Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2021-09-26/News and notes

Discuss this story

"The mainland group say that, if it is subordinate to the foundation, the Wikipedia movement is dead in mainland China."
...what does that even mean? All language Wikipedias are "subordinate" to the Foundation, they are language variants organized and run by the Foundation itself. And, yes, there are global Wikimedia rules that need to be followed. And that includes not bringing harm to other users. Does this group really think everyone else doesn't see the BS PR they're pushing? It's pretty plain to see that they want to both promote the censorship of the Chinese government and to use Chinese Wikipedia as a front to identify and hunt down "dissidents". Silver seren^C 21:57, 26 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
- @Silver seren: It is pretty hilarious how they get all pearl-clutchy at the very suggestion they could be involved in "community capture", and in the very next breath they declare Wikipedia dead to the entire community if they don't get their way. Making the prosecution's case, as it were. -- FeRDNYC (talk) 12:59, 27 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  - @Silver seren and FeRDNYC: That simply seals the case that those in charge of WMC only interested in taking over, not in taking part in the global movement. Nevermind that Wikipedia has already been officially dead in China for a decade. It's a classic case of WP:NOTHERE. Deryck C. 12:31, 19 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
- Normchou ^💬 04:33, 20 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Hard-fork? What's that? The fork link doesn't mention that type. Jim.henderson (talk) 00:07, 27 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
- I presume it means a full copying of Wikipedia that isn't making a mirror or some sub entity. They're just going to take all the content and make their own thing. Silverseren^C 00:15, 27 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  - Yeah, Jim. It means a complete split, Zh.wiki keeps what's there and does whatever it wants. WMC.nonwiki starts with the same articles and does whatever they want to do with it. I think it also implies "and never the twain shall meet again" Smallbones, 00:23, 27 September 2021 (UTC)
    - Though wouldn't even hard forks have to still give attribution, due to Wikipedia's editor copyright? Or are they likely to go the "Copyright doesn't exist in China for things made not in China" route that several other product makers have done for other things? Silverseren^C 00:26, 27 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
      - As POV-pushy as they are, the WMC folks have enough self-respect to not go to Baidu Baike. I believe they will keep the attribution just fine. --Artoria 2e5 🌉 03:46, 27 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
- "Hard fork" is used in the open-source world and in cryptocurrency context. It occurs in Fork (blockchain)#Hard fork, maybe it needs to be added at Fork (software development). ☆ Bri (talk) 04:42, 27 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  - All right, so it seems "hard" here means they copy, once, all the pages of that particular language's Wikipedia, not just the articles, and don't copy later versions of WP pages but rather only use their own updated versions if any. As I understand it, Everipedia also did that. If they were to use versions updated by WP edits, it would be called a "mirror" rather than a "fork". So, is a "fork" necessarily a "hard fork" or are there also softer kinds? Though, perhaps Wikipedia talk:Mirrors and forks would be a better place to discuss nomenclatorial questions. Jim.henderson (talk) 16:33, 27 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    - In software a soft fork means the new code is backwards compatible but that doesn't really make sense for a human readable work. I am not sure myself if there is a difference for a WP fork. The word "hard" might be superfluous. ☆ Bri (talk) 16:57, 27 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
      - The Fork (software development) article already defines a "soft fork" in terms of friendliness and intention. I guess that would be enough. --Artoria 2e5 🌉 02:58, 30 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Congratulations to the new CEO— Preceding unsigned comment added by Kirbopher2004 (talk • contribs) 2021-09-27T03:09:18 (UTC)
A question for Iskander: "What experience do you have of contributing to Wikimedia projects? Do you have an active account on Wikipedia or another project?" Modest Genius ^talk 11:57, 27 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Though legitimate, this is a loaded question. And personally, I don't think that you need to have an extensive experience as an editor to be at the helm of the Foundation. You learn nothing about managing a non-profit by editing Wikipedia, and you don't need to have 50k edits and 12 GAs to understand how Wikipedia works. What her job entails is mostly managing a huge stack of cash and setting the priorities as to how that cash should be spent. The most relevant experience here is business management. From what I could read, she understands and respects the work of the volunteers as well as the "separation" between the Foundation and the content, and has a sound vision of Wikipedia's purpose—and that's all I need to know. This is much more preferable to an executive that would have 50k edits and 12 GAs and, on that basis, would pretend to order us around or tell us how to do our job. JBchrch talk 16:21, 27 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

It's not a loaded question, I'm just interested. I'm not implying that such experience is required - I recognise that they're different jobs. You're inventing your own criticisms. If someone became CEO of a sports team it would be reasonable to ask if they had ever played the sport, or ask the new CEO of a coffee chain whether they ever drink coffee. Those things are not necessarily required to do a good job, but are relevant and of interest to stakeholders. Modest Genius ^talk 11:38, 28 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Modest Genius: I'm sorry that I misunderstood your comment. But if you ask a question that begins with "What experience do you have of...", it may give a wrong impression of your intentions... JBchrch talk 22:18, 28 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Businesspeople are going to make bad decisions if they don't understand the purpose of the non-profit they are leading. For instance, I don't want the WMF to grow the most that it can, to increase its reader donation pot or to hire many more employees. Those things will be neutral or negative to the actual grassroots movement that the WMF sits on top of. As for spending a stack of cash, you need to know what's cost-effective, morally appropriate and what the community want most and why. You may not have to have 50,000 edits or 12 GAs to understand Wikipedia, but if you do have those then you probably do understand a lot about Wikipedia. But since 99% or more of Wikipedia readers don't actually know what Wikipedia is, you need something to show why you're fit—we have one of the most complex bureaucratic, technical and norm-based process systems of any community I can think of. I'd be interested to hear, with a completely open mind (her CV looks alright to me), why Iskander thinks she can make the best decisions for me and my community. — Bilorv (talk) 22:24, 28 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

During the introduction on wikimedia-l she got a (reasonable IMO) advise to create but not disclose an account end edit anonymously for some time.--Ymblanter (talk) 18:35, 27 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Another question for Iskander: What is your understanding of disinformation on Wikipedia, how are you going to tackle this problem and how would you determine an adequate level of resourcing? MER-C 12:00, 27 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@MER-C, JBchrch, and Bilorv: what a lot of people didn't understand is that the recently vacated post of CEO, despite the job description was not not a managerial position - at least if that was intended, it's not what it turned out to be. Even in times of crisis the best the incumbent could manage were a couple of hurried Tweets. That job became a more representative function like that of a non-executive presidency or the work of Senior Royals. I'm not saying that it did not generate more donations (hopefully more than the salary and travel bill), but there was no shop floor management of any kind that reached the notice of the volunteer communities. The actual hierarchy of the WMF still remains enigmatic. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:08, 11 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

User:Super Wang [...] looks forward to editing Wikipedia again – on the hard-fork. Well, if it's a hard fork... he wouldn't be, would he? He might look forward to once again editing an online collaborative encyclopedia, and may well end up doing so, but that (mainland-hosted, forked) encyclopedia wouldn't be Wikipedia. I'm fairly confident the WMF are protective enough of their brand that they'd force them to at least not use the name Wikipedia, even if all the content originated from there (before being subjected to a thorough government scrubbing). -- FeRDNYC (talk) 12:51, 27 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
- About that government scrubbing - I wonder if they will suppress censored versions from the history of all the articles. That would be lot of work! If they don't, then it would open the possibility for mainland Chinese to view uncensored Wikipedia articles via the article history tab. I'll be interested to see how this plays out. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 13:26, 28 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  - Or could just don't import any article of sensitive topic, that would be much easier, and much safer for the fork itself located in the mainland China overall. —— Eric Liu_（Talk） 13:38, 28 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    - @Ericliu1912: Oh, I think they'll definitely do that, for sure. But Mr. Stradivarius makes a good point, there are likely to be unacceptable versions of articles on topics they do want to keep. Rather than having to sanitize all the histories, I suspect they'll just drop them entirely, and only clone the current content of each article as the starting point for their fork. (IANAL, but that would seem to fall well within the terms of the CC-BY-SA license. At most they'd just have to provide a list of everyone who contributed to the article in its current state, in lieu of the edit history.) -- FeRDNYC (talk) 23:35, 29 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The legitimacy of the voting in the latest Russian Arbitration Committee election (AK-32) has been challenged. [...] According to Levg "there is a probability that AK–32 will be asked to investigate it, or more likely – to establish a kind of 'Investigation commission'." — What is AK-32? The first sentence says it is the election, but then "AK–32 will be asked to investigate" makes no sense. —2d37 (talk) 10:56, 29 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
- Thanks for the question. Short answer (AK-32) is the name given to the Russian arbitration Committee, version #32, and also can refer to the election of that committee. The need for the numbering is that they have an election every six months! So the abbreviation might have been (Arb Kom-elected May, 2021). It's a confusing story that I've been following for over 2 months and I think it's important. Trying to make sense of it has been fairly difficult however. I think where it stands now is that A) it will just be easier now to wait until the AK-33 election, B) the lack of members on AK-32 makes it difficult for them to investigate their own election, C) everybody is sick of it, D) perhaps any investigation may be conducted by unusual means. Take your pick of any or all of those! I decided to report the story because I think it could be very important. OTOH telling our readers exactly what happened or even what is happening is not possible. Usually what we'd do on a story like this is to say that "an investigaion is happening ..." but the news here is now something like "an investigation is apparently not happening". I hope this helps. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 13:38, 29 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
- @2d37: Smallbones_(smalltalk) 13:45, 29 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  - I wonder if they'll have the same naming convention in seven years time. MER-C 17:04, 29 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    Yes, this is something which has been discussed there for years (I was in AK-8 and AK-10, and it was already a hot topic), so I would expect yes, until it gets completely disrupted by these external forces.--Ymblanter (talk) 12:13, 1 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  - @Smallbones: I hope this helps. — Yes, thank you. I'm sorry if I accidentally implied the story is unimportant. —2d37 (talk) 02:03, 30 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]