User talk:Jimbo Wales

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Fixing broken 2013 RfA process

Yes, RfA problems again. I also tried a wp:RfA (aka "Request for Abuse"), after 8 years of waiting, and it was still as bad an experience as everyone has been warning:  block-log entries from 3-7 years ago were treated as if yesterday, and many insults were over-the-top. The quickest fix: as you, Jimbo, have suggested:

• Have a house of wikilords: There needs to be a system of appointed wiki-lords, as users given various user rights, perhaps selected by groups of similar-focus admins, to be rejected only by strong evidence of problems, and because wikilords are *appointed* then they could be unappointed, perhaps temporarily, at any time when their actions seemed to diverge off-course.

Currently, the RfA process seems like a "insta-poll popularity contest" rather than a "job interview" and the main focus directs people to issue judgmental decisions of Support/Oppose within seconds of starting an RfA page. Also, there are unusual cultural twists in RfA discussions, such as treating rebuttals to objections as being "badgering of opposes" rather than a logical discussion to clarify misunderstandings. Because I was a formal debate judge for years, I was not fooled to refrain from refuting incorrect claims (bottomline: debaters who fail to refute claims partially will lose a formal debate). Plus, of course, the RfA process allows the same level of insults as could be expected at wp:ANI, except each user's wp:RfA page is named with their username as an obvious, obvious case of "wp:Attack page". The whole process is completely awry, and I had to respond quickly to refute wp:NPA insults which would otherwise stand as accepted by begging the question. Anyway, the only workable solution, to the current judgmental RfA process, is to separate the interview-period from the judgement period:

• Split RfA into interview days versus judgment days: Hence, an RfA would begin with a questions-only phase of 4 days, as a job interview, with perhaps some competency tests depending on the stated intent of the candidate. Then, another period, of perhaps 4 days, could be the judgment period of Support/Oppose/Neutral.

The 1st, interview phase would discuss issues, and hopefully, follow "rules of evidence" (real evidence, not spin-doctored slants) to have specific diff-links; plus the focus would be on asking questions about the activities which the candidate would be performing. If the questions, or potential admin tasks, seemed too difficult, then the candidate could withdraw during the first phase. Then the 2nd, judgement phase could be longer if any insults were redacted meanwhile, by a neutral moderator, so that a candidate would not have to watchdog the RfA as being an outrageous personal attack-page during the whole time period. I was totally unaware that an RfA was like a wp:ANI thread open to insults, except with a person's username "flashing in lights" as a beacon to come see the insults by name. No wonder some people refer to the RfA period as a horrific experience, and as I said, if I had not been a debate judge for years, I might also have been tricked in allowing insults to stand, unrefuted, because of fear to avoid "badgering the opponents" who hurl unfounded insults. However, a separate "House of wikilords" would allow quick appointments, such as a request for 20 bilingual admins if an avalanche of new articles were created with non-English sources, pushing the limits of notability decisions due to a lack of other-language skills. Anyway, I would warn anyone, who plans an wp:RfA, to be prepared to defend yourself from over-the-top insults during the whole time period, and do not be fooled into keeping quiet to refute claims just to avoid "badgering of opponents" while insults are hurled without restraint. -Wikid77 (talk) 15:06, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

Oh man, this is so sad. You were making such a good impression with your posts in #VE bad links on 22 September above, and then you go and spoil it with this section. If I got snowed that bad, I would step back for some serious personal meditation and reflection rather than come vent in this most public place. I see that apparently some admins have behaved so badly that they have been topic-banned; I didn't realize that. So perhaps life is unfair and there's a double-standard here, you'll have to deal with that. Maybe just focus first on getting that ban lifted first, before applying to be an admin? Hope you can apply for the template editor user right soon, good luck. Wbm1058 (talk) 16:57, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

I appreciate the words of encouragement, but other users have been coming to this talk-page, warning others for years about the RfA process, and the problems in the RfA process need to be pinpointed, in order to be improved. There have been prior discussions with vague details about various RfA experiences. However, in this case, I saw the distortion in progress, because I had lived the actual details for 8 years. Also, other people have warned there was discrimination against users with block-logs, and the attitudes should have improved by now, but I was even condemned for a wp:3RR block 7 years ago. Also, I had to remind people how I was strongly advised to retain my topic-ban about college student Amanda Knox acquitted of the 2007 Murder of Meredith Kercher (her British flatmate in Perugia, Italy), because many other users had been indef-blocked, and my topic-ban protected me from getting blocked along with them. Recently, long-term power user Rich_Farmbrough (WP's highest edit-count for years) was indef-blocked (site-banned) after users could not learn to work with him, and so that shows how anyone can be blocked despite the incentive to try to keep a valuable editor by finding ways to work together. If people cannot understand how that topic-ban has protected me during the past 3 years, then I wonder if they understand how to think like an admin, and how to use tactics to protect users from newcomers being secretly investigated for advocacy stopped by indef-blocks. Anyway, I just wanted to let Jimbo know what I saw in the rush-to-judgment of a popularity contest, which does not wait 4 days while discussing issues before entering an Oppose/Support/Neutral comment. Next time someone reports problems in the RfA process, then this can be a point of comparison. As for me, I am far too busy to perform admin duties at this time, so I am relieved that my RfA was closed early, and I just objected to the general RfA process. -Wikid77 (talk) 18:50, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

Farmbrough is not "indef-blocked (site-banned)", he was blocked for 1 year, and as far as I know still can use his talk page. I admire the way he's conducted himself during the block. In contrast to another editor who a couple months ago was indefinitely blocked, email disabled, and cannot edit their own talk page. Please just stop digging your hole deeper. It's painful to watch. Wbm1058 (talk) 19:58, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

Well, Farmbrough might have a 1-year block now, but I do not think anything has changed to work with him, so upon return he would get another 1-year block? ...as I said, "indef-blocked". His restriction of "no automated edits" was untenable, and when he violated it at the end, he made more than 1,000 repeated changes inside a page (sending a clear message I think), so I suggest a compromise where he might use automated edits but with a mentor to approve those edits, or reduce the scope of edits as needed, but not zero automation. -Wikid77 08:53, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

@Wikid77. RFA is a broken process, but not entirely the way you think. Old issues rarely cause opposes unless people have reason to think that they persist, one test of a good candidate is to be able to demonstrate how you've resolved such issues. The good thing about RFA is that it isn't a popularity contest, a sufficiently over qualified candidate can sail through with over a hundred supports, the vast majority of whom have never previously interacted with them. The bad things include the overreliance of the !voters on the Q&A section and simplistic measures such as raw edit count and length of tenure, combined with galloping standards inflation, but standards inflation re the most easily measured criteria. My fear is that good candidates are being deterred by arbitrarily high requirements for edit count and tenure, (as well as the occasional incivil participant) and that we risk bad eggs slipping through due to insufficient scrutiny of their actual edits. But the good news about RFA is that the long decline has bottomed out, after five consecutive years of sharp falls in the number of new RFAs, 2013 has already seen as many successful RFAs as 2012. RFA still has problems, we are a long way from being able to appoint as many new admins as we lose to retirement etc; So we are still heading towards a cliff, but are no longer accelerating towards that cliff. ϢereSpielChequers 07:01, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

Indeed, other factors have shown a resurgence in Wikipedia activity, beyond more new admins, such as people asking why protected-template updates from 3 years ago did not get installed. Plus I imagine the VisualEditor did not hurt editor retention, because over 94% of editors avoided it each week. As for the RfA process, I see niche groups supporting a fellow editor, as a way to increase the support pile-on, and I think that might be an effective way to overcome judgmental restrictions; however, the danger is to promote a candidate with a secret agenda to use the powers in other ways. In cases of editors blocked for the Amanda Knox case, we see an unrelenting determination to thwart them, as evidenced in User_talk:Charlie_wilkes#Block where a responding admin refused the unblock request because his supporters all knew him from the same article, the only article (duh) where we all worked together, and he had provided reliable sources to disprove a claim how suspects lied about when they called police, as later refuted by sources. However, my RfA is an extreme case of someone topic-banned with numerous editors blocked, while trying to write about what was later confirmed in court. However, I think splitting an RfA into an interview phase, with later judgment phase, would give people more time to see the hollowness of several editors all blocked together who were later proven correct by court reports. Yet, insults about my knowledge of Wikipedia software, or misinformation, were likely too complex for RfA discussion and scary to others. Technical people need to be selected by a panel of technical users; otherwise it could be too confusing/boring for others to follow. But again, approval should be recommended by a random sample of users who review a candidate. -Wikid77 (talk) 08:53, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

There are a lot of misunderstandings about what is wrong with RfA. A truly huge amount of research was done into it at WP:RFA2011 that pretty well identified the real problems. Among the regular !voters (and this pool of editors changes slowly over time in a cycle of about 2 years or so) there are three main factions: Those who feel that every established editor should have the bit, those who think adminship in general should be abolished to be replace by some other totally different system, and those who provide well researched, objective rationales for their votes whether they know the candidate or not. The remainder and the vast majority is a very transient pool of people who have only ever voted on one or two RfAs. Among these are the ones who very often appear to fail to understand what adminship is all about and probably do little or no research and just pile on.

It's interesting to note that en.Wiki is one of the very few major Wikipedias not to have introduced a minimum requirement for voting at RfA. If it appears that the dearth of candidates seems to have bottomed out, this is possibly due to the fact that the traditional PA and incivility at RfA has somewhat, but not entirely abated. I think we should give it a little longer however before claiming the improvement as a clear trend. That said, whether we have enough candidates or whether RfA is really a 'horrible and broken process', it does do it its job reasonably well - if the very rare close calls demonstrate anything. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 10:27, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

Hi Kudpung, oddly we might agree on the close calls if not on the rest. I fear that RFA and especially its reputation is scaring away many well qualified candidates. Paradoxically the shift in focus of the RFA community from judging candidates on their edits to the Q&A section and simple stats such as number of edits and length of tenure may also be letting more bad eggs through. I've seen one admin from recent years be desysopped despite getting over 90% support. I doubt we have sufficient stats yet but it would be interesting to see if the last couple of hundred admins wind up with a lower proportion of bad eggs than the earlier batches. ϢereSpielChequers 18:53, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

• Well, I think a few troublesome admin promotions could be expected, and "people have a right to be wrong about a candidate" but they do not have a right to treat an RfA as a named wp:attack-page, so I will be more vigilant to check for attacks posted to future RfA pages and redact vicious insults, to be sure people provide adequate diff-links to support their claims. The more people who view an RfA as a cordial discussion of qualifications, then the better the chances for more candidates to apply. -Wikid77 (talk) 00:28, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

The flag of Spain is banned in ca.wikipedia.org international listings of flags. Why?

(first of all, sorry for my bad english, is not "very good looking" hehe)

There is a BIG problem there:
Amical, (the secessionist association, "owner" of ca.wiki, I guess, with a secessionist president of some catalan ARMY who says FREE CATALONIA SOON !???, with a secretary proud to be a WAR FISH) this WAR-LIKE people (against who? I expect not Spain) that controls ca.wiki, is making the Wikipedia in Catalan languaje fall into a very biased and dangerous nationalism. Only an 8 or 10 percent of catalan speaking people and territories are secessionist, against the rest of catalan speaking people and territories, the Spanish Constitution, the Autonomous Statutes, the European Union, etc... BUT the secessionist government of a little region that speaks Catalan is paying about 9.241 euros to that association and other "gifts" like giving them power (to change history to invent new hatred) in Public Libraries, Museums, Schools, etc...
Source: Secessionist regional governor subsidizes Wikipedia in Catalan, that says: "Catalonia is a State of Europe" SHAMEFUL.

In grey, vast majority territories where Catalan language is spoken

So, please, can you ask ca.wikipedia.org be enciclopaedic and put back the spanish flag in international listings of flags? One example (there are about 10000 more in cawiki): Host nations of Olympic Games (where is Spain there? who is changing history with hate like Goebbels tried to do?

Hilarious (and sad) situations arise as replacing the flag of Spain by the local flag of Catalunya region, suggesting that the Kingdom of Spain did not exist at the 1888 Barcelona International Exposition or that lie: Spain did not participate in the Host nations of Olympic Games of 1992, also censoring Spanish Olympic Committee to shamefully ban the Spanish flag in that list. Examples:

• http://ca.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exposici%C3%B3_Universal_de_Barcelona_(1888) "Preceeded by Flag:Australia - Flag:Sovereign Catalonian State Succeeded by Flaf:France"
  
• http://ca.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jocs_Ol%C3%ADmpics Olympic Games hosts: 1988 Seoul (Korean State Flag) 1992 (Catalonian local region Flag) 1996 Atlanta (USA Flag)
• Hilarious: Barcelona is not in Spain, ¿who says it, FIFA?¿?. WTF is this Flag wars? http://ca.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selecci%C3%B3_de_futbol_d'Espanya
• shameful: F.C. Barcelona player, Carles Puyol, played with Spain in year 2000, then he goes out of Spain and from 2001 to 2013 plays in "Sovereign-State-of-Catalonia-FIFA-recognized-Sovereign-Football-National-Team" hahahaha... http://ca.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carles_Puyol_i_Saforcada WTF?¿?
• Hilarious situation in F.C. Barcelona: some SPANISH football players are from Spain, some NOT. https://ca.wikipedia.org/wiki/F.C._Barcelona This is a honest encyclopedia or a website of jokes?
• Sad: The region to which we, its population (the Catalan speakers of this region too) have called "Comunitat Valenciana" (Valencian Community) by the Spanish Constitution and the region Statute of Autonomy. They call it "País Valenciá" (Valencian State or Valencian Country) because they please, putting some links to blogs and biased unknown institutes: http://ca.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pa%C3%ADs_Valenci%C3%A0
• Frustrating: If someone decides to change "Països Catalans" (or Catalan States or Catalan Countries -imaginary countries-) for "Spain" (Spain), in a list of football club tournaments throughout the Spanish territory (Zaragoza B, Orihuela, etc), suddenly appears a robot that automatically reverses any issue contrary to nationalism. hahaha Try it! diff: http://ca.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Organitzaci%C3%B3_del_futbol_a_Catalunya&diff=11883735&oldid=11883734

It's normal, extreme nationalism is excited using Wikipedia to invent history, that also goes to the extreme right or the extreme left -Why these people do not use their own wiki to invent their own stories they invented?-, but there is something a person can not to invent: the history. Like it or not, the history takes us we can not invent.
We (and the historians) hope you fix solution to this scandal, as this shameful ban of Spanish flags, as well as being full of hatred, goes against all historical encyclopedic accuracy, and goes against what Spanish and American municipalities, institutions, organizations and schools want to give to their children. Spain exists in 1888, in 1992, and Today, and either wikipedia will not change history under dark interests. Sorry for my bad english. But donations have to work with us, not against us. Regards. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.144.90.9 (talk) 01:33, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

I don't think you're leveling with us. I see [1] and pages and pages more of links to the flag of Spain. Pages like [2]. The only complaint I see is that the people on the Catalonian Wikipedia give a Catalan flag for some cases where things happened in Catalonia. That's a touchy POV issue either way, and I certainly don't know the answer, but I would hazard a guess that many Catalonian-language sources would do that, no? Our article Catalonia#Politics gives the impression that Catalonian nationalism is a roughly even split of opinion. No need for people off-project to get involved in their content disputes. Wnt (talk) 01:57, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

Though on consideration I should acknowledge that using the Catalan flag and nationality for the 1992 Olympics, which I assume was hosted by the Spanish Olympic Committee, may well be a mistake even by this standard. Wnt (talk) 03:26, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

Wnt, I don't think you are being fair pointing out that the Spanish flag is used on Catalan Wikipedia, because that is obviously not what the anon is complaining about. It seems to be more about the exceptional treatment of the Catalan flag, so that it is used as we would expect it to be used if Catalan was a sovereign country. So, for example, you have football players categorised as Spanish or Catalan, rather than just as Spanish (as we would do it on en.wp) or as Catalan, Andalucian, Valencian etc. I don't know whether this is acceptable or unacceptable and I would suppose a key question is what sort of consensus has been developed over the issue. Formerip (talk) 11:00, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

We had a similar discussion not too long ago here on User:Jimbo's page. It did seem Jimbo was personally interested in getting involved and was looking for more information on whether, especially in the specific topic of the Olympic host country issue (eg- Is Catalonia ever mentioned as the host "country" as opposed to Spain?). I hope he is still interested and responds here on if he has gotten anywhere on an opinion.Camelbinky (talk) 18:19, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

In that discussion, it was apparently determined that it was an interesting issue back in 1992 and that in fact both the Spanish and Catalonian flags were used during the Olympics. That strikes me as relevant. If there is a general massive bias then yes we should be concerned. If there is a curious anomaly on this one article and it is arguable one way or the other, then I trust natural wiki processes to help us to arrive at a reasonable compromise. I would love to hear from more people from Catalan Wikipedia.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 19:57, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

So, I guess posting BLP violations on Jimbo's talk page is kosher as long as the targets don't speak English? Among other things, the above message accuses living persons of being "war-like," members of "dark interests," of being "full of hatred," and comparing them to Joseph Goebbels. Of course there's the distinct possibility that I'm the first person to actually read the whole thing, as opposed to glancing at the huge wall of text and having my eyes glaze over. --108.38.191.162 (talk) 04:06, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

I think you mean civility issues and personal attacks, not BLP, I think you are stretching BLP too far to include anything said about any living persons, this is a talk page, no one in particular was "outed" or singled out for attack. But, yes you probably are the first one that didn't have your eyes glaze over. But yes, on Jimbo's talk page I think it has been customary to give a bit more leeway to ramblings and let them be ignored instead of trying to hard to correct, as often they have a legit complaint buried in the ramblings and we don't want to discourage people from coming to Jimbo's page.97.88.87.68 (talk) 14:13, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

Hello Jimmy

I wanted to ask you if you received my last email. It has an important question for you there. Miss Bono ^{[hello, hello!]} 20:01, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

archive.is

Do you or some WMF staff have any opinion on this issue? Someone not using his real name (talk) 03:24, 3 October 2013 (UTC)