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Today I had been studying some ancient Chinese philosophy... and browsed into https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zizhi_Tongjian_Gangmu and found that you had just today made a slight edit to the page after almost two years of no changes.
Given the nature of ancient chinese philosophy, I couldn't help but think there was a special reason for it, from my point of view? Could I inquire as to what prompted you to add that one dash on April 1st?
Nothing exciting, I'm afraid; I've been doing a lot of similar edits to standardize the use of hyphens/dashes in date ranges and curly/straight apostrophes and quotation marks. I'm intentionally trying to rotate between topics and only do a handful of pages from each category at a time, to avoid swamping the watchlists of people who have a big batch of similar pages watchlisted, and it just happened that at that time I was doing a batch on Chinese literature; had you checked my contributions a few minutes later, it could have been Indian musicians or stamp collecting. I'm afraid I don't have any knowledge of this particular topic; this is just one of those "trivial but needs to be done by a human because there's so much potential for false positives so it can't be left to a bot" type of tasks that I perform when I get home from work and am not tired enough to go to sleep but too tired to concentrate on actually writing something. ‑ Iridescent 22:56, 1 April 2020 (UTC)
Is there a reason I'm unable to access your main page and am redirected to talk? Beamas3232 (talk) 23:28, 1 April 2020 (UTC)
I don't see the point in user pages, unless one has some kind of specific skill or specific issue one needs to make other editors aware of; this is Wikipedia, not Instagram. An editor's talkpage and their contribution history is IMO generally a much better guide than whatever they choose to say about themselves—the nature of wiki software means this is an environment where it's possible to judge people by what they actually do, not whatever boasts they choose to make. ‑ Iridescent 23:36, 1 April 2020 (UTC)
But I just was just reading your user page before posting on your talk. I even confirmed with web archive that it existed as recently as March 10th. The only explanation is you made it redirect right after I posted on talk. Unless this a wiki thing where all new talkers are automatically barred from userpage. Beamas3232 (talk) 23:43, 1 April 2020 (UTC)
I have no idea what you've been reading, but it certainly wasn't my userpage, whose history can be seen here. ‑ Iridescent 00:10, 2 April 2020 (UTC)
Given the nature of your exact time and date of your response, I can't help but feel there's more going on then you're letting on... especially if I go over the short history of your user page... it's very "cryptic" to say the least. But this doesn't seem to be expanding my knowledge and is consuming your time. Thank you for humoring me. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Beamas3232 (talk • contribs)
I have absolutely no idea what you're on about with your exact time and date of your response. If you find it unusual that my reply to you came after you asked me a question, I'm not sure what to say; were you expecting me to reply to you before your question? If you're trying to make some kind of allegation against me, come out and allege it, (although I'm not sure what you think I'm involved in; a consipiracy to hide the fact that I standardized the en-dash formatting?) Be aware that my userpage currently has 577 people watching it, all of whom would have noticed had it been edited, deleted or otherwise amended, and by trying to claim that you've read a page that doesn't exist you're just making yourself look ridiculous. (Have you tried searching for one of the phrases you remember from whatever you thought was my userpage, to see what page it was that you actually read?) ‑ Iridescent 00:34, 2 April 2020 (UTC)
Uhhhhh, I was noticing that your reply came exactly 10 minutes after midnight, 00:10, 2 April 2020 (UTC)... Curious though, what kind of allegation were you thinking I was thinking of making? Are there conspiracies on Wikipedia? Beamas3232 (talk) 00:52, 2 April 2020 (UTC)
Forget it, you've been very helpful with the code. If I've made you angry, I apologize. Could you explain about the code part though? Under what circumstance would "Jimmy and Lila, discussing the terms of her resignation" appear? https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Iridescent&oldid=948608870, used to show it, now its just kangaroos. Beamas3232 (talk) 01:05, 2 April 2020 (UTC)
Nevermind about the code, I figured it out.
While I have you, what is the code that shows the pictures and words "An administrator "assuming good faith" with an editor with whom they have disagreed."? With "administrator" being variable, sometimes it is a a checkuser. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Beamas3232 (talk • contribs)
I'm new to wiki editing, but the source begins with MiszaBot... am I talking to a bot? Beamas3232 (talk) 23:32, 1 April 2020 (UTC)
No, you're not; Miszabot is the bot that archives stale threads from long talkpages. ‑ Iridescent 23:37, 1 April 2020 (UTC)
That's what every bot says. EEng 00:24, 2 April 2020 (UTC)
To be fair, at the moment I think I'd need at least three resits before I passed a Turing test. ‑ Iridescent 10:14, 2 April 2020 (UTC)
Admin noticeboard
When did I make an unsubstantiated accusation and when was I warned?--SharʿabSalam▼ (talk) 17:28, 6 April 2020 (UTC)
Here, as I suspect you know perfectly well. ‑ Iridescent 17:30, 6 April 2020 (UTC)
What? Where is the unsubstantiated accusation? What was wrong with my comment? Why are you even an admin if you can't tell where is the unsubstantiated accusation? Are you going to apologize?--SharʿabSalam▼ (talk) 17:38, 6 April 2020 (UTC)
Could you tell me what was wrong with saying Oppose IP editors are not causing any problems. The last IP edit I saw was this edit. It was fine and perfect. Wikipedia is free for everyone. Protection should be based on real vandalism history not speculations based on page views.?--SharʿabSalam▼ (talk) 17:41, 6 April 2020 (UTC)
As already explained to you in the diff I just gave of it being explained to you, what's wrong with it is that it was patently untrue and the edit you claimed was "fine and perfect" was clearly nothing of the kind. If you don't like that warning, does this one a couple of weeks before that suit you any better? No, I'm not going to apologise; you were either making untrue claims without bothering to check, or intentionally telling untruths to try to be disruptive, and neither of them is something you should be doing. Why do you appear to feel the need to keep wading into threads on the administrators' noticeboards (411 posts to ANI and 162 posts to AN at the time of writing), anyway? ‑ Iridescent 17:47, 6 April 2020 (UTC)
In fact what you said here but don't just come here and make shit up in the hope we won't notice, and if you're going to tell lies tell lies that take more than ten seconds to fact-check, is unsubstantiated accusation and its even personal attack, accusing me of telling lies and making sh*t. I didn't respond because I found your language very inappropriate? Why are you speaking like this? I thought admins should be more civil than other regular editors. Why did you write the word "sh*t" in a public page on a well-known website. Imagine if someone saw that comment and saw your language?. In fact the edit was made in good-faith and I agree with it. Calling the coronavirus, Wuhan virus seems inappropriate. Again, I didn't want to respond to your low level street language.--SharʿabSalam▼ (talk) 17:54, 6 April 2020 (UTC)
Yes, in my opinion calling the coronavirus "Wuhan virus" is inappropriate. Noting that reliable sources (not just a handful of bloggers, but reputable news media and government agencies) have called the coronavirus "Wuhan virus" is not. If you can't grasp the difference between the two, Wikipedia is possibly not the place for you, as "check our personal opinions at the door and reflect what the reliable sources say" is arguably our single most fundamental principle. Quite aside from the matter of that edit, it's obvious that the article was being disrupted by IPs; you can check its history for yourself and see the IP vandalism if you can't be bothered to click on the diffs you were given at the time. (Nobody at AN/ANI ever agrees on anything; when you're the sole person arguing against a unanimous consensus there, you may want to stop and think that maybe you're the problem.)
If you seriously think people are going to come over with the vapors if they see the word "shit" on an internal noticeboard, I think we're done here. ‑ Iridescent 18:03, 6 April 2020 (UTC)
"check our personal opinions at the door and reflect what the reliable sources say" is arguably Only arguably? Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 18:14, 6 April 2020 (UTC)
There's general agreement on what the non-negotiable core policies are, but not so much on what the single most important one would be. I'd argue that WP:NPOV (which is just a longer-winded way of saying "check our personal opinions at the door and reflect what the reliable sources say") is the single most important, but there's a reasonable argument that "Wikipedia is free content that anyone can use, edit, and distribute" trumps it, and I've in the past seen a do-no-harm argument that WP:BLP trumps all the other considerations (just because something can be written about neutrally from reliable sources, doesn't mean we're obliged to include it if doing so would potentially harm the subject; it's why we quite often oversight the good-faith addition of people's birth dates.) If we're going back in history; when we had only three "Foundational Principles" neither NPOV, FREE or BLP were on the list. ("Don't be a dick" was, incidentally.) ‑ Iridescent 18:23, 6 April 2020 (UTC)
Let me tell you a real story about me and Wikipedia,
When I joined Wikipedia, my English language was very basic. One time I was exploring some old discussions and I found this discussion Talk:Tunisian campaign and saw this comment. There was a phrase there that grabbed my attention. It was Stop acting like a whiney bitch. I googled it and I found some sources like Vice : "Why Is Ray J Acting Like A Whiny Little Bitch?" I assumed that it means to act aggressively or inappropriately towards other people. It sounded really cool. It was very weird and unusual phrase to me. I then wanted to say it in Wikipedia. I was waiting for a chance to say that word. Until one day an editor in Wikipedia called me "anti-Arab", I told him that it's not his first time to act like a whiny bitch. [1] then Oshwah reverted me and blocked me (and the other editor) for personal attack. I was shocked, I thought it was okay to say that phrase. I realised that people get influenced very easy by what they see. I double-check every word that comes out of my mouth. Don't influence other people with your language.--SharʿabSalam▼ (talk) 19:02, 6 April 2020 (UTC)
Don't be so melodramatic. If someone doesn't have the English-language skills to appreciate that the word "shit" is context-sensitive, they shouldn't be editing on an English-language website; if they are editing on an English-language website I certainly hope they're not trying to learn the language from the Administrators' Noticeboard.
Hold on a second, I didn't come here to debate whether that article should be protected or not. I came here following your comment in the admin noticeboard today, where you said: It's even less long ago that an administrator warned SS about, er, making unsubstiantiated allegations about other editors on the admin noticeboards… Glass houses/stones. ‑ Iridescent 11:24, 6 April 2020 (UTC) when I asked you about the "unsubstantiated allegations" and the warning, you brought that discussion about page protection. There was no allegations in my comment and your response to me was aggressive with no reason. Saying that I am talking lies and making shit up etc. I didn't respond to you but you kept pursuing this vendetta against me and today you made that comment.--SharʿabSalam▼ (talk) 20:08, 6 April 2020 (UTC)
I know Iri doesn’t particularly care for meta stuff, but it’s worth pointing out that you were a large part of the drama behind ar.wikis equivalent of WP:FRAM this summer when you suddenly switched positions on an Arabic dialect wiki after getting into some sort of fight on that project and started accusing editors who opposed you of being Saudi government agents, despite the fact that many of the people who you were arguing with have publicly disclosed being from the Levant and for a variety of reasons are exceptionally unlikely to be spies planted by the Saudi government. For those less aware of the history of ar.wiki, the topic of national dialect projects is extremely sensitive there after the Egyptian Wikipedia debacle, and you went around actively creating drama by posting on proposals for projects that were either closed or would never survive outside of incubator for a variety of reasons (so I’m not casting aspersions, I’ll leave your meta contributions here.)You’re now frequently creating drama on multiple projects. Iri is correctly telling you to back off the noticeboards. I think you’re generally a good editor, but your xwiki history indicates that when you get involved with behind the scenes parts of Wikimedia projects, it’s not usually in a way that adds clarity. Focus on content, not drama. TonyBallioni (talk) 20:23, 6 April 2020 (UTC)
That's a weak attempt to change the subject the discussion. Iridescent said I was warned about false allegations and when I asked when and where, they posted this link. There is no allegations there and his response was actually a personal attack saying that I am telling lies etc.
I didn't participate in that discussion for no reason, I am a Muslim and I found that editor comments very offensive.--SharʿabSalam▼ (talk) 07:48, 8 April 2020 (UTC)
I can change "making shit up" to "knowingly making demonstrably untrue statements" if you'd prefer, but the net result is the same. You made a statement which the most minimal research (i.e. clicking on the history of the page in question) would have shown you was obviously untrue; as such either you had checked the history and were deliberately lying, or you hadn't checked the history and were just making things up.
You're clearly not interested in what either I or anyone else has to say, but just trying to pick a fight. I very rarely do this, but get off this talkpage and stay off this talkpage; any further posts from you will be reverted. If you have an actual, credible, allegation to make about me, I'm sure you're well aware of how to find the relevant noticeboard for whatever the complaint is. If you don't have an actual, credible, allegation to make about me, then go away. ‑ Iridescent 08:29, 8 April 2020 (UTC)
A barnstar for you!
The Technical Barnstar
Thanks for suggesting about Webfont Settings. RIT RAJARSHI (talk) 09:41, 8 April 2020 (UTC)
You're very welcome. WebFonts is a bit problematic, which is why we have it as opt-in rather than opt-out. It's very useful in that it allows people to view pages which contain fonts they're unlikely to have installed (so someone reading a page with a block of e.g. Inuktitut syllabics text won't just see a mess of error codes). The problem is that if we're installing a font on all our readers' computers for free, it needs to be a font that's (a) entirely public-domain with no fees involved and no legal issues if people re-use it commercially, and (b) not so elaborate that it uses up a huge quantity of bandwidth. Thus, the character sets it uses are rather dull and visually unappealing. ‑ Iridescent 09:55, 8 April 2020 (UTC)
You did not restore portal kitten
Its okay that tou deleted the draft but when I asked for a copy tou did not respond. Thats mean. Aaron Justin Giebel (talk) 05:15, 7 April 2020 (UTC)
I didn't delete Draft:Portal:Kitten (Fastily did that), I just declined your request that it be restored, for reasons already explained to you. Since the whole thing was just a cut-and-paste copyvio of the lead of the existing Kitten article, there is no original content to email to you, even if I felt inclined to disclose my email address to someone who addresses me like this. ‑ Iridescent 08:08, 7 April 2020 (UTC)
Weird strategy. Insult the guy yer asking a favour of. What's the success rate, I wonder. ——SN54129 09:50, 7 April 2020 (UTC)
Bizarre. [2], so hopefully there's room for improvement...I feel sorry for Sam4You, who must have received about fifty pings in the course of that short discussion. ——SN54129 12:04, 7 April 2020 (UTC)
For the record, and to put an end to this, here is the entire wikitext of Draft:Portal:Kitten as of AJG's final edit to it on 23 September 2019:
= Kitten =
{{Box|Introduction: A kitten is a juvenile cat. After being born, kittens are totally dependent on their mother for survival and they do not normally open their eyes until after seven to ten days. After about two weeks, kittens quickly develop and begin to explore the world outside the nest. After a further three to four weeks, they begin to eat solid food and grow adult teeth. Domestic kittens are highly social animals and usually enjoy human companionship. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitten|header=Introduction|align=|box type=inline-block|style=|color=#d5d5d5|link=}}
= Featured Image From Wikipedia Commons =
Kitten plays with ball
[[File:KITTEN plays with ball.jpg|thumb|Kitten Plays With Ball]]
Certainly not worth risking Iridecimation for :) ——SN54129 10:48, 8 April 2020 (UTC)
origin of covid
Hi. I hope you are doing well. Do you think the origin of covid19 is correct here? Or am I missing something? —usernamekiran (talk) 23:01, 29 March 2020 (UTC)
I have no clue (I've been sweeping the COVID articles every couple of days for obvious grammar, spelling and formatting errors as their high visibility and dismal quality makes them a high-profile embarassment to Wikipedia, but except for some very specific elements relating to emergency planning I have no expert knowledge). You're probably better off raising it at WT:MED or WT:COVID. What I would say is that I'd be extremely skeptical of the claims of anyone claiming to have identified a specific route of transmission for its entry to any given territory; given the high number of asymptomatic carriers and the lack of knowledge of its potential modes of transmission, trying to search for a Patient Zero is a futile task. ‑ Iridescent 23:12, 29 March 2020 (UTC)
Thanks for the response. I think its simply logically impossible for a virus to have origin in different continents. I removed the origin completely, similar to other few articles. On related note, WHO gave a statement loosely saying "first recorded case was in china, but the origin/patient zero can be outside of china". Now many say that the statement was politically motivated. Remaining highly skeptical, and indoors is the best policy for current days. See you around —usernamekiran (talk) 00:00, 30 March 2020 (UTC)
It's certainly theoretically for a virus to appear simultaneously on two different continents—if, for instance, its animal reservoir was in migratory birds and infected specimens happened to be caught and eaten separately at roughly the same time in two different locations, or if an infected animal were slaughtered for meat and the meat was insufficiently sterilized and subsequently exported to different countries. In the case of C19 I don't believe it for an instant. ‑ Iridescent 00:09, 30 March 2020 (UTC)
At this point in time, I recommend WT:COVID instead of WT:MED for this type of question. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:46, 1 April 2020 (UTC)
At this point in time I don't recommend either, as the medicine project seems currently to be in the middle of a full-scale mass psychotic episode and no sane person should go near it, and the coronavirus/covid articles are a mess which would probably be better off replaced by a blank page and a notice reading "When it comes to a topic like this why the hell would any sane person trust an article which anyone can edit? Here are the external links to the WHO and to relevant national health authorities; go read them instead." I don't know who at Google took the decision to blacklist Wikipedia from the coronavirus search results, and whether that's a global thing or nation-by-nation geolocated, but whoever made that decision deserves some kind of medal. ‑ Iridescent 19:55, 1 April 2020 (UTC)
It isn't blacklisted, it's just that they've prioritised sites like the NHS/WHO/.gov and so on. Our article is 20th in my search results, seven places below the Daily Mirror... Black Kite (talk) 20:02, 1 April 2020 (UTC)
If our article is appearing seven places below the Daily Mirror, that hasn't happened naturally; someone at Google has been fiddling with PageRank to intentionally push Wikipedia below governmental and legitimate news sites. ‑ Iridescent 20:06, 1 April 2020 (UTC)
That sounds reasonable, because it's still above the Mail and the Sun! Black Kite (talk) 20:27, 1 April 2020 (UTC)
If anyone is actually taking medical advice from the Mail, I think that would be an example of evolution in action. ‑ Iridescent 20:34, 1 April 2020 (UTC)
An extreme example of my long-expressed belief that we shouldn't have an article on a current event until it's been out of the headlines for, say, three months. — Preceding unsigned comment added by EEng (talk • contribs)
No argument from me on that one. I'd go further and say "any article on a current event sourced exclusively to websites and newspapers should be summarily deleted". ‑ Iridescent 20:17, 1 April 2020 (UTC)
Speaking of our coronavirus coverage (in the midst of the above-referenced "full-scale mass psychotic episode"1), go ahead … take a deep deep breath, and read the first sentence here, aloud, without taking another breath. [3] I thought of you because of the sentence on my user page you are so proud of, at 171 words! * 1 Wikipedia, naturally, has no article or definition anywhere for the medical use of the term, episode, but Yale says these episodes have three phases, and the length of each varies. That's not encouraging. Bst, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:38, 3 April 2020 (UTC)
(adding) Just in case someone is thinking that ten uninformative stubs than a single informative overview is hyperbole, at the time of writing Category:COVID-19 and its subcategories contain 1393 pages and that's only going to go up. Every one of them has the potential to kill our readers if misinformation finds its way into them; do you believe that WP:COVID are actually monitoring all of them, let alone the 2614 articles that currently link to Coronavirus disease 2019? ‑ Iridescent 11:37, 3 April 2020 (UTC)
You only managed a 135-word sentence there. A frightening percentage of Wikipedia's medical content is dangerously dated to blatantly inaccurate. (Yes, this can be said about most of Wikipedia's content, but with medicine, it matters.) Yet our medical content is touted in media coverage and mentioned in journal articles that use flawed methodology that would be rejected by our medical sourcing policies. You may recall that there are three times I have been !outvoted on the issues that we now see in our COVID coverage. 1) We need a BLP-style policy to shoot on sight poorly cited medical information. 2) We should have a disclaimer on every medical article (beyond the site-wide disclaimer). 3) COVID should not have a banner at InTheNews. The fourth factor has been a quiet attrition over the years-- good editors and doctors who gave up in despair at the current state of the Medicine Project, and don't speak up because they know it to be futile-- such that EVEN IF all of those problems you mention above were not the case in the the COVID articles, we no longer have a cadre of medical editors capable to keep even one correctly written article up to snuff.[4] The days of a collaborative group of "gentleman and scholars" working together towards precisely worded, timely and accurate medical content are long gone. Thank goodness Google did whatever they did to keep us from showing up in the search results, but the number of hits those pages are getting anyway is frightful. And you see Wikipedia's coverage touted by people who have the media's ear, as if none of these problems exist. At least we were able to highlight one example of one good medical editor's contributions at TFA, in Introduction to viruses. Has your thinking on the suitability of that TFA re-run changed? Another of my goals there was to try to do something to regain lost flexibility in TFA scheduling. Without that, TFA runs the risk of becoming an irrelevant showcase for a very small group of editors still writing FAs, with declining pageviews reflecting little interest in the topics highlighted (User:SandyGeorgia/sandbox2#March mainpage TFA views). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:53, 3 April 2020 (UTC)
No argument from me on any of the above; yes, there's an iceberg-tip of decent quality content but it depends solely on whether there happens to be someone both interested enough in the topic to maintain it, and expert enough to gatekeep against the woo and the outdated sources. For every Oxygen toxicity or Linezolid, there are a thousand Poppy teas or Male genital diseases.
As you know, I'm not a great fan of re-running TFAs except in exceptional circumstances like Barack Obama where changing circumstances mean it's effectively a completely different article, or genuine once-in-a-lifetime major date relevance like Pluto on the day of the New Horizons rendesvous. I think the Chicken Little routine pulled by repetition's advocates to force the policy change through was based on completely false premises. With 836 articles still in Wikipedia:Featured articles that haven't been on the Main Page, at the current low rate of (promotions−delistings per year)≈250 it would be a decade before the stock started to run low. On top of that, I suspect the current drop in participation and nominations at FAC is largely the result of a single editor who's taken it upon himself to gatekeep against any page that doesn't meet his personal stylistic preferences; once he gets bored and finds a new hobby the people he's driven away will start drifting back, the newcomers who are too intimidated to participate for fear of spending the next year shooing him off their talkpages will be encouraged to dip their toes in the water, and the promotion rate will gradually go up again.
With regards to the specific Introduction to viruses article, I have no objection to it as an article, but I still firmly maintain that Wikipedia's best response to the current pandemic is to keep all current medical information off the main page. We don't want people to get the idea that our medical information is trustworthy.
The declining pageviews areb't an artefact of the TFAs being too niche, they're (in small part) an artefact of fewer people visiting the main page because Google is increasingly good at directing them to the right article, and (in large part) because the art of blurb writing is dying. (There never was a Golden Age when all the TFAs were core topics; this was the TFA queue a decade ago under Raul654.) If you can convince readers that the topic sounds interesting, you can get 100,000+ views for even the most niche topic. Something like Britomart Redeems Faire Amoret is as niche a topic as they come but still managed to get more pageviews on its TFA day than Washington D.C., Jennifer Lawrence or even Earth did on theirs, because the blurb focused on those aspects which were likely to appeal to readers, rather than those aspects which were likely to appeal to Wikipedia editors. (The single best piece of advice I ever received on Wikipedia was Giano's injunction 12 years ago always to write as if addressing an intelligent 14-year-old.) ‑ Iridescent 14:40, 3 April 2020 (UTC)
Yes, and an intelligent 14 year old would have understood the origin was stupid people eating their sweet and sour bat medium rare. Giano(talk) 15:54, 3 April 2020 (UTC)
I can't quite put my finger on just why eating bat seems so vile, given that I grew up eating rabbit which is basically a wingless bat, but I don't care; the whole idea seems only one step away from eating dead rats. ‑ Iridescent 16:00, 3 April 2020 (UTC)
I could do with a dish of cold rat right now. With ketchup of course. Only in death does duty end (talk) 16:55, 3 April 2020 (UTC)
That's the last time I'll read Iri's page while eating breakfast. But I do want to remind you all of the side effects of living under Chinese-style regimes such as the one they help maintain in Venezuela, where hungry bands of people have killed zoo animals for food, gang-attacked cows in fields to kill them with their bare hands for a meal, and eat all manner of animals one would otherwise never consider as food, which I won't mention here for the disgust factor. In other words, those regimes are now killing us all as they been killing Venezuelans for years. [5]SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:06, 3 April 2020 (UTC)
The English consider this to be food
I can't speak for Venezuela, but in the case of China it isn't "economic hardship forces people to eat weird animals" (Wuhan may not be Beverley Hills, but the purchasing power of a typical resident is probably no different to that of a resident of Warsaw or Mexico City). As anyone who's had the misfortune to visit a market in Hong Kong or Taipei can confirm, the Chinese just have a fundamentally different view of what consttutes a food animal, regardless of government. (It works both ways; try serving cheese to someone from China and watch the expression on their face as they try to discreetly avoid touching it without causing offense.) Every country has some kind of food that disgusts the neighbors; if you ever visit France ask just what goes into a traditional Provençal salami. ‑ Iridescent 17:24, 3 April 2020 (UTC)
Casu marzu. But then, on the other hand, there is hotdish, which will just kill you in different ways than Giano's sweet and sour bat medium rare (via obesity). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:29, 3 April 2020 (UTC)
Signpost
Oh good god… Sometimes I think this website is losing its collective mind. ‑ Iridescent 14:11, 5 April 2020 (UTC)
It gets better. Graham Beards (aka Graham Colm)-- who I won't ping because the man is actually a physician who specializes in viruses and is on the front lines now, called out of retirement to help, and busy up to his eyeballs, and who actually KNOWS something about viruses, and actually KNOWS something about writing quality medical content (eg Introduction to viruses, rotavirus and more) and actually helped WRITE the core guidelines governing medical content and UNDERSTANDS Wikipedia policy and MEDRS guideline and whose actual views on the aforementioned "full-scale mass psychotic episode" are well worth knowing -- is not quoted at all in this response to that silliness,even though he is interviewed and reported by same media. Take that, Iri; 117-word sentence! When the Signpost overlooked Brianboulton's death, and I got such a horrific response when I inquired, I asked other FA-process people why they hadn't mentioned his death to the Signpost, I discovered in what regard the Signpost is held these days. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:00, 5 April 2020 (UTC)
Eeng, I see your sense of humour is right back on its nuts after the lapse during the Kablammo ship-gender episode! Welcome back! SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:31, 5 April 2020 (UTC)
I don't follow it avidly, but I get the feeling the only thing the current Signpost has in common with the Signpost of Tony1 or Kudpung is the name. This may be horribly unfair but when I look at it now, it gives the impression of being the private blog of a small handful of insiders, rather than having even the pretence of neutrality or accuracy. ‑ Iridescent 16:05, 5 April 2020 (UTC)
That was pretty much the feedback I got. But just in case we deceive ourselves, all was not rosy in the Tony1 days, either. How do you think the subject of this headline might have perceived it? If that's what you get when the writers are friends, holy moly, what will you get when they're not? Iri, put a sub-head somewhere in this section ... gettin' long. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:14, 5 April 2020 (UTC)
I can understand why you took offense at that headline, but I can't see any malice or ill-intent there. "The sun sets on…" is a fairly stock journalese phrase for "a lengthy period is coming to an end". I don't read "The sun sets for featured article delegate SandyGeorgia" as implying that you were dead or had left Wikipedia altogether, any more than I'd read "As the sun sets on Donald Trump's first term we look back at his successes and failures" as implying that Trump had died or resigned from office.
I had not revisited the discussion until you mentioned it. That was a painful read; the reminders of what a BunchASocks did to FAC still gives me a big ouch. And of course, there was much I couldn't say there and still wouldn't say, but recall one certain ex-arb EoTR effect. But you are correct; my issues then are trivial compared to what the Signpost has become today. Has it ever been to MFD? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:40, 7 April 2020 (UTC)
If you mean the Signpost itself, not as far as I'm aware (although individual pages have been). I imagine it would be a pointless exercise, as there are enough wannabees who wouldn't want to risk upsetting them for fear of adverse commentary in a RFA/Arbcom/Board run and would vote "keep" come what may, that they could fill every issue with photos of their editorial staff recreating goatse and a deletion discussion would still result as "no consensus". IIRC there was talk a few years ago about them taking the whole thing off-wiki as a kind of Wikipedia Review Mark II, to avoid being bound by Wikipedia and WMF policy, but it never came to anything. ‑ Iridescent 14:51, 7 April 2020 (UTC)
Which brings us back to the responses I got after Brianboulton's death, where I was told no one reads it anymore. Should I expect a sound beating when they report on the upcoming arbcase? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:01, 7 April 2020 (UTC)
This was surgical. ——SN54129 12:32, 11 April 2020 (UTC)
(for the benefit of confused TPWs, this is about this thread.) That's not the WMUK crowd (most of whom are decent people and will try to explain themselves when asked even if they disagree with you); that's the Wikidata crowd running their usual plays of covering each other's backs, posting "we're So Damn Important that policy doesn't apply to us and we're not obliged to explain ourselves to the peasants", claiming that whichever page the complaint has been made it (whatever it may be) is somehow "the wrong place", and when none of that works bombarding the discussion with walls of text, claiming that because they've posted more words than anyone else it constitutes "consensus". It's not the first time it's happened and it won't be the last. ‑ Iridescent 12:42, 11 April 2020 (UTC)
(Edit conflict, also I disagree somewhat regarding the WMUK and Wikidata crowd, they are very interconnected) Please, Mike Peel knows exactly what he was doing. Its now admin action, admin action reversed, so even if they wanted to no-one could reblock it (until it misbehaves again) due to WP:WHEEL. Its not a case of 'I disagree with this admin action' it was 'issue has resolved'. Except in the case of bots, there either has to be an indication the problem with the bot itself has been resolved (it hasnt), the task its running has been halted (it hasnt, since many people are using it), or the underlying data its using has been altered so it wont re-occur (can you get the theme here, no it hasnt). So no, problem with bot not resolved, bot has just been let loose to re-offend. And Mike Peel is not an amateur, he knows full well all of the above, the potential consequences, the relevant ENWP policies. So ignorance is not an excuse. And dont even get me started on the COI between the people complaining about it and their well documented attitude to NFCC and free knowledge in general. Only in death does duty end (talk) 12:44, 11 April 2020 (UTC)
Yes, wrt a COI, this and this is pretty transparent... ——SN54129 12:56, 11 April 2020 (UTC)
(edit conflict, re to OID) Other than Mike Peel, the only WMUK folk I'm aware of who have any particular connection to Wikidata are RexxS and POTW, neither of whom appears to have had any part in this particular incident. On your other points no argument from me; there are no legitimate circumstances when a Wikidata bot should ever be posting a non-free image (non-free images can only be used in articles and these bots are specifically banned from editing any part of an article other than in some cases the infobox data) and all those involved are perfectly well aware of this. However I have no particular desire to have the starring role in WP:FRAM 2.0 and nor I suspect do you. Either they'll quietly fix the bot in the background to prevent this happening again, or it will happen again in which case the existing thread has provided enough background that they can no longer play the "we didn't know it was an issue" card, and it will be Arbcom's problem not mine. (If you're not aware of the background here, this bot was written by the same guy who wrote MediaWiki; if we have to start dishing out desysops or community bans it will go right to the top because of the potential media interest.) ‑ Iridescent 12:58, 11 April 2020 (UTC)
AWB editing
Hello Iridescent, you have made over 1500 edits inside the last 2.5 hours, the majority of which appear to be bot like. Could you please slow down? Based on WP:AWBRULES, this is in conflict with numbers 2 (through high speed editing using AWB / WP:ASSISTED) and, in some cases, 4 (insignificant or inconsequential edits). --TheSandDoctorTalk 19:53, 9 April 2020 (UTC)
Just dropping by as a lot of these edits popped up in my watchlist - probably from my category work. Hitting speeds of 17 epm is a bit much. Combining that with 1500 edits in 2.5 hours is very bot-like. ~riley(talk) 19:57, 9 April 2020 (UTC)
No comment on the speed but I don't see how typo fixing is An edit that has no noticeable effect on the rendered page. "Curly" apostrophes and hyphens instead of endashes are both well-known MOS errors that need cleaning up. TheSandDoctor do you have any examples of these "insignificant and inconsequential edits"?-- P-K3 (talk) 20:35, 9 April 2020 (UTC)
@TheSandDoctor: You forgot to mention, accidentally I assume, that However merely editing quickly, particularly for a short time, is not by itself disruptive. Nuance, of course, but. ——SN54129 20:42, 9 April 2020 (UTC)
@Serial Number 54129: you are correct; however, the emphasis is on a short period of time. 2.5 hours is not what I would consider short. Please see full response below. I wasn't sure how to work this in and thought this response to you was best left as its own comment anyways. Apologies to Iridescent for the extra ping. --TheSandDoctorTalk 00:16, 10 April 2020 (UTC)
Then you should be able to point to that in policy, rather than as a personal consideration. ——SN54129 10:22, 10 April 2020 (UTC)
(edit conflict) They look bot-like, but they aren't—I am manually reviewing every one as I make them. They're dull but necessary, mainly standardising the format of en-dashes and apostrophes. It's a job that can't be left to a bot as only a human can spot the false-positives where curly-quotes or hyphenated number ranges are actually appropriate; the trouble is that this in turn means the "hide bot edits" watchlist option won't hide them. (They are all marked as minor, so "hide minor edits" will hide them.) I'm intentionally trying only to do a few from any one category at a time, to avoid flooding the watchlist of someone who has all the entries in a given category on their watchlist.
If you have any examples of my making an actual "insignificant or inconsequential edit"—which in this context has a specific meaning of An edit that has no noticeable effect on the rendered page—please point it out. There certainly shouldn't be; some things like standardising on en-dashes on pages which mix en-dashes and hyphens may look like they don't have a visible effect, particularly in a fixed-width edit window, but they definitely do. Likewise, if you have any evidence of my violating WP:MEATBOT—which again, in this context has a specific meaning of a) contrary to consensus or b) cause errors an attentive human would not make—please point it out. (I know I have made a couple of fat-finger mistakes in which I've accidentaly approved an incorrect edit, but AFAIK I've immediately reverted within seconds—example.) Unless policy has significantly changed, there's no maximum edit speed limit on human editors provided they pay attention to the edits they make, and ensure that they do not sacrifice quality in the pursuit of speed or quantity, both of which (I hope) I'm doing. ‑ Iridescent 20:42, 9 April 2020 (UTC)
I have struck out the #4 as you and Pawnkingthree make a good point in that respect. I believe that the most relevant section here is WP:ASSISTED ("semi-automated processes that operate at higher speeds, with a higher volume of edits, or with less human involvement are more likely to be treated as bots."), which is why I added a link to it above after making my initial comment. To be clear: I have nothing against your changes themselves and believe that they are, overall, "good". The issue I have is the high edit rate without a bot flag, which has the real potential of flood watchlists and recent changes (as was evidenced above), despite your mitigation efforts of doing a few from multiple categories. An entirely supervised bot account is not unusual and would mitigate all of the potential issues that Riley and myself have pointed out. However, if editing is done at slower speeds, the issues would be mitigated and a flag not required. --TheSandDoctorTalk 00:13, 10 April 2020 (UTC)
TheSandDoctor, has anyone actually complained? If no one has complained, that’s fairly good evidence that the lack of a flag isn’t an issue and that Iridescent’s editing is within policy. TonyBallioni (talk) 01:19, 10 April 2020 (UTC)
@TonyBallioni: Riley complained that his watchlist was flooded right at the top of this thread. --TheSandDoctorTalk 01:25, 10 April 2020 (UTC)
No he didn’t. He said he saw a lot of them on his watchlist after you raised the issue. That’s not the same as a sui generis complaint where someone is actually annoyed. Are there any actual complaints of someone asking Iridescent to stop? This run is newish, but he’s been running AWB to fix typos for years, and I suspect at the same rate. TonyBallioni (talk) 01:39, 10 April 2020 (UTC)
"Have there been complaints" seems to be the wrong approach. It's perfectly reasonable and understandable for a BAG member to raise concerns about unapproved bot activity (as a matter of policy, there is no distinction between "bot-like editing" and a literal bot). And his concern seems to be in line with the standards of "bot-like editing" that are articulated by the policy itself: "Editors who choose to use semi-automated tools to assist their editing should be aware that processes which operate at higher speeds, with a higher volume of edits, or with less human involvement are more likely to be treated as bots." Based on this, an extremely rapid semi-automated tool run, lasting hours and making 1500 edits is likely to be treated as bot-like editing. Why a leviathan semi-automated troll would be flagged by a member of the BAG as "bot-like editing" is obvious. Why the concern should be met with obstinance and hostility is not. Surely any reasonable editor could acknowledge the concerns, explain why they feel it should be allowed, and ask what the recommended course of action to alleviate the concerns are. I'm not saying Iridescent must submit entirely and bow down to TSD, but as a BAG member raising a concern in good faith, they should at least keep an open mind and be willing to accept feedback and negotiate their actions going forward, and not just aggressively reject his concerns. This goes beyond bot policy, into the collaborative nature of the project. ~Swarm~{sting} 03:40, 10 April 2020 (UTC)
I don’t want to speak for Iri, but I actually think his response was pretty open. This talk page can be a baptism of fire on stuff like this though if you haven’t posted here before by all the talk page stalkers.I commented because I get on well with both Iridescent and TSD and was trying to raise what seems to me to be question at the heart of what the bot policy is talking about in these cases: does the editing actually bother people? If yes and and it’s not just one or two, setting up a bot account or making changes might make sense. I don’t think anyone actually has complained though, and he’s been using AWB to fix typos in mainspace for a very long time. That’s what I’m getting at. Are we dealing with something that’s actually disrupting how people work, or are we talking about a theoretical disruption at some point in the future.I think everyone’s trying to be helpful here, but the bot policy doesn’t exactly speak in absolutes on this topic, so figuring out if there’s an actual complaint seems to be the starting point to see if there’s something with that issue that can be resolved. TonyBallioni (talk) 04:23, 10 April 2020 (UTC)
@Swarm, I'm struggling to see where any "obstinance and hostility" from me is, let alone "aggressively rejecting concerns". TheSandDoctor raised concerns; I explained what I was doing and pointed out that while something like this might look as a quick glance like it's not having any effect on the rendered page (and thus breaching the "insignificant and inconsequential edit" rule), it's actually bringing a non-compliant page into line with current practice; TSD agreed and struck the relevant part of the original post.
TSD also raised concerns regarding potential WP:MEATBOT violations, and I explained that WP:MEATBOT doesn't just mean 'working so quickly that an observer might say "wow, that's as fast as a bot"', but has a specific definition in the context of Wikipedia of "a) contrary to consensus or b) cause errors an attentive human would not make". Since cleaning up malformed formatting is obviously not contrary to consensus, and (as far as I know) I'm not making errors an attentive human would not make,* that also doesn't apply; again, TSD agreed with that. *I have made a few errors, but that's human nature and I'd be still be making the occasonal error—in fact, almost certainly more as there's more scope for mistyping—were I doing everything completely manually. Judging by the number of edits I make that are subsequently reverted, and doubling it on the assumption that not every page is being watched, at a very rough guesstimate my non-self-corrected error rate is probably somewhere around 1/10,000. It's certainly lower than the number of errors I'd be making were I trying to do the whole thing by hand.
I'm not someone who's just stepped off the boat; I was here for the original discussions that created WP:MEATBOT (they originated as a spinoff from the Town bot BRFA, continued here and were codified here), and the key line from the discussions was Xeno's "check[ed] each edit to make sure all are good" <-- In that case, you aren't the one being addressed with this policy., and I'm manually checking all of these as I make them. (When it comes to approving/rejecting edits made using AWB—and other semiautomated editing tools like the antivandalism revert-and-warn scripts—the limiting factor isn't the size of the article but the distribution of the proposed changes in diff view. An article with multiple potential changes spread across multiple paragraphs means scrolling through reviewing each one, and reviewing takes time. An article with only a single proposed change, or where all the changes are close enough together to be visible at once, is just a case of glancing at both sides of the diff window and saying "yes, that's a straightforward error" or "no, that's intentional" and the human review and decision to approve/reject can easily take no more than three or four seconds.)
That just leaves whether this should be done on a human or a bot-flagged account, and "excessive speed", as the two potential issues.
There are strong downsides to human editing (whether semi-automated or not) on a bot-flagged account unless the task is both absolutely routine and with no potential for controversy whatsoever, such as search-and-replacing every instance of a renamed template or category:
By hiding the edits from many people's watchlists it reduces the likelihood that people will spot it if and when the human does make an error;
It confuses other editors (particular newer editors) as to what is and isn't an appropriate task for a bot since they see the edits being made with a bot flag, don't realise there's human review of every edit, assume that unsupervised search-and-replace is acceptable on Wikipedia, and promptly find themselves warned or even blocked (I consistently reject roughly 1⁄3 of the proposed changes on a task like this);
It means that if while doing the routine search-and-replace one spots a typo, a piece of vandalism, or a factual error, one either makes a substantive edit using the bot account (very bad practice), or needs to come out of the bot account and into the human account to make the edit, then back again, wasting time. By the nature of AWB it fairly frequently spots typos or significant formatting errors in the course of doing other tasks, and log-out → log-into-main-account → make-the-edit → log-out → log-in-to-bot-account each time adds up very quickly;
Accounts with the bot flag aren't permitted to make talk or usertalk posts, meaning that if anyone raises a concern or just asks a question, it again entails the full log-out → log-into-main-account → make-the-edit → log-out → log-in-to-bot-account cycle each time, wasting the time of the "bot" editor, delaying a response to the person asking the question, and increasing the likelihood that the "bot" editor accidentaly forgets to switch accounts and either makes an inappropriate edit using the bot-flagged account, or inadvertently runs the script on their non-flagged account.
Given the obvious downsides of using a bot account for non-bot edits, I'd only consider doing so if there were evidence that working on a human account were actually causing issues. As TonyBallioni says, I've been doing this task on-and-off for 13 years now and to the best of my recollection this is the first time anyone has ever raised a concern (and people are not shy when it comes to telling me when they think I've done something wrong), so while I'm certainly willing to believe that watchlist flooding is an issue, I'm not yet convinced that it is. "1500 edits in 2.5 hours" sounds like a big number, but that's only a rate of 10 edits per minute, which compared to some of the other AWB regulars is practicallyglacial). ‑ Iridescent 10:01, 10 April 2020 (UTC)
Apropos of nothing, but some non-enwiki projects use a so-called "flood" flag instead of the "bot" flag for humans when they do some kind of mass edit that swamps recent changes. Same underlying user right but different name. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 10:11, 10 April 2020 (UTC)
The non-enwiki projects tend to have fewer editors and consequently fewer edits, and as such flooding recent changes is an actual issue. Here, it would be impossible for anyone other than the Mass Messaging script to flood recent changes even if they wanted to; at the time of writing (one of the quietest times of the day in editing terms, and during a public holiday so the edit rate will be even lower than usual) the 500 most recent non-bot-flagged edits stretch back only four minutes. An edit rate of 10 edits-per-minute is barely going to make a ripple in that. ‑ Iridescent 10:29, 10 April 2020 (UTC)
Regarding This talk page can be a baptism of fire on stuff like this though if you haven’t posted here before by all the talk page stalkers I think this is fair and I apologise for butting in, particularly as it resulted in edit-conflicting with Iridescent's reply. It would perhaps have been prudent to wait before the person being addressed had gotten their response in and this may have contributed to the sense of aggression that Swarm picked up on. (It's just that this subject is rather close to my heart as the amount of times overt the last 14 years I must have violated MOS:ENBETWEEN by lazily rendering a sumo wrestler's win/loss record as "10-5" instead of "10–5") I certainly appreciate this particular type of AWB run.)-- P-K3 (talk) 11:41, 10 April 2020 (UTC)
I wouldn't read your original comment as aggressive either. I agree about the 10-5 vs 10–5; it's something we all do and it's on the increase. Hardly anyone can remember the complicated rules of when to use en-dashes, em-dashes and hyphens, and the rise of tablets, smartphones and laptops just makes it more difficult even if one does remember the rules. (On a standard desktop computer if I want to insert an en-dash I know I can do alt-0150 on a PC or option-hyphen on a Mac; on a tablet if I want to insert an en-dash it means going to the bottom of the edit window, bringing up "insert" from the drop-down menu, and zooming in to squint at the options trying to discern on a tiny screen which is the en-dash, which is the em-dash and which is the minus sign. It's no wonder people say "screw it, a hyphen is good enough".) We also have the additional problem that Wikipedia is a stubborn holdout against curly quotes; thus, editors who are trying to be helpful and not flood an article with a string of minor edits will copy the paragraph in question into their favorite word processor, edit it there, and copy it back into the article as a single edit; unfortunately the word processor will try to be helpful and will convert the apostrophes and quote marks into "smart quotes", meaning that when the paragraph is pasted back in we're left with one paragraph using curly apostrophes in an article that otherwise uses straight apostrophes throughout. ‑ Iridescent 11:54, 10 April 2020 (UTC)
Thanks for the "alt-0150" tip – I do most substantial editing on desktop and that's preferable to changing the drop-down menu (which of course is always on "Latin" when I want it to be on "Wiki markup," and vice versa).-- P-K3 (talk) 12:26, 10 April 2020 (UTC)
If you're using a Mac, in System Preferences/Keyboard/Input Sources, check "Show Input menu in menu bar". Then at the right of your menu bar you should see an icon that looks like a tiny window showing a "Command" symbol. From there, "Show Keyboard Viewer" will display a little keyboard, which changes according to the combination of modifier keys you use. Look at the hyphen key, for example, as you hold shift, alt, and shift-alt. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 12:01, 11 April 2020 (UTC)
Saying that, that's using my desktop Mac running 10.11. I've just checked my MacBook on 10.15 and it doesn't work like that! Horror! Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 12:06, 11 April 2020 (UTC)
Aha, on 10.15, System Preferences/Keyboard/Keyboard and check "Show keyboard and emoji viewers in menu bar". Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 12:09, 11 April 2020 (UTC)
With Apple products (both computers and iphones/ipads), the other really useful and not very well documented trick is that if you press and hold a letter key, a pop-up will appear with all the variations on that character (so pressing and holding the s key will give options for ß, ś, and š), all of which are numbered and you just need to press the number (so o followed by 5 gives the œ character). This being Apple they won't make things too helpful, so it doesn't work for the hyphen key. ‑ Iridescent 13:34, 11 April 2020 (UTC)
YGM
Thanks for your talk page stalking-- YGM. By the way on the typo AWB thread above ... since I make so many typos, I just want to say a big thank you for frequently showing on my watchlist. I stayed out of the meta discussion, but I keep you busy! SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:02, 11 April 2020 (UTC)
Requesting help about creating a "free software" organization both community and company
Hi ! First thanks for observation of my page i'm searching Wikipedia help pages but i couldn't find a useful article. I want to create a page like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Hat which is about our free software efforts. Please let me know what information should be included in that official company page. And what format that i need to use. In the meantime i'm looking at the Red Hat Wikipedia page source code to understand how it is written to learn the Wikipedia page format.
Thanks for your help MertGor —Preceding undated comment added 11:05, 12 April 2020 (UTC)
MertGor, I'm assuming this is about Masscollabs(free software company) which I recently deleted? Our policies on which topics Wikipedia will cover are complicated, but can be summarised as "we only cover things which are already the subject of significant independent coverage elsewhere". In addition to this, when writing about a person, company or product we only say what independent sources have said about that topic, not what our article subjects have said about themselves.
It is theoretically possible for a new startup, that doesn't yet have a product on the market, to be "notable" in Wikipedia terms, but these are quite rare; they'll be companies with either very significant backers, or where their proposed product or service is considered so significant by independent sources, that the preparations for the launch themselves generate significant independent coverage. (We're talking something like SpaceX, where the personalities involved and the sums of money at stake meant significant independent coverage before they had a product on the market.) In all cases, the key phrases are "significant coverage" and "independent sources"; because Wikipedia doesn't engage in original research, the independent coverage needs to exist before it's potentially appropriate for a Wikipedia article.
(Incidentally, I'm not sure if you have any kind of connection to Masscollabs or if it's just a topic whicb interests you. If you're employed by them or connected to them in a significant way, while we don't expressly forbid writing about a topic with which you have a conflict of interest we very strongly discourage it—it's almost impossible to write neutrally about a topic with which you have a connection.)
Don't take the deletion of the article personally or as any kind of snub. The sheer size of Wikipedia's 50,057,954 pages can sometimes give the impression that we cover absolutely anything, but we actually have quite strict rules on what is and isn't included. As I said, startups and new tech products are very rarely appropriate for Wikipedia—at the same stage of their development we also deleted the articles on Twitter(twice) and iPhone(seven times!). ‑ Iridescent 14:21, 12 April 2020 (UTC)
Iridescent first thanks for clarification about Wikipedia rules I'll be happy if someone who is interested in our project (who is not in our community) writes "Masscollabs" article because i like Wikipedia to use and i want to contribute to it both for articles and the Wiki software. If i'm right / as i understand i should wait for someone to write that article who is outside our community. In the meantime i will create the official company (now we are a community enterprise like all free and open source communities like Trisquel GNU/Linux) and set all rules suchs as services , service level agreement text and code of conduct.
Thanks for your reply and help. I'm new to Wikipedia and an excited user but i will learn Wikipedia* deeply soon.
From the "our community", I'm taking it that you're connected to this site? If so, before you go any further at all read Wikipedia:Conflict of interest, in particular this section. If at all possible you shouldn't be editing a topic with which you're involved; if you do edit a topic with which you're involved, you need to declare your connection to the subject. To reiterate my earlier point, nobody (including you) can write about Masscollabs on Wikipedia unless and until you're able to source whatever goes in the Wikipedia article to independent sources. ‑ Iridescent 14:48, 12 April 2020 (UTC)
Iridescent Yes i'm the creator of the community and company project.I understand the process i read the articles. So it is time to work and wait for independent sources to be created. Sorry for taking your time and thanks for your help.
What the actual fuck? I assume this is an error; I've never added nor removed a drug price in my life, nor do I have any interest in drug pricing (my medical contributions have been on early teratological case studies, nothing related to current practice or issues). If Arbcom wants to list me as a party to this case Arbcom can do me the courtesy of explaining why. ‑ Iridescent 20:42, 7 April 2020 (UTC)
Yea, that's a mistake. You aren't listed as a party. Someone (not me) should get this fixed. You can look at the case page and see you are among the collapsed (non-party) respondents. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:48, 7 April 2020 (UTC)
Apologies. Used wrong template. You are not a party in this case. See the correct note below. Dreamy Jazz 🎷 talk to me | my contributions 20:49, 7 April 2020 (UTC)
Why do I get the feeling this start sums up how the rest of the case will go? Cases like this are why arbs burn out. ‑ Iridescent 20:54, 7 April 2020 (UTC)
Think like a theatre buff: a bad dress rehearsal = a good show. Things could get better. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:56, 7 April 2020 (UTC)
Well yeah, nothing's more likely to go well than a fourteen-party case in which one of the parties is on the WMF Board of Trustees, one is a WMF employee, one is on the board of the Wiki Project Med Foundation, one is currently serving a lengthy block for disruption on medical articles, one is a former arb, thirteen of the fourteen are Big Beasts who will each have a flock of supporters trying to do the legs of anyone the supporters think is giving a hard time to their guy/gal, all over an issue that 99% of readers don't care about, and all being held in a climate that's making people treat minor disagreements like huge deals. I supported the committee accepting this one, as the underlying bad feeling was making petty squabbles break out all over the place and the buck has to stop somewhere, but I'm under no illusions over how foul-tempered this one is going to be. ‑ Iridescent 21:10, 7 April 2020 (UTC)
Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:46, 7 April 2020 (UTC)
Iri, where are you getting a former arb out of the 14? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:01, 7 April 2020 (UTC)
D'oh. Thanks, 184; been here too long to remember it all. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:26, 7 April 2020 (UTC)
I’ve never noticed the stuffed bear in that cat picture. I quite like it. TonyBallioni (talk) 22:10, 7 April 2020 (UTC)
The bear's sensible. Hears of an arb case and sews its mouth up! ——SN54129 12:31, 8 April 2020 (UTC)
I like the cat best. Partly because it looks just like the calico (female by definition) of my youth, who disappeared from home and was never seen again when I went away to college. I guess her heart was broken by my abandonment. But mostly because she also has her mouth shut, but her eyes are optimistically looking forward, and she is sitting on a suitcase full of information. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:20, 8 April 2020 (UTC)
Meh. I get your point, but if we started cracking down on all the people who frantically canvass their buddies off-wiki to cover each other's asses when they sense a discussion isn't going their way, whole swathes of Wikipedia would be a wasteland. (You think all these people—on both sides—just happened to stumble across a discussion on a noticeboard that typically gets less than half the pageviews of my talk page?) At least the WPMED people are being (or at least, appear to be being) open about the fact that they're agreeing a party line and tag-teaming to try to create a fait accompli consensus before anyone else has the chance to respond; this is more than I can say for some processes like DYK reviewing, MOS disputes or even dare I say it FAC. ‑ Iridescent 19:45, 12 April 2020 (UTC)
Ah, but that suitcase! SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:47, 12 April 2020 (UTC)
Spam spam spam
I don't seen enough of the folks who watch this page at Talk:Gothic architecture, where there is an RFC, a split proposal, and assorted other needs for help. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:11, 14 April 2020 (UTC)
Our civility policy makes it difficult to explain exactly why people who've been round Wikipedia more than about five years or so are unlikely to want to touch that particular article with someone else's bargepole, so I'll just put this and this here. ‑ Iridescent 07:21, 15 April 2020 (UTC)
I don't especially think that's the problem. The article was written to a certain level around 2007, then largely left free of major edits for several years. A couple years ago, when the "main author" was away from WP (for about 5 years) two other editors started expanding it, more than doubling the size, which peaked around 199kb raw. Everybody now agrees its too large (most people being more bothered by this than me), and there have been some disagreements about fundamental points or how to express them, as well as what and how to split off. A new, highly agressive, editor has now appeared on the scene, has seen off the main author (currently again retired, which is a great pity) and is currently getting started on the remaining other editor. Those stats don't tell the full story - there have been many large recent edits switching in and out between different versions. I've hardly edited the article at all myself. Johnbod (talk) 12:42, 15 April 2020 (UTC)
Yes, comment on content not the contributor, but if they've really been "seen off by a new, highly aggressive, editor" then in all honesty my initial reaction is "now you know what it was like for everyone else". I know for certain there were at least two articles for which I wrote the bulk of the text which I deliberately unwatchlisted after losing patience with their "I demand you do everything my way" ramblings, and I can't imagine I'm alone. ‑ Iridescent 14:04, 15 April 2020 (UTC)
Gosh, I'd forgotten about the blasphemy uproar. Good times, yeah. EEng 16:02, 15 April 2020 (UTC)
I ... prefer not to remember the whole thing of the Middle Ages article. If there is one article and its talk page that has gotten me away from editing big topics again, it's that and the insane discussions about Bulgaria and the lead image. Sorry, Johnbd, but those discussions were almost enough to give folks PTSD. --Ealdgyth (talk) 15:08, 15 April 2020 (UTC)
And we wonder why folks throw their hands up and quit...
I Need Those Words; they should come in useful. Speaking up throwing up hands and quitting, Ealdgyth! (You were just pinged-- gasp-- to my page.) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:13, 13 April 2020 (UTC)
I specifically pointed to all the restrictions listed on the personal restrictions page... is this one Iri references not listed there? I swear, restrictions are enough to make me scream and throw a toddler tantrum. --Ealdgyth (talk) 19:19, 13 April 2020 (UTC)
It is listed, but it seems he only responded to the first of the 3 restrictions he is under. I've asked him to explain his position on his talk. Mdaniels5757 (talk) 19:23, 13 April 2020 (UTC)
You told me edit summaries were impossible to enforce. But when you have an editor who makes hundreds of (known) controversial bot-like edits, along with known controversial reverts, without edit summaries, or with deceptive edit summaries, can that be added to arb evidence? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:53, 13 April 2020 (UTC)
(e.c., re to SG) Personal opinion only; I'd think that it's impossible to enforce the use of edit summaries, since they're officially "good practice" rather than mandatory, but repeated violations of WP:SUMMARYNO could be taken as evidence of bad faith. Bear in mind that you're dealing with a dedicated wikilawyer here who's always taken the "if it's not specifically forbidden it means I can do whatever I want" line, so if he appeals his block, or immediately restarts the bot the moment the block expires, it will almost inevitably lead to a long and tedious case. ‑ Iridescent 20:12, 13 April 2020 (UTC)
There have been cases at AN/I over edit summaries. Basically because it wasnt that the editor wasnt using them, it was that they were not using them and the edits turned out to be deceptive in some fashion. Likewise marking as minor etc etc. Usually ends up with a block for the generic 'disruptive editing' which can be applied to absolutely anything if it annoys enough people. Only in death does duty end (talk) 20:19, 15 April 2020 (UTC)
Oh sure, misleading edit summaries can be taken as evidence of a pattern of behavior, particularly if it's obvious there's a deliberate attempt to mislead and not "shit, I forgot to change the pre-formatted edit summary I was pasting onto a run of 2000 identical edits once I finished with that task and moved on to something else, thanks for pointing it out". To the best of my knowledge the absence of edit summaries isn't enforceable—Edit summary is explicitly neither policy nor even guideline—although not using them is such poor practice that it can bite you hard in the ass if you ever apply for a position that requires trust. ‑ Iridescent 20:32, 15 April 2020 (UTC)
I've sort stopped using edit summaries, except (usually) in the mainspace. It was a technical change to the 2017WTE, actually. After years of me asking the Editing team to support previously used edit summaries, so I wouldn't have to re-type them, they made the change, but it somehow put me off using them. "Just what I asked for, but not what I want", I guess. I don't imagine that anyone's much hurt by getting no edit summary on talk pages instead of my traditional r or c, though. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:25, 17 April 2020 (UTC)
I don't think anyone cares about talk page edit summaries, although I think it's a good idea to use them everywhere to keep your mind in the habit, in the same way that I try to stay in the habit of following WP:ACCESS even on talkpages. Where edit summaries become a problem is when people use an anodyne summary like "tweak" or "clean up" to mask something potentially contentious. ‑ Iridescent 07:08, 17 April 2020 (UTC)
Oh, yes, some of them do: phab:T249391. I suppose that work-me ought to go analyze how often custom/non-boilerplate edit summaries happen on talk pages. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:47, 22 April 2020 (UTC)
DOB
I think there may be some misunderstanding. I don't have any issues with your sources. I was saying that the previous source provided for Kylie Minogue was unreliable and unacceptable. I have no objection to someone other than myself using a reliable source for the full DOB on a sufficiently famous person's article. I personally will not add the full date of birth to a living person's article on principle. I maintain that we must be very careful as this is not something we should normally be revealing. I don't want it to be normalised. - Chris.sherlock (talk) 09:11, 20 April 2020 (UTC)
I agree that with non-public figures who've given no indication they're happy for the public to know their personal details we should err on the side of not including someone's full date of birth, but that isn't the case here. Kylie is one of the most famous people in the world (on Google's auto-generated list at the top of a search for most famous Australian she's #4, ahead of Mel Gibson and Heath Ledger and behind only Nicole Kidman, Hugh Jackman and Cate Blanchett). Given that she released an album called Golden to mark her 50th birthday she's obviously not trying to conceal her age, and the risk of identity theft—the other typical reason we suppress exact dates of birth—obviously don't apply, since any fraudster giving their name as Kylie Minogue would be laughed out of the bank.
Looking at the Wikipedia pages for the ten most-searched-for living people on Google in 2019 (Antonio Brown, James Charles, Billie Eilish, Kevin Hart, R. Kelly, Neymar, Joaquin Phoenix, Jussie Smollett, Greta Thunberg, Jordyn Woods, if you wondered, and I agree there are some surprising omissions from that list), every one includes their birth date in the lead. WP:DOB isn't a blanket ban on publishing birthdays providing the birthdate can be sourced—which for people this famous will always be the case—it's advice to omit the date of birth if a subject complains about our inclusion of their date of birth, or the person is borderline notable.
On a skim through a few famous people off the top of my head whom I know to be secretive about their real-life identities (Deadmau5, Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo, Sia) Wikipedia nonetheless includes their dates of birth. Those privacy provisions in the BLP policy are aimed at singers who had one minor hit in 1983 and have spent the intervening 37 years running a hardware store in Buffalo, local elected officials who just scrape over the notability bar, actors who appeared in three flop movies and then got a job at a bank, or non-public figures who happen to be notable ex officio in Wikipedia terms owing to their jobs, not for people at the level of fame that mainstream publishers publish print biographies of them. ‑ Iridescent 2 13:34, 20 April 2020 (UTC)
I suspect as is common in BLP's) the BLP requirement for in-line citation meant it was just sourced to a convenient one, not the best one. A recurring problem with BLP's is that well-sourced information from the article is used without in-line citation somewhere, an editor demands in-line cite as per policy, and the first one available is picked. What happens then is someone quibbles over that, and it gets cite-spammed with 8 different ones. Sometimes these later get removed for over-cite (by a different editor) and we are back to the one less-than-perfect citation. I say 'problem' but its not so much a problem as a necessary outcome of the BLP policy that prevents in most circumstances badly cited information being hand-waved into articles. Ideally people would pick the best citation available, but thats just not always the case. Also ideally, when someone spots that something which is almost certainly available from reliable sources already in the article, they would read the references and cite it. But that requires a time dedication that many editors are not willing to commit to. You could be at that 100% of the time in BLP's and not make a dent.
Saying that, if someone proposed an amendment to the BLP stating only year of birth can be included in relevant living biographies, they would have my full support. For a living person the exact day and month is almost never relevant - people who release albums to mark their birthday and stuff like that being the exception - and their are legitimate identity concerns even for the really famous. Only in death does duty end (talk) 13:48, 20 April 2020 (UTC)
You;d be surprised how often the exact date of birth turns out to be potentially significant, even in cases where you wouldn't immediately expect it. Eligibility for 30 Under 30 and 40 under 40 awards (of which there are shedloads, as there are separate awards for different geographical areas and different industries within those areas) is an obvious one, and there's also a steady tick of "youngest ever to…" and "oldest ever to…" landmarks. In countries which have a statutory retirement age (which includes almost all English-speaking countries and hence the majority of Wikipedia's BLPs), that exact date becomes increasingly significant to many biographies as it draws near, plus tiny variations in dates of birth are disproportionately important in some other fields because of the variation in achievement depending on when in the academic year the child was born. (There's a fairly well-known study that proved that children in the oldest half of their class at school grow up to constitute something like 90% of professional sports players, for instance, which couldn't have been done if the only published data was the birthyear rather than the birthdate.)
As I'm fond of saying in many different contexts such as the "article importance" scales, notability discussions, and the whole wretched infobox-vs-lead and text-vs-data debates (and the WMF is fond of saying as well; WAID can no doubt pop up with the statistics on which parts of an article different readers look at, if you ask nicely), trying to second-guess which piece of information the reader is looking for when they visit any given article is a fool's game. We can talk at length on the cultural influence of the Rolling Stones, the details of their recording techniques, and their interpersonal relationships, but sometimes the readers just want to know if Mick is older than Keith. ‑ Iridescent 22:15, 20 April 2020 (UTC)
Actually, I don't think we have much at all on "which parts of an article different readers look at", other than how long the page is open, whether they hit on links or refs etc. All website average-time-spent-per-page times are incredibly short. People wanting to know when Stanley Baldwin was born/died/became prime minister is my standby example of what (and all) a large % of people want from WP. As reporters were/are trained to do, it's always best to assume they will only read the lead. Johnbod (talk) 22:23, 20 April 2020 (UTC)
Research:Which parts of an article do readers read has been marked as a draft for close to five years now, but they do still update it occasionally. The mobile site may be ugly and annoying, but the collapsed-sections-by-default and the need to scroll through makes it possible to track what people are looking at. (60% of mobile visitors don't uncollapse anything so only see the lead) There was some chatter on the topic on this talkpage a couple of years ago as a small subsection of a very long meandering thread. ‑ Iridescent 06:49, 21 April 2020 (UTC)
Thanks - both good stuff, which if I've seen previously I've forgotten. No need to adjust my views above from the first. Johnbod (talk) 11:37, 21 April 2020 (UTC)
Frequency of section expansion in the article Barack Obama
I imagine if they studied the traffic pattern on a dozen different articles, they'd get a dozen different answers. (This is already visible in the limited information they have published, where the reading pattern on Barack Obama doesn't follow the usual asymptotic drop through the article but instead clearly shows readers are skipping over the parts about his career as a senator and jumping straight to the meat-and-two-veg of his presidency and his personal life.) There are some topics like Thierry Henry where most readers will only be looking for a specific factlet like "which teams did he play for?" or "did he ever compete in the Olympics?"; there are some like Stanley Baldwin where some will only want to know what his term of office was or when he died but some will actually want a long essay on his achievements and failures; there are some like Actuary where the majority of readers probably are people who've heard the term but aren't sure what it means, and will probably be satisfied with just the lead; and there are some that are either so hyper-niche that the only people reading it are likely to be people who'll want to read the whole thing (Did You Hear What Happened to Charlotte King?) or broad concepts like Philosophy where it's impossible to summarise the topic in the lead so readership will largely be all-or-nothing. Plus of course there are those topics where we know readers are only likely to be interested in a single facet of the story, but WP:UNDUE means we're too polite to say so and consequently we have vast swathes of text which the readers ignore. (Most of our medical articles could safely be replaced with a four-question FAQ of "How do I avoid catching it?", "How do I know if I have it?", "How do I treat it?" and "How likely am I to die from it?" plus a link to the relevant health authorities in various countries, and nothing of value would be lost.) ‑ Iridescent 16:20, 21 April 2020 (UTC)
Solidarity lockdown munch
Serial Number 54129, "chocolate welshcakes" sounds so spectacularly revolting that "disgusting" wouldn't suffice and a new word will need to be invented. ‑ Iridescent 16:42, 23 April 2020 (UTC)
Actually, I could've sued 'em; my one only had three chocolate chips in. Perhaps's there's a COVID-due shortage. Even so, they weren't unpleasant, the plain one too. As a welshcake virgin, I'm not unimpressed. ——SN54129 17:30, 23 April 2020 (UTC)
If you want authentic Welsh things that are actually nicer than they look, dig out some laverbread and Glamorgan sausages, both of which look and smell like they've passed through a dog but are actually very nice and deserve to be better known than they are. ‑ Iridescent 17:33, 23 April 2020 (UTC)
Snarky Puppy Redirect
If there is no longer a link to Snarky Puppy Live At The Royal Albert Hall, what is the reason for a redirect page? The only link was in the Snarky Puppy Discography, and it has been corrected to the proper title, GWFrog (talk) 18:32, 19 April 2020 (UTC)
Huh? That's not the purpose of redirects (although "someone forgot to pipe the link in wikitext" is a secondary function); the point of redirects is so that if someone enters the name in the search box the software will take them to the correct page, and Snarky Puppy Live At The Royal Albert Hall is an eminently plausible search term; why would any reader expect that they need to type "Live at the Royal Albert Hall (Snarky Puppy album)"? (And they'd need to type it in full, given how many other articles we have called Live at the Royal Albert Hall.) If you disagree then RFD is over there, but "unnecessary" isn't and never has been a speedy deletion criterion. ‑ Iridescent 18:39, 19 April 2020 (UTC)
And yet I find that about fifteen editors have used "unnecessary" as their reason for supporting deletion in the current entries at RFD. Maybe RFD needs something like Template:Single-purpose account that says "Unnecessary is not a valid reason for deletion", "Unused in current versions of articles is not a valid reason for deletion", etc. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:05, 22 April 2020 (UTC)
Break: admin areas of interest over time
RfD is something of a mess at the moment; a few years ago it was virtually taken over by a single "eccentric character with strong personal opinions who was vocal in expressing his views when people disagreed with him", who managed to bully, intimidate, and just generally bore most of the participants away. He eventually got initially banned from RfD and shortly afterwards from Wikipedia altogether, but the previous participants had found other things to do with their time in the meantime, and the space hasn't yet been fully re-settled. Couple that with the general unenthusiasm among admins for closing deletion discussions—the constant bombardment with "how dare you not delete this you are OBVIOUSLY BIASED!!!" (completely non-random example) and "how dare you delete this you are obviously AN OBSESSIVE DELETIONIST" gets tiresome very quickly—and it's not surprising that RfD has become a bit of a mess.
If with your work hat on you're looking for something on which to spend some of the $101,932,698, then tracking what admins actually do and how that changes over time and between projects would be a genuinely useful exercise. (It could probably be done just by plotting the figures from all the old versions of User:JamesR/AdminStats.) I'd be willing to bet a reasonable sum that almost all newly-minted admins start off by heading over to XfD eager to start doing routine maintenance, but within a year almost all of them have become disgusted with the atmosphere there and have largely given up on it. If this is actually true it has obvious implications in terms of concentrating the gatekeeping in the hands of the handful of admins who do still regularly patrol deletion, something that can only be exacerbated by the disintegration of RFA and the lack of new blood to take their place. A sizeable proportion—arguably all—of the recent high-profile unpleasantnesses on Wikipedia have been some variation of "someone was doing something they shouldn't, but they'd been so active in that area for so long that casual observers assumed they must know what they're doing, and there were so few experienced editors working in their area that there was nobody in a position to call them out on it". ‑ Iridescent 21:52, 22 April 2020 (UTC)
User:Jmorgan (WMF) probably has some good ideas about how to study such things. Are you thinking that the key point is "Alice spent her first year doing XFD, and then stopped doing XFD"? Or "Alice spent her first year doing XFD, and then stopped doing anything"?
I have wondered whether encouraging a rotation would help: A bot invites Alice to spend the next week at MFD, Bob gets a day at ANI, you get a year at CCI, etc. When your sentence has been served invitation expires, then the bot can invite you to a different area. But maybe a more intentional, deeper engagement would be better: Alice invites Bob and Chris to spend several months training to be the next Lord High Coordinators of MFD. That could produce more stability, but less "average Joe tries to follow the written policy and common sense" effect. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:20, 23 April 2020 (UTC)
I'm thinking the key point is the former; "Alice spent her first year doing deletions, her second year doing blocks and protections, and all subsequent years either hanging round drama boards posting in-jokes and belittling new editors for not understanding obscure jargon, or settled into some hyper-specialist niche like WP:Requests to change the font on TimedText subtitle files where she's appointed herself the sole arbiter of policy". In the old days it didn't matter so much as we knew Bob was a year behind Alice in the cycle so would take up the slack, but the general malaise at RFA means Wikipedia is an army with a shedload of generals and a shrinking but still substantial number of privates, but no lieutenants or captains. I'm obviously basing all of this on anecdata—I have no intention of plotting each admin's activity in various areas as a set of 1144 separate time series—but I'm fairly sure I'm generally right, and I'm reasonably sure this is what has led to the current setup of little administrative fiefdoms where everyone is reluctant to challenge the self-appointed boss of that particular obscure administrative area. ‑ Iridescent 16:57, 23 April 2020 (UTC)
Belatedly, but to save reinventing the wheel: WereSpielChequers, Kudpung, when you were doing your big piles of adminship statistics was any analysis done of adminship activity after RFA, or were you only looking at the run-up to and immediate aftermath of RFA? My feeling is that newly-passed admins initially head straight for the deletion backlog; after six months to a year they largely abandon deletion and move on to AIV/RFPP and start handing out blocks and protections; and after a year or so of that they either largely stop using the admin tools and confine themselves to some permutation of content work, writing essays, and/or hanging round on noticeboards issuing pompous pronouncements, or carve themselves out a specialist niche as the go-to admin in one particular area after which they become virtually impossible to dislodge from that area because everyone assumes that because they know so much about that narrow niche, their personal opinions must be a reflection of policy even if they contradict the actual policy. However, this may be more a reflection of the people I've had the most contact with, rather than an accurate representation of Wikipedia as a whole. ‑ Iridescent 19:55, 26 April 2020 (UTC)
And there I wonder where I fit into that scheme... Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 20:18, 26 April 2020 (UTC)
I think you also need to account for time. People usually become more active on Wikipedia when they have excess free time: unemployed, first job out of school that has about 10 hours of work a week even though they pay you for 40 (🙋🏼♂️), being in high school or university and not having many friends, being retired, etc. As people move along with their lives and careers, the amount of time they have to devote to this project wanes so they can’t really be the all-rounder that’s needed to pass RfA these days and so people settle in. I got CU/OS around the time my life got more complicated because of changing careers and the associated education and so I settled into working in the privacy related areas of the site since there are less people who can do it and it requires a lot less work than finding books in academic libraries and using them for research on papal conclaves. That, and when you’re back in grad school the last thing you want to do in your free time is write more (or at least I didn’t...)Settling into that sort of behind the scenes role was a way for me to give back to a project I care about and whose mission I support while using my limited resources and energy in the way I thought/think would have the most impact. I suspect the “life evolves and here’s something I enjoy/am good at” factor plays a huge role in admin activity and areas of focus. TonyBallioni (talk) 22:43, 26 April 2020 (UTC)
Oh, that undoubtedly plays a part—my own editing pattern is largely dependent on how much real life is interfering. At the moment I'm doing virtually nothing that requires actual thinking, and in the past I've been virtually absent literally for years at a time. I still think that even taking all that into account there's a definite trend of admins initially starting off (understandably) in those areas where "is this action appropriate?" is generally relatively clear-cut (mainly deletion, but also some other routine maintenance type things like page renamings and DYK promotions), after that moving on to more complex things, and subsequently either moving on to broad-sweep meta issues, or busying themself in one particular arcane corner which after a certain time they appoint themself sole arbiter of.
Stereotypes generally exist for a reason, and "Legacy admin from ten years ago who doesn't actually do very much that's actually useful but nonetheless writes lengthy sermons on just why the people who are doing something that's actually useful are doing it wrong" (something I've been guilty of myself on occasion) and "Admin who does so much of the work in one particular area that the other people working that area insist they're indispensable thus and shouldn't be sanctioned despite their obvious obnoxiousness" are both very well-established Wikipedia archetypes and have been pretty much back to Bomis days. I certainly can't be bothered to go through and count (and "contentious" is subjective), but per my earlier comments on a quick skim of the recent history at WP:Arbitration Committee/Noticeboard I'd say at least half the contentious decisions (either cases or motions) in the last couple of years have been some variation on "an admin spent so much of their time in a particular niche they didn't notice they were gradually drifting away from consensus, but because they were so important in that niche nobody felt able to call them out before the shit hit the fan". ‑ Iridescent 23:20, 26 April 2020 (UTC)
Yeah, I'd agree with all that. I just think the last stage you reference has more to do with external factors than Wikipedia. A substantial portion of RfAs and/or functionary appointments in the last 5 or so years are from people roughly at the I've been out of school for 1 year and am bored out of my mind at my entry-level white collar job age. I think it's you or WAID who recently pointed out that our relatively stable activity level is less from new accounts and more from returning users. I'd suggest that people who create an account at 14 and return at 23 are likely a substantial portion of that population just from anecdotal experience and my familiarity of a lot of the bigger "new" personalities in this timeframe.If you figure it takes 1 yearish to RfA, then 2ish years to get to "meta or niche admin" stage, you're looking at around 26-28, which is when a lot of people go back to grad school or get promoted to a position that actually requires thought and where instead of sitting at the office hoping your boss doesn't realize there's not 40 hours of work for you to do actually have 45+ hours of work to accomplish. Both grad school and having a job without much downtime tend to make the meta/niche roles much more attractive. TonyBallioni (talk) 23:37, 26 April 2020 (UTC)
Thank feck for online solitaire packages :) ——SN54129 05:37, 27 April 2020 (UTC)
Age distribution of respondents to the WMF editor survey, 2011[6]
12–17 (13%)
18–21 (14%)
22–29 (26%)
30–39 (19%)
aged 40+ (28%)
We don't have decent demographic data; the WMF and some external researchers have done some limited surveys, but they've been of a self-selecting sample so what they're actually sampling is "the type of people who respond to surveys". I suspect that while variations of "I graduated and got a full time job for the first time" account for some of the lengthy absences it's a smaller proportion than you'd think. (Wikipedia isn't actually as young a place as its reputation suggests. Because younger editors tend to engage in more activities that draw attention, they're more likely to get noticed in the first place, and because younger editors are more likely to give a clear indication of their age—either directly or indirectly—they're more visible. For most editors one has very little indication of their age unless they choose to say or have posted a photo.) People who visit wiki-events are an equally self-selecting and not necessarily representative sample, but my experience of such events tends to mirror the WMF's figures from 2011 (see right).
If I had to speculate, I would say that "long disappearances" and "sudden returns" are more led by relationship status (when you're trying to impress your new girl/boyfriend you're unlikely to lead with "I spent four hours today arguing with a complete stranger at Talk:Eat Pussy over whether the disambiguation page should include a link to Cat meat!", but after you've been together a few years s/he will either have learned to be tolerant of your quirky habit, or will dump you and give you even more free time); by health (either ill-health forcing people away from Wikipedia for a few years, or ill-health reducing the capacity to pursue more active hobbies so one spends more time in sedentary hobbies like Wikipedia editing); by children and childcare issues; and above all, by retirement, unemployment, and people switching between full-time and part-time work.
Along with changes in admin activity patterns over time, an in depth anonymous survey of editors who've returned after long breaks asking why they left and why they came back would probably be a useful tool to try to stop people leaving and encourage people to come back. However, that would be quite time-consuming (the replies would need to be in the form of free-text so some poor intern would need to read everything rather than just tabulate a column of numbers). Courtesy ping to User:Whatamidoing (WMF) (in case User:WhatamIdoing hasn't already made her aware of this thread) who presumably would be the one to explain why it wouldn't be a sensible use of money. ‑ Iridescent 08:39, 27 April 2020 (UTC)
Is it just me, or does that pie chart assume there are no 17 year olds on Wiki(p|m)edia? Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 08:50, 27 April 2020 (UTC)
I took the legend from the "Age distribution" sidebar at Wikipedia:Wikipedians. Looking at the actual press release, the first slice is actually "12-17" not "under 17"; I've corrected it. ‑ Iridescent 09:00, 27 April 2020 (UTC)
2011 is a long time ago. I have been attending London meetups for over a decade, when I started I was one of the oldest present. More than ten years later there are often several people older than me. Wikipedia being a complete pig to edit on a smartphone, I am pretty sure that we are seeing the "Greying of the pedia", the community has been gaining pensioners rapidly while failing to recruit current teenagers. I'm pretty sure that the teenage admins we used to have have long ago graduated from university. I would not be surprised if none of our 500 or so admins were under 18 today. I doubt if 1% of our admins are currently teenagers. ϢereSpielChequers 14:30, 27 April 2020 (UTC)
It's been talked about, e.g., m:Grants:IdeaLab/Email inactive (formerly active) users with a survey on inactivity reasons. m:Research:Necromancy was looking at whether former editors could be re-activated via e-mail (answer: 99.7% no) and has been billed as a "why editors stop" study, but it doesn't seem to have done much beyond asking people to edit again. m:Research:Harassment survey 2015#Results says that some people quit editing (temporarily or permanently) in response to harassment. I've heard people claim that some newer editors stop because they have achieved their goals (e.g., wrote the definitive article about whatever their favorite thing is), and that some stop because their contributions get reverted so they think it's pointless. Volunteer-me's e-mail inbox says that editors quit when they finish school, get a job, get married, have kids, etc. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:03, 27 April 2020 (UTC)
One of the ideas from the 2009 strategy project was to survey the community, and one of the interesting things we learned from that survey was when we asked why people left a lot considered that they hadn't left. It is a pity that there has been a lack of research in this area, I'm assuming that like any longterm volunteer community the more open we are to people returning the more likely people will return. So things like automatic expiry of userrights without an easy return option aren't sensible. Talking to people who do return is always instructive, I like to think of us as a digital potting shed or allotment site, ready to welcome back the divorced, retired and redundant. It would be possible to survey returnees and ask them why they returned. Of course that only works when people return under the same username, lots have returned under new names. ϢereSpielChequers 20:56, 27 April 2020 (UTC)
WereSpielChequers, I’m not sure off-wiki events are that great a way of measuring editor population. In the United States, due in large part to geography, the local affiliates are pretty niche and only active in a meaningful way in major population centers. I lived in a state that has some of the more high-profile personalities on the project either resident in it or strongly connected to it. I went to a few off-wiki events to help out and I was the only person with more than 500 edits, and I was certainly the youngest. I’m not sure how it is in the U.K., but I think a large part of it here is the editors in their 20s-early 30s might as a group just don’t care about the off-wiki stuff. TonyBallioni (talk) 22:29, 27 April 2020 (UTC)
Off-wiki events aren't representative. By their nature they're more likely to be attended by people with fewer real life committments which skews the sample. The choice of venue skews the sample further; they're often held in pubs/bars which can discourage young people, lone women, and people who avoid places where alcohol is served (either through religious reasons or other personal reasons such as recovering addicts who want to avoid the temptation), and when they're held in more academic settings that in turn discourages a different group of people who don't feel comfortable in such an environment. For obvious reasons they tend to be in big cities or cities with a strong student presence, which distorts the sample further, and they'll disproportionately attract people who can afford to travel to them.
All that said, they can still be useful as a rough indicator of whether the project is stagnating. If one compares the photos from "WikiMeetup Fooville 2010" and "WikiMeetup Fooville 2020" and it's all the same faces, just ten years older, that's a reasonable indicator that Wikipedia is no longer attracting or at least retaining new blood. ‑ Iridescent 17:50, 29 April 2020 (UTC)
Arbitrary break
(EC) I've not done all that much analysis on areas of interest and career paths of admins. I've always taken it on trust that admins will at least start out in the area(s) they said they would in their RFAs, even though I didn't - I've barely touched AIV in all my time as an admin. One bit of research that I did with Kudpung and ScottyWong some years ago was in debunking a WMF claim on their promotional material that 30% of our top editors had started out as vandals. The truth was much more interesting, and possibly more embarrassing. The WMF had taken two stats, almost all blocks are for vandalism, and 30% of the thousand editors with the highest edit counts (as at about ten years ago) had at least something in their block log. On the principle that 1 and 1 makes eleven, the WMF had revealed part of their prejudice about the community. But of course most vandalism only accounts only get to do enough edits to count as a new user before they get indef blocked, the blocks among our most active editors were very different. The two most common reasons, about three quarters of the blocks were accidentally blocked self and accidentally blocked someone else - Kudpung might remember which accounted for half of the 30% and which for half of the remainder. Three of the lessons that I took from that episode were that the longer one edits here, the greater the chance of being accidentally blocked, a not insignificant proportion of our admins have made embarrassing mistakes, and that if you point out a WMF mistake quietly and diplomatically you are going to waste months of time - I don't use "badsites" but, the WMF pays more attention to them than they do to the community, so a short post there would have been a much more efficient use of my time. Simpler bits of research include looking at intervals between adminship and desysopping - a probationary period would not seem to make sense as the problem is more long term admins drifting away from community norms, there may even be a three year risk period. The other one I looked at was the "admins who get the tools and do nothing with them" meme that sometimes comes up at RFA. If you look at the admins who have near zero logged actions on adminstats three things jump out at you. The first is that lots of people who have never had admin rights have a handful of admin actions attributed to them. The second is that the adminstats data only goes back to December 2004 and there are a number of ancient admins who are down as doing almost nothing with the tools, but if you look at their talkpages from 2003 and thereabouts they clearly were active admins then; and there are a few exceptions such as admins who only had the bit for days or who only wanted it to maintain the spam filter. ϢereSpielChequers 14:22, 27 April 2020 (UTC)
There was neither an attempt nor intention during the research to make any analysis of what editors do after they get the bit. For those with successful RfAs, the effort was to AGF that they would do what they claimed were their reasons for wanting it. Over the years however, it becomes empirically clear that some were interested merely in the prestige of the position, or as I have said more than once: 'having something to brag about in the schoolyard'. I doubt that this fits for mature, retired academics in their 60s who just get on with the job of admining in all it entails, and doing a lot of outreach and other off-Wiki work (but they seem to be the ones that Arbcom is anxious to get rid of).
Anyone who knows how is welcome to do that research - I'm sure the results would prove very interesting if not directly useful. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 06:15, 28 April 2020 (UTC)
From experience, it's easy for an admin to say they want the tools so they can do a given task, but then hardly ever do it. Sometimes it's not until you have the tools and try to do something that you realise you don't find it interesting and go do something else instead. Sometimes, the task ceases to exist; I had the intention of primarily cleaning up the torrent of stubs—back then Wikipedia was less than a third of its current size and the number of active editors was rising faster than the number of articles, and it was still possible to think in terms of "cleaning up everything"—but New Page Patrol made "hovering over Special:NewPages zapping the spam as it came in" largely redundant. (I wonder how an RFA that answered "What admin work do you intend to take part in?" with "To be honest, probably not a lot" would fare nowadays.)
I do think that in general regardless of what someone wanted the tools for, they'll tend to follow the "straight for the deletion backlog, and after that on to blocking and protecting" path. It's why at RFA, even in the cases of people who say they only want it for a single specialist use like editing the WP:DYK queue or amending full-protected templates, temperament is still generally the primary concern; we have too much emperical experience of admins who decide that having sysop=1 makes them into the wiki-sheriff. ‑ Iridescent 18:06, 29 April 2020 (UTC)
TPS question on revert notifications
Iri and TPS, what kind of revert triggers a notification to the user being reverted, and alternately, what kind of partial revert or edit is done to avoid notification to the reverted editor? I understand Rollback, so no need to go there. I don't understand the other tools (Twinkle, etc), and I don't understand if partial reverts trigger an alert. (Yes, in spite of 15 years of editing ... I do know how FAC and FAR work, though!) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:59, 15 April 2020 (UTC)
As far as I know, rollback doesn't trigger a notification, while the Mediawiki "undo" and Twinkle "restore this version" and "undo changes" do, but I may be wrong. I assume (just because I can't see any technical way the software could detect it) that manually reverting—that is, opening the old version, copying the wikitext, and then editing the current version and overwriting it with a paste of the old text—wouldn't trigger a notification. All methods will obviously still show up in watchlists. The official documentation is at mw:Help:Notifications ‑ Iridescent 15:17, 15 April 2020 (UTC)
Dunno if it's directly relevant, under Preferences>Notifications>Edit revert you can check/uncheck as to whether you want to be notified every time you are reverted. Even by email, if you happen to have an empty email account and want it spammed to bits :) ——SN54129 15:23, 15 April 2020 (UTC)
Agreed; given that it doesn't always work nobody should be relying on it anyway, and it just causes unnecessary stress when you see that "your edit was reverted!" pop up since it's almost invariably something like an en-dash you fixed four years ago. Anything you actually feel strongly enough about that you might want to edit-war on it, just watchlist it. If someone were in a position to actually get changes made (for instance, if there's a Community Relations Specialist, Contributors Product who happens to be watching this page) one of the simplest ways to reduce the general shittiness of Wikipedia with no real downside would be to have that checkbox disabled by default or even make the option to switch it on admin-only. ‑ Iridescent 20:14, 15 April 2020 (UTC)
I think I said once that making revert-notifications-off the default would reduce the overall decibel level substantially. Like you said, If you care about an article you should care enough to take note of all changes to it, not just get a warning flare when your change got reverted. EEng 21:19, 15 April 2020 (UTC)
The grand old gentleman of WPMED who first and best welcomed me was User:Encephalon, and his advice then held me in good stead for many years. He said something like, "As long as you never edit war, you'll be fine", and explained it was a bright line. (Now I know it is not.) I did a revert once last month, in the midst of an edit war, when I was in … complete shock and disbelief at what I was seeing. Miss that Encephalon influence! SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:35, 15 April 2020 (UTC)
Hmmmm ... thanks ... but all that leaves me nowhere. I will try to dig around and come up with an example, to better hone in on the question. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:34, 15 April 2020 (UTC)
If you want to test the effect of a particular action, probably the easiest thing to do is make a bunch of sandbox edits, log out and undo the edits by various methods, log back in and see which ones have generated a "your edit was reverted" notification. If this is for the purpose of evidence at the arb case (something along the lines of "well, User:Foo must have been aware because this generates a ping), work on the assumption that nothing generates a notification, since you can't ever assume that it's been delivered—this is why we insist that people posting complaints at the noticeboards manually notify whoever they're discussing. If you're asking how to edit a page while reducing the likelihood of someone else noticing, then the only certain way is to use the "edit" button and take the offending edit out manually. ‑ Iridescent 15:41, 15 April 2020 (UTC)
While perhaps replacing it, if possible, with something else of the same size...zero-kb changed ;) ——SN54129 15:44, 15 April 2020 (UTC)
Iri, I suspect your final sentence is in play, but will have to test that myself, I guess. I assume "take the offending edit out manually" has the same effect as "add back in the preferred text-- that others had removed-- manually"? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:53, 15 April 2020 (UTC)
Yes, or open the old version from the page history, copy the wikitext, and then edit the article and paste the wikitext in. There are perfectly legitimate reasons to do this, as if you're only partially undoing an edit this is generally easier than undoing it completely then trying to reconstruct it, so if you've seen someone doing it it's not necessarily evidence of anything untoward. ‑ Iridescent 16:04, 15 April 2020 (UTC)
Ok, yes. That. Not implying that it is untoward, but demonstrating that the reverted editors may not even know they were reverted. Related to no use of edit summaries. Would that be a correct statement? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:15, 15 April 2020 (UTC)
Yes; other than actually leaving some form of "I have reverted you" message, or when the reverted editor responds to it so has shown themselves aware, there's no way to prove that any given editor is aware of any given revert, regardless of what mechanism was used to perform the revert. The software is glitchy so it may never have been delivered, the reverted editor may have notifications turned off, the reverted editor may have muted the reverting editor, or they may just not have checked their notifications for a while. (If you don't mark notifications as "read" and allow the count to reach 99—which isn't that uncommon, particularly if you've made a bulk change to lots of articles and someone has undone a lot of them—the software starts acting goofy; it doesn't like three-digit numbers.) ‑ Iridescent 16:21, 15 April 2020 (UTC)
OK, overall then, I am going to stop worrying about this issue; it is the editor who was reverted responsibility to follow that. I do wish we could do something about misleading and missing edit summaries, particularly on edits known to be controversial. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:31, 15 April 2020 (UTC)
Both undo and rollback produce notifications (see mw:Notifications#Features). IPs never see these and I think that brand-new editors don't, either. The defaults were determined in consultation with The Community™. I doubt that we could get them changed here with anything less than a local RFC.
AFAIK nobody has compared the use of the Undo button before and after this feature was released. I keep wishing that someone would make a list of ideas for grad students. Figuring out whether experienced editors used the Undo/Rollback buttons to revert other experienced editors less, and plain old edits that 'just happened' to match a previous version more, should be on the list. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:14, 17 April 2020 (UTC)
Yup, just tried edit-warring with myself using a sock account and I can confirm that the vanilla rollback button does generate a notification.
As regards figuring out whether people are consciously trying to subvert notifications, then presuming the WMF still has the raw submission data for each edit stored you wouldn't need to pore over everyone's history manually; just check the proportion of edits that have wpUndidRevision flagged and see if there's a sudden unexpected jump.
Were the current defaults definitely determined by The Community, or just decided by the devs? From those parts of the Help talk:Notifications archives I managed to skim through before my eyes started glazing over, the only place I can see this being discussed was The revert notification encourages edit-warring, consider removing or modifying it which was a discussion about whether the function should exist at all, rather than as to whether it should be opt-in or opt-out. (With a certain inevitability, one of the people who was most vocally in favor of revert notifications is now under an indefinite partial-block from the entire article space owing to inappropriate mass reversion.) ‑ Iridescent 07:42, 17 April 2020 (UTC)
Can't find it now, but there was once a long, long discussion of changing the bull-angering-red little square-with-number-in-it to a more soothing color. Came to nothing in the end, of course. EEng 12:23, 17 April 2020 (UTC)
Personally I tend to use Twinkle for reverting more than one edit, opening and saving an old revision when I do a partial revert, undo for when a rollback isn't the correct move. For what it's worth I keep revert notifications, so that I can check when people are unilaterally reverting AFD closes or if I make a bad edit. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 08:15, 17 April 2020 (UTC)
I'm not (and I assume EEng isn't) disputing that there are circumstances where revert notifications are useful. (For instance, I always make sure they're switched on before I do any kind of semi-automated search-and-replace run; if I see an edit I've made being reverted it acts as an early-warning system that what I'm doing is potentially contentious and I should double-check it, although in practice it invariably turns out to be that my edit was correct and someone has misunderstood the diff and thus restores spelling mistakes and/or mangled grammar.) All that we're suggesting is that instead of the current situation, where "Notify me when someone reverts an edit I made, by using the undo or rollback tool" is active by default unless and until the editor chooses to turn it off, it be made off by default unless and until the editor chooses to turn it on. ‑ Iridescent 08:32, 17 April 2020 (UTC)
Multiple responses: regarding poring over someone's edit history, proving to be quite impossible with the tools not working for the last three days, and the added complication of deficient use of edit summaries. Jo-Jo, where/how do you keep these revert notifications? The need to go back and discover ten years' worth of diffs is daunting, yet they can't be saved onwiki. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:59, 17 April 2020 (UTC)
New notifications appear on Special:Notifications, which you can set to show read notifications, unread ones, or both. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 15:06, 17 April 2020 (UTC)
Ah, thanks Jo-Jo; now I understand. But that will only get you reverts of your own edits, which is not the issue I am dealing with. Bst, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:26, 17 April 2020 (UTC)
Are you trying to generate a list of all the reverts someone else has performed? Go to their contribution history, click the "Search for contributions" box at the top to bring up the search options, enter mw-undo (for "undo") or mw-rollback (for rollbacks) in the "tag filter" box, and click the blue "Search" botton—e.g. this is every edit you've made that's been tagged as an undo. ‑ Iridescent 15:44, 17 April 2020 (UTC)
OMG. It just gets worse and worse. I did not know of this use of the search. I am not sure whether to thank you or not :( Rollback is ONLY for clear-cut vandalism, right? (Although so many of us hit the rollback button by mistake and then have to revert ourselves, so those have to be individually examined.) And, back to the original problem I raised: this only detected undo or rollback, not other kinds of reverts, and ... lack of edit summaries. Too Much Work. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:01, 17 April 2020 (UTC)
It will detect anything made using the "undo" button or any equivalent (such as the "restore this version" button in Twinkle), regardless of whether or not an edit summary was used (the undo tag is added by the software even if the edit summary is blank). In theory an admin can remove the "undo" tag from an edit but it will show in that admin's log, and I imagine anyone doing so without very good reason like fixing a bug would be called out on it very quickly. "Rollback" is for clear-cut vandalism (or for cleaning up your own mistakes) only, "undo" is a revert for any other reason. ‑ Iridescent 16:09, 17 April 2020 (UTC)
(adding) As a belated addendum to the above about rollback, see also Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Ryulong#Rollback, which created a precedent for an additional exception to the "only for vandalism, your own edits, or on your own userpage" rollback policy. Provided it's publicly explained why the rollback tool was used, it's permitted to use the rollback tool to undo mass edits (my emphasis) even if they were made in good faith and don't constitute vandalism. (The classic example would be one of those editors who doesn't understand the difference between American and British spelling, and search-and-replaces every instance of "centre", "realise" etc on hundreds of pages. Provided it was explained to them why they were being reverted, it would be considered acceptable to use rollback on all the edits even though the individual edit summaries wouldn't explain why the edits were being reverted.) ‑ Iridescent 10:24, 18 April 2020 (UTC)
Quantifying edit summary use is pretty easy: Go to https://xtools.wmflabs.org/editsummary/en.wikipedia.org/SandyGeorgia and wait (and wait and wait) for it to load, and then you almost give up and say that you already knew that SandyGeorgia uses edit summaries anyway, when it finally confesses that she'd used edit summaries on 100% of her last 150 major and 150 minor edits, and on 99.7% of all edits ever.
As for getting good edit summaries, phab:T54859 might be an interesting starting point. Maybe it's something to keep in mind if the m:Community Wishlist happens this year. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:59, 22 April 2020 (UTC)
Does that Community Wishlist actually have any effect? I always assumed it was the WMF equivalent of giving a child a toy steering wheel so they can pretend to drive the car, and that the devs work on whatever they want to work on and on the occasion that it happens to correspond with something that was supported in the public vote, they claim it as a win for democracy. (Otherwise, where's my dark mode toggle, my cross-wiki watchlist, my default global gadget set, the auto-archiving of external links, named references in VE, multiproject article alerts…) ‑ Iridescent 22:06, 22 April 2020 (UTC)
They promise to "address" the top 10 vote-getters. The others get a Phab task but usually nothing else; for example, reviving m:Crosswatch was #29 at m:Community Wishlist Survey 2019/Results and will therefore not be fulfilled by the WMF (although a volunteer dev asked for a grant to do something similar).
On average, I think about eight happen, and approximately one is declined in some fashion ("too big for this program" seems to be the most common reason), and another one they start but don't get finished (maybe doing something useful, but not everything). Most of the wishes are fullfilled by the jack-of-all-trades Community Tech team, and a couple get parceled out to others, especially the Editing team. There is a bit of "happens to correspond with something"; one year, everyone voted for the Wishlist to do something in the next fiscal year that Editing had already planned for the current fiscal year. However, that's not intentional, and whenever they're noticed, those wishes are usually removed from the wishlist before voting starts or at least get a note that the WMF plans to do that work anyway.
About the top 10, they're not "supposed" to be done with the 2019 wishlist items for another several months, but they spent so much time on New Page Patrolling that they were running late on everything, and now everything's delayed even further because of pandemic-related disruptions, plus they just hired a couple of new folks (with the unavoidable short-term productivity hit that entails). So it should be coming, but probably not by the normal 30 June 2020 target date. (Work-me sees that PM most Mondays, so ping me if there's a particular project you'd like an update on.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:04, 23 April 2020 (UTC)
Cross-wiki watchlist is the only significant change I can think of that I'd actually be interested in seeing (oh, and maybe "get VE and Wikitext references working together properly"); most of the top-10 proposals in any given year are fairly anodyne tinkering since anything complicated gets opposition. Since that's been an outstanding Phab task since—er—September 2005 (and a top-5 vote-winner in 2015), I'm not holding my breath. ‑ Iridescent 16:25, 23 April 2020 (UTC)
WhatamIdoing... they spent so much time on New Page Patrolling ... - that's their own fault entirely. NPP is a crucial, major operation. The community wish list was designed as a forum to request improvement or accessories that would be 'cool' to have, but NPP is not some convenience gadget of the kind you might buy to stick on your dashboard in the hope it will make your car go faster - the makers of modern motor cars have mostly thought of everything anyway, but the attitude of the WMF is, well, no longer modern despite its bold claims of being progressive.
Those concerned with NPP and its importance as en.Wiki's fundamental process and only firewall against irrelevant and totally inappropriate new pages in mainspace, have been pleading with the WMF for a decade for a dedicated team of devs to address what is an on-going task. But no, a self-important mid level dev insisted time and time again that anything to do with NPP should be requested from Santa at the Xmas bid for candy, and deliberately blocked any other avenues of appeal for work on NPP.
The result was that the community finally got their way with ACTRIAL which proved once again that the WMF is often disasterously wrong, and got their way with NPP by ensuring that it topped the table at the Wishlist. Perhaps you (and anyone else who is following) should read this seminal essay which was basically an open letter to the WMF, and which led towards breaking the impasse: New Page Patrol - a necessary evil . Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:18, 28 April 2020 (UTC)
What should be relatively easy to do is to identify the areas of admin work, see who currently are the most active admins there (for example who edits the request pages most), and check when they got the flag.--Ymblanter (talk) 07:56, 28 April 2020 (UTC)
A lot of admin work leaves no trace on any central pages, like request pages. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 08:09, 28 April 2020 (UTC)
Kudpung, I agree that it's a self-inflicted injury. If the rule is going to be that "wishes" have to be small enough for that team to address in about a month, then the rule should be the same for everyone. This would have meant splitting the multi-part NPP request into many normal-sized individual items, instead of one omnibus item. But instead of doing that, they decided to take on an outsized "wish" for the English Wikipedia's New Page Patrol plus the usual number of normal-sized wishes. They're paying for their decision now, with a disrupted schedule (and we all are, too, with half as many wishes happening in the coming year's work and none unrelated to Wikisource). WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:37, 28 April 2020 (UTC)
I'd agree with you (WAID) if this were the WMF of 2007, but that's not really the case any more. From the whole way the wishlist setup is structured, I sometimes get the impression that the WMF is still in the mindset of the old days, where whether or not any given proposal got implemented was largely a function of whether a developer thought it looked interesting and whether an enthusiast for that particular change was good at lobbying and was friends with the right people.
Back then, the "we focused on NPP so that meant nothing else got done" argument made sense. The same isn't the case nowadays. The WMF's cash reserves alone—not including investments, property, and restricted cash—are currently over $100 million, and rising by $30 million a year. If the WMF wants to go ahead with ten, fifty, a hundred changes simultaneously, they're in a position to hire as many programmers and testers as necessary (or persuade Google, Facebook or Microsoft to send them on secondment) to get it done. The real purpose of the annual wishlist isn't as a mechanism to ration out scarce resources to where they'll do the most good, but as a mechanism to judge whether any given proposal is actually something that has broad support, or just something that there's no enthusiasm for but which has a handful of very vocal supporters. ‑ Iridescent 17:37, 29 April 2020 (UTC)
But you also know that no dev team is infinitely expandable. So long as the Wishlist remains the territory of a single team, then the capacity of that single team limits what they can do.
You also know that organizations can't grow above a certain rate without pain, and the WMF has been at that point a couple of times. "As many programmers and testers as necessary" is achievable long-term but not short-term. So in between now and that magical future, "more Wishlist" is basically synonymous with "less other stuff", and I don't see a lot of people lining up to say that the projects they're personally involved in (e.g., new editor retention, research, multimedia) should be cut so that there could be more resources available for the Wishlist. In fact, I see a lot more people saying that the Stewards ought to get what they need, or that Commons has been neglected, or that map support is needed everywhere, than saying that the best prioritization system is to let partially informed and sometimes heavily canvassed editors decide, by popular vote, more of what ought to happen. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:15, 29 April 2020 (UTC)
Oh, it's not infinitely expandable—and we wouldn't want it infinitely expandable, since aside from a few lunatic-fringe types who fap to the Agile Manifesto, the wiki communities are fairly conservative and don't want to have to integrate multiple simultaneous cultural and design changes simultaneously. My issue is more with the idea that NPP somehow derailed every other improvement—it might have been a big project but it was still ultimately only one project. If there's one thing we learned from Lila, it's that the WMF has the resources and the ability to throw an unlimited amount of time and money to throw at a problem when it happens to be someone's pet project, without derailing or unduly disrupting everyone else's workflow. ‑ Iridescent 07:03, 30 April 2020 (UTC)
Draft:Legende WoW-a
Hello. You just removed my CSD:G3 from the draft. You don't belive that "Soon a decade will come, when the peak of the new WoW expansion, the game is joined by one of the best paladins of this game ever. It is an unknown Balkan player with a clever name; MirsoCetnik. Maybe satirical, or just like any other Balkan resident; buzovan. Somewhere, the more powerful paladin never stepped on Azerot." is a hoax draft? MistyGraceWhite (talk) 08:01, 30 April 2020 (UTC)
Certainly not; WP:G3 isn't a generally catch-all for "I don't think this page is appropriate for Wikipedia", but has a very specific meaning. This is fairly clearly someone trying to write about World of Warcraft gaming; it may well be a violation of WP:NOTWEBHOST, but that doesn't make it a hoax. (Because of the instructions we now give to new editors, it's not at all unusual for material a new account intended for their userpage to end up inadvertently as an article draft.) I note that despite your template-bombing User talk:AurelijeBalkanski with three separate templates, you've not made the slightest attempt to ask them what they're trying to do or explain to them what is and isn't appropriate and that we strongly discourage non-English text even in user/draft space. ‑ Iridescent 08:10, 30 April 2020 (UTC)
Just want to say
Reading your talk page archives has been perhaps the most helpful resource in terms of understanding how the community has changed these past years and what the current zeitgeist is. Your knowledge and insight into issues past and present is a breath of fresh air. Sometimes you'll mention an old discussion or a long-gone user and I'll have an Obi-Wan Kenobi "Now that's a name I haven't heard in a long time" moment. I knew there was a reason I named you an awesome Wikipedian 11 years ago.
I've been trying to catch up on years of being a hermit by reading policies, RFA/Bs (and crat chats), ArbCom cases, and other sundry major discussions, and it's been a real bear. I think about how on the Wikipedia article it says right underneath a big fat {{update-section}} that "Various Wikipedians have criticized Wikipedia's large and growing regulation, which includes more than fifty policies and nearly 150,000 words as of 2014." Zoinks. I would really love to see what the numbers are 6 years later. bibliomaniac15 05:29, 30 April 2020 (UTC)
In many ways, I think this talk page is an ideal model for what a Wikipedia talk page should be. It's definitely one of my favorite talk pages (the characters! the drama! the monologues!) and it often acts as a good portal to other zany parts of the wiki world. --MZMcBride (talk) 06:45, 30 April 2020 (UTC)
Thanks to both… Every so often I look through my old archives, and my main reaction—other than "wow, I could be pretentious sometimes back then"—is the same as yours; either "wow, I'd completely forgotten that name" or "huh, I can't believe I ever thought that particular issue was significant". Policies and guidelines are still too bloated, but not as bloated as they could have been. It's at least theoretically possible to read and remember every entry at Wikipedia:List of policies, and while it's not possible for a sane person to read and remember everything at Wikipedia:List of guidelines and its subpages, it's still possible for someone to at least remember where the best place to look is when one needs to know. (Some of the "Wikipedia has a million words of instructions!" criticism IMO misses the mark. A lot of those pages are things like Wikipedia:Event coordinator and Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Snooker which 99.9% of editors can completely ignore, and which the 0.1% are going to be well aware of, but where it's nonetheless useful to have things down in writing rather than relying on consensus and precedent.) Despite the bloat in written instructions, IMO the old "Assume good faith / Don't be a dick / Ignore all rules" WP:TRIFECTA still applies. ‑ Iridescent 06:54, 30 April 2020 (UTC)
Thirding this. I've always skimmed it when I was around, but did a deep dive on my return-ish of late. All conversations seemed to touch here at some point so it was an easy way to follow out to longer reads without having to fully wade through the drama of the AN boards yet still access key info/updates. I had a personal chuckle at the recent thread about AWB edits. One of yours was an edit to a town I used to live in 20+ years ago. I also know you were involved with my rename and why it is in no way reflective of where I live. Thanks for this resource. I also still miss WP:ANK days. StarM 20:01, 30 April 2020 (UTC)
As far as I know Keeper is still around, he just mostly edits from an IP these days to avoid people pestering him. He was one of the Great Old Ones who briefly emerged from hibernation on the edit summary thread a couple of years ago (as were you). ‑ Iridescent 20:24, 30 April 2020 (UTC)
Paradigm overflow sewer
I recently ran into the delicious (?) notion of a paradigm overflow sewer, which apparently is an actual thing (e.g. [7]). It seems to me that there are parts of the Wikipedia/Wikimedia world which might usefully be described as paradigm overflow sewers, and thought you might want to add to your rhetorical toolbox for use at the appropriate moment. EEng 14:33, 3 May 2020 (UTC)
I watched them build that thing, and never once heard it called "paradigm overflow sewer". It's just a fancy way of saying "connect the sewage treatment plants so if one is full the inbound traffic gets diverted someplace else to be treated, instead of either backing up or being dumped into the river". I don't know how much you know about the civil engineering history of London, but for some reason the sewage engineers have always been incapable of talking about any aspect of the sewage system in normal terms; everything is "palatial" or "monumental". (We're not just talking about Eminent Victorians either; this is Bazalgette Tunnel Ltd's current website, and they still talk like they're colonising Mars rather than trying to find ways to pump megatons of shit into the North Sea more cheaply.)
If you want a hot tip for our very own paradigm overflow sewer, I hotly tip Wikipedia:Village pump (WMF), which seems to be being earmarked as a future autonomous free port of Meta on Wikipedia's territory. ‑ Iridescent 14:55, 3 May 2020 (UTC)
Well to be fair, a lot of those projects were truly monumental. EEng 16:11, 3 May 2020 (UTC)
You declined CSD A7 twice on Saturday. What was the credible claim of significance or importance I missed?--Dewritech (talk) 12:17, 4 May 2020 (UTC)
(talk page watcher) Being a US restaurant chain in a country where the US was, only a generation earlier, less than popular to say the least...? SERIAL# 12:32, 4 May 2020 (UTC)
Also, Today, Roadster Diner is one of the leading food chains in Lebanon and has numerous locations all around the country. is a claim of importance. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 14:05, 4 May 2020 (UTC)
(Article now moved—I think incorrectly but it's not something over which it's worth edit-warring—to Draft:Roadster Diner, if any TPW is wondering what this is about.) As JJE says, Roadster Diner is one of the leading food chains in Lebanon and has numerous locations all around the country is a credible claim of significance by any reasonable measure. As per Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion#A7. No indication of importance (people, animals, organizations, web content, events)—which are written in very carefully worded detail that was the result of (literally) years of discussion—there's no way this qualifies for deletion under A7.
If you can demonstrate that the claim is false, it could theoretically be deleted under WP:G3 as a hoax, but that particular set of circumstances (the claim is simultaneously plausible on its face, but so self-evidently a hoax that the conclusion can't be disputed) almost never arises, and an admin who invoked that particular clause more than once or twice a year would likely be desysopped fairly quickly in the new climate. (This kind of behaviour was the primary factor in the defenestration of RHaworth; this isn't just an academic debate but a fundamental issue, since every inappropriate deletion tagging potentially results in a legitimate editor resigning in disgust.)
Speedy deletion tagging is (explicitly, and this is written Wikipedia policy) only to be applied in the most obvious cases. If there's any possibility that a reasonable editor could potentially feel deletion was inappropriate, then except in a few exceptional circumstances like Neelix redirects, speedy tagging isn't appropriate. ‑ Iridescent 19:25, 4 May 2020 (UTC)
Your edit summary drew me here to read this section, and parts of your concise and understandable reply should certainly either become part of a new essay or a major portion of the existing language. Laying things out as clearly as A-B-C in well-written English seems essay worthy. Randy Kryn (talk) 19:32, 4 May 2020 (UTC)
Most of it already is part of the existing policies. People just dont read them properly. The lack of understanding around what the speedy deletion policy allows and what editors (who tag under it) think it allows is depressingly large. And thats one of the more explicitly and simply written policies. Personally I think it comes down to a basic lack of knowledge of what certain words mean when used in a sentence. Only in death does duty end (talk) 13:51, 5 May 2020 (UTC)
Thanks for your answers. Those unspecific filler words like leading or numerous sound quite different to me than the sample claims given at WP:CCOS (President, first cricketer, debuted at #5 or invention won). Almost everything or everyone is leading or numerous in some respect. But if consensus is different, I will follow it.--Dewritech (talk) 11:02, 7 May 2020 (UTC)
For what it's worth, I tend to think of WP:A7 as being aimed largely at things like "Mary Clegg is the prettiest girl in our class", or "My mates and I have started a band in our basement". That is, things that are clearly, blatantly, and unambiguously nowhere near important enough to be worthy of an encyclopedia article. The bar to clear is described as a lower standard than notability, but I keep seeing people edging it more and more towards notability than has ever been intended. If I have to stop and think "Is it possible this *could* be sufficiently important?", that's enough to turn me away from nominating for A7 (or to have me decline an A7 on the rare occasions I can be bothered getting caught up in it). Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 11:14, 7 May 2020 (UTC)
What Boing said. Speedy deletion isn't for cases where you think the article is biased or puffy—it's explicitly only to be used in the case of pages that are so obviously inappropriate for Wikipedia that they have no chance of surviving a deletion discussion. (This isn't some obscure policy you have to hunt around to find; it's a verbatim quote from Wikipedia:Deletion policy.) If there's any realistic possibility that the topic could be a viable Wikipedia article, and there's at least one revision in the history of the page that isn't so irredeemably spammy it would require a fundamental rewrite to become encyclopedic, then except in the case of copyright violations and (in some cases) pages where the only editor is a banned editor, then by definition it can't be tagged for speedy deletion. ‑ Iridescent 2 16:41, 8 May 2020 (UTC)
Note re question
Hi Iridiscent. I appreciate your note to me at Village Pump. I understood that you were posing a question to me, and I provided a response, which I hope was responsive and helpful. also, you stated that I "feel this constant need to propose grand redesigns of Wikipedia and constantly act like the only opinions of any value are those of people who agree with you." I am not aware of any area or venue that I am acting in that manner in any way at the present time, or at any time in any edit over recent weeks. In any future interactions, I would appreciate if we could please address each other in a positive and constructive manner, and avoid any personal comments, or any comments on individual actions that are tangential to the current topic, and obviously seek to observe WP:Civil in every respect. I do sincerely appreciate and respect your desire to make Wikipedia a better place. If you reply here, please ping me. thanks. ---Sm8900★ 🌎 23:06, 3 May 2020 (UTC)
Moxy has already explained it to you in that thread with If you haven't garnered any support from your previous four post about the same thing last week and the week before .....perhaps best to assume support is simply lacking, but I'll put it more bluntly. When you make a proposal, it's rejected, and you keep coming back with slight variations on the same proposal, you're insulting every other participant on whichever board you propose something on, by repeatedly expecting them to read proposals that you know have little support.
If you were a new editor we'd be making allowances—sometimes people do come in with ideas for reform and try to push them overenthusiastically, and sometimes new editors aren't familiar with Wikipedia's rules—but as you know this isn't the case here. You've been here only seven months less than me so you can't play the "I didn't understand how things work" card, and it's only a couple of months ago that you were engaged in this exact same disruption to such an extent that admins were seriously considering blocking you as an apparent compromised account (I note that at the time of writing WP:HISTORYstill includes your self-appointed position as the boss of Wikipedia's historical coverage, incidentally). The only reason you weren't sanctioned then was that you made explicit promises to abide by the restrictions proposed by Nick Moyes—and yes, those restrictions did include the just to stick to content creation and normal editing for a while … and to cease with the 'grand ideas' and problem-solving for a bit to which you're now pretending you never agreed. ‑ Iridescent 19:25, 4 May 2020 (UTC)
Oh no, not again. I am so, so sad, so really sad to have to be sucked back into these ridiculous and will-sapping interactions with Sm8900. Honestly, mate, you need to learn when to drop the stick. Forgive me for being so personal - but is it an OCD/ADHD thing that makes you so obsessive and pedantic? If it is, please just tell us and help us to understand and support you. If not - put bluntly, stop annoying the community with you proposals, wikilawyering and weasel-words. Yes, you did irrefutably undertake to me to stop all of this rubbish. You said, when I proposed how you should ease off and stop annoying everyone else with your well-meaning but misguided attempts to improve all of our lives: "I will be happy to adopt every single one of them.". Just stop, please. Go back to basic editing and content creation. Your passive-aggressive demands that we all treat you politely have now rather worn thin, and you need to stop. Right now. Make no more proposals for change; don't say stuff like "oh, I agree, you're quite right; thank you; I won't do it again" but then just carry on in almost exactly the same way as before, albeit with a slight change of emphasis whilst demanding we are polite and courteous with you. Just stop. Stop! Please re-promise from now on to focus entirely on editing article content, and to stop expending everyone else's time with your well-meaning but misguided, off-beam and seemingly unwanted proposals for change. It's become like a person poking a stick into a wound to try and make things better. Stop it now, or the community might wish to step in to stop you. Will you agree to simply edit article content and stay off other project pages and from making proposals for change for the next 12 months? It seems it might have come to "Edit content, or edit nothing at all. Period." Sorry, but I think it's now time that you need to choose which direction you go in, and another visit to WP:ANI might decide what happens next. Nick Moyes (talk) 23:50, 4 May 2020 (UTC)
you didn't give me a time period before. if you want me to agree to a time frame, I can accept that. I would like to discuss the details. can we please discuss at your talk page, Nick Moyes? I will post a message there. thanks. ---Sm8900★ 🌎 23:57, 4 May 2020 (UTC)
Hi Nick Moyes. Since you and I had interacted directly at this page in this section above, I just wanted to thank you again here, for your help at your talk page, in reaching a positive new accord and understanding, to enable us to move forward in a positive way.
Hi Iridescent. I just wanted to let you know that in connection with the points, issues, and concerns that you raised above, I had an extensive discussion with Nick Moyes about some valid ways to address these concerns, and to find some new ways to reach a new positive understanding on ways to address this positively. Based on this, I have agreed to at least a two-week hiatus in making any new proposals. you might find it helpful and informative to view the specific details on the new accord that we were able to reach; this discussion clarifies and updates the prior discussion on this; in other words, this provides new clarifications, modifications, and update to any understandings and points previously made on this set of issues. I hope that is helpful.
you are welcome to view the full discussion and new understandings, at the talk page section User talk:Nick Moyes#New accord and understandings. I hope that is helpful. I appreciate your help. thanks!! --Sm8900 (talk) 18:00, 7 May 2020 (UTC)
Honestly, there's no need to have a long discussion. Literally all these walls of text can be summed up as "please don't waste other people's time unnecessarily"; as long as you're not doing that, there's no problem. ‑ Iridescent 2 16:47, 8 May 2020 (UTC)
Troubling edsum
Hi there, I got your name from "recently active admins". I just noticed a troubling edit here on the James O Brian page. The two edits at 17:33 inserted and then immediately deleted innuendo on a BLP article, but repeated the assertion in the edsum. The intent was apparently to create a non revertible edsum about the page subject. I am not really sure how this is dealt with. Grateful for your guidance on the matter. I have watched your page should you wish to reply to me here. -- Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 17:46, 16 March 2020 (UTC)
ETA - not to worry. Just went back to the page after writing this and see another admin has already blocked the editor in question. -- Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 17:48, 16 March 2020 (UTC)
I've revdeleted the relevant content, although this looks to me just like juvenile vandalism rather than genuine defamation. In future, you're much more likely to get a response for this kind of thing at WP:AIV. ‑ Iridescent 17:49, 16 March 2020 (UTC)
Great, thanks and thanks for the pointer. -- Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 17:51, 16 March 2020 (UTC)
I wonder if this kind of juvenile vandalism will increase or decrease now, with the coronavirus shutting down more and more countries' education systems. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 17:56, 16 March 2020 (UTC)
Other than an (expected) dip at Christmas when people have better things to do, the IP edit rate and the new editor registration rate barely twitch during the school holidays, so probably not as much as you'd think. What I'd imagine we will see is a slight uptick in the activity of existing editors who are sitting at home with nothing else to do. (In a worst-case scenario we're looking at a genuine cultural change as older people and people with existing medical conditions are both disproportionately represented on Wikipedia and those are the two groups who would be worst-affected if the virus isn't contained, but in the worst-case scenario we'll all have more to worry about than the internal politics of a website.) ‑ Iridescent 18:08, 16 March 2020 (UTC)
There's actually more juvenile vandalism when people are in school (probably because they are bored and also looking stuff up on Wikipedia for school) than in the summer, as can be seen from anti-vandalism filterhits. I think there might be a increase in vandalism now because a lot of kids are probably stuck at home and bored. Galobtter (pingó mió) 19:19, 16 March 2020 (UTC)
Reply, having slept on it
What we are likely to see soon is a massive uptick in petty arguments, edit-wars and (much as I hate to use the word) incivility. Social distancing measures are presumably going to reduce the scope for people to say "I'm getting unduly upset by this argument that ultimately isn't of much importance, I'm going out for a drink/meal/movie/walk to calm down", while simultaneously people are going to be under hugely increased real-world stress. It's not just the "will I get sick?" worry; there's also the financial implications of global recession and job insecurity, having bored children sent home from school with nowhere to take them to tire them out, being locked in a house with family with no way to get away from arguments, and the psychological impact of a constant drip of doom-and-gloom from the media.
It's obviously not a decision that's mine to make unilaterally, but for the duration I think we should ensure that WP:Civility#Blocking for incivility is actually applied as written, in particular Civility blocks should be for obvious and uncontentious reasons, because an editor has stepped over the line in a manner nearly all editors can see, and we should start clamping down on admins (and Arbcoms) who play civility cop. By all means we need to continue to have standards, but we equally need to recognise that these are not normal times; that taking away someone's hobby at such a time potentially has a major impact on them; that people under stress sometimes say and do things they don't really mean; that when someone is acting erratically we don't know what else is going on in their life; and that except in the most egregious cases, we should be talking to the people involved—privately if necessary—before we start throwing blocks and bans around, and we should collectively start taking Assume Good Faith even more seriously than usual. In the current environment, those admins and editors who pride themselves on their zero tolerance approach and lack of empathy are an active liability. ‑ Iridescent 10:44, 17 March 2020 (UTC)
I sat through a presentation last week that said movement-wide, the new editor retention rate is flat. It's flat because it's up almost everywhere except here, but down here (also at dewiki and plwiki), and our losses balance out their gains. Enwiki's current growth in active editors comes primarily from the re-activation of old accounts (the number of active registered editors has gone up every month since December 2018). I'd therefore add "an uptick in people who know how Wikipedia used to work" to your list of predictable changes during the next few months. I wonder what they'll think of what they find these days. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 00:26, 24 March 2020 (UTC)
The March figures haven't been released yet so we're not seeing the impact of the UK, CA and NY lockdowns yet, but up to a couple of weeks ago the active editor rate wan't showing any variation other than the usual weekday/weekend cycle. Now the schools have closed in most English-speaking countries I assume the figures for en-wiki are going to start to shift quite rapidly and the existing editors are going to be increasingly stressed (anecdotally, there already seems to be a significant rise in people overreacting to really trivial things). ‑ Iridescent 09:14, 24 March 2020 (UTC)
(I was talking about the movement-wide numbers, not enwiki-only numbers. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:30, 14 April 2020 (UTC))
Probably also this one. I think I was being a little too tetchy there...probably due an apology in the future (once I have figured out what to do with this). Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 20:56, 2 April 2020 (UTC)
I don't think you're being unduly tetchy—that's some industrial-grade asshattery going on there, and I'd have lost patience roughly five lines in when the reviewer was demanding you use Oxford commas. Reviewers like that are why I no longer submit anything to GAN and either jump straight to FAC or leave it unreviewed; because of the single-reviewer model, GAN means playing Russian Roulette with reasonable editors in five of the chambers and a self-important fuckwit in the sixth. ‑ Iridescent 21:09, 2 April 2020 (UTC)
I liked GA back in the day, but it got less fun when Geometry guy wasn't around. I don't bother with any of those processes now. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:30, 14 April 2020 (UTC)
This may just be selection bias on my part (because I'm now largely uninvolved other than my annual "skin in the game" FAC nomination and occasionally commenting on reviews if people ask me to have a look at something, I usually only notice GAC/FAC when something goes wrong), but I get the general feeling that GA lost its mojo when Geometry Guy and Malleus abandoned it. The knowledge that at any point one of them could appear and berate a bad reviewer served as a brake on the mutual back-scratching and the reviewers who didn't understand the criteria. Now, it gives the impression of being a mix of friends reviewing and promoting each other's work DYK-style, and of being infested with reviewers who invent their own non-existent criteria and insist article authors comply with their personal stylistic preferences.
When it comes to FAC, there seems to be some kind of "conservation of crazy" principle in place. The people involved keep changing but at any given time there always seems to be one nutcase who wanders around the nominations making ridiculous demands and generally poisoning the atmosphere, and it's a matter of pure pot luck whether any given nomination draws their attention or not.
I do think there's still a role for FAC or an equivalent "which are the best articles?" process going forward, as a way of generating and updating a set of examples of Wikipedia getting things right. With the whole WP:1.0 scheme now long-abandoned, I'm not convinced there's any longer a point to any of the rest of the assessment scale which just serves as a massive distraction to editors. (Yes, I know Internet-in-a-Box is offical dogma, but I'm not in the least convinced. We'd be serving "that girl in Africa who can save the lives of hundreds of thousands of people around her, but only if she's empowered with the knowledge to do so" and her community considerably better if, instead of giving her a portable wi-fi hotspot linked to a memory card containing a database dump which will go out of date within minutes, we paid the bill for a communal phone line and router or a tethered cellphone/mobile hotspot, or arranged for the installation of a BGAN terminal.) No reader ever said "wow, this article is reasonably well-written with a defined structure and no obvious omissions or inaccuracies!"; either the page contains whatever information they're looking for, or it doesn't. The outdated and confusing stub–start–C–B–G–A–F scale could IMO be replaced with "inadequate–adequate–high-quality" as the only divisions, and nothing of value would be lost. ‑ Iridescent 08:30, 16 April 2020 (UTC)
"one nutcase who wanders around the nominations making ridiculous demands and generally poisoning the atmosphere". Yeah, I've seen a few of those float through the process in the 8 or 9 years I spent putting articles through. A few people drop out from FAC each time another one makes ill-judged and idiotic comments. Plus ca change, I guess. – SchroCat (talk) 08:45, 16 April 2020 (UTC)
(Sorry, only just noticed this.) I don't think it's a problem unique to FAC; you see this at any process which is likely to attract Mrs Tiggywinkle types. There's generally at least one of them hanging around the Manual of Style at any given time, and all the active noticeboards tend to have a few lurkers who remain silent unless an opportunity arises to push whatever agenda they're trying to promote. ‑ Iridescent 09:28, 30 April 2020 (UTC)
Side observation
I just realized that diffs have sums. Huh. Never thought of that. EEng 23:17, 3 May 2020 (UTC)
And breaks are to assist with linking. ‑ Iridescent 09:05, 10 May 2020 (UTC)
We insert section breaks in threads to allow people to use them as anchors for links (as well as their secondary purposes of avoid scrolling in edit windows and separating off sidetracks), but to link is the opposite of… never mind. ‑ Iridescent 14:35, 10 May 2020 (UTC)
Must be like the roof joke. EEng 15:29, 10 May 2020 (UTC)
Bert Hesse
I am new to wikipedia and am not sure why my page about Bert Hesse was deleted. There was an old page about him but mine had eternal references/links. Can you restore it to my sandbox so I can work on it more and learn the rules about posting it?
Michelle2w (talk) 15:55, 23 April 2020 (UTC) Michelle2w
Michelle2w, it's definitely not appropriate for the Wikipedia article-space as it stands, but I've restored it to your userspace at User:Michelle2w/Bert Hesse to allow you to work on it. Basically, you need to show that he's notable in Wikipedia's terms; that is, we're only interested in what sources independent of the subject have to say about him. Thus, we can't use material sourced to Studio South Holdings, or to the websites of books or movies connected to him. (For different reasons, we can't use IMDB as a source on Wikipedia at all except in very limited circumstances. They're a user-generated site, so we can't assume anything published there is accurate.) What you need to do is find independent sources (e.g. Variety, The Stage and similar publications), and only include such material as you can source to these independent sources; only then can we determine if he's notable in Wikipedia's terms.
Also, I don't know if you're writing this because you find him interesting or if you're being paid by him to write it; from the tone of the article ("As asset managers, we coordinate the various aspects of the entertainment industry in locations where we operate" etc) it sounds like you're an employee of his. While we do allow people to edit on behalf of their employers, you need to declare the financial relationship, and if you're connected with him in any way you need to read this page before you go any further. ‑ Iridescent 16:38, 23 April 2020 (UTC)
IridescentIridescent I haven't had time to go over the page. Can you restore it to my sandbox so I have a chance to change it? Is there a time limit to make the change? Also, I couldn't tell who deleted it. I am just getting started with Wikipedia. Thanks.
Michelle2w —Preceding undated comment added 18:02, 17 May 2020 (UTC)
Michelle2w, see my reply above; I've already restored it to your user space to allow you to work on it, at User:Michelle2w/Bert Hesse. There's no formal time limit as such—there are people who have years-old draft articles in their userspace—but if it becomes obvious that you're not going to work on it (say, if it goes for a matter of months) someone right re-tag it for deletion. Note my comments above regarding the need for you to declare any conflict of interest you might have. ‑ Iridescent 18:20, 18 May 2020 (UTC)
Divine Comedy
May have been better for this one to add some references rather than delete it. It's a reasonably popular regional troupe. Something to consider in the future at least, peace! Rogerdpack (talk) 01:25, 20 May 2020 (UTC)
That's not how Wikipedia works; if you're claiming something meets Wikipedia's notability requirements—particularly something two-a-penny like a student society—the onus is on you to demonstrate that it's the topic of significant coverage in multiple independent reliable sources. A vague claim that they're the second hit in google when you search for 'divine comedy', after wikipedia itself (for one-would-hope-obvious reasons, they're not even in the first hundred Google hits on divine comedy and while that's the point at which I gave up looking, I strongly suspect they're not in the first thousand), and a total of three sources two of which are the subject's own website and the third is only the most tangential of passing mentions in the local student paper, don't qualify. There are examples like Footlights or the Harvard Glee Club of student performing societies that are notable in Wikipedia terms, but there are upwards of 4000 universities and colleges in the US alone, most of which have multiple such groups, so this is not a topic where there's any presumption of notability.
The issues on the page were tagged since October 2015 with regards to notability concerns and since September 2017 with regards to the lack of citations; this isn't a case of those nasty Wikipedia admins failing to allow a good-faith editor enough time to put an issue right. Speedy deletion is only for articles that have no chance of surviving a deletion discussion, and I'd be more than willing to restore it into draftspace or userspace if you think you could source this and demonstrate notability to a point where it would have at least a slight chance of surviving a deletion debate, but I won't do so unless you genuinely feel you can bring this to a point where it meets Wikipedia standards, as otherwise I'd just be wasting the time of whoever had to delete it second time around. ‑ Iridescent 08:19, 20 May 2020 (UTC)
O font of institutional knowledge
A birdy who shall remain nameless was asking me if there was any community discussion about revdeling block logs. As the source of all Wikipedia institutional knowledge, I'm punting to you. TonyBallioni (talk) 01:23, 21 May 2020 (UTC)
The principle that there are grounds in which it's morally acceptable to revdelete a block log was established at Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Giano#Giano II 2 back in 2006—that comes with the caveat that it was an exceptional set of circumstances (an admin had maliciously put "hate speech" as the block reason, and it was considered unfair to leave that visible to anyone). That was before "revision deletion" was a software function, and it entailed the WMF devs amending the database.
When the ability for admins to delete revisions was considered in 2009, there was discussion (mainly at Wikipedia talk:Revision deletion/Archive 1#Community consultation and elsewhere on that page) about which powers the new userright should cover (it's probably easiest to crtl-f for "log" and resd the whole page). The revision deletion policy was mainly FT2's work so he may know of other discussions. I would assume there was also similar discussion on the oversighter mailing list when the ability to oversight logs was rolled out.
There was a lot of discussion in 2010–11 regarding how to handle bad blocks, prompted by an appeal from Malleus (as he was then), who felt he was being judged unfairly because he had a long block log, even though many of the blocks had been promptly promptly overturned as inappropriate. (I honestly can't remember where the discussions took place, and searching the admin noticeboards for "Malleus" is going to be a fool's errand.) The consensus was always that we shouldn't redact the logs except in the case of serious abuse like doxxing someone in the edit summary, since if an admin were making bad blocks it was necesary to have the evidence of those bad blocks visible so as to build a case against them.
In early 2011 there was internal discussion on the Arbcom mailing list on whether we should request the devs add an asymmetric editing feature, such that the log entries would still be visible in the admin's log, but not that of the blocked editor. Nothing ever came of it.
There was a proposal in 2016 to make block logs editable. As a meta proposal it probably wouldn't have come into force at en-wiki even if implemented, as we have a consistent local consensus against it, but in any event it didn't take off. At about the same time there was a local RFC on block log redaction which died on the vine from lack of input.
In late 2017–early 2018 in the wake of this block, there was some very heated discussion on the blocked editor's talkpage which subsequently spilled over onto mine, which may be why you're thinking of me in the context of block log redaction. That discussion was framed in terms of whether redacting a block log would be a valid invocation of WP:IAR rather than in terms of changing policy; the whole thing was rendered moot when it became clear that aside from a couple of the blocked editor's friends, there was general agreement that the block had been within the bounds of legitimate discretion so there wasn't anything to discuss.
As far as I can recall that's all of them, but I was away for big chunks of the 2010s so there may be others I missed; enough people watch this talkpage that someone will presumably pop in with any I've missed. If you have an account at Wikipediocracy it might be worth asking there—for obvious reasons a lot of the people who were most disgruntled about their block logs ended up on Wikipedia Review venting about it, and people like Somey and Greg are generally quite good at remembering that kind of thing. ‑ Iridescent 07:27, 21 May 2020 (UTC)
Why can't the usual "hide this revision" box not just be checked, I wonder? It would hide the block from the great unwashed at ANI, while allowing Administrators to see the full log and weigh it accordingly? serial # 09:16, 21 May 2020 (UTC)
Probably because the Administrators can misread a block log in the same way as non-Administrators? Besides, the main point is that policy doesn't really allow this, not that it's technically impossible. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 10:07, 21 May 2020 (UTC)
See [8],[9] for what started this. serial # 10:47, 21 May 2020 (UTC)
If the issue is Fram's block of GorillaWarfare, then you've illustrated just why there's such vocal opposition to allowing block log redaction. In the absence of my asymmetric-log proposal of 2011 being adopted, then hiding the block from GW's log would also mean it no longer appeared in Fram's log—this would have made Framageddon even more confusing and ill-tempered than it already was, since we would have had conversations along the lines of "I think GW should be considered involved", "Why, she's never interacted with Fram before?", "Yes she did, you just can't see it", "How am I supposed to determine what happened, then?", "Fine, I'll undelete the block", "You overturned an admin action, now nobody can re-hide it without it constituting wheel-warring". If you don't think any of the participants in that case would have been that petty, obnoxious, and sticklers for policy-for-the-sake-of-policy, I would respectfully disagree. ‑ Iridescent 14:10, 21 May 2020 (UTC)
Section of TIAT's block log in admin view
On "Why can't the usual "hide this revision" box not just be checked" it's a matter of policy, not of technical limitations. Editing block logs has been technically possible for years; see this log, which to an oversighter will appear to be a standard block-and-unblock by myself, to an admin will appear to be an unblock by myself preceded by some kind of mystery action with all details hidden and any attempt to investigate the revdeletion will bring up this dialog box, and to a non-admin will appear to be an unblock with no corresponding block at all.
The issue is the Wikipedia:Revision deletion#Log redaction policy, by which hiding any action from a block log other than in the most exceptional circumstances (either mandated by Arbcom or the WMF, or hiding something so egregiously inappropriate it would fall under the oversight policy) is one of those actions that automatically is considered admin abuse. As such it would trigger the immediate level II desysop of the admin concerned. (It very rarely happens, since the admins all know where the genuine red lines are as opposed to "we don't generally do it that way", but on the rare occasions that an admin does perform one of the Forbidden Actions Arbcom do enforce that "automatic desysop regardless of the circumstances" provision. (Speaking of petty annoyances, User:Serial Number 54129, would you consider changing your signature to something other than "default font in black without the bracketed (talk) link or anything else to indicate that it's a wikilink let alone a signature"? In wall-of-text threads it makes it much more difficult for readers skimming the thread to see where your comment ends and the next comment begins, particularly if for whatever reason you're indented to the same level as whoever's following you.) ‑ Iridescent 14:00, 21 May 2020 (UTC)
Thanks for the clarification; it's about as hardcore as it gets then! Also, apologies for the sig; I felt the last one was overly garish and, per SIGAPP, probably distracting/overbearing. However, on re-reading that, I may be breaking it even more as it is now! Stand by— serial # 14:11, 21 May 2020 (UTC)
Testing, testing, one two, one two. ——Serial# 14:19, 21 May 2020 (UTC)
File:Manchester Art Gallery - Gallery 3 Etty wall.jpg listed for discussion
I have been request stupid if I have a chance to apologise generally I will do it my stupid requesting is so bad these days. Requesting was just too catch fun that was my own use will some not. I know this may result go block if it. I accept all consequences. Tbiw (talk) 10:15, 7 June 2020 (UTC)
I'm not entirely sure what you're trying to say here, but if you're worried that you're going to be blocked because you made all those requests for permissions, don't be. Except in very clear-cut cases when someone is obviously here only to cause problems, we only block as a last resort if someone carries on causing problems after they've been warned not to. In your case it's fairly clear that you just didn't understand you were being a nuisance.
What you have to remember is that despite how big and daunting it can appear, the Wikipedia editor base is actually fairly small; the numbers have risen slightly during the current pandemic as people are spending more time at home than usual, but in ordinary circumstances we typically only have around 3500 active editors and around 500 active administrators at any given time. It does have a genuine impact when you do things like submitting multiple requests for permissions, since for each of those requests one of those 500 admins needs to review your request and your editing history and make a judgement as to whether it would be appropriate to grant that permission.
As I said at your most recent request, whether or not you have or don't have any given userright isn't going to give you any kind of special privileges or status on Wikipedia; unless you have a specific reason to want any given permission, you're just wasting your own and other people's time by requesting it, particularly in cases when it's obvious you don't have a use for that permission (such as requesting the File mover bit when you've literally never uploaded or edited a file in your entire history). ‑ Iridescent 12:58, 7 June 2020 (UTC)
Iridescent you have speak well but why calling me nuisance all your words cause emotional problem you don't know who I am(easily affected emotionally) you are just abusing I have apologise for that why still abusing me. Your advise was good why putting nuisance . Let me tell you have just offended me . Iridescent I hereby declare total restraint on requesting on Wikipedia for months . I promise. But please in your own way nuisance might fell good but in my is bad. Iri I am still apologising to all people. Sorry.......... Tbiw (talk) 20:17, 7 June 2020 (UTC)
If you don't want to be accused of being a nuisance, don't be a nuisance. You've made requests for rollback, massmessage, AWB, templateeditor and filemover within a 48-hour period, all of them spurious; describing that as being a nuisance isn't being insulting, it's a straightforward statement of fact.
As I say, we're not assuming anything bad or malicious on your part. A lot of people who are used to other online environments find it hard at first to understand the relatively flat structure of Wikipedia/Wikimedia, and see specialist user rights as giving some kind of special status or "levelling up"; this particular misunderstanding isn't going to be held against you in any way. I'm not sure what you mean by "total restraint", but certainly don't feel this is something you need to leave Wikipedia over; just bear in mind that this is a site of 60,557,789 pages which is the result of over 20 years of development, and the more technical "back office" parts of it can be more complex and confusing than people are used to. As long as you're editing constructively and are willing to listen to and engage with other people when they disagree with you (even when you think they're wrong), it's very unlikely anything you do will get you in any kind of trouble. ‑ Iridescent 21:44, 7 June 2020 (UTC)
I have apologise thanks iri thanks iri. Tbiw (talk) 13:19, 8 June 2020 (UTC)
A question
Have you checked who was the Oxford historian to whom I referred? You may remember you wrote some sarcastic remarks about the books I use. Borsoka (talk) 16:01, 9 June 2020 (UTC)
This relates to Wikipedia talk:Administrators' noticeboard/Archive 15#What can I do?, for the curious. You mean this thread? I'm not sure what point you're trying to make here; it's self-evident that you're assuming that "his book was published by Oxford University" somehow confers reliability on the book, which is just straightforward not the case. OUP is a commercial publisher that happens to be owned by Oxford University, not the publishing arm of Oxford University; yes, they publish the Oxford English Dictionary, but they also publish Emil's Clever Pig and Slayer Slang: A Buffy the Vampire Slayer Lexicon. If you want to take Norfolkbigfish to ANI that's your prerogative—I haven't looked in detail as to who's in the right and who isn't—but on a brief skim over the history there's only one editor that gives the impression of acting inappropriately and refusing to engage. ‑ Iridescent 16:23, 9 June 2020 (UTC)
OK, Norfolkbigfish challenged the reliability of the following book: Tibble, Steven (2011) [1989]. Monarchy and Lordship in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, 1099-1291. Oxford: Clarendon Press. ISBN978-0-19-822731-1.. This book is one of the most often cited works on its subject. I wrote of "Oxford University Press", because I previously referred to him as an Oxford historian and I was totally bemused that any editor who writes of the crusades could challenge its reliability. Do you think the book's comparison with "Emil's Clever Pig" was a proper remark by an administrator?
Another question. Did you read our lengthy discussions or at least did you take a look at them before stating that I bombarded him "with warnings and personal comments"? Did you study his comments on me and his messages about me on my Talk page, on other editors' Talk page and during our discussion? Borsoka (talk) 16:57, 9 June 2020 (UTC)
If I correctly understand your silence above, you made absolutely no attempt to understand any of my remarks on Norfolkbigfish's Talk page and their context, but you thought you were in the position to make a preliminary judgement. Interestingly, you had time to search for books published by OUP to make fun of a book that you do not know. I hope you will be eager to understand the circumstances before making decisions in other cases. Have a nice day. Borsoka (talk) 03:01, 12 June 2020 (UTC)
I don't think you do "correctly understand my silence above"; my silence above is owing to the fact that I couldn't give a damn about your content dispute on a topic in which I have no involvement and no interest. (The only reason this is here at all is because I commented as an uninvolved outside observer on your thread at the admin noticeboard's talk page.) You raised concerns about an editor's conduct, and it was pointed out to you (by multiple, experienced, editors) that it appeared to outside observers that Norfolkbigfish was making an effort to follow Wikipedia's dispute resolution processes whereas it appeared that you were acting inappropriately.
The book in question may well be academically reliable—I haven't checked and am not qualified to judge—but when it was pointed out to you that the author himself said "I have never had an academic career. I have worked in advertising and PR for most of my career and am now Communications Director for a large international financial institution", your response appeared strongly to suggest that you believed that because it was published by OUP that somehow made it inherently accurate. You continue in the paragraph above to claim that he's an "Oxford Historian" and have yet to provide anything to back that up; there's nothing in anything I can find to suggest that he even studied at Oxford, let alone is or ever has been a member of the faculty. (This is the author in question; he works for a PR agency in Islington, and the only academic position of any kind I can find that he's ever held is that of honorary research associate at RHBNC in Egham.) Since as far as I can tell on a quick skim the entire basis of your dispute with NBF is that you're each accusing each other of making unsubstantiated claims not backed by the source, making an error this basic and doubling-down on it when challenged doesn't exactly fill me with confidence.
Although it sometimes gives the impression owing to the number of people who comment here and the relatively broad selection of topics with which I've been involved and that as a consequence get discussed here, my talk page is not an extension of the Village Pump or of the admin noticeboards. If you're looking for general input as to how yourself and NBF are giving due weight to various sources and/or as to which of you are interpreting the sources correctly, you're much better off asking at the relevant WikiProjects. In this context, I'd strongly suggest Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Military history as the place to start, both because any subject matter expert on Wikipedia is likely to have that page on their watchlist, and because they have a large number of people who aren't interested in medieval warfare but who are used to weighing and interpreting sources on warfare and international relations topics and will be able to provide genuinely neutral input. ‑ Iridescent 10:54, 12 June 2020 (UTC)
Thank you for comment. I am so happy that I have met a person who can make judgements about editors so quickly. Have a nice day. Borsoka (talk) 12:40, 12 June 2020 (UTC)
Hello Iridescent, hope you are well. I don't know if you've been watching over the Teahouse recently. Many experienced editors, including you, make surprise visits from time to time, so I like to think all experienced editors are watching. Anyway, there was recently a question, involving the template {{COI}}. I have always thought it was one of those templates that the editor that it is referring to should not remove. But, it's mainly per WP:DUH. I can't think of any policies or guidelines on this.The OP writes at Wikipedia:Teahouse#Stigmatizing_of_some_of_my_contributions, five articles have been tagged with the COI tag unambiguously referring to their contributions. They deny in no uncertain terms any COI with regard to those topics. My assumption was that as soon as an editor denies COI, AGF overrides all individual or group concerns unless WP:COIN decides that the editor is lying. However, the only discussion about the editor that I can see took place at WPMED talk page (not much of a discussion there either), not COIN or ANI. My instinct tells me that the COI tag should be replaced with a more content- and less editor- centric tags, whichever may be applicable. An alternative viewpoint seems to be that the tag is not a judgement on the contributor or the subject of the article, but only the content, and hence it is no different from any other tags. So, my question: What PAGs govern the use of these templates, that are more than just matters of content dispute? If an editor who denies COI can't remove the tag, does it mean the editor is effectively also forced into abiding by WP:COI, having to make requests for the tag to be removed, and should not such a restriction on any editor come from a community discussion at the appropriate venues? The best answer I could think to give (besides telling them that ANI is where to file complaints) is that the editor should ask the tagger to highlight specific content that is of concern and then work on improving it (easier said than done for a COI editor), since tags must accompany talk page explanations if they are to remain over objections from others. But I thought to ask here first, in case there's a better answer. Regards! Usedtobecool☎️ 21:53, 7 June 2020 (UTC)
I honestly don't know the correct answer. This looks like one of those difficult borderline cases, where the editor doesn't have anything to gain so it isn't a straightforward conflict of interest, but personally knows the article subjects so is potentially not neutral. (It's not an uncommon situation; it arises all the time with musicians in particular.) It's enough of a tricky situation that I'd recommend starting a discussion at Wikipedia:Conflict of interest/Noticeboard to get input from the people who have the most experience in this particular gray area. The whole thing is complicated by being in WP:MED topics; I have no intention of reading this trainwreck of a case (the combined case pages come to more than 11⁄2megabytes) so don't know if the case affects any of this but even if it doesn't it's a field where tempers are running high, and Doc James (who's the subject of the original Teahouse complaint) appears to have taken exception to the outcome of the case and has vanished altogether.
@ThatMontrealIP, JzG, Newyorkbrad, and WhatamIdoing:, have you any thoughts on how this one? (NYB and WAID, I know you're constrained in what you can say, but your input might be useful here.) @Johnbod, Pigsonthewing, and Lirazelf:, have similar situations ever arisen with museum staff writing about the objects in their collections or with academics writing about their colleagues, and if so how did we handle it then?
My personal (and entirely non-policy-based) opinion is that the in this case the COI tags probably shouldn't be on the articles themselves, but there should be a note at the top of the talkpage. To me, the spirit of the COI template in article space is to act as a "warning, this article might not be accurate" marker to readers, whereas in this case the issue is more "we've no real reason to doubt this, but if an experienced editor is interested in the topic we'd be grateful if you'd double-check it". Realistically, when it comes to niche topics the people who are best placed to write the articles are often going to have a personal connection to the article subject, and it's not practical nor desirable to slap maintenance tags on decent-quality articles, particularly given that we don't put maintenance tags on (e.g.) the torrent of dubious stubs and obvious COI editing by The Vanished User Who Must Not Be Named. ‑ Iridescent 22:29, 7 June 2020 (UTC)
Usedtobecool, we don't have guidelines on maintenance tags. It's too bad, because if we'd written those back in the day, then we'd probably have greater agreement on why those tags exist, and therefore on when and how to use/not use them and questions like whether readers need to be "warned" that we are talking about deleting an article on grounds of non-notability.
For your immediate situation, the "controlling law" about when and how to use a template is almost always the template's own documentation page. In this case, that means that you should be following the directions at Template:COI#When to use. Since I wrote those directions back in 2013 (based on the success that we had with my 2010 change to the directions at Template:POV), I'm prepared to warrant them as being practically perfect in every way when sensibly applied, and if you disagree, then I'll refund the full US$0.00 that I was paid to write them in the first place. ;-)WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:10, 8 June 2020 (UTC)
WhatamIdoing, hi, thanks for responding. The "When to use" says to use it when the article is biased "as a direct result of editing by the subject of the article, or by a person with a close connection to the subject". The question is who makes that determination, especially when the person in question unequivocally denies any COI. Is it one editor, a group, a group at a project talk page, a group at COIN or a group at AN/ANI? Usedtobecool☎️ 05:21, 8 June 2020 (UTC)
(talk page stalker) I agree with Iridescent that the primary purpose is to alert the readership of the issue more than anything else. If you search ANI or AN for at least one of the usernames pinged you’ll find someone quite fervently insisting the opposite and that we must only use it if there’s talk page notification with concerns (and the implied discussion.) I personally think that point of view is wrong. Maintenance tags don’t do anything for editors as editors almost universally ignore them in terms of doing maintenance: they’re for readers to know issues with an article before reading. That’s their primary purpose at least. If it’s useful to the reader, put it up documentation be damned (pace WAID.) If the reader doesn’t gain anything, don’t add it. That is to say, I agree with Iri’s sentiments even if my advice is slightly more blunt on this specific occasion. TonyBallioni (talk) 05:34, 8 June 2020 (UTC)
@Iridescent: Heya, mmm. While I was at Museums Galleries Scotland, and Scottish Libraries & Information Council, COI tends to be one of the policies that makes folks most nervous. I tended towards advising to follow WP:CURATOR, as I think Andy says below, and talk page statement. In general, writing about items in the collection is A-OK, don't write about colleagues (minefield, frankly), and be careful about adding external links to your catalogue as even though they're quite useful, folks might think you're a spammer. Never had anyone get into hot water about COI editing ARAIR. Lirazelf (talk) 10:43, 9 June 2020 (UTC)
"have similar situations ever arisen with museum staff writing about the objects in their collections or with academics writing about their colleagues" Yes; the former is covered - and generally welcomed - by WP:CURATOR, and the pages to which that section links. The latter can be more problematic, as it can involve a hierarchical relationship which brings into question whether the writer is under managerial pressure, or currying favour, or whether it might be a quid-pro-quo, where two individuals agree to write about each other. However, that is not a given, and should be approached on a case-by-case basis. Regarding the issue at hand, a cursory examination shows that at last one of the articles has nothing on its talk page to comply with the long-standing, present-by-consensus, requirement (highlighted in vivid yellow in the template's documentation) "if you place this tag, you should promptly start a discussion on the article's talk page to explain what is non-neutral about the article"; that warning is immediately followed by the equally-long standing notice: "If you do not start this discussion, then any editor is justified in removing the tag without warning". Note that the requirement is to explain what is non-neutral about the article, not simply to assert a COI; and that anyone may remove the tag if that is not done. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 10:17, 8 June 2020 (UTC)
There’s no such requirement: it’s a documentation page, not a policy page. So what it says can be safely ignored, especially if it harms the reader. It’s use is for readers, not for editors. “You absolutely must start a discussion under all circumstances and offer explicit reasoning as to why it isn’t neutral” is an editor focused approach to Wikipedia and wikilawyering of the first degree. People should put up the tag if it’s useful to readers. Not put it up otherwise. If there’s controversy over it, then yes, it should be discussed. That’s how everything on Wikipedia works. It’d make more sense if you disagree to start the discussion on the talk page yourself rather than just remove it. Most people don’t read template documentation pages, so likely don’t know about the non-requirement to start a talk page thread it suggests. TonyBallioni (talk) 13:25, 8 June 2020 (UTC)
If you wish to remove or revise the requirement, start an RfC, and demonstrate consensus. Until and unless you do, it stands, by consensus. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 15:54, 8 June 2020 (UTC)
If you wish to make it a policy that template documentation has the same weight as actual policy and is above IAR, I’ll gladly participate in that RfC. Until then, I and every other editor will continue to treat it like literally every other maintenance template is used. If you have an issue with someone placing it, then you should initiate the discussion. Not make up some rule hidden in documentation the overwhelming majority of editors will never see. Yes, I know you take people to ANI over this and have gotten people to agree with you. That’s mainly because you’re a well known name. No one really cares and it exists to serve the reader. TonyBallioni (talk) 17:20, 8 June 2020 (UTC)
(ec) While there may not be a requirement written in stone per se, putting a tag without any explanation why in the edit summary (let alone a description on the talk page) is profoundly unhelpful. Tags sometimes seem to be a way for an editor to loudly assert their opinion on an article without explaining the motivation that led to it, which doesn't help anyone else and leaves a giant notice at the top of the article screaming "this page is rubbish, go and look at Quora or Stack Exchange instead". So in my view, removing it is simply common sense. In practice, I have removed maintenance tags that have been in place for over ten years and they are not challenged. Ritchie333(talk)(cont) 17:22, 8 June 2020 (UTC)
Yeah, I wouldn’t disagree with that. I’m just aware of Andy’s hardline stance on the talk page issue, and since it’s a question thread wanted to point out that people don’t follow the wording on the documentation all the time and it’s only raised when the article in question is connected to a power player in the Wikiverse. I think probably the best example would be something like when mid-sized company X is created by someone with the same name as the chief marketing officer and stuff looks like it’s probably fluff, but there’s no clear place to begin and no one else cares enough about the article to ever engage in a talk page discussion. Initiating a talk page post in those circumstances doesn’t make much sense, but we probably owe it to our readers to let them know about the COI. In those circumstances an edit summary should be fine. TonyBallioni (talk) 17:32, 8 June 2020 (UTC)
I don't think most maintenance tags exist for readers. With a few exceptions, such as {{hoax}}, I don't think readers care. I think these tags exist for the purpose of helping improve the article. If they aren't likely to prompt edits (and whether most of them do, especially after the first few days, is IMO an open question), then I wouldn't add them.
The POV (including COI) tags have a particular problem. If you don't understand what the problem is, then you can't fix the article. You might be perfectly willing to believe there is a problem, but what is it? How can you help? How can you tell whether you've fixed the problem? Sometimes bias is subtle. Without an explanation, e.g., that this article about a psychiatric condition that is written purely from a psychiatrist's perspective and is missing the perspectives of the patients, social workers, and family members, or that this article about a devastating pediatric condition never mentions the family, the article often can't be fixed, so we require a note on the talk page. In the absence of a note, anyone who can't figure out what the problem is can assume it was fixed and remove the tag.
All the POV and especially COI tags also have a history of being treated like a Badge of shame, whose sole purpose is to express an editor's personal disapproval that someone else dared to edit the article (worse, those other editors are usually writing about something because they were obviously interested in and even approved of the subject!). We used to have the occasional editor demand that the COI tag be permanently attached to an article, because of their armchair-lawyer understanding of advertising rules. Given all that, I think it's appropriate for us to be fairly strict about insisting that the POV/COI group of tags be used only when there is a realistic way to improve the article. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:34, 8 June 2020 (UTC)
It’s less a legal thing more of a fairness thing. I’ve never once found a single maintenance tag useful as an editor. Before I was that active editing and was a reader I found them extremely useful. In fact, I remember them frequently coming up in conversations, both about articles and as pop culture references when I was in undergrad. I think either John Oliver or Trevor Noah has made reference to them as warnings in comedy sketches too. They definitely are something the public is aware of. Anyway, as a reader if something was only from one source or had large swaths uncited, the tags told me to take it as worth a grain of salt. I always appreciated it, and found it helpful.I see the COI tag as similar. If something has been written by the brother of a musician, it’s probably worth alerting the public to it until someone has time to go through it. I don’t see them as having any use in actually fixing the problem. The backlog of maintenance tags is one that’s never going to be solved. There’s a lot of opposition to tagbombing internally since tags do absolutely nothing for editors and can be a bit bitey, but when used correctly, they have significant value for readers. I think COI, one source, and a few of the verifiability ones are probably some of the more important ones when it comes to alerting readers. I’m sorry if it makes the author sad, but I do think we owe a moral duty to them to be upfront about when our content might be lacking. It’s pretty much the only reason I’d stick any tag on an article. TonyBallioni (talk) 20:10, 8 June 2020 (UTC)
break
Thanks for pinging me. As it happens, I have an enormous problem with putting the COI tag on the top of articles and keeping it there for an extended period of time, except in egregious cases, because it is indeed stigmatizing to both the article subject and the contributors. This is especially true when the article is a BLP or otherwise affects living people associated with the subject. There will always be an implication that the person or entity that is the subject of the article has done something wrong. Often that implication will be incorrect, and at other times the editing may involve mild self-interest that is at most a venial sin.
If you'll pardon a solipsistic example, somewhat oddly I am a BLP subject myself. If I were less steeped in wiki-policy (and if my contributions were less scrutinized here and abroad), I would update some details in the article and fill in some omissions. I would do it in an entirely neutral and unobjectionable way. But even so, if I tried it, I can imagine someone trying to stick the COI banner at the topic of the article and fighting to keep it there for the rest of my life. Obviously if that were to happen, I would resent it, and if months went by and the tag remained, I would resent Wikipedia.
The compromise of putting the COI template on the talkpage is more palatable, although it would be useful if the template were used accurately and helpfully. As it happens, again using myself as an example simply because I'm too lazy to find another one at this hour, there's a COI template on the talkpage of my article. It is there first to warn readers that I am connected with the subject of the article, which is certainly true and indeed is a large part of what the article is about, and that therefore I shouldn't edit it, even though I never have. It is there second to warn about another editor, who is described as "personally or professionally connected" with me. As it happens, this person at least has actually edited the article—but no questions have ever been raised on-wiki about a single one of these edits, nor could they be. How any of this might be useful to our readers, in the unlikely event the article has any, is nowhere explained. If that's how COI templates are going to be used, we could use fewer of them.
With regard to COIs on the part of museums and libraries, I think these are often overstated as well. It's a good thing, not a bad thing, when institutions post relevant information about their collections in relevant articles, although links should only be to substantive and not trivial aspects of the collections, and should not be overdone. I've seen librarians and archivists mass-reverted and threatened with blocking for posting such links—even as we simultaneously are trying to encourage these same institutions to work with us and contribute content. It's gotten to the point that someone has seriously proposed barring external links to archival and library finding aids as a matter of policy (see this discussion), although at this point it looks like that's not going to happen. Newyorkbrad (talk) 02:59, 9 June 2020 (UTC)
I think that a large part of the problem stems from the fact that we've never developed a clear and widely understood definition of what we mean by "conflict of interest". The COI template is intended to highlight an article that is biased or has other serious problems as a direct result of editing by the subject of the article, or by a person with a close connection to the subject (e.g., public-relations employees or paid editors) (my emphasis), not "articles that may have been edited by someone connected to the subject at some point". However, ever since Jimmy and Greg's dick-waving dominance contest in 2007 there have been none-too-subtle signals from the top that it's every loyal editor's civic duty to report the slightest possibility of a COI, so a certain faction among the Defender Of The Wiki types and the new page patrollers feels they're obliged to slap the template on any page where there's the slightest possibility that one of the editors may once have met someone mentioned in the article, and ignore the "only if the article is biased or has other serious problems" clause.
Unless and until someone starts being prepared to warn and block people for inappropriately using {{COI}} and {{G11}} we're probably not going to see cultural change here. I—and I assume every other admin who'd be willing to make themselves unpopular by warning-and-blocking overzealous taggers—have no confidence at all that either Arbcom or the Foundation is going to have my back in these circumstances, given recent unpleasantnesses.
In the case of your article, the {{Connected contributor}} template is being used incorrectly and I'll remove it if you want. Given that you haven't edited the biography yourself there's no COI editing to flag, and Do not use this template solely to identify an article subject as a Wikipedian is explicitly in the instructions for that template.
I personally see no point at all in the {{Connected contributor}} template existing at all. Per my comments way up above there's a legitimate case for "this article is potentially biased and inaccurate" warnings on the article itself (indeed, {{citation needed}} is probably one of the most immediately-recognizable things about Wikipedia for general readers), and for "this article is probably not biased and inaccurate but we'd appreciate a second opinion" flags on the talkpage, but our maintenance templates were never intended to serve as Marks of Cain or as tools for the low-level harassment and/or outing of editors who happen to be the subject of articles. Either an editor has a conflict of interest which results in bias or other serious problems—in which case they should be dealt with as we'd deal with any other problem editor—or their edits aren't causing any problems in which case their real-life identity is none of anyone else's business. (If I didn't know that the "keep, it exists" contingent would turn out in full force to wail and gnash teeth, I'd happily not only delete but oversight Wikipedia:Notable people who have edited Wikipedia as well. To me it's a straightforward mix of self-promotion and harassment.)
Slight sidetrack, but the "finding aids" issue isn't as black-and-white as the above—or the discussion linked above—would suggest. To take the Musée d'Orsay as an example just because it's one with which I'm familiar, it's obviously useful to the reader to provide an external link to this tool on their own website to determine whether and where any given item in their collection is currently on display (not currently linked in the Wikipedia article); it's ethically questionable but probably still a net positive to link to this tool which does have a useful purpose in providing high-resolution images of 200+ items from their collection, but is also effectively a front end for a Google spamvertising portal (not currently linked in the Wikipedia article); it's almost certainly not appropriate to include this thing which purports to be a guide to the Musée d'Orsay but is actually just some guy's incoherent personal blog about his vacation in France (needless to say, currently linked in the Wikipedia article). ‑ Iridescent 08:23, 9 June 2020 (UTC)
"I—and I assume every other admin who'd be willing to make themselves unpopular by warning-and-blocking overzealous taggers—have no confidence at all that either Arbcom or the Foundation is going to have my back in these circumstances, given recent unpleasantnesses." Yup, been there, done that. Ritchie333(talk)(cont) 13:00, 9 June 2020 (UTC)
If you think that a block is warranted after a disregarded warning (for this or any other reason) but aren't sure it will be supported, the obvious solution is to post about the issue on AN or ANI. Granted that the noticeboards aren't anyone's favorite place to be, but if an admin posts "I think User:X ought to be blocked, what do others think?" and several others agree, the admin is unlikely to be criticized after the fact. And better still, perhaps User:X will see that it's not just one person who sees a problem, and adjust his or her editing accordingly. (I know, after all these years I'm still the eternal optimist.)
As for the finding aids issue, I certainly wasn't suggesting that anything calling itself a finding aid should be included as a link; I was merely arguing that they shouldn't automatically be excluded either. Regards, Newyorkbrad (talk) 15:16, 9 June 2020 (UTC)
Ah, you've been untouchable for too long; Wikipedia is even more dysfunctional than it was 12 months ago. What happens now if Admin:Y posts 'I think User:X ought to be blocked, what do others think?"' is a mob of crazies start poring over Admin:Y's history trying to find any possible flimsy pretext for a boomerang block or unclean hands, and meanwhile all of User:X's friends frantically try to disrupt the thread as much as possible to ensure that any editor who might support the proposal is intimidated into not participating such that it ends up getting closed as no consensus. If they're especially blessed, Admin:Y might also get a mob whipped up off-wiki and spend the next few months with assorted weirdos following them around claiming that everything they do is evidence of misconduct.
If you want to carry out a wikisassination in the current climate, the sensible thing is to indefblock the other party no matter how flimsy the grounds and then go to AN or ANI and frame it as "Does anyone think User:X should be unblocked?". I do still support the continued existence of the AN/ANI system on the grounds than nobody has yet proposed anything better, but that doesn't mean I don't consider it both dysfunctional and a total crapshoot in terms of who participates. (Even things as trivial as the time of day the thread is opened can have a material impact on outcomes; if you want a civility block to stick, start your thread at 0100 UTC on a weekday, when the UK and Europe are asleep, the Aussies and Kiwis are at work and the East Coast is winding down, but California is just getting home from work/school and has the entire afternoon and evening to edit.)
I wasn't accusing you of thinking we should take everything calling itself a finding aid at their word, but pointing out that it's not a straightforward case of "finding aids are good and we should include them where possible". A lot of them are of questionable value, and a significant number lead users (either overtly or covertly) into the ethical cesspits of the Google or Amazon data-mining systems. I oppose Google Books links, and including the asin= field in citations (except in those very rare cases when a book has an ASIN but no ISBN or OCLC), for the same reason. ‑ Iridescent 16:05, 9 June 2020 (UTC)
Agreed that practically the only way to do a block of a Vested Contributor(tm) these days is block and then review. The assorted weirdos thing following you around is also true, speaking from experience (though, the Icewhiz saga is somewhat unique and that’s where my off-wiki nutiness mainly comes from these days.) TonyBallioni (talk) 16:15, 9 June 2020 (UTC)
My point wasn't to endorse everything that happens on the noticeboards, by a long shot. Within the ArbCom, I've always taken the somewhat controversial position that ArbCom needs to retain jurisdiction to review and potentially overturn community bans enacted on AN/ANI, to address the occasional possibility that the process could misfire badly. (Which is not to claim the mantle of Richard Feynman, who memorably wrote, "I couldn't claim that I was smarter than sixty-five other guys, but the average of sixty-five other guys, certainly!") Perhaps I will have to take some more controversial admin actions sometime and see if things play out as badly for me as you suggest they typically do. As it happens, I thought I might be starting a controversy last night, but it deescalated in a thoroughly undramatic fashion, which is good for the wiki but ruins our test-case. Regards, Newyorkbrad (talk) 16:37, 9 June 2020 (UTC)
If we want to be able to warn (much less to block) people for overtagging articles, then we probably need a guideline against it first. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:53, 9 June 2020 (UTC)
The essay at Wikipedia:Responsible tagging has languished somewhat (because "tag bombing" is such a common piece of wikispeak, people tend to link to WP:TAGBOMB which points somewhere else), but could be cleaned up easily enough. An RFA to elevate "don't place tags where the readers will see them unless you're drawing attention to a genuine problem" would almost certainly pass but would possibly be fairly nasty, as there's a small but vocal group who'd be vigorously opposed to it. (This may be assuming bad faith but I'm still going to say it: a lot of patrollers see getting a maintenance tag to stick on an article as some kind of win in the Wikipedia MMORPG, a close third only to getting something deleted and getting someone sanctioned.) Such a proposal would reflect the unwritten status quo, to some extent; if I went digging through the archives I could find numerous examples at the admin boards of a consensus that overenthusiastic use of {{citation needed}} and its kin constitutes disruptive editing. (I know we pride ourselves on Not Doing Precedent here, but FWIW here's unanimous support at Arbcom (proposed by some guy called "Newyorkbrad", as it happens) for the principle that adding maintenance tags can be sanctionable disruption.) ‑ Iridescent 19:37, 10 June 2020 (UTC)
There is an unwritten status quo that "don't place tags where the readers will see them unless you're drawing attention to a genuine problem"? Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 20:32, 10 June 2020 (UTC)
There's an unwritten status quo that making a habit of placing tags where the reader will see them that don't draw attention to a genuine problem constitutes disruptive editing and can lead to sanctions if someone keeps doing it. What makes it a gray area is where one draws the line between "serving the reader by pointing out potentially problematic content", "adding disruptive clutter" and "weaponizing the maintenance tags to harass the article's authors and/or bludgeon a particular viewpoint out of the article".
A long time ago Anthonyhcole had a proposal that citation templates be linked to particular pieces of text so it would be clear what supported what. (There was a brief discussion of it on my talk page.) As far as I know that largely fizzled out—it made the wikitext in the edit window quite confusing and I don't think it was supported by Visual Editor—but something similar for in-article maintenance tags might be the way to go as a long-term goal. That way, instead of just slapping a generic {{COI}}, {{In popular culture}}, {{Proofreader needed}} etc giant orange tag on the article, those placing tags would be forced to highlight exactly which parts of the article they considered problematic. ‑ Iridescent 11:12, 12 June 2020 (UTC)
There is a version of such "highlighting" maintenance tags for unsourced statements. I don't remember the template but it was on the typhoon season articles. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 13:08, 12 June 2020 (UTC)
Sorry, I thought I had responded to the ping early on, but I didn't, & now I look late at night and the points are mushrooming - so catching up: yes, it would be better on the talk page, & there is now a COI declaration there; yes Doc James should have specified what he was unhappy with, & didn't, so the tags can reasonably be removed. In general, curators writing on WP is a rare & normally welcome event. The problem comes from the marketing departments or interny/volunteer types, who often spam images (Brooklyn Museum) or links, including useless ones to small deposits of archival material. I (having mostly failed to get other editors interested) did a load of checking of Metropolitan Museum of Art links to their 2,000-odd fully online books and catalogues, to see they were appropriately placed. This is a superb resource, but initially they were tending to spam it up a bit. There's a museum in New Jersey (?) whose assistant marketing manager's long edit-war campaign to remove hostile-ish museum press coverage of them selling off large chunks of their collections has probably been successful, since I've now forgotten their name. Probably a reasonable decision by the museum, as I think they'd lost much of their endowment in the Madoff investment scandal. Johnbod (talk) 03:22, 10 June 2020 (UTC)
If anyone wants to go wading through archives, you'll find me ranting way back in the dark ages that Wikipedia's entire outreach strategy was fundamentally flawed, and that the ideal Wikipedia editors were museum curators, schoolteachers and the authors of children's books, as they're the groups with the most experience in the difficult art of writing in summary style for an audience which for the post part isn't particularly interested in the topic. I still stand by that; I know "everyone is equally welcome" is core ideology but it wasn't true in 2001 and it isn't true now. I'd take one person who knows how to write in summary style and knows how to find and give due weight to sources (they don't need to be subject matter experts, they just need to know where to look and what to exclude) over a hundred good faith newcomers who want to expound at length on why their personal opinions are the only correct ones. ‑ Iridescent 19:37, 10 June 2020 (UTC)
I always suspected a large share of the complaints that Wikipedia was "too hard" to edit were actually polite ways of saying, "I do this shit as part of my day job, & the only pay I get for my work is a line in my CV. Why should I do it when I won't even receive that small compensation?" Which is why in the long run more projects like Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy may put Wikipedia out of business. -- llywrch (talk) 22:17, 10 June 2020 (UTC)
<3 the SEP, but it also has an extremely different audience. TonyBallioni (talk) 23:24, 10 June 2020 (UTC)
SEP and its ilk aren't competing for Wikipedia's audience, as they only cater for specific narrow niches. Wikipedia's strength is that when reading an article, one can click (or hover) to find out more about anything mentioned on which one wants to know more, regardless of field. At the moment there's nothing equivalent to Wikipedia, where I can be reading an article about the Avro Vulcan bomber and find out about the significance of the god Vulcan, why aircraft intended to operate during a nuclear war are painted in a weird color, the causes and outcome of the Falklands War, or where and what Fan Bwlch Chwyth is. What would kill Wikipedia is if someone ever figured out a viable way to link all these disparate resources like the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, the various Dictionaries of National Biography, atlases etc, but this isn't going to happen any time soon; the costs in terms of both time and effort to have curation (either human or AI) between all the world's academic and reference websites would probably be an order of magnitude more than the resources it takes to run Google Search. ‑ Iridescent 10:54, 12 June 2020 (UTC)
...or journalists. But in many years working with them one thing I've noticed is that they are strongly of the opinion that you should get paid for anything you write (and credited too). Johnbod (talk) 23:13, 10 June 2020 (UTC)
Hi Iridescent. You previously speedy deleted UpCounsel under {{db-a7}}. I requested the deleted page be moved to draft at WP:REFUND so that I could work on making improvements. Muboshgu (talk·contribs) undeleted the page and moved it to Draft:UpCounsel. Muboshgu wrote to contact the deleting administrator who is you before moving the page back to mainspace. I believe I have addressed the {{db-a7}} concerns so would like to move Draft:UpCounsel back to mainspace. Would you support that? Thanks, Cunard (talk) 11:35, 14 June 2020 (UTC)
I'd have no issue with moving it back to mainspace. Be aware (I assume you are already) that while I'm familiar enough with you to know that you genuinely do pick up apparently random topics and expand them, your version looks like a textbook example of Wiki-PR's output, so be prepared for patrollers in good faith to plaster it with {{potential vanity}} tags. ‑ Iridescent 06:30, 15 June 2020 (UTC)
Thanks for reviewing the draft and being fine with restoring it to mainspace. You are right that I choose random topics (usually when they have been nominated for deletion or been deleted) and expand them. Some more information about why I worked on this draft: I have no conflict of interest with UpCounsel. I became aware of the article's deletion through this edit and am aware of the company only through my work on list of gig economy companies. The rewritten draft discusses a lawsuit against UpCounsel for false advertising and unfair competition which UpCounsel failed to get the court to dismiss and had to settle by giving the plaintiff a stock grant. A Wiki-PR article would not have this, so I think any {{potential vanity}} tags could be removed on that basis. But if any editors have feedback about how to improve the article's tone or neutrality, I would be happy to make those changes. Cunard (talk) 07:40, 15 June 2020 (UTC)
Benezit
Do you have access and does it go into any detail for this artist here? Thanks. Can't seem to find much on her other than her relations to notable artistes. Thanks. FloridaArmy (talk) 17:04, 16 May 2020 (UTC)
@FloridaArmy I should have access, but when I try to view the biography I get to "You do not currently have access to this article. Please login to access the full content.", but when I try to log in it tells me I'm already logged in. (I've tried it with two different logons so it's not just me.) EEng or Johnbod might be able to help, or it could be that the OUP has quietly disabled remote access and not bothered to update the pages. ‑ Iridescent 18:19, 18 May 2020 (UTC)
Sorry, don't know. If they don't quite know who she was, or how many of her there were, there probably won't be much more in Benezit. Johnbod (talk) 21:01, 18 May 2020 (UTC)
Waugh, Eliza maiden name: Young. American, 19th century, female. Miniaturist. Eliza Waugh was married to Samuel Bell Waugh. Eliza Waugh and Eliza Young appear to have been one and the same person.
(Cite: "Waugh, Eliza." Benezit Dictionary of Artists. October 31, 2011. Oxford University Press. Date of access 18 May. 2020.) However, there's also this entry:
Young, Eliza Middelton Coxe. American, 19th – 20th century, female. Born 7 November 1875, in Philadelphia. Painter. Eliza Middelton Coxe Young was a pupil of Anshutz and Charles M. Young. She was active in Radnor and seems to be identifiable as the artist also known as Eliza Waugh.
(Cite: "Young, Eliza Middelton Coxe." Benezit Dictionary of Artists. 31 Oct. 2011; Accessed 18 May. 2020.)Samuel_Waugh#Family suggests Mary Eliza Young Waugh as yet another name, leading to [10] and [11]. That last link refers to an entry in Falk, Who Was Who in American Art, which you can apparently get at [12]; you have to log in but I think it's open to anyone. See also [13][14]. If you Google the Mary name she pops up a lot but (big surprise) seemingly always as someone's wife or mother. But a careful search under that name might find something I missed.
(talk page stalker)FloridaArmy, the OUP seems to offer (at least) two levels of access at its websites. I can access ODNB using my UK local library card membership number. But to get access to more specialist publications, such as Benezit, I'd usually need an academic institution account. In the UK this must be be governed by what local authorities subscribe to for their libraries. Outside UK, I guess this varies further? A valid question for WT:RS. Martinevans123 (talk) 21:40, 18 May 2020 (UTC)
I get the same as FloridaArmy. Martinevans123 (talk) 07:16, 19 May 2020 (UTC)
Thanks for all the help and insights on this one. I followed up and started an article on one of her relations, I believe the article I worked on was her husband, but it's been a bit.. The relation was also an artist and their son was making a film about them. They had gathered up his work from various collections when a fire dedtroyed their house. So much of his work was lost. And I couldn't find the film. I got discouraged. FloridaArmy (talk) 23:17, 7 June 2020 (UTC)
For some topics, particularly biographies, you really do need to wait until they get mentioned in a book before you can do much on Wikipedia with the topic; it both gives you something to build on, and provides a jumping-off point to search for other sources. At some point, someone will publish Female American Miniaturists of the 19th Century or the like which will make her a viable topic. Creating Wikipedia articles on the basis of "collating all the one-line passing mentions of the topic" is always really tricky, as it makes it very hard to allocate due weight to various points and there's always a strong temptation to shoehorn every passing mention in. ‑ Iridescent 13:01, 15 June 2020 (UTC)
I discovered this afternoon that we don't have an article on Carl Wilhelm von Sydow, who although I rarely cite him in my other life was an important folklorist and also a full professor at Lund, which is not chopped liver. He had a Festschrift and yadda yadda. The reason for my search in the first place was that I do rarely cite him and he published as C. W. von Sydow; perhaps his full name not being in common use is a factor in our not having an article on him. However, after leaving a bitter edit summary at Max von Sydow, who was his son by his second marriage, I discovered we had an article, deleted A7 in 2012 by ItsZippy (now returned as WJ94 but not an admin. Could you peek and if it isn't too horrible, restore it? If I'm still under 99 edits for the month I can flesh it out fairly fast since I'm procrastinating hugely on what I should be writing. Thanks in advance for looking. Yngvadottir (talk) 00:46, 15 June 2020 (UTC)
@Yngvadottir: (TPS) No need to restore it - its entire content was "Carl Wilhelm von Sydow, (1878-1952), was a Swedish folklore scholar." Sorry. Black Kite (talk) 00:57, 15 June 2020 (UTC)
Bummer. I could easily go from there, but I am no longer creating new articles in main space, so unless someone else wants to make a fresh start, that's it. (Plus it would be only fair to give the original creator credit; how soon after creation was it deleted?) Yngvadottir (talk) 01:03, 15 June 2020 (UTC)
Created 17:27, 30 April 2012 by Azsymkamen, deleted 19:25, 30 April 2012, so live for less than three hours. (As a microstub with no indication of notability and no referencing of any kind, any admin would have deleted it unless they were already personally familiar with the topic.) Incidentally, you are aware that the WMF no longer keep track of (or at least, no longer publish) that 100-edits-in-a-month metric—that data series ended in December 2018, and the new "active editor" metrics only measure "more than five edits per day" and "more than five edits per month"?
That data is still technically tracked, and it's available via the REST API. The last three months on enwiki had 5214, 5506, and 5801 such editors. --Yair rand (talk) 07:06, 15 June 2020 (UTC)
(Huh, that's actually extraordinarily high. If you exclude anons and non-article edits, May 2020 had the highest very-active editor numbers since May 2009, and if you include them, it's still the highest since January 2010.) --Yair rand (talk) 07:29, 15 June 2020 (UTC)
I'd expect April and May 2020 to break all kind of participation records; at that point all five of the core en-wiki countries (the US, UK, Canada, Australia and India) were in full lockdown, and had been for long enough that the novelty will have worn off for most people and they'd have been looking for something to pass their time; it ought to more than cancel out the decline in participation from key workers and parents who had less free time on their hands. You also have the factor that with schools closed in many places and parents homeschooling, readership went up significantly, so there's more likelihood of people spotting errors (or just finding pages that don't agree with their point of view) and trying to fix them. The uptick in editing seems to primarily be existing inactive and semi-active editors returning to the fold; the number of edits from logged-in editors rose but the IP edit rate hasn't shifted at all. (@Yair rand, if they're still logging the ">99 edits per month" data series, is there a way to access it that doesn't involve messing around with the API, or to get {{Wikipedia editor graph}} updating again? The cynic in me says that if they're still keeping track of it but it's disappeared from the publicly-viewable Wikistats—as opposed to they decided it wasn't worth tracking and just abandoned the dataset—it means that the WMF are trying to hide something inconvenient, and it would be interesting to know what that something is.) ‑ Iridescent 13:29, 15 June 2020 (UTC)
Hm, I tried to put together a self-updating template at Template:Wikipedia editor graph (100 per month)/sandbox, but it looks like something's going wrong with the Graph extension. In any case, the (anons and non-content edits included) stats are available at Wikistats. --Yair rand (talk) 22:14, 15 June 2020 (UTC)
Interesting, thanks; they hid that well. The interesting thing to me is that on the "100 edits in the past 24 hours" metric, we've now gone past pre-Sue Gardner figures and are at an all-time high, although admittedly that may just reflect there being more bots than there were in the old days. ‑ Iridescent 08:03, 16 June 2020 (UTC)
I undeleted the article and brought it to a state when it is, by any reasonable standard, not amenable for speedy deletion. I have zero time now to work on it but may come back in the evening. Everybody should feel free to improve it.--Ymblanter (talk) 06:46, 15 June 2020 (UTC)
Thanks, and I've expanded a little bit, and made the redirect I had been looking for. Must now go boom. Yes, Iridescent, I appreciate your letting me know, but I wasn't able to stay under 5 edits, and I have to make a stand somewhere. (As a result, I'll have to spend almost all of the second half of this month doing what I should be doing. There are several mentions that can now be linked '-)) Yngvadottir (talk) 08:20, 15 June 2020 (UTC)
I don't have time at the moment, but thanks for that and I'll certainly have a look. Mary Beard sometimes has an annoying tendency to present her personal opinions as if they were undisputed truth, even on controversial topics, but she's always interesting, and The Sirens and Ulysses is such a preposterously horrible painting it's always interesting to hear what people have to say about it. ‑ Iridescent 2 16:45, 8 May 2020 (UTC)
Isnt it merely 'not great'? 'Preposterously' inplies a level of ridiculousness that is extreme. Why do you think its that bad? Only in death does duty end (talk) 14:46, 10 May 2020 (UTC)
Sirens on display
"Horrible" in the sense of disturbing, not in the sense of inept. Have you ever seen it in the flesh? Because of its size, it's very hard to get a sense of it online; see the photo of it on the right to get a feeling for what it looks like in context. To give an idea of scale, Andromeda and Perseus (top left, above Banksy's Love Is In The Air) is 76 cm × 63.5 cm (2 ft 6 in × 2 ft 1 in)—roughly the size of seven sheets of A4 paper—but even the tiny details of Sirens like the individual sailors on the ship in the background dwarf it. (The figure of Ulysses, who at Wikipedia display scale looks like a grain of rice, is actually about two feet tall.)
When you see it on display, you see a row of breasts each larger than your own head at eye level, next to a pile of photorealistic life-size corpses in varying states of decay, above which is a smaller but still fairly large naked man. It's technically astonishing—Etty considered it the most accomplished thing he'd ever done—but even today the effect is genuinely revolting and unsettling, even if you're fully aware you're going to be confronted with it as you walk round the corner from the 18th-century gallery, filled with demure formal portraits and landscapes, that precedes it.
(Even today with audiences used to a culture of gratuitous nudity and horror-as-entertainment, Manchester Art Gallery spends an inordinate amount of time with attempts to put Sirens and the smaller but equally morally dubious Hylas and the Nymphs into context and to counterbalance them in some way with 'controversial in a different direction' pieces like the Banksy or Joana Vasconcelos's Big Booby. If they weren't both so high-profile they'd probably go into storage for the rest of time and only be hauled out for earnest "history of controversial art" exhibitions (as the Tate has already done with Youth & Pleasure and their version of Musidora), and I can hardly imagine what a Victorian audience must have made of them.) ‑ Iridescent 15:45, 10 May 2020 (UTC)
Victorians liked a boob as much as the next man. They just lied about it more. I guess being from common stock, I dont look at fine art the same way. Much of which seems to be an excuse for people to paint other naked people for other people to enjoy looking at naked people. I know there is a school of thought on this at it applies to art but the name escapes me. Of course I am not at the level where I consider dogs playing poker the pinnacle of art, but as applied to the above, the only thing I then find unusual is the sheer size of it. I mean, I knew it was big, but thats pretty huge. I can understand why they put a massive boob next to it. Only in death does duty end (talk) 18:48, 10 May 2020 (UTC)
Victorians may have liked them, but until Etty they couldn't get them. The Vagrancy Act 1824 criminalised wilfully exposing to view, in any street, road, highway, or public place, any obscene print, picture, or other indecent exhibition, which effectively killed the market (aside from the few who were famous enough to get major commissions, artists lived on the sale of print rights and on putting works up for auction, both of which involved display and distribution to the public and were consequently banned). (That isn't to say it was legal before that, but the 1787 Proclamation for the Discouragement of Vice only made obscenity a common-law offense and the magistrates would sometimes turn a blind eye or be confused about where the lines should be drawn.)
It's why you see so many paintings between 1824 and 1857 (when the Obscene Publications Act formalised the distinction between "pornography" and "art") illustrating the relatively obscure Summer by James Thomson; a particular stanza (Meantime, this fairer nymph than ever blest / Arcadian stream, with timid eye around / The banks surveying, stripped her beauteous limbs / To taste the lucid coolness of the flood) gave a pretext for publishers to publish tit-pics on the grounds that they were illustrating a classic work of literature, and that by showing a naked teenager they were just being faithful to the text. (Venus serves the same role in French and Italian art.)
Etty was literally the first successful English artist to paint nude women as anything more than a very occasional training exercise or private never-to-be-exhibited commission, and he had a carefully worked out formula for claiming he was illustrating classical subjects for which it would be reasonable to assume the models' clothes happened to fall off. (He was shielded by the fact that he was very publicly both devoutly religious and completely asexual, and had a lot of friends in high places, but he still spent his entire career being condemned by the press for corrupting public morals.) If you're interested in the convoluted relationship between 19th-century English culture and the rapidly-changing obscenity laws and how each influenced the other, I highly recommend Alison Smith's The Victorian Nude and the catalogue she wrote for the Tate's 2001 Exposed exhibition, both of which you should be able to pick up on Amazon or find in specialist libraries. ‑ Iridescent 19:34, 10 May 2020 (UTC)
Victoria erotica
For fellow talk-page stalkers: That unmentionable site has Victorian erotica as its latest example of a "crap article", and it does need a lot of help. Yngvadottir (talk) 20:30, 10 May 2020 (UTC)
I'm not touching that; I have better things to do with my time than field non-stop crazies rambling about Effie Gray and The Way of a Man with a Maid. The current article looks like someone's blog and would probably need to be wiped and rewritten from scratch. (What is Oscar Wilde doing in there? His writing is about as erotic as a Haynes Manual.) It's not a sensible topic, anyway. In economic and social terms to speak of a single Victorian age makes sense as her reign was bracketed by the rise of Britain as an industrial superpower in the 1830s and the cultural shock of the Boer War in 1901, and in artistic terms by the end of the stranglehold of the English School and the Royal Academy at the start of her reign and the introduction of abstraction and vorticism in the 1900s, but none of the key dates regarding the shift from puritanism to permissiveness (the re-establishment of cultural links with France in 1815, the Vagrancy Act 1824, the invention of photographic duplication in 1840, the Obscene Publications Act of 1857, Regina v. Hicklin in 1868, the launch and closure of The Pearl in 1879, the "naturist magazine" loophole in the 1890s, Lady Chatterley's Lover in 1928, the Obscene Publications Act 1959 and the Chatterley trial in 1960) tally at all with any particular reign. I have a vague aspiration to add a section on changing attitudes towards nudity to my half-finished Victorian painting, but don't hold your breath.
Besides, assuming the person raising concerns about Victorian erotica at The Other Site is Poetlister (I haven't checked but I can't imagine Somey and co being interested in obscure articles on Victorian literature), I dare say he's perfectly capable of fixing it himself if he's that bothered, and is probably better qualified than me to do so. Something tells me he knows how to evade CU if he puts his mind to it. ‑ Iridescent 21:11, 10 May 2020 (UTC)
Oddly not Poet. His only small comment on the subject is about the lack of content on the impact of photography. Of course this doesnt rule out the other posters being Poet.... but given who they are , unlikely. Only in death does duty end (talk) 21:59, 10 May 2020 (UTC)
Looking at this pseudo-article more closely, in all honesty I'm getting seriously tempted to just send it to AfD. Per my above comments I don't believe there's such a thing as "Victorian erotica", there's just a trend of English literary and artistic traditions, part of which happened to coincide with the period. This reads like a 16-year-old's school essay; it seems to be just a jumbled mess of garbled speculation, misrepresentation of sources (if anyone takes this article seriously and tries to read Charles Dickens or George Eliot as erotica they're in for a surprise), and near-random non sequiturs. ‑ Iridescent 23:20, 10 May 2020 (UTC)
It is terrible, but an excellent proof that dense referencing to academic sources means next to nothing in the wrong hands. A move to something like Sexuality in Victorian culture might be a modest improvement. Johnbod (talk) 23:51, 10 May 2020 (UTC)
If there was anything "erotica" about Dickens, they surely wouldn't need to force teenage schoolboys to read it. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 13:22, 11 May 2020 (UTC)
Ooh, a well-turned ankle or two—! :) serial # 13:37, 11 May 2020 (UTC)
Unless anyone says in the next couple of days that they think there's anything worth keeping here, I'll set the wheels in motion for deletion. I still can't see a viable topic. Lumping a bunch of unrelated writers and artists together just because they happened to be working in a particular period makes no more sense than bundling the 1958 Munich air disaster, the abandoning of the 2020 Tunnocks Caramel Wafer Cup and the expulsion of Ebbw Vale from the Welsh League together as "British football during the reign of Elizabeth II". ‑ Iridescent 18:37, 11 May 2020 (UTC)
For any TPW who isn't getting the reference, see Template:Did you know nominations/London in the 1960s and Talk:London in the 1960s#Removed material for some background. That isn't entirely a fair comparison. This Victorian erotica one is just a slightly longer than usual instance of a Wikipedia page written by someone who doesn't understand how to interpret sources on a topic with which they're not already familiar and doesn't understand how to apply due weight so is creating an inappropriate synthesis (an article type of which we have no shortage). London in the 1960s was arguably the most ineptly-sourced page in Wikipedia history and included everything from novels being cited as historical documents, to cut-and-paste copyright violations, to really bizarre obvious errors (the Beatles as cockneys, claiming the Canary Islands are in the Thames), to things the author had just made up. Were Wikipedia an educational institution or a professionally-run publisher, the author of Victorian erotica would have been sent away and told to rewrite it, but someone submitting London in the 1960s would have been fired/expelled on the spot. ‑ Iridescent 21:37, 11 May 2020 (UTC)
Indeed - it just brought it back to mind. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 22:13, 11 May 2020 (UTC)
My word, as someone whose family has lived on the Thames in/around South/East london for 300 years... That is a terrible terrible article. I mean, CANARIES.... Jesus. Only in death does duty end (talk) 16:22, 13 May 2020 (UTC)
Yes, but by providing an early warning of the problems with the article, the islands served as Canaries in the coal mine. Newyorkbrad (talk) 19:20, 13 May 2020 (UTC)
Maybe they were confused with the Isle of Dogs (geddit? :-) Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 19:28, 13 May 2020 (UTC)
Fun fact, my father had the good fortune to be working at the NatWest Tower when it was bombed by the IRA in 93. He then moved over a couple of years later to Canary Wharf just in time to be bombed again in 96. Only in death does duty end (talk) 19:51, 13 May 2020 (UTC)
Unlike most such articles it gets rather better lower down - the LGBT stuff might be worth homing somewhere, if not already covered. Johnbod (talk) 01:42, 12 May 2020 (UTC)
Sexuality in the Victorian era would be a nightmare to write and even more of a nightmare to prevent degenerating into grey goo. "The Victorians" weren't a homogeneous mass; the culture of individual towns and cities was far more varied than it is now, and the culture of villages was totally alien to both; class and money were much more important than they are nowadays; colonialism, the opening up of Europe, and the disintegration of the Islamic world meant the definition of "culturally acceptable" was even more fluid and situation-specific than it is today; and above all, you had London and Manchester exerting a telegraph- and railway-powered distorting influence on the culture and economy of the rest of the UK in a manner that's never been seen before or since. One could probably knock up a basic Sexuality in Victorian London article out of the relevant chapters of Catherine Arnold's City of Sin, but expanding it to cover the whole of England—let alone the rest of the UK, parts of which were culturally totally unconnected to London—would be book-length, even in summary style. When I was doing the "sexuality in Victorian Swansea" articles a couple of years ago I quickly came to the conclusion that the parent article would be virtually impossible to write in Wikipedia style, and (with all due respect to our Ospreylian cousins) its history is orders of magnitude less complex than that of even Norwich or Carlisle, let alone the Victorian megacities or the countries of the UK. Plus, even if you somehow could write Sexuality in the Victorian era, you'd then be committing yourself to spending the rest of your life editwarring to stop people adding every prostitute / criminal conversation trial / smutty writer / closet homosexual they happen to read about to the article, or it would promptly deteriorate into List of whatever Hallie Rubenhold and Lucy Worsley happen to have tweeted about recently. Women in the Victorian era is bad enough, and is basically "list of anecdotes about posh women of the 19th century"; I could safely testify that to 99% of women in 19th-century Britain, "never acknowledging the use of undergarments", "traditional pastimes such as reading, embroidery, music, and traditional handicrafts", and "detailed instructions on how to supervise servants in preparation for hosting dinners and balls" were not matters of pressing concern. ‑ Iridescent 19:59, 18 May 2020 (UTC)
Ronald Pearsall's very long 1969 book The Worm in the Bud: the world of Victorian sexuality. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson ISBN 0-297-17663-3 would be an essential all-in-one source. Johnbod (talk) 21:05, 18 May 2020 (UTC)
This BL article (and its "further reading" section) would also be a good jumping-off point. There have been a few people working on Victorian erotica recently so I won't AfD it yet, but I'd still say that it needs a top-to-toe complete rewrite if it's to be viable. ‑ Iridescent 12:54, 15 June 2020 (UTC)
Delayed response* I wasnt actually suggesting anyone attempt it, for almost all the reasons you succintly and accurately list above. I am currently trying to work out why we dont have a free image of John Craven for his biography... Only in death does duty end (talk) 13:08, 15 June 2020 (UTC)
There's one on Flickr which is shown as CC BY-NC-ND, but which is a UK government photo so might be covered by OGL. You could try just writing to his agent and asking for a headshot, a lot of publicists are happy to release something to us if it means that the Commons photo (which by definition usually means the photo at the top of the google results and the photo newspapers use as their stock photo of the subject) is something that makes their client look good. ‑ Iridescent 13:38, 15 June 2020 (UTC)
The only one on commons that appears to be actually him is not suitable at all. I say appears because you cannot see his face, a truely magificant piece of photography in that regard. I might try writing. It only came up because the wife has been asked to contribute to countryfile and then wondered why I got excited at her being a step removed from Newsround's John Craven. I then had to explain who John Craven was... Only in death does duty end (talk) 13:43, 15 June 2020 (UTC)
In vague defence of Commons, that photo appears to have been part of a batch scraped by the long-abandoned GeographBot, rather than an instance of someone on Commons saying "Hey, this image has potential encyclopedic value". Geograph is sometimes a useful resource but their quality standards are non-existent (so many photos from that bulk upload are problematic, c:User talk:GeographBot is literally a redirect to Commons:Batch uploading/Geograph/Deletion requests). ‑ Iridescent 14:51, 15 June 2020 (UTC)
As an aside
If whichever of the unmentionable sites it is that's collating "crap articles" is still looking for them, I humbly present Nonfiction, Self-concept and Artist. ‑ Iridescent 08:15, 16 June 2020 (UTC)
And speaking of artists, if anyone wants to unlock the "getting an article that's been on Wikipedia since Nupedia days deleted" achievement in the Wikipedia MMORPG, Neoism is an absolute open goal. ‑ Iridescent 14:02, 16 June 2020 (UTC)
Tiger versus lion only exists because one recognizable name has made it his personal goal to see that the worst article on Wikipedia is never deleted. It is named as it is because it is intended to be an article about who would win in a hypothetical fight if they overlapped in the wild. It is explicitly not a comparison. TonyBallioni (talk) 14:07, 16 June 2020 (UTC)
Oh good god; yes, I'm familiar with that particular editor, who always talks a good game when it comes to "keep, this is salvageable" but generally doesn't walk the walk when it comes to actually salvaging anything. If this level of sourcing is acceptable, I could probably cobble together an adequate 100 duck-sized horses versus one horse-sized duck article from google. (Here are the venerable and painfully earnest New Statesman, The Atlantic and Medium discussing that very topic; that's honest-to-goodness Multiple Independent Non-trivial Reliable Sources.)
My all-time Worst Article on Wikipedia is still this drivel, which subsequently got cleaned up (after much "keep, it exists" reverting) and is now just "crap" rather than "terrible". ‑ Iridescent 14:32, 16 June 2020 (UTC)
Without going to the extreme length of reading it all carefully, I don't especially see the problem with "Artist" - Art is a tricky word, with too many meanings, that confuse some of our readers. See the current discussion at Talk:art. At least the lead of Self-concept seems useful, though the lower reaches look like homework. Anyone who sets out to read an article on Nonfiction will probably find what they want there. Johnbod (talk) 14:57, 16 June 2020 (UTC)
Go to the trouble of reading Artist; it's not long, and it degenerates into impressive levels of gibberish. Self-concept in my opinion reads like a particularly bad student essay, and should probably be cut back to just the lead, while I'd say Nonfiction is an embarassment for something that has a "top importance" marker on it.
We now have a late entrant which at the very least is a possible contender for "most unmaintainable article on Wikipedia": List of fugitives from justice who are no longer sought. (This isn't a list of criminals who've never been found and the authorities gave up looking for, which might be an interesting topic; this is explicitly "list of people who were wanted by the police and were subsequently arrested or confirmed dead". You may be as surprised as I am to discover that the authorities are no longer actively searching for Saddam Hussein, Ted Bundy and Davy Crockett.) ‑ Iridescent 15:09, 16 June 2020 (UTC)
Well, I did, more or less - not untypically, the worst bits are those that probably represent fairly faithfully recent academic research, while much of the unreferenced "OR" is at least dealing with real issues. Anyway, I don't see it belonging on any list of "Crappest of the Crap on WP". For that, in the area of the arts, pick most "Art (or Dance, music, crafts etc) of Fooland" articles. The site-which-must-not-be-named never knows where to look either, it's always seemed to me. Or the cheater's way is just to follow the WikiEducation classes around. Johnbod (talk) 15:43, 16 June 2020 (UTC)
No, the cheaters way is to go here and click pages at random. The WikiEd classes, I make allowances for; they're by definition newcomers who don't yet understand what's appropriate, and at least in theory the instructor should clear up the worst of the mess after the event. If you're hunting for crap, the best hunting grounds are villages, which—unless one of the regulars happens to live there—tend to either be totally uninformative substubs, or insanely detailed lists of every possible thing that ever happened there. Animal breeds (other than horses) are also a good bet, particularly vague ones like Black cat. (If you really want to shoot fish in a barrel, you can always start here.) ‑ Iridescent 15:57, 16 June 2020 (UTC)
And just going to put Kill off here. ‑ Iridescent 15:14, 16 June 2020 (UTC)
I killed some of it off. TonyBallioni (talk) 16:30, 16 June 2020 (UTC)
Re Neoism ... your wish is my command, for about a minute, anyway. :-) After reading the actual article ... what, on, earth? Even *I* knew the art world could be weird, but that's taking it to another level ... Graham87 16:46, 16 June 2020 (UTC)
I'm assuming this is someone yanking our chains and the article is itself supposed to be some kind of performance art. Under normal circumstances I'd summarily delete it—an supposed movement that boasts of "once having as many as two dozen" members is vanishingly unlikely to be even remotely notable—but because this has been around since 2003 I know any deletion will bring the "but it exists" contingent out en masse. (If you want more surreally bad articles on art collectives of questionable notability, try Ztohoven.) ‑ Iridescent 17:01, 16 June 2020 (UTC)
UTRS Access
You are being messaged because there was a bug in UTRS that made it look like you had access to no appeals in the system. This has now since been patched and will be tested more before fully implemented again. You can track the progress if you wish here. I appreciate your patience and wanted to stop by to say try again, and let me know if anything else is wrong. Please also ping me if you reply here. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of -- Amanda(aka DQ) 05:15, 16 June 2020 (UTC)
I've literally never in my life visited UTRS, other than when I clicked on https://utrs-beta.wmflabs.org/ a couple of minutes ago to see if I did have an account or not. If there's someone on there claiming to be me, they're an impersonator. ‑ Iridescent 07:50, 16 June 2020 (UTC)
DQ's bot is malfunctioning, its been sending messages in error to lots of editors. They are already aware of it. Only in death does duty end (talk) 07:53, 16 June 2020 (UTC)
I get that, but I'm wondering how I ever got on a UTRS distribution list in the first place. ‑ Iridescent 08:04, 16 June 2020 (UTC)
Very unusual for the bots to run havoc on a Monday morning; it's traditionally Thursday that the WMF updates the software without bothering to tell anyone in advance and cause every bot and template to go haywire. (We even have the WP:ITSTHURSDAY redirect for use at the Help Desk and the Village Pumps to save having to type out the same explanation every week.) ‑ Iridescent 13:37, 16 June 2020 (UTC)
Late June and the first few days of July would normally be another good time for crazy software, but the end-of-fiscal-year plans seem to have gotten filed under "pandemic" this round, so I think we'll see less of that.
Also, Thursday sometimes happens early on Monday, if the train gets derailed and can't be fixed quickly enough to run it on Friday. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:40, 18 June 2020 (UTC)
I have however noticed a, for lack of a better phrase, an evolution in wiki-life. My initial reaction was to see it all as a coup by the younger editors (wiki-editing rather than physical age) over the established guard. But with time I've come to see it more as an evolution. Certainly the established rules (policies) are being interpreted differently than they once were, but given that wiki is a consensus driven culture, I don't see an alternative. Regardless - your comment did make me smile at one view, while still being sad at another view. I do enjoy your ability to evoke a wide range of thought with such concise posts. Best always, — Ched (talk) 17:42, 17 June 2020 (UTC)
Good to see you again! Yes, by "civil war" I meant the Framgate brouhaha—my point is that, by going to the barricades during T&S's attempted coup, we established the principle that Arbcom is the place to go when it comes to user conduct issues; consequently, we can't now turn around and decide Arbcom shouldn't have authority over a user conduct issue just because we don't like the idea of an arb case, or don't have confidence in this particular iteration of the committee to reach the right conclusion.
If anything, I'd say Wikipedia's evolution is going the other way; the general malaise in editor recruitment and retention during the Sue Gardner era and the disintegration of RFA means Wikipedia is now run by a gerontocracy of people who've been around for 10+ years. (Thanks to the miracle of WP:NAVPOPS, of the successful Arbcom candidates a decade ago I can see that 1 of them had been active for 6 years, 3 for 5 years, 7 for 4 years, and 1 for 2 years—that is, when they were elected they had an average wiki-experience of just over four years apiece. The corresponding figures for last year's election are 1 for 15 years, 1 for 14 years, 5 for 13 years, 2 for 12 years and 2 for 11 years, or an average wiki-age of 13 years. To put that in perspective, the current arb who's been active on Wikipedia for the shortest time is Bradv who'd been here 11 years when he was elected. Eleven years before I was elected to Arbcom, the site that was eventually to become Wikipedia looked like this.) Although the constant intake of kids make a lot of noise and make it seem like they're more numerous than they are, Wikipedia is dominated by men aged 40–70; this or this are much more representative of Wikipedia. (Yes, before anyone points it out I know that meetups underrepresent women and young people who are less likely to have the free time and less likely to feel comfortable meeting a bunch of strangers, but the principle stands.)
I'm not sure the policies are really being interpreted that differently than they were back in our day. There's probably less of an "it's OK to goof around provided you're doing something useful as well" attitude than there used to be—something like WP:BRC would nowadays prompt a pompous "you're not devoting your time 100% to building the encyclopedia"—but we made that bed for ourselves by letting a gaggle of self-appointed court jesters push the envelope so much that the community lost patience. Even despite T&S's hamfistedness, things are probably more consistent—and hence fairer—now than they ever used to be; there's at least a fighting chance now that if three editors cause the same problem, they'll receive the same sanction, which is surely better than the old days of who-was-friends-with-whom. ‑ Iridescent 18:32, 17 June 2020 (UTC)
Following your link above to the site that was eventually to become Wikipedia, I was confronted by the slogan, "We're only irritating until you get used to us." Honestly I wonder if that sentiment mightn't be useful in welcoming new editors today. EEng 00:42, 18 June 2020 (UTC)
@EEng: Don't sell yourself short like that. Newyorkbrad (talk) 01:21, 18 June 2020 (UTC)
Guns, terrorists, babes and cars ... is there anything more to life? Levivich[dubious – discuss] 17:23, 18 June 2020 (UTC)
Even if you knew nothing about him, you could just look at that list of interests and guess that at the time he lived in north Florida… ‑ Iridescent 17:45, 18 June 2020 (UTC)
Request
Would you mind deleting the redirect at Finbarr Donnelly. Have a bio on the way, and for selfish reasons would prefer a new article rather than an expansion. Here is why[15] Thanks. Ceoil (talk) 23:05, 23 May 2020 (UTC)
✓Done. Hope all well with the two of you. ‑ Iridescent 07:10, 24 May 2020 (UTC)
We are well. Liz stranded but might be back in a few weeks thank god. Re deletion, pls accept this proto-type Julian Cope tune as thanks[16]. Ceoil (talk) 00:13, 6 June 2020 (UTC)
Glad to hear you're both well; despite the chaos of UK/IE at the moment, I don't envy anyone stranded in the US in these strange times. Have some surprisingly good dreampop-electronica by Mark Radcliffe; given that he started off in Skrewdriver he must qualify for some kind of "longest musical journey" award. (As does Steve Miller, come to that.) ‑ Iridescent 07:45, 6 June 2020 (UTC)
Oh that's really nice. Seeing some Talk Talk influences there. RIP. ps no comment re Skrewdriver's musical ability; but sadly there seems to be an increasing, moronic, audience for that stuff in the last 3 odd years. Where was Mad Dog when we needed him. Ceoil (talk) 10:34, 6 June 2020 (UTC)
@Ceoil: Which Mad Dog is that? There were at least two :) ——Serial# 13:50, 7 June 2020 (UTC)
I'm not at all surprised at the increasing audience; there's an increasing, moronic audience for that kind of thing in general, since the internet means the word gets out even if the radio refuses to play it. If I were an immoral record company executive, it would probably be quite lucrative to manufacture an overtly alt-right band; there are so few pro-Trump/pro-Bojo bands that there would be a ready-made audience who'd buy it out of loyalty whether or not they liked it, and venues being picketed would create a constant stream of publicity. (The Macc Lads made an entire career out of right-wingers buying their stuff out of loyalty despite it being terrible, and they didn't have the benefit of Twitter and Reddit.) Off the top of my head Morrissey is the only one who's trying this, but he's such a creepy old weirdo he just alienates his former fans without attracting new ones. (Hell, you're Irish; you know that when there's a ethno-nationalist divide in a society there's an consistent niche market for overt nationalist tat on both sides of it.)
I'm very taken with Mark Radcliffe's UNE project in general. I stumbled onto it quite by accident, as he was playing my local and I went along out of curiosity; I'm not sure what I was expecting but it definitely wasn't that. (Assuming normal life isn't going to be restored any time soon, he has the distinction of being the last gig I'll see; this was in that weird twilight-week at the end of March when every other European country was in full lockdown but the UK government was still pretending it was business as usual. The atmosphere was very strange, as everyone there knew this was probably going to be the last day the pubs would be open.)
If you have a spare €9 floating around, I'd also recommend Spread Love as well worth a punt. As I think I've said before, while they completely flopped at the time I think the Loves were a fascinating if wildly uneven band; rather like I imagine the Beatles would have sounded if instead of splitting, they'd replaced John Lennon with Tom Verlaine. (They also spawned Cosines, The School, and Simon Love & the Old Romantics, all of which are quite interesting acts in their own right.) ‑ Iridescent 22:56, 6 June 2020 (UTC)
Now see, I personally was wondering about why nobody has tried the If I were an immoral record company executive, it would probably be quite lucrative to manufacture an overtly alt-right band; there are so few pro-Trump/pro-Bojo bands that there would be a ready-made audience who'd buy it out of loyalty whether or not they liked it, and venues being picketed would create a constant stream of publicity. tack as well. Perhaps someone tried and found out that they are not that good customers? Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 09:14, 7 June 2020 (UTC)
The major labels would be unlikely to touch it for fear of boycotts and of existing artists resigning from the label. There are a very few far-right figures who have contracts with major labels—Eric Clapton and Morrissey spring to mind—but they developed their extremist views (or at least went public with them) after they'd become successful. There are right-wing elements in punk going all the way back to Johnny Ramone and John Lydon, but aside from the hatecore lunatic fringe they tend to be mainstream conservatives and in any case their politics doesn't generally affect their output. I do think that a well-marketed rightist equivalent to Billy Bragg or Bruce Springsteen would make a comfortable income from it; there are enough people on the right who would welcome the chance to say "Look, someone who isn't a creepy weirdo like Ted Nugent is saying things that reflect how I feel!". (Geoff Norcott has already successfully trodden a similar path in comedy, by attracting Conservative supporters who know that he's tedious and unfunny, but feel obliged to support him because he's one of the few comedians who can be counted on not to take shots at the open goal that is Boris Johnson.) ‑ Iridescent 13:34, 7 June 2020 (UTC)
I realise the irony re right wing fetishists and what have you, but can you pls move Love Your Enemies (album) back to We Hate You South African Bastards!. Reason: thats what the album is called. No point in a discussion as talk page was populated by bots only. In ictu oculi moved it in 2016, to match a later CD reissue (note what the record label did there), prob not knowing what he was doing. Ceoil (talk) 19:17, 13 June 2020 (UTC)
ps, I have a lot to say about the above, but just saw it now and thinking. Ceoil (talk) 19:20, 13 June 2020 (UTC)
✓Done, although if anyone challenges it—or reverts me—it should probably go to a formal discussion somewhere. Wikipedia goes by WP:COMMONNAME for article titles rather than automatically going by the original name, and there have certainly been things that are better known by a re-release title (Sister Lovers is an obvious one that springs to mind, I could certainly make a case that David Bowie (1969 album) ought to be at Space Oddity, and I doubt anyone could figure out the WP:COMMONNAME of Impossible Princess (if we're sticking with the arts but moving away from music, good luck getting consensus to move And Then There Were None to its original title). ‑ Iridescent 07:33, 14 June 2020 (UTC)
Understood and thank you. Its not the first time they go into trouble with album titles, Caughlan (a rather intense performer and individual) wanted his next band the 2nd album to be titled "Bugs Fucking Bunny", but the label were, sigh, not so keen. Something about trade mark and liable issuesCeoil (talk) 21:08, 14 June 2020 (UTC)
Probably less to do with trademark issues and more with the label knowing that no retailer would put it on the shelves; even Never Mind the Bollocks got hauled off to an obscenity trial, and no sane person considers "bollock" an obscenity. To the "musicians who have suddenly come out of the closet as extremist nutjobs" list you can now add Matt Johnson, whose twitter feed over the last few days is so enthusiastically endorsing every wacko conspiracy going, it looks like a Russian bot farm. ‑ Iridescent 06:48, 15 June 2020 (UTC)
Never liked Matt Johnson myself, too po-faced and serious like there was never a real human being behind the persona presented to the weekly music press. Angry young men moving towards the right/neo-conism in advanced years is not a new thing of course, see Tom Wolfe or Christopher Hitchens. Maybe grumpy old reactionaries is a better term; as a more widespread phenomenon, see also how the Brexit vote was drawn on generational lines....its the same stuff over and over...three steps forward, one steps back, and longevity is something we now need to take into the political calculus...speaking as an aulder person myself. ps, am sold on this by Simon Love. My dig into the past this weekend is this into the similar forgotten nostalgia ditty Nick Drake/John Cale. One one of those heard it in the radio once in 1996, only found it again on utube this week things. Ceoil (talk) 20:54, 19 June 2020 (UTC)
Matt Johnson completely passed me by at the time other than I name I occasionally saw mentioned; I'm honestly not sure I'd ever even heard his music before the online boom and 6 Music started. He's not even reactionary; his Twitter feed before he locked it was descending into almost Larry Sanger levels of conspiracy stupidity.
Simon Love is one of those people like MES or Amelia Fletcher who's held back by sounding much better live than he does recorded. Something like Not If I See You First recorded comes across as fairly generic and dated, but live it's like watching someone simultaneously channel all four Beatles, if you ever get the chance I highly recommend it. Much the same goes for his fellow ex-Love Liz Hunt, who on vinyl comes across as a cheesy 1960s pastiche but live gets the whole room standing in silence so as not to miss anything.
I know it's heresy, but I never really got Nick Drake. I get that at the time it was revolutionary, but by the time I was old enough to listen to it properly, everything he was trying to do had already been done better by someone else. See also Richard Thompson, Elvis Costello, and Alex Chilton. ‑ Iridescent 2 20:35, 20 June 2020 (UTC)
Heresy indeed. While I wont call for your burning just yet, note that without Drake, we wouldn't have Thompson, Costello or Chilton, who all came after. To get why most people like him, listen to the piano figure in this particularly haunted song. Re right wing, sadly Tony Hadley has also all fallen off side. I'm devastated. Ceoil (talk) 22:12, 20 June 2020 (UTC)
Oh, I get that Nick Drake was a key figure and along with Alex Chilton laid the foundation for the musical movements that became indie, goth, post-punk and twee-pop, but I don't think any aged particularly well. Because they were so influential, a lot of people took what they were trying to do and built on it, so the originals seem very dated to me. I have much the same problem with Bob Dylan - yes it was completely revolutionary 50 years ago, but if I like that style I can now get something similar elsewhere without the self-indulgence and incoherent mumbling. ‑ Iridescent 2 08:42, 22 June 2020 (UTC)
"Win" by default for boring organizing work
(I really hope this doesn't count as inappropriate canvassing. I think it doesn't, but...)
So, the folks at the WMF decided that the continuation of the strategy process ("transition to implementation") would be decided at a series of online events ("virtual transition discussions"). These events would be designed by a "design group", consisting of people nominated from whoever wants to. Also, the setup is that there's to be one person on the design group from each geographic region, because WMF. The design group's work is likely to have considerable influence over the extent to which the community is involved in the discussions, the outcome of which may have considerable impact on the future of WMF-community relations, among other things.
Here's the thing: The two-week nominations process for the design group ends in about four hours, and there have still been precisely zero nominations from North America or the Central/Eastern Europe region. (This might have something to do with the fact that the broad, public call for nominations was posted on zero places on-wiki (because WMF).) If you happen to know anyone who might want to be involved in this (or if any of your talk page watchers might consider it), who could work to ensure that the process is not entirely WMF + affiliates, I think that might be a helpful contribution. It's also possible that it might be an annoying waste of time; things are a bit unclear. --Yair rand (talk) 19:59, 21 June 2020 (UTC)
I'm in neither. Assuming by "Central and Eastern Europe" the WMF means what the entire rest of the world calls "former Soviet bloc", there are quite a few Polish editors around who might be interested. I think Ymblanter is Russian and might be a good fit (I strongly disagree with him on many things, but I don't think anyone would doubt his commitment). There are no shortage of North Americans here (obviously); if you're after people who aren't the usual process insiders, someone like Liz might be a good fit. You might also want (and yes this is a serious suggestion) to post a notice on Wikipediocracy to see if any of them might be interested; not all of them are obsessive agenda-pushing weirdos, and if you're looking for the kind of people who are going to enjoy studying the details of WMF proposals it's probably the best place to find them. (Years back I once seriously proposed allowing the old Wikipedia Review to nominate an observer to the Arbcom mailing list, for just that reason.)
I honestly wouldn't lose sleep over whether this is filled or not. Whatever it comes up with is going to be ignored by the community as an unrepresentative body of which nobody's heard, and by the WMF who will jusr disregard anything that isn't a rubber-stamping of whatever their staff have already decided; what you have here appears to be a "veneer of legitimacy" exercise rather than a credible community consultation. (If they actually wanted independent input, the request would have been posted on all the big wikis, not tucked away in Meta where nobody except the process wonks will ever see it.) ‑ Iridescent 2 20:43, 21 June 2020 (UTC)
I am Dutch, but I do indeed have sufficient Russian background, and probably would be able to do the job (one can even mention the Russian Wikivoyage as my (alt) home project. However, the page looks too bureaucratic to me. If the idea that someone nominates me I do not mind, but if I have to do it myself and then negotiate with all affiliates (I am not a member of any affiliate not thematic organization, never attended a Wikimania etc) I am afraid I just do not have time for that - but if it closed in four hours, and I have to go to bed more or less now, nomination by someone else probably remains the only option.--Ymblanter (talk) 20:59, 21 June 2020 (UTC)
This is amazing. I've tried to stay aware of opportunities like these to be involved, looked in the usual places at least once a week, & this is the first I've even heard of such a process. But as Yair rand said, because WMF. (It's almost as if you need to know the right people to be involved in this process. And be aware that improving content apparently is, at best, a distraction from the important work that pays.) -- llywrch (talk) 04:26, 22 June 2020 (UTC)
Hi, I have been cleaning up Special:WantedTemplates and noticed that Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:"_+_"oldafdfull"_+_" is pointing to your monobook.js and vector.js pages. clearly these are false positives (basically a bug in how WP parses .js pages). it would be really great if you could add // <syntaxhighlight lang=javascript> to the top and // </syntaxhighlight> to the bottom of those pages. by putting these tags in comments, it won't prevent the javascript from executing, but it will remove those pages from Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:"_+_"oldafdfull"_+_". alternatively, for the monobook.js page, if you are no longer using the monobook skin (many people are using vector these days) and don't need to keep the old page, you could just have the page deleted. thank you in advance for your help. Frietjes (talk) 20:04, 27 June 2020 (UTC)
✓Done. I obviously reserve the right to revert the changes if they somehow affect functionality in future; the world is not about to come to an end even if there's a glitch in Special:WantedTemplates since anyone experienced enough to be on that page in the first place will know Wikimarkup well enough to know that Template:"_+_"oldafdfull"_+_" is not a real instance of someone trying to use a nonexistent template. ‑ Iridescent 18:49, 28 June 2020 (UTC)
FAC Laura Harrier is currently in a standstill. One editor supported the promotion to FA status but the current editor believes the article is too short to be a Featured Article. Could anyone assist with this article or quickly look over it for a review, or if not interested in reviewing it, let me know if it is indeed too short please? Factfanatic1 (talk) 13:43, 22 June 2020 (UTC)
A 30-year old has got most of their life ahead of them (hopefully), and consequently I wouldn't consider it to be a good subject for an FA. This would be because the article will probably need to be updated, and the first people on the scene won't be FA stalwarts, and consequently you'll need to spend time fixing it, or run this risk of it being delisted - essentially a moving target is hard to hit. Given the annual readership is about 3/4 million, this seems likely. Look how much bother Neelix had. Essentially, the best biography candidates for FA are the deceased, in my view. Ritchie333(talk)(cont) 17:46, 23 June 2020 (UTC)
Also, Factfanatic1, just to let you know that it's not length per se that dictates at FAC (Laura currently beats our shortest FA by ~2K bytes), but criterion 1b, which requires the article to be comprehensive (it neglects no major facts or details and places the subject in context). Length is only ever going to be problematic in the extremes. ——Serial# 18:03, 23 June 2020 (UTC)
@Factfanatic1, I agree with both those above. While this is short (1659 words), it's still more than twice the length of 2005 Azores subtropical storm (662 words), Miss Meyers (686 words), How Brown Saw the Baseball Game (712 words) or Nico Ditch (777 words), so don't feel that length is some kind of barrier. What is missing, however, is any apparent depth. Yes, I get that this is a relatively private person, but at the moment there's so little about her personal life that it reads more like a CV than an actual biography. (Cut out her acting and modelling roles, and by my count the article comes to 273 words. It quite literally says less than a tenth as much about the article subject as a person than does Julian of Norwich, and the latter has been dead for 600 years and spent most of her adult life locked in a one-room cell.)
I think in this particular case, it's the sourcing that will be it's undoing; it's not, how you say, robust... ——Serial# 12:46, 24 June 2020 (UTC)
I also agree with Ritchie333 that this kind of mid-fame BLP is generally the worst topic you can choose as a topic on which to write on Wikipedia, particularly if you want something to become and remain a Featured Article. She's famous enough that she'll have a steady stream of cranks, weirdos and well-meaning fans constantly making additions, but she's not an A-lister who'll be on the watchlists of numerous people who will clean up after them; plus, unless you're willing to commit to keeping it up to date, it will go out of date almost immediately. There are high-quality and stable biographies of living people on Wikipedia, but they're almost exclusively either people so obscure as to not attract many edits and not need routine maintenance (Bronwyn Bancroft, Eusèbe Jaojoby) or of people so famous that every change to their article is instantly scrutinised (Kylie Minogue, Hillary Clinton). This kind of mid level, where you have a lot of people who will potentially want to make changes to the article but not a lot of people who will be interested enough to care, is generally where the Wikipedia model most typically fails, and when coupled with the issues around BLPs it makes the articles a nightmare to keep stable. (This isn't by any means singling you out, it's a systemic failing of Wikipedia. Pick your favourite sports team and look at how bad the biographies of all their current roster, other than possibly the star player, are.) Remember, although when it comes to the Featured article criteria it's 1a (prose quality) and 1c (sourcing) that authors and reviewers tend to focus on, 1e ("its content does not change significantly from day to day") is of equal importance, and that's very hard to do for any biography where the content is going to change day-by-day. ‑ Iridescent 07:47, 24 June 2020 (UTC)
I'm aware of the redirects, which would have been just cause to boot Neelix off the project there and then, but before that I recall him taking questionable subject material to GA / FA and exhibiting extreme WP:OWNership issues with it, (eg: here) which ought to have been sanctionable too. If he hadn't gone batshit insane with redirects, would he still be around? Ritchie333(talk)(cont) 08:49, 24 June 2020 (UTC)
It's an angels on pinheads thought experiment now, but regarding If he hadn't gone batshit insane with redirects, would he still be around?, probably not. He survived as long as he did because of Cirt running interference for him to make it look like obvious fluff like this had some kind of consensus, and that particular sockfarm has long-since been shown the door. It was the "segmental removal of the titties" fiasco that got people looking over his history and realising just how problematic he was, but it was always going to happen sooner or later. (On the subject of Neelix, if SandyGeorgia is still looking for obvious WP:FAR material to try to coax that process back into life, I humbly present the "spot the reliable source" exercise that is When God Writes Your Love Story.) ‑ Iridescent 15:12, 24 June 2020 (UTC)
You FAR it ... I am still trying to recover from the arbcase fallout, with disputes from that mess following me to Tourette syndrome. And if FAR does not pick up, and WPMED does not improve, you'll see another extended absence from me anyway. (On the subject of short articles for FA, I wonder why people do it. I had to promote them per consensus as that was "my job", but I prefer not to review them. I can't object to them because consensus and criteria doesn't allow it. But writing a short bio on a very young person isn't a great approach to FAC ... ) Bst, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:23, 24 June 2020 (UTC)
I will if and when I get round to it if nobody else does, although I'm trying to stay away from FAC at the moment—as far as I can tell it's in one of it's periodic phases of "hijacked by cranks demanding everything comply with their personal preferences", and in my experience it's usually best for all concerned to stay away until they get bored and move on.
Regarding short FAs, from experience at least sometimes it's due to Wikipedia's arcane rules on which topics can and can't be merged. Something like Waddesdon Road railway station serves no useful purpose as a stand-alone article rather than an entry in Infrastructure of the Brill Tramway, but we have a (pointless IMO) protocol that every article on a train station needs to be a stand-alone page; as such, it needed to go through the motions at FAC for the sake of Wikipedia:Featured topics/Brill Tramway. (It undoubtedly does meet WIAFA—it says everything there is to say about the topic—but there's nothing to say as it was an undistinguished building at which nothing interesting ever happened; what makes the Brill Tramway interesting was the string of unintended consequences that led to a dilapidated rural freight line built to collect milk from cattle farms inadvertently becoming part of the London Underground, not the actual buildings.) Multiply that by all the other areas where the "every topic needs a stand-alone page" crew hold sway, such as coins and pro sports, and it's easy to see why it happens. Plus, these short articles are a useful gateway for people to get started; an unconfident new editor would likely feel uncomfortable trying to conduct "a thorough and representative survey of the relevant literature" as their first attempt when it came to The Rolling Stones, but could feel reasonably confident doing the same thing for Pocketbooks. ‑ Iridescent 16:25, 24 June 2020 (UTC)
I plead guiltyish on Miss Meyers, but she's probably the only really short but comprehensive article I will bother with FA on. Right now, I am not sure I'll have TIME for another FAC of my own, between life outside wiki and just keeping TFA and FAC in line. Maybe this winter... --Ealdgyth (talk) 16:29, 24 June 2020 (UTC)
I see that Cliftonian was a support at When God Writes Your Love Story; Buidhe is looking at all of Cliftonian’s FAs. Blame Ealdgyth :). After she stopped doing the source source reviews, FAC became the playground of mutually supportive groups. There is hope ;) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:28, 24 June 2020 (UTC)
Hey now! I ... just don't have the time anymore. Not being stuck at home with my elderly mother has actually meant I have time for other projects and ... there is life outside wiki! I just don't have the two-three hours a day to devote to JUST source checks at FAC. If you want me to be involved in TFA selection AND as a FAC delegate, something has to give.... --Ealdgyth (talk) 17:38, 24 June 2020 (UTC)
Iridescent, FAR does not have many of the issues of FAC (due to very low participation) but we do have a long list of articles needing review piling up at Wikipedia:Featured article review/notices given. I am not allowed to open another FAR for two weeks so please, I would appreciate it if you went ahead and nominated this one. buidhe 17:42, 24 June 2020 (UTC)
I'll nominate it if nobody else does. I'm a bit reluctant for it to be me, as I was involved in the Neelix incident from the start. I was the admin who deleted Tumorous tittieset al, and was the one who originally proposed the mass reversal of all his creations that eventually evolved into the WP:X1 deletion criterion. Obviously this was all five years ago, but someone could reasonably complain that I'm non-neutral when it comes to the matter. ‑ Iridescent 06:44, 25 June 2020 (UTC)
That reminds me that I need to get back to Laguna del Maule (volcano) so that it can be put to FAC. In terms of FAR, a while ago I marked Mono–Inyo Craters for improvement as 3700+ sources are too much for me to work with, but I see Hike395 handled much of the issues over there. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 20:37, 25 June 2020 (UTC)
On a topic with a lot of sourcing, you don't actually have to read all 3700 sources; "thorough and representative survey of the relevant literature" is a largely symbolic rule that survives only because it's a convenient blunt instrument with which to beat wikipolitical opponents. As long as neither the nominator nor the topic is on the personal hitlist of one of the people who get their kicks from hanging around FAC making unreasonable demands, the "thorough" part is ignored and one only needs to demonstrate "representative". (I assure you, nobody has ever conducted a thorough survey of all the relevant literature when it comes to Virus, Moon or Jesus.) ‑ Iridescent 06:38, 26 June 2020 (UTC)
...hanging around FAC making unreasonable demands. Well, I guess "unreasonable" is in the eye of the beholder, but if it involves spending nearly two weeks and over 3K words arguing about bloody footnotes, and then disappearing into the night, metaphorically speaking, then I know what you mean. It's bloody brigandage that place sometimes. ——Serial# 09:06, 26 June 2020 (UTC)
"there is life outside wiki"? Lies. Sedition. Treason. Also, {{dubious}} and {{citation needed}}!
I need to go convince an editor to tell her kid to elope, so that she won't be too busy to edit next year. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:45, 27 June 2020 (UTC)
I fell down a rabbit-hole looking at some of the Neelix stuff, and have one question: What was the target of Anti-trousers??? --Mdaniels5757 (talk) 23:23, 28 June 2020 (UTC)
Hi, I've not been editing much for quite a while and may be out of touch. I've just left a note elsewhere but I'd rather have a second opinion if you could oblige. Basically, why link to Wikisource rather than the original printed document. Comments from your watchers welcome. - Sitush (talk) 17:12, 28 June 2020 (UTC)
No firm answer as it depends on what the source is and what it's being used for, but in general I'd disagree with you. In most cases, I'd think it would be better to link to a searchable and copypastable Wikisource page than a grainy scan, provided we have confidence in the integrity of the Wikisource page. We're not talking something like Wikidata where there are reasonable concerns about huge volumes of data that are beyond the capacity of their relatively limited number of volunteers to moderate; Wikisource is probably the most stable and well-run of all the WMF projects. (This is the live feed of all IP edits to Wikisource; they really don't have the problems with vandals or good-faith drive-by editors who don't understand the rules that we do.)
There's also the issue that unless you're talking about something like the Bibliothèque nationale, we have more confidence in the Wikisource link remaining stable than we do in most archiving sites. In most cases, "link to the original printed document" means Google Books or archive.org. Google is notorious for pulling the plug on sites with little or no notice if they decide there's not enough profit to be made (even very high-profile services like Google Play Music and Google Hangouts, both of which had the massive competitive advantage of being bundled with every Android device, just got the chop) so we can't really rely on them, plus there's the ethical issue of pushing readers into what we know to be a data-harvesting scheme. Archive.org, meanwhile, is run by Internet Archive who could politely be described as "morally ambiguous" (it's only a couple of weeks since I described IA's current operations as "straightforward organized crime"), are currently in the middle of a nasty lawsuit which has a decent chance either of getting them shut down completely or of seeing them reclassified as a notorious market and booted out of the US, so you need to work on the assumption that any link to them is potentially going to go dead without notice at any time. (Indeed, as I write this there's a discussion about shutting down the bot which adds the book links altogether. In all cases—even things like the Harvard archives which we can reasonably assume aren't going anywhere—all it takes is a website redesign at their end to break every link from here, whereas we know that the interwiki links are going to last as long as the WMF ecosystem lasts.
Executive summary: if we have it on Wikisource, then unless there's a specific reason to link to a scan (if the exact layout of an edition is important, for instance) in my opinion it's to Wikisource we should be linking. ‑ Iridescent 18:44, 28 June 2020 (UTC)
I wasn't aware of the legal action but I've always been dubious of the IA bot and of IA itself. Really old books, such as the ones that I was challenging in my note, are out of copyright anyway but I've never understood why they decided to sort-of scrape Google's stuff and I don't see how archiving copyrighted websites can be legal (although I think the British Library or Museum have a similar project running). Yes, nobots etc can be used by designers to limit IA's ability to gather website content but that's not how I think the law was intended to work.
I've no idea what happened to the legal challenges publishers put up re Google Books, although I remember they existed - probably got burned by the sheer amount of money Google could throw at the case + the very liberal US copyright laws. But it is only 18 months or so ago that IA was screaming about going bust & someone was trying to get a campaign going on Jimbo's talk page for a WMF takeover of IA, so despite apparently expanding significantly of late I don't think they're going to have similar resources.
I do find so-called courtesy links useful: many books have no ISBN, OpenLibrary is a complete mess and so too is WorldCat. IA itself is very clunky compared to Google Books and we have a phenomenal number of misrepresentations that require checking every day. Yes, Google is data-mining but, hey, I don't have to click on the link and if I do I'll get something that, for all its flaws, is better than the non-WMF free alternatives. I've got thousands of books in my house but they still don't cover what I need to do things on WP and there is pretty much zero chance of me getting to any of the few libraries that haven't been closed and aren't restricted access.
I take your point regarding Wikisource, which was what I came here for. It isn't going to fill the massive hole, though, because of the sheer number of pre-1923 works that would need to be transcribed and the even greater number of useful post-1923 works (WP:HISTRS etc applies). I suspect a bot to fix linkrot if IA does go down won't be beyond the realms of possibility. - Sitush (talk) 19:35, 28 June 2020 (UTC)
Going by Google Books#Legal issues it seems like US courts have very definitively ruled that except for particular circumstances Google Books is protected by fair use rules. Web archiving itself is a bit more murky but if the blithe assertions here are to be trusted it seems like it'd be on fairly solid legal ground too. That said, if memory serves the issue that IA faces isn't about the archiving but that they hosted some works on condition of not making them unduly accessible and made them unduly accessible anyway. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 20:35, 28 June 2020 (UTC)
The issues with Google Books are more the possibility that Google might at any time shut it down (if you don't think that could happen, check out the history of Live Search Books), the ethical issue of pushing readers (potentially unwittingly) into the Google network, and the fact that not only readers in different countries, but readers with different cookies,* see completely different things from the same link so it's impossible to second-guess what readers will see on any given link. You're correct about the IA case; the issue before the courts is that they digitized a bunch of (copyright) books on the understanding that they'd restrict viewership so as not to unduly impact on sales, and then promptly decided to make them available to all and sundry. (Ten days ago IA backed down, but the legal wheels are now in motion and by unilaterally declaring themselves exempt from US copyright law they've managed to seriously piss off the Senate Judiciary Committee so they're likely to be made an example of. There's a brief and not-very-good summary of the case at Internet Archive#National Emergency Library.) ‑ Iridescent 21:14, 28 June 2020 (UTC) *Google doesn't provide services out of the goodness of their hearts. The more links you click, the more likely it is that the next link you click will be 'snippet view' with a link to buy the full text from them, a probability that rises to close to 100% in some countries like France; by providing Google Books links, in many cases you're literally just directing readers to an advert. ‑ Iridescent 21:14, 28 June 2020 (UTC)
And if you didn't think the folks at IA were already weird enough, "The Great Room of the Internet Archive features a collection of more than 100 ceramic figures representing employees of the Internet Archive"... Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 21:44, 28 June 2020 (UTC)
I have never seen the point of linking a bibliographical item to Google Books. Once they provided access to a copy or a snippet view of the work, but now it provides little more than a second-rate copy of a WorldCat entry. (If there is a need for some kind of tag, an ISBN number, a Library of Congress identifier, or a British Library shelf number would probably be much more useful.) Having a link to Google Books is nothing more than free advertising for Google, & I suspect in most cases it's done only because people see it done elsewhere. -- llywrch (talk) 21:45, 29 June 2020 (UTC)
I don't know where you are, but here in the UK they often provide very substantial previews, up to say 100 pages, sometimes even "full view" on recent books, and it is only to those that I link, but I do that very often. I also give the ISBN, but when you have that, "a Library of Congress identifier, or a British Library shelf number" seems completely redundant to me. It is of course a problem that I don't know what people in other countries can see on the link. Johnbod (talk) 23:14, 29 June 2020 (UTC)
My time zone ought to give you a hint. ;-) But AFAICS, the only point any of those three have is to identify the book so the reader can find a copy. I know pre-1970 books published in the US often had an LC number in the front; I assume there is an equivalent code for books published in the UK. -- llywrch (talk) 23:31, 29 June 2020 (UTC)
You may have access to a very good university library, and not mind going there to find a hard copy. This is highly untypical for our readers (even without COVID considerations). Getting almost anything from the British Library takes 3 days btw, as they have chosen to keep the vast majority of normal books 200 miles from the reader's desks, and have a fleet of vans. You can get something at the National Art Library in the afternoon, if you order in the morning and are lucky. I haven't done either for years. No, there wasn't an equivalent code for books published in the UK, though they sometimes had a LOC #. Johnbod (talk) 23:41, 29 June 2020 (UTC)
I can't comment on the present situation with the British Library; the only time I used it was when it was still located in the middle of the British Museum. (I still have my reader's ticket somewhere in my files.) As for library access, although there is a decent one about a mile away from my house, I've mentioned elsewhere that I'm more like to use my public library's ILL services or their access to JSTOR. And my wallet. -- llywrch (talk) 14:12, 30 June 2020 (UTC)
To the best of my knowledge, the WMF has never written down any recommendation about editors linking to Wikisource vs some other website. Legal doubtless holds the predictable views, to the predictable degree, against links to copyvios and other obvious legal problems. As you noted, our privacy interests are likely better protected by linking to Wikisource instead of an external website. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 05:44, 29 June 2020 (UTC)
Referred here by Sitush from the matching topic on my user talk. I'm glad to be able to agree with Iridescent. Wikisource is not unique in the digitisation field. No reason to give it general preference. But ... it does do reference works that other sites steer away from, and that is not hard to understand. It does offer good verifiability, in terms of the MediaWiki extension that displays images opposite OCR text. It does allow anyone to fix errors simply. And it does add value to texts by researching authors, and linking them in various ways. Charles Matthews (talk) 11:59, 29 June 2020 (UTC)
I think one of the dominant reasons we link to Wikisource is that we're interested not just in providing open works but also interested in converting more readers to editors somewhere, even it's not here. (Which is why, despite that I would prefer it to be enforced less or removed as a rule, we still tolerate other open wikis.) --Izno (talk) 00:19, 30 June 2020 (UTC)
Yes, that's a significant factor as well; plus, linking to Commons and Wikisource is a good way of illustrating the fact that—whatever our insect overlords may think—there's more to the WMF than just Wikipedia, and there are ways in which people who don't want to (or lack the ability to) contribute to Wikipedia can still be useful. ‑ Iridescent 07:49, 30 June 2020 (UTC)
I reviewed Edward Thomas Daniell for FAC a week or two ago, but I think it needs someone who actually knows something about art to take a look. I suggested you, Ceoil, or Johnbod; Ceoil has not yet responded, though he has edited, so I'd guess he's not interested. Would you be willing to take a look? I don't know enough to know if it's missing something obvious about the period, or the artist's work. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 13:23, 6 July 2020 (UTC)
I will do, but might be a couple of days. ‑ Iridescent 06:01, 7 July 2020 (UTC)
Haven't forgotten this and will get round to it ‑ Iridescent 20:53, 15 July 2020 (UTC)
Creating new article with previous declined draft
Hi. I am planning on creating Ingrid Silva. However, there is a declined draft written in Portuguese and clearly by the subject herself. Do I simply create the new page or work on the draft first and move it? Corachow (talk) 21:15, 9 July 2020 (UTC)
I'd say act as if the draft doesn't exist. Unless someone translates it it will be deleted sooner or later in any event, and if the translation is somehow a genuine improvement whatever you create, we can always do a history merge. ‑ Iridescent 20:56, 15 July 2020 (UTC)
(a very late) (talk page stalker)@Corachow: I did a Google translate (which seems to do Portuguese reasonably well), and that draft is nothing but puffery and undue trivia. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 18:48, 21 July 2020 (UTC)
A sincere question and not an attempt to foment a civil war
What's the current wisdom these days on the best referencing format to use, for a new article so there's no existing format to follow? Is there a consensus these days on footnotes versus inline versus whatever, or are editors still just picking their favorite style and running with it? Thanks, Newyorkbrad (talk) 02:21, 30 June 2020 (UTC)
What is sometimes called "Harvard style", with authors & page numbers in parentheses in the text, is heavily out of favour. So "footnotes" after "reflist" are normal, assuming that's what you mean. Ye olde vertical styles of cite templates are out. Many hate sfn, others like it. Me, I just put the sources in a References section, & then inside a <ref></ref> put the author & page number. Much the best. But yes, editors are still just picking their favourite style and running with it. Let a thousand flowers bloom ...Johnbod (talk) 03:18, 30 June 2020 (UTC)
Agree with Johnbod ... I am one who hates Hates HATES sfn. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 04:02, 30 June 2020 (UTC)
Johnbod, what do you do if you have two sources written by the same author? Sfn covers that, presumably you do it manually, which means you have ended up with a non-templated sfn unless I've misunderstood you. - Sitush (talk) 04:04, 30 June 2020 (UTC)
I just use "Smith (2012)" and so on. I don't see why that makes it "non-templated sfn" myself, but if you like to think of it that way. A huge advantage of my style is that it makes combining refs easy. Much of the stuff I do is covered by 2 or 3 sources, which may vary in depth, availability and authority. In such cases I like to use all three to make things as easy as possible for a reader who actually wants to look at them. And I often want to add a link to an image, or a museum page as well. But I don't want a cab-rank of refs every couple of sentences. Johnbod (talk) 15:07, 30 June 2020 (UTC)
@Johnbod: The reason that's a "non-templated sfn" is because a templated sfn reads {{sfnp|Smith|2012|p=1}}, producing {{Smith (2012), p.1}}, and is a templated form of your non-templated Smith, 2012 p.1. All the best, ——Serial# 15:25, 30 June 2020 (UTC)
Well there are many other ways of achieving this, and sfn does not allow combining references, which is itself enough to rule out me using it. Johnbod (talk) 15:46, 30 June 2020 (UTC)
We use {{sfnm|la1=Smith|y1=2012|p1=25|la2=Jones|y2=2012|p2=60}}, which gives "Smith 2012, p. 25; Jones 2012, p. 60." ——Serial# 15:54, 30 June 2020 (UTC)
Indeed. And the advantage of the template is that there are tools that can pick up errors, such as a source that is no longer cited. - Sitush (talk) 15:59, 30 June 2020 (UTC)
Sorry, not convinced - look for example at the current notes 13-29 at Enamelled glass. I don't see sfn handling those. Johnbod (talk) 16:41, 30 June 2020 (UTC)
No, you're right; sfn could never look quite like that! ——Serial# 16:50, 30 June 2020 (UTC)
Not even with the ps= parameter? I'm pretty sure Eric/Malleus used to do that. - Sitush (talk) 18:24, 30 June 2020 (UTC)
I've been misunderstood, apologies; I meant (*raised eyebrow*) that sfn could never result in the notes looking quite like that...thank goodness. Such a curious mix of short form citations, full citations, explanatory footnotes all fighting for room and attention, winning neither. ——Serial# 18:35, 30 June 2020 (UTC)
Returning to the original question, I'd say in general pick whatever referencing style you feel comfortable with. The only thing I'd bear in mind is that if the new article forms part of a series, it's generally sensible to use the same style as other articles on similar topics as it makes it easier to move or copy text between the articles. (I started using the {{sfn}}/{{efn}} system—which I'd previously found fairly annoying—when I was writing Brill Tramway and Redrose convinced me that it made sense to use the referencing style of other London Transport articles. I've now come to appreciate that—despite his other issues—Merridew really did know what he was doing, as once you're over the steep learning curve it simplifies a lot of things that would otherwise need fiddly markup like references within footnotes.)
I'd also advise steering clear of List Defined References (putting all the citations as defined entities in a single section, and then invoking them when you cite them in the body text), as that not only makes the article virtually impossible to edit for the 99% of editors who aren't familiar with the LDR system, it makes the article literally impossible to edit for anyone using VisualEditor (and such strange souls do exist). ‑ Iridescent 08:02, 30 June 2020 (UTC)
Of course making it impossible for visual editor would never be a goal. No siree. Na-uh. Nope. Only in death does duty end (talk) 08:51, 30 June 2020 (UTC)
VE has its uses even for experienced editors (try adding a column to an existing table using VE and Wikitext, and see which takes you longer). Plus, even though it's still not practical for heavy lifting, it's a good recruitment tool; your typical reader would find [[File:Name|Type|Border|Location|Alignment|Size|link=Link|alt=Alt|page=Page|lang=Langtag|Caption]] completely incomprehensible, but can grasp "click where you want it to go, choose your image, choose its size, choose its caption", and then progress from there. I assume even VE's loudest opponents wouldn't dispute that "you need to learn Wikitext before you can do even the most basic of tasks" has always been a barrier to entry, and VE allows people to dip their toes in the waters and decide whether it's worth their while making that commitment, and lets them learn markup at their own pace on talkpages where formatting errors aren't such an issue while still continuing to make constructive edits in article space. VE is genuinely not a bad product; the problem is that the launch was so badly botched that it's permanently tainted in everybody's mind, plus it's So Damn Slow. ‑ Iridescent 09:06, 30 June 2020 (UTC)
I have been using List Defined References since I saw them recommended by GorillaWarfare, iirc. I like them even more now that I've found the {{r}} template, which makes the inline citations especially compact. For a recent example of a new article started in this way, see Paediatric multisystem inflammatory syndrome. The format was no obstacle to other editors and that includes use of the visual editor, such as this edit by John P. Sadowski, while various other editors did their own thing. An IP editor has been doing most of the expansion and has since normalised the format to his preference but so it goes. The important thing is the content, not the format. Andrew🐉(talk) 13:24, 30 June 2020 (UTC)
Just to note that an article doesn't have to use LDRs to use {{r}}. Often you see the first cite to a source in the < ref name=foo> ... < /ref> style, and subsequent cites to the same source in the {r|foo} style (instead of < ref name=foo/>). Or to be completely modern, you can use {refn|name=foo| ... } for the first cite, and {r|foo} for the rest.And don't forget {r}'s handy page= parameter e.g. {r|foo|page=5}. EEng 14:11, 30 June 2020 (UTC)
Thank you all for your comments here. It sounds like I should rule out inline "Harvard" cites, which I'd been considering, and use one of the traditional formats, which are generally what I have used in the past anyway. An editor who has been one of my critics (though he surprised me during the last election season) has scolded me in the past for messing up some formatting, so I'll try not to give him the chance to do that again.
One reason I chose this page for this thread is that Iridescent has remarked before that the variety, special formatting requirements, and complexity of our referencing systems can be a barrier for new editors. Nothing in this thread leads me to believe he is wrong. Regards to all, Newyorkbrad (talk) 14:41, 1 July 2020 (UTC)
FWIW, any & all of these are an improvement over how we did it in the Stone Age of Wikipedia: <sup>[[#Notes|1]]</sup>, then preface each reference source under ==Notes== with an octothorpe. Much simpler to set up than any system suggested above, a much bigger PITA to maintain than any system suggested above. (And before that, we didn't have footnotes. Ward Cunningham never thought about needing them, I guess.) -- llywrch (talk) 20:42, 1 July 2020 (UTC)
Inline citations are allowed—see Actuary for an example of them in use at FA level—but I strongly advise against it. Readers aren't used to them on Wikipedia so it just confuses them; more importantly editors aren't used to them so (as with the aforementioned List Defined References) you're going to confuse every future editor of the article.
To those defending LDR, "Always cite any material challenged or likely to be challenged" and "Poorly sourced material should be removed immediately" are two of the closest things Wikipedia has to Holy Writ. If you click "references" on Help:Introduction to Wikipedia you're taken to this set of instructions, so this is how conscientious new editors trying to do things "the right way" are going to try to do things. Open a LDR article in VisualEditor and try to either add a new reference, or remove/edit an existing one, using the method our own instructions say should be used, and see for yourself that it's literally impossible. Whatever the good intent of LDR, the result is that it creates a de facto new usergroup in which only the relative small group of people to whom {{reflist |refs=
<ref name=RCP>{{citation | makes sense can actually make any kind of substantive edit to articles using the LDR system. (Even disregarding the issues around VE, in wikitext LDR is still confusing as hell even to reasonably experienced editors. People might find our existing setup of 2000+ citation templates plus manually formatted referencing confusing, but they can grasp the basic principle of "put the source in ref tags after the statement it supports" easily enough. "Edit one section to add the text, edit a completely different section to insert the reference, add a name to the reference you've just created ensuring the name is unique, go back to where you added the text, add either <ref name= or an {{r}} template incorporating the name you've just given to your reference", not so much.) ‑ Iridescent 17:38, 3 July 2020 (UTC)
Using those instructions, I just added a citation to an article that I had created recently with LDR. This addition was done using Visual Editor and worked reasonably well (though the automatic generation feature left out the paper's main author). I shall continue to use LDR for prose because putting such huge references inline makes the prose incomprehensible when using the text editor, which still seems to be the dominant mode for editing. (recent stats on VE usage) Andrew🐉(talk) 13:39, 9 July 2020 (UTC)
That's rather proven my point, given that immediately after making that edit in VE you had to go into the wikitext editor and manually fix the errors introduced by trying to use VE to edit an article written using LDR! On a one-paragraph low-impact stub like this it's not really an issue, but on a longer article which is likely to attract newer editors (e.g., anything appearing on the main page or anything relating to current events or popular culture), the LDR system is basically erecting a barrier in which anyone VE—a system we actively encourage new editors to use—can't edit the article without editing disruptively and getting themselves in trouble. ‑ Iridescent 20:16, 15 July 2020 (UTC)
There was no error. Having demonstrated that VE worked fine; I then normalised the citation to my preferred format. The two co-exist reasonably well so I was just tidying up. Andrew🐉(talk) 22:20, 21 July 2020 (UTC)
What is U5 supposed to be used for?
You'll hopefully know the answer to this. Consider User:Natasha Sikah. Exactly how does this meet the WP:U5 criteria - "Pages in userspace consisting of writings, information, discussions, or activities not closely related to Wikipedia's goals, where the owner has made few or no edits outside of user pages, with the exception of plausible drafts and pages adhering to Wikipedia:User pages#What may I have in my user pages? (emphasis mine) While it's not a major issue, I can't see how it's fundamentally any different to "Ritchie333 is a fortysomething software engineer, musician and real ale drinker" Ritchie333(talk)(cont) 12:56, 28 July 2020 (UTC)
(talk page stalker) Well, I can't see that, but speaking in generalities WP:NOTCV/LINKEDIN and WP:NOTDIRECTORY are probably the most common U5 deletions, all with lashings of WP:PROMO. Or they should be, anyway... ——Serial 13:05, 28 July 2020 (UTC)
It was a poor, three-sentence draft of a Zoom-based "clairvoyant and psychic medium". Would have been an A7 in article space, not quite G11 material, absolutely plausibly a draft (which is what the discussion enacting U5 explicitly intended, not anything similar to "draft that could plausibly become an article"). In practice, U5 might as well read "anything currently in the user namespace that the deleting administrator doesn't like, written by someone who hasn't been around long enough to effectively object". —Cryptic 13:24, 28 July 2020 (UTC)
@Cryptic: your last sentence is effectively the sum of wot I just emailed Ritchie... ——Serial 13:34, 28 July 2020 (UTC)
"It was a poor, three-sentence draft of a Zoom-based "clairvoyant and psychic medium"." I thought it was a short and brief biography of the user. As I said, I'm not bothered about its deletion, I was just trying to understand what drove the policy to be created in the first place, and thought it might have been more geared towards Wikipedians creating userpages of editors they don't like, for example. I mean, surely by Cryptic's definition it could just be dealt with by G11? Ritchie333(talk)(cont) 13:39, 28 July 2020 (UTC)
We've never gotten consensus to blanket forbid autobiographies in the main namespace, so we pretty much have to treat autobiographical pages written in the third person in other namespaces like we do other drafts. However galling that is, given I pretty much view my entire purpose here as opposing self-promotion.Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion/Archive 53 has U5's enactment discussion right at the top; it's worth reading if you haven't ever, or perhaps skimming if you haven't recently. —Cryptic 14:00, 28 July 2020 (UTC)
I seldom processed U5 requests in the past as they are so open ended, but large amounts of offtopic material (including CVs and borderline spammy material) is the sort of stuff I used to see. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 13:22, 28 July 2020 (UTC)
I consider U5 as intended for "really obviously inappropriate but not technically covered by existing policy", such as people using us to host their resume. In the specific case of User:Natasha Sikah I'd consider deletion very harsh, as that just looks to me like an utterly straightforward "this is who I am" of the kind we encourage newly registered editors to post. (For the benefit of non-admin TPWs, the entire text of the page was Natasha Sikah has been a clairvoyant and psychic medium for over 25 years teaching students and reading The Tarot for clients. Natasha was introduced to the mystic world by her stepfather and mentor, Alex Sanders who invented Alexandrian Wicca. Natasha lives in Marbella, Southern Spain and is a pioneer providing both her student courses and Tarot readings on Zoom.) If she'd provided contact details or was otherwise clearly touting for business, fair enough, but I really can't see how to read that as "misuse". ‑ Iridescent 12:41, 29 July 2020 (UTC)
Image query - rediscovered temple
My new DYK goes: "Did you know that the newly-reported 6th-century Devunigutta Temple(pictured) in Telangana, India, only came to international scholarly attention when images were posted on social media in 2017? Source: "In the August of 2017, images of a peculiar ancient building preserved on a remote, forested plateau in eastern Telangana, .... were uploaded on a social media platform by a journalist from Hyderabad.... To the best of our knowledge, this temple has not previously been documented, .... Considering its relatively good state of preservation and its many special features,it is puzzling why no one should have reported or studied it yet." - Start of Wessels-Mevissen, Corinna, and Hardy, Adam, "Note on a Recently Reported Early Śiva Temple near Kothur (Telangana State)", Berlin Indological Studies, 24 (2019): 265-278
Can anyone more used to the various platforms find these (or other) images & very kindly upload any that can go on commons to the temple's category? I've exhausted google images, & the sources have lots of good ones, but there are only a few usable ones on Commons. I'd be very grateful for any help. Johnbod (talk) 18:27, 25 July 2020 (UTC)
I don't know much about social media, but I do know that posts found there are almost never suitable for Commons, as Facebook, Twitter et al tend to impose their own redistribution terms on anything you upload there. The easiest thing to do would probably be to write to Adam Hardy and Laxshmi Greaves and ask if they could release a couple of photos—since it's free advertising for them and free PR for Cardiff University, there's no obvious reason for them to refuse. ‑ Iridescent 12:37, 29 July 2020 (UTC)
Well, Commons has millions of Flickr pics. One obvious issue with the Greaves and Wessels-Mevissen (her pics, not Hardy's) pics they have used in their articles is whatever terms they had with the journals concerned. Thanks anyway. Johnbod (talk) 13:17, 29 July 2020 (UTC)
Flickr is in its final death throes—in a last-gasp effort to cut hosting costs and generate revenue its new owners have deleted all but the most recent 1000 of every editor's uploads unless they pay an annual ransom, so there's vastly less content there than there used to be. If you go to their search page and search it as you would any other search engine, making sure you set "Commercial use and mods allowed" in the drop-down menu, it will bring up Wikipedia-suitable photos. (Because "all rights reserved" is the default, very few Flickr photos are actually suitable for Commons.) ‑ Iridescent 12:38, 31 July 2020 (UTC)
About CiteVAR
Greetings! I apologise that I have overlooked on this matter. However, I was pointed to by another editor who told me that using #tag:ref may cause issues to references and that refn would have been ideal. I welcome your take on this. Thank you and I apologise for not initiating communication properly as I may not be that experienced. VincentLUFan (talk) (Kenton!) 16:00, 24 July 2020 (UTC)
As you yourself pointed out, that article had been stable for TEN FUCKING YEARS before you started disrupting it. What "issue" are you claiming that the existing referencing system is causing? ‑ Iridescent 12:33, 29 July 2020 (UTC)
If I remember correctly, as told by another Wikipedian whom I do not remember, the #tag:ref section will cause syntax issue or similar whereby he recommended me to change it to refn. There is no issue to nominate the article as it is structurally stable for its content. I have only made copyedits so I don't get what you are trying to imply. Thank you. VincentLUFan (talk) (Kenton!) 14:33, 31 July 2020 (UTC)
You've answered for yourself why this is clearly inappropriate for FAC when you say this has not been worked on for around a decade; it isn't up to date, and at the moment it can't be up to date, as the books literally haven't been written yet. The chain of events that led to through-running S Stock were by no means a foregone conclusion; usual LT practice with shuttle branches—e.g. South Acton, Ongar—has been to use existing stock that's retired from normal usage and run it into the ground, and there was no technical reason to get rid of the A Stock shuttle, and when they did decide to end its status as a shuttle there were much better cases either for transferring the route to Arriva, converting the line to Class 139 operation, or flogging it for housing and subsidizing RRBs to Amersham. At some point once the histories are published I might bring it up to date, but it's not a case of just slapping an extra paragraph at the end; it's quite a complicated issue revolving around various combinations of Crossrail and HS2 proposals, arguments between the GLA and the counties over subsidy, and the political toxicity of the 400yd step-free interchange at Chalfont & Latimer.
On a more general point, as I think Ealdgyth has already explained to you you really shouldn't be nominating things at FAC unless you both have all the sources at hand, and understand the topic to a very high level. Your edits to the article and your comments at the FAC indicate that this isn't a topic with which you're familiar; for instance, there's nothing unique about a London Underground station not being within London—while there's no formal definition of "London", there are 15 LU stations outside even the broadest definition of the boundary (25 if you count the incomplete Elizabeth Line), while "sort of a commuter-metro service" describes about 95% of the TfL network and close to 100% of it outside the Inner Circle. While FAC does have an element of prose review, reviewers are primarily checking for accuracy and omissions, and unless you're both intimately familiar with the topic and in possession of all the significant sources, you shouldn't ever be considering nominating an article at FAC since you won't be in a position to answer questions and thus will just be wasting the reviewers' time.
(In general, work on the assumption that you shouldn't be nominating anything at FAC unless you were a significant contributor to it. Anyone who can contribute at FA level is going to be familiar with the process; if the author hasn't nominated something, there's almost certainly going to be a reason why they haven't. The instructions in the big blue box at the top of Wikipedia:Featured article candidates are all there for a reason.) ‑ Iridescent 15:05, 2 August 2020 (UTC)
I see. Yes I have chatted with Ealdgyth myself and was still a little puzzled about the whole situation hence I came here as well. I apologise that I have overlooked that the article being up-to-date which caused lots of information omission. Thank you for the enlightenment. VincentLUFan (talk) (Kenton!) 16:12, 2 August 2020 (UTC)
Notice of ANI that mentions you in passing
Greetings, FYI I filed a request at WP:ANI titled "CIR-based community-imposed site ban re: RTG". In providing a basis for my request I mentioned you and your prior dealings with this editor. Your input at ANI is optional, i.e., invited but not specifically requested. Thanks for reading. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 13:00, 3 August 2020 (UTC)
—usernamekiran (talk) 00:00, 30 March 2020 (UTC)
If Robin "copyright is for losers" Gunningham tries to sue over a photo that incidentally includes a tiny, blurry shot of an image that's already been reproduced in infinitely greater detail approximately a million times. I don't imagine WMF Legal are going to lose much sleep over the way that one's going to go. ‑ Iridescent 20:29, 31 May 2020 (UTC)
