User talk:Jimbo Wales

Paid editing

Suppose an editor's behavior creates a strong suspicion of paid editing but the editor denies it. What is the appropriate action? How can the Terms of Use be brought into play? None of our help or policy pages really explains this in a useful way, as far as I can tell. (I have two specific situations in mind.) Looie496 (talk) 11:33, 23 October 2015 (UTC)

Ignoring whether they are or are not being paid, are they editing in conformance with content policies like WP:NPOV, WP:RS and WP:DUE? Thryduulf (talk) 11:37, 23 October 2015 (UTC)

No, but that's not really the point. The Terms of Use don't really mean anything if they don't add anything to our existing policies. My question is what additional tools they give us. Looie496 (talk) 12:38, 23 October 2015 (UTC)

They don't really add anything on-wiki, where paid advocacy has long been forbidden by numerous policies. They make it easier for the office to tell agencies to knock it off and follow through on such requests. WilyD 15:40, 23 October 2015 (UTC)

But how does the office become aware that a problem exists? Who tells them, and how? Looie496 (talk) 11:46, 24 October 2015 (UTC)

@Looie496: The office, by which I assume you mean the WMF, is unlikely to do much of anything concerning any individual paid editing situation or suspect. It has to be enormous, and I believe that the most the WMF has ever done is yell. I could be mistaken, as I haven't paid that close attention, but I don't believe the WMF has actually taken legal action against violators of its paid editing TOU. That is one of the weakest and most half-hearted areas of endeavor on Wikipedia. In any given situation, it is probably the last thing to look for and the hardest thing to prove. If an editor is POV-pushing, that is usually enough. That doesn't mean that prohibiting paid editing is futile or insane or contrary to the Four Freedoms or whatever the paid editing apologists are saying, but that the TOU is really most useful as a device to justify action by the WMF, if it ever chooses to do so in serious situations. Coretheapple (talk) 21:16, 25 October 2015 (UTC)

I think the appropriate response is for Looie to spend the rest of his days on Wikipedia stalking the edits of the suspected paid editor. Keep badgering them about why they made a particular edit X, or whether they believe edit Y is truly neutral. It becomes Looie's permanent volunteer job to make the suspected paid editor's activity on Wikipedia completely miserable. Meanwhile, the German Wikipedia welcomes corporate-affiliated editors to directly interact openly on their Wikipedia articles, while Jimbo has his Bright Line Rule for the English Wikipedia while he jets from place to place taking 5-figure payments for little 45-minute keynote speeches. This has been the operating plan since about October 2006. I'm surprised it's taken Looie nine years to catch on to it. - 2600:1002:B01B:2A03:F9C3:ED8C:2CA7:B96D (talk) 12:34, 23 October 2015 (UTC)

I don't want to spend the rest of my days stalking the edits of the suspected paid editor. I want to offload that job on somebody who has better tools. Looie496 (talk) 12:38, 23 October 2015 (UTC)

Staking an another editor and badgering them about something is WP:HARASSMENT, regardless of why it is done. Trying to get someone to reveal details of their real life that they do not want to is WP:OUTING. If you have no evidence that this editor is breaking the terms of use, and they have denied doing so, why are you pursuing it? If their contributions to the encyclopaedia are neutral, based on reliable sources and do not add undue weight to an article, then what benefit would taking any action have? Thryduulf (talk) 13:38, 23 October 2015 (UTC)

Glad to have you say that - but when you were emailed actual evidence of harassment in the past - you did precisely nada. When you saw harassment by an "anonymous IP" you did precisely nada. When you actually do something, I shall suffer a cardiac arrest. Cheers. Collect (talk) 14:06, 23 October 2015 (UTC)

If discussion on the user's talk page doesn't reach a resolution, you can raise the matter at WP:COIN, but be mindful that outing is still not allowed. Rhoark (talk) 13:43, 23 October 2015 (UTC)

Out of interest, if you could email me the details privately, I'd enjoy looking into the situation as a learning experience. Mr 2600 is obviously being unhelpful in this discussion, and while I disagree with most of the other answers, they at least express a defensible perspective.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 14:15, 23 October 2015 (UTC)

Translation: Mr 2600 hit close to home, so let's call him "unhelpful". It's the good old Kazakhstan defense. - 2601:42:C100:9D83:D139:E3C0:4FBC:7F82 (talk) 16:46, 25 October 2015 (UTC)

Email sent. Looie496 (talk) 14:56, 23 October 2015 (UTC)

@Looie496: do keep us updated. Given the "community's" witless attitude toward this issue (mainly because the "community" in discussions like this, though not this particular discussion, tends to be dominated by paid editors and their tools) I'm not holding my breath. Coretheapple (talk) 15:41, 24 October 2015 (UTC)

There is nothing "witless" about this — the community has spoken that they value anonymity over identification and accountability and WMF has spoken that they prefer wide open horizons for IP editing and account creation over some sort of substantive registration process. It's patently obvious to all but a small handful that if A and B are true, C is impossible — C being effective identification and permanent removal of paid COI editors. At that point the question is whether such editing is to be regulated and supervised through a rational set of policies or driven underground where regulation and supervision is impossible. That's where we sit. Carrite (talk) 18:52, 24 October 2015 (UTC)

we sit having proven my point with the usual red herrings, black-and-white scenario-fallacies, nonexistent "community speaking" and other blah blah. Coretheapple (talk) 19:10, 24 October 2015 (UTC)

All right, tough guy, you start the first RFA, requiring registration to edit and limiting individuals to one account each. We can work on making that stringent via WMF once En-WP voices its approval. Go for it, I'll back your effort in word and deed. Either that or admit that you're just chattering like an angry squirrel and that my read of political reality on this matter is accurate. Carrite (talk) 15:27, 25 October 2015 (UTC)

Oh there's no question that the political reality is that your point of the view, the "let's propose something that will be immediately and overwhelmingly shot down and do nothing else" point of view, is dominant whenever the subject comes up, which again proves my point. Speaking of paid editing, I really have to pay you to continue to come on these talk pages and blah-blah to confirm my position on this, and the futility of depending on a community of Carrites to deal with a reputational issue that really doesn't affect most editors. Coretheapple (talk) 18:24, 25 October 2015 (UTC)

Hey, I'm happy to toss ya a life preserver as a freebie. Please do get out of the deep end of the pool, however, your flailing about is scaring the other patrons. Carrite (talk) 12:22, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

Free work is the least I've come to expect from anyone who devotes time and energy, without compensation, to helping other people make money by leeching off Wikipedia. Coretheapple (talk) 13:08, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

I just noticed the reference to Kazakhstan offered by the IP. This discussion follows so closely the usual "paid editing discussion script" its instructive. (Propose unworkable solutions and say that's the only way to address paid editing; sScream "Kazakhstan!") Same cast of characters: the paid editing fanatics, the paid editing apologists, Mr. 2600/2100. Jimbo expressing useless moral support.

I can't emphasize too much, and I want Carrite to pay attention to this as he always seems to ignore this, fanatical as my view is on paid editing, it has been my position for some time that paid editing is a reputational problem for Jimbo and a financial issue for Mr. 2001, and really only a source of recreational amusement to the rest of us unless we are anxious to volunteer to help commercial and private interests (Wikipedia's founder and paid editing mills). Let them slug it out. Please note this diff from my user page, indicating that this has been a long-held position on my part. Coretheapple (talk) 21:06, 25 October 2015 (UTC)

Just curious -- what percentage of Mr 2001's total annual income do you perceive is derived from paid editing of Wikipedia, such that it is a "financial issue" for him? - 2601:42:C100:9D83:20B4:1DBF:A120:2522 (talk) 21:28, 25 October 2015 (UTC)

I think the answer to that question is "less than you'd like it to be." Similarly, I surmise that the answer to this question: "To what extent does paid editing hurt Wikipedia's reputation?" is "More than its founder wants it to be." As you see, this is ultimately an issue between you and your ilk and Jimbo, which is why I don't go berserk when I see your posts here, even though you were perma-blocked from Wikipedia. Jimbo apparently used to feel that paid editing was a big deal, but now he feels that Wikipedia can deal with it, push it off into a corner, off by Kazakhstan if you will. So while I find the practice dreadful, I see no point in getting upset by it. Likewise, I think that if you focus on your day job and less on this hobby, you would be a happier person. Just my two cents. Coretheapple (talk) 21:36, 25 October 2015 (UTC)

Venturing a guess, I would suppose that Mr 2001 pulls down an annual salary from the Very Large, Very Rich corporation for which he works that is in the low six figures and that he makes for paid editing on Wikipedia something in the middle four figures. And I suppose that he would still continue to take paid editing gigs if he were making virtually zero just because he's all-in as a matter of principle at this point and he's not gonna be bullied or bluffed away. That's the kind of guy he is (and I do like him a lot, actually). You also might be interested to learn, Mr. Core, that Mr. 2001 in real life really, really doesn't like the looks of his paid editing prospects if the hardline registration suggestions I make above were put into place. That's one thing the paid editors who use multiple socks can't deal with — tightly restricted registration. But, hey, you just keep trying to do an end run around the community and keep us posted how that is working out for ya... Carrite (talk) 12:30, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

Yes, I am sure the gravy train would eagerly embrace any approach to the paid editing plague such as the ones you keep bringing up, since they have no chance of being enacted. Rest assured that I've given up a long time ago trying to influence the "community" to bail out what is essentially a Jimbo/WMF problem. I've waxed eloquent on that point in this very discussion, indeed in my comments directly above. However, I am pleased that you have ignored it (again, I owe you money for being my interlocutor) so that I can cheerfully repeat: the onus is upon those most directly involved to do the end-running that indeed is required so that a "community of Carrites" does not harm their franchise. But it is not the "Coreetheapple franchise." It is the "Jimbo franchise." You are free to ignore this again, so that I can repeat it. Coretheapple (talk) 14:16, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

I'm not surprised to hear that Mr. 2601 only makes about $5,000/year on his paid editing, who would actually be satisfied with the work this guy does? OTOH, is sounds extremely strange that this person would spend the last eight years editing Wikipedia after he was banned to uphold the principal of "free hidden advertising in encyclopedias". It's just weird that somebody would have such a principal. Does anybody know what philosophical, ethical or religious traditions this comes from? It obviously has no basis in the US legal tradition of Freedom of Speech - commercial speech can be highly regulated in the US, and trying to apply an outside commercial venture's "freedom of speech" to what is a legally private forum is totally off-base. In short, does Mr. 2601 have any justification for trying to force his commercial advertisements down Wikipedia's throat? Smallbones_(smalltalk) 15:10, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

Your verb tense is wrong — I haven't asked Mr 2001 about his financials and am playing Mr 2601's guessing game since Mr Core would not. Smallbones, Mr 2001 keeping after it for 8 years because he tried to do the right thing, was treated miserably for his efforts, and has harbored a grudge ever since is no more difficult to understand than is the behavior of the anti-paid editing crew continuing to fight the good fight (or tilt at windmills) in the face of compelling evidence that their battle is inevitably a losing one. It's all about fighting out of principle. No need to be flippant about these things. Carrite (talk) 15:54, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

There is every reason to be flippant about these things, and I'll be happy to enumerate them for you. First, as I've indicated above, paid editing is fundamentally a reputational issue for the project as a whole and for Jimbo personally. Everyone else are essentially bystanders, involved purely out of curiosity and personal interest. Thus the very fact that we are having this conversation, while Jimbo, the only nonblocked edidtor with a personal interest, is only sporadically involved, is something of a hoot. Secondly, playing along with Mr. 2600's pretense that he is a different person than Mr. 2001 is certainly ridicule-worthy. Thirdly, there is something indeed quite amusing about a paid editor taking a "principled" stance on his "right" to exploit Wikipedia's business model for personal profit. Fourthly, it is doubly amusing to hear someone like you say that doing so is "the right thing." Right by whose standards of morality? P.T. Barnum's? Dracula's? Coretheapple (talk) 16:46, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

• @Looie496: - please email me your suspicions and details. Details that are inappropriate to share on-wiki are usually fine to share with admins off-wiki and if my own research and assessment agrees with yours, I'll block them for you or enforce an existing ban depending on the circumstances. I also note with interest that I've personally violated WP:OUTING w/r/t paid editing at least a dozen times, including at ANI and in arb pages - and in a way that Cooley, LLP actually quoted in a cease and desist letter to those involved. Kevin Gorman (talk) 17:46, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

Kevin, do you mean this particular Cooley, LLP? Or did you mean this one? Or this one? - Mister 2001:558:1400:10:DDD:F877:1CF7:CE3D (talk) 13:51, 27 October 2015 (UTC)

It took me awhile to get the gist of @Carrite:'s "Your verb tense is wrong." Do you mean that Mr. 2001 no longer does paid editing? Why doesn't he take the advertisement off his page then? And why would he continue to harass folks about it? You are describing a completely irrational person. He hides advertising in a non-profit encyclopedia. He deceives people about his identity while here and has an obsession about attacking Jimmy Wales on this page. But he doesn't do any paid editing? his harassment come totally from principle? I'll ask again, what principle? Have you ever run into anything like this "principle" in any field of human endeavor in history? Smallbones_(smalltalk) 17:45, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

You're assuming that I'm right about GK's financials and I haven't talked to him ("I'm not surprised to hear..." vs. "I would not be surprised to hear..."). Still, he's lurking and hey, GK, I'll lay $5 of those $10 you owe me that my orders of magnitude guessed above are correct. (See, a bet where you don't have any risk — how cool is that? Of course, if I lose I will blab, so you might want to consider whether you wanna cash that chip...) Don't make GK out to be a huge player in the paid editing debate, he's a small "pop and pop" fetid basement type of operation in a high-stakes game. Your real enemies are elsewhere. I respect the fact that GK has taken unfairness and went all-in with it for so long. He's made mistakes in the process, but he is basically a good dude and standing up to bullying is always commendable. Not to say he's not a troll from time to time, but I reckon that's his compensation for time spent. You need to focus your attention elsewhere, Smallbones. Carrite (talk) 00:35, 27 October 2015 (UTC)

I'll focus my attention wherever I want, thank you. He is not just "a troll from time to time" - every time I see him here he is trolling. He's been banned for 8 years, Doesn't he know when he is not welcome. He harasses me on my talkpage. He violates the terms-of-use. And Carrite says "well he only does a little paid editing".

User:Hell in a Bucket has removed the above and other material that he considers contentious. I've reinserted the above - I see no reason for anybody to consider it to be contentious. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 15:18, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

Smallbones, you wonder why that particular paid editor keeps visiting your Talk page (when you've asked him not to), and he says it's because you keep spreading lies about him elsewhere, especially on Jimbo's Talk page, where he does have a limited, traditional right-of-response. Well, here is one of those examples. You keep saying that the paid editing of MyWikiBiz constitutes "advertisement". His work is actually quite "encyclopedic", according to the standards, guidelines, and policies of Wikipedia, save only for the new "Terms of Use" rules that are regularly disobeyed by some of the Wikimedia Foundation's top donors, anyway. So, think about this -- if you stop lying about his content being "advertising" (which, if it were, it would get fairly promptly deleted, anyhow, so what would be the point), he will likely stop dropping by your Talk page to point out what a liar you are.

Carrite, the 2015 paid editing tab is actually in the high three-figures, and the income unrelated to paid editing is in the top 6% of US households for 2015. So, since you thought the paid editing was in the thousands, you are off by an order of magnitude (correct?), so now I only owe you $5, not $10. Go Green! Go White! - Mister 2001:558:1400:10:DDD:F877:1CF7:CE3D (talk) 14:01, 27 October 2015 (UTC)

Why are you referring to yourself in the third person? Coretheapple (talk) 20:00, 27 October 2015 (UTC)

Dang, anonymous MSU fan — nailed the income but overshot the estimate on paid advertising revenue by a factor of 5 or 6. You win money for nothing, which was pretty much what that Ducks covering at the last minute was. Tip of the hat to you. Carrite (talk) 20:56, 27 October 2015 (UTC)

Now you're just trolling! Carrite (talk) 20:38, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

It's difficult to know what Carrite is responding to here, now that Smallbones has exercised his privilege. - 2001:558:1400:10:88BD:E371:E0D2:93F8 (talk) 14:22, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

RfC: administrator election reform

Wikipedia:2015 administrator election reform/Phase I/RfC --Guy Macon (talk) 16:13, 24 October 2015 (UTC)

• RfC summarized in a bottom section: I see the RfC about RfAs began on 15 October 2015, and the discussion quickly expanded to include 16 issues, A-P, as summarized in the "For convenience" section: WP:2015_administrator_election_reform/Phase_I/RfC#For_convenience.
  The results seem fairly mixed, with dozens of users opposing most of the suggested reforms. -Wikid77 (talk) 00:34, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

WMF NSA lawsuit dismissed

Comment? Future? [1] --DHeyward (talk) 00:13, 25 October 2015 (UTC)

[2] --Guy Macon (talk) 00:51, 25 October 2015 (UTC)

As I understand it, we'll hear from from the ACLU next week, and a decision will be made soon as to next steps. This sort of thing is unfortunate, of course, but depending on the exact details (I am not a lawyer) a successful appeal is always a possibility. Given what we know from the Snowden documents, the Judge is wrong. Unfortunately, it may take 25 years (when things will be routinely declassified) to prove it definitively. WMF blog post has more details.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 22:09, 25 October 2015 (UTC)

Ah yes, the internet backbone. Quite appropriate, with all this terribly beastly spying business going on, don't you think? Can we open a 25-year RfC on NSA? Martinevans123 (talk) 22:24, 25 October 2015 (UTC)

Jimbo Wales I see you removed this without comment, but in all seriousness you now have a judge essentially stating that the arguments you have been the public face of aren't credible. Instead of continuing to push the same discredited commentary as you have above, why don't you push the WMF to look at other solutions. Here's a suggestion; if you and the WMF are so deftly afraid of the NSA bogeyman, why don't you simply move the WMF servers out of the US? Problem solved. 101.186.127.22 (talk) 04:31, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

This strikes me as a freedom of navigation exercise. No matter what the law says, the more powerful pushes out the weaker, until that is new law. So a judge might have ordered the Guantanamo force feeding videos to be released in 2014; but what happens is that the government releases the ones they want, on the schedule they say, and the lawyers who sued them and the judge that gave the order have to learn to become part of the apparatus keeping their contents hidden from the public. You didn't see them last year, won't see them this year ... maybe they'll be declassified when the full version of the Bay of Pigs report comes out, or when U.S. warships patrol through the Great wall of sand.

Meanwhile, if the courts didn't dare look into this, we should scarcely be surprised. Constitutions were written by people - how long did we really think the dead words of dead men would safeguard our defenses? As on the South China Sea, it is now a matter of tactics and, above all, numbers. If, say, Wikipedia Zero allows someone in a distant country to view a cached version of a page at his local phone company, how is the NSA going to find out? If conversations are actually carried out with effective encryption, and if we simply don't ask for or keep the most useful kinds of personal data in the first place, how much are they going to get anywhere? While moving the main server is one part of this tactics, a better question might be whether we can eliminate the need for central servers and administration entirely. Simply having a central server in a different country will not help if they are in a relationship with the NSA, and how many aren't? Wnt (talk) 14:12, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

Moving the servers outside of the U.S. would do nothing. The NSA's spying involves them tapping the Internet backbone that physically exists in the United States. It doesn't matter where the endpoints of the traffic are. And, the NSA is enormously helped in this by the fact that the majority of Internet traffic passes through the U.S. (Hey, remember, the Internet started as a U.S. Department of Defense research project.) --71.119.131.184 (talk) 20:05, 27 October 2015 (UTC)

How much of donor's contributions were used on this farce? Cla68 (talk) 00:44, 27 October 2015 (UTC)

However much it was too much. Regardless of one's opinion on NSA etc. it is not WMF's remit to be a pawn in the EFF++ game. We could perhaps develop robust technologies to encourage and assist editors and readers who wish to maintain their privacy. (And HTTPS everywhere is not it.) All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 01:10, 27 October 2015 (UTC).

"Pawn" seems like an odd choice of wording, since it usually connotes an entity who is being unknowingly manipulated. Since the WMF had to explicitly sign on to the lawsuit, and has actively supported it in the public media, it seems to me that "ally" would be more accurate. One can certainly argue that the WMF should or should not be involving itself in such things, which is a separate issue. --71.119.131.184 (talk) 20:05, 27 October 2015 (UTC)

The WMF blog post linked above mentions pro bono legal counsel, so at least part of the legal cost didn't come from WMF. Deli nk (talk) 13:20, 27 October 2015 (UTC)

Pro Bono? Poor old NSA, eh? Martinevans123 (talk) 21:31, 27 October 2015 (UTC)

The Intercept puts this in a broader context. Wnt (talk) 13:36, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

The Signpost: 21 October 2015

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• News and notes: Wikimedia lawsuit against NSA dismissed; Affiliates mailing list launched

• In the media: "Wikipedia's hostility to women"

• Special report: One year of GamerGate, or how I learned to stop worrying and love bare rule-level consensus

• Featured content: A more balanced week

• Op-ed: Wikipedia is significantly amplifying the impact of Open Access publications

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• MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:01, 25 October 2015 (UTC)

Nice of Gamaliel to offer a wholly independent editorial on Gamergate. It's not like he's involved in the article at all, is he? Jimbo why don't you write an editorial on how Jimbo Wales looks next? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 166.170.47.206 (talk) 23:37, 27 October 2015 (UTC)

Bans

@Jimbo Wales: You walk about wanting this user talk page to be open, so is it your intention that bans don't apply here? Oiyarbepsy (talk) 02:11, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

• To be clear this specific question is almost certainly related to Eric Corbett's ongoing arbcom topic bans related to civility and issues of the gendergap. Oiyarbepsy: to get a reasonable answer, providing context is a really good idea. Kevin Gorman (talk) 07:17, 26 October 2015 (UTC)
  • Ignoring the true point behind Oiyarbepsy's question, it would be nice if Jimbo would clarify this in a more general sense. Jimbo has largely relied on others to moderate his talk page for him, and he only makes this difficult for them by allowing a near free-for-all, with the moderators needing to interpret "near" for themselves. GorillaWarfare (talk) 07:35, 26 October 2015 (UTC)
  • Oiyarbepsy removed all six of EC's posts, of which only two allegedly violated his arbcom restrictions. And of the two, even the blocking admin (a former arb) did not remove. Even when the specific arbcom remedy included allowance to remove. IHTS (talk) 08:12, 26 October 2015 (UTC)
    • That's why I'm asking. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 11:46, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

Eric Corbett is deeply unwelcome here. I generally support the idea that if people have a problem, they should be able to approach me here without getting into trouble for "canvassing" and the like. But there are limits, and we are not required to have unlimited patience for people who are not prepared to behave in an appropriate manner. I acknowledge the difficulty that GorillaWarfare identifies and the main thing about it is that no one is going to get into trouble for removing trolling from my user page. As another example, anything from "Mr. 2001" should be deleted immediately - he's not here to build an encyclopedia, he's here to wage his nearly 10 year obsessive campaign against me.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 20:17, 27 October 2015 (UTC)

Are you here to build an encyclopaedia then? What was the last article you expanded or improved for the benefit of the project? Cassianto^Talk 20:57, 27 October 2015 (UTC)

Is that supposed to be a joke? - ^theWOLFchild 13:09, 31 October 2015 (UTC)

Does is sound like one? Cassianto^Talk 19:29, 31 October 2015 (UTC)

There are many ways to contribute constructively to the project. I am 100% sure that I'm doing my job responsibly and with good humor.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 01:37, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

• There was an entire arbitration case on this general subject. As a result of this I ceased my previous policy of deleting the so-called "Mr. 2001" contributions, and expect to continue this policy notwithstanding the comment immediately preceding. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Banning_Policy Coretheapple (talk) 20:24, 27 October 2015 (UTC)

That is understandable. Still, if anyone wants to remove them, I won't complain and will defend that action as being consistent with maintaining this page as a useful forum.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 20:34, 27 October 2015 (UTC)

I just felt it's too much of a pain. Smallbones upholds policy and is dragged through an arbitration. Bah. Coretheapple (talk) 20:41, 27 October 2015 (UTC)

I'm a bit surprised to see my username here and I should thank Coretheapple for digging out the diff that made the result of that ArbCom decision inevitable. But I have no complaints about going through the ArbCom process. About the only thing that really surprised me was that nobody actually accused me of violating any of Wikipedia's rules. I don't think that should be allowed - the folks who request such cases should get a short-term ban for trying to drag people through the mud. As far as me trying to keep some modicum of order on this page, well it is just not my job and may not even be possible. But I do remove comments by trolls and banned editors, as well as from people explicitly disinvited by Jimmy, if I feel that they are trying to discourage others from participating here (via their trolling). I generally do not remove comments once they have been responded to, but that is not a hard and fast rule. I'll remove all the comments below that have been made by folks who have been explicitly disinvited above. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 15:50, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

Jimbo...it's understandable that Corbett is not welcome on your talk page, we all get that now I think. It would, however be wise to not let links to libel printed in a magazine which names him and is full of inaccuracies also stand posted here. It's unfortunate that some editors were interviewed for that piece while others were not, which makes it not only lousy investigative journalism, but bad science as well.--MONGO 20:49, 27 October 2015 (UTC)

MONGO, this talk page has a high level of activity. Given people's real life schedules and Wales relying on informal moderators to manage the discussions, I'm not sure who is responsible for maintaining a pristine environment. As least since I've been editing, this talk page is a messy place where all sorts of crazy comments and personal appeals are posted. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 21:23, 27 October 2015 (UTC)

Let me be clear that I do not hold Jimbo responsible for not monitoring his page 24/7...but if someone is going to post such things that libel an editor who uses their real name, well, maybe I'm guilty too for not hatting the thing.--MONGO 01:58, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

Exactly, Liz. Which is why it should be deactivated. The thing is an embarrassment, despite Jimbo thinking it is (or may be?) a "useful forum". It is useful to no-one but cranks, misanthropes, publicity-seekers and acolytes. - Sitush (talk) 21:30, 27 October 2015 (UTC)

Please go away then.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 01:37, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

(removed comment by Sitush - You've been told above (as well as last year) that you are not welcome here.) Smallbones_(smalltalk) 15:50, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

(removed comment by Sitush again - You've been told above (as well as last year) that you are not welcome here.) Please re-read Jimbo's comment above "Please go away then" That should be clear enough for anybody. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 17:20, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

Sitush has asked on my talk page to see the diff from last year disinviting him from posting on this page, Here it is Smallbones_(smalltalk) 17:36, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

Here is another instance. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 22:36, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

Removed comment from Sitush again. This time it was reinserted by @Hell in a Bucket:. H, please read above where Jimmy says "if anyone wants to remove them, I won't complain and will defend that action as being consistent with maintaining this page as a useful forum.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 20:34, 27 October 2015 (UTC)" That should be easy enough for anybody to understand. If you don't like my removals, please take it yourself to ANI. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 18:51, 28 October 2015 (UTC) Note immediately below HIAB added it back again. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 19:38, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

(added back: let Jimbo do his own dirty work of censorship and deflection). No - that is your usual deflection from the point being made. As for your remark in this section that I am 100% sure that I'm doing my job responsibly and with good humor, well, the only thing I am 99% sure of is the utter arrogance of anyone who is 100% sure of anything they do. Complete certainty, with no allowance for doubt, is a fatal flaw. - Sitush (talk) 07:22, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

If Eric believes that The Atlantic has libeled him, that is Eric’s affair; the offices of The Atlantic and the US District Court for Washington DC are thataway ⇒. None of that has nothing whatsoever to do with whether Wikipedia may link to this revered publication. MarkBernstein (talk) 22:01, 27 October 2015 (UTC)

So if falsehoods about you are linked here then that would also be okay? How okay would they be if you were also defacto banned from commenting here about them?--MONGO 02:08, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

Is this the same "revered" publication you not-so-long-ago suggested was staffed by nonprofessionals? Why the change of heart? 83.170.111.152 (talk) 00:39, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

Did what Mark stated go completely over your head? Smh... Dave Dial (talk) 01:12, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

I admit the double negative confused me but no, I don't think so. Recently, here and elsewhere Mark's spoken of The Atlantic's impeccable reputation yet not long ago he suggested journalists were no better than Culinary Assembly Engineers. I wondered what motivated his change of heart (and whether I should be swayed most by his previous opinion or recent opinion.) 83.170.111.152 (talk) 01:28, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

I see. So you're just trolling, since Mark said no such thing. Neither implying working at McD's was bad, nor that being a journalist was the same thing. Most especially, he stated nothing about the Atlantic in that piece you linked to. So please, stop trolling here and grow up. Dave Dial (talk) 01:40, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

If you're going to paraphrase my arguments, kindly get them right. In that talk, I'm pointing out that journalism is a job or a trade, not a profession. That happens to be true, though many forget it. In the fuller discussion published in Genre, I pointed out the class distinction between newspaper reporters, who were typically high school graduates, and magazine writers, many of whom had gone on to college. This, too, is nearly forgotten; there was a great gulf fixed between Damon Runyan and Dottie Parker. There were always exceptions, like New Yorker editor Harold Ross, or hat Hemingway boy. You could perhaps make an argument that Tarbell and the rest f the muckraker crew were establishing a profession when they tried to buy out Colliers, but that's not the route US journalism took. Now, please crawl back not your hole, or try t find a better gotcha at Gamergate HQ -- and next time, dear banned editor, have the guts Eric Corbett showed and edit under (one of) your accounts. MarkBernstein (talk) 02:29, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

That was my first reaction when the subject came up. But he is using his real name, which puts things in a different category, I thought. I don't see why he can't put his "side of the story" on his own user page. Coretheapple (talk) 22:37, 27 October 2015 (UTC)

But The Atlantic claims that Eric was an admin. Surely even you can't stomach such a vile and baseless slur? 86.187.207.140 (talk) 23:30, 27 October 2015 (UTC)

He can't put “his side of the story” on Wikipedia because Wikipedia Is Not A Web Host. You know that! If he wants to publish a rebuttal to The Atlantic, he could submit it to The Atlantic. If they won’t take it Harper’s, The New Yorker, Wired, The New Republic, The Nation, and Esquire are all still in business. MarkBernstein (talk) 23:40, 27 October 2015 (UTC)

I understand that, and this involves an area in which I have scant acquaintance and no involvement. I just think that given all the circumstances, a bit of slack should be cut in his direction for BLP reasons. That's all. If he abuses it, then that's another story. Coretheapple (talk) 20:34, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

(removed comment by Eric Corbett - You've been told above that you are not welcome here.) Smallbones_(smalltalk) 15:50, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

What's the matter, Eric, can't you get an article about Wikipedia published in a professional periodical? RO^(talk) 23:49, 27 October 2015 (UTC)

(removed comment by Eric Corbett - You've been told above that you are not welcome here.) Smallbones_(smalltalk) 15:50, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

Hey Jimbo?

Howdy JW. Would you clarify as to who you don't want posting on your talkpage & who you've authorized to delete such unwanted posts? GoodDay (talk) 20:25, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

• I can't speak for Jimbo but can provide a couple informative diffs regarding parts of your questions: [3], [4] Kevin Gorman (talk) 04:38, 2 November 2015 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Today's articles for improvement

Jimbo, I'm not sure if you're aware this Wikiproject exists, so I just wanted to bring it to your attention. It's essentially a project that fosters community-driven improvement on one article over a week - generally really important topics that shockingly still have underwhelming articles after all these years. The aim is two-fold: to encourage newbies to enter the project by working with some established editors, and to push important articles up to GA/FA. A co-founder, I have personally contributed by working alongside some Wikimedia people to post statuses out into social media (Twitter/Google+/Facebook) to spread the word via engaging and witty tags. We have had various successful improvements so far, and there are at least four other-language Wikipedias that have followed in our footsteps and created TAFI Wikiprojects of their own. For a time, we were even on the main page! (Just below the DYK section). We're chugging along after 2.5 years, and are always looking for fresh blood, and interesting ideas to improve our innerworkings. Please stop by if you have the chance, and perhaps nominate an article or two if you find any doosies.--Coin945 (talk) 10:38, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

• Excellent, see list: "WP:Articles_for_improvement" (over 250 pages, including: Brain damage, Blackmail, Club drug, Erik the Red, Guacomole, Holy Spirit, Jumbotron, Ozone layer, Pig Latin, Ratatouille, Statistician, Vending machine, Viral phenomenon, etc.). -Wikid77 (talk) 15:42, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

Why Wikipedia was failing

The wp:TAFI project (with list: "WP:Articles_for_improvement") has addressed one of the key reasons why Wikipedia was failing the audience: not enough indepth coverage about mainstream subjects, outside the typical popstars or current TV or films. So the solution is to prioritize efforts to expand major subjects, and improve the existing pages within each mainstream subject. We have millions of pages of minor, rare topics to distract the editor efforts, and so sorting out priorities is crucial to expanding coverage of the mainstream topics, many of which have been awkward stubs for years. -Wikid77 (talk) 15:42, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

Thank you so much for your support and endorsement @Wikid77:. When we began this endevour, it astounded me how easy it was to find really obvious core topics that had sad articles, and we have seen such great improvement, but there is always more work to be done, and always more people to inform of our existence. Do you have any ideas (or contacts, resources etc.) to help our Wikiproject become more successful?--Coin945 (talk) 16:09, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

Enfranchising voters in arbcom elections

I'm dropping a pointer to this discussion here for a couple of reasons. As one: Jimbo is both the creator of arbcom, and still recognized in many arbcom policies (i.e. this) as having authority to involve himself directly with arbcom decisions. As another: Jimbo has repeatedly requested that his page not be subject to the general outlines of WP:CANVASSING, and most other highly watched places I could notify I would be instantly accused of canvassing if I notified.

I've started a discussion and strawpoll here about whether or not I can appropriately exercise my administrative abilities to send out a massmessage neutrally notifying recently active eligible voters in the upcoming arbcom elections that they are eligible to vote, along with a brief description of what arbcom does (taken from arbcom's own description,) and the type of decisions they can make. I started the discussion because it perturbs me that 2014's arbcom tranche saw only 60% of the voters of 2013's arbcom tranche, and a total of 600 voters or so despite the fact that many more are eligible.

I believe that many voters within the electorate that arbcom has set for itself are completely unaware that they are able to vote despite being many of them having a vested interest in the direction Arbcom goes, and novel perspectives to contribute both in voting and in questioning candidates. (e.g., the person who rapidly popped up in initial discussions about this - with over 50k edits - who was unaware they could vote.)

Discussion is welcome in either place, but for the sake of whatever admin ends up closing my AN thread, I would request that anyone with significant comments or who wants to voice an opinion in what is pretty much a strawpoll on whether or not a neutral massmessage to inform eligible voters they are eligible to vote would be an appropriate administrative action comment or !vote here rather than on this talk page. Best, Kevin Gorman (talk) 22:06, 27 October 2015 (UTC)

What exact mechanism are you thinking of using? I strongly support improving notification of elections, not just at the time of the election, but also in the run up to election so that interested parties have time to do their homework and research the candidates. I'm not sure that mass messaging is the best tool - a site notice to all logged in editors is surely easier and more appropriate?--Jimbo Wales (talk) 01:40, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

We already use a site notice to all logged in users, but discussions both on my talk page and in private have brought up that (a) a lot of people just ignore sitenotices out of habit or have turned them off, and (b) the site notice doesn't make it clear to at least an insignificant portion of those eligible to vote that they are in fact eligible to vote (among other things, a content contributor with more than 50,000 edits stated that the banners had not made them aware they were eligible to vote - yet surely someone with that many edits has a strong potential interest in the direction arbcom heads.) Massmessage is quite easy to use - my proposal at AN is to send out a massmessage to all voters who are eligible to vote by the already identified standards who have been active in the last three months (so that I don't accidentally wake up people who have been inactive for years.) I have exact verbiage there, but my thought is to send out a short, factual, neutrally worded paragraph immediately after candidate nominations have ended (as the Q&A phase begins) from a secondary account that is neutrally named (so that there's not an impression that I am personally pushing people to vote in one direction or another - since any admin can grant +massmessage and +confirmed to another account, a newly created alternate won't be an issue.)

The notices we have in place certainly get the attention of a lot of people, but 2014's voter turnout was 60% that of 2013's - no other editor metric fell like that. If a massmessage draws in any additional chunk of eligible voters who are interested in participating in the election process, I think it's worth it, given how poor recent voter turnout has been. This should be doable with the admin toolset I already have, without need for anything like WMF tech time. Kevin Gorman (talk) 03:02, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

There seems to be only upside potential here. It's effective, it's free, it addresses a problem of decreasing voter turnout, and it may improve participation in a democratic election process. Thank you, Kevin Gorman, for this most sensible proposal. — Cirt (talk) 03:37, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

Kevin - you need to establish why people aren't voting. I'd suspect people are sick to the back teeth of the staggering incompetence of the Arbitration Committee in recent years, the people who don't edit but who arbitrate (just what is AGK doing on ArbCom, other than hat collecting) or the people like GorillaWarfare who seem to be hell bent on dragging the community into disrepute. The last 2 or 3 years have left so much mess that it's only the egotistical who will now stand, so the candidate pool itself is desperately poor. The rationale and sensible people, assuming they've not seen sense and fucked off completely (the sensible option) wouldn't want to sit on ArbCom. So maybe it's the case that people don't want to choose the least worst candidates - maybe we need to start by getting some good candidates to stand this year, and that might attract voters. Nick (talk) 12:09, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

@Nick: - I was very tempted to suggest you take your "sensible option" :-o but your truly sensible option of encouraging editors to nominate themselves as candidates for ArbCom is absolutely wonderful. I wish I'd thought of the idea myself. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 14:59, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

@Smallbones: sarcasm is unbecoming. You know precisely what I mean, get out there, find people who would make good arbitrators and encourage them to stand. There needs to be a big pool of candidates and the community needs to be more engaged in the process. Nick (talk) 16:39, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

@Nick: Sorry, but if we eliminate humor than this page would be impossible to deal with. Yes, yes - let's get a big pool of candidates. "Let a thousand flowers bloom." Smallbones_(smalltalk) 16:50, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

A notification to editors that they are eligible to vote might also prompt long-term editors and admins to consider candidacy. There doesn't seem to be a downside here to additional publicity for ArbCom elections. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 17:24, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

The mostly likely reason folks don't vote is, because in the big scheme of things, arbcom is not that important (see Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2012-10-29/Recent_research#informal). NE Ent 17:39, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

I tend to think Nick is substantially correct. I've voted in the last few elections, and often end up picking the "least worst" of a very thin field. If you want voters, give them candidates they feel good and confident voting for. That, in turn, should help raise the reputation of ARBCOM and attract better candidates. Intothatdarkness 18:41, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

That's a good idea, Intothat. And I think editors who care should encourage quality candidates to run. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 20:52, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

Knowing that this is a probably offbeat proposal, what if we made it the case that in effect, all individuals meeting basic qualifications set in advance were, in some way, eligible candidates in some form of primary election, and have a predetermined number of candidates, including the top votegetters who do not withdraw their candidacy, be the final candidates in the later final election? I grant that it would complicate and lengthen the process, but in at least the early stages "Draft (X)" movements tend to increase voter turnout in other elections. John Carter (talk) 21:11, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

• I wholeheartedly agree that we also need to expand our candidate pool, and am working on ideas regarding how to encourage that as well. The lack in ideal candidates willing to stand for arbcom is a separate problem from the fact that we have editors with over fifty thousand edits literally unaware they could vote. Both problems need to be addressed, but the fact that one proposal doesn't address both problems isn't a reason to go against it. Kevin Gorman (talk) 01:27, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

• Absolutely - I just don't want people who realise they can vote turning up and thinking "Wow - even though I can vote, I don't actually want to vote for any of these people". Do we have metrics on how many people view the election pages and perhaps the candidates pages in particular v. how many votes are cast, or could we generate that sort of data this year ? I would be interested to know if we've got lots of people going off to look at the candidates, thinking they're all really rubbish and not voting or if a big percentage of those who review the candidates go on to vote. Nick (talk) 06:08, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

The problem isn't that the candidates are rubbish, but that the voting material is rubbish. A lot of one-off questions about very specific issues, no clear statements of principle, no matrix of which decisions from the previous year a candidate agrees with or wants to revisit, not even a matrix of which incumbent candidates supported or dissented from those decisions. It is very hard for people to decide which way to vote to get the most sensible decision-makers. Wnt (talk) 18:06, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

Henry Lincoln Johnson

See move: Talk:Henry_Lincoln_Johnson#Requested_Move_2015-A. -Wikid77 (talk) 15:07, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

The 2015 Medal of Honor winner "William Henry Johnson" is listed under "Henry Lincoln Johnson". His name was never "Henry Lincoln Johnson". Before the 2015 Medal of Honor investigation, he was conflated with another person by that name. The MoH committee found 1,300 pages of documents that all use the name "William Henry Johnson" or "Henry Johnson". The reasons given for keeping the erroneous name is the precedence that it has been this way for 10 years in Wikipedia and that it represents WP:COMMONNAME, even though it is not the most common name. You can see the GHits on the talk page. The name "Henry Lincoln Johnson" comes from a family that thought they were related to him and publicized that he deserved the MoH, but as the MoH committee discovered, they were not related. He deserves to be remembered by his own name, and not an erroneous name assigned to him out of ignorance. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 17:01, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

This is another "RAN losing argument for his preferred vision at talkpage, appeals to Jimbo" thread. Nothing to see here. Only in death does duty end (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 17:10, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

• Its sad that you see this as a win-lose situation. But, if you must, I won, or more correctly historical accuracy won. My "preferred vision" was the correct vision, and the historical inaccuracy will be corrected. Next time argue cogently over the facts of the case, rather than emotionally over my involvement. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 13:48, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

Hey, veracity is not something that is won and lost in a debate of half a dozen people on an on obscure talk page. I have behind me on a bookshelf Chad L. Williams, Torchbearers of Democracy: African American Soldiers in the World War I Era. (University of North Carolina Press, 2010). We are talking about a very top level academic source. There are two names listed in the index, "Henry Johnson" (pp. 124-127, 216-217, 289) and Henry Lincoln Johnson (pp. 220, 387 fn. 122). The first of these is a nationally famous figure, the subject of the WP article. Two different people. Richard Norton is quite correct on this issue and the title of that article needs to be changed. This is not a belly bumping contest or a political war. Stand aside Only in death... Carrite (talk) 18:23, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

Also this. I am a huge supporter of COMMONNAME. Common name of this individual, clear from the text of the Williams book, was "Henry Johnson." That might need to be disambiguated somehow. Certainly the current title is incorrect. Carrite (talk) 18:25, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

Alphabet soup. We're in the middle of a BRD with lots of AGF and we'll see if IAR trumps a recent RfM, or something like that. A few new faces offering opinions would be welcomed, I think. Carrite (talk) 20:40, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

• This has proven to be an absolutely fascinating case, in which even American National Biography has managed to conflate the two names of two individuals. There are no such thing as "reliable sources," there is only "correct" and "incorrect." There's probably actually an academic journal article here on how a Congressional Medal of Honor (2015) winner who was nationally famous in his day managed to be misnamed in so many places by so many people... It turns out that individual no. 2 is also Wiki-notable; a good biography for me to write as soon as the naming discussion ends. Carrite (talk) 14:08, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

Herman A. Johnson and his children lobbied for the MoH for Henry Johnson in the 1990s, and Herman and his children were responsible for the error. He thought that the MoH winner was the same person as his father, which was incorrect, even though his lobbying was successful in securing the honor for Henry. All the first person accounts published after WWI use the correct name. In the 1990s the Lincoln name is used in interviews with Herman and his family. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 14:35, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

Less news about Wikipedia

VentureBeat talks about Compared to companies such as Google and Facebook, which received a combined total of nearly 4,500 stories in the Times between January and September this year, Wikipedia racked up just 50. Twitter by itself saw 4,344 stories. One Wikipedia editors sums it up in comments section "Most of these companies are in the news due to shake-ups in their leadership, huge profits, poor stock performance, or privacy changes which damage consumer's confidence. Wikipedia doesn't have that stuff going on."

My view is that Wikipedia doesn't wish it's readers "Happy New Year" , "Merry Christmas" or other local and religious festivals as Google does according to the users Geographic Location. This won't be breach of privacy as only the reader can see the banner. Past one year, most headlines about Google was "Google Doodle" which celebrates the birth anniversary of Socialists, Artists, Writers, Scientists, Architects, Inventors, Philanthropists who are not in public memory. Wikipedia's main page featured article celebrates articles which considered written correctly, whether the subject has any popularity among readers is ignored. Due to this a The Human Centipede and The Bus Uncle will appear on main page, not Raiders of the Lost Ark, Florence Nightingale and Alexander Fleming.

Wikipedia can't compete with Twitter, as Twitter trends are impossible in Wikipedia.--1.39.37.249 (talk) 10:24, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

Making assumptions about users' religions sounds like the express lane to trouble (imagine if there are any Christians left in Syria and somehow they managed to get a connection and see a banner here reminding them about Ramadan...). It's not really part of the educational mission. Featuring On This Day or other items during major holidays accomplishes the same thing with less potential for offense, and it is more educational to present these items to readers who aren't familiar with the religions. Wnt (talk) 11:08, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

Putting something on the mainpage will get it seen by large numbers of people who weren't necessarily looking for that specific information. How we choose what we show is important, and there are various competing ideas as to how we should choose. Raiders of the Lost Ark was a very popular film and a priority to those who think we should prioritise our efforts to things that the public are searching for. But to those who care more about core encyclopaedic topics it is a popular culture article barely worthy of inclusion. This could lead to endless arguments as to what goes on the mainpage, our current compromise of posting Featured articles and various other articles that meet certain standards is a compromise solution, but crucially a compromise where anyone can promote their favoured types of mainpage content, but by bringing articles up to mainpage quality not by arguing as to what should or should not be on the mainpage. This has the added advantage of being an incentive for many of our article writers as often they want their work to be read. ϢereSpielChequers 11:35, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

I think things have gone badly wrong with the featuring of commercial products. Yes, I understand even important works of literature are commercial products. But when we have recent video game releases constantly appearing on the front page, when we have whole WikiProjects dedicated to specific companies to get their work featured, that's as crooked as it gets. Even if we ration the number of video game articles appearing, that's still as crooked as it gets, because whoever decides which has a chance to make a lot of money also. I have in the past advocated a strict approach - we could simply disqualify all companies and company products, by which I mean, branded products, copyrighted products, and patented products. We'd only feature works of literature in the public domain, for example, or companies gone defunct without successor. Maybe certain freeware, but that could get dicey fast. Problem is, I don't seem to get people agreeing. But could we at least agree not to feature commercial products with a large, active advertising budget behind them, in some flimsy effort to protect the site from the worst of it? Wnt (talk) 13:03, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

It won't all be crooked, there are fans of many commercial products especially Films, Music and TV programs. But I see the case for some sort of wait or quota. I think it would be an interesting RFC, but you need to assume Good Faith of the fans amongst the writers. ϢereSpielChequers 19:15, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

VisualEditor News #5—2015

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Did you know?

You can use the visual editor on smartphones and tablets.

Click the pencil icon to open the editor for a page. Inside that, use the gear menu in the upper right corner to "Switch to visual editing".

The editing button will remember which editing environment you used last time, and give you the same one next time. The desktop site will be switching to a system similar to this one in the coming months.

You can read and help translate the user guide, which has more information about how to use the visual editor.

Since the last newsletter, the VisualEditor Team has fixed many bugs, added new features, and made some small design changes. They post weekly status reports on mediawiki.org. Their workboard is available in Phabricator. Their current priorities are improving support for languages like Japanese and Arabic, making it easier to edit on mobile devices, and providing rich-media tools for formulæ, charts, galleries and uploading.

Recent improvements

Educational features: The first time you use the visual editor, it now draws your attention to the Link and ⧼visualeditor-toolbar-cite-label⧽ tools. When you click on the tools, it explains why you should use them. (T108620) Alongside this, the welcome message for new users has been simplified to make editing more welcoming. (T112354) More in-software educational features are planned.

Links:  It is now easier to understand when you are adding text to a link and when you are typing plain text next to it. (T74108, T91285) The editor now fully supports ISBN, PMID or RFC numbers. (T109498, T110347, T63558)  These "magic links" use a custom link editing tool.

Uploads:  Registered editors can now upload images and other media to Commons while editing. Click the new tab in the "Insert Images and media" tool. You will be guided through the process without having to leave your edit. At the end, the image will be inserted. This tool is limited to one file at a time, owned by the user, and licensed under Commons's standard license. For more complex situations, the tool links to more advanced upload tools. You can also drag the image into the editor. This will be available in the wikitext editor later.

Mobile:  Previously, the visual editor was available on the mobile Wikipedia site only on tablets. Now, editors can use the visual editor on any size of device. (T85630)  Edit conflicts were previously broken on the mobile website. Edit conflicts can now be resolved in both wikitext and visual editors. (T111894) Sometimes templates and similar items could not be deleted on the mobile website. Selecting them caused the on-screen keyboard to hide with some browsers. Now there is a new "Delete" button, so that these things can be removed if the keyboard hides. (T62110) You can also edit table cells in mobile now.

Rich editing tools:  You can now add and edit sheet music in the visual editor. (T112925)  There are separate tabs for advanced options, such as MIDI and Ogg audio files. (T114227 and T113354)  When editing formulæ and other blocks, errors are shown as you edit. It is also possible to edit some types of graphs; adding new ones, and support for new types, will be coming.

On the English Wikipedia, the visual editor is now automatically available to anyone who creates an account. The preference switch was moved to the normal location, under Special:Preferences.

Future changes

You will soon be able to switch from the wikitext to the visual editor after you start editing. (T49779) Previously, you could only switch from the visual editor to the wikitext editor. Bi-directional switching will make possible a single edit tab. (T102398) This project will combine the "Edit" and "Edit source" tabs into a single "Edit" tab, similar to the system already used on the mobile website. The "Edit" tab will open whichever editing environment you used last time.

Let's work together

• Share your ideas and ask questions at mw:VisualEditor/Feedback. This feedback page uses Flow for discussions.
• Can you read and type in Korean or Japanese? Language engineer David Chan needs people who know which tools people use to type in some languages. If you speak Japanese or Korean, you can help him test support for these languages. Please see the instructions at mw:VisualEditor/IME Testing#What to test if you can help, and report it on Phabricator (Korean - Japanese) or on Wikipedia (Korean - Japanese).
• Local admins can set up the Citoid automatic reference feature for your wiki. If you need help, then please post a request in the Citoid project on Phabricator. Include links to the TemplateData for the most important citation templates on your wiki.
• The weekly task triage meetings are open to volunteers. Learn how to join the meetings and how to nominate bugs at mw:VisualEditor/Weekly triage meetings. You do not need to attend the meeting to nominate a bug for consideration, though. Instead, go to Phabricator and "associate" the main VisualEditor project with the bug.

If you can't read this in your favorite language, then please help us with translations! Subscribe to the Translators mailing list or contact us directly, so that we can notify you when the next issue is ready. Thank you!

— Whatamidoing (WMF) 04:16, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

Wikimedia v. NSA

Wikimedia v. NSA: Another Court Blinds Itself to Mass NSA Surveillance --Guy Macon (talk) 08:01, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

Requesting input from Jimbo

There is currently a discussion regarding a prior arbitration case, and possible amendment to it, relating to this page at WP:ARCA#Amendment request: Banning Policy. As I said in my statement there, I think your input in the matter might be valuable. John Carter (talk) 18:07, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

Google describes Wikipedia's value...

[5]: In the midst of hyping up their "heavy investments" in fancy-dancy RankBrain AI, Google says: In experiments, the company found that turning off this feature “would be as damaging to users as forgetting to serve half the pages on Wikipedia,” Corrado said.

Admittedly, I'd be more impressed if most of the time I wouldn't rather do a David Bowman upgrade to their AI, but still it sounds nice. Wnt (talk) 11:50, 31 October 2015 (UTC)

Apology

Above, I used intemperate language toward a colleague. I apoligise. It was rude of me to use such language while a guest on your talk page. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 16:23, 31 October 2015 (UTC)

I just don't know why you had to keep repeating the c-word, over and over and over again while complaining about its use. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 19:15, 31 October 2015 (UTC)

Fair point. I was actually apologising for calling Cassianto Corbett's slavering lickspittle, but I could have used euphemisms, pronouns and contractions when discussing the other word. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 23:51, 31 October 2015 (UTC)

Apologies rarely, if ever, work on Wikipedia, but the way that sentence reads, I wouldn't expect User:Cassianto to be particularly satisfied with how this one is going. :) Wnt (talk) 16:05, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

Anthonyhcole, Wnt is right; your "apology", if at all genuine, lost any kind of credence as it was posted here and without any kind of acknowledgement to me. If you meant the apology, you'd have posted it to my talk page (or at least mentioned me in your post). Its wording was also ambiguous and skirted around the issue. In fact, I didn't have a clue what you were talking about. Cassianto^Talk 16:58, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

I wasn't apologising to you. I was apologising to Jimmy and, I suppose, the other readers, for bringing down the tone of discussion here. -Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 18:54, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

Then why did you do it? Oh, of course, we know why; it was to try and keep the "Eric is evil" dramah alive. Unfortunatley for you, you've made yourself look like a complete idiot. Cassianto^Talk 13:31, 2 November 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for explaining my motives, User:Cassianto. Just to elaborate on that, though: I recalled that Jimmy was hoping that this could be a page where we could come together and have sometimes difficult discussions on contentious topics in a respectful and constructive environment. Then I reflected on the way I treated you above, and realised I'm part of the problem, and felt a bit ashamed. Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 14:15, 2 November 2015 (UTC)

Jimmy hoped for nothing of the sort. If he did he would allow the likes of Sitush and Eric to post here without the fear of being told not to. Cassianto^Talk 18:00, 2 November 2015 (UTC)

Or, you could just accept the apology that wasn't directed toward you at face value. Townlake (talk) 19:17, 31 October 2015 (UTC)

"The C Word" - can anyone read that and not think of the word? I understand if young children are listening who might repeat the word in embarrassing circumstances, but the idea that a word is so bad that it cannot be mentioned in writing is a little foreign to me.

All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 03:25, 1 November 2015 (UTC).

Well, the word, which is offensive to many women and men, is repeated 40 times on this talk page and I didn't want to make it 41. Can you imagine a racial or ethnic slur term being used 40 times and how hurtful that might be? It would probably be immediately rev'deleted and the editor blocked. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 08:44, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

In the context of the current Arbcom case, or commentary upon it, it seems like fair use. By the same token, anyone using it as an insult against another Wikipedian, male or female, in the aftermath of the case should be dealt with harshly. Carrite (talk) 15:28, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

I don't think it is right to bait and switch, to start with "feminism" and use it as an excuse to accomplish some other end, i.e. censoring speech. When people see feminism abused that way - whether in "GamerGate" related issues or here - the reaction is to become hostile toward feminism, and indeed toward women. But I have to ask - is FEMEN pro-censorship? Were The Vagina Monologues pro-censorship? No. Some people here are just using women as human shields.

Equality between the sexes means that it is pretty much equivalent to call someone "dick" or "cunt". Maybe there are a few nuances in the terms more apparent to the discerning British, but fortunately I lack such aesthetic sensitivity in my vulgarity. As a practical matter, in view of ongoing controversy, it would perhaps be wisest to try to use the opposite-sex epithet where feasible, to help restore the balance of nature as it were; long term though, we really shouldn't be expecting scatology to literally describe the subject. Wnt (talk) 16:04, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

The key word in my sentence above is insult. I think you may fail to appreciate the baggage that the word "cunt" has to an American woman. Quoting myself: "It's the last word a battered woman hears screamed at her as her abuser slugs her in the face." There is a deep degree of violence attached to the word. Calling somebody a "prick" or a "pussy" isn't in any way comparable. Carrite (talk) 17:15, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

While the situation of a battered woman may be heart-wrenching, it can't be the grounds for our policy. After all, there are many situations in which we can picture someone could have a PTSD-like reaction. The U.S. and other countries have many soldiers back from the war who have heard "Allah u akbar" shouted as their comrades lay blown apart from explosives, but that doesn't mean that we should make a specific rule against editors using the phrase, even if they were to do so obnoxiously after winning some article content RFC they should have lost. You could spend all day and night coming up with things that might be specifically offensive to some people, but it's not a productive way to administer the site. You know the whole point of making some ruling against this word wouldn't be to go after the people who are being unambiguously sexist harassers, but as a sort of IDF-like tactic of declaring a buffer zone and attacking the bystanders in it in order to look tougher. Wnt (talk) 18:06, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

(e/c) No. This is part of what got the pedia into this. If responsible Wikipedians (including especially all administrators) see someone claiming a right to use epithets and insults against others on Wikipedia, they should universally say: 'No, just no. That's not the way we expect to do discussion.' Alanscottwalker (talk) 17:16, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

To be clear, we're all on the same page that people being insulting toward other editors are generally doing a disservice, distracting from important issues and spreading rancor; but the specific language used isn't what's important with that. We also recognize that Wikipedia gets heated and a certain background level of insult is unavoidable. There is also a continuum between directly insulting an editor and using words impersonally - indeed, we have a number of backwaters like WP:ITN and WP:RFA for description of which (in aggregate) our entire cultural patrimony of invective sometimes may seem inadequate. Wnt (talk) 18:11, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

The specific language used is not important? That makes little sense. It is through specific language, in such a written medium, that it is done. Alanscottwalker (talk) 18:34, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

Indeed. A sexist rant of the type you worry about may use the letter "u" a few times. But does that mean we need a special policy on the use of "u"s, and should criminalize comments that contain an unuusual number of them? No. The intent to attack contributors and drive them off the project is what we find fault with, not its particular expression, and that is true whether we are speaking of letters or of words. Wnt (talk) 22:32, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

No. One cannot separate expression from intent. It is expression that we use to see intent. As for sexist rant, that has nothing to do with my comments. We already have specific policy, it is comments like yours above, "it would perhaps be wisest to try to use the opposite-sex epithet", that reject that policy. Alanscottwalker (talk) 23:20, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

Hmmm, this discussion between us about how to use words may not have much chance, considering that we seem to be failing to communicate. Wnt (talk) 23:29, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

That's too bad but 'do not use, and do not favor using epithets' is pretty clear. Alanscottwalker (talk) 23:42, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

Oh, it's clear you don't like epithets. What's not so clear is what you expect admins to do about that. I don't know if you are saying that admins should go after everyone who uses epithets, and indeed, everyone who opposes your position that they shouldn't be used. But administrative action, like money, or hatred, is a scarce and precious resource that shouldn't be spent willy-nilly. Wikipedia is already overdrawn -- an international reputation for bureaucracy and conflict, a declining editor base. ArbCom and admins are overtaxed with cases of trying to figure out how to interpret the special rules they've come up with to punish previous infractions. And still we haven't stopped actual women from actually being harassed! Wnt (talk) 12:02, 2 November 2015 (UTC)

I have stated what I expect. Read my first comment. It's not my position, it's this websites. If one does not like it, they are free to pursue their personal agenda elsewhere, just not here. But you already said you are anti-epithet in your second comment to me, which just goes to show how foolish your first comment was and is. You don't want poor behavior, discourage it and do not suggest people have a right to do it. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 15:41, 2 November 2015 (UTC)

@Alanscottwalker: Ah - that may be the core fallacy here. You imagine that we need to abolish people's right to do something to discourage it. But nothing could be more counterproductive. Consider drug prohibition, which has catapulted a dozen different obscure and generally unappealing substances to nation-wide and enduring popularity. Contrast the war on tobacco - which was highly successful when it was just a surgeon general commenting on pictures of tarred lungs, and stopped working once it was diverted into smoking bans and taxes. Every time a thing is banned, its pursuit is ennobled, while legitimate and well-deserved criticism is reduced to an expression of slavish conformity. The only defense against that is to stick to banning things which are not merely undesirable, but clearly intolerable, which is to say here, to focus on the actual offenses committed against editors rather than the use of this word or that. Wnt (talk) 17:58, 2 November 2015 (UTC)

As is plain, there is no such right. So no, there is no abolishing of a right, either. Your continued misstatements that it's a right to mistreat people on this site is just false. And as anyone who has been on the internet knows such a false claimed privilege causes more mistreatment, leading to more mistreatment, and more mistreatment. Don't wring-hands about mistreatament, while encouraging it and making false claims to privilege it. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 18:00, 2 November 2015 (UTC)

Halloween cheer!

Happy Halloween!

---

Hello Jimbo Wales:
Thanks for all of your contributions to improve Wikipedia, and have a happy and enjoyable Halloween!
    – Rubbish computer (Trick: or treat?) 17:15, 31 October 2015 (UTC)

Send Halloween cheer by adding {{subst:Happy Halloween}} to user talk pages with a friendly message.

--Rubbish computer (Trick: or treat?) 17:15, 31 October 2015 (UTC)

Thanks! I love Halloween - it's my favorite holiday I think.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 18:53, 2 November 2015 (UTC)

COI topic ban appeal

I have been topic banned from discussions relating to COI "broadly construed, as documented at ANI. Can I appeal that ban here? I have made some edits this week regarding some inadequately disclosed FCOI (Financial Conflict of Interest) issues that were not being addressed by anyone else. We've got users who keep directly substantively editing articles where they have a disclosed FCOI despite multiple warnings. I'd like to be able to address these problems, but I must stop doing so because of the topic ban. Our policy (WP:COI) is that "All editors are expected to follow United States law on undisclosed advertising, which is described by the Federal Trade Commission at Endorsement Guidelines and Dot Com Disclosures." but I am being prevented from making that better known. I appeal to Jimbo to lift the ban. Certainly there has been combative behavior regarding inadequately disclosed FCOI from those who support the ban (including me) and from those oppose the ban (including some users who oppose it because they have a FCOI). The reasons for the ban have been portrayed (inaccurately) as my refusing to get the point that, e.g. editing articles despite a FCOI is not banned. A lot of the finger pointing was done by those who are friendly to those who continue to flood wikipedia with promotional and uncritical content on behalf of interests with deep pockets. --Elvey^(t•c) 22:49, 31 October 2015 (UTC)

Jimbo has no special power to over-turn community consensus. After six months of abiding by the editing restriction you can appeal to the community. As it stands you haven't' even attempt to respect the community's consensus on your ban. Give up the stick and move on. You've had a chance, now it is time to move on.--Adam in MO Talk 23:12, 31 October 2015 (UTC)

You can always email them to a willing user who is willing to look into them (I am, in limited circumstances, so feel free to email me if you have indisputable proof). Mdann52 (talk) 12:54, 2 November 2015 (UTC)

Halloween cheer!

Happy Halloween!

---

Hello Jimbo Wales:
Thanks for all of your contributions to improve Wikipedia, and have a happy and enjoyable Halloween!
    – North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 23:54, 31 October 2015 (UTC)

Send Halloween cheer by adding {{subst:Happy Halloween}} to user talk pages with a friendly message.

use of substantially unaltered "public domain" text where there is a small line for attribution

I know Wikipedia justified using wholesale copying of the 1911 EB as being "legal" in its early days - but should we now leave that behind and stop new articles from substantially being unaltered copies of "public domain" works where the "attribution" is a small line at the end of the article and the material is actually readily available from online sources without needing the "public domain source" and we actually expect the wording by editors to no longer be simple verbatim copying from old books which are out of copyright? I only recently began to find out how many articles are found by Coren's bot - and the number is amazing, as is the practice of editors using nice chunks of material from "public domain" works and thinking that the attribution line is sufficient to claim they wrote the article. I can understand, perhaps, doing some of that where other sources are not easily found, but where other sources are easily found, I fear I think it lazy at best, and, by current standards which require rewriting of material whether in or out of copyright, plagiarism at worst. Other opinions, now that Wikipedia is used as a source by readers who might not notice the tiny line of attribution? Collect (talk) 12:32, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

• I concur with this. I ran into an administrator pulling this stunt just a year or two ago and it absolutely blew my mind. There should actually be a Wikiproject to start liquidating all the EB 1911 article extracts with a view to their total elimination. Carrite (talk) 15:23, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

• @Collect - Is there a list somewhere of articles using the EB 1911 "credit" template? Carrite (talk) 15:24, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

See Category:Wikipedia_articles_incorporating_text_from_the_1911_Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica Collect (talk) 21:11, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

Can someone explain the problem? Something is better than nothing - that's what people thought before, and I don't see what's changed. Updating these articles may be a good opportunity, but it isn't obligatory. Wnt (talk) 15:48, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

Legally, no attribution line at all is required. On the other hand we at Wikipedia require the use of citations, and I would try to get editors to use those instead of complaining that something is wrong with copying from PD-texts.CFCF 💌 📧 18:49, 1 November 2015 (UTC) 

Is "legally" the only criterion Wikipedia should use? By the way, I have essentially re-written a few such articles as it appears finding online sources is a lot easier now than it was ten years ago. I decided I was not up to the overall Herculean task of fixing them all - thus the post here. What I specifically find troubling is current editors resorting to this lazy means of article creation. Are you suggesting that we should put our blinders on to this all-too-prevalent current practice? Collect (talk) 19:09, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

Isn't the whole idea of Wikipedia built on the idea of Open Knowledge, which enables reuse? Of course PD texts need to meed the same criteria as original texts, with respect to sourcing, NPOV, and other policies. And of course they should be properly attributed. But there is no reason to reject available resources just because they are not original. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 20:14, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for notifying me of this discussion. </s> Given that your complaints on Wikipedia are usually frustratingly vague, I have no idea if you are speaking solely about me or not. For some months, I have been importing public domain obituaries of Yale University alumni who meet WP:GNG but have yet to be written about. Each one is marked with a template clearly indicating its copyright status and origin. I make zero claims of authorship, I do not include these articles in lists of my creations in my userspace, I do not submit them to DYK as I regularly do for new articles I write, etc., so it is inappropriate and inaccurate to casually libel me as a plagiarist.

I may not write the articles from scratch, but I do a lot of work integrating them into the encyclopedia, like establishing links with relevant articles, creating Wikidata entries, supplementing the public domain material with other relevant information I do write myself (such as the big paragraph in the middle of Alexander MacWhorter III). I feel this adds to the project here just as much as anything else: bot created articles, images taken from the public domain, etc. I do not see why taking the time to create original articles would be that much of an improvement. Your version of the article George Goodyear is not really that much different from my public domain version so your effort hasn't really translated into much of an improvement for the encyclopedia, other than to satisfy a desire for purity and originality.

It's easy to say that I'm "lazy" because I don't want to write an article on an obscure 19th century state legislator from scratch. But volunteer time is a finite resource, and volunteers are going to write about what they want to write about. In fifteen years, no one wrote about that obscure 19th century state legislator, and they probably wouldn't have in another fifteen. Given the choice of topics to write a new article from scratch, I will pick something else that interests me more. But I'm willing to take the time to do this, which is quicker and easier. Given that after fifteen years of random article creation we still have gaps in the encyclopedia, we need to stop imagining they will all be filled in the same way we always have done things. We are not going to tighten up the GNG - given that those who advocate this have in the past been labeled "deletionists" and likened to book burners - so if we want a comprehensive encyclopedia with five million articles, we are going to have to reevaluate the ways we create and maintain them with the finite volunteer resources we have. I don't see any reason why the public life of 19th century America can't be comprehensively covered as the 21st is here. But while the 21st is created by current interest and easy availability of sources, 19th century material does not have those advantages, so what I'm doing is a very small way of addressing the systemic recentist bias of the encyclopedia. Gamaliel (talk) 20:46, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

I have found a number of editors - you at least attribute the source. Others don't. My problem is that we often can avoid using a blanket use of a single "public domain" source by simply looking on the internet for better sources. And I daresay I demur that using multiple reliable sources is not an improvement over using a single "public domain" compendium. And if the issue is that of "time" then we should not bother with Arbitration cases about editors actually using quotes from sources in footnotes, should we? I admittedly only have reached double digits in "articles created" but I do not think "5 million articles created" is all that much better than "5 million hamburgers sold" - it is the utility of the articles which counts, not sheer quantity, in my own personal opinion. Warm regards, Collect (talk) 21:08, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

I'm glad I'm not the one who is plagiarizing then. :D I get what you are saying about quality over quantity, but I don't see how original text is automatically better any more than a user-taken photograph is automatically better than a public domain image. For me, it comes down to this. I'm not going to write original articles about these people, but I think i do a good job of integrating these public domain bios and it fills gaps in the encyclopedia that otherwise will likely go unfilled. Gamaliel (talk) 21:12, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

@Collect: If you have a way in hand that is easier to create articles, you can try to sell other editors on the idea, and maybe they'll do it. But provided the articles are acceptable at all, which is to say, they are GNG-able topics and based on a source, then it is certainly useful to create them. Having a draft based on one source gets us halfway to having a draft that merges the information from two. In Henry Ford's day, people were arguing that you have to have a master mechanic make a car rather than having some guy at the head of the line tightening the first screw... they didn't prevail. Wikipedia has it better than Ford, though, because when you're selling your product for free you don't have to wait until it is even a tenth finished before you start selling. Wnt (talk) 22:22, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

Principle One is easy: Use modern English (your own words) rather than whatever style was used in the "public domain" material which is unchanged with the excuse that it is "legal" to simply cut and paste as long as the original is "out of copyright." A huge percentage of material is "out of copyright" but editors manage to keep from simple cut and paste in a great many of them.

Frankly, we could simply import thousands of major books by using bots to "create" articles - but is that a worthwhile mode of operation? Or is it simply laziness incarnate to call oneself an "editor" when your job is "cut and paste" without a scintilla of original effort? I have noticed that I can find added sources in less than 10 minutes - surely one should not claim to "create" an article by a ten-second cut and past when I do not even think my ten minutes is a "big deal." How do others feel about claiming to "create" articles by doing the ten second "slam bam, thank you Wikipedia" routine? Collect (talk) 23:24, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

Could you link a couple examples that come to mind? It's hard to debate the merits of something one is not familiar with. Thanks. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 23:59, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

You could track my spoor -- I do not believe it is proper to accuse editors of "plagiarism" in this venue. For seeing how quickly I have come up with articles recently, I can point to my own articles at Act on petition which was about as easy as cribbing the EB1911 article (deceased), Charles S. Strong where the initial skeleton took about 10 minutes of searches, John W. Curry, Éditions Gründ, Gordon Grant (artist), Boston Society of Civil Engineers etc. Research for the skeletons of those articles was fast as a rule (Strong is interesting as he was an incredible person with very little "paper trail"). With the tools at our disposal, it is hardly a major task to actually do more than crib a "public domain" source. Collect (talk) 00:17, 2 November 2015 (UTC)

My scintillas are really original, thanks. Martinevans123 (talk) 00:06, 2 November 2015 (UTC) .. and my skeletons are pretty extreme, too.

Why are you focused on who gets "credit" for what? If the end result is a benefit to the encyclopedia, then who cares? Like they say on Reddit, it's just internet points. Gamaliel (talk) 14:48, 2 November 2015 (UTC)

• I imagine this would be an appropriate RFC at WT:Plagiarism. Currently, this practice is endorsed by that guideline. There are many more sources of this than EB 1911 - see Category:Attribution templates (which also includes some compatibly licensed rather than PD sources). --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 14:33, 2 November 2015 (UTC)

Congratulations on 5,000,000 articles!

for all your contributions, thank you.

Smallbones_(smalltalk) 13:19, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

---

Have you seen [[this page]] Jimbo? Congratulations, indeed. Cheers! {{u|Checkingfax}} {Talk} 13:27, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

• Congrats Jimmy, and to the WMF and all Wikipedians and users! Jusdafax 13:35, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

Congratulations on this project! Eman235/talk 18:01, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

• 
  English Wikipedia now has over 5 million articles.
• Video (Firefox browser recommended for playback)

• --Pine^✉ 19:40, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

---

As of Sunday, 19 May 2024, 09:39 (UTC), The English Wikipedia has 47,420,777 registered users, 121,176 active editors, and 859 administrators. Together we have made 1,219,850,668 edits, created 60,706,331 pages of all kinds and created 6,825,216 articles.

We are approaching a billion edits. Alas, there is no way to include page views in the above list. :( --Guy Macon (talk) 23:07, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

You mean "over 26 million User Names have already been used, so no wonder it's so hard for new users to find something suitable"!? Martinevans123 (talk) 23:19, 1 November 2015 (UTC) ... or are most of those genuine ip socks?

How was my username not taken until 2014? --Rubbish computer (Trick: or treat?) 01:00, 2 November 2015 (UTC)

One reason is that the word "rubbish" used as you are using it is a Britishism, so millions of editors wouldn't have even considered it. But I think we are getting off-topic here. :) Newyorkbrad (talk) 02:00, 2 November 2015 (UTC)

Heh: never thought of that. Thanks, --Rubbish computer (Trick: or treat?) 02:10, 2 November 2015 (UTC)

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A barnstar for you!

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	Thank you for making us this place. Nhan 02:19, 2 November 2015 (UTC)

Happy cold season

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	I wish you a very happy shivering and trembling cold season of winter. Jogi 007 (talk) 05:07, 2 November 2015 (UTC)