User talk:Jimbo Wales

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Systemic bias

One of the main focuses of my editing recently has been philosophers, specifically women philosophers. I've written a couple dozen articles recently myself, and have been preparing to launch a Wikiproject about it, but have barely touched the surface of what is to be done. One biography that stood out as a particularly egregious omission was that of Alison Jaggar. One of Jaggar's books has been cited by more than 2,000 academic publications, an astounding number, especially given that philosophy is generally an undercited field. She has an h-index in the 90's, which is approaching Einstein's level. She is generally credited with teaching the first class about feminist philosophy ever to have been caught, and she co-founded the first women's studies department in the world. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy's article about feminist ethics literally states that "Alison Jaggar's summary of the fourfold function of feminist ethics cannot be improved upon in any significant way." That is a huge claim in any field, and I don't think I've ever seen a single remotely comparable claim in philosophy.

I'm not going to ask why we didn't have an article about Alison Jaggar. I understand that well enough. 90% of Wikipedia editors are men, and most are not philosophers. Philosophy as a field has a significant gender skew itself. It makes a lot of sense that these demographic biases would synergize in a way that would mean we would end up without articles about people like Alison Jaggar. The fact that there's a reasonable explanation for it does not, however, make it okay. Instead of asking why the article was missing, I would like to pose a different question: Given that we're the #1 source of information in the world, how is it morally conscionable that because of our systemic biases we are missing articles about people like Alison Jaggar? Five hundred million people a month look at us as their initial source of information - far more priority needs to be placed on trying to figure out how to address the systemic bias issues that plague Wikipedia. Systemic bias issues are painted as a core aim of the Foundation, but it seems like it's not necessarily being resourced appropriately. Kevin Gorman (talk) 21:44, 21 September 2013 (UTC)

You appear to be extrapolating from an anecdote to a claim of systemic bias. What is the evidence that notable/famous women philosophers are under represented on wikipedia beyond an anecdotes? As a curiosity, why did WikiProject feminism not create this article if the person has such influence within feminism? Why aren't you using works devoted to Alison Jaggar if there is a comparison to Einstein (Einstein's H-index is listed as 167 [1] by google scholar). I checked Jaggar's H index with google scholar and yet I don't see 90 papers with at least 90 citations each, indeed it appears to be significantly lower than that: [2] (looks about H-index 26), where does your H-index claim come from? IRWolfie- (talk) 22:08, 21 September 2013 (UTC)

My google scholar gadget set up to process the names she's published with puts Jaggar's index at 76. Sorry for the double mistake, and an out-and-out comparison to Einstein probably wasn't appropriate, but I would still challenge anyone to find any academic with a citation index that high not represented on Wikipedia. Kevin Gorman (talk) 22:33, 21 September 2013 (UTC)

I don't have your gadget but it may be including others by the name of A Jaggar. I suggest looking at the actual publications, perhaps listing the highest cited and manually counting. Also [3] 107. IRWolfie- (talk) 00:04, 22 September 2013 (UTC)

IRWolfie-, there are several relevant research papers linked at meta:Gender gap. They find, generally, that women are underrepresented unless the women are at the very top of their fields. To give one specific example from memory, you can count on us having an article for all women winning an Oscar for best actress, but when you look at film actors and actresses below that extremely high level, we are more likely to write articles about the males than the females. (Not something from research I've read, but the dynamic is probably reversed for porn stars. Grad students in search of an interesting thesis topic should take note of the opportunity. .) WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:52, 22 September 2013 (UTC)

There is an obvious basis for bias that a mostly-male editing population will have paid little attention to feminist theory. It probably doesn't help that Wikipedia doesn't regard "forums" as part of its normal operation - perhaps we can discuss it momentarily here, and people can ask specific questions at Humanities Refdesk, or discuss it somewhat within the generally remote environs of a WikiProject, but there's no really proper and encouraged place for us to hash over, classify, organize, and archive our reactions and original thought about the ideas in, say, that extraordinary claim you cited (even though it might lead us back to actual references). For example, to quote your source, all feminist approaces to ethics seek to (1) articulate moral critiques of actions and practices that perpetuate women's subordination; (2) prescribe morally justifiable ways of resisting such actions and practices; (3) envision morally desirable alternatives for such actions and practices; and (4) take women's moral experience seriously, though not uncritically (Jaggar, “Feminist Ethics,” 1992). Yet just off the top of my head, I would think that feminism should encompass far more than this - for example, a consideration of the moral decision making surrounding unhealthy behavior that might affect a fetus, with the goal of deciding what women should be expected to do or not do in order to avoid teratogenesis. Much the same with nursing. Also analysis of surrogate parenthood. Of the effects of different levels of parental commitment to gestation on expected behaviors of the sexes, and second-order effects of assumptions made based on this (i.e. if you suppose that women will be less promiscuous due to biology, and your behavior reflects that prejudice) I think that even a largely-male group of editors is perfectly capable of becoming interested in feminist theory and doing more to document the major thinkers, if there is a way to recruit them to become interested - but we don't really provide such a way. Wnt (talk) 07:20, 22 September 2013 (UTC)

Just woke up (yes, I sleep a ton,) but for clarity: that claim was explicitly about feminist approaches to ethics, not feminism as a whole. Feminist ethics is more or less a subfield, her claims weren't intended to apply to feminism as a whole. I'll be piping in elsewhere in this thread shortly. And yeah, I agree with you both that it's an expected bias and that a largely-male group of editors would be perfectly capable of documenting the area should they choose to. Jaggar (and feminism in general) is just one area where our bias is evident, although I think it's a pretty good example area. The problem is the bias occurs over and over again in a huge number of areas, and relatively little is being done to try to address it. Kevin Gorman (talk) 20:48, 22 September 2013 (UTC)

That is about the gender gap specifically, not systemic bias, IRWolfie- (talk) 09:17, 22 September 2013 (UTC)

You don't seem to have read the academic research articles listed at the gender gap page. They say things like "Our findings confirm the presence of a...gender-oriented disparity in the content of Wikipedia’s articles.". That's about a systemic bias in the content of articles, not merely about the gender of the editors. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:17, 23 September 2013 (UTC)

I have addressed that further down, IRWolfie- (talk) 22:40, 23 September 2013 (UTC)

I did misspeak; I should've said in the 80's (80's, iirc,) rather than the 90's; Einstein's had been showing up around 100 for me. I realize there's a pretty big difference between the 80's and the 100's, but it does drive home the point that Jaggar was a really, *really* significant missing academic. I'd challenge anyone to find an academic with a comparable citation index who isn't mentioned on Wikipedia. I'll rerun the numbers now, but 26 certainly isn't the case. I'm in the process of compiling a more evidence based demonstration that notable women philosophers are significantly represented, but felt like a conversation about how we prioritize dealing with issues of systemic bias could use a kickstart ahead of time. Kevin Gorman (talk) 22:17, 21 September 2013 (UTC)

Before a conversation about how to deal with systemic bias there should be an agreed methodology for detecting systemic bias. That would first involve performing an analysis of the reliable secondary sources to determine if they have a systemic bias and thus to rule out that effect (Correcting for a bias in the literature would require expertise, something wikipedia with its cult of the amateur does not have the ability to help with, it also borders on WP:RGW). Most wikipedia editors are men therefore they write about men is fallacious reasoning and to a certain extent sexist in that it assumes something along the lines of "Men only edit men things, women on edit women things". IRWolfie- (talk) 22:22, 21 September 2013 (UTC)

There's a growing body of empirical peer-reviewed evidence that has demonstrated that we *do* experience significant systemic bias, and there's been but limited criticism of it as far as I know. I'll dig up some studies shortly (I have a feeling this is going to be a rather quickly growing thread), but Joseph Reagle at NYU among many other people have published on the topic. (There are also, FWIW, empirically documented differences in editing patterns between men and women.) Kevin Gorman (talk) 22:26, 21 September 2013 (UTC)

And who do you propose should be interpreting said peer reviewed evidence? No offence, but the thought of a pile of amateurs trying to interpret any body of peer reviewed literature and making judgement calls based on them sounds like it would be doomed to failure. I doubt many editors who would chime in to such a discussion would unduly burden themselves down with the task of reading the literature. Amateur hour is a necessary evil in terms of writing the encyclopedia itself, we assign weight based on the preponderance of coverage a view gets in reliable sources but that would be a disaster for identifying bias in wikipedia itself; it would be tantamount to accepting the literature amongst reliable sources with no critical evaluation whatsoever. IRWolfie- (talk) 22:37, 21 September 2013 (UTC)

There are several options here: ignore a problem that has been documented in multiple peer-reviewed journal articles. Read and evaluate the articles themselves if you have the necessary background to do so (I do.) Trust the peer-review process the articles underwent, and accept their conclusions that we have a problem fairly uncritically. Having read the relevant literature (and witnessed its effects in my day to day editing,) I don't think that ignoring the problem is a terribly good way to move forward. I think that more research, far greater funding of projects aimed at reducing this bias (including evaluating those programs to see what works and what doesn't,) and greater awareness of the problem would be a good set of initial steps forward. BTW: I left my study list on my thumb drive at home, but will throw up a bunch later. To jump to a different realm altogether, take a look at these two images: points from the Geonames database plotted on a map, Geotagged Wikipedia articles plotted on a map - I think they serve as pretty self-evident demonstration of systemic bias in another part of Wikipedia. Kevin Gorman (talk) 22:48, 21 September 2013 (UTC)

I have no idea whether you have the ability to "read and evaluate the articles themselves" at an expert level. I can merely note that you have stated as such, although the age your page indicates and that you don't appear to be an academic in the area does make that somewhat implausible. Back to the main point: editorial decisions by non-experts only get us so far. Once you decide to evaluate the peer reviewed literature and make very large drastic changes based on non-expert consensus when it requires expertise then there are significant problems. The discussions are a free for all where any editor without expertise can chime in in as incompetent a manner as they see fit without having read any of the literature if his rhetoric is sufficiently good. Wikipedia is based around effectiveness at debate, not of the quality of arguments. There is no mechanism to guarantee people have even read any of the text at all before commenting. Expecting a group which largely will consist of non-experts with no onus on them to make informed decision to then actually make good decisions is fanciful. You need experts to notice the nuances, what is missing or the subtle twist. Now, a sufficiently neutral summary of the articles on your thumbdrive could be made by wikipedians. It wouldn't be perfect, far from it, and it would probably make an expert cringe but it would be fine for an encyclopedia to cover it. The issue is when you use that write up to make editorial decisions based on believing that the encyclopedia content to be necessarily true. If you want to detect systemic bias, commission independent experts (no wikipedia editors please) to write a report with recommendations, IRWolfie- (talk) 23:54, 21 September 2013 (UTC)

You seem to be suggesting that, since the average Wikipedian may not be able to have a completely informed view of our systemic bias issues, we should not discuss them. This is rather (okay, really fucking) confusing to me, since it seems to be equivalent to suggesting that the status quo is acceptable. This was intended to be a thread to discuss approaches to the situation; frankly, commissioning independent experts to write a report with recommendations about how to tackle the problem seems to me to be a perfectly reasonable suggestion, and the exact kind of suggestion I was hoping would arise out of this thread, minus all the bollocks. The Wikimedia movement spends what is it now, something like sixty million a year movement wide? And this discussion is occurring on the talk page of a trustee of WMF, and being at least tangentially monitored by at least one additional trustee (since I was in a room with her earlier today.) We are emphatically not doing an okay job handling these issues currently; we need new tactics if we're going to have much luck doing so going forward. I think your suggestion is at least potentially a legitimately good one, and it's certainly something that is within the capabilities of the Wikimedia movement. I would appreciate it if you would stick to making similarly productive points (and seriously, that does seem like an idea worth considering,) and cut the crud. Kevin Gorman (talk) 05:24, 22 September 2013 (UTC)

You saw a gap in coverage, and created the article on the 18th. That's the idea behind a crowd-sourced encyclopedia; whining because someone else didn't do it before you did is pointless. Tarc (talk) 22:14, 21 September 2013 (UTC)

Individual missing articles are to be expected; the significant systemic bias that Wikipedia, as an encyclopedia experiences, is a significantly different issue. I'm rerunning the citation indexes currently, but would challenge you to find any academic more prominent than Jaggar who doesn't currently have a page. If you manage to find one, I'd make a bet that the person is either a woman, or from a non-anglophone country. Kevin Gorman (talk) 22:20, 21 September 2013 (UTC)

I don't see initiating discussions about how we can better address gaps in our coverage of certain topic areas to be "whining". Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 22:28, 21 September 2013 (UTC)

• Comment. I own a book by Alison Jaggar (Living With Contradictions). Except it is not really by her, it is edited by her. Looking at the publications mentioned in the article, the same thing might apply to a number of them. I don't know how the index on Google scholar works, but might someone's score be inflated if their books are often cited for someone else's words? I say that without prejudice to the substance of the discussion - Cullen328's comment above is quite right. Formerip (talk) 23:23, 21 September 2013 (UTC)

The original poster has a good point. I wouldn't be surprised if there are weaknesses and biases here, because of our demographic. He got lot of flack, which hopefully he wasn't surprised by, since you can get flack here for most anything (which is not necessarily an entirely bad thing). The original poster probably was over the top a bit with the hyperbole ("how is it morally conscionable that... we are missing articles about people like Alison Jaggar?", bolded) It's arguably a moral failure, but we're not monsters; save that kind of language for denouncing dictators and so forth, I'd advise. We have gaps. I'd bet that engineers aren't horribly underrepresented here, but to my surprise I recently found that we didn't have an article on the National Society of Professional Engineers which has been around since 1934. So I made one, albeit stubby, and that's part of the solution. Sometimes a gap is just a gap. But, the original poster is justified in raising these questions, and if it's a large gap he can't be expected to fix it all himself, and so recruiting help to fix these gaps may well be called for, and I welcome such an erudite editor in such a difficult and (probably) underrepresented area, and so should we all. Herostratus (talk) 02:54, 22 September 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for your kind words. You are right that the flak wasn't unexpected, although I was expecting a bit more positivity as well. I would like to point out that there is definitely a difference between a morally unconscionable situation and someone themselves being morally unconscionable; morally unconscionable situations occur with some frequency on Wikipedia, but I certainly don't view Wikipedians or the WMF as morally abhorrent. If I did, I probably wouldn't have thousands of edits, have flown across the country three or four times for Wikipedia-related business, or have contracted with the Foundation. Sometimes a gap is just a gap; sometimes it isn't. When gaps occur with significantly more frequency in one area than another, it is telling, and is a problem. I got home late and haven't bothered digging up the full set of studies I have laying around here somewhere, but the map I linked above is pretty solid evidence that these gaps do occur with far greater frequency with some areas and topics than in others. When we're viewed by 500 million people a month, I view that as a *gigantic* problem, and one that the Wikimedia movement as a whole, as well as the WMF and ENWP are taking no where near appropriate action to address. I think that we need to pretty urgently begin to put far more time and resources (which yes, will likely include money) in to this problem before it becomes even worse than it currently is. Kevin Gorman (talk) 05:24, 22 September 2013 (UTC)

• So, what we have here is someone telling us that:
  • Wikipedia does not have an article on every notable subject that would be appropriate under its editorial policies. We already knew that.
  • Wikipedia has articles on whatever its volunteers have to date felt like creating articles on. We knew that, too. Wikipedia is incomplete and will always be incomplete, so long as the world keeps changing, new people keep becoming notable, and the scope of human knowledge keeps expanding.
• So yes, by all means, if you see a gap, fill it. If you see a big gap, then absolutely, enlist the help of others to fill it. This is a collaborative project, after all. But don't call the rest of us morally unconscionable because that's not our area of interest or we didn't notice it beforehand. That'll just get you pushback and not help at all. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 03:24, 22 September 2013 (UTC)

If you think I've called you or Wikipedians as a whole morally unconscionable, please provide a diff. There's a big difference between a morally unconscionable situation, and a morally unconscionable person. We have massive systemic gaps in our content, and as a movement we are doing - bluntly - pretty close to nothing to try to address them. I absolutely view it as a moral duty of one of the most widely used sources of information in the world to take action to address these gaps - far more action than we have so far taken. (And if you doubt the existence of massive systemic bias in Wikipedia, I'd again reiterate my suggestion earlier: find an academic more prominent than Jaggar who is not either a woman or minority who isn't already mentioned on Wikipedia. It's certainly not the only part of Wikipedia effected by systemic bias, but it makes a damn good illustration of it.) Kevin Gorman (talk) 05:29, 22 September 2013 (UTC)

I did actually take up your challenge to find academics more cited than Alison Jaggar (c. H-index 76 per your estimate) who do not have Wikipedia articles, mostly because I suspected it would be quite easy to find, for instance in the natural sciences. So I searched for white male natural scientists without articles on English Wikipedia. The most cited scientist I found via just a couple of spotchecks was Carl-Henrik Heldin with a stellar H-index of 127 in the highly prestigious field of cancer research. In the Anglo sphere, I found Roger Nicoll, a neuroscientist with a H-index of c. 115 (my estimate). The impression I get is that in the natural sciences you can actually be pretty close to Nobel Prize level, and still not have an article on English Wikipedia. On the other side, I believe you should search long and hard to find any established top male soccer player without a Wikipedia article. (I’ll try to expand and improve the Heldin and Nicoll articles a little bit, and would very much appreciate help from editors who understand molecular cell biology and/or neuroscience better than I do). Regards, Iselilja (talk) 11:03, 23 September 2013 (UTC)

That's actually pretty damn impressive; I am legitimately surprised to find anyone with an h-index of 127 without an article. I would point out that citation metrics differ significantly between fields, and an h-index of 76 in philosophy is a lot different than an h-index of 127 in cancer research (more cancer research journals are indexed, cancer papers tend to be cited more often, etc,) but either way, that's quite impressive. I'd also point out that he isn't the founder of a discipline taught in almost every major US university. That's not to denigrate him in the least - an hindex of 127 is ridiculously high to be missing - just to point out that stature wise, there are still differences. Curiously, Heldin's work on TGF is actually directly relevant to my genetic condition as well. I'll try to expand his article within the next few weeks. (I'd also point out that he's not a US based researcher, which may have something to do with it.) I'll poke at Nicoll's as I can as well. Kevin Gorman (talk) 19:53, 23 September 2013 (UTC)

Do you have a citation for Jaggar as the founder of women's studies? AFAICT, it's very unlikely because a number of departments seem to have been set up before Jaggar completed her post-grad studies. Formerip (talk) 20:06, 23 September 2013 (UTC)

It's looking like I'd have to head to the library for a book source for this, which I do not have time to do today, but: Jaggar was heavily involved in the organizing of the Women's Studies Department at SUNY Buffalo, which was founded at about the same time as SDSU's department - the first two in the world. I've seen her described as a co-founder in at least one paper source. She also was co-editor of Feminist Frameworks, the first major Women's Studies reader. Women's studies courses had been taught before SUNY Buffalo, but no full departments had existed. She certainly doesn't deserve sole credit, but that's still a pretty freaking big deal. Kevin Gorman (talk) 20:12, 23 September 2013 (UTC)

I'm not suggesting she is insignificant. San Diego state seems to be the first WS department (in 1970), with SYNY Buffalo following soon after. If Jaggar was involved in it, this would have been as a post-grad, so she unlikely to have been the major driving-force. According to her cv she left 2 terms (probably) prior to the start of the actual programme in 1971 (note also that she is not mentioned on this webpage). So it might be that she was somehow involved in women's studies during its infancy, but it would be quite an exaggeration to say she is its "founder". Formerip (talk) 21:34, 23 September 2013 (UTC)

So she's not the founder and her H index is not near what was originally claimed. That makes me wonder about the other statement which was "She is generally credited with teaching the first class about feminist philosophy ever to have been caught", IRWolfie- (talk) 22:38, 23 September 2013 (UTC)

Well, assuming no lectures of Fourier, JS Mill, Wolstenholme, De Cleyre, the Pankhurts, Beauvoir etc were ever caught, I am willing to assume good faith on this point of fact. Formerip (talk) 01:01, 24 September 2013 (UTC)

• Let's reboot this thread a little. Wikipedia has a massive problem with systemic bias, as is well illustrated by the published research on the issue, as well as anecdotal evidence and fun things like the geonames vs wikipedia geotagged maps I linked earlier. When we're viewed by five hundred million people a month, this is a big problem - in my mind at least, probably one of our biggest. Most of the strategies we've tried to address this so far have not tilted the lever. So, what can we do as a movement to begin to address our bias in a meaningful way? I'm actually a fan of the suggestion made earlier in this thread of commissioning a report from outside experts (though I'd have to think a bit about what an appropriate group of experts would be,) with actionable recommendations. What are your (and by that I mean anyone reading this) thoughts about tactics that we have not yet tried that might have greater impact than what we've done so far? Kevin Gorman (talk) 05:34, 22 September 2013 (UTC)

I agree with you completely and your words have a great impact on me. I am sorry for the push-back that you've gotten here, and invite everyone who pushed back to give this another think-through. It is a morally untenable situation. I think that you've identified one big component of the solution, and engaged in another big component of the solution. One big component is "resourcing" by the Foundation, broadly construed. Exactly how resources (money) can be most' usefully deployed is less clear, but I'd put a big bet on outreach programs. But the other component, one that I think is equally important, is increasing awareness in the community of how hostile responses to people who want to talk about this problem are themselves part of the problem.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 06:54, 22 September 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply; I initially was hoping this discussion would've gone in a more productive way overall. (Ironically, I was sitting in a room with about a dozen other Wikipedians and some WMF folk at the time, and don't think any of them expected the conversation to be half this hijacked.) Unfortunately, I don't think that this thread can now serve as a productive space for actually discussing potetial solutions. In the relatively near future I will probably try to start a discussion in a different forum with a more structured start so that a more productive conversation can hopefully occur (I may also drop you an email in the interim.) Unless you disagree with me about the likelihood of anything productive coming out of the future of this thread, I'd honestly invite you to hat it. Kevin Gorman (talk) 21:03, 22 September 2013 (UTC)

The initial claims were that wikipedia didn't have an article with someone on par with Einstein in terms of citations, and that therefore there is a "morally unconscionable" systemic bias here about feminist studies. A minor probing at the issue reveals that the individual is not on par with Einstein in terms of citations or notability or anywhere near it, but rather things have been overstated quite a lot (also I think article existence isn't the best criteria to use to judge bias, rather editor attention through edit counts would be). If someone starts by overstating their case that doesn't help the situation. It simply does not follow that an anecdote necessarily reveals a systemic bias. Perhaps if the discussion had centred around a discussion of published research .... IRWolfie- (talk) 09:47, 22 September 2013 (UTC)

Please IRWolfie, go read this. I really, sincerely, seriously doubt that your response to *any* conversation regarding systemic bias would have been different, regardless of the tone I had used. Systemic bias in Wikipedia is an incredibly well documented phenomenon, and has drawn enough attention in the past that addressing it made it in to the Foundation's last five year strategic plan. Did I moderately overstate my initial claim? Yes, I certainly did. Is that an adequate reason to hijack an entire conversation about a serious issue that has been documented in peer-reviewed literature, significant anecdotal experience, and has been considered serious enough to make it in to the strategic plan? No, it isn't. Kevin Gorman (talk) 21:03, 22 September 2013 (UTC)

You seem to have misunderstood what I have said. I don't overly care about your tone, I care about the argument you made to back up your case which was poor. Can you stop referring to the Hallowed Literature (which you have done in multiple places), and instead cite it so we know what you are talking about exactly "X says Y" etc. If you want to demonstrate there is a problem you need to link to the empirical studies not bring up an anecdote. IRWolfie- (talk) 09:25, 23 September 2013 (UTC)

I assume you accept that Wikipedia and the Wikimedia movement in general has a significant gendergap. If not, then you've really not been paying attention to very much movement news, so I'm not going to dig in to all of the research covering it. Moving to something that isn't exactly a statistically rigorous study (but I also wouldn't brush off as anecdotal,) this Signpost article is quite enlightening. Moving on to more serious literature, this study suggests quite strongly that men and women focus on different content areas in their Wikipedia editing, and that content primarily of interest to women is significantly less covered than content primarily of interest to men. Reagle, Rhue in the IJC in 2011 found that Wikipedia is more likely to be missing articles about women than missing articles about men (though didn't find significant differences where articles did exist) - sorry, don't have a link handy. Halavais and Lackaff, 2008 confirmed that significant systemic bias exists in Wikipedia, where hard sciences tend to be well covered, and social sciences, humanities, medicine, and law don't tend to be. Callahan and Herring, 2011, suggest strongly that ENWP suffers from a strong Americentric bias, wherein topics about American subjects receive not only more and better coverage, but more positive coverage than is warranted. These two maps demonstrate are geographic bias quite well - in the first, each dot of light represents a place in the GeoNames database, in the second, each dot of light represents a geotagged Wikipedia article. Our obvious demographic skew alone should be enough to convince any reasonable person we suffer from significant systemic bias. I could keep going - there's plenty of more where that came from - but if you've somehow missed the point that ENWP has significant systemic bias, I'm not sure I can help you see it. We suffer from significant systemic bias, we're doing little to address it, and it is so significant as to arguably represent a form of erasure. That is not an okay situation. Kevin Gorman (talk) 19:48, 23 September 2013 (UTC)

I didn't claim systematic bias doesn't exist, I merely noted that you hadn't demonstrated the particular case you initially set out to highlight. I have no particular issue accepting that there is a US centric bias on wikipedia due to the strong US demographic, although I think geotagged wikipedia articles are a poor way to demonstrate it since most articles are stubs that are created and then abandoned (there are editors that have lists of villages and create an article for every village in the list. There are about 4.3 million articles, most of them utter rubbish except for about 200k of them. On the paper by Lam et al, I'll focus on "F-Coverage-Worse: Coverage of topics with particular interest to females is inferior to topics with particular interest to males". The data for their analysis is from 2008, I don't see why that would be representative of current editing.

A few things I notice anyway: they judge quality by article length. That is, they aren't judging how complete the coverage is in terms of content, and are using length for a proxy of quality. They also assume that those who self identify as female or male are representative of the wikipedia editors who have registered account and IP editors. They also assume that articles in "male" topics (such as science) should be of equal to length to "female" topics (such as articles on people and the arts). They also only look at "high-activity articles where we knew the gender of at least 30 editor" (whether that means those currently identifying and looking back or those that identified at the time when they searched I'm not sure). Interestingly the data set appears to exclude the popular culture/games, films and books articles/US hurricanes/breaking news articles which appears to attract much focus in editing on wikipedia. Interestingly, they identify Biographies as "female" and say they have less coverage, yet there are 1,146,156 of them, and much much fewer science articles; their criteria for coverage is very odd. The coverage could be lower because the topic area is much much larger and editing is more diffuse; I haven't looked at the paper in sufficient detail for that. How does this relate to feminist philosophers? IRWolfie- (talk) 22:10, 23 September 2013 (UTC)

Because a discussion about systemic bias started off with an example of a feminist philosopher, it must exclusively discuss feminist philosophy? Wut?~ Kevin Gorman (talk)

Is the discussion you want about geographical systemic bias, claims about system bias against feminists or about systemic bias generally? There already is a wikiproject for countering systemic bias. Wikipedia appears to have a bias against academia generally in favour of pop culture and I have noticed other academic disciplines that receive little attention on wikipedia, so I think focussing on feminism specifically is necessary. Anecdotally, consider how poor our article is on Atomic physics and the articles generally surrounding it. What's also interesting is that fringe theories appear to often receive more attention than mainstream subjects; the astrology article [4] has received twice the number of edits than medicine article: [5], and 2000 more edts than [6]. IRWolfie- (talk) 10:01, 22 September 2013 (UTC)

About systemic bias generally. It's evident in a huge number of areas, one being the anecdote I started with (it's pretty frigging unusual for the founder of a discipline found in almost every university in the US to have no article,) another being well demonstrated by the geonames maps that I'm pretty sure I've already linked in this thread, and a whole 'nother set being documented in the literature. Kevin Gorman (talk) 21:03, 22 September 2013 (UTC)

• Also consider below: "#Systemic omissions and overmerging". -Wikid77 12:29, 22 September 2013 (UTC)

@Kevin G. - I really hate this whole line of argument. One anecdotal omission does not "systemic bias" make. If something is missing, add it! That's what WP is all about. The real "systemic bias" that should be of concern to all of us is the emphasis on pop culture over hard information. Carrite (talk) 23:27, 22 September 2013 (UTC)

One anecdotal omission does not "systemic bias" make, although a high enough number of them certainly point that way. You may have noticed, I did add it... and twenty something other missing women philosophers in the process, with more to come. If you don't accept anecdotal evidence for systemic bias and don't accept... well.. peer-reviewed statistical evidence for systemic bias (see the studies that have been linked in this thread... or go to google scholar,) then what the hell *would* you accept as evidence of systemic bias? I'm going to step back from engaging with people who aggressively fail to see systemic bias despite the mountain of evidence, both anecdotal and peer-reviewed, that points towards it, though, since I doubt it would be productive to continue. Kevin Gorman (talk) 23:49, 22 September 2013 (UTC)

The plural of anecdote is not data, do you expect anecdotes to be accepted (Anecdotes#Qualification_as_evidence)? You find deficiencies in an area of wikipedia in which you are knowledgeable, is that surprising? I would be surprised if anyone with academic interests has not noted major deficiencies in their area. But which areas do you not find deficiencies in? What are you comparing them to? Where are these studies you talk about which you say where linked to in this thread (there was a link to gender gap studies which != systemic bias in terms of topics) and why aren't we discussing them instead (I would think that would be much more fruitful)? IRWolfie- (talk) 09:35, 23 September 2013 (UTC)

• @Gorman, You posted about a deficiency in Feminist philosophers at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Feminism#missing_women_philosophers, but no one there appeared to be overly interested in that specific sub-project (and this doesn't mean I think there is a systemic bias here, I would wager most academic subjects have major deficiencies). Feminist philosophy is a niche academic subject, and like nearly all niche academic subjects on wikipedia, there are going to be few editors who are specifically interested. You are currently filling in the gaps and have made good progress. How is it a systemic problem if you fixing it right now and are about half way through? i.e what further action is necessary if you are fixing the issues? Have you perhaps tried asking for anyone interested from WP:WOMENSCI? IRWolfie- (talk) 09:51, 23 September 2013 (UTC)

I'm halfway through fixing the underrepresentation of women philosophers on Wikipedia? Did I suddenly write another hundred and fifty articles in my sleep or something? It is a significant error to assume that the relatively small list of people I included on my subpage is near comprehensive. I have a larger list I haven't posted yet of around 200 probably notable scholars who I have not yet individually checked, and that's just including living people. Before I started my writing spree, the concatenation of living people with women philosophers led to the conclusion that there were about 115 articles about living women philosophers on ENWP. I couldn't find a way to do a similar category concatenation without crashing toolserver to examine living male philosophers, but examination by hand showed that they were significantly overrepresented, even acknowledging the fact that they are overrepresented in the field itself. More importantly, however, this issue goes way beyond just one field. Wikipedia's systemic biases are legion, and as a project and movement, we are doing very little work (in comparison with what is required) towards fixing them. And yes, I was actually just talking about you with some of the womsci people on facebook about you yesterday, but thanks for the suggestion :P. Also.. I'm a bit confused as to how a field that has a related department at almost every major college or university in the US is a 'niche' subject. Kevin Gorman (talk) 20:02, 23 September 2013 (UTC)

"I was actually just talking about you with some of the womsci people on facebook about you yesterday". It's nice to see I require such clandestine discussions. "... that has a related department at almost every major college or university in the US is ..." I would be very very surprised if most universities in America had a department of feminist philosophy. I would be very surprised if any of them did, but maybe I'm just not familiar with US universities ... over the pond they are less common certainly ... IRWolfie- (talk) 21:10, 23 September 2013 (UTC)

Most US universities have Women's Studies programs. Kevin Gorman (talk) 21:19, 23 September 2013 (UTC)

You've shifted the goal posts. First you said departments, now you are talking about programs. You were talking about a deficiency in feminist philosophy. That is most definitely niche. IRWolfie- (talk) 22:33, 23 September 2013 (UTC)

...Seriously dude? Pretty much all US universities, barring some of the religious ones have women's studies departments. Pardon me for saying 'program' rather than 'department.' Jaggar's texts are regularly assigned in almost every university in the country. I wasn't - and have never been - talking exclusively about a deficiency in feminist philosophy. I used an example - who happened to be a feminist philosopher - to point out that we are doing exceedingly little to address our egregious systemic biases. I can't tell if you are intentionally trolling or just unintentionally doing so, but am done engaging with you. Kevin Gorman (talk) 23:49, 23 September 2013 (UTC)

By the way, what's with the "women philosophers"? That's not even proper English. It's female philosophers... or is it? Because feminist philosophy is practiced by feminist philosophers, and feminist philosophers can be of any number of sexes and genders. The OP should recognize that the dragon he is seeking to slay lies hidden in his own first paragraph --- because if we unconsciously assume that feminist philosophy is something that can only be practiced by women, of course men will tend to ignore it. And even if Wikipedia had 50% women, that would mean that feminist philosophers would still be 50% neglected. Wnt (talk) 18:27, 24 September 2013 (UTC)

Systemic omissions and overmerging

Beyond a bias which focuses with a slant on various topics, there also seems to be a systemic pattern of omissions of various major terms, among a set of related phrases where some are omitted. The pattern might just be the result of "pot luck" where no one has yet written the related articles where other pages just happened to be the interest of particular Wikipedians. However, I wonder if the rules are thwarting expansion, by "Wikipedia is not a dictionary" and "Wikipedia is a not an indiscriminate collection". Instead, I think Wikipedia is, or should be, an extended dictionary of complex terms, and in many cases, an article is started but then deleted in favor of a blurb created in Wiktionary. Plus, consider the chilling effect of "overmerging" where every major variation of a term seems to be funneled into a few articles. I would not be surprised to find a merge-tag on "Decision tree" to combine with "Forest" because at times, the overmerging can seem that extreme. Recently, I had to create redirects for the database terms "read lock" and "write lock" to help discuss wp:edit-conflicts, when I tried to explain how 2 editors can overwrite each other's revisions, within 1 minute, because there is no read-lock on the prior revision to prevent both editors from attempting to update from the common ancestor revision, and so the fix would be for MediaWiki to read-lock upon edit-Save, and the next edit-Save, of the same page, must wait to read the 1st editor's new revision, before applying more changes (using diff3 merge) to become the 3rd revision (based on the 2nd). Anyway, there might be systemic patterns, of omissions and overmerging, which could be overcome by specific practices to seek completeness of related topics, and prevent overmerging which might deter new small articles about the major related concepts. Wikipedia really should be millions of small articles about various specific topics, rather than merge "chocolate" and "vanilla" and "wild blueberry" into a giant page of "flavors". -Wikid77 12:29, 22 September 2013 (UTC)

• Yet we use merge for a good, simple, reason - it makes certain subjects easier for our readers to understand. That's exactly why read lock and write lock should be covered in an overarching article Lock (database). To do otherwise would expect the user to click between a number of articles. There is also the issue of our policies on notability, which is why we have articles of the type "List of characters in X fictional story", rather than one for each. Black Kite (talk) 18:04, 22 September 2013 (UTC)

Well, the "List of characters in X" is a valid merge, but in some cases, a common term gets buried as a redirect into paragraph #18 of a huge page. Perhaps the notability rules need to be adjusted to avoid overmerging of terms. For example, there is a short article "bowling pin" which describes the term as separate from the various pages about games of "bowling" and we could have a separate page "tap hammer" to describe the tool and explain common applications, rather than merge into a long article about other hammers. I think some tools are overmerged, into large tedious articles, where a major tool might, instead, have a separate page but also appear in a long list of related tools. By comparison, we allow separate notability for a cricket player who attended a few games in 1894, and I think there are over 240,000 footballers who could get articles. -Wikid77 (talk) 22:57, 22 September 2013 (UTC)

Call me stupid. Trust me, you wouldn't be the first. ;) But I think that there might, maybe, be a way to fix some of these glaring omissions of major articles topics, which I've seen actually exists in a lot of broad topic areas around here. I just filed a bot request to see if it is possible to generate a bot that can provide either a list of topics given separate articles in some of the pdf encyclopedias at wikimedia commons, and, maybe, provide some sort of indicator of the length of articles as well. I work with a lot of the religion based content, and I am actually kinda stunned to see that some topics which have articles of 20 pages or so in the old Hastings Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics don't even a basic stub here yet. That's just one example, I'm sure others in other fields can provide more as well. With so many old PD reference sources out there, like early Encyclopedia Britannica, Chambers, Americana, and others, if a bot could generate some such lists, that might help a lot. It might help if we could also get some more interest in the Missing encyclopedic articles WikiProject on that basis as well. So, not being technically inclined at all, I don't know if it is possible, but, if it is, particularly for a lot of the foreign encyclopedias, having that information available would help a lot. John Carter (talk) 01:31, 23 September 2013 (UTC)

Rough draft solution proposal

The community should submit grant applications to the Foundation to hire independent review professionals skilled and experienced in professional fact checking, who would operate independently of both the Foundation and the editing community to evaluate, list, and prioritize suggested instances of systemic bias. Such instances would include the omissions of ordinary editing and the committed mistakes of conflict-of-interest editing, mathematical errors, misinterpretation and misrepresentation of sources, remnants of vandalism, and other quality and coverage flaws in general. The Wikiproject on systemic bias should undertake a recruiting and organization drive to list, sort, and prioritize the claimed instances of systemic bias, for the purposes of assigning the professional fact checkers once they are vetted and hired. EllenCT (talk) 22:15, 22 September 2013 (UTC)

• I'm not sure that it would be the best idea to priortize basic fact-checking and vandalism removal type stuff, since that kind of stuff *can* be reasonably done by ordinary editors. I think it would be better to have any set of outside people brought in focused on first analyzing both the research that has already been conducted as well as making their own assessment, and second, making concrete recommendations for how to move forward. The bigger issue with this suggestion, though, is that there actually isn't an existing Foundation grant program that would fund this. I guess the FDC could if a chapter wanted to take up the banner, but I am myself unfortunately chapterless. Although I know the Foundation is moving away from programmatic work and pivoting towards technical and grant work, I do think it would also be a decent idea for the Foundation to have a position - not dis-similar to Lori as GLAM coordinator - to coordinate work with outside organizations interested in trying to help address our systemic biases. I've been in discussions about this set of issues with a number of institutions including half a dozen top universities and a number of major professional associations, but a Foundation-based position would both have the advantage of being able to take on such activities full time, and be able to take advantage of the social capital that the Wikimedia Foundation generally enjoys in the outside world in a way that individual volunteers cannot. Kevin Gorman (talk) 22:33, 22 September 2013 (UTC)

Do you know about meta:Grants:IEG#ieg-learn? I took the liberty of adding you as the primary contact to meta:Grants:IdeaLab/Independent fact checkers to counter systemic bias. Do you have time to oversee the recruiting, vetting, hiring, and employment of one or more fact checkers over the next half year? If you want to try to get more than one, you should train them to apply for an IEG themselves to do the work as you have set forth. EllenCT (talk) 23:11, 22 September 2013 (UTC)

Unfortunately, I would eat my right foot if an IEG for such a purpose would be funded at a rate high enough to employ a team of people with the expertise necessary to produce an actually useful report - in most past instances, outside consultants have taken quite a while (and quite a bit of cash) before they were able to produce useful Wikipedia-related reports. Even if such a report were to be produced with the limited budget IEG's offer (30k USD grants may be the theoretical max, but I would be surprised if any grants at that level were approved,) there would still be the issue of actually implementing the recommendations (and many of the recommendations would likely be actionable at a Foundation or movement-wide level, not an individual project level.)

For such a project to be successful, it would likely need a greater than six month time span, a greater amount of money than an IEG would potentially provide, and more Foundation support than is provided to IEG's. From experience, I know that past reports on topics of remotely similar scope commissioned by the Foundation from outside experts have run more $-wise than is available from an IEG. I do like the idea, but for it to be successful, it would have to be driven by the Foundation or a chapter. My first guess at an approach would be adding someone to Asaf or Frank's teams on contract for a year to drive the project, and then working with Bridgespan or another outside group that already has some familiarity with Wikipedia, having the new team member both guide Bridgespan in terms of scope, etc, and then act as a champion for implementing the recommendations once the report was out. (I'm not as familiar with the potential capacity of chapters.) Kevin Gorman (talk) 23:42, 22 September 2013 (UTC)

Why don't you try and see what happens instead of pledging to consume your foot if it works? EllenCT (talk) 00:16, 23 September 2013 (UTC)

From my work with WMF and multiple other non-profits, I have a reasonable idea of what a worthwhile study and followup implementation would cost - at least a reasonable enough idea to know that it's quite a bit more than $30k. I don't mind doing things for free, but I do normally prefer doing things that I know have at least a reasonable chance at success. The idea of an outside report really is a good one, but the cost of the report will exceed the theoretical maximum limit of an IEG (which isn't going to be awarded, anyway,) and without someone in at least something of a position of power to act as champion for the recommendations of the report, it would still be of limited utility. Plus I'll be submitting a separate IEG anyway ;) Kevin Gorman (talk) 01:54, 23 September 2013 (UTC)

• Also compare WP coverage to lists of people or terms: We could compare to a "list of 5,000 philosophers" or "glossary of marine technology" or "list of terms in mortgage loan origination" to be sure WP has adequate coverage, even if only with redirects into lists of notable people or terminology. All of the articles from the Catholic Encyclopedia were confirmed in recent years. -Wikid77 (talk) 23:19, 22 September 2013 (UTC)
• Grants and consultants aren't the answer. Then again, Wikipedia ISBUREAUCRACY. Carrite (talk) 23:30, 22 September 2013 (UTC)

  What would you suggest... is the answer? That is what this whole section was intended to be about, after all. Kevin Gorman (talk) 23:43, 22 September 2013 (UTC)

• If you want to have an idea of how much it costs, you might contact the people who paid for Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Google Project, a somewhat similar project to review a few dozen important medicine-related articles.
  That said, I suspect that this might fall into the category of "paying for content", which the WMF will not do. (I wonder if the Google Foundation would.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:42, 23 September 2013 (UTC)

• I'd support that as a solid step in the right direction. The points about the nature of funding durations etc are fine detail and something to be ironed out, IRWolfie- (talk) 09:17, 23 September 2013 (UTC)

Given the structure of the grants programs that the Foundation has, points about funding, duration, etc, are not fine details that can be ironed out at a later point; they instead require that the Foundation itself (or a chapter, if one wanted to pick it up) spearhead the project. IEG's have caps too low to provide enough funding for something like this, and are of a fixed duration. The Wikimedia Grants program could theoretically approve a grant large enough, but speaking as someone who reviewed that particular program on contract, I can both say with some certainty that (a) Asaf would never approve such a grant to an individual, and (b) He would be completely right in not doing so. Kevin Gorman (talk) 20:07, 23 September 2013 (UTC)

• I don't like the idea of paying outside professionals at all. This is Wikipedia - people write it for free. It doesn't seem appropriate to pop up a proposal complaining there's one area we haven't attended to, so let's hire those particular people, quite possibly putting the person who made the proposal in the path of the money. Our efforts should focus on rallying existing editors using existing tools, such as the site notice banner, and organizing them effectively to take on the task through usual processes such as RfC. Wnt (talk) 18:48, 23 September 2013 (UTC)
• We don't need professionals. We could offer a donation of $5k to $10K to a journalism school, neutrality should be one of their main subjects of study. We give them a consensus list of articles to report on for neutrality. We won't allow them to edit articles nor accept their reports as etched in stone. If it is successful then we can do it each semester and pay $10 or more per article from new lists.--Canoe1967 (talk) 20:39, 23 September 2013 (UTC)
  • Support offering compensation to established professional journalism schools in return for fact-checking, countering systemic bias, identifying conflict-of-interest quality problems, and identifying coverage problems, on a trial basis for a variety of schools initially. Then the community would have a wider variety of results to evaluate. EllenCT (talk) 01:20, 25 September 2013 (UTC)

How would journalists help in establishing bias? You need topic experts, IRWolfie- (talk) 09:01, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

Not necessarily. If the question is "does WP give sufficient coverage and prominence to feminist academics?", the best person to ask might not be a feminist academic. Formerip (talk) 09:48, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

One other option, of course, would be for wikipedia to have somewhere some data on what subjects are presented in what current reference books, which would make it at least theoretically a bit easier for anyone to find at least what those comparatively recent reference sources say. And, of course, if we had enough such lists of articles available, we could probably even be better able to determine what secondary topics are most deserving to be discussed in main articles. As an example, if, for instance, an encyclopedia of philosophy or religion gave a great degree of coverage on, for instance, the philosophical/theological implications of quantum mechanics, that would, I think presumably, be a good indicator that the topic is significant, and, maybe, significant enough for at least a short summary in the main article. We would, I think, want to lay the most emphasis on secondary material relating to the broadest topics, like history, philosophy, social sciences, etc., first, but, particularly if some reference source outside of the strictly (in this example) scientific field discussed them in an article, the sources together would probably be sufficient to indicate that the topic should be at least to some degree summarized in the main article. John Carter (talk) 15:11, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

Does that assume that reference works on bias authored in the past are going to be applicable in the future? I believe any evaluation of systemic bias and quality and coverage problems has to be done independently, and has to be done as new work. For example, there are probably very few treatises on bias which complain about Gilbraltar, new pesticides, depleted uranium or the latest politician who decides it would be a good idea to puff up their resume on Wikipedia. 75.98.22.23 (talk) 23:49, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

It is basically a proposal for, more or less, in house examinations of bias, based on reference works. Honestly, as someone who deals with religious content, a simple look at the numerous lengthy articles in the Eliade/Jones Encyclopedia of Religion which don't even have stubs here can see that there is a rather obvious bias toward Europe, Asia, and the "developed world," and apparently against the Pacific islands countries, some of the Caribbean, and other less popular areas. As someone who has been peripherally involved in a lot of the "third world"/"underdeveloped" areas for some time, I can say that there is actually very little doubt on that score. The best way to eliminate such systemic bias would be, I think, to provide editors with indicators of what articles exist elsewhere, and where content for them can be found. If someone wanted to spend the money to get a study to confirm that, honestly, I think the money might be better spent in getting some cheap interns or college students to develop pages indicating what topics in given subjects are notable, and some easily available sources on them, to make it easier for all editors to reduce the extant level of systemic bias many of us who have been around for some time already know exists here. John Carter (talk) 01:22, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

Languages listed at left side of each page

Dear Sirs.

Cordial saludo.

To make the presentation of the different languages (left part of all wikipedias) more clear, I suggest, to add to such languages lists (blue ones) with special characters e,g. japanese, chinese, indian, arab, etc., etc. the language referred also in english with brakets. Why?: a lot of people will wonder what for a language with special character is that one: example

aleman (german) jap ...... (japanese) chin nnnnn (chinese).

I take the opportunity, as simple user of wikipedia, to congratulate you and your team, for the enormous fantastic labour done during all the years. Wekipedia is really a big help for hundred of millions of users.

Mario Van Nuffel - mvn@gmx.net — Preceding unsigned comment added by Quiqueriqui (talk • contribs) 01:11, 22 September 2013 (UTC)

I am revising the heading of this section from make the presentation of the different languages (left part of all wikipedias) more clear, adding to such languages with special characters e,g. japanese, chinese, indian, arab, etc., etc. (the language referred also in english) . to Languages listed at left side of each page, in harmony with WP:TPOC, point 13 (Section headings). Please see Microcontent: How to Write Headlines, Page Titles, and Subject Lines. The new heading facilitates recognition of the topic in links and watchlists and tables of contents.

—Wavelength (talk) 01:25, 22 September 2013 (UTC)

See "ISO 639-1 language matrix" and User:Wavelength/About languages/ISO 639-1 language matrix.

—Wavelength (talk) 05:58, 22 September 2013 (UTC) and 06:00, 22 September 2013 (UTC)

See "Language names in their own languages and scripts" and "List of indigenous language names".

—Wavelength (talk) 18:22, 22 September 2013 (UTC)

Wavelength, please read Please do not bite the newcomers. And yes, that information exists at the pages you link to, but that doesn't resolve the original poster's suggestion. — Scott • talk 13:33, 23 September 2013 (UTC)

I favor an English translation in brackets or parentheses. This would not affect the language names or their scripts at all. Yopienso (talk) 15:16, 23 September 2013 (UTC)

Agree with Yopienso. Should we take this to the village pump (technical)? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 97.88.87.68 (talk) 19:00, 23 September 2013 (UTC)

If you are going to, please make a proposal that makes sense. I have my user interface set to Dutch, for example. Why should I see "German" next to "Deutsch" instead of "Duitse"? When I switch to Japanese, shouldn't it show ドイツ?—Kww(talk)

My communication to the newcomer was emotionally neutral.

—Wavelength (talk) 20:11, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

There is a dynamic tension when one assigns to a list element a name that is not only brief but also informative. Hay una tensión dinámica cuando se asigna a un elemento de una lista un nombre que es no sólo breve sino también informativo.

—Wavelength (talk) 16:40, 24 September 2013 (UTC) and 17:33, 24 September 2013 (UTC)

• Note: Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#How can I see the inter-language links in plain English? seems to be where this thread ended up. See answers and ideas, there. –Quiddity (talk) 19:53, 25 September 2013 (UTC)

You've got Email

Hi Jimbo,

Just letting you know that I've sent you an email, just in case it is stuck in your spam filter or something.

Best, Miss Bono ^{[hello, hello!]} 15:12, 23 September 2013 (UTC)

I'll keep an eye out for it. What subject line?--Jimbo Wales (talk) 01:31, 24 September 2013 (UTC)

I guess it is a Re:Wikipedia Email, or Wikipedia Email or Hi Jimbo... I sent 4 of them (the original and 3 more) because the servers where I email from were having problems and I didn't know if you received the first one, so... I am so sorry for so many emails, please don't get mad. Thank you very much for your time, and again, sorry for the bothers. Miss Bono ^{[hello, hello!]} 12:18, 24 September 2013 (UTC)

Did you find them? Miss Bono ^{[hello, hello!]} 12:02, 25 September 2013 (UTC)

I found one in my spam folder - and sent you a reply. Did you get it?--Jimbo Wales (talk) 05:25, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

I am going to check that later this afternoon with my friend. She is the owner of the email account. I will let you know. Kind regards and thank you very much.

P.S. I am curious whether it was the Re: email the one you found or not. Miss Bono ^{[hello, hello!]} 12:02, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

I have checked and I didn't receive your email. Miss Bono ^{[hello, hello!]} 16:10, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

I received it and replied back. Hope you get it. Check first at your spam folder :D Miss Bono ^{[hello, hello!]} 18:39, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

VE hidden: now help fix 3 months of nowiki

This is a reminder to find prior pages with garbled "</nowiki>" text and correct them (see: search 100: "nowiki" "the"). With the WMF decision to hide the VE menu option (as "opt-in" feature) on 23 September 2013 (see: dif354 in wp:VPT), then the rate of VE users inserting nowiki tags should drop drastically, and so fixing the prior nowiki tags will solve the problem finally. Some twisted nowiki-tag text is so warped that I do not think a Bot could fix them (in some cases, 4 unrelated nowiki wikilinks have been inserted at each wikilink; see dif559). However, a common warped pattern is:

• [[Thing|<nowiki/>]][[Thing (...)|Thing]]

In rare cases, the fix can be just "[[Thing]]" but it might take a while to see it. The latest nowiki-tag error I have fixed from wp:VisualEditor was garbled into the page on 17 September 2013. However, hundreds of garbled nowiki-tag contortions have been saved for the whole 3 months, July through September, and I think at least 300 more pages need to be fixed. For a while, almost all nowiki problems were being repaired, by thousands of extra edits, but perhaps people burned out and left 300 or more unfixed pages. It has been 3 months of contorted text, in perhaps 40,000 pages (most re-edited to fix). VE usage had dropped to 3% of username edits on enwiki, with only 20% of new usernames, and people who opt-in to use VE are likely to know to avoid the nowiki errors (formerly 600 per day). -Wikid77 (talk) 04:48/13:22, 24 September 2013 (UTC)

These are now tagged with an edit filter, but, curiously, not all edits tagged "nowiki" are also tagged as VE edits, for example, see this diff. Why would a new user like 186.7.95.63 go out of their way to nowiki a bullet list—indeed, how does a new user like this even know about nowiki tags? Wbm1058 (talk) 15:13, 25 September 2013 (UTC)

Most edits by IPs are edits by experienced editors that have chosen not to register or chosen not to log in. Don't confuse failing to have an account with being inexperienced.—Kww(talk) 05:28, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

It could be someone who logged in from an internet cafe and spent half an hour editing this single article with VE. Then a couple days later they spent another 30 minutes on it in another cafe session. I wonder if the nowikis were some residue from the VE session two days earlier? It doesn't make sense that they would go to the trouble to nowiki this list. Wbm1058 (talk) 22:08, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

It says its ok to ignore rules sometimes, but does local consensus actually allow that?

After a discussion on the List of unusual deaths talk page, I decided to start a Request for Comment to get more input. As the founder of Wikipedia, and the guy who has been around here the longest, please tell me your opinion. Does the disclaimer saying you can ignore policy at times and use common sense actually have the ability of ever being done in any possible circumstances? Talk:List_of_unusual_deaths#RfC: Can editors determine on a talk page what qualifies as an "unusual death" and should be in the List of unusual deaths or must the reliable source specifically use the word "unusual" or synonymy in it? Dream Focus 18:17, 24 September 2013 (UTC)

• Consider editorial judgment: I think Jimbo says to use "editorial judgment" as with common sense to determine the wp:acceptability of text; however, if numerous other editors disagree with that judgment, then they outnumber the decision, and the reversal in that case should be understood, even if someone disagrees with the old policy and the rough consensus. I like to say, "People have a right to be wrong" and explaining an alternative decision can be a challenge. In some cases, the "only one" disagreeing with the crowd might be Jimbo, and that can be reassuring to know you are not alone in being opposed by several people. Also, remember ~74% of monthly users do not use talk-pages, as the wp:silent majority who do not discuss issues to seek a consensus each month. -Wikid77 (talk) 19:20, 24 September 2013 (UTC)

It's never okay to ignore rules in opposition to consensus. If the consensus is to follow a rule, then you can't ignore it just because ignoring it seems preferable to you. Regarding the specific issue, my opinion is that Wikipedia editors sometimes fail to realize that all article writing requires some degree of synthesis -- the only alternative to synthesis is plagiarism. The question then becomes how much synthesis to permit -- zero is not an option. Looie496 (talk) 19:46, 24 September 2013 (UTC)

The problem is with cases of "false consensus" such as forcing dashes where hyphens have been used in wp:COMMONNAME titles, for decades (or centuries), and a survey of opinions might reveal, in a few weeks, how 9 people oppose the dash guideline being defended by 7 people as the "consensus". It is really frustrating when "most people" oppose the so-called consensus, and we find severe cases of "consensus thumping" to claim any talk against the current guidelines as being tendentious editing by wp:DE disruption. -Wikid77 (talk) 20:05, 24 September 2013 (UTC)

Wikid, as he often is, is correct. There's some aspects of "uniformity" that we want shared across all articles and a local consensus, either at an article or by a wikiproject over a large number of articles, should not be allowed to trump what must be assumed to have been a larger consensus about the encyclopedia as a whole. Unfortunately we cant, and should never, try to list all the policies and guidelines that trump local consensus and which ones could be. Obviously BLP broadly would not be allowed to be overruled by consensus, but BLP subsections may on specific issues or situations might be overruled, I cant think of a situation that would occur, but we should never close the door to that possibility. The minute we start creating hard-fast laws with zero-possibility of an instance where common sense might require bending the rules, we then have a fundamental shift in the very fabric of what Wikipedia stands for. IAR is the most important concept in Wikipedia for that reason. Far more importance than the useless 5P essay.Camelbinky (talk) 21:01, 24 September 2013 (UTC)

• The particular application of IAR that Dream Focus seeks is the ability to include things in a list when he can't locate a source that says the item meets the inclusion criteria for the list. I don't think IAR can apply, because such a thing can't improve the encyclopedia.—Kww(talk) 21:10, 24 September 2013 (UTC)

• I think I was quite clear. When we have sources in reliable sources that the event took place, and was notable enough to get coverage, but when the word "unusual" or a synonymy was not found in the coverage at all, if there is consensus that the death was unusual and should be included in the list, is it then acceptable to have it? Here we have an article that has been viewed 82,269 times in the last 30 days, and was mentioned in Time Magazine. You will always find plenty of people to disagree what improves the encyclopedia, many wishing to delete the article entirely, as well as many other things Wikipedia has on it. So those who don't like an article will never agree that anything that helps it survive or grow longer would improve the encyclopedia, thus making IAR impossible to ever enforce. I am curious if it has ever been used in the past couple of years for anything. Anyone know of any cases? Dream Focus 22:21, 24 September 2013 (UTC)

• I certainly have. I'm aware of a few accounts that are likely to be evading blocks that I imposed: I can tell by their diction and topics of interest that they are the same editor. However, they seem to have learned their lesson and aren't repeating the blockable behaviour. I even provided User:Stephanie J Stone substantial leeway, because even though she was repeating some of the behaviour that led to the block, I could see she was trying. That's the kind of thing IAR is for.—Kww(talk) 23:29, 24 September 2013 (UTC)

• Thousands of users go IAR every day: But those people just ignore all the rules, most of the time. Many people put BLP vios in text, or omit requested sources, or edit-war, etc. It is quite common at wp:ANI to see numerous insults, or claims of misconduct not backed with diff-link evidence, but allowed to stand as begging the question, even in disparaging headers ("Editor refusing to explain closure of MR against consensus"), which sound like, "Man refusing to stop beating woman after robbing her" and wonder why he could not get a fair trial. No unproven allegations there? We even have the old term "wp:Wikilawyering" which is an IAR, BLP insult to all living attorneys (replaced by wp:Wikifinagling). We also have unblock wp:WHEEL-wars where the blocking admin is not respected to allow the block to remain, or reduce it when time permits. Anyway, wp:ANI is a big pool of wp:IAR refusal to be wp:Civil and provide adequate diff-links of evidence to support each outrageous insult. -Wikid77 (talk) 06:42, 25 September 2013 (UTC)

I've been having a similar discussion over at Talk:List of rampage killers#Suggested title change. We currently have no article called rampage killer and the term is not defined anywhere on WP. As far as I am concerned, this list and the several related lists amount to synthesis of sources. I have pretty much given up trying to reason with the editor who WP:OWNS these articles, but I haven't identified an appropriate place to bring this into wider discussion. It is unfortunate that sometimes a post on Jimbo's talk page is the most expedient way to get more input in these types of issues. Delicious carbuncle (talk) 18:31, 25 September 2013 (UTC)

What it really should say is... "Its ok to invoke IAR if your an administrator. If you are an IP or regular editor it is higly frowned upon and will generally be reverted." IAR is no longer an effective policy along with article ownership, POV and several others. 138.162.8.59 (talk) 19:26, 25 September 2013 (UTC)

• That isn't relevant to this discussion. Delicious carbuncle tried to delete the article in question Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of rampage killers and the 11 other people who participated in that discussion said KEEP despite his constant arguing. Various people pointed to reliable sources that use the term "rampage killer" along with "spree killer" or "mass murderer" interchangeably. A rampage killer can be a mass murderer or a spree killer, we having articles for those already. Dream Focus 11:25, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

To register or not to register? That is the question

Given that a recent thread at the village pump (policy) regarding IP's and mandatory registering has gotten a bit out of the realm of that noticeboard, I figured a thread here on the topic might be more appropriate; as this has become an informal place for more esoteric questions such as this, where the question is more to make us think about our positions than it is likely to become policy (which really is the point of posting at the vpp). So my esoteric question of the day is broadly mandatory registering versus our current way (or even more leniency) and I'd love to see well thought out discussions and questions raised and responded instead of everyone just talking past each other, not willing to budge; in a more focused question- does it hurt Wikipedia to continue to allow editors to comment that IPs are second class "citizens" and they have to "learn to live with it" or is that a violation of our policy and we should truly consider that such comments need to stop.Camelbinky (talk) 19:09, 25 September 2013 (UTC)

Actually the truth of the matter is IP's are third class citizens, regular editors are 2nd class! Starting with administrators, who are essentially the first class citizens, there are a lot of things on the project that can only be done by admins and that number grows as the numbers of admins dwindles. Regular editors are restricted from doing many things inluding even applying for certain rights (one must be admin to do that!). Then that leaves IP's, not only are they restricted from doing many things and editing many pages, they generally cannot vote in things like RFA's, cannot create articles without going through AFC, etc. So really, IP's are third class citizens when you break it all down. At this point Wikipedia may as well just eliminate the ability of making edits by IP's. If they want to edit they can just create an account. 138.162.8.59 (talk) 15:16, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

Commons is broken - the "low quality genitalia" edition

This discussion is better held over at commons. Clearly it is the right thing to do to treat all contributors with respect.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 05:23, 26 September 2013 (UTC)
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
Jimbo, Commons admin Mattbuck has a habit of starting deletion discussions with phrases like "low quality genitalia" rather than "low quality genitalia image". I asked him to be more careful about this in May, but got no response. I asked him again earlier this month, and got no response. When I noticed that he was doing it again, I had no doubt that he was doing this deliberately and I started a discussion on COM:AN/U. You may be surprised to see that some members of the Commons community feel that it is acceptable to insult uploaders, if those uploaders are uploading pictures of their genitals. I am perplexed by this. Although Commons has a ridiculous number of self-shot average-sized white penises, we all agree that Commons should have images of adult genitalia, so why would we insult the very people who are contributing these? Jimbo, is this in keeping with the WMF's statements about treating people with respect? Delicious carbuncle (talk) 23:34, 25 September 2013 (UTC) Hooray. Another edition. --Onorem (talk) 23:39, 25 September 2013 (UTC) And this one's a comedy! Resolute 23:45, 25 September 2013 (UTC) Woah, luckly I have my popcorns. --cyclopiaspeak! 23:47, 25 September 2013 (UTC) Heck, by the time this mess is over, the only picture available will be an icon of 8=D. ZappaOMati 00:50, 26 September 2013 (UTC) I'm sorry, but this is dumb...like, Grade-A scraping-the-bottom-of-the-barrel dumb. Out of all the scum & villainy and the cavalcade of Beta-M cheer-leading yahoos that promote it, Mattbuck is actually cleaning some of the amateur porn glut and you're getting on his case for saying "low-quality genetalia" ? Seriously? I find it kind of amusing actually, IMO it's just a somewhat sarcastic way of saying "your amateur porn skills suck, so GTFO". quite frankly, you degrade and de-legitimize the previous editions of "Commons is broken" with this petty nonsense. Tarc (talk) 23:47, 25 September 2013 (UTC) Sounds to me like you have a good idea of how to handle genitals courteously, DC. Why not just roll up your sleeves and lead by example? Formerip (talk) 23:51, 25 September 2013 (UTC) By posting some "high quality genitalia"? Resolute 23:54, 25 September 2013 (UTC) Tarc, what's "dumb" about treating contributors with respect? If I upload an image of myself to Commons, I do not expect to have my appearance insulted. Why should this be allowed just because the subject matter is genitals? Saying "your amateur porn skills suck, so GTFO" is completely unacceptable, but at least it isn't as bad as saying "your genitals are low quality". Delicious carbuncle (talk) 02:40, 26 September 2013 (UTC) Being mean to newbies is inconsequential compared to the nonsense they usually get up to over there, you know that. Tarc (talk) 02:59, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

Jimbo, I tried to discuss the issue on Commons. The discussion got forcibly closed with no action and the surprising comments which prompted me to come here. I have found that trying to discuss Commons issues on Commons is generally fruitless (but at least they were mature enough not to make jokes about it). Perhaps you can bring up the issue of respecting contributors and image subjects at the next WMF Board meeting? I suspect the board may not be aware of how far Commons is from what they envisage. Delicious carbuncle (talk) 15:03, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

The Board is well aware and it is an ongoing topic of discussion. I can't promise what will happen, but I can promise that there is real attention being paid to the problem and I think it highly likely (again I can't promise) that something will be done. How effective that will be, depends on what will be done, etc. But I'm working on it.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 19:10, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia admin violating "Bright Line Rule"

Jimbo, is there an exception for Wikipedia administrators, that they need not follow the Bright Line Rule that you advocate? Here is an example. User:Rockpocket says he is Darren Logan, a faculty member at Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, yet he repeatedly edits Wikipedia's article about his employer, without engaging on the Talk page. Or, would you say that a faculty employee of an establishment is not a "paid advocate", so they are exempt? - DimLineRule (talk) 10:16, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) Although there is some WP:COI at play, an employee is typically not considered a "paid advocate", unless their job is to promote the entity. The sole edit you linked to certainly does not violate any promotional guidelines, etc ES&L 11:01, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

By the criteria expressed by User:EatsShootsAndLeaves, even a paid editor of Wikipedia who abides by WP:NPOV, WP:RS, WP:V, and WP:NOTE, who endeavors to write a balanced, non-promotional article about a topic (that a client pays for) should not typically be considered a "paid advocate", then. If someone has the intention of expanding the encyclopedia, on the content principles of Wikipedia, then it would appear they should be exempt from the Bright Line Rule. That's good to know. Paid editors who abide by a "no advocacy"/"no promotion" practice are exempt. Paid advocates are instructed to follow the Bright Line Rule. - DimLineRule (talk) 11:29, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

I think you're adding words to the ones I typed, but as someone who responds to a lot of unblock requests from promo usernames, welcomes a lot of people with {{Welcome-coi}}, and was the original creator of {{coiq}}, there's a big difference between paid advocacy - often based on how the individual presents themself. For example "my boss asked me too ..." is a paid advocate. "I'm an intern at this company..." is a paid advocate. "I've been hired to ensure..." is a paid advocate. Now, as much as the rest of us who work for an organization should "promote" our employer as much as we can, that does not make us a paid advocate. Yes, I have edited the article of an employer - or past employer. Was I doing so as a paid advocate? No. ES&L 11:51, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

Any thoughtful discussion of paid editing must deal with different kinds of paid editing differently. If a university asks professors as a part of their duties to engage in various activities as public intellectuals, in service to the broader goal of helping to create a more educated and enlightened society, and accepts work on improving Wikipedia entries as a reasonable means to that end, that's not problematic. But such professors should generally avoid editing about the University itself, as that could easily be construed as promotional. The bright line rule is designed as a best practice which means that it is not something one does to meet some bare minimum ethical standard, but rather something that one should aspire to as the best possible practice.

In that context, I think that Darren Logan should not edit the entry about Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute directly. If there is even a potential conflict of interest, or a potential appearance of impropriety, it is better to ask for corrections at the talk page, even suggesting wording and referencing, but stopping short of doing the actual edits. This is the easiest and most direct way to avoid most problems. (Note that I don't say 'all' problems.)

As ES&L points out, the one edit that our sockpuppet friend pointed to does not itself seem problematic. Nonetheless, it is best practice to avoid such edits.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 13:17, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

There are a plethora of examples of paid editing being accepted and allowed. For example we have an entire program for allowing college professors and students to edit articles. The students receive grades based on their content work so that is a form of compensated editing even if not paid. Additionally, the professors themselves are paid by the Universities and have been known to encourage the students to do some negative things towards the project. Not to mention the various users who have stated openly that they will help develop articles (even if going by the established rules) for a "bounty". This is compensation, etc. So there are various forms already out there not even counting the ones hiding in the shadows we don't yet know about. 138.162.8.59 (talk) 15:22, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

Precisely my point. "Paid editing" - as I have said many times - is not the most interesting term to use if we want deeper understanding of the issues. "Paid advocacy" is better, but avoidance of damage to Wikipedia means something broader - it means avoiding editing which may give rise to the appearance of conflict of interest.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 18:55, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

• Of course the OP must realize that there is no formal WP rule known as the "Bright Line Rule." Best practice — and what should be required — is self-identification of COI on the article's talk page. This has not been done in this instance. Outside of that, I fail to see the problem that the pretty obviously trolling OP User:DimLineRule sees. Carrite (talk) 16:21, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

Carrite, I think that self-identification of COI on the talk page is a very bare minimum, not "best practice". If someone with a COI edits an article and declares their COI on the talk page, they'll likely avoid an immediate block. But that's hardly best practice. Best practice is the bright line rule with escalation through the proper channels if you don't get action.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 19:07, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

I will yield the semantic point. I think everyone can agree that declaration of COI on the talk page is an essential starting point. What is and is not kosher after that is a matter of some debate. Carrite (talk) 00:41, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

• Agree with Carrite. While Faculty members aren't paid advocates although they should, of their own volition, note their conflict of interest on the talk page, IRWolfie- (talk) 18:48, 26 September 2013 (UTC)
  • I think Professors who edit (not about their institution, but about something they have expertise in) should self-identify as a best practice, but I think it's mistaken to call it a "conflict of interest" in most cases.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 18:55, 26 September 2013 (UTC)
    • Why should a professor self identify for editing in their field of expertise if it isn't a COI? I certainly think that anyone editing where they have a COI should reveal that, but simply editing a topic in which you have extensive knowledge? I don;t see why it should be required, and I've seen situations where other editors have felt that people who do so are trying to marginalise the inputs of non-experts. - Bilby (talk) 22:51, 26 September 2013 (UTC)
      • Have to agree. If it isn't a COI, then what is the purpose of such self-identification? We can tell people's areas of interest/expertise by their editing habits anyway. Resolute 23:09, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

Question Time panelist publicly asserts COI editing is not OK. From the most recent episode of Question Time (TV series) a few moments ago; "You will probably go home and edit your Wiki (sic) page to be in your favour, which is hardly acceptable". --Demiurge1000 (talk) 22:20, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

Some falafel for you!

Just Because! Beurocraticobama (talk) 02:09, 27 September 2013 (UTC)