User talk:Jimbo Wales

Will there be an emergency? Nope, didn't happen

Maybe I'm just feeling very gloomy today, but it strikes me that President Trump will likely declare a national emergency tonight at 9pm New York Time. Such a declaration itself could become a different kind of national emergency. The stuff will really hit the fan in the press, in social media, and probably even on Wikipedia, and it will come from all sides. See e.g. ABC - Pence calls border 'bona fide emergency,' dodges questions about Trump falsehoods Pence is making the case ahead of Trump's address to the nation Tuesday night. and pre-refutations such as LA Times - There is no security crisis at the border

I'll just ask admins to consider ahead of time what they will do if it really does hit the fan on Wikipedia. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 16:06, 8 January 2019 (UTC)

Smallbones I really hope he doesn't. However, the fact he's making federal workers work without pay is not a good indication **sigh**-- 5 albert square (talk) 17:17, 8 January 2019 (UTC)

• Fact is, there has been one since Jan 20 2017. Hashtag ITMF. Guy (Help!) 18:24, 8 January 2019 (UTC)

I think it is pretty clear that what Trump will announce will be that he intends to exercise the powers of 10 U.S. Code § 2808 to begin construction of the wall that Congress is denying him funding for. This is probably not particularly alarming in the short run although, as Smallbones predicts, there will be a lot of noise about it. My concern personally is that this is a trial balloon for the exercise of much more alarming powers that the President may (or may not) theoretically have.

My view is that Congress has been lazy for a very long time in terms of giving increasing arbitrary authority to the Executive branch for all kinds of things. This has largely been kind of ok, mostly because whatever your views of various Presidents, none of them were actual lunatics. Depending on your view of our current President, you may find it alarming that he has these powers.

I'd like to add that I don't mind a little bit of personal chit-chat here about politics, I'd like to always seek to tie it back to Wikipedia. We have chosen a very tough job: NPOV. Dislike for the President, fear about things that are happening in the world, may make it emotionally harder to remain neutral, but remain neutral we must. I happen to personally think that given the decline in quality of the media across the board (there are still fantastic journalists out there, but overall the landscape isn't great) the best way for us to help the world heal is neutrality.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 21:12, 8 January 2019 (UTC)

I think the thing to watch here is the border patrol's claim to unusual police powers throughout a large internal region of the U.S. 100 miles from any border or coast. [1][2] CBP is widely known to enter buses and private property without a warrant, and the latter article makes some remarkable claims about powers it has demanded. The thing to bear in mind is that if Trump can funnel billions into a "border wall" that is not a literal wall and can allocate them however he wants, before long he could have "border patrol" agents combing through backyards and walled gardens looking for pot plants (even in Washington State ... especially there, I would think), and whatever other nasty surprise policies he comes up with. Wnt (talk) 21:31, 8 January 2019 (UTC)

[3]. --Guy Macon (talk) 22:25, 8 January 2019 (UTC)

Just watched the speech - it was about 10 minutes long, but nothing new in it. Nothing about a declaration of a national emergency. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 02:26, 9 January 2019 (UTC)

Predictions are tricky. I mean, after all the dire warnings some made in favor of the North Carolina bathroom bill, I just finally read of a case of sexual assault in the ladies' room. In which the women are accused of assaulting the transwoman ... and who would have predicted that? Wnt (talk) 09:11, 9 January 2019 (UTC)

A fascinating example of Stephen Miller's writing style. The lack of empathy in the White House is pretty chilling. Guy (Help!) 11:39, 9 January 2019 (UTC)

The transfer of power to the executive is a natural response to polarisation. The near-impossibility of gaining 2/3 majority in a Senate where Wyoming gets the same number of votes as California means that bipartisanship is a difficult proposition, especially now that the right wing media has basically severed itself from the continuum of mainstream journalism. Guy (Help!) 01:12, 12 January 2019 (UTC)

Not to distract from the anger properly directed at "Tariff Man" (who is hurting a lot of Canadian workers), but the most important aspect, imo, is how many people have big debts and no savings (including me) which causes them(us) to live from paycheck to paycheck.

We just never seem to learn the most basic elements of capitalism. People my age had grandparents who witnessed first hand all the farms and homes that were repossessed by banks, or just as often by governments for unpaid property taxes. Even our parents would see any amount of mortgage on the homes we grew up in as a heavy threat, like a raised guillotine, to be paid off ASAP. My granddad came out of the depression better than most because after losing a couple of cotton crops to the boll weevil, he picked up himself, wife and 2 kids and moved to the city and learned how to sell life insurance from scratch. Also, being a Mason helped a lot, I imagine. But the point is, the only thing I remember him saying to me when we went to watch the train roll through town, was "Hold your money!"

I didn't even know what he meant and never asked. I, as a 5 year old, thought it meant literally "hold it in your hand". Much later, after he died, my mom told me it meant to save your money, and boy, she got it. She never paid 1 penny in interest. She always worked and had a deal with my more normal dad that he would pay the mortgage(which included interest) and she would pay for everything else. Many of her generation, at least a lot of them, who grew up in the great depression, would have had no trouble at all waiting a month or 2 for their paychecks. But the money lenders got most of us in my generation. I started getting credit cards in the mail when I was still in school with no income at all. Some people call it "Debt capitalism" and differentiate it from pure capitalism....I don't know enough about economics to speak on that, but maybe there is a difference.

This biggest selling song ever at the time it was sung here, says it all, and I especially get a kick outa the guys in tuxedos snapping their fingers, cause I imagine those are the guys who owned the "company store". Nocturnalnow (talk) 16:01, 11 January 2019 (UTC)

Smallbones asked for a reminder...

I've moved this from my user talk page as it refers to a bitcoin price prediction I made on this page. @Guy Macon: likes to kid me about predictions I've made, including the one in the section above. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 16:54, 9 January 2019 (UTC)

At User talk:Jimbo Wales/Archive 232#Thar she blows! you wrote "I'll say it's close to worthless now, and that will become apparent by New Year's Day (please remind me then)." I waited an extra week.

Full disclosure: I have never owned any cryptocurrency or had anything to do with bitcoin other than being hired as an engineer to advise someone who has a large mining rig on how to get his electricity bills down.

It is my considered opinion that, like stocks, bitcoin prices are essentially unpredictable. Which is why I found your prediction to be interesting. There certainly was a bubble -- hitting the "all" button at https://www.coindesk.com/price/bitcoin is really interesting -- but your prediction failed.

Care to make another prediction? A day, a week, a month, any time frame is fine with me. I would like to compete against you with a prediction based upon a coin flip. I think that if we both do this a number of times that our performance will be about the same (I don't think you have the ability to be consistently wrong either!).

Back to that bitcoin miner: right now he loses money if he turns on his rig. He can become profitable if he invests in a more efficient mining setup, but there is a low enough bitcoin price at which the new rig becomes unprofitable -- and a high enough bitcoin price at which the old rig becomes profitable again. So he is really into predicting future prices, and doesn't care much for me saying that they are unpredictable. --Guy Macon (talk) 21:16, 7 January 2019 (UTC)

I'm sorry I don't have time right now to give this answer the care that it deserves. The price of bitcoin had fallen from $6500 to $3735 in the weeks before I restated my "$0" prediction. (I'd originally made it on this page on Feb. 14 when the price was about $9000.) The quoted price is now just below $4000, so - as financial predictions go, I'm still doing pretty well :p) !

Nevertheless, it's only a little bit more clear now that the bitcoin market is likely to become essentially defunct than it was back in November. (BTW, this is not financial advice in anyway. Short-selling is very difficult in bitcoin and I wouldn't recommend that anybody put any money into that market simply because it seems to be very difficult to get any money out).

I'll recommend Attack of the 50 Foot Blockchain from User:David Gerard for the best blog info out there. (I'm not blaming him for my opinions here. We certainly disagree at times, especially on details). I haven't seen any real news from the heights of the usual financial reliable sources (e.g. WSJ, Bloomberg, NYT) in the last couple of weeks.

The news that strikes me as most important in the last month (but not in RS yet) is that Bitmain, the largest trade processor ("miner") of bitcoin is having major financial problems. A few months ago they were touting something like "the biggest IPO since Google". Now the cryptopress says they are laying off 50%-80% of their workforce, with the 2 Co-CEOs possibly among the layoffs. China has awhile ago banned bitcoin mining but not enforced the ban. In any case it looks bad not just for Bitmain but for the entire mining industry. Tell your friend not to buy new mining equipment. Tell him to buy used equipment by the pound from China. (Not real financial advice, as usual).

The best news for bitcoin supporters that I've seen lately is that the ICE, owner of the New York Stock Exchange, has a fairly new subsidiary that is has been planning to open a regulated, efficient, no-tricks exchange for bitcoin. The "good news" is that they have only delayed the opening by a month or so (to February). My gut-feeling is that they will keep on delaying the opening, until it's obvious that there's no real market left, but we'll see.

So, if you really want to drag another prediction out of me, the bitcoin price will be down significantly next January 1, if the market hasn't already effectively closed. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 16:54, 9 January 2019 (UTC)

I hope nobody sees my good-natured kidding as anything other than friendly... So by "down significantly" may I assume that over 20% lower than the Jan 1 2019 price would be a successful prediction? Given the volatility is seems likely that it will be either far higher or far lower. I am not making a prediction on something that is almost as unpredictable as our President, but if I had to choose my guess would be "a lot lower" based upon the number of idiots I see who are obviously trying to drive the price up by attracting new suckers investors. It just feels like a bubble.

I would hope that if the WMF gets any donations in bitcoin it would convert them to US dollars the same day rather than holding them... Jimbo, do you know if that is the case? --Guy Macon (talk) 17:12, 9 January 2019 (UTC)

I'm not close enough to the process to know if "same day" is a promise I can make. But basically, yes. It is not the policy of the Wikimedia Foundation to engage in currency speculation.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 21:49, 9 January 2019 (UTC)

The WMF should start to use the Basic Attention Token, see also here. Count Iblis (talk) 20:39, 9 January 2019 (UTC)

Sometimes it is better to be uncreative. Thanks for the heads up on "Brave Browser"/BAT though, it helps to solve a conundrum. It should be obvious enough that if you watch a TV program in 2045 that you don't get to just walk out of the room for the ad or look at some other diversion; you're expected to sing along, you're expected to know the words, and you're expected to have the right feeling about the company as assessed by an AI analysis of your voice and biometrics. The question is, how do you get from here to there? Well, by turning the watching of ads into a cash commodity for users - for proles rather than overlords - it becomes inevitable that certain harsh security measures will be necessary (which would have been hard to impose on reputable ad wholesalers) because they are scheming thieving little peasants, essentially evil in nature, stealing their existence from the few who own the world every day, committing crime and filth from public drinking straight on through to public urination simply because they don't or won't have a pot to pee in. So BAT can be viewed as a bridge between the medieval present and the illustrious capitalist future. Something similar was pursued in one of the early Black Mirror episodes, if you have the company's permission to look at it. Wnt (talk) 02:27, 10 January 2019 (UTC)

Just out of interest, re "It is my considered opinion that, like stocks, bitcoin prices are essentially unpredictable." In the short term, I agree. But over the long term, the value of stocks is determined by the actual profit made by the companies - and that is measurable, and it is possible to estimate a valuation for a stock based on it. The closest the two things come, as far as I can I see, is that it is possible for followers of both to attempt what is known as Technical Analysis (or charting), which is nothing more than guessing which way a price will go based solely on patterns (real or imagined) on a price chart. But unlike stocks, cryptocurrencies have no underlying tangibles whatsoever, and there is no fundamental valuation that can be estimated. So when we reject chart-watching for the bunk that it is, cryptocurrencies have nothing left. Stocks are rational long-term investments, cryptocurrencies are not. So what do I think is a rational value for bitcoin? I can see none whatsoever, though I've really no idea whether it will eventually reach zero - but I suspect it will trend lower over time. "It just feels like a bubble"? Absolutely. (Can you guess I'm a follower of Warren Buffett?) Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 16:12, 10 January 2019 (UTC)

Even if there are not going to be any new applications for Bitcoin, it will still have a rational value. It's a global lottery where your chance of winning is a lot better than in ordinary lotteries. If people are willing to buy lotteries such that the total amount of money invested in the lottery is more than a billion dollars so that the first prize can be more than billion dollars, making almost everyone pay into the bank account of the new billionaire, then it's only logical that a lot more people will be willing to buy Bitcoins as it's much more likely that people will win money in that game. The market capitalization of Bitcoin should thus be compared to the combined value of the jackpots of all large lotteries. The latter is of the order of several billion dollars, while Bitcoin's market capitalization is $64 billion. Dividing that by the 17.47 million Bitcoins gives you the Bitcoin price. The Bitcoin game is thus more popular than ordinary lotteries are. It may become a bit less popular, but it's unlikely that people will abandon playing this game altogether. Count Iblis (talk) 23:46, 10 January 2019 (UTC)

Yes, a fair point - there is rational value as a gambling mechanism. But there's a difference from lotteries, in that lotteries have a prize. Cryptocurrency is like a lottery with no prize but just a limited number of tickets. The value of the tickets is only based on what people will pay to buy them from you even without a prize - oh, and the limited number of tickets is growing every day. Even as a gambling mechanism, it seems very silly. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 08:24, 11 January 2019 (UTC)

(COI declaration: I have $20 in Bitcoin somewhere on my backup hard drive) In my opinion, Bitcoin basically lost any chance of succeeding when the Bitcoin Cash split happened. The entire community basically imploded in on itself, and rational discussion about how to improve the technology became impossible. The Cash proponents became obsessed with continued blocksize increases being the best way to scale the software, while the old guard backed more complicated solutions that were potentially much stabler long-term but would also take substantially longer to develop. Newsflash: nobody wants to use a currency that can magically turn into different currencies at random times with the value being determined by whoever has the most political sway in the community at the moment. The mining arms race also turned the blockchain from a novel way to determine consensus through a decentralized system into an never-ending electricity suck as everyone competes to get rich quick. Not a great look when we're still busy trying to figure out how to make energy without cooking the planet at the same time. Finally, the best solution either camp could come up with to solve what became known as the "coffee problem" (i.e. how to pay for your daily cup at Starbucks with crypto) ended up eventually becoming "idk, just have a PayPal-esque intermediary sit between the transaction, no need to fill the blockchain up with all that." So it's probably not going to work as a currency. While I do think there may be value in blockchains eventually, the hype surrounding them was way overboard, and early projects like the DAO just wound up backfiring on everyone. But, given the current state of the world as a whole right now, I'm not confident predicting anything more than "wait and see" at this point. Someone's probably going to discover that injecting blockchains into people cures cancer or something, and it still won't even make the top 10 most ridiculous events of this decade. Nathan2055^{talk - contribs} 00:49, 11 January 2019 (UTC)

Re: "Newsflash: nobody wants to use a currency that can magically turn into different currencies at random times with the value being determined by whoever has the most political sway in the community at the moment." It's more basic than that. The key requirement for a currency is stability, and nobody wants to use a currency whose value is extremely volatile. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 08:14, 11 January 2019 (UTC)

Yeah, the stability issue is also a major problem. There have been various arguments on that front, ranging from "well gold is unstable too" to "it doesn't matter because <complicated economics jargon>." At the end of the day, Average Joe doesn't want to have to deal with fluctuating values and any rationally sized purchase being measured in many decimal places and shopkeepers don't want to deal with having to reprice goods on a real time basis. As it stands, the only thing the currency is really good at is being a speculation like gold, except it isn't even as good as gold since it's not a physical object that stuff can be done with. Nathan2055^{talk - contribs} 08:30, 11 January 2019 (UTC)

Yes, I've seen the gold analogy too, but I think it misses the point that gold is also not viable as a currency (which is largely why the gold standard was abandoned). Those pushing cryptocurrencies as a cheaper way to transact than centrally-controlled currencies with their transaction charges miss the fact that established currencies and their mechanisms are actually very efficient and very cheap in transaction costs. Who wants to save a fraction of a percent in transaction costs when the currency itself is subject to wild daily fluctuations? Blockchain technology has great potential, but not for implementing currencies. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 12:35, 11 January 2019 (UTC)

Public domain in 1923

I went to 1923 in art and randomly tried a couple of links. Everything I checked still had low-resolution fair use images that claimed they were not public domain. Is there a project that is trying to fix these now that works from 1923 are public domain? Ken Arromdee (talk) 23:15, 11 January 2019 (UTC)

I think you're misunderstanding how copyrights on artworks work. What has changed is that works published in the United States in 1923 are now in the public domain; unless the artwork is something that was published, such as an illustration from an American book (or more pertinently, in 2024 a cartoon mouse), it remains in copyright until the requisite number of years following the creator's death (the exact timeframe varies by jurisdiction). ‑ Iridescent 23:21, 11 January 2019 (UTC)

Information on Active Wiki arbitration on the name of the country after Parliament renamed the "Republic of Macedonia", to "Republic of North Macedonia"

Dear Jimbo today on 11. of jan. 2019 Macedonian parliament voted to rename "Republic of Macedonia", into "Republic of North Macedonia". That created edit war and confusion on Wiki on the matter which name to use as an official name[4]. Only for information. Present Name of the country "Republic of Macedonia" should remain on the Wikipedia unchanged because "Agreement from Prespa" on name matter yet has to be ratified in the Greek Parliament as well, and according to the Macedonian Law for Implementation of Constitutional Changes, before approval and ratification of the Agreement of Prespa in Greece, changes of the Macedonian of Constitution that were passed today on 11. 1. 2019. will not enter into force. So, before final decision in the Greece Parliament including the end of the process of ratification of the mentioned Agreement, the name of the country is still "Republic of Macedonia", not the new one "Republic of North Macedonia" adopted today by the Parliament in Macedonia. Regards, 93.86.1.126 (talk) 01:04, 12 January 2019 (UTC)

To clarify, Wikipedia:Naming_conventions_(Macedonia) dictates the naming of the article Republic of Macedonia (per WP:ARBMAC) and a one-month long RFC is required to change the name. That should allow sufficient time to ensure accuracy. power~enwiki (π, ν) 01:07, 12 January 2019 (UTC)

Tool for quickly copying media from Wikipedia/Wikimedia Commons to another wiki?

I wonder if anyone here knows of a tool for quickly copying media (images mainly) from Wikipedia/Wikimedia Commons to another (non-WMF) wiki, in such a way that automatically follows best practices for attribution?--Jimbo Wales (talk) 18:58, 13 January 2019 (UTC)