User talk:Jimbo Wales

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Alleluia! See WP:Statement on Wikipedia from participating communications firms

Or see Ad Age

I see this as a key turning point for Wikipedia (assuming the ToU changes are also put through).

Remember when the BLP policy went thru? Everybody thought it would be difficult or impossible to enforce and would bring Wikipedia down by violating our first principles. Instead it marked a new life for us as readers and new editors started taking us seriously. I predict that's what will happen this time as well. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 21:56, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

I agree. A great opportunity is upon us.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 22:04, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

• I was invited to the meeting at the Donovan House that ended with this agreement; sadly my grant request was turned down and I was unable to attend. That said, Ive stayed in pretty constant contact with the organizers of the event, as well as some of the participants. In my estimation, the PR people involved in this are being deadly serious in their positions. This is, I think, likely to provide us with our best chance to-date to integrate PR editors in to Wikipedia's workflow in a way that doesn't damage the integrity of the encyclopedia (and helps us cover undercovered areas better,) and at the same time discourage people and companies from using under the radar Wiki-PR style groups. I honestly believe that this has a significant chance of representing a turning point in our relationship with the PR industry. Kevin Gorman (talk) 22:09, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

• There have always been a number of "Good Guy" PR firms, including many of those in CREWE. They aren't the problem. They might be part of the solution, in that they will be looking to establish new editing structures to address the legitimate concerns of their clients, but this group of companies saying they are going to play by the rules (implicitly under the assumption that the rules will be fair to them) doesn't affect the broad situation in which WP content writing is a growth industry for freelancers, in which companies of smaller and smaller size are coming to see WP presence as an essential part of their marketing efforts, in which there are absolutely no fetters upon the creation of multiple accounts and paid COI editors flying under the radar. It's an opportunity for an alternative editing process to emerge, yes, but I still don't see anything from WMF but continuing efforts to ratchet up the rhetoric and the war with paid COI editors — which will continue to drive things underground, away from supervision and control. Carrite (talk) 23:10, 10 June 2014 (UTC)
  • I don't see that at all. Rather quite the opposite. The path forward is to reward and encourage disclosure and ethical behavior (i.e. to drive things in public, toward supervision and control). I wonder, though, rather than just being negative about other people's efforts to deal with what I think you agree is a problem, why don't you give us some detail about what you would do differently.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 00:21, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

Well, I think the basic question is this: do we believe in anonymity of contributors and ease of entry as our fundamental principle, or do we believe in validity of content and transparency of contributorship as our fundamental principle? We cannot have it both ways. If we really want to ban paid COI editing, it is going to require real name registration, one user-name per account, sign in to edit, and an end to so-called "outing" prohibitions — things that can be determined by WMF as part of Terms of Service. The cost will be the loss of perhaps 25 to 50% of the editor base. If we want to maintain anonymity and ease of entry into editorship and current outing rules, we need to accept that paid COI editing is a fact of life and to split the difference with these editors: mandating disclosure but banning retribution against those who disclose. The software can be tweaked so that COI edits can be identified with a button the same way that minor edits are identified with a button. The key will be to keep an eye on paid COI edits without pursuing paid COI editors like they are outlaws and villains — giving them space to work and parameters of good behavior. Treating them like gophers to be shot on sight will just force them underground. It will be a cultural change either way. The current stalemate is sort of the worst of both worlds, easy underground shenanigans and an officially authorized "game" of liquidating those who engage in underground shenanigans. It all comes down to a fundamental decision about anonymity vs. transparency. Myself? I'm for transparency. Carrite (talk) 01:18, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

Thank you. These are thoughtful remarks and much better than the innuendo and snark that are too often present here. I don't have time for a full response at the moment, not to mention that a full response requires some thought, but I invite you (and others) to think about third way approaches. That is - there is value in both ease of entry and (in some cases) anonymity, and there is value in validity of content and transparency of contributorship. AND, this is key, the two are only sometimes in tension. In many or most cases, ease of entry and validity of content are perfectly aligned. As are anonymity and validity of content.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 01:23, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

A quick response: there is comparatively little tension between anonymity/ease of entry with historically "encyclopedic" content. There is a great deal of tension between those things and commercial or contemporary biographical content, which involves self-interested parties on the one hand and really boring, volunteer-repelling topics on the other. Community notability rules aren't going to change, tweaking those is not a viable solution. It is a puzzle. The key thing is this: I think every single one of us agree that NPOV content is essential and that unsupervised and left to their own devices, paid COI editors will not tend to produce NPOV content. The question is how to eliminate the problem, not that there is a problem. Either we regulate paid COI editors under the current system or fight an unending and ultimately unwinnable war of annihilation; or else we accept that the days of IP editing and 40 socks per customer are relics of the past and actually do annihilate paid COI editing. I honestly can't see how one can split the difference on this matter. —Tim Davenport, Corvallis, OR /// Carrite (talk) 01:44, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

I was surprised there was not more support for corporate accounts, which would make COI edits much easier to identify, whether it is on Talk or in History. Also, if companies opt-in to a corporate account, that makes it easy to create a category of accounts that can be supervised/reviewed and easier to contribute on behalf of a company without disclosing your volunteer account or personal information. Just like accounts get upgraded to auto-confirmed, I could see new corporate accounts having no article-space privileges, but after a certain point they can request permission for a Pending Changes-type situation (pending changes reviewers would have to learn to revert anything controversial and tell them to take those items to Talk). Rather than review each edit individually, volunteers can conduct quarterly reviews of all corporate accounts and blanket revert with a button-press if their edits are 75%+ bad.

However, several editors I have talked to have sarcastically asked the question as to whether WMF would develop the software for new features for PR participation, especially given that COI editing (participation?) is strongly discouraged. And I'm sure they have lots of features on the wish list for the volunteer community as it is. CorporateM (Talk) 02:51, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

One solution which can go a long way without changing identification requirements is make special sourcing requirements for information on currently operating businesses, business leaders, and currently marketed products. Instead of applying general RS guidelines, allow only facts sourced to reputable academic sources on the one hand, and a more limited whitelist of news and business sources on the otherhand. This whitelist could list just well-established newspapers and business magazines (New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Businessweek etc.) and the requirement be that only regular reportage (not advertorials or anything unusual) among those whitelisted could be used to source claims. This wouldn't solve everything, but would go a long way as much of the material that paid advocates add are sourced to lesser-quality sources and self-published sources which nonetheless still meet basic RS requirements. With a whitelist requirement like this, much could be summarily removed without much fuss. --Atethnekos (Discussion, Contributions) 04:11, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

Though I don't necessarily agree with everything that Carrite is recommending, his comments are incisive, thoughtful and worthy of consideration. I disagree that formal "corporate accounts" are a good thing, as that erodes our key value that editors are individuals rather than groups. I have a lot of concerns with this declaration by 11 PR firms. The signatories have Wikipedia accounts, most with only a handful of edits, mostly to their own user pages. If they truly want to engage with Wikipedia, the way to do so is by editing productively, in addition to issuing grand declarations. Are other people from those firms editing? If so, who are those accounts? And if 11 firms commit to following our policies and guidelines, how about the hundreds of firms that haven't? Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 04:23, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

I think it would be nearly enough to simply forbid undisclosed alternate accounts and beef up our data collection enough to do a decent job of preventing socking (which we could do virtually automatically for most editors, given software that made a robust effort at doing so). The privacy concerns are pretty negligible to my mind: there may be the occasional nuclear physicist and scat porn enthusiast that wouldn't want to use one account to edit both topics, but we can live without one or the other set of contributions.—Kww(talk) 05:29, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

I've been saying this for a while now that it doesn't seem like it would be hard to automatically track MAC addresses, device IDs and other anonymous, non-personal information and automatically detect socks without interrupting the user experience of non-socking users. This wouldn't even have to prevent legitimate alternate accounts if there is a way to add exceptions into the system. It would become very difficult to sock if each the user had to use a different computer for each sockpuppet account. CorporateM (Talk) 15:46, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

@CorporateM: This is wrong for several reasons. To begin with, supposedly the MAC address should not be accessible to a website. There's been some hinting in the leaks that the NSA uses it somehow, but I don't know where to access it in a PHP file. Same with device IDs. So I think you're talking about getting editors to install a client, which is just poison -- you would lose three quarters of them in a day, the client would be a huge security vulnerability, and someone might still find a good way to hack the system (for example, some MAC addresses can be changed^[1]). Also, the idea is defective in that lots of people have several computers - desktop, laptop, a few terminals at work if they're a little naughty, mobile/tablet/whatever. While others share the terminals at the public library, especially if they actually went there to research something. Wnt (talk) 21:48, 14 June 2014 (UTC)

As a representative of one of the agencies involved--Peppercomm--I created an account so that I could answer any questions people have and so that anyone on Wikipedia would have a means through which to contact me. My answer is solely for Peppercomm's situation; I can't speak about any other agency involved. I have never had another account, and I don't edit Wikipedia pages professionally (and, as Cullen328 points out, haven't done anything of substance editing on Wikipedia personally, either). Likewise, none of our employees are tasked with doing paid editing or even intervention on Wikipedia for our clients--nor do we hire freelancers to do so. In our agency's case, we counsel on what NOT to do. If they believe, however, that there is an inaccuracy or situation that requires some sort of discussion with Wikipedia editors, we have gone to an outside firm we trust who knows the Wikipedia editor community much more deeply than we do--in particular, in our case, Beutler Ink--to ensure that any requested edit our client wishes to make is done in an ethical, transparent manner that abides by all of Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. To NOT edit pages has been Peppercomm's policy since at least 2008, when I joined the firm full-time...and, it seemed, had been the policy prior to my arrival as well. Our 11 companies issued this statement to make it clear to the Wikipedia community that many of us do have policies in place to align with Wikipedia's policies & guidelines--& Wikimedia's ToS (although our exact approaches and policies may differ). And our hope is that others will sign on or, if they don't already have these policies in place, will start to think about why they should. To be frank, intentional sockpuppetry and other forms of editing are one thing--but as substantial a problem are corporate employees or people at agencies who "don't know enough about Wikipedia to know what they don't know"...who understand this is an "encyclopedia anyone can edit" part but not COI and other very important parts of what makes Wikipedia what it is...Leumas712 (talk) 08:07, 12 June 2014 (UTC)Leumas712

• For those of us who (like me) haven't been following the TOU discussion recently, is this still the wording that is going to be added? Coretheapple (talk) 17:35, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

If you're going to only allow sources like the New York Times for businesses, what do you do about businesses that cater to specialized markets? I remember Jimbo trying to make an article about a restaurant in South Africa. Good luck trying to find information in the New York Times on that. You probably wouldn't even find much about, oh, an anime producer, and even if you can find enough to create an article, all the existing articles on such companies would have to be rewritten with new sources.

I think the mistake here is trying to figure out how you can prevent COI editing and only thinking about the particular type of business likely to engage in COI editing. Having standards which limit the usable sources would help in articles about those kinds of businesses, but would completely destroy articles on others. Ken Arromdee (talk) 17:59, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

What makes you think that South Africa does not have any well established newspapers? Or that they might not report on small restaurants from time to time, if they considered the restaurant worthy of note for some reason? --Demiurge1000 (talk) 19:20, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

The idea was that articles about businesses could only be sourced to a particular set of whitelisted sources. I highly doubt that such a whitelist would initially have South African newspapers in it, or Animne News Network for anime companies, for that matter.

Of course, you could always look at the article after it's created, and only decide at that moment to add the South African newspaper to the whitelist. But that's basically what we do anyway every time we edit an article and remove material because a bad source was given. The only difference is that with the new method, after we decide the source isn't bad and that the material is okay to keep in the article, we add it to the whitelist, but it doesn't actually change how the article itself is created.

And how does that apply to the example of the anime company? You could probably find New York Times articles eventually, but saying that we can't use sources like Anime News Network is absurd. (And I doubt that anyone creating a whitelist ahead of time would put Anime News Network on it.) Ken Arromdee (talk) 17:33, 13 June 2014 (UTC)

It's true that much material would be removed. But that's true whenever notability and RS requirements are tightened. Imagine our current notability and RS standards were far lower than they actually are. We would have a lot of material which wouldn't otherwise be there. Then imagine we brought standards up to the actual current standards. A lot of material would be removed. Is that a bad thing? Of course not: It just means we are better enforcing the requirement that we make an encyclopedia, and not a indiscriminate collection of information. My suggestion is that for the particular class of articles at issue, a further tightening of these requirements would be an improvement.

Sure, it's absurd not to use the Anime News Network (at least, I believe you, I'm not sure what it is). That's why it would be added to the whitelist. Here's an example method of implementation for avoiding the problem you mention of not having the right things whitelisted: Create the putative whitelist over a long period, even years, while it is non-binding. Interested parties can discuss with adequate time as to what is appropriate and what is inappropriate for the list. This would involve looking at what sources are working well for this class of COI-prone articles and what are not working well. This could be done right now, without any wider community approval. If the community approves of it at a later time, then it can be implemented as binding then. --Atethnekos (Discussion, Contributions) 18:17, 13 June 2014 (UTC)

It is rather, say, irritating that the Englisch WP community allows for the public relations and advertising industry to use the Wikipedia namespace for a press release. We should rather reflect on why we have not succeeded to exclude those people from WP altogether.--Aschmidt (talk) 18:14, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

I agree, because it is a given that reputable corporations, including PR firms, will not violate website terms of use. That is not a cause for celebration. Most reputable and indeed some not-so-reputable PR people and corporate executives already abide by the TOU amendment (assuming it is what was originally proposed; nobody has yet addressed my question above). While this has been billed as the beginning of \the end of paid editing, in practical terms it seems more like an acceptance of paid advocacy editing. Coretheapple (talk) 19:07, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

+1. Indeed, this page should be deleted because it violates our rules for the Wikipedia namespace. It should not be tolerated that those companies misuse Wikipedia for their business communication. Wikipedia is not an outlet for press releases. It is financed by donors who give their money for an educational project.--Aschmidt (talk) 19:29, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

It strikes me as a form of advertising, especially for the less well-known firms and PR people signing on. Seriously, every Tom, Dick or Harry who wants a client, such as my personal firm Coretheapple Communications LLC, can and will sign on. Seems promotional. Coretheapple (talk) 19:54, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

Standard English ?

The wording in 'see also' … … 'describes the current state of affairs on the English Wikipedia as it regards Jimmy Wales.' Seems unclear at least, possibly incorrect in UK English. Also tiny quibble, most of the content on the linked page is 'history of role/anomalies of role' … … is the italicised phrase standard US English?Pincrete (talk) 19:06, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

Yes, it's not brilliantly phrased. Make it better if you like. Formerip (talk) 19:10, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

Just wanted to be sure that the usage wasn't 'standard US'. I've amended the 'see also', it now reads Role of Jimmy Wales – describes the current legal status of Jimmy Wales on English Wikipedia and its administrative bodies, with some examples of how he has used his powers in the past.

Regarding the nauseating and cowardly remarks made by Wikiconference USA attendees

I hope those attendees of the recent Wikiconference USA in New York who were discussing LilaTretikov and Wllm behind their backs, suggesting that the WMF's new ED should dump her partner, or banish him from the WMF world, are proud of themselves. "Multiple influential people", says Kevin Gorman. If any of them are reading this, I'll eat my hat if they have the spine to identify themselves in public and stand behind their grotesquely inappropriate comments. — Scott • talk 20:52, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

Grotesquely inappropriate is exactly right, under any circumstances. – SJ + 00:51, 13 June 2014 (UTC)

I was present for the conference and heard no such remarks at all. What is the source for this gossip? Did you attend the conference, Scott? Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 04:25, 13 June 2014 (UTC)

There's a link in my post. Try clicking it. — Scott • talk 17:56, 13 June 2014 (UTC)

Is anyone else getting "PirritSuggester" malware ads after accessing the Wikipediocracy site? I just did a system restore going back 3 weeks, and it seemed to get rid of them, but as soon as I access Wikipediocracy, the adware starts to appear, and my privacy settings show a huge of cookies being added. I'm seeing the same thing on wllm's personal blog. adnxs.com and pirrit.com seems to be the more intrusive ones, adding links and ads in the middle of text I am trying to read. —Neotarf (talk) 21:22, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

Nope, never had anything like that from either site. 'Course, I use Firefox... 28bytes (talk) 21:35, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

So do I. And I have Windows Essentials enabled. This is something new. —Neotarf (talk) 21:39, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

Nope. Must be somewhere else you've been. John lilburne (talk) 21:43, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

Okay, thanks, I'm getting it now on other sites, where I might be expected to use a credit card online. <sigh> —Neotarf (talk) 22:00, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

• /Sigh - sad to see this come up here. Wllm, none of my emails to you were unsolicited except the very first which you responded warmly to, and I'm disappointed that you chose to post a chunk of an email from me related to sensitive issues publicly. To those wondering, yes, I did send Wil an email where that was part of a longer chunk. I don't want to say what he posted was 100% accurate because I haven't compared them side by side, but it can probably be assumed to be. I would have responded to your post on the talk page if I had seen it, but haven't been monitoring the talk page regularly as I'm only now finally fully back to having internet access, being thoroughly in the bay, etc.

I have never tried to meddle in Wil's relationship, except to point out to him that some of his actions were actively sabotaging the impressions movement members were forming of Lila in her first few weeks on her new job, and by asking him to reconsider how hard and how fast he was diving in to certain controversial areas. Though now restored to internet access, I'm pretty much going to stay away from this thread except to say that I think Lila's performance so far shows that she holds a lot of promise as a replacement for Sue, something that took a bloody hard search to find. Kevin Gorman (talk) 21:39, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

And why would it be any of their business, and why would it be any of your business to play tattletale and convey idle gossip? John lilburne (talk) 21:45, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

Sounds like we could all use a bit more clarity here, Kevin. Do you mind if I release all of the emails you sent me? Could be either on-wiki or WPO, up to you. ,Wil (talk) 21:55, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

Yes Wil, I do object, and for a pretty simple reason: doing so is not in the interests of, bluntly, anyone. You've already picked out about the worst sounding quote you could've in terms of effecting my reputation, let those who enjoy drama bask in that while they must, instead of drawing anything else in. I do have a couple things to point out: my email to you was not unsolicited, and my response to your request to not interfere with your personal life was to clarify that that was the last thing I wanted to do, emphasize that you had brought up a *lot* of points that needed to be addressed sooner or later, invite you out to dinner to meet in person and hopefully in the process convince you that I did in fact have your best interests in mind, and start talking about how to make productive change while stressing that not everything could be addressed instantly. Do you want to watch the world burn because fire is pretty, or do you prefer construction? If you want something constructive to come out of your engagement with Wikimedia, that can only happen if you engage with Wikimedia's community in a different way than you have so far. Please note that I'm only responding to pings from Wil and a handful of others in this section, rather than monitoring it proactively. Kevin Gorman (talk) 23:03, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

"If you want something constructive to come out of your engagement with Wikimedia, that can only happen if you engage with Wikimedia's community in a different way than you have so far." "Morning and evening Maids heard the goblins cry: "Come buy our orchard fruits, Come buy, come buy." Imbibe, imbibe! Say the words!Dan Murphy (talk) 23:13, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

Kevin, I don't think that quote was designed particularly to affect your reputation; though the best thing to do with offensive, ridiculous gossip is to stop it at the source and not pass it on. Repeating awful things that others have said is not quite as bad as the initial insult, but still hurts. As Wil seems to have been offended, an apology would not be remiss. – SJ + 00:51, 13 June 2014 (UTC)

If, as appears, tasteless remarks were made, I am not sure that one helps alleviate the tastelessness by publicizing them extensively. Newyorkbrad (talk) 23:20, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

NYB, here's where I think you and I fundamentally disagree with how to handle matters like this. There is a good reason to hold people to their words and deeds. If we just sweep this stuff under the carpet, then Kevin's exactly right: the Wikimedia community tolerates this kind of behavior. I'm not interested in damaging the Wikipedia community or its reputation- just the opposite. I want this kind of stuff to stop. And it won't stop unless we admit we could have done better and learn our lessons well. So, I propose that we own our mistakes, learn from them, and better ourselves. And we should encourage others to learn from mistakes. If, for example, Kevin were to apologize to me and Lila, I would consider it a sign of strength, not weakness, and I would tell him so. ,Wil (talk) 02:15, 13 June 2014 (UTC)

Wil: I've sincerely apologized to Lila, multiple times, over situations related to our interactions. When you expressed concern that I was trying to interfere with your personal life, I emphatically stressed that I had absolutely no desire to interfere in your personal life. (And, except for introducing myself, I have not sent you a single unsolicited email. If you took offense at me relaying how people viewed your behavior: I'm sorry, but sincerely hope you reread that whole line of emails to find and consider the point I made within them. I doubt leaking every email I've sent you would hurt my reputation to a greater degree than the initial offensive nugget you posted - but it would hurt likely hurt both your standing and Lila's, so I hope you have the sense not to. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kevin Gorman (talk • contribs) 02:41, 13 June 2014 (UTC)

Accepted. This is where we could use some practice, however. An apology that follows the pattern "If *, I'm sorry, but *" is a weak apology. I simple "I'm sorry" is much more effective. I'd very much appreciate a chance to accept a strong apology from you, because I believe that it is warranted. But I'm not about to force it out of you; if you don't truly regret what you've said, then I'd prefer you don't apologize at all. And, Kevin, sincerely, you can stop worrying about my reputation. It will build naturally as I do what I believe is right. And, if you haven't caught on to this yet, I really don't care that much what people think of me. I'm interested in their ideas. And I've found no lack of good ideas voiced by good people here. I'm making a lot of friends and enjoying myself. I'm gonna stay the course. If you have concerns about Lila's reputation, I suggest you take it up with her. ,Wil (talk) 04:19, 13 June 2014 (UTC)

It looks like that's the strongest apology I'm going to get. :( ,Wil (talk) 01:06, 14 June 2014 (UTC)

• This food fight is getting pretty silly. (1) Kohs shouldn't have been banned from WikiconNYC14 at all. (2) If there was a legitimate reason to ban him, it should have been stated. And it still should be, he's waiting. (3) The conference organizers owe him $5.30 and an apology, in my opinion. All the rest of this is so much noise. Carrite (talk) 23:44, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

  Off-topic for this thread, but yes. People running events can set whatever guidelines they like, and can choose their attendance list to realize the type of event they have in mind; but this should be clear up front. – SJ + 00:51, 13 June 2014 (UTC)

  Sj's right. It's OT, but there is a common theme here. It sounds like there were lots of learning opportunities at WikiCon USA. No biggies. This kind of stuff happens. I think if we practiced apologizing and forgiving, we would all move on and do it better the next time.

  I can guarantee one thing, however; if one chooses to hide their missteps and waste everyone's time- or, worse yet, reputations- by trying to save face, I'm not the only one who will persist in holding everyone accountable. But make no mistake, I do it so diligently because I don't want to have to do it next time. ,Wil (talk) 02:15, 13 June 2014 (UTC)

• I'd disagree, with that, Brad. If such remarks were made that Scott alleges in the original post, they should be publicised here, and if they are as offensive as has been suggested, the offenders swiftly removed from any position of authority or importance. (And, to be honest, anyone in authority who didn't do anything about it / didn't condemn it, possibly including people further up this thread). Black Kite kite (talk) 23:49, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

Would someone please Rev Del this thread? It's entheta that draws attention to a potential trouble source who's under the influence of suppressive persons, and I'm sure the sole source of Wikipedia has more important things to attend to. Wikipedia is a safe space. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 01:28, 13 June 2014 (UTC)

@Anthonyhcole: Didn't you mean to say "Wikipedia is a safe space opera"? ;) ,Wil (talk) 02:21, 13 June 2014 (UTC)

@Anthonyhcole:, I believe you're a squirrel.— alf laylah wa laylah (talk) 00:05, 14 June 2014 (UTC)

"suppressive persons"? "sole source of Wikipedia"? "Wikipedia is a safe space"? Not seeing anything RevDel-able here, but then your statement doesn't really make much sense to me. Nikkimaria (talk) 00:39, 14 June 2014 (UTC)

Scientology and Sarcasm. Today is brought to you by the letter S. :D ,Wil (talk) 01:06, 14 June 2014 (UTC)

Kohs is not convincing me with this argument. While arguing around the idea that he not be banned from a Wikimedia conference, "thekohser" posted that "... got his panties in such a twist over this "blackmail thread", he spent exactly 1 hour, 42 minutes, 29 seconds on MyWikiBiz last night, even searching the database for [his username], just to make sure I haven't said anything mean about him. I'm pleased that he spent some time on the Sophismata page, though..." Now, this idea that someone is going to make opinions known for the Wikimedia community, encourage them to come and hear his banned words of wisdom, only to invade readers' privacy and use their browsing for opposition research, is not something I approve of. I have to limit my reaction in light of my opinion that every user ban should have a fixed maximum duration, and also in consideration that this wasn't directly done on Wikipedia; nonetheless, this is an argument he was making specifically for our benefit in lieu of access to edit here, and it makes me more willing to believe that his activities using any data he might collect at the conference could be problematic. As for the comments the OP was talking about, I haven't heard them, they may be unwise, but not every silly thing said has to lead to somebody getting voted off the island. Wnt (talk) 06:41, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

He may have said that in the thread about the conference, but I thought that comment was completely unrelated to WikiConference USA itself. For what it's worth, I told them today that I didn't think such doxxing behavior was OK for cases where they aren't exposing abuse (YMMV) and some of them did not like it at all. Then I reasserted that they are being asshats when they're making snarky comments about others. And, surprisingly enough, for completely separate reasons, I've stopped posting on WO altogether. It's been a busy day. But I still think that Wikipedia conferences that are open to all members must not exclude any participants who don't pose a threat. The matter that this section was created to discuss, however, has been resolved by Kevin's apology, although (and I really hate to criticize any apology; in fact, it's my first time doing so) it's mixed with more excuses and inaccuracies. In any case, I've decided not to release the rest of Kevin's mails. I don't think he was acting in bad faith, and he certainly assumed privacy. He just wasn't acting with prudence. I think he got the message that I'd rather not hear from him privately anymore. ,Wil (talk) 07:51, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

@Wil. I don't think the following representation of the dialog on WPO is accurate: "I told them today that I didn't think such doxxing behavior was OK for cases where they aren't exposing abuse (YMMV) and some of them did not like it at all." I think that a big majority of the wide range of people posting at Wikipediocracy would agree that real life identification of those abusing Wikipedia through anonymous accounts is OK, with the main difference of opinion being a big majority feeling that this should be limited to the manipulation of content and a small minority feeling that this should also apply to administrators and others making abusive use of site rules against their enemies. Essentially ALL feel there MUST be some purpose to such identifications. I think that's a reasonable reflection of actual sentiment there, whether one actively participates in such public identifications or one does not. This again gets back to the question that you yourself dodged on WPO when I directly asked it of you twice: in the matter of accuracy of Wikipedia content and transparency of contributors on the one hand vs. the perceived right of Wikipedia contributors to online anonymity, where do you land? Carrite (talk) 15:05, 16 June 2014 (UTC) Last edit: Carrite (talk) 15:07, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

User "comments"

What do you think about user comments like this, Mr.Wales?

"Users with ridiculous grudges against Wikipedia are given endless slack - which they very often tie in a noose and hang themselves." — Preceding unsigned comment added by 37.230.3.89 (talk) 22:11, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

I think it's an interesting variation of the English expression "give him enough rope and he'll hang himself". --Carnildo (talk) 23:19, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

It's curious: I explicitly asked Mr.Wales about his opinion, yet another user thinks he either is Mr.Wales himself (loss of reality) or he thinks he has a right of overriding importance to respond before the asked person has replied...Odd manners, but we're quite used to it.--37.230.3.89 (talk) 23:55, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

What is really interesting about this statement is that it is completely distorting the truth (cause quite a few Wikipedia officials are definitely not at all giving any kind of slack or "enough rope" but quite the opposite, they tend to kill all opposition once anyone dares to pipe up) and secondly, but more importantly, it shows the condescending and despiteous manner in which quite a few officials look down on other users (often times just because they aren't able to tolerate a different opinion).--37.230.3.89 (talk) 23:52, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

So how do you think users with ridiculous grudges should be treated? AndyTheGrump (talk) 00:31, 13 June 2014 (UTC)

You mean users with ridiculous grudges against living and/or deceased persons who use Wikipedia articles as a tool to vent their personal frustration?--37.230.19.41 (talk) 23:25, 15 June 2014 (UTC)--37.230.4.122 (talk) 16:50, 14 June 2014 (UTC)

Klout?

Has anyone ever talked to Klout about adding a network connection to Wikipedia? If we're interested in getting more editors and more/better contributions from those editors, it seems like it would provide a nice incentive. ,Wil (talk) 23:43, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

I am not familiar with Klout beyond what is stated in our article about them, so I don't know just what you mean by "adding a network connection." But I will say preemptively that it would be a mistake to have any more incentives for anyone to maximize the sheer quantity of their edits to Wikipedia, as opposed to the quality and usefulness of their contributions. So any collaboration with that site should bear this in mind. Newyorkbrad (talk) 23:47, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

Have either of you read The Circle (2013 novel)? Klout reminds me of that book. Like Wil, I'm interested in considering outside the box ideas. Like Brad, I'm nervous about a metric that seems geared more toward quantity than quality. Quantity is easy to measure, quality a bit tougher, and even though I personally work in an area that needs quantity, I think Wikipedia as a whole needs to think how to pivot toward quality. --S Philbrick(Talk) 01:10, 13 June 2014 (UTC)

@Newyorkbrad: Klout measures online influence and is very popular among internet thought leaders who tow around lots of followers to whatever site they post on. I do agree about quality. But the best metrics for quality come from the feedback of other users. For example, influence on Wikipedia might be measured in how many people watch your user talk page. To incentivize quality, one might count thanks instead of contributions. And it wouldn't hurt Wikipedia to incentivize thanks, either. :) Of course, mechanisms have to be built in to handle gaming the system; in this case socks could really distort a score if sock-like behavior isn't somehow discounted in the algorithm. This is my point in asking about Klout; to do it right for Wikipedia, they would almost surely need our help defining the optimal algorithmic behavior.

@Stu: I connected my Wordpress blog to Klout. Do you have any idea how that connector happened?

@Sphilbrick: Also agree with you on the pivot to quality as we reach a sort of article saturation- on en.Wiki, anyways. Haven't read the book. Just might do soon. ,Wil (talk) 02:36, 13 June 2014 (UTC)

"Internet thought leaders" are often such mostly in their own minds. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 03:46, 13 June 2014 (UTC)

Oh yes, someone asked Jimbo about this a while back and he registered or looked at his klout and commented on how he thought they based his number. It was interesting enough that I was curious and registered as well. I forgot all about it until I got a notification about my "klout" number a few months ago.--Mark Miller (talk) 04:52, 13 June 2014 (UTC)

Yeap. I usually don't go to the site unless I get a notification. I do check out the graph of my score while I'm there out of curiosity, but I personally haven't started using it to change my behavior. I might if Wikipedia were on it- probably in the form of doing higher quality edits on pages that need more help than others if the score were calculated right. In any case, clearly many people here are influential online, because of how many articles they write on WP if for no other reason. ,Wil (talk) 14:44, 13 June 2014 (UTC)

Memories are short here! Jimbo "barely even understands" Klout. - 50.144.2.5 (talk) 12:27, 13 June 2014 (UTC) (one of 1 million Xfinity WiFi hotspots)

My memory seemed perfectly long enough as you just linked to where Jimbo discussed his Klout page, but I wouldn't say he barely understands it. It appears the discussion shows that Jimbo even said that after looking at his page after months it seemed much improved. You have to have some basic understanding of something to say it has improved. I think what Klout turned out to be, statistical information about a specific user's "Influence" based on the amount of traffic to their postings on the internet, is flawed because it only figures hits and Google searches from a person but cannot know if the person is really influential. People can be directed to a posting but it doesn't mean they read it or agree with it. I am just unclear how it works myself. Is this for just the user to see of themselves or can you look up the klout of others? If so, would that encourage a negative effect of people trying to market themselves on the internet...in greater numbers than already exist?--Mark Miller (talk) 16:21, 13 June 2014 (UTC)

See Klout#Critism. I'm thinking I wouldn't want to touch this with a ten foot pole, even before we get to the specific question of what "adding a network connection to Wikipedia" entails. Wnt (talk) 21:32, 14 June 2014 (UTC)

I ask one question of an admin, whom I have never interacted with before, and he says I'm "disrupting Wikipedia" and threaten me with ANI

Points have been made, repeatedly. Time to move on--S Philbrick(Talk) 17:03, 14 June 2014 (UTC)

Dear Jimbo Wales: We are encouraged to talk on the discussion page of an article about our disagreements. I have never, ever interacted with Dennis Brown, an admin, and he expresses his opinion on the talk page about an issue. I followed his comment with a question that I believed in good faith was an important question and the answer to which would shine some light on the topic. Instead of answering my question Dennis Brown immediately accused me of "disrupting Wikipedia" and then later he threaten to take me to ANI. We are told to talk on the talk pages over and over again and in my first encounter with this admin he basically tells me that I can't talk to him or I will get the ANI. Is this the way that you envisioned Wikipedia working? You can review his inappropriate response to my simple question here: false claim by an admin of me "disrupting" wikipedia when I was simply asking an admin for his opinion. I would like to know why admins, such as Dennis Brown, apply the rules so arbitrarily. What I did I did not even see as "disrupting Wikipedia". I saw myself asking his opinion. Trying to talk to the guy. He just showed up on the talk page and I wanted to know more about what he thought. He saw it as "disruption". Why? The other editors on the talk page were asking the same questions, but they did not get the heavy hand of an ANI threat. Do you think this is the way to encourage discussion? I don't. Please review what I'm talking about.--NK (talk) 21:02, 13 June 2014 (UTC) Having looked at the exchange, I am not sure that I would have characterized the question as "disruption", but it was a hostile question, and that may be why he characterized it as disruption. Anyway, if you expect Jimbo Wales to second-guess and reverse a respected administrator, then you are wasting electrons. Robert McClenon (talk) 21:29, 13 June 2014 (UTC) I didn't say that I did.--NK (talk) 22:47, 13 June 2014 (UTC) No. You are right it was not "disruption" it was a simple question. I'm not attempting to get anything overturned. If he did not want to answer the question then he should have stated as such. There was no need to attempt to scare and intimidate me into silence and he was clearly in a conflict of interest because he took a position on the other side the debate and then he attempted to make the argument that he was going to take me to ANI to get me to stop asking him a perfectly logical question.--NK (talk) 01:18, 14 June 2014 (UTC) That's odd. I'm having trouble finding your question. Oh, I see where Dennis Brown offered a clear, concise, and well-reasoned opinion in response to an RfC. And I see where you directly replied to Dennis Brown's comment with a bit of unhelpful, rhetorical, distracting polemic that happens to be followed by a question mark—but I don't see you asking him a good-faith question anywhere. And now you've decided to take your show on the road, demonstrating further bad judgement. Go find something productive to do. Scoot. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 21:41, 13 June 2014 (UTC) You are wrong. It was a good faith question. You have jumped to a conclusion based upon very little information. Also, your response to my attempt to talk to Jimbo seems, as Robert McClenon stated above, hostile. I believe that Jimbo states that he has an open door and I believe him when he says that. I find your belittling of my attempt to take advantage of his open door an example of the hostility that McClenon referred to and similar to the hostility that admin Dennis Brown exhibited toward me when I asked him a direct question that was directly on point of the topic on the talk page. Why you feel the need to exhibit such hostility toward someone that is simply taking advantage of Jimbo's offer is not consistent with Jimbo's offer and is not consistent with the open door environment that Jimbo has stated on numerous times that he wants. No, you go find something productive to do and make sure that productivity includes not displaying the type of hostility that you and Dennis Brown believe is ok to engage in.--NK (talk) 01:18, 14 June 2014 (UTC) The question asked, about whether we would include quotations every time the subject makes them, is one that virtually no one would think of it as an "important question," and I note that you also seem to be jumping to some quite unwarranted conclusions about the intentions of others, perhaps also indicating that you have little if any understanding of content policies and guidelines. As an editor apparently senior enough to come to this page, I and I think virtually everyone else here may well conclude that your rather apparently over-the-top rhetorical overreaction to the situation was both unhelpful, and, honestly, more than a little irrational. Rhetorical questions pretty much by definition do not necessarily require direct answers, and, honestly, as they really can't be seen as being honestly attempts to improve the content, may arguably not belong on the talk page at all. Agree with TenOfAllTrades here, with a proviso that reviewing the relevant talk page guidelines at WP:TPG would also be more productive than further comment here. John Carter (talk) 21:55, 13 June 2014 (UTC) I find nothing irrational in taking up Jimbo on his open door policy. Also, it is simply your opinion that my question was not important that is not fact it is opinion. What is irrational is for you to confuse opinion from fact. That is the definition of irrationality. I have a great understanding of content policies and guidelines. Once again, you do not know me other than the little tiny bit you have read but you have jumped that incorrect conclusion. This is an example of the type of hostility that I seen from TenOfAllTrades and Dennis Brown. I guess somehow this hostility makes you feel better but it is not consistent with the Jimbo open door policy. My question was helpful. Thank you John Carter for expressing your opinion, not fact, and for exhibiting your hostility because it mirrors the hostility that Dennis Brown sent my way simply because he did not agree with me.--NK (talk) 01:20, 14 June 2014 (UTC) You asked a pointless question, and were rebuffed. Somehow you think asking a rhetorical question in a RFC was very clever. When Dennis refused to fall for the bait, you badgered him on his Talk page. And now you come here to try and pretend like you are some innocent party, feigning as if your question wasn't rhetorical and demanded an answer? Very clever. Dave Dial (talk) 22:45, 13 June 2014 (UTC) Once again, another example of confusing opinion for fact. My question was not pointless. I'm not pretending to be some innocent party. Oh, I need to mention the parade of hostility continues from you that came from TenOfAllTrades, John Carter, and Dennis Brown.--NK (talk) 01:20, 14 June 2014 (UTC) In an RFC (request for comment) there is a polling section and a discussion section. Your question had enough battleground mentality in the way it was formed that it was clear you were trying to make a point in the polling section. Disrupting the RFC with prolonged text, in the wrong location and in the form of ad hominem argument was pretty basic disruption.--Mark Miller (talk) 22:59, 13 June 2014 (UTC) I don't really know how to respond to this one other than point out that there is more hostility toward any one that attempts to take advantage of Jimbo's open door policy and you have no understanding of the phrase ad hominem because I did not call Dennis Brown a name. I only asked him a question.--NK (talk) 01:20, 14 June 2014 (UTC) I can't speak for Jimbo, he does that quite well himself, but I have seen enough of his replies to feel confident that he does have some concerns about admins who may abuse their authority, but I'll be stunned if he supports your position that Dennis Brown was out of line. All editors and especially admins are expected to AGF, but adherence to AGF does not mean one has to pretend that your leading question was an honest attempt to initiate a conversation with a simple question. Frankly it is an insult to Jimbo's intelligence that you would make such an assertion. You are still relatively new. Have you been around long enough to hear about WP:boomerang?--S Philbrick(Talk) 00:00, 14 June 2014 (UTC) It is no insult to anyone intelligence to have a conversation. That's my point exactly. The hostility exhibited here by just raising a valid question shows the problem. Dennis Brown did not want to even engage in a conversation. And most the posters here do not want my side to be even heard. The response is pompous, hostile, dismissive, arrogant, etc. It is not consistent with what Jimbo's open door policy presents itself to be. The mean-spirited attitude of TenOfAllTrades is not as hostile as Dennis Brown, who basically said if I asked the question again he would ANI me and he refused the answer and he has a clear conflict of interest, but TenOfAllTrades's comments are arrogant and dismissive and, of course, immature. For some reason none of you want to let me have a hearing. You want to silence me--just like Dennis Brown wanted. What is the big deal? Is there a spirit of open communication or isn't there? Based upon the attitude displayed in this sequence of comments the answer is no.--NK (talk) 01:18, 14 June 2014 (UTC) If everyone but you thinks you are being wrong or otherwise disruptive, perhaps it is time to ask yourself if, indeed, all these people could be right. You asked a silly rhetorical question, and you've been correctly put in your place. Whining here is not helping you, quite the opposite. --cyclopiaspeak! 01:21, 14 June 2014 (UTC) Why are you so hostile to me raising the question? Does this hostility add to the open communication environment that we are told we want?--NK (talk) 01:32, 14 June 2014 (UTC) Because it was clearly not an honest question, but a rhetorical device. Which can be fine, but it failed: acknowledge it and move on. There is no way that question was in good faith. And before you jump for the n-th time yelling "no no it was a good faith question", well, in Naples they have a say, ca' nisciuno è fesso, which means "nobody is a fool here". So, if you think you can fool us into thinking that you were asking a good faith question, you basically are assuming we are a bunch of idiots. When you treat people like idiots, expect hostility.--cyclopiaspeak! 01:45, 14 June 2014 (UTC) You state, correctly, that there should be an open communication environment. You (NazariyKaminski) have been interfering with that open communication environment. Although it is permitted to delete messages from your talk page, rather than archiving them, deleting them makes communicating via the talk page difficult, by forcing other editors who wish to engage in honest communication to view the talk page history. However, you have the gall to accuse us of interfering with open communication when you are deleting communications, forcing us to view the history. I am not an admin. If I were, you would be already blocked for 36 hours for tendentious editing, not for the original hostile question, but for pursuing it at bizarre length. You were cautioned. The community thinks that the caution was appropriate. Take that as a caution, and drop the issue, or go on and get blocked. I would give you a Level 4 warning on your talk page for using Jimbo's talk page to rant, but you would delete it. Consider this your Level 4 warning. Any further comments should result in a block. Robert McClenon (talk) 01:55, 14 June 2014 (UTC) Robert McClenon: I guess your hostile and abusive response is why you aren't an admin. Also, your comments are inconsistent with a open communication.--NK (talk) 15:47, 14 June 2014 (UTC) NK, You cry about "open communication", yet use that phrase like a passive-aggressive mallet to get others to shut up; to stiffle discussion. You underestimate the intelligence of others, then strike out and play the victim when they call you on it. You dig in, insist on having the last word, spilling more and more vitriol with each comment, yet you are completely unaffected by the fact that no one agrees with you. I wrote an essay about 6 years ago that covers some of this: WP:Don't bludgeon the process. The situation is simple, but either you lack the ability to understand the nuances of the English language, or you are blinded by your own ideals and biases. Either way, you have taken my polite, concise and well thought out comment at an RFC and attack me in every way possible because I wouldn't answer your "clever" response to it, a response that was created NOT to generate discussion, but instead to undermine my credibility and call my motives into doubt. My initial response was that your actions are a violation of WP:POINT: A willingness to disrupt Wikipedia in order to make a point. Everything you have done since, including your actions here, have only proven me right. Dennis Brown | 2¢ | WER 16:43, 14 June 2014 (UTC) (e/c)NK: Have you been misunderstood? If so, it's often best to take some of the blame, even if undeserved, if what you are really interested in is open communication. On the other hand, if all you want is to cast blame elsewhere for such missed communication, than it's likely to lead to wasted time, and not communication. Forensically, it is relatively simple to see what happened in the comments under discussion. You: 'Someone else supposedly made a claim, you agree with it, don't you' Him: 'I am not going to respond to a claim/question in that form' (he even pointed you to a link he felt explained his reason for not responding to the claim/question in that form). So, either reformulate your question, or move on. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 16:47, 14 June 2014 (UTC) NK - this is meant to be a "World Wide Encyclopedia", not some other type of entertainment. Martinevans123 (talk) 16:52, 14 June 2014 (UTC)

is Wikipedia dying?

just few years ago I could find artciles about everything new, but now I can't:

• King's Bounty: Warrior of North is just still redirection
• Ironclad: Battle for Blood - no article yet

What is happening to Wikipedia?
Deleters are claiming that "wikipedia already has articles about evering and no new articles are needed", but I see THAT'S A LIE! Why do they become so POWERFULL? Why metapedists who do nothing just delete are more equal the those who write articles? Why no one see the AGONY of Wikipedia? Why no one tries to save it? (Idot (talk) 06:40, 15 June 2014 (UTC))

Maybe priorities change? Years ago, you couldn't articles on most of the Fortune 500 companies but you could on every Pokemon out there. Does the fact that you can't find information on two video games tell you that the website is "dying"? -- Ricky81682 (talk) 07:02, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

Wikipedia has articles about *almost* everything, but some video games, films, books, pop albums etc may not meet WP:GNG, which is the requirement for a standalone article. In these cases, they can be included as part of other articles. Plus there is a need for someone to take the time to write the article.--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 07:07, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

Just few years ago we used to have enough people to write articles that cover everyithing... (Idot (talk) 09:01, 15 June 2014 (UTC))

The media claimed a decline in editor numbers in 2013, but that is not the real issue here. The rules for article creation are stricter now than they were a few years ago, and a stub class article about a video game sourced to a couple of online reviews would probably face WP:AFD.--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 09:10, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

Both are related, 'coz there is a GREAT DISINCETIVE and GREAT DISCOURAGE to editors, 'coz everyone are equal, but Herostrates are more equal then others, just 'coz
if a writer has a couple of hours to spent Wilipedia, he or she is forced to spend such time for arguing in AFD, not for writing articles and as as result the writer gets no pleasure from writing articles, but great displeasure, so if the writer is not a masochist the best choise is not to waste free time for displeasant Wikipedia, but to spent for something else
while a Herostrate may spent his or her couple of hours of free time in AFD, and gets lots of pleasure, and Wikipedia is very pleasent place for Herostrates, so Herostrates are more equal than editors, 'coz only Herostrates are able to spend their time for pleasant activity (Idot (talk) 09:45, 15 June 2014 (UTC))

While our fellow Idot here may be easy to ignore because of their not-so-good English and apparently frivolous complain, I wouldn't shrug and move on so fast. It is true that most of our readership is more inclusionist than we are. Readers expect to find information when they look for something on WP. Whenever we don't do that, it is a failure. Now, it is true that on some subject we simply cannot do that (e.g. if there is a lack of RS). But I often have the feeling that we draft tighter and tighter notability/inclusion guidelines only for the sake of ourselves as editors, without thinking about the readers outside. In fact the declining number of editors means that we are alienating more and more people, preventing them from becoming editors as well. I strongly urge everyone to consider that we are here for the readers. Maybe relaxing our inclusion criteria a bit, sometimes, would make this thing a bit uglier than we would like, but probably our readers would be much happier. This is not a new issue, actually. Media have often a dim view of our deletionist approach, and they already had several years ago: [2],[3],[4],[5]. Meanwhile the problem has only got worse.--cyclopia^speak! 10:57, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

One person's "important information" is another person's "useless trivia" (and vise versa). The debate between inclusionists and deletionists has been going on since the earliest days of Wikipedia, and it won't end with this discussion. Deletion is only a "problem" if you are an inclusionist. The deletionists, of course, don't consider it a "problem" at all. It may be that most of our editors are deletionists... when the article under consideration is about a topic they have no interest in. They suddenly turn into rabid inclusionists when the article is about a topic they care about. Like I said... one person's useless trivia is another person's important information (and vise versa). Blueboar (talk) 11:37, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

you don't see the crucial point: deleters usually DO NOT write articles id est (in general) deleters ARE NOT writers, typicall they DO NOT improve articles, because they don't do anything to improve articles, but they have greater POWER than thouse who write articles, 'coz they could spend all free time for deletion, while writer are forced to spend lots of time not for writing articles, but for arguing with deleters - it means lots of time are WASTED not for improving articles, but just for arguing with deleters. while deleters do not have filling of waste of time (they have only pleasure of deleting and arguing), writers have fillings that writing in Wikipedia is waste of time and efforts, 'coz whatever they did might be easily wasted by deleters (Idot (talk) 12:07, 15 June 2014 (UTC))

The counter point, of course, is this: While deletionists do not improve any specific article... the see their activities as improving the entire project (ie Wikipedia as a whole). Remember, there are two ways to improve a written work... one is to add more to it... the other is to edit out what isn't needed. It's what editors do (there is a reason we are called editors, not writers). Blueboar (talk) 14:08, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

Thank you User:Idot for asking such a brilliant and perceptive set of questions. They get right to the heart of the problems preventing Wikipedia from achieving it's potential for good. To answer each in turn:

• Is Wikipedia dying?

Not yet, but it is inflicted with a sickness. And until that sickness is cured, Wikipedia is increasingly at risk of going the way of Citizendium. Venture capitalists have long expressed a wish to fund a more open alternative to Wikipedia. Even back in 2008 they recognised that "Deletionists rule Wikipedia" . Almost every month here in London alone, there's a conferences on Inclusive capitalism. Im expecting to attend one on 3rd July with folk like Andrew Witty, Charlie Mayfield, Sir Roger Carr, Frances O’Grady, Sir John Armitt, Katja Hall and Mike Wright. While inclusionism is generally talked about in a broader sense than its typically used here on Wikipedia, options for a replacement are sometimes discussed. With good SEO, leveraging of social media and perhaps a little inside help from one or two of the tech giants, it would not be hard to engineer. So far, those with the knowledge to help implement the project have demurred, out of loyalty to Wikipedia. But this may not be the case forever. Once it happens it will happen fast. Wikipedia will drop like a stone in the search rankings, and there will be nothing the Foundation or community could do about it.

• What happened to Wikipedia?

As you clearly already know, its been largely taken over by deletionists.

• Why have Deletionists became so powerful?

There lots of reasons for this. As per your insightful opening post, one of the reasons is the powerful myth about article saturation. The assertion that we close to the point where we have articles on almost everything worthy of coverage in an encyclopedia is not just wrong, but breathtakingly wrong. Back when the famous 1911 Encyclopedia was written, it was reasonable to say that human knowledge increased at such a slow rate that it took about a century to double. Now human knowledge is increasingly at an exponential rate. This is a totally mainstream idea and not to my knowledge challenged by any serious academic. Human knowledge is now likely doubling in less than a year, accordingly to IBM, it may soon start to double in only 12 hours. Wikipedia took well over 10 years to reach 4.5 million articles. What's most concerning is the second derivative of the rate of increase, which is close to zero even in terms of bytes being added to the database, and clearly negative with regards to new articles. Millions of potential new topics are arising each year, receiving abundant coverage in reliable sources, and only an increasingly tiny fraction get included in Wikipedia.

I can't believe someones tried to defend this by saying at least we now have good coverage of Fortune 500 companies. Since Wikipedia became the world's leading source of information, the larger companies are naturally going to ensure they have articles. But what about topics of huge social importance but with less CoI reason to encourage editing?

Over the last few years, in the field of hunger relief and development, I've been painfully aware there are literally tens of thousands of high impact topics that aren't even mentioned in Wikipedia, despite being abundantly covered in reliable sources. I myself have expanded or created articles on a few dozen of these topics: e.g. Seoul Development Consensus , Hunger in the United States, School breakfast club , The World Development Report 2011 , but the efforts of myself and the few others who work in this topic class are just tiny drops in an ocean of omission. The same could be said about countless other topic classes. Huh, even many topics one might expect to appeal to Wikipedia's young male demographic are poorly covered. As a specific example, this May the United Nations held its first ever conference on autonomous weapons, and this attracted huge coverage in the main stream press. But not only is there no article for the conference, the fact it occurred doesn't seem to be mentioned on Wikipedia at all!

Again, not only are we no where near achieving article Saturation , Wikipedia is falling behind the saturation point at an exponentiation rate, and this includes omission not just of important computer games, but of countless events with massive coverage in both mainstream press and scholarly journals, and which any well balanced person would agree are of world historical significance.

Another equally destructive myth is the thinking behind the various methods used to promote quality. Aside from directly destroying content in the name of quality, adding ugly maintenance tags to the top of articles is perhaps the most self defeating. The sort of people best able to create quality content have many other platforms on which to contribute to other than Wikipedia. They also often have a well developed sense of aesthetics, and are repelled away from Wikipedia by the excessive tagging. This also ties in with what you've just suggested about content creators seeing contributing here as a waste of time, due to the power of deletionists.

Yet another reason for deletionists becoming so powerful is the way the RfA process favors them. Almost by definition, Inclusionists tend to be tolerant, and its relatively rare for them to oppose a half decent deletionist candidate. Whereas deletionists are much more likely to oppose an inclusionist candidate. So over the years, the admin corps has became progressively more deletionists in character, and the deletionist ideology has effectively became normalized throughout the politically active section of the community (i.e. those who frequently participate in the meta processes like XfD, RfA, ANI, policy discussions).

• Why are deletionists favored over article writers?

You've already answered this, but its worth repeating. The short answer is the prevailing social dynamics on Wikipedia make it so.

Some come to Wikipedia because they want to add to the sum of humanities knowledge. This is hard work. Others seem to come to Wikipedia as its a good opportunity for them to exercise power. Everyone likes to have power, and the need to do so is generally proportional to one's strength of character (but not sadly ones ability to achieve or even perceive the good). Power is often defined as the ability to dispose. As Hegel revealed, the desire for recognition is a primary human drive, and achieving it often involves negating the other. Wikipedia is perfect for those who like to exercise power by destroying other peoples work. As you rightly point out, it is far easier to achieve pleasure here as a deletionist than as a content creator. This is also a fourth way to answer your question about why deletionists have became so powerful.

Moving on to a possible solution, a classic way societies have responded to destructive and intolerant elites is raise up a King. In Christendom especially, one of the roles of the King was to stand up on the side of the people against the nobility (or the power hungry middle class) if they became to oppressive to the people. (To be non sexist, I should point out good Queen Beth I was probably the very best recent monarch in this regard). In the early days of Wikipedia, Jimbo was effectively a good inclusionist King figure, but after years of aggressive lobbying by deletionists, he has progressively retreated from this role, both as he prefers the community to run itself, and as he's been sympathetic to deletionist propaganda when they present it as a way to increase quality.

The more modern solution to the problem of oppressive elites is strong and inclusive institutions. The simplest way a reform along these lines could be implemented on Wikipedia might be to give Arbcom the power to change policy, and create life long seats for our best inclusionist editors like Casliber, Hobbit, cyclopia, MSQ, Milowent, Dream and the Colonel. Only Jimbo would have the authority to bring this about.

• Why do none see the AGONY of Wikipedia?

A great many do, it's just most are paralyzed by the horror of it all and so rarely express it.

• Why do none try to save it?

Many have, but those who try to effectively oppose deletionists on Wikipedia rarely last. A few years back we had several editors of indomitable character, who heroically tried to save vast quantities of articles. The rescue Titan Anobody, the heroic Benji, the master strategist Ikip. But all have been permabanned, often after having threads started against them on off wiki sites, allowing hordes of deletionists to descend on ANI en mass and create an unstoppable illusion of consensus.

Deletionists are so powerful that only Jimbo could possibly oppose them. Despite the glaring flaws you've spotlighted, Wikipedia is still a monumental achievement, and Jimbos very success in founding it may mean he's not the best person to nurture his idea to its full fruition.

If you read this entire post though, I hope you'll see that some of the needed prep work is already being done off wiki. It make take several years, maybe two decades at the outside, but sooner or later inclusionism will rightly return as the prevailing ideology for the world's number one encyclopedia. This is inevitable. The question is whether it will be achieved with Wikipedia and the Wikimedia foundation, or against them. FeydHuxtable (talk) 12:20, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

• I am rather proud to be known as a "deletionist", actually. I and others serve here as "editors" more in line with what a copy editor does at a newspaper, i.e. formatting, grammar, fact-check, and ensure balance. We curate the content of others, basically. Part of that does involve working to delete content deemed ill-suited to this project. Not every Transformer needs his/her exhaustive history and abilities spelled out in detail, not every 4th-rate politician needs a biography, and not every video game gets a plot analysis and strategy guide. Unless there is something egregiously wrong (e.g. copyright violation) with an article, such things are always put up for a community discussion, where you can have your say. And Feyd, thanks for the early-morning chuckle. Titans, heroes, and master strategists? You identified 3 of the worst scourges to ever infest this project there. Tarc (talk) 12:29, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

You're welcome Tarc, and thanks for having the honesty to demonstrate the extent of the problem by openly admitting you're proud to be deletionist. The flip side of that pride is the much more common editor who denies being a deletionist yet still clearly acts on that philosophy. That’s what I meant about deletionism being normalized. We're not just talking about articles for 4th rate politicians being destroyed. On the subject of politics, even global phenomena like the 2008–09 Keynesian resurgence have been put up for deletion. A world wide policy shift that arguably effected everyone on the planet, and which attracted thousands of dedicated articles in the mainstream media, financial press, and the journals, and which had even had several whole books written entirely about it from the world's leading universities (including Harvard, Cambridge and MIT). Despite all this being patiently explained, the article was still put up for deletion! As you well know, topics that have attracted wall to wall media coverage relating to royal weddings or tragedies like the death of Amanda Todd have also been repeatedly put for deletion. No wonder fewer and fewer content creators want to contribute here. It's not just trivial articles that are being attacked. And to fulfill our m:vision , even the most minor Transformer character deserve an article. Why can't obviously intelligent people like yourself not see that deletionism is out of control, and ultimately threatens the very existence of Wikipedia? FeydHuxtable (talk) 12:57, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

Sorry for that flip reply. I didnt mean to suggest there's something wrong in being a deletionists. As you say, deleting is a necessary part of presenting a useful encyclopedia. There's lots of reasons from op positional theory why its even desirable for the role to be personified by individuals. Folk being proud to be a deletionist is not the problem. The problem is one of balance, as Idot correctly says, deletionism is a problem because its become too powerful. FeydHuxtable (talk) 13:32, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

I'm somewhere between an inclusionist and a deletionist.

The inclusionist within me says:

• Deleting an article that a new editor started working on is going to demoralize and confuse the newbie and likely scare him/her off from ever working here again.
• We could benefit from articles on some subjects that are considered too insignificant to be encyclopeadic right now. If someone comes here to find some information, and it's not here because it's "insignificant" - then we failed to give that person the information (albeit obscure) that they needed...we failed in our role as "repository of all human knowledge".
• What does "encyclopeadic" mean anyway? It means "suitable for inclusion into an encyclopedia". As we are now by far the biggest and best encyclopedia in the world, Wikipedia defines what an encyclopedia is. What is "encylopeadic" is now, by definition, "whatever Wikipedia chooses to accept". So we have a circular argument.
• Disk space is cheap - so why not have articles about more obscure subjects?

But then the deletionist in me rears up his ugly head:

• Allowing people to create articles that are truly too insignificant is a bad thing because it will result in a huge increase in the number of articles without a corresponding increase in people who stay here to maintain them. We truly don't have enough editors to maintain a much larger body of articles.
• Wikipedia can only maintain the "encyclopedia that everyone can edit" mantra because, when spam is added to an article, it gets cleaned up in minutes - or when mis-information is put into an article by some random bad guy, it gets corrected by the people who have that article on their watchlists. That's certainly true for articles like Physics that have hundreds of watchers - but if we allow people to create articles about their barely-notable relatives, how can we be sure that they'll maintain them off into the infinite future? There is a risk that widening the scope of the encyclopedia will make it unmaintainable. You can certainly argue that only the unimportant articles will fall foul of spammers, vandals and so forth - but can we expect our readers to understand that reading an article on a barely notable topic exposes them to a vastly higher risk that what they are reading is nonsense. The effect that this might have on our reputation would certainly diminish our readership - and that's a much bigger threat to the encyclopedia than a diminution of the number of editors.

So who is right? I don't know...hence I oscillate between inclusionist and deletionist ideals. Hence, I subscribe to the Association of Wikipedians Who Dislike Making Broad Judgments About the Worthiness of a General Category of Article, and Who Are in Favor of the Deletion of Some Particularly Bad Articles, but That Doesn't Mean They Are Deletionists.

When we had that rash of Pokemon articles, I felt that it was too much to have an article about every single Pokemon. But, they mostly turned out to be well-referenced, and a lot of them made it to Featured Article status, and a fair number of people read them too. I've even had need to read one or two of them over the years.

My thought is that the gold standard for article acceptance should be:

1. Is it referenced? Although we should give time for new editors to understand the need for references and to track them down and add them to their new articles before we leap in and delete those articles.
2. Is it actively being maintained? Maybe we should have a bot that randomly inserts "PLEASE DELETE THIS SENTENCE!" into articles at random and watches to see how long it is before the article is fixed. If the time exceeds some threshold - then the article clearly isn't being actively maintained, and we should review it for deletion.
3. Deleting articles that are unmaintained is a victimless crime because if a newbie creates an article and doesn't look in on it after several months, then if we delete it, we're not likely to deter him/her from becoming a new editor. But if he/she has been working hard on the article for days or weeks, then instead of deleting it, let's move in and help with it...even if it is kinda obscure. Then, if we have to delete the article later, we've already established a friendly working relationship with the new editor - and it's much more likely that they'll stay.
4. Is it more than just a stub? The consideration and caution displayed when deciding whether to delete an article should be in proportion to the amount of work that went into creating it.
5. Consider that (especially with first-articles-by-new-editors), it's not the article that we're deleting - it's the editor.

With those considerations in place, I don't see why we shouldn't allow much less notable subjects to be included here. Disk space is cheap - and who is really harmed if a well-maintained, nicely referenced article about some very obscure person is created here?

SteveBaker (talk) 13:25, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

Interesting compromise, but while deleting unmaintained articles might not hurt the creator(s) in the sense that they'd be less likely know their work was destroyed, we'd still victimize all the present and future readers who would want to see encyclopedic coverage of the topic. Much better to only allow the destruction of hoaxes, attack pages and non notable BLPs. FeydHuxtable (talk) 13:32, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

I'm surprised that anyone, anywhere, considers Wikipedia nearly done. There are about 300 German electoral districts currently missing articles, at least 500 members of the current German parliament don't have articles. Go back to 1949 and there must be 8000-9000 members without articles. In Spain over 2,000 members of parliament elected since 1977 don't have articles here. Add the members of regional assemblies in both those countries and you easily have over 50,000 articles uncreated which have presumptive notability. That's just for two rich western democracies with a lot of people who've had the money to put themselves through decent universities with every day computer access. How many electoral districts and members of regional and national parliaments around the world are missing? I don't think it's an exaggeration to say it must be close on a million. For all that, I'm not totally convinced about the Transformers characters and so on. I believe we should be making more use of mergers and redirects so that they have some mention here until the sources exist to spin them out into their own articles. I found that in the case of the politicians. I had a look before with a thought to creating articles on members of the Valencian regional assembly, but the sources just aren't there. In such cases I think "list of X" articles are better and are much easier for editors to monitor for vandalism, POV and misinfo than 2 or 3 sentence permanent stubs. Valenciano (talk) 13:40, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

• Well, strangely enough, if we look at the two articles that Idot complains about at the start of this very odd thread'

• "King's Bounty: Warrior of North is just still redirection" - well, yes, because it's never been more than a one-line stub. And "Ironclad: Battle for Blood - no article yet" ... as far as I can see, this has never had an article. So, Idot, if you want these things to have articles, you could also try writing them instead of complaining about it. Black Kite kite (talk) 14:47, 15 June 2014 (UTC)
  • Black Kite, you don't get the point unfortunatelly, just few years ago articles of same topic would be have been already written! just few years ago I would had 'em already as a reader (Idot (talk) 15:32, 15 June 2014 (UTC))
    • Well, that's as maybe, but how does it stand with the stuff about "deletionists" if the articles have never even existed? Articles will exist if there are people sufficiently interested to write them. I can only assume, in the case of these two games, that there - as yet - haven't been. Black Kite kite (talk) 17:46, 15 June 2014 (UTC)
      • if writers were not discouraged the artciles would be already have been written. but we have the sad situation when writers are DO discouraged, so they choose do not waste time and efforts in Wikipedia by writing articles - the choose another pleasant activity, but not discpleasant and frustating athmosphere of Wikipedia which is not as frendly as used to be few years ago. 'coz whatever you do could be easily wasted by Herostrates, so writing articles become useless waste of time and efforts (Idot (talk) 18:03, 15 June 2014 (UTC))

Very true Idot. Appalling as the direct destruction wrought by deletionists is, it's small compared to their indirect damage. Due to deletionist dominance, countless millions of articles are never written as creative editors are too discouraged to start them in the first place.

Survey after survey from the Foundation has confirmed deletionism is a leading reason for the decline in active editors. For years nothing has been done, as it's been seen as the inevitable consequence of a wikipedia's maturation, a terrible pattern that plays out across all the difference languages.

Many good outside academics have tried to analyse the reason for the fall off in active editors. Without exception they've all been seduced by the false narrative of article saturation and nonsense about low hanging fruit. It took your genius to divine the true reason: the social dynamics implicit in the DNA for a wikimedia project are too favorable to deletionists.

After inclusionist trailblazers grow a new wikipiedia to a critical mass, it becomes attractive to deletionists who derive pleasure from exerting power over article creators and their work. They turn inclusionist's great virtue - tolerance - into a weakness. Jimbo and Jimbo alone has the power to turn the tide against deletionism. I doubt it will happen, but you've certainly started your thread in the right place. Thank you so much for giving us hope! FeydHuxtable (talk) 18:52, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

During 2004/2005, it took months after the announcement of a massive, high profile film for an article to be created about it. As of right now, a video game that gets announced at E3 has an article created within ten minutes. It's the same with most films and television series bar a very tiny minority of them. Article creation may well have slowed down but I do not believe pop culture topics have anything to worry about. —Xezbeth (talk) 14:46, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

I completely reject the point of deleting articles without people watching them. It is precisely the most "academic" topics the ones that will have less people watching or editing them, and the things from popular culture and/or modern times the ones with most activity. Cambalachero (talk) 17:56, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

• Is Wikipedia the site for the description of what some of the complaints? I mean, gamers and such don't go to Wikipedia to learn about video games. They go to walk-through sites, or cheat sites. Or more like Wikia. I use Wikia all the time for Walking Dead info. The TV, game and comic. I don't know if an encyclopedia is the venue here. I don't know if it isn't either. It might be a good idea to quasi-merge some of the material provided in Wikia and Wikipedia. Both are run by the Wikimedia Foundation. Dave Dial (talk) 18:33, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

• It's an issue of scope. Wikipedia is trying to be more general and as such, is more concerned about more general topics. The Wikia page has more details on about the Walking Dead game but I'm certain Wikipedia has more details about the actors, the writers, the company, etc. Rather than both get bloated and unwieldy, let each community exist on its own. Wouldn't you rather the administrators at the Wikia page be people who know more about the Walking Dead series rather than just 'regular' people who may have no interest and cause fighting because they just aren't a part of that community? -- Ricky81682 (talk) 18:40, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

It's not a WMF project. It's run by a separate company, Wikia, Inc. See here and the WP article - it's a for-profit venture, hence the ads. BethNaught (talk) 18:42, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

Oh, ok. I thought since it was founded by Jimbo and Angie that it was part of the Foundation. And yes, I would rather go to Wikia to get more in depth info on games. In fact, I do. In any case, I don't think Wikipedia is dying, just evolving. Dave Dial (talk) 18:53, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

I'd like to thank Idot for starting this conversation, though I don't think video games are underrepresented relative to other items ... indeed, they seem to get front page product placements far out of proportion to their importance. And I especially thank FeydHuxtable for cogently saying things I could practically have written myself. But I should emphasize that the rules haven't changed. WP:GNG is still the "basic notability criterion" for everything, and it reads the same as ever. What has happened is that a lot of people just make a point of intentionally ignoring the guidelines we have, saying that such-and-such an article fails Notability (cartoon characters) or whatever. One things deletionists will never delete is notability guidelines, studded with some carefully lobbied-for set of things that, nominally, represent additions to the articles we can have, but which end up being voted as if they were limitations on them.

The larger problem that is a part of is that adding content is subject to all sorts of rules - "original research", NPOV, COI and so forth. But the people who come around to delete content don't follow rules. They basically say, this source doesn't match my impression of what is true, so it's out. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof, and extraordinary means anything I don't believe in. Or they wave a bundle of ethics at you, claiming violations of innumerable policies or just whatever they say doesn't seem right for us to cover. Even when they are not deleting to favor a POV, their notion of "balancing" an article is to chop down whichever view was best documented to match the physical length of whatever view was least worked on. There's no penalty for coming up with five different reasons, all clearly bogus from even a quick skim of the policy text, why an article has to be deleted. They perfect a make-work routine, understanding that victory involves spending a bare minimum of time to revert, a brief citation of a random policy if challenged, and a move on to the next policy when necessary. By moving quickly and spending little time, they can move in herds and achieve "consensus", at which point they can say the policy is defined by what they do.

I am not sure, but I think that Wikipedia can be saved by fusing it with one of the Internet's other forgotten pillars, Usenet. I understand, of course, that as implemented that network is vastly insufficient. However, I think we could formulate a general idea of decentralized storage, using the history old-id as the posting identifier, enabling Mediawiki markup, especially transclusion, in reading of the individual posts, and replacing the burdensome administrative and editing structure of Wikipedia and the obsolete and oversimplified newsgroup structure of Usenet with an after-the-fact choice of preferred versions by multiple independent authorities, and empowering the individual reader with the ability to archive some set of specific article versions to be served in a decentralized torrent-like network. I don't think it would be easy to design, and far harder to get people involved in, but we should think about ideas like this seriously in the expectation of the time when Wikipedia really does go under. I do not want this whole public enterprise getting taken over, censored, and all but owned by some creepy spy like company like Facebook or Quora because they're the only ones who had a dream, even though a dark one. Wnt (talk) 23:43, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

Merging with USENET - the famed copyright/child-porn/spam service would be like taking a cyanide pill for Wikipedia. Not to mention the wonderful tens of thousands of lawsuits waiting to happen in such a "fusion." IMO of course. Collect (talk) 00:11, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

I don't usually agree with Collect, but I agree that merging Wikipedia with Usenet is one of the genuinely worst ideas ever to be expressed in Wikipedia. Robert McClenon (talk) 00:50, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

People file all these sorts of edits in Wikipedia. These are the accusations made against anything that "anyone can edit". Of course, as I said, we would need better than the simple newsgroup structure; as with Wikipedia, something should point to mark a "current version". The fact that Usenet is a venerable and ongoing institution demonstrates that indeed it is legal (especially something equivalent to "wiki.rec.games.computer.pokemon"!), so instead of worrying about how to beef up censorship we can worry about how to keep powerful people with POVs from skewing the content, by giving people a choice. I do recognize that spam is a huge problem on Usenet, but if we have a dozen people choosing their own "current versions" of a given article, only those 12 have to wade through it all. The rest would just see it transcluded from an index file the others would generate and post. Of course, it's vital to have a lot of development there so that people aren't wading through all this except by setting some preferences or choosing authorities to follow while reading, but see the technical aspects handle themselves as they ought. I suppose it will take more convincing and some specifics, even some mock-ups, to make this clear. I'm still trying to think of a good way to make the distribution sites self-funding (I admit, that's a tough one, but I think there should be a way). Wnt (talk) 00:59, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

I always find it interesting that while 'anyone can edit', if they add something, they are doing great work but if they remove something, it's a problem. Adding a ton of text that is in not comprehensible does not help. Editing is both. The truth is the best prose and writing is concise and that means stuff goes away (or else, you have indecipherable mess like this was). Is the real problem a lack of new people creating articles? I thought actual article creation was rarely by new users (other than those who wanted to create one article and that's it). Most new users I see start off with copyediting, correcting or revising the work of others and that's not a deletionist/inclusionist problem, that's a problem we have of creating massing walled gardens so that it's difficult to figure out what's right or what's wrong to do. I'm probably a rabid deletionist but I'm also trying to get rid of the mass of complicated templates people have created so that a user can actually see regular text when they edit a page and not get in trouble for ruining everything by forgetting a brace somewhere. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 08:50, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

• Deletionism puffs your heart up for a little while. It may not benefit mankind at all, but at least the deletionist gets LULZ -- even better than kicking down sand castles on the beach. That's about it. 71.246.147.13 (talk) 10:48, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

Try comparing Joseph Widney with (Joseph Widney article as of 27 November 2008). Cheers. Collect (talk) 12:45, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

All I have to note, is this →.

Michelangelo took a perfectly good piece of marble and threw most of it away. More is not always better. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 12:58, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

Your rhetorical comparison, TenOfAllTrades, is a perfect example of what is wrong with deletionist culture.

Wikipedia is not used by readers as a whole. Readers don't print Wikipedia from the first article to the last, read it, ponder on its overall structure and decide if it was a good or bad read, if it was balanced or not. That's exactly the point. Wikipedia is not an overall finished work that has to be savoured whole. Wikipedia is a resource. It is akin to a library. When I look for a book in the library, I want to find it. A librarian that throws away otherwise useful or interesting books because they don't fit his notion of a library is not a good librarian. A library is there to service readers.

Deletionist culture sees WP as a goal per se. That makes it sterile and worthless. Readers do not care about how your great careful crafting of notability guidelines makes it rival the editorial committee of Britannica. Readers want to find information. They have been promised the sum of human knowledge, and rightly so they expect it.--cyclopia^speak! 14:30, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

That's a weak argument Cyclopia. Everyone is a deletionist, whether they admit it or not. They simply draw the line in a different place. I don't think anyone would say "Well, the sum of human knowledge includes what my neighbor had for breakfast yesterday, so let's start a List of breakfast foods consumed by Obiwan's neighbor in June 2014. The library analogy would work if we were simply importing work that was already published, which is what a library does. Thus, for wikisource, we can take any primary source, I doubt they are as picky as we are for what they accept, and commons as we know pretty much accepts any image as long as the licensing is ok. But we're not a library, we're nothing like a library, in fact we're so far from a library it's not even funny. We're not curating a collection of works that have editorial expertise and publication houses and book reviews and so on behind them. We're curing self-created content, we have a limited number of editors, and we should thus have a limited number of articles, because the fewer editors per article the more likely such articles are to be vandalized, thus resulting in crap for the reader. I'd much rather we had 1,000,000 high quality articles watched by hundreds than 4,000,000 articles of middling quality, some of which have no watchers at all. I would support any move to drastically strengthen the inclusion/notability requirements for articles, especially BLPs.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 14:39, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

Great point, I don't want something like the two border-line NN video games tarnishing the good name of the encyclopedia. We're not an aggregate, we discriminate at notability for every topic. If it's notable, it's in, and if it's not, it is merged or deleted. Simple, no palaver needed. Seattle (talk) 15:02, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

The problem being, reasonable people disagree on "notable", but IMHO as it stands the overall definition of "notability" is too inclusive to be ultimately manageable by a (perhaps declining) editorial corps.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 15:06, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

This imaginary bogeyman of a monolithic "deletionist culture" is why I should know better than to get into these types of discussions. If people who believe we should follow WP:BLP or WP:MEDRS are "deletionists", I guess I'm a library-burning "deletionist". Heck, Cyclopia, you were involved in an edit war just ten days ago at Olbers' paradox (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views), where you removed content from that article three times in rapid succession because you didn't think the sourcing was good enough. You couldn't even be bothered to go to the talk page. Guess you're a damn dirty deletionist, too.

...Or maybe – just maybe – you should consider restating your position with a little less us-versus-them and a little more nuance. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 15:02, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

• Obi-Wan Kenobi, your words "I'd much rather we had 1,000,000 high quality articles" sounds like "deletionsists looks for sources and improve artiles to high standards", however they DO NOT, deletions DO NOT improve quality of articles, they just delete 'em! they don't even give a chance to improve it. high quality article is not created in one day, it even not created in seven days, but deleters behave like a slave driver they tell to voluteers who write articles "create high quality article by tommorow otherwise it will be deleted!", but We ARE NOT Slaves! we are free voluteers! (Idot (talk) 15:33, 16 June 2014 (UTC))

• (edit conflict) Everyone is a deletionist, whether they admit it or not. They simply draw the line in a different place. - I am talking of a line that is still more or less around WP:GNG, with perhaps a few inclusive exceptions (just for the sake of example, astronomical objects).
• But we're not a library, we're nothing like a library, in fact we're so far from a library it's not even funny. - Way to miss the point of my analogy, Obiwankenobi, but I guess it is my fault. The issue is not in what WP is made of, I am aware it is not made of original books, thanks. The issue is the way it is accessed. Readers access WP more or less like students in a library, looking for a resource explaining a subject. Deletionists are those who perceive it as a book instead, something which only makes sense as a whole. Which is extremly elegant, but it is far removed from our readers' perspective.
• because the fewer editors per article the more likely such articles are to be vandalized, thus resulting in crap for the reader. - That's a good objection; that's probably the only good objection. Yes, if more articles mean a sea of vandalized articles, that is bad. But look, the more we're tightening the criteria to include articles, the more we lose editors. Correlation is not causation, sure; but in this case I see some causation. When most new articles begin to be bombed by PROD/AFD tags; when we make the article creation process more and more difficult (see the Articles for Creations monster), we make the entry into WP more and more complicated exactly for the people we should attract more than anyone else: content writers.
• This imaginary bogeyman of a monolithic "deletionist culture" is why I should know better than to get into these types of discussions. - Only if, in turn, it is accompanied by an imaginary bogeyman of a caricatural "inclusionism" that is often portrayed as "everything goes", as the silly breakfast example of Obiwankenobi above shows. Inclusionism does not mean I want an article for each grain of sand in the beach (poetic as it would be). It means that, very broadly speaking, we should have no further bias/barrier in including content than the availability of (possibly secondary) reliable sources. Yeah, I do remove stuff which is unsourced, I do remove WP:OR, I do want a lot of stuff deleted. What I do not want deleted is, in general, reliably sourced information.
• I am sorry if it looked, simplistically as an "us-vs-them". But there is a clash of cultures. While the terms "inclusionist" and "deletionist" denote each a broad spectrum of different positions, with lots of space in the middle, a bit like "left" and "right" in politics, they still have a meaning. And I think the difference is exactly in: do we see WP as a resource, where the existence of an article does not taint the existence of others; or do we see it as a monolith to consider always as a whole? Do we think of giving readers information, or of building something for the sake of us editing and having a cute Internet hobby?--cyclopia^speak! 15:34, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

Thank you

Thank you for co-creating Wikipedia. You are to Wikipedia what Stan Lee is to Marvel or Walt Disney to Disney. We are all grateful for your vision and foresight. Thank you Mr. Wales. --The Sockpuppet (talk to the hand) 10:23, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

• Well, I was thinking more like what Winston Churchill is to Europe: "From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent..." and "We shall never surrender" or "...if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, 'This was their finest hour'." Overcoming the forces of darkness. Something more like that, perhaps. -Wikid77 (talk) 12:15, 15 June 2014 (UTC)
  • As in, "human knowledge shall be kind to me, for I intend to sum it" perhaps? LeadSongDog come howl! 04:02, 16 June 2014 (UTC)