User talk:Jimbo Wales

WPITN, original research on popularity, the core of Wikipedia, and bias.

Well Jimbo how's things,

I live in Ireland, Jimmy. And it has been on the main page here for a week now. The Irish government fails to return a majority, it says on In The News.

Ireland has not returned a majority government since before I was born, which was certainly not yesterday, so that isn't news at all. What is news is that both the main parties here have been pipped for the second time in even longer than that with Sinn Fein winning the second most seats with the largest voter percentage.

If you were running a news outlet which was expected to be knowledgeable about the stories it is promoting, and you reported it that way, you'd be blatantly biased. It would be like an open cover up. Exacerbating that fact is the situation in Ireland. Traditionally the government has often schemed open cover ups in Ireland so that politicians can promote popular agendas against, or avoiding, the wishes of the people.

Neutrality is a supposed to be a pillar here. WPITN has for a long, long time, to many laughed-out complaints, reported government leadership issues as their (I cannot recall now if it was first or second but it is mass death and government leadership, I'm not going to search back through the years again just now, it is those two)..

Wikipedia, it is often said, has its own bias to support. We have an agenda here on this site. Freedom of information. Open source culture. I believe I've made the point... ~ R.T.G 15:18, 19 February 2020 (UTC)

RTG, the news event is the election. That's the whole point of that ITN item. Yes, you can read "bias" into it because we don't mention Sinn Fein. Or you could assume that the people at ITN don't know a lot about Irish politics.

Regardless, the ITN piece is neutral. The fact that it doesn't say everything you want it to say may be a reflection of your own biases, or it may not - what did they say when you raised it on Talk? Or did you not do that? Guy (help!) 15:58, 19 February 2020 (UTC)

Wikipedia, despite having a news section, is not a newspaper. The headline is accurate, the election didn't return a majority. If you have an alternative headline, why not propose it? CaptainEek ^{Edits Ho Cap'n!}⚓ 16:36, 19 February 2020 (UTC)

Bumbling around a partisan political event. A pillar of neutrality, that is not. Why belittle the truth? Wikipedia was born of a dynamic charitable people-as-one fledgling society. Tonight it beds down with a load of stuffy-old popular media. Sacrilege I say, Get partisan government leadership issues off the main page of Wikipedia! ~ R.T.G 16:48, 19 February 2020 (UTC)

We are supposed to exemplify neutrality, not simply design a nice sticker for it as we facilitate business as usual among the others. ~ R.T.G 16:50, 19 February 2020 (UTC)

So do you suggest we not cover any political issue? We routinely announce the winners of various national political competitions, should we not?? CaptainEek ^{Edits Ho Cap'n!}⚓ 16:57, 19 February 2020 (UTC)

We don't have the space there to adequately cover that topic. It literally drowns the section. There's nothing in WPITN about supporting and promoting Wikimedias agendas or issues, nothing. Yes I would certainly suggest not to cover political events with no other qualification than their popularity in current media. It's ridiculously trivial and open to bias. Wikipedia is so against that. So easy to manipulate. Such wide coverage. Popular media says today to fear that. Why wait until it is broken. Can we not be dynamic any more? Ye Gods! Wikimedia has employed a whole village to try and find ways of being more dynamic and promotional of the mission. There isn't room to cover it there. We were supposed to link to Wikinews for that. Tell me, how come Wikipedias recent birthday and 6 millionth article milestone doesn't seem to appear in the nomination history? Hmm. Well maybe it's not so important then. ~ R.T.G 17:33, 19 February 2020 (UTC)

RTG, you have entirely failed to establish why the statement is not neutral. Guy (help!) 17:44, 19 February 2020 (UTC)

The other parties generally mark solidarity in opposition to Sinn Fein. The fact that the election hasn't returned a government in 40 years makes the divided result of the election trivial. The fact that this is only the second time one party has made a tangible foray since longer, as well as the rise in popularity of Sinn Fein over the last two elections, is undeniably the most newsworthy thing about that election... and it can be argued, that reporting their success as a main feature is biased, promoting them, as well as it can be argued that excluding them from mention can be biased, by downplaying the most significant feature. Fight your way out of this one... Politics is partisan, it is partisan, it is partisan. And here on Wikipedia we avoid partisanship like the plague, because: there is absolutely no need for us to pander to it. ~ R.T.G 17:57, 19 February 2020 (UTC)

RTG, tone down the wrongteous anger. We're not pandering to anyone. The statement is 100% accurate, neutral, and any issues you have with its completeness can be raised at the appropriate talk page. Which, if you adopt the style and tone you have here, will probably be unsuccessful. Guy (help!) 18:08, 19 February 2020 (UTC)

@JzG:That's a total wash, Guy. Why personalise this? Why embitter emphasis with talk of anger? Come on, if it's a challenge, rise to it. Give us words of support better than "I support them". Give us good reason. I say, if you cannot do so, you cannot. ~ R.T.G 18:19, 19 February 2020 (UTC)

RTG, I think your words speak for themselves. And I think that's about all that can be said on the matter. Guy (help!) 18:39, 19 February 2020 (UTC)

You may misunderstand the purpose of ITN. ITN is not for news about Wikipedia (that would be seen as navel-gazing). It's for covering world news that is interesting, relevant, and that we have a halfway decent article on. CaptainEek ^{Edits Ho Cap'n!}⚓ 17:42, 19 February 2020 (UTC)

The purpose of all sections on the main page is to promote awareness of content in the encyclopaedia. Why should the purpose of any section there have nothing to do with the sites mission? There is no why right there. I don't know why, you don't know why, it's just the way things are, right folks? Hmm. ~ R.T.G 17:57, 19 February 2020 (UTC)

RTG, But the ITN section does promote our content. It shows off decent articles about current events, and drives editors towards those pages to improve them. Having an article ITN greatly increases its traffic, and edit count, which is a positive thing. CaptainEek ^{Edits Ho Cap'n!}⚓ 18:10, 19 February 2020 (UTC)

Actually, Captain, I've looked into it before. Political leadership issues and occurrences of mass deaths totally swamp the content of that section for a long, long time. Complaints are perennial. ~ R.T.G 18:21, 19 February 2020 (UTC)

RTG, Or perhaps its just that those events tend to be notable, and thus we tend to have articles about them? How do you propose we fix this? What substantive change would you have the community make? CaptainEek ^{Edits Ho Cap'n!}⚓ 18:27, 19 February 2020 (UTC)

That's subjective. WPITN should be focused on the mission of this site, not the missions of popular media. Look up this page. There is news to be had without swamping in government leadership issues and issues of deaths, which in the timeframe WPITN operates in, Wikipedia is not the go-to resource. For an ongoing event, yes Wikipedia becomes a go-to resource. Hot-off-the-press..? That's not Wikipedia. It's not encyclopaediac. Reporting things like freedom of information and open source culture is encyclopaediac and down with the mission here. Is this really down to me? Is this not a valid suggestion? ~ R.T.G 18:38, 19 February 2020 (UTC)

For my part, I've made the effort to address political bias at ITN and gave up/do not plan to engage at that forum again. If there was a serious RfC on removing it, I'd agree; however note this could be considered a perennial proposal. ☆ Bri (talk) 21:25, 19 February 2020 (UTC)

I think it is certainly a perennial proposal to stop giving so much coverage to government leadership issues. ~ R.T.G 01:47, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

If ITN was really going off the mission of popular media, ITN right now would be TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP BREXIT BREXIT BREXIT. ITN is not a news ticker, we are very selective to avoid stories that the media weighs heavily but in terms of a long-term importance of the encyclopedia. That, to me, nixes about 50% of the usual stories mass media covers. And the reason that ITN often features election results and the results of tragic events is that they ARE in the news and that these articles tend to show the type of quality wiki editors can accomplish in a short amount of time.

Also, it would be part of the Wikimedia Foundation to focus on freedom of speech and open source projects, but for Wikipedia which is about information in general, we do not give any special prioritzation to these subjects at all. --Masem (t) 00:21, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

Someone has suggested a companion page to extend and thereby balance coverage out, over at Wikipedia_talk:In_the_news#Proposal_for_a_companion_page,_Wikipedia:_In_other_news. I think that's a really good idea. It wouldn't instantly change what I am complaining about, but at least other genres would not be utterly rejected by the ITN project. I don't think they so openly avoid particular subjects as Masem seems to suggest, but the effect in practice certainly does return that result. An extension page would go some way to responding to that without dramatically changing the face and content of the section, and without enforcing a prioritisation, it would still open the door to the wider news area which has often been requested over there. ~ R.T.G 07:25, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

ITN does not outright reject any "genre" of news (with possibly the exclusion of celebrity gossip for good reason). But as a en.wiki main page box, we are looking for topics we believe have interest to the widest swath of readers that may see it and which demonstrate quality updated articles on en.wiki. As a rule, election articles nearly always meet both - the changes or lack thereof of national leadership is considered important and these are nearly always updated in real-time. Same with major sports results, weather and transport disasters and terrorism/mass casaulty incidents. The volunteer editors on WP tend to be drawn to these. But we post stories about science, health/medicine, entertainment, and a host of other areas, it is just that ITN does not get anywhere close to as many candidates, the articles often are not updated to the quality expected that the forementioned volunteer articles get, and (to your point) that ITN regulars do deem the topic to not be to of interest for the main page readership or show the long-term significance for an encyclopedia. But I want to stress that this is one of several reasons why you're not seeing this other stories posted. There is no ban or similar autorejection in this area, this is simply how a volunteer based project with a volunteer-based nomination process has the chips fall. ITN is not purposely rejecting content. --Masem (t) 15:50, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

Ah but the has been significant auto-rejection. Go you to that page and talk of balancing topics. It's just a lucky co-incidence that holding the status quo pushes some genres forward far beyond any of the rest. It's something like 60-70% or more leadership and disaster, WPITN. It is literally woeful, unless you blinker yourself to that sort of thing. No they don't tend to be drawn to that. For the longest time, if you try to push other genres, you get crowded out. There isn't enough room. The reality is not that people interested in the news only prefer these things, but that there is nothing else left there to see. You are representing a barrier to diversity. ~ R.T.G 16:15, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

If you want a diversity, go and nominate a story. This is encouraged on the main page itself, in the Nominate an article link, and is the very example of direct democracy in action, which so rare in real world. If every person complaining about "it's 60-70% or more leadership and disaster" instead nominates at least one story, we may become more diverse. As simple as it could be for an average reader and potential editor. Brandmeister^talk 20:04, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

It is good to see this topic being discussed here. I have added some information on the 2020 general election to the general current history article, at History of the Republic of Ireland#Economic and political history 2008–present. feel free to review this material, and to add or edit any information as you may wish. thanks!! --Sm8900 (talk) 14:44, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

The purpose of ITN

Re: "You may misunderstand the purpose of ITN", the real purpose of ITN is to sabotage the purpose of Wikipedia (the purpose of Wikipedia is to be an encyclopedia) by turning it into a place where people go to to look for breaking news. Yes, I know that it is popular, but it still does not belong in an encyclopedia. It also sabotages the purpose of Wkinews by training users to look for breaking news on Wikipedia instead of on Wikinews. We should nuke ITN and replace it with a link to Wikinews. That isn't going to happen because so many here have an entrenched interest in displaying unencyclopedic material ion the front page of an encyclopedia, but it would be the right thing to do. --Guy Macon (talk) 15:42, 22 February 2020 (UTC)

Guy Macon, As usual, I agree with you. Guy (help!) 16:47, 22 February 2020 (UTC)

That does raise a good question: why is ITN so prominent? It sits right atop the page. Its also one of the only two parts of the mainpage that is displayed on mobile. I always felt that another part of the mainpage should be on top, such as moving the Featured pic to that slot. CaptainEek ^{Edits Ho Cap'n!}⚓ 18:05, 22 February 2020 (UTC)

Guy I agree with you on this too, as unusual. There are a thousand places to find news on the web, most of which are superior for that purpose. If we wanted to show people what our editors actually care about, we would put some form of WP:MOSTEDITED on the front page. It always has some but not much overlap with ITN. EllenCT (talk) 19:38, 22 February 2020 (UTC)

Why is there absolutely no link between ITN and Signpost? ~ R.T.G 15:35, 23 February 2020 (UTC)

I don't know, but check this out: WMF Legal Counsel Stephen LaPorte, User:Slaporte (WMF), has been offering a email list version of WP:MOSTEDITED called Weeklypedia for almost six years now. EllenCT (talk) 19:24, 23 February 2020 (UTC)

WPITN swears they are doing things the best way it can be done. And yet, no awards are on the cards for that section. It is an odd one out, and not because it is quirky, innovative, surprisingly effective, and surpassing of its peers, like most of the rest of the site. Instead it is small, stuck, narrow, and mildly objectionable. ~ R.T.G 15:48, 23 February 2020 (UTC)

RTG, I completely agree; you put it better than I could have. ☆ Bri (talk) 21:24, 23 February 2020 (UTC)

OK, should we close it down? What's the process for that? I assume not an WP:MFD.--WaltCip (talk) 13:48, 24 February 2020 (UTC)

I would certainly not miss it from the main page, the encyclopedic nature of the contents is often questionable. Does Britannica do a news feed on its main page? The Rambling Man (Staying alive since 2005!) 14:56, 24 February 2020 (UTC)

Oddly enough, the front page at https://www.britannica.com/ is pretty much 100% about articles in the encyclopedia. Same with https://www.encyclopedia.com/, http://en.citizendium.org/, https://www.rep.routledge.com/, and https://rationalwiki.org. Turns out that western civilization does not collapse if an encyclopedia stops pretending to be a newspaper. Go figure.

Also, the main page of Wikivoyage is 100% about travel, the main page of Wikiversity is 100% about learning, the main page of Wiktionary is 100% about word definitions, the main page of Wikisource is 100% about sources, the main page of Wikibooks is 100% about books, the main page of Wookieepedia is 100% about star wars, and the main page of the minecraft encyclopedia is 100% about minecraft.

But hey, Conservapedia has "in the news" on the front page, so we are not alone. In fact, most of the page is devoted to "In The News: what the mainstream media isn't fully covering". Maybe we should be more like them and have ITN articles like "London Daily Mail reports the Wuhan Center for Disease Control, where research was done on bats, is 300 yards from the Wuhan Seafood Market where the Coronavirus is alleged to have originated". I'm just saying. --Guy Macon (talk) 17:38, 24 February 2020 (UTC)

WaltCip I think any change to ITN would require strong consensus at a Village Pump RFC that was widely advertised. CaptainEek ^{Edits Ho Cap'n!}⚓ 17:00, 24 February 2020 (UTC)

Well all this talk is cheap. Someone who feels strongly about it should make a proposal to reduce ITN to memories. The Rambling Man (Staying alive since 2005!) 17:41, 24 February 2020 (UTC)

Near where I live we had a proposal to make changes to a major highway. On the side of keeping the traffic flowing were thousands and thousands of users of the road, none of whom showed up at the city council meetings about the plan. On the side of a plan to reduce 4 lanes to 2, convert the existing lanes to parking spaces, drop the speed limit from 40mph to 25 and place stop signs every 50-100 feet were a grand total of 15 shop owners who showed up at every meeting and gave generously to political campaigns. Want to guess who won? --Guy Macon (talk) 17:49, 24 February 2020 (UTC)

The coronavirus? The Rambling Man (Staying alive since 2005!) 18:45, 24 February 2020 (UTC)

I'm on board with any effort to do away with ITN entirely (and while Venezuelan presidency was on the mainpage, I also came across some news portal that carried tons of inaccuracies, so that's another problem area). NOT NEWS! SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:42, 24 February 2020 (UTC)

So someone who cares should raise an RFC and we'll get some community consensus, not just vox populi from Wales' talkpage. The Rambling Man (Staying alive since 2005!) 18:45, 24 February 2020 (UTC)

For those not in the know, I probably hold the record for being the worst formulator of RFCs on the entire Wikipedia, with three epic fails under my belt. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:39, 24 February 2020 (UTC)

At the core, the main problem is that what some editors think of "in the news" is what newspapers are reporting, whereas ITN has been very clear that we are not a news ticker and focus on stories that are more encyclopedicly relevant. And now we're adding this angle of "ITN should be able news about en.wiki, not news news" but that would make sections like DYK and On this Day also stand out as inapporopriate. I'm all for finding ways to help broaden what ITN covers by way of getting more volunteers to submit articles and stories to cover that fit its purpose, but getting rid of ITN and not other sections of the main page is not addressing the problem correctly. --Masem (t) 19:28, 24 February 2020 (UTC)

• If motivating the creation of articles of topical subjects is somehow sabotaging this project, I guess I never understood the point of this whole project in the first place. Aren't we here to write articles? ITN contributes to that. ITN is not intended as a source of news, it is intended to highlight articles on topical subjects that happen to be in the news. 331dot (talk) 20:11, 24 February 2020 (UTC)

  You're absolutely spot on 331dot. The Rambling Man (Staying alive since 2005!) 20:18, 24 February 2020 (UTC)

  Why would we put something that has the purpose of serving editors instead of readers on the front page? Nothing else that only exists to serve editors (Wikipedia:Five pillars or Wikipedia:Verifiability, for example) is on the front page. WP:ITN says "The In the news (ITN) section on the main page serves to direct readers to articles that have been substantially updated to reflect recent or current events of wide interest." (emphasis added). Readers. Not editors. --Guy Macon (talk) 20:58, 24 February 2020 (UTC)

  I disagree. One of the requirements for ITN is that highlighted article shows that it has been updated and that the article has a reasonably quality that meets with the five pillars. This may not be much for "simple" updates where only or a line or two needs to be updated to reflect the news, but for things like the Notre Dame fire, that was an article of high quality developed rapidly by multiple editors but in a few hours on the day it happened. That's the ideal of what we want to feature in that box, that we can cover current events while adhering to the 5 pillars, though we recognize that type of event (importance or coverage) does not happen every day, so we allow important stories that are still articles of good qualities to be there too. We are directing readers to these articles. We are trying to make a judgement of what our readership is as this is a global work , not just US or UK or English-speaking, and so are focusing on topics that we consider have the best broad encyclopedic interest in place, not just those that CNN and other news channels are rambling on about. --Masem (t) 21:09, 24 February 2020 (UTC)

  It seems to me that the purpose you just described would be better served with a section titled "recently updated" or by simply by "featuring" multiple high-quality articles in that space. You could still put in articles about late breaking news, but the message to the reader would be "this is worth reading" as opposed to "this is the place to look for breaking news". --Guy Macon (talk) 21:58, 24 February 2020 (UTC)

Name changes have been proposed before(I've even supported it in the past, not sure about now), but I don't get a "breaking news here" message from "in the news". I get an "in the news" message. 331dot (talk) 22:18, 24 February 2020 (UTC)

That itself is a possibility (in brainstorming mode here) along with perhaps recently promoted GAs and FAs, but then that gets at odds with TFA. Or if we're talking newer articles, that also gets at odds with DYK which is meant to highly good quality articles that are new or have significant updates with the hooks to draw the reader to them. ITN serves as a third way to draw attention to works on WP in contrast to looking at quality (TFA), looking at newness (DYK) and looking at recurrence (OTD) by using the news media as a guide for what's happening in the news to identify hat we have created or updated quality articles for, and which editors feel is encyclopedically relevant for a broad audience. This latter factor is always going to be at odds but I still believe it is more an issue with not getting as many nominations to work from and less about being too narrow of what we allow for posting.

One of the things that should be stressed is that the ITN box has continued to link to Portal:Current events which has far less a barrier for inclusion. If a reader needs to see a broader picture of the news they can go there in one click from the main page. P:CE is still not a news ticker, it just doesn't have the space limitations that ITN has. --Masem (t) 22:25, 24 February 2020 (UTC)

• People can't read articles if they aren't written. We need to encourage both- which is what ITN does. 331dot (talk) 21:33, 24 February 2020 (UTC)

• Question Is there a formal RFC some place so I can oppose the perennial "I didn't get my way therefore ITN is completely broken" proposal? --LaserLegs (talk) 22:58, 24 February 2020 (UTC)

  Not that I'm aware of. But if you see it, please let us all know. The problem with running to Jimbo to complain is that mostly, no-one gives a shit. The Rambling Man (Staying alive since 2005!) 23:14, 24 February 2020 (UTC)

• There is a tide of claims now that ITN is encouraging content and promoting content. But it isn't. One of the main features of the review at ITN is wether the reviewers believe the content is newsworthy. Also, Portal:Current events is for developing events, only. It's not for expansion of coverage, at all. ~ R.T.G 08:03, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

RTG Any curated content of any kind involves a judgement call. Just as AFD involves a decision about "notability" and other factors. If you don't like the decisions that are made, you should be there participating instead of wanting to burn the place down because you don't like the decisions. Many people wish to work on articles to see them posted to ITN, and many people want to read them. 331dot (talk) 08:36, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

More evasive response. The complaint was not that items are judged when they are reviewed, but that the guide tells them to go with what they feel like. Aw I'm sorry. The point is not to shut you down though, but open the doors a little. ~ R.T.G 18:58, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

• Nothing can be fun and enjoyable, kill it all !!!!! Dry content you shall consume peasant. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:23, 25 February 2020 (UTC)
  • You think ITN is "fun and enjoyable"? ‑ Iridescent 10:46, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

    It is fun to some of us interested in using the increase in media cover caused by a person's death to improve Wikipedia. (See Slate article about ITN.) ITN has contributed to the improvement of countless BLPs that have, until the person's death, been plagued with sourcing issues. I for one have created articles like Mavis Pusey about notable people that have gone unnoticed and "Under-the-Radar" as The New York Times put it. ITN is doing great work to improve our encyclopedia.

    What people still seem to not understand is that ITN is not a news service. It is a WikiProject like any other. The goal of the project and the measure by which it or any other WikiProject should be judged is whether or not it causes articles to be improved and helps to "make a great encyclopedia" (see first paragraph of Wikipedia:In the news). --- C&C (Coffeeandcrumbs) 17:43, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

    • This right here. I know recently I contributed greatly to Larry Tesler's article, and a few months back we had no article for Shuping Wang that I helped to expand on. And I forget who it was but there was that case of a female Nobel winner that we had NO article on at the time she was named a laureate. ITN helps to draw readers (hopefully editors) to topics that can be expanded further as long as we have a good base (quality) for them to build on. --Masem (t) 18:00, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

There are four slots on ITN today. It doesn't encourage anything of the sort. Wikipedia has six million articles. It was recent news in fact, when the site broke the six billion barrier. Well, in most places, that report news, it was news. You know, if they have room for... anything...? ~ R.T.G 18:58, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

It wasn't in the news however. (the best source I can find right now is TechCrunch). We're trying to just ITN stories based on the appropriate media for the type of story which is generally going to be mainstream international newspapers and news networks. --Masem (t) 19:05, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

It was in some news, but more importantly, it was news for the site. In fact, in response to your claim I searched and am stunned by how little coverage it received. However, that's not a good enough excuse for the template not to have run it. On one hand the guides are telling you to promote what you feel, while on the other hand you appear to feel nothing. It's untenable. Go up the page to where one of the better editors active on the site, User:BD2124, has suggested an expansion page, and support it. And link to it from the template, and send all of your kooki stuff there, and lesser notable stuff, and let it cover everything which should be covered, rather than maintaining a barrier, around this objectionable shortfall. You aren't even being accused of anything devious. You are just being accused of being too small and narrow in your output. The request is not to "burn the place down". It's to extend the place. ~ R.T.G 19:36, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

One of the things we try to avoid is navel-gazing. Yes, 6M articles is impressive, and we updated the logo for it, so everyone saw it, but we know people do not llike it it when we draw undue attention to Wikipedia itself (Every time the donation banner goes up, ppl bitch, for example). So unless there is significant coverage related to Wikipedia that is actually in the mainstream news, it does not make sense to cover it. And we already have a page for stuff that doesn't quite make ITN: that's Portal:Current Events. --Masem (t) 20:05, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

Navel gazing? Even people who contribute nothing to Wikipedia should be proud of it. It's literally the broadest project. And the news section it puts on its front page, should operate in deference to it. There's been many requests to expand ITN in some way. It wouldn't take much to do so, and opposition to the idea is pretty crapola from over here baseless or evasive. ~ R.T.G 21:12, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

Turn on a national news program that has a limited time slot (like CBS Nightly) or the front section of the NYTimes or another major paper. How often do you see them tooting their own horn? At best, I have seen (and this is totally reasonable in my book), obits to their well known editors and reports at the tail end of the program, and maybe rarely the case of reporting on winning an award like the Pulitzer. I might have seen a 60 Min block end with "With that, that was our 10,000th story. Goodnight!" in passing or something like that. They don't navel gaze at least to the public audience. I am 100% sure these news outlets have internal news channels like we have our Signpost to go all in on praise and the like. If it was the case that the world made a big deal of our 6M article, then that would have been something, but the world didn't, and it is inappropriate for ITN to give undue weight there; it sets a bad precedent for the future. --Masem (t) 01:56, 26 February 2020 (UTC)

Exactly so. It would be hypocritical to ask people who have created new software applications or formed new rock and roll bands to not use Wikipedia articles as a means of self-promotion and then to turn around and do it ourselves. --Guy Macon (talk) 03:43, 26 February 2020 (UTC)

On one hand Masem is supporting the statement that Wikipedia is not a news service, while farther down here on the same thread they are saying that things should be done, like news outlets would do it... And I think this sort of confused antipathy is typical of the protectionism over at the ITN. Of which it is not the protection that has to be complained about, but the confusion. Being protective is understandable given what and where WPITN is. However, what turned me on to this was, this time last year there was a further story on colony collapse disorder run by most outlets. I wasn't laughed out, but I might as well have been laughed out. It was snowballed. There was no complaints towards editing and adding the story to articles. It was news about encyclopaedia-worthy content. And then I realised, isn't ITN like this all along? I complained, I searched for previous complaints, I realised it was actually an issue falling between the cracks for many years. Please find a way to balance out into stuff like science, technology, and things for instance, which might attract an editor for a while who will study a topic with focused interest, it probably remains to be said, because there is going to be no flood here. Even if there is an expansion, it's not going to turn all our heads sideways and overshadow the whole project as this bright shiney new thing, or this massive stupid broken thing... It is going to be so minor an update, in the material sense, but it will be a taste of polish for this project, and I wish they'd see that because there are many editors devoted to that template... Look it's far too much to go on and on about. It's a really simple thing. Let's see that Wikipedia will still be here. WPITN will still be here. Nothing is going to fall down or break on this, and where your RFCs should go is into what is or isn't newsworthy in a more balanced coverage. Please go to ITN talk and state support for BD2124s proposal, thankyou o/ ~ R.T.G 12:05, 26 February 2020 (UTC)

RfC

Note that there's now an RfC at the Village Pump for this.

Jimbo hasn't commented on this matter himself. Perhaps that's because he's too busy with his own efforts to reform news coverage: WikiTribune and now WT Social.

Andrew🐉(talk) 13:02, 27 February 2020 (UTC)

What a blatant washing out of this whole issue. What a hostile political action. ~ R.T.G 16:04, 27 February 2020 (UTC)

Jimbo's CoinGeek panel with Craig Wright

Video, and summary. EllenCT (talk) 10:43, 22 February 2020 (UTC)

I often need to wash my hands after handling money, but transitioning to paper and coinless money outright would mean an extreme cut in charity, difficulty with pocket money for kids, and incidents of broken plastic causing hunger. ~ R.T.G 12:11, 26 February 2020 (UTC)

Jimbo, thank you for doing that debate. The bitcoin enthusiasts need more of that kind of criticism. 107.242.121.64 (talk) 00:01, 28 February 2020 (UTC)

Smithsonian Releases 2.8 Million Images Into Public Domain

I'm guessing someone's on top of this already, but thought I'd post here for those who haven't seen: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/smithsonian-releases-28-million-images-public-domain-180974263/ --S Philbrick(Talk) 19:41, 26 February 2020 (UTC)

I pointed that out at Signpost. And we can expect more to come (was it plans for 78 M images total??) --Masem (t) 20:12, 26 February 2020 (UTC)

Board minutes?

Hi Jimbo, it's been more than a year since the Board of Trustees has posted minutes of their meetings. Would you please ask for those to be published? EllenCT (talk) 15:20, 28 February 2020 (UTC)

' libertarian ' ? ' centre-right ' ? ' capital - dee Democrat - ell Labourite ' ? Or, ------ ?

Following Q ( diff ) was on the talk page @ jimbo's blp but I'm re-posting here.

Politics?: His political position is variously described as being a supporter of Ayn Rand, "libertarian", "centre right", being a supporter of the Democratic Party of the USA, being a supporter of the British Labour Party (though he has attacked Jeremy Corbyn), and being sympathetic to the Occupy movement. Can we clarify this? Has he changed his opinions? Does he have a very individual point of view? Are these descriptions just wrong? Or is there a clearer way to explain this? -- (user:Jack Upland)

Hmmm. It would be fun if some sourcing could be found Re what hypothetical ideology or ideologies might categorize some various trends by which jimbo's decisions seem governed. What I myself might guess is, inasmuch as jimbo's not a political public figure so much as---- well, l' innovateur célèbre . . , perhaps, politically speaking, he'd most closely be classed within something like the pragmatic technocratic mode, with little to no ideological consistencies by overarching political category or closely-related categories able to be found.

By my reading, he does come across a bit go-along-to-get-along as figurative helm of the WM foundation, say, when a mass of volunteers are fixing to boycott over some opinion he'd come to've expressed, he'll then qualify these same, trying to arrive at a reasonable compromise of sorts, no? If it were me, I might let them walk. Where in heck else they're gonna go? With larry &t-al @ some at various wiki-esque competitors? Plus: What kind of ' first amendment absolutist ' - which he obviously won't be classed as - stands by while the En-WP willy nilly blocks contributors' even linking a whole host of sources? A set of guiding principles similar those undergirding poynter ought be adopted & stringently abided by instead, in the face of the usual locusts swarms-beholden-to-ideological leftism as gather in typical WP in-house editorial discussions. ( WP could really use this metaphorical counter-swarm of chinese ducks ha ha ha! . . saying this myself, politically speaking, at least a 3rd-generation Democrat & self-described socialist heh! ).--Hodgdon's secret garden (talk) 19:28, 28 February 2020 (UTC)

I would like Jimbo to post his http://politiscales.net results. EllenCT (talk) 00:16, 29 February 2020 (UTC)

He said he's a pathological optimist and that says it all because that mentality would override and make moot all of the wide variety of typical labels people adopt or throw at each other. Having said that, "I'm with you" Blair is either really stupid or else a really bad dude, obviously, imo, so I don't understand how come he seems to like him, but then again, Christians are not supposed to be judging anybody so maybe he's just more Christian than me, but damn, Blair does piss me off. Maybe even more than the turd he was "with". Nocturnalnow (talk) 01:55, 29 February 2020 (UTC)

Well that was quick

Wikipedia offers a wealth of knowledge on countless topics to those who know where to look, but therein lies the rub — navigating its database of over 6 billion articles requires some web-crawling finesse. My hypothesis is that our 260 billion readers got to work. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 10:37, 29 February 2020 (UTC)

hi

Hi. recently I found that some users use wikpedia to propagate things like violence. and fiercely prevent any changes in those articles. I'm aware naive people will believe those layers. So could you please put that warning "wikipedia don't guarantee truth" at the top of every page of wikipedia? FlayeF (talk) 10:41, 29 February 2020 (UTC)

See the "Disclaimers" link at the bottom of every page. Or google "Is Wikipedia reliable?" Of course, some of the info you find then will be from Wikipedia, which could be problematic. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 11:04, 29 February 2020 (UTC)

Political pressure on the Bulgarian community

Hi Jimbo!

You already know about the Bulgarian Wikinews. I thought I'd share with you another case—also because the Foundation may be getting pushed into some not very fair political games (as if there are fair ones :).

A few years ago there was an article about a corruption scandal in Bulgaria that was drawing much attention at the time (and one of many in recent years). One of our editors, who is known to frequently cross the line with his political preferences, proposed the article for deletion, because he felt, ironically, that it was too politically charged. The discussion was heated at times, but, overall, followed the routine practices (I do have some remarks about how it was closed, but they are not that important here).

In the end, the article was deleted, with a basically split vote of 9 to 8 in favor of deletion, with the most debate being around the question whether such "hot" topics should be covered in Wikipedia.

Fast forward three years. A week ago I got contacted by a journalist working for, amongst others, the investigative website Bivol.bg (apparently, the reason why I was contacted was that I had tried at the time to moderate the AfD discussion). She wanted to know the real identities of the editors who had voted "so fervently" in favor of deletion. I shared this with the Bulgarian community in Wikipedia, where the general suggestion was to ask her to contact the editors publicly. When I conveyed this to the journalist, she responded that she wasn't interested in having discussions with insert-pejorative-for-anonymous-people. She requested that instead the ediors contact her, revealing their real identities and answering if they were paid for their contributions, if they were members of political parties, etc. At that point, most colleagues in Wikipedia felt that further communication seemed pointless and perhaps even harmful. One of them still did contact the journalist and answered the questions in good faith, but apparently later regretted it, as the communication seemed edgy.

Finally, today came the article in Bivol.bg, which, in general, accuses the community of censorship and doing the bidding of certain political figures. For obvious reasons, I'm not going to discuss here the truthfulness (or not) of such statement.

What worries me—and why I decided to contact you—is that the article does reveal the real identities of editors, who apparently have been "investigated", with some ambiguous or even misleading connections being made, employers being named, etc.

The article also mentions that WMF "had been presented with the case in details" (I probably should mention that the article is full of incorrect statements like: "new sysops are elected only by the existing ones", "the sysops don't need to provide justification for their actions", one of our colleagues being presented as an "active blogger of the Foundation", etc.), that the Foundation promised to investigate it, and ending with a quoted statement by Chantal that "the manipulation of Wikipedia for personal and political gains is against the essence and the mission of the project" (of course, that's an entirely correct statement on its own, but in the context, to me, it seemed manipulatively presented as if the Foundation already agrees with the accusations against the Bulgarian wikicommunity).

Such doxing attempts are of course inevitable and expected to come from diverse sources. They may be even well-meaning and beneficial in certain cases, like the Bellingcat investigations. But you, of course, are the last person whom I need to convince why the privacy of the editors in Wikipedia is important. The fact is that while I stand with my real identity and this has certain benefits (at the very least, people tend to be less aggressive when communicating with me), I'm also much more mindful of what I write, and there are topics I consciously try not to get too involved with (and even so, I still have managed to earn myself some invitations to "meet f2f" to "solve the problem"). This is further exacerbated by the problems that Bulgaria still faces with instilling the rule of law.

I'm certain that these problems are not unique to the Bulgarian projects. I also don't know what (or if) the Foundation can do about them. But, again, I thought it wouldn't hurt to at least ring a small bell here.

Best regards,
— Luchesar • T/C 18:46, 29 February 2020 (UTC)