserting a link, reference or media file will put the cursor after the new content again (bug 53560). Next week’s update will likely improve how dropdowns and other selection menus behave when they do not fit on the screen, with things scrolling so the selected item is always in view.

If you are active at other Wikipedias, the next group of Wikipedias to have VisualEditor offered to all users is being finalized. About two dozen Wikipedias are on the list for Tuesday, September 24 for logged-in users only, and on Monday, September 30 for unregistered editors. You can help with translating the documentation. In several cases, most of the translation is already done, and it only needs to be copied over to the relevant Wikipedia. If you are interested in finding out whether a particular Wikipedia is currently on the list, you can leave a message for me at my talk page.

For other questions or suggestions, or if you encounter problems, please let everyone know by posting problem reports at Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback and other ideas at Wikipedia talk:VisualEditor. Thank you! Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:59, 19 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

concerns about article 2013 mass surveillance disclosures

I am curious to hear editors' opinions on the article 2013 mass surveillance disclosures. This is obviously an important topic and one that I know Jimbo is personally interested in. We present a lot of information (over 240,000 bytes) but we are doing a poor job of presenting that information in the form of an encyclopedia article. I am concerned about the following:

This is as much an infodump as it is an article. There's a massive over-reliance on bulleted lists and tables rather than prose. Many of these lists and tables provide no context to the reader. There's a ton of jargon. Take for instance 2013 mass surveillance disclosures#SIGADS, an 8-column table of SIGADS which doesn't even bother to explain what a SIGAD is.
There's a massive reliance on primary source documents. The article seems to fall into the trap of reporting on what's in these leaked documents instead summarizing what secondary sources have found to be significant. To take some random examples: "Cyber Hit Counts: no explanation has been provided in the source material." "Source document is low resolution, some sections cannot be reliably deciphered."

I'd like us to get this article right, but that entails writing an actual article, not a compilation of lists of documents, lists of codenames, lists of votes on amendments, etc. GabrielF (talk) 02:39, 20 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Great! I encourage lots of people to go take a look. This is the sort of article that we ought to do incredibly well, for a number of reasons. It is desirable to do it well because this is an issue that our readers care about and very likely find very confusing. I had dinner with a prominent tech blogger last night, and he talked about how - even for him - the details of encryption and what has been leaked and what the leaks mean is a very difficult thing to grapple with and get correctly. And we should have a lot of expertise in our community to present these issues clearly and in an encyclopedic manner, which means, as you rightly point out, not an "infodump" but something thoughtfully considered in the context of significance.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 09:25, 20 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The disclosures are far from over, there are some things nobody (outside the NSA) understands, and we can't write about something which nobody understands until more slides are leaked. The article is obviously not perfect, but it is a new article under construction and the media disclosures are still ongoing, so you'll hopefully get a clearer picture once all the slides and documents are released. -A1candidate (talk) 08:28, 20 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think that's really a valid reason to accept a confusing 'data dump' article in the meantime.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 09:25, 20 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Has your legal team tried to litigate Connected Ventures / CollegeHumor and Streeter Seidell for this incredibly unflattering portrayal of you?

Because the past donation solicitation banners seemed (to Streeter, at least) to hint desperation, Streeter got the bright idea to make you into a cocaine addict who would be just as desperate for the snort powder as the WMF seemed to be for operating funds.

I believe there would be a legal rule or two broken (defamation? Or something similar) and it hurts public image anyway, so as it's still up there, why wouldn't the legal team litigate? If they did though, how come it hasn't been taken down? --2602:30A:2EE6:8600:C5C7:4D93:58C4:4447 (talk) 02:59, 20 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

See Streisand effect and Hustler Magazine v. Falwell. Best course of action is to just ignore it. Monty ₈₄₅ 03:06, 20 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

This parody of our fundraising banners is almost certainly fair use and accordingly legally protected. Parody is not defamation, legally. It would be counterproductive to respond formally. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 03:33, 20 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Yep, exactly. Generally speaking, parody and criticism have been given substantial protection under fair use because of the free speech implications of restricting it. This looks like a textbook case of fair use parody to me. (That's not to say I agree with the thrust of the parody, mind you, just that a lawsuit against it would likely be fruitless and probably highly counterproductive.) Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 03:42, 20 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

This is almost three years old... — Crisco 1492 (talk) 03:44, 20 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, it's old and we are not currently planning to use the "Jimmy appeal" thank goodness, since the ugly yellow banner works so well. In any event, I have a good sense of humor and although I didn't find this to be the funniest joke ever (hard for me to see it, obviously, as the butt of the joke, even if it actually is really funny, but I actually think it's not just me - it's just not that funny), it's hardly the sort of thing that I would think worthy of litigation.

I did want to add that quite often, people say "Streisand effect" too quickly. Sometimes a lawsuit is designed to keep people from seeing something and is therefore counterproductive. But in other cases, a lawsuit is about responding to a defamatory allegation and punishing someone for making it. Calling more attention to the matter, in order to shame the bully, is not always therefore a problem. Properly speaking, then, the concept of "Streisand effect" is best used when someone would like to suppress true information.

If someone published a news story or blog post claiming, in seriousness, that I have a cocaine problem (I don't use drugs at all) and that funds are being diverted from Wikipedia to pay for that (I don't even get reimbursed for flights to board meetings, etc.) , then taking legal action could very well be sensible. (Full context matters, of course.) But a rather blunt and simplistic joke about it? Meh.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 08:04, 20 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Obvious parody is a form of protected free speech in the US as established by cases such as Hustler Magazine v. Falwell. Additionally, it is difficult to win a defamantion (i.e. libel, slander) case without demonstrating both intent and negligence. IOW, Americans are entitled to great leeway in the manner by which they can criticize public figures. N^oformation ^Talk 09:57, 20 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Seidell has nothing on this this 4chan classic. 121.222.157.23 (talk) 10:56, 20 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Teaching children how to use Parental control to prevent parents "from accessing any websites that you do not deem appropriate for them"? Really?

Am I missing something here? "Securing any wireless access points with a password, and making use of Parental controls to prevent your parents from accessing any websites that you do not deem appropriate for them, would be possible ways of dealing with this. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 15:15, 15 July 2012 (UTC)". 50.174.76.70 (talk) 16:29, 20 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

It seems to me an obvious mistake, typing the word "parental" probably induced "parent" instead of "children" a few words later. --cyclopia ^speak! 16:42, 20 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

That, or we need to award {{The Barnstar of Good Humor}}. Monty ₈₄₅ 16:49, 20 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Okaay, then I guess this "My parents have a Mac too. Parental Control is set on it to stop them breaking things by accident. (After all, the Parental Control feature is provided to allow you to control parents in this manner, right?) This confuses them greatly when I change the desktop background to be a surprising picture and they can't change it back. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 01:07, 2 January 2013 (UTC) " is also a mistake or a humor? 50.174.76.70 (talk) 17:01, 20 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Those diffs are from 15 and 9 months ago respectively, why the sudden interest now? And why are you asking Jimbo Wales about this rather than User:Demiurge1000? 94.196.139.22 (talk) 17:04, 20 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

This is the continuation of a discussion that Jimbo and an anonymous user have been having here for some weeks. Delicious carbuncle (talk) 17:07, 20 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

^ http://www.jutarnji.hr/jimmy-wales--srbi-i-hrvati-ne-smiju-imati-odvojene-wikipedije/1126205/

[1] ttp://www.jutarnji.hr/jimmy-wales--srbi-i-hrvati-ne-smiju-imati-odvojene-wikipedije/1126205/

[1]