Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/Single/2024-07-04

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The following is an automatically-generated compilation of all talk pages for the Signpost issue dated 2024-07-04. For general Signpost discussion, see Wikipedia talk:Signpost.

Cobwebs: Counting to a billion — manuscripts don't burn (5,346 bytes · 💬)

(Almost) All the edits are there. However many are only available to gatekeepers. And many more are not easily findable, or useable. We really need a finding aid. All the best: Rich Farmbrough 14:48, 4 July 2024 (UTC).

@Rich Farmbrough: - yes, I left out a few thing about non-flammable manuscripts on Wikipedia. Many are not easily accessible to non-admins, some are not easily accessible to admins, and I think a very few are burned intentionally, perhaps for legal reasons. But there are at least a couple of exceptions to these exceptions, e.g. some controversial things on Wiki are intentionally saved by Wikipedians before deletion. So, deleted articles are hard to access for non-admins. But I've been told that I can ask an admin to send me a copy of a deleted article if I have a "good enough reason" that's not just a "fishing expedition." But there are off-wiki records as well, e.g. archive.org. If you have an article url or name, you can see what they have on the Wayback Machine. There are data dumps from long ago. There's an exception for "bonafide researchers" (I should really check out this exception).
Probably the biggest category of missing stuff is deleted articles, but AFD records are easily available so at least you can find out why they were AFDed, when, and how many times, quite often with a description of the sources.
But nobody said that "remembering everything" is easy.
I think a lot of people would just be happy with a good indexing system, even if it is incomplete. Basic Wikipedia search does some of that, and indexing is the type of thing that will get better in the future, even for old records.
Smallbones(smalltalk) 17:21, 4 July 2024 (UTC)
@Smallbones: I think your first paragraph refers to the "researcher" user access level? ☆ Bri (talk) 17:24, 5 July 2024 (UTC)
@Bri: An access level so infrequently used, there are between 3 and 0 people who currently hold it, and less than 10 who have ever held it!
(WP:RESEARCHER and Special:ListUsers/researcher both agree that there appear to be 0 users with that access level, currently, though it's possible I'm just not allowed to see them. Whereas meta:Research:Special API permissions/Log lists 9 people who've ever been granted that right. Six were 2011 summer-program participants with short-term access long since revoked. The other three reportedly have indefinite rights since 2010, 2015-06, and 2015-09. But they may be performing their research somewhere other than enWiki. At least one of them, FaFlo, mentions working with Wikimedia Germany in the RENDER research project. #WhateverThatIs) FeRDNYC (talk) 13:38, 6 July 2024 (UTC)

But nobody said that "remembering everything" is easy.
— Smallbones

Heck, you won't even catch me saying it's desirable. (Even Wikipedia embraces the right to be forgotten... to a limited extent.) FeRDNYC (talk) 01:13, 7 July 2024 (UTC)
  • I'm not saying that this should be the case, only that it often is. It's a bit of a warning - if somebody writes something on the internet, it can show up anytime - probably at the worst possible time. So don't write something on the internet if you'd be embarrassed seeing it in a prominent place. I guess I've been thinking about this lately because in the last 12 months I ran into a huge database (from a tipper who may not have known what it was). It wasn't all usable, but much of it could be verified. My immediate reaction was "why did anybody put this on the internet?" I can imagine some of their reasons, but I can imagine many more why they would never want anybody to see it. So it is worthwhile letting Wikipedia editors know that Wikipedia tries to keep everything they write here, and it pretty much works. Smallbones(smalltalk) 00:40, 8 July 2024 (UTC)
  • Also, the developers and sysadmins have always made clear that they do not guarantee the long-term availability of deleted revisions. In practice, it looks like the oldest visible/restorable deleted revision is from the end of 2004 ([1]) (I checked, and that revision is still visible and could presumably be undeleted), so many of those from the early days are lost as well, and it's possible more could be. And oversight really did used to be a "hard delete"; it was only later on that it was made into the "superdelete" that we know it as today. Seraphimblade Talk to me 20:33, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

Crossword: On a day of independence, beat crosswords into crossploughshares (1,041 bytes · 💬)

Yeah, they get posted later. jp×g🗯️ 14:05, 4 July 2024 (UTC)
Ahh, ok. '''[[User:CanonNi]]''' (talk • contribs) 14:06, 4 July 2024 (UTC)
  • Thanks! A nice change of pace. All the best: Rich Farmbrough 15:11, 4 July 2024 (UTC).

Discussion report: Wikipedians are hung up on the meaning of Madonna (1,316 bytes · 💬)

There was some similar turmoil over Georgia, as can be seen at Talk:Georgia... AnonMoos (talk) 16:56, 4 July 2024 (UTC)
Not the same, but Czech Republic has a few RM:s under its belt. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 18:39, 4 July 2024 (UTC)
Thanks for the article! Interesting to read about drawn-out conundrums in corners of Wikipedia I haven't visited (yet). I once bookmarked one user's curated list of articles with disputed titles that have been yanked around in all sorts of requested moves over the years. Fun to browse if you like that sort of thing. Crunchydillpickle🥒 (talk) 07:57, 5 July 2024 (UTC)
Ah yes, I recently saw Decade-Long Battle for “Yogurt” vs. “Yoghurt” on Wikipedia by Nathan Yau. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 08:25, 5 July 2024 (UTC)

Gallery: Spokane Willy's photos (605 bytes · 💬)

I love your photographic style, SpokaneWilly. It's just so mesmerizing. I especially love your first photo from the other news section. It's hard to look away from it. SilverserenC 17:16, 4 July 2024 (UTC)

Humour: A joke (1,965 bytes · 💬)

  • Shouldn't it be sockpuppeteer? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2.28.124.91 (talk) 13:48, 4 July 2024 (UTC)
    I don't know, but I'll have a glass of your finest champagne. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 20:38, 4 July 2024 (UTC)
    For a second, I thought that said "shouldn't I be a sockpuppeteer?" ☆ Bri (talk) 23:44, 4 July 2024 (UTC)
    Yes, a glass of your finest sockpuppet tears! --Surturz (talk) 01:40, 5 July 2024 (UTC)
    Most likely not, because the sockpuppet asked last. At SPI the sockpuppeteer is the oldest account. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 13:04, 5 July 2024 (UTC)
    I know. Do you mean "The sockpuppet answered last? I don't know who "asked" last. Implicitly the last to answer has already got two other accounts (who have drinks), making them the holder of the other accounts/drinks. 2.28.124.91 (talk) 10:03, 6 July 2024 (UTC)
    No, you're overthinking it. When someone is sockpuppeting, the thing they're literally doing is speaking through other accounts to disguise that all of the opinions/statements are coming from them. So the joke only works if it's "the sockpuppet says" — with the implication of that being, therefore, that the sockpuppeteer is the one saying it, and has been controlling all three accounts #ThisWholeTime. FeRDNYC (talk) 13:15, 6 July 2024 (UTC)

In focus: How the Russian Wikipedia keeps it clean despite having just a couple dozen administrators (2,553 bytes · 💬)

  • I am reminded of a discussion in a local Chapter meeting, perhaps a whole decade ago, in which a much-respected Arbitrator predicted that the future will be in unbundling Admin powers. It has not happened much; I have become a rollbacker and "event organizer" (actually a coach for newbies) in ENWP, and in Commons I fairly often use my file mover right, but we WP sergeants are neither many nor powerful. No, I am not seeking more bits of officer power for myself but others might make good use of a different fraction. Jim.henderson (talk) 17:14, 4 July 2024 (UTC)
    • It would have been better to have a single flag, but it is not feasible. Now it's difficult to get elected as admin, and there are few active admins. This division of rights is a must for ruwiki. BilboBeggins (talk) 19:32, 5 July 2024 (UTC)
  • I am one of the very few (two ever?) users who have been through an RfA in both Russian (2008?) and English (2012?) Wikipedias, I do not have an impression that one RfA was significantly more difficult than another one.--Ymblanter (talk) 06:21, 5 July 2024 (UTC)
    • Maybe it was easy to get admin flag in ruwiki in 2008, but it is pretty hard to get any important flag now there. I particularly have faced resistance even for a patrolled flag, from people who either were part of Datapult or are active in forks and are banned now on ruwiki. While I applied for Xfdcloser flag, I got an oppose vote from Jukoff on the grounds that my reply was badly formatted, even though he was the one who got the formatting bad while answering. Top Xfdclosers couldn't get admin flag. BilboBeggins (talk) 19:32, 5 July 2024 (UTC)
  • I wouldn't call the flag summarizer. Xfdcloser seems a better adaptation, because that is what we do. BilboBeggins (talk) 19:32, 5 July 2024 (UTC)
  • For what it's worth, introducing interface administrators wasn't a WMF decision. I worked on it in my free time and all the decisionmaking followed community and developer processes. (You can find more background on the old feedback page at m:Creation of separate user group for editing sitewide CSS/JS.) --Tgr (talk) 11:38, 6 July 2024 (UTC)

In the media: War and information in war and politics (2,056 bytes · 💬)

  • Thanks for another good Signpost! :-) Btw @User:JPxG, all that info about Lauren Oyler's apparent reliance on Wikipedia was first dredged up by Ann Manov in Bookforum[2] (in a takedown so bitter and splashy that the review itself became news [3]). Maybe the Substack article mentions that, I don't know. I'm stuck in the cold and barren land outside the paywall! Crunchydillpickle🥒 (talk) 08:43, 5 July 2024 (UTC)

Mutant 59: The Plastic Eaters by Gerry Davis & Kit Pedler

I was surprised that Nature's (very droll) satire wasn't inspired by the novel (itself a spin-off of Doomwatch, itself a cultural fossil. Then again, I recall it from another high school student having it –Class of '77, mind you! More seriously, it's good to see Wikipedia used as a format for satire...! kencf0618 (talk) 14:53, 4 July 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for the info! Doomwatch#Series_One has a good paragraph on the first episode. It looks to me like this is just another example of "there's nothing new under the sun". If anybody sees more Fiction set on Wikipedia do please let us know at Suggestions. Smallbones(smalltalk) 19:01, 4 July 2024 (UTC)
I love this type of fiction, so this was a joy to read for me :) ~Maplestrip/Mable (chat) 11:49, 5 July 2024 (UTC)

ADL

Some ADL discussion at Jimbotalk: User_talk:Jimbo_Wales#The_ADL_is_"generally_unreliable". Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 08:22, 5 July 2024 (UTC)

News and notes: WMF board elections and fundraising updates (1,591 bytes · 💬)

  • I thought that the question #4 for the candidates, concerning "novel competition" versus slow-reacting Wikimedia entities, was a good one. High-inertia norms and procedures on EnWiki, at least, as I see it, could be holding us back. ☆ Bri (talk) 17:45, 4 July 2024 (UTC)
    • I agree. Despite WP:BOLD, we're not very innovative. Perhaps it's because of our size, or because a determined minority (of say 10% of editors) can almost always prevent a consensus on anything. Our editors also seem to love old rules that they can argue about forever, but will never streamline the rules so that they are effective or contain something really new. Maybe competition would be good for us. Smallbones(smalltalk) 19:25, 4 July 2024 (UTC)
  • The answers show that there are some excellent candidates running. WaikikiVice (talk) 23:49, 4 July 2024 (UTC)
  • Sometimes more than once in a week I read in some forum or other that Wikipedia is hostile and disrespectful towards conservatism. Precisely the opposite. We are far more conservative than just about anyone I read who proudly calls themselves "conservative". Jim.henderson (talk) 01:09, 7 July 2024 (UTC)

Obituary: Hanif Al Husaini, Salazarov, Hyacinth, and PirjanovNurlan (410 bytes · 💬)

  • Very sad. Why do we have four persons but only three in the header? --Gerda Arendt (talk) 14:01, 4 July 2024 (UTC)
    Fixed. QuicoleJR (talk) 15:51, 4 July 2024 (UTC)

Op-Ed: Why you should not vote in the 2024 WMF BoT elections (7,770 bytes · 💬)

  • 42 % of voters in the 2022 election came from English or German Wikipedia alone

This statistic is not so surprising if you consider that the English and German Wikipedias make up 40% of the active userbase across Wikimedia projects. Projects broadly associated with the Global North account for 85%. We're not a "powerful minority", we're a majority, and majority rule is a feature of electoral systems, not a bug.
I don't think you achieve equity by placing one or two people on a distant and unaccountable board. You get it by using real money and real resources to build up projects serving under-represented regions, so that there's actually a sizeable constituency to represent in the first place. Though, in the interim, I agree that increasing the number of seats at the table (as the proposed Global Council does) would help smaller projects get a fair say. – Joe (talk) 15:02, 4 July 2024 (UTC)
Yes, I agree it's a feature and not a bug, but it's not an insurmountable challenge to take the edge off this system. I originally wrote this piece as a way to express my unease about not even attempting to make the BoT more representative, but carrying on like this is all going well and there's nothing to worry about here.
There are efforts underway to create regional networks in most regions of the world that would build up these projects, at the same time this is also a question of time economy and who has time to engage in this process. Even if you had the same amount of users from West Africa as on German Wikipedia, the percentage of people sparing the time to engage with a BoT election will be lower.
And yes, the Movement Charter would be a very good opportunity to rethink representation and create a voice for the global Wikimedia community. :-) Philip Kopetzky (talk) 16:21, 4 July 2024 (UTC)
  • "Almost every year we go through the process of a community election to elect members of the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees." Per meta:Wikimedia Foundation elections there have been only four Board elections in the seven years since 2017, including this year. WaikikiVice (talk) 00:19, 5 July 2024 (UTC)
    Sure, "almost" isn't tangible, and in the middle of the pandemic the terms of the BoT were extended if I recall correctly. :-) Philip Kopetzky (talk) 07:29, 9 July 2024 (UTC)
  • I vote for candidates because their positions most closely match what I want to see done. I don't really care who they are or where they're from (and realistically, I'd rather not even know where they're from; that shouldn't factor in at all.) If that happens to be candidates from whatever regions you're talking about, great. If their positions don't speak to me to say "Yeah, that's what I would really like to see the BoT focusing on", well, they're not going to get my vote. In an election, it's up to the candidate to bend to the electorate, not the other way around. Seraphimblade Talk to me 04:24, 6 July 2024 (UTC)
    Supporting a candidate whose views you agree with is great when you're talking about known factors. Perhaps you want a bigger/smaller budget, or more/fewer technical staff, or more/less attention on a specific legal risk, or something like that.
    However, there are also unknown unknowns. Consider, e.g., that nobody voting in national elections in 2000 knew what would happen on September 11, 2001. The US presidential election was all about domestic policy and how best to fritter away the Clinton budget surplus. No candidate had a platform about what he would do if several airplanes were hijacked, and no voter considered that eventuality. What we needed less than a year later had almost nothing to do with what we voted for.
    While it's not usually that dramatic, we need people who can handle more than the pre-identified headline issues. Diversity (of any type: geographical, linguistic, political, etc.) within a group helps that group when they encounter the problems that you've not thought about yet. Imagine: "Don't schedule this major event that day; everyone on my continent will be on holiday." "We have been overlooking this type of contributor." "This problem might sound unbelievable to people from your background and experiences, but I assure you that it is serious for many of our contributors and worth our time to look into it." "Wikipedia is our most popular site, and I know all of you started off as Wikipedia editors and want to focus on that, but the needs are building up at Commons and in the Stewards' workflows, and they deserve a fair allocation of the movement's resources, too."
    NB that I'm not saying that a diverse group is more important than your favorite issues. I'm just saying that it is also a worthwhile goal for an organization, as it tends to minimize structural risks. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:43, 7 July 2024 (UTC)
  • Obviously this opinion piece is written from a privileged European, white male perspective, and should be interpreted as such seems performative to me. Boycotting the election requires so little effort. Make a positive change. Translation for discussions with candidates? Pack the board? Move such discussions to the main page? Look outside the Wikipedia movement—are books disappearing from public and school libraries? Is history disappearing from books? Is authoritarianism replacing democracy? — Neonorange (talk to Phil) (he, they) 12:56, 6 July 2024 (UTC) —
    The WMF would rather change their bylaws than us having pack their board, translations would require recipients who have way greater problems than wondering who sits on a far away board of an American organisation. The fact that we are discussing this is already an improvement, and @WhatamIdoing provided a good reasoning for why we need that diversity of experience and skills if we want to prevail in the future. The Movement Charter would have helped make this happen quicker, but it's not a lost cause either ;-) Philip Kopetzky (talk) 07:26, 9 July 2024 (UTC)
  • Our executive director is from South Africa. We have had a board member from the Global South, specifically Patricio Lorente from Argentina, who was also board chair for a bit. We have different mechanism for bringing on board members as that improves diversity. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 15:52, 6 July 2024 (UTC)
  • What percentage of eligible voters vote? Unless it's a very high value, I don't see how a boycott would be visible. CMD (talk) 11:42, 7 July 2024 (UTC)
    @Chipmunkdavis, I believe that turnout is typically very small. m:Wikimedia Foundation elections/2022/Results/Community voting said that almost 6,000 votes were recorded. I don't see any estimates of how many people were eligible. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:31, 7 July 2024 (UTC)

Opinion: Etika: a Pop Culture Champion (569 bytes · 💬)

Recent research: Is Wikipedia Politically Biased? Perhaps (39,410 bytes · 💬)

  • I'd like to see a similar study about politicians not from the modern Western countries, but from the Nazi Germany. There were left-wing politicians, like communists and liberals, and right-wing politicians, like fascists and conservatives. Would there be more negative covarage of the right-wing politicians? Perhaps 1000% more claims of organizing mass murders and so on? Would the author also write that "these trends constitute suggestive evidence of political bias embedded in Wikipedia articles"? All these studies of left-right bias without considering the reality are such a bullshit. Wikisaurus (talk) 15:54, 4 July 2024 (UTC)
    Hmm. By late 1933, the only politicians in office in Germany were Nazis, and it remained that way until Nazi Germany was defeated in 1945. When you ask was there more negative coverage of right-wing politicians, from what time period and from what country do you mean? From inside Nazi Germany, the coverage of Nazis themselves was positive. But the coverage of someone like Konrad Adenauer in (liberal) US and UK sources is obviously far more positive than of the Nazis. Conversely, the coverage in liberal western sources of Dith Pran is going to be more favorable than that of Pol Pot, even though Dith Pran was significantly to the right of Pol Pot. I don't think these extreme examples are going to tell us much about the bias on coverage of common contemporary Democrats and Republicans, none of whom have engaged in mass murder. Jweiss11 (talk) 06:10, 9 July 2024 (UTC)
  • Of course Wikipedia has a left-leaning bias. People who spend all day online usually happen to be younger folk, who in turn happen to be more left-leaning folk. That much is obvious, and tends to be agreed upon. However, what many people don't really agree with is that we really let our biases affect our editing. We tend to use more liberal sources and deprecate conservative ones, while pretending that there is no motive behind it. Hell, the amount of times I've heard the phrase "reality has a left-leaning bias" makes it clear that NPOV gets routinely ignored. When the right attacks Wikipedia, they're completely correct. Not that it should matter, but I am writing this as a leftist. It's embarrassing to be a Wikipedian. Dialmayo 18:04, 4 July 2024 (UTC)
  • @Dialmayo: Perhaps because left-leaning sources are more WP:RELIABLE than right-wing sources? Perhaps because the Overton window has shifted so much that sources considered left-wing are very close to the centrum or even right-wing, and sources considered right-wing are far right? That is the reality in the US, and this wiki is very Americentric. In any case, sentiment analysis is an art, not a science, so we should take this report by conservative think-tank (who clearly has a dog in this fight) with a giant grain of salt. Polygnotus (talk) 18:16, 4 July 2024 (UTC)
    Polygnotus, I agree with you completely, but User:Jweiss11 has an interesting counterargument, so I'm pinging him here in case he wants to share it. Viriditas (talk) 23:46, 4 July 2024 (UTC)
@Jweiss11: I was promised an interesting counterargument. Where is it? Polygnotus (talk) 03:55, 5 July 2024 (UTC)
Just to be clear what I'm arguing against, your claim is that the Overton window has shifted right-ward? In the United States? Over what time period? Any key topics here? Jweiss11 (talk) 03:57, 5 July 2024 (UTC)
I am not sure what Viriditas was referring to. Possibly Talk:Intellectual_dark_web#Left,_right,_and_center and/or User_talk:Jweiss11/Archives/2023#Comments_on_IDW? The Left–right political spectrum is too much of an abstraction to be helpful in any serious discussion. Polygnotus (talk) 07:59, 5 July 2024 (UTC)
Polygnotus, yes, the 2023 discussion on my talk page with Viriditas contains much of the argument I would make here. If the "left–right political spectrum is too much of an abstraction to be helpful in any serious discussion", then why did you use it in your opening comment here? Seems it would be impossible to have a meaningful discussion about Overton window shifts without employing some sort of directional political spectrum. This spectrum doesn't have to be one-dimensional, but it has to have at least one! And the more dimensions it has, more difficult it's going to be for participants to conceptualize it, make coherent arguments about it, and follow the arguments of others. Jweiss11 (talk) 12:17, 5 July 2024 (UTC)
@Jweiss11: Because this isn't a serious discussion. Way too sober for that. While LGBT/healthcare stuff has gone in the right direction, there is also a noticeable trend within certain segments of the Republican Party and its base towards embracing far-right/white supremacist ideas, conspiracy theories like QAnon, and other extremist views. So while the Overton window has shifted in the right direction for some topics, there is also a very noticeable shift in a very bad and dangerous direction. Jewish space lasers can't melt gay frogs. Polygnotus (talk) 19:08, 5 July 2024 (UTC)
It's unfortunate Jweiss11 hasn't shared his argument, but you (Poygnotus) were kind enough to link to it from his archives, so thank you. The important point that I'm trying to make here (in a roundabout way, I should have been more direct) is that Jweiss11 (more than anyone else here) understands the overarching argument that David Rozado, the primary researcher of the paper we are discussing, is trying to make. Unfortunately, I don't think HaeB or anyone else here has addressed it. For those who don't know, Rozado's purpose here is not to show that Wikipedia is biased towards a left-wing POV. That's a very old argument that predates Wikipedia, and goes all the way back to the 1971 Powell Memorandum, which is where it all started. In fact, the Manhattan Institute grew out of the concerns discussed in the Powell memo, so it's more than appropriate to mention it here.) Rozado is one of a number of young researchers that have fallen for this old canard and have used it as their starting premise for their research, something we've seen time and time again over the last 25 years. My point is this: Jweiss11 perfectly encapsulates Rozado's (and the Manhattan Institute's) larger argument, which is that the Overton window has not necessarily shifted to the right, but in fact (according to them) the Overton window has shifted to the left, with the so-called "liberal" news media responsible for this shift around 2010 or so, which Rozado and others have been focusing on since at least 2022. In other words, the larger argument here that nobody is addressing is not that Wikipedia is biased towards the left, but, according to Rozado and others, Wikipedia is using biased sources that are incentivized to publish partisan news. Jweiss11 and Rozado are on the same page here. Rozado and others are simply resurrecting the old "liberal media" meme, which has been shown time and again to be poorly supported. What is even worse, is that Rozado's research is being used by hard right sources to argue that the news media is promoting "left-wing extremism", and that Trumpism is a "natural" response to the media's "shift" to the left. In other words, this is yet-another-argument promoting Murc's Law, "the widespread assumption that only Democrats have any agency or causal influence over American politics", and that conservatives are being forced to defend themselves by any means necessary. This is pretty insidious when you take a step back and look at what Rozado and others are doing. This amounts to "you made us do this [J6, Supreme Court, Theocracy, etc.] because you pointed out our racism, corruption, and violation of the Constitution, and called us out on our lies". Apologies if that's too convoluted for anyone to follow, but look at who is citing Rozado's research and how they are using it. It's just one long argument for going after the media for criticizing Republicans and shutting them down. Wikipedia will be next on their hit list. That's what this is about. Viriditas (talk) 21:25, 5 July 2024 (UTC)
Polygnotus, I appreciate you granting that the Overtone window has moved leftward on gay marriage and universal healthcare. I don't think Viriditas was willing to concede that. As for gay frogs and space lasers, that stuff is pretty fringe and often not entirely serious. That these are now common memes I think is not evidence of a general rightward shift in American culture, but a function of the internet offering new platforms for fringe nutjobs, and many people just enjoying the freak show. I'm not sure Alex Jones could be Alex Jones without the internet. Could he have existed in the 1970s or 1980s? What's far more robust is the leftward shift within mainstream influential institutions on what can broadly be described as identity politics. Many of America's top universities and high schools, most respected newspapers, and Fortune 500 companies have, at an accelerating pace in the last decade, moved left of liberal egalitarianism into the servicing of leftist identify-based grievance politics with the adoption of DEI bureaucracies. When I was in high school and college in the 1990s, the idea that an ostensibly liberal academy would have racially segregated programing was unthinkable. But that's exactly what Grace Church School did in 2020; see https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/27/us/new-york-private-schools-racism.html. Jweiss11 (talk) 22:54, 5 July 2024 (UTC)
Alex Jones' ideas did exist in the 1970s and 1980s, except they were known as the John Birch Society (JBS), whose positions are now considered mainstream conservatism. According to The Atlantic in 2024, Donald Trump’s 2016 election 'saw many of its core instincts finally reflected in the White House,' and the JBS 'now fits neatly into the mainstream of the American right.' FWIW, Alex Jones cites JBS spokespeople Gary Allen and Larry H. Abraham as one of his most formidable influences from when he was growing up, having read their book None Dare Call It Conspiracy (1971). Jones calls the book "the quintessential primer to understand the New World Order".[4] The circle, as they say, is complete. Viriditas (talk) 23:42, 5 July 2024 (UTC)
My point in asking that question about Alex Jones (could he have existed in the 1970s or 1980s?), was not that to suggest that right-wing conspiracists didn't exist then or before, but to suggest than none of them made $100 million dollars with their schtick then. Jones could have never made such a fortune pre-internet. Jweiss11 (talk) 03:47, 6 July 2024 (UTC)
We know that people like Charles Coughlin were promoting similar ideas in the 1930s. As for money, the rise of televangelism in the 1970s and 1980s was made highly lucrative, and the Bakkers and others generated hundreds of millions using the same kind of rhetoric as Alex Jones. It is unclear how Reagan’s tax cuts helped or hindered them, but we do know that evangelicals fought the IRS in the 1970s over segregation (see for example Bob Jones University v. United States), and this fueled the rise of the new right as a coalition wing of the GOP. Note that both Jim Bakker and Alex Jones generated income using the same revenue stream: marketing and selling emergency survival products to "preppers". It’s the same shtick. Let’s not forget how all of this ties directly into Alex Jones, as he was motivated to start his career in part by the Waco siege on the Branch Davidians, which became a right wing touchstone of so-called religious persecution and alleged government overreach, which neatly fit into their conspiracy world view. Jones is very much a part of the religious, right wing ecosystem. Viriditas (talk) 04:08, 6 July 2024 (UTC)
  • So you think it's Wikipedia editor's fault that right wing sources are more likely to put out misinformation and false stories? Our reliability rules are incredibly transparent and they are applied equally. SilverserenC 18:23, 4 July 2024 (UTC)
As a non-American, I can tell you that the US right and the right wing media in general have gone off the deep end since Trump. It's not that they just become more extreme in their position, it's that they've become an echo chamber simply disconnected from reality because acknowledging anything that makes Trump looks bad is now a sin, because anything that makes Trump look bad is un-American leftist George Soros-backed Communo-Marxism . Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 18:51, 4 July 2024 (UTC)
One can argue that being a Wikipedian is itself a rather socialist idea/hobby, so perhaps active editors are to some extent self-selected in that direction. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 19:31, 4 July 2024 (UTC)
  • People who spend all day online usually happen to be younger folk, who in turn happen to be more left-leaning folk. That much is obvious, and tends to be agreed upon. I hate to be the Ackchyually Guy, but the idea that younger people skew left and become more conservative as they age was debunked about a decade ago. I believe the current thinking on this subject is that people tend to be both hardwired as liberal or conservative and susceptible to environmental influences throughout their life. It is certainly true that the literature is full of "now that I pay taxes, I'm a conservative" anecdotes from the 1980s and up, but it looks more and more like this was conservative propaganda, not hard data. The fact is, the more you explore this question, the more you find the opposite is true in almost equal amounts; younger people also tend to skew conservative (for reasons) and become more liberal as they get older. I think everyone here can agree that information, knowledge, and education are a liberalizing influence, which is why conservatives in the US are against public education and are trying to promote homeschooling and private religious schools. Since the 1980s in the US, conservatism has transformed into a regressive, reactionary, anti-Enlightenment project. Prior to that time, these elements were mostly confined to fringe conservatism. However, the desegregation of schools in the US in the late 1950s and 1960s caused white supremacists to form a coalition with other fringe conservative groups. This includes the rebellion of paleo-conservatives and libertarians against government regulations, particularly environmental restrictions on polluters in the 1970s; opposition by evangelical Christians to taxation by the IRS; and opposition to equal rights for women in the late 1970s. This fringe coalition became a large voting bloc (although still a voting minority that uses the electoral college and voter suppression to win elections). They made great use of culture war wedge issues, like the anti-abortion movement, to draw votes to their side. Prior to this moment, most conservatives in the US supported abortion and were pro-education. Most Americans are not aware of this history. (Surprisingly, the last pro-choice conservatives lasted in the GOP up until the early to mid-1990s until they went extinct.) This new coalition of grievance-motivated conservatives then joined the Reagan Revolution, and with the help of the Koch network, replaced the old values of conservatism with the fringe values. Sadly, most people in the US agree that these newer conservative values are anti-democratic, pro-authoritarian, pro-fascist, and anti-American. This is where we are today. Recently, and in an altogether fresh approach, Rachel Maddow has investigated the much narrower history of right-wing extremism during the 1930s and 1940s, greatly expanding our knowledge of how foreign-influence operations have played a large role in US politics on the right. Viriditas (talk) 00:09, 5 July 2024 (UTC)
  • Think about "The sentiment classification rates the mention of a terms as negative, neutral or positive." There's an underlying assumption that the underlying topic is somehow neutral, and that being negative or positive implies being inaccurate or biased. Where then, is there room for a discussion of the merits of a case, or for viewpoints on a particular topic? People can be both critical and correct. If there is a page on (pick your favorite disinformation- or bogus health-related topic), then I would hope that criticism of that incorrect viewpoint would appear on that Wikipedia page. Does being critical of something mean that Wikipedia is unreasonably biased against that topic? Or does it mean that we are doing our job properly? Mary Mark Ockerbloom (talk) 18:36, 4 July 2024 (UTC)
  • It's also worth noting that a major goal of disinformation is to undermine trust: in authority, in science, and in information sources, so that people don't know who or what to believe and are incapable of acting effectively. Wikipedia is a major source of information in today's world. We should not take this lightly. Mary Mark Ockerbloom (talk) 18:36, 4 July 2024 (UTC)
    The fundamental problem is things are quickly accelerating, to the point where Wikipedia might be under attack in the very near future. Time to start planning for that scenario now. You don’t need Hari Seldon to see that the future is upon us. Viriditas (talk) 03:08, 5 July 2024 (UTC)
  • [It] classifies Glenn Greenwald or Andrew Sullivan as "journalists with the left". Greenwald and Sullivan are both lifelong Republicans who have identified (I believe) as civil libertarians, or right-libertarians. Greenwald and Sullivan have built their entire careers criticizing the Democratic Party. The authors of this study should be embarrassed by their research, and it’s safe to say it can be dismissed as flawed. Viriditas (talk) 00:19, 5 July 2024 (UTC)
    Viriditas, while Sullivan has been a long-time Republican, I'm pretty certain Greenwald never has been. I suspect maybe at one point he might have been a Democrat. Greenwald can be difficult to pin down. He's definitely some sort of libertarian, which generally has the effect of making him seem right-wing on domestic issues and left-wing on foreign policy. Greenwald took effectively right-wing (or libertarian) positions on mandates and other measures during Covid. But on foreign policy, he like many libertarians, is almost indistinguishable from the "progressive" left in that they paint the United States as some sort on uniquely evil force of death and destruction around the globe. I recently attended a debate in NYC with Greenwald and Alan Dershowitz, in which Greenwald ran significantly to the left of Dershowitz, an actual life-long Democrat, on the topic of US military intervention with the respect to Iran's nuclear program. See: [5]. Jweiss11 (talk) 00:45, 5 July 2024 (UTC)
    Betsy Reed in 2021: "He's become a practitioner of manufactured controversy in the service of the hard right in this country."[6] Viriditas (talk) 00:53, 5 July 2024 (UTC)
    The left has a strong tendency to eat its own when one among its ranks steps out of line. Jweiss11 (talk) 00:55, 5 July 2024 (UTC)
    Isn't the opposite true? In 2003, Bill Clinton said: "...Democrats want to fall in love. Republicans just fall in line." Viriditas (talk) 00:57, 5 July 2024 (UTC)
    The left doesn't "eat its own". It engages in circular firing squads based on who is the biggest victim. That's very different than eating its own and falling in line. Obama in 2019: "One of the things I do worry about sometimes among progressives in the United States...is a certain kind of rigidity where we say, 'Uh, I'm sorry, this is how it's going to be' and then we start sometimes creating what's called a 'circular firing squad', where you start shooting at your allies because one of them has strayed from purity on the issues."[7] Viriditas (talk) 01:05, 5 July 2024 (UTC)
    I agree with Obama here. That's what I meant by "eating its own". Jweiss11 (talk) 01:10, 5 July 2024 (UTC)
    My error, then. Viriditas (talk) 01:14, 5 July 2024 (UTC)
  • Just a hat tip to HaeB for another thoughtful summary and analysis. Routinely my favorite part of the Signpost. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 00:48, 5 July 2024 (UTC)
  • Hmm. I recall seeing an interview that John Stossel did a couple years ago with a prolific Wikipedia editor about political bias on the site. That Wikipedia editor offered a similar conclusion! 🤔 Jweiss11 (talk) 00:51, 5 July 2024 (UTC)
The same Stossel who is "faculty member of the Charles Koch Institute"? Viriditas (talk) 00:54, 5 July 2024 (UTC)
The very same! But that Wikipedia editor is not paid by the Kochs! Jweiss11 (talk) 00:57, 5 July 2024 (UTC)
See above: manufactured controversy. This is what the culture wars are, and it's the only platform the right has. Viriditas (talk) 00:58, 5 July 2024 (UTC)
  • The opening bit about "failing to live up to" NPOV should be enough to write this paper off, we do not have a responsibility towards balance between the left and right sides of the Overton window any more than we do towards balance between historians and Holocaust deniers. Orchastrattor (talk) 01:39, 5 July 2024 (UTC)
    Exactly, the writer like many accounts that get indeffed very fast has just read the title of the policy and then made assumptions about what the title means. TarnishedPathtalk 01:55, 5 July 2024 (UTC)
  • Of course a research piece for a American think tank is going to confuse left-wing with liberals. Calling the Democrats, who are strongly is support of capitalism and engage in continuous wars, left-wing is wrong-headed when considering global politics. That the research found positive sentiment for Scott Morrison (a conservative Australian former prime-minister) just makes a joke of the whole argument. TarnishedPathtalk 01:53, 5 July 2024 (UTC)
  • We then extract the paragraphs in which those terms occur to provide the context in which the target terms are used and feed a random sample of those text snippets to an LLM (OpenAI’s gpt-3.5-turbo), which annotates the sentiment/emotion with which the target term is used in the snippet. So, it's all bullshit, then. Good to know. XOR'easter (talk) 19:02, 5 July 2024 (UTC)
No it's not. Or, at least, not for that reason. jp×g🗯️ 22:27, 6 July 2024 (UTC)
  • I still can't believe the professor went to a right-leaning media tank instead of a more credible academic journal. I can't help wonder this would affect the professor's or the study's credibility. Does anybody here fully trust what the study says? —George Ho (talk) 03:21, 8 July 2024 (UTC)
    It's very believable, and there are literally hundreds of similar examples. Please read the book Dark Money (2016). It explains how groups like the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research came to be highly influential with US universities and professors. This has been going on for four decades. Viriditas (talk) 03:25, 8 July 2024 (UTC)
    That still doesn't make the study reliable by any means. Too bad certain persons can't differentiate reliability from appeal (especially to one-sided values), and too bad certain ones aren't skilled enough to figure out which is credible and which is not. Ones can call the study "credible" or "reliable" only because the study fits their "values" maybe without fully reading what the study says or without looking up meaning of words. George Ho (talk) 12:11, 8 July 2024 (UTC)
    I mean, that was the intended purpose of the Powell memo. Viriditas (talk) 20:06, 8 July 2024 (UTC)
    George Ho, it's possible that Rozado shopped this to one or more academic journals, but no-one wanted it. He had a similar study published in the Journal of Computational Social Science' in 2021: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s42001-021-00130-y. I haven't delved deeply into the this study, but on the face of it, I see no reason to doubt its reliability. Right-wing think tanks have little to no influence on academia in the US. AS for dark money going to universities, I'd be far more worried about it coming from places like Qatar than the Koch bros. Jweiss11 (talk) 20:44, 8 July 2024 (UTC)
    Right wing think tanks interface with, fund, and employ academics who work in right-wing funded university programs and departments. There's a lot of them, but the most notable ones inlcude the Gus A. Stavros Center for the Advancement of Free Enterprise and Economic Education at Florida State University; the Mercatus Center and the Institute for Humane Studies and the Antonin Scalia School of Law at George Mason University; the Marriner S. Eccles Institute for Economics and Quantitative Analysis at the David Eccles School of Business, University of Utah; the Institute for an Entrepreneurial Society (IES) in the Martin J. Whitman School of Management at Syracuse University; the Center for the Study of Free Enterprise at Western Carolina University; the Institute for the Study of Free Enterprise at the University of Kentucky; the Eudaimonia Institute at Wake Forest University; and selected programs at Whitman College and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Although it is highly complex in its social engineering designs, it basically works like this: the conservative funding network (first established in the Powell memo) spent hundreds of millions of US dollars promoting academic programs that ostensibly uphold laissez-faire economics. These programs then publish ideologically-biased academic papers which call for government deregulation, particularly when it comes to industrial polluters, call for the elimination of social programs, and most importantly calls for the elimination of taxes on the wealthy, particularly the same billionaire class who are in fact funding the conservative network. The right-wing think tanks then use these papers to promote policy changes at the congressional level, all the while creating a revolving door, where the people they fund at the academic level end up working for them at some point at the think tank level, with these people very often going back and forth between academia, the think tanks, private industry, and even government. So when Jweiss11 says "right-wing think tanks have little to no influence on academia", he may not be aware of the complex relationship involved. The most common relationship we often see while writing articles on Wikipedia, is the example of a researcher who is mostly unknown, but publishes a book that criticizes climate change science and government efforts to mitigate it, for example. It turns out that the researcher received a fellowship from a think tank (although this relationship is rarely explicit) to work on their book, and after it is published, the media touts the book as "Academic contrarian at university X disagrees with government Y about policy Z". This formula is so cliche at this point, that most people here are fully aware of it. It's an echo chamber. Viriditas (talk) 21:20, 8 July 2024 (UTC)
    And left-wing think tanks don't also do this? Can you explain why, in spite of whatever level of influence there is from right-wing think tanks, why American academia is overwhelmingly left-wing? Jweiss11 (talk) 21:35, 8 July 2024 (UTC)
    I'm afraid that somewhat distracts from the subject here, and we are covering the same points up above again, but if someone else wants to respond, that would be fine. Viriditas (talk) 21:38, 8 July 2024 (UTC)
    I'm afraid my last set of questions is a clear request for intellectual honesty. Jweiss11 (talk) 21:41, 8 July 2024 (UTC)
    No, they are a clear set of distractions from the topic based on the tu quoque variation. I will leave your questions for others. Viriditas (talk) 21:46, 8 July 2024 (UTC)
    Viriditas, you don't get to unilaterally decide what's on-topic and what's not. You're putting up a smokescreen to avoid having to address the weak points in your augments. Jweiss11 (talk) 21:54, 8 July 2024 (UTC)
    My purpose here in this discussion is to discuss the topic under discussion. We are not discussing allegations of "left-wing" hypocrisy, or why you think the US academia is "left-wing". I already addressed the latter part up above, where I wrote "information, knowledge, and education are a liberalizing influence, which is why conservatives in the US are against public education and are trying to promote homeschooling and private religious schools." I'm afraid that's as far off-topic as I'm willing to go. I will leave your other questions for others. Viriditas (talk) 22:00, 8 July 2024 (UTC)
    Again, you don't get to unilaterally decide what's on-topic and what's not. You can try, as you have, but that move is intellectually and civilly unsound. It's quite ridiculous that you repeatedly ping me into discussions, and then won't address my straightforward questions. Arguments like "reality has a liberal bias" or "information, knowledge, and education are a liberalizing influence", two statements with which I generally agree, don't engage with the question of left-of-liberal influence and ideology on academia, replete with its postmodern undermining of objectivity and the scientific method and its neo-Marxist reductionism of everything into the oppressor vs. the oppressed. Jweiss11 (talk) 22:15, 8 July 2024 (UTC)
    You mean how you never addressed the argument I originally pinged you for? Love me some Jweiss11 in the afternoon. Gets the blood flowing. Viriditas (talk) 22:19, 8 July 2024 (UTC)
    I clearly did. My view of the Overton window shift in the US in recent decades is discussed above. Jweiss11 (talk) 22:23, 8 July 2024 (UTC)
    Except you didn't. Another editor had to link to the discussion, and you just talked around it. I think our time in the dojo today is finished. Viriditas (talk) 22:25, 8 July 2024 (UTC)
    I clearly did. I asked Polygnotus for clarification on his position (because I didn't just want to assume his was identical to yours), and he responded with a link to our 2023 discussion, which I then discussed and amplified here. Jweiss11 (talk) 22:28, 8 July 2024 (UTC)
    I don't agree. I had to address your claim directly, your argument that the Overton window has moved to the left, not the right, which is very much aligned with Rozado's research interests which show (according to him) that the Overton window moved left around 2010. That was the argument I pinged you for, and you never once discussed it. Anyway, I will bow to you now and say goodbye. You can have the last word. Viriditas (talk) 22:32, 8 July 2024 (UTC)
    Well, as I was exchanging with Polygnotus, you jumped back with your own thoughts (which was fine in and of itself) before I had a chance to understand where Polygynous was coming from and respond. I clearly reiterated my view that the American Overton window in the 21st century has moved decidedly leftward, with three example topics: universal healthcare, gay marriage, and identity politics. I think the third one there is the biggest and more far-reaching cultural development of the century thus far for America (and many other places in the west). Contorting your eagerness to jump back into conversation into evidence that I never "never once discussed" my view of the Overton window is either a bald-faced lie or utter delusion. Jweiss11 (talk) 22:44, 8 July 2024 (UTC)
    Reading... or rather skimming the published article, his study looks rather skewed to historical figures and political figures and media establishments, especially in the Results section. Also, mostly US-centric and Western-centric, less non-Western examples. I dunno what Rozado wanted to accomplish other than to present himself as mostly concerned about Western civilization or to make Wikipedia look bad. George Ho (talk) 06:13, 9 July 2024 (UTC)
    The English version of Wikipedia itself is disproportionately focused on the west, because all the sources that ever been written in English are disproportionately focused on the West. I'm not sure what you mean by "skewed to historical figures and political figures and media establishments"? As opposed to what? Is it possible Rozado just wanted to adjudicate political bias on Wikipedia? Jweiss11 (talk) 06:22, 9 July 2024 (UTC)
    I'm not sure what you mean by "skewed to historical figures and political figures and media establishments" Hmm... Perhaps "skewed" isn't the right words to describe this. How about "narrowed down" instead? To put another way, Rozado narrowly used those figures to exemplify his point. As opposed to what? How about TV and web shows, natural species (especially of flora and fauna), mathematics, microorganisms, events, culture, communities, etc.? Is it possible Rozado just wanted to adjudicate political bias on Wikipedia? Is "adjudicate" the right word to describe his intent? How about "determine"? Anyways, if that was his intent, then why go to a right-leaning think tank rather than a central- or left-leaning establishment? Despite the project's possible political bias, I still am uncertain whether to trust the article's determinations (of study results). —George Ho (talk) 15:15, 9 July 2024 (UTC)
    Well there's unlikely to much be political bias in articles about flora and fauna or mathematics. And if there was, it would be meta-level and much harder systematically detect. Yes, he's narrowed the investigation down to overtly political topics. His study doesn't suggest that there is political bias on each and every article on Wikipedia, but merely that it may be pervasive bias within certain topic areas. The majority of my editing focuses on American college football and related topics, and I can testify that there's virtually no political bias in that topic area. But I do think there is a serious bias problem when it comes to many elements of contemporary politics, media, and sociology. Again, it's possible that Rozado shopped this study to a lot of places, but only a right-leaning think tank was interested in publishing it. Do you think a left-leaning think tank, journal, or periodical would be eager to jump on this? And if Rozada has published this with a centrist outlet like Heterodox Academy, Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism, Quillette, or The Free Press's, that venue would be (or already has been) branded as right-wing or unreliable or both by the community here. Jweiss11 (talk) 16:39, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

Sister projects: On editing Wikisource (246 bytes · 💬)

Interesting read! Frostly (talk) 03:01, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

Special report: Wikimedia Movement Charter ratification vote underway, new Council may surpass power of Board (3,264 bytes · 💬)

I say "No" because the following issues, from the bullet points above, need to be resolved:

  • An "Independent Dispute Resolution function" will be put in place to resolve conflicts among movement bodies, theoretically including the WMF.

That needs to be in place from the beginning. I would recommend a mediation procedure be specified, not just the creation of a "function."

  • There’s no mention of how long the terms of GC members are.

Absolutely need term lengths and limits.

  • Unclear if Global Council members are to be paid.

Without resolution in advance, this could be a source of endless headaches.

  • There’s a commitment that certain demographics not dominate the Global Council, so there will most likely be quotas for certain regions, but there are no guarantees.

Please specify the quotas in advance and make them binding.

  • The Global Council defines itself, i.e. its own processes, structures, membership(!) and accountability.

This is asking for trouble. The constitutional document should not be able to be modified solely by the body it governs, but only by the ratifying constituency.

  • GCB election processes are similar to how the WMF board of Trustees is elected, with the same problems of being dominated by members from Europe and North America.

As above, need firm quotas. WaikikiVice (talk) 23:48, 4 July 2024 (UTC)

The number of maximum GBC members (20, 15, …) is still open, see m:Talk:Movement_Charter#Inconsistency_about_maximum_number_of_GCB_members. Best, —DerHexer (Talk) 10:48, 5 July 2024 (UTC)

Further clarity around costs of this new structure is required. The WMF board has an entire legal and finical team which we spend many millions of dollars on a year. I am not seeing duplicating this being a good use of funds, but would such teams be legally permitted to advise the Global Counsel? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 14:48, 6 July 2024 (UTC)
Duplication of legal and financial staff is not at all proposed in the charter. Of course WMF staff would be permitted to advise the Global Council, as indeed they advised heavily the MCDC in drafting the charter and making sure it met with all of the WMF's legal requirements. Pharos (talk) 16:03, 7 July 2024 (UTC)

WMF Board has voted not to ratify the charter

See mailing list, board resolution, board minutes. Only board member opposed was Mike Peel. --Andreas JN466 12:15, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

Traffic report: Talking about you and me, and the games people play (489 bytes · 💬)

Is it just me or is the description for ChatGPT grammatically awkward? Reconrabbit 22:14, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

Probably the word "has" is incorrect. Plus there's an extra comma in there. @Igordebraga and Vestrian24Bio: ??


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