User talk:Jimbo Wales

Talk-pages

Of cource the primary use of these pages must deal with the article in question. But having said that, I also feel that we must not build a "Berlin Wall" against for instance general questions regarding the topic which the article covers. Sometimes questions or general explinations are of benefit for Wikipedia as a whole, I think. Thanks Boeing720 (talk) 11:58, 19 September 2015 (UTC)

Re "Sometimes questions or general explinations are of benefit for Wikipedia as a whole" – How about an example? --Bob K31416 (talk) 17:40, 19 September 2015 (UTC)

A basic question about a topic should always be welcome on the talk page, if the article doesn't say. The Refdesks are useful to gain a wider audience, or when a question is so specialized that you know that the answer shouldn't go back in the article even if you have it in hand. But people who try to claim that Wikipedia is "not a forum" so you shouldn't ask how tall it is, how many people died that day, what the yearly budget figures are, etc... they are definitely doing something worse than useless. Wnt (talk) 20:56, 19 September 2015 (UTC)

No, we have enough trolling on the ref desks, let's not encourage that to spread to article talk pages in any way. You may not like it, but WP:NOTFORUM is policy. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 21:02, 19 September 2015 (UTC)

But what's a "forum"? The answer is incredibly subjective. I don't see why we should discourage editors from saying "How tall is this building?" when they can make the article-improvement comment "we should say how tall this building is." I think it is truly odious that Wikipedia will host endless reams of editors Wikilawyering and accusing one another in some kind of passive-aggressive sumo policymaking contest, but what people say we need to get rid of is a question about the actual topic of the article! Wnt (talk) 21:10, 19 September 2015 (UTC)

Because we'll get questions like, "How do I contact celebrity X?", "How do I get out of ticket I get because of an illegal speed trap in Podunk, Nebraska?", "Will director Y read my script?", "I think Z has disease N because of symptoms a, b, c. What do others think?", "Why are people stupid enough to vote for X?". All these are real (paraphrased) questions I've encountered. The data generated by the ripped-out Article Feedback Tool will also give you an indication of what will happen if NOTFORUM is relaxed. People participate here because they want to write/maintain encyclopedia articles, not act as a trivia answer desk. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 21:41, 19 September 2015 (UTC)

You can say those questions aren't related to improving the article and need to go somewhere else. Except... well, the first one actually is valid; the article can include some types of contact information, or you can explain why certain other types may be outside of Wikipedia's purview; either way, the degree of contact data that the article has can be rechecked. The last can be rephrased with some reference to WP:N, but then we can indeed ask why analysts said people voted for the candidate. Yes, such questions impose some ballast, but it is much easier ballast to carry than the policy Furies. Wnt (talk) 23:16, 19 September 2015 (UTC)

Um, WP:PHONEBOOK?  :-)     (That's also implicit in pillar one, methinks.) Plus maybe WP:DOX applies, depending on who they are asking about contacting, and how exactly. I think that article-talkpages should be, 99.4% of the time, conversations about improving the article (prose and sourcing). *Sometimes* questions are an implicit indicator that the article needs to be improved, such as questions about what-does-this-convoluted-paragraph-mean, for instance. The correct response is to try and rewrite the prose in question, to make it easier to understand, clarify the ambiguity, or whatever prompted the question. Sometimes questions about sources are helpful, too, such as does-anyone-know-an-archive-URL-because-this-ref-is-a-deadlink.

  But generic questions, should be politely moved over to WP:Q (or to the most appropriate sub-venue thereof), rather than answering directly on the talkpage. If the question has a brief answer, giving the answer and *then* saying "but next time please use WP:Q if you don't have a specific suggestion about improving Elvis which is what Talk:Elvis is typically used for", or something along those lines, is prolly optimal. p.s. Although I used to think there ought to be a namespace something like Forum:Elvis or maybe FreeForAll:Elvis where random questions/comments/chitchat could occur, more recently concerns about policing copyvio and BLP in such a namespace (not to mention WP:NICE enforcement) began to give me heartburn, so I no longer believe that WP:NOTFORUM is that problematic for the 'pedia. There are plenty of social networking websites, after all, and there are usertalk pages where broad latitude is permitted. p.p.s. Does this mean I get to be a policy-Furies-member-in-good-standing?  ;-)    75.108.94.227 (talk) 03:39, 21 September 2015 (UTC)

Someone wanted an example, and a bit off-topic information about a certain religion later helped me in a different article. And when questions appeare on talk-pages, then I think it may be a call for better explinations. I don't think it's that hard to imagine. Boeing720 (talk) 13:57, 21 September 2015 (UTC)

Forgot - the talk-page rules are very differently controlled. If the talk-pages must be 100% impovement suggestions (and formulated as such), then all article small talk ought to be removed. I just don't see that would generate a general improvement. But in an article about for instance a Spanish robbery in 1930, if someone then asks "How much was a Spanish Pesteta worth in US Dollar at that time ?" - is to me a kind of signal, that a smaller improvement is called for regarding the currencies. Boeing720 (talk) 14:21, 21 September 2015 (UTC)

Re "a bit off-topic information about a certain religion" – What was the information and religion? --Bob K31416 (talk) 00:10, 22 September 2015 (UTC)

Is this really that difficult to imagine without specific details ? But OK, It was about Jews and Judaism. My knowledge about the Jewish people was poor, in the context of Judaism. Do You need further details ? But by learning what I did can see some matters in a different light now. An other example, I once noticed our Second World War article lacked an exchanging article. Just a list of all war outbreakes during the larger overall war. Since I had a decent source, I made such a list. But then I suddenly became aware of the fact that a such list already existed. And according to our rules, in such cases - shall the first article be improved instead of making a new one. I just didn't kno since the list wasn't linked to the WWII article. See Declarations of war during World War II. When I first saw it, I found it to be of very poor quality, as USSR vs Poland, USSR vs Finland, Japan vs USA lacked. Now it's become a rather good list. My point is that I could have used my own time better , by asking whether this list really didn't exist. In that case would I have asked a bit off-topic question. But that isn't the same as asking how much flour that goes with each egg, when making pancakes. I just think that we must not judge every minor off-topic matters at the talk-pages. Boeing720 (talk) 21:55, 23 September 2015 (UTC)

Ahmed Mohamed (student)

Jimbo, I would really appreciate it if you could follow on Mark Zuckerberg's footsteps and invite Ahmed Mohamed to the Wikimedia Foundations headquarters in SF. It would be a nice gesture in support of bright students and educational attainment and aspiration for other young people who may feel discouraged. Thank you. Kleinebeesjes (talk) 14:46, 19 September 2015 (UTC)

Wikimedia doesn't make a general policy of inviting such students to its headquarters. For instance, Wikimedia didn't invite the kid who was arrested and suspended for writing a story where he shoots a dinosaur with a gun, even though creative writing is a mark of "bright students and educational attainment".

Inviting him sends a message, therefore, that Wikipedia believes that this case is different from all the other cases of kids who've had school administrators overreact to them. This is a message that Wikimedia has no business sending. Ken Arromdee (talk) 16:48, 19 September 2015 (UTC)

Please note that this writer claims the clock can be purchased from Radio Shack. I don't know whether the claim will stand up but it would certainly be wise to let the dust settle a bit before extending any invitation.--S Philbrick(Talk) 17:37, 19 September 2015 (UTC)

His treatment was outrageous but it's not actually connected with Wikipedia. Facebook and other IT companies have an interest in keeping their workers' wages down, and the supply of H-1B visa applicants from countries like Pakistan up, so denouncing his arrest is of more direct relevance to them. Wnt (talk) 21:03, 19 September 2015 (UTC)

Aside from anything else the WMF doesn't really have the type of exciting HQ that the other major websites have.©Geni (talk) 02:15, 20 September 2015 (UTC)

Oh please. The Whitehouse would be on lockdown with a clock in a briefcase like that. No Courthouse would let it in and it is not something he could take on an airplane. His lack of forthrightness is what lead to his legal problems. The Boston marathon bomber had a standard pressure cooker so there is not a lot of tolerance. If he drew a picture of a gun, no one would have blinked an eye at an arrest. "See something, say something" shouldn't be undermined by this nonsense. He's a kid that made a mistake. --DHeyward (talk) 02:24, 20 September 2015 (UTC)

^{(late comment)} President Obama has invited him to the White House. I'm sure the president fully expects to see the clock when Ahmed visits. It's a tiny little circuit board -- not attached to anything that could go "boom" -- the school's reaction had nothing to do with what it was that he made, but was a kneejerk reaction likely fueled by knowledge of his heritage. Etamni | ✉ | ✓  09:38, 20 September 2015 (UTC)

I will paraphrase a comment I saw on Facebook. It's clear that they did not think this was a bomb. They knew full well that it wasn't a bomb. If they thought it was a bomb, they would have evacuated the building. They would have stayed far away from it. They would have called the bomb squad to defuse it. They did none of those things. They put him in an office. They called the police. The police put the clock into their squad car and drove with it, and the boy, to headquarters. They wouldn't have done that if they thought it was a bomb. Everyone involved knew full well that this was not a bomb.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 09:19, 20 September 2015 (UTC)

Yes, it is clear that they didn't think it was a bomb – but they seemed to believe the kid wanted them to think it was a bomb, and they kept claiming that even after questioning, arresting, and releasing him, and they suspended him from the school. —BarrelProof (talk) 11:03, 20 September 2015 (UTC)

Of course not. There was no explosive. The question was why he disassembled a clock and arranged it in a briefcase in such a fashion which he he refused to answer. If he drew a picture of a gun shooting his teacher, no one would think the picture was actually a gun. This is what the clock represented and he didn't provide answers to why he did it. There was no class assignment for briefcase clocks. The Columbine kids set the tone of zero tolerance and the truth is, he's getting a pass because of his name. If you don't think so, build a clock like that and try getting into a Courthouse, the Whitehouse or a plane with it. --DHeyward (talk) 14:48, 20 September 2015 (UTC)

Pencil case. Not brief case. Small box -- the picture being distributed misrepresents the size (to try and make it look more threatening than it was, no doubt.) Also, it did not have visible wires -- it was just a small box with a digital display, which is to say, a CLOCK. The cops opened it up to make it look more threatening, again. Of course to anyone with half a clue it looks obviously harmless when opened because it's a circuit board and some wires which only says "bomb" if you are utterly clueless and have never bothered to open up a single home electronic. The kid was on the robotics team throughout middle school and no doubt brought electronic bits to school with him all the time (because robotics club, DUH) and he was just starting high school. He brought it in to show to the science teacher, which he did, and it wasn't his idea to show it to the English teacher -- she just wanted to know what was making noise in his backpack. He was asked why he did it and he told the truth -- "I did this, I thought it was cool, I wanted to show it off, it's a CLOCK." And you could definitely get on a plane with this -- you can get on the plane with a laptop if you open it up and plug it in to show it's a laptop. Ahmed would have been asked to plug the box in, it would have worked as advertised (counting UP not DOWN!) and it would have been passed through. Nothing in it looks remotely like an explosive on a scanner, so it would have been fine. Of course you're a Gamergater, so facts, logic, and common sense mean nothing to you, but thanks for continually providing proof of that! PuceGoose (talk) 17:22, 20 September 2015 (UTC)

What this guy just said. People like DH really show their biases with comments like the above. It's as if someone opened up their alarm clock or PC and shat their pants. If you're that uneducated/ignorant and paranoid, you've no business educating children. Dave Dial (talk) 17:38, 20 September 2015 (UTC)

@DD2K: I know your not the braintrust, but I'll try to clue you in anyway: Why do you think his robotics teacher told him not to show it to other teachers and keep it hidden? Bill Maher said it best: "Because it looks like a bomb!" In reality no one overreacted. Just like kids that bring a harmless AirSoft gun to school and a teacher knows it's a toy. The only thing police want to know is intent. Are they just showing off a new cool toy or trying to intimidate someone? That's all they wanted to know. I've lived in places where they don't even bother asking questions, the bomb disposal unit just blows unattended bags up. Doesn't even have to look like a bomb and virtually none of them are bombs but there is enough bombing that it really teaches that leaving unattended bags is a bad (and expensive) idea. It alarms people. A friend lost his beach volleyball set and returned from lunch just as they blew it up. The real person that failed Ahmed is his teacher that told him to keep it hidden instead of taking it until the end of the day. That teacher foresaw problems and failed to eliminate an obvious mistake. When you realize that the teacher who praised it as "nice" told him to keep it hidden, he really meant "it's nice, but it looks like a bomb!" If I were the principal at the school, that teacher would be disciplined because he observed something that he knew could be mistaken for something more nefarious than a clock. --DHeyward (talk) 09:14, 23 September 2015 (UTC)

On the initial inquiry - I live in London, so it wouldn't be my place to invite a stir into the offices of the Wikimedia Foundation. I agree with other comments that however we might feel about the case, it isn't really within the scope of our usual work to do this. I would say that as the months roll on, if Ahmed writes something interesting about the experience, he'd make a very interesting speaker on a panel at a conference. But since this has nothing to do with Wikipedia, and indeed, nothing to do with the Internet really, I'm not sure there's a good fit for Wikimania.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 09:19, 20 September 2015 (UTC)

And one more comment: this is so clearly a case of BLP1E that it is obvious to me that the article will be deleted. We may as well get started on that process now, eh? (Oh, duh, I just went to do that and saw that it's already nominated, yay!)--Jimbo Wales (talk) 09:26, 20 September 2015 (UTC)

If you really think that the page will obviously be deleted, you haven't been around AFD much. Many articles about passing news events that will be forgotten in a year easily survive AFD these days, especially when there is an opportunity to make a political point or confirm our prejudices (particularly about Southerners). Gnome de plume (talk) 10:36, 20 September 2015 (UTC)

BLP1E might be a good argument for saying the title of the article should be changed so that the article is presented as being about the incident and its aftermath rather than about the student. But it's not a good argument for deleting information about the incident from Wikipedia. I believe there is currently no separate article about the incident. —BarrelProof (talk) 10:42, 20 September 2015 (UTC)

Yes, I don't disagree with that. The point is that the *incident* is notable. But about this boy, we have no way to write a quality *biography*. Virtually nothing is known about him (partly because he's just a kid about whom there isn't a lot *to* know) as a person. The main thing we know is this one incident.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 13:09, 20 September 2015 (UTC)

• Aww, thanks Jimbo for suggesting that he'd make a very interesting speaker on a panel at a conference. But arguably, one could say that Ahmed has more to do with wikipedia than any of the other internet giants that invited him, since the others are not primarily about the acquisition of info whereas wikipedia is. This is because Ahmed's primary passion is invention and the sharing of his technological knowldedge, which sounds very similar to the founding principles of wikipedia. Kleinebeesjes (talk) 10:56, 20 September 2015 (UTC)

Re "This is because Ahmed's primary passion is invention and the sharing of his technological knowldedge, which sounds very similar to the founding principles of wikipedia." – Wouldn't that be OR? In Wikipedia, we present other people's published technological knowledge. --Bob K31416 (talk) 20:44, 20 September 2015 (UTC)

All he did was take apart an alarm clock and put it in a case that can easily to be wired to a bomb, he didn't invent anything. Raquel Baranow (talk) 21:14, 20 September 2015 (UTC)

What amazes me is that the Republican position seems to be, clearly and unapologetically, that people of Arab descent should realize that anything they do is likely to be viewed as an act of terrorism - therefore they should be put in jail for criminal threats unless they realize that because of their racial appearance they are not allowed to do anything unusual that might potentially be misconstrued. There is something very Jim Crow era about that. Wnt (talk) 03:17, 21 September 2015 (UTC)

I didn't realize he was of Arab descent. Does he know this? What amazes me is how vitriolic the left becomes when they can inject "-isms" into any event. This American high school student assembled a device that looked like a threat. Google "student gun school" and you'll see any number of zero-tolerance stances including a second-grader that nibbled his pop-tart into a gun shape (suspended) or high schoolers that took prom pictures off-campus with fake guns (suspended). The truth is that religion, ethnic background and gender had nothing to do with it but because it's silly season, politicians are making hay of it. Any high schooler that did that would have faced the same scrutiny and many have faced punishment for far less. --DHeyward (talk) 03:38, 21 September 2015 (UTC)

Ah, now I understand your other comments [1]. - Cwobeel (talk) 23:56, 21 September 2015 (UTC)

Do we know whether Ahmed is an editor? MarkBernstein (talk) 18:53, 20 September 2015 (UTC)

I think that there are enough caution flags regarding this incident to suggest that the Wikimedia Foundation should keep its distance. --Bob K31416 (talk) 13:05, 23 September 2015 (UTC)

There's nothing suggesting caution flags when universities, politicians, scientists and other big names are lining up to give their props to this student. Jimbo Wales seems to be incorrect above since the articles seems destined to be kept if votes are anything to go by.Kleinebeesjes (talk) 23:20, 23 September 2015 (UTC)

Article about the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Zalta's Wikimania presentation goes into more detail about the model, including funding. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 02:12, 22 September 2015 (UTC)

Article is here. Select quotes that caught my eye: "Though it [Wikipedia] has nearly 5 million articles in the English-language version alone, seemingly in every sphere of knowledge, fewer than 10,000 are “A-class” or better, the status awarded to articles considered “essentially complete.”" Also: "[On SEP,] Any errors reflect poorly on the contributors, and someone who spots a slip-up can talk to a real person about it—neither of which is true with Wikipedia." Interested to hear Jimbo's and others' thoughts on this. Everymorning (talk) 01:59, 22 September 2015 (UTC)

They have a very good model. It could work for medicine - on a much larger scale.

From the video:

Structure

• Advisory board (Stanford philosophy faculty) appoints
• Two paid full-time administrative editors (a "senior editor" and Zalta as "principle editor") who plan, budget, manage paid part-time staff (one "associate editor", five "assistant editors"), manage the technical infrastructure, and make the final editorial decisions based on the advice of
• The editorial board - 140 volunteer "subject editors" (topic experts) who review the work of
• 1800 volunteer authors
• The subject editors may recruit volunteer outside reviewers if the topic is beyond the expertise of the subject editors
• Post-publication reader feedback

Process

• A subject editor recommends a topic (sometimes an unsolicited proposal is made by a member of the profession)
• If the administrative editors (Zalta and colleague) approve, an "entry" is created
• Subject editor suggests an author
• Zalta invites the author
• The entry is written,
• Zalta checks the form of the article
• The article is refereed, revised, refereed, revised, etc.
• A subject editor recommends acceptance
• Published
• Kept up to date by the original author
• When that author leaves the process, if a suitable new maintainer cannot be found, the subject editors may commission a new article
• Articles may be re-titled, re-scoped, split into finer topics or merged into larger ones, or they may be retired to the archive

That's a summary of the first quarter of the presentation. The whole thing is fascinating, though, if you like this kind of thing. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 02:12, 22 September 2015 (UTC)

• That's all very well, but after 20 years they have only 1,500 articles, which may represent good coverage of philosophy, but would not get us very far overall. Johnbod (talk) 04:06, 22 September 2015 (UTC)

An Encyclopedia of Philosophy that only has good coverage of Philosophy! They do not have nearly the coverage of Family Guy that we do. What a scandal! -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 15:31, 22 September 2015 (UTC)

Nupedia had 21 approved articles, and a bunch more articles in progress, in its first year. If we take that the SEP has ~1,500 articles after 20 years, simple math gives us 1,500 ÷ 20 = 75, so we're looking at a similar (same order of magnitude) rate of progress (updates to existing articles notwithstanding) in the SEP as with Nupedia. It's a given that Nupedia was impractically slow. A slow speed isn't practical for Wikipedia (a general encyclopedia), despite how well it can work for the SEP, a specialized encyclopedia covering the slow-moving field of philosophy. {{Nihiltres |talk |edits}} 18:48, 22 September 2015 (UTC)

A "slower" Wikipedia would not necessarily be a bad thing. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Ahmed Mohamed (student), Talk:Kim_Davis_(county_clerk)#RfC:_Two_articles_or_one.3F_.28Or_three.3F.29 etc etc etc. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 18:07, 23 September 2015 (UTC)

• Nah, just place the above structure within each WikiProject and that will take care of most of the topic areas in Wikipedia. The thing is, however, that Jimbo and the WMF have made it clear that their goal with Wikipedia is not what Stanford has achieved with their encyclopedia. Cla68 (talk) 04:43, 22 September 2015 (UTC)

Johnbod, Cla68, the only thing stopping medicine (a much better-funded domain than philosophy, with a much broader body of scholarship) from doing something like this is the absence of leadership. Wikipedia could take that leadership and catalyse this by fitting Zalta's model, or the appropriate bits of it, onto ours. Most of the heavy lifting would be done by the academy and the professions.

I'm talking here about us cannibalising his work structure and possibly even his funding model. We'd have to allow anyone to edit, still, and Wikipedia would have total editorial control, but periodic reviews by the world's top scholars would throw up "canonical" versions of our best articles that have a doi and are (in the case of medicine) PubMed indexed - and citable WP:RSs. SEP has proven that scholars are willing to donate their time to this kind of enterprise when the model suits them.

As for WMF's position, Cla68, Lila is deeply committed to the idea that we should be offering knowledge to the world, rather than the untrustworthy assertions we presently offer, and the WMF will do all it can to facilitate sensible ventures aimed at that goal. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 07:19, 22 September 2015 (UTC)

Well, I hope that's true - let's see. Johnbod (talk) 12:44, 22 September 2015 (UTC)

Maybe medicine has already done it with the encyclopedic info at Medscape, for example these articles on anatomy. --Bob K31416 (talk) 08:10, 22 September 2015 (UTC)

There is no other general purpose free encyclopedia that has accomplished anything comparable to what Wikipedia has. Not by a long shot. Not by a country mile. Not by orders of magnitude. If specialized freely licensed encyclopedias succeed, then we should import their content into Wikipedia, with attribution. If they are not freely licensed, we should wish them well and link to them, if they meet our standards as reliable sources. In all cases, we should wish other encyclopedia projects well, even if they fail. They are noble efforts. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 08:30, 22 September 2015 (UTC)

I'm not really convinced. If you turn 140 experts loose on Wikipedia, there *will* be good articles written. I don't know if all their structure (or ours!) would contribute or hinder that - probably depends on the relative skill of the volunteers and of the administrators. I congratulate them on having an article on Holes. (it seems pretty vapid, since in general holes are simply a second-order elaboration on a first-order model and not nearly so mysterious as all that, but that can be blamed on the RSes) But given that article, there are two possibilities: either the article is freely redistributable, in which case we can steal it without apology and henceforth outdo their efforts, or it isn't, in which case it is worthless to our goal. And so those creating it are essentially a private WikiProject, or else simply another copyrighted source for us to cite and summarize. Don't mess with the Borg Collective; you will be assimilated. :) Wnt (talk) 12:57, 22 September 2015 (UTC)

Yes it is an interesting model. Unfortunately there content does not appear to be under an open license. There are multiple other sites using similar models including Medscape, Uptodate, and Dynamed but none are open access. We are looking at a similar but open model in collaboration with a number of publishers including PLOS medicine per [2]

Could we get 1,500 articles in 20 years? I do not know but hope so. The plan would be to have them within a stand alone site and integrate / build upon WP. Our article on dengue fever for example has been formally peer reviewed and published. A bunch of similar high quality interlinked articles for those who require greater assurances of accuracy would be useful for professionals. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 13:43, 22 September 2015 (UTC)

(The link James points to is required reading for anyone with an interest in this topic. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 02:27, 23 September 2015)

James, it's not just professionals who require greater assurances of accuracy. According to the results of the recent community consultation, the general reader demands that too. While your "open-access point-of-care summaries" proposal in the linked article is excellent, it doesn't address the unreliability of Wikipedia's offering - except that, if your laudible proposal succeeds while Wikipedia does nothing to address its unreliability problem, we'll be rightly displaced in search engine results by yet another site: yours. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 07:45, 23 September 2015 (UTC)

What I am proposing is a collection of review type articles within a specific topic area. The articles would not be free for anyone to edit and thus could not be within a Wikimedia site exclusively. They would also be published and hosted in pubmed commons. There is no plans to have the same massive scope as WP. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 18:01, 23 September 2015 (UTC)

What you're proposing is perfect. Well managed, this is the answer to a great many prayers. Consider quitting your day (night?) job and focissing on this exclusively until it's done. A non-profit with this as its mission should be well-supported by foundations like Gates and Wellcome. I'm just making the point that, meanwhile, there's the Wikipedia reliability problem. As you know, that's my focus. If the BMJ project goes where it might, hopefully Wikipedia will be able to feed some articles into your project. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 10:32, 24 September 2015 (UTC)

The journal that published Dengue fever[3] was closed in 2014, apparently because it was unable to attract enough experts.[4]

"While inspiring, the process was also chronically frustrating. Despite everyone’s best intentions, it was challenging for a small team to keep stoking the interest and engagement of the general academic community, and it was difficult to recruit members to our editorial board and board of directors who could provide the kind of hands-on involvement that our small but ambitious operation required. Academic medicine has been slow to recognize the importance of stepping out of the comfort zone of traditional publishing: unfortunately, the benefits of disseminating information freely still takes second place to the allure of publishing in a prestigious forum, however difficult that forum may be for readers to access. By the end, despite continual efforts to deepen our bench strength, there were few stalwart supporters. Perhaps our mistake was to focus our recruitment efforts too much on those who were well established in their careers, rather than on up-and-coming authors and editors, who might have been more likely to embrace new possibilities."

--Bob K31416 (talk) 18:38, 22 September 2015 (UTC)

• The success of an endeavor such as SEP depends crucially on the quality of top-down leadership. For comparison consider Scholarpedia, an online encyclopedia with similar rationale and structure, but much less successful because the top-down leadership has not been as strong. Scholarpedia has a number of good articles, but in many cases the corresponding Wikipedia articles are actually better -- sometimes a lot better. Looie496 (talk) 14:22, 22 September 2015 (UTC)

• I couldn't agree more. But don't underestimate the importance of the quality of the review process, and the reputation of the body doing the reviews. Anybody can set up a review process. Not many can do it with rigor. SEP has a strong reputation for quality.
• If Wikipedia is going down this road, we need to be very cautious about just who is doing the reviewing and whose reviewed versions we point our readers to. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 08:03, 23 September 2015 (UTC)

• Just to be clear here, anyone who wants to discuss an article with me will be talking to a real person. Jimmy can vouch for that. Guy (Help!) 19:31, 22 September 2015 (UTC)
  • Are you sure? Maybe you are just Watson. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 19:55, 22 September 2015 (UTC)

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy has "The Meaning of Life" and Wikipedia has "Meaning of life". Perhaps each article is better than the other in some respects.

—Wavelength (talk) 19:08, 24 September 2015 (UTC) and 22:56, 24 September 2015 (UTC)

Coca-Cola registered trademark placed in the public domain on Commons

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Coca-Cola_logo.svg

Free media for a Free people, maaaaaan! This registered trademark (in a high resolution file) was moved into the "public domain" on Commons in Sept. 2012. What could possibly go wrong? Anyway, one of you who still visit William Golding Island might want to fix the licensing on that and add a ®™ to the file itself before Coke gets unhappy... Carrite (talk) 15:07, 23 September 2015 (UTC)

WP:SOFIXIT, no use in just complaining. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 15:26, 23 September 2015 (UTC)

Are you contesting that it is public domain, as implied by your scare quotes? Actually if you look at the file history it has been on Commons since 2007 and have there been any problems? BethNaught (talk) 15:38, 23 September 2015 (UTC)

Is this sarcasm? The Coca-Cola logo is literally a textbook example of a trademark that is in the public domain under copyright law (in this case due to both age and simplicity). We've had it on Commons for ages labeled correctly as both public domain under copyright law and rights reserved under trademark law (which is a much narrower set of restrictions on reuse than copyright). Dragons flight (talk) 16:05, 23 September 2015 (UTC)

• For background on this topic, see the OP's contribution at Monkey selfie & Commons "We all know what hardline Free Media Maaaaaaaan asswipes they are at Commons...". JoeSperrazza (talk) 02:56, 24 September 2015 (UTC)

What's it doing on Commons if it's not freeeeeeeeee??? Carrite (talk) 02:43, 24 September 2015 (UTC)

The William Golding Island part might also be a commentary on the setup of the Wikipedia subculture. Another way of looking at it is that we are here voluntarily. --Bob K31416 (talk) 17:04, 23 September 2015 (UTC)

Personally, I think Jimbo looks great in a white uniform. Martinevans123 (talk) 22:26, 24 September 2015 (UTC)

An image can be both in the public domain and be trademarked. Our logos for example are in both the CC and trademarked. They are two seperate issues. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 18:04, 23 September 2015 (UTC)

Ah yeah, "separate issues". Martinevans123 (talk) 22:31, 24 September 2015 (UTC)

No, but see, it is a well-known fact that Commons is "broken", so anything Commons does must be wrong, by definition. --71.119.131.184 (talk) 20:07, 23 September 2015 (UTC)

You are very brave smirking in anonymity, Mr. Commons IP account. Wanna step up with your actual WP account name??? Carrite (talk) 02:44, 24 September 2015 (UTC)

I have one account that I haven't logged into in about six years. Does that count? And no, there are no bans, blocks, or any other sanctions on it. But why do you care anyway? --04:01, 24 September 2015 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.119.131.184 (talk)

On a slightly different note, "Happy Birthday to You" can now go on Wikimedia Commons after a judge ruled this week that it is not copyrighted. Well done to the judge.--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 05:10, 24 September 2015 (UTC)

Could we have it automatically played when we log on, exactly a year after we first created our Wikipedia User account? Martinevans123 (talk) 23:12, 24 September 2015 (UTC)

Article quality - first pass on the "Wales method"

About 10 days ago there was a discussion on article quality "Is Wikipedia getting better"- which has continued on and off since then. Frankly, I got pretty tired of reading arguments about what were clearly questions that could be mostly answered with statistics, but just seeing a couple of statistics cited. In any case, I took a first pass through some data I collected by hand and came up with some "suggestive answers". This is only an exploratory data analysis and the words "conclusive" or "significant" should not be used at all in reference to it.

Please see User:Smallbones/Article quality prelim, and feel free to make any comments on methods or stats on the talk page there.

TLDR;

Wikipedia needs a method to answer questions such as “Is Wikipedia getting better?” or “Is any increase in average article quality due to better new articles, or to old articles getting better?” This exploratory data analysis expands upon a method proposed by Jimmy Wales - selecting random articles and comparing their quality now to earlier versions. 100 pairs of a current article and its 2 year old version are examined, along with 13 articles less than 2 years old, The stub-FA class ratings do not appear to be useful for this analysis. A proposed rating system was flawed, but may be adjusted for future use. The small increase in average article quality appears to be driven by both a higher quality for new articles and an increase in the quality of old articles. Article quality, as well as page views, vary across subject topics, but changes in the composition of Wikipedia by subject topics appears to be minimal. Improvements to the method used are discussed along with a potential use of the method.

I'm certain that there will be folks who will suggest a better quality metric, another variable that should have been considered, or a different method of analysis. Feel free to copy my data from User:Smallbones/Wales_method#Data to your own user page and give it a try. I'd love to see your results.

(EC) I'd like to stress that, while stats do not decide most questions themselves, they should be used to help decide policy questions. The example here might help decide not so much "Is Wikipedia getting better?" but "What actions can we take to increase article quality?" One particular possible solution that pops out of this analysis would be to consider merging, improving, or deleting the lowest quality articles which are in the lowest 20% of articles by page view rank. If we just deleted these articles, page views would go down by less than 1% and average article quality would jump. Just a suggestion - and it would need more study - but I just wanted to point out that if we are going to make policy suggestions on this page, a few numbers would certainly help. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 02:28/02:44, 24 September 2015 (UTC)

I wish we had an easy way to insert emojis. <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 for this start.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 02:40, 24 September 2015 (UTC)

You could just use ♥♥♥♥ etc. (Special characters→Symbols in the edit window. Am I now giving tips to the founder of Wikipedia on how to use Wikipedia? Wow... surreal). Yunshui ^雲_水 07:09, 24 September 2015 (UTC)

I made a Template:Emote before (though no one really uses it), and just added ❤ to it now. It's still missing a lot of emoticons but it's a very simple template to update. Wnt (talk) 13:10, 24 September 2015 (UTC)

From the section Is the data representative? of your page, selecting articles at random from all of Wikipedia articles does not appear to be useful, unless one is interested in mainly analyzing articles with ratings of Start, Stub, and unassessed, which are 95% of your sample. --Bob K31416 (talk) 13:34, 24 September 2015 (UTC)

(EC)Unfortunately, you are correct simply because only about 7% of articles are rated above Start (wow, I'd better check that). In the sample I did manage to get 5.4% above start. I've been considering how to get random samples for smaller subsets, e.g. articles in project WP:NRHP or articles that started with a blurb at DYK. For some projects, I think I've almost found a way to almost get a random sample, while assuring that a minimum number are from each quality class, but I better check it out first. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 13:52, 24 September 2015 (UTC)

Yes, the approx. 7% number checks out. See your table at [5] which gives 6.76% while including lists and FL (which I removed for my work). I think it's quite an important point that many people are forgetting about or disregarding the 93% below "C" (or the 54% stubs if you want a different cutoff) when we consider article quality. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 14:07, 24 September 2015 (UTC)

OK, here is a description of how you might get a stratified random sample for certain projects, e.g. WP:NRHP, which would allow you to say a lot more about the 7% of articles rated above Start. If your project has a table like this from Wikipedia Version 1.0 (complete list of these projects at User:WP 1.0 bot/Tables/Project) you'll have categories like this which break down the projects articles by quality class. I put the {{random in category}} template at the top of each of the NRHP quality categories. Clicking the "random in category" link should give you a random article with that quality class. How many random articles should you choose? As many as you want, usually a minimum number so that you can say something about the class - maybe 20? The trick is that if you want to bring all the classes together to represent the full results then you have to weigh each class by the actual number of articles in the population, i.e. the 7% above Start still only get 7% of the weight in the overall results. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 16:05, 24 September 2015 (UTC)

Suggested mode of investigation:

1. Make a list of 20 random articles substantially unrelated to each other from a date certain (say, 01/01/2010) in each of several categories where the length at the time was over 25,000 characters and where the current version of such articles is still over 25,000 characters). I suggest the categories should include one set in "pop culture" (to see if there is a disparity for such articles on Wikipedia), one in "world history" (as a "neutral area" I would think), one in "famous women" (to see if any gender disparity exists), and one in "long running ideological disputes" (to see if POV editing is evinced for either period) for 80 articles total.

2. Without furnishing dates as to which version of each article is being shown to reviewers, present both versions of each article chosen to a panel of outside people generally knowledgeable in evaluating articles for their ratings of each article version (in short, not Wikipedia editors at all).

3. Present those ratings of each article to a panel of persons skilled in statistical analysis to determine if any patterns seem reasonable to investigate further. Collect (talk) 14:10, 24 September 2015 (UTC)

I'll just say that if you can organize this please go ahead, with some quibbles. You're not really talking about random samples here, so it would be hard to say how representative the sample would be (and representative of what?) For comparisons across categories, I'd suggest a minimum sample of 50 in each category (s.e. about 7%). Getting all this type of sample would require a large amount of work. Finding the outside experts to donate(?) their time would be difficult. Perhaps a university or think ank might be able to organize this. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 14:38, 24 September 2015 (UTC)

The small size for each of four categories was suggested as a preliminary study only - and the randomness is, of course, limited here - I was using that term to stipulate that the choice of articles would try to be disparate within the category, rather than using multiple related articles. I also suggest that we compare articles which were basically "fleshed out" in the past, as comparing old stubs with current non-stubs is not of particular interest to anyone. Emended above. If and only if the first results showed that a given category might have statistically interesting results at variance from the other categories would a larger sample make much sense. As I understand it, the WMF would be the ones who would contact any outside research group, and, indeed, might undertake such a study itself. And, of course, any researcher reading this page might also think it possible that it might be an interesting project. The main addition I made to your proposal really is that we examine not just "average articles" but that we specifically seek information about groups of articles - and that I suggested 80 initial articles in the study instead of 100. I could easily posit that some of the individual categories I suggested might end up with many more articles studied if the statistics initially are "interesting." Jimbo Wales might possibly forward such proposals to WMF - I think the results would be of more than internal interest, however. Collect (talk) 17:19, 24 September 2015 (UTC)

Bug reported in 2007, still no action

https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T11790

Given the huge surpluses that the WMF runs every year, could we please hire some developers and give them the task of fixing bugs before they celebrate their 7th birthday? I don't want to be buying these bugs drinks when they turn 21... --Guy Macon (talk) 13:39, 24 September 2015 (UTC)

Well in pure numbers there are plenty of developers. What they have lacked until recently is competent leadership, direction, quality control and oversight. No comment on the current situation as its a work in progress with the current jetpacking of certain upper level staff who have contributed to the previous problems. Personally I'm going to give it another 3-6 months before I start sharpening the pitchfork again... Only in death does duty end (talk) 09:51, 25 September 2015 (UTC)

There are still some developers who "know" what the user community needs better than the user community itself. I have no idea how the dev portion of the WMF is structured so that these developers can be held accountable for their decisions. Other bugs (example from 2006) seem to suffer from cowboy coding. Again, lack of accountability seems to be an issue. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 13:50, 25 September 2015 (UTC)

As the Visual Editor fiasco showed, there have definitely been serious problems in the development process. But there is also another kind of problem: the developers don't have any good structured way of getting input about which bugs are important to the broad editor community. Unfortunately the fact that one or two editors pester them about a bug doesn't automatically mean that it is important to large numbers of people. In this case I agree that the problem is important, but I don't think that message has gotten across. In fact I doubt that the developers are fully convinced that this is really a bug at all. (In "dev-speak" this is really more of an "enhancement request" than a "bug report".) Looie496 (talk) 14:16, 25 September 2015 (UTC)

Looie496, I don't think getting structured input is the problem. Have a look at this and (especially) the talk page. The WMF (poorly) designed a survey, solicited input for it, and then...? This reinforces my belief that the WMF is more interested in gathering (fairly useless) stats and happily chirping out "we need more feedback!" for a couple years rather than execution. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 14:34, 25 September 2015 (UTC)

This year fundraising in Russia

I dared to write here not like to a place "where all can be solved and answered" :-), I know it is not. Mostly I recalled your interviews for TPO launching about the fundraising overall and that "On the Internet, something went wrong". So I thought of some extra comments if any about the situation that Russian Federation (7th in top-10 of 2012) 10 months in the row exempted from the fundraising program: with the only reason given that it is "not a decision motivated by politics" and that no further details can be provided.
Actually the question arose from the discussion (Russian) about the 15th Wikipedia birthday and different ideas to celebrate the event in Russia. This is when I personally discovered that that Fund action of November 2014 is still in effect. So I made a separate topic on it (Russian, but original quotes in English). So anything else we need/allowed to know while missing another Christmas donations rally besides that it is nothing about politics? Sorry if a wrong place or if I was/am too direly speaking on the matter. --Neolexx (talk) 22:10, 24 September 2015 (UTC)

Online

Hey Jimbo, would it be possible to make wikipedia show when a user is online or not? — Preceding unsigned comment added by I am. furhan. (talk • contribs) 01:40, 25 September 2015 (UTC)

You can do something sort of like that by going to their user page and hitting "contributions" on the sidebar, getting a link like Special:Contributions/Wnt. I think it is possible to write up some custom Javascript for your account to see the time since last contribution for a user in some easier way (it can't be done with Scribunto). What you can't do is see whether the user has closed all their windows since making the last edit - that kind of Javascript-dependent "social reading" provides companies with potentially useful marketing/surveillance data, but for Wikipedia it would only be wasted bandwidth for the "I'm still here" or "I went away" signals, and at a very major cost in editors' privacy. Wnt (talk) 13:26, 25 September 2015 (UTC)