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

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.

Daily pageviews of User:Jimbo Wales

A graph should have been displayed here but graphs are temporarily disabled.

This talkpage has been mentioned by a media organization:

Matthew Gault (8 December 2021). "Wikipedia Editors Very Mad About Jimmy Wales' NFT of a Wikipedia Edit". Vice Media. The trouble began when Wales posted an announcement about the auction on his user talk page—a kind of message board where users communicate directly with each other.

Another bunch of paid spammers heard from

Wiki Encyclopedia Inc.

"we excel in researching, editing, writing and monitoring your brand's Wikipedia page; making sure that it precisely represents your business the way you want!"
Promises SEO optimization; monitoring and reversal of edits by "outsiders", and that no unfavourable edits are made; client approval of submissions; and that deleted articles will be restored [1]
Claims:

"1100+ The Wikipedia Profiles

14+ Years of expereince [sic]

185+ Countries served

1240+ Happy clients"

--Orange Mike | Talk 16:21, 20 May 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I hope the WMF gets the new TOS provisions (proposed here, sections 4 and 14) in place soon and starts using it! — Mdaniels5757 (talk • contribs) 21:31, 21 May 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

This is just the latest front for WP:PAIDLIST#Abtach. SmartSE (talk) 09:06, 22 May 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

The Signpost: 22 May 2023

News and notes: Golden parachutes: Record severance payments at Wikimedia Foundation

In the media: History, propaganda and censorship

Arbitration report: Final decision in "World War II and the history of Jews in Poland"

Recent research: Create or curate, cooperate or compete? Game theory for Wikipedia editors

Featured content: A very musical week for featured articles

Traffic report: Coronation, chatbot, celebs

WikiProject report: Wikipedians Convene for Queering Wikipedia 2023: The First International LGBT+ Wikipedia Conference

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 08:39, 22 May 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Paid editing spreading across wikis

Hello, Jimbo! As a defender of Wikipedia from spammers, specially those in violation of Terms of Use, I suggest a more careful look for edits outside of English Wikipedia. I am starting to notice many spammers that are blocked here on en.wiki, but left unblocked everywhere else and keeping up with the highly suspicious edits.

For instance BIB6310, that is blocked here for being a sock, but went across many other large projects doing the same, most recently on Portuguese Wikipedia. If an editor violates Terms of Use, I believe they should be prevented from doing it everywhere. I will probably lock all socks of Anne Barrington, but I believe we should start thinking on some sort of automatic process for such cases, like requesting immediately lock for accounts in violation of ToU. Do you think we should enforce that?

Kind regards. —Teles «Talk to me˱_{M @ C S}˲» 19:32, 22 May 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

While there are some obvious challenges, I actually suspect this is a very clever avenue to pursue change. The first issue that springs to mind is that someone might be very well behaved on one language wiki, but go to another language and behave badly and get blocked, and that's very different from the kind of cross-language abuse accounts that you are talking about. Distinguishing between those would be important.

In terms of forecasting the near future, I would anticipate that the ~~right~~ rise of large language models with very good multi-lingual capabilities will probably give rise to new forms of cross-language abuse. Why spam in only one language, if you can spam in 200 for no additional cost? Gross, but that's going to be a thing.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 09:53, 23 May 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

This would seemingly be putting a lot of additional work onto stewards and I think cases like this are the exception rather than the rule. I know that for some sockrings who are known for crosswiki abuse we already globally lock them too. It would be interesting to be able to view all the edits to other wikis by users who are blocked on one wiki though. SmartSE (talk) 10:19, 23 May 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I think the latter is what I have in mind as a baby step. One thing to consider - but there are many many elements to consider - is that the exact role of stewards versus local admins is not a fact of phsyical reality but just how we have done things (for good reason). I can envision a system whereby local admins can help other wikis by blocking obvious spam accounts globally. I'm not saying that's an obvious first step, just encouraging that we don't have to think that local admins can't usefully help other language admins. A slightly milder version than enabling global blocking for local admins would be some kind of notification system where a user who is blocked in one language and tagged as "obvious spammer" is automatically highlighted to admins in other wikis where they are active.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 11:00, 23 May 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

A global user block mechanism does not currently exist. A feature request, phab:T17294, has been open since 2008 to build this functionality; interested developers are welcome to work on it. A global RFC would be needed to define when it would be able to be used. A technical design consideration would be if a local project should be able to whitelist past it as they can global IP blocks. — xaosflux ^Talk 13:38, 23 May 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Did you mean "the rise of large language models"? Or have they formed political factions already? Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 10:27, 23 May 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Lol, thank you, yes that was a typo - corrected now!--Jimbo Wales (talk) 10:56, 23 May 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Thank you and some thoughts and advice

Thank you for creating Wikipedia all those years ago. And for welcoming in contributors like me who didn't know shit about anything. Thank you for the Bomis babes, too. But seriously, thank you for being a believer in principles, and culture. You haven't died, but you are being managed into retirement, and this is right and as it should be, and you surely were expecting it for a long time. Take it from me. But, I do urge you to really look at the Planet Earth a little more closely. This project could be a model for so much. It's capitalist libertarians like some of your friends who insist that profit is at the root of all human enterprise. Wikipedia exists as a shining counterexample to this. Human cooperation can and should be oriented around helpfulness, kindness, pursuit of rational inquiry and knowledge and free culture. That means incentives oriented around the community and culture. There is still a rot afoot on this planet and in this project. It arises from those who believe that truth and facts may be discarded when convenient, and that every issue has 2 symmetrical sides, even when one is rooted in a lie and the other in fundamental rationality. So your willing retirement and acceptance of a prophet role would be encouraged and welcome for the growth of intelligence on this project and planet, but right now, your alignment has drifted, but it's not too late to course correct. Neutrality is admirable, but neutrality means not creating artificial sides when some sides disqualify themselves. Wikipedia has always understood that. Andre🚐 17:40, 26 May 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]