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RE: Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Muhammad images (via Talk:Muhammad#Image_poll)
... After SOPA really this looks insanely hypocritical...
An enyclopaedia should be about facts and an objective view of the materials available, not hiding things away depending on whose pressure/lobbyist group is larger...
' WP:NOTCENSORED - "Any rules that forbid members of a given organization, fraternity, or religion to show a name or image do not apply to Wikipedia because Wikipedia is not a member of those organizations."
You either are, or you aren't... If you're going to hide this stuff then it's going to be other "blasphemous" material next...
Why not go the whole way and just start letting people opt out from links and articles that could offend them, per Websense let people live in an maginary world of their own creation: Filter bubbles in internet search engines, BBC News Online
Is copying verbatim an extensive part of an article abstract likely to be a copyright violation? [1] The section copied is over seventy words long. Is it proper for an editor to revert edits designed to avoid a coopyvio in favor of the full exact quote proper in your opinion? BTW, the exact excuse given is
but would anyone think that only copying 40% of an abstract (all in consecustive words) is proper? I give this as an example since we have a discussion above on this talk page about copyright and Wikipedia, and copyright in general. Cheers. Collect ( talk) 03:18, 30 January 2012 (UTC)
``` Buster Seven Talk 08:20, 31 January 2012 (UTC)
I've been contacted by people in the movie industry who would like to sit down and talk to me about what kind of bill I would support. While I believe that they have been arrogant and overbearing in the past, I also think this is a good opportunity for us to move forward with some proposals that will address some of the real issues they have, AND a good opportunity for us to move forward with some proposals that will address many of the real issues that we have. Let's discuss. What's your (realistic) dream copyright reform bill? As Mick sang, "You can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes..."-- Jimbo Wales ( talk) 20:21, 28 January 2012 (UTC)
I have to say that, as someone who was opposed to the initial blackout, I'm opposed to Wikipedia digging into the political game any deeper than it already is. One instance of political bias is, while not ethically proper in my opinion, it's permissible as a simple brain belch, a loss of common intelligence to push a political ideal on behalf of certain people. I have a major issue with Wikipedia trying to lose more face by becoming more politically involved. Inviting, but improper. Within hours of a 'law' that had anything whatsoever to do with this encyclo going public, either some of our own people would begin to edit pages about certain people saying "____ Representative voted opposing the new bill proposed, that was partially written by Jimmy Wales, founder (co-founder?) of Wikipedia" or a member of the outside media would directly tie us to someone who voted for or against the bill.
Moreover, where does it end? I'm by no means impartial, as I don't think it's truly possible to be impartial unless you simply don't use your mind whilst writing. What bugs me is, after this second foray into politics, then what? Backing certain politicians? Partys? Agendas?
I'm opposed to the SOPA and PIPA crapolA that everyone else here opposes, but in the same vein, once you lose credibility, you will never win it all back, regardless of what you do. If White Star Line was still operating under the old name, you think any of their competition could ignore sticking a few "And WE have captains who OBEY ice warnings!" ads? I was opposed to the bass ackwards way the initial blackout was carried out, I was opposed to Wikipedia involving itself in politics in any form, and I am opposed to Wikipedia becoming more involved. (Sorry Jimbo, but to a lot of people, you ARE Wikipedia, and it does what you tell it to. Whether you can or can't isn't the question. As the face of the project, you really don't need to be dragging it through whatever mud you like the looks of. Wikipedia has, for the time being, a lot going for it. Once it, and more directly, you begin to dig into politics, it stands to lose a lot of credibility. An encyclopedia without credibility is just one site clogging up Google every time you search for something.)
I realize and recognize that my statement doesn't matter, because a 'committee' will vote on it regardless. And, those who follow you directly and bow in your shadow will mindlessly follow, as they did with the blackout. My own suspicion says, the whole group could be totally opposed to something, if you came along and said you liked it, there would be a LOT of "Well, on second thought, Jimbo has a point and I change my vote". For better or worse, where you go, a whole lot of this group would follow because of admiration. I can't say I'm one of them, but I don't follow blindly. Actually, I've never known me to follow at all unless I liked where the group I was with was going. Nothing personal against you, you just draw a lot of pull from many people. It happens.) As I see it, Wikipedia has no place in politics, and therefore shouldn't try to create a place. Copyrights are so screwy that it's sickening, but at the same time, speed limit laws are screwy too, and I don't think it's Wikipedias business to be messing with either.
I'll catch trouble for this, but this is partially why I've hated seeing you make any type of definitive statement; people will follow you even if the idea isn't all that great. Even if it undermine what I feel is what this place is about. I've only been an 'editor' for a few days, but I've been a faithful reader for a few years. Bring on the hate mail. ;) Skweeky ( talk) 05:11, 29 January 2012 (UTC)
Disabling copyright protection is a grossly ill-considered position. Protection of intellectual property rights was a long struggle (see the Mark Twain quote I earlier posted on this page on [6]) (yes - it may go too far in some cases - but the baby-bathwater anaology still holds true), and for Wikipedia to be seen in any way as an opponent of them is against the core foundations of Wikipedia. Cheers. Collect ( talk) 13:33, 29 January 2012 (UTC)
Create a wiki for this law, the structure of which could perhaps be used as a prototype for working on various other laws. It's a new direction, but worth exploring. Start by providing the full wording for existing law(s), SOPA and PIPA, along with discussions of the pros and cons of each. Include Lawrence Lessig's proposals along with other major proposals and alternatives. Then facilitate discussion on the purpose of copyright law, what helps and what hurts innovation, how and when legal restrictions and regulations are useful, etc. This should NOT be limited to discussions of x number of years of y type of protection (the existing structure, simply arguing over the number), but should include other ideas such as strong protection for a short period of time, followed by lesser protection for another period of time. Whatever. The important thing is to focus on the intended goal, and bring forth and fully discuss some new ideas. Living in a globalized society, copyright laws need to be global as well. Wikipedians are global, so they should be able to represent various points of view on this. Good luck. 76.192.40.75 ( talk) 18:44, 29 January 2012 (UTC)
Issues that would interest them: Thank you for asking our opinions. As you know, there are many issues to consider. So, here are some reminders:
I know you know this, I just want hammer it into your mind more forcefully: When going into these "discussions," it is imperative to leave "AGF", "DONTBITE", and whatever nice rules we have here at home. No matter what they're gonna tell you and no matter how much they'll smile at you, their mind is focused exclusively on money and how much of it they can make, regardless of consequences, morals, or costs to others. Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 > haneʼ 04:36, 30 January 2012 (UTC)
A concession that could be made to the content industry that I would think the community should support would be to advise the industry that if another bill sponsored by the content industry should appear next year, they would be invited to address the Wikipedia community directly on an equal footing with those opposed to the bill. In my view giving them a fair chance to stop a consensus from forming for active opposition would also mean advising them that if non-Wikipedia civil liberties activist sites are directing their people towards a Wikipedia page calling for community input (as occurred prior to the blackout), they would be free to direct their people similarly. The alternative to having the call for input being open without discrimination would be to have it closed without discrimination, such that all outside groups would be equally discouraged from interference. Also, Wikipedia ought to be happy to trade away more aggressive enforcement of copyright (since Wikipedia is already aggressive, at least in my opinion) if the same bill put copyrighted material into the public domain sooner and/or in larger quantities.-- Brian Dell ( talk) 04:31, 2 February 2012 (UTC)
Jimbo, I think I'm right in saying that you've been a strong advocate of protecting our community members against privacy violations and harassment. A case came to my attention recently of a Wikipedian who posted the real name, home address and phone number of another Wikipedian who had that same day received a real-world threat relating to his role on the Commons. The issue is currently being discussed at WP:AN/I#Delicious Carbuncle harassment and outing: block or ban proposal.
If this privacy violation had happened on Wikipedia I'm sure it would have resulted in an immediate block. However, it happened on an external website (one dedicated to discussing Wikipedia - you can guess which it is). I have seen the suggestion from time to time that we can't do anything about off-wiki conduct by Wikipedians (despite what WP:OUTING#Off-wiki harassment says). That might be true if their conduct has nothing to do with Wikipedia but in this particular case there was a clear attempt to influence things happening here and on Commons, by using tactics forbidden on Wikipedia. As a general rule, would you say that it shouldn't be acceptable for Wikipedians to sidestep prohibitions on certain activities on-wiki by moving off-wiki to do them there? From my perspective, I take the view that if Wikipedians have issues with each other about their on-wiki activities they should try to resolve them on-wiki, rather than seeking to use off-wiki forums to evade Wikipedia's bans on harassment, outing, canvassing etc. I'd be interested to know what you think. Prioryman ( talk) 12:09, 29 January 2012 (UTC)
Jimmy, I'd like you to weigh in here as well. Y u no be Russavia ლ(ಠ益ಠლ) 07:45, 30 January 2012 (UTC)
I have to say this is really quite unbelievable. We have a situation where a Wikipedian seeking to advance an on-wiki political dispute has posted the home address and phone number of another Wikipedian, who was and is still facing real-world harassment. This is undisputed. This action put the victim in real personal danger, and it was strictly prohibited by Wikipedia's harassment policy. That is also undisputed. And yet we have people on AN/I blaming the victim (!) and actually defending the perpetrator's actions as somehow justified, even though we've never accepted any justification for egregious privacy violations. Have we really reached a point where (some of) the Wikipedia community is so obsessed with scoring political points that they are willing to condone any intrusion into a person's off-wiki life? If so, why do we even have a harassment policy in the first place, if nobody is willing to enforce it? I note that any admin would have had a cast-iron case for indefinitely blocking the perpetrator, which would be well supported by policy and precedent, yet no action whatsoever has been taken against him. Can it be that the perpetrator and his thuggish supporters on Wikipedia Review have intimidated the entire admin community? Prioryman ( talk) 19:38, 31 January 2012 (UTC)
Closing conversation that didn't ask me any questions |
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The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it. |
This is a follow-up to the following discussion: User_talk:Jimbo_Wales/Archive_95#SOPA.2FPIPA_backlash, User_talk:Jimbo_Wales/Archive_95#ACTA, User_talk:Jimbo_Wales/Archive_95#White_House_petitions. As expected, the White House has decided not to respond to the "Investigate Chris Dodd and the MPAA for bribery after he publicly admited to bribing politicans to pass legislation" petition. Nevertheless, it garnered 31,034 signatures before being closed. The "End ACTA and Protect our right to privacy on the Internet" petition, on the other hand, now has over 37,000 signatures, and the White House it more likely to give a real reply to that one. The "Reduce the term of copyrights to a maximum of 56 years" petition currently has over 2,800 signatures. -- Michaeldsuarez ( talk) 14:35, 1 February 2012 (UTC)
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The Wikipedia project as bounded by the oversight of the Wikimedia foundation has imo from my experience and investigations, masses of copyright violating uploads and cut and copy paste content currently hosted on its servers. - Good faith is a consideration here in regards to SOPA - The foundation and its tentacles are in no way promoting or encouraging the uploading and sharing of copyrighted content, although an objective position imo would suggest a raised request for evidence of file ownership prior to upload would be a protective position, and although there are copyright investigations opened - they are not well actioned and can take months and even over a year to action. Raising the profiles of these issues would further protect the project from litigation resulting from any more restrictive legislation, as also would the restriction of unconfirmed accounts from the ability to publish via wikimedia servers, more than limited content additions without any review. [[WP:PEND|Pending protection]] although rejected at a en wikipedia poll would have been beneficial in this regard. -- Youreallycan [[User:Philippe (WMF)|Philippe Beaudette, Wikimedia Foundation]] clarified that the foundation was allowing equal weight to any vote, IP addresses - sockpuppets (I added this as the wide open aspect of the vote meant that there was no control in regard to multiple voting at all) drive by anti sopa activists, unconfirmed accounts, people that had never previously edited en wikipedia, and last but not least regular en wikipedia editors - all were given the same weight in the vote by the foundation. I expected the process to be as usual and as per your comment in the interview quoted below, who voted for this? wikipedia editors, the wikipedia community. I was reported to the ANI for tagging the new users and IP addresses as [[WP:SPA]] in the voting section as we usually do in such discussion and AFD discussions, well, all such discussion really, the discussion is here [[Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/IncidentArchive736#SPA Tagging at Wikipedia:SOPA initiative/Action]] -- Youreallycan That declared position from Philippe (WMF) seems incompatible with what [http://articles.cnn.com/2012-01-17/tech/tech_web_wikipedia-sopa-blackout-qa_1_jimmy-wales-wikipedia-community-anti-piracy?_s=PM:TECH Jimmy told CNN in an interview on the 17th Jan] -''' CNN: Who voted exactly? - Wales: The Wikipedia community. These are people who are editors of the website.''' - Jimmy, your comment to CNN about the the wikipedia community being the voters seems at odds with that declared by the foundation (and followed) - did you know the foundations position as to who was allowed to , encouraged to join in the vote? As it turned out, such users that are not counted in a discussion to delete a single article were counted in a vote to close the whole project for 24 hours. -- Youreallycan
The question is: Jimmy, your comment to CNN about the the wikipedia community being the voters seems at odds with that declared by the foundation (and followed) - did you know the foundation's position as to who was allowed to , encouraged to join in the vote?
Cla68 wanted to ask you to answer, but the whole thing got erased. Gravitoweak ( talk) 19:24, 3 February 2012 (UTC)
with this issue? Input from a wider community is much needed here. Pesky ( talk … stalk!) 09:47, 4 February 2012 (UTC)
Wikid77 here again, this time on spelling variants. The issue of alternate spellings for words is related to the earlier talk-page thread "
#What's next" but perhaps others would consider it an off-topic tangent. Text is difficult to trace to sources when names are often spelled differently. In articles written about India or Pakistan or
Tamil language (etc.), there are often several spellings (or dual words) used to name the same item. Some common examples are the city names: "
Calcutta" as "
Kolkata" or "
Bombay" as the long-term
Gujurati name "
Mumbai". Then, some people might spell "Kolkata" as "Kolkattah". For lesser-known towns, there are often 3 or 5 spellings. When searching for source documents, to check for excessive copying of text, the changes in spelling or wording are a real barrier for Wikipedians to handle. Of course, it would be great to pre-vet all text added to articles, given unlimited time in an "ideal" world of 24-hour volunteers. However, when an entire subcontinent does not spell words the same, or "correctly" where that concept has any meaning, then Wikipedia benefits by having many hundreds of readers proofreading various articles, and perhaps an anonymous reader will post an IP-address note that some text seems to have come from a rare printed book about the subject under an alternate name.
Another way the "web of knowledge" is kept clean is by the wikilinks which cross-reference to other articles where the names are spelled differently. However, if those other articles were also to be locked under private pre-vetting, then the public would have even less chance of detecting the common alternate names. I understand that some people think I am "apologetically" trying to justify some rare cases of infringement, but what I am trying to emphasize is how having information widely available can, actually, reduce overall infringement, by having many thousands of people reviewing the materials, looking for copies while also checking for inaccuracies or out-dated text. This concept of "public review" is in comparison to imagining a core group of "private reviewers" who could not cope with the complexity of changes in spelling (or dual words) for the same term in thousands of cases for the main towns of a billion people. I guess the central focus is to understand how difficult pre-vetting of text would be in a more-restrictive system. Of course, this is not as much of a similar risk for videos, but any additional copyright restrictions for video would likely impose similar restrictions on books and webpage text as well. -
Wikid77 (
talk)
16:24, 2 February 2012 (UTC)
Hi Jimbo, Why don't wmf run a advertising campaign along the lines of ' Wikipedia is edited by people like you' because most people I know think you wrote it (they're pretty stupid because that would take around 60 years)? I think if we want more editors we should raise awareness. Thanks--William George Dover [Willdude123] 19:34, 3 February 2012 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Willdude123 ( talk • contribs)
I just received an e-mail from Demand Progress about an Internet spying bill by the author of SOPA requiring ISPs to retain data about users and their reading for 18 months. [7] Would the bill have any effect on Wikipedia (e.g. changing the retention of checkuser data and therefore, most likely, making sockpuppet policies harsher)? Do people feel Wikipedia should get involved in this one? Wnt ( talk) 18:49, 4 February 2012 (UTC)
ISPs currently keep such records, folks. And libraries maintain log-in sheets for their computers as well. And since the bill does not apply to websites, as it stands, this may simply be a further attempt to politicize Wikipedia. Cheers.
Collect (
talk)
17:12, 5 February 2012 (UTC)
Jimbo, any news [8] on how things will (or will not) move forward from here? -- J N 466 00:57, 6 February 2012 (UTC)
Hi Jimbo,
You recently expressed interest in the work of WWB Too, a paid editor working for Cracker Barrel and other companies wishing to improve their image by modifying their Wikipedia articles to minimize negative publicity. I wanted to let you know that WWB Too has done a major rewrite of the Cracker Barrel article in his user space, and that another editor replaced the existing Cracker Barrel article with WWB Too's rewrite. The new article has now been nominated for good article status. I thought you might want to participate in the GA review process, or at least monitor its progress. Cheers, Ebikeguy ( talk) 22:20, 4 February 2012 (UTC)
Jimbo, you were mentioned here in connection with the Shakespeare authorship question, a series of articles you have taken some interest in. It would be great if you weighed in with some deep thoughts... or some shallow ones if you think they might go over better! Smatprt ( talk) 02:01, 6 February 2012 (UTC)
Ah - just received a year-long topic ban by an involved administrator. Didn't break 3RR, participated in the talk page, was reverted multiple times for a minor edit, references removed, and the other editor... no block, no ban, not even a warning, just free rein to bully, harass, and belittle any editor (even Jimbo) who dares to edit the pages that are (apparently) owned by the current editors. And what does one do when an involved administrator who has obviously chosen sides acts in such a one-sided manner? (The admin didn't even respond to my comments here). What a system. Smatprt ( talk) 17:27, 6 February 2012 (UTC)
Hi Jimbo,
I was wondering if you would support a discussion around paid editing issues at Wikimania - or maybe even participate. http://wikimania2012.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions/Paid_Editors
I've learned a lot just following the discussions around WBToo, being a part of both Wikiprojects and seeing the discussions on Facebook. I'm also taking your recommendations very seriously and using "edit request".
I mentioned your name as a suggested panelist, but then felt I should ask you first. While 85% of the issues with paid editing are on the PR side of the pond, it would be great to foster some meaningful in-person discussions with representatives from the Paid Advocacy Watch, Wikiproject Cooperation, PR and yourself.
I'm not asking you to change your mind on anything and have even defended your "bright line" repeatedly in the CREWE group. It would be great for you to share that message at the conference along with other viewpoints. King4057 ( talk) 03:52, 6 February 2012 (UTC)
I adore you.... but I need to ask you something. Talk back please :). Cigaro Pizarro ( talk) 15:26, 6 February 2012 (UTC)
Just for the record, User:Plasticspork and User:Russavia have now completed their second step in deleting all news collection references in Wikipedia. As you are aware, the first was Tample:CNNtopic, and this one is Template:Economist topic. The latter was, of course, used for many important economists and other important people. Not that those two would know that, as these people rarely appear on E! I suspect they couldn't find enough salacious tittle-tattle, and salacious photographs, in The Economist to justify a link. Other Admins have made it clear, over many articles over many years, that there is no reason any article should have External links or Further reading sections, as readers who want to learn more about important people (as opposed to plastic surgery victims, see above) only need search engines (e.g., Google) which provide all the latest scandals right at the top of the SERPs. They believe the purpose of a Wikipedia article is to provide only a carefully shaped view, built from specially curated sources, focusing on the most sensational personal life topics. Which they have accomplished a surprisingly large number of times. (Did you really think John Prescott's article was unusual?) My interest does not extend to spending 24x7 trying to argue with such. You have stood by while they achieved the tipping point, and you're still in denial. "Creative destruction" is a current meme, and apparently applies to Wikipedia. Perhaps you'll have better luck in your next venture. btw - do thank Sue Gardner for at least being honest about her decision to not waste any time or effort trying to attract contributors of "her father's age" as they can't seem to pick up Wikipedia syntax. You have no idea how much I appreciated her honesty, posting it as she did on a public page. I will now leave the two of you to...what that leaves for "contributors". 75.59.204.69 ( talk) 02:12, 7 February 2012 (UTC)
Mr. Wales, I have recently concluded my participation in an ArbCom case. I lament seeing the array of shortcomings I hardly imagined could exist at that level. The legacy of your vision is in peril. In truth, your fundamental role as founder is actively being usurped and some believe you are no longer a relevant factor. That alone, as a mere notion, is disquieting. More perplexing, is the tolerance you exude, while active mining removes the entire aggregate beneath the foundation of your institution. ArbCom is functionally obsolete if it was to serve as a mediation of last resort. Please fix it. My76Strat ( talk) 10:58, 7 February 2012 (UTC)
I levy no claim of nefarious conduct. Rather, I believe accepted practices, have become unacceptable. While editing is not a right, it is an oft cherished privilege and reasonable protections, outlined in policy, should be afforded; equally! The letter of law and deed of implementation can no longer be bridged.
Your expressed views are thoughtful and aligned with policy. This is not characteristic in the field. People who should be under oath to support policy, contravene it instead. Policy is nullified by excuses that twist prose inconceivably; and then prevail!
We have reached the event horizon of a terminable end; my hope is that you will not stand idle. Solutions require your determination. I'll respect the decision you render. Sincere regards - My76Strat ( talk) 03:38, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
The Special Barnstar | |
Thanks a lot for creating Wikipedia! A site only made for free knowledge! Extraordinary! REDGREENBLUE ( talk) 01:42, 9 February 2012 (UTC) |
strange rant hidden, perhaps someone else can help this person? |
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The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it. |
HI i would like to launch a complain against a wiki used "MilborneOne" ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:MilborneOne), for preaching his biased and nationalistic views on wikipedia,he probably an Indian patriot may be a "MASTER EDITOR" on wikipedia but this position requires a very un-baised and professional approach and also ,i believe that one should have mercy on us and leave wikipedia out of their personal preferences and prejudices. On feb 5-2012 regarding the "JF-17 Comparable to Su-30MKI?" the Indian members were allowed free discussion and i was not allowed to respond and i was blocked by "MilborneOne " all my reply was erased and i was not given a chance to express and explain my self of not being Mentally Deranged or is being payed by his government. as put by the other user .what i said was
Its time you Indians wakeup to reality and accept that there are others in this world who have better things than you and who play better cricket (Sachin Tendulkar can be out the very first ball) than you and are much better people than you INDIANS. Kindly keep your prejudice to you self and leave wikipedia out , and stop making these racist remarks with your agenda." WIKIPEDIA must take steps to make it free of racism prejudice and personal agenda of its editors. thanks — Preceding unsigned comment added by 119.155.42.3 ( talk) 08:53, 9 February 2012 (UTC) |
Jimbo, as the only WMF representative here who actually responds to questions, I am curious if using a picture of a Siberian tiger (on a user page, not in the article itself) to represent a living person known primarily for their extensive facial plastic surgery ( Jocelyn Wildenstein) is in keeping with Wikipedia's policies on biographies of living people or with the WMF statements in regard to how living persons should be treated on all WMF projects? To me this is a no-brainer, but I am not known for my good judgment, especially of late. Details are discussed in this ANI discussion, although I would hate for anyone to think that I am blatantly canvassing for your opinion in this matter. Delicious carbuncle ( talk) 18:52, 5 February 2012 (UTC)
Continuing the thoughts about paid advocates, PR, etc. You make no mention of Political paid operatives openly or otherwise editing articles directly related to their client or boss. Isn't the orchestration of the product that wikipedia produces a problem? Ive been accussed repeatedly of poisoning the well by bringing this subject up, but I think it is important especially with the General Election to start soon. Since you gave so much thought and comment to the above IP's conversation I wonder if you might do the same for me. Your response to my email on this subject was disappointing. 6 or 7 words. Or point me in a direction where this important and timely issue is being discussed and considered. Maybe you have seen http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2012/02/06/gingrich-spokesman-defends-wikipedia-edits/ . Maybe not. ``` Buster Seven Talk 02:42, 7 February 2012 (UTC)
Here's Joedesantis's revisions to the mainspace:
I disagree with several revisions Joedesantis made, especially the 2010 revisions to the Callista_Gingrich article, but Joedesantis is currently restricting himself to the Talkspace. -- Michaeldsuarez ( talk) 13:19, 7 February 2012 (UTC)
Note: [10], [11], and [12]. Note also (for fun) WP:CANVASS. Collect ( talk) 13:14, 7 February 2012 (UTC)
As we approach the second anniversary of Wikipedia:Proposed deletion of biographies of living people coming into force, I wonder whether the time is right to extend that principle to all newly created articles (perhaps those created after 18 March 2012)?
While not the intuitive follow-up to BLPPROD, I still routinely see unreferenced articles created that have something to do with living people, 1982–83 Watford F.C. season being one example from the football world. There's nothing harmful about that particular article given its lack of development, but the fact is that unsourced articles focussing on the successes and failures of living people continue to be created. Other examples include lists of people, and sub-articles of individual living people.
By requiring all articles to contain some sort of sourcing, we would be accelerating Wikipedia's cultural shift towards a greater emphasis on verifiability. It would also be a beneficial precursor to further action on BLPs, as the higher a baseline we start with on all articles, the less onerous it seems to go a little bit further for living people.
Thanks for reading, — WFC— 17:47, 7 February 2012 (UTC)
I would suggest that, given the huge numbers involved, that we start at the "most read" and "longest" and not worry about deleting tens of thousands of unread stubs at the start. And not just for "new" articles - we have a good number of horrendous ones still around. A long article which has "too few" references may well be far worse for Wikipedia than a stub with none. As a mechanical exercise (triage), I would suggest that we start with articles with more than 200 readers per month, where there are fewer than 1 reference per 5000 characters -- this should get the worst ones into focus, I trust. Articles read under 100 times per month may be bad - but we should prioritize the ones which are most harmful first. Collect ( talk) 12:40, 8 February 2012 (UTC)
There were several big flaws in the BLPprod system and even more so in the out of process deletion spree that preceded it. Most seriously it was driven by people issuing ultimata and being prepared to ignore consensus, and as a result we wound up biting lots of newbies and other editors and prioritising some relatively low risk areas of the pedia. If we were to make another concerted drive to improve quality in a particular area I would suggest that we start by identifying an area where quality is demonstrably low and/or risk demonstrably high. The Death anomalies project managed that - we identified over 600 articles where people were alive on EN and dead on other wikis. This was a high risk identified group and without the need for any policy changes we got it fixed. I would suggest to those who want a similar quality improvement drive that they start by identifying a group of problematic articles and then publicise that. We have lots of unreferenced and poorly referenced articles, the vast majority of which turn out to be accurate if checked. Identify a subset of our most problematic articles and people will come help fix them. Ϣere SpielChequers 13:32, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
Toolserver is a vital but unreliable resource. In the annals of its mixed blessings, today User:Soxred93's Toolserve account expired. His webpage says he's retired. The loss over his tools is already being felt: User_talk:X!#Soxred93_Toolserver_tools. Among the excellent gizmos that are now unreachable: Edit Count (with the pretty pie graph and month-by-month, top articles breakdown), Edit Summaries (which tells you when you've been naughty), WikiBlame (which tells you who wrote what), and Pages Created (which tells you all the articles you started) . I don't mean to be apoplectic, but this is a travesty! And an indication of why the foundation needs to move fast towards integrating the toolserver into our ecosystem. Wikipedians do not live by NPOV and whiskey alone: we need our tools! What can be done?? -- Ocaasi t | c 05:04, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
Hi Jimmy, re: this edit summary: you should use the {{ Xfd-privacy}} template when courtesy blanking deletion discussions, and the {{ Courtesy blanked}} template in all other cases. Both of those templates should be substed to make it harder for users to find a list of courtesy blanked pages by using the "what links here" feature. While researching the answer to this question, I noticed that the documentation for the Xfd-privacy template was missing because the template had recently been moved to its current title and its documentation subpage had been left behind; I've just restored and updated the docs for the template. Graham 87 05:51, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
Since every Wikipedian learns the basic page when they first start editing here (especially its subsection on avoiding to remove likely true and especially sourced content!), it's apparent that a very active Wikipedian exists who has never heard of George Romney nor even his son Mitt Romney. Well, either that--or, the only other logical option avialable: the editor in question is currently engaging in some kind of pointyness? Viz., Collect--who, I see, is one of your talkpage regulars!--over at the Romney family (US) page ( diff), in an open-and-shut case of the removal of sourced content, two identical citiations to a Jennifer Dobner and Glen Johnson Associated Press story at the same time that deleted the list article's entries for George Romney and Mitt Romney. (Note that even without this citation, the article had a dozen references making refernce to one or the other, from up in the article's lede section.) I don't know if the editor thought that the article wasn't of value because the version that he removed had been published at Fox News or what. But, the point is, even if there weren't already a boatload of refernces to George and/or Mitt in the sourcing, everybody knows that the most notable members of the Romney family nowadays are George and Mitt.
I don't know if the fact that an election is going on is a contributing factor to this or not. Newt writes alternative histories. Here's one. Say that Hatch's proposed US Constintutional amendment to allow naturalized citizens to run for president had already passed and Arnold Schwarzenegger were running for prez. Would user:Collect be deleting Arnold Schwarzenegger's name from the list article about the Kennedy-Shrivers clan? If not--here's another newtonian, alternative history. Say, hypothetically, that (A.) Sirhan Sirhan missed. (B.) Marilyn was Bobby's mistress. (C.) And Bobby found her to be his political muse so he divorced and remarried his muse (D.)--joining Marilyn's church, Christian Science. (E.) If Wikipedia existed then, would user:Collect be editing articles about families whose religion is Christian Science in order to delete references to Bobby?-- Hodgdon's secret garden ( talk) 11:23, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
-- Hodgdon's secret garden ( talk) 02:13, 10 February 2012 (UTC)- Obama family
- African American genealogy
- African-American families
- Families
- American families
- Genealogies of individuals
- Family trees
- First Families of the United States
OTHERSTUFFEXISTS != much reason. The RS/N noticeboard made clear that genealogies on Wikipedia have to be validly sourced. And Wikipedia is still not Ancestry.com. Cheers. Collect ( talk) 04:02, 10 February 2012 (UTC)
I've been reading around the web and i found some articles which say that the charity which holds this site has been spending only a fraction of the money they received for server equipment and technology... and the rest went to someone's pockets. What is this? Can you clarify it? Gravitoweak ( talk) 14:02, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
http://ostatic.com/blog/wikipedia-fundraiser-successful-but-should-they-do-it-again
http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/wikipedia-experts-call-for-no-donations-to-wikipedia-111911964.html Gravitoweak ( talk) 14:56, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
Gravitoweak's user page is identical to User:Negativecharge's, who posted a bunch of jimbo-is-stealing-all-the-money conspiracy theories on my talk page some time ago and who has apparently been blocked for being someone's sock (the block message doesn't specify whose.) Quackquackquack. Kevin ( talk) 16:06, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
Thanks to everyone else who answered these questions. To answer some questions myself. First, since I'm the most known person involved with our fundraiser and people might think of me if they think of "someone's pockets", I don't take a salary and I don't take expenses, indeed I don't even take normal board expenses for my service at board meetings. That is, I pay for my own flights and accommodations. I sometimes do eat at a board dinner, and sometimes the Foundation has gotten me a car back to the airport when I leave a board meeting, although I generally ask them not to do so.
Our finances are audited and very open. Traditionally Sue has performed very well against her budgets, and we have tended to have the fundraiser perform quite well. What this means is that each year we have raised slightly more money than budgeted for (in less time), and we have also spent slightly less money than budgeted for (due to a frugal culture and things going well), so that our surplus is, happily, in a reasonably good place. Some critiques are inevitable whatever choices we make - if we overspend, we'll be rightly criticized. If we have a smaller surplus, we'll be accused of being irresponsible. And if we have a larger surplus we'll be accused of hoarding cash. While it is certainly possible to have respectable and differing views on precise details of strategy, I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about critiques that stray from "gee, I think we should consider doing this differently" into the territory of character assassination.
The 41 cents per dollar on program services is a figure that really bugs me, because it both out of date and anyway misleading. To the naive reader it suggests that the rest is going for nonsense. But here's the funny thing: I was told that most of our IT budget, for arcane reasons having to do with how that number was calculated, couldn't be included under program services! For various reasons related to understanding that their metrics weren't doing a good job of identifying what they wanted to identify, Charity Navigator has a different methodology now, and under their improved metrics, we do quite well: Charity Navigator report.
One final point about financial efficiency. We know that 470 million people per month use Wikipedia. (Comscore) Our planned budget is $28.3 million, or $2,358,333 per month. So that's just about 1/2 cent per person served. A half a penny per month per person served. If someone came to you in 1960 and said for that amount they could put a free encyclopedia into the hands of a half a billion people at a cost of a half a penny per person per month, you'd have been astonished. I'm still astonished, I love the Internet. :)-- Jimbo Wales ( talk) 13:31, 10 February 2012 (UTC)
Today, the Supreme Court of Canada came out with the ruling that ISPs are not subject to the Canadian Broadcasting Act because they have no control what is transmitted. See this CBC article if you are interested. Bielle ( talk) 16:55, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
You may be able to shed some light here on why only admins and account creators can do anything with edit notices. - Rrius ( talk) 00:25, 10 February 2012 (UTC)
Hi Jimbo, I made a mockup of the banner I suggested a while ago
— Preceding unsigned comment added by Willdude123 ( talk • contribs) 18:36, 10 February 2012 (UTC)
What do you think of m:Requests for comment/Gwen Gale? It looks like not even a co-certifier is needed to start a meta RfC, so any user banned from en.wp can put up an "admin abuse" page over there, as it happened in this case. Is a meta RfC the next step after the en.wp ArbCom declines [18] further involvement? ASCIIn2Bme ( talk) 19:04, 10 February 2012 (UTC)
That page is a disgraceful misuse of WMF resources: an attack page by an indef blocked user. As Tarc said, posting a comment is useless due to the large number of malcontents. The page is setting a precedent that anyone blocked at en.wikipedia can go to another project and paste walls of text in a fake RfC hoping that some of the mud will stick. Johnuniq ( talk) 23:03, 10 February 2012 (UTC)
WP:BEANS. Stuff like that is usually closed without result, no matter where it comes from. Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 > haneʼ 23:05, 10 February 2012 (UTC)
I think we have an official response from a m:global sysop [19]. ASCIIn2Bme ( talk) 02:39, 11 February 2012 (UTC)
This thread is a tangent, because I did not want to clutter the earlier discussion of counting what kinds of editors might be leaving, or later returning. For several months, I analyzed the enwiki active-editor data and confirmed that the exodus of "active and busy editors" has ended, where the counts of editors making >5 edits or >100 edits per month during 2011 has been within 98% of the same monthly counts from 2010. In fact, for the first time in years, the count of busy editors in December grew beyond the November counts (rather than wait to only rise in January each year). So now, the concern has been the top editors might be leaving the busy neophytes, yet I am thinking, "Hey, the top chefs are leaving Paris, so how will the world be able to cook supper?" They will do fine. After carefully editing 11,000 articles, I just do not see the feared impact. Perhaps people do not realize that 350 separate "top editors" (the top 10% of 3,500) have relatively little impact on improving 6,851,156 articles, when thousands of people come from other languages and add partial information to enwiki. Perhaps Wikipedia is in the realm of "too big to comprehend" without using wiki-calculus, analogous to trying to handle
time slowing in a strong gravitational field, without
tensor calculus.
If 350 top people were expected to make a massive impact, then they would have needed to coordinate their efforts, and not all tweak parts of the same articles. I am thinking, if the articles had been divided into 350 distinct groups, then that would be 6,851,156/350 = 19,575 articles for each person to fix. And I mean "fix" not just change 2 words per page per edit, but rather make 175 crucial changes per page, with extra sources and proofread. By having 350 top editors to "speed-edit" 1 article+sources per hour, 40 hours, 52 weeks per year, that would require 9.4 years for each person to really impact English Wikipedia (and no weeks of vacations). Meanwhile, the growth for new articles during those 5 years, including 290,000 more articles during year 2012, would have to wait. Hence, the numbers just do not add up. A set of 350 separate, non-coordinated top editors cannot hope to avoid rehashing the same articles, for minor changes, and overlook a million articles which they rarely see to fix. For that reason, I agree with the "Jimbo plan" to recruit editors into the major 2,000
WP:WikiProjects. The solution is to coordinate more people within each WikiProject. We know the top editors cannot edit 52 weeks per year, without breaks, or without helpers. The ants would need to follow a coordinated plan to create a gilded super-anthill of the finest architectural quality, otherwise, it is just a functioning dirt mound. -
Wikid77 (
talk)
10:10, 11 February 2012 (UTC)
Not sure whether this crosses the line, but Joe Desantis has been lobbying other editors to do his work for him outside of article talk pages. See where he posts on user talk pages [20]. And there are signs of meat puppetry at his behest [21] Mattnad ( talk) 21:01, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
FORUMSHOPPING? This has been iterated on this user talk page, on article talk pages, noticeboards etc. With the exact same result every time - JDeSantis has operated within Wikipedia policies and guidelines, and trying to toss mud at him does not work. Cheers. Collect ( talk) 00:40, 10 February 2012 (UTC)
While I think it is good to keep a close eye on Joe DeSantis - the media will be watching his every edit, I am sure - at least to date I have not heard anything particularly alarming. He did make direct article edits in the distant past, until he was cautioned against it. Lately he's been following what I consider to be best practice (and what I think should be firmer in policy): he's openly identified his affiliation and he's interacting with the community directly and respectfully, but he's completely avoiding article space edits.-- Jimbo Wales ( talk) 13:37, 10 February 2012 (UTC)
Hello Jimbo, I think the number of high-quality editors who are leaving the project is alarming to say the least and the problem should be addressed ASAP. I am talking about content-contributors, those who create interesting, informative articles on a variety of subjects, expand the stubs and starts, and promote pages to GA and FAC class - these are the people who are getting fed up and throwing in the towel. When the engine starts to smoke is the time to look under the bonnet/hood, not when the car breaks down. Something needs to be done.-- Jeanne Boleyn ( talk) 14:26, 10 February 2012 (UTC)
Aug 2010/Jan 2011 study | 2001 | 2002 | 2003 | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | 2009 | 2010 | 2011 | 2012 | 2013 | Totals |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Year admins created their accounts or started editing | 32 | 109 | 223 | 404 | 481 [1] | 326 | 115 | 43 | 13 | 0 | 0 [2] | 1746 | ||
Year active admins started editing [3] | 9 | 30 | 60 | 145 | 221 | 183 | 69 | 35 | 12 | 0 | 0 | 764 | ||
Admins still active (Aug 2010/Jan 2011) % | 28.1% | 27.5% | 26.9% | 35.9% | 46% | 55.1% | 60% | 81.4% | 92.3% | 43.8% |
Admins are much less likely to stick around than prolific editors, but as a group they are still fairly stable by Internet standards - most of the admins who started editing in 2006 were still active at the start of 2011. I may update those figures, we've had another 54 new admins since then. But that won't change the broad message; Admins generally stick around for several years. A large majority of our current admins made their first edit more than five years ago. It would be interesting to do something similar for FA/GA writers. Whether the problems at RFA are contributing to our overall editor retention problem is also an area worth looking at, certainly there have been some editors leave when they realise they can't become admins. Ϣere SpielChequers 00:23, 11 February 2012 (UTC)
Jimbo you might want to see Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard#An_overall_concern_about_AN_and_ANI if someone hasn't forwarded that on to you already, Newyorkbrad really has a point there
One of your most long-serving administrators has also been having some good discussions too — As I said the problem of abusive administrators seems to be evening out as more people get recruited it acts a balance against any one group being able to take control like they used to be able to, these days the problem seems to be less the old problem of administrators acting on whims - who have mostly passed a kind of maturity check - since there are now more that decisions are more likely to have to be made as a group, but the overall culture reflects human nature/internet culture as a whole (also [22] [23] but I am sure you are probably familiar with that idea already) rather than what you want it to be, there is a general feeling that people can get away with being nasty to people as long as it's not made directly but in snipes and repeated insults small enough to get away with but enough to try push people and make them scared of not fightng back, WP:BATTLEGROUND is policy but as many people have said recently the problem is it is not enforced and for many people it has become a hypercompetitive macho environment of who can put down competitors and get away with it, a WP:GAME
There has been a big discussion started on the talk page of WP:AN: Wikipedia_talk:Administrators'_noticeboard#AN.2FANI_reform:_Alternate_proposal_.232 I think this could be a major step towards making the culture less hypercompetitive and hostile if WP:CIVILITY was enforced, hostility breeds hostility and it's an endless circle, I remember when I was new I got into arguments and the continual one-upping because that is what the culture is like, as people commented on Newyorkbrad's post there is no one person to blame, but something needs to be done - especially if you want to start getting serious about changing the gender divide About 9 people in the entire of last year joined WikiProject Gender studies [24], now compare that to... this :/
Mistress Selina Kyle ( Α⇔Ω ¦ ⇒✉) has given you a cup of tea. Tea promotes WikiLove and hopefully this has made your day ever so slightly better.
Spread the WikiLove by giving someone else a tea, especially if it is someone you have had disagreements with in the past or someone putting up with some stick at this time. Enjoy!
Spread the lovely, warm, refreshing goodness of tea by adding {{ subst:wikitea}} to their talk page with a friendly message.
-- Mistress Selina Kyle ( Α⇔Ω ¦ ⇒✉) 02:18, 11 February 2012 (UTC)
The exodus of good editors is also connected with the other threads on this page about content. People often join Wikipedia and create good content. Then they discover that WP:NOTCENSORED is used to defend the seediness, that a trustee of one of its charitable arms uploaded bondage pictures of himself, complains about being victimised when they are pointed out but doesn't give a fuck about the privacy concerns of women sex workers. Jimbo, you have to decide whether you want to keep those who defend the seediness or those who are driven away by it.-- Peter cohen ( talk) 16:24, 11 February 2012 (UTC)
I think you should read this: No, Wikipedia has not forgiven GoDaddy for backing SOPA
The Reddit comment does seem to be rather striking and a good point, "I gave them $20 so they can move. I'll be asking a refund I guess."
A lot of people on the net at large did donate to Wikipedia because of the statement that we would be moving away from GoDaddy. Is this still happening? Is there some sort of time frame, or at least a guess, for when it will be completed? I can fully understand that it's something that would take some time. Silver seren C 04:26, 11 February 2012 (UTC)
I saw an article saying Wikipedia is still with GoDaddy. Could you give us an update? -- JaGa talk 16:02, 11 February 2012 (UTC)
Kudos to you...if only some of our administrators would be willing to acknowledge they may have erred or acted too harshly as you did at Silver seren's page, the website would be a far better place...thank you for this example for others to follow!-- MONGO 19:36, 11 February 2012 (UTC)
The constant seeking for blame and winners and losers in debate is a poison.
Jimbo Wales, 22:16, 11 February 2012
I completely agree with Jimbo on this matter. Editors are frequently prone to regard an argument as a competition, in which winning the argument is the goal, rather than improving the encyclopedia. Geometry guy 01:38, 12 February 2012 (UTC)
Discussion winding down.-- Jimbo Wales ( talk) 20:38, 12 February 2012 (UTC) |
---|
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it. |
Is this http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/File:Rick_santorum_caricature_satire_made_with_frothy_santorum_pic_1.jpg really what we want on this project? IsThisReallyWhatWeWant? ( talk) 05:17, 7 February 2012 (UTC)
The OR argument is not unreasonable; although in this case the act is so simple in description that I don't see it as an issue. As to your latter argument; I have a passing interest in books on old houses. Quite often they are described in detail, but no floor plans are drawn. On Wikipedia, however, you will very often find a carefully drawn floor plan. As far as I can read you, and most of the other, objections to this image centre around the violence, or some non-specific potential for harm. This is what our Not Censored policy is written to address. You may find the topic peurile, but that is irrelevant. You call this article "sex education", I don't think it falls in that category at all - if anything it is pop culture or something along those lines. And to answer your question; because we can. that's not to say the image is of good quality, it isn't --
Errant (
chat!)
16:45, 10 February 2012 (UTC)
Under pretexts of not censorship, wikipedia admits articles on practices of violence made for the women. The freedom of Free expression has to too include sexual customs make for the women? Wikipedia is t it neutral? Not surprising that wikipedia has less and less women for contributors, Sous des prétextes de non censure, wikipédia admet des articles sur des pratiques de violence faites aux femmes. La liberté d'expression doit t elle aussi inclure des mœurs sexuelles faites aux femmes ? wikipedia est t il neutre ? Pas surprenant que wikipédia a de moins en moins de femmes comme contributeurs, מתחת לתירוצים של צנזורה, וויקיפאדיזאד מתוודה שמאמרים על תרגולים של אלימות עשתה לנשים. החופש D, ביטוי גם צריך לכלול קירות ; ארסאסאקסאאלס פאיטאספאמאס? ויקיפדיה T זה ניטרלית? לא מפתיע זה וויקיפWיקיף? ד.י.ה. איטוד פחות פחות דאסאס כ/כפי שתורמים, je persiste -- Cordialement féministe ♀ Cordially feminist Geneviève ( talk) 20:19, 10 February 2012 (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. |
RE: Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Muhammad images (via Talk:Muhammad#Image_poll)
... After SOPA really this looks insanely hypocritical...
An enyclopaedia should be about facts and an objective view of the materials available, not hiding things away depending on whose pressure/lobbyist group is larger...
' WP:NOTCENSORED - "Any rules that forbid members of a given organization, fraternity, or religion to show a name or image do not apply to Wikipedia because Wikipedia is not a member of those organizations."
You either are, or you aren't... If you're going to hide this stuff then it's going to be other "blasphemous" material next...
Why not go the whole way and just start letting people opt out from links and articles that could offend them, per Websense let people live in an maginary world of their own creation: Filter bubbles in internet search engines, BBC News Online
Is copying verbatim an extensive part of an article abstract likely to be a copyright violation? [1] The section copied is over seventy words long. Is it proper for an editor to revert edits designed to avoid a coopyvio in favor of the full exact quote proper in your opinion? BTW, the exact excuse given is
but would anyone think that only copying 40% of an abstract (all in consecustive words) is proper? I give this as an example since we have a discussion above on this talk page about copyright and Wikipedia, and copyright in general. Cheers. Collect ( talk) 03:18, 30 January 2012 (UTC)
``` Buster Seven Talk 08:20, 31 January 2012 (UTC)
I've been contacted by people in the movie industry who would like to sit down and talk to me about what kind of bill I would support. While I believe that they have been arrogant and overbearing in the past, I also think this is a good opportunity for us to move forward with some proposals that will address some of the real issues they have, AND a good opportunity for us to move forward with some proposals that will address many of the real issues that we have. Let's discuss. What's your (realistic) dream copyright reform bill? As Mick sang, "You can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes..."-- Jimbo Wales ( talk) 20:21, 28 January 2012 (UTC)
I have to say that, as someone who was opposed to the initial blackout, I'm opposed to Wikipedia digging into the political game any deeper than it already is. One instance of political bias is, while not ethically proper in my opinion, it's permissible as a simple brain belch, a loss of common intelligence to push a political ideal on behalf of certain people. I have a major issue with Wikipedia trying to lose more face by becoming more politically involved. Inviting, but improper. Within hours of a 'law' that had anything whatsoever to do with this encyclo going public, either some of our own people would begin to edit pages about certain people saying "____ Representative voted opposing the new bill proposed, that was partially written by Jimmy Wales, founder (co-founder?) of Wikipedia" or a member of the outside media would directly tie us to someone who voted for or against the bill.
Moreover, where does it end? I'm by no means impartial, as I don't think it's truly possible to be impartial unless you simply don't use your mind whilst writing. What bugs me is, after this second foray into politics, then what? Backing certain politicians? Partys? Agendas?
I'm opposed to the SOPA and PIPA crapolA that everyone else here opposes, but in the same vein, once you lose credibility, you will never win it all back, regardless of what you do. If White Star Line was still operating under the old name, you think any of their competition could ignore sticking a few "And WE have captains who OBEY ice warnings!" ads? I was opposed to the bass ackwards way the initial blackout was carried out, I was opposed to Wikipedia involving itself in politics in any form, and I am opposed to Wikipedia becoming more involved. (Sorry Jimbo, but to a lot of people, you ARE Wikipedia, and it does what you tell it to. Whether you can or can't isn't the question. As the face of the project, you really don't need to be dragging it through whatever mud you like the looks of. Wikipedia has, for the time being, a lot going for it. Once it, and more directly, you begin to dig into politics, it stands to lose a lot of credibility. An encyclopedia without credibility is just one site clogging up Google every time you search for something.)
I realize and recognize that my statement doesn't matter, because a 'committee' will vote on it regardless. And, those who follow you directly and bow in your shadow will mindlessly follow, as they did with the blackout. My own suspicion says, the whole group could be totally opposed to something, if you came along and said you liked it, there would be a LOT of "Well, on second thought, Jimbo has a point and I change my vote". For better or worse, where you go, a whole lot of this group would follow because of admiration. I can't say I'm one of them, but I don't follow blindly. Actually, I've never known me to follow at all unless I liked where the group I was with was going. Nothing personal against you, you just draw a lot of pull from many people. It happens.) As I see it, Wikipedia has no place in politics, and therefore shouldn't try to create a place. Copyrights are so screwy that it's sickening, but at the same time, speed limit laws are screwy too, and I don't think it's Wikipedias business to be messing with either.
I'll catch trouble for this, but this is partially why I've hated seeing you make any type of definitive statement; people will follow you even if the idea isn't all that great. Even if it undermine what I feel is what this place is about. I've only been an 'editor' for a few days, but I've been a faithful reader for a few years. Bring on the hate mail. ;) Skweeky ( talk) 05:11, 29 January 2012 (UTC)
Disabling copyright protection is a grossly ill-considered position. Protection of intellectual property rights was a long struggle (see the Mark Twain quote I earlier posted on this page on [6]) (yes - it may go too far in some cases - but the baby-bathwater anaology still holds true), and for Wikipedia to be seen in any way as an opponent of them is against the core foundations of Wikipedia. Cheers. Collect ( talk) 13:33, 29 January 2012 (UTC)
Create a wiki for this law, the structure of which could perhaps be used as a prototype for working on various other laws. It's a new direction, but worth exploring. Start by providing the full wording for existing law(s), SOPA and PIPA, along with discussions of the pros and cons of each. Include Lawrence Lessig's proposals along with other major proposals and alternatives. Then facilitate discussion on the purpose of copyright law, what helps and what hurts innovation, how and when legal restrictions and regulations are useful, etc. This should NOT be limited to discussions of x number of years of y type of protection (the existing structure, simply arguing over the number), but should include other ideas such as strong protection for a short period of time, followed by lesser protection for another period of time. Whatever. The important thing is to focus on the intended goal, and bring forth and fully discuss some new ideas. Living in a globalized society, copyright laws need to be global as well. Wikipedians are global, so they should be able to represent various points of view on this. Good luck. 76.192.40.75 ( talk) 18:44, 29 January 2012 (UTC)
Issues that would interest them: Thank you for asking our opinions. As you know, there are many issues to consider. So, here are some reminders:
I know you know this, I just want hammer it into your mind more forcefully: When going into these "discussions," it is imperative to leave "AGF", "DONTBITE", and whatever nice rules we have here at home. No matter what they're gonna tell you and no matter how much they'll smile at you, their mind is focused exclusively on money and how much of it they can make, regardless of consequences, morals, or costs to others. Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 > haneʼ 04:36, 30 January 2012 (UTC)
A concession that could be made to the content industry that I would think the community should support would be to advise the industry that if another bill sponsored by the content industry should appear next year, they would be invited to address the Wikipedia community directly on an equal footing with those opposed to the bill. In my view giving them a fair chance to stop a consensus from forming for active opposition would also mean advising them that if non-Wikipedia civil liberties activist sites are directing their people towards a Wikipedia page calling for community input (as occurred prior to the blackout), they would be free to direct their people similarly. The alternative to having the call for input being open without discrimination would be to have it closed without discrimination, such that all outside groups would be equally discouraged from interference. Also, Wikipedia ought to be happy to trade away more aggressive enforcement of copyright (since Wikipedia is already aggressive, at least in my opinion) if the same bill put copyrighted material into the public domain sooner and/or in larger quantities.-- Brian Dell ( talk) 04:31, 2 February 2012 (UTC)
Jimbo, I think I'm right in saying that you've been a strong advocate of protecting our community members against privacy violations and harassment. A case came to my attention recently of a Wikipedian who posted the real name, home address and phone number of another Wikipedian who had that same day received a real-world threat relating to his role on the Commons. The issue is currently being discussed at WP:AN/I#Delicious Carbuncle harassment and outing: block or ban proposal.
If this privacy violation had happened on Wikipedia I'm sure it would have resulted in an immediate block. However, it happened on an external website (one dedicated to discussing Wikipedia - you can guess which it is). I have seen the suggestion from time to time that we can't do anything about off-wiki conduct by Wikipedians (despite what WP:OUTING#Off-wiki harassment says). That might be true if their conduct has nothing to do with Wikipedia but in this particular case there was a clear attempt to influence things happening here and on Commons, by using tactics forbidden on Wikipedia. As a general rule, would you say that it shouldn't be acceptable for Wikipedians to sidestep prohibitions on certain activities on-wiki by moving off-wiki to do them there? From my perspective, I take the view that if Wikipedians have issues with each other about their on-wiki activities they should try to resolve them on-wiki, rather than seeking to use off-wiki forums to evade Wikipedia's bans on harassment, outing, canvassing etc. I'd be interested to know what you think. Prioryman ( talk) 12:09, 29 January 2012 (UTC)
Jimmy, I'd like you to weigh in here as well. Y u no be Russavia ლ(ಠ益ಠლ) 07:45, 30 January 2012 (UTC)
I have to say this is really quite unbelievable. We have a situation where a Wikipedian seeking to advance an on-wiki political dispute has posted the home address and phone number of another Wikipedian, who was and is still facing real-world harassment. This is undisputed. This action put the victim in real personal danger, and it was strictly prohibited by Wikipedia's harassment policy. That is also undisputed. And yet we have people on AN/I blaming the victim (!) and actually defending the perpetrator's actions as somehow justified, even though we've never accepted any justification for egregious privacy violations. Have we really reached a point where (some of) the Wikipedia community is so obsessed with scoring political points that they are willing to condone any intrusion into a person's off-wiki life? If so, why do we even have a harassment policy in the first place, if nobody is willing to enforce it? I note that any admin would have had a cast-iron case for indefinitely blocking the perpetrator, which would be well supported by policy and precedent, yet no action whatsoever has been taken against him. Can it be that the perpetrator and his thuggish supporters on Wikipedia Review have intimidated the entire admin community? Prioryman ( talk) 19:38, 31 January 2012 (UTC)
Closing conversation that didn't ask me any questions |
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The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it. |
This is a follow-up to the following discussion: User_talk:Jimbo_Wales/Archive_95#SOPA.2FPIPA_backlash, User_talk:Jimbo_Wales/Archive_95#ACTA, User_talk:Jimbo_Wales/Archive_95#White_House_petitions. As expected, the White House has decided not to respond to the "Investigate Chris Dodd and the MPAA for bribery after he publicly admited to bribing politicans to pass legislation" petition. Nevertheless, it garnered 31,034 signatures before being closed. The "End ACTA and Protect our right to privacy on the Internet" petition, on the other hand, now has over 37,000 signatures, and the White House it more likely to give a real reply to that one. The "Reduce the term of copyrights to a maximum of 56 years" petition currently has over 2,800 signatures. -- Michaeldsuarez ( talk) 14:35, 1 February 2012 (UTC)
|
The Wikipedia project as bounded by the oversight of the Wikimedia foundation has imo from my experience and investigations, masses of copyright violating uploads and cut and copy paste content currently hosted on its servers. - Good faith is a consideration here in regards to SOPA - The foundation and its tentacles are in no way promoting or encouraging the uploading and sharing of copyrighted content, although an objective position imo would suggest a raised request for evidence of file ownership prior to upload would be a protective position, and although there are copyright investigations opened - they are not well actioned and can take months and even over a year to action. Raising the profiles of these issues would further protect the project from litigation resulting from any more restrictive legislation, as also would the restriction of unconfirmed accounts from the ability to publish via wikimedia servers, more than limited content additions without any review. [[WP:PEND|Pending protection]] although rejected at a en wikipedia poll would have been beneficial in this regard. -- Youreallycan [[User:Philippe (WMF)|Philippe Beaudette, Wikimedia Foundation]] clarified that the foundation was allowing equal weight to any vote, IP addresses - sockpuppets (I added this as the wide open aspect of the vote meant that there was no control in regard to multiple voting at all) drive by anti sopa activists, unconfirmed accounts, people that had never previously edited en wikipedia, and last but not least regular en wikipedia editors - all were given the same weight in the vote by the foundation. I expected the process to be as usual and as per your comment in the interview quoted below, who voted for this? wikipedia editors, the wikipedia community. I was reported to the ANI for tagging the new users and IP addresses as [[WP:SPA]] in the voting section as we usually do in such discussion and AFD discussions, well, all such discussion really, the discussion is here [[Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/IncidentArchive736#SPA Tagging at Wikipedia:SOPA initiative/Action]] -- Youreallycan That declared position from Philippe (WMF) seems incompatible with what [http://articles.cnn.com/2012-01-17/tech/tech_web_wikipedia-sopa-blackout-qa_1_jimmy-wales-wikipedia-community-anti-piracy?_s=PM:TECH Jimmy told CNN in an interview on the 17th Jan] -''' CNN: Who voted exactly? - Wales: The Wikipedia community. These are people who are editors of the website.''' - Jimmy, your comment to CNN about the the wikipedia community being the voters seems at odds with that declared by the foundation (and followed) - did you know the foundations position as to who was allowed to , encouraged to join in the vote? As it turned out, such users that are not counted in a discussion to delete a single article were counted in a vote to close the whole project for 24 hours. -- Youreallycan
The question is: Jimmy, your comment to CNN about the the wikipedia community being the voters seems at odds with that declared by the foundation (and followed) - did you know the foundation's position as to who was allowed to , encouraged to join in the vote?
Cla68 wanted to ask you to answer, but the whole thing got erased. Gravitoweak ( talk) 19:24, 3 February 2012 (UTC)
with this issue? Input from a wider community is much needed here. Pesky ( talk … stalk!) 09:47, 4 February 2012 (UTC)
Wikid77 here again, this time on spelling variants. The issue of alternate spellings for words is related to the earlier talk-page thread "
#What's next" but perhaps others would consider it an off-topic tangent. Text is difficult to trace to sources when names are often spelled differently. In articles written about India or Pakistan or
Tamil language (etc.), there are often several spellings (or dual words) used to name the same item. Some common examples are the city names: "
Calcutta" as "
Kolkata" or "
Bombay" as the long-term
Gujurati name "
Mumbai". Then, some people might spell "Kolkata" as "Kolkattah". For lesser-known towns, there are often 3 or 5 spellings. When searching for source documents, to check for excessive copying of text, the changes in spelling or wording are a real barrier for Wikipedians to handle. Of course, it would be great to pre-vet all text added to articles, given unlimited time in an "ideal" world of 24-hour volunteers. However, when an entire subcontinent does not spell words the same, or "correctly" where that concept has any meaning, then Wikipedia benefits by having many hundreds of readers proofreading various articles, and perhaps an anonymous reader will post an IP-address note that some text seems to have come from a rare printed book about the subject under an alternate name.
Another way the "web of knowledge" is kept clean is by the wikilinks which cross-reference to other articles where the names are spelled differently. However, if those other articles were also to be locked under private pre-vetting, then the public would have even less chance of detecting the common alternate names. I understand that some people think I am "apologetically" trying to justify some rare cases of infringement, but what I am trying to emphasize is how having information widely available can, actually, reduce overall infringement, by having many thousands of people reviewing the materials, looking for copies while also checking for inaccuracies or out-dated text. This concept of "public review" is in comparison to imagining a core group of "private reviewers" who could not cope with the complexity of changes in spelling (or dual words) for the same term in thousands of cases for the main towns of a billion people. I guess the central focus is to understand how difficult pre-vetting of text would be in a more-restrictive system. Of course, this is not as much of a similar risk for videos, but any additional copyright restrictions for video would likely impose similar restrictions on books and webpage text as well. -
Wikid77 (
talk)
16:24, 2 February 2012 (UTC)
Hi Jimbo, Why don't wmf run a advertising campaign along the lines of ' Wikipedia is edited by people like you' because most people I know think you wrote it (they're pretty stupid because that would take around 60 years)? I think if we want more editors we should raise awareness. Thanks--William George Dover [Willdude123] 19:34, 3 February 2012 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Willdude123 ( talk • contribs)
I just received an e-mail from Demand Progress about an Internet spying bill by the author of SOPA requiring ISPs to retain data about users and their reading for 18 months. [7] Would the bill have any effect on Wikipedia (e.g. changing the retention of checkuser data and therefore, most likely, making sockpuppet policies harsher)? Do people feel Wikipedia should get involved in this one? Wnt ( talk) 18:49, 4 February 2012 (UTC)
ISPs currently keep such records, folks. And libraries maintain log-in sheets for their computers as well. And since the bill does not apply to websites, as it stands, this may simply be a further attempt to politicize Wikipedia. Cheers.
Collect (
talk)
17:12, 5 February 2012 (UTC)
Jimbo, any news [8] on how things will (or will not) move forward from here? -- J N 466 00:57, 6 February 2012 (UTC)
Hi Jimbo,
You recently expressed interest in the work of WWB Too, a paid editor working for Cracker Barrel and other companies wishing to improve their image by modifying their Wikipedia articles to minimize negative publicity. I wanted to let you know that WWB Too has done a major rewrite of the Cracker Barrel article in his user space, and that another editor replaced the existing Cracker Barrel article with WWB Too's rewrite. The new article has now been nominated for good article status. I thought you might want to participate in the GA review process, or at least monitor its progress. Cheers, Ebikeguy ( talk) 22:20, 4 February 2012 (UTC)
Jimbo, you were mentioned here in connection with the Shakespeare authorship question, a series of articles you have taken some interest in. It would be great if you weighed in with some deep thoughts... or some shallow ones if you think they might go over better! Smatprt ( talk) 02:01, 6 February 2012 (UTC)
Ah - just received a year-long topic ban by an involved administrator. Didn't break 3RR, participated in the talk page, was reverted multiple times for a minor edit, references removed, and the other editor... no block, no ban, not even a warning, just free rein to bully, harass, and belittle any editor (even Jimbo) who dares to edit the pages that are (apparently) owned by the current editors. And what does one do when an involved administrator who has obviously chosen sides acts in such a one-sided manner? (The admin didn't even respond to my comments here). What a system. Smatprt ( talk) 17:27, 6 February 2012 (UTC)
Hi Jimbo,
I was wondering if you would support a discussion around paid editing issues at Wikimania - or maybe even participate. http://wikimania2012.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions/Paid_Editors
I've learned a lot just following the discussions around WBToo, being a part of both Wikiprojects and seeing the discussions on Facebook. I'm also taking your recommendations very seriously and using "edit request".
I mentioned your name as a suggested panelist, but then felt I should ask you first. While 85% of the issues with paid editing are on the PR side of the pond, it would be great to foster some meaningful in-person discussions with representatives from the Paid Advocacy Watch, Wikiproject Cooperation, PR and yourself.
I'm not asking you to change your mind on anything and have even defended your "bright line" repeatedly in the CREWE group. It would be great for you to share that message at the conference along with other viewpoints. King4057 ( talk) 03:52, 6 February 2012 (UTC)
I adore you.... but I need to ask you something. Talk back please :). Cigaro Pizarro ( talk) 15:26, 6 February 2012 (UTC)
Just for the record, User:Plasticspork and User:Russavia have now completed their second step in deleting all news collection references in Wikipedia. As you are aware, the first was Tample:CNNtopic, and this one is Template:Economist topic. The latter was, of course, used for many important economists and other important people. Not that those two would know that, as these people rarely appear on E! I suspect they couldn't find enough salacious tittle-tattle, and salacious photographs, in The Economist to justify a link. Other Admins have made it clear, over many articles over many years, that there is no reason any article should have External links or Further reading sections, as readers who want to learn more about important people (as opposed to plastic surgery victims, see above) only need search engines (e.g., Google) which provide all the latest scandals right at the top of the SERPs. They believe the purpose of a Wikipedia article is to provide only a carefully shaped view, built from specially curated sources, focusing on the most sensational personal life topics. Which they have accomplished a surprisingly large number of times. (Did you really think John Prescott's article was unusual?) My interest does not extend to spending 24x7 trying to argue with such. You have stood by while they achieved the tipping point, and you're still in denial. "Creative destruction" is a current meme, and apparently applies to Wikipedia. Perhaps you'll have better luck in your next venture. btw - do thank Sue Gardner for at least being honest about her decision to not waste any time or effort trying to attract contributors of "her father's age" as they can't seem to pick up Wikipedia syntax. You have no idea how much I appreciated her honesty, posting it as she did on a public page. I will now leave the two of you to...what that leaves for "contributors". 75.59.204.69 ( talk) 02:12, 7 February 2012 (UTC)
Mr. Wales, I have recently concluded my participation in an ArbCom case. I lament seeing the array of shortcomings I hardly imagined could exist at that level. The legacy of your vision is in peril. In truth, your fundamental role as founder is actively being usurped and some believe you are no longer a relevant factor. That alone, as a mere notion, is disquieting. More perplexing, is the tolerance you exude, while active mining removes the entire aggregate beneath the foundation of your institution. ArbCom is functionally obsolete if it was to serve as a mediation of last resort. Please fix it. My76Strat ( talk) 10:58, 7 February 2012 (UTC)
I levy no claim of nefarious conduct. Rather, I believe accepted practices, have become unacceptable. While editing is not a right, it is an oft cherished privilege and reasonable protections, outlined in policy, should be afforded; equally! The letter of law and deed of implementation can no longer be bridged.
Your expressed views are thoughtful and aligned with policy. This is not characteristic in the field. People who should be under oath to support policy, contravene it instead. Policy is nullified by excuses that twist prose inconceivably; and then prevail!
We have reached the event horizon of a terminable end; my hope is that you will not stand idle. Solutions require your determination. I'll respect the decision you render. Sincere regards - My76Strat ( talk) 03:38, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
The Special Barnstar | |
Thanks a lot for creating Wikipedia! A site only made for free knowledge! Extraordinary! REDGREENBLUE ( talk) 01:42, 9 February 2012 (UTC) |
strange rant hidden, perhaps someone else can help this person? |
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The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it. |
HI i would like to launch a complain against a wiki used "MilborneOne" ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:MilborneOne), for preaching his biased and nationalistic views on wikipedia,he probably an Indian patriot may be a "MASTER EDITOR" on wikipedia but this position requires a very un-baised and professional approach and also ,i believe that one should have mercy on us and leave wikipedia out of their personal preferences and prejudices. On feb 5-2012 regarding the "JF-17 Comparable to Su-30MKI?" the Indian members were allowed free discussion and i was not allowed to respond and i was blocked by "MilborneOne " all my reply was erased and i was not given a chance to express and explain my self of not being Mentally Deranged or is being payed by his government. as put by the other user .what i said was
Its time you Indians wakeup to reality and accept that there are others in this world who have better things than you and who play better cricket (Sachin Tendulkar can be out the very first ball) than you and are much better people than you INDIANS. Kindly keep your prejudice to you self and leave wikipedia out , and stop making these racist remarks with your agenda." WIKIPEDIA must take steps to make it free of racism prejudice and personal agenda of its editors. thanks — Preceding unsigned comment added by 119.155.42.3 ( talk) 08:53, 9 February 2012 (UTC) |
Jimbo, as the only WMF representative here who actually responds to questions, I am curious if using a picture of a Siberian tiger (on a user page, not in the article itself) to represent a living person known primarily for their extensive facial plastic surgery ( Jocelyn Wildenstein) is in keeping with Wikipedia's policies on biographies of living people or with the WMF statements in regard to how living persons should be treated on all WMF projects? To me this is a no-brainer, but I am not known for my good judgment, especially of late. Details are discussed in this ANI discussion, although I would hate for anyone to think that I am blatantly canvassing for your opinion in this matter. Delicious carbuncle ( talk) 18:52, 5 February 2012 (UTC)
Continuing the thoughts about paid advocates, PR, etc. You make no mention of Political paid operatives openly or otherwise editing articles directly related to their client or boss. Isn't the orchestration of the product that wikipedia produces a problem? Ive been accussed repeatedly of poisoning the well by bringing this subject up, but I think it is important especially with the General Election to start soon. Since you gave so much thought and comment to the above IP's conversation I wonder if you might do the same for me. Your response to my email on this subject was disappointing. 6 or 7 words. Or point me in a direction where this important and timely issue is being discussed and considered. Maybe you have seen http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2012/02/06/gingrich-spokesman-defends-wikipedia-edits/ . Maybe not. ``` Buster Seven Talk 02:42, 7 February 2012 (UTC)
Here's Joedesantis's revisions to the mainspace:
I disagree with several revisions Joedesantis made, especially the 2010 revisions to the Callista_Gingrich article, but Joedesantis is currently restricting himself to the Talkspace. -- Michaeldsuarez ( talk) 13:19, 7 February 2012 (UTC)
Note: [10], [11], and [12]. Note also (for fun) WP:CANVASS. Collect ( talk) 13:14, 7 February 2012 (UTC)
As we approach the second anniversary of Wikipedia:Proposed deletion of biographies of living people coming into force, I wonder whether the time is right to extend that principle to all newly created articles (perhaps those created after 18 March 2012)?
While not the intuitive follow-up to BLPPROD, I still routinely see unreferenced articles created that have something to do with living people, 1982–83 Watford F.C. season being one example from the football world. There's nothing harmful about that particular article given its lack of development, but the fact is that unsourced articles focussing on the successes and failures of living people continue to be created. Other examples include lists of people, and sub-articles of individual living people.
By requiring all articles to contain some sort of sourcing, we would be accelerating Wikipedia's cultural shift towards a greater emphasis on verifiability. It would also be a beneficial precursor to further action on BLPs, as the higher a baseline we start with on all articles, the less onerous it seems to go a little bit further for living people.
Thanks for reading, — WFC— 17:47, 7 February 2012 (UTC)
I would suggest that, given the huge numbers involved, that we start at the "most read" and "longest" and not worry about deleting tens of thousands of unread stubs at the start. And not just for "new" articles - we have a good number of horrendous ones still around. A long article which has "too few" references may well be far worse for Wikipedia than a stub with none. As a mechanical exercise (triage), I would suggest that we start with articles with more than 200 readers per month, where there are fewer than 1 reference per 5000 characters -- this should get the worst ones into focus, I trust. Articles read under 100 times per month may be bad - but we should prioritize the ones which are most harmful first. Collect ( talk) 12:40, 8 February 2012 (UTC)
There were several big flaws in the BLPprod system and even more so in the out of process deletion spree that preceded it. Most seriously it was driven by people issuing ultimata and being prepared to ignore consensus, and as a result we wound up biting lots of newbies and other editors and prioritising some relatively low risk areas of the pedia. If we were to make another concerted drive to improve quality in a particular area I would suggest that we start by identifying an area where quality is demonstrably low and/or risk demonstrably high. The Death anomalies project managed that - we identified over 600 articles where people were alive on EN and dead on other wikis. This was a high risk identified group and without the need for any policy changes we got it fixed. I would suggest to those who want a similar quality improvement drive that they start by identifying a group of problematic articles and then publicise that. We have lots of unreferenced and poorly referenced articles, the vast majority of which turn out to be accurate if checked. Identify a subset of our most problematic articles and people will come help fix them. Ϣere SpielChequers 13:32, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
Toolserver is a vital but unreliable resource. In the annals of its mixed blessings, today User:Soxred93's Toolserve account expired. His webpage says he's retired. The loss over his tools is already being felt: User_talk:X!#Soxred93_Toolserver_tools. Among the excellent gizmos that are now unreachable: Edit Count (with the pretty pie graph and month-by-month, top articles breakdown), Edit Summaries (which tells you when you've been naughty), WikiBlame (which tells you who wrote what), and Pages Created (which tells you all the articles you started) . I don't mean to be apoplectic, but this is a travesty! And an indication of why the foundation needs to move fast towards integrating the toolserver into our ecosystem. Wikipedians do not live by NPOV and whiskey alone: we need our tools! What can be done?? -- Ocaasi t | c 05:04, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
Hi Jimmy, re: this edit summary: you should use the {{ Xfd-privacy}} template when courtesy blanking deletion discussions, and the {{ Courtesy blanked}} template in all other cases. Both of those templates should be substed to make it harder for users to find a list of courtesy blanked pages by using the "what links here" feature. While researching the answer to this question, I noticed that the documentation for the Xfd-privacy template was missing because the template had recently been moved to its current title and its documentation subpage had been left behind; I've just restored and updated the docs for the template. Graham 87 05:51, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
Since every Wikipedian learns the basic page when they first start editing here (especially its subsection on avoiding to remove likely true and especially sourced content!), it's apparent that a very active Wikipedian exists who has never heard of George Romney nor even his son Mitt Romney. Well, either that--or, the only other logical option avialable: the editor in question is currently engaging in some kind of pointyness? Viz., Collect--who, I see, is one of your talkpage regulars!--over at the Romney family (US) page ( diff), in an open-and-shut case of the removal of sourced content, two identical citiations to a Jennifer Dobner and Glen Johnson Associated Press story at the same time that deleted the list article's entries for George Romney and Mitt Romney. (Note that even without this citation, the article had a dozen references making refernce to one or the other, from up in the article's lede section.) I don't know if the editor thought that the article wasn't of value because the version that he removed had been published at Fox News or what. But, the point is, even if there weren't already a boatload of refernces to George and/or Mitt in the sourcing, everybody knows that the most notable members of the Romney family nowadays are George and Mitt.
I don't know if the fact that an election is going on is a contributing factor to this or not. Newt writes alternative histories. Here's one. Say that Hatch's proposed US Constintutional amendment to allow naturalized citizens to run for president had already passed and Arnold Schwarzenegger were running for prez. Would user:Collect be deleting Arnold Schwarzenegger's name from the list article about the Kennedy-Shrivers clan? If not--here's another newtonian, alternative history. Say, hypothetically, that (A.) Sirhan Sirhan missed. (B.) Marilyn was Bobby's mistress. (C.) And Bobby found her to be his political muse so he divorced and remarried his muse (D.)--joining Marilyn's church, Christian Science. (E.) If Wikipedia existed then, would user:Collect be editing articles about families whose religion is Christian Science in order to delete references to Bobby?-- Hodgdon's secret garden ( talk) 11:23, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
-- Hodgdon's secret garden ( talk) 02:13, 10 February 2012 (UTC)- Obama family
- African American genealogy
- African-American families
- Families
- American families
- Genealogies of individuals
- Family trees
- First Families of the United States
OTHERSTUFFEXISTS != much reason. The RS/N noticeboard made clear that genealogies on Wikipedia have to be validly sourced. And Wikipedia is still not Ancestry.com. Cheers. Collect ( talk) 04:02, 10 February 2012 (UTC)
I've been reading around the web and i found some articles which say that the charity which holds this site has been spending only a fraction of the money they received for server equipment and technology... and the rest went to someone's pockets. What is this? Can you clarify it? Gravitoweak ( talk) 14:02, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
http://ostatic.com/blog/wikipedia-fundraiser-successful-but-should-they-do-it-again
http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/wikipedia-experts-call-for-no-donations-to-wikipedia-111911964.html Gravitoweak ( talk) 14:56, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
Gravitoweak's user page is identical to User:Negativecharge's, who posted a bunch of jimbo-is-stealing-all-the-money conspiracy theories on my talk page some time ago and who has apparently been blocked for being someone's sock (the block message doesn't specify whose.) Quackquackquack. Kevin ( talk) 16:06, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
Thanks to everyone else who answered these questions. To answer some questions myself. First, since I'm the most known person involved with our fundraiser and people might think of me if they think of "someone's pockets", I don't take a salary and I don't take expenses, indeed I don't even take normal board expenses for my service at board meetings. That is, I pay for my own flights and accommodations. I sometimes do eat at a board dinner, and sometimes the Foundation has gotten me a car back to the airport when I leave a board meeting, although I generally ask them not to do so.
Our finances are audited and very open. Traditionally Sue has performed very well against her budgets, and we have tended to have the fundraiser perform quite well. What this means is that each year we have raised slightly more money than budgeted for (in less time), and we have also spent slightly less money than budgeted for (due to a frugal culture and things going well), so that our surplus is, happily, in a reasonably good place. Some critiques are inevitable whatever choices we make - if we overspend, we'll be rightly criticized. If we have a smaller surplus, we'll be accused of being irresponsible. And if we have a larger surplus we'll be accused of hoarding cash. While it is certainly possible to have respectable and differing views on precise details of strategy, I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about critiques that stray from "gee, I think we should consider doing this differently" into the territory of character assassination.
The 41 cents per dollar on program services is a figure that really bugs me, because it both out of date and anyway misleading. To the naive reader it suggests that the rest is going for nonsense. But here's the funny thing: I was told that most of our IT budget, for arcane reasons having to do with how that number was calculated, couldn't be included under program services! For various reasons related to understanding that their metrics weren't doing a good job of identifying what they wanted to identify, Charity Navigator has a different methodology now, and under their improved metrics, we do quite well: Charity Navigator report.
One final point about financial efficiency. We know that 470 million people per month use Wikipedia. (Comscore) Our planned budget is $28.3 million, or $2,358,333 per month. So that's just about 1/2 cent per person served. A half a penny per month per person served. If someone came to you in 1960 and said for that amount they could put a free encyclopedia into the hands of a half a billion people at a cost of a half a penny per person per month, you'd have been astonished. I'm still astonished, I love the Internet. :)-- Jimbo Wales ( talk) 13:31, 10 February 2012 (UTC)
Today, the Supreme Court of Canada came out with the ruling that ISPs are not subject to the Canadian Broadcasting Act because they have no control what is transmitted. See this CBC article if you are interested. Bielle ( talk) 16:55, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
You may be able to shed some light here on why only admins and account creators can do anything with edit notices. - Rrius ( talk) 00:25, 10 February 2012 (UTC)
Hi Jimbo, I made a mockup of the banner I suggested a while ago
— Preceding unsigned comment added by Willdude123 ( talk • contribs) 18:36, 10 February 2012 (UTC)
What do you think of m:Requests for comment/Gwen Gale? It looks like not even a co-certifier is needed to start a meta RfC, so any user banned from en.wp can put up an "admin abuse" page over there, as it happened in this case. Is a meta RfC the next step after the en.wp ArbCom declines [18] further involvement? ASCIIn2Bme ( talk) 19:04, 10 February 2012 (UTC)
That page is a disgraceful misuse of WMF resources: an attack page by an indef blocked user. As Tarc said, posting a comment is useless due to the large number of malcontents. The page is setting a precedent that anyone blocked at en.wikipedia can go to another project and paste walls of text in a fake RfC hoping that some of the mud will stick. Johnuniq ( talk) 23:03, 10 February 2012 (UTC)
WP:BEANS. Stuff like that is usually closed without result, no matter where it comes from. Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 > haneʼ 23:05, 10 February 2012 (UTC)
I think we have an official response from a m:global sysop [19]. ASCIIn2Bme ( talk) 02:39, 11 February 2012 (UTC)
This thread is a tangent, because I did not want to clutter the earlier discussion of counting what kinds of editors might be leaving, or later returning. For several months, I analyzed the enwiki active-editor data and confirmed that the exodus of "active and busy editors" has ended, where the counts of editors making >5 edits or >100 edits per month during 2011 has been within 98% of the same monthly counts from 2010. In fact, for the first time in years, the count of busy editors in December grew beyond the November counts (rather than wait to only rise in January each year). So now, the concern has been the top editors might be leaving the busy neophytes, yet I am thinking, "Hey, the top chefs are leaving Paris, so how will the world be able to cook supper?" They will do fine. After carefully editing 11,000 articles, I just do not see the feared impact. Perhaps people do not realize that 350 separate "top editors" (the top 10% of 3,500) have relatively little impact on improving 6,851,156 articles, when thousands of people come from other languages and add partial information to enwiki. Perhaps Wikipedia is in the realm of "too big to comprehend" without using wiki-calculus, analogous to trying to handle
time slowing in a strong gravitational field, without
tensor calculus.
If 350 top people were expected to make a massive impact, then they would have needed to coordinate their efforts, and not all tweak parts of the same articles. I am thinking, if the articles had been divided into 350 distinct groups, then that would be 6,851,156/350 = 19,575 articles for each person to fix. And I mean "fix" not just change 2 words per page per edit, but rather make 175 crucial changes per page, with extra sources and proofread. By having 350 top editors to "speed-edit" 1 article+sources per hour, 40 hours, 52 weeks per year, that would require 9.4 years for each person to really impact English Wikipedia (and no weeks of vacations). Meanwhile, the growth for new articles during those 5 years, including 290,000 more articles during year 2012, would have to wait. Hence, the numbers just do not add up. A set of 350 separate, non-coordinated top editors cannot hope to avoid rehashing the same articles, for minor changes, and overlook a million articles which they rarely see to fix. For that reason, I agree with the "Jimbo plan" to recruit editors into the major 2,000
WP:WikiProjects. The solution is to coordinate more people within each WikiProject. We know the top editors cannot edit 52 weeks per year, without breaks, or without helpers. The ants would need to follow a coordinated plan to create a gilded super-anthill of the finest architectural quality, otherwise, it is just a functioning dirt mound. -
Wikid77 (
talk)
10:10, 11 February 2012 (UTC)
Not sure whether this crosses the line, but Joe Desantis has been lobbying other editors to do his work for him outside of article talk pages. See where he posts on user talk pages [20]. And there are signs of meat puppetry at his behest [21] Mattnad ( talk) 21:01, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
FORUMSHOPPING? This has been iterated on this user talk page, on article talk pages, noticeboards etc. With the exact same result every time - JDeSantis has operated within Wikipedia policies and guidelines, and trying to toss mud at him does not work. Cheers. Collect ( talk) 00:40, 10 February 2012 (UTC)
While I think it is good to keep a close eye on Joe DeSantis - the media will be watching his every edit, I am sure - at least to date I have not heard anything particularly alarming. He did make direct article edits in the distant past, until he was cautioned against it. Lately he's been following what I consider to be best practice (and what I think should be firmer in policy): he's openly identified his affiliation and he's interacting with the community directly and respectfully, but he's completely avoiding article space edits.-- Jimbo Wales ( talk) 13:37, 10 February 2012 (UTC)
Hello Jimbo, I think the number of high-quality editors who are leaving the project is alarming to say the least and the problem should be addressed ASAP. I am talking about content-contributors, those who create interesting, informative articles on a variety of subjects, expand the stubs and starts, and promote pages to GA and FAC class - these are the people who are getting fed up and throwing in the towel. When the engine starts to smoke is the time to look under the bonnet/hood, not when the car breaks down. Something needs to be done.-- Jeanne Boleyn ( talk) 14:26, 10 February 2012 (UTC)
Aug 2010/Jan 2011 study | 2001 | 2002 | 2003 | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | 2009 | 2010 | 2011 | 2012 | 2013 | Totals |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Year admins created their accounts or started editing | 32 | 109 | 223 | 404 | 481 [1] | 326 | 115 | 43 | 13 | 0 | 0 [2] | 1746 | ||
Year active admins started editing [3] | 9 | 30 | 60 | 145 | 221 | 183 | 69 | 35 | 12 | 0 | 0 | 764 | ||
Admins still active (Aug 2010/Jan 2011) % | 28.1% | 27.5% | 26.9% | 35.9% | 46% | 55.1% | 60% | 81.4% | 92.3% | 43.8% |
Admins are much less likely to stick around than prolific editors, but as a group they are still fairly stable by Internet standards - most of the admins who started editing in 2006 were still active at the start of 2011. I may update those figures, we've had another 54 new admins since then. But that won't change the broad message; Admins generally stick around for several years. A large majority of our current admins made their first edit more than five years ago. It would be interesting to do something similar for FA/GA writers. Whether the problems at RFA are contributing to our overall editor retention problem is also an area worth looking at, certainly there have been some editors leave when they realise they can't become admins. Ϣere SpielChequers 00:23, 11 February 2012 (UTC)
Jimbo you might want to see Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard#An_overall_concern_about_AN_and_ANI if someone hasn't forwarded that on to you already, Newyorkbrad really has a point there
One of your most long-serving administrators has also been having some good discussions too — As I said the problem of abusive administrators seems to be evening out as more people get recruited it acts a balance against any one group being able to take control like they used to be able to, these days the problem seems to be less the old problem of administrators acting on whims - who have mostly passed a kind of maturity check - since there are now more that decisions are more likely to have to be made as a group, but the overall culture reflects human nature/internet culture as a whole (also [22] [23] but I am sure you are probably familiar with that idea already) rather than what you want it to be, there is a general feeling that people can get away with being nasty to people as long as it's not made directly but in snipes and repeated insults small enough to get away with but enough to try push people and make them scared of not fightng back, WP:BATTLEGROUND is policy but as many people have said recently the problem is it is not enforced and for many people it has become a hypercompetitive macho environment of who can put down competitors and get away with it, a WP:GAME
There has been a big discussion started on the talk page of WP:AN: Wikipedia_talk:Administrators'_noticeboard#AN.2FANI_reform:_Alternate_proposal_.232 I think this could be a major step towards making the culture less hypercompetitive and hostile if WP:CIVILITY was enforced, hostility breeds hostility and it's an endless circle, I remember when I was new I got into arguments and the continual one-upping because that is what the culture is like, as people commented on Newyorkbrad's post there is no one person to blame, but something needs to be done - especially if you want to start getting serious about changing the gender divide About 9 people in the entire of last year joined WikiProject Gender studies [24], now compare that to... this :/
Mistress Selina Kyle ( Α⇔Ω ¦ ⇒✉) has given you a cup of tea. Tea promotes WikiLove and hopefully this has made your day ever so slightly better.
Spread the WikiLove by giving someone else a tea, especially if it is someone you have had disagreements with in the past or someone putting up with some stick at this time. Enjoy!
Spread the lovely, warm, refreshing goodness of tea by adding {{ subst:wikitea}} to their talk page with a friendly message.
-- Mistress Selina Kyle ( Α⇔Ω ¦ ⇒✉) 02:18, 11 February 2012 (UTC)
The exodus of good editors is also connected with the other threads on this page about content. People often join Wikipedia and create good content. Then they discover that WP:NOTCENSORED is used to defend the seediness, that a trustee of one of its charitable arms uploaded bondage pictures of himself, complains about being victimised when they are pointed out but doesn't give a fuck about the privacy concerns of women sex workers. Jimbo, you have to decide whether you want to keep those who defend the seediness or those who are driven away by it.-- Peter cohen ( talk) 16:24, 11 February 2012 (UTC)
I think you should read this: No, Wikipedia has not forgiven GoDaddy for backing SOPA
The Reddit comment does seem to be rather striking and a good point, "I gave them $20 so they can move. I'll be asking a refund I guess."
A lot of people on the net at large did donate to Wikipedia because of the statement that we would be moving away from GoDaddy. Is this still happening? Is there some sort of time frame, or at least a guess, for when it will be completed? I can fully understand that it's something that would take some time. Silver seren C 04:26, 11 February 2012 (UTC)
I saw an article saying Wikipedia is still with GoDaddy. Could you give us an update? -- JaGa talk 16:02, 11 February 2012 (UTC)
Kudos to you...if only some of our administrators would be willing to acknowledge they may have erred or acted too harshly as you did at Silver seren's page, the website would be a far better place...thank you for this example for others to follow!-- MONGO 19:36, 11 February 2012 (UTC)
The constant seeking for blame and winners and losers in debate is a poison.
Jimbo Wales, 22:16, 11 February 2012
I completely agree with Jimbo on this matter. Editors are frequently prone to regard an argument as a competition, in which winning the argument is the goal, rather than improving the encyclopedia. Geometry guy 01:38, 12 February 2012 (UTC)
Discussion winding down.-- Jimbo Wales ( talk) 20:38, 12 February 2012 (UTC) |
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The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it. |
Is this http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/File:Rick_santorum_caricature_satire_made_with_frothy_santorum_pic_1.jpg really what we want on this project? IsThisReallyWhatWeWant? ( talk) 05:17, 7 February 2012 (UTC)
The OR argument is not unreasonable; although in this case the act is so simple in description that I don't see it as an issue. As to your latter argument; I have a passing interest in books on old houses. Quite often they are described in detail, but no floor plans are drawn. On Wikipedia, however, you will very often find a carefully drawn floor plan. As far as I can read you, and most of the other, objections to this image centre around the violence, or some non-specific potential for harm. This is what our Not Censored policy is written to address. You may find the topic peurile, but that is irrelevant. You call this article "sex education", I don't think it falls in that category at all - if anything it is pop culture or something along those lines. And to answer your question; because we can. that's not to say the image is of good quality, it isn't --
Errant (
chat!)
16:45, 10 February 2012 (UTC)
Under pretexts of not censorship, wikipedia admits articles on practices of violence made for the women. The freedom of Free expression has to too include sexual customs make for the women? Wikipedia is t it neutral? Not surprising that wikipedia has less and less women for contributors, Sous des prétextes de non censure, wikipédia admet des articles sur des pratiques de violence faites aux femmes. La liberté d'expression doit t elle aussi inclure des mœurs sexuelles faites aux femmes ? wikipedia est t il neutre ? Pas surprenant que wikipédia a de moins en moins de femmes comme contributeurs, מתחת לתירוצים של צנזורה, וויקיפאדיזאד מתוודה שמאמרים על תרגולים של אלימות עשתה לנשים. החופש D, ביטוי גם צריך לכלול קירות ; ארסאסאקסאאלס פאיטאספאמאס? ויקיפדיה T זה ניטרלית? לא מפתיע זה וויקיפWיקיף? ד.י.ה. איטוד פחות פחות דאסאס כ/כפי שתורמים, je persiste -- Cordialement féministe ♀ Cordially feminist Geneviève ( talk) 20:19, 10 February 2012 (UTC) |