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The following is an automatically-generated compilation of all talk pages for the Signpost issue dated 2013-06-19. For general Signpost discussion, see Wikipedia talk:Signpost.

Arbitration report: The Farmbrough amendment request—automation and arbitration enforcement (25,375 bytes · 💬)

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• Another prolific and valuable editor is biting the dust because Wikipedia insiders don't particularly like him. Rich is a martyr for the cause of content builders. Wer900 • talk 21:35, 20 June 2013 (UTC)
  • Actually he is generally well liked, the issue is one editor who reports him for any minor point and an administrative process that cannot apply perspective. Regards, Sun Creator^(talk) 00:07, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

• It's nice to see in depth material like this in the arbitration report. (It may have sometimes been like this before, but I don't remember it recently.) --Demiurge1000 (talk) 22:09, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

• "In depth" is nice, but the article would be better if it were less one-sided in Rich's favor. Fact is, he's blocked for a year because he's violated his sanctions multiple times, and been caught doing so despite his efforts to conceal his misdeeds. The original sanction would have been long since commuted if Rich had done the one thing requested: Put away all automation and type edits in by hand, like the vast majority of first time users do. The idea was to provide Rich an opportunity to have empathy with those whom his automation mistakes impacted. Instead, he has challenged the legitimacy of the sanctions, violated them willfully and repeatedly, and now seeks to be re-tried in the court of public opinion. The person who is solely and totally responsible for Rich Farmbrough being blocked for such an extended period of time is Rich Farmbrough--every process, at every turn, gave him ample direction on what to do, and ample opportunity to comply. It's a quite regrettable outcome, but one of his own making. Jclemens (talk) 23:35, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

• Took the words out of my mouth. Though you're the ex-arb in the room, so I guess it's for the best you're the one who said them anyways. :P I'll never understand how some people's response to a sanction can be to try every possible action except to willfully comply with it until they've proven it can be lifted (which, history has shown, is actually a lot easier than it sounds). This article, while interesting, fails to give due consideration to the reasons that ArbCom repeatedly denied RF's requests to lift the sanction. A two-sided examination of the events here would have referenced the unanimous dismissal of the "omnibus appeal", the fact that several arbitrators felt Rich's behavior could soon merit an indefinite ban, etc. I'm not saying Rich has no valid complaints, but let's remember that this is someone who has, among other things, attempted to get arbitration findings struck as NPA/BLP violations. I must say, I'm saddened to see material like this appearing in this section of the Signpost. Normally, at the end (well, now, the middle) of a dramatic week, you can always settle down with the Signpost and read a nuanced and balanced summary of whatever's unfolded. The Abritration Report, especially, has always impressed me with its neutrality, and this edition is an unfortunate departure from that tradition. This should have been published as an Op-Ed. — PinkAmpers&^{(Je vous invite à me parler)} 00:01, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

  I have to say, being unfamiliar with the case, that it's not at all clear to me why Rich was sanctioned in the first place, let alone blocked currently. Powers ^T 01:29, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

  And by that do you mean that you agree the article's biased, or that you agree with the viewpoint advanced in the article? — PinkAmpers&^{(Je vous invite à me parler)} 02:44, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

  I don't have enough information to say. It feels like the article is incomplete, which some may read as biased. Powers ^T 23:49, 22 June 2013 (UTC)

  Incomplete, yes. When I first started the whole interview process, I had hoped for things to be wrapped up in a neat package. Apparently WP isn't like that. I would defend the neutrality of the report though: both Mr. Farmbrough and the committee had opportunity to articulate their views. I am well aware that this interview type of format takes the report out of its comfort zone, and that some readers may miss the usual formula. As for nuance, I hope it is still there, but that is up to the reader to judge. Neotarf (talk) 08:39, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

• Well said, better than I could have done. Anomie⚔ 02:29, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

• I note one glaring error: AnomieBOT contains neither code nor data from any of Rich's bots, and the implication is frankly absurd. Since this piece calls out tag dating in particular, let's look at that. AnomieBOT's tag dating came about because Rich couldn't manage to keep his bot unblocked to do the task, and no one else wanted to do it long-term.

  Code first. It seems clear to me that even the first version of AnomieBOT's TagDater.pm is in a distinctly AnomieBOT style, but direct code comparison is of course impossible since Rich hadn't and hasn't to my knowledge released his code publicly.

  As for data, AnomieBOT's tag dating has two major sources: WP:AWB/DT for the list of templates, and the category hierarchy under Category:Wikipedia maintenance categories sorted by month to find pages with templates needing dating. Regarding the former, I note that, despite running his tag-dating bot, Rich appears to have made only two trivial edits[1][2] to WP:AWB/DT. Nor did he create Category:Wikipedia maintenance categories sorted by month, although he does seem to have played a part in some of the complex templates currently used in that hierarchy. I don't see that contributing to the templates used in an existing category hierarchy rises to the level implied here.

  As for the many lesser inaccuracies and omissions in this piece, I think I'll refrain from specific comment. There are enough people who idolize Rich for various reasons (the saddest being, IMO, those who hold him as some sort of mascot for people "oppressed" by "Wikipedia's [ArbCom/admin] oligarchy") that I don't want to get into a drawn-out argument with. Anomie⚔ 02:29, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

  • If this makes any difference, the exact wording of Farmbrough's statement to the Signpost was, "All AWB bots and AnomieBot effectively use some of the code/data from my bots which was turned into Wiki Pages." Neotarf (talk) 18:22, 21 June 2013 (UTC)
  • As you state, User:AnomieBOT uses WP:AWB/DT. Most of the content of that page was added here by Rjwilmsi with the edit summary "Mainspace rules: add & merge list from SmackBot". You can also see the discussion where I provided him this list at here and the list itself at User:Rich_Farmbrough/temp102 (as it was at the time) and more neatly formatted at User:Rich_Farmbrough/temp102. I always felt happy that AnomieBOT and others were using that, it felt like work hadn't been wasted. All the best: Rich Farmbrough 21:21, 20 May 2024 (UTC).
    

Since there are some remarks here about neutrality, let me make it clear that none of the opinions expressed in the piece are my own. I will try to find time to say more about this later, but for now let me just say that if someone has a question about who or what is being cited, I would be happy to provide more detailed diffs. Neotarf (talk) 09:26, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

None of the opinions, perhaps. But the selection of opinion to present leading to the POV? Anomie⚔ 12:58, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

If there is some opinion or discussion somewhere that has been left out, anyone is welcome to add it. Neotarf (talk) 08:39, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

This is probably the worst-ever article I've read in the Signpost. If it was an essay by Rich about why he reckons he was unfairly treated that would be one thing, but it's basically an opinion article which cherry picks Rich's interpretation of events while leaving everything else out. Where's the coverage of his multiple attempts to push against his restrictions? (which is what contributed to the block). Some of the prose would be deleted from a stub article - for instance "It has been suggested that this will have a chilling effect on other bot operators, that they will be afraid of making mistakes and getting banned. Says one talk page commenter, "A lot of bot ops and potential botops think twice before starting a bot. I have talked with several editors who want too but are afraid if they make mistakes that the zero defect mentality will get them banned." - who has suggested this, and who is the mysterious "one talk page commenter"? Given the number of chances Rich was given there doesn't seem to be any imminent danger of them being "banned"(!) - are bot owners really so silly that this represents their consensus opinion? Nick-D (talk) 10:00, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

Nick-D, if the links to the discussions weren't clear enough, this particular discussion took place on the blocking admin's talk page. I was not covering the arbitration committee at the time of any of Farmbrough's previous interactions with it, however, (if that question was not merely rhetorical) any available information about them would be found in the Signpost archives. It was not our goal to rehash material that has already been reported, but to provide the briefest of backgrounds for readers who are new to the situation. Neotarf (talk) 18:09, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

If that was your intention, then I'm afraid that I don't think that it was successfully executed. This is a woefully one-sided view of things, which basically misleads readers by presenting cherry picked material focused on Rich's justifications for his actions. Nick-D (talk) 01:18, 22 June 2013 (UTC)

The arbitration committee was given a chance to respond before publication, and they did so. If there is material somewhere that has not been represented, anyone is welcome to point it out. Neotarf (talk) 08:39, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

• I am one of the editors who concluded that Rich Farmbrough was using automation in violation of his agreement not to do so. The spirit of the restriction was to not change a bunch of things with one mouse click or key press. Rich Farmbrough had a history of doing that and making the exact same minor error in many places. Rich made it clear in previous discussions that he realized that doing that was the behavior that he was not to repeat. One could argue that doing a search and replace and hitting the OK button after examining each replacement was allowed, but doing a search and replace and letting it make multiple changes all at once would be an unambiguous violation, and I am convinced that this is what happened.

Consider this edit. It may help to look at the before and after pages as well as the diff. Clearly he was attempting to fix the places where a word like Madhubala was surrounded by ‘ and ’ and also in italics using the usual '' wikimarkup. In other words, change ''‘Madhubala’'' to ''Madhubala'' by removing the ‘ and ’.

This is a standard automated-text-repair operation, and I have written small scripts to do things like it many times, usually on a batch of a few thousand documents at once. The ‘ is easy: just replace all instances of ‘ with nothing. Alas, if you then try to do the same with ’, you accidentally turn Bob’s hat into Bobs hat and actress’ family into actress family. Now of course if you are editing manually, you just remove the ’ from ''‘Madhubala’'' and not from Bob’s hat or the actress’ family. But how to do it with automation?

Here is where Rich Farmbrough appears to have made a programming error. After batch-replacing ‘ with nothing, he batch-replaced ’'' with ''. Alas, sometimes the second ’ doesn't have a '' after it, and so the programming error turns ‘Madhubala’ into Madhubala’ and ‘I got it’ into I got it’.

We know this was automated, because a human who is moving through text manually removing quotation marks simple does not remove multiple ‘ characters without removing the matching ’ character, but only when the ’ is not followed by two '' characters. There are mistakes that humans make and there are mistakes that only automated editing tools make, and this was the latter.

Also, missing the giant red error on the page indicates that he probably never read anything but the wikimarkup, and the edit summary ("Italics for book titles, not bold.") which confuses ''‘ with ''' tends to support this theory. --Guy Macon (talk) 10:58, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

I'm trying to follow this explanation in terms of the rest of the text, particularly the "Eureka" portion at the end. "And the way he had twisted the title ‘Eurek(h)a’ of the book" becomes "And the way he had twisted the title Eurek(h)a’ of the book", and "shamelessly borrowing the joyous quote ‘Eureka’ which meant" becomes "shamelessly borrowing the joyous quote Eureka’ which meant". But in the same section, "Mohan Deep got 'Eurekha!' vetted" and "Rekha was to talk about 'Eurekha' 4 years later" do not have the same error introduced.

For anyone trying to follow the "red error" issue, a red "cite error" in the main text is first introduced here [3] (not by Farmbrough) on 06:31, 22 March 2013, and another smaller red "unknown parameter" in the references section here [4] at 05:03, 22 March 2013. There are eleven intervening edits before Farmbrough makes the disputed edit. Ten edits after Farmbrough's edit, the article is moved from "Articles for creation" to article space [5] (again, not by Farmbrough) on 11:05, 23 March 2013‎ with both red errors still in it. The first red error (in the text) is eliminated here [6] at 11:09, 23 March 2013, about 13 edits after Farmbrough touched it, the second red error is finally removed, three weeks later, here [7] on 06:06, 15 April 2013, when the page number is added to the citation. Farmbrough made some 13 edits to the article before the error was removed, there were 85 edits by all editors altogether that left a red error still in the text. Neotarf (talk) 13:38, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

• I will keep my comment brief but as I have stated in other venues in the past, the blocking of Rich and his bots over minor edits was a decision of monumentally poor judgement. Even more so given his eventual banning from the project was due to the extrmely poor wording of his sanction. Sepcifically the decidedly poor use and interpretation of the terms "broadly construed" which allow an administrator unlimited discretion. An editor being banned over little more than a difference of opinion about the types of edits that should be done is nothing short of just plain dumb. Every month Rich and his bots aren't editing is directly equivelant to tens of thousands of useful edits not being done, setting the project back in an unmeasurable amount. Kumioko (talk) 13:55, 24 June 2013 (UTC)
  • "Broadly construed" points both ways--it's easy to see why people who like to Wikilawyer hate it, because it's essentially IAR applied to sanctions: in any sanction that includes "broadly construed" it is very explicitly stating that the spirit counts, not just the letter. ArbCom tends to use a lot of "broadly construed", because people who are able to find consensus at lower levels of dispute resolution don't make it to ArbCom cases. Jclemens (talk) 02:44, 28 June 2013 (UTC)
    • But your assumptions are that the wording assumes that the editors is guilty and that every one of the 1400+ admins who could block that user, would do so fairly or has the same understanding or interpretation of the rules. Unfortunately that is often not the case. It doesn't have to do with wikilawyering and fankly I only see that as an excuse by those who support a system of making it easy for admins to eliminate editors without due process. Broadly construed measn that any interpretation of the judgement is justified. It has nothing to do with wikilawyering and everything to do with fairness and common sense. Kumioko (talk) 17:05, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

Postscript. Several comments above have raised questions about neutrality in terms of the format of this arbitration report. As I said there, and will say again, comment was invited from both Mr. Farmbrough and the arbitrators. I also promised, somewhere upthread, to try to find time to comment about this at greater length, so I will say something more now about the writing of this report, and the departure from the usual arbitration report format.

When we first started discussing the possibility of doing an interview for the arbitration report, I knew immediately that I wanted to interview Farmbrough. When a disruptive user is indeffed, there is often a sigh of relief that goes up from the community. But with Farmbrough, that wasn't what happened. Instead, there was a whole dialogue that started up about process--the process surrounding arbitration enforcement and bot development, and people stated bringing up points about the structure of WP. In fact, the working title of this report was "The Farmbrough amendment request - a closer look at automation and arbitration enforcement".

While I was putting the report together, I was also trying to decide whether Farmbrough was a hero or a villain. But you would probably have to edit in the same area with someone to really answer that question, and as far as I know, I have never had any interaction with Farmbrough on WP at all. And I suspect the answer to that question is not that simple. I also didn't look at any of the diffs for any of his cases until after I had submitted the report, so whatever I wrote came directly from discussion about the current case, and not from trying to judge for myself what had happened.

My primary interest in writing this was to find out something about how WP breathes and grows, and sometimes hiccups, in the context of real users, not in the abstract. But if the comments here are any indication, most readers are not interested in the meta-type issues I tried to bring out in the report. They are interested in Farmbrough himself; and they are not finished with talking about what happened.

Neotarf (talk) 11:59, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

Simply inviting comment isn't really enough for neutrality. In addition you've cherry-picked a few heavily biased "anonymous" comments, but didn't invite comment from any of the other users mentioned or anyone involved in the case beyond two of the arbs.

Regarding "When a disruptive user is indeffed, there is often a sigh of relief that goes up from the community. But with Farmbrough, that wasn't what happened.", that's not really accurate. Usually a sigh of relief goes up from part of the community while the disruptive user's supporters (their "fan club", although that term sometimes has a derogatory connotation) complain about every aspect of the situation. Sometimes there are not many supporters or they drop the issue quickly. In this case there are a fair number of them and the list includes some extremely vocal and tenacious members. In the end it comes down to trying to draw the line for how much disruption can be excused by good editing; look at some other cases where a disruptive editor also does good work, both where the user wound up banned and where they didn't, and you'll find the same thing.

Regarding "most readers are not interested in the meta-type issues I tried to bring out in the report", I for one don't see any meta-type issues in your editorial. When the whole piece is focused on the one editor and to a lesser extent his arb case, it should come as no surprise that people discuss that editor and that arb case. In a good case study, the meta issues are still clearly presented and are the real focus of the work. Anomie⚔ 13:19, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

But this isn't a case study, and I am not presenting issues, or a point of view. Since my role here is to be a neutral observer, or at least to be equally detested by all parties, I can only point out issues that have already been raised by others. In a perfect world, PR specialists would give me pithy and quotable sound bites that were all understandable, and spelled correctly. But this is Wikipedia, in all of its chaotic glory, and even if I would like to make something up, I am stuck with what people have actually said. For example, I was particularly puzzled by several comments that Wikipedia had become a "personal fiefdom"; it was not clear how this might apply to the automation group. Also, I never did receive an answer to where someone could go for assistance if they had a problem with a bot. As far as I can tell, they take it to Farmbrough's talk page, where he still dispenses technical advice on occasion. And if you check again, I think you will find that arbitrator T. Canens did adequately explain the arbs' decisions (and the issues you brought up), even if he wasn't involved in the original case.

If you really don't see the procedural issues, I would suggest you go to the two talk pages linked in the report, and read the comments yourself. For those who automatically discount anything that isn't written by an admin, there are comments there by admins as well. There are plenty of editors there, who have taken the lead in trying to define and resolve some of the issues, instead of just complaining that no one else has resolved anything to their satisfaction.

I sympathize with anyone who has ever been irritated by someone else's editing, but clearly this is a complex situation. And it is likely to come up again, quite possibly with the same issues still unresolved. I too wish I had been able to stumble across some easy answers, wrapped up in a neat package, but this is Wikipedia: what you see is what you get. Neotarf (talk) 15:40, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

Discussion report: Citations, non-free content, and a MediaWiki meeting (992 bytes · 💬)

• Not sure if this qualifies for inclusion, but the WMF is asking for input on a new privacy policy at m:Privacy policy/Call for input (2013) and Signpost readers may be intersted in commenting there. Best. 64.40.54.119 (talk) 04:22, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

• Thanks for the link. I mostly note Meta items from Meta's mainpage, and that item isn't on Meta's mainpage perhaps because of a lack of translations, but I agree that it's notable enough to mention in this report. I'll include it next week. --Pine^✉ 07:13, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

Thank you and thanks again for bringing back the Discussion Report. 64.40.54.92 (talk) 01:53, 22 June 2013 (UTC)

Featured content: Cheaper by the dozen (1,641 bytes · 💬)

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Featured pictures

All pictures on this page gained featured picture status this week? Since I only see three in the list. Garion96 (talk) 21:30, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

Oops. Fixed. Thanks for letting us know! — ΛΧΣ²¹ 02:09, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

What happened to adding in content that was demoted over the past week? I find demotions just as relevant as promotions. Albacore (talk) 04:26, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

Hmm. I've never seen that before on the FC section, but I consider it will be good to add those too. Thanks for the suggestion, I will work on it for future issues :) — ΛΧΣ²¹ 05:39, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

Yes, a few years ago there used to be a list of the demoted articles. If you could list these, it might spur people to spruce some of them up and re-nominate for FAC. -- Ssilvers (talk) 22:10, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

• Should it be "part" rather than "past"?--Gilderien Chat|List of good deeds 17:35, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

In the media: South African learners want Wikipedia; Editing of Israel topics (603 bytes · 💬)

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• This was interesting! Thanks for writing it. --Pine^✉ 07:02, 21 June 2013 (UTC)
• "... Or both." Thanks for the laugh :-D --U5K0'sTalk_{Make WikiLove not WikiWar} 21:08, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

News and notes: Swedish Wikipedia's millionth article leads to protests; WMF elections—where are all the voters? (28,239 bytes · 💬)

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Low voter numbers in WMF elections

• Regarding the voter numbers in WMF elections, I don't vote because I don't have any idea of who the candidates are. And that I trust that whatever decision that will be made will be a good one. Skalman (talk) 20:45, 20 June 2013 (UTC)
  • You are wrong. ;) The decision will be a good one only if participated: the WMF board can't act in isolation. --Nemo 21:12, 20 June 2013 (UTC)
    • I agree with Nemo, with the added bit that we (the Signpost) did extensive profiles of all of the candidates: the Board, part 1 and 2, and the FDC. Please read them, get to know the candidates, and make your vote. :-) Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 21:18, 20 June 2013 (UTC)
• The WMF elections have low numbers of voters because only Wikipedia insiders actually care anymore about what goes on at the heights of the WMF. Intrigue and power-playing are the lifeblood of said insiders, and so they will try to participate in decisions of power to the greatest extent possible. This is why ArbCom has not made any landmark rulings protecting content builders, but has merely existed to ensure that business as usual continues without getting too far out of hand. Wer900 • talk 21:31, 20 June 2013 (UTC)
  • I hate to agree with such a cynical comment, but I think Wer900 is right in that most potential voters do not view the WMF as having any direct operational influence on the projects. Perhaps this is the result of years of the WMF ducking responsibility for such things as child protection. When I raised the idea that the WMF's terms of use be used to deal with allegations of hostile environment sexual harassment (made by no less than Jimmy Wales), nothing happened, despite the very clear wording of the terms. It seems like that particular piece of boilerplate is intended for some other purpose than actually being used to deal with problem users. Perhaps voters don't see the relevance of voting for people that keep themselves at arm's length from the projects they manage. Delicious carbuncle (talk) 21:46, 20 June 2013 (UTC)
    • Then why not vote in people who will change that? There are individual editors running this year who are not members of chapters or have been disengaged with actual editing for some time. Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 22:47, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

• how was which language you speak calculated for the voters. If its just which wiki is your sul home wiki, I think that is rather inaccurate. I was under the impression in previous years the voter list showed which wiki you voted from, which doesnt seem the case this year, but I might be mistaken. Bawolff (talk) 23:57, 20 June 2013 (UTC)
  • By home wiki: it's the best indication we have, and I think not too bad. English is likely to have a higher proportion of second-language speakers, of course; but they still regard en.WP, and its wiki-culture, as their home, apparently. Tony (talk) 01:25, 21 June 2013 (UTC)
• I'm an Arab and I didn't vote. Well, I was going to vote and I actually opened the previous Signpost issues and started reading them. I got bored half way and decided to go back to content creation. Mohamed CJ (talk) 00:50, 21 June 2013 (UTC)
  • I'm struck by the cynicism. I'm wondering whether participation in WMF "democracy" is not happening in the Arab Wikimedia world? Why are the Arab-speaking chapters and the Arab-WP community not organising for a good candidate or two to stand next time, with a policy platform that means something to Arab-speakers? Tony (talk) 01:46, 21 June 2013 (UTC)
    • I can't answer these questions as I'm not an active user of the Arabic WP (probably less than 10 edits), but I think it has to do with the weakness of the Arabic language content on the web in general. Mohamed CJ (talk) 06:42, 21 June 2013 (UTC)
      • Maybe the WMF movement needs your knowledge and ideas to make the presence of Arabic on our sites stronger. Tony (talk) 07:36, 21 June 2013 (UTC)
        • @Tony1: I'm interested in helping by whatever I can (probably after I return from the wiki-break starting tomorrow). How do you think I can help best? Mohamed CJ (talk) 13:01, 21 June 2013 (UTC)
        • Mohamed, now you've put me on the spot! There are now opportunities for forming a WMF-affiliated user group, which could become eligible to use the trademark and apply for funding if it presented a well-developed case for project activity. In a small country such as yours, the demographics favour the occasional physical meet-up. But finding other like-minded Wikimedians is critical, and a user group could link Arabic-speaking Wikimedians across that huge east–west distance. A good start would be to get together online with a few people and list ways in which the coverage of the Arabic language and Arab culture could be expanded and deepened (even including photography on Commons). I think the WMF volunteer AffCom (Affiliations Committee) would be willing to offer logistical and procedural advice; certainly one of their missions is to facilitate the formation of good user groups. I'm advised that there are no chapters in the Arabic-speaking world. Tony (talk) 14:48, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

The Indonesian voters are partly helped by campaign via Indonesian Wikipedia Facebook Groups. I curious though, how accurate the language count of the voters, if, let's say, I'm voting from Meta? Bennylin (talk) 11:13, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

I tried to vote but gave up. Simply too difficult. Seems it is organised for programmers. Besides of that WMF and so on (local chapters etc) in my experience really does not connect to the average contributor. It does not mean WMF etc is irrelevant, but that for someone who want to have fun contributing to Wikipedia it is simply a step away from the fun. Best regards Ulflarsen (talk) 15:26, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

I voted last year but not this time simply because I found it such hard work. Its like the voting system has been designed for some theoretical 'ideal' rather than what would engage voters. 146.90.180.38 (talk) 21:54, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

I agree. I'm a veteran editor and member of a Wikimedia chapter, but found the voting process to be confusing. I gave up on it on my first attempt, but ploughed through it on my second attempt. The quality of the candidates seems high, and it's a shame that the voting system doesn't encourage participation. Nick-D (talk) 01:21, 22 June 2013 (UTC)

I didn't made it on my first attempt too. The problem was: it's on wmf site, the first thing (well, almost) that I noticed was that I was not logged in. Then after I ignored that and tried to vote anyway, lo and behold, it said that I wasn't logged in. I decided to gave it a second chance after several days (I reckon very few people would do second chances) assuming that the first was a glitch and hopefully didn't happen again, and I successfully voted. Have it been tested on non-programmers yet? For wikis that didn't have any representation among the candidates, it felt like I was voting for UNICEF board members: interesting, but would never connect personally. Not that far from steward elections. Bennylin (talk) 17:16, 22 June 2013 (UTC)

All you have to do is select whether you support, oppose, or are neutral on the candidates, right? How do you all above think that the WMF can improve the interface? Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 01:28, 22 June 2013 (UTC)

I'd suggest a 'flatter' structure to the website, and separate votes on each category with the explanatory material more clearly displayed - I found that I had to dig around for information about what it was I was voting for. Nick-D (talk) 10:18, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

I left a note on a few of the Wikipedia pages, e.g. Arabic Wikipedia. There are now five votes from ar.wp. ;-( John Vandenberg ^(chat) 06:47, 22 June 2013 (UTC)

I'm not interested on the elections. The WMF did not supply any reason why to vote. So who cares? Many don't, neither do I. Matthiasb (talk) 21:16, 27 June 2013 (UTC)

I agree. I abstained from voting mainly due to my unfamiliarity of the candidates, and the voting interface, though I doubt it is possible to simply, is simply too difficult to decide. I cared about this election, but couldn't bear to vote someone that I have never heard of. --Hydriz (talk) 03:21, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

It's really interesting what happened to the Arab language. It has enough very active and active editors and more than enough readers according to statistic provided by wikimedia server. Compares to Javanese language Wikipedia who struggle with adding editors and still creeping up on readership. Both have similarity: their increase (probably) caused by project based effort. It shows that project, regardless additional editors to article number result - don't make community. 110.138.45.11 (talk) 05:45, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

A million articles... With a bot

I must say I find it hard to understand why so many people are vehemently opposed to bot-generated stubs. I myself am very much in favor of bots doing the tedious work of creating stub articles for individual species in invertebrate zoology and botany. I do understand the inevitable Immediatist versus Eventualist disagreement on Wikipedia, but still... I am amazed that in Wikipedia (of all places!) so many people intensely dislike the idea of bots creating these helpful little stubs. Once stubs are in place it is extremely easy for relative newcomers to add images or other useful pieces of information. It is a big nuisance to have to create your own stub every time you want to add an image of a species that is not represented, and I think many people who are not very experienced may be put off by that necessity. I know that some people loathe stubs, but until we ban humans from creating stubs (which are much more likely to be error-prone and much harder to fix), I don't see why we should say it is terrible to let bots create them. Invertzoo (talk) 00:06, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

I'm with Invertzoo on this matter. I think such stubs are useful. Like seed crystals. It seems to me that regardless of their being sketchy on a social/statistical/competitive_ego level (i.e. to pump up stats to achieve 'milestone' recognition) the use of such stub creating bots still has a practical benefit in seeding encyclopedic articles. I'd like to encourage folks to give consideration to how much 'keeping score' and 'viewing things as a competitive game' may be influencing some peoples attitudes. Their initial emotional responses. Would this issue be any where near as contentious if weight hadn't been given to a numerical milestone in the first place?

Technology progresses and automation is part of that. I'm not writing this with a stick in the mud, nor on papyrus w/ a reed pen, nor on vellum w/ a quill, nor on paper with a typewriter. It seems sensible to me to take advange of software based tools in a software based environment. Subject to human consideration and oversight. A consideration might be to flag such stubs for review or automatic deletion if there's no growth within some period of time, say 6, 12, 18 months or whatever and to have them posted into an organized category so that folks who specialize in the relevant fields may easily access them. Feed, facilitate, and foster them instead of damning their diminutiveness. --Kevjonesin (talk) 04:27, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

I am torn with Lsj's style of editing, especially after bearing witness to what it has done to the Cebuano and Waray-Waray Wikipedias, where his bot was first deployed. On the one hand, yes, bots do help increase the coverage of a given Wikipedia, but it does no good if they stay as stubs forever ("permastubs"). The Cebuano and Waray-Waray Wikipedias are beset with the problem of having tens of thousands of stubs on virtually everything, but no editors to expand the content. We can't presume that editors will just magically jump in and edit: what if they don't?

For me, I will always emphasize quality over quantity on smaller-language projects. I would prefer a Wikipedia which has thousands of well-written articles, compared to a Wikipedia which has hundreds of thousands of permastubs. --Sky Harbor ^(talk) 06:58, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

It's a pity that ceb.wp and war.wp will always be remembered as sv.wp's experiment sandbox. Bennylin (talk) 17:18, 22 June 2013 (UTC)

I'm also with Invertzoo on this. User:Polbot used to create species articles (scroll to bot function #6) from a database back in 2007. So don't call kettle black on this one, because we were there in the past. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 06:54, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for that, Ohana—I wasn't aware of any similar bots on en.wp beyond the early rambot. Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 07:01, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

English Wikipedia is also pretty heavy on current and former bot-created stubs, by Rambot, Polbot and others. Even though there are a lot of well-developed bird articles, most were started by Polbot. They helped us by adding useful information, saving human editors time, and providing an invitation to edit the articles. The German Wikipedia just has its own philosophy on stubs, human or bot written. English and Swedish Wikipedia use them as one step to gradually, incrementally building up content, while they want a more finished product. I don't care whether bots inflate counts, since using them is productive, if you don't have such strict standards. —innotata 14:16, 24 June 2013 (UTC)

Without wishing to join the debate here, let me just add a few pertinent facts:

• @Kevjonesin: The bot-created articles are already flagged and organized in special categories, just as you wish: sv:Kategori:Robotskapade artiklar, ceb:Kategoriya:Paghimo ni bot, war:Kaarangay:Himo hin bot. Looking at the first test run, creating around 8,000 articles about bird species in February 2012, the majority have by now been checked and de-flagged by other editors on svwp.
• @Bennylin, @Sky Harbor: It is not accurate to call ceb.wp and war.wp "sv.wp's experiment sandbox", nor are these where my bot was first deployed. The experimenting and development was done initially on svwp, with the finished code ported to the other languages only after full-scale production was already underway on svwp. In the case of war.wp, this was done at the express request of one of its sysops. Ceb.wp was my own idea; it is my wife's native language, and I wanted to contribute to it the best I could without being a fluent speaker.

Lsj (talk) 16:27, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

I am aware that JinJian made a request for bot-generated stubs after he generated his own set of stubs which pushed the Waray-Waray Wikipedia up to 100,000 articles, and I am aware that your wife is Cebuana (yes, I've been following both the Cebuano and Waray-Waray cases for some time now), but the question still stands: what guarantee do we have that increasing article counts in this manner will generate the editorship necessary to update them? Wikimedia Philippines for one is slowly starting to establish a user group for Waray-Waray speakers (of which JinJian is the only Wikipedian in that group so far), and we're hoping to attract more editors, but in the absence of that, the likelihood of the two Wikipedias being full of permastubs is more probable. This is why editors on the Tagalog Wikipedia have opposed the mass generation of stubs: we feel that it is not in our best interest to dilute the quality of the encyclopedia for the sake of increasing article counts, and to this day we're still feeling the effects of having so many stubs which can't possibly be updated.

I am happy that you helped the Swedish Wikipedia get to one million articles using your bot, but at least the Swedish Wikipedia has a sustainable community that can work toward expanding those stubs. That cannot be said for the Cebuano and Waray-Waray Wikipedias, which at most have only one active editor each. --Sky Harbor ^(talk) 16:50, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

So I do my best to recruit more editors in Cebu, see e.g. here :) You do have a valid concern, but frankly, I don't believe the bot articles are lowering the average article quality on cebwp, a lot of the manually created stubs are worse. Compare e.g. hand-written ceb:Mananap (animal) with any of the bot-created articles. Cebwp and warwp both lack critical mass today, without enough articles to attract a solid reader base from which to recruit editors, and not enough editors to create that article base. My hope is that bot creation can help to break out of that vicious circle. Possibly that's a vain hope, but hand-writing isn't getting them off the ground either. Lsj (talk) 20:16, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

The bot won my contribution time

As someone who often tries to add photos of plants or animals that I know almost nothing about (having simply copied their binomial from a label), I completely agree with Invertzoo. I would really prefer not to have to look up all the bits and pieces to make a stub if they can be scripted from a database. If the stub is already there, I can even add a picture to another language wiki. I guess that's why sv:Gudeoconcha sophiae ceb:Gudeoconcha sophiae war:Gudeoconcha sophiae, and sv:Epiglypta howinsulae ceb:Epiglypta howinsulae war:Epiglypta howinsulae have illustrated articles about Gudeoconcha sophiae and Epiglypta howinsulae, species which live(d) solely on an English speaking Island, while the English Wikipedia does not! (Undoubtedly User:Invertzoo, a Gastropod expert, will help me rectify this, but that's not the point.) --99of9 (talk) 10:23, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

This makes perfect sense. I do wish that WMF projects would lose their sense of base-10 thresholds as some kind of competition; it really detracts from the quality of articles as the more important benchmark of success. Tony (talk) 10:42, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

If the base-10 competition inspired the bot to write stubs for me to add to, then I'm not that unhappy with it. But I'm all for celebrating quality as well as quantity. Do you have a way of benchmarking quality across wikipedias? (Even within en-wiki - do we celebrate e.g. base-10 FA/GA/FL/FT/FP moments?)--99of9 (talk) 11:57, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

I like the idea of bots doing the grunt work and preparing an easy to improve stub for us squishier types of contributors. Starting an article from nothing can be intimidating for people, not to mention hard if you want to do it well, with all the categories, info boxes etc. Also, I find it heartening to see smaller wikipedias expanding this way. I didn't notice if the bots were using information from the English wikipedia to help with the work, but one of the reasons I contribute to the English wikipedia is my hope that some of this great collection of people's good will can one day find its way to Slovene wikipedia as well. --U5K0'sTalk_{Make WikiLove not WikiWar} 18:30, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

Raschka's comments: wording/grammar mess

The following needs someone who actually knows what it's supposed to mean to fix it:

Raschka told the Signpost that these articles were stubs a impart little useful information to readers—he asks, "who could be helped [these] fragment[s] of data?"

Should it be "were stubs that impart" or "were stubs and impart" or something like that? And the direct quote is [fixed from the original] but winds up still making no sense. Should it be "helped [by these]"? DMacks (talk) 00:44, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

Fixed, thanks! I tried to make two sentences into one and then forgot to fix the grammar. :-) Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 00:51, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the quick fix! DMacks (talk) 05:18, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

Where voters come from

I noticed the statistics regarding where the voters come from. It does skew the numbers greatly that all links to the SecurePoll page in the Signpost article and the meta page explaining where to vote, are to the English Wikipedia version. If a great number of people have an account there, I wouldn't be surprised if many of them didn't bother changing the URL to their home wiki. -Svavar Kjarrval (talk) 01:07, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

An account is not enough, they also have to be active enough to be eligible on the wiki where they open Special:SecurePoll; for most users that's only their home wiki, though e.g. I may be eligible on a dozen wiki. The Meta pages link either to Meta or to a local page, only the English version should link here. --Nemo 08:17, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

Language	Voters	Very active Wikipedians
English	592	3321
German	221	982
Italian	157	445
French	153	795
Spanish	82	542
Polish	48	245
Chinese	41	299
Other	310	ru 658 ja 346 pt 201 nl 249 sv 114

Now this table is more representative. I mean, if you take enough time to read the candidates' opinions, then I guess very voters have less than 100 edits a month. (source: stats.wikimedia.org)

The number of English-language voters doesn't seem that high to me. --NaBUru38 (talk) 01:14, 27 June 2013 (UTC)

Pric-o-pedia

The portrait of Jimmy Wales is hilarious and skillful. I have no idea why anyone would vote to delete the portrait, and the image is a flattering likeness of Wales, so I can't imagine why he objected to it if, indeed, he did. -- Ssilvers (talk) 21:54, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

For what it's worth, he considered it to be Hostile environment sexual harassment. You may or may not agree, but such concerns are surely worth taking seriously. The arguments to delete the picture were mostly based on the assumption that it was created in order to harass or humiliate a living person; in the end, however, Commons decided to keep it. Robofish (talk) 21:18, 24 June 2013 (UTC)

pl wiki and sv wiki

"By the same metric, the Polish are twice the size of the Swedish." Userbase = active editors?

Compare sv an pl wiki. Stub ratio = 0.4135 for sv wiki and 0.5067 for pl wiki; depth = 18 for both of them. Pl wiki has more stubs! Long pages: in pl wiki and in sv wiki. Number of edits = 37486690 in pl wiki and only 23063785 in sv wiki. More users = more edits =/= more larger articles. 1 bot = thousands of stub-creators. Sławek Borewicz (talk) 22:40, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

Something else. Bot activity article creation: 16% in pl wiki and 47% in sv wiki. Compare with stub ratio. Sławek Borewicz (talk) 22:50, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

• It is sad that bots are creating these short articles. Today I clicked on the Random Article link 10 times, and 3 of the articles were created by bots. It is also a pity how they tested it; I clicked the Random Article link on the Cebuano Wikipedia repeatedly, and it took about twenty clicks to get to an article created by a human. And also, these bots could mistake unreliable sources as reliable, which would make things bad. Citrusbowler (talk) (contribs) (email me) 15:43, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

I needed 25 26 (Sorry, ceb:Burg was also created by a bot) --Metrónomo (talk) 01:38, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

Op-ed: Two responses to "The Tragedy of Wikipedia's Commons" (67,964 bytes · 💬)

General

• There's a minor typo: "free-content remit than that that of supporting". Mohamed CJ (talk) 00:34, 21 June 2013 (UTC)
  • Fixed, thank you! Don't be afraid to fix obvious typos like that yourself. :-) Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 01:07, 21 June 2013 (UTC)
• MichaelMaggs's article doesn't really tell us his/her opinion on sexual images, while Mattbuck is basically supporting the current status quo. My main interest in Commons is uploading images for use on Wikipedia, but I also upload images knowing that they may never be used here. Although I !voted for Muhammad images to be used in the article [8], I find the excessive collection of seemingly useless sexual content on the Commons as disruptive, repellent and pointy. Mohamed CJ (talk) 01:04, 21 June 2013 (UTC)
  • No one is supporting the status quo. The theme of both responses is: "If you have a problem with Commons, engage with us instead of sniping from afar." Which is good advice. Powers ^T 01:22, 21 June 2013 (UTC)
    • I can see how "Come talk to us" is a definite vote for the status quo, since it seems the only well-developed policy on Commons is "Your problem isn't our problem". These responses consider my op-ed scathing for Commons, and maybe I did use harsh language in places, but ultimately, none of them address how Commons can continue to assert policy autonomy while still serving the inter-wiki media sharing function. My op-ed offered a solution that in my eyes is win-win, allowing autonomy for Commons, and removing the repercussions of Commons-local policy or lack thereof from the other projects Commons serves. Gigs (talk) 02:36, 21 June 2013 (UTC)
      • "Us" indeed--Commons is marked by cliquishness and instinctive antipathy. Drmies (talk) 04:18, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

        We all have home wikis, mine is Commons. I was posting as a Commons administrator, about a Commons issue, to an audience of people who are not Commons users. What other pronoun would I use? -mattbuck (Talk) 12:16, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

        That wasn't my main point. Through sheer misfortune I re-read the Santorum deletion discussion again yesterday and was reminded of why I don't like to come and talk to you all there. Drmies (talk) 17:03, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

• I'm pleased to see these two responses to the original op-ed. I won't comment on the sexual images debate, but otherwise the responses reflect my long held view that commons is not just a source of images for wikimedia projects, but also a useful library of free licence images, etc, that anyone can use. I have uploaded many of my own images to commons. Although I often immediately add an image I have uploaded to an appropriate wikipedia article, that is not always the case, as I also frequently upload images on the basis that someone might find them useful somewhere at some time in the future. If I have one criticism of commons, it is that many of the images in commons are not of particularly high quality. But I suspect that that problem is merely one of many reasons for us to upload better images to commons than many of the ones that are already there. Bahnfrend (talk) 02:03, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

Contentious images

I do not see any issues with contentious images be filtered by choices, as it is all personal preference. One technical way to resolved this, is to tag those photos and let user decide what photos they want to see. For example, tag the "Contentious images" in broad category ie. (Sexual explicit/Violence/Glory/Discretion's. Ordinary user have to explicitly select/tick search result to include photos that falls under that category, Otherwise only non-tag photos will be displayed. This is not censorship, because it is the user decisions to decide what they want to see, without being forced to see photos that they do not want to see in the first place. User have the right to choose. Why should a group of admin decide on behalf of the user what photos user must see/cannot see. User power. Yosri (talk) 01:26, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

Unfortunately, this would be censorship, because it enables entities other than the user to manipulate the classification system to forcibly impose it through technical and/or punitive means.   — C M B J   01:32, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

The tagging must not be done arbitrary/single person, must follows guidelines set by committee/voting. User still can choose to see/ignore. Why should somebody force me to see things that I do not want to see. Yosri (talk) 01:42, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

Consider the following scenario. The New Foo State Education Agency (NFSEA) boasts a promise of zero tolerance for prohibited activities and commissions a task force to implement the policy across all educational institutions in New Foo. NFSEA's task force then concludes that content-control software will be necessary to enforce a provision that forbids, among other things, accessing online pharmacies. Accordingly, the task force recommends acquisition of a compliant software suite, one of such, "Foo Filter", it notes as being a government off-the-shelf product made available through an NFSEA-approved vendor, FuTek. The NFSEA then negotiates with FuTek and procures a license to use Foo Filter over the next ten fiscal years. The NFSEA deploys Foo Filter at all educational institutions across New Foo, including institutions ranging in scope from elementary schools to public research universities, then concludes that the implementation has been completed. Everything seems to be in order and life goes on as usual. Several weeks later, class is back in session at Foo University, and Joseph, a sophomore at FU, is at the computer science laboratory reading Wikipedia articles pertaining to an upcoming assignment he has on human rights. He is particularly moved by Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse and plans to make his presentation on the subject. However, upon visiting that article, he soon realizes that the article's twelve images are all inaccessible except for one: File:Navy consolidated brig -- Mirimar CA.jpg. He raises the point with a member of the laboratory's staff and asks her why students aren't allowed to access these images. "I'm sorry," she says, "these images are restricted because Foo Filter automatically blocks all images classified as offensive in nature." Joseph replies, "but doesn't that go against the idea of free speech?" "Yes," she says, "but Foo Filter's use is mandated on all state campuses and there are stiff penalties for noncompliance." "So you're saying that I'm going to have to walk back to my dorm if I want to use one of these images in my presentation?" "No," she says, "the dormitories actually use the same network, so you won't be able to access it there, either." "Ridiculous," Joseph says. "Rules are rules," she says sighingly.   — C M B J   13:37, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

That was really long and unhelpful. -mattbuck (Talk) 14:16, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

Sorry that it did not resonate well with you. The point was to illustrate the concept that I outlined above, which is that the practical effects of an optional filter extend beyond that of user choice.   — C M B J   14:27, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

If someone wanted to prevent others from seeing parts of Wikipedia, they could simply block all of WP or block all images from WP. You describe a scenario in which only specific images are blocked - which is worse? Delicious carbuncle (talk) 14:56, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

Doesn't Google and other large image hosting websites do the same? It's common sense. Mohamed CJ (talk) 06:57, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

The owner of the network should be allowed to block it. Ie, If I open up my wifi network, I mght want to block some IP at the router. If you want to access those go to CC ("Cyber Cafe")/Starbuck. Yosri (talk) 11:23, 22 June 2013 (UTC)

• What is amazing is just how little interest there is in technical mechanisms to allow users to control what they find offensive. Knowing very little about Javascript, I wrote up a tiny little script [9] that actually hid all the images in Muhammad. This was proof-of-principle of an idea I had gone on about at considerable length in User:Wnt/Personal image blocking. We could allow people who are offended to form networks, transclude together huge lists of blacklisted images, doing so collaboratively without requiring any Official View of what is a Bad Image. It doesn't seem like that is of any interest to anyone though. Despite talk of people being offended, the cause seems to be more about trying to win power to affect what other people see. If you don't have personal choice of what to block and whose blocklists to transclude into your own - if you have a project-wide set of categories to include and exclude content - then inevitably people will disagree on those categories, and someone has to so regretfully place himself in charge of saying who is right and who has to be banned to keep him from disagreeing with the others. Wnt (talk) 07:54, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

Decentralizing this sort of scheme is actually the best suggestion I've heard yet, although it does still worry me that if lists gain enough popularity they will be used to do harm. If China catches wind of such a scheme, for example, they could exploit our work to easily block access more legitimate content than would otherwise be feasible. There are also considerations in places like Iran where homophobic lists, for example, could theoretically contribute to persecution efforts.   — C M B J   13:42, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

Some of those things worry me too, but the point is, if users write up some user scripts to do what they want, that's their right and I can't stop it, nor should I want to. There are technical refinements that might be helpful (such as ensuring that it is hidden from others whether a user is actually running a script he seems to have active on his page) but they might only be a false sense of security anyway (since the connection could be spied on). If people are that intimidated in an area they probably are already being effectively censored anyway. Wnt (talk) 15:22, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

Come to think of it, the decentralized model actually gave rise to another thought in my mind, which is that there may be some technical ways around this problem of exploitation. The most important part would be to disincentivize unauthorized attempts to interface with the system and this could be implemented in several different ways. One such example would be to make classifications a hidden attribute. The system could then allow users to synchronize their filter preference using an automatically generated key that is unique to either their session or account, which, if valid, would allow embedded files to be first checked up against the classification table. This would presumably prevent the vast majority of abuse while still allowing users to have control over what they see.   — C M B J   11:37, 22 June 2013 (UTC)

I'm not quite sure I understand that, but my thought is that the list could be kept as a userspace .js file (perhaps in a JSONP format to permit use on multiple WMF projects). Those files already have a special advantage that no one else can edit them but the user and admins; it is possible that a small technical measure might also prevent others from reading them. But again, it sort of asks for trouble because who knows if an admin will be co-opted to check up on how people in the faith are doing, etc. - it might reduce privacy rather than increase it when such things are figured in. So long as people can simply not log in or not enable Javascript these seem like better options for a user in such a strange position. Wnt (talk) 16:34, 22 June 2013 (UTC)

Basically, one way of thinking about this would be that a new user flag could be created, let's call it "filter". The filter flag would be disabled by default but made available to anyone. Logged in users could indefinitely opt for this flag by toggling an option in their preferences. Anonymous users could similarly toggle the feature for their session by way of a workaround that stores a temporarily valid key in their cookie data. The filter flag would then function much as does any limited access flag like those that affect Special:DeletedContributions and would allow new types of content to be generated differently on the server side according to the user's preference. As for the classification side of things, let's now suppose that the filter flag depends on a database column called classification and its data for any given file is always 0 by default. We then create a new Special:Classification page that contains a simple form to change the classification code for any given file.   — C M B J   23:04, 22 June 2013 (UTC)

"If China catches wind of such a scheme, for example" This is offensive and, pardon my bluntness, stupid. "If the United States Navy catches wind of them airplane things, they might get some !

The statement is retarded and the ridiculous propganda behind it is even worse. Cisco built the Great Firewall, okay ? "The Chinese" have already got wind of that filtration concept, fella. And they do a lot better job than a bunch of twits living in Mummy's basement.

I live in China. The GFW can be a pain in the behind. But we all know it's there and we all know why and we all account for the fact that the bureaucracy is exercising a thousand-year-old cultural imperative to put a happy smiling face on all public events. The ridiculous crap that Westerners (esp. Americans) believe about the Communist Party trying to retain control of their power is so ludicrous it doesn't deserve comment.

On the other hand, the NSA playing Big Brother hiding in the closets of *all* Americans is not a tinfoil-beanie paranoid fantasy. So please take the ridiculous spew about "if China got wind of this !!" and place it where the sun doesn't shine, along with all the rest of the fascist propaganda that the Amerikanski i-dot-tens love to spew.

Someone, somewhere in this long discussion claimed that "there is no technical answer." Of course there is. Both BeOS and OS/2 had extended attributes in their file systems that could determine all sorts of things about any given file. Yse the same idea : all one would have to do would be to tag items of a sexual or violent nature and let *the user* decide for himself what he or she wishes to see.

But the point is that neither party to the dscussion wants to allow that. One group wants to remove anything they don't like, the other group wants to force people who find sexual or violent materials uncomfortable to have to wade through it anyway. "That's FREEDOM !"

No it isn't. Freedom is being able to make the decision for yourself. The US is big on FREEDOM ! as long as it's the freedom that the powers-that-be have decided is okay. As a Jewish friend once told me, "Nazi Germany really wasn't a bad place - as long as you were a nazi." Or as George W freedomiciously informed the Palestinians, "You better democratically elect someone more acceptable to us than Yasser Arafat."

Either you believe in freedom or you are a fascist. If you believe in freedom, then you give people the tools that allow them to make their own choices. You don't ram your own ideas down their throats, no matter how much you think it "would be good for them." It's that simple.

I have 100 times more freedom in Axis of Evil Commie Red China than Americans do in the US. Honest. That's sick. 210.22.142.82 (talk) 07:35, 24 June 2013 (UTC)

I'm very sorry for the distress that my comments caused you. The reason I mentioned China is because the government has sought to censor Wikipedia in the past and because the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology recently discussed plans to strengthen its control over some mainstream content providers. I did not intend to suggest that China is inherently bad or socially inferior, or that the unique consideration you speak of is without merit. Incidentally, your comment actually took the place of a clarification that I had written but withdrawn for further thought; it is now added above. I also believe that your idea of file attributes is nearly identical in principle to what I was trying to say.   — C M B J   10:07, 24 June 2013 (UTC)

I'm not really distressed :) but thanks for the concern. I am just *so* tired of the hypocrisy that runs rampant in the US. Yes, China censors the news. Guess what ? we are all aware of it. AND, at this time I am not so sure I am opposed. They didn't toss Google over "censorship", they tossed Google over spying and commercial issues. They have no intention whatsoever of letting a foreign quasi-governmental establishment have that kind of control in China. And they do not like the kind of hate-filled rabble-rousing news that is all the rage in the US. A news media that everyone knows is slanted and no one really believes is better than the pretentiously uncensored yet in fact *very* slanted so-called news that a large portion of the populace does really believe. Which is worse for society, CCTV or Faux News ?

The truth is, the US is worse and censors in a much more insidious manner. The US has feet of clay ...no, worse than clay. The Establishment of the US is ruthless, corrupt, murderous (John F, Robert, Martin Luther, Bobby Seale, &c &c) deceitful (Vietnam, Iraq) ... you name it. Open your eyes. It's not China that you need to be concerned about. In the US you have the total freedom to say what the Establishment wants to hear. Or act weird enough that they can call you a crackpot and use you to whitewash their filthy lies.

If you want to use a country as an example of censorship, please don't start with China.

About technical issues, you are right - solving this problem would be simple if people actually wanted to solve it. Just tag all files, somewhat like the exif info on a photograph, only simpler. Make ten categories if you want. BFS, HPFS, and XFS can all do that right in the file system. Probaly other files systems also. Then a user could click a radio button if he chooses to not see any items in those categories. It would solve both the toothbrush issue and the vaginal Simpsons painting. File is tagged "sexual", suddenly both the Mennonnites and Anton LeVeigh's disciples can be happy. (Except truth is, neither party would be happy. The Mennonites don't care if they can't see sex, they don't want *anyone* to see sex. And the Satanists same, except opposite. That's the root problem :)

Wake up, America. The US is **worse** than China about freedom, equality, and human rights. That's why I moved here. Not joking. 210.22.142.82 (talk) 13:24, 24 June 2013 (UTC)

Historically and Economically Inaccurate

One of the truly great tragedies of medieval England was not so much the tragedy of the commons in its original sense but the forcible enclosure by powerful outside interests of the historic common land that had for centuries been available as a free resource for all. - no, that's still wrong. But whatever.Volunteer Marek 03:24, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

Whether the description of the medieval English commons is accurate or not, the problem with this discourse is apparent ignorance of basic economic terminology. The Tragedy of the Commons is an economic concept which is relevant to a discussion about limited resources. However: Wikimedia Commons, like the Creative Commons, is a functionally unbounded public good. It was perhaps clever, but not helpful, for the author of "The Tragedy of Wikipedia's Commons" to conflate a limited with an unbounded resource in an apparent effort to score rhetorical points. I hope the Signpost will continue to strive NOT to publish articles with contrived arguments such as this. Thank you for publishing these more nuanced and considered responses. ChristineBushMV (talk) 16:30, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

I'd defend my title by saying that administrator and volunteer effort is not an unlimited resource, it's definitely scarce in economic terms. I think that many of the problems of Commons do stem from a lack of resource. Much of the lack of content policy development comes from a desire to not get drawn into content disputes on the encyclopdias, combined with a lack of administrative resource to develop a nuanced policy that prevents Commons from becoming a flickr-esque dumping ground. All of these things require a great deal of administrative effort, and when you are spending all your time weeding the firehose of license problems that comes from the encyclopedias, you don't have much time for nuanced policy discussion or development. Gigs (talk) 17:21, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

The resource is the media themselves, their storage and distribution. A modest proposal: perhaps if encyclopedia editors focused more on developing well-written encyclopedic content in summary style with rigorous citations, and less on policing the commons, it would be a win-win? ChristineBushMV (talk) 18:24, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

You're missing the point. Or, actually, points, plural.Volunteer Marek 04:25, 22 June 2013 (UTC)

You're missing the point. People have the right to oppose enclosures, and did, for example in a series of enclosure riots in the 1500s described in that article. They realized - as too many today seem to have forgotten - that as more and more things are taken out of the public domain and sold off as "rights", the common inheritance of every human being becomes smaller and smaller, so those born poor become poorer and poorer, until you have the absurdity of whole countries running automatically by the power of metals and fossil fuels and machines, but all the profit goes to a tiny elite that "owns" all the resources God provided under this Earth (and next, in space), and the others are called parasites for wishing they had a way to live.

Though your original point itself, criticizing this history, may seem like a distraction, it isn't really, because the whole point of Commons and of a wide-ranging and open Commons is to try to provide the poor of the world (and the others, whose rights, it turns out, depend on the rights of the poor to exist) with open access to at least think and read and write about a larger legacy of ideas, against those who believe that the power of learning and thought itself should be rationed to an elite and its favored pets, and forever foreclosed from the larger part of humanity, whose purpose is solely to be made extinct or reduced to the status of mere raw material, a sacrifice to Moloch under the name of Spencerism. To some, of course, the entire mission of Commons is therefore illegitimate, and they need merely begin somewhere. Wnt (talk) 16:51, 22 June 2013 (UTC)

This is probably as good place as any to let you know that I have a standing personal policy to ignore and not respond to your nonsensical rants, Wnt. Here and elsewhere.Volunteer Marek 21:13, 24 June 2013 (UTC)

Opinion from Dcoetzee

I came to this party a bit late so I didn't submit an op ed, but wanted to give my thoughts briefly. I'm a long-time adminstrator on both Commons and English Wikipedia, and I refer to both as home wikis. There is substantial overlap between us in the area of image curation and dealing with media licensing issues - I have seen a lot of great work going into Wikipedia:Possibly unfree files here, and Commons itself is quite reliant upon the excellent table at Wikipedia:Non-U.S. copyrights. I believe many of the image admins here on En would be great Commons admins, and vice versa. On the other hand, Commons' understanding of copyright law, U.S. and international, and policies surrounding it are in many ways more nuanced than En's, with extensive pages on issues like non-copyright restrictions, de minimis, and freedom of panorama, and as such it's no surprise that not everyone who excels here has the specialist understanding to administrate content on Commons.

But the main thrust of the original essay was, as these responses suggest, about scope. I want to emphasize what MichaelMaggs referred to as the "small proportion of our holdings that relate to sexual imagery and to privacy/the rights of the subject". Commons does receive a lot of low-quality penis uploads by white first-world males, for whatever reason, and we purge these without prejudice; this inspired the part of the scope policy reading: "poor or mediocre files of common and easy to capture subjects may have no realistic educational value, especially if Commons already hosts many similar or better quality examples." At the same time, Commons struggles to acquire a variety high-quality and/or distinctive media of sex, anatomy, and pornography topics, such as medical images, images of non-whites or women, documentary photographs and videos of sexual acts, portraits of porn stars, and so on. Contrary to the moral panic that frequently surrounds the presence of sexual content at Commons, we actually need a lot more of it, just the right kind.

Our policy on photographs of identifiable people addresses many of the typical cases where a person's image may be used unethically, particularly images taken in a private setting without consent. In addition to this, there is a de facto policy that persons who request deletion of an image of themselves, which is not in use or easily replaced by another image, typically have their request honored (we call this "courtesy deletion"). We also provide courtesy deletion in some cases when users make it clear that they didn't understand the meaning of the free license at the time they used it. Photos of people online can damage reputations and be very disturbing, so we take these kind of issues very seriously, and always weigh the benefit of works to the public carefully against the risk to the individual.

That said, much of this practice is encoded only as folk knowledge gained through experience, and deserves more thorough documentation as official policies and guidelines. Policy development on Commons can be a struggle, with a small number of users split among a huge number of tasks, and in many cases practice shifts before policy comes along to document it, as has happened with the more aggressive deletion of URAA-violating images, or with the 2257 tag for sexually explicit works. But when policy development founders, it is not through lack of attention so much as because new policies have to be effective at carving out a new area that is not adequately addressed by our core policies. As anyone who's frequented Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion would know, rules that seem intuitive are often found to have important exceptions. As an international project, it's also important that policies on Commons are culturally-neutral and guided by the common needs of all projects.

Part of the misunderstandings between Commons and other projects arise because of poor communication: we sometimes delete files without warning users on local projects, or fully explaining to them the intricacies of the laws that require the deletion; we sometimes do not delete works that one project finds inappropriate for its local culture, but others find useful. I think an important part of our mission going forward should be to communicate our intentions and rationales to all affected parties at all times. Dcoetzee 04:41, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

Dcoetzee, I agree with you that policy documentation on Commons is very lacking, mostly due to a lack of administrative resources. There's an open RfC over there right now and I have proposed the beginnings of a working draft on a more nuanced inclusion policy. If you have time, come check it out. Gigs (talk) 17:25, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

Good only in speech

Despite they (Common admins) are big philosophers by speech; they never leave a chance to humiliate someone, neglecting every personality rights. JKadavoor Jee 11:46, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

Quite indiscriminate your judgement: none of the 2 op-editors voted to keep that image. Of the admins participating in the deletion discussion, 4 voted to delete and 5 voted to keep. --Túrelio (talk) 12:20, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

It was a contentious DR, and was decided on the grounds that the subject is a public figure and the media are not easily replaceable. I'm sure if I tried I could find many XfDs on en.wp that I disagree with, but that just shows that my own opinions are not the consensus ones. -mattbuck (Talk) 12:22, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

I said “Common admins”; not the above admins. The DR was closed by an admin; am I right? Please appoint admins who have a common sense to read and understand what are written in our policies: "While some aspects of ethical photography and publication are controlled by law, there are moral issues too. They find a reflection in the wording of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 12: "No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation."Common decency and respect for human dignity may influence the decision whether to host an image above that required by the law. The extent to which an image might be regarded as "unfairly obtained" or to be "intrusive", for example, is a matter of degree and may depend on the nature of the shot, the location, and the notability of the subject." JKadavoor Jee 12:31, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

"none of the 2 op-editors voted to keep that image"- One voted; and later strike off. This too interesting (not sure though). JKadavoor Jee 12:45, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

This isn't the first time I've seen it, but the use of the UDHR as an excuse for censorship is an unrivalled act of Wikilawyering chutzpah. The declaration - which could have been better written there - was speaking of actions of governments that single out individual citizens for systematic society-wide ostracism and abuse based on their political beliefs, race, religion, etc. (This is due to an insufficient recognition of positive rights, which made it inconvenient for the document to speak of what is denied when the government makes such attacks) It clearly does not mean, in any country, that attacks on people's "honor" have ever stopped - especially not if something as trivial as doing an unconventional painting offends your notion of honor. Wnt (talk) 15:29, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

FYI, personality rights do not relate to privacy rights - they relate to control of a person's image for publicity or advertising purposes, and are inapplicable on Commons. See commons:Commons:Photographs_of_identifiable_people#The_right_of_publicity or Personality rights for more information. Privacy rights vary widely by jurisdiction and are largely inapplicable in a case like this one, although there are ethical concerns. As I explained in the DR at some length, I do not believe the works were intended to insult anyone, and I believe their educational value to the public exceeds any risk or discomfort experienced by Wales. Dcoetzee 20:29, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

Are you consciously ignoring what had written a few paragraphs below? What is the educational value? No need to buy a brush; since God already gifted you a multipurpose brush with built-in gray-white paint? JKadavoor Jee 03:10, 22 June 2013 (UTC)

It is an example of the work of a notable artist. If you want to argue that "Pricasso" is not notable, that's something you'd have to take up with the Wikipedia community, not the Commons community. Powers ^T 23:57, 22 June 2013 (UTC)

So Article 12 is not applicable to notable people; only for the poor and ignorant? I hope Pricasso can portrait Muhammad and keep alive; because he is notable. JKadavoor Jee 05:26, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

I'm not following you. Are you saying it violates "Pricasso's" privacy to include work that he specifically released under a free license in a repository of freely licensed work? Powers ^T 12:15, 24 June 2013 (UTC)

It is difficult to talk people who pretend they didn't understand. Template:Did you know nominations/Pricasso and Wikipedia_talk:Did_you_know#Pricasso may tell you more. JKadavoor Jee 15:24, 24 June 2013 (UTC)

Don't blame me if you're communicating your ideas poorly. Where did I suggest that "Article 12 is not applicable to notable people"? Article 12 refers to privacy of individuals; since I was referring to Pricasso's notability, I assumed you thought Pricasso's privacy was at issue. Is it? Powers ^T 14:12, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

Sorry. Privacy doesn't only mean do not portray an identifiable living persons in a private place or situation without permission. "When something is private to a person, it usually means there is something within them that is considered inherently special or personally sensitive." Bodily integrity, Modesty and a lot of things related to it. Here what is compromised is Jimbo's Personal rights; his honour and reputation. We already have a resolution, http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Images_of_identifiable_people : "Treat any person who has a complaint about images of themselves hosted on our projects with patience, kindness, and respect, and encourage others to do the same. which was neglected here. JKadavoor Jee 15:52, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

So you're talking about Jimbo's privacy rights? What does that have to do with Pricasso's notability? Powers ^T 17:20, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

Please read the deletion request; it was closed by an admin as kept saying "The artworks despicted here are made by a notable artist, and therefore his works are within COM:SCOPE" JKadavoor Jee 05:10, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

Update: Commons:Administrators are in more troubles; but refusing to accept it. JKadavoor Jee 06:58, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

Yes, Pricasso is notable. What does any of that have to do with Jimmy Wales' privacy rights? Those are two entirely separate issues; why have you conflated them? Powers ^T 23:40, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

Not me; it was Com:Admins and 'crats who conflated them and says "because Pricasso is notable, we can ignore Jimbo's Personal rights". JKadavoor Jee 03:51, 27 June 2013 (UTC)

Communication is the key

The original op-ed and the two responses as well as many of the comments above point to the lack of communication among parties being the source of contention. Perhaps a way to forestall future disagreements is to make sure the lines of communication are always open. Even though we're all focused on the projects, we have to go the extra distance and focus a bit more on individual's perceived displeasure in order to see that sometimes illusive consensus. -- kosboot (talk) 12:51, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

{ {Keep Local} }

There is a way to opt out of the dysfunctional Commons asylum. Whenever one uploads a file, never upload to Commons, always upload straight to En-WP and include (in addition to a proper Rights tag) the template { {keep local} }, which will prevent the speedy deletion of the En-WP version of the file in the event that it is moved over to Commons. All files should be housed by the various language WPs, in my estimation, and Commons written off as a good idea gone terribly wrong. Carrite (talk) 17:02, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

"Keep local" doesn't even say not to copy to Commons, only that you should also keep a local copy. If your meaning is that people shouldn't free-license their work, then you're basically proposing a "take your ball and go home" approach.

To be sure, that is an approach that works both ways, and when artists can't be sure whether their upload will be kept or discarded because it offends somebody, the odds of them uploading to Commons will indeed be reduced. Indeed, even now, I would not suggest an artist simply put his work straight on Commons, because he will only be demeaned by a community that puts no value on what it gets for free - I'd say that it makes far more sense for him to pay a little to set up a high quality web site (like http://www.thescarproject.org/) to showcase his work, control and optimize its presentation, and then if someday he wants to free license some, maybe when he's ready for a publicity blitz, maybe in his will, he can put a cc-by on it and maybe someone will notice and upload it to Wikipedia. Wnt (talk) 17:31, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

The problem is that quite frequently, as I recall from the 2009-10 period where I was more active in administrative areas, a local image is uploaded to commons and deleted locally, then afterwards deleted at commons because of copyright or other issues, even though the image satisfied local project policy (e.g. an acceptable license or justifiable as fair use), and most of the time the commons admins who delete the image don't bother informing the local project. I don't know if commons made efforts on this matter since that time. Of course there is also that with the huge number of 'inappripriate images' on commons, they are used for vandalism on local projects. On wikipedia, we know how to use the mediawiki blacklist (though it sometimes takes a while) but some smaller projects aren't aware of this possibility, and are hit harder. The problem with commons is mostly the lack of communication with the local projects, but not only that. Commons has become a strong independent project, but the emphasis on being primarily a service for local projects has largely disappeared. In order to grow as a project, people at commons are prepared to relegate to the second plan their responsibility to local projects, and it's not just with Wikipedia. Cenarium (talk) 20:29, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

The { {keep local} } template doesn't stop importation to Commons (although I believe it slows the process); it does prevent speedy deletion of the original En-WP image as a duplicate, however. Then, just for instance, citing an incident in my own personal experience, when Administrator No. 1 at Commons engages in personal retaliation by deleting or attempting to delete uploaded material in a "up yours" power play, he can delete away on Commons all day long and the En-WP image is preserved. Carrite (talk) 04:04, 24 June 2013 (UTC)

There we have an example from March: File:EnthanasiePropaganda.jpg, uploaded to commons, deleted there, when we had used this for years and it was acceptable under fair use. Why would this be moved to commons and then years later deleted ? Even though I (maybe excessively) emphatically asked to inform wp in the deletion request if this were going to be deleted, no one bothered. I just undeleted the image now on wp. How can this be explained ? Cenarium (talk) 21:43, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

For such cases we have a special template {{fair use delete}} at Commons, which starts a process of copying the file to :en into the fair-use queue and tagging it finally for deletion on Commons. However, as this is a :en-only process, developed by Dcoetzee 1 or 2 years ago, it is an additional item to have in mind when processing the deletion queues on Commons and eventually not all my colleagues are even aware of this special process. --Túrelio (talk) 22:14, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

As an English Wikipedia user I generally oppose use of Keep Local on the grounds that it defeats the purposes Commons was created for: consolidation of media used on many projects, and more importantly, making it easy to make improvements to media and/or the file description page in a single centralized location. Divergence between the Commons version and English Wikipedia version is a serious maintenance issue. Dcoetzee 06:19, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

What is the question to be answered ?

NSFW: Masturbating_with_a_toothbrush.jpg

For what I have understood, these two answers to the "Pink Parrot Incident" can be summarized as "come and fix it". But this is not so simple. What is to be fixed ? Let us go back to the "Tooth Brush Incident". You type: "ToothBrush". in the Commons search bar and you get a lot of toothbrushes. A simple request gives you 20 of them. If you look further, you obtain File:Toothbrush regurgitated by albatross on Tern Island, Hawaii - 20060614.jpg (the 40th toothbrush, on the left) and three picture later, you obtain another great moment in the life of a toothbrush File:Masturbating_with_a_toothbrush.jpg (the 43rd toothbrush, on the right).

The long "history". of this file is *educative*. It was created on 6 May 2011‎. Quite immediately (2 June 2011‎) the "Tooth Brush Incident" appeared, and part of the people has tried to fix this incident by renaming the file into File:Woman masturbating with improvised vibrator.jpg (and removing it from the Commons:Category:Toothbrushes). Another part of the people has worked hard to keep alive this "Tooth Brush Incident", introducing again and again the searchkey "toothbrush" into the name, the categorization, a link to the file or whatever. At 19:27, 22 May 2012 (UTC), a group of admins has stated that ""We agree that there is a problem when a search for toothbrush on Commons returns this image on top of the results"".. But the problem has not been fixed as now.

From that, we can see that this long lasting "Tooth Brush Incident" is not the result of a poor search tool nor even the result of the mere existence of that file on 'commons.wikimedia.org'. Its a bigger problem, that cannot be solved by a simple increase of the workforce at Commons. In fact, this place doesn't look to be a workplace and this can be the key problem.

NSFW: Hot sex barnstar.png

Isn't this barnstar a great *educative* picture, in the context ? Pldx1 (talk) 19:22, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

That "hot sex barnstar", incidentally, was created by User:Beta M, who was banned from all projects by the WMF. Delicious carbuncle (talk) 19:30, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

Sorry, but I don't understand what you are implying by your remark. Do you suggest that the Wikimedia Fundation has ordered the deletion of this barnstar and that 'commons.wikimedia.org' has not complied ? Pldx1 (talk) 22:19, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

There was a deletion discussion about this barnstar, but it was kept. One day a journalist with nothing better to write about will do a story on Wikimedia Commons and include this barnstar as an example of the culture there. The fact that it was created by someone with a conviction for distribution of child porn will just be another salacious detail for them to add. They might even mention that Commons could not reach a consensus to ban that user, which may be what encouraged the WMF to act. If they are good researchers, they might also note that despite banning him from all WMF projects, we still link to Beta M's porn site in Anarchism and issues related to love and sex (I removed it once, but someone put it back). Delicious carbuncle (talk) 04:22, 22 June 2013 (UTC)

• Our photo of a toothbrush regurgitated by an albatross is core content. There are few things that we can serve from Commons which are more important than ongoing documentation by citizens of the ecological impact of the pollution that clogs our oceans. Is it disgusting? Sure. The world comes in a lot of flavors, and most of them are expressible only in scatological epithets. Our job is to cover it all.

• Toothbrush masturbation is a little more peculiar, but it goes to show the inventiveness of the human mind in these things. If you can say "I'd like to see a picture of ---" then Commons' educational mission is to provide some, at least within the limits of what it can legally get away with. Wnt (talk) 20:01, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

• But you see, sex and human bodies are dirty and sinful, so we should remove all depictions of such things, or else we may tempt people into sin. I mean, humans have used improvised masturbatory and sex aids all the time for as long as humans have existed, so much so that palaeontologists turn them up all the time on digs, and there are ribald jokes about women sitting on running washing machines, horseback riding, and emergency room personnel regularly have to treat people who've injured themselves by using an ill-chosen sex aid, and so on. But this just shows how corrupted and sinful humans are. We certainly don't want to be giving people the idea that sex and masturbation are normal, ordinary parts of human life and as deserving of depiction as anything else, or else people might wind up touching themselves and going to Hell. We need to only depict things that are acceptable in respectable Christian society, like this and this. --108.38.191.162 (talk) 20:52, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

I'm belief the issues is protecting the children from those images, unless you want to tagged Wikipedia 18SX. Yosri (talk) 12:49, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

How exactly are these images damaging to children? Powers ^T 12:14, 24 June 2013 (UTC)

Children have a tendency to imitate; and it hurts their private parts. :( JKadavoor Jee 12:26, 24 June 2013 (UTC)

Powers ^T 12:45, 24 June 2013 (UTC)

http://else.econ.ucl.ac.uk/papers/uploaded/302.pdf JKadavoor Jee 12:52, 24 June 2013 (UTC)

Toothbrushgate, Part 47

"One of those results was the search "toothbrush" returning a picture of a woman using an electric toothbrush for self-pleasure as one of the top results. This was entirely a legitimate result - it was a picture of a toothbrush, and it was titled as such."

... no, it was NOT a "legitimate result." Is this what someone actually wants to see when searching for toothbrushes? No? Then it's not a good result. The user is always right. Let me add that I am one of the people who rolls their eyes at proposal for general "content filters," but something akin to your average Google SafeSearch should have been in place, and if it isn't now, it should be added. Nothing to do with images of Muhammad or whatever which is a giant distraction. SnowFire (talk) 22:26, 22 June 2013 (UTC)

Define what is "safe" without reference to your particular culture. Powers ^T 00:01, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

A) The picture wasn't really of a toothbrush. It was loosely related at best. So... a bad result, which is why the above line in the editorial is so infuriating. A Google Image search for the topic wouldn't have found it unless you cued it (so sexuality is okay if you specifically include a word asking for it).

B) If we assume that the picture was already cross-categorized as both sexual & related to something non-sexual... which there probably are good examples of... must the perfect be the enemy of the good? I've already said that I largely think that customer search filters by country or whatever would be a waste of time, a mess, and easily abused. However, the fact that a wide-ranging general filter is bad doesn't mean that filtering out sexual material that is objectionable to the vast majority of human culture is bad. I doubt the toothbrush would have be an "expected" result in the most liberal Scandinavian country anyway, but if it was, oh well, see above about you can't be perfect. Don't serve porn without explicit user sign-off, it shouldn't be that hard. Letting these kind of results continue will only strengthen the case for idiotic censorship filters. SnowFire (talk) 00:18, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

To present an analogy: by default, I have SafeSearch disabled on Google Images search, because it tends to accidentally exclude some useful results. On one occasion, I searched for images of Homer Simpson for an article, and one of the results was a picture of someone's vagina painted as Homer Simpson. The technology does not exist to reliably distinguish pornographic and non-pornographic images - there will always be false positives and false negatives - and some users who are deliberately seeking pornographic content will inevitably be confused by the need to deactivate a filter. The question is whether we, like Google, should make the presence of such filters a default, despite its disadvantages - or if not, what other alternatives might exist. Dcoetzee 02:35, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

Wiki should make the presence of such filters a default. If the user is old enough (to decide you want to see those pictures), they should be able to deactivate those filters.Yosri (talk) 12:49, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

An observation

I was waiting to see if anyone would replace the images above of a woman masturbating with an electric toothbrush and the "hot sex barnstar" with links, but no one has. A reasonable interpretation of WP:NOTCENSORED is that if you look at WP articles about topics dealing with sexuality or anatomy one should expect to see images of nudity or sexuality. In practice, a rather silly but popular invocation of WP:NOTCENSORED as nothing but a slogan means that our readers should follow a "principle of most astonishment" where at any time you should expect to see images of nudity or sexuality. I'm not offended by it personally, but It seems obvious to me that it is not appropriate to for readers of the Signpost -- hopefully read by many of other "millions" of contributors -- to be faced with an image of a masturbating woman in the comments. Delicious carbuncle (talk) 14:25, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

It is difficult to open Wikimedia pages in front of children nowadays. JKadavoor Jee 16:54, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

I've replaced the images with links. Colin°^Talk 18:00, 27 June 2013 (UTC)

Are these pictures really free pictures?

Undigested toothbrush

Item one, the Colgate toothbrush . For what I understand, this Colgate toothbrush picture was taken by someone working at the United States Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), Hawaiian Islands NWR, as part of that person's official duties. As a work of the U.S. federal government, the image is *in the public domain*. Yes, this is the truth. But this is only a part of the truth.

Because this picture doesn't appear to be a *free* picture. This pictures carries a proeminent "Colgate" trademark. Moreover, this proeminent trademark on the handle of the brush is the only thing that is clearly identifiable on this picture. How do you even know that the central part of the bolus is a toothbrust ? From the trademark on the handle. This largely not de minimis. Not convinced ? Let us replace the trademark "Colgate" by the common name "commons". This gives the right picture. Convinced now ?

The description attached to the picture says: An albatross bolus – undigested matter from the diet such as squid beaks and fish scales. This bolus from a Hawaiian albatross (either a Black-footed Albatross or a Laysan Albatross) found on Tern Island, in the French Frigate Shoals, Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, has several ingested flotsam items, including monofilament fishing line from fishing nets and a discarded toothbrush. Ingestion of plastic flotsam is an increasing hazard for albatrosses.

Therefore it is *fair* to use such a picture, among many other ones, to describe that "even an innocent toothbrush can turn into a fatal weapon". This is done in fr:Déchet en mer, and could be done in en:Marine debris, etc. But it is *unfair* to use the same picture in a way suggesting that Colgate is the worst among all these wrongful killers of innocent albatrosses, as done at eo:Procelarioformaj birdoj and nn:Stormfuglar. The use at en:Bolus (digestion) as the only picture illustrating a one line article stating that "Under normal circumstances, the bolus then travels to the stomach for further digestion" is unclear.

Conclusion: the picture seems to be relevant (with the proper statements) at some pages inside Wikipedia, and irrelevant at 'commons.wikimedia.org'.Pldx1 (talk) 12:11, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

The name of the brand is incidental, and even if it weren't it's just text which means it's not eligible for copyright. As for trademark issues, we just tag it with {{trademark}} and leave it as that. -mattbuck (Talk) 12:37, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

If it's the Colgate trademark on a Colgate brand toothbrush, then that's nominative use. You could make a weak case for tarnishment of the brand, but I doubt that would go far since we didn't shove the toothbrush down the albatross's throat to try to make Colgate look bad. Gigs (talk) 03:52, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

Good God, I thought everybody who lobbied for that kind of suppression of anything bad about a company in the name of trademark law was making $100,000 a year. If people will do it for free nowadays, there goes the last best hope of the middle class. Wnt (talk) 12:30, 27 June 2013 (UTC)

Add Google Search link to commons:Special:Search

Why reinvent the wheel? Just add a Google Search link to the commons:Special:Search page:

• Google search of the Commons - add search terms.

Then the nudity, gore, and sex challenged could use Google's SafeSearch option if they so choose.

I am sure one of the various gadgeteers on the Commons could come up with some gadget to add the link to the bottom of commons:Special:Search. It could be enabled at commons:Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-gadgets.

Or better yet it could be added by default for all users, whether registered or anonymous. Google often does much better searches of the Commons than the MediaWiki search engine. So I and others would love to have it enabled by default.

I never use SafeSearch though, and so please do not add a Google search link with SafeSearch enabled by default. --Timeshifter (talk) 14:27, 24 June 2013 (UTC)

It is an interesting suggestion, but Google refined their image search last year so that people who aren't searching for porn see less of it diluting their results. An image search for "toothbrush" doesn't turn up File:Woman masturbating with improvised vibrator.jpg, nor does a search for "vibrator" (although it does turn up File:Report-a-File step 1.png, which incorporates that image). A search for "masturbating" does find the image. Note that this is with Google's "safe search" disabled. Delicious carbuncle (talk) 15:36, 24 June 2013 (UTC)

Yes, according to the SafeSearch article Google's default image search now turns up less nudity, gore, and sex unless more explicitly searched for. Those search algorithms are up to Google.

The default image search with Google is without SafeSearch turned. One can tell this by doing an image search. The option to turn on the filter then shows up.

My main point is that there is no need for the Commons to tag images somehow for filtering. Google already filters for sex, nudity, and gore with SafeSearch. So let us use it. We could even add 3 links to commons:Special:Search:

• Google search of the Commons - add search terms.
• Google image search of the Commons - add search terms.
• Google image search of the Commons with SafeSearch turned on - add search terms.

See this Google page. It explains what I did with the last link in the above list: "append &safe=active or &safe=on directly to all search URLs. This will enable strict SafeSearch." --Timeshifter (talk) 16:41, 24 June 2013 (UTC)

• I think this is an excellent idea, but it needs to work on every Wikimedia wiki for "multimedia search". Gigs (talk) 17:06, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

Those Google image search links can be put on Special:Search on every Wikimedia wiki. An additional Google site search can also be set to search for images particular to a specific Wikimedia wiki. That would allow Google search of fair use images too. --Timeshifter (talk) 04:04, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

It would not be desirable to feature Google to the exclusion of rivals like Ixquick and Bing, but of course, there's no reason why we couldn't fit all the commercial search sites with all options in a page for the purpose of searching. Wnt (talk) 06:55, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

We could add a few site search links to Special:Search from the major search engines such as Google and Bing. Then we could link to a page with more links. There is no reason we shouldn't make Wikipedia and the Commons more accessible to all. Making people go elsewhere defeats the purpose of a search engine in speeding up access to what people want. --Timeshifter (talk) 16:06, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

To MattBuck

I'm just so grateful that there is someone who has a bot to take note of uploaded genitalia photos to mark them for deletion...and that person isn't me. God bless you for your work! 69.125.134.86 (talk) 23:24, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

Technology report: May engineering report: Flow enters consultation phase and other headlines (3,414 bytes · 💬)

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Hi all, after more or less 100 Tech Reports, this is my last as Lead Writer (at least for a while) due to real life time commitments. This won't come as news to many of you (I've already missed quite a few weeks in the last couple of months) but I thought I should mention it as it may mean that there are no Tech Reports for a bit. I hope that isn't the case – some people have spoken to me about contributing already – but there is a pressing need for a lead writer to coordinate those contributions, if nothing else; please do shout if you think you could fill that role. In any case, with the creation of Tech News it's probably time for a reassessment of the Tech Report as an independent source of technology news anyway (and whether we can really be bothered, given the ~4 hours a week time requirement), which I leave you to ponder. All the best, - Jarry1250 ^{[Vacation needed]} 10:56, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

Jarry, let me be the first to wish you the best with your real life obligations. :-) Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 21:14, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

Thank you Jarry! Your contributions have been appreciated. 192.136.210.191 (talk) 01:32, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

Sorry to see you go, Jarry. I hope you'll be back. Thanks very much for your dedication and the many long hours you've spent helping to keep us Signpost readers updated on the latest tech happenings. Your work has been appreciated by many, many readers. Best. 64.40.54.119 (talk) 05:03, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

Thanks Jarry! I always enjoyed reading this section. Just a note about this one: While the title is about VisualEditor being set for rollout early July, the report itself does not mention nor details that information. Cheers! Nicolas1981 (talk) 05:05, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for your work Jarry. I'm putting a well earned Signpost barnstar on your talk page. --Pine^✉ 06:29, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

Jarry, your excellent work on the Signpost's Tech report is what prompted us to create Tech News, because we wanted to spread technical updates to a wider and multilingual audience. I hope you'll be able to join us and help write Tech News; your talents and experience with the Tech Report would be much welcome, and it would require much less of your time. guillom 08:34, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

Your posts were always good, at a minimum. Thank you for your dedication. Cantons-de-l'Est (talk) 20:33, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

• Thanks for the great work on the tech reports. Honestly it was one of the main reasons I read the signpost. Bawolff (talk) 17:50, 24 June 2013 (UTC)

Traffic report: Most popular Wikipedia articles of the last week (3,307 bytes · 💬)

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• A minor point but our article states that the reception to the PS4 has been positive, rather than mixed. Stephen 02:02, 21 June 2013 (UTC)
• Cat anatomy is probably popular because many universities in the United States force their undergraduate Human Anatomy and Human Physiology labs to use cats instead of cadavers. Cadavers are hard to find (particularly if the university doesn't have a medical school - what did you think happened to all those people who donated their bodies to science?), very expensive and come with a long list of rules, whereas embalmed cats purchased from a commercial supplier of embalmed cats... don't. I'd wager that the article is frequently viewed by those who need to brush up before lab practicals and exams.
  (Personally, my Human Anatomy lab used cadavers but my Human Physiology lab at another university used cats, so I can say with confidence that if you were a human anatomy student who never got to dissect a cadaver, you were cheated.) You may now forget this entire conversation and resume your editing. ;-) KrakatoaKatie 08:57, 22 June 2013 (UTC)
  • Yes, but ... over 100,000 students each day are viewing that one article? Over three million in the last thirty days? ;-) Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 01:06, 23 June 2013 (UTC)
    • The most likely reason for its high view counts, according to a chat I had at the London Wiki meetup, is an automated malware program checking to see if it has access to the internet from an infected computer by accessing a pre-programmed page. Serendi^podous 15:43, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

Wikistats has the count for every language for the month of April 2013 now. However, a surprising number of languages had artificially high counts for Leonhard Euler that month, and it looks like all of these thousands of hits were occurring on the same day across all languages that have that article. This is obviously something automated and not natural, but what? Til Eulenspiegel /talk/ 13:48, 27 June 2013 (UTC)

Not automated at all. A Google Doodle about him shot interest in him up across the board. Serendi^podous 14:47, 27 June 2013 (UTC)

Ah, thank you for solving that mystery for me! Til Eulenspiegel /talk/ 18:16, 27 June 2013 (UTC)

WikiProject report: The Volunteer State: WikiProject Tennessee (399 bytes · 💬)

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• Thanks for the interview! The barbecue question and answer made me smile. :) Sumana Harihareswara, Wikimedia Foundation Engineering Community Manager (talk) 23:36, 24 June 2013 (UTC)