User talk:Iridescent: Difference between revisions

...the inherant corruption level at WMUK, but it is very hard to not consider it a cesspit when stuff like this crops up. Anyone else found to be engaging in such rampant sock and/or meatpuppetry would have resulted in the entire lot being indeffed. Instead what we have is wagon-circling and quite frankly unbelieveable and not-credible excuses in order to avoid blocks. Only in death does duty end (talk) 08:40, 8 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I dunno, is this a case for Arbcom? If private information (CU data and explanations involving them) and accusations of collusion including on-wiki collusion are involved... Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 08:56, 8 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I've already commented there. I actually find the explanation plausible—I can easily see a situation where a bunch of Welsh Wikipedia types meet up socially (and hence don't bring laptops with them) but then someone brings up a particular Wikipedia page and everyone decides to have a look. However those with long memories will recall that we went through this whole "we're not the same person, we're a group of friends who happen to be interested in the same topic" stuff in excruciating detail at WP:EEML, and as far as I'm aware nothing has changed since then.

I think "this is WMUK circling the wagons" is probably a misread of the situation; other than Llywelyn2000 himself, the only person there I recognise as having anything to do with WMUK is Mike Peel and IIRC even he no longer has any connection to it. Although WMUK nominally has 500 members, that's because one needs to be a member to apply for one of their "buy this book for me" microgrants, not because it's some kind of mass movement. The actual core of WMUK is a lot smaller than people think; it's not a bloated tag-team like WMDC. (Johnbod is much better placed than me to say whether this is the case, but I'd argue that most of the well-documented problems have been precisely because WMUK is so small, it's historically been possible for a pair of nutcases to repeatedly try to hijack it for their own purposes.)

It's not particularly surprising that a bunch of Llywelyn2000's friends have turned up, since they're the ones who'll have his talkpage watchlisted and thus will have seen the notification that the SPI is taking place. One sees the same thing whenever any long-term editor is accused of anything; the closing admins know (or should know) how to distinguish between friends defending their buddy (or enemies looking for a chance to land a free hit) and genuinely neutral analysis.

I doubt this needs to go to Arbcom (or that they'd accept it), unless it develops further. Access to the CU evidence would seem to be a red herring—as far as I can tell, nobody involved is disputing that the accounts were using the same computer, and there's no secret technical evidence that could determine whether two accounts using the same computer are the same person using two logons or two people each using one logon. In theory T&S or the stewards might need to get involved if the allegation spreads into "they're also socking on cy-wiki", but that's well above my pay grade. ‑ Iridescent 15:29, 8 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

This is all news to me, & I must say I can't get excited about, rather agreeing with HJ Mitchell (I too have met Llywelyn2000 many times, though not for some years). It doesn't really have anything to do with WMUK imo. The reason WMUK has 500 members is because some years ago the annual appeal donation online form allowed you to divert the £5 fee for WMUK membership out of your donation, making you a member. I don't know if this is still the case, but the "retention" on UK appeal donations from year to year used to be extremely high, and I imagine the bulk of the current membership arrived by that route (hardly any of the editors I speak to still seem to be members). The membership suddenly jumped to the current level. Unfortunately, one would imagine that most of these donors have never edited WP & really know next to nothing about its internal affairs (& they won't receive any enlightenment from WMUK newsletters etc). Before the AGM they get an online proxy form with the Board's recommendations, and almost all of them follow it entirely. The effect can be seen in the choices for board elections. When I was a trustee we considered this way of expanding the membership, then about 80, but nearly all regular editors, but decided not to take that route, precisely to avoid the current situation. I don't agree that the small size led to the problems - the German equivalent had a far larger membership (up to 2000?), and problems that were probably at least as bad, but all conducted in the decent obscurity of a foreign language, so they hardly impacted Anglophone awareness. Johnbod (talk) 18:21, 8 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Apologies for snark in advance. Yes I guess it would be news to you that the Wales Programme Manager/WMUK Manager (Wales) appears to have been running a sockfarm for a substantial period of time, out of their home office which is what they describe as the WMUK drop-in. So nothing to do with WMUK at all then. Forgive my sarcasm, but this is just the last in a long line of WMUK members doing shady things (and by members, I dont mean random person who wants a discount. Remember the Shapps affair?). There are other links to users on the SPI page from WMUK, but lets just say that posting them publically would likely hit all sorts of outing rules. The reason why none of the arguments is particularly credible is that on different occasions they have directly referred to themselves using multiple accounts, have clearly been logging in and out of multiple accounts etc. In order to be a plausible you have to accept that a)multiple people were in the same place, using the same hardware, in succession. B)they have to have similar enough writing styles and idiosyncrasies that you accept different people use and/or spell words incorrectly. The first in context of teaching etc is at least somewhat plausible. The second is not. Now let me preface this next bit with something Iridescent may have forgotton (or I may have never mentioned, tbh it doesnt really come up) - that I am from the Rhondda. The idea that multiple people in Wales just happen to congregate in one spot, have the same grasp and use of English is just rediculous (see what I did there). For a start the Welsh language stats are well documented. So the concept of multiple people being *that* similar in their use of English would only hold if they were remarkably similar people, which would require their cultural, age and educational level to be near identical given the Wales population demographics. Or that they were all primarily Welsh speakers who had the same bad English teacher. It is just not remotely credible. Substantially because the Welsh education system has been significantly better than that for at least 20 years or more. The much more likely explanation, and the only one that would be entertained for pretty much any other user who didnt have ties to a chapter/affliate, is that it is one person. As it is, they have received favoured treatment, not even blocked as a CU-block, so any administrator can lift it at any time. How long are we taking bets on before someone does it? A week? Maybe a month? Only in death does duty end (talk) 20:45, 8 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Unless there's something I'm missing, to me this is a case of an individual with their hand metaphorically caught in the cashbox, not a case of institutional corruption. As per my previous comment, I'm not seeing any WMUK wagon-circling—other than Mike Peel, I don't recognize anyone at the SPI as having any connection at all to WMUK. (A couple of people may have attended WMUK-run events, or accepted a £20 buy-this-book-for-me grant, but I wouldn't consider that a COI.) I've always been fairly critical of WMUK, which sometimes gives the appearance of being a mechanism by which people sign off on grants to each other and which has historically had something of a blind spot regarding obvious sleazeballs trying to use it for their own ends, but I think the accusation of collusion in this case is barking up the wrong tree.

I agree that behavioral evidence strongly suggests this was one person using the different logons, but that's not incompatible with L2000's explanation, if they're passing the laptop back and forth and losing track of who's logged on as who. To me that aspect of things is largely an irrelevance, since "one person using multiple logons" and "multiple people colluding off-wiki" are treated the same way in Wikipedia terms and this is certainly one or the other.

(It's unlikely but not impossible, but I can actually just about believe which would require their cultural, age and educational level to be near identical given the Wales population demographics. Or that they were all primarily Welsh speakers who had the same bad English teacher in this case. If the people involved are a group of L2000's friends, it's entirely plausible that they're all the same age, from the same area, and attended the same school, particularly if the circle of friends is drawn from the relatively tiny pool of Welsh-speakers in Denbighshire. Per my comment above, this is missing the point, since by the EEML precedents we don't care if they're the same person or not provided there's evidence of collusion.)

I wouldn't have blocked as a checkuser block either. The reason we have the separate {{CheckUser block}} block rationale with the You must not loosen or remove this block, or issue an IP block exemption, without consulting a CheckUser or the Arbitration Committee wording isn't that we deem sockpuppetry some kind of mortal sin that required special treatment, but that if someone disputes the CU evidence, only people with access to the CU tool have the technical ability to examine it. Since in this case L2000 admitted from the start that they were all using the same device, the CU evidence isn't relevant to the case, so in the event of an appeal a vanilla admin is just as competent to assess it as a CU.

Regarding How long are we taking bets on before someone does it? A week? Maybe a month?, under normal circumstances in this situation I'd accept an appeal after about six months provided there was a firm undertaking not to do it again and ideally an undertaking to stay away from contentious discussions; I'd accept an appeal sooner if there was a convincing reason a particular discussion would benefit from their input, under a strict "any more of this and you're banned for life" proviso. (What makes this not usual circumstances is that commentary like this very likely violates a strict interpretation of UCoC, and at the moment we don't yet know whether English Wikipedia is going to take a "you must not offend anyone" or a "we accept that some people's opinions are inevitably going to upset others" interpretation of UCoC once the dust settles.) ‑ Iridescent 05:21, 9 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I don't see how that violates UCOC. The UCOC is about genuine problem editors, not about giving admins a stick to beat people with. There might be problems around giving extra powers to the WMF, but this kind of paranoia clouds the issue and isn't helpful. 2A04:4A43:461F:DCA3:0:0:DCD:E63C (talk)\ — Preceding undated comment added 09:48, 21 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

It probably doesn't—the point is we don't know if and how UCoC is going to be enforced. My point is that even if it's not enforced, its existence has the potential to create a chilling effect. ‑ Iridescent 18:37, 21 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

There were similar concerns about the Technical Code of Conduct, which was implemented several years ago (applies to MediaWiki.org, Phabricator, the wikitech-l mailing list, and in-person events). Since then, there have been very few concerns raised, and apparently no serious disputes. I think it's reasonable to assume that the UCOC will have a similar experience, but I also think it's reasonable to worry that it might not. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:11, 22 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Movement Charter Drafting Committee elections

And by the way the elections for the UCOC drafting committee (or part of it) are closing very soon (11:59, 25 October 2021), and I hope people will vote. There are 72 candidates for seven places. Their number of edits on the various projects vary between over 15,700,000 and 10! You have to find these out from the links as the table summarizing the candidates unhelpfully, if not suspiciously, doesn't give them. WMUK conspiracy theorists will be excited by two of them, and many other candidates have history in chapters, WMF committees etc. Johnbod (talk) 04:00, 23 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, that's the Movement Charter Drafting Committee, not the UCOC drafting committee. Disclosure: I'm a candidate. Wackiest election I've ever seen in my life; technically it's two elections rolled into one. Risker (talk) 04:10, 23 October 2021 (UTC) Adding a couple of potentially useful links: This one is a way of viewing the "20 questions" that all candidates had to answer. This one, drafted by Guerillero, gives basic details (including edit counts) of all candidates. Risker (talk) 04:16, 23 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Aah, thanks - well I still think we should all vote. Amended to "Their number of edits on the various projects vary between over 1,570,000 and 10!" on the basis of the very useful Guerillero link. Now we have no excuse. Johnbod (talk) 15:24, 23 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

That's 15,700,000. And I bet he looked at every single one. —Cryptic 16:19, 23 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I not only can't make head nor tail of that election process, I can't even understand what a "Movement Charter Drafting Committee" actually is or why I should care who is on it (let alone why I should care enough to read 70+ candidate statements). I'm probably more up-to-speed than most with WMF jargon and with WikiSpeak in general; if I don't understand it, it's a reasonable bet that most other editors don't either. ‑ Iridescent 05:18, 24 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, I know where you're coming from. Only about 850 people from all of the wikis have participated to date (with en.wp responsible for about 35% of the voting, probably because we're one of the few projects with a watchlist notice). There will be a movement charter drafting committee because enough people said during the strategy sessions that we needed a movement charter to make it necessary for someone to draft it. And yeah, I know there aren't very many people who are interested in the strategy, either. The process by which those "someones" will be selected is excessively convoluted, and was further complicated by the forced delay of the Board elections (because nobody actually tested if the software worked!), and the necessity of having this election cleared before the next scheduled use of SecurePoll a few days after this one ends. Yeah...it's only possible to run one instance of SecurePoll at a time. Risker (talk) 05:27, 24 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I think I am closer to understanding the meaning of life than understanding whatever the "Movement Charter Drafting Committee" is. If I am any evidence, then your "reasonable bet" seems spot on. Aza24 (talk) 05:29, 24 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Browsing through the Meta pages, it appears that it's a process to select the group of people who will work out how to get to these supposed goals. Since We will become a platform that serves open knowledge to the world across interfaces and communities. We will build tools for allies and partners to organize and exchange free knowledge beyond Wikimedia. Our infrastructure will enable us and others to collect and use different forms of free, trusted knowledge. describes a state of affairs which I suspect most of the active participants on the four big wikis consider actively antithetical to the values of Wikipedia—I joined up to ensure topics that interested me were better covered online, not to be an unpaid intern trying to improve the effiency of the data-mining operations of a bunch of morally dubious corporations, and I assume the same is true of you—I can't see how anything other than bad feeling is going to come out of this. ‑ Iridescent 05:46, 24 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

(Disclosure: I'm also a candidate.) Summary of the important parts: We've got one shot at making a constitution-like document that the WMF (and all our other orgs) will actually be bound by, with systems to make sure that the included rules are actually enforced. We're talking about legally-binding transfers of power, reworked systems of funds-distribution and high-level decision-making, basic requirements for our organizations, and a whole pile of new structures with various responsibilities. The Drafting Committee will run the drafting process for this, and the election ends in ~28 hours (at 12:00 UTC, no idea why). --Yair rand (talk) 07:46, 24 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Given that this is the WMF we're talking about, surely if it looks like it's going to come up with anything that isn't in line with their agenda they'll just abolish it? (If I'm reading it right, this committee is going to have seven members elected and eight appointed. I don't pretend to be a mathematical genius but even I can see something suspicious there.) ‑ Iridescent 13:32, 24 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Eh. It's 7 by the community, 6 selected by a committee whose members are selected by affiliates, and 2 selected by the WMF. I'm personally somewhat less sceptical of affiliate-selected members after good interactions with Shani, an affiliate-elected trustee. But I do think there's a bit too much weight given to affiliates, in general. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 15:11, 24 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

As the assorted WMUK people lurking on this page can testify, the WMF has form for cutting off funding to affiliates if San Francisco takes a dislike to their management, and cutting off recognition altogether if SF takes a sufficient dislike. (It isn't some unique thing that only happens in exceptional circumstances, either; they do it so often they even have a boilerplate form for it, and the chapters who've been kicked off the gravy train aren't tiny operations but biggies like India, Hong Kong and the Philippines.) It would be a brave affiliate indeed who chose not to follow the party line. ‑ Iridescent 16:01, 24 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

...Or maybe just reasonably self-interested, given the possibility of actually fixing those problems (see the Hubs/GC plans, which will likely take the relevant powers away from the WMF, afaict). I would guess that the affiliates would be very well-motivated to not follow a WMF line at the expense of their own interests, and to ensure that the Charter is something the community likes (to ensure that the community ratifies it in the first place, a necessary prerequisite to it taking effect). --Yair rand (talk) 17:47, 24 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe, but I'm skeptical that replacing the existing "loose collective with a central authority and a handful of local chapters which are there if you want them but which you're free to disregard" setup with a formal "WMF → regional hub → local chapter → peons" hierarchy will have any obvious benefit in most cases, other than ensuring that people in places without local chapters theoretically have at least some local representation to lobby on their behalf. Having an explicit power structure would seem to me to be likely to make it even more difficult to deal with the next Gibraltarpedia or LauraHale situation when it arises, since a hierarchical structure means more high places in which bad actors can have friends and protectors—and since WMF is presumably still ultimately going to have control of funds, the hubs will still not want to antagonize their masters. (To be clear, I agree with the WMF having its hand on the funding tap. Without some kind of central oversight, there's far too much risk that local chapters get hijacked by a small group who self-declare themselves "consultants" and start awarding grants to each other.) ‑ Iridescent 04:16, 25 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I think it'll be more "Global Council → hubs → chapters" than having the WMF at the top, but I agree that the risks from bad actors in the outlined hierarchy are concerning. --Yair rand (talk) 05:37, 25 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

As long as the power and the liability end up in the same place, any arrangement is likely to work for me.

I have formed the impression that the affiliates' general goal is to get more power into their hands, while making as much liability as possible be Someone Else's Problem. I have no reason to believe that this will address any of the hard questions, like what the movement should do if (as has been proposed) large websites are legally required to take complaints about content by telephone or to suppress legal-but-harmful speech, or to prevent minors from reading pages not deemed fit for children and teenagers, or what to do if the organizations with the liability are being put in legal jeopardy by the organizations with the power, or by volunteers. Some problems can't be solved by us (the internet needs a treaty that settles the question of what to do when drawing the line here on your map is illegal under Indian laws, but drawing the line there is illegal under its neighbor's laws), but I don't expect us to solve even the problems that we could, because the solutions are unpopular. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:09, 29 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Election compass tool

Out of curiosity, I put myself through the election compass tool, and only four of the candidates even manage to pass the 50% agreement mark. Yair rand, I don't know if you'll be flattered or horrified, but other than some guy I've never heard of from Hausa Wikipedia you're my closest match. (Interestingly Risker, with whom I assumed I'd match quite closely, comes out quite near the bottom on 38%.) ‑ Iridescent 04:39, 25 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

You're not the first person who has said that, Iridescent. Someone on Wikimedia-L said something to the effect of being surprised how I came out low on their comparison, but when they read the responses, they agreed with most things that I wrote. I know that I found that other candidates gave a different "rating" for questions and then largely responded the same as someone else. Let's just say it's a very imprecise tool. In an election with too many candidates for anyone to seriously assess, I don't know if the compass has helped or hurt. Like I said, it's one really wacky election. Risker (talk) 04:54, 25 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

(random tps pile-on) From idle interest I just used the election compass as well, with supports for editorial independence and decentralisation and opposes for things that smacked of One World Government. As above the top match was Yair rand and someone I've never heard of from China, with a bottom third placing for Risker who was my top voting pick in the actual election. Makes me wonder how accurate this tool really is, and its potentially dubious role in influencing how people voted. (Fwiw Yair I voted for you also: this is more about the low ranking for others than your constant top-place-getting in compass run-throughs). -- Euryalus (talk) 05:00, 25 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Agree that the tool is very imprecise. (Interestingly, my own results have Risker as second-closest at 67%.) It's also an issue that some candidates interpreted certain questions very differently from others. --Yair rand (talk) 05:37, 25 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I found the tool produced quite different results to my votes yesterday, which surprises me as I made sure to read the candidate statements, which I would expect to reflect a tracker like that. Perhaps it is due to the ambiguity of eh questions, many of which I found somewhat unhelpful, with potential interpretations that could swing me from support to oppose. CMD (talk) 07:37, 25 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I didn't try the compass at all. I am wary of using these interpretative tools because one never has an idea how they interpret your answers. I just threw my hat into Risker's ring and called it a day. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 08:24, 25 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Did the same. More than once Risker has been a rock for me and mine, and perhaps is uniquely respected. Ceoil (talk) 18:40, 30 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I did notice that there were a lot of questions with only one reasonable answer (like "Do you feel the Charter should be written in gender neutral language?", to which any answer other than "obviously, but since this is going to need to be translated into 200+ languages some of which are strongly gendered languages, I'm not losing sleep if something is poorly translated on Elder Futhark Wikipedia provided it's made clear than in the case of disagreement the English-language version takes precedence"). I suspect that how much weight the candidates gave to these non-questions skews the results dramatically, since everyone taking the test is presumably going to agree with every candidate on them so those who marked them "high importance" get an automatic fake advantage. (I did vote in the end, but mainly because when I looked at the full list of candidates there's one candidate who I think is genuinely crazy and who I wouldn't trust to look after a goldfish, let alone potentially influence a major information source. By the nature of the universe, if I hadn't voted that person would probably have won by one vote.) ‑ Iridescent 16:48, 25 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Rambling aside about change

The belief in Murphy runs strong in this one. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:18, 29 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Not really. If we're going by aphorisms, my attitude isn't so much "anything that can go wrong will go wrong", but "a leader is best when people barely know he exists". Wikipedia and the WMF more generally don't have a divine right to exist, any change has the potential to annoy at least some people, and anything with the potential to drive editors or readers away risks leaving the field open for Big Tech to slide into our niche. (We know from history that Microsoft and Google have both in the past had their eyes on the position we currently occupy; it's reasonable to assume the other big players do as well.) No matter how much criticism is directed towards the chaotic administration of the WMF and Wikipedia, it's still a hell of a lot better than the idea of Zuckerbergopedia. In this position, I'd say cultural conservatism (in the "opposed to change" sense, not the Donald Trump sense) and only making changes when there's a clear consensus for that change is the only rational course—"run fast and break things" can work for startups, but our great strength is that we don't significantly change either technically or culturally, so both readers, editors and functionaries can drift in and out without feeling out of place. The 3000-ish regulars on en-wiki and their equivalents on the other wikis may make the most noise, but without the swarms of casual editors we'll collapse, and if they start thinking "this place has changed since I was last here and I don't want to put in the effort to learn the new expectations" they're not easily replaceable. ‑ Iridescent 18:51, 1 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

One of the problems with requiring a clear consensus for change is that sometimes there is a clear need for change but a consensus against doing it. High-volume editors don't believe that certain problems are real, but we are convinced that our opinions are the only ones that ought to counted towards consensus. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:24, 1 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

By "a clear need for change", I mean that this is clear to all the people who actually know what they're talking about, e.g., Ops for server problems, lawyers for legal problems, affiliates for affiliate problems, people who run edit-a-thons for edit-a-thon problems, etc. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:26, 1 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

And high-volume editors for high-volume editing. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:55, 1 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

After all these years together, do you still imagine me thinking that my opinion should be limited only to subjects related to high-volume editing? ;-) WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:23, 2 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sure we could each write volumes about it. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:32, 2 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

But since the editors are ultimately what keeps the entire WMF ecosystem afloat, in situations where a problem's been identified but the solution is potentially going to alienate editors isn't there an onus to convince the editors that the problem needs addressing? (Or, in the case of genuine emergencies, at least to explain why the urgent action was taken and discuss whether whatever action was taken is appropriate as a long-term fix.) It might not always lead to the results the WMF think are optimal, but if the four big wikis (and in particular English Wikipedia) fall below a critical mass of editors the whole thing will just fizzle out. It does the WMF no good at all if they have a beautiful user interface and a written constitution that would make Jefferson green with envy, if in getting to that point the en-wiki and de-wiki editor bases have defected to Amazonopedia or whatever and the WMF is left presiding over a near-unusable photo-sharing website, a highly questionable travel guide, and a giant spreadsheet of insects.

Don't think editor bases aren't going to jump ship if they get sufficiently annoyed and a competitor is offering another ship to jump to—just ask Wikitravel. If one of the tech giants forked the existing content and offered $10,000 bounties for any established Wikipedia editor willing to defect to Knol 2.0, they could probably kill Wikipedia overnight if they timed the offer to a time when the editor base was already restless over something. (At the time of writing we have 468 active admins on en-wiki. It really wouldn't take much of a nudge to make us unmanageable since fewer admins would lead to more office actions which would in turn push more admins into resigning—and if English Wikipedia dies, the other projects will eventually follow.) ‑ Iridescent 11:16, 3 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, ^ that. --Tryptofish (talk) 11:44, 3 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I'm doubtful. Transitions can be ugly, but I am not irreplaceable. If I quit – if a hundred "editors like me" quit – then I have no reason to believe that another editor wouldn't appear in my place. Maybe the new ones would even do a better job of it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:28, 21 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I'm irreplaceable. Your mileage may differ. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:08, 21 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Facetious or not, I'm not convinced that You are not irreplaceable is particularly true except in the technical sense that we could hypothetically train someone to do any given task. Wikipedia's history is full of examples where the departure of one editor or a small handful has left a huge dent—a decade later we're still doing by hand what GimmeBot used to do automatically because nobody can replicate the bot, WikiProject London has gone from one of the most active groups on the site to completely moribund without Kbthompson and myself keeping things moving, etc etc etc. I assume the effect is even more pronounced on the other wikis where there's a smaller pool of active editors, and thus less chance someone else will step up to do any given boring-but-necessary job when the person currently doing it leaves. ‑ Iridescent 06:01, 22 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, that essay is absolutely not true in many areas. Looking at a few that I'm familiar with—anti-spam, WP:CCI, and WP:URLREQ—then there's a single person (or sometimes two or three) who if they departed Wikipedia there would be massive effects on the rest of Wikipedia, with a "replacement" likely never being feasible due both to the amount of work being done by those people and the high amount of domain specific knowledge that their roles require. Maybe for something like content creation the essay is more accurate, but that's an area of Wikipedia I have far too little experience in to state anything insightful on. Perryprog (talk) 20:49, 22 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed; to take a couple of relatively trivial examples, you only have to look at how quickly the Signpost degenerated into gray goo when the couple of people holding it left, or how chaotic FAC became after Raul's defenestration. I'm certainly not saying "relying on a few key individuals" is in any way something we should be proud of—it's frankly embarrassing that a top-ten website relies on the goodwill of a handful of people who in many cases have grossly inflated opinions of themselves—but it's where we are. ‑ Iridescent 18:50, 23 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Under Raul, FAC did not “rely on a few key individuals”, because Raul was truly a delegator, and was always committed to building a team. When they killed the director position, the FA process degenerated into factions representing FAC, FAR and TFA, bereft of any overarching vision, dominated by egos and reward seeking, and absent any concept of community or teamwork. It’s a wreck. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:57, 29 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, that's my point. I consider You are not irreplaceable to be demonstrably false since there are cases where the departure of one individual has had a clear negative impact, and Raul leaving FA was one of them. He 'wasn't irreplacable' in the sense that Wikipedia has still survived without him, but the presence or absence of a single person can cause clear changes even though the "wisdom of crowds" dogma would have us believe it doesn't. ‑ Iridescent 06:45, 30 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

musings on WP:You are not irreplaceable

How are Yahoo Answers, WikiTravel and Myspace doing these days? Nobody is irreplaceable, but the web is now old enough that we have clear evidence that if a collaborative site falls below a critical mass of experienced participants, it goes into a death spiral as the remaining userbase can't keep up with maintenance, the site starts looking like a mess, and that in turn discourages new people from signing up. You can already see the process beginning to take hold on Commons despite them having the massive advantage of one of the world's largest websites pushing a constant feed of potential new editors in their direction, and there's no reason to think it couldn't happen here. We can barely keep up with the spammers as it is; it wouldn't take many new page patrollers resigning for us to be overwhelmed, once we get a reputation for untrustworthiness it will be very difficult to restore credibility, and if we lose the reputation for credibility we kill the primary incentive for editors to want to work here in the first place. ‑ Iridescent 05:09, 21 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think the You are not irreplaceable essay is arguing about generalities. It doesn't even need to be true. Instead it is a warning to editors who think they are irreplaceable and who may indeed be widely felt to be irreplaceable and who then act like they can't be replaced/removed. Either the person ends up devoting too much time to the project that their real life and mental health suffers, and/or they behave in suboptimal ways that get tolerated (for a time) but really shouldn't be (and ultimately aren't). For the essay to work, it only has to convince the problematic editor and their supporters.

Business lore comments about irreplaceable or indispensable employees and generally they are considered a bad thing. Harshly, some even recommend dispensing with such employees as soon as you can, lest they become even more indispensable. But more positively, some offer advice on fixing or avoiding such a situation. The fact that various groups and wikiprojects on Wikipedia have had users who appear irreplaceable or whose loss killed off the wikiproject is a pathological sign. I get the message that pissing off the existing user base could be fatal but at the same time, we have to be realistic that current editors will leave for all sorts of reasons. -- Colin°^Talk 11:21, 22 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure business is really the same situation. Businesses have an effectively unlimited pool of potential replacements provided they're willing to pay enough to recruit the right people, while "replacing someone" on Wikipedia means finding someone else among the relatively limited pool of active editors who's willing to take on whatever the departed person was doing.

The real-world analogy to (e.g.) the chain of events that led to RexxS resigning would be if the only mechanic in a small town was arrested and on his release decided he didn't like the notoriety and decided to move out of town—it might well be the case that it was necessary and there was no reasonable other course anyone involved could have taken, but it nonetheless means that the only alternatives the locals have are to make the effort to recruit another mechanic from outside, to persuade another local resident to give up their existing job and retrain as a mechanic, or to make do without and hope their self-repaired automobiles don't explode.

The aging of the 2005–08 intake means we're now witnessing a demographic timebomb as people die, resign, or just get bored. New blood is no bad thing but neither is institutional memory, and we're beginning to reach the point where we're losing too many of the people who do the unglamorous behind-the-scenes stuff—the Facebooks of the world can pay people to do the behind-the-scenes stuff, but our model means we don't usually have that luxury except in the few limited cases where the community is actually willing to have the WMF interfering and the WMF is willing to do so. Generously assuming that one editor in five hundred has both the expertise and the inclination to do something like advanced template maintenance, that means there are perhaps a dozen editors currently active who could maintain something like Module:Asbox. And we're the biggest game in town; when it comes to something like Hindi Wikipedia (which is hardly some ultra-niche project only catering to a handful of enthusiasts) with ≈20 active editors and seven current admins you're literally talking about an active editor base so small that an outbreak of food poisoning at their AGM would destroy the project's administration. ‑ Iridescent 17:41, 22 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Businesses do not have an unlimited pool of candidates. I have been (distantly) involved in a hiring process for which we had realistic estimates that approximately 100 people in the world were qualified. One hundred people in the world is enough if you only need one coder (and we did hire someone), but it is not my idea of "an effectively unlimited pool of potential replacements provided they're willing to pay enough to recruit the right people". In other cases (e.g., historical buildings), there may be only one or two plausible candidates. Some skills are rare, no matter how much money you have, especially if you can't wait a couple of years to teach someone what they need to know.

But I think that what's different about Wikipedia, or wikis in general, is that when we can't find one of the few people in the world who know how to repair degraded copper wires in old-fashioned core memory, then we can just replace the old stuff with some modern electronics, and we can still go to Space today anyway. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:06, 29 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

More on irreplaceability

In theory yes, but in practice "we can just replace the old stuff with some modern electronics" isn't as straightforward as it sounds. Enacting cultural change on Wikipedia is like doing a three-point turn in a space shuttle; "if the bot that does foo goes down it doesn't matter because we'll just write another bot or learn to do it by ourselves" is a nice sentiment but doesn't tend to actually happen. In the wiki context people can't be either compelled or paid to do the things they ordinarily wouldn't do; if only one person is willing to do a particular job and that person leaves, then the job doesn't get done. (In your hiring process, you can keep upping the pay until you tempt one of those hundred people to leave their current employer. We don't have that option here; if User:Σ resigns and nobody else wants to write a talkpage archiving bot then talkpages will no longer be archived. Repeat that statement for the hundreds if not thousands of other instances where a process is reliant on a single individual.) Yes, this isn't how it should be, but it's how it is, and if this is the case even on English Wikipedia with its mass editor base, it can only be worse on the smaller wikis with only a handful of active editors. ‑ Iridescent 07:12, 30 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Case study: GAN is dependent on a barely-functioning bot with several major known errors that the maintainer has no plans to fix; he steps in when it shits the bed entirely, which it does on about a monthly basis, and no more. This is an unusually good case, because someone is actually in the process of writing a new bot and has been since about June. He's also fitting that in between all his other on- and off-wiki commitments. I'm hoping the current bot doesn't give up the ghost completely first. Vaticidalprophet 09:42, 30 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

On the other hand, Legoktm is the third person to operate that bot (it was previously run by Harej and Chris G), so I'd say that GA is more of a counterexample than an example. Also, re talk page archiving, that exact situation did happen back in 2013 when MiszaBot died, and somebody was willing to write another bot within a few weeks. (And, all this time, ClueBot III has been running in parallel, so the bus factor is at least two). * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 00:00, 1 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

On the other other hand, since GimmeBot went down in 2013 then AFAIK nobody has fully replicated its functionality. In any case, bots are just a single relatively trivial example of the "a given area is dependent on a single editor or a small group" issue. (Perhaps I'm violating WP:BEANS here, but I'm sure the vandals have already figured it out; a lot of article groups are the result of a single editor with a particular interest. When that single editor leaves, there's a good chance nobody is watching those pages any longer; as long as the vandalism is plausible enough not to set off alarm bells at New Page Patrol, a vandal can go through those pages merrily changing dates and so forth, which thanks to Google's laziness in not fact-checking Wikidata will then ripple out across the internet.)

As of today we have 5082 editors reaching even the fairly minimal activity threshold of 100 edits-per-month and we have 6,416,100 mainspace articles. A static number of people maintaining a steadily growing site is unsustainable, and the only potential point of dispute is just where the breaking point is and what measures we can take to delay or mitigate it. It's not being Chicken Little when one can see incontrovertible evidence of the sky getting steadily closer. ‑ Iridescent 06:30, 1 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Interesting point. Is this the fate of most voluntary endeavors then, even on the web? For me the continued draw is working collaboratively in an increasingly atomized world, on a project of worldwide importance (creating and preserving virtually the only remaining encyclopedia in existence of its size and scope). For me the community I have found here is also of major importance. I found very friendly help and abundant collaboration from the moment I joined (people were in much better moods then). That said, I also found a great deal of bullying in some quarters my first few years here, and had to completely leave certain editing areas to escape it. I think community and kindness are the key to editor retention, and editor retention is the key to WP's survival. When editors have a bad experience during their first couple of years, they are likely to leave. A lot of old hands are excellent encyclopedists, but they didn't start out with the skill level and skill set and learning curve they now have. I think we need to trust that well-meaning newbies of any scholarly or research bent are eventually going to be good encyclopedists, and treat them with kid gloves and much social interaction, so they will stay longterm. Softlavender (talk) 09:57, 1 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

My personal feeling—as I've been saying with various wording since at least 2009 and probably earlier—is that Wikipedia is heading for a "flowers growing in the sewers" model, in which we give up any serious attempt at holding back the flood of crap and just concentrate on preserving and improving those parts that we deem worth preserving and improving, and on making it clear to readers which is which. (It's partly why I spend so much time banging on about making article assessment fit for purpose.)

It will mean a radical shift in mindset, but unless there's going to be either a massive boom in editor recruitment or a mass cull of stubs—neither of which seems particularly likely—a shift from a 'curators of everything' model to a 'marking what's important so readers can filter out the garbage, but otherwise only moderating when problems are actively flagged' model seems the only way to go. I'd argue that some of the other projects like Commons have already taken this route, even if they've not yet reached the point at which they'd admit it. ‑ Iridescent 16:42, 1 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

It isn't just WMF who have to watch out. Wikipedians can be our own worst enemies when over-enforcing rules and sanctions ends up scaring away newbies. Another difference with business is that employees are largely recruited to do something the owner wants. Whereas many "jobs" on Wikipedia happen because someone decides spontaneously to do it. So it was a bonus they volunteered to edit here in the first place, and a bonus they decided to do something nobody else was doing or could do, and so we should be a bit philosophical if they leave.

As an aside, I do personally have experience of being replaced. I created the monthly Commons:Photo challenge in 2013 and ran it for a few years. When I gave it up, someone else volunteered to take over and have done so very well since. I have occasionally helped out when they go away on holiday around a month end/start, but strangely haven't needed to do that these last couple of years. On any long running project like wiki, getting replaced is probably a very healthy thing, and a measure of the activity being considered worthwhile. -- Colin°^Talk 17:35, 1 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

This has happened to me at TV Tropes as well. Now if only I could be replaced at updating the articles at User:Jo-Jo Eumerus/article work... Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 18:36, 1 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

It's happened to me also, but when a process has relied on a single individual or a small group, a succession relies on there being either someone being shown the ropes beforehand with an eye to them taking over, or someone lurking in the background with the ability to take over if the need becomes critical. Even English Wikipedia with its thousands of editors has had issues in the past with processes depending on the single person who's willing to keep them running. For some of the smaller wikis where the main editor base could fit comfortably in a Ford Tourneo, the departure of even a single person could wreck the project.

Although it's long-since rambled, this thread is nominally about Welsh Wikipedia so let's stick with them as an example. Last month only five editors made more than 100 article edits and only 16 editors made more than 10 edits there. Had the WMF decided to get heavy regarding the unpleasantness mentioned in Only in death's original post and issued a global lock on Llywelyn2000 it would have left a gaping hole in the project's maintenance; had an investigation uncovered evidence of collusion which led to both Llywelyn2000 and Deb being blocked it would literally have wiped out the project's administration. Repeat this a hundred times for all the other smaller wikis in the WMF ecosystem—from the vantage point of English Wikipedia it's easy to lose sight of just how small the editing communities of all the other Wikipedias are. (If meta:List of Wikipedias is to be believed, and that's bot-updated so I've no reason to doubt it, at the time of writing there are 35 Wikipedias that have ten or fewer active editors—not admins, editors.) ‑ Iridescent 07:18, 6 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I live in Wales, suffice to say there are other issues which wouldnt necessarily make that a bad thing if it happened ;) You dont have to look very far on Cymru for the same issues that crop up with all the smaller wikis where the admin pool is essentially a group of close friends. But that is a result of what happens when you have a very small self-governing pool of people and no accountability. Its not a Wiki issue. Only in death does duty end (talk) 12:51, 6 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Well yeah, I don't think cy-wiki would be missed; it's a charmless mix of nationalist tub-thumping and performative wokeness. It's not a great example, though, since even the most ardent nat is used to "the Welsh-language version of this is inadequate, let's check the English version" as a part of everyday life. For something like Burmese (33 million speakers, lots of politically sensitive topics, unique alphabet so stewards have difficulty monitoring it remotely, Wikipedia has four admins) an increase or decrease in the number of editors can literally have a material impact on people's lives. ‑ Iridescent 15:34, 6 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Next time someone asks me why I dont vote Plaid Cymru, I am using "it's a charmless mix of nationalist tub-thumping and performative wokeness" rather than my usual "bunch of muppets". Only in death does duty end (talk) 09:41, 7 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Watching the usual suspects trying to euphemismify away any mention of extremism from Plaid Cymru provides hours of peaceful relaxation; the changes tend to stick since nobody except PC supporters cares. "Adopted a neutral standpoint" is probably the winner, although "controversial remarks" warrants an honourable mention, and to read all the tales of electoral triumph you'd never suspect that this is a party that got less than 10% of the vote at the last election. (Today I Learned that the new PC logo is supposed to be a poppy, and not as every single person assumes a badly-drawn daffodil.) ‑ Iridescent 16:48, 7 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Three admins, actually, my:အသုံးပြုသူ:အလွဲသုံးစားမှု စိစစ်စနစ် is just the abuse filter. Elli (talk | contribs) 16:54, 7 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Clicking that link, looks like someone's Spirograph is on the blink. EEng 17:05, 7 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Deep lolness. Martinevans123 (talk) 17:08, 7 December 2021 (UTC) p.s. sorry, I mean ငိုရယ်မောမော အီမိုဂျီ[reply]

Apparently, it's because paper was in short supply so they'd write on palm leaves, and using the traditional alphabet with its straight lines would rip the leaves so the alphabet was redesigned to be all curves. That's two things I've learned today. ‑ Iridescent 18:51, 7 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Probably explains why my Spirograph doesn't work well with palm leaves... Martinevans123 (talk) 16:15, 8 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

How very Iechyd-dare you! ""Come home to a real fire, buy a cottage in Wales". Meibion Glynneath 123 (talk) 16:58, 7 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

That link takes me (indirectly) to List of International Emmy Award winners. Looking over that list, I can only conclude either that someone on the Emmy panel is transfixed by RADA accents, or that the media in every part of the world not within the M25 is unspeakably bad. ‑ Iridescent 19:36, 7 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Yes indeed. A travesty that Aneurin Anus and Kenny Twat have not yet been suitably honoured. Martinevans123 (talk) 16:20, 8 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

RE 'Controversial remarks', they were indeed controversial at the time but you could probably say them now in the current Welsh economic climate with nary a remark in return (except for possibly the 'must learn Welsh' one). The impact of house purchases on rural and other remote communities is well documented, seaside purchases - buy-to-let - the inability of people growing up in Welsh communities to move into the local housing market is a big issue. COVID had an interesting effect where all the people with second homes attempted to flee the cities under the various lockdowns/work-from-home to set up down here. They didnt seem to be prepared for the anger they got from what is normally a quite placid populace. The issue with health board resources and centralised government funding is a thorny one as well. Only in death does duty end (talk) 09:30, 13 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Hmmm, it's almost as if something had happened in the last 20 years that had brought "damn foreigners coming over and stealing our jobs", "they're just parasites who use our public services without putting anything back" and "people speaking another language are a danger to our cultural values" out of the crazysphere and into mainstream conversation… (FWIW, I don't believe in "Once you have more than 50% of anybody living in a community that speaks a foreign language, then you lose your indigenous tongue almost immediately" as remotely the reason the Welsh language is in decline, or you'd be seeing Spanish extinct as a language in the US. What's killing Welsh—and Sorbian, Griko, Occitan, Breton, Romansh, Frisian et al—isn't cultural imperialism, but a relative lack of written materials (both online and paper) making it less convenient to use in day-to-day life than other languages, and speakers of the language choosing to move out of the area.)

The phenomenon you describe during Covid wasn't specific to Wales. Small towns and villages across the world were overwhelmed by people pouring out of the cities into second homes and AirBnBs, and nowhere were the locals very pleased about it. ‑ Iridescent 07:05, 15 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Managing scale

Managing scale (scaling up, maintaining current size, or scaling down) is the fate of all endeavours. It's more upfront with for-profit projects, as they have to decide on how to allocate their financial resources. Volunteer initiatives can be more vulnerable to the availability of volunteers, and in an environment like Wikipedia that lacks hierarchy, long-term planning is very hard. There's no one responsible for it, and anything that a group of like-minded editors tries to plan for is subject to the whims of the consensus discussions of the day, and the continued participation of the editors in the group. isaacl (talk) 21:13, 2 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

When it comes to scaling up or down, Wikipedia has additional problems that for-profit companies, government bodies, and more traditional charitable groups don't have. The traditional way for an organization to handle growth is to break up into separate operating units. Wikipedia doesn't really have that option—it's not as if we can sell the 2,017,386 biographical articles to a venture capital firm to free us up from the need to maintain them, or split the science and arts articles into separate operating divisions to ensure that problems affecting one don't spread to affect the whole. Likewise, when it comes to downsizing the traditional way to handle it is through mergers, but we don't realistically have that option either—the only other bodies that would have both the inclination and the technical ability to absorb Wikipedia are national governments and big tech, and if Wikipedia ever did go into terminal decline the Googles and Chinese Community Parties of the world would much rather kill it off and have control over its replacement, rather than try to absorb twenty years' worth of contradictory rules and interpersonal squabbles. I assume the WMF's 'hubs' plan is at least in part an attempt to address the scaleability issues, but the whole "anyone can edit" nature of the beast means there ultimately needs to be a single place for the buck to stop. ‑ Iridescent 07:26, 3 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

English Wikipedia can't divest itself of articles, but it could take other steps to reduce churn and thus maintenance, such as protecting more articles. Traditional charitable groups at least have people directing what its volunteers do, and thus can choose to stop working on projects that they can no longer adequately staff (or provide other resources for). English Wikipedia currently requires large group conversations to try to decide what to cover and in what detail, and it's ineffective for managing scale. isaacl (talk) 20:55, 3 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

and taditional encyclopaedias have editorial boards and editors, who decide what needs covering, and more or less at what length. WP has never had any of that. I presume "English Wikipedia currently requires large group conversations to try to decide what to cover and in what detail" should be understood in the future conditional tense - I see no evidence any such process is currently being attempted at other than an individual level. Johnbod (talk) 21:28, 3 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

While a lot of decisions are made on an article-by-article basis—sometimes setting precedent, sometimes not—the big group discussions about how and where the margins of Wikipedia's scope are going to be defined take place quite often. You particularly see them on things like sports and music, where a change in the interpretation of "notability" or "reliable source" has the potential to cause mass deletions. Here's one that's just been opened on how esports teams (or "groups of videogamers" to anyone over the age of about 20) should be treated, for instance. ‑ Iridescent 04:45, 4 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

There is a discussion now on how to cover fringe theories. There are interminable discussions on what standards should be used to determine if a subject should have an article. There's an ongoing conversation on how to judge the potential availability of CC-BY SA compatible photos, in order to decide if a copyrighted photo can be used instead. There was a long discussion on portals a couple of years ago, where people tried to figure out how many people were willing to actually maintain them. There are lots of attempts to establish more guidance, but huge group conversation aren't great at reaching definitive conclusions. A very small number of recalcitrant participants can stall progress, because most people really are trying to find a happy consensus that everyone can live with. isaacl (talk) 05:23, 4 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The huge group RFCs can still reach a result even if there are stubborn holdouts, provided they get properly formally closed and it's made clear that even those who don't like the closure are expected to abide by it unless and until they formally challenge it. For an obvious example, as far as I know my closure of Religion in biographical infoboxes is still holding and still being grudgingly abided by, despite my ruling going explicitly against the opinions of some of the most vocal members of the "IAR means the rules don't apply to me" tendency. ‑ Iridescent 17:30, 4 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

It's of course possible to reach a result in some cases if one side is willing to push for an outcome. These days, this generally happens in cases where there is some urgent concern (say, COVID-19 coverage). Typically, though, editors don't like pushing for a result when they know it will cause significant dissatisfaction with some people, and a lot of the more ambivalent editors passing by will push for a "please just stop arguing and go do something else" ending to discussion, rather than trying to work out an agreement on guidance. isaacl (talk) 21:10, 4 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

All too many of the people at WP, are there because they like to argue about rules and details.It's not surprising that we should atttract people who are perhaps a little stubborn and even obsessive-compulsive, but perhaps we cna figure out a way to redirect them to arguing about content. I may be heretical here, but about half our articles would benefit form a direct challenge about the relevance and basis of the content, and atr least the result would be an improved WP. In deciding such things, we need to stick to arguments based on one and only one basic principle: what makes a better encyclopedia. We won't agree, but the way forward is to recognize the disagreements, and accept that the encyclopedia will as seen by any one person, contain detailed content on things we don't care in the least about; the counterpart to that is that it will contain content about what we individually do care about. As an example, it should not really bother me if we contain detailed articles on minor football professionals or beauty contest winners, of the detailed plots of stupid video series--as long as we can have articles on the scientists and and writers and historians whom I consider important. That's why I've always been an inclusionist -- in the hope for reciprocity. DGG ( talk ) 10:18, 5 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Notability vs appropriateness

As I've said many times before, if I were in charge the sole notability criterion would be "using genuine reliable secondary sources, can you write 1000 words about this topic without waffling or padding?". If we applied this scrupulously—and accepted that it would mean deleting some pages on things that "are obviously notable" if the sources don't exist to back that claim up—it would solve about 90% of our problems in a single stroke. ‑ Iridescent 17:51, 5 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

A thousand words feels like too much. I'd be happy if we could write 200 words without waffling or padding. (But I'd specify independent reliable sources rather than secondary ones.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:06, 8 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

200 words seems to me too short—the point is to filter out all the "we know this person/village/company/species exists, but there's nothing to say about it" chaff that's generated from directories, atlases etc. That said if it was a 200-word limit or nothing, I'd take the 200-word limit. Yes, it would mean losing stand-alone articles for "but this is obviously a notable topic" topics like the wonderfully-named Edmund Bastard (politician). To use that as an example, an article complying with the new rules could almost certainly be written—if he was a Member of Parliament for 25 years he'll surely have been mentioned in coverage of Parliamentary proceedings even though Dartmouth was a rotten borough in this period so the usual "we can assume he was covered in detail in the local press" argument doesn't apply. But this page is now 10 years old, other than its initial creation hasn't had a single non-bot edit that I can see, and is sourced solely to a book from 1834 called A Genealogical and Heraldic History of the Commoners of Great Britain and Ireland. Unless and until there's something actually to say about him, this is a straightforward example of a topic where we'd better serve the readers by directing them to an entry in a list rather than a content-free pseudoarticle, with the added bonus of helping keep {{NUMBEROFARTICLES}} down to a manageable size.

My thinking in "secondary" rather than "independent" is that it's easier to define, and for a change this drastic we'd want as few gray areas as possible, but that's a very minor point. ‑ Iridescent 08:06, 8 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Eh, in sciencey topics it's often not so clear what "secondary" is. There are a lot of sources that satisfy WP:PSTS but not WP:MEDRS for example. And I have always advocated the viewpoint that the intro section of an academic paper more commonly than not is a secondary source. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 09:32, 8 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

It's an interesting point, about scientific publications. Although it's true that introduction sections (and often portions of the discussion section) are reviews of the literature, and thus somewhat secondary, they are always constructed to support the significance of the primary research, and therefore are not particularly independent. (Yes, peer review is supposed to at least partially mitigate that, but I can say from experience that it rarely does, unless the peer reviewer pushes to cite their own work.) --Tryptofish (talk) 17:44, 8 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I think you meant to say that they are not necessarily "comprehensive", which is a nicer way of saying that the contents might be cherry-picked. They can be "independent" if the previous work was done by other people, no matter how biased the summary is. The problem for Wikipedia editors is that we can easily be led astray if we are too trusting of such summaries. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:38, 14 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

It's true that they are not necessarily comprehensive, but they are not necessarily independent as well, and the latter is indeed what I meant. In other words, the sort-of cherry picking of what to emphasize, what to include or exclude, in itself constitutes a lack of independence. If authors cherry pick the prior literature that is useful in making their point, then that reduces the independence for our sourcing purposes. It's the difference between not being comprehensive simply because it's brief, and – as is the case in what I'm talking about – not being comprehensive because of a deliberate (even if good-faith) effort to present a one-sided review of past work. --Tryptofish (talk) 16:23, 14 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure that concept fits with the way that we normally talk about Wikipedia:Independent sources. Merely agreeing with someone else/someone else's research doesn't make you non-independent of that research. If agreeing with someone meant the end of independence, then book reviewers would stop being independent every time they said a book was good (but if they hate it, they're still independent), and in the field of physics, only crackpots would be considered independent of Einstein.

I think I understand what you're driving at, but independence isn't quite the right wiki-jargon. Maybe the word we want is closer to self-serving. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:07, 15 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I should explain how I mean this. If this discussion were in project space, I wouldn't be saying it the way that I say it here, but this is of course user space, so I'm speaking more informally. I recognize that "I have seen biased writing of introductions and discussions, so we should deprecate such sourcing" would rest too much on OR and would be somewhat inappropriate for policy discussions. But I'm coming at this (and I know what I'm talking about) as someone with decades of experience working within the peer review system and seeing what happens from the inside. You are right that "self-serving" is applicable here, but the kind of self-service going on would indeed translate into non-independence (or at least bias/POV in the source). For example, I had a rather unpleasant competitor in the specific research area of my research, and he always either wrote his papers (and even reviews) omitting any mention of the (highly relevant) publications from my lab, or occasionally would cite my work misrepresenting what it said and dismissing it. Colleagues from other institutions would roll their eyes when talking with me about it, and his work eventually went out of favor, so insiders often understood what was going on, but I'm sure that lay people would have no idea. People who haven't seen the sausage-making from the inside would be quite surprised if they knew about this kind of thing, but it's more common than the public would suspect, and peer-review doesn't work as well as it's purported to. Obviously, I'm not even close to a reliable source about that for Wikipedia's purposes, but I cannot un-know what I know, --Tryptofish (talk) 17:36, 15 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I thought about it some more, and it occurred to me that you are thinking of independence as being "the source is independent of the other references that it cites and discusses", which is quite reasonable, and more precise in terms of the Wikipedia meaning than the way I was thinking of it (at least when the introduction or discussion refers to papers written by other authors). I was approaching it as "the source is not necessarily independent in its citing of its own publications, and not necessarily neutral in its citing of publications by others". It is reasonable for you to point out that the latter, non-neutrality in citing the work of others, is really bias but also independent in the Wikipedia meaning of the word. I didn't pick up on that until just now. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:06, 15 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I suspect I've seen a case of dueling academics on wiki. From our POV, there's a clear right–wrong division: One of them has been socking, and the other isn't.

You doubtless remember that one of my pet peeves about people claiming "unreliability" when the real problem is undue weight. A sound theoretical structure for our policies seems to be important to me. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:10, 16 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

An academic socking on Wikipedia. What a wonderful example to set for one's students. I'm facepalming, and yet I'm not surprised. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:15, 16 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know the context of the particular case in question, but an academic socking isn't automatically going to be A Bad Thing. I can imagine circumstances when an academic might have legitimate reasons for editing using an account that isn't linked to their real-world identity, either to prevent their opinions being given undue weight, to experience Wikipedia as a new editor as part of their research, or just to avoid giving the impression that they're trying to pull a "do you know who I am?". (Yes I'm well aware that 99% of the time none of these will be the case, and the actual reason will be "I'm the Regius Professor of Foology, your rules do not apply to me".) ‑ Iridescent 17:43, 20 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know the context either, but I'm fine with editing under an anonymous username, as opposed to one's real-life name, or to using a legitimate alt account. But actual socking, in the sense of using multiple accounts in order to appear to be more than one person (or to evade sanctions) is A Bad Thing (or A Bad Thing, PhD). (Foology, by the way, is a popular topic at faculty meetings.) --Tryptofish (talk) 18:39, 20 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

This is the SPI kind of socking. I've seen at least four accounts blocked so far. WhatamIdoing (talk) 08:04, 23 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Why doesn't that surprise me… Let me guess, it's either about (a) a completely trivial point about which literally nobody other than the editor involved cares or (b) us not giving due prominence to their own recently-published book which is available in all good stores and makes an ideal Christmas gift? ‑ Iridescent 14:22, 24 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I think it's a dispute over where the exact boundary lies between two obviously overlapping subjects. Anybody can see that the correct answer is the one that makes my area bigger and more important than your area. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:50, 6 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Jo-Jo Eumerus, WP:MEDRS does mention these sections: "In addition to experiments, primary sources normally contain introductory, background, or review sections that place their research in the context of previous work; these sections may be cited in Wikipedia with care: they are often incomplete". It doesn't mention the "not particularly independent" aspect that Tryptofish mentions. Independence can sometimes be a problem with a dedicated review, such as in a small or polarised field. There was a discussion recently at WT:MED which highlighted again that peer review is no silver bullet and doesn't magically confer reliability on the work. We frequently get editors assuming that everything in a "peer-reviewed journal" is peer reviewed, when in fact only a portion of the work is. -- Colin°^Talk 08:56, 10 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

My general thinking—which may not be policy but seems to me to be straightforward common sense—is that if the paper is discussed elsewhere we should be using wherever it's discussed rather than the original as our source, and if it's not discussed elsewhere that should generally be a massive red flag as to whether it's something Wikipedia should even be mentioning. Wikipedia is, in theory anyway, a directory of topics that are demonstrably considered important by other sources, not the Grand Repository of Every Piece of Information. ‑ Iridescent 18:40, 10 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

This is true (and as far as I can tell at least adjacent to PAG status) as a rule of thumb, but sometimes hits odd edge cases for uncommon or underresearched disorders. MEDRS is written assuming a significant and progressing body of literature; the significant majority of individual diseases are rare conditions not sexy enough for funding where you're lucky if the last literature review is from this century. Wikipedia's niche-filling role of "being the most comprehensive source on the open internet on a narrow topic" is even more important for rare medical conditions -- without us, things too weird for the NIH/NHS/WebMD types to have coherent articles about them are excluded from the general population, which is not great if you or someone you care about has just been diagnosed with one of them.

In general, a lot of discussions on the definitions and borderlands of reliable sourcing are written assuming people are working on the most controversial thing a given subject matter could cover. My participation in the Covid MEDRS discussions has mostly been trying to prevent people from, in the laudable effort to stop people from rewriting all our articles to say orange juice cures Covid, forgetting this is not most of our medical content and turning MEDRS into something that makes it impossible to write about anything in Orphanet/NORD's scope. In non-medical content, I've seen some horrendous games of telephone in the RSN-to-RS/PS-to-source-highlighter-script pipeline -- an RfC of six people where all agreed a source was apolitically reliable but two (who I happen to agree with -- its political content is a dictatorship mouthpiece -- but not enough to trump the apolitical reliability the way this did) argued it politically unreliable, the RfC was closed as 'politically unreliable', and this was translated to the source highlighter scripts as a giant red glowing "DON'T USE THIS" sign. Vaticidalprophet 19:33, 10 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Medicine

Medicine is a special edge case, as the only significant field where the use of outdated sourcing can cause real-world consequences. The subconscious assumption underlying Wikipedia is that the ideal of a Wikipedia article is an aggregation of all the sources that haven't been superseded by something better since they were written. This works great for something like vintage automobiles, since even if nobody's written about it for five decades nobody's going to come along and discredit the theory that the Ford Whatever was a four-door saloon with a maximum speed of 122 mph. This is imperfect but works adequately for a broader swathe of biographies and humanities topics—there are a lot of niche historical topics where the most definitive references are hopelessly outdated books with titles like The Wogs Are Out For Blood, but where the facts aren't disputed so it's a case of separating the non-problematic facts from their problematic interpretation.

On medical topics, the underlying "notability doesn't expire so if it was only covered in depth in 1923 it remains worthy of an article" leads to problems, since the 'best' sources by our usual standards are often totally discredited but the discrediting doesn't necessarily itself meet our standards for reliable sourcing. MEDRS is a valiant effort to square that circle, but brings its own issues in that it's not always clear what is and isn't a medical article. (Coffea → Coffee bean → Coffee → Caffeine → Caffeine citrate; at what point on that line does MEDRS kick in? Is Heroin a medical or a social history topic? How about Bee sting?)

In an ideal world, Wikipedia wouldn't cover medical topics and we'd have a separate Wikispecies-style wiki for medicine, where we could both rewrite the sourcing and notability rules to suit the unique circumstances, and be a lot harsher when it comes to blocking and protecting than Wikipedia's rules allow. "Anyone can edit", "be bold" and "if we get this wrong people might die" aren't a good mix; a separate project where we could enforce "get consensus for any given change before you make it" and "think about whether this is actually an improvement rather than about whether it complies with Wikipedia's arbitrary rules" would solve an awful lot of problems.

The whole "politically unreliable means 'never use this'" thing is an issue that comes up all the damn time. I once had someone—and a very experienced editor from the 2004 intake to boot, not an overenthusiastic n00b—earnestly explaining to me that the Daily Mail RfC meant that the Daily Mail wasn't a reliable source for a quotation from the Daily Mail. ‑ Iridescent 06:52, 11 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

(Tryptofish clears throat, and then says something that will be like kicking a wasp nest.) At the risk of being reviled, I'll point out that the reviled Doc James created the reviled Medicine Wiki, which is exactly a separate wiki that deals only with medicine topics and has its own content rules. (That said, I'm perfectly/painfully aware that the creation of a separate project with separate rules arose from the desire to have rules that permit drug pricing information, and that the project may suffer from too little participation, so no one needs to point any of that out to me.) --Tryptofish (talk) 23:06, 11 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah -- the project that hosts the pre-rewrite versions of all the articles I've done in the past year, so we can have permanent public-facing preservations of a bunch of outdated Starts. I became active in the post-Case/Medicine era, and I honestly can't make sense of what I've read of it (and I've read much of it). It just sounds like an archetypal case of the Infobox Phenomenon, where people tear themselves apart over issues barely noticeable outside their bubble.

On the broader point, there's simultaneously a tendency to treat Wikipedia's medical content in exactly the way you (Iri) describe, and an open question of how useful it really is. The protection threshold is de facto far lower for medical articles -- indef semis over single-incident vandalism are, maybe not routine, but I've certainly worked on articles in that situation (e.g. tetrasomy X has exactly that protection log). Ajpolino has been working for several months now on trial unprotections of many high-profile medical articles, and of the articles called out on that list as unprotected, I took a look at Healthy diet, Multiple sclerosis, and Parkinson's disease to see none reprotected or wracked by newfound severe issues. (Oldfound severe issues are outside the experiment's scope...) The aforementioned tetrasomy X and its big sister trisomy X were unprotected adjacent to the experiment, as a procedural result of histmerges with userspace rewrites, and similarly haven't faced any issues. Vaticidalprophet 23:25, 11 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Your point about mirroring out-of-date versions of our articles is an excellent one. What they really need over there is some kind of crawler/bot that continuously (or at least periodically) mirrors the edits made at en-wiki, rather than just staying frozen in time. (Has there really been that much time post-case? I've certainly been seeing you around a lot, and productively so.) --Tryptofish (talk) 22:02, 12 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Jamesopedia appears to be down to just three editors. Assuming that's the case, it's a zombie project that isn't really comparable to what I'm suggesting. Assuming that SUL continues to function (and there's no reason it shouldn't) and that we make GlobalWatchlist enabled by default, any transition should be virtually invisible to both readers and editors other than on switchover day itself.

Spitballing further, we could even continue to host non-technical versions of the articles on Wikipedia complete with prominent Warning! This page is potentially inaccurate and does not constitute medical advice, do not take any action based on it! disclaimers. That would address something that's always been an issue since the earliest days, that we're simultaneously trying to cater for the target intelligent fourteen year old with no prior knowledge, and for people with decades of experience. For a handful of the most sprawling topics we already have pages like Introduction to genetics, but it's very much the exception; there's no policy basis for these pages existing, and there are only about a dozen. As things stand, the ≈20,000 readers per day visiting COVID-19 are presented with "reverse transcription loop-mediated isothermal amplification from a nasopharyngeal swab" within about 30 seconds of reading. ‑ Iridescent 07:02, 13 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Iridescent, you are being very unfair. While they do only have three editors active in article space (Whispihistory, Ozzie10aaaa and King James), you are forgetting QuackGuru, who has created more than 20 sandboxes on e-cigarettes. Ok, now you are suggesting the splinter medWiki would be technical, presumably aimed at health professionals, and wouldn't need disclaimers. And that the core Wikipedia could continue to have lay friendly pages on cancer that were held to a lower standard and admined by people who wouldn't know a catheter from a catherine. While editors are motivated by several factors, I think having a readership is a big draw. So why would I edit a specialist publication for people who already have the information they need and know where to get it, or a non-specialist publication that is read by millions? Consider that in the UK the British National Formulary is freely available to all. And Datapharm's emc provides summary information sheets for professionals and patient info leaflets for lay patients for pretty much all drugs. Wrt drugs, what's your medWiki offering that those don't? A History section? -- Colin°^Talk 08:54, 13 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I won't presume to speak for everyone who originally signed up at the Med Wiki, obviously, but I can explain what my experiences have been. I signed up originally because I figure that any alternative to en-wiki is worth giving a chance, and I believed that I could help with fixing inelegant writing. (I still feel badly about not having done that.) Over time, I ran into two issues. One is that the login process over there has some problems. Logging in directly over there raises some preservation-of-privacy issues, and I'm extremely protective of my privacy. There has been a process of being logged in as part of the Wikimedia global login, but that has only worked on-and-off. Second, I think there has been an "after you; no, after you" problem: potential editors (or at least, me) see the low level of participation and wait to see who else participates, and it becomes self-fulfilling with hardly anyone going first. Early on, James and Ozzie were very busy with the mirroring (such as it was), and it felt to me like I might as well wait until they had gotten through that step. And after a while, those two problems I describe made it seem easier and easier not to bother. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:01, 13 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Iri, what you have in red is what I have long advocated for all medicine content. That RFC failed because of how I structured it, and the subsequent worse additions by others; it would be grand if a better formulated RFC could get some sort of real disclaimer on medical content (as opposed to the site wide disclaimer that no casual reader will ever see). Search for my comment in this discussion.

You have it right on Jamesopedia, but (besides hosting the efforts of a topic banned editor) there are other issues there that need not be shared publicly. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:26, 13 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

He was topic-banned from pricing, not from medical topics as a whole. And the purpose of the new wiki was, in significant part, to have different rules on pricing content than at en-wiki. There's an inconsistency with saying that we should spin off a separate medical wiki with different rules on content, and then treating a separate wiki with different rules that we don't like as though it were Wikipediocracy. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:31, 13 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I am iPad editing in the car on a long trip home from a wedding, hotspot connection, so I could be wrong, but I was fairly certain he was more broadly topic banned: “QuackGuru topic banned: QuackGuru is indefinitely topic-banned from articles relating to medicine, broadly construed.” SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:37, 13 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Struck, with my apologies. I thought you were referring to James, but you are correct about QG. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:39, 13 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

My writing tends to lack clarity even when not editing from the car :) :) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:41, 13 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

"Hosting the efforts of a topic banned editor" isn't necessarily a bad thing. If Wikipedia is going to have "your only rights here are the right to leave and the right to fork" as a mantra for two decades, we can't then complain when people leave and fork. I said much the same once to someone at WMF (I assume WAID but can't honestly remember) regarding proxying. "If you're a really excellent historian but you're just not able to work with others, we should help them -- go and make your own website, release it under Creative Commons license and we'll try to use some of that material, because it's just not working out" may not be formal policy, but given that it was publicly announced by Jimmy Wales to a crowd of people at Wikimania, any normal observer would assume that it is policy. That being the case, it's not reasonable for us to complain either about people who don't fit in to Wikipedia's environment going and doing their thing elsewhere, or about other people then importing things they've written. ‑ Iridescent 06:35, 15 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

^Well-said, thanks. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:41, 15 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

(Has there really been that much time post-case? Time is a cruel mistress. Case/Medicine was opened April 2020 (fantastic timing, eh) and closed June 2020, so a year and a half ago now. I became active a year ago and have passed the >100 edits 'highly active editor' (ask the WMF, not me) bar for about eight or nine months of that.) I think both Colin's "what is medical content" (which, as it happens, was one of Iridescent's points as well w/r/t "when does MEDRS kick in" and "when do altmed DS sanctions kick in") and "why would people write for X minor publication when they could write for Y major publication with as much or more ease" are both significant points that any split would need a good answer to. Impact of writing is a huge part of why people in any field end up on Wikipedia. I've been published in "real outlets" of significant reach, and I doubt it gets anywhere near the readership of even my most damnably obscure articles. In turn, debating the borderlands of what a given subject-specific PAG actually applies to has never been simple, from much more trivial cases ("does a MOS note about how to write fractions in science-related articles apply to medical articles, and in turn is someone changing it to that format being disruptive?") to broad existential debates when people get dragged for noticeboards for flying too close to their tbans. Vaticidalprophet 19:56, 13 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

What I'm thinking of shouldn't have any significant impact, positive or negative, on the readership for any given page; to anyone other than the actual editors, it would be a behind-the-scenes shift regarding where specific pages were hosted. If and when it became more fork-y—e.g. when articles start to exist in two versions, an introductory one on Wikipedia and a technical one on Newwiki—there would be a dip in readers but hopefully an increase in satisfaction, as we'd no longer have the "this article is too simplistic!" and "this article is too complicated!" complaints.

Again this is thinking out loud rather than a policy proposal, but if "two separate domains" and "where to draw the subject boundaries" are what's causing the problem, there are ways it could be done that would still keep the whole thing in-house. As well as expanding the use of [[Introduction to Foo]] articles (User:Encyclopædius had some thoughts once on going the other way as well, and having [[Summary of Foo]] pages, but I don't know how far he got), we could cobble together formal definitions of "High Importance Topic" and "Topic Where Inaccuracy Poses an Increased Risk", and enforce stricter sourcing/balance rules on them along with some kind of automated system to flash warnings at anyone attempting to edit pages falling into these categories… If "preserving the unity of the wiki" is the top priority, there are still ways we could start preparing for the time when we admit we can't monitor every change and need to prioritize the topics where accuracy is most important. ‑ Iridescent 06:35, 15 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Would you need it to be a separate wiki (maybe with a bot updating it, or some sort of cross-wiki transclusion)? Medical articles (as chosen by consensus) could be moved into a different namespace, and the entire namespace could be protected against anyone who doesn't have a "medical-editor" userright. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:13, 16 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The way I'm thinking about this, if it's a separate wiki, it has separate rules for (potentially) everything. If it's this wiki, then the normal rules and existing infrastructure applies, and the main difference is that there's an extra level of page protection. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:14, 16 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

If it stays on this wiki, it surely wouldn't need a new namespace? We could just create a new medical=yes, or even a more generic potentially_sensitive_high_readership_topic=yes, flag, come up with an agreement as to how we decide which pages are covered by it, and then restrict the right to edit that page to people who've passed an "I understand the specific extra rules regarding this subset of articles" test (either an actual exam or an RFA-lite interrogation). Call it Pending Changes Level 3. If it failed we could just quietly abandon it as we did with Flagged Revisions etc, if it worked we could potentially expand it to all the other shit-magnets like American politics, climate change, I/P etc. It could hardly be a more dysfunctional system than WP:ACDS. ‑ Iridescent 19:31, 16 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I think it'd be easier to keep track of a namespace than to keep track of which article gets which flags, but a "PC3" could also work, if admins didn't mind the extra hassle of protecting all the pages.

Having a separate wiki might reduce some of the drama. At smaller wikis, everyone knows everyone, and the editor who's annoying you today is very likely the editor who helped you solve a problem yesterday. You're not being annoyed by a faceless random luser; you're being annoyed by someone whom it is likely in your own best interest to maintain a functional relationship with. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:56, 17 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

As per my previous comments in this thread my slight preference would be for a separate wiki for the reasons that you mention, although I can see good arguments for "keep it all in one place". An obvious drawback to separate wikis is that—as we already see with Wikidata and with different language wikis—there will inevitably be times when the different versions of articles disagree, and readers would understandably be confused if Google returns two different "Wikipedia" results each saying different things; an obvious drawback to keeping it on-wiki with an additional article flag would be that it adds yet another layer to Wikipedia's byzantine bureaucracy; an obvious drawback to "do nothing and carry on as we currently do" is that we know the system is already creaking at the seams and eventually the number of articles in any given area is going to overwhelm the number of editors monitoring that area, and for some topics like medicine and BLPs this has more potential to cause issues than it does for others. ‑ Iridescent 07:07, 18 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

On breaking up Wikipedia

Back to the drum I’ve been beating for years. Medicine needs a BLP-type policy which would allow us to massively remove poorly sourced and dated content. That would address, I believe, everything Iri raises. We could effectively blow up dated and miserable medical content, because nothing is better than something poor in the medical realm. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:57, 12 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The problem with Doc James's if-I-can't-win-every-time-I'm-taking-my-ball wiki isn't its existence, but the fact that it mirrors Wikipedia so is always going to lag behind since if the literature changes any editor is going to update Wikipedia, but not everyone is going to update Jamesopedia (even if he deigns to allow them to create an account). What I'm envisaging is something different, in which we export the medical articles to a separate site, delete the pages from Wikipedia, and replace every internal link with a link to the relevant page on the new site, and the existing wikilinks on the medical articles with backlinks to Wikipedia. (It's not beyond the bounds of possibility; this is what we did when we moved the images en masse to Commons.) The change would be virtually invisible to readers since the only sign that they'd temporarily left Wikipedia would be the replacement of the death star with the Medwiki logo and vice versa as they navigated between pages.

Such a move would have the advantage of allowing us to have genuinely separate rules on notability, sourcing, protection and editor interaction on this particular set of articles, and (importantly) to block people from editing medical articles as a whole while leaving them still able to edit everything else. I don't believe I'm giving away state secrets in saying that WP:MEDRS is a fudge of a solution which regularly leaves good-faith editors confused and upset when they think they're improving an article, only to find themselves summarily reverted and warned even though they've been faithfully following all the 'normal' rules on sourcing et al which we've just spent ages explaining to them. It would also allow us to have a separate group of "medical admins" who've demonstrated familiarity with the particular issues affecting medical articles and thus can be appointed admins on the new wiki, without having to go through the whole "please demonstrate your familiarity with the circumstances in which deletion criterion A10 should be invoked on a userspace draft" charade of RFA.

Looking further forward, a stand-alone Medwiki could also start looking at the unique circumstances affecting COI on medical articles, where the most up-to-date information is often proprietary and the people with the best knowledge of a given topic are often directly employed by firms or organizations working directly on that topic. As things stand, we have an uneasy dancing around policy where we're often choosing either to intentionally fail to provide all the information readers are likely to be looking for, or we're turning a blind eye to the use of sources which are technically inappropriate and to editing by editors who technically should be avoiding a particular topic.

I don't expect this actually to happen any time soon, but I do think that "preserve the best of Wikipedia in separate walled-garden sites that are small enough for the admins to actually administer" will increasingly be seen as the route to take as Wikipedia proper becomes unmanageably large. As long as this line shows no sign of levelling off while this line remains flat, the question of how we decide which articles need to be kept up to date and which can safely be ignored is going to become slightly more pressing with each year that goes by. ‑ Iridescent 07:06, 12 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Well, at least you didn't call it the King James Version. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:04, 12 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

A-series CSD criteria aren't applicable in userspace. (Sorry, nerdsniped.) On the note of how a hypothetical Wikimedicine would permit blocking editors from all and only medical articles, it's worth noting a recent significant ANI thread was about exactly this issue. The combination of ANI's nonspecific search function with the fact the board's recent archives are absolutely screwed by "the longest thread of all time by over 200k bytes more than the next, followed by several spinoffs" gave me some issues narrowing it down, but I eventually managed to get to Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive1084#JCJC777, and Multiple sclerosis, and long-term concerns unheeded. It's a bit of a stretch to call the discussion resolved -- he ended up getting pblocked from the article at the core of the issue, but no further restrictions either technical or social.

As it stands, I'm not sure we can't just tban people from medical articles within the Wikipedia context. The problem is, AFAICT, more rooted in hesitation to tban people from major and wide-ranging topic areas that aren't under Discretionary Sanctions™. I recall you having a fairly negative view of Discretionary Sanctions™ -- I'm more in the "well, things aren't going to get better if we repeal it without a clear plan elsewise, I guess" school of thought, which seems vaguely on the more cynical end of community consensus -- but medicine is certainly an area where the treatment of subject matters as "either normal or Really Bad" crashes into reality. (I don't agree medical articles should work on a consensus-required format -- if nothing else, bikeshedding is such a pervasive problem for significant improvement of big-subject articles that I suspect nothing would ever get done, which for these articles is going backwards. I've had the experience of everyone who edits in a topic area suddenly coming out to give their input on a high-profile article twice over in topic areas much less contentious, and I completely understand why many people stop editing such articles entirely over it. In turn, I suspect trying to enforce Discretionary Sanctions™ in medicine, which is an unfortunately plausible outcome of making a big deal over how complicated a topic area it is to the wrong people, would have all kinds of horrible domino effects.)

BLPs might be the same, actually. They're nominally a Discretionary Sanctions™ area, but in practice, if a BLP article has that tag on its talk page it's an unusually heated one, and if someone gets a 'neutral statement not implying there are issues with your contribs' DS notice for BLPs they're probably skirting right up against the borders of an oversight block. There is probably a better way to recognize areas as sensitive without doing the same things for them you do for intractable millennia-long ethnic conflicts. Vaticidalprophet 07:47, 12 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I personally think discretionary sanctions are a lot of work for minimal benefit. If someone is causing problems, they're causing problems whether the article is under DS or not. Plus, unless the scope of the sanction is very specifically targeted, it's very difficult to say whether a given topic falls into their scope. (An existing DS in medicine is Any edit about, and all pages relating to, Complementary and Alternative Medicine. Since it's routine for disease/condition articles to include some variation on "traditionally people ate honey to reduce the effects but clinical trials have shown no evidence of any benefit", does that mean that e.g. Common cold is subject to the discretionary sanctions? The wording of the DS says "all pages relating to…", not "only those sections that deal with…", after all.) Plus, the DS regime is so complicated that nobody except a handful of professional wikilawyers can even remember what WP:DSTOPICS covers, let alone how each individual circumstance is interpreted. As I say, moving the medical articles to a separate wiki where the rules can be re-written if necessary and where we don't treat "anyone can edit" as some kind of Holy Writ would negate the need for most of the confusion, without having any obvious negative impact for the reader. ‑ Iridescent 08:01, 12 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

My consensus-required comment is re. a separate project where we could enforce "get consensus for any given change before you make it". I don't think that's a useful way to edit most articles in any field -- smaller articles don't have anyone who cares to make a consensus over, bigger articles have everyone come out of the woodwork to argue minor details -- and for the specific considerations of medicine it might be even worse if bias towards inaction prevents updates or radical restructuring of low-quality articles. (I've discussed with Aza24 the issues of people bikeshedding things like, er, infoboxes while ignoring that the article they're arguing so much about is terrible.) I'm open to the idea of topic-level splits in the broad context of "this might be how we end up handling the too-many-articles-for-editors problem", but I suspect there's a lot of mid-hanging fruit with being less wildly culturally hostile towards newer editors. (Mid-hanging -- there are many, many reasons Wikipedia is a tough environment to jump into, some of which are eminently valid, others of which are not but not well fixed.) Vaticidalprophet 16:18, 12 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Personally, if an article is in such bad shape that it needs "updates or radical restructuring" then if I were in charge we'd be about a thousand times more willing to take the WP:TNT approach and move it to draftspace unless and until it's in decent shape again. I can't imagine the WMF allowing it, though; if {{NUMBEROFARTICLES}} ever does go into reverse, it has too much potential to damage the "constantly improving" narrative and frighten the horses among the big corporate donors. ‑ Iridescent 17:05, 12 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure about that. Svwiki has been deleting articles hand over fist for the last several years (about 20–25% of all articles deleted), relevant people in the WMF know this, and AFAICT nobody thinks it's a problem at all. WhatamIdoing (talk) 07:08, 14 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't the mass deletions on sv-wiki the cleanup following a malfunctioning translation bot, rather than a conscious "we've decided to delete these articles" decision? If so, it's not really comparable. Plus—and meaning no disrespect to the Swedish language—neither the big corporate donors nor the 99.86% of the world's population that doesn't speak Swedish has an opinion on Swedish Wikipedia. When the number of articles on English Wikipedia levels off—as it will have to do one day—it will cause a wave of "Is Wikipedia Dying?" pieces across both the specialist and the popular press, which unless carefully handled will translate directly into a collapse in donations. Nobody wants to be backing a loser, and "help us grow" is a much easier message to sell than "help us stabilize and improve what already exists" even if the latter is actually more important. ‑ Iridescent 07:23, 15 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Nobody wants to be backing a loser, and "help us grow" is a much easier message to sell than "help us stabilize and improve what already exists" even if the latter is actually more important. This might be sellable by using a different axis for 'growth'. It's a recurring complaint that readers have little to no awareness of GA/FA status -- why not solve both problems? Certainly both processes have their issues, but introducing readers to the concept of good and featured articles, and framing improvement through increasing their numbers rather than the raw article count, might reframe the issue well. Vaticidalprophet 07:25, 15 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Barring a major change of notability criteria, the number of Wikipedia articles added every year isn't going to go to zero ever. Even accounting for deletion of existing articles, every four or eight years we'll need a new article on the last US president to leave office, at a minimum. That and a number of tropical cyclone articles, catastrophes, dead celebrities, presidents and prime ministers of other countries etc. The annual article creation rate can approach a lower limit set by this type of "a new notable topic every year" article, yes, but I dare say that this "floor" isn't much lower than the present-day article creation rate. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 10:51, 15 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

and far, far more numerous than any of these, new sports people becoming notable, and the accompanying articles on seasons, championships etc. I don't see any reason why "help us grow" can't easily be redefined as based on total text size rather than the number of articles, plus "necessary" new ones. Since I haven't done it for a few years, now might be the time to repeat my regular call for a 6 month ban on all new articles that aren't about things or people whose notability is new. Johnbod (talk) 16:09, 15 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

How would an embargo on new articles about topics whose notability isn't new work? There are a lot of unquestionably notable topics where nobody's got around to writing the article yet—there are Featured Articles on (e.g.) French Wikipedia that are still redlinks here (example, example, example), and this is French, not some obscure language where nobody here speaks the language to translate the sources, or a niche project with more dubious notability rules than our own. For any pre-internet topic, our coverage is still full of gaping holes—half the entries on Charles Dickens bibliography are redlinks for example (and some of the bluelinks are just links to Wikisource rather than actual articles).

I'm not convinced permanent growth is inevitable. We delete 250–300 pages per day over the normal course of events, and it's not inevitable that the same number of new footballers, pop groups, charting songs etc are always going to come into existence. Even if they do, it's not a foregone conclusion that the articles are going to keep being created—statement of the obvious maybe, but those articles aren't magicked into existence. (I'm sure new netball players are achieving 'notability' by Wikipedia's definition of the term every day, but with Laura Hale ejected there's a lot less chance they're each going to get their cookie-cutter biography.) ‑ Iridescent 17:10, 15 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Getting it to work would be very easy, since we have many officious editors who would be delighted to police it, once approved, which of course it never ever will be. Non-compliant articles should be booted in draftspace for the duration, which would be enough to quickly stem the flow. DYK etc efforts would intstead go into expanding existing articles x5 etc, which would be a very, very, good thing, and the main point of the excercise. I would be more affected than you (see above); having recently developed an interest in writing on garden history, I find our coverage full of gaping holes - Canal (garden history) was completely new, Woodland garden is a disam page for shopping malls in the Mid-West etc, Medieval garden redirects to a very crappy Monastic garden, no Wilderness (garden history), and so on. But I would be prepared to make the sacrifice. Johnbod (talk) 19:02, 15 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I imagine it would be a recipe for endless arguments over whether any given topic is "newly notable" or not. (How would we handle an performer who'd had a song in reach #39 in the Moldovan charts in 2006 so was technically "already notable" by Wikipedia's rules, but has now just switched to Broadway or the West End and been nominated for a slew of major awards? Or something like the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, which technically always met our notability requirements but where there was no need for an article prior to recent events?) What would be just about within our capabilities both to implement and to get consensus for would be an ACTRIAL-style experiment of banning creation of new articles, or the moving of drafts into article space, unless the new page meets the "non-trivial coverage in multiple, independent, reliable sources" test, with NPP ruthlessly zapping any page that doesn't meet the "prove this topic is actually notable" test. (Per my comments elsewhere in an ideal world I'd throw a minimum size requirement for new articles in there as well.) ‑ Iridescent 06:21, 16 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Johnbod, I don't want to consider that ban until you've gotten those articles written.

I will add to Vaticidal's marketing ideas that there are two other ways to measure: to look at all the Wikipedias (vs enwiki only), and to contemplate the impossibility of counting "articles" once Abstract Wikipedia is functioning (they're probably saying several years from now, so maybe in a decade).

The idea for Abstract Wikipedia is that you "program" an article once – maybe something like "'''Subject''' (altname) = 1 category(disease([[dementia]]))" – and then you instantly have as many articles as you have languages sufficiently translated to turn that into "Dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB) is a type of dementia". WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:26, 16 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

They've been running an experimental version of that on ht-wiki for years. Based on that—and on Reasonator—I'm not holding my breath. The "anything can be broken down into data and then reassembled into text" approach can just about work in a very few cases (Johann Sebastian Bach is the one they like to show off), but anyone who thinks an algorithm can capture the nuance of even a dull stub, let alone anything complex, is talking out of their hat. The WMF has been sold a bill of goods; I doubt even Google has the capability to do what Abstract Wikipedia is promising since it's an approach that would only work if every word in every language was unambiguous and never depended on context. We instantly banninate anyone we catch using the Content Translation Tool for a reason. ‑ Iridescent 19:47, 16 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

What's at htwiki is there because I begged Moushira to make the Web team install it, and it's not the same. I suspect that Abstract Wikipedia will work just about as well as Rambot worked for US census content (speaking of which: Is anyone working on the 2020 census update?). I hear that it's meant to be modular, so that you could choose individual sections/paragraphs and write the rest however you want to.

The CX filter exists because one guy was dumping unedited machine translation from Spanish into the mainspace. I think we overreacted. Also, anybody in this discussion can use CX freely (the filter only requires EC; I've used it to create three articles), and even total newbies can use CX here if they publish their translated articles first outside the mainspace. Which is to say that any logged-in editor can use CX to translate an article, save it to something like User:Newbie/My_first_article, make nine other edits, wait until your account is 96 hours old, and then you can WP:MOVE the page to the mainspace with no further barrier. The CX "ban" is security by obscurity at best. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:08, 17 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't the mass deletions on sv-wiki the cleanup following a malfunctioning translation bot, rather than a conscious "we've decided to delete these articles" decision?

No, the bot was functioning precisely as expected: importing data into multiple wikis from any of a variety of low-quality sources in the operator's two pet topic areas of geography and species (sv.wp, ceb.wp, war.wp, andddd one other). Swedish WP simply has the manpower and willpower both to reject further additions by that bot as well as to clean up the prior additions. Izno (talk) 06:23, 16 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Break: splitting

In essence, then, spinning out a portion of Wikipedia articles in order to manage scale, thus turning Wikipedia into a federation of communities. isaacl (talk) 16:22, 12 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, exactly. Most of the articles would stay on Wikipedia, but those on fields where particular issues mean the vanilla Wikipedia rules aren't a good fit (medicine is the obvious one, but I could see a case for other specialist topics) would move to semi-autonomous wikis with a different set of rules. In the long term I could imagine it going the other way as well, allowing things like the biographies of fictional characters to operate in a more Wikia-like environment with looser rules on notability and sourcing—it's never sat entirely comfortably with me that we host articles like Sil (Doctor Who) that have an obvious in-universe notability but no evidence of any real-world recognition. It's worth pointing out that we already have precedents for this with Wikivoyage and Wikispecies, both of which have their own rules on style, their own inclusion guidelines and their own independent administration but still fit into the broader WMF ecosystem; this wouldn't be detonating a bomb under Wikipedia, it would be restoring Wikipedia to its original purpose while still retaining the two decades worth of accretions. (A more diffuse ecosystem might also finally provide a valid reason for Wikidata to get its act in order, as it would become an essential resource for tracking which topics were covered where.) ‑ Iridescent 16:55, 12 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think your medical-Wikipedia offshoot would work. It isn't clear to me if the "anyone can edit" model applies there too or some hurdle is imposed. I'm sure there are plenty folk who think some medical qualification should be required. I dread to think about a species called "medical admins", and don't see how they might be any less "scare away the newbies" than those on Wikipedia have been. MEDRS is a surprise to both lay and academic editors. The former get confused that BBC News isn't an ideal source and the latter frustrated they can't demonstrate their knowledge of the latest research by citing the primary literature. But handling that requires a degree of people skills that appears to be in short supply. We increasingly had admins who just saw MEDRS as a hammer to hit folk with, regardless of the collateral damage. I'm not sure how moving it to a separate database would change that. It really helps, IMO, that MEDRS is fundamentally just the application of core policies to an topic field. I can reject text citing a primary research paper source just citing WP:WEIGHT, for example. It helps that editors with varied interests are involved in supervising and establishing rules. Some recent medical battles were overseen by an admin who writes about children's literature.

Your proposal assumes that the split for biomedical information is article based. The high profile recent case that kills that idea is the Covid 19 origins battle, which is part political, part forensic/criminal/health-and-safety, part biomedical, etc. What would you do with Dentistry, say? At what point in that article topic and its daughter articles would you say "this should be on MedWiki"? What about Heroin? And if MEDRS was dropped from Wikipedia, we'd end up with people using biographical or commercial articles as coat racks to describe wonder therapies.

I think Medicine (or biomedical subjects generally) is enormous both in quantity of topics and variety. We have major conditions like diabetes and cancer and we have rare diseases, major blockbuster drugs taken by millions, and strange therapies that are only offered hundreds of times a year in a country like the UK. We've got minor complaints like headaches and dandruff and major killers like HIV and malaria. I'm not really sure that a wiki model with volunteer editors works for all of that. And perhaps that problem gets solved by Google, which doesn't return Wikipedia in the first page of results for many topics today. Generally, the stuff it does return is pretty good. For example, a topic that I've edited occasionally over the years is tuberous sclerosis, a 1/6000 rare disease. If I Google that then I get... the NHS with a short simple-English overview; the Tuberous Sclerosis Association, which is the UK patient organisation; RareDiseases.org which has such a comprehensive and well written article, that we might as well send readers to that instead of whatever I've written. This isn't true for every topic. And textbooks could be offered as e-books to the developing world at zero cost if there was a will to do so. -- Colin°^Talk 18:52, 12 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The way I'd envisage it would be for Wikipedia to have a structure more like Wikia, where "anyone can edit" still applies everywhere, but the rules vary depending on topic. It wouldn't just be for topics like medicine where we might want stricter rules; it could also cut the other way as well. (A lot of the sources we blacklist as hopelessly biased would be perfectly legitimate as a source of reviews on arts articles, for instance.) Regarding admins, my thinking would be that they'd be wiki-wide as they are now, but with the option to only be admins on a particular subwiki if it was thought more suitable, but this is currently very speculative off-the-top-of-my-head spitballing at the moment.

The suggestion SandyGeorgia doesn't quite make but implies a little way up, of resurrecting a variant on WP:STICKYPROD for "medical articles, broadly construed" would also be a good one. Slapping "either ensure this is up to date or it will be summarily moved to draftspace in a month" tags on pages would go a long way towards clearing out the crud. As far as I'm concerned, it's better we have nothing than we have either outdated or badly written content; we shouldn't be hosting pages like Poppy tea. ‑ Iridescent 19:26, 12 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Some pieces of dated articles are salvageable, so a solution would be a hybrid between “sticky prod, move to draft space” and “WP:BLOWITUP”. That is, after you place a sticky prod and after it moves to draft space, you blow up everything except the irrefutable and well cited basics, keeping a stub or start-class article. This would basically reduce more than half of the current medical FAs to start class articles, a few salvageable paras, which I think is a just fine, even optimal, solution to some very dangerous content (for which I have long advocated we need a better and more prominent disclaimer). When Wikipedia has a poor article up, we are being irresponsible, and readers should go elsewhere for the info they seek. (IPad typing, sorry for typos and brevity.) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:33, 12 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

But even before that, why can’t I, as a knowledgeable medical editor, simply go through dated articles and apply a BLP-style hatchet to dated, unsourced, or poorly sourced content, simply removing that content, rather than tagging it for an update that no one will ever do ? Akin to the ability to delete any poorly sourced content in a BLP. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:35, 12 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

No argument from me. As I say somewhere in the morass above, if I were in charge the sole notability criterion would be "using genuine reliable secondary sources, can you write 1000 words about this topic without waffling or padding?". If we applied this scrupulously—and accepted that it would mean deleting some pages on things that "are obviously notable" if the sources don't exist to back that claim up—it would solve about 90% of our problems in a single stroke.; as far as I'm concerned "no article is better than a bad article" is something that should be applied across the whole of Wikipedia, not just the medical topics. The reason I say the sticky prod should move pages to draftspace rather than outright deleting them is that crucially draftspace is {{noindex}}ed. As such it would render the pages invisible to search engines, while still keeping them in existence to allow people to work on them without the pressure of "if I don't fix this right away it will be lost altogether" which might lead to people cutting corners. (The cynical but true answer to why can’t I … simply go through dated articles and apply a BLP-style hatchet to dated, unsourced, or poorly sourced content is that it would be a recipe for constant edit-warring. A universally-applied expiry date system would—hopefully—not have the problem of people feeling targeted or harassed.) ‑ Iridescent 19:44, 12 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Me three on the very important point that there needs to be a BLP-like way to purge anything that misleads readers on health-related matters. As for breaking up en-wiki into a federation of communities, we kind of come around, circularly, to whether Wikipedia is in decline, because there might be little value in creating multiple projects that would all be in decline. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:12, 12 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

One way to try to break the stalemate of consensus not scaling upwards is to enable smaller groups of interested editors to make consensus-based decisions in a given area. Having separate wikis for each is one way to do this. Popular areas will likely continue to do fine (Wookieepedia is a very well-maintained resource), but less popular ones will probably suffer, and lose the potential of drawing from a broader, more diverse community. (If it's true that this potential is already lost in a flood of biased editors, then those areas might be a lost cause in any case.) It would be a large change in operating procedure, so there is a risk in a lot of editors opting to leave instead of learning new ways. isaacl (talk) 23:37, 12 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Well, we already basically do this. This is my mini-rant, but since the GNG is so vaguely written to as to mean whatever you want it to mean WP:OUTCOMES has significantly more practical weight than the GNG does, regardless of what we pretend. What the GNG means in practice for a BLP is different than what it means for a 14th century religious figure is different than what it means for an MMA fighter. That's the easiest example, but Wikipedia is a website built on many local consensuses, and when you eventually have enough small decisions about the similar topics, only then will you get enough people to agree with it to actually pass a major policy change.

It's also a self-selective thing no matter how big it is: the RfA RfC is a great example of this. A significant portion of the "influential voices" on this project ignored the entire thing or ignored most of the proposal because 1) RfA being broken is not a widely held opinion by people who don't regularly participate on WT:RFA, so why should people who don't think it's broken be part of proposals to "fix" it and 2) Don't care because they're already admins.

Because of this, two of the more visible changes (RFC/U-reborn and not defaulting to autopatrolled for admins) from that RfC have exactly nothing to do with RfA and will have zero impact on it, but because the people who thought it was an issue agreed that it was one, and the people who didn't think it was an issue ignored it, they passed. TonyBallioni (talk) 03:17, 13 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The key difference is that local consensus is not empowered to make final decisions. Because consensus doesn't scale upwards well, there's almost always going to be some significant number of unhappy people in a larger group. The RfA RfC is an example of this. The problem of scale means it's really hard to get everyone who might be interested to participate and engage fully. So the outcomes may or may not have broad consensus support across the entire community. With federated communities, there's a possibility that each individual community can be more satisfied with its own rules than it would be now. (I think the problems of scale with consensus will still come up, but it may be easier to mitigate them in a smaller, more cohesive community. And a smaller community could well decide to use a different decision-making method, like an editorial board.) isaacl (talk) 05:52, 13 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@TonyBallioni, I haven't seen anything suggesting that Wikipedia:Requests for comment/User conduct be reborn. What are you thinking of? WhatamIdoing (talk) 07:32, 14 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I very much agree we should be more aggressive with outdated articles. In the climate change space this is a major problem too. We're playing into the cards of climate deniers by citing old research that overstates uncertainty with respect to current knowledge. I've started a a cross-wiki review on climate denial, and non-English Wikipedias are far worse, relying almost completely on pre-2008 sourcing. A lot of projects stimulate translation of new articles, rather than re-translation of existing articles.

One of the ideas I had to partially counter this, is to develop tools that display the median source age. (For WP:The Core Contest, I wrote a little offline python script to do this). On a centralised place (like wikidata?), we could put a maximum median source age per article. For instance, if a page on climate change is based on sourced with a median age of 12 years, they should typically be stubbified/draftified. For the biography of an 18th century playwriter, a median age of a 100 years may be acceptable. Femke (talk) 21:12, 12 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Ew. Don't remind me of updating the climate change related articles. Of all the articles I had to update the past two weeks, Pacific Meridional Mode was by far the most painful. JoJo Eumerus mobile (main talk) 21:40, 12 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

• The idea of a 'sticky prod' for a few other types of articles is not new. However, due to the creation of the BLPPROD having been the subject of what was at the time one of the messiest and most heavily debated issues on en.Wiki, no one has taken the initiative (or risk) of starting the dialogue for other sticky-prods. As RFC go, the size and participation of the BLPPROD discussion(s) has only been surpassed by the two rounds of ACTRIAL discussions that were several years apart. Although both BLPPROD and ACPERM both address the need for quality in articles, the similarity stops there. The reasons why the debates were so drawn out and garnered such huge participation were quite different. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 23:03, 12 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  Yes, but these aren't normal circumstances when it comes to medical topics. The "retired, hurt feelings" departure of the two most vocal "but we've always done it this way" obstructionists in the wake of WP:ARBMED has created a window of opportunity for a more general "who is our target readership and how do we best serve them?" debate with less chance of degenerating into shouting. ‑ Iridescent 07:10, 13 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  There doesn't seem to be a great place to put this without seeming to point at any individual. Sorry about that.

  I am uncomfortable with the way people are talking about other editors. I think editors should be free to volunteer as much or as little as they happen to feel like, without people running them down in public for their personal choices. We can disagree about things without being ugly.

  Also, Iri, last month you were trying to convince me that I was irreplaceable, and that wonderful opportunities wouldn't appear if I (or people like me) disappeared. This comment of yours sounds more optimistic about future changes. WhatamIdoing (talk) 07:58, 14 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  Normally yes, but in this particular case it's impossible to talk about that particular project without talking about specific editors, since it's literally the embodiment of a single person's vision. Discussing medwiki without mentioning James would be like discussing the origins of Wikipedia without mentioning Jimmy Wales.

  Nobody is completely irreplaceable, but equally a relatively small number of people carry an undue amount of weight. Sometimes their loss can be a positive in opening up a niche for new people and new ways of thinking; sometimes their loss is devastating and means essential things don't get done. Where on that spectrum any given person falls is probably something on which every single editor who's interacted with them has a different opinion. ‑ Iridescent 17:22, 15 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Defining “independent”

To be fair, it's also not clear in a lot of cases what "independent" is. (To bang a drum that's been banged many times before, we sometimes place an unhealthy premium on sources meeting our arbitrary rules on which sources are "better", rather than on which sources are actually most useful in a given situation. Back in the early days of Wikipedia we knowingly had an incorrect birthdate on Jimmy Wales because an independent article had got it wrong, and nobody would let him correct it because "he had a conflict of interest" and "his birth certificate was a primary source". There are some unique advantages we get from having a resident gang of weirdos with an unhealthy obsession with rules—I can't imagine anyone on Twitter voluntarily going through every page checking the copyright status of images, or a Britannica employee checking every article for the consistent use/non-use of serial commas without expecting to be paid—but there are also some unique drawbacks.) ‑ Iridescent 16:04, 8 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The Wales thing seems like people confusing independent and reliable; a birth certificate is surely the most reliable source in this situation. My pet problem along these lines is that all scientists debunking the idea of a Cumbre Vieja tsunami are saying "a giant landslide can't create a tsunami" rather than "it is highly improbable that this eruption will cause a tsunami", even though the evidence for the former is fairly unreliable and America-centric whereas the latter is undisputable AFAIK; thus the article Cumbre Vieja tsunami hazard puts major emphasis on the probability point. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 16:34, 8 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The confusion with Wales's birthdate seems to be a question of "was he born shortly before midnight or not?" A similar thing happened with George Harrison, when Harrison himself announced in the 1990s that the date that all sources and his birth certificate had reported were wrong and he'd actually been born the night before. (It's been largely ignored though). Pawnkingthree (talk) 01:17, 12 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The confusion with Wales's birthdate is more a question of him being unable to keep his own story straight. Here he is edit-warring to change it to August 7, here he is complaining to the press that August 7 is incorrect, here he is complaining that we give his birthdate as August 8 when it should be August 7. The current version of the article says shortly before midnight on August 7, 1966; however, his birth certificate lists his date of birth as August 8 and cites Britannica as a source, but Wales publicly claims the Britannica entry is wrong about this. Were this Joe Blow from Kokomo, it wouldn't be an issue—we routinely remove exact birthdates from biographies if the subject doesn't want them known and there's no public interest in listing them—but for someone who's made an entire career out of being the public face of "information wants to be free" to be openly lying and obfuscating when it comes to his own information, it's at best unseemly. ‑ Iridescent 07:46, 12 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Quality and deterioration

We see a lot of deterioration already in maintenance-heavy parts of the encyclopaedia and in some of the behind the scenes areas. As a prominent example, most portals died by undermaintenance when the original creators/maintainers left or lost interest (and most of the remaining ones have been replaced by something heavily automated). Many WikiProjects are moribund and just serve as convenient hubs for useful maintenance listings (article alerts/deletion sorting), not as places where anything much gets organised. In article space, things like the 299 German constituencies do not magically update with every election, but sometimes they go six years and two elections out of date. (We currently have an editor who has diligently updated them all, but should they stop it may again take a few years until they are replaced). The standard response is to add cleanup tags that declare this as somebody else's problem (but may help readers to filter them out as semi-garbage).

At the same time, we have a much greater emphasis on quality for new article now than we had ten years ago. I have some hope that the better sourced stuff written now will look better fifteen years from now than the unsourced crap from fifteen years ago does now. (Incidentally, the "unsourced" backlog is 15 years at the moment, perhaps another example of Wikipedia failing already). —Kusma (talk) 23:10, 1 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Yes and no. The crap coming through now is superficially better than the leftovers from back when it seemed a good idea to copy-paste the 1911 Britannica (of which at the time of writing we still have 11,760), but boy oh boy are we building up a nest of problems for ourselves by not keeping up with the PR crud with a superficial veneer of "sources" that on closer inspection turns out to just be a bunch of reprinted press releases. If Kudpung is still around, he'll probably be able to put it more eloquently than me. (Back in Wikipedia Review days, among the insane drivel were some very perceptive predictions from Somey on what Wikipedia would evolve into once it passed into its maintenance phase. I always felt we never gave him enough credit for his insights because we—arguably justifiably—dismissed him owing to the crank company he kept. I once seriously proposed that provided we could convince him to sign a binding NDA not to leak sensitive information, he should be given formal observer status on any future variation on WP:ACPD; he had a real knack for spotting where things were likely to go wrong before the rest of us did.) ‑ Iridescent 17:51, 2 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Of these two positions, I'm more in agreement with Iri's - a lot of the early stuff was/is actually pretty good, but nobody felt the need to provide references - certainly not inline ones. It's not rare for "updating" and adding crap online sources to actually reduce the quality of the article. The EB1911 wasn't that often downright wrong, and sometimes what is now left from an original complete copypaste is just a sentence or two, or even nothing - people hesitate to remove the tag, or check if anything is actually left. It's very persistent in bios of lesser Old Master painters & other artists though. Johnbod (talk) 12:08, 3 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Many WikiProjects are moribund and just serve as convenient hubs for useful maintenance listings (article alerts/deletion sorting), not as places where anything much gets organised. Even the active wikiprojects (and I have two plenty active talks on my watchlist) are interestingly hollow -- large projects like WPMED used to have tons of subsets and taskforces. Some months back I was looking at the Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Medical genetics task force page, wondered who the current active members are, and suddenly realized I am WikiProject Medicine's medical genetics taskforce. (I also note the page is out-of-date enough that the "recently featured" article prominently advertised in an ambox has since been defeatured.) On the EB1911 note, total rips are both concerningly common still and turn up in strange places. In the last GAN backlog drive, I quickfailed Aberdeenshire (historic), which is both predominantly taken from the EB1911 and far substandard in the patches that aren't (either uncited or cited to questionable sources, and poorly integrated with the article/probably better placed in Aberdeenshire proper). Vaticidalprophet 12:21, 3 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

That squares with my experience at Galileo Galilei, where nobody commented on my GA reassessment until Buidhe delisted it today, as well as with the deafening silence at Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Pali-Aike volcanic field/archive1. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 12:25, 3 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not particularly surprised at Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Pali-Aike volcanic field/archive1. A lot of people hate commenting on the reviews for more technical subjects since they're worried they're just going to look foolish if they misunderstand the specialist language. Plus there's the purely practical matter that we've just come out of Thanksgiving week in the US and are now in the run-up to Christmas, and people are busier than usual. ‑ Iridescent 17:21, 3 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Vaticidalprophet, WPMED's task forces were a failed experiment. With the exception of the EMS group, none of them ever seemed to establish a group that was active in the task force and not completely redundant to the main group's talk page. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:44, 5 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

WikiProjects are kind of an interesting beast to me. People will often mention them, as kind of this abstract notion ("you can always go see if anyone at WikiProject Whatever can help with that!" and the like), but it's really hard to see evidence of life at any but the biggest. Today I went through all of the historical newsletters listed in the big template here, and noted their last publication date + number of issues: out of twenty-three newsletters total, there are only eleven active WikiProject newsletters. Yet there are 119 inactive. Most of them have less than a half-dozen issues (and many of them never even released a first issue), but there's a considerable number that had a long history before abruptly ceasing with no warning. My best guess is that these were the work of a couple highly involved people whose departure instantly tanked the publication. I suppose in the halcyon days of 2008 or whatever, it really did seem possible that there'd be enough people to justify (and sustain) something like Wikipedia:WikiProject Nickelodeon/SpongeBob SquarePants task force/Newsletter — 11 issues — whereas nowadays WikiProject Television has had fewer than 11 talk page sections in the entire year of 2021. It gets me to wondering, a little, if the problem with WikiProjects might just be that hundreds of them were created, either because of optimistic growth projections or because of an actual extant editor base to support them, for a wide variety of subjects that no longer have the "critical mass" of editors necessary for any kind of communal activity. With animals, for example, we have Cats (3 talk page discussions from this year), Dogs (4), Rodents (3), Cetaceans (1) — not exactly a hopping place to get perspectives and find collaborators. WikiProject Mammals, on the other hand, has 31 talk page sections from 2021: a little under 3 per month is still kind of desolate but it's a pretty noticeable improvement over 0.08 per month. I can't help but think that folding them all into one might give some chance of survival (of course, if the dog or horse or cat lovers found themselves represented in such numbers that they stood a chance of holding together their own WikiProject, they'd be free to do that). jp×g 07:29, 5 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@JPxG, I'm one of the old hands at Wikipedia:WikiProject Council, so of course I have well-developed opinions. IMO merging projects together is a good idea. IMO one of the problems with the endless creation of WikiProjects is that people did not understand that a WikiProject is a group of people. They frequently thought that it was a categorization system ("all the articles about SpongeBob") or had irrational hopes of the Build it and they will come variety. I would cheerfully prohibit the creation of new WikiProjects unless they could prove the existence of a group of participating editors with at least 20 years' combined experience between them.

The process for merging up old WikiProjects is a bit fiddly. First, you need to ask whether the existing remnant would object to being merged (and wait for a month or so to see if you get an answer). Then there's a mess about merging templates and pages. It would probably be worth it for about half of them. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:13, 8 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Merging Wikiprojects is quite fiddly, and quite hard to get help on. I've been working for awhile to try and upmerge Template:WikiProject Philippine History to be a taskforce template for Template:Wikiproject Tambayan Philippines, but the coding is not obvious. The task force system should provide an easy way to consolidate Wikiprojects without immediate disruption, but a system to do so hasn't developed. There was for example consensus to fold some Wikiprojects into WP:WEATHER in 2020, but it does not seem to have yet happened. CMD (talk) 08:01, 8 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Chipmunkdavis, did you already ask for help at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Council? I'm not sure who's active with the banner templates (the banner template is the hardest part) these days. WhatamIdoing (talk) 08:02, 14 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@WhatamIdoing: I did, in addition to a few other places! It's in [[Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Council/Archive 25#Help merging a taskforce template into a Wikiproject template|the archives now. I think it's moved, if slowly. CMD (talk) 09:18, 14 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I see you've also already asked for help at Template talk:WPBannerMeta#Merging one banner into another, which was going to be my next suggestion. Hmm... I might have to use my brain today after all. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:41, 14 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

On some occasions, even the dead WikiProjects are worth keeping around. Something like WP:WikiProject London Transport is completely moribund, but still has a useful purpose in that a post to the talkpage will appear on the watchlist of a lot of people interested in the topic so it makes sense for announcements. They can also serve as a ready-made neutral space in which to hold contentious discussions without all the usual look-at-me types who hang around the Village Pumps making uninformed comments. ‑ Iridescent 08:06, 8 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Only 22 active editors are watching that page. WhatamIdoing (talk) 08:01, 14 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

And I find I'm one of them - anything useful from me in that area is not to be expected, I'm afraid. Johnbod (talk) 15:29, 14 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

It's still 22 (or 21 anyway) more than nothing. Experienced editors know the right people to ask and the right places to get a particular comment seen, but no good faith new editor is going to know who to speak to. WT:LONDON has only 25 active watchers at the time of writing, but there's nowhere else a new editor could have asked a question like this and got an answer. Since these project talk pages take essentially no effort to maintain and occasionally serve a useful purpose, then IMO they should be kept around even if we delete the portals, taskforces and all the other accoutrements of an active wikiproject. ‑ Iridescent 07:34, 15 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

• I’m actually very much ‘around’ because I have to use Wikipedia many times a day as a reference work, but I’m trying very hard not be be proactive and to resist even stopping to correct a typo when I see one. I've even taken this talk page, the last vestige of sanity on Wikipedia, off my watchlist. Nobody is irreplaceable, but in a volunteer environment even if it is just changing the flowers in the church for mass on Sunday or managing hundreds of other volunteers, if it's something you saw needed doing, everyone is quite happy to sit back and let you do it for ever - you get taken for granted. So when I felt I had done as much as I could for NPP and handed the reins over, it’s probably just a coincidence that it’s been an organized chaos ever since and it just ended up getting me in trouble for continuing to help out.

Nobody ever wanted to realise how important NPP is and they still don't. With over 6 mio articles, the encyclopedia has gone way beyond the point of non return for cleaning it up and radically pruning it of all the crap and nonsense. The 50 or so active registered New Page Reviewers out of the 750 hat collectors can't even handle the daily flow - WP:ACPERM somewhat stemmed the tide but it is already nearly 4 years ago, the spammers and scammers have caught up and it's time to think of something else. Since March last year I just make the occasional comment and add a vote to major RfC and elections because every single vote is important - especially if it means trying to obtain some form of proper Arbcom for the future generations. Those events are rather rare and I'm really only there to rubber neck. When the current ACE is over (God help us when the results are published) I will be seen again a lot less until the next firework show or Framgate. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 01:27, 5 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I know the feeling; I'm also virtually absent nowadays, other than monitoring my own talkpage and responding to questions.

I agree that we've almost certainly passed the critical point where New Pages Patrol can no longer keep up with the new pages and the combination of Recent Changes patrollers and Cluebot can no longer keep up with vandalism. Moreover those are both backlogs where once they've built up, they'll never be cleared, since reviewing old changes is difficult and thankless. I already said it further up this thread, but it bears repeating—Wikipedia is heading for a "flowers growing in the sewers" model, in which we give up any serious attempt at holding back the flood of crap and just concentrate on preserving and improving those parts that we deem worth preserving and improving, and on making it clear to readers which is which. I have a feeling that where we end up will be the article mainspace becoming a de facto draft space, and some kind of beefed-up and much more public-facing assessment process to flag "this is a page that's actually monitored for quality".

It does not escape my irony detector that this is the Nupedia model which failed first time around, but for all our faults we're in much better shape to run an assess-and-flag process now. The Meta:Internet-in-a-Box people are already doing such a "hide the drivel and only display the pages that have actually been checked" exercise for the medical articles, and as far as I know it's yet to cause the world to come to an end. ‑ Iridescent 04:37, 5 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I've joined the not really here but I was visible enough at one point that for some reason people still listen to what I say club mainly through real life circumstances (all good), and like Kudpung I made a name for myself originally in NPP and by getting ACPERM through.

This would be a better discussion over drinks at a bar, but as I'm a few thousand miles away from both of you, here goes: while I agree with both of you we've past various points of no return on quality control; I also think we've somewhat aged to the point where it matters less in practice, even if I'd prefer it was still maintained: in our early phases, having low quality control just to get stuff in was important; you need content to drive views. When we were in our mid-development stage, the quality control began to matter more: if you want to be the default source of knowledge, people have to take you seriously. We've now become the default source of knowledge for the world, which means that we have relatively well developed articles on most of the subjects people care about, and while I'm sure the three of us could think of any number of niche articles that are currently trash that could be developed into something better because there is abundant academic sourcing, their mere existence isn't a threat to our credibility.

On the NPP front, this has a corollary: because most of the articles people actually care about already exist, the public isn't going to notice that we have hobbyists creating articles on relatively unknown serial killers for fun. They're also not going to notice the flood of Bollywood advertisements or no-name tech start-ups with paid articles because they're things no one is actively searching for. Our success in becoming trusted has oddly enough become our best defense at staying trusted — no one is looking for the shit articles except WPO and the like to make points.

In my view the biggest threat to the project in terms of credibility with the public is the paid stuff, where I'm more with Kudpung than you Iri, but since becoming a CU I've become less intense on it than I used to — mainly because the CU data makes it abundantly clear that it's just a bunch of freelancers doing gigs for the same client and not an Orangemoody-esque type operation anymore. There's really not all that much we can do from a functionary perspective to deal with it at this point. My solution has been for the CU team to wash its hands of it and return it to the "regular" admins as enforcement through existing non-WMF policy since most of the paid article spam is obvious and can be deleted and blocked on those grounds without anything private. Regardless: if the extent of the paid crap became known to the broader public, it could cause a credibility crisis. It hasn't yet because the inner workings of Wikipedia are opaque enough despite being completely transparent that it wouldn't be worth a journalists time to figure out when there are more headline grabbing stories. TonyBallioni (talk) 05:41, 5 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

We still have our fair share of incoherent drivel even on the core topics people care about. (Home and Man are both total gibberish but are about as core topic as it gets; we also have gems like Performing arts, Injury, Western Europe, Manufacturing, Human behavior… Wikipedia is often a lot better at covering the smaller topics, where it's actually possible to read all the relevant literature, than at high-importance topics like these, or even smaller topics where the story is convoluted enough to make it difficult to give due weight (Spoon, anyone?). ‑ Iridescent 06:26, 5 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, we agree on that, but oddly enough, I doubt people are actually looking to us for information on those things. It's topics like Lenin and Taylor Swift, to use both of our favourite examples, that we excel at in terms matching public interest with quality content. We do have a lot of niche articles that are phenomenal, but that really isn't where many readers look all that much. It's the narrower topics on specific events/people that are well known that we get good-enough content that also has a lot of page views. I don't really think we're in danger of those types of article deteriorating, which is why we still have credibility with the public. No one's reading articles on 17th century conclaves, much to my dismay... TonyBallioni (talk) 06:41, 5 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

To pull out an example from that list, Manufacturing is getting 35k views a month, so clearly someone is looking at it. (Swift and Lenin both get much, much more -- and I concur more overall with the "Wikipedia is big enough to take a lot of hits" model -- but that's not chump change.) That said, the article has also improved quite a bit in the past year due to the return of the Core Contest, which is probably our best bet at getting improvements to those kinds of articles. (Speculation on the level of dysfunction involved in the nth-biggest site on the internet and the canonical modern reference work getting improvement to its core topics primarily through fifteen-odd people competing for a share of £250 once a year is...not invalid.) Vaticidalprophet 06:54, 5 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The niche topics do sometimes flare up unexpectedly and unpredictably, either because a previously-obscure topic makes the news or because they get mentioned in the media or on a celebrity's social media. All it would take would be an HBO drama set in early 18th-century Rome, and you'd get the pleasure of scraping the Randies off of 1724 papal conclave. (As I've said before, I'm not too concerned about the quality of articles like Taylor Swift and Lenin. If Wikipedia shut down tomorrow, readers could find out just as much from whatever took its place at the top of the Google results. It's the less familiar topics where Wikipedia is important; to me it's more important that we cover Vice Squad than that we cover The Beatles. It's why I'm not concerned no matter how bad Manufacturing is, since anyone who actually needs to know can find better-quality sources with no difficulty.) ‑ Iridescent 06:58, 5 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I actually agree with all that. I suppose my main point is that from a credibility standpoint, we're really not at risk so long as the things that are most regularly viewed are at a sufficient level of quality, which I think they are. So long as we can maintain that, I'm not really all that worried about us returning to the 2005 public perception of the project. Doesn't mean that all the other things you mentioned aren't important, just that we have enough goodwill from Lenin and Taylor Swift to make up for the papal conclave articles that are copy/paste from out of copyright anti-Catholic polemic tracts available for free online and a sprinkling of hobbyist blogs as sources (which is what they were before I gutted most of them 5 years ago...) TonyBallioni (talk) 07:20, 5 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I think we're on the same page. This is what I mean by "flowers in the sewers"; as long as the things people actually want to read are adequate, we need to stop worrying so much about trying to clean up the torrent of sludge beneath. ‑ Iridescent 07:43, 6 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Gatekeeping & NPP

Yes, Iri, your spot-on irony is accurate, and I couldn't agree more with TonyBallioni (Hi, Tony, I was kinda wondering where you have got to, you've been rather conspicuous by your absence!). There is even growing corruption within NPP itself (or perhaps the sleuthing is getting slightly better?) WT:NPR has become a dynamic venue since I began it a couple of years ago, but like everywhere else now, it's all talk and little action; their November backlog drive didn't work out as they expected either. Some possible solutions would be to upgrade ACPERM to Extended confirmed, and, based on ORES, to have bots or filters take on more of NPP: automatically declining stubs and/or articles with only one source and tagging stuff flagged as spam or COPYVIO automatically for PROD or CSD. Not to be confused with AfC, but simply a 'Sorry, your submitted article does not yet conform to our minimum criteria for inclusion. Please read the advice on your talk page, then Your first article, create the article in your sandbox, and when it's ready, submit it to AfC for review. There's plenty of help to be had, don't hesitate to ask at the Tea House'

The biggest challenge to all this however, is that there is an excruciating entrenched reluctance by the WMF for years to create a proper landing page for new users. Not to mention the boring Wikipedia skin which is about as interesting as the monochrome test card on pre-colour British TV. It's certainly not due to a lack of funds. There is also a huge amount of negative (but possibly unintentional) publicity for Wikipedia - do you remember that old episode of Lewis where Supt. Innocent says to Lewis "C'mon, Robbie, if you believe everything you read on Wikipedia you'll believe anything. You're a detective, do your own research."

Like Tony says, however, not everyone goes for a swim with the bottom feeders in a sea of effluent, some of the sewage doesn't get noticed, and it's even less searched for. Yes, I guess your right: 'flowers growing in the sewers'. Another problem is that this has now become more the South Asian Wikipedia in English and some of it needs forking off, at least into a Bollywood Wiki. BTW, did you read the alarming new demographics stats about Birmingham? Only 25 miles from my home town, oh, and that's where RexxS lives, shame I can't pop in for a pint...

There is a distinct apathy setting in on Wikipedia towards governance and maintenance work. I have horror visions of it looking like Tchernobyl, abandoned and overgrown with weeds in a few years time - not exactly what I would want for something I spent the equivalent of 2 years full-time work on as a volunteer. All this drafting of UCOCs and grand plans for the future are only attempts to disguise the fact that everything is far from rosy, and an excuse for the WMF to spend more money on themselves and their friends. Even on The Signpost the editorial team is now almost suffering from burnout, or so it seems, and the periodical is only a shell of its former self. Maintenance work? No one wants to do it. No one clambering to be an admin. A tiny bunch of (mostly) unsuitable candidates for Arbcom, meaning we'll have to put up and shut up with what we can get rather than what we want or what is best for Wikipedia, and low turnouts for most other policy debates. Top marks for Barkeep49's arduous RfA reform programme though (at least they are stripping the toolbox of Autopatrolled - ironic really as pointing out a case of that was one of the things that lost me the bit). The successful parts of the reform still won't encourage more candidates to come forward and it won't improve the toxic nature of the process either. Hardly likely anyway with Arbcom's modern trend to line up admins like plastic ducks in a shooting gallery - new admins will be lambs for the slaughter; the malevolent elements of the community are almost certainly being even more encouraged to sift through admins' histories to dig up any and enough dirt to provide us with more sleazy entertainment. I've taken to having the occasional peek at WO. There seems to be a hard core of rather unpleasant people there and what they don't know, they simply make up. Totally immature, hardly surprising most of them are blocked or banned (or still socking away). I dunno why Beeb bothers with the place (or Ritchie333 for that matter). It's simply got Beeb some flack on his re-bid for arb. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 07:40, 5 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

As one of the people running the backlog drive -- and someone who's watched the NPP project over the past year or so -- we were really, really hurt by the loss of a few of our top reviewers. At least, we were hurt numbers-wise. One of the reviewers, who I will not name here, did not exactly have the reputation for doing good reviews, moreso doing a lot of them. While losing them really hurt the backlog, I think it's safe to say the level of quality control they performed was iffy at best.

This brings up a somewhat existential question for the NPP project: can we really trust the reviewers? Sure, everyone says they've read the guidelines -- and they've been vetted -- but it's a difficult task that different people will have different ideas of how to do right.

At this rate, we might have to consider whether it should be required for people to create their first N articles in draft-space (perhaps require ten created in draftspace before they can create in mainspace, then require fifteen more before autopatrolled). Drastic but I don't see how else we get out of this. And creating in draft-space would pressure the iffy-promo articles to be less bad, whereas in NPP they can slip through by virtue of being a total pain to review. Elli (talk | contribs) 08:08, 5 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The problems with "actually-mandatory draftspace" solutions are manifold. The big issue is that "we don't have enough maintainers" is not an issue solved by putting up more barriers upfront to crossing from 'person who idly fixes a couple typos' to 'Wikipedia editor' -- and we are already absolutely full of upfront barriers (like the fact everyone who's been editing for less than a year is assumed to be either a CIR case or a sock). If we want more maintainers, which is an integral half of the "too much to maintain and not enough maintainers" issue, it needs to be much easier to make that jump (and to make the other, first jump of 'person who doesn't edit Wikipedia at all' to 'person who makes nonzero edits and doesn't see them reverted on sight'). "Put up more upfront gatekeeping" is a common solution out of desperation, but it's a death spiral, because the people turned off by the upfront gatekeeping don't replenish editors. There's a tie from here to the fact basically every editor cohort since the early 2010s on has had much worse retention than their predecessors. Vaticidalprophet 08:25, 5 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Fair enough with that, just one more active editor is worth a decent amount of editor effort for the ROI. Where would you find the extra 200 somewhat-active NPPs we need though? (assuming one article per day is a reasonable amount for one to do) Elli (talk | contribs) 08:32, 5 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Tricky problem, isn't it? I do my best (I'm not going to ping my latest attempted recruit to something this inside-baseball at his current point in Wikipedia editing, but he's happily translating a zhwiki article right now). I think there are reasonable places to pick up the slack both in recruitment and in not producing a billion things volunteer editors shouldn't have to deal with. One of the mid-hanging fruit of the latter I've been thinking about lately is a failure in the opposite problem (WMF and WMF-adjacents trying too hard to recruit and falling flat on their face) -- every time the m:Wiki Education Foundation program runs, NPP, DYK, and GAN are all flooded with no-hopers. It...would for various reasons be difficult to convince the people involved to get rid of it...but it makes up such a horribly disproportionate amount of issues when it's in full swing that I really struggle to see that the benefit it offers outweighs the strain it puts on those systems, even before accounting for low-quality edits to existing pages. Vaticidalprophet 08:43, 5 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Wouldn't that just put more pressure on AfC by keeping the amount of garbage constant and routing it elsewhere? There are about three thousand drafts awaiting review right now -- it seems to me like it might be more effective to screen out garbage by something like an account age or edit threshold for accounts making submissions. jp×g 08:26, 5 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@JPxG: well, most New Page Patrollers would likely switch to doing AfC. And it's a lot easier to decline crap at AfC than get rid of it at NPP. Elli (talk | contribs) 08:32, 5 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

More gatekeeping has never hurt the content-building, ACPERM proved that outright, especially if one reads this thread from the top where it has been clearly described that all the essential traditional encyclopedic stuff has already been written and is being quietly maintained by true specialists and academics without the shite that populates ANI. No one is interested in the mixtapes Mike is making in his garden shed in Macclesfield.

Like I keep banging my drum: NPP is the most important single process on the en.Wiki, far more important than AfC which is still not an official system of quality control, and it also has its own issues of corruption. What doesn't get treated there can gladly evaporate automatically at G13. We know it, and DGG, WSC, Barkeep49, and Primefac know it, even if there is the occasional rare gem that can be salvaged. There are a few suggestions above, and there is a project for discussing it all at WP:NPPAFC. I could probably clear a lot of the backlog out myself single-handed over the Christmas break, and correctly, and start a well formed RfC argument for changes if I wanted to, but I'm hardly going to bust a gut helping out this time round. FWIW and the thanks I'd get, I'm more likely to end up doing a complete runner like RexxS did 😉 Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 08:52, 5 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I agree on that (the importance of NPP). Ultimately the entire WMF ecosystem is based on public trust in English Wikipedia. I sometimes get the feeling that the WMF don't appreciate that if we get a reputation for being full of PR garbage, the donation streams will dry up and all the shiny new projects will need to be abandoned—our only real asset is our reputation and if we lose it, it will be very difficult to get it back. It would be do-able just about—some kind of sticky prod deal where we ruthlessly delete pages unless someone can provide a reason to keep them, as we did for unsourced BLPs way back before the dawn of time—but I assume I speak for everyone in saying it wouldn't be a fun experience for anyone involved. ‑ Iridescent 18:06, 5 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

More on quality

Part of me wonders if it might be easier to just have two separate queues of article creation (with two separate sets of criteria for submissions): one for companies, bands, TikTokers and entrepreneurs, and one for literally everything else. An article about a historic church or a Roman senator goes to the normal queue (with 50 pending submissions in front of it), and an article about a turnkey, just-in-time provider of scalable solutions and disruptive technology leveraging AI and cyber to provide value-add insights goes to the other queue (with 5,000 pending submissions in front of it). jp×g 09:02, 5 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I was unironically about to suggest that, yeah. I think our Big Problem is trying to kid ourselves about what the actual inclusion guidelines necessary for Wikipedia are -- specifically that we want articles that don't suck, regardless of what Some Guy's Essay says we're supposed to want -- such that our current attempts to shove every square peg into the round hole of 'notability' are mostly just flailing. A companies-and-entrepreneurs stream (whether as a dedicated part of AfC or NPP, a "you need to go through AfC specifically for this", or whatever else) would solve a pretty sizable array of our inflow problems. Vaticidalprophet 09:06, 5 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I thinks that's all to complicated for the moment. The biggest problem is that there is a lot of talk at NPR but nobody is coordinating it, that's where you need to start. The venue is WP:NPPAFC, and it's time to give Iridescent his talk page back and for me to enjoy the rest of my Sunday (what's left of it) and watch the snooker final. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 09:10, 5 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

If AfC continues to have several thousand drafts and NPP continues to see almost five digit queues, perhaps it's time we discuss broadening our criteria for speedy deletion or increasing the purview of our various notability guidelines. For a technical approach, we could start disallowing the creation of pages that lack an external hyperlink (unless they're redirects) to force (mainly new) editors to at least try to find one source. I'd also not be opposed to raising the permission to create mainspace articles to EC, but then we'd just end up moving the problem to AfC, though as many people have said above, it is a lot easier to kill an article in draftspace (whether that's good or bad is subjective). Anarchyte (talk) 09:21, 5 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

That's all been discussed above (start at the top of the thread), and it's good to see some support for it, but the place to discuss it is at WP:NPPAFC. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 09:54, 5 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

This will send the ironymeter off the scale entirely, but what you're proposing (a second track for pages with a potential COI, which only get moved to mainspace and indexed after they've been reviewed for sourcing and neutrality) is pretty much exactly the MyWikiBiz proposal of 2006, which led to sitebans flying around like confetti and ill-feeling that still hasn't fully dissipated 15 years on. I'd support it, but as long as Jimmy Wales is on the board you can guarantee the WMF will find a pretext to veto it; admitting he was wrong is not something Jimmy handles well. ‑ Iridescent 17:47, 5 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I think many of the NPP and AfC reviewers do work on two streams--the most likely articles and the worst first, and then all the mediocre. But I am one of the very few people looking at AfCs about to be deleted , and I find I can rescue perhaps 5 to 10% of them. That is, I can mark them for rescue--I can't myself fix more than a few or I would never keep up. But I do look at every article on an academic or possibly notable organization or general topic--if I can understand it. Nothing important in the fields I look at is going to get lost by expiring G13s while I'm still able to do it. I don't like our concept of notability, as I've been saying for years, but I know how to work around it.

I emphatically do not think our quality is deteriorating--most of the existing junky promotional articles are the old ones; most of the weakly sourced bios have been here for years; most of the coterie POV general articles were started very early on. I think this is due to 3 factors--fewer volunteers come here nowadays without the intent of doing some actual work; we are much better at detecting coi and promotionalism ; and, most important, an immensely greater amount of material is available on the internet--and even paywalled material from many sources through the WP Library. DGG ( talk ) 10:37, 5 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Agree with DGG that net quality is still rising. But I'm curious about the current state of the Wiki. I hear people talking about defunct portals, and Wikipedia:RFA by month shows RFA currently as quiet as it has ever been. But Wikipedia:Time_Between_Edits shows that we are still above the editing levels of the late 2014/early 2015 minima. I have to wonder where all that activity is. Do we just have loads of people quietly beavering away in mainspace and sticking close to their subject? Or just a growing proportion of editors with a COI focusing on the articles about their school, business or charity and otherwise keeping their heads down? To respond to Vatricidal and Kudpung, there is a big difference between retention of editors who start by creating new articles and those who start by improving an existing article. Twas always thus, the minority who start by wanting to add an article get short shrift, and though I'm pretty sure a high proprtion of them are spammers or have a broader view of notability than we accept, I do believe we lose some good newbies in draftspace. The bigger picture re editor recruitment and retention has been the shift of a large proportion of internet usage to smartphones and tablets, and the WMF decision to optimise the mobile platform for readers rather than editors. I know there has been some work done to make the mobile platform less editor unfriendly, but the days when mobile was less important than PC access are long gone. In the US Mobile access to websites is now twice that of PCs. It doesn't take more than a cursory look at recentchanges to show that we are largely a PC based editing community with mobile edits a small minority. I don't know to what extent the WMF is keeping an eye on such things, but if total editing volumes dropped back towards levels last seen in the 2014 minima I would hope I wouldn't be the only one sounding the alarm. Whether its adding a tablet view to the mobile and desktop ones, or making the mobile view more editor friendly, or using fundraising style banners to recruit volunteers to do some editing, there are ways in which we could turn more of our readers into editors. And if the community started to appear to shrink again we'd need to. ϢereSpielChequers 11:22, 5 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I'd be very surprised if we don't see a rapid drop fairly soon. The editor levels and editing activity levels have been artifically inflated since March 2020 for obvious reasons; at some point, workplaces and schools will be fully reopened and we're not going to have the free gift of people bored at home with nothing better to do. (If you—or WAID—or anyone else with the power to get changes through the WMF's sclerotic bureaucracy—wants a fairly easy free hit, just reconfigure {{citation needed}} et al to display a "this is potentially problematic, click here to fix it" popup which when clicked shows a mini-tutorial on how to add a reference, format text, add an additional statement, or whatever else the "problem" template in question indicates needs fixing.) ‑ Iridescent 17:47, 5 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I think Ed already built what you want. See phab:T211243. When they finally solve the two-parser problem, I believe it will be possible to offer this tool in read mode. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:35, 8 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

That's pretty much what I mean, although what I envisage is that the "clink here to fix it" is displayed by default in read mode, rather than the reader having to click on the [citation needed] to bring up a dialog box. ‑ Iridescent 08:06, 8 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Election results

Looks like the results are in. Risker made it, I don't know anyone else in that group and the only one that stands out is Li-Yun Lin and that's only because of the "Jamie" before it. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 20:36, 1 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks - actually (after chance conversations with two people in the know on these matters) I think I voted for all of these except my compatriot (among my 17-odd votes). Wierd election - only 1018 votes, and one winner (Ravan) only got 20 votes in the first round. The 2nd round was a damp squib, as none of the 3 people eliminated had received any votes at all.... Risker was ahead from the start with 59 votes, and had 101.65 by the time she was elected in round 35. Now where's my swingometer... Johnbod (talk) 21:34, 1 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I'm struck by how few votes there were (even allowing that the numbers are first-ranks). It also looks like (though I only looked quickly) that some of the appointed members were eliminated from the voting pretty early. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:29, 1 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Other than Risker I've only heard of one of those who made it, and that's someone I'd have put a "strong oppose" next to were such a thing possible. The fact that the WMF announcement itself seems to carry the implication that anyone wanting to engage with this process be obliged to join Telegram does not exactly fill me with confidence. ‑ Iridescent 06:35, 2 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I've run across most of the community-elected folks, and I think it will make a reasonably balanced group. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:27, 2 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Oh dear. It took me a bit too long to realise that this was not an ArbCom election, but something else. I think I need to re-lurk again (and resist the temptation to read any other thread on your talk page!)... Carcharoth (talk) 02:55, 11 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I wouldn't have known any of this was going on were it not for this thread, and I still don't understand exactly what this election was about or how it worked. Ultimately, however the WMF like to bleat about every project being equal, the reality of the WMF system is that English Wikipedia is the sun, German, French and Spanish Wikipedias are the planets, and all the other projects are asteroids. Ultimately, although they may nominally be in charge the only rights the WMF has over English Wikipedia are the right to be consulted, the right to encourage, and the right to warn, given that we have the clout to ignore anything with which we disagree. As such, it doesn't really make sense to think of the four big wikis as "parts of the WMF" in the same way that Wikispecies or Frisian Wikipedia are. ‑ Iridescent 07:53, 11 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

... And Commons is a black hole. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:56, 11 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

For the record

Those with an interest in WMUK (either pro or anti) probably ought to be aware of Wikipedia:Conflict of interest/Noticeboard#"One rule for them another for us" at Wikimedia UK. (My personal view, FWIW, is that this looks like a series of good-faith mistakes rather than any kind of smoking gun, although all those thought the sourcing here was acceptable for a BLP should certainly have known better; if I'd seen a page like that created by a new account I'd have flagged that account as a probable paid editor without blinking.) ‑ Iridescent 07:18, 20 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I lack entirely any good faith anymore when it comes to *organisations*. But that shouldnt be surprising to anyone. Only in death does duty end (talk) 14:08, 22 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

If it had been one of the usual suspects I'd agree with you, but this looks like straightforward cockup rather than conspiracy. The editor in question has only 300-ish edits across the entire WMF ecosystem and only 55 to English Wikipedia; it seems completely plausible to me that someone whose only significant experience with WMF sites has been on non-public-facing sites like Meta and WMUK's wiki—and who's presumably watched people like Fae and Mabbett getting away with worse for years—wouldn't appreciate just how bright a red line COI now is. ‑ Iridescent 17:50, 22 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The first part is correct, I think, but I very much doubt she's heard of Fae, and very possibly not Mabbett either, & that she's put in any time at all watching anything on English Wikipedia. Most of her few edits to articlespace are I imagine responses to the subjects of bios complaining to WMUK about this or that. Johnbod (talk) 18:09, 22 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Given that she's obviously read the "Controversies" section, I'm fairly confident she's heard of Fae… (For what it's worth, I very much doubt … that she's put in any time at all watching anything on English Wikipedia is in my opinion not exactly a testimonial. Her job description includes "Ensure appropriate consultation and engagement with volunteers and the Wikimedia community in the development of the charity's work"; for anyone at a local Wikimedia chapter, let alone the CEO, not to keep at least a weather eye on their language's Wikipedia seems to me akin to appointing someone to the board of a TV network who doesn't own a television.) ‑ Iridescent 18:51, 22 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

It wasn't intended as a testimonial. Rupert Murdoch has apparently never watched a tv programme in his life - otherwise an unlikely comparison. Calouste Gulbenkian, holidaying in the Med, once asked the captain of his yacht what that very large and very very long ship in the distance was ..... Johnbod (talk) 19:14, 22 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

FWIW, "Rupert Murdoch doesn't watch television" is an urban myth; he quite regularly comments on shows he's watched. (If nothing else he's certainly watched The Rise of the Murdoch Dynasty, given that he's spent the better part of the last year complaining about it.) Indeed, if this FT article is to be believed (and the FT is usually absolutely scrupulous about fact-checking since even their most trivial comments can potentially affect markets), the reason Britain has the dubious prospect of talkTV (British TV channel) to look forward to is his being stuck in lockdown with nothing on TV he wanted to watch. Quite how he made the leap from "there's nothing worth watching on at the moment" to "what the world needs is more of Piers Morgan", I leave as an exercise for the reader. ‑ Iridescent 05:25, 4 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Say what you like about Piers (and I do regularly, I loathe the man) he does create watchable television on a fairly regular basis. But I am in the minority of people who actively try to watch people with opposing views because I already know what my 'side' thinks about an issue. Only in death does duty end (talk) 10:44, 14 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

He does, but for the wrong reasons. Just getting viewers isn't enough, advertisers want to know why people are watching; not many companies want "petulant attention-seeker" to be a value customers associate with their product. (I'm not sure actively try to watch people with opposing views because I already know what my 'side' thinks about an issue really relates to Piers Morgan. He doesn't really have a 'side' as such other than whichever way he thinks the wind is blowing.) ‑ Iridescent 07:48, 15 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Hello! Voting in the 2021 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23:59 (UTC) on Monday, 6 December 2021. All eligible users are allowed to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once. The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail. If you wish to participate in the 2021 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. If you no longer wish to receive these messages, you may add {{NoACEMM}} to your user talk page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:10, 23 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

So here it is. I threw in my headbands for Enterprisey and Opabinia, uncertain on the others. JoJo Eumerus mobile (main talk) 18:01, 23 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Good god, is it that time of year already? Looking at the crop of candidates—and even more so, looking at the candidates whose terms are expiring and aren't running again—I have a feeling Wikipedia:You are not irreplaceable is about to be stress-tested to its limit. ‑ Iridescent 19:01, 23 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Of those not rerunning, at least two will be missed. One seems to have been on the Committee ever since I can remember. There are about two expiring terms who will probably be reelected and those two have the best experience and institutional memory (don't interpret that to mean they are automatically the best arbitrators). Tactical voting is probably the best solution. If some seats are left empty, so be it. Time for a reform of the system Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 23:08, 9 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I assume every candidate other than the obvious no-hoper will clear the 50% mark, so things will carry on as normal. What we really need is an election with fewer viable candidates than vacancies. Wikipedia is inherently very conservative when it comes to structural change, which is normally a good thing in that it prevents us from following every passing fad, but has the drawback of making it harder to steer the ship away from icebergs. An arbcom with half-a-dozen vacant seats would be the signal that maybe the structures that worked in 2004 are no longer fit for purpose. ‑ Iridescent 08:40, 10 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

It's probably safe to predict that we will go through repeated spasms of lowering the percent threshold to pass, then raising it, then lowering it, and on and on. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:36, 10 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Or, we grit our teeth and have the conversation about unbundling which we've been avoiding for ten years. Unbundling the functions of Arbcom actually makes more sense than unbludling the admin toolkit—block, delete & protect are three tools for dealing with the same root problem, but "dispute resolution panel", "top-level law enforcement body" and "court of appeal for the interpretation of ambiguous policies" don't really have much in common other than that they're all functions Jimmy decided to divest himself of at the same time. If the job had less authority—or at least, less perceived authority—there wouldn't be the annual outburst of angst since the occasional crazy or bad actor making it through would be "legitimate representation of other perspectives" rather than "giving out powerful tools with minimal oversight". ‑ Iridescent 05:45, 11 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps, but then we'd have to have a process for picking the members of three different high-level bodies rather than one. The election each year takes a lot of time and effort, and I don't think we'd want three of those, so we'd need to figure out how that would work. Plus the three roles you identify sometimes do overlap in a given case or situation; an ArbCom case could easily involve (1) a dispute (2) over whether someone violated a potentially ambiguous policy, and (3) if so, what to do about it. I'm not saying it's a bad idea, but as always, there are these ancillary questions to think through. For what it's worth, I still believe that ArbCom, while of course still important, is much less so than in the past, for reasons we've discussed before. Regards, Newyorkbrad (talk) 14:36, 11 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The process for selecting members of three bodies with limited scope would be less problematic since we wouldn't need the whole SecurePoll rigmarole if we weren't engaged in the annual appointment of the Wikipedia Justice League. Some kind of Mediation Committee to gatekeep disputes could probably just have its members appointed on the basis of "anyone who wants to join can just sign up provided nobody has a strong objection", leaving Arbcom's vestigial "final authority when all else fails" function as "an annually-elected body with the power to issue binding closures to RFCs". (Both the existing RFC process for resolving disputes over policy, and the new Wikipedia:Administrative action review, would slot neatly into this structure.) ‑ Iridescent 07:15, 12 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

A recently closed Request for Comment (RFC) reached consensus to remove Autopatrolled from the administrator user group. You may, similarly as with Edit Filter Manager, choose to self-assign this permission to yourself. This will be implemented the week of December 13th, but if you wish to self-assign you may do so now. To find out when the change has gone live or if you have any questions please visit the Administrator's Noticeboard. 20:06, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

So our solution to "NPP is currently unable to handle the flood of incoming articles" is to add more articles to that flow? Sometimes I get the feeling that Wikipedia's hive mind is attempting collective suicide by deliberately strangling itself in its own bureaucracy. ‑ Iridescent 08:05, 8 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Technically, it was our "solution" to the "RfA is broken" problem. But, I shouldn't complain as I gave my thumbs-up to that proposal. Granted, my thinking there was influenced by the impression that admins having autopatrol causes some people to escalate certain content issues - that should be handled at AN/ANI - to Arbcom prematurely. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 09:32, 8 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I already said this elsewhere, but I'm annoyed enough at this change-for-change's-sake that I'll repeat it here: I suspect most of the people parroting some variation on "it won't increase the NPP workload because most admins will qualify for autopatrolled anyway so they can just be re-awarded it" have no conception of how strict the requirements are. It took me three years to meet "prior creation of 25 valid articles, not including redirects or disambiguation pages", and that was back in the days when there were still a lot of redlinks so it was actually possible to find topics on which a page didn't already exist. My most recent 25 ab nihilo page creations stretch back to 2010, and I'm more prolific than most when it comes to writing about niche topics where we're less likely already to have a page. What we're actually doing here is formalizing "people who spam Wikipedia with a flood of stubs are considered more trustworthy than people who put some thought into whether a new stand-alone page is actually a good idea". ‑ Iridescent 17:00, 9 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

When I got my Autopatrolled, one needed 50 articles - that ought to be reinstated. This change is a token change because admins can give it to themselves and half the active admins have already done so. The idea behind it was that adminship candidates should bring Autopatrol with them to their trial of ire and thus avoid oppose votes from trolls on the lines of 'not enough content work'. The irony is that admins themselves who should know better have been caught blatantly abusing it. This change will not unduly increase the burden on NPP. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 23:21, 9 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Ah. the good old days—the explanation for why the threshold changed from 40 to 50 is possibly the stupidest comment in Wikipedia's history. FWIW that threshold is not easy to reach; you and I score only 90 and 78 respectively on "mainspace non-redirect non-disambiguation page creations" threshold despite being two of this wiki's most active editors (I've created 14,650 pages on this wiki alone, but 14,572 of them don't meet the strict requirement of counting towards the autopatrolled threshold). Because it's harder to create a page from scratch nowadays (even if the article doesn't exist, there's a good chance it exists as a redirect), a lot of Wikipedia's most active editors fail to meet even the reduced 25-creation threshold; BradV, Risker, L235 for instance.

I don't see how this change will avoid oppose votes from trolls on the lines of 'not enough content work'. Typically on any given RFA where this is the case, the first such oppose is mine and the rest are "per Iridescent". (The raw boilerplate is "I don't think editors who haven't had the experience of putting large amounts of work into an article, and/or defending their work against well-intentioned but wrong "improvements" or especially AFD, are in a position to empathise with quite why editors get so angry when their work's deleted and/or The Wrong Version gets protected, and I don't support users who don't add content to the mainspace being given powers to overrule those who do.", but I try to tailor it to the particular circumstances of that RFA so I don't necessarily use that exact wording.)

The opposition has nothing to do with whether or not the candidate can be trusted with autopatrolled status, but on the fact that it's impossible to judge whether someone with little or no experience of content work (whether it be page creations, image uploading, or editing existing articles) can empathize with the degree of investment people involved in on-wiki disputes can feel over things which appear trivial to outsiders. (We have a long and inglorious history of admins who don't appreciate this, primly lecturing genuine subject-matter-experts on the fact that Wikipedia policy says their expertise counts for no more than the opinion of some guy who's just wandered in having a read an article on the matter in his local paper, and then wondering why the expert is getting angry and frustrated.) As long as admins have some kind of "judge and jury" role rather than purely maintenance functions, I think it's reasonable that someone who wants authority over people engaged on a particular task should have demonstrated some understanding of that task.

It's not as if writing a handful of 200-word stubs, or uploading some photographs of a local landmark, is particularly onerous. If someone isn't even willing to meet this minimal requirement yet they're still requesting adminship, I think it's completely legitimate of me to question both their motivation and their understanding of the fact that Wikipedia adminship is supposed to be about the maintenance of an information resource, not the moderation of a social network. ‑ Iridescent 08:13, 10 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I bet I can find even stupidester comments! --Tryptofish (talk) 19:34, 10 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I'll start you off with my usual example of "username lacks moxy, candidate should change it to something more fear-inspiring and re-apply". ‑ Iridescent 05:28, 11 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I hinted at this at Floq's page, but one of the main functions that +autopatrolled had for admins was that it exempted all of the maintenance pages that pretty much only admins create from needing to be patrolled in the new pages feed or in the page curation tool. Despite what some might think, we actually do have people who patrol new user pages, both admins and non-admins, and given that a fair amount of user space needs to be suppressed, it is something that is needed.

I don't really think adding a few hundred sock tags to that pool of pages needing review with even less patrollers than we have patrolling articles is a net-benefit to the project. To use myself as an example - I don't qualify for autopatrolled, but I gave it to myself anyway since no one needs to look at my sock tags. I also have pretty strong content chops as the generic functionary goes, even if I haven't done much in that regards in a few years. My having autopatrolled cuts down on work while also being low-risk from a content perspective. Though if a wiki-lawyer wants to take me to RFC/U reborn, I suppose they can have at it. TonyBallioni (talk) 06:16, 11 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

My I've created 14,650 pages on this wiki alone, but 14,572 of them don't meet the strict requirement of counting towards the autopatrolled threshold above is making much the same point. Something as basic as "emptying Category:Expired proposed deletions and creating procedural AfD nominations for those instances which aren't clear-cut and would benefit from a second opinion rather than being summarily deleted" means creating a bunch of new pages; I can't see how it benefits NPP to suddenly have thousands of dull administrative pages dumped into their queue. (This is true for all admins; I'm not some kind of outrider. To pick on User:ToBeFree, just because he seems to be the first person making an "I never create pages so this won't have any impact on NPP!" argument at the RfC, his not having the autopatrolled right would have dumped a little over 14,000 pages into the NPP queue.) ‑ Iridescent 07:15, 11 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Heh. 13,642 of which are user talk pages. Hm hm. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 11:33, 11 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I went through a portion of the NPP queue the other day, and noticed that large numbers of redirects from intra-userspace moves, and redirects from moving userspace drafts to mainspage, were in there (about a thousand in the last 30 days). I'm thinking of setting up a bot/script to go through them, because I can't think of any reason why we should give a damn about userspace redirects (unless they're something like User:Example/Worthless fraud and piece of trash child molestor redirecting to a BLP). There were about a thousand in 30 days of unreviewed pages (ot of a total queue of 8,000) -- it wouldn't be an Industrial Revolution of NPP technology, but it'd certainly count for something. jp×g 07:45, 11 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

On that note, there are a whopping 19,851 unpatrolled userspaces in total since November 10, compared to 10,083 mainspace pages. What da...? jp×g 07:48, 11 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Less people tend to review user space, but it has a ton of creations, because ACPERM doesn't impact it, and some of our tutorial pages suggest creating things there. A lot of it tends to be problematic. TonyBallioni (talk) 08:22, 11 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Well there is over a thousand useless pages right there for an indefinately blocked user (who is unlikely to ever be unblocked) that someone could do something about if they felt the need to cut down the total amount. Only in death does duty end (talk) 11:22, 11 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

That editor (a) is an inveterate pusher of boundaries and (b) has a lot of very active cronies who will proxy on his behalf. Any admin trying to clean up the messes he's left would spend the next year or so being constantly dragged to noticeboards by his coterie for alleged "admin abuse". I don't think you were around for the very similar case of Betacommand, but have a read of WP:AN/B and its archives to get a feel for how such a cleanup is likely to go. ‑ Iridescent 07:24, 12 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Actually I was around for BC/Delta but not visible. I was aware of the issues but had no real need to get engaged. Mainly because I am fairly hardline on NFCC, their actions didnt impact me so much. I think I only commented when the obvious BC/Delta sock Weriath started to ramp up the behaviour that got BC/Delta sanctioned. And even then it wasnt BC's actions that drove me to it, it was the utter blatant hypocrisy in the Admins who enabled and protected Betacommand's socking that was so disgusting. Betacommand has probably done more than any other single editor to make tolerance of problematic and disruptive automated editing lower than it would otherwise be. I could make a good argument that had not Betacommand thoroughly laid the groundwork before 2010, Magioladitis and Rich Farmbrough would not have incurred blocks relatively swiftly in comparison. Of course the extended-duration to which they were allowed/enabled in disrupting other editors, after the initial problems were identified, were similar to Betacommand/Delta/Weriath. ENWP admin corps is remarkable in its tolerance of clearly disruptive editors, while also being remarkable in its complete absence of consideration for the victims of said disruption. And this despite the fact that most of the policies and procedures are not actually written that way. Only in death does duty end (talk) 10:07, 12 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

All three of the editors you mention had one common factor: an extreme "I don't care what everyone else thinks, I'm doing the Lord's work so I can't be wrong" attitude towards their bots and scripts. It's sometimes easy to lose sight of the fact that 99% of automated editing is completely uncontentious; all it would have taken for any of the three to avoid sanctions would have been either "I see what the problem is, I'll fix that", "I personally don't agree that it's problematic but if it's causing issues I'll stop", or "You're mistaken, it's not causing problems, and here's an explanation as to why". Rich had a particular issue, which even BC didn't have, in that he was actively evading the safeguards and throttles that we have in place to prevent crapflooding; I suspect that's why when the book was finally thrown, it was thrown harder than usual. ‑ Iridescent 16:07, 12 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

There is a kind of election analysis here (not of the candidates, but some stats and coloured pics) of the process that may be of interest. Comments welcome on the talk page. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 23:32, 9 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

One thing I will say is that the "page views of guides" is misleading. The huge spike in pageviews of TRM's guide on the 16th, for instance, won't reflect a sudden surge of interest in him on that day, but the fact that he made a lot of edits late on the 15th and throughout the 16th, so those people who had the page watchlisted would have refreshed it on multiple occasions as it kept popping up on their watchlist and they re-looked to see what had changed. If you want an actual picture of how much cut-through each of the guides had, you'd need to pester the WMF to release the relevant unique page views data. ‑ Iridescent 08:23, 10 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for pointing that out. I don't think it matters. I'll include that in my analysis though. The WMF is never very helpfull so I won't waste my time on that. I'm doing this to try and gain an impression as to how effective the voter guides are at influencing the voting. Probably like at RfA, such stats don't mean much due to the small sample size. Much better would be to find out what experience the actual voters have like we did at WP:RFA2011. At first blush it looks as if the real regular editors (names that are familiar to me) voted later than on the first day stampede. A very high % of the voters do not list en.Wiki as their home Wiki; I wonder if that means anything. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 12:47, 10 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I am pretty sure that at many elections (RfX and Arbcom) experienced editors take their time to investigate and/or see what things crop up before throwing in their votes. After all, a first day vote is just as effective as one cast on the last day. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 12:56, 10 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Election Results, with my predictions and comments. I think that between them, the voter Guides probably had a significant impact. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 01:20, 16 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

1570 votes, about as usual. Only 2 got 50% supports (of the total), one only just. Johnbod (talk) 03:38, 16 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

• Don't really think the guides do much. I'd actually be interested to see what the result would be if we decreased the advertising next year. I only voted for 4 people this time. First time I couldn't get to a full slate. I know a lot of the older names I talked to couldn't either. We'd probably have gotten 8 even without the bot, but I think we would have had several one-year terms. TonyBallioni (talk) 05:42, 16 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  It's impossible to measure, but my instinct is that since the mass-mailings began the guides do have an effect. Prior to that the only people participating in the election were by-and-large people already familiar with the candidates, and if not then they were familiar with recent policy changes, arb cases etc and thus could interpret the candidates' statements and "how would you have dealt with this?" questions. The mass mailings invite a lot of people to participate, many of whom have probably not heard of the candidates before and most of whom probably aren't particularly keen on reading vast reams of text.

  This year, the "candidate statements" page alone clocks in at 4600 words, while the Q&A to the candidates comes in at 66,600 words. For reference, the whole of Lord of the Flies clocks in at under 60,000 words. In that context, I'd be more surprised if there wasn't a strong element of "I feel it's my duty to participate since I've just had this mailing telling me how important it is, but I haven't the time to read all that, can someone please tell me how to vote?" going on. We know this happens with real-world elections after all or candidates wouldn't spend so much time trying to get positive media coverage and celebrity endorsements, and if people aren't going to do their own research on elections that are going to have a genuine material effect on their lives and the lives of everyone they know, they're unlikely to do their own research on elections where the only issue at stake is the internal administration of a website. ‑ Iridescent 06:45, 16 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  I'd actually be interested to see what the result would be if we decreased the advertising next year. I only voted for 4 people this time. First time I couldn't get to a full slate. I know a lot of the older names I talked to couldn't either. Well, I only got 2 and both were elected so... Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 10:17, 16 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  My qualifications for opining on the significance of the guides are that: (1) I wrote one of the guides, and (2) I have absolutely no empirical evidence, and am purely guessing, and so I might just be pulling this out of my nether regions. I think the guides have some effect, but they are not necessarily decisive. I also think that some guides are more influential than others. I'm sure that there are users who look at the guides, find some of them useful, and dismiss other guides as bizarre and worthless. Based on what seems to have been the conventional wisdom before the results were announced, the biggest surprise was that Beeblebrox came in as low as he did. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:25, 16 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  The figures for Beeblebrox look pretty much in line with similar candidates in the past. He got the level of support one would expect; if you (plural) are surprised he didn't do better, I think you're not taking into account how many people he's annoyed who will have actively opposed him this time around, rather than just sit on their hands and leave him in 'neutral' as one normally does with "not my cup of tea" candidates. I personally think a lot of the concerns are an overreaction, but his self-appointment of himself as Wikipediocracy's ambassador to Wikipedia unquestionably struck some nerves in a way that e.g. Izno's involvement with Discord didn't even though the latter is arguably more problematic. Note how few "neutral" votes he got compared to the others. (Even if one discounts the "participant in a hate site!" hysteria, there are purely practical concerns over having an Arbcom member who will probably have to recuse from anything potentially controversial. There's a legitimate argument to be made—I've made it myself in the past—that the people who do best as arbs are the bland candidates you've barely heard of rather than the vocal and high-profile personalities.) ‑ Iridescent 18:27, 16 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  Yes, I think that's a good analysis, and it may reflect significant numbers of voters making informed decisions independently of the guides. Or maybe using guides to inform themselves, and then voting as they choose instead of voting the same as the guide writers. (For instance, I supported Beeblebrox with some reservations based on the things you described, and people who read my rationale may, perhaps, have been influenced to oppose while ignoring my personal conclusion.) --Tryptofish (talk) 18:41, 16 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  I'd say more likely, there was a general trend to support based on the guides, but 357 people were sufficiently annoyed with him to actively oppose. Consider that even if you completely discount the Wikipediocracy stuff (which I'm sure did have an effect), he's responsible for 6000 blocks plus a fair few "lock him up and throw away the key!" comments on ANI and at Arbcom, and at least some of those blockees are going to have friends. ‑ Iridescent 19:16, 16 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  "Izno's involvement with Discord" is interesting, given that 5 of the 8 elected this year (WTT, Wugs, Cabayi, and Enterprisey, besides myself) and another 4 of 7 in the other tranche (Bar, L235, Eek, and Cas) are also present to various degrees where most have been at least since last year's election, never mind the dozen or so previous and exiting arbs. (And I think maybe all the clerks?) Clearly Wugs and I are the ringleaders of the cabal, though, if you were to go by who got questions about the topic this year. :^) Izno (talk) 23:22, 16 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  I wasn't the one raising it; you'd need to ask Joe Roe why you two were singled out while other candidates weren't. I don't know if this was the case with you, but I know from previous elections (and from being around long enough to remember the legendary WP:BADSITES debates) that this kind of situation isn't usually a binary "participation in off-wiki sites is automatically bad" situation. It's a complicated set of variables regarding the nature of the site, the nature of the specific discussions participated in, the nature of the comments made, whether there a potential involvement in attempts to circumvent or sway on-wiki consensus, whether even if there wasn't, there's a potential for accusation of potential involvement in attempts to circumvent or sway on-wiki consensus, and whether there's a perception that the individual concerned has tried to cover up some or all of their off-wiki activity.

  My personal position, which I don't think is any great secret, is that except when it's done for legitimate and genuine technical reasons—"if you're having difficulty logging on to Wikipedia contact us via IRC", "this statement on Twitter is factually incorrect, this is what actually happened", "I need to speak to a now-banned user about something they once wrote, doing so on Wikipediocracy is more open than via email since at least it leaves some kind of audit trail in case people want to know exactly what was said"…—it should be a fairly hard-and-fast rule that the more hats a Wikipedia functionary is wearing, the less they should engage in anything off-wiki except when there's a genuine privacy concern in which case the off-wiki discussion should take place in a venue that's genuinely restricted and which nobody else can sign up to. There's very little legitimate reason not to have discussions in public, particularly when other users are being discussed, and even when nothing remotely untoward is going on the very fact of discussions taking place that aren't publicly visible to everyone has far too much potential to create the perception that something untoward is going on. (If there's nothing problematic, why isn't the discussion being held publicly on-wiki where everyone can see it and where there will be a record of it if anyone questions or challenges something that was said?) It's taken us years to shake off the "Wikipedia claims to be egalitarian but actually has a two-tier system in which those who are members of off-wiki cliques get preferential treatment" reputation and we still haven't entirely done so, and the continued participation of high-level functionaries on IRC, Discord, Wikipediocracy etc (and the continued existence of Arbwiki) just reinforces that perception even if the functionaries in question aren't actually doing anything wrong. ‑ Iridescent 20:14, 18 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  One wonders also about email communications. I know, hypocritical from me since I, Joe Roe, Rosguill and Seraphimblade came up with the close for Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Mass killings under communist regimes (4th nomination) via email. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 20:35, 18 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  Email (and face-to-face or phone) seems to me to be a different kettle of fish to IRC et al. There are quite often genuinely legitimate reasons for a specific conversation not to be made public: privacy matters, legal concerns, and sometimes just plain "can I get a second opinion on this before I go public?". Where I think off-wiki discussion groups cause problems is the potential for them to be perceived as an "insider" clique with the potential to distort consensus, even if they're not actually engaged in any kind of corrupt practices in reality. (It's not exclusive to online channels either. Some of the worst offenders for back-channelling and tag-teaming are some of the individual chapters whose members can be relied on to turn up in lockstep to support each other.) As regards something like Discord, Wikipediocracy etc, my advice to anyone involved (speaking very much in a personal capacity) would be "before you post the comment you're about to post, could you give a convincing explanation if challenged as to why you're not making it on-wiki?". ‑ Iridescent 07:00, 19 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  If you plan on doing cross-wiki work, IRC is also useful because of the stewards channel and access to steward. It also provides live logging of every steward/WMF action via steward tools, which is useful from an accountability standpoint (The Fram situation was noticed on IRC before it was on-wiki because of the live logging.)

  I'm no fan of the Discord and really have never been, but that's more to do with the social dynamic than anything else. I've described it as the worst of #wikipedia-en ^connect, which I quit years ago for the social dynamic, even while still being active in the functionary channels on IRC. Comes off to me as a bunch of young users trying to cozy up to admins. That's both annoying and somewhat creepy. That's not just a Discord problem though, -en on IRC had it for years as well. I think what probably makes it come off worse on Discord is that a bunch of younger people already use it, versus IRC which is an ancient technology that required an extremely minimal degree of familiarity to figure out. TonyBallioni (talk) 00:28, 19 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  How could the Fram situation have been noticed first on IRC? The blocking would have popped up on the watchlist of every person who had Fram's user/usertalk page watchlisted the moment it happened, just by the nature of MediaWiki software. The ban was enacted at 17:41 and I made the complaint that eventually spiralled into WP:FRAMBAN at 18:01; it's not what one could call a significant lag. ‑ Iridescent 07:45, 19 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  Short version: the block didn't show up but the desysop showed up immediately in #wikimedia-stewards ^connect because it was handled on meta via the user-rights interface there. That specific situation aside, the stewardbot IRC feed is the easiest way to see what's actually going on re: changes in user rights via meta or with global locks on accounts, since those don't show up on watchlists on a local project, and there's really no reason to check your meta watchlist most of the time. TonyBallioni (talk) 17:39, 19 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  As one of the ones bringing up the discord thing in her guide - I'll clarify that it's not the existence of discord that gets my goat - it's the fact that the discussions on discord are treated as if they are not at all connected to wikipedia and that while in some cases they can influence events on wiki, there is no accountablity for statements there. I use discord constantly throughout my day in my "day job" and I KNOW how it works. Things are almost always visible and searchable ... even if you're not on/in when something is stated. And almost all discord participants know that things they say are "logged". But yet, while the wiki-discord channels can be used to sway discussions on wiki, the fact that they are used that way ... can't be used on wiki as evidence of misbehavior/swaying/etc.... this is just wrong. I'm not going to ding people who use discord - but I did call out the folks who contributed to what I see as a problem. In some ways, it's worse than the old IRC-no-logs-days... because you CAN go see the crap that gets slung around but some folks seem to want to treat it like the old smoke-filled-backrooms of American politics. BLECH. So much for the wiki-way! Ealdgyth (talk) 17:58, 19 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Standard questions and political compasses

• I was thinking about whether a few standard broad questions could help voters identify candidates – like left/center/right or "taxes: too high/too low/about right?", for real-world legislators. However, I'm not sure what the questions would be. It depends on whether voters feel like they are voting for someone to represent them/their views, or if they are looking for someone who is good at problem solving and conflict resolution. In the former, you'd be asking for political views, such as enwiki-vs-WMF/chapters, and in the latter, you'd be asking questions like "Have you ever, or will you soon, take a formal training program on conflict resolution?" WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:32, 16 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  There was a discussion on this topic at WT:ACE2021#Compass. Izno (talk) 23:23, 16 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  My thoughts are already on the record on compass tools. I think for Arbcom elections it would be even less useful. Arbcom isn't the Wikipedia Parliament and arbs aren't representatives, and except for a few very specific questions like "under what circumstances do you feel people should be given second chances?" I can't see how candidates' views on internal wikipolitics are relevant. What one is looking for in Arbcom elections is "is this person going to give participants a fair hearing?", "how will this person react to attempted bullying and bluster?" and "will this person be able to work with the rest of the committee?", and none of those are attributes that can be given a mark-out-of-ten and placed on a scale. ‑ Iridescent 06:22, 17 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  I think that asking questions about second chances, fair hearings, bullying, teamwork, etc. (and not about internal politics) would help editors discover that these qualities were important in ArbCom members. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:56, 17 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  Maybe, but what's being discussed is the possibility of an "electoral compass" tool, not whether it's appropriate to ask questions of the candidates, and I don't see how this would translate into any kind of "how should I vote?" tool. See my comments in the #Election compass tool section a couple of threads up; with the arguable exception of second chances (where there are legitimate grounds for dispute between "turn a blind eye" and "banned means banned"), none of these are issues on which candidates are going to have differing opinions. No candidate is going to say "well, I'm all in favor of bullying", and although they might give different answers as to how it should be tackled and whether it's an issue that should be dealt with at the community, the arbcom, or the T&S level, there's no easy way to score that into a format which a machine can translate into some kind of grade. (You see the same problem with the "real" Political Compass test, where all the questions are written with the very atypical politics of the US in mind and consequently even avid hardline authoritarian extremists in Europe come across as centrists, because there are so many questions to which anyone no matter what their political views would give the same answer. As an experiment, I just tried answering all their questions as best I could in character as Priti Patel—arguably the most right-wing politician to hold office in the UK in postwar history—and scored almost dead center at 1.13/10 "right" and 2.46/10 "libertarian".) ‑ Iridescent 16:24, 17 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  The US political compass is also written in such a way to make everyone think they're a libertarian. It's not actually a tool to see where you stand. It's a tool to make you believe you're Ayn Rand. TonyBallioni (talk) 16:34, 17 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  They also have some really whacky "analysis". To take the last UK election as an example just because it's one where I'm familiar with all the parties involved, the previously-mentioned Plaid Cymru—who literally have "To ensure economic prosperity, social justice and the health of the natural environment, based on decentralist socialism" as their stated primary objective after Welsh independence itself are shown as almost dead centre, while the Conservative Party—already by that time under the live-and-let-live and state-subsidies-all-round governance of Boris Johnson—are shown as more right-wing than even the actual extreme-right-wingers of UKIP (and also further to the right than Donald Trump). The UK still fares better than Germany, where apparently the only party in the entire country that isn't "authoritarian" is (checks notes) the remnants of the East German Communist Party. ‑ Iridescent 18:20, 17 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  I took it again in the first time in years just to see where I fell. Answered it all accurately. I'm apparently a hardcore libertarian. Which is odd, as I'm definitely not a libertarian by any reasonable use of the term. TonyBallioni (talk) 23:13, 17 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  I just took it answering it all accurately as myself, and am apparently an ultra-leftist libertarian (7.25 left, 2.36 libertarian), which is news to me. I think that what's going on with the "libertarian" thing is that they treat 'libertarian' as 'the absence of authoritarian', and they have a preponderance of questions where any reasonable person—whatever their politics—is going to answer "that's not the government's business".

  To TPWs, there is (for once) actually a point to this rambling sidetrack. These "political score" tools have years of experience (TPC has been running for over 20 years) and are working in an area where huge stacks of books and research papers have been published into the best ways to measure and interpret political sentiment. If they're unable to given even rough approximations of an accurate reading, what is the likelihood that a volunteer writing a tool as a hobby, or a WMF dev ordered to write such a tool, is going to come up with something that can interpret the often contradictory responses of Arbcom candidates? (As Kudpung points out in his essay linked in the OP, many of the questions this time round were so garbled and vague that it's literally impossible to compare the candidates' responses. I can say from experience that this is not a new phenomenon this year.)

  Dubious tools aren't so much of an issue in real world elections, since the overwhelming majority of voters won't be using them so any distorting effect will be drowned out. In the context of Wikipedia/Wikimedia elections, where there's a small electorate most of whom won't have even heard of most of the candidates, anything that misleads even a handful of participants is potentially going to have a significant distorting effect on the outcome. (I take any voter guide that doesn't have a huge "THIS IS JUST MY PERSONAL OPINION!" disclaimer with a major pinch of salt for the same reason.)

  This is why I opposed and still oppose mass mailings to people who haven't explicitly requested they be added to a "notify me of Arbcom elections", "notify me of RFAs", "notify me of all Requests for Comment in a given area" etc mailing list, and oppose secret ballots in the Wikipedia context, even though opposing either seems counter-intuitive. Participants who aren't either already aware that there's an election/RFC/RFA going on or people who've asked to be notified, are in general not going to be familiar enough with the candidates/issues to make informed choices, and not going to be people who'll want to put in the effort to read up on all the background. At RFA/RFC the open voting goes some way to allaying that, as the "here's why I'm supporting" and "here's why I'm opposing" are all laid out in detail so even if one's unfamiliar with the candidate or unfamiliar with the issue it's possible to get a feel for what the issues are. I know mine is a minority opinion, but I honestly do believe that Arbcom elections worked better when they looked like this as a collection of RFA-style support/oppose comments where it was actually possible to see who was supporting/opposing whom and why. ‑ Iridescent 06:35, 18 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  Yes, that's what they're doing, and they're also wording the questions in such a way as to make you select the options that will increase your libertarian score. Using myself as an example — I don't think the students at the local university should be arrested for smoking pot. I think that's a position most people in the United States would hold. That says nothing on my overall views on drug policy, which are not anywhere near what the libertarian fringes want. The compass takes a question meant to encompass drug policy; gives you an option (should possession of marijuana be criminal) that even right-wing states have adopted or de facto adopted, and then uses the response to move you further down the libertarian spectrum. There are a fair amount of questions that take answers that the majority of Westerners, even in the United States, have the same opinion, and then they take your response and move you down into the lower two quadrants. It's an obvious bias of the compass.

  Relating it to Wikipedia: I could write a compass test that has people agreeing that a banned user should be an arb and that NYB is a fringe lunatic, just based on how I worded the questions. That's an extreme hypothetical, but you know as well as I do that the type of people who would be writing ACE compasses would also likely be the people with axes to grind. TonyBallioni (talk) 17:22, 18 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  Likewise e.g. the homosexuality question; I'd be fairly confident in saying that the majority view in conservative America is "personally I think it's sinful but the government has no business interfering, this is for God to judge", which according to the compass tool would be "libertarian".

  We already have the questions they used to construct the compass tool for the movement charter elections, so I imagine anything here would be similar. Any compass tool not created by 'consensus' will just be denounced as illegitimate, but if we create a tool by consensus than as you can see we'll just get a mixture of platitudes and whoever happened to be drafting the questions trying to force candidates to endorse their pet projects by putting them in a situation where they'll find it hard to say "no".

  I suppose if the existing committee (or a commission of recent former arbs) drew up a list of questions they felt would be genuinely relevant to the people who'd be taking over from them, that might work, but could reasonably be accused of being a mechanism for entrenching bias. In fact thinking about it, if I remember I might suggest something similar when they hold the RFC on how to structure next year's election; if all the candidates got asked a bunch of standard questions from current or former arbs at the beginning of their Q&A page it would at the very least mean they had some sensible and relevant questions to start with before they had to engage with the annual parade of cranks and grudge-holders. ‑ Iridescent 18:10, 18 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  There used to be a set of standard questions for arb candidates, which grew longer each year; you answered those questions yourself in ACE2010. (You also answered more than the usual quota of non-standard questions, such as "if you're both elected, how will you be able to coexist on ArbCom with Newyorkbrad after what you wrote about him on Wikipedia Review?", which you dealt with well.) A couple of years later, the standard questions were deprecated in favor of just having the individualized ones, although typically most of the "individual questions" are posted identically to each candidate. A short set of standard questions isn't a bad idea, but whoever might prepare it should be sure to look up the reasons the prior set of questions was dropped. Newyorkbrad (talk) 22:40, 18 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  According to recent polling, 70% of the general public, and 55% of Republicans support same-sex marriage, up from 35% and 17% in 2009. The same is true for marijuana. Scorpions13256 (talk) 00:07, 22 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  I'm not sure I even realized those were standard questions, rather than just a section for "one-off questions the questioner had chosen to ask of every candidate that year, rather than just addressed to a particular candidate". (As regards Wikipedia Review, in light of my comments about Discord above in this thread, I hope you'll note that the day the election results were announced I immediately withdrew from WR and never touched it again. I do actually practice what I preach.)

  The more I think about it, the more I like the idea of a set of pre-formatted questions to be answered by each candidate as part of their candidacy process, the same as we currently do at RFA. It would give candidates space to expand on their initial statements without cluttering the candidate statements page, would pre-empt people having to ask the questions we know are going to be asked every year, and as previously mentioned would reduce the problem of the first (and thus most visible) questions each year quite often being variations on "what is your opinion on insert obscure issue which nobody not actually involved cares about?" and "do you agree that the existing committee is hopelessly corrupt for blocking my friend/not blocking my enemy?". ‑ Iridescent 07:00, 19 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  I like your sample question ("What is your opinion on <insert obscure issue which nobody not actually involved cares about>?"), and I hope that something similar will someday appear as an example in a help page.  ;-)

  Writing the software is the easy part; it could be done in a spreadsheet.

  Finding questions that correctly divide groups is harder. If you don't do that correctly, then your tool will either give the same results for everyone, or it will produce essentially random noise. This is a solvable problem, though it would probably take resources (e.g., a couple of hours' each from many former ArbCom candidates to "playtest" survey questions) and professional-level skills in survey writing. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:10, 20 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

More election thoughts

This is very much thinking out loud rather than any kind of even partially-formed plan, but in this context I'm not sure dividing the group is the issue. In the context of arbcom elections we're appointing—or at least trying to appoint—people with the ability to dispassionately assess a situation rather than a policy-making body. As such, what the questions to the candidates ought to be about should primarily be about how people react when they're placed in a situation where whatever they do is going to make people unhappy, and about whether people can be fair when asked to reach a decision about the conduct of people they know. There are some genuine 'political' issues involved in arbcom elections—I mentioned "where do you stand on the 'turn a blind eye' vs 'banned means banned' spectrum?" and "how many second/third/fourth chances should someone be given and under what circumstances?" but most of the issues affecting arb candidates aren't the type of issue that lends itself well to a spectrum. (Even if we did try to place candidates on a numerical scale for issues like "are you likely to be biased in cases involving people who hold views with which you disagree?" and "are you likely to give undue weight to the opinions of your friends?", we'd end up annoying a lot of people.) The "compass" approach might be valid for elections to things like the WMF board, where successful candidates are potentially going to influence policy, but for arbcom elections I'd say the purpose of standard questions would be more to create a managed environment for the candidates to give an impression of themselves, rather than for people with competing views to write manifestoes. ‑ Iridescent 04:56, 20 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I think that you want to divide the group, e.g., into people who can dispassionately assess a situation vs those who can't, and people who will cope when their friends turn against them vs those who won't.

Another possibility would be to require candidates to do some basic training first. The obvious problem with that is becoming better informed about the work might result in very few people being willing to stand for election. How many people would do this, if they understood up front that it's a time-sucking experience that will lose you half your friends and make Wikipedia completely un-fun for the next three years? WhatamIdoing (talk) 08:11, 23 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

We do try our best to stop candidates going into it blindfold; you can't add your name to the candidates list without being confronted with assorted dire warnings like You are running for a seat on the Arbitration Committee. This is a position that is extremely demanding on time and energy; please run only if you desire to contribute to the encyclopedia in this difficult role. and Candidates should be aware that they are likely to receive considerable internal and external scrutiny. External scrutiny may include attempts to investigate on- and off-wiki activities; previous candidates have had personal details revealed and unwanted contact made with employers and family. We are unable to prevent this and such risks will continue if you are successful.

Being informed about the nature of the work isn't really an issue, since anyone who can convince enough people to support them in the election is almost certainly going to be someone who already understands what Arbcom does. (They'll also almost certainly be admins, or at the very least have had long dealings with admins, so will at least be familiar with the back-office workings of Wikipedia and to some extent the WMF.) The issue is more that time pressures select for people who are inclined to act as arbs largely full-time rather than trying to remain active as editors as well; the constant dealing with the worst of people selects for people with a particular thick-skinned mentality (and has a tendency to instil an us-v-them attitude); and the way the elections are structured selects for people who are good at telling people what they want to hear without offending others, not necessarily for people who are good at doing what's necessary even if it means offending others (and creates an additional pressure against re-election of arbs who've made necessary decisions that inevitably antagonize half the participants in a debate).

It's part of why I'm so keen on seeing Arbcom's remit split up and redistributed across a few smaller committees rather than one big one. If we had different people tackling different tasks rather than a single group doing everything, it would be less of a commitment both in terms of time, and in terms of exposure to crazy people. If it genuinely only took up a couple of hours a week, candidates were able to specialize rather to be experts in everything (we don't expect members of the Bot Approvals Group to be experts in assessing the notablity of roads, why do we expect people appointed to an alleged conflict resolution body to be able to interpret Checkuser results?), and one wasn't automatically signing up to an inbox full of incoherent threats every morning for the next five years, we could attract a broader spectrum of people rather than relying on recruitment from within an ever-shrinking professional political class. (Remember the fuss a couple of years ago when we fell below 500 active administrators for the first time? As of today that number is on 465.) ‑ Iridescent 05:54, 24 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

(belated addition) How do the projects that don't have an arbcom or other form of central politburo handle things? Yes most of the other English-language projects have turned into case studies in corruption, but presumably that's not the case at all the other language Wikipedias. (Or is it?) ‑ Iridescent 09:27, 1 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The different projects have a wide variety of different approaches. The first thing to say is that most are far too small to sustain any kind of bureaucratic effort. All of those either don't have enough users to develop serious disputes, hash it out among themselves (often off-wiki), or beg for help at Meta-Wiki if things get out of control. One advantage to a small community is that the person causing problems today is the person who solved your problem yesterday, so there is less black-and-white thinking about individuals. Also, since you know the individuals better, it's also more feasible to use negative reinforcement effectively. People can tacitly agree to completely ignore certain comments from an individual and go on with the conversation as if the person never even commented. This is much harder to do in a large group.

Of those communities big enough – there are maybe 25 wikis that have more than 2K registered editors each month, fewer than 10 that have 10K, so there aren't that many in this group – only a few actually have an active ArbCom. Some split it up the work into multiple processes, (e.g., admin recall is separate from a discussion about blocking or topic-banning people). Many of these communities are still small enough that what you might call the Identified patient is just one person, so processes really can treat these as individual problems rather than group problems. After all, if only 1 in 10,000 people are likely to forcefully support some unusual position on wiki, then most communities won't have one of them pushing that opinion, much less two of them. If a handful of experienced editors band together against the one, then that small group will win. I suspect that more wikis have an informal cabal of long-time, well-respected admins than a formal ArbCom. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:54, 6 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

		Io, Saturnalia!
		Wishing you and yours a Happy Holiday Season, from the horse and bishop person. May the year ahead be productive and distraction-free. Ealdgyth (talk) 14:56, 17 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

And the same to you! December seems to come along earlier every year. ‑ Iridescent 16:25, 17 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

		Holiday cheer
		Here is a snowman a gift a boar's head and something blue for your listening pleasure. Enjoy and have a wonderful 2022 I. MarnetteD|Talk 02:44, 19 December 2021 (UTC) [reply]

Likewise! I do like that photo… ‑ Iridescent 07:02, 19 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

And the same to you! ‑ Iridescent 04:58, 20 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

It appears that I have run into this situation yet again. See everything in this diff. It appears that even though the source is public domain in other countries, most published works later than 1926 are still copyrighted in the United States. This chart appears to be the most handy guide we have. Pinging Nthep and Premeditated Chaos just to be safe. Scorpions13256 (talk) 23:26, 21 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

This guide appears to be even clearer. Scorpions13256 (talk) 23:39, 21 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Meyrick lived in England, the book was published and printed in England, he died in 1938 meaning his books are out of copyright in England, and the holding institution for this particular book is in England. I'm inclined to agree with the BHL where they say Copyright Status: Public domain. The BHL considers that this work is no longer under copyright protection; even if it weren't, I'm not going to start revdeleting since there's obviously zero potential that Meyrick's heirs are going to take legal action over our republishing content from a book that's undoubtedly in the public domain under English law. ‑ Iridescent 07:20, 22 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

(Since I got pinged). No one's disputing that the books are PD in England, but the problem is that the URAA restored US copyright to foreign works. Since the WMF is on US soil, it has to go by US copyright law, as idiotic as it may be. Of course it's unlikely that we'll be sued by the estate, but whether or not legal action may be taken is not the bar for removing content that violates copyrights. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 08:11, 22 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

As per PMC. The URAA is a complete pain and unfortunately we have to work within it. Nthep (talk) 10:18, 22 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I see that the source says "1923-1930" so - assuming that it's a publication date and that parts of it were published sequentially - it seems like parts might be under copyright [under URAA terms] and other parts would not be. Which parts are we talking about here? Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 11:11, 22 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry I took so long to respond. I don't have internet access until after 5:30 on weekdays. It appears that the whole thing is just one giant book on individual species of Lepidoptera. The species do not appear to be separated by year of publication. I am not sure how much of the book you have read. If we have all been wrong this entire time, I am more than willing to go through all of my past edits and request that the content come back. I always use the same edit summary, so it won't take long. Scorpions13256 (talk) 22:44, 22 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

It was literally published as a series of booklets that were then collated into volumes, so the publication date changes every few pages (example example). Parts will be PD by any definition, but it's cartainly not a good use of time checking them all individually. ‑ Iridescent 05:33, 23 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Was the book copyrighted in the United States? If so, was the copyright renewed? Newyorkbrad (talk) 23:02, 22 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I've been unable to determine whether or not the book was published/copyrighted in the US at the same time it was published in England, so my guess is that it was not. Unfortunately, it was not in the public domain in its source country as of the URAA date of January 1 1996, so it doesn't meet the special case whose criteria is "1926 through 1977: Published without compliance with US formalities, and in the public domain in its source country as of URAA date" (see Commons:Hirtle_chart). ♠PMC♠ (talk) 23:14, 22 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I think an adminstrator may want to review what has been redacted at Keiferia chloroneura. I went through all of my old edits as I promised, and this is the only one from the same source that may have been published before 1927. All of my other removals look good. The four that Iridescent reverted were likely also published in 1925. Scorpions13256 (talk) 22:01, 24 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Diannaa, I wouldn't normally bother you but if you're around would you mind giving Scorpions a second opinion regarding the above one? This is a slightly odd case, as the sources in question were published as a partwork series of installments and only later collated into a book, so the copyright status is literally different for individual pages of the same source. (Although this very much goes against WMF dogma, I do stand by what I said above that this is not something about which I'm losing the slightest sleep if we get it wrong. The articles have such minimal traffic that if we delete something we shouldn't we're not inconveniencing anyone, and the commercial value is so minimal that if we keep something we shouldn't there's zero realistic legal risk.) ‑ Iridescent 11:21, 28 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Ironically, if we let the Ruigeroeland CCI sit untouched for as long as most CCIs sit, the majority of his sources will hit PD and we won't have to care. I'm not saying that's the only reason I've been ignoring it (it was something like 75 unbelievably tedious subpages long to start with), but... ♠PMC♠ (talk) 12:10, 28 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I wouldn't even call it ironic. There's more work at CCI than there is people to do it especially since MRG left; prioritising "blatant copyright violations with the potential to have genuine commericial and/or legal impact on Wikipedia and reusers" over "technical cases to do with differing copyright expiry dates between the US and other jurisdictions" would seem to be straightforward common sense. ‑ Iridescent 12:46, 29 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

My preference is not not base copyright decisions on the likelihood of us getting caught or getting sued. I would just go by the Hirtle chart and US copyright law. In cases where we are unable to determine the copyright status, my preference is to assume material is copyright unless proven otherwise.— Diannaa (talk) 12:37, 28 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

		Season's Greetings
		Wishing everybody a Happy Holiday Season, and all best wishes for the New Year! Adoration of the Kings (Bramantino) is my Wiki-Christmas card to all for this year. Johnbod (talk) 14:50, 22 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

And to you! ‑ Iridescent 14:30, 24 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

		Nadolig llawen a blwyddyn newydd dda
		So here's some Jingle Wings and some Jingle Navidad Cubana and some Bryn and some Crickmore:Crewe just for you!! Very best wishes for Christmas and the New Year. Martinevans123 (talk) 14:24, 24 December 2021 (UTC) [reply]

A'r un peth, gobeithio y cewch chi flwyddyn newydd fendigedig a gwyliau hapus! (Beio google os mai gibberish yw hwn, ni allaf ond siarad am dri gair o hyn.) ‑ Iridescent 14:29, 24 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, Google Translate is Still a Cucking Funt, etc. looks fine to me! Martinevans123 (talk) 14:38, 24 December 2021 (UTC) p.s. sorry about the effing and jeffing[reply]

I edit conflicted as you closed the thread [1] ... may I add my defense anyway ?? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:39, 30 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

• It's curious that Nutez failed to notify me of this thread, as they similarly failed to notify others per the instructions at WP:FAR, even as they continued editing and the FAR Coord, Nikkimaria asked Nutez to do so. I would not like to think that Nutez was intentionally poking me, since I am the editor who always verifies the notifications at FAR.
  But looking on the bright side, I suspect that we have seen progress on Wikipedia since 2012, when male editors could refer to respected female editors as bitches, Wicked Witch of the West sending out her winged monkeys, and accuse other female editors of hate mongering for a neutral notification of a now blocked user engaging in serial falsification of references. I don't think those kinds of misogynistic posts would fly today, and they were shocking even then. I rather foolishly (but brashly and proudly at the time) called out the assholery in all caps no less; I had not engaged in any such behavior before that, and have not done it since. I hope my little contribution towards highlighting misogyny on Wikipedia (for which I was fully prepared at the time to be blocked) made a wee bit of difference. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:39, 30 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  Feel free to add to the ANI thread if you want; as the subject of the thread you're entirely within your rights to do so. My closure wasn't any kind of formal "nobody else is allowed to comment" closure—I only closed it to prevent other people wasting their time checking the fake diffs, and combing through your recent contribution history in case the OP had just made an error with the diff and you actually had done something problematic. (One of the wearily well-documented problems with Wikipedia noticeboards is that as we don't have a formal "closed without action" marker. Thus spurious threads end up wasting a lot of time since each admin coming afresh to the complaint sees that no action has been taken, and concludes that that's because they're the first admin to see it and thus they have a duty to investigate it now they've been made aware, so we end up with 20+ people all reading the same nonsense trying to figure out what's actually being complained about.) ‑ Iridescent 16:30, 30 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  Thanks, Iri; since you don't mind, I will add that response there (lest the "assholery" be drug up again in the future), and I have notified Nutez of this thread. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:34, 30 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  "Misogyny from a male editor" doesn't really paint the full picture. What you actually mean is "Misogyny from a male 'Audience Engagement Content Strategist' at the Wikimedia Foundation". ‑ Iridescent 17:44, 30 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  "Holey Moley, more WMF assholery." Chuck Hoolery 123 (talk) 17:57, 30 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  Lovely. Well, I like to think he was just a kid then, and it didn’t occur to him that it wasn’t OK to go around calling women bitches, witches and hatemongers (right after we had a civility arbcase). I never knew if putting the shoe on the other foot got the point across, even with the all caps, but in hindsight, I could have said instead, “How would you like it if someone called you a churlish prick”, which would have been more comparable to what he was condoning and covering up with hate-mongering bitches and witches content. I do think that such a situation would not happen today. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:05, 30 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  I can't recall all of the particulars of this incident and so I'm not really able to do anything more than guess about what I was trying to achieve in those diffs. I'll just say it should be abundantly obvious that ten years ago I was in a very different stage of life. Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 22:14, 31 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  As I imagined, The ed17; sorry that it was drug out again, such that I felt I had to defend and explain the context for my own ALL CAPPED assholery. Happy New Year, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:28, 31 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  Ooh, "Bitches and Witches", sounds very modern to me! Martinevans123 (talk) 18:14, 30 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  Who knew I would go down this rabbit hole for using the words darn and heck ? What a strange world … SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:18, 30 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  Darned rabbits! Martinevans123 (talk) 18:37, 30 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  If I were stretching AGF to near breaking point, Nutez's previous account says that they're a Norwegian-speaker with limited English. Dropping "darn and heck" into Google Translate for English→Norwegian renders faen og pokker; re-translate that Norwegian→English and it comes back as "fuck and heck". If he's relying on translation software for unfamiliar words, I could just about buy that "darn" and "heck" may not translate properly, and he genuinely believes that he's being sworn at. (I'm singularly unconvinced by this—most Norwegians have a decent knowledge of English, and these aren't hyper-obscure terms we're talking about—but it's just about plausible. We did once have a case of a virtually fluent English speaker getting very upset at the phrase "get your knickers in a twist" because he thought he was being accused of wearing women's underwear; the reason book translation is such a lucrative gig is that idiomatic English is an absolute nightmare to translate without messing up the nuances.) ‑ Iridescent 19:01, 30 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  I just want to know why they don’t do notifications :) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:07, 30 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  When I'm editing Wikipedia, I'll wear what I like.... if you don't mind! Martinevans123 (talk) 19:09, 30 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  He certainly isn't the first and won't be the last. The "you must notify everyone" warning that's shown to people starting new sections at ANI could practically be designed to be ignored—everything from the font to the color scheme is almost designed to say "you can skip this part". ‑ Iridescent 19:12, 30 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  I see what you mean :) Norwegian: interesting. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:38, 30 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I tried giving SandyGeorgia an ANI notice, but got in an edit conflict with an admin censuring me. The Google translate theory is funny though: on my talk page you recently wrote bullshit, which I don't consider to be particularly civil. If I put that particular 8-letter word into GT (English→Norwegian) it comes out as "tull", which re-translates to English as "nonsense". In that case it works in your favour, so I shall not complain. Slightly amusing is it, nevertheless. Anyway, I'm done here – it seems like you had a lot of fun at my expense. Nutez (talk) 11:38, 31 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

You posted at ANI at 11:25 UTC; no admin posted at User talk:SandyGeorgia until 16:59 UTC (and that wasn't to "censure you"). This is a wiki and the histories are preserved for anyone to check; for the second time, if you're going to tell lies tell lies that aren't obvious and easily-checked fabrications. ‑ Iridescent 11:49, 31 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

You sure? On my screen it looks like Nil Einne posted the ANI notice 11:36, i.e. only ten minutes after I created the section at ANI. Nutez (talk) 12:07, 31 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Nil Einne however isn't an admin. And I think it's generally expected that the person who makes a report also notifies its subjects. More substantively, though, nine year old edit summaries are not a good grounding for a complaint and it doesn't seem like Sandy made any questionable edit summaries after your post on their talk page - or at least you didn't link any [which is also your responsibility] Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 12:17, 31 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I didn't know that, I just assumed that they were, since they intervened so readily. I got into an edit conflict with them several times, both at ANI and on User talk:SandyGeorgia, so I gave up in the end. Nutez (talk) 12:21, 31 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

It's not expected only admins will intervene at ANI. Also there is zero point notifying someone twice. So once you saw that I had notified SandyGeorgia there was no reason to notify them anymore. You could have offered an explanation or apology for failing to notify them. I'd note that I while I have a tendency to edit my posts. I did not do so either at SandyGeorgia's talk page or ANI so it was impossible for you to get into an edit conflict with me more than once on either page. I did make a followup on ANI mentioning that pings weren't sufficient, 50 minutes later. If you were still trying to notify SandyGeorgia nearly an hour after you posted, that's largely a you problem not an us problem. Nil Einne (talk) 12:29, 31 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict) You see, edit conflicts do happen (even here). It is correct, I was trying to add more evidence and decided to edit [my] post or post something more before giving the notice, but I got in an EC with you, and lost my hope.

I'm letting you know as it doesn't look like the thread starter is going to.
— User:Nil Einne 11:36, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

It seemed to me that you simply assumed that I wasn't going to post an ANI notice ever. Nutez (talk) 12:35, 31 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Also, I don't particularly cherish the you-vs-us language. That's why I assumed you were an admin, talking to a non-admin like me (in-group/out-group). Nutez (talk) 12:41, 31 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

This comment gets to heart of the issue:

Also there is zero point notifying someone twice. So once you saw that I had notified SandyGeorgia there was no reason to notify them anymore.
— User:Nil Einne 12:29, 31 December 2021 (UTC)

That's exactly what I thought; hence, I thought the job was done. Nutez (talk) 12:41, 31 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

This is all a sidetrack to the fact that this all stems from you accusing SandyGeorgia of writing incredibly vile edit summaries, laced with profanity and anger but have yet to provide an example of a single one. Here's every edit SandyGeorgia has made for the past six weeks, which I've wasted a few minutes of my life I'll never get back checking, and I can see no sign of any of these supposed vile edit summaries. Unless and until you can provide even a single example of one of these edit summaries, don't expect any of this to be taken seriously. ‑ Iridescent 12:46, 31 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

(EC) You said an admin posted, but I'm not an admin. And while my comment at ANI could be considered "censuring" you, but it's unreasonable to call my ANI notice such. Yes I did offer a brief explanation to SandyGeorgia of why I was posting when the thread had nothing to do with me. I consider this reasonable when I'm notifying someone because the thread started did not do so, so whoever I'm notifying understands I'm just posting because someone else did not and it's otherwise nothing to do with me. It did occur maybe you just decided to edit your post or post something more before giving the notice, or maybe were just very slow. Hence why in both my comment at ANI and on SandyGeorgia's talk page I implicitly acknowledged the possibility maybe you were just slow. (In most cases it's been long enough I don't bother.) I'm not sure why it took you so long to post an ANI notice since AFAICT your next post at ANI was a reply to me so I see no sign why it would take 8+ minutes for you to do so. But in any event, from what I saw, this is the first time you even mentioned you had planned to post an ANI notice but got delayed by 8+ minutes, indeed your previous comment seem to suggest you thought a ping was enough. So personally I have no problem accepting you just got very delayed, you also need to understand why none of us knew this is what happened. Nil Einne (talk) 12:23, 31 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you all for your help in dealing with this. And thanks again, Nil Einne, for notifying me. Iri, I feel for you, having to review my edit summaries for six weeks :) I hope you enjoyed the Cyclone/Tornado CCI, and that you noticed me "sheesh"ing myself when I couldn't get an sfn right at Sherman.

Not an admin, above my pay scale, so pardon me (and please enlighten me) if I get the WP:CLEANSTART aspects of this wrong. I am (almost) wishing the thread at AN/I had just stayed open, so the full extent of the behaviors could have been examined there. I doubt that El C was aware of having blocked the editor before, when the falsifications about me were called out.

Is this not an example of just why we have CLEANSTART? Nutez/Gertanis/Eisfbnore are the same editor, operating three accounts, who has now revealed that they came at all of this to pick up on their almost ten-year-old grudge.[2] As well as apparently stalking my edits, and possibly failing to do the FAR notifications for some pointiness. (When I said I just want to know why they don't do notifications, I was referring to FAR, not ANI.) In an attempt to buttress the lies about my edit summaries, they dredge up a nine-year-old issue (because ... the only time I have ever used that kind of language), unnecessarily dragging Bish, Nikkimaria, J Milburn and everyone else back through this old business. Perhaps part of why they did not respond to Nikkimaria's request to do the FAR notifications (another grudge?). And then Nutez blames me for bringing in The ed17, when it was Nutez who did that.[3]

So, again, not an admin, but why is this person allowed to operate three accounts, from which they revisit (and misrepresent) their nine-year-old grudges? Nutez was still editing as Eisfbnore in 2020. A lot of admin time was wasted at ANI, not to mention the issue with The ed17; that time might not have been misspent if anyone had known at the time of the post that this was nothing more than an old grudge (or two, or three) from an editor who seems to be stalking my edits, and possibly also has an issue with Nikkimaria. We might want to examine whether they should be nominating articles at FAR at all, along with whether they should continue to stalk my edits. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:38, 31 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

As long as the accounts are flagged as belonging to the same editor, we don't have a problem with that, as there's no intention to deceive and they're not trying to distort discussions by participating in one discussion as two different people. (Whenever I have any kind of bulk editing to do, I do it from my other account, as I'm trying to stave off the day I hit the 600,000-edit mark and the standard tools stop working.) It's not particularly uncommon when someone forgets their password to just abandon the account and start a new one—unless you've registered an email address for them to send a password reset request to, the reset process is truly painful and relies on your being able to contact someone IRL who can verify your identity. It looks like the point may be moot, in any case. ‑ Iridescent 17:53, 31 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Editors who "retire" often re-appear. And the Nutez account was not flagged as Eisfbnore (nor was Gertanis). And they did use the new account to deceive, ala, to cover up the grudge motive for the fabrications about my edit summaries. What am I missing about CLEANSTART application to the case? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:57, 31 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

My mistake, I saw that Nutez was flagged as an alt-account of Gertanis but not that they hadn't mentioned that they were also Eisfbnore. It really depends on whether it qualifies as Changing accounts to avoid the consequences of past bad behaviors, which is what makes the sockpuppetry policy kick in. My strong inclination is to leave it and see if the retirement sticks; past experience strongly suggests that if we just ignore retired editors once they've gone they tend to stay retired, but if we take any kind of action against them they see it as a declaration of war, and I'm not wildly keen to be the midwife to another Mattisse unless it's unavoidable. If they come back and continue to use multiple accounts, or continue to resume editing articles or topics in the same manner that resulted in a negative reputation in the first place, we'll re-judge then. ‑ Iridescent 18:03, 31 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Not to mention that what the clean start policy means changes every 1 January when a new batch of arbs comes in (and now is the time that they're traditionally most active.) That's not a criticism of the committee, just that right to vanish/clean start then coming back and acting like a jerk tends to be one of the more contentious block/unblock type things the first quarter of every year. The policy is written so vaguely that an admin could probably justify blocking any clean start and not be abusing their discretion, but that also isn't really the intent of the policy. What it inevitably turns into is 'what does the person who has the misfortune of reading the multi-paragraph appeal think the clean start policy means.' And that changes in approximately 1.5 hours. TonyBallioni (talk) 22:27, 31 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I’ve been a victim of that phenom as well … with an arb who left the committee under not the best of terms. I think Iri’s advice about how to handle this one is sound. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:34, 31 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

To what Tony's (correctly) saying, also add that in many cases it's genuinely impossible for anyone not in a tiny circle of functionaries to assess the validity of either a clean start or an alt account. The circumstances are quite often either "I have a reputation for troublemaking but I want to show that if people aren't aware who I am I don't get in to trouble and thus that people are targeting me rather than finding genuine problems with my edits" or "My main account is tied to my real-life identity and I want to set up a separate account to edit a contentious topic which I don't want my family/employer/government connecting to me, even though that will mean my operating the two accounts simultaneously". In those circumstances exactly what's been agreed, when, and with whom has to be kept secret since declaring it publicly will blow the account's cover; and by one of the Iron Laws of Wikipedia, it can be guaranteed that if and when a problem does arise, the arb who handled that particular negotiation will be on vacation. ‑ Iridescent 09:48, 1 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I make a point of never bearing a grudge for more than 15 years. But then I only started editing in 2007. Martinevans123 (talk) 18:09, 31 December 2021 (UTC) p.s. can't speak for my begrudging threadbare socks, of course.[reply]

I thought we should round this out with some humor from the Master of the Edit Summary. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:53, 2 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

"Discussion tools" gadget

This is your predictable reminder that anyone who's tired of edit conflicts on talk pages can go to Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-betafeatures, turn on "Discussion tools", and probably never see another edit conflict (while using those tools) for the rest of the year. The devs did some magic to resolve nearly all edit conflicts (literally to the point that they now get complaints because it doesn't edit conflict, and some editors wish that it did). WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:43, 6 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I just turned it on, but I personally don't like it. I guess it depends on what you're used to but as far as I can see, it forces you to make replies in a tiny window, with an absolutely incomprehensible mystery-meat toolbar that's missing most of its features.  ‑ Iridescent 17:04, 6 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

How often does an experienced editor like you actually use anything in the toolbar? (I even type wikitext tables from scratch, which I understand is a little extreme. But really: bold, italics, formatting, links? I doubt that anyone on this page regularly resorts to a toolbar button instead of just typing a few ' or [. Type the @ symbol if you want it to search for the person's name to ping, and I think you can safely ignore the toolbar. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:12, 6 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@WhatamIdoing I use the toolbar while editing articles pretty frequently, not that I'm a content editor. The toolbar for discussion tools has all I need, though. But I think I'm pretty experienced. I dream of horses (Contribs) (Talk) 21:17, 6 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

As you (WAID) possibly remember as I led the complaints when the WMF tried to get rid of it, I use the extended 2006 toolbar and don't understand why anyone in their right mind wouldn't as I consider it an improvement in every way on the current default. Specifically on talk pages, I use it all the time for those elements that are slightly more of a nuisance to type: nowiki, strikethrough, super- and sub-script, small text, and (especially) hidden text. Yes they're all in the "wiki markup" drop-down under the edit window, but that (a) adds an extra step as one needs to navigate to the right menu then select the right item as opposed to just a single click in the toolbar, and (b) as with everything else using drop-downs is a PITA to use on a phone, tablet, or any other mouseless interface. ‑ Iridescent 07:48, 7 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

What I mostly remember about the removal of the 2006WTE was that the interface admins at the German-language Wikipedia had a couple of weeks' notice, in German, on their designated local noticeboard, that they needed to copy and paste a fix into their site to prevent their local version of CharInsert (NB: CharInsert is not actually part of the 2006WTE) from breaking. They didn't do it, so their CharInsert tool broke when the 2006WTE was removed. As a result, about a hundred dewiki editors descended on the annual community wishlist (a process that always has a minimum of six months' delay for voting and planning) to demand that the 2006WTE (NB: not CharInsert) be re-installed instantly.

I use keyboard shortcuts for most formatting, but my Mac overrides the keyboard shortcut for strikethrough. Fortunately, I don't need to use it very often. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:52, 7 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

What I remember is arguing with you (in your WMF capacity) because you didn't believe anyone on en-wiki was actually using it. Keyboard shortcuts are great in theory but have the same problem the fancy new toolbars with dropdowns have; they presuppose you're using a keyboard/monitor/mouse setup, which is the case for an ever-decreasing proportion of editors each year. If we had a mobile interface that wasn't an absolute piece of shit it wouldn't be an issue, but as long as we're forcing anyone using an Ipad, Surface, or any other touchscreen device to use the desktop editor if they want to do anything substantive, the design of the desktop editor needs to take users of mobile devices into account. (This is the point where I page Cullen328.) ‑ Iridescent 18:34, 7 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I am working right now, so I will just link to my 2015 essay on this subject. Cullen328 (talk) 20:29, 7 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for reverting my G13 request. I haven't the faintest clue what I was thinking—I was checking if an old-ish SQL script I had was still working, that was the first draft I checked from its results, and because Xtools wasn't giving the "(+n months)" text, I checked the edit history and somehow assumed that October was six months ago. I've had plenty of silly mistakes in the past but this certainly is my clearest "huh?!" one... Perryprog (talk) 17:28, 31 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

No worries at all, we've all done it. If I had to guess, the fact that the original creator has had their username oversighted from the logs (no idea why, I assume it contained contact details as I can't imagine a User:You all suck donkey dick type vandal would be creating what appear to be legitimate attempts at Wikipedia articles) confused the script into thinking it was created back in UseModWiki days before usernames existed in their current form and thus was 19 years old. ‑ Iridescent 17:39, 31 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

It's not oversighted, it's only revision-deleted; see this (admins only, obviously), which shows it was an IP address that was hidden. In page histories the display of revdel'd info can be a bit weird. Graham87 10:59, 1 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Well that is just plain weird. There's nothing remotely identifying about the IP; it's a generic dynamic IP in California. Very strange. ‑ Iridescent 15:31, 1 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Huh. I've seen requests on the IRC help channel for hiding IP addresses due to forgetting to log in or just "because" (which is mildly ironic as that reveals their IP to anyone in the channel, though it's normally all helpers), and as far as I know those requests normally go through. Perryprog (talk) 18:20, 1 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

A token of thanks Hi Iridescent! I've nominated you (along with all other active admins) to receive a solstice season gift from the WMF. Talk page stalkers are invited to comment at the nomination. Enjoy! Cheers, {{u|Sdkb}} talk ~~~~~

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 23:50, 31 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The likelihood of my being seen in public in an "I 💖 Wikipedia" t-shirt is roughly equal to the likelihood of my trusting the Wikimedia Foundation with my name and address. That's quite aside from the dubious ethics of donor funds being spent on freebies to admins, or on any editor—let alone any admin—accepting said freebies. Removed my name from the list. ‑ Iridescent 09:28, 1 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Do you not want people in public knowing you edit Wikipedia? I've worn my "This user edits Wikipedia" shirt to plenty of public events and the worst it's gotten me is a guy asking me to write an article on his band. (understandable position wrt the WMF, I got my shirt as a gift so I can't really speak to that-- I guess I'm eligible for a second shirt through this program?) Elli (talk | contribs) 09:55, 1 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

In general, I can't imagine any circumstances in which anyone in England could ever get away with wearing a Wikipedia t-shirt except in a few very limited contexts such as trade shows and computing events (and even then I'd be reluctant, given the disdain in which the rest of the computing world holds the WMF). As a general item to wear out and about, I'd put "I 💖 Wikipedia" only slightly below "Morrissey fan club" in terms of the likely reaction. (I live in a hyper-hipster area, and could probably just about get away with it as people would assume it was meant ironically, but it would still be akin to a "please spit in my drink" sign.) Plus, the t-shirt designs are spectacularly ugly—this one in particular looks like a still from an alien's colonoscopy. ‑ Iridescent 10:24, 1 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

But it's always nice to have something clean tucked away just in case. And Happy New Year, too! Martinevans123 (talk) 10:38, 1 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

And to you… Yes, at some point in the next couple of years the Hoxton tendency are going to face a quandry as to whether to dig out the t-shirt they've been keeping in their drawer for the past 30 years in anticipation of a single day, given that the (ahem) connotations have changed somewhat since the 80s. ‑ Iridescent 10:42, 1 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I feel like I'm hopelessly out of the loop here, then; in the social circles I'm in in the US, Wikipedia is generally viewed quite positively (except for a few on the political fringes). "Maybe not always reliable but usually pretty useful" is the general sentiment I get. And computing people seem to like it more, not less, than the general public. The shirts do promote Wikipedia, not the WMF, though... Elli (talk | contribs) 10:45, 1 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

(talk page stalker) That's very sincere Elli. I think there really is a big culture split between US and UK. Over here, as Iri says, Wiki-geeks tend to be viewed with mildly contemptuous disdain. Martinevans123 (talk) 10:52, 1 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I think the gap being gestured at might be as much or more generational, perhaps. My country's social context is closer to the UK on the US on most axises (if not necessarily by much these days, globalisation being as much Americanization as it is), but Elli is of my age cohort, who are people who never lived in a world where Wikipedia didn't exist. (One of the complex impacts of Wikipedia's gerontocracy is that the culture is driven by people who don't have an intuitive grasp of the fact Wikipedia is a Last Survivor. The archetypal "intelligent fourteen-year-old" today was born 2007/2008 and has decent odds of having never seen, let alone read, a paper encyclopedia.) Vaticidalprophet 10:55, 1 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Haha. Woman (peeping around door): Are you an encyclopedia salesman? Salesman: No madam, I'm a burglar, I burgle people. Martinevans123 (talk) 11:09, 1 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I concur with Martin. I don't think it's a generational thing; someone walking around 20 years ago in an "I edit the Dorling Kindersley Definitive Visual Guide series" shirt, or someone 100 years ago with an "I edit Pears' Cyclopaedia" badge, would be treated with equal disdain. The UK in general and England in particular has anti-intellectualism fairly firmly hardwired into the culture.

Specifically regarding Wikipedia, in the US there may be a better awareness of how the sausage is made. Here, I'd guess that at least 90% and probably closer to 99% of the public are unaware that Wikipedia is user-generated and see it as just another questionable American media company data-mining its readers and pushing right-wing propaganda. (I can't back that up with actual data, but I can back it up with very consistent anecdata, given the number of times I've seen people genuinely shocked when the "edit" tab is pointed out to them. It's part of why I think the obnoxious fundraising banners are necessary even though the money isn't needed—they serve to remind readers that Wikipedia isn't just another Facebook or Sky but is at least trying to be independent.) To my eyes, wearing an "I Edit Wikipedia" t-shirt would in most circumstances elicit the same effect as walking around with an "I work for The Times" badge. ‑ Iridescent 11:14, 1 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict) Australia is nastily anti-intellectual, but then I did flee to the big city the first moment I could and presumably live in all kinds of unusual social bubbles. Most people seem to find it an interesting hobby when I bring it up, although the "do they pay you for that? why not?" question is horribly inescapable from anyone older than me; my own cohort don't tend to ask as much. (It is I suspect the counterpoint of the pro-banner argument -- and I'm weakly pro-banner on the whole -- which is that the people who know a little bit more about the sausage-making than that, but only a little, assume in turn that the money goes to the production and maintenance of articles.) I definitely find your anecdata plausible otherwise, to the point I've used it as an example when people are trying to gauge "how much do readers know about Wikipedia's internal maintenance?" ("nothing"). Most of the people I've encountered who've had non-zero experience with editing themselves are Americans on the internet, although most of them also seem to be nursing some grudge from 2005 that I'm expected to either hold the solution to or listen to their pitch on how to fix every internal problem with Wikipedia over. Vaticidalprophet 11:25, 1 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

"When I bring it up" is probably the key phrase there; you're controlling when and to whom the topic is raised. I'd imagine that even in the relatively cosmopolitan big cities of Australia, an "I 💖 Wikipedia" tshirt out of context would get the same kind of reaction as an "I 💛 Mark Zuckerberg" or "I 💛 Rupert Murdoch" t-shirt, while in smaller towns or outback villages you may as well walk around with an "I collect vintage bus tickets" badge or a hand-knitted "Bring Back Battlestar Galactica" jersey in terms of the likely reaction. ‑ Iridescent 12:03, 1 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

As if anyone is as much of an anorak as that. Martinevans123 (talk) 12:09, 1 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

If you ever want reassurance that no matter how many vintage porcelain telegraph pole insulators you have in your shed there's always someone nerdier than you, visit the London Transport Depot Open Day. The depot itself is surprisingly interesting, but the market stalls that congregate—all of which have signs like "Original 1930s tram timetables of Austria"—are jaw-dropping. ‑ Iridescent 12:14, 1 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, when a (Northeastern US-based) friend proposed nominating me for a shirt giveaway my response was "I can't imagine wearing it in public, but I guess I could use more pyjama shirts". (I did not end up getting a Wikipedia pyjama shirt.) My thoughts there, even in Melbourne, were closer to the "too nerdy to possibly wear unironically" end than the "political controversy" end -- I at least have the sense people tend to be aware Wikipedia and Facebook are in some sense different even if they couldn't articulate how, if indeed perhaps for no other reason than the huge honking "We're a nonprofit that relies on donations" banners everywhere all the time, but the corollary of that awareness is it strikes me as pretty far towards the "handknitted Battlestar Galactica fan shirt" end of the spectrum even for someone raised in a pretty nerdy household. (On the banners note, were you following the issues with this season's set? They ended up being pulled because there were so many more complaints than normal.) Vaticidalprophet 12:24, 1 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I suppose the second surprise of the dayyear for me is that there's a non-trivial number of Wikipedians who would mind being seen as nerdy in public. Perhaps another cultural difference? Elli (talk | contribs) 12:27, 1 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

If I only have so many weirdness points, I have better things to spend them on than Wikipedia shirts 😛 Vaticidalprophet 12:29, 1 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

(@Elli) Despite its justified reputation for violent crime, in my experience the US has far less of a culture of casual violence than the UK or Australia. (Every American who comes here for the first time—including me—is shocked the first time they see the "would you please stop beating up ambulance drivers?" posters in pub toilets.) Here, "beating up students" and "beating up posh people" are both relatively regular pastimes, and a Wikipedia t-shirt would be taken as a signifier of both. When I say I can't imagine any circumstances in which anyone in England could ever get away with wearing a Wikipedia t-shirt I don't mean it as a fashion statement.

(@Vaticidalprophet) They go through the fig-leaf exercise of "pulling the banners in response to concerns" then quietly putting them back a couple of days later every year. Usually the moment comes either when people complain about Jimmy Wales's face and they pull the banners then reinstate them without him, or people complain that the banners are 'impersonal' so they pull them and reinstate them with that increasingly-dated photo of Jimmy gurning at the camera. ‑ Iridescent 12:48, 1 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

About the beating up of ambulance drivers/students/posh people, to what extent is that the conduct of a small and violent (and perhaps idle) subpopulation, versus an all-too-widespread conduct of large swaths of the population? --Tryptofish (talk) 21:28, 1 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I'd say not much, although if you analyzed the stats you'd probably find a rough correlation between earnings, education, social class and propensity to get into fights. It's hard to over-emphasise just how much more alcohol-fuelled the culture of these islands is compared to that of the US. ‑ Iridescent 07:23, 2 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, I hadn't known about this, and I find it quite interesting. I'm guessing that it also correlates with soccer oh, no, I mean football, don't beat me up! fandom. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:14, 2 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Last year was a record for teenage homicides in London, equalling 2008: "27 were stabbed to death, two were shot and one died in an arson attack." But I suspect very pf those few involved alcohol. And of course, London is a bit of a special case. Martinevans123 (talk) 20:29, 2 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The teenage homicide rate is an outlier—those are mostly targeted attacks linked to gang turf wars over drugs (or mistargeted attacks where a gang has mistaken someone completely uninvolved as being member of a rival gang). Despite all that "at a record high" you're still far less likely to be murdered in Britain than almost anywhere else in the world. ‑ Iridescent 03:16, 4 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I've come to see gurning Jimmy as a Talk page enhancement. But in my experience, yes the Wiki t-shirt has little catwalk value. "Wiki Queens... sachet away!" Martinevans123 (talk) 13:14, 1 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

This time's issue was that the banners were...ostentatious...even by usual standards -- they were putting them in the middle of articles, screwing with TFA formatting, repeating them more often than usual, etc. I'm not logged in on mobile, so I got them while browsing there, and they definitely made trying to read anything a headache even in that relatively muted form (the screenshots I saw of desktop were even worse), in a way I don't recall from any prior year. The post-return mobile ones are nicer. Vaticidalprophet 14:29, 1 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, any type of activism (including political activism) is considered much more positively in the US than in Europe.--Ymblanter (talk) 11:18, 1 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

That's definitely true; volunteering to staff a phone bank or hand out flyers wouldn't raise an eyebrow in the US, but in Europe (in the broadest Atlantic-to-the-Urals sense) it's seen as akin to trainspotting as something only a hardcore of true believers would do and even fewer would admit to doing. There's probably a long, complicated explanation to do with an ingrained mistrust of mass movements following fascism and communism, with sharply different attitudes towards the roles of the state and religion, and with the way so many well-intentioned European movements end up being tainted with nationalism. Whatever the reason, even relatively successful and high-profile movements (at all parts of the spectrum) tend to have a very few actual activists, and those who are active tend to stay fairly quiet about it unless they're a dedicated spokesperson. (Even the UK Conservative Party—probably the most successful and influential political movement of all time—is down to fewer than 200,000 members, and most of those are very elderly and just haven't bothered to cancel the membership they took out in the 1960s rather than actual activists.) ‑ Iridescent 11:43, 1 January 2022 (UTC)I[reply]

Greetings from a lurker on this page. My activism in the U.S. consists of little more than a collection of t-shirts -- including one from Wikipedia. I wear them fearlessly. My favorite t-shirt features a photo of Geronimo and several of his warriors carrying rifles. The caption is: "Fighting terrorism since 1492." (I imagine several people now looking up "Geronimo" on Wikipedia to see who the hell he was. Is that an accurate characterization or is Geronimo a household name around the world?) Smallchief (talk) 14:01, 1 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Big down under too, of course. But it's them pesky Cherakee Injuns you gotta look out fur... Martinevans123 (talk) 14:24, 1 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Good song and video. I recall the New Christy Minstrels fondly -- 60 years ago.Smallchief (talk) 16:12, 1 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Haha, I don't quite go back that far. But yes, Oldies but Goodies lol. Martinevans123 (talk) 18:46, 1 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I'd think that at least in the core "Five Eyes plus Ireland" anglosphere, most people would have at least a vague idea of who Geronimo was, even if they were hazy about which tribe he belonged to, the exact period, and what exactly he did. (I suspect that if pressed, the most common answer you'd get would be "the guy who fought Custer".) Ditto Germany, where for reasons nobody has ever understood there's an enduring obsession with the American West. ‑ Iridescent 14:18, 1 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Like this? Kablammo (talk) 16:07, 1 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

If you ever want to see weirdness personified, visit Pullman City (surprisingly, a redlink at the time of writing). Germany is a strange place. ‑ Iridescent 16:33, 1 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I know a fair bit more about the US than most people who haven't lived extended periods there, but my understanding of Geronimo is pretty hazy. Not nonexistent, but pretty hazy. The supposed skull-stealing might be better-known than any of his life's accomplishments. I find it difficult to gauge the average non-US-Anglospherian's level of knowledge of the US -- I once tried to explain where an exchange student friend from Arizona was from and, after grasping at straws that it was "in the desert near California", got "where's California?". Vaticidalprophet 14:29, 1 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

To be fair, even Anglospherians' knowledge of other English-speaking countries is fairly hazy; stop a hundred Brits or Aussies and ask them to point to Washington DC on a map and 90 of them will get it wrong (ask them to point to Canada on a map and probably at least half will get it wrong), and ask Americans to name a famous Australian who isn't either a musician or actor and you'll be met with baffled stares. Even when it comes to their own countries' history, most people's knowledge is very hazy unless it happens to be something they learned at school; I'd bet the majority of the English population would be completely baffled if asked who won the Battle of Stamford Bridge or who George Hudson was. ‑ Iridescent 15:13, 1 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Here in Switzerland, the news usually assume we know that California is part of the USA; I don't remember if they expect viewers to know what Colorado is. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 15:33, 1 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

(butts in and carefully avoids speaking to any of the main issues) re: Pullman City, see Native Americans in German popular culture#In the 20th century; another article by Serten/Polentarion, a wiki-friend I very much miss. (bows out) Yngvadottir (talk) 04:11, 6 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The UK news—with the exception of the BBC, which is aimed at an international audience so has a tendency to explain everything—tends to go the other way; an assumption that everyone knows where every single place in North America is even when it's some deeply obscure village which even people in the same state haven't heard of, but explaining even the most basic "Belgium, which borders on France" aspects of European geography. (This doesn't extend to Ireland, where the UK media typically has it as an article of faith that all their readers will be familiar with terms like Teachta Dála and Taoiseach and with the precise location and the precise locations and constitutional status of obscure border communities.) ‑ Iridescent 15:41, 1 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

• (Generic response having read all of the previous replies) I'd say most Americans know that Wikipedia is user generated, but still have no real clue what that means. I've used I'm an administrator on the English Wikipedia as a fun fact in those annoying "get to know your peers" type calls for years and the most common response is "What pages do you administer?" and then when I explain that I primarily work in deterring abuse by crazy people on the internet via IP addresses their eyes glaze over. A shirt wouldn't be looked down on here. Wearing volunteer t-shirts around isn't quite normal, a bunch of orgs do it, and the WMF thinking of having these t-shirts as a way to publicize editing is certainly within the US norm for NGOs (and I'm not just talking about the West Coast type. It's pretty popular even in middle America for people to give out free t-shirts to volunteers.)
  On the anti-intellectualism point; I think one of the funniest things is the US is our self-perception on this related to the rest of the Anglosphere and Europe. If you talk to left-leaning Americans, the idea is that the US has a strongly anti-intellectual place and that Europe and the UK holds intellectualism in an extremely high regard. Europe and the UK being a perfect paradise where people (read: politicians) care about race relations and science is a pretty huge trope in the US. The US certainly has its issues on this type of thing culturally and politically, but there are some ways where culturally we are very much more open to it.
  Rounding back to the Wikipedia t-shirt example; I suspect if you wore it in one of the more stereotypical "redneck" areas of the US, you'd get a lot of questions and then the end result would be "Man, you sound really smart. That's pretty cool", at least that's been my experience having heady discussions with people who are stereotyped as not caring about education, etc. in the US. TonyBallioni (talk) 16:44, 1 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  Having come from one of those stereotypical redneck areas myself, I endorse that. Americans tend to be much friendlier when it comes to strangers than people almost anywhere else. (If I saw someone in the UK wearing a charity t-shirt, my thought wouldn't be "oh, it's someone who volunteers for that charity", it would be "yet another chugger, better get ready to tell them to fuck off", and I suspect I speak for the entire country if not the entire continent on that.) ‑ Iridescent 17:37, 1 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  On the anti-intellectualism point; I think one of the funniest things is the US is our self-perception on this related to the rest of the Anglosphere and Europe. Yeah -- this is fascinating! The "shitty America/perfect Europe" trope seems to have blunted somewhat years ago when the migrant crisis and rightist swing was in the headlines, but the US's handling of covid probably made it worse. (Not that anyone came out of that covered in glory, but it seemed to reignite a lot of anti-American sentiment amongst my offline and online social bubbles both.)

  It has interesting interactions with the way both Americans and elsewhere-Anglospherians (and increasingly everywhere-ians as Western and American culture is exported; at one point most of my peers were Indonesian or Singaporean and it held) treat the coastal cities and "America" as fundamentally different places. The more British-tinged parts of the Anglosphere tend to have strongly non-aspirational cultures (social climbing as sin rather than virtue) in a way antithetical to many American cultures; it's plenty common for people who feel stifled by them to dream of living in the-version-that-exists-in-one's-head-of $major_american_city in a way that would be treated as ridiculous if expressed as "living in America", despite the fact it is. (Of course, just as many such people in Australia want to live in the version of London that exists in their heads.) The reality, as you note -- people are people, and are often shaped by such different forces to the ones they stereotype.

  I've wondered a lot about the consequences of different cultural attitudes towards aspiration/social climbing/whatever term best applies to Wikipedia's internal administration is. The traditional transnational complexity is about differing civility attitudes (I recall recently reading an editor going by his real name insisting people call him "Dr. Lastname" rather than "Firstname" or "Lastname" and finding it fascinating how our senses of civility were so different -- in my own context that demand felt about as rude as I suspect being called without a title felt to him), but I've wondered if it might be compounded by the calls being made disproportionately by people from a specific subset of that. I recently noticed how many of the former arbs I know the nationality of were specifically Canadian, which was interesting. Vaticidalprophet 17:45, 1 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  This is going to sound weird, but a lot of it has to do with the accent. Americans assume anyone who talks with a British accents is well-educated, even if they're just a local sports star who can barely read. All Europeans in film are portrayed with British accents, so Europeans are associated with the RP in the popular imagination because of Hollywood. TonyBallioni (talk) 18:00, 1 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  FWIW, unless you're hanging around with a lot of BBC newsreaders or Old Etonians, anyone you hear in the US talking with a "British accent" is almost certainly hamming it up for the cameras. When Americans meet genuine English, Welsh and Irish people speaking with their own accents (Scottish they can generally recognize even though it doesn't usually sound like stage Scots), nine times out of ten they think they're Australians. ‑ Iridescent 18:44, 1 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  Things have spread considerably in recent years. Even at the Aunty Beeb Mothership, and especially with nasal Bradford Chris on Any Questions. Even Zeb can get rural! Martinevans123 (talk) 21:29, 1 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  Interesting observation. Where I'm from its usually the other way around (Americans confuse Aussies for being British.) I agree with your general point though. I was more saying because of the US perception of intelligence with British (read: RP) accents, and Hollywood's decision that people who live in Madrid and Salzburg speak English with perfect RP accents, that has a certain influence on the way that many Americans perceive the continent. TonyBallioni (talk) 18:53, 1 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  Americans also think that anyone speaking with a French accent must be good in bed. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:19, 1 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  France has a particularly broad disconnect between "how it's perceived by people who've never been there" and "what it's actually like". The psychological shock felt by tourists expecting to find a charming and beautiful country filled with attractive people eating delicious food and then stepping off the Eurostar into the hellscape of the Gare du Nord is well-documented; we even have an article on it. ‑ Iridescent 08:29, 2 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  Yes, Gare du Nord is a beast. It has 36 platforms and is "the busiest railway station in Europe by total passenger numbers" (or was in 2015, anyway). But it's about a thousand times better than it used to be. Martinevans123 (talk) 17:51, 2 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  It's always interesting hear despatches from the parallel universe some 15 miles away! I have been given several Wikipedia t-shirts over the years, but unfortunately none in my size, so I can't speak to that. However, I have for several years used a Wikipedia over-the shoulder bag (given by none other than Sue Gardner at some event) as my normal day around town bag. This has a big jigsaw globe logo on the big flap (white on black), but no text - not very conspicuous perhaps, but certainly visible. I've only ever had a couple of comments from strangers, somewhere between friendly and puzzled. If I take my light Wikimedia Polska bag to the local shops I might well get enthusiastic comments from Poles. The equivalent Wikimedia UK one has never provoked any reaction (any more than the one that suggests I'm a cancer researcher). Johnbod (talk) 17:26, 2 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  "Scenes you seldom see": WMUK not provoking a reaction ranging from disbelief to outrage  ;) SN54129 — Review here please :) 17:44, 2 January 2022 (UTC) [reply]

  On this page, certainly. Johnbod (talk) 17:51, 2 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  I'm still trying to find a place in my brain to accommodate the idea that "Americans also think that anyone speaking with a French accent must be good in bed." Haven't tried, and hope I never will be able to bear witness to that particular generality, that this American doesn't share. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:49, 2 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  It's the ones with big noses you've got to look out for... Martinevans123 (talk) 17:59, 2 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  Sorry to have pained your brain, Sandy! But a lot of Americans (present company excluded, of course!) have uninformed stereotypes of unfamiliar accents denoting stuff that familiar accents do not. (Then again, a lot of Americans think Trump was a good President, and a lot of other nonsense.) --Tryptofish (talk) 20:32, 2 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  French Donald? Phew, what a thought. But, breaking news.... not fake dandruff!! Martinevans123 (talk) 20:55, 2 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  Actually, that would be Marine Le Pen. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:06, 3 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

• @Johnbod, the existence of those two parallel universes has been a documented feature of British (and Irish) cities for over a century, as for complicated reasons to do with transport infrastructure, tied housing and migration patterns neither US-style "rich suburbs, poor downtown" or European-style "rich centre, poor suburbs" took hold to the same extent they did elsewhere. Even in the most picture-postcard areas or the shiniest glass-and-steel business districts of any of the larger cities, you're never more than a few minutes walk from a crime-ridden dump.

  The differential rates of casual violence between the US and UK are a matter of record. While the homicide rate in the US is crazy high compared to pretty much anywhere else in the world outside an actual war zone, you're much more likely to be the victim of low-level crime in the UK than in the US. There are some cheery figures from the UN here to be starting with; obviously one needs to make allowances for differential rates of reporting, but the cultures of the US, UK and the rest of Western Europe are similar enough that there's unlikely to be major differences. ‑ Iridescent 11:04, 3 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

• Well the captions there certainly need updating - the international "vicious, semi-criminal" classes have largely taken over the London brick zones, and the "fairly comfortable. Good ordinary earnings" group can hardly be dominant anywhere in the areas shown. Johnbod (talk) 17:38, 3 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

• Another question that I'm curious (and ignorant) about: how effective (or not) are the police and the legal system at keeping a lid on the low-level violence? --Tryptofish (talk) 19:10, 3 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

• In general I'd say the English police (I can't speak for the other Home Nations) work to much more of a fire-brigade model than their equivalents in the US; offences are reported over the phone where possible, and aside from a few hotspots the concept of "patrol officer" no longer really exists. Remember that between 2010 and 2019 the police and court budgets were slashed every year—one of the quirky differences between US and UK politics is that in the UK, the left demand an increase to the police budget. ‑ Iridescent 03:16, 4 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Overrepresentation of Canadians

• I've been thinking about the t-shirt issue, myself. Personally, I rarely wear anything that has a logo of any kind in public, unless it just can't be helped (e.g., the logos built right into trainers). Having said that, I have a really wide-ranging series of "Wiki" related t-shirts, including a couple "I edit Wikipedia" shirts, a special long-sleeved one given only to participants in a certain project, Wikimania t-shirts of various styles and colours, a couple of hoodies (one too small, one mountains too large), etc. I thought about where I wear them outside of Wiki(p/m)edia events; the main answer was that they're usually worn underneath something else (long-sleeved shirt in the summer, coat and/or sweater/hoodie in the rest of the year, with the rare exception of a couple whose designs aren't obviously related to Wikipedia unless someone is close enough to read the small-print words (obviously discouraged in this pandemic era). I generally consider them "work clothes" (eg gardening, housework). And given I'm retired now, plus the fact that most people have eliminated most social events in the last couple of years, I'm generally not going much further than a walk around the neighbourhood (in the winter coat or summer long-sleeved shirt) and haven't for the last 22 months.

  As to the disproportionately high number of Canadians who have served on Arbcom...well, anyone who's lived in Canada since the 1960s has been raised in a far more varied cultural milieu than most people in other Western countries, with the exception of some very large cities like New York, London, Hong Kong. So it doesn't surprise me that Canadians are seen as being more "neutral" about anything with the possible exception of hockey. (True story: "Hockey Night in Canada" is broadcast in English, French, Punjabi, at least one indigenous language, and occasionally other languages. The Olympic hockey finals are broadcast in at least 10 languages that I know of...) So yeah. Risker (talk) 21:27, 1 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  I'm certainly not going to go through Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/History#Current and former members counting—although this being Wikipedia I'm sure we can find someone who would—but are Canadians really particularly overrepresented, or is it just that "American and British" is the default on en-wiki so one notices the Canadians, Australians etc more? Those arbs are all—obviously—drawn from the pool of active editors, and the active editor breakdown for last month was 2000 US, 780 UK, 340 Canada, 260 India, 240 Australia, 110 Germany, 100 Philippines, 690 long tail of others. Assuming that some people who are actually Canadian will be showing up as US because they're editing from .com/.org/.net domains rather than .ca—and assuming that the figure for India is misleadingly large as a fair-sized proportion of that 260 aren't going to be fluent speakers so are effectively disqualified from Arbcom—I get the feeling the proportion of Canadians is roughly what one would expect it to be. ‑ Iridescent 07:53, 2 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  At an http(s) level, connections are made from an IP address, not a domain name. For most connections this means the IP address will be allocated by the user's ISP, and since these are generally country-specific, although someone might appear to be editing from another province/state in which the ISP also operates, the country is typically correct. The big caveat, though, is editors using VPNs or through other means are tunnelling their connection through another location (including, say, multinational companies who route their Internet traffic through centralized access points). isaacl (talk) 23:47, 5 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  Based on those numbers, there is less than one 1 highly active editor for every 100,000 people in the developed English-speaking world (1:85K UK, 1:100K Australia, 1:110K Canada, 1:160K US). If ArbCom participation is proportional to activity, you would expect to see more UK folks and fewer US folks than you would from a random selection of people in the world. (I've omitted LMICs, because "people" and "people with internet access" don't track as closely.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:31, 6 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  although this being Wikipedia I'm sure we can find someone who would Can't resist a challenge. WAID's numbers are actually a bit higher than I would've thought, but the nationalities track as I expect. I can't buy diversity as a sole explanation for any potential Canadian overrepresentation -- Australia is more or less Canada-size and over half of the population are first or second generation immigrants (and the Special Broadcasting Service reports in 74 languages), and my quick 'not actually going through and looking at all the numbers' on the arb list leaned towards my intuition Australians are at least less represented comparatively than Canadians. Vaticidalprophet 17:35, 6 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  I agree on diversity—the US and UK are arguably the two most ethnically-diverse countries in the world so it wouldn't make sense for diversity to explain any Canadian overrepresentation. (If anything, diversity ought to lead to under-representation, since it increases the proportion of residents who are likely to be active on non-English sites instead of here.) ‑ Iridescent 18:44, 6 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  I don't know. It might depend on which groups you count. If you are counting immigrants and the native-born children of immigrants, that's about 25% of the US population. It sounds like Australia is much more diverse than the US on that score. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:16, 6 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  Possibly, although "diversity" is also a function of where the immigrants are coming from and patterns of assimilation—someone fresh off the boat who's fully bought in to their host culture is functionally equivalent to someone whose family has lived there for a thousand years, while some communities can still be very distinctly culturally separate from the local culture even if they've lived there for generations. (Immigrants don't walk around with "immigrant" labels. One of the unexpected side-effects of Brexit was that for the first time it provided an accurate picture of UK migration patterns (as non-citizens had to register that they were currently resident in the country to be granted the right to remain) and it was discovered that the immigrant population was double what anybody thought.) ‑ Iridescent 08:03, 7 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Hey, I just realized you have deleted my hours of work by a single click. I did not know such a topic was created in the past. AFAIK, WP:10 only applies to " duplicates an existing English Wikipedia article, and that does not expand upon, detail or improve information within any existing article(s) on the subject..." My creation of course included items which is not covered in the the current page. I suggest restoring my content so that we can merge the two contents. Best, --Mhhossein ^talk 03:13, 2 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

By the way, have a blessed year. --Mhhossein ^talk 03:16, 2 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Mhhossein see User:Mhhossein/2021 U.S.–Iran naval incident.

Iri, figured you wouldn't mind because of time zones, etc. Apologies if stepping on toes. TonyBallioni (talk) 04:53, 2 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you Tony. I wish you a nice year. --Mhhossein ^talk 05:33, 2 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

No problem at all—thanks Tony. ‑ Iridescent 07:56, 2 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Hi I was just wondering what you thought of Jerry Heller if you don't mind 49.186.229.223 (talk) 08:39, 2 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I have no idea who he is. Although mine is currenntly the most recent edit to the page, that was purely an ultra-minor edit standardizing the formatting of the commas in the dates. ‑ Iridescent 08:44, 2 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I've used Heller (before his death) as an example of BLP issues arising in unexpected places; see "No Vaseline." Newyorkbrad (talk) 19:11, 2 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Another question

Can n actually do this as a job 49.186.229.223 (talk) 08:41, 2 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Do what as a job? If you mean Wikipedia editing, generally no; except for a handful of specialists who work for the Wikimedia Foundation (which owns Wikipedia) we generally block paid editors as it's virtually impossible for them to edit neutrally. ‑ Iridescent 08:44, 2 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Hello admin, I have created Zaeem Ahmed biography page, which has been deleted after my contest. But, I have created the page with no promotional intention or I don't have a relation with the person. I take a mission to create missing profiles of famous persons from Bangladesh. that was my first step to do. But now that page has been deleted. Please retrieve the page. I tried my best to follow the specific guideline by Wikipedia, but I don't know why you deleted the page. Please retrieve the page otherwise I will be very sad and that might be my last editing. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Foyjul90 (talk • contribs) 08:50, 2 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Foyjul90, Wikipedia doesn't publish original research; we only host neutral articles that are sourced entirely to independent reliable sources. (That is to say, the only thing we do is summarize what other people, who aren't connected with the subject, have published about that subject.) This is particularly true with biographies of living people, as there are both legal considerations regarding potentially defamatory content, and considerations about giving undue weight (positive or negative) to particular aspects of somebody's life. The article I deleted at Draft:Zaeem Ahmed was very obviously not neutral—it contained lines like From this vision he is continuously developing innovative ideas and making the work easier for every level of employment. Plus, almost all of it was entirely unsourced; although it had three references, one of them was his own company's website and thus unusable on Wikipedia, and the other two were both only used to cite the statement In, 2020, he was elected as Chairman of EC of Prime Bank Bangladesh Ltd.

If you genuinely feel you can write a neutral and sourced biography of him, I can temporarily restore your draft page so you can work on it further, but as it stands it's not an appropriate page for us to be hosting on Wikipedia, even as a draft. We take our policy on biographies of living persons very seriously, and we can't host unreferenced material on living people, even as a draft, for anything more than a very brief time while someone is working on it. ‑ Iridescent 09:03, 2 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the explaination. Please restore the page temporarliy, so that I can make the changes. It will be very helpful for me. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Foyjul90 (talk • contribs) 09:10, 2 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I've temporarily restored it at Draft:Zaeem Ahmed to allow you to continue to work on it. As per my previous comments, you'll need to provide citations for every claim made about him (and the citations need to be to independent sources) for Wikipedia to host it.

If you haven't already, I very strongly recommend reading Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons and Wikipedia:Reliable sources. Writing a new article from scratch is probably the single most difficult thing to do on Wikipedia if you're not already familiar with our rules, and biographies are the most difficult type of new article to write. ‑ Iridescent 09:16, 2 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

One more thing, I have seen Mr Fazle Kabir's page, which has reference link from his own organization (Bangladesh Bank) and other newspaper site links, which are like same to my page. So, how that wokred? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Foyjul90 (talk • contribs) 09:41, 2 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Usually it means English Wikipedia has 60,991,728 pages and only a few hundred editors active at any given time, and thus things slip through. That said, in the case of Fazle Kabir it looks like the only citations to his own organization's website are for non-contentious statements. (Citations to newspapers—provided they're genuine independent coverage rather than reprinted press releases—are acceptable, although be wary of using them as newspapers aren't always great at fact-checking.) Basically, anything you say you need to be able to show where you got it from, and if any statement is potentially contentious you need to show that the source it came from is reliable. ‑ Iridescent 09:52, 2 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Technically, non-independent sources are acceptable, but only if they are used in very limited ways. Most of the article must come from independent sources. A non-independent source could be used to fill in some common detail that you can't source any other way (e.g., how old he is, or whether he is married).

@Foyjul90, if you are looking for good examples to follow, then you might want to look at the handful of articles listed at Wikipedia:Featured articles#Business, economics, and finance biographies. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:38, 6 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@WhatamIdoing I have found that my Draft page has been published here : https://en.everybodywiki.com/Zaeem_Ahmed . Is it from Wikipedia? and they are mentioning that they took the article from Wikipedia, but this page has not been published yet. And, for the page, I tried my best to find some newspaper sources but did not find them. Can you publish the page with the mentioned source and I can edit that in the future when I get any updated news source about him. Foyjul90 (talk) 03:18, 8 January 2022 (UTC)Foyul90 Thanks for the clarifications. I am working on the draft page to make the page eligible to approve. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Foyjul90 (talk • contribs) 09:55, 2 January 2022 (UTC) WhatamIdoing I have not get any reply from you. Please let me know. If the above mentioned website is associated with Wikipedia, then please publish my page. If not, then please publish my page in wikipedia, so that if any source I found, I can add. Please help me.Foyjul90 (talk) 10:04, 11 January 2022 (UTC)Foyjul90[reply]

@Foyjul90, I'm not WhatamIdoing, but I can confirm that site is nothing to do with Wikipedia. Because the moment you press the "Publish changes" button on Wikipedia—whether it's on an article, a draft, a user page or a talk page—you consent to the By publishing changes, you agree to the Terms of Use, and you irrevocably agree to release your contribution under the CC BY-SA 3.0 License and the GFDL agreement that appears between the editing window and the "Publish changes" button. That means, once something has appeared on Wikipedia—even if it's deleted from Wikipedia almost immediately—any other website can use that material for whatever purposes they choose; there's a huge industry dedicated to copying material from Wikipedia. Unfortunately, in most cases we have absolutely no control over what other websites (or paper books) do with our material; the only time we can really do anything is if they're not complying with our licensing terms by making it possible to find out who the authors who wrote the originals on Wikipedia were.

As per my comments further up this thread, your page is already published on Wikipedia at Draft:Zaeem Ahmed. "Draft" doesn't mean it's not published; it just means it's not indexed by search engines, to reduce the risk of readers searching for information coming across a page that isn't yet compliant with our rules. (This is particularly important for articles about living people, owing to the legal implications if we get something wrong or give an incomplete picture.) We won't hold on to the draft forever—we usually delete them if nobody's worked on improving them for six months—but you're free to work on it at your own pace to bring it up to our standards regarding independent reliable sourcing ‑ Iridescent 19:52, 11 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the suggestion. I will keep updating this page — Preceding unsigned comment added by Foyjul90 (talk • contribs) 04:37, 12 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Do you think the articles created by this user are appropriate for mainspace? They seem to be making a lot of them, and reverting my moves/recreating the article from the redirect when I draftify them. More on this IP. – AssumeGoodWraith (talk | contribs) 09:33, 2 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I personally don't think Wikipedia should be hosting pages like that, but I don't know enough about tennis to judge whether this is a major enough tournament that there actually is a case for going into that level of detail. It's probably best to ask at WT:TENNIS, as the people there will know what the relevant precedents are for such things being kept/deleted. ‑ Iridescent 09:40, 2 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Not just advertising but CIR as well Fiddle^Timtrent Faddle^Talk to me 16:05, 2 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

(Arjunvarmaina, for curious TPWs.) Yeah—it's a bit of a shame, as I think he probably was genuinely trying to help, but there comes a limit. My limit was roughly the point when, after his autobiography had been deleted for the fourth time, he started trying to game the system by overwriting existing pages and moving them. There seem to be a lot more really clueless self-promoters than usual out and about today; I'm wondering if some site has run a "boost your SEO by getting yourself on Wikipedia!" feature. ‑ Iridescent 16:09, 2 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The world is full of oddities. I think they now think they are unblocked because the removed the block notice. Fiddle^Timtrent Faddle^Talk to me 16:14, 2 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

As long as he doesn't removed declined unblock requests, he can delete whatever he likes. If he's stupid enough to delete the instructions for how to get unblocked, as he's just done, I suspect he's probably somebody we can cope with losing. ‑ Iridescent 16:52, 2 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I'm surprised any fan of the Indian Navy would want to read Navy News. But maybe they're very bored. Martinevans123 (talk) 17:11, 2 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

There's nowt so quair as folk, my friend. Fiddle^Timtrent Faddle^Talk to me 18:43, 2 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Just like Bunny, of course. Martinevans123 (talk) 18:48, 2 January 2022 (UTC) [reply]

I've been told/witnessed someone being told "We need an article for a verified badge on Twitter." twice now. The time I was told this, the person got frustrated with me asking questions in an effort to expose their need to disclose that they were a paid editor and ragequit.

So maybe that at least partially explains the increase of clueless self-promotors. Either Twitter actually does provide "having a Wikipedia article" as an avenue to get a verifed badge, or else there's a site lying and saying that it's an avenue. I dream of horses (Contribs) (Talk) 22:26, 2 January 2022 (UTC) (Edited at 22:28, 2 January 2022 (UTC) because keyboard lag sucks)[reply]

Twitter technically says "Provide a link to a stable Wikipedia article about you or your organization that meets the encyclopedia’s notability standards". Nikkimaria (talk) 22:46, 2 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Nikkimaria In other words, employers of paid editors are misinterpreting that criterion for their own benefit. I dream of horses (Contribs) (Talk) 22:49, 2 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I remember when they announced that there was some controversy on-wiki iirc. I don't really have a problem with it, it's about the best system I could think of -- but yeah, it leads to a few more spammers. Elli (talk | contribs) 02:10, 3 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict) I looked, and guess what: Twitter actually does use our articles as evidence of notability, even linking to Category:Wikipedia notability guidelines: [4] (scroll down to the section on "Notable", third bullet point). --Tryptofish (talk) 22:48, 2 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

It's actually relatively easy to get a verified account on Twitter. You just have to be willing to take the time and effort to impersonate yourself. Create a bunch or doppelganger accounts, post harrassment. Complain from your legit account Twitter are is enabling abuse, verified tick coming your way.... it can take some time. Think the fastest I have seen it was a couple of months. But it's easier for them to verify an account than deal with the bad press that they are enabling harrassment. If you have money to burn, bonus points for buying followers to the doppelgangers. In many ways Twitter staff are not particularly invested in doing detailed investigation. Only in death does duty end (talk) 22:55, 2 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Much as Twitter is usually (rightly) held up as the exemplar of all that's worst about Big Internet, on this occasion my instinct is to salute them for at least trying. Wikipedia and the WMF are not exactly in a position to preach to anyone else about how to square the circle between permitting anonymous posting as a fundamental principle, whilst still protecting the rights of people being commented upon, holding individuals responsible for their actions when they cross the line, and somehow separating out those comments made by people who are actually qualified to comment on a given topic from those made by impersonators or anonymous randos. (Yes, I know the bluetick doesn't mean much; someone with a verified identity can in some ways be more damaging than a rando when they're talking about something on which they're not qualified, since the blue tick gives a false veneer of legitimacy so Twitter ends up with one-hit-wonder 80s pop stars being treated as equally qualified to comment on a given topic as professionals who've spent their lives studying that topic. Still, at least Twitter are trying rather than just vaguely waving their hands and saying "crowdsourcing will make everything all right".) ‑ Iridescent 10:10, 3 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

But I guess Twitter doesn't care about WP:CIRCULAR. If we say it's notable, they think it's notable. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:13, 3 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Tryptofish Well, I guess we'll have to care and make sure we're not referencing ourselves, mirrors, etc. I dream of horses (Contribs) (Talk) 01:06, 4 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

WP:ANYBIO didn't mention Twitter, last I checked... Elli (talk | contribs) 03:25, 4 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe this wasn't clear enough, but my (slightly facetious) point was that we don't consider ourselves to be a reliable source, and yet Twitter thinks that our determinations of notability are reliable for their purposes. That probably wasn't as clever as I thought it was. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:01, 4 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Our determinations of notability—as opposed to our actual content—probably aren't a bad thing for them to be using as a starting point. Although the notability rules are arbitrary we're generally pretty good at assessing whether a given topic meets the arbitrary rules, even if the actual article on that topic is a mess. In my experience the system usually only breaks down when a particular WikiProject tries to substitute their own notability rules, leading to nonsense like Robert Murcutt. ‑ Iridescent 12:01, 5 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

There was a discussion somewhere once—don't ask me to find it—about that. In terms of notability, we don't care at all about Twitter verification. Although they use "notability" as a filter to stop every Rag, Tag and Bobtail from applying, it's possible to get the blue tick on Twitter without being remotely notable in Wikipedia terms; likewise there are people who are unquestionably notable in Wikipedia terms who don't qualify for the blue tick on Twitter. (Every electoral cycle there's a parade of indignant former elected officials complaining that Twitter has un-verified them now they're no longer a 'public figure' by their definition, even though under Wikipedia's current notability rules they'd retain their notability for all eternity.) ‑ Iridescent 03:35, 4 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Huh, didn't know that worked -- good to know. The main route to verification I knew of (assuming non-notablity) was to buy PR articles. There are services to get articles published in sources that even Wikipedia considers reliable. The quality sources aren't particularly cheap, though apparently you don't exactly need high quality ones depending on the niche. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 09:33, 4 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

• In case anyone is curious, we get a ton of Arabic-language socks coming to en.wiki for "Wikipedia verification" on social media because ar.wiki shows them the door and won't let them abuse that project for similar issues. علاء is gracious enough to let us know about them when he's not crazy busy in real life, but yes, the desire for social media verification and the assumption that English-speakers won't check foreign language sources is a relatively large source of our sock spam. TonyBallioni (talk) 06:30, 5 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  I seem to have spent an inordinate proportion of the past week performing G11 deletions on an endless parade of Indian students posting their resumes. (If you head over to new userspace pages you can watch the stream flow in.) I get the strong feeling someone in India has recently run a "Wikipedia, the alternative to LinkedIn" article. ‑ Iridescent 17:17, 5 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Why did y'all hack the military JAMIE LYNN PATTERSON (talk) 00:46, 4 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@JAMIE LYNN PATTERSON (talk page watcher) Now, how does one hack the military? I thought that was nigh to impossible. Or maybe you're referencing an edit Iridescent made to a military-related article. I find that more believable. I dream of horses (Contribs) (Talk) 01:10, 4 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

JAMIE LYNN PATTERSON, I have absolutely no clue what you're talking about. Are you accusing me personally of hacking the military or accusing Wikipedia of hacking the military and just using me as a representative? ‑ Iridescent 03:17, 4 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

And I have absolutely no clue who Mark Bratcher is (and I Googled the name). --Tryptofish (talk) 19:09, 4 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

https://www.thestar.com.my/news/nation/2021/12/15/ma63-amendments-passed Kititto (talk) 02:42, 4 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, why are you telling me this? Have you confused me with someone else? ‑ Iridescent 03:16, 4 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, it was passed in 1963, so it's clearly urgent in 2022. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:07, 4 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Reading the link the OP posted, it appears that a law has just been passed amending the 1963 agreement such that Sabah and Sarawak will have a special constitutional status in future. I still have no idea how I come in to this given that I've never even been to Malaysia and have made a mighty two edits to the article in its entire history, one of which was to correct the spelling of "millennium" and one of which was to standardize the capitalization of "Christian" and "Muslim". ‑ Iridescent 12:01, 5 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I think I've solved the mystery. I'll guess the OP has misread this edit summary, and thought I was the one doing the reverting. ‑ Iridescent 12:11, 5 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Hi!

You get this message because you are an admin on a Wikimedia wiki.

When someone edits a Wikimedia wiki without being logged in today, we show their IP address. As you may already know, we will not be able to do this in the future. This is a decision by the Wikimedia Foundation Legal department, because norms and regulations for privacy online have changed.

Instead of the IP we will show a masked identity. You as an admin will still be able to access the IP. There will also be a new user right for those who need to see the full IPs of unregistered users to fight vandalism, harassment and spam without being admins. Patrollers will also see part of the IP even without this user right. We are also working on better tools to help.

If you have not seen it before, you can read more on Meta. If you want to make sure you don’t miss technical changes on the Wikimedia wikis, you can subscribe to the weekly technical newsletter.

We have two suggested ways this identity could work. We would appreciate your feedback on which way you think would work best for you and your wiki, now and in the future. You can let us know on the talk page. You can write in your language. The suggestions were posted in October and we will decide after 17 January.

Thank you. /Johan (WMF)

18:13, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

A question: (I know I'm talking to a bot but I assume someone who knows the answer will see this and answer without the circumlocutions I'd get if I asked on Meta, or at least point me to where I can see the answer without having to wade through pages of Wikispeak.)

If this is being done for legal reasons (even though nobody seems able to point to the law in question), is there going to be some kind of easy-to-read and easy-to-share breakdown of which aspects will be legally enforceable, which will be policy but not legally binding, and which will just be recommended practice? There are massive gray areas here as far as I can see that would have the potential to get people working in complete good faith into serious trouble on-wiki, and even into serious trouble IRL if the legal concerns are actually justified. "This string of IP edits backing the position of User:Alice in her dispute with User:Bob all appear to come from the place Alice has already disclosed she works" and "most of the disruptive IP editing on this topic comes from a single country or region" are both fairly common statements, but without clarity it's not clear under what circumstances Legal will back admins and under what circumstances they'll throw them to the wolves.

I'm not trying to be negative—even though I'm not convinced by the legal argument I can see ethical reasons for masking IP addresses—but I get the feeling this is about to unintentionally ignite a firestorm of "admin abuse" claims and it would be better for all concerned if we knew where we stood beforehand rather than making up the policy as we go along in response to individual cases. (It would also help admins decide whether the potential liability is worth the risk. If WMF Legal honestly believe that in future I'm potentially putting myself at genuine legal risk just for doing routine admin activities, now is probably the time for me to step down.) ‑ Iridescent 12:02, 5 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Rumor has it that I'm not a bot, but there are some things I've seen that I think are relevant. The Portuguese WP responded to this by simply banning IP editing, requiring registered accounts, full stop. In the various links in the bot post, I found an analysis of the results of that, by the WMF themselves (don't ask me where, but it's someplace in there). Surprisingly for the WMF, they concluded that it worked out well, and are actually recommending that other wikis try it. The numbers of active editors actually increased after the ban, as did the number some measures of non-bot content edits, as IPs apparently decided to register accounts. At the same time, the number of reverts and the amount of vandalism decreased. My guess is that a ban will happen here too, especially when more en-wiki people start realizing the kinds of problems you described – better to just side-step all the problems and not have to worry about it. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:51, 5 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The report is at meta:IP Editing: Privacy Enhancement and Abuse Mitigation/Impact report for Login Required Experiment on Portuguese Wikipedia; most of the underlying statistics are at https://analytics.wikimedia.org/published/notebooks/AHT/ptwiki_dashboard.html Vahurzpu (talk) 17:54, 5 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, the WMF is requesting several more projects sign up for IP-ban trials. Of course, you could easily construe that as still being opposition -- they're explicitly putting out feelers for "ptwiki might not be representative", which is to say "it might be detrimental to other projects". From the talk, eswiki, fawiki, and fiwiki are all interested in participating. eswiki would be particularly interesting -- while nothing else really quite compares to enwiki in scope and influence, it's one of quite few that comes close and could be a better model for us than ptwiki is. (Of course, the WMF rejected it for exactly this reason.) Vaticidalprophet 18:12, 5 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Skimming that talk, it looks to me like they're intentionally trying to find projects where it will fail, so they can say "We're not going ahead with this", and seem a little put out that pt-wiki actually seem to like it. Surely the sensible way to test whether it would work on English Wikipedia would just be to switch it on for a month and see what happens? ‑ Iridescent 18:36, 5 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I facepalmed at the thought that WMF would reject it (but it would of course be par for the course). But I see that they rejected it only for the purpose of doing a monitored trial. Eventually, projects will decide for themselves what to do, and it wouldn't be the first time if we (en-wiki) have to tell the WMF to butt out. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:40, 5 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

That said, we don't have a great track record of telling them to butt out when they have their minds set on something. I note that MediaViewer and Vector are still the defaults, VisualEditor continues to be pushed, and it took about 10 years of arguing to get them to remove the Flow tanks from our border. "Anyone can edit" is such an article of faith at the WMF, that some of them will never be persuaded that "anyone can still edit, they just need to set up an account" is more use to everyone concerned (including the editors themselves) than IP masking. ‑ Iridescent 18:48, 5 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, I really can't argue with that. On the other hand, we are largely at their mercy when it comes to the software on the servers, but we can adopt the policies that we want. (Although I'm making assumptions about the eventual consensus of a discussion here, where the track record isn't good either, especially when it comes to change.) I see a situation where, if the community establishes something via a duly-conducted RfC and WMF tries to tell us no, it would look more like the response of the community and ArbCom to Framgate. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:55, 5 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Just clarifying for myself, it's only articles that IPs are prevented from editing on ptwiki? I see one ptwiki editor's comment was translated as "IPs now do a bit of fun on the contact pages, but it's a side effect that I see no escape from." To me it seems like if IPs can still make edit requests and join discussions, that's pretty darn close to "anyone can edit". —valereee (talk) 19:57, 5 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

It looks like they switched IP editing off completely except between April and July. By "contact pages", they probably mean their equivalent of the "I'm having difficulty creating an account" page, which would obviously need to either be editable by IPs or have a very clear mechanism for submitting requests via email with a reasonable expectation they'd be read. ‑ Iridescent 20:13, 5 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

That would be my impression also. The reference to "contact pages" was in a comment by a single editor, and it's a translation from "páginas de contato". If anyone watching here reads Portuguese, it would be good to know what the phrase really refers to. (Google Translate, which of course is even more reliable than our articles (not!), treats "contato" and "discussão" as two different things, but...). --Tryptofish (talk) 20:26, 5 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Doing the unscientific experiment of looking at pt:Especial:Mudanças recentes, it looks like there's zero IP activity at all now and a greater proportion of edits by new, redlinked accounts than we get here, which is exactly what I'd expect. If there is any Portuguese-speaker happens to be watching this page, to save wading through Meta the phrase who's translation we're questioning is Certamente não foi uma decisão que tomamos com prazer, mas minha lista de páginas vigiadas nunca andou tão pacífica, e olha que ultimamente eu nem tenho conseguido olhá-la o tempo todo como uns meses atrás. Os IPs agora fazem certa farra nas páginas de contato, mas é um efeito colateral do qual não vejo escapatória., if anyone wants to have a stab at translation. ‑ Iridescent 21:39, 5 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Wow...that looks so peaceful. :D —valereee (talk) 22:00, 5 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The open question is whether it's peaceful like a library, or peaceful like a cemetery, or, if you prefer, like the dying towns in rapidly depopulating rural areas.

Most of us made our first edits as IPs. Making those few encouraged us to create an account. If we couldn't make those first edits before creating an account, how many of us would be editing today? Nobody knows. I would not wish to bet Wikipedia's entire pipeline of future editors on a short-term experiment. I'd rather see a multi-year, multi-site crossover study, in which places prevent logged-out editing, see what happens, re-enable logged-out editing, see what happens, re-block it, and so forth. And when we get to this wiki, I think I'd like to see ways of decreasing IPs without shutting them off all at once. Maybe you can make your first edit without an account, and you need to register after that? Or only IPs from certain countries need to register initially?

Also, the rate of IP edits varies substantially between wikis. Being an IP at the English Wikipedia is not at all the same as being an IP editor at the Japanese Wikipedia. The social meaning is quite different. Being an IP at jawiki seems to produce more of a "comment on the content, not the contributor" or maybe "good deeds done in secret" feeling. There seem to be editors there who haven't registered an account because they are actively trying to avoid having a reputation/identity. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:21, 6 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Regarding I would not wish to bet Wikipedia's entire pipeline of future editors on a short-term experiment, can I point out that this is pretty much exactly my position regarding most WMF-imposed changes (you described it as you'd prefer the current verifiable problems over the predictions of doom a little way further up this page). I don't see that switching IP editing off on en-wiki for a month, with a clear "after three months the experiment will end, the status quo will be restored, and we'll look at the positives and negatives" sunset clause, falls into the same "this change is irreversible so if it does go wrong, we're gambling with the future of the entire site" area as something like UCoC. The absolute worst-case is that we lose three months' worth of new editors.

Without some kind of experiment on one of the big wikis, we'll never be able to make reasonable calls about whether the opportunity costs of losing potential new editors cancels out the editor time wasted from cleaning up after IP vandalism. (My personal guess is that it won't be an issue. You and I joined back in the day, but the generation joining up now are very, very used to being asked to create accounts on every website. I suspect we wouldn't even see a particularly drastic drop in traffic if we demanded people create accounts to read Wikipedia.) ‑ Iridescent 18:38, 6 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I think that it's sensible to start with the mid-sized wikis, partly because pilot tests help you figure out what questions to ask. I also think we need each of the big wikis to run their own experiment, with start and stop dates. I also think that there might be good reasons to do this multiple times, to flush out the dedicated-long-time-IP editors and actually be able to see the new/future generation, rather than the ones who have been editing for years. Also, the effects aren't over when you flip the switch, because people will remember that you now have to create an account, and that will linger.

I have some concerns about it in practice. The power imbalance between old and new generations of editors is significant, humans are short-sighted, and we love personal convenience. This is IMO what we should do, but I am not sure that we will actually do it. (If anyone's the contest about when the "It's been so nice without so many newbies trying to edit, so don't switch back even though we all solemnly agreed that we would switch back" RFC will start, please put me down for 29 days before the planned end of the experiment.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:28, 6 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, I have concerns about it in practice. As I've said to you many times, we don't really understand the internal dynamics of Wikipedia or why the system hasn't fallen apart when every instinct says the model shouldn't be viable. The reputation of English Wikipedia is ultimately the primary asset of the entire WMF ecosystem, and IMO we should be very averse to any tinkering with it since we can't predict the consequences and if we damage our reputation it will be very hard to bring it back. (I know the WMF couldn't admit this, but the other reason it's sensible to start with the mid-size wikis is that if we screw up Ukrainian Wikipedia etc it won't have any significant knock-on effect, but if we screw up English Wikipedia then the whole 200+ wikis unravel.

That said, I still think it's worth a time-limited experiment. Even if it reduces the raw edits-and-editors numbers that's not automatically a bad thing—it's perfectly possible that 5000 editors free to do constructive work would be better than 6000 editors spending a significant chunk of their time patrolling, reverting, and checking watchlists. Without an experiment, we'll never know. ‑ Iridescent 07:36, 7 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

We already know what will happen if we have a smaller number of editors doing more content creation instead of a larger number editors reverting, because that already happened. What will happen is that experienced editors will worry about the decline in the number of editors, the number of admin candidates, and among their personal vandal-fighting acquaintances. This is what happened when Cluebot took over most of the simple anti-vandal work in 2007. Even though the number of active editors leveled off about a decade ago, some editors are still repeating these stories from 2009 as if they were true today.

So we will (I predict) get fewer active editors, specifically among the dedicated anti-vandal types, because there will be (I predict) less actual work for them to do in their preferred areas. Some of them will quit/become inactive rather than become article writers. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:03, 7 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Meh. We're never going to run out of busy-work to do for people who like gnoming type things; I racked up 3200(!) edits yesterday standardizing the internal use of en-dashes and hyphens on date ranges within articles and barely scratched the surface, and anyone who thinks registering accounts will actually eliminate disruption—as opposed to just reduce it to a more manageable level—is welcome to head on over here and click links at random. It's not as if Commons—which has always been an IP-free zone—is one big happy family all working together for the greater good. I'm generally extremely conservative when it comes to making any kind of change to how Wikipedia operates, but I still think the experiment is worth trying. ‑ Iridescent 18:23, 7 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

We had no shortage of gnoming needs in 2007 when Cluebot made anti-vandal patrolling less fun, and we still lost a huge number of editors who did anti-vandal patrolling. I don't think that humans are interchangeable here. If your idea of fun is to revert a bunch of poop vandalism, then when that doesn't need to be done, you find a different hobby. You don't start replacing hyphens with en dashes. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:33, 9 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Did we though? I was there at the beginning when high-speed vandal-fighting became a thing—indeed, I'm largely the reason the reversion tools require the rollback permission to use—and I don't remember mass resignations over ClueBot. The volume of manual reverts dropped since there was less to do, but I can't think of any regular editor who wept salt tears because there were no new vandals to revert.

Statement of the obvious perhaps, but if there is genuinely such a thing as an editor who is only able to contribute a single particular type of edit, and we no longer have a need for that particular type of edit, why should we be concerned if they leave? If a change genuinely does bring an end to 'poop' vandalism, then mourning the editors who do nothing but revert 'poop' vandalism seems like the Wikipedia equivalent to complaining that since the invention of the automobile there are fewer blacksmiths around. ‑ Iridescent 17:54, 9 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Just because people don't write resignation manifestos doesn't mean that they didn't stop editing, or reduce their participation. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:17, 10 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@WhatamIdoing True, but neither is it always a great loss when someone reduces their editing, or even stop entirely. I dream of horses (Contribs) (Talk) 03:44, 10 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

RadiX has helped me translate bus tickets from Portugal before. Tks4Fish is less useful at bus ticket translating, but probably knows a thing or two about pt.wiki. And both of them happen to be stewards so they're also fluent in meta-speak. TonyBallioni (talk) 02:20, 6 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Hi TonyBallioni! Thanks for the ping.
@Valereee, Iridescent, and Tryptofish: IP editing is banned at ptwiki for all namespaces, with an exception for the Help namespace and all associated talks. So, you can't edit WP:AN as an IP, but you can edit WP Talk:AN and so on. The Help namespace is now the place where IPs can report problems, or ask questions, or whatever they need. The final vote to decide that was held here, from September 4, 2020 until October 4, 2020. As for that quote, its translation is very accurate, and represents well what is being said in Portuguese.
I'm happy to answer any more questions you may have, just ping me to ensure I'll see it. Best, —Thanks for the fish! ^{talk•contribs} 17:27, 6 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! Hm. Well, I'd support not allowing IP edits to articles. I've been more and more concerned about mobile editors IP-hopping. I just can't see how we're going to keep up. But I'd support allowing IPs to still make edit requests and participate in discussions. Until the IP-hopping becomes too disruptive. Which I suspect it will. I had to semi the talk for a Hong Kong-related redirect a while back, it was unbelievable. —valereee (talk) 21:59, 5 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

At this point, I may be investigating more than you really wanted, but I also see here that an AbuseFilter was used to "turn off editing for IP editors". I don't see anything to indicate that it was namespace-specific, but there's probably someone watching here who knows about abuse filters. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:07, 5 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, thanks! I assume it's possible to turn off IP editing to articles but allow it in other namespaces? —valereee (talk) 23:07, 5 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know how filters work. In principle, one could semi-protect all articles and no talk pages, but it would obviously be near-impossible to do that manually. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:20, 5 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Another idea: perhaps just have the userright to see IP addresses be automatically assigned to editors with extended confirm and de-assigned to fully blocked users? This can be done with an adminbot.

I anticipate there's going to be drawbacks to this I haven't thought of that will be inevitably bought up (because Wikipedia is like that), which is fine. However, this will solve some of the ethical issues with fully exposed IP addresses while limiting the ability to see full IP addresses to users that can (hopefully!) be trusted with that. I dream of horses (Contribs) (Talk) 01:57, 6 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

If the WMF is correct in saying that this change is in response to a legal concern, extending the view_ip_address userright (or whatever they end up calling it) to everyone who's extendedconfirmed wouldn't meet their legal obligations. The reason so many apparently random permissions are restricted to admins isn't necessarily because admins are some kind of super-user; it's that the RFA process provides a legal figleaf under US law as they can say "see, we've made a bona fide effort to ensure that access to potentially sensitive material is restricted to people who've gone through an in-depth vetting process". ‑ Iridescent 09:56, 6 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm. Your reply has me thinking, because you are, or at least could be right. I have a few thoughts.

1. The phrasing "norms and regulations" is a bit odd. Perhaps it's easy to translate into other languages. However, it does lead to the question "Norms? Whose norms? Not ours." I realize this is a bit of a derail, but that's how my mind works.

2. An adminbot shouldn't assign the userright, in your opinion. All right, your reasoning makes sense.

Perhaps people should be given the IP sight userright if they seem to know better than to harass people.

Example: I think I have the autopatrolled right because an admin looked at my account and decided I could be trusted with it; I've only created articles if you think like a computer. Now, if I were to, for example, start uploading copyrighted spam, I'd (rightfully!) have that right taken away. However, I know better than to do that.

My thought is basically "Do we really need to only give out this right only to anti-vandals?"

3. I wonder which law is requiring the WMF to make this change. Is this communicated anywhere? If not, why not? Also, if it's not a US-based law, maybe they can only mask IPs coming from the country requiring it. I dream of horses (Contribs) (Talk) 19:24, 6 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

From recent edits I can see WhatamIdoing is currently reading this page, who when she's at work is Community Relations, Wikimedia Foundation. You could always ask, although it looks like throughout this the WMF have been a bit cagey about exactly why this change suddenly needs to be made now after 21 years. ‑ Iridescent 19:54, 6 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Done.

This isn't really directed at iridescent specifically, but towards everybody participating and following the discussion. Let's remember that people who work at the WMF are human. If whatamidoing doesn't reply at all, I'll assume she can't/isn't comfortable answering because of the dynamics at the workplace. I dream of horses (Contribs) (Talk) 21:02, 6 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

FWIW, WhatamIdoing did reply, if anyone cares to watch the ensuing discussion. I dream of horses (Contribs) (Talk) 22:04, 6 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Tryptofish and Valereee: AF is currently used as a "last measure" of sorts. The way the IP editing ban has been handled is through partial blocks for the most common ranges that edited ptwiki, and whatever is outside those ranges is then caught by the AF. You can see here the block log for the user that blocked most of the ranges. Anything that starts with {{Deslogado| means a block made to handle the ban. Best, —Thanks for the fish! ^{talk•contribs} 17:36, 6 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Tks4Fish, thanks from a fish! --Tryptofish (talk) 21:26, 6 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Turning off IP editing via the AbuseFilter is a privacy violation for good-faith editors. (Because the filter trigger is logged, and the account creation is logged, and if you line up the two logs, you have a matching list of registered editor's IP addresses.) It should not be done. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:07, 6 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

True, although that's also exactly what happens with CU logs. FWIW I think the privacy concern angle is hugely overblown; if you live in a dictatorship where the secret police stalk your history then you should probably work under the assumption that the security services know who you are anyway, and for 99% of editors the most your IP address will show is "subscriber to a big telecoms provider in whichever country everyone already knows you live". ‑ Iridescent 18:42, 6 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Or, you know, if you're a new editor, and you're editing from work, and the IP address resolves to your workplace, and you don't really want someone to ring you up at work and ask you about your COI problems. Most people who are editing from home might fall into "subscriber to a big telecoms provider" category, but that's not true for everyone. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:35, 6 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Surely if someone is editing from a workplace and has a conflict of interest, we want to know? That Congressional filter exists for a reason. ‑ Iridescent 07:39, 7 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@WhatamIdoing If someone really, really wants to find out where your COI lies, they just have to look for the tell-tale signs of COI editing, no IP address needed. What you described is stalking behavior, if done without consent. The risk of being victimized is predicted mostly by being around people who victimize other people. I dream of horses (Contribs) (Talk) 09:41, 7 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

It's not necessarily stalking. When there's a particularly large volume of seriously inappropriate editing from a particular IP or range, there are circumstances in which it's appropriate to contact abuse@provider, and if the provider happens to be the person in question's employer then that unavoidable ends up with the link being made IRL. I would say that I think it's almost always a very very very very bad idea for anyone other than the WMF themselves to do this precisely because the editors on the receiving end of it do see it as stalking; at least one of our longest-term WP:LTA cases is a direct result of an editor taking exception to their employer being contacted. ‑ Iridescent 09:55, 7 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

ArbCom certainly seems to consider ringing someone up at work to talk about their COI editing to be a ban-worthy offense.

Also, I suspect that if some stranger who saw your posts on a website phoned you out of the blue, a normal person would probably consider phoning the police next. You don't have to live in a dictatorship with a secret police service to want a certain amount of privacy. Nobody should have to deal with people contacting them to say "I know where you live, I know where you work, I know where your kids go to school". This has happened to admins here, and we should not make it any easier for it to happen in the future. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:10, 7 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

It's complicated. I'm aware of the case to which you're referring in which someone was banned for calling someone's place of work. I'm also aware of the case in which a then-member of Arbcom contacted a disruptive editor's employer to let them know he was disrupting Wikipedia from their systems. (I won't name names in public to avoid stirring up old hostilities, but it's not a great secret.) The area between "inappropriate contact" and "legitimate method of preventing abuse" isn't at all black and white. ‑ Iridescent 18:28, 7 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]