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I've seen the score chart, styles, scores, and songs, and call-out order be removed. Sottolacqua made a page biased, and lack reputable sources, and miss the most information in Dancing with the Stars (U.S. season 12). She also removed a warning I've wrote to her. The answer is there. I want her gone and to never come back to editing and removing important stuff with Dancing with the Stars (U.S. season 12). -- Plankton5165 ( talk) 04:24, 11 November 2011 (UTC)
I have no strong opinion, but shouldn't this discussion be at the talk page? |
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The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it. |
Any takers anybody to expand this?♦ Dr. Blofeld 22:54, 12 November 2011 (UTC)
Considering the way Berlusconi ran the show for so many years in Italy it seems a very notable event in Italian politics that he would resign and surely longer article could be written about it examining his reasons for doing. WP:NOTNEWSPAPER and WP:RECENTISM you could argue could be used to argue against any event in world politics. If in due course it is merged then so be it but Berlusconi's article is already excessively long...♦ Dr. Blofeld 11:43, 13 November 2011 (UTC)
I just asked for some help with expanding it! Jeez, I thought you'd support me. ♦ Dr. Blofeld 13:31, 13 November 2011 (UTC) |
I have no problems with merging it, but as I say the article is too long.♦ Dr. Blofeld 14:08, 13 November 2011 (UTC)
The Irish burned their genealogical records during the early troubles. (A few of them anyway). But the original records often remain in the churches. Wouldn't this be a splendid new wikia project? Kittybrewster ☎ 13:54, 13 November 2011 (UTC)
Interesting piece in the Guardian today about the work of some Oxford University researchers: The world of Wikipedia's languages mapped. 75.59.227.116 ( talk) 16:11, 11 November 2011 (UTC)
Thanks Wavelength, I hadn't thought of The Signpost. I did add it just now to Wikipedia:Press coverage 2011, which I found by way of The Signpost talk page. Finding anything here is like sorting through a jumble drawer. 75.59.227.116 ( talk) 22:34, 13 November 2011 (UTC)
HABLAN DE CRIMENES DE LEZA HUMANIDAD COMO EL PALACIO DE JUSTICIA, EL CASO DE MAPIRIPAN, LOS ASESINATOS DE TRUJILLO PERO NUNCA NOMBRAN EL ASESINATO DE LO POBRES CAMPESINOS Y EL PROFESOR GONZALO QUE MURIERON EN COMBATES POR NUESTRO GLORIOSO Y HORROSO EJERCITO NACIONAL Y DE SUS FAMILIAS QUE NADIE SE ACUERDA ENTONCES QUE ESTAMOS HACIENDO — Preceding unsigned comment added by 186.112.101.193 ( talk) 15:58, 13 November 2011 (UTC)
I was amazed that Wikipedia does not currently note the pun, with the Shakespeare authorship question, to compare the line from Sonnet 76, about the name "de Vere". For years, the pun has been noted elsewhere, in the line "that every word doth almost tell my name" with the name "deVere" and the word "eVery" as almost telling the name. This is just another major curious omission, where outside sources note the connection, but it is found nowhere in Wikipedia. The concern is not just the years when plays were published, and the potential for unfinished plays to be pen-named later, but also the possible double entendre in that unusual line of poetry. Add this to the long list of simple, easy topics to add to Wikipedia. - Wikid77 ( talk) 17:29, 13 November 2011 (UTC)
It appears to have been recreated - Wikipedia:Run to Mommy - Off2riorob ( talk) 12:50, 14 November 2011 (UTC)
The discussion for the redirect is at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2011 November 13 - perhaps it needs wider publicity. I am pretty certain the community is against the creation of such a redirect. Off2riorob ( talk) 12:53, 14 November 2011 (UTC)
I don't endorse the language used by Pink Oboe above, but I do endorse his (?) request: please undelete this. There was an active deletion discussion in progress, the redirect does not unambiguously meet the speedy-deletion criteria, there is precedent for similar redirects (see the various redirects to ANI, for example), and your deletion circumvented the established process for dealing with such discussions. Nikkimaria ( talk) 13:17, 14 November 2011 (UTC)
Good call, Jimbo. Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 > haneʼ 13:18, 14 November 2011 (UTC)
I cheerfully tossed in the first keep, more for a poke in the eye of the ridiculousness of WQA than anything, but really guys, this doesn't stance a chance in hell of being retained. Let it go. Tarc ( talk) 13:27, 14 November 2011 (UTC)
Hello,
I saw your remark on User talk:Off2riorob about civility, and wanted to say that this is a thoughtful, concise and persuasive argument for one of our essential five pillars. I may quote it to to others, though I may be accused of trying to curry favor with this encyclopedia's most prominent contributor. So be it. Cullen328 Let's discuss it 18:03, 15 November 2011 (UTC)
Hi, I'm directing this quiry to you as I can't find any one else.
Flattr is a donation system where users give an amount of their choosing to Flattr. Then they click Flattr buttons on websites. If a user clicks on 100 of these in a mounth then each website will get a 100th of the money they gave to Flattr. One problem is that you can Flattr a twitter user even if they don't have a Flattr account so a bunch of this money goes unclaimed. Wikipedia is one such example. @Wikipedia has 161 people wanting to give it money. To claim this you would need a Flattr account and the login details for @Wikipedia. As I only discovered Flattr yesterday I don't know how much money this amounts to but every little bit helps. The link to the unclaimed donation is https://flattr.com/thing/425462. Hopefully you can organise to claim it. Thanks, Bardi1100 ( talk) 21:57, 15 November 2011 (UTC)
There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Redirects_for_discussion#Wikipedia:Run_to_Mommy you might be interested in. Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 > haneʼ 00:06, 16 November 2011 (UTC)
I am concerned that when you closed Wikipedia:Redirects_for_discussion/Log/2011_November_13 as a speedy deletion you violated Wikipedia:SPEEDY, unless, of course, it was an office action. I don't believe it's appropriate for admins to super-vote - even if they are voting correctly. Please consider not taking abrupt unnecessary action in the future - there is no rush, and not only did you prevent non-admins from reversing your action, you also used your gravitas as "founder." Such actions should be reserved for things that really need it. Thanks. Hipocrite ( talk) 13:46, 14 November 2011 (UTC)
The right place for this discussion is at the talk page of Wikipedia talk:Wikiquette assistance |
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Jimbo, it appears that at least one member of the community disagrees that incivil pages can be speedily deleted. Please defend your new speedy deletion rationale at WP:SPEEDY. Thanks. Hipocrite ( talk) 14:02, 14 November 2011 (UTC)
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Sorry to bother you again but... somebody's losing it... Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 > haneʼ 14:14, 14 November 2011 (UTC)
This all is one of the main reasons why out-of-process deletions like this one are so often a bad idea. If you had let the discussion run its course, probably none of the current problems would have happened. Fram ( talk) 14:22, 14 November 2011 (UTC)
I think that from time to time it is valuable to remind people that WP:NPA is hard policy, and that civility really does matter. -- Jimbo Wales ( talk) 13:51, 14 November 2011 (UTC)
So, if "civility really does matter", why didn't you (YOU, Jimbo) do something about the two gross instances of incivility or say something to those editors while you deleted the redirect and
dealt with The Pink Oboe? Is there nothing that will draw attention to the civility double standard on Wikipedia, and how it is frequently (and falsely) claimed that content contributors get a free pass while admins get away with whatever they want? I apologize if you actually did do something to address the underlying uncivil admin post that led to all of this, but if you did, I can't find it. An admin can tell two other editors to "shut the fuck up", and no one
bats an eyelash at the Administrators' noticeboard. Yep, civility really does matter. So, ANI is a cesspool, WQA is "run to mommy", and now you, Jimbo, have put yourself in a position of "run to daddy"-- like many fathers, you wandered in to a scuffle, listened to half a story, meted out some punishment, and wandered off, while the real "civility" abuser got off scot free. If you are serious about civility (and there was no NPA except the retracted one from Off2riorob), then DO something about it as BOLD as you did about the Redirect-- start with Stephan Schulz.
SandyGeorgia (
Talk) 16:10, 14 November 2011 (UTC)
SandyGeorgia....those that feel Malleus is at the very least "difficult" aren't delusional. MONGO 17:33, 14 November 2011 (UTC)
Elizabeth Windsor is a large shareholding retiree, who was predominantly unemployed throughout her working life, and occasionally a celebrity or military support worker. She has large unspecified political powers. And she keeps her emphatic-adjective mouth shut in public about politics, because of the examples of her extended family members who didn't, and lost their crowns or heads. Fifelfoo ( talk) 21:53, 14 November 2011 (UTC)
This Signpost page on recent featured content presents a nice summation of a big problem in Wikipedia, and one which US Wikipedians invariably pooh-pooh, because they can't see a problem. The problem is this: Wikipedia is supposed to be an international encyclopaedia, catering to an English-speaking audience around the world. Many of these people will not have a good grasp of global geography. The US is routinely presented in Wikipedia as the 'default' country, although no one country is supposed to have primacy (and I'm not talking about numbers of readers by country - I'm talking about content). Rarely in a US-based article is the country given. It is considered sufficient by the US editors who write it just to give city and state. "Because, of course, we all know that Boise, Idaho is in the US, don't we? And if we don't, we should, and besides, it's only one blue click away to find out." My point is: we shouldn't have to blue click. Such utterly, utterly basic information as the country involved should be presented on the page.
A quick survey of the blurbs on the Signpost page:
So we can see that every single non-US entry has its country given, while only one in five, a measly 20%, of US entries has the country mentioned. The US has a reputation for being parochial and inward-looking; this arrogant assumption that the US is so important and well-known that editors need not bother to specify the country is infuriating, and I see it time and time again in Wikipedia articles. It makes Wikipedia look ridiculous too - how can it claim to contain as comprehensive coverage as other encyclopaedias if it doesn't even bother to give absolute basics? Try clicking on 'random article' and see how many US-based ones don't bother to give the country, even indirectly.
Please can something be done to ensure that such basic information is provided, every single time? 86.143.70.9 ( talk) 10:22, 15 November 2011 (UTC)
I know that U.S.-centrism is a problem here and I favor reasonable corrective measures. Maybe its just me, but when I read "The CN Tower is a communications and observation tower in Downtown Toronto, Ontario, Canada", I can't help thinking that mentioning Toronto alone would have been sufficient. Looking at Big Ben, I note that England is not mentioned until the fifth sentence, and is not wikilinked. That being said, I can't really object to the United States identifier being added to the lead whenever any editor sincerely thinks that it is useful. To disclose my personal bias, I am a Californian, have been to the top of both Mammoth Mountain and the CN Tower, and once saw a spectacular view of Big Ben from an airplane window. In my opinion, some cities and subnational place names are so well known that they don't require the country name immediately thereafter. London, Tokyo, Paris, Beijing, Rome, Cairo, Toronto, Baghdad, Brasilia, Hanoi, Stockholm, Athens, Sydney, Kathmandu, Lagos, Capetown and many others come to mind. I think that the better known U.S. states also qualify, such as California and Texas, as well as provinces such as Ontario. But I wouldn't object if someone wants to add Japan every time a topic located in Tokyo is first mentioned, just as long as its in good faith rather than pointy. Cullen328 Let's discuss it 22:06, 15 November 2011 (UTC)
(ec) While I agree in general that Wikipedia tends to be US-centric, I can't agree with this specific criticism. First, England and Wales are subnational entities very much like US states. It's unfair to treat them as equivalent to sovereign states/countries/nations in this context just because the UK has such a weird terminology for its four major subdivisions. (Three of them are routinely called "countries" in many contexts, and even Northern Ireland is referred to in this way in certain formulaic contexts. At least one of them is also commonly referred to as a "nation". They are never referred to as "states", although they are very much the equivalent of states in the US or Germany.) While most people from outside the UK have no trouble locating England (if there is any problem here then it is a lack of awareness and understanding of the more or less subtle differences between "England", "UK", "Great Britain" and "Britain"), a not all our readers will be aware that such an entity as Wales even exists.
Languages come with a package of cultural background that every reasonably educated speaker is supposed to be familiar with. As someone who learned English formally as a second language I was actually taught this package more or less systematically at school. People who learn English informally normally become familiar with the English-language mainstream culture simply because it forms the basis of almost all texts and broadcasts. It is perfectly reasonable for an encyclopedia to assume this mainstream culture as a given.
With this in mind, the question becomes whether it is tricky for too many typical readers to resolve location information such as the following without confusion:
The answers will differ from case to case, but in the interest of a certain degree of uniformity that makes the encyclopedia easier to use, the way we handle this should be somewhat consistent. Of course it should also be idiomatic. ("London, Ontario" is fine and necessary, but "London, England" sounds weird to British English speakers in most contexts.)
I am afraid there is no perfect solution to this problem. But I consider it perfectly normal and natural if the sovereign state is usually omitted for certain anglophone countries, but always given in full for all other countries. In my opinion this is a harmless built-in bias of any English-language encyclopedia. While I would not mind systematically mentioning sovereign countries in all cases just for consistency, I doubt that this would work in practice. A much more important problem can be seen in many medical articles, for example, which switch back and forth between purely scientific descriptions and specific legal regulations in the US, or US-centric statistics, as if the US covered the entire globe. Hans Adler 22:11, 15 November 2011 (UTC)
Zi-lu said, "... What will you consider the first thing to be done?"
The Master replied, "What is necessary is to rectify names."
It seems as though style guides somewhere are actively making it harder for people to find out the location of places they don't know. See for example [3] unlinking Poland and United States in the lead and infobox. While very few English speakers wont know the location of the United States, and most Europeans should be at least roughly familiar with where Poland is (I've no idea about people from other areas), but how many people can locate Honduras (see Central American Airways Flight 731)? Thryduulf ( talk) 16:53, 16 November 2011 (UTC)
Pinoy Big Brother: Double Up ( | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) (as example only) ( This version, at the time I left this first note; later blanked due to copyvio problems)
Hi Jimbo Wales,
I know you feel strongly about care regarding unreferenced/poorly-referenced BLP content, and I wanted to bring to your attention an example of what is quite a large-scale problem with reality-TV articles. On Pinoy Big Brother: Double Up, a user recently removed a whole chunk [5] but was summarily reverted [6] and even dismissed from the talk page [7]. And these are in no way 'new users'; one has 8000+ edits, the other 20k+.
I advised said user to raise it on BLPN, and I only mention it to you because I've seeen this problem on a great many similar articles. We have a tremendous amount of problems with various versions of The X Factor, and many more. Note the edit-summary from the example removal - "you want to try that on all BB articles too?"
Articles of this type attract a great deal of BLP information gleaned by people just watching the programmes. Most of the actual broadcasts are not available for any later verification, which leads to a problem for editors trying to make sure it is all neutral and appropriate. The articles attract fans, who naturally think along the lines of, "well of course Sally hates Brian, it's obvious" – and it is often hard, and certainly an unrewarding task, trying to battle for verifiability and neutrality. Chzz ► 11:54, 17 November 2011 (UTC)
Update re the example: it looks like there are significant copyright-violations too; see [8]. Chzz ► 15:37, 17 November 2011 (UTC)
is not strictly true - all production companies keep archives these days and while access to those archives may not be easy or free it will be possible. Per [[[WP:PAYWALL]] this is no barrier to verifying the information presented. Our job is helped by the increasing number of these shows being uploaded to YouTube, helping editors to verify the details without access to the archive - That said these are primary sources and should be treated as such with due caution. Stuart.Jamieson ( talk) 09:01, 18 November 2011 (UTC)Most of the actual broadcasts are not available for any later verification
Although you are probably used to your name being invoked as the source of Wikipedia policies and guidelines, I wanted to let you know about a pending discussion regarding notability of U.S. presidential children at Talk:Rosalynn Carter in which User:Redmondome has cited you as a source for his views while trying to impose what I believe to be an overly-broad interpretation of Wikipedia notability guidelines including redirecting Talk:Amy Carter to Talk:Rosalynn Carter without redirecting either of the associated Article pages, which I subsequently reverted. Please feel free to share any thoughts you may have on this matter at Talk:Rosalynn Carter. -- TommyBoy ( talk) 13:15, 17 November 2011 (UTC)
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For Wikipedia! Arsaces ( talk) 08:22, 18 November 2011 (UTC) |
Relevant to 'verifiable, and true'-- Jimbo Wales ( talk) 14:29, 16 November 2011 (UTC)
Just an aside. If you're looking for a source for some info in Wikipedia, try to find a source that predates the edit that first put the info into Wikipedia, when possible. -- Bob K31416 ( talk) 20:42, 16 November 2011 (UTC)
Here is another nice example: [12] [13] [14] [15]. The result: [16] [17] [18]. Poor Madam Walker. -- J N 466 20:43, 18 November 2011 (UTC)
I was interested to see the discussion about the wording of WP:V because it chimes with something I've been thinking about for a while, namely that there is a lot of verifiable but false information out there that gets in the way of writing good articles - especially when someone has an interest in publicising said false information. I've been working on and off for a while on an article about the Cyrus Cylinder, an important ancient artifact in the British Museum. There is a pretty clear mainstream perspective on it from historians which is reflected in the article. However, the artifact was also adopted as as symbol of Iranian national pride by the regime of the late Shah, which made all kinds of claims about it that historians have explicitly rejected. The current Iranian government has also latched on to it as a symbol of its own legitimacy. The cylinder has thus become something of a nationalist totem for Iranians, backed up by a fake translation of its text. The problem is that the claims and the fake translation have taken on a life of their own and are routinely trotted out in news reports and publicised by non-historians such as politicians, lawyers, and so on. The claims are eminently verifiable but, according to the historians, completely fake and false, anachronistic and tendentious. Note that this is not a "two schools of thought" issue with dissenting historians - it is a straight split between historians and non-historians. This has presented a real problem in writing and maintaining the article because it has repeatedly been disrupted by people (usually Iranian nationalists) demanding rewrites to present the claims as "the facts". After all, they're verifiable, so that's all we need, right? And so it goes. Prioryman ( talk) 13:21, 17 November 2011 (UTC)
In other words, truth is not enough, it must be verifiable – and verifiable is not enough, it must also be true (or, at the very least not known to be false). — Coren (talk) 20:54, 17 November 2011 (UTC)
Not only is this article an appalling mess of POV pushing, but it has stayed in almost this exact form for about 6 years, and through 4 AfDs. The Global warming deniers simply come out en masse, shout down all policy-driven arguments, then revert all changes.
Its structure is simple. Present the mainstream view while avoiding any mention of the evidence for the belief. Reduce it to a few bold assertions. Then have page after page of denialists arguing against it, without bothering to mention that these arguments have been dealt with by the mainstream.
Any attempts to fix it are shouted down, attempts to deal with it through Wikipedia processes attract so many POV-pushers that they just end up closed no consensus, allowing the problem to continue forever.
A clearer example of the utter failure of Wikipedia is hard to think of. Is there anything that can actually be done? 86.** IP ( talk) 06:15, 17 November 2011 (UTC)
86's position on this article, that it is propped up by deniers, is quite bizarre. Meanwhile, AH thinks it is propped up by whatever-the-opposite-of-a-denier-is. Being hated by both signs is reasonable evidence that the article itself is actually quite reasonable, which it is. It could be better, if folks could just settle down to try to improve it. What it mostly needs is the inclusion criteria tightened up - our definition of "scientist" is far too broad. But that is for the article talk page, and we could be having that discussion, if people like 86 weren't wasting all the bandwidth with deletion campaigns and appeals to higher authority William M. Connolley ( talk) 08:49, 17 November 2011 (UTC)
What would a reader expect from an article called List-of-fringe-X-deniers? Of course, a list of people denying X, together with their fringe views. That's not POV but exactly what should be in that list. -- Pgallert ( talk) 08:59, 17 November 2011 (UTC)
The subject perhaps holds merit. The content there at the moment is a disaster. For example; the most critical problem is that the list has been defined as "people who disagree with one of these three views" - and quotes from scientists have been originally researched through primary source material (from the individuals) to build the list. Obviously this is problematical. Ideally we would need each entry to be sourced either to a third party whose view is that this scientist opposes that view or an explicit quote that mentions the IPCC and their opposition. And we can then back it up with a direct quote if appropriate. -- Errant ( chat!) 12:06, 17 November 2011 (UTC)
Jimbo Wales, if you wanted to see the accuracy level (or not!) in presentation of the scientists' views, open up two browser tabs and scroll down side by side: one on a July 2011 version using the prev link in revision history, another showing the current version. There was a trick of spreading out the changes over many edits, but that way shows the net result.
It could teach volumes about what sometimes goes on in Wikipedia these days.
Or glance within reference link #2 to learn what the Wikipedia article implies to be 97.4% consensus on "mainstream" (catastrophic) global warming is actually based on 75 of 77 respondents in a 2-question web poll agreeing that temperatures now are warmer than in the Little Ice Age (the "pre-1800s") and that human activity has a non-zero effect (which, to a scientist, means not 0.00000). Most didn't respond at all to the transparently dishonest slanted web poll.
Continued ensuring of dishonesty is unfortunately what can happen when those most likely to make enough edits to gain admin powers are deletionists, far easier for someone to make thousands of deletions than that many constructive additions, resulting sometimes in the very opposite of the best people rising high in power. Wikipedia is an excellent source of info on some topics where nobody has tendency for bias, but breaks down utterly on those which get a core of activists of the worst kind.
If there was a system where Wikipedia polled a sample of a couple dozen people randomly chosen from the whole moderate-edit-number user base of ordinary people, on some controversial matters, it wouldn't be so just a matter of who has one or more hardcore political-activist admins on their side on articles like this. This is an article in one of the worst spots: major enough to attract the activist team but minor enough that Wikipedia's mainstream on it is just enforced by several editors and one or more admins. 12.74.177.6 ( talk) 13:11, 17 November 2011 (UTC)
86** may be new, and inexperienced, even lacking in basic awareness of WP practices, but that does not excuse plain bad argumentation and disruptive behavior. E.g., his characterisation of "an appalling mess of POV pushing" is hardly useful to any temperate discussion, and seems more applicable to his own continued efforts. And: most recently it was he that reverted some moderate attempts to improve the article. As to being shouted down: having repeatedly claimed that there is an OR problem, having added, and then restored, an OR tag, he was expressly asked ( here) to provide an example, yet has failed to do. He may indeed be frustrated, but that is not because of some "denier" conspiracy, but his own failure to convince. Indeed, he seems to entirely misaprehend the situation, as many (all?) of the editors opposing him are not "deniers", and the opposition is not on grounds of POV but on failure of process. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) 19:45, 17 November 2011 (UTC)
The tactic being successfully enforced now by the activist team (cunning I admit) is to delete any quotes expressing the real basis of the scientists' views, to show only repetitive content-free out-of-context remarks, to effectively strawman them all. Presumably they figure such is more effective than deleting the article entirely, as its mere existence provides a pseudo-convincing impression of balance to the naive, although really a trashed version making it look like the scientists have no basis for their views. Again, a comparison of the July 2011 versus current versions provides an example; the former also had nice quote box formatting since deleted.
Incidentally, for one of many examples of doubleplusungood info nobody is ever supposed to see from the perspective of the activist team here, read Dr. Shaviv:
http://www.sciencebits.com/NothingNewUnderTheSun-I
The preceding is a convenient link to a general discussion including for laymen, but the topics within it are covered by papers such as:
http://www.space.dtu.dk/upload/institutter/space/forskning/05_afdelinger/sun-climate/full_text_publications/svensmark_2007cosmoclimatology.pdf Svensmark, Henrik (2007). "Cosmoclimatology: a new theory emerges". Astronomy & Geophysics 48 (1): 1.18-1.24. doi:10.1111/j.1468-4004.2007.48118.x.
http://www.phys.huji.ac.il/~shaviv/articles/sensitivity.pdf Shaviv, Nir J (2005). "On climate response to changes in the cosmic ray flux and radiative budget" (PDF). Journal of Geophysical Research 110 (A08105). doi:10.1029/2004JA010866.
And much, much more, the above just the tip of the iceberg. For instance, non-PC temperature history, for 100 years (not the politically correct 30-40 year cutoff) of the top of the Northern Hemisphere where temperature changes most:
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/ArcticIce/Images/arctic_temp_trends_rt.gif (compare recent history versus 1930s)
The actual history of the warm Minoan Warm Period, Minoiske Warm Period, Holocene Climate Optimum, etc.: http://climate4you.com/images/GISP2%20TemperatureSince10700%20BP%20with%20CO2%20from%20EPICA%20DomeC.gif which is a graph of U.S. government NOAA data: ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/icecore/greenland/summit/gisp2/isotopes/gisp2_temp_accum_alley2000.txt
http://www.meteor.iastate.edu/gccourse/history/paleoclimate/climates.html (vastly contrary to what is enforced on Wikipedia climate articles by one or more admins and several supporting political-activist editors, the same handful of names over and over again)
I casually discussed such a bit more at http://forums.spacebattles.com/showthread.php?t=193102&page=6#post6202383 That includes many links to peer-reviewed, university, and government sources with non-PC info.
Et cetera. Et cetera.
I don't bother wasting my time adding non-politically-correct content to Wikipedia articles, however, when it just would as usual be eliminated soon afterwards by the dishonest activist team. But, Jimbo Wales, if you read this, your site -- which could be far better -- is crippled on topics like all the climate articles by the dominance of the bias-enforcing deletionists discussed in my last remark. You alone, if you have honor and willingness to spend a little time investigating, are the about only one left who could have much chance of improving the situation here; ordinary users soon realize there is no point in fighting an admin personally. 12.74.176.214 ( talk) 00:30, 18 November 2011 (UTC)
Turn off the infernal damned donation ads Jimbo! I only need to see them once, not constantly. PumpkinSky talk 03:43, 18 November 2011 (UTC)
Try to sex-up the banners. Change the models. If you absolutely need to be there yourself, shave. -- 92.106.228.219 ( talk) 12:45, 18 November 2011 (UTC)
MOST READ
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I've known that this campaign in India was brewing for a few hours but now have English language confirmation. The man behind it has tried and tried here, and is now going the direct route. Be careful out there, Jimbo: yet another riot or even bomb is not out of the question. I wish the conference well, obviously. - Sitush ( talk) 04:38, 18 November 2011 (UTC)
jimmy a bounding am a simple user in a place in this beautiful world and use your regular page, page of which I am grateful ...... case is so like me or if there are many rather most of the usurious not have a credit card but would like to donate .... happens to them? Also your site is the first to appear in gogle if looking for something .... even nonprofit donations because you ask not to the same institutions that appear on this website as without them you want your advertising also are benefited with the information they deliver to the Board Index. I hope I have made my contribution as I can not cash. and if you need something from Chile and I can help just ask. Leticia ~ ~ ~ ~ — Preceding unsigned comment added by 200.90.242.172 ( talk) 12:08, 18 November 2011 (UTC)
Chzz ► 21:32, 18 November 2011 (UTC)
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The Barnstar of Diligence |
For creating the greatest center for knowledge in the entire world. Alexroller ( talk) 00:52, 19 November 2011 (UTC) |
Hello! Your user page in portuguese Wikipedia was edited by another user after your latest contribuition in 2010-november-12. Is better updating the page with your current version of user page in english Wikipedia (translated) or reverting to your last edit, that says that's better visiting your user page here? -- MisterSanderson ( talk) 01:02, 19 November 2011 (UTC)
Jimbo, there is a discussion at WT:NOT#Objectionable content that examines the following question: Should the use of illustrations (images, audiovisual media) in Wikipedia be a matter for community consensus, or should we aim for a presentation that is in line with presentations in reputable secondary sources? In other words, should the project create its own editorial standards with respect to article illustration, or should we strive to have editorial standards that are broadly consistent with and informed by editorial standards in the relevant literature? What is your view? Cheers, -- J N 466 11:10, 19 November 2011 (UTC)
Jimbo, I wanted to draw your attention to something. A relatively new editor created Wikipedia:WikiProject English. The stated purpose there is to “Ensure that article names conform to English Wikipedia policies”. The user behind that has objected to certain articles on hockey players, such as Marek Zidlicky. Notwithstanding that RSs like Sports Illustrated and The New York Times (and even the NHL themselves) spelled it “Marek Zidlicky”, our article had the title (and body text) spelled “Marek Židlický”.
Well, the user behind getting the Marek Židlický moved (and who started Wikipedia:WikiProject English) has found himself the lightning rod of attention from editors active on those hockey articles and they started this MfD in an effort to muzzle discussion of this.
Perhaps the WikProject’s stated goals aren’t being well articulated and need to be massaged. Whatever its teething problems, it seems quite unfair to try to shut down a WikProject when it is still in its infancy (just a couple of weeks old) before it can prove that it can develop a following. I suspect that given the hyperbole at the MfD, the message point of the WikiProject will live on even if project itself is closed down for running contrary to the wishes of a cabal of editors who, in my humble opinion, are putting Wikipedia in the position of flouting the RSs.
All in all, this issue of flouting the RSs for some sports-related articles strikes me as an instance where a consensus among a limited group of editors, at one place and time is overriding the community consensus on a wider scale. Per WP:LOCALCONSENSUS, that isn’t allowable on Wikipedia. Greg L ( talk) 16:36, 19 November 2011 (UTC)
Methinks it unfortunate that you have such a quick propensity to see it as “just too obvious” that those who advocate follow the RSs are actually motivated by “bad faith” and are “disruptive in nature”. Please familiarize yourself with WP:AGF and WP:NPA; good editors are expected to debate ideas without attacking the motives and character of the individual behind the ideas. I’m glad this discussion has been brought here, where the sunshine of public inspection can help sanitize weak arguments and infected processes. Now…
Your “Fact 6” amounts to “Don’t put credence in the RSs like The New York Times (and Sports Illustrated and the NHL) and any other RS that has editorial policies at odds with Hans. But note that WP:RS and WP:SPELLING don’t yet mention User:Hans Adler as an RS—and for good reason; it is not within the purview of mere wikipedians to debate with furrowed brow and pouted lower lip, what are *good* English-language practices and which ones are *bad* so that Wikipedia can then flout how the rest of the English-language press spells words. Being that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia that “anyone can edit” and is a collaborative writing environment, following the RSs is a core principle. It is not a principle that can be thrown out with the bath water as a small group of editors try to lead the English-speaking world to a New And Brighter Future®™©.
If you don’t understand why Wikipedia follows the RSs, please take a look at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Dates and numbers. See the “Binary Prefixes” section in the archives? Click on it to expand it. Do you see those 18 archives? For three years, rather than follow what the rest of the English-language computer-related press did and write The Dell Inspiron came with 256 MB of memory, hundreds of our articles had The Dell Inspiron came with 256 MiB of memory. That’s pronounced “mebibyte”. No other computer manufacturer nor computer magazine on this pale blue dot uses such terminology when communicating to a general-interest readership. Yet, all it took was 20 editors here at this little backwater RfC to decide that mere wikipedians somehow knew better and Wikipedia should strike off and try to lead by example. We had hundreds of computer articles with “MiB” and “KiB” rather than “MB” and “KB” everyone else used. It took three whole years for it to dawn on those editors that Wikipedia did not have such influence and that using terminology and spelling that English-speaking readers will only see here and never again after leaving our pages is a disservice to our readership. It certainly wasn’t easy to reverse that. The lead proponent of that was an admin who quit Wikipedia after the final decision was cast to follow the RSs.
I take pride that I lead the effort that reversed that unwise practice regarding mebibytes and kibibytes so we wouldn’t finding ourselves out in left field where the RSs don’t tread. Greg L ( talk) 18:42, 19 November 2011 (UTC)
Note that User:Who R you? wanted to start a WikiProject to discuss and work on these issues. That brought out a cabal to silence the *dangerous talk*. I personally think that the proper response to “bad speech” is *better* speech. I’m funny that way. I take a dim view of attempts to squelch discussion on the premise that the underlying ideas are bankrupt and—as you just wrote here—“it is just too obvious” that those behind those ideas have “bad faith and disruptive nature”. As you are now discovering, doing an MfD on a WikiProject is easy. Squelching an idea (like adhering to core principles of Wikipedia) is hard. Greg L ( talk) 19:13, 19 November 2011 (UTC)
(*sigh*) To User:Resolute, your certainty and absolutism about how User:Who R You? is trying to “subvert” something (the harmony of the “in” crowd at the Central Committee For All That Is Good On Wikipedia?) betrays a bite the newcomer attitude.
It might surprise some here that I have no issue whatsoever with diacritics; “follow the RSs” is not a principle I use to either promote or deprecate diacritics or influence things to my personal liking (or further my own sense of what is Right and Holy with the English language). At Talk:Crêpe here, I initially !voted to support “crepe” because I first thought that was most common in English-language RSs (you know: this is en.Wikipedia so “English-language” has something to do with how things are done here). But after much fact finding, it became apparent the most-reliable English-language RSs (say, Alton Brown’s cookbooks), spelled it “crêpe”, so I came down ultimately for that spelling (with the diacritic).
But the principle of how the “crêpe” decision was arrived at was a paradigm the closing admin cited when he closed the RfC to move the article to the new title. Admin/user GTBacchus wrote: The result of the move request was: page moved per discussion. In particular, Noetica's excellent and thorough analysis of the sources behind the Google searches establishes that the use of the circumflex is significantly more common in reliable sources addressing this topic, so the COMMONNAME argument is turned right around. This discussion is where I'll probably point people in the future as an example of how Google searches should be treated; that's good work. Note how the closing admin cited using evidence of real-world English-language practices was the deciding factor. The decision to use either “crepe” or “crêpe” was not the product of back-room debate by mere wikipedians who fancy themselves to be power brokers for the future of the English language.
Wikipedia follows the way the real world works; it is not the other way around and never has been—just as it was when we went back to using “megabytes” rather than “mebibytes” even though some 20 editors were absolutely convinced this was *better* because it was a new standards proposal from the IEC. Well… fine. But is anyone else in the English-speaking world following the IEC’s suggestion? In the case of “mebibytes,” no; Wikipedia was off doing its own thing because some 16-year-old kid with a computer had the same say as does a wikipedian who has a Ph.D. in English.
And ‘crat/user Dweller wrote, during the move of Marek Zidlicky as follows: Opponents of the move have argued passionately and I have felt some resonance with their comments, but WikiProject guidelines and userspace essays cannot trump policy. Furthermore, tempting as it is to defer to precedent, Wikipedia doesn't work on precedent, so I have not viewed any previous diacritic-related page moves referred to by Darwinek.
These two principles “Follow the RSs” and “Ensure that article names and body-text spelling conform to English Wikipedia policies” are nothing to fear. Attempts to label any of what User:Who R You? is trying to do as “subversive” is fear mongering and has no place on Wikipedia. Greg L ( talk) 00:28, 20 November 2011 (UTC)
For each of the several RMs the project has been involved with in its brief life, there are several thousand English-language RS examples of the name without diacritics, and zero, or near zero, with. Britannica`s style is to run with a single version of a name, but Wikipedia generally gives variations. So even if a title is without diacritics, the formal name with diacritics can be given in the opening or box. Kauffner ( talk) 01:10, 20 November 2011 (UTC)
I'm going to make the same comment I always make: blind source following is detrimental to the encyclopedia. To actually use reliable sources effectively, you actually need to understand what the source is saying; just doing a Google search for sources that'll fit your point of view is the opposite to good practice. From my experience, recent good-quality sources tend to transliterate rather than do blind letter replacement; do a search for "Novak Dokovic" and compare it to "Novak Djokovic". The culture of COMMONNAME as holy scripture is very worrying; I don't think it was ever intended to bludgeon diacritic removal into the project; indeed, my reading of the naming guidelines is that, when the original form is not the most common name, then you should transliterate, as per proper practice, but for heavens sake, don't say that "И" is the same as "N". (Also, as a sidenote, XKCD's recent strip on citogenesis has some truth; there's been a shift in referring to the theme from Requiem for a Dream as "Lux Aeterna" once it got its own Wikipedia article, so take care that you're not creating precedent). Sceptre ( talk) 02:03, 20 November 2011 (UTC)
Hopefully, the RMs will continue. Over the years, alot of hockey players articles were unilaterally moved by pro-dios editors. Those arrogant moves were un-necessary. GoodDay ( talk) 08:33, 20 November 2011 (UTC)
The problem you experienced on that hockey-related venue, GoodDay, is that local cabals can arrive at a local consensus that is utterly contrary to common sense editorial practices of genuine editors at major publications. Since Wikipedia has the principle of “follow the RSs” engrained into its DNA and since this applies also to spelling (see WP:SPELLING and WP:RS), flouting the predominant practice of most-reliable English-language RSs is verboten. Publications like The New York Times and Sports Illustrated have editors who invariably possess journalism degrees. And, yes, publications like The New York Times have access to all the diacritic marks they need and have no difficulty accessing them whenever they need to. Type foundries all the way to the Linotype days offered full diacritic support; that practice continues today after type foundries converted to digital typefaces. The New York Times experiences no difficulty with deadlines to properly spell it “François Mitterrand.” It would be only too easy for them to use diacritics when writing the name of an NHL hockey player who originated from Eastern Europe, but they don’t and spell it “Milan Jurcina”. Allegations that The New York Times isn’t an RS because deadline pressures prevent them from using diacritics even though they’d like to are baseless and absurd. And, quite properly, Wikipedia also doesn’t use diacritics in the name of that same hockey player, but this move regarding Milan Jurcina took a lot of editors’ time. That’s a lot of effort to fix these articles just one by one. These are the facts.
Ever since I was a businessman in my early 20s, I’ve remembered a hard-learned and important lesson about power: there is “paper power” and “practical power;” they are two very different things. Wikipedia, by virtue of its enormous size and diversity of its subject matter, gives wikipedians the tools to run off and do dumb things. Because Wikipedia is the “encyclopedia anyone can edit,” we have everyone from English professors with Ph.D.s to 16-year-old kids in their mommy’s basement; all have the same ability to be heard. I am quite certain the 16-year-old kids outnumber the Ph.D.s on Wikipedia; that’s the nature of the beast given that Wikipedia is a hobby. The result is that Wikipedia affords small cabals “practical power” that enables insane divergences from common sense, like this RfC where just 20 editors decided on their own that Wikipedia would unilaterally adopt a proposal by the IEC to use a new unit of measure called “kibibits (Kib)” and “mebibytes (MiB)”. Nearly overnight, we had hundreds of articles changed so they read The Dell Fluffy Bunny 9000 computer came with a whopping 64 MiB of memory. Wikipedia was the only publication on this pale blue dot using such terminology; not even Microsoft’s Dictionary of Computer Terms had entries for the terminology. And because so few general editors cared about this and the use of the terminology was controlled by a local cabal of specialists who circled the wagons (and had an admin who used his power to great effect to revert attempts to get Wikipedia back to planet earth), it was impossible to do anything about that insanity for three whole years.
This is why WP:LOCALCONSENSUS states that Consensus among a limited group of editors, at one place and time, cannot override community consensus on a wider scale. That is an important principle. But it takes an admin with serious brass or a ‘crat (also with lots of brass) to step in and override a wagon-circling cabal. That’s why I brought this issue here. There is an important principle of “follow most-reliable RSs” that is being ignored in some quarters (hockey, for instance), and doing moves one by one, like we did for Marek Zidlicky and Milan Jurcina is time consuming and unnecessary.
I think we’ve had plenty of feedback from all parties here and there is an unnecessary combative nature to the discussions… far too many personal attacks on others with claims that editors intend merely to disrupt. So…
I came here to break out of this cycle so we don’t have a repeat of what happened with “mebibytes.” The proponents of that practice—like those behind eschewing the practices of most-reliable RSs on diacritics—are well meaning; in the case of “mebibytes”, they thought Wikipedia should Lead The World By Example©™®. But Wikipedia doesn’t have that sort of influence; it just looks foolish when we have articles that spell players’ names contrary to all the most-reliable English-language RSs (like the NHL and Sports Illustrated and The New York times). We have no all-powerful, college-educated editor with a journalism degree; that’s why we follow the RSs and don’t pretend that mere wikipedians can debate, with furrowed brow and pouted lower lip, what is the One True Way for proper English-language practices and they’ll just have Wikipedia strike off doing its own thing.
It’s time to hear Jimbo provide guidance here. Greg L ( talk) 19:29, 20 November 2011 (UTC)
During last year's fundraiser, on December 14, I suggested a banner [28] that uses information that came straight out of Sue Gardner's appeal: "If all of our readers donated $1, the fundraiser would be over about four hours from now." [29] Whether by that suggestion or not, by December 28, banners with $5 and $10 were tested out in the same exact form as the banner that is being used in this year's fundraiser. And they seemed to have done well. [30] However, no trials were done with the $1 amount that says that the fundraiser will be over within 4 hours instead of today. Unless trials are done with smaller amounts like $1 and $2, saying the fundraiser will be over within 4 or 2 hours, or less than 1 hour (48 minutes) for $5 if it takes 4 hours for $1 donations from every reader with last year's target and whatever calculation was used to get that data in Sue Gardner's appeal, we have no way of knowing how these banners will perform. It will be a neglect to not run trials with variations of the amount and the time it will take to reach the target if every reader of the Wikimedia projects donated that amount. It can well be that one variation will perform better than the $5 banner saying that the fundraiser will be over today. I greatly urge that trials are done with these banner variations to determine which one performs best:
They also need to be translated into other languages and currencies, probably based on users' IP addresses. So far, I haven't seen a translation of the $5 banner last year or this year. And similar trials should definitely be done for other countries, currencies, and languages.
There could be other variations. One can even wonder if fundraising instead of fundraiser will make a difference. Other variations could be using "all our readers," "each of our readers, "each/every reader," or "each/every reader of Wikipedia," "can be over" and "will be over."
Hopefully, having tested variations of this present banner, the most effective one can be found for each country, currency and language that will help this year's fundraiser and future ones reach their target quicker and easier and with less distraction for people with an element that in ways doesn't belong in Wikimedia projects. One could say it's a necessary evil. So it's all the more important that the target is reached soon and they are over soon.
Logos112 ( talk) 02:25, 20 November 2011 (UTC)
Me too, which is why I want to test the Article of the Month scheme they have on German wikipedia on english wikipedia. How though do we go about running that particular test? What do I have to do get it implemented for a trial period? Still no response? Very disappointing, I think this will be the last time I post on your page as I cannot believe how disinterested you actually are in promoting article growth and that's really what matters here. Trying to approach you or the foundation with development ideas is like driving a car into a brick wall. All I want is just for you to say something like "Its on the agenda and is something we may consider but will need some discussion"! ♦ Dr. Blofeld 13:11, 21 November 2011 (UTC)
I saw that your user page doesn't have interwiki link to Wikipedia Farsi, I will be glad if you want, to translate your userpage to Persian and present it to you. All the best for you-- Sahehco ( talk) 10:12, 20 November 2011 (UTC)
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I see that the 'Message from Jimmy Wales' is back with requests for donations. I have recently come across Flattr, which allows users to reward all manner of bloggers, writers, musicians and anyone who delivers valuable content online. This strikes me as an excellent alternative to advertising revenue, allowing readers to show their appreciation in monetary terms for useful content. I wrote a short blog post about it here: http://www.claire-king.com/2011/11/20/imitation-is-the-best-form-of-flattry/ The website for Flattr is http://Flattr.com A flattr button would presumably be an easy thing to add to Wikipedia pages, and in terms of getting donations it is a much faster, easier gesture for readers to make than a credit card donation. Is it something you have thought about? Claire King ( talk) 23:12, 20 November 2011 (UTC)
Thank you. These four points here are particularly useful: <<Privacy: The standard Flattr button is loaded dynamically from Flattr's own servers, which would presumably violate the Foundation's privacy policy (the surfer's IP would be transmitted to an outside entity, which would be in a position to track the surfer's Wikipedia reading behavior). However, there is the possibility of using a static button or a link as in the examples on Commons. Collaboration: Assuming that the money would go to Wikipedians, instead of the WMF: How should the Flattr donations for an article with many different contributors be distributed? Cannibalization: The average donation per Flattr click is far smaller than the average donation via the "Donate to Wikipedia" link, so (in the case where the WMF would be the recipient of Flattr donations) the overall revenue might actually be reduced. Commission size: Currently, Flattr imposes a 10% fee on donations, which might be seen as too high.>> The 10% fee is still the case. As for cannibalization, perhaps as a trial (for WMF fundraising) outside the 'fundraiser' itself could give some data on clicks & revenue? Great to see from the second link that it's an idea that could be considered for next year. Claire King ( talk) 08:33, 21 November 2011 (UTC)
Hi Jimbo,
Two years ago Wikipedia user donated $1,000 to Wikipedia. Then the user told you about the donation.Surprisingly the user was blocked for this post, and his post was deleted from your talk page.Do you believe you could provide some guarantees that anther substantial donors would not be blocked for donating to Wikipedia? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.156.129.254 ( talk) 16:18, 21 November 2011 (UTC)
Jimmy, several media organizations have either retracted or altered their articles about the event. I've made changes to the article accordingly. It seems there has been some poor media reporting and it doesn't make an article we can keep anymore - I've voted to have it deleted. I apologize for some of the content based on these sources. Zuggernaut ( talk) 17:19, 21 November 2011 (UTC)
Could I ask you a favor? Could you take a look at Amadigi di Gaula and tell me your opinion. Someone who seems to follow me and behaves as a troll added flags there. This person thinks I did something wrong, by adding a few lines from two articles which I found on internet. I contacted one of the authors, and he does not seem to be annoyed, on the contrary he is willing to help. But I really think I did not do something wrong. In fact I made references which is usually enough in academic circles. I contacted an experienced scientist and he told me if this person is not the author, I should not worry. But this wikipedian has different ideas, probably because he does not like me for some time. Nobody else seems to bother. The article is very poorly visited.
This person earlier hijacked George Frideric Handel's art collection which I started. He removed all the links to the Dutch and Italian painters and thinks he did a good job. I don't think he is a good pedagog. The link to this article from the main article Georg Frederick Handel is poor too, so nobody is going there to investigate. Taksen ( talk) 16:36, 21 November 2011 (UTC)
I followed your advice. I hope it works.Greetings from Amsterdam. Taksen ( talk) 18:53, 21 November 2011 (UTC)
P.S. In my point of view the English Wikipedia changed into something that reminds me to the GDR, where you cannot trust anybody. They are unwilling to help and might attack you not understanding the culture or on your language. Besides the rules on the continent are more layed back. We don't have as much lawyers as you have who would like to make a buck, and I can compare because I have experience on the Dutch, German and French Wikipedia. Taksen ( talk) 19:59, 21 November 2011 (UTC)
FYI there is currently a discussion on a policy talk page in the section
Wikipedia is not a democracy regarding
a previous message of yours that is linked to from the policy. --
Bob K31416 (
talk) 15:54, 22 November 2011 (UTC)
P.S. The discussion is just in the first part of the section, not the subsection. --
Bob K31416 (
talk) 16:01, 22 November 2011 (UTC)
P.P.S. Strikeout because the formatting was changed (fixed) to place the off-topic subsection in its own section. --
Bob K31416 (
talk) 04:43, 23 November 2011 (UTC)
I'm more wondering whether to do Jimbo a special crown-shaped barnstar. Of course Wikipedia is, to a significant extent, a democracy. There'd be no point in it otherwise. And of course democracy does not mean the tyranny of the majority. But we are subject to the tyranny of anything, we have a problem. -- FormerIP ( talk) 01:06, 23 November 2011 (UTC)
You know, I've just been having this discussion on my talk page. interesting. What we currently have on project is a kind of pre-tribal band system, which can look like any other system (because the elements of all sophisticated political systems are present 'in the bud' in social bands). There are some elements of tribal society developing (Arbcom and administrators fill a role like 'tribal elders' in loose tribal aggregates, policy and guidelines take on an almost mystical/devotional role in some discussions), but on individual pages it still largely devolves to conflicts between small ideologically insular groups fighting for control of a resource. Aristocracy in any sense of the term would be a superior system; in Aristotle's sense it would be far superior.
Except that is not the case here. what Wikipieda lacks is the overarching culture/structure that makes conglomerates and bureaucracies work. I mean for heaven's sake: if you read the disputes I get into you'll find editors heatedly trying to redefine what 'knowledge', 'information', 'neutrality', and etc mean, so that they can get the result they want; That's nuts for an encyclopedia. you'd never find a conglomerate where different segments try to redefine what 'money' mean, nor a bureaucracy where one group claims that Frank is Joe's superior while another group claims that Joe is Frank's superior. Any corporation or bureaucracy that wound up in that state would be incapable of doing anything, which is the condition we find ourselves in on contentious articles. We simply don't have a sufficiently sophisticated system to compare ourselves with any modern organization. -- Ludwigs2 00:41, 24 November 2011 (UTC)
(
edit conflict)Jimbo, Re your question, "Is there a particular question that you or someone else has?" - Not from me. I was just giving you a heads up on a discussion on a policy talk page about whether or not the policy page was misinterpreting a previous message of yours. And I wasn't requesting anything from you. I thought the section was an important part of policy because it influences how much value to give to consensus polls. Regards, --
Bob K31416 (
talk) 01:52, 23 November 2011 (UTC)
Update. On that policy talk page it turned out I was mistaken about your message being misinterpreted and I corrected my error. Regards, --
Bob K31416 (
talk) 14:53, 23 November 2011 (UTC)
Just ran across this - Petition: Replace the image of Jimmy Wales with that of a golden retriever. Thought it was funny. And a golden retriever would be adorable. Silver seren C 01:55, 23 November 2011 (UTC)
Hi,Jimbo.I just have a query.Why can't experienced rollbackers give permission for rollback at Requests for rollback page?I try to mean,that,rollbackers cannot give any more permission other than for rollback? That's me! Have doubt? Track me! 16:15, 23 November 2011 (UTC)
Jimbo, a few weeks ago, you made the above disapproving comment. I was wondering, how are Wikipedians generally supposed to know that this is a bad thing for the encyclopedia—where can we find a statement of principle that promotes this sentiment? Uniplex ( talk) 20:38, 23 November 2011 (UTC)
I don't know where to say it but here: This year's fundraiser looks exceptionally well done. Mixing personal appeals from multiple members/editors from the community, with a Wikipedia staff programmer, and yourself, is very effective. And the messages are great. I know it's too early to tell, but I'll say it: well done. First Light ( talk) 06:20, 24 November 2011 (UTC)
LOL @ this from the Daily Mail. "Like Eric Clapton, he popularised use of the wah-wah pedal in mainstream rock,which he often used to deliver an exaggerated sense of pitch in his solos. He was influenced by blues artists such as B.B. King, Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Albert King and Elmore James, and later began wearing a moustache like singer Little Richard, saying 'I want to do with my guitar what Little Richard does with his voice'.
I wrote those lines myself in the wikipedia article. When are these shoddy journalists going to write things for themselves? They should not be using wikipedia text without attribution. Are we going to let major newspapers copy from us without attribution? ♦ Dr. Blofeld 10:00, 24 November 2011 (UTC)
Not the first time DM has done it. Perhaps I should contact them and inform that "we're onto them" and warn them against doing it again?♦ Dr. Blofeld 10:22, 24 November 2011 (UTC)
I have emailed the Daily Mail warning them.♦ Dr. Blofeld 13:06, 24 November 2011 (UTC)
Sorry, I know that this page is watched my a myriad of users, so I'd like to make more public about a publication that has sparked some discussions during the last few days -- user TCO has put some issue analysis down here:
PowerPoint: Wikipedia's poor treatment of its most important articles -- Sp33dyphil © • © 10:22, 24 November 2011 (UTC)
I'm fairly sure that this is not the right place for this discussion (if there's a proper venue, please point me there) but here's my response. Apologies to Jimbo, but here I go.
The arguments are interesting, but I am bothered by them on several counts:
Before you talk about page views, you discuss Vital articles. Now, I'm sure a lot of hard work and massive amounts of consensus finding went in to choosing them, but ultimately, they're a horse designed by a committee. Worst, they don't set out to - and therefore don't - correspond with readers' needs.
You cite in the powerpoint Family as one of our vital articles. I'm sure it's a very worthy choice. And indeed, it's had 115,000 views in the last 30 days. Not bad. Except Lady Gaga has had 2.3 million hits in the same period. I'm not certain Lady Gaga would ever gain the consensus to be deemed a vital article. But she is what people want to read about. There are musicians/composers in the vital articles list; 14 of them in total (counting the Beatles as 4). Of those 14, 12 are dead, nearly all of whom died before 1980 (and mostly before 1900).
Deriding the FAs that we produce because they're about topics that some editors deem less worthy than others misses the point. People produce FAs because they're passionate about them. Believe me, without passion, you wouldn't bother entering the process a second time, even if you managed to the gumption to stick through a first time.
And that passion will equate to others' passions, too. I have little to no interest in hurricanes. In the UK, hurricanes hardly ever happen. But I admire the efforts of the editors who produce streams of hurricane FAs - and they'll be useful and interesting to a group of readers.
I tend to write on football and cricket. The latter is the subject of gleeful derision by some, mostly Americans, which I can understand. But cricket is immensely important to many - especially the growing internet userbase of the Indian subcontinent, who treat their cricketing heroes like modern day gods.
We should be proud of the FAs we produce and encourage people to participate in the Featured processes. By all means, encourage people to develop FAs for articles you think are important. The biggest problem I have with your powerpoint is that it seems to me to disparage the work currently done. Phrases like calling some types of articles "peculiar" is counterproductive. Just because you may have little interest in mushrooms is irrelevant if someone has done the hard work to develop quality articles about mushrooms. And who's to say that with a couple of FAs under their belt about mushrooms, they may not take on getting Science featured? Worse, you even disparage individual FA writers, who should be lauded and festooned with garlands of barnstars and ribbons and praise, as "dabblers" and "star collectors". Or you deride the article itself. The Adelaide Leak article, a fascinating study of an intriguing incident, you discount as "1930s cricket player dramah". I tell you, the "dramah" is in your presentation.
I could weather my first two problems in your presentation as minor, but this third is just abysmal and it brings everything crashing down with it.
Don't go trying to improve something that is difficult and requires skill, effort and perserverance (in exchange for no money and a hard time at FAC) by disparaging the contributors and their contributions.
Go rip up this powerpoint and make a fresh start with some humility and respect for the people producing quality articles. -- Dweller ( talk) 11:43, 24 November 2011 (UTC) PS This "dabbler" hadn't heard of the Core Cup till he read your report. I don't understand the table and can't find it onwiki. Where is it?
Note that the article assessments are often way off base. Ancient Greek philosophy is supposedly a start class article, while it is obviously at least C-class. The same goes for many of the supposed "start" class articles: something like Drinking water or Sexism is not a start class article any more by any strectch of the imagination. The quality assessments often lag significantly behind the article improvements, making any study based on those assessments a bit dubious. That doesn't mean that an article like oil couldn't do with some improvement of course. Fram ( talk) 13:11, 24 November 2011 (UTC)
Maybe it would be good to shift focus on to processes that can get random poor articles into decent shape and away from new processes aimed at producing content of the very highest quality.
WP:ITN is a good process for doing that and, contrary to what you might expect, the improvements it throws up are quite diverse. So, over the past week, articles like Dersim Massacre, Bulbophyllum nocturnum, Tony Stewart, Metallic microlattice, National League for Democracy, Eurasian Union and Soyuz TMA-22 have all been significantly improved. More often then not this means turning an article which is a complete dog into one that gives a decent overview of the subject, even if it doesn't reach WP's very highest standards.
How might that sort of process be enhanced or replicated? -- FormerIP ( talk) 14:45, 24 November 2011 (UTC)
@Reso. Yes but there are many editors who would be interested in writing about 19th century composers and philosphers, myself included. The idea is that enough people know about an article of the month scheme where they have the chance to win something and select any article from a batch of core articles to develop... You'd be surprised at the diversity of interests if there was an incentive involved...♦ Dr. Blofeld 15:21, 24 November 2011 (UTC)
![]() | This page is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
I've seen the score chart, styles, scores, and songs, and call-out order be removed. Sottolacqua made a page biased, and lack reputable sources, and miss the most information in Dancing with the Stars (U.S. season 12). She also removed a warning I've wrote to her. The answer is there. I want her gone and to never come back to editing and removing important stuff with Dancing with the Stars (U.S. season 12). -- Plankton5165 ( talk) 04:24, 11 November 2011 (UTC)
I have no strong opinion, but shouldn't this discussion be at the talk page? |
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Any takers anybody to expand this?♦ Dr. Blofeld 22:54, 12 November 2011 (UTC)
Considering the way Berlusconi ran the show for so many years in Italy it seems a very notable event in Italian politics that he would resign and surely longer article could be written about it examining his reasons for doing. WP:NOTNEWSPAPER and WP:RECENTISM you could argue could be used to argue against any event in world politics. If in due course it is merged then so be it but Berlusconi's article is already excessively long...♦ Dr. Blofeld 11:43, 13 November 2011 (UTC)
I just asked for some help with expanding it! Jeez, I thought you'd support me. ♦ Dr. Blofeld 13:31, 13 November 2011 (UTC) |
I have no problems with merging it, but as I say the article is too long.♦ Dr. Blofeld 14:08, 13 November 2011 (UTC)
The Irish burned their genealogical records during the early troubles. (A few of them anyway). But the original records often remain in the churches. Wouldn't this be a splendid new wikia project? Kittybrewster ☎ 13:54, 13 November 2011 (UTC)
Interesting piece in the Guardian today about the work of some Oxford University researchers: The world of Wikipedia's languages mapped. 75.59.227.116 ( talk) 16:11, 11 November 2011 (UTC)
Thanks Wavelength, I hadn't thought of The Signpost. I did add it just now to Wikipedia:Press coverage 2011, which I found by way of The Signpost talk page. Finding anything here is like sorting through a jumble drawer. 75.59.227.116 ( talk) 22:34, 13 November 2011 (UTC)
HABLAN DE CRIMENES DE LEZA HUMANIDAD COMO EL PALACIO DE JUSTICIA, EL CASO DE MAPIRIPAN, LOS ASESINATOS DE TRUJILLO PERO NUNCA NOMBRAN EL ASESINATO DE LO POBRES CAMPESINOS Y EL PROFESOR GONZALO QUE MURIERON EN COMBATES POR NUESTRO GLORIOSO Y HORROSO EJERCITO NACIONAL Y DE SUS FAMILIAS QUE NADIE SE ACUERDA ENTONCES QUE ESTAMOS HACIENDO — Preceding unsigned comment added by 186.112.101.193 ( talk) 15:58, 13 November 2011 (UTC)
I was amazed that Wikipedia does not currently note the pun, with the Shakespeare authorship question, to compare the line from Sonnet 76, about the name "de Vere". For years, the pun has been noted elsewhere, in the line "that every word doth almost tell my name" with the name "deVere" and the word "eVery" as almost telling the name. This is just another major curious omission, where outside sources note the connection, but it is found nowhere in Wikipedia. The concern is not just the years when plays were published, and the potential for unfinished plays to be pen-named later, but also the possible double entendre in that unusual line of poetry. Add this to the long list of simple, easy topics to add to Wikipedia. - Wikid77 ( talk) 17:29, 13 November 2011 (UTC)
It appears to have been recreated - Wikipedia:Run to Mommy - Off2riorob ( talk) 12:50, 14 November 2011 (UTC)
The discussion for the redirect is at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2011 November 13 - perhaps it needs wider publicity. I am pretty certain the community is against the creation of such a redirect. Off2riorob ( talk) 12:53, 14 November 2011 (UTC)
I don't endorse the language used by Pink Oboe above, but I do endorse his (?) request: please undelete this. There was an active deletion discussion in progress, the redirect does not unambiguously meet the speedy-deletion criteria, there is precedent for similar redirects (see the various redirects to ANI, for example), and your deletion circumvented the established process for dealing with such discussions. Nikkimaria ( talk) 13:17, 14 November 2011 (UTC)
Good call, Jimbo. Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 > haneʼ 13:18, 14 November 2011 (UTC)
I cheerfully tossed in the first keep, more for a poke in the eye of the ridiculousness of WQA than anything, but really guys, this doesn't stance a chance in hell of being retained. Let it go. Tarc ( talk) 13:27, 14 November 2011 (UTC)
Hello,
I saw your remark on User talk:Off2riorob about civility, and wanted to say that this is a thoughtful, concise and persuasive argument for one of our essential five pillars. I may quote it to to others, though I may be accused of trying to curry favor with this encyclopedia's most prominent contributor. So be it. Cullen328 Let's discuss it 18:03, 15 November 2011 (UTC)
Hi, I'm directing this quiry to you as I can't find any one else.
Flattr is a donation system where users give an amount of their choosing to Flattr. Then they click Flattr buttons on websites. If a user clicks on 100 of these in a mounth then each website will get a 100th of the money they gave to Flattr. One problem is that you can Flattr a twitter user even if they don't have a Flattr account so a bunch of this money goes unclaimed. Wikipedia is one such example. @Wikipedia has 161 people wanting to give it money. To claim this you would need a Flattr account and the login details for @Wikipedia. As I only discovered Flattr yesterday I don't know how much money this amounts to but every little bit helps. The link to the unclaimed donation is https://flattr.com/thing/425462. Hopefully you can organise to claim it. Thanks, Bardi1100 ( talk) 21:57, 15 November 2011 (UTC)
There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Redirects_for_discussion#Wikipedia:Run_to_Mommy you might be interested in. Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 > haneʼ 00:06, 16 November 2011 (UTC)
I am concerned that when you closed Wikipedia:Redirects_for_discussion/Log/2011_November_13 as a speedy deletion you violated Wikipedia:SPEEDY, unless, of course, it was an office action. I don't believe it's appropriate for admins to super-vote - even if they are voting correctly. Please consider not taking abrupt unnecessary action in the future - there is no rush, and not only did you prevent non-admins from reversing your action, you also used your gravitas as "founder." Such actions should be reserved for things that really need it. Thanks. Hipocrite ( talk) 13:46, 14 November 2011 (UTC)
The right place for this discussion is at the talk page of Wikipedia talk:Wikiquette assistance |
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Jimbo, it appears that at least one member of the community disagrees that incivil pages can be speedily deleted. Please defend your new speedy deletion rationale at WP:SPEEDY. Thanks. Hipocrite ( talk) 14:02, 14 November 2011 (UTC)
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Sorry to bother you again but... somebody's losing it... Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 > haneʼ 14:14, 14 November 2011 (UTC)
This all is one of the main reasons why out-of-process deletions like this one are so often a bad idea. If you had let the discussion run its course, probably none of the current problems would have happened. Fram ( talk) 14:22, 14 November 2011 (UTC)
I think that from time to time it is valuable to remind people that WP:NPA is hard policy, and that civility really does matter. -- Jimbo Wales ( talk) 13:51, 14 November 2011 (UTC)
So, if "civility really does matter", why didn't you (YOU, Jimbo) do something about the two gross instances of incivility or say something to those editors while you deleted the redirect and
dealt with The Pink Oboe? Is there nothing that will draw attention to the civility double standard on Wikipedia, and how it is frequently (and falsely) claimed that content contributors get a free pass while admins get away with whatever they want? I apologize if you actually did do something to address the underlying uncivil admin post that led to all of this, but if you did, I can't find it. An admin can tell two other editors to "shut the fuck up", and no one
bats an eyelash at the Administrators' noticeboard. Yep, civility really does matter. So, ANI is a cesspool, WQA is "run to mommy", and now you, Jimbo, have put yourself in a position of "run to daddy"-- like many fathers, you wandered in to a scuffle, listened to half a story, meted out some punishment, and wandered off, while the real "civility" abuser got off scot free. If you are serious about civility (and there was no NPA except the retracted one from Off2riorob), then DO something about it as BOLD as you did about the Redirect-- start with Stephan Schulz.
SandyGeorgia (
Talk) 16:10, 14 November 2011 (UTC)
SandyGeorgia....those that feel Malleus is at the very least "difficult" aren't delusional. MONGO 17:33, 14 November 2011 (UTC)
Elizabeth Windsor is a large shareholding retiree, who was predominantly unemployed throughout her working life, and occasionally a celebrity or military support worker. She has large unspecified political powers. And she keeps her emphatic-adjective mouth shut in public about politics, because of the examples of her extended family members who didn't, and lost their crowns or heads. Fifelfoo ( talk) 21:53, 14 November 2011 (UTC)
This Signpost page on recent featured content presents a nice summation of a big problem in Wikipedia, and one which US Wikipedians invariably pooh-pooh, because they can't see a problem. The problem is this: Wikipedia is supposed to be an international encyclopaedia, catering to an English-speaking audience around the world. Many of these people will not have a good grasp of global geography. The US is routinely presented in Wikipedia as the 'default' country, although no one country is supposed to have primacy (and I'm not talking about numbers of readers by country - I'm talking about content). Rarely in a US-based article is the country given. It is considered sufficient by the US editors who write it just to give city and state. "Because, of course, we all know that Boise, Idaho is in the US, don't we? And if we don't, we should, and besides, it's only one blue click away to find out." My point is: we shouldn't have to blue click. Such utterly, utterly basic information as the country involved should be presented on the page.
A quick survey of the blurbs on the Signpost page:
So we can see that every single non-US entry has its country given, while only one in five, a measly 20%, of US entries has the country mentioned. The US has a reputation for being parochial and inward-looking; this arrogant assumption that the US is so important and well-known that editors need not bother to specify the country is infuriating, and I see it time and time again in Wikipedia articles. It makes Wikipedia look ridiculous too - how can it claim to contain as comprehensive coverage as other encyclopaedias if it doesn't even bother to give absolute basics? Try clicking on 'random article' and see how many US-based ones don't bother to give the country, even indirectly.
Please can something be done to ensure that such basic information is provided, every single time? 86.143.70.9 ( talk) 10:22, 15 November 2011 (UTC)
I know that U.S.-centrism is a problem here and I favor reasonable corrective measures. Maybe its just me, but when I read "The CN Tower is a communications and observation tower in Downtown Toronto, Ontario, Canada", I can't help thinking that mentioning Toronto alone would have been sufficient. Looking at Big Ben, I note that England is not mentioned until the fifth sentence, and is not wikilinked. That being said, I can't really object to the United States identifier being added to the lead whenever any editor sincerely thinks that it is useful. To disclose my personal bias, I am a Californian, have been to the top of both Mammoth Mountain and the CN Tower, and once saw a spectacular view of Big Ben from an airplane window. In my opinion, some cities and subnational place names are so well known that they don't require the country name immediately thereafter. London, Tokyo, Paris, Beijing, Rome, Cairo, Toronto, Baghdad, Brasilia, Hanoi, Stockholm, Athens, Sydney, Kathmandu, Lagos, Capetown and many others come to mind. I think that the better known U.S. states also qualify, such as California and Texas, as well as provinces such as Ontario. But I wouldn't object if someone wants to add Japan every time a topic located in Tokyo is first mentioned, just as long as its in good faith rather than pointy. Cullen328 Let's discuss it 22:06, 15 November 2011 (UTC)
(ec) While I agree in general that Wikipedia tends to be US-centric, I can't agree with this specific criticism. First, England and Wales are subnational entities very much like US states. It's unfair to treat them as equivalent to sovereign states/countries/nations in this context just because the UK has such a weird terminology for its four major subdivisions. (Three of them are routinely called "countries" in many contexts, and even Northern Ireland is referred to in this way in certain formulaic contexts. At least one of them is also commonly referred to as a "nation". They are never referred to as "states", although they are very much the equivalent of states in the US or Germany.) While most people from outside the UK have no trouble locating England (if there is any problem here then it is a lack of awareness and understanding of the more or less subtle differences between "England", "UK", "Great Britain" and "Britain"), a not all our readers will be aware that such an entity as Wales even exists.
Languages come with a package of cultural background that every reasonably educated speaker is supposed to be familiar with. As someone who learned English formally as a second language I was actually taught this package more or less systematically at school. People who learn English informally normally become familiar with the English-language mainstream culture simply because it forms the basis of almost all texts and broadcasts. It is perfectly reasonable for an encyclopedia to assume this mainstream culture as a given.
With this in mind, the question becomes whether it is tricky for too many typical readers to resolve location information such as the following without confusion:
The answers will differ from case to case, but in the interest of a certain degree of uniformity that makes the encyclopedia easier to use, the way we handle this should be somewhat consistent. Of course it should also be idiomatic. ("London, Ontario" is fine and necessary, but "London, England" sounds weird to British English speakers in most contexts.)
I am afraid there is no perfect solution to this problem. But I consider it perfectly normal and natural if the sovereign state is usually omitted for certain anglophone countries, but always given in full for all other countries. In my opinion this is a harmless built-in bias of any English-language encyclopedia. While I would not mind systematically mentioning sovereign countries in all cases just for consistency, I doubt that this would work in practice. A much more important problem can be seen in many medical articles, for example, which switch back and forth between purely scientific descriptions and specific legal regulations in the US, or US-centric statistics, as if the US covered the entire globe. Hans Adler 22:11, 15 November 2011 (UTC)
Zi-lu said, "... What will you consider the first thing to be done?"
The Master replied, "What is necessary is to rectify names."
It seems as though style guides somewhere are actively making it harder for people to find out the location of places they don't know. See for example [3] unlinking Poland and United States in the lead and infobox. While very few English speakers wont know the location of the United States, and most Europeans should be at least roughly familiar with where Poland is (I've no idea about people from other areas), but how many people can locate Honduras (see Central American Airways Flight 731)? Thryduulf ( talk) 16:53, 16 November 2011 (UTC)
Pinoy Big Brother: Double Up ( | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) (as example only) ( This version, at the time I left this first note; later blanked due to copyvio problems)
Hi Jimbo Wales,
I know you feel strongly about care regarding unreferenced/poorly-referenced BLP content, and I wanted to bring to your attention an example of what is quite a large-scale problem with reality-TV articles. On Pinoy Big Brother: Double Up, a user recently removed a whole chunk [5] but was summarily reverted [6] and even dismissed from the talk page [7]. And these are in no way 'new users'; one has 8000+ edits, the other 20k+.
I advised said user to raise it on BLPN, and I only mention it to you because I've seeen this problem on a great many similar articles. We have a tremendous amount of problems with various versions of The X Factor, and many more. Note the edit-summary from the example removal - "you want to try that on all BB articles too?"
Articles of this type attract a great deal of BLP information gleaned by people just watching the programmes. Most of the actual broadcasts are not available for any later verification, which leads to a problem for editors trying to make sure it is all neutral and appropriate. The articles attract fans, who naturally think along the lines of, "well of course Sally hates Brian, it's obvious" – and it is often hard, and certainly an unrewarding task, trying to battle for verifiability and neutrality. Chzz ► 11:54, 17 November 2011 (UTC)
Update re the example: it looks like there are significant copyright-violations too; see [8]. Chzz ► 15:37, 17 November 2011 (UTC)
is not strictly true - all production companies keep archives these days and while access to those archives may not be easy or free it will be possible. Per [[[WP:PAYWALL]] this is no barrier to verifying the information presented. Our job is helped by the increasing number of these shows being uploaded to YouTube, helping editors to verify the details without access to the archive - That said these are primary sources and should be treated as such with due caution. Stuart.Jamieson ( talk) 09:01, 18 November 2011 (UTC)Most of the actual broadcasts are not available for any later verification
Although you are probably used to your name being invoked as the source of Wikipedia policies and guidelines, I wanted to let you know about a pending discussion regarding notability of U.S. presidential children at Talk:Rosalynn Carter in which User:Redmondome has cited you as a source for his views while trying to impose what I believe to be an overly-broad interpretation of Wikipedia notability guidelines including redirecting Talk:Amy Carter to Talk:Rosalynn Carter without redirecting either of the associated Article pages, which I subsequently reverted. Please feel free to share any thoughts you may have on this matter at Talk:Rosalynn Carter. -- TommyBoy ( talk) 13:15, 17 November 2011 (UTC)
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For Wikipedia! Arsaces ( talk) 08:22, 18 November 2011 (UTC) |
Relevant to 'verifiable, and true'-- Jimbo Wales ( talk) 14:29, 16 November 2011 (UTC)
Just an aside. If you're looking for a source for some info in Wikipedia, try to find a source that predates the edit that first put the info into Wikipedia, when possible. -- Bob K31416 ( talk) 20:42, 16 November 2011 (UTC)
Here is another nice example: [12] [13] [14] [15]. The result: [16] [17] [18]. Poor Madam Walker. -- J N 466 20:43, 18 November 2011 (UTC)
I was interested to see the discussion about the wording of WP:V because it chimes with something I've been thinking about for a while, namely that there is a lot of verifiable but false information out there that gets in the way of writing good articles - especially when someone has an interest in publicising said false information. I've been working on and off for a while on an article about the Cyrus Cylinder, an important ancient artifact in the British Museum. There is a pretty clear mainstream perspective on it from historians which is reflected in the article. However, the artifact was also adopted as as symbol of Iranian national pride by the regime of the late Shah, which made all kinds of claims about it that historians have explicitly rejected. The current Iranian government has also latched on to it as a symbol of its own legitimacy. The cylinder has thus become something of a nationalist totem for Iranians, backed up by a fake translation of its text. The problem is that the claims and the fake translation have taken on a life of their own and are routinely trotted out in news reports and publicised by non-historians such as politicians, lawyers, and so on. The claims are eminently verifiable but, according to the historians, completely fake and false, anachronistic and tendentious. Note that this is not a "two schools of thought" issue with dissenting historians - it is a straight split between historians and non-historians. This has presented a real problem in writing and maintaining the article because it has repeatedly been disrupted by people (usually Iranian nationalists) demanding rewrites to present the claims as "the facts". After all, they're verifiable, so that's all we need, right? And so it goes. Prioryman ( talk) 13:21, 17 November 2011 (UTC)
In other words, truth is not enough, it must be verifiable – and verifiable is not enough, it must also be true (or, at the very least not known to be false). — Coren (talk) 20:54, 17 November 2011 (UTC)
Not only is this article an appalling mess of POV pushing, but it has stayed in almost this exact form for about 6 years, and through 4 AfDs. The Global warming deniers simply come out en masse, shout down all policy-driven arguments, then revert all changes.
Its structure is simple. Present the mainstream view while avoiding any mention of the evidence for the belief. Reduce it to a few bold assertions. Then have page after page of denialists arguing against it, without bothering to mention that these arguments have been dealt with by the mainstream.
Any attempts to fix it are shouted down, attempts to deal with it through Wikipedia processes attract so many POV-pushers that they just end up closed no consensus, allowing the problem to continue forever.
A clearer example of the utter failure of Wikipedia is hard to think of. Is there anything that can actually be done? 86.** IP ( talk) 06:15, 17 November 2011 (UTC)
86's position on this article, that it is propped up by deniers, is quite bizarre. Meanwhile, AH thinks it is propped up by whatever-the-opposite-of-a-denier-is. Being hated by both signs is reasonable evidence that the article itself is actually quite reasonable, which it is. It could be better, if folks could just settle down to try to improve it. What it mostly needs is the inclusion criteria tightened up - our definition of "scientist" is far too broad. But that is for the article talk page, and we could be having that discussion, if people like 86 weren't wasting all the bandwidth with deletion campaigns and appeals to higher authority William M. Connolley ( talk) 08:49, 17 November 2011 (UTC)
What would a reader expect from an article called List-of-fringe-X-deniers? Of course, a list of people denying X, together with their fringe views. That's not POV but exactly what should be in that list. -- Pgallert ( talk) 08:59, 17 November 2011 (UTC)
The subject perhaps holds merit. The content there at the moment is a disaster. For example; the most critical problem is that the list has been defined as "people who disagree with one of these three views" - and quotes from scientists have been originally researched through primary source material (from the individuals) to build the list. Obviously this is problematical. Ideally we would need each entry to be sourced either to a third party whose view is that this scientist opposes that view or an explicit quote that mentions the IPCC and their opposition. And we can then back it up with a direct quote if appropriate. -- Errant ( chat!) 12:06, 17 November 2011 (UTC)
Jimbo Wales, if you wanted to see the accuracy level (or not!) in presentation of the scientists' views, open up two browser tabs and scroll down side by side: one on a July 2011 version using the prev link in revision history, another showing the current version. There was a trick of spreading out the changes over many edits, but that way shows the net result.
It could teach volumes about what sometimes goes on in Wikipedia these days.
Or glance within reference link #2 to learn what the Wikipedia article implies to be 97.4% consensus on "mainstream" (catastrophic) global warming is actually based on 75 of 77 respondents in a 2-question web poll agreeing that temperatures now are warmer than in the Little Ice Age (the "pre-1800s") and that human activity has a non-zero effect (which, to a scientist, means not 0.00000). Most didn't respond at all to the transparently dishonest slanted web poll.
Continued ensuring of dishonesty is unfortunately what can happen when those most likely to make enough edits to gain admin powers are deletionists, far easier for someone to make thousands of deletions than that many constructive additions, resulting sometimes in the very opposite of the best people rising high in power. Wikipedia is an excellent source of info on some topics where nobody has tendency for bias, but breaks down utterly on those which get a core of activists of the worst kind.
If there was a system where Wikipedia polled a sample of a couple dozen people randomly chosen from the whole moderate-edit-number user base of ordinary people, on some controversial matters, it wouldn't be so just a matter of who has one or more hardcore political-activist admins on their side on articles like this. This is an article in one of the worst spots: major enough to attract the activist team but minor enough that Wikipedia's mainstream on it is just enforced by several editors and one or more admins. 12.74.177.6 ( talk) 13:11, 17 November 2011 (UTC)
86** may be new, and inexperienced, even lacking in basic awareness of WP practices, but that does not excuse plain bad argumentation and disruptive behavior. E.g., his characterisation of "an appalling mess of POV pushing" is hardly useful to any temperate discussion, and seems more applicable to his own continued efforts. And: most recently it was he that reverted some moderate attempts to improve the article. As to being shouted down: having repeatedly claimed that there is an OR problem, having added, and then restored, an OR tag, he was expressly asked ( here) to provide an example, yet has failed to do. He may indeed be frustrated, but that is not because of some "denier" conspiracy, but his own failure to convince. Indeed, he seems to entirely misaprehend the situation, as many (all?) of the editors opposing him are not "deniers", and the opposition is not on grounds of POV but on failure of process. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) 19:45, 17 November 2011 (UTC)
The tactic being successfully enforced now by the activist team (cunning I admit) is to delete any quotes expressing the real basis of the scientists' views, to show only repetitive content-free out-of-context remarks, to effectively strawman them all. Presumably they figure such is more effective than deleting the article entirely, as its mere existence provides a pseudo-convincing impression of balance to the naive, although really a trashed version making it look like the scientists have no basis for their views. Again, a comparison of the July 2011 versus current versions provides an example; the former also had nice quote box formatting since deleted.
Incidentally, for one of many examples of doubleplusungood info nobody is ever supposed to see from the perspective of the activist team here, read Dr. Shaviv:
http://www.sciencebits.com/NothingNewUnderTheSun-I
The preceding is a convenient link to a general discussion including for laymen, but the topics within it are covered by papers such as:
http://www.space.dtu.dk/upload/institutter/space/forskning/05_afdelinger/sun-climate/full_text_publications/svensmark_2007cosmoclimatology.pdf Svensmark, Henrik (2007). "Cosmoclimatology: a new theory emerges". Astronomy & Geophysics 48 (1): 1.18-1.24. doi:10.1111/j.1468-4004.2007.48118.x.
http://www.phys.huji.ac.il/~shaviv/articles/sensitivity.pdf Shaviv, Nir J (2005). "On climate response to changes in the cosmic ray flux and radiative budget" (PDF). Journal of Geophysical Research 110 (A08105). doi:10.1029/2004JA010866.
And much, much more, the above just the tip of the iceberg. For instance, non-PC temperature history, for 100 years (not the politically correct 30-40 year cutoff) of the top of the Northern Hemisphere where temperature changes most:
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/ArcticIce/Images/arctic_temp_trends_rt.gif (compare recent history versus 1930s)
The actual history of the warm Minoan Warm Period, Minoiske Warm Period, Holocene Climate Optimum, etc.: http://climate4you.com/images/GISP2%20TemperatureSince10700%20BP%20with%20CO2%20from%20EPICA%20DomeC.gif which is a graph of U.S. government NOAA data: ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/icecore/greenland/summit/gisp2/isotopes/gisp2_temp_accum_alley2000.txt
http://www.meteor.iastate.edu/gccourse/history/paleoclimate/climates.html (vastly contrary to what is enforced on Wikipedia climate articles by one or more admins and several supporting political-activist editors, the same handful of names over and over again)
I casually discussed such a bit more at http://forums.spacebattles.com/showthread.php?t=193102&page=6#post6202383 That includes many links to peer-reviewed, university, and government sources with non-PC info.
Et cetera. Et cetera.
I don't bother wasting my time adding non-politically-correct content to Wikipedia articles, however, when it just would as usual be eliminated soon afterwards by the dishonest activist team. But, Jimbo Wales, if you read this, your site -- which could be far better -- is crippled on topics like all the climate articles by the dominance of the bias-enforcing deletionists discussed in my last remark. You alone, if you have honor and willingness to spend a little time investigating, are the about only one left who could have much chance of improving the situation here; ordinary users soon realize there is no point in fighting an admin personally. 12.74.176.214 ( talk) 00:30, 18 November 2011 (UTC)
Turn off the infernal damned donation ads Jimbo! I only need to see them once, not constantly. PumpkinSky talk 03:43, 18 November 2011 (UTC)
Try to sex-up the banners. Change the models. If you absolutely need to be there yourself, shave. -- 92.106.228.219 ( talk) 12:45, 18 November 2011 (UTC)
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I've known that this campaign in India was brewing for a few hours but now have English language confirmation. The man behind it has tried and tried here, and is now going the direct route. Be careful out there, Jimbo: yet another riot or even bomb is not out of the question. I wish the conference well, obviously. - Sitush ( talk) 04:38, 18 November 2011 (UTC)
jimmy a bounding am a simple user in a place in this beautiful world and use your regular page, page of which I am grateful ...... case is so like me or if there are many rather most of the usurious not have a credit card but would like to donate .... happens to them? Also your site is the first to appear in gogle if looking for something .... even nonprofit donations because you ask not to the same institutions that appear on this website as without them you want your advertising also are benefited with the information they deliver to the Board Index. I hope I have made my contribution as I can not cash. and if you need something from Chile and I can help just ask. Leticia ~ ~ ~ ~ — Preceding unsigned comment added by 200.90.242.172 ( talk) 12:08, 18 November 2011 (UTC)
Chzz ► 21:32, 18 November 2011 (UTC)
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The Barnstar of Diligence |
For creating the greatest center for knowledge in the entire world. Alexroller ( talk) 00:52, 19 November 2011 (UTC) |
Hello! Your user page in portuguese Wikipedia was edited by another user after your latest contribuition in 2010-november-12. Is better updating the page with your current version of user page in english Wikipedia (translated) or reverting to your last edit, that says that's better visiting your user page here? -- MisterSanderson ( talk) 01:02, 19 November 2011 (UTC)
Jimbo, there is a discussion at WT:NOT#Objectionable content that examines the following question: Should the use of illustrations (images, audiovisual media) in Wikipedia be a matter for community consensus, or should we aim for a presentation that is in line with presentations in reputable secondary sources? In other words, should the project create its own editorial standards with respect to article illustration, or should we strive to have editorial standards that are broadly consistent with and informed by editorial standards in the relevant literature? What is your view? Cheers, -- J N 466 11:10, 19 November 2011 (UTC)
Jimbo, I wanted to draw your attention to something. A relatively new editor created Wikipedia:WikiProject English. The stated purpose there is to “Ensure that article names conform to English Wikipedia policies”. The user behind that has objected to certain articles on hockey players, such as Marek Zidlicky. Notwithstanding that RSs like Sports Illustrated and The New York Times (and even the NHL themselves) spelled it “Marek Zidlicky”, our article had the title (and body text) spelled “Marek Židlický”.
Well, the user behind getting the Marek Židlický moved (and who started Wikipedia:WikiProject English) has found himself the lightning rod of attention from editors active on those hockey articles and they started this MfD in an effort to muzzle discussion of this.
Perhaps the WikProject’s stated goals aren’t being well articulated and need to be massaged. Whatever its teething problems, it seems quite unfair to try to shut down a WikProject when it is still in its infancy (just a couple of weeks old) before it can prove that it can develop a following. I suspect that given the hyperbole at the MfD, the message point of the WikiProject will live on even if project itself is closed down for running contrary to the wishes of a cabal of editors who, in my humble opinion, are putting Wikipedia in the position of flouting the RSs.
All in all, this issue of flouting the RSs for some sports-related articles strikes me as an instance where a consensus among a limited group of editors, at one place and time is overriding the community consensus on a wider scale. Per WP:LOCALCONSENSUS, that isn’t allowable on Wikipedia. Greg L ( talk) 16:36, 19 November 2011 (UTC)
Methinks it unfortunate that you have such a quick propensity to see it as “just too obvious” that those who advocate follow the RSs are actually motivated by “bad faith” and are “disruptive in nature”. Please familiarize yourself with WP:AGF and WP:NPA; good editors are expected to debate ideas without attacking the motives and character of the individual behind the ideas. I’m glad this discussion has been brought here, where the sunshine of public inspection can help sanitize weak arguments and infected processes. Now…
Your “Fact 6” amounts to “Don’t put credence in the RSs like The New York Times (and Sports Illustrated and the NHL) and any other RS that has editorial policies at odds with Hans. But note that WP:RS and WP:SPELLING don’t yet mention User:Hans Adler as an RS—and for good reason; it is not within the purview of mere wikipedians to debate with furrowed brow and pouted lower lip, what are *good* English-language practices and which ones are *bad* so that Wikipedia can then flout how the rest of the English-language press spells words. Being that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia that “anyone can edit” and is a collaborative writing environment, following the RSs is a core principle. It is not a principle that can be thrown out with the bath water as a small group of editors try to lead the English-speaking world to a New And Brighter Future®™©.
If you don’t understand why Wikipedia follows the RSs, please take a look at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Dates and numbers. See the “Binary Prefixes” section in the archives? Click on it to expand it. Do you see those 18 archives? For three years, rather than follow what the rest of the English-language computer-related press did and write The Dell Inspiron came with 256 MB of memory, hundreds of our articles had The Dell Inspiron came with 256 MiB of memory. That’s pronounced “mebibyte”. No other computer manufacturer nor computer magazine on this pale blue dot uses such terminology when communicating to a general-interest readership. Yet, all it took was 20 editors here at this little backwater RfC to decide that mere wikipedians somehow knew better and Wikipedia should strike off and try to lead by example. We had hundreds of computer articles with “MiB” and “KiB” rather than “MB” and “KB” everyone else used. It took three whole years for it to dawn on those editors that Wikipedia did not have such influence and that using terminology and spelling that English-speaking readers will only see here and never again after leaving our pages is a disservice to our readership. It certainly wasn’t easy to reverse that. The lead proponent of that was an admin who quit Wikipedia after the final decision was cast to follow the RSs.
I take pride that I lead the effort that reversed that unwise practice regarding mebibytes and kibibytes so we wouldn’t finding ourselves out in left field where the RSs don’t tread. Greg L ( talk) 18:42, 19 November 2011 (UTC)
Note that User:Who R you? wanted to start a WikiProject to discuss and work on these issues. That brought out a cabal to silence the *dangerous talk*. I personally think that the proper response to “bad speech” is *better* speech. I’m funny that way. I take a dim view of attempts to squelch discussion on the premise that the underlying ideas are bankrupt and—as you just wrote here—“it is just too obvious” that those behind those ideas have “bad faith and disruptive nature”. As you are now discovering, doing an MfD on a WikiProject is easy. Squelching an idea (like adhering to core principles of Wikipedia) is hard. Greg L ( talk) 19:13, 19 November 2011 (UTC)
(*sigh*) To User:Resolute, your certainty and absolutism about how User:Who R You? is trying to “subvert” something (the harmony of the “in” crowd at the Central Committee For All That Is Good On Wikipedia?) betrays a bite the newcomer attitude.
It might surprise some here that I have no issue whatsoever with diacritics; “follow the RSs” is not a principle I use to either promote or deprecate diacritics or influence things to my personal liking (or further my own sense of what is Right and Holy with the English language). At Talk:Crêpe here, I initially !voted to support “crepe” because I first thought that was most common in English-language RSs (you know: this is en.Wikipedia so “English-language” has something to do with how things are done here). But after much fact finding, it became apparent the most-reliable English-language RSs (say, Alton Brown’s cookbooks), spelled it “crêpe”, so I came down ultimately for that spelling (with the diacritic).
But the principle of how the “crêpe” decision was arrived at was a paradigm the closing admin cited when he closed the RfC to move the article to the new title. Admin/user GTBacchus wrote: The result of the move request was: page moved per discussion. In particular, Noetica's excellent and thorough analysis of the sources behind the Google searches establishes that the use of the circumflex is significantly more common in reliable sources addressing this topic, so the COMMONNAME argument is turned right around. This discussion is where I'll probably point people in the future as an example of how Google searches should be treated; that's good work. Note how the closing admin cited using evidence of real-world English-language practices was the deciding factor. The decision to use either “crepe” or “crêpe” was not the product of back-room debate by mere wikipedians who fancy themselves to be power brokers for the future of the English language.
Wikipedia follows the way the real world works; it is not the other way around and never has been—just as it was when we went back to using “megabytes” rather than “mebibytes” even though some 20 editors were absolutely convinced this was *better* because it was a new standards proposal from the IEC. Well… fine. But is anyone else in the English-speaking world following the IEC’s suggestion? In the case of “mebibytes,” no; Wikipedia was off doing its own thing because some 16-year-old kid with a computer had the same say as does a wikipedian who has a Ph.D. in English.
And ‘crat/user Dweller wrote, during the move of Marek Zidlicky as follows: Opponents of the move have argued passionately and I have felt some resonance with their comments, but WikiProject guidelines and userspace essays cannot trump policy. Furthermore, tempting as it is to defer to precedent, Wikipedia doesn't work on precedent, so I have not viewed any previous diacritic-related page moves referred to by Darwinek.
These two principles “Follow the RSs” and “Ensure that article names and body-text spelling conform to English Wikipedia policies” are nothing to fear. Attempts to label any of what User:Who R You? is trying to do as “subversive” is fear mongering and has no place on Wikipedia. Greg L ( talk) 00:28, 20 November 2011 (UTC)
For each of the several RMs the project has been involved with in its brief life, there are several thousand English-language RS examples of the name without diacritics, and zero, or near zero, with. Britannica`s style is to run with a single version of a name, but Wikipedia generally gives variations. So even if a title is without diacritics, the formal name with diacritics can be given in the opening or box. Kauffner ( talk) 01:10, 20 November 2011 (UTC)
I'm going to make the same comment I always make: blind source following is detrimental to the encyclopedia. To actually use reliable sources effectively, you actually need to understand what the source is saying; just doing a Google search for sources that'll fit your point of view is the opposite to good practice. From my experience, recent good-quality sources tend to transliterate rather than do blind letter replacement; do a search for "Novak Dokovic" and compare it to "Novak Djokovic". The culture of COMMONNAME as holy scripture is very worrying; I don't think it was ever intended to bludgeon diacritic removal into the project; indeed, my reading of the naming guidelines is that, when the original form is not the most common name, then you should transliterate, as per proper practice, but for heavens sake, don't say that "И" is the same as "N". (Also, as a sidenote, XKCD's recent strip on citogenesis has some truth; there's been a shift in referring to the theme from Requiem for a Dream as "Lux Aeterna" once it got its own Wikipedia article, so take care that you're not creating precedent). Sceptre ( talk) 02:03, 20 November 2011 (UTC)
Hopefully, the RMs will continue. Over the years, alot of hockey players articles were unilaterally moved by pro-dios editors. Those arrogant moves were un-necessary. GoodDay ( talk) 08:33, 20 November 2011 (UTC)
The problem you experienced on that hockey-related venue, GoodDay, is that local cabals can arrive at a local consensus that is utterly contrary to common sense editorial practices of genuine editors at major publications. Since Wikipedia has the principle of “follow the RSs” engrained into its DNA and since this applies also to spelling (see WP:SPELLING and WP:RS), flouting the predominant practice of most-reliable English-language RSs is verboten. Publications like The New York Times and Sports Illustrated have editors who invariably possess journalism degrees. And, yes, publications like The New York Times have access to all the diacritic marks they need and have no difficulty accessing them whenever they need to. Type foundries all the way to the Linotype days offered full diacritic support; that practice continues today after type foundries converted to digital typefaces. The New York Times experiences no difficulty with deadlines to properly spell it “François Mitterrand.” It would be only too easy for them to use diacritics when writing the name of an NHL hockey player who originated from Eastern Europe, but they don’t and spell it “Milan Jurcina”. Allegations that The New York Times isn’t an RS because deadline pressures prevent them from using diacritics even though they’d like to are baseless and absurd. And, quite properly, Wikipedia also doesn’t use diacritics in the name of that same hockey player, but this move regarding Milan Jurcina took a lot of editors’ time. That’s a lot of effort to fix these articles just one by one. These are the facts.
Ever since I was a businessman in my early 20s, I’ve remembered a hard-learned and important lesson about power: there is “paper power” and “practical power;” they are two very different things. Wikipedia, by virtue of its enormous size and diversity of its subject matter, gives wikipedians the tools to run off and do dumb things. Because Wikipedia is the “encyclopedia anyone can edit,” we have everyone from English professors with Ph.D.s to 16-year-old kids in their mommy’s basement; all have the same ability to be heard. I am quite certain the 16-year-old kids outnumber the Ph.D.s on Wikipedia; that’s the nature of the beast given that Wikipedia is a hobby. The result is that Wikipedia affords small cabals “practical power” that enables insane divergences from common sense, like this RfC where just 20 editors decided on their own that Wikipedia would unilaterally adopt a proposal by the IEC to use a new unit of measure called “kibibits (Kib)” and “mebibytes (MiB)”. Nearly overnight, we had hundreds of articles changed so they read The Dell Fluffy Bunny 9000 computer came with a whopping 64 MiB of memory. Wikipedia was the only publication on this pale blue dot using such terminology; not even Microsoft’s Dictionary of Computer Terms had entries for the terminology. And because so few general editors cared about this and the use of the terminology was controlled by a local cabal of specialists who circled the wagons (and had an admin who used his power to great effect to revert attempts to get Wikipedia back to planet earth), it was impossible to do anything about that insanity for three whole years.
This is why WP:LOCALCONSENSUS states that Consensus among a limited group of editors, at one place and time, cannot override community consensus on a wider scale. That is an important principle. But it takes an admin with serious brass or a ‘crat (also with lots of brass) to step in and override a wagon-circling cabal. That’s why I brought this issue here. There is an important principle of “follow most-reliable RSs” that is being ignored in some quarters (hockey, for instance), and doing moves one by one, like we did for Marek Zidlicky and Milan Jurcina is time consuming and unnecessary.
I think we’ve had plenty of feedback from all parties here and there is an unnecessary combative nature to the discussions… far too many personal attacks on others with claims that editors intend merely to disrupt. So…
I came here to break out of this cycle so we don’t have a repeat of what happened with “mebibytes.” The proponents of that practice—like those behind eschewing the practices of most-reliable RSs on diacritics—are well meaning; in the case of “mebibytes”, they thought Wikipedia should Lead The World By Example©™®. But Wikipedia doesn’t have that sort of influence; it just looks foolish when we have articles that spell players’ names contrary to all the most-reliable English-language RSs (like the NHL and Sports Illustrated and The New York times). We have no all-powerful, college-educated editor with a journalism degree; that’s why we follow the RSs and don’t pretend that mere wikipedians can debate, with furrowed brow and pouted lower lip, what is the One True Way for proper English-language practices and they’ll just have Wikipedia strike off doing its own thing.
It’s time to hear Jimbo provide guidance here. Greg L ( talk) 19:29, 20 November 2011 (UTC)
During last year's fundraiser, on December 14, I suggested a banner [28] that uses information that came straight out of Sue Gardner's appeal: "If all of our readers donated $1, the fundraiser would be over about four hours from now." [29] Whether by that suggestion or not, by December 28, banners with $5 and $10 were tested out in the same exact form as the banner that is being used in this year's fundraiser. And they seemed to have done well. [30] However, no trials were done with the $1 amount that says that the fundraiser will be over within 4 hours instead of today. Unless trials are done with smaller amounts like $1 and $2, saying the fundraiser will be over within 4 or 2 hours, or less than 1 hour (48 minutes) for $5 if it takes 4 hours for $1 donations from every reader with last year's target and whatever calculation was used to get that data in Sue Gardner's appeal, we have no way of knowing how these banners will perform. It will be a neglect to not run trials with variations of the amount and the time it will take to reach the target if every reader of the Wikimedia projects donated that amount. It can well be that one variation will perform better than the $5 banner saying that the fundraiser will be over today. I greatly urge that trials are done with these banner variations to determine which one performs best:
They also need to be translated into other languages and currencies, probably based on users' IP addresses. So far, I haven't seen a translation of the $5 banner last year or this year. And similar trials should definitely be done for other countries, currencies, and languages.
There could be other variations. One can even wonder if fundraising instead of fundraiser will make a difference. Other variations could be using "all our readers," "each of our readers, "each/every reader," or "each/every reader of Wikipedia," "can be over" and "will be over."
Hopefully, having tested variations of this present banner, the most effective one can be found for each country, currency and language that will help this year's fundraiser and future ones reach their target quicker and easier and with less distraction for people with an element that in ways doesn't belong in Wikimedia projects. One could say it's a necessary evil. So it's all the more important that the target is reached soon and they are over soon.
Logos112 ( talk) 02:25, 20 November 2011 (UTC)
Me too, which is why I want to test the Article of the Month scheme they have on German wikipedia on english wikipedia. How though do we go about running that particular test? What do I have to do get it implemented for a trial period? Still no response? Very disappointing, I think this will be the last time I post on your page as I cannot believe how disinterested you actually are in promoting article growth and that's really what matters here. Trying to approach you or the foundation with development ideas is like driving a car into a brick wall. All I want is just for you to say something like "Its on the agenda and is something we may consider but will need some discussion"! ♦ Dr. Blofeld 13:11, 21 November 2011 (UTC)
I saw that your user page doesn't have interwiki link to Wikipedia Farsi, I will be glad if you want, to translate your userpage to Persian and present it to you. All the best for you-- Sahehco ( talk) 10:12, 20 November 2011 (UTC)
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I see that the 'Message from Jimmy Wales' is back with requests for donations. I have recently come across Flattr, which allows users to reward all manner of bloggers, writers, musicians and anyone who delivers valuable content online. This strikes me as an excellent alternative to advertising revenue, allowing readers to show their appreciation in monetary terms for useful content. I wrote a short blog post about it here: http://www.claire-king.com/2011/11/20/imitation-is-the-best-form-of-flattry/ The website for Flattr is http://Flattr.com A flattr button would presumably be an easy thing to add to Wikipedia pages, and in terms of getting donations it is a much faster, easier gesture for readers to make than a credit card donation. Is it something you have thought about? Claire King ( talk) 23:12, 20 November 2011 (UTC)
Thank you. These four points here are particularly useful: <<Privacy: The standard Flattr button is loaded dynamically from Flattr's own servers, which would presumably violate the Foundation's privacy policy (the surfer's IP would be transmitted to an outside entity, which would be in a position to track the surfer's Wikipedia reading behavior). However, there is the possibility of using a static button or a link as in the examples on Commons. Collaboration: Assuming that the money would go to Wikipedians, instead of the WMF: How should the Flattr donations for an article with many different contributors be distributed? Cannibalization: The average donation per Flattr click is far smaller than the average donation via the "Donate to Wikipedia" link, so (in the case where the WMF would be the recipient of Flattr donations) the overall revenue might actually be reduced. Commission size: Currently, Flattr imposes a 10% fee on donations, which might be seen as too high.>> The 10% fee is still the case. As for cannibalization, perhaps as a trial (for WMF fundraising) outside the 'fundraiser' itself could give some data on clicks & revenue? Great to see from the second link that it's an idea that could be considered for next year. Claire King ( talk) 08:33, 21 November 2011 (UTC)
Hi Jimbo,
Two years ago Wikipedia user donated $1,000 to Wikipedia. Then the user told you about the donation.Surprisingly the user was blocked for this post, and his post was deleted from your talk page.Do you believe you could provide some guarantees that anther substantial donors would not be blocked for donating to Wikipedia? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.156.129.254 ( talk) 16:18, 21 November 2011 (UTC)
Jimmy, several media organizations have either retracted or altered their articles about the event. I've made changes to the article accordingly. It seems there has been some poor media reporting and it doesn't make an article we can keep anymore - I've voted to have it deleted. I apologize for some of the content based on these sources. Zuggernaut ( talk) 17:19, 21 November 2011 (UTC)
Could I ask you a favor? Could you take a look at Amadigi di Gaula and tell me your opinion. Someone who seems to follow me and behaves as a troll added flags there. This person thinks I did something wrong, by adding a few lines from two articles which I found on internet. I contacted one of the authors, and he does not seem to be annoyed, on the contrary he is willing to help. But I really think I did not do something wrong. In fact I made references which is usually enough in academic circles. I contacted an experienced scientist and he told me if this person is not the author, I should not worry. But this wikipedian has different ideas, probably because he does not like me for some time. Nobody else seems to bother. The article is very poorly visited.
This person earlier hijacked George Frideric Handel's art collection which I started. He removed all the links to the Dutch and Italian painters and thinks he did a good job. I don't think he is a good pedagog. The link to this article from the main article Georg Frederick Handel is poor too, so nobody is going there to investigate. Taksen ( talk) 16:36, 21 November 2011 (UTC)
I followed your advice. I hope it works.Greetings from Amsterdam. Taksen ( talk) 18:53, 21 November 2011 (UTC)
P.S. In my point of view the English Wikipedia changed into something that reminds me to the GDR, where you cannot trust anybody. They are unwilling to help and might attack you not understanding the culture or on your language. Besides the rules on the continent are more layed back. We don't have as much lawyers as you have who would like to make a buck, and I can compare because I have experience on the Dutch, German and French Wikipedia. Taksen ( talk) 19:59, 21 November 2011 (UTC)
FYI there is currently a discussion on a policy talk page in the section
Wikipedia is not a democracy regarding
a previous message of yours that is linked to from the policy. --
Bob K31416 (
talk) 15:54, 22 November 2011 (UTC)
P.S. The discussion is just in the first part of the section, not the subsection. --
Bob K31416 (
talk) 16:01, 22 November 2011 (UTC)
P.P.S. Strikeout because the formatting was changed (fixed) to place the off-topic subsection in its own section. --
Bob K31416 (
talk) 04:43, 23 November 2011 (UTC)
I'm more wondering whether to do Jimbo a special crown-shaped barnstar. Of course Wikipedia is, to a significant extent, a democracy. There'd be no point in it otherwise. And of course democracy does not mean the tyranny of the majority. But we are subject to the tyranny of anything, we have a problem. -- FormerIP ( talk) 01:06, 23 November 2011 (UTC)
You know, I've just been having this discussion on my talk page. interesting. What we currently have on project is a kind of pre-tribal band system, which can look like any other system (because the elements of all sophisticated political systems are present 'in the bud' in social bands). There are some elements of tribal society developing (Arbcom and administrators fill a role like 'tribal elders' in loose tribal aggregates, policy and guidelines take on an almost mystical/devotional role in some discussions), but on individual pages it still largely devolves to conflicts between small ideologically insular groups fighting for control of a resource. Aristocracy in any sense of the term would be a superior system; in Aristotle's sense it would be far superior.
Except that is not the case here. what Wikipieda lacks is the overarching culture/structure that makes conglomerates and bureaucracies work. I mean for heaven's sake: if you read the disputes I get into you'll find editors heatedly trying to redefine what 'knowledge', 'information', 'neutrality', and etc mean, so that they can get the result they want; That's nuts for an encyclopedia. you'd never find a conglomerate where different segments try to redefine what 'money' mean, nor a bureaucracy where one group claims that Frank is Joe's superior while another group claims that Joe is Frank's superior. Any corporation or bureaucracy that wound up in that state would be incapable of doing anything, which is the condition we find ourselves in on contentious articles. We simply don't have a sufficiently sophisticated system to compare ourselves with any modern organization. -- Ludwigs2 00:41, 24 November 2011 (UTC)
(
edit conflict)Jimbo, Re your question, "Is there a particular question that you or someone else has?" - Not from me. I was just giving you a heads up on a discussion on a policy talk page about whether or not the policy page was misinterpreting a previous message of yours. And I wasn't requesting anything from you. I thought the section was an important part of policy because it influences how much value to give to consensus polls. Regards, --
Bob K31416 (
talk) 01:52, 23 November 2011 (UTC)
Update. On that policy talk page it turned out I was mistaken about your message being misinterpreted and I corrected my error. Regards, --
Bob K31416 (
talk) 14:53, 23 November 2011 (UTC)
Just ran across this - Petition: Replace the image of Jimmy Wales with that of a golden retriever. Thought it was funny. And a golden retriever would be adorable. Silver seren C 01:55, 23 November 2011 (UTC)
Hi,Jimbo.I just have a query.Why can't experienced rollbackers give permission for rollback at Requests for rollback page?I try to mean,that,rollbackers cannot give any more permission other than for rollback? That's me! Have doubt? Track me! 16:15, 23 November 2011 (UTC)
Jimbo, a few weeks ago, you made the above disapproving comment. I was wondering, how are Wikipedians generally supposed to know that this is a bad thing for the encyclopedia—where can we find a statement of principle that promotes this sentiment? Uniplex ( talk) 20:38, 23 November 2011 (UTC)
I don't know where to say it but here: This year's fundraiser looks exceptionally well done. Mixing personal appeals from multiple members/editors from the community, with a Wikipedia staff programmer, and yourself, is very effective. And the messages are great. I know it's too early to tell, but I'll say it: well done. First Light ( talk) 06:20, 24 November 2011 (UTC)
LOL @ this from the Daily Mail. "Like Eric Clapton, he popularised use of the wah-wah pedal in mainstream rock,which he often used to deliver an exaggerated sense of pitch in his solos. He was influenced by blues artists such as B.B. King, Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Albert King and Elmore James, and later began wearing a moustache like singer Little Richard, saying 'I want to do with my guitar what Little Richard does with his voice'.
I wrote those lines myself in the wikipedia article. When are these shoddy journalists going to write things for themselves? They should not be using wikipedia text without attribution. Are we going to let major newspapers copy from us without attribution? ♦ Dr. Blofeld 10:00, 24 November 2011 (UTC)
Not the first time DM has done it. Perhaps I should contact them and inform that "we're onto them" and warn them against doing it again?♦ Dr. Blofeld 10:22, 24 November 2011 (UTC)
I have emailed the Daily Mail warning them.♦ Dr. Blofeld 13:06, 24 November 2011 (UTC)
Sorry, I know that this page is watched my a myriad of users, so I'd like to make more public about a publication that has sparked some discussions during the last few days -- user TCO has put some issue analysis down here:
PowerPoint: Wikipedia's poor treatment of its most important articles -- Sp33dyphil © • © 10:22, 24 November 2011 (UTC)
I'm fairly sure that this is not the right place for this discussion (if there's a proper venue, please point me there) but here's my response. Apologies to Jimbo, but here I go.
The arguments are interesting, but I am bothered by them on several counts:
Before you talk about page views, you discuss Vital articles. Now, I'm sure a lot of hard work and massive amounts of consensus finding went in to choosing them, but ultimately, they're a horse designed by a committee. Worst, they don't set out to - and therefore don't - correspond with readers' needs.
You cite in the powerpoint Family as one of our vital articles. I'm sure it's a very worthy choice. And indeed, it's had 115,000 views in the last 30 days. Not bad. Except Lady Gaga has had 2.3 million hits in the same period. I'm not certain Lady Gaga would ever gain the consensus to be deemed a vital article. But she is what people want to read about. There are musicians/composers in the vital articles list; 14 of them in total (counting the Beatles as 4). Of those 14, 12 are dead, nearly all of whom died before 1980 (and mostly before 1900).
Deriding the FAs that we produce because they're about topics that some editors deem less worthy than others misses the point. People produce FAs because they're passionate about them. Believe me, without passion, you wouldn't bother entering the process a second time, even if you managed to the gumption to stick through a first time.
And that passion will equate to others' passions, too. I have little to no interest in hurricanes. In the UK, hurricanes hardly ever happen. But I admire the efforts of the editors who produce streams of hurricane FAs - and they'll be useful and interesting to a group of readers.
I tend to write on football and cricket. The latter is the subject of gleeful derision by some, mostly Americans, which I can understand. But cricket is immensely important to many - especially the growing internet userbase of the Indian subcontinent, who treat their cricketing heroes like modern day gods.
We should be proud of the FAs we produce and encourage people to participate in the Featured processes. By all means, encourage people to develop FAs for articles you think are important. The biggest problem I have with your powerpoint is that it seems to me to disparage the work currently done. Phrases like calling some types of articles "peculiar" is counterproductive. Just because you may have little interest in mushrooms is irrelevant if someone has done the hard work to develop quality articles about mushrooms. And who's to say that with a couple of FAs under their belt about mushrooms, they may not take on getting Science featured? Worse, you even disparage individual FA writers, who should be lauded and festooned with garlands of barnstars and ribbons and praise, as "dabblers" and "star collectors". Or you deride the article itself. The Adelaide Leak article, a fascinating study of an intriguing incident, you discount as "1930s cricket player dramah". I tell you, the "dramah" is in your presentation.
I could weather my first two problems in your presentation as minor, but this third is just abysmal and it brings everything crashing down with it.
Don't go trying to improve something that is difficult and requires skill, effort and perserverance (in exchange for no money and a hard time at FAC) by disparaging the contributors and their contributions.
Go rip up this powerpoint and make a fresh start with some humility and respect for the people producing quality articles. -- Dweller ( talk) 11:43, 24 November 2011 (UTC) PS This "dabbler" hadn't heard of the Core Cup till he read your report. I don't understand the table and can't find it onwiki. Where is it?
Note that the article assessments are often way off base. Ancient Greek philosophy is supposedly a start class article, while it is obviously at least C-class. The same goes for many of the supposed "start" class articles: something like Drinking water or Sexism is not a start class article any more by any strectch of the imagination. The quality assessments often lag significantly behind the article improvements, making any study based on those assessments a bit dubious. That doesn't mean that an article like oil couldn't do with some improvement of course. Fram ( talk) 13:11, 24 November 2011 (UTC)
Maybe it would be good to shift focus on to processes that can get random poor articles into decent shape and away from new processes aimed at producing content of the very highest quality.
WP:ITN is a good process for doing that and, contrary to what you might expect, the improvements it throws up are quite diverse. So, over the past week, articles like Dersim Massacre, Bulbophyllum nocturnum, Tony Stewart, Metallic microlattice, National League for Democracy, Eurasian Union and Soyuz TMA-22 have all been significantly improved. More often then not this means turning an article which is a complete dog into one that gives a decent overview of the subject, even if it doesn't reach WP's very highest standards.
How might that sort of process be enhanced or replicated? -- FormerIP ( talk) 14:45, 24 November 2011 (UTC)
@Reso. Yes but there are many editors who would be interested in writing about 19th century composers and philosphers, myself included. The idea is that enough people know about an article of the month scheme where they have the chance to win something and select any article from a batch of core articles to develop... You'd be surprised at the diversity of interests if there was an incentive involved...♦ Dr. Blofeld 15:21, 24 November 2011 (UTC)