User talk:Jimbo Wales

Jpeg and DWM

This article covers some early thoughts of the JPEG committee about putting DRM into Jpegs. (Don't you hate committees?) All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 00:30, 16 October 2015 (UTC).

Wikipedia has already gone down the wrong path on this. What we should do is strip all metadata from every file and add it as human-readable annotation to the file page. Instead, there are Commons voters every day claiming that images should be deleted because they have no metadata! Yeah, in theory an image with no metadata might be copied off a web site ... but it might also be uploaded by someone like myself who doesn't want sinister tracking dreck in a file.

The rate things are going, I'm guessing WMF would be more likely to make the DRM mandatory, perhaps telling themselves some feel-good story about how that helps preserve attribution of the image or something. People in power just seem to love Orwell, no matter who they are. Wnt (talk) 14:33, 16 October 2015 (UTC)

Wow, that rant is just so wrong on so many levels that it is very difficult to know where to even begin. It's false, and you've been around here for long enough to know all the reasons why it's false.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 14:57, 16 October 2015 (UTC)

I hope you're right, I honestly do. Wnt (talk) 17:53, 16 October 2015 (UTC)

But what do you think of Commons:Commons:Watermarks, which argues that invisible watermarks shouldn't be removed and that removing EXIF data to text is illegal in Germany, etc? And that's without a set of treaties hanging over everyone's heads proclaiming the divine right of DRM. Wnt (talk) 18:01, 16 October 2015 (UTC)

Metadata is good. If anything we should do the exact opposite of what you propose: modify jpeg files to include the information on the Wikipedia page as metadata. That way when the file is downloaded the information about its origin and properties will come with it. (I'm also in favor of displaying the EXIF metadata as text on the Wikipedia page, but definitely not of removing the EXIF data from the file.) Looie496 (talk) 12:03, 17 October 2015 (UTC)

Exactly. Metadata is not DRM. Different issues altogether.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 15:08, 17 October 2015 (UTC)

• @Looie496: (ec) I disagree with this, mostly because I feel that metadata is something done to people, not for them. It seems very rare for users to have ready access to the data -- which is the very reason you suggest making it available in text form. If the metadata had been set up with the OS or browsers to be easily readable by ordinary users, there would be no such need. What metadata is really about is tripping up people who take disapproved photographs. Of course, the usual excuses for universal surveillance like child pornographers can be trotted out, and such cases do exist; but such professionals tend to learn what not to do. Whereas the casual user who comes here to upload a few photos from a war zone or officially disproved protest in an unfree country (and how many free ones are left?) may not be aware that a camera body serial number, GPS data, or data about when and how the photo was edited may be available to whoever scrutinizes the image.
• While Jimmy Wales may understandably be appalled by the suggestion that the WMF would put shackles on CC-licensed work - something the license, to be sure, doesn't even allow - the implementation of a suggestion like yours could have exactly that effect if courts like the German one cited in the link above are taken to mean that users don't feel free to strip out the metadata. Now you can casually suggest adding this metadata as if it doesn't matter, because there are no laws or decisions against adding copyright information to photos. But the situation could be altogether different for the person taking it out. And so while you might not see a proposal like that as "adding mandatory DRM to all Commons images", that may be exactly what it amounts to when it is time for someone to use them. Wnt (talk) 15:17, 17 October 2015 (UTC)

Rare for users to have ready access to the data? Are you not aware that in Windows all you have to do is right-click on a jpeg image and select Properties? Pretty much every modern system makes it easy to view EXIF metadata. Looie496 (talk) 17:23, 17 October 2015 (UTC)

@Looie496: I'm not sure how the Windows Properties/Details tab would appear in Comparison of metadata editors, but discussions like [1] give me the impression it would not compare all that well. (If you would, I'd appreciate it if you can give us a clue in that article!) My general impression has tended to be that whatever editor you're using, there's always some kind of metadata it's not tracking (because metadata is something done to you, not for you) but I don't honestly know enough about it. Wnt (talk) 18:01, 17 October 2015 (UTC)

Also, not to engage in an appeal to authority but just to offer a data point: Richard Stallman once responded to my concerns (years ago) that the GNU FDL requirement that full text of that license be transmitted along with every image by suggesting that the license could be embedded in the metadata of the image.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 17:26, 17 October 2015 (UTC)

Sigh. I respect Stallman, but that kind of hidden and infectious spammage is, among other things, no way to cut Wikipedia's carbon emissions. When we stop using the fiber optic cables for communication and co-opt them as a sort of ritual prayer wheel to the copyright (or anti-copyright) gods, we are truly writing a dark age onto the golden. Wnt (talk) 18:06, 17 October 2015 (UTC)

FWIW if we actually look at the actually CC Licence it includes the line "You must include a copy of, or the Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) for, this License with every copy of the Work You Distribute or Publicly Perform." so less onerous than the GFDL. It does not say it needs to be embedded and just using the file description page seems to be enough.--Salix alba (talk): 21:41, 17 October 2015 (UTC)

Biographical Index of the Middle Ages

Two things:

1. The requested page move here was rejected. I had no strong feelings, but on balance felt that 'John Dun Scotus' was more appropriate, as that is how we see Scotus's name in the title of articles in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Companion to the Middle Ages and many others. The problem was that the other people voting were clearly not specialists. An IP comments "He's better known as "Duns Scotus" – on what basis? user:Mutt Lunker writes "John Duns Scotus is a lesser-used amalgam of the two" again on what basis? I had asked some academic colleagues to participate, but none of them did. One wrote to me privately "I've never been that thrilled with Wikipedia even though there are some good things on it. The complete levelling of the notion of expertise makes no sense to me; thus, Scotus's alleged premature burial gets to be a fact right along with individuating difference." Right.
2. Connected with this, a colleague just drew my attention to this excellent work. A Biographical Index of the Middle Ages that contains "short biographical information on approx. 95,000 persons from Europe and the Middle East who shaped the cultural development and the religious life during one thousand years". That's a great resource, the problem is that it costs $1,175.00. It's the weird academic business model again. The less demand for the product, the more it costs. Only an economist could explain that. The author is unlikely to have received any payment. Now Wikipedia relies ultimately on sources like these, once, after a long time, they become public domain. Why can't Wikipedia build on its crowd sourcing model to produce a similar work? But then we come back to point 1 above. Scholars generally refuse to participate in Wikipedia, witness my colleague's reaction. "The complete levelling of the notion of expertise makes no sense to me". Someone is now bound to mention 'Nupedia'. I reply, Wikipedia has nothing like Biographical Index of the Middle Ages, moreover it depends ultimately on such publications for reliable sources. Why is it not possible to develop a mixed model where specialist volunteers can work in parallel with non-specialists, or with them in some more controlled way than at present?

Peter Damian (talk) 09:14, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

Peter, there was actually an interesting moment in one of the presentations at WikiCon that was buried in the torrent of verbiage that might get you thinking. The argument was made that rather than fruitlessly trying to get scholars and academic subject-experts to write, it might be far more productive to get them to critique. To sit down and (in person, by email, by Skype, whatever) go line by line over what is good and bad, right and wrong, in one or a series of articles on their "topic" and then to have the actual changes made by a Wikipedian who knows the site and the software. No soiling of hands, very easy means of contribution, and a mediative barrier between expertise and the sometimes rough and rowdy and rude community. Think outside the box. best, —Tim /// Carrite (talk) 13:50, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

See my point 1 above. I had asked a number of colleagues simply to comment, not to write anything. Peter Damian (talk) 14:11, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

The consensus model doesn't scale down to small discussions where a few people are basically talking out of their ass. The closer should have disregarded the !votes made without reference to evidence. Gamaliel (talk) 18:45, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

Hmm but isn't Wikipedia just a very large collection of such small discussions? Peter Damian (talk) 20:14, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

I saw Peter's contribution to the Scotus discussion, found it interesting and, assuming he is indeed an academic specialising in the subject, which I'm perfectly willing to believe, potentially persuasive regarding the discussion (it is not of course a "vote"). However the post was very equivocal, stating prominently that he had "no strong feelings" and that the nomination was "fussing around on details" and that "it hardly matters". As the only rigorous support(ish) comment, it was sufficiently lukewarm that can you blame myself and the other opposing participants (one of whom is also a declared history academic) to not feel sufficiently moved to withdraw or qualify our opposition; likewise the closing admin? My post was in response to the lame "no reason not to" nomination and I probably should have listed the various modern, mainstream, non-specialist and possibly less-notable-than-yours texts that form my experience in regard to the topic but I'm open to persuasion and you didn't seem at all inclined to persuade me/us. What's more, if you regard the article as a mess, I'd encourage you to tackle it, and your cryptic remark about spotting "a remarkable piece of vandalism" without specifying what it was and asking us to note that you "never correct crude vandalism" for some reason was less than helpful regarding the issue being located and addressed. Mutt Lunker (talk) 23:20, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

"I just noticed a remarkable piece of vandalism, still uncorrected. Please note I never correct crude vandalism" is the quote from Mr Damian (italics in the original). If the reason was lack of time and interest, preferring to focus on other tasks, that could be marginally acceptable, I guess, although not very Wikipedian, since we're talking about taking a moment to correct "crude vandalism" which is really pretty much incumbent on us if we happen to run into it.

But that's not the reason. It has something to do with head games, not sure of the point, maybe something along the lines of "the Wikipedia is a bad thing, since anyone can write anything in it, and deliberately leaving examples of this lying about helps prove my point", which is close enough to a breaching experiment to make no difference IMO. At any rate, TL;DR: don't feed the trolls. Herostratus (talk) 16:44, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

As I said, no strong feelings. The crux of it was that I couldn't persuade two people I emailed, one of whom has written a book about Scotus, the other of whom is a noted expert, to contribute to the debate. And no, I don't correct crude vandalism. Peter Damian (talk) 18:05, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

That seems extremely petty to essentially say 'hey there is vandalism here but you are to ignorant to see it and I will not do anything about it' In fact I can not think of one productive reason anyone would do that. If you are not going to fix it do not mention it. Do not make it an Easter-egg hunt for others. See meta:Don't be a jerk.

If anyone needs to check something in Biographical Index of the Middle Ages ping me, I have a copy. Jbh^Talk 19:45, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

Amazon to take legal action against sockpuppets

In the Sunday Times this morning, report about how Amazon plans to sue people who write fake reviews. According to the report:

• They will force them to pay 'treble' damages and legal fees
• They will use the courts to force sockpuppets to hand over details of their clients
• Abuse will be identified via the payment systems. "Just follow the money" says Yair Cohen, a lawyer specialising in internet law.

Peter Damian (talk) 10:06, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

That's very interesting.Here's the link. Seems that Amazon was targeted by a paid editing mill. How ridiculous to sue. Sounds like they've got a bunch of paid editing fanatics over there. Don't they realize Amazon has more important problems! I understand that unpaid reviewers from Kazakhstan skew many reviews. Coretheapple (talk) 13:31, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

Is trivialising the cover up of human rights abuses in Kazakhstan really necessary, when advocating for a tougher stance on paid editing? Brustopher (talk) 22:57, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

Wow. 56 *pounds* for writing shill book reviews, and doing it so sloppily that they didn't even have to start a new account once per 450 reviews? That's something close to $50,000 to just write stupid little snippets about books nobody heard of in a transparently obvious fashion. I obviously don't know a thing about how to make money by writing. I wonder what getting a best-selling video game featured at the top of the Main Page is worth? Wnt (talk) 16:33, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

The 12 pound fee for the Sunday Times stops me from reading the whole article, but here's the Bloomberg and Guardian pieces.

If Amazon can sue John Does for ruining their reputation, I'd think that the WMF could do the same thing, especially when some of our paid editors engage in racketeering and extortion. What's stopping us? Smallbones_(smalltalk) 16:54, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

Pinging @GeoffBrigham (WMF): just to make sure he knows about the case. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 17:18, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

Once again, Smallbones seems unable to distinguish the difference between a fraudulent endorsement of a product or business, and a factual encyclopedia article about a product or business, supported with reliable source citations. I guess we're just forever doomed to circle around in his spiral of phoney baloney ignorance. - 216.162.93.38 (talk) 18:27, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

The usual banned editor - who was banned about 7 years ago for paid editing. He made a point of identifying himself by editing the article about his business a hour before editing here. I've reverted that edit, but please leave this comment in to show his extreme hypocrisy. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 20:07, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

Why did you feel the need to revert a broken link back into the article exactly? Brustopher (talk) 22:33, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

Wiki-insanity it must be.--TMCk (talk) 22:39, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

Observe All Rules (OAR) is one of the pillars of Wikipedia. It says, "if a rule damages the encyclopedia, be sure to follow it." Or something like that. Carrite (talk) 05:38, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

Please read WP:BANREVERT. It says that anybody can revert a banned editor and they do not need to state a reason. They result of this is that a banned editors edits won't stay in the encyclopedia. Of course some misguided person (e.g. User:Brustopher) might come along a say something like "allowing a banned editor to update the link to his own press release improves the encyclopedia" but I would say that this violates WP:NOTPROMOTION. Fortunately, the reference is not needed in any case, the referenced fact is also referenced in the following (non-PR) ref. Please don't reinsert PR placed there by a banned editor. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 22:53, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

You reverted to a broken "PR" link and now you're making up an excuse.--TMCk (talk) 23:08, 18 October 2015 (UTC)
Maybe it wasn't such a good idea to draw attention to your bad edit?--TMCk (talk) 23:10, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

I'm aware of WP:BANREVERT. I just don't understand people who adhere to a sort of BANREVERT dogmatism. Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should. I remember a recent case, where this same banned editor openly reverted a load of vandalism he'd previously added into articles. One user actually thought it would be a wise idea to revert the vandalism back into the articles! While you later came to the conclusion that the material shouldn't be there in the first place, it clearly wasn't what you thought when you reverted the link fix. If it was you would have removed the reference at the time. Brustopher (talk) 10:29, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

If you are accusing me of putting vandalism back into articles, you are wrong. I am accusing you of enabling a banned user. You want him to be able to update his links to his press releases. Why? Truth, justice, and the Wikipedia way? Smallbones_(smalltalk) 17:31, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

@Smallbones: The WMF's role should never be to help private parties go after and prosecute editors for writing the wrong thing. The WMF's role could be to help make racketeering and extortion impossible, by fighting back the arbitrary and political aspect of deletion, by working to develop convenient tools to open the process to pools of randomly selected volunteers to reduce the role of the self-selected career voters.

Allowing companies to sue posters for "damaging their reputation" by speaking is extremely dangerous. Who damages a company's reputation? If a rater who doesn't read the book can be punished, why not someone who posts to a Playboy forum and tells people where to find the best nudes, or people who tell jokes that aren't funny on Reddit? Allowing companies to financially punish every Terms and Conditions violation (if not more) would make the Internet too dangerous to use at all; freedom of speech would be nothing but an ugly joke. Wnt (talk) 18:57, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

I'm sorry but I think you completely missed the point of what I was trying to say. I don't think that the WMF should help private companies sue folks who disparage them here (or at least I've never considered the matter). What I am trying to say is that the WMF should sue paid editors *and* the businesses who pay them for damaging Wikipedia's reputation by putting in advertisements here. Readers should be able to trust that our articles are not written by the subjects of the article (the companies written about). Smallbones_(smalltalk) 20:07, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

I think this article is of interest to the discussion:

• I created a fake business and bought it an amazing online reputation" by Kashmir Hill, September 15, 2015: "Yelp was the only company that caught us, hiding both of the reviews I bought behind their “not recommended” click wall and not counting them in F.A.K.E.’s rating. It has software that screens out suspicious reviews, not including them in a company’s star-rating. If they see too many of them, they will penalize a business’s page, putting a “consumer alert” on the profile for 90 days warning visitors that they think the business is buying fake reviews. People on Fiverr who were selling reviews would often say “No Yelp” in their descriptions, saying it was hard to make those “stick.”"

--Atlasowa (talk) 19:41, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

Re Amazon: Amazon Mechanical Turk gives businesses access to an on-demand, scalable workforce, i.a. to Curate and Create Content: "The community of Workers on Mechanical Turk can write, edit, and curate original content to help you jumpstart your site experience so that visitors see a relevant and interesting website. Example Tasks: * Summarize content or write abstracts of third-party articles. * Write articles about specific subjects based on web research." I wonder how Amazon makes sure that they are not procuring fake reviews ("content creation") themselves? --Atlasowa (talk) 19:53, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

• Amazon have a much bigger problem. I reported a large number of fake reviews of Kevin Trudeau's books, a bunch were removed but they are still selling, and showing large numbers of positive reviews for, his book on the fraudulent HCG diet. Trudeau is in jail because of this scam, and Amazon are still handing him money for it. There are also "Hulda Clark Zapper" toys on sale, books promoting Miracle Mineral Solution, and even homeopathic first aid kits. I'd love it if Amazon began to give a fuck about consumer protection, but I don't think it's happening yet. Guy (Help!) 22:03, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

The Signpost: 14 October 2015

• Op-ed: WikiConference USA 2015: built on good faith

• WikiConference report: US gathering sees speeches from Andrew Lih, AfroCrowd, and the Archivist of the United States

• Editorial: Why the news media needs a Wikipedian in residence

• News and notes: 2015–2016 Q1 fundraising update sparks mailing list debate

• Traffic report: Screens, Sport, Reddit, and Death

• Featured content: A fistful of dollars

• Technology report: Tech news in brief

• Blog: Third Wikimedia Spain conference takes place in Madrid

• Read this Signpost in full
• Single-page
• Unsubscribe
• MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:38, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

Echo

The other day I mentioned User:Biosthmors in a discussion. After signing the note I decided it would be nice to have his input, so I wikilinked his user name and signed the post again (with a new date stamp) - I'd heard that doing this will send a "ping" to him and draw his attention to the discussion. He didn't respond and I assumed he had nothing to add to the topic. A few days later he discovered the conversation and very much did have an important contribution to make. He hadn't gotten the "ping".

Biosthmors left a query at Wikipedia talk:Notifications#Why didn't it work?, and a volunteer left an explanation that I had trouble understanding. I left a ping for Biosthmors there, following (I think) the volunteer's instructions but he hasn't responded.

Then another volunteer on the Notifications Talk Page pointed me to a phabricator bug report from over a year ago that had been relegated to "unimportant" status. The request was when you successfully send a notification, something tells you you succeeded.

User:Quiddity has subsequently upgraded its importance to "not completely useless" or something. Wouldn't you think this was pretty fundamental to an effective notifications system?

I decided to add some encouragement to the phabricator page so clicked on "Register with LDAP" whatever that is and was told to expect a confirmation email. I opened the email and followed the link in it to a page that says "Login or register with LDAP", which I can't do because at no point in this process have I been asked to create a user name and password. Now, when I go to phabricator I can't even read or navigate through the site. I'm confronted with a page that says

"You must verify your email address to login. You should have a new email message from Phabricator with verification instructions in your inbox. If you did not receive an email, you can click the button below to try sending another one."

The new email has the same link as the first email, so now I'm effectively locked out of phabricator. Just a whine. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 10:21, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T68078

And the first line in this phabricator task is:

"This is a request from another user on hewiki who does not do bugzilla."

I don't "do phabricator" either (i don't want to give WMF my email address). And Anthonyhcole can't "do" it. If WMF were actually interested in what the community thinks about the importance of bugs/tasks, they would ...

*create a ping-back for phabricator mentions on-wiki*

a little like (deprecated) meta:Template:Bug, which produces:

T68078 (links from mw m w)

Click on the links to phab-linksearch in different wikis! You mention a phab task in english or german wikipedia and you automatically get links to pages that discuss the same phab task in other language wikis. Why doesn't phabricator provide those "mentions" too? --Atlasowa (talk) 18:21, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

Total number of active users

The number of users who have made at least one action in the last 30 days, seems to have risen significantly in recent weeks, topping 120,000 some time last month (as far as I can remember) and now 125,000. It'd be interesting to know if this is a new record, how many of these users are former Wikipedians returning to editing, and how significant this figure is overall. Are there any estimates as to what proportion are vandalism-only accounts at any one time? Is there also a similar figure for the number of IPs who have edited Wikipedia in the past 30 days, and a way of showing this? Thanks, --Rubbish computer (HALP!: I dropped the bass?) 15:41, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

Can you provide a link to your source of these numbers? I can't remember, off the top of my head, where these stats are kept. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 19:44, 19 October 2015 (UTC)