Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/Single/2020-04-26

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The following is an automatically-generated compilation of all talk pages for the Signpost issue dated 2020-04-26. For general Signpost discussion, see Wikipedia talk:Signpost.

Arbitration report: Two difficult cases (5,244 bytes · 💬)[edit]

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I hope everybody understands that this article was difficult for me to write. If you have any proposed corrections to make, please state your proposed wording here, and we'll see what can be done. Smallbones(smalltalk) 20:06, 26 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

  • A long term dispute at WikiProject Medicine about including drug pricing
  • --> A long-term dispute involving many issues at Wikiproject Medicine, that erupted over drug pricing ...
  • Sandy Georgia and several other members of WikiProject Medicine are not generally in favor of including drug prices
  • ... this is just not true; there are many instances where drug pricing is in accordance with WP:NOPRICE
  • --> Sandy Georgia and several other medical editors are concerned about multiple long-term trends affecting the Medicine Project.
  • At the evidence page, editors are roughly split, in the type of evidence they have presented, in whether it favors one side or the other in the dispute.
  • This is considerably off, as a) it divides us into "camps" (unhelpfully), and b) the dispute is NOT only about drug pricing, nor are the divisions only in that direction. I don't know how to suggest re-writing this.

SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:16, 26 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@SandyGeorgia: Bri made a correction that I think handles your 1st point. I've included your suggested correct on your 2nd point. For your 3rd point, I think we'll pass for now. For just about every ArbCom case I've seen there are "divisions" or "camps" or "2 sides". It would be better for everybody if there weren't, but I think my wording reflects reality here. Smallbones(smalltalk) 21:04, 26 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Better, thanks! SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:29, 26 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
"productive and controversial editor"-> "productive but controversial editor" ? --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 08:30, 27 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • I hope Jytdog remains blocked forever. I took issue with his interactions with another editor and we talked on Skype circa 2016-2017. It was a private call but I'll say that the editing community is better off without him. Chris Troutman (talk) 14:23, 27 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • I appreciate that it's difficult to write about a case where you have strong personal feelings, but the summary of the Jytdog case in my opinion grossly underplays the reason for his ban, which is that the way he conducted his efforts to fight paid or conflict-of-interest editing. He repeatedly went digging for personal information about editors he suspected of having a conflict of interest and berated other editors he perceived as getting in his way over the course of several years. He had been banned or blocked for it multiple times and each time he was nice as pie, promising he would change his behaviour, only to do exactly the same thing a few weeks later. Yes, he was a productive editor, and yes, he almost certainly meant well, but his crusader mentality and his focus on "protecting" Wikipedia from edit (or editors) he deemed harmful at all costs, even at the cost of the community's fundamental values, made him a net negative to the project. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 09:34, 28 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Although I'm for the moment an arb, i recused myself from this case as I thought I might instead want to give testimony--though in the end I decided not to. I can therefore give my personal opinion, that HJM's post above is more accurate than the summary. I think it would be fair to say, in particular, that based on published comments, most WPedians regarded J's manner of contact off-wiki as inexcusable. I doubt very much the committee expressed to any degree whatsoever a tolerance for undeclared paid editing, and I am disclosing no secrets in giving my impression that the committee is now at last seriously involved in trying to combat UPE. I have urged the committee to adopt this attitude since I first joined it, and my efforts--because they match the general feeling of the community-- have in that respect finally been successful. For this to actually produce results will, however , be a considerable struggle. DGG ( talk ) 23:38, 29 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

By the numbers: Open data and COVID-19: Wikipedia as an informational resource during the pandemic (457 bytes · 💬)[edit]

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Thanks! --Diego (WMF) (talk) 02:02, 11 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • I,m so sad bad news from USA, aboutCorona Virus I hope to finished soon -A M Muse

Discussion report: Redesigning Wikipedia, bit by bit (4,019 bytes · 💬)[edit]

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  • I'm glad to see the coverage of the sidebar update. For anyone just coming across the conversation now, some of the proposals look to me to be ready to close, with SNOW in some cases. If you are uninvolved and feel confident assessing consensus, please consider making some closes rather than just adding on to the pile. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 22:01, 26 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • There's also a discussion at VP Proposals on whether to grant editcontentmodel to template editors and mass message senders. — Wug·a·po·des​ 01:12, 27 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
    • Thanks for pointing this out! Sometimes things slip through the cracks so it’s good that other people are following these discussions closely as well. —pythoncoder (talk | contribs) 15:33, 27 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Why do designers refuse to understand that white space is wasted space which could have been filled with useful information? --Orange Mike | Talk 18:43, 29 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
    Because that is an incorrect opinion not borne out by decades of usability research or other sciences. The fact is that a measure of 72 characters is best and healthiest for the eyes. White space allows for users to quickly distinguish various elements in a screen, reducing eye strain and recognition fatigue. A better question is "why do Wikipedians refuse to understand that their personal use case or preference is not the only one that should be, and that there are many users with different needs?--Jorm (talk) 19:27, 29 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
    That comment would have been better without that last sentence. --Yair rand (talk) 19:42, 29 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
    Personally, I’d like to see page width capped at 1280px (or maybe less). Reading isn’t too bad on my 1280×800 laptop screen but I’ve read WP on desktops and it’s much more annoying. Probably wouldn’t be too hard to code. —pythoncoder (talk | contribs) 18:46, 30 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
    @Jorm, Yair rand, and Pythoncoder: there's certainly a lot more usability work to be done on Wikipedia. Perhaps once the sidebar redesign concludes, we can try to reinvigorate WP:WikiProject Usability and take on other tasks. Cheers, {{u|Sdkb}} talk 19:22, 30 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
    I'm over being shit on by the community for trying to improve Wikipedia's usability. But ya'll have fun.--Jorm (talk) 19:34, 30 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • "April Fools' Day: have we gone too far with the pranks?" lol, literally EVERY april fools since I joined. :D —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 12:11, 7 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Essay: Wikipedia:An article about yourself isn't necessarily a good thing (1,117 bytes · 💬)[edit]

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  • Well done. Will this be an easy to remember all-caps essay link? -- GreenC 18:40, 26 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@GreenC: It is WP:PROUD / WP:FAMOUS. ☆ Bri (talk) 18:56, 26 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
In the essay feature, "Essays are republished in The Signpost to draw attention to the contributions of the writers." It's been part of The Signpost since 2018. ☆ Bri (talk) 16:36, 27 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Featured content: Featured content returns (1,328 bytes · 💬)[edit]

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  • So cool to see my FL on the list! buidhe 21:57, 26 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • My first FP is here. «I'm Aya Syameimaru!I文々。新聞Iuserbako» 02:45, 27 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Just wanted to say I'm really happy to see Featured Content back. It's always been my favourite part of the Signpost. I really enjoy the summaries of the articles and lists and the beautiful layout of some amazing images. If I had one request, it would be a caption on the images to tell us what they depict, but thank you for bringing it back! HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 09:19, 28 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Gallery: Roy is doing fine and sending more photos (1,774 bytes · 💬)[edit]

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  • All stunning images—I particularly like the Mosque and the De Gray House. — Bilorv (talk) 21:28, 26 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Thank you, Dr. Klotz, for uploading over 4,000 quality photographs to Commons. ☆ Bri (talk) 21:52, 26 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Beautiful. I envy this man's travels! -Indy beetle (talk) 08:52, 27 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • The photos are stunning to see, thank you Dr. Klotz.--Vulphere 11:31, 27 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • I loved this story and Roy's photographs - glad he's well and with family, wishing him safe travels for the future! Zeromonk (talk) 13:38, 27 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • This story contributed much to my level of happiness today. Great that you spotted these background facts, Smallbones. Thank you to the world-wide photographer, Dottore Klotz! -- Just N. (talk) 17:13, 27 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • I have been pleased to sort and curate his excellent photos for years, when they were in my area of knowledge. Jim.henderson (talk) 11:26, 29 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Great photos Cesdeva (talk) 22:09, 12 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

In focus: Multilingual Wikipedia (19,824 bytes · 💬)[edit]

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  • I was surprised to learn that almost half of the articles in German don't have English language concurrent articles. This is not very healthy as we have so many notable Germans with no mentions in English Wikipedia and we are being deprived of vital information. Now I am not suggesting that we create English language articles for all of those, it would be too time-consuming. But at least for a certain number of such articles, it is well worth our while to do what's necessary. We could set a target that within the next 2 years, necessary steps would be taken to cover let's say 75% of the German articles in English instead of the present 50%. That would add a huge number of articles of notable German individuals and subjects, wouldn't it. If this cannot be presently achieved for some reason, we could at least create redirect pages in English Wikipedia with the appropriate short description, defaultsort, language links and appropriate categories with the resulting redirect page pointing to the German page for now. Or, instead of a redirect page, a template would be created that will inform reader that there is actually a German language article for the said individual or subject. This could also similarly apply for say Italian, Spanish and French language articles as a start, possibly also Arabic, Portuguese and Chinese at a later stage. The "translate" feature would do the rest once we are led to the language page of the non-existant English language article. werldwayd (talk) 20:08, 26 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • I think a first step would be to assess why we don't have an English article matching one on another wiki. Is it solely because of a language barrier? Is the concept covered by a different article? Does the explanation lie in differing notability guidelines between projects? A translate-a-thon is not a bad idea in theory but further analysis would be useful in better understanding the underlying issues. Nikkimaria (talk) 20:29, 26 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Here's a quick query that shows you a few hundred German articles without one in English (should be easy to change the language on that): https://w.wiki/P7d
Probably even more interesting is this, the list of articles that exist both in the German and Spanish Wikipedia, but not in English: https://w.wiki/P7f
This is just for starting this investigation, obviously, we should have a much deeper analysis, I agree with that. --denny vrandečić (talk) 20:55, 26 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Just because the article is in German and there's no English equivalent doesn't mean that that the article is about a German subject. I've encountered many articles in German about Australian athletes. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 01:23, 27 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • I have translated a few articles from German and other languages to English. In some other cases, the article I wanted to "port" had insufficient references per enwp requirements. This is not necessarily a surmountable problem with just more translators. Notability and BLP documentation standards differ between different Wikipedia language editions, and enwp seems to have a relatively high bar. Example, I just created a stub for Paragraf Lex. It has zero references on Serbian Wikipedia. It appears to be somewhat notable; at least, it is cited quite a few times by English Wikipedia. ☆ Bri (talk) 21:00, 26 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Indeed, I'd expect us to have the highest bar as the largest Wikipedia (by some metrics). Lower bars encourage expansion of content and accumulating an editor base, which is good for small Wikipedias, whilst higher bars encourage improving the quality of already-existing content. Nonetheless, we do have systemic biases and no doubt there is a lot of useful translation that can be done, even if the aim is not to make an article for every subject on the German Wikipedia. — Bilorv (talk) 21:18, 26 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • When we talk about articles existing in one language Wikipedia not being present in the English language Wikipedia, it doesn't always prove that there is a deficit needing to be addressed. For example, a few years back I was surprised to find the Bulgarian language Wikipedia has an article on every Consul of the Roman Empire known -- who number about 1,400 between 30 BC & AD 235. (en.wikipedia has somewhat more than 1,000.) I was impressed by that, & took a close look at a few ... only to find they were the most basic of stubs, consisting of little more information than "X was a politician of ancient Rome. X was a consul in year A with Y as his colleague", & some fancy templates. (Google translate works wonders in cases like this.) No sense translating stubs like these to the English Wikipedia; we create enough stubs on our own. -- llywrch (talk) 03:40, 27 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • "Almost half" means there are more than one million articles in the German language-version of Wikipedia that are not in the English version. So, regarding "We could set a target that within the next 2 years, necessary steps would be taken to cover let's say 75% of the German articles in English instead of the present 50%", there is no feasible path - today - to translate 500,000 articles in two years. There probably isn't a feasible path to translate even 5,000 articles, if by "feasible" we mean "finding volunteers who speak both languages fluently, and aren't busy doing other things". If we're going to get massive amounts of content from one language version into other language versions, the only way to do that is with computer-based processes, lightly reviewed by humans. Or by a donation of several billion dollars from a very well-endowed foundation or philanthropist. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 23:18, 26 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
    What we really need is an automated translation tool that translates everything but the text. By which I mean the templates, links, tables, categories etc. This would greatly reduce the effort required. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 01:23, 27 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
    But what we normally don't need is machine-translated content...have a look at pages for translation; there, many articles which have been machine-translated are listed, and are waiting to be evaluated/translated/copyedited, some of them for years . What we regulars over there that have learned: it's much more efficient and less time-consuming to write articles from scratch, using the foreign-language sources used in the other language article. Of course only if no English sources can be found. Lectonar (talk) 10:22, 27 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
    The Content translation tool can offer that really well! @Amire80: for cc --denny vrandečić (talk) 16:07, 27 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
    Thanks, denny vrandečić :)
    Hawkeye7, yes! Computers should translate what they can translate reliably: code, data, etc., and humans should translate prose. I'd go even further and say that ideally humans really should not translate things that can be reliably translated by computers. A good multilingual systems is supposed to strive for this: automate everything that can be reliably automated. I'm also fine with Denny's proposal in principle, because to the best of my understanding, what it suggests is auto-generating boilerplate prose from data reliably, while allowing people to write their own prose.
    As Denny says, Content Translation kind of does it, although not perfectly. It's pretty good at transferring links, images, and tables. Links are mostly a breeze, if the article exists in the language into which you are translating and they are connected using a Wikidata sitelink. Images are a breeze if they are on Commons. It's not perfect with complex tables because they are, well, complex, especially those that have a lot of columns and are too wide to fit in a narrow column, but yeah, it kind of works. (The real solution for complex tables is to try thinking of storing what they show in a proper database, and then get the data to display in articles using queries that auto-adapt to different media. It would be a difficult project that will require a lot of infrastructure, but it's worth thinking about. But I digress.)
    Categories are a breeze, as long as directly corresponding categories had been created in the language into which you are translating. What often happens in practice is that the English Wikipedia's category tree is more complex because it has more articles and more need for deeper categories, so categories have to be manually added after the article created.
    Another thing you didn't mention is language-independent content, most notably math formulas.
    And this brings us to templates, which are the biggest pain. Translating templates works nicely in Content Translation if the corresponding template exists in the language into which you are translating, and all of its parameters had been correctly mapped using TemplateData. Templates and modules are currently stored on each wiki separately, so this has to be done for every template in every wiki, and in practice this doesn't scale. It must be possible to make templates shareable, or global. I wrote a proposal for this: mw:Global templates/Proposed specification, short version. Your opinion about this is very welcome.
    Lectonar, you are generally right, but here's the more nuanced approach to machine translation. If machine translation of a text from another language is posted as a Wikipedia article, this is worse than useless. This absolutely must not be done, ever. If, however, machine translation is used by a responsible human who corrects all the mistakes that it made and makes sure that the text reads naturally, has true information, and is well-adapted to the reader in the target language, and then this text is posted as a Wikipedia article, then it's indistinguishable from translation. If machine translation helped this human translator do it more quickly, then it was beneficial.
    Some people who translate texts find machine translation totally useless and prefer to translate everything from scratch. This is totally fine, too, but it's not absolute: There are also people who find that machine translation makes them more efficient. As long as they use it responsibly and post text only after verifying every word, this is okay. --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 07:38, 28 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Responding more directly to the article, thanks again to denny vrandečić for mentioning global templates. The two ideas are indeed related, although I'd say that we should make it possible to have globally shareable modules and templates first, and then proceed to complete something like Wikilambda. Here's my rationale: The syntax for writing modules and templates is familiar to many editors. The global templates proposal specifically says that it doesn't suggest changing anything about the programming languages in which they are written: wiki syntax, parameters, parser functions, Lua, etc. It only suggests a change in where they are stored: transitioning from the current state, in which modules and templates can only be stored and used on a single wiki, to having the option of storing some of them, those that are useful to multiple wikis, on a shared repository (while preserving the option of having local modules and templates). This is similar to having to option to store images on Commons. I've read the whole Wikilambda paper, and my impression is that while it's probably not finalized, it's already clear enough that the proposed Wikilambda "renderer" language is a new thing that will be significantly different from wiki syntax and Lua. This is legitimate, but it makes a lot more sense to start a global repository from something familiar. In addition, developing a global repository will probably require updating some things deep in the core MediaWiki platform so that the performance of change propagation across sites will be better, and this will also improve the performance of some existing things, most importantly Commons and Wikidata. Once this core improvement is done for familiar things like images (Commons), structured data (Wikidata), and wiki syntax (modules and templates), it will be easy to build Wikilambda upon it. --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 08:12, 28 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
    This makes a lot of sense to me, but does not strike me as a botteleneck. It will take some time to set up the basic site + processes for Wλ, and we can pursue a "global sharing" framework at the same time which will be useful for Wλ once it gets underway. – SJ + 23:22, 5 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • If I undertake to write an article for English Wikipedia, I generally have to find English-language sources. German-language sources aren't much help to my English-speaking readers.
In effect, notability is defined per-language. For any particular article in German Wikipedia, the topic may not be suitable for English Wikipedia, if there are not enough appropriate English-language sources. Bruce leverett (talk) 18:57, 1 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
This is not an issue. According to WP:NOENG, English sources are preferred in the English Wikipedia, but non-English sources are allowed, and this is sensible. As for notability, my understanding is that this Multilingual Wikipedia / Abstract Wikipedia / Wikilambda proposal doesn't intend to force any article to appear in any language, but only to give an easier way to auto-generate basic articles in languages that are interested in them. --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 12:16, 2 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Non-English sources are "allowed", but, to repeat what I said above, "German-language sources aren't much help to my English-speaking readers". Yes, I expect people to read the footnotes, and click on them. I understand that for some articles, including some that I have worked on, this isn't an issue. But the implication is that creating a non-stub English-language version of a foreign-language article is more than just running Google translate and fixing up the results -- much more. I'm not scoffing; in many cases of, for example, chess biographies, I have yearned to be able to transplant the knowledge from a foreign-language article to English. But it's only a little less work than writing a new article from scratch. Bruce leverett (talk) 18:42, 2 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@Bruce leverett: Agreed. There's also nothing that would stop us from using a cite mechanism in the Abstract Wikipedia that prefers sources in the language of the Wiki when available, and only falls back to sources in other languages if none is given. I guess it is still better to have a source in a foreign language than have no source at all, but I totally understand and agree with the idea that sources in the local language should be preferred on display. --denny vrandečić (talk) 20:48, 11 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I expect people to read the footnotes, and click on them You're going to be very disappointed. Not only don't they read the footnotes, sometimes they post questions on the talk page admitting that they didn't read the article. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 23:26, 5 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • I have read both the Signpost article and the separate article. In theory, "Wikilambda" sounds like a good idea. In practice, however, I think it would be too complex to implement. I have been interested in, and have had some ability in, computer programming since I was first exposed to computers in the late 1970s. I have been a Wikipedia editor for more than a decade, and have translated hundreds of Wikipedia articles from another language (mostly either German or Italian) into English (usually with the assistance of Google translate). But I really doubt whether I would have the computing skills to contribute anything to "Wikilambda"; I found it difficult enough to draft the code necessary to transclude Wikidata information into Wikipedia infoboxes, to such an extent that I had to procure another Wikipedia editor to help me. "Wikilambda" seems so hard to grasp that I don't think I would even try to get involved in it. Maybe if the proposer could convince enough computer geeks who speak more than one language fluently to become contributors to "Wikilambda", then it might be able to get off the ground. But I have my doubts. Bahnfrend (talk) 13:07, 2 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@Bahnfrend: But isn't that true for Wikipedia in general? We have people with different skill sets working together. Bots written in Python, templates written with many curly braces, modules in Lua, tables, images, categories, and beautiful natural language text.
The important part is that the actual content can be contributed by many people, because that is where we must make sure that the barrier is low. This is what the project really needs to get right, and it devotes quite a few resources to this challenge.
For Wikilambda itself, yes, that's a very different kind of beast - and will have a different kind of community with a different set of contributors. But they don't have to be the same contributors that contribute to the Content of the Abstract Wikipedias. But again, as in Wikipedia we will have volunteers with different skill sets working together and achieving more than they could alone. --denny vrandečić (talk) 20:53, 11 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Always a promising idea, and seems very doable now that related substructure is available. Let us! I suggest EO as an early target wiki, for all of the reasons. – SJ + 23:22, 5 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you! --denny vrandečić (talk) 20:49, 11 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Answered there, thanks! --denny vrandečić (talk) 20:49, 11 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

In the media: Coronavirus, again and again (4,015 bytes · 💬)[edit]

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  • Katherine Maher said the committed, meticulous and sometimes eccentric community of volunteer editors are the actual bosses of the encyclopedia, not her. Really? Well, the WMF certainly doesn't act that way! MER-C 18:48, 26 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Looks like the Telegraph interview is paywalled. On the one hand, there's some irony there. On the other hand, journalists aren't volunteers like Wikipedians and need to get paid. On the third hand, I'm not going to pay whatever The Daily Telegraph wants to charge me to read the only article of theirs I'm likely going to be interested in for the foreseeable future. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 19:16, 26 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
    @Sdkb, here czar 19:29, 26 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • And the jew-tagging article from Commentary is fascinating. I can see both sides here — the author's concerns are very reasonable and sympathetic. His argument for removal is basically that a mention is WP:UNDUE, but it seems like a borderline case, and I'm not sure whether him referring to himself in his piece as "a proud if non-observant Jew" bolsters or hurts that argument. If his article was Featured status, it would be long enough that a brief mention would probably be warranted, but it's not. This is the same situation we had when we were trying to figure out how to write about The North Face's Wikipedia editing scandal. I brought up the general question of how to handle WP:UNDUE for less developed articles at the pump, but it needs further discussion — it's still not clear whether WP:UNDUE is in reference to the article in its current state or in its hypothetical featured state. For anyone who wants to engage with the (predictably messy and sprawling) discussion on the jew tagging question, see the author's article here. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 19:58, 26 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
    I've started a discussion at WT:NPOV on the general question of how WP:UNDUE applies to less developed articles. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 21:01, 26 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • The parallels to Triple parentheses are enough to make my skin crawl. I hope we come up with a stringent standard for this. ☆ Bri (talk) 21:11, 26 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Interview: Health and RfAs: An interview with Guy Macon (12,325 bytes · 💬)[edit]

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This is not regarding the Q&A, which is obviously an opinion piece of the subject at hand, but regarding the first paragraph, which should be neutrally worded and introducing the subject of the Q&A. This sentence is not worded in a neutral manner, "The good news is he survived, but unfortunately he failed the RfA." The word "unfortunately" is not needed, and presents a bias in that RFA's are mere rubber stamps. You should have just said that the RFA failed. Sir Joseph (talk) 19:09, 26 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Sir Joseph: I have amended the the article accordingly. Regards, Eddie891 Talk Work 19:23, 26 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Do not edit material published under a byline. If you want a change to the non-answer portions, ask the author (Puddleglum2.0) or the editor in chief (Smallbones). If you want a change to the answers, ask me. --Guy Macon (talk) 21:17, 26 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
In general we don't make corrections, unless it's a simple copyedit near the publication time, after publication without checking with the editor-in-chief. When I first saw this, I thought it was ok ... but what if Guy took this as "it was not unfortunate that he failed the RfA." I doubt that was intended but he might have taken it that way now. So I'll leave in the "unfortunately". To the very first commenter, @Sir Joseph:, we allow ourselves polite comments like "unfortunately he did not pass the RfA" without considering ourselves mad POV pushers. Smallbones(smalltalk) 21:59, 26 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I understand your point, but that is the whole point of an RFA, to get the support and oppose and then see where consensus takes you. You're a newspaper, you're supposed to report that the RFA didn't pass. This interview is his lookback at the process and his opinions on it. You are basically giving your newspaper's opinion that it was unfortunate that he didn't pass his RFA. That's all I said, that it was not a neutral statement, it has nothing to do with being mad POV pushers. Sir Joseph (talk) 22:08, 26 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
You and I have a completely different view on the meaning of the word "unfortunately". In my opinion, if the worst editor in the world ran for RfA and was rightly shot down 1000 to 0, that would still be unfortunate -- unfortunate that a thousand people's time was wasted, unfortunate that the editor wasn't a better person, and unfortunate that someone with a better chance of winning did not run instead. Sir Joseph, I know that you hold a grudge against me because I once disagreed with you on a content dispute and the consensus of editors was in my favor. You got your opportunity to express your opinion of me in your RfA !vote. Coming here and picking a fight over the word "unfortunately" is, IMO, a form of grave dancing. I would strongly prefer to not have any further interaction with you. --Guy Macon (talk) 00:19, 27 April 2020 (UTC) I have stricken my comment and sincerely regret interacting with Sir Joseph in any way. --Guy Macon (talk) 15:29, 27 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
In your hypothetical case, then it would be "fortunately" the person didn't pass RFA. In the paragraph above, the sentence says that you unfortunately did not pass RFA, which is editorializing the RFA. (Also, you didn't just once disagree with me, you also hounded me and accused me of being a sockmaster, and I don't think that's the only reason people didn't want you as an admin. Finally if you don't want anything to do with me, simply don't respond to my posts, as you were supposed to do, with the unofficial IBAN you agreed to.) People are reading this Signpost, and they want the intro to be neutral, not everything is about you, the Q&A is, but the intro should be as neutral as possible and we should be encouraging people to express their opinions at RFA, whether it's support or oppose, and if we tell people that their oppose votes are the wrong votes, that is bad. Sir Joseph (talk) 01:03, 27 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Fwiw, as someone who did not participate in the RfA, I read the "unfortunately" at the top to have an implied "for him" after it, so I didn't see it as an issue. But I could see how others might have interpreted it differently.
Regarding the more general question of editing after publication, I've noticed before that the Signpost has different standards than a normal area of Wikipedia. This seems appropriate since it is a newspaper, but since it is also unusual for Wikipedia, Smallbones, would you consider drafting an edit notice to go on all Signpost articles explaining what the policy is? {{u|Sdkb}} talk 18:10, 27 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
For now, let me just quote About (The Signpost): "We welcome post-publication edits such as grammatical and spelling corrections to articles, subject to review by the Signpost team; we value our readers' efforts to correct simple mistakes and provide needed clarifications." That should be read in the context of us being a newspaper - we have a deadline and publish on a specific date, we then do not update articles, other than corrections and minor copyediting; we have bylined authors - it is not a joint communally written constantly updated article like a mainspace Wikipedia article. Rather, each Signpost article should be seen as a snapshot of a particular time, written by a particular person or team, with input from the overall Signpost collective. Smallbones(smalltalk) 19:38, 27 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • I would disagree with the advice to editors considering RfA, as an editor who has almost exclusively edited in admin-adjacent and/or contentious areas and didn't get much flak for it at RfA. What may be more accurate is that participating at WP:FRINGEN is a powder keg for a future RfA, given that the nature of disputes there makes it both difficult to assume good faith (unlike a politically controversial topic like I/P where an editor can recognize that the other side simply has a different view), and editors on the wrong side often stick around and may not be considered persona-non-grata by the community (unlike UPEs) signed, Rosguill talk 22:16, 26 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks! Let me give you a rundown of what it is like after you spend a couple of minutes with no heartbeat.
I came to in a hospital bed. Air was going in and out of my lungs, but I wasn't doing the breathing. The respirator tube going down my throat was. You know that feeling in your legs after a long-distance run? That's lactate buildup, and if you overdo it you are sore the next day. When your heart stops the lactate builds up everywhere and it doesn't stop increasing. So everything was sore. It even hurt to move my eyeballs (which you pretty much can't stop doing). Even my tongue was sore. My major muscles were so sore that I literally could not lift my arm and could barely lift a finger. And my chest muscles were too sore to do any breathing.
A physical therapist explained that my muscles should recover, and they did. after a day I was able to breathe without the tube. After two days I could lift my arm enough to get a sip of water without help. After four days I could roll on my side (you don't realize how much you miss that until you can't do it). As the days went by I was able to sit up with help, then stand for a few seconds, then a couple of steps using a walker, and so on. I was released when I could get out of bed and walk 20 or 30 feet between rests.
Now that I am home I am building up my stamina, walking farther each day. And I can now sit at my computer for 40 to 50 minutes (I get up and walk every 15). So I haven't fully recovered, but I am getting better every day.
The best part of all of this? All of the well wishes on my talk page. They really lifted my spirits. --Guy Macon (talk) 03:54, 27 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • I didn't take part in the RfA for a number of reasons, but a heart attack - or anything life threatening - takes a massive precedent over what happens on this small corner of the web. I'm so glad you are ok, Guy, and have no further complications. Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 09:48, 27 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • I did not take part in the RfA either; the only two I have participated in were FRAMGATE related. I voted Support for Floquenbeam and Fram because I favored a return to the status quo. That said, I think WP:PITCHFORKS should link to RfA. It is highly visible and attracts all sorts of people that express their opinions on how the website should be run. The unfortunate aspect of it is that I don't think there is a clear alternative process that would encourage civil discourse. Of course, civil discourse occurs during RfA as well. I wish that Admin status was really encouraged as 'not a big deal.' Where the 'big deal' aspect of Adminning comes into play is when consensus is determined. But, I digress.
I am happy that Guy Macon is recovering and not taking the failure of an RfA too seriously- life is too short to stress over a website. I wish him a full recovery and encourage kindness all around, especially with the challenging environment that all of us are experiencing today. Jip Orlando (talk) 15:57, 27 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
The discussion of RfA as a whole has me wondering what the end-game for this is going to be... I can see at least two possible outcomes, both obviously terrible:
  • Administrators continue burning out faster than they are elected, until eventually en-WP becomes reliant on meta:SRP for a lack of local bureaucrats. CAT:AB is (on average) growing faster than it shrinks, in my estimation, so we already have a rather serious problem (for a smaller-scale example, RfD discussions are now semi-regularly relisted by involved admins because there aren't enough uninvolved admins to close out old discussions in a reasonable amount of time). This would just be the logical conclusion of doing nothing to solve it.
  • The WMF decides that the above outcome is unacceptable, and declares a new RfA process by fiat. The community hates this, but is unable to reach consensus about whether the WMF's process is actually better or worse than the existing process, so the WMF just waits out the resulting "no consensus" RFC, and wins by default.
Again, I dislike both outcomes, but I don't see all that many viable alternatives. At some point, something is going to have to give. --NYKevin 05:15, 27 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

News and notes: Unbiased information from Ukraine's government? (15,574 bytes · 💬)[edit]

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  • The destubbing contest sounds like a great idea... Has the WMF expressed interest in providing grants for contests in the way it did for the Women in Red World Contest? Eddie891 Talk Work 18:31, 26 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
    • The destubbing contest is indeed a great idea. It is also a low-key contest with some weekly prizes of £10 gift certificates at Amazon totaling £250 (c.$308) thru August 1. I imagine the source of the prizes is Wikimedia UK or the WMF. Smallbones(smalltalk) 21:16, 26 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • "well-informed Ukraininans" from Ukrainian propaganda machine is no better than Russian propaganda machine. The country overrun by a bunch of neoNazis and racists cannot be source of neutral information. I am not talking about conflicts over Donbas or Crimea. I am talking about the overall policy of rewriting the history of their land and sowing discord between ethnicities and religious faiths. I am talking about neonazis openly throwing Hitler Salute and whitewashing their WWII murderers. The activities of the government which restored the employment of an ambassador to Germany caught pants off with antisemitic and other racist texts in the social media and celebrating his birthday with the cake in the shape of the book titled "My Struggle" must be watched very closely in Wikipedia for WP:COI. Staszek Lem (talk) 23:28, 26 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Well, that's a bleak point of view. Let's see what happens first, with our eyes wide open, before we leap to accusations of Neo-Nazism and anti-semiticism. Liz Read! Talk! 06:10, 27 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
It is already happening for years, massively, just nobody cares.--Ymblanter (talk) 06:25, 27 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Let me remark for the context that NickK is one of the few really constructive editors in the topic area, which features mostly driveby editors and editors with the agenda (not necessarily pro-Ukrainian, could be anything).--Ymblanter (talk) 06:41, 28 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Just to clarify, it was not the government who restored employment of that diplomat but a court of appeal. Here is the comment from the MFA (Ukrainian version is more detailed): the government still wants to fire him, but the court made them restore his employment. Labor Code of Ukraine is from 1971, so firing people is tricky in Ukraine, but that's not MFA's fault — NickK (talk) 23:09, 27 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Oh please, Labor code from 1971? you are kidding me! In the country so proud of decommunization? "Ostatechne proschewaj", my ass. The UA court system is completely dysfunctional when it comes to violations of human rights or making big circles around proven murderers who happen to be "activists". Every dissent is quickly labelled as Russia's/Putin's hand. Corruption is rampant. "Bloody Yanykovych"s times is the golden age compared to what's going on there now. Current clown's government is a hostage of "activists", who have more arms on their hands than the regular army and therefore feel nonpunishable. Staszek Lem (talk) 00:42, 28 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I think it would be fair to say that the Ukrainian court system is dysfunctional, period. It is not pro-Russian or anti-Yanukovych, it is dysfonctional at least since Wikipedia exists. It is sad, but we are not working with these courts and are not interested in it — NickK (talk) 13:19, 28 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • I was taken aback when I first saw the news that Wikimedia Ukraine was partnering with the Ukrainian government on such a massive scale. The Russian state media can go to hell, but I am worried about the consequences for NPOV. The outward and combative focus of this venture, and the fact that it so heavily involves the Foreign Ministry, makes it seem very much like a propaganda operation. I think it would be much better if the the Ukrainian government instead directed an effort through the Ministry of Culture, publishing photographs of cultural events and historical sites, or documents about artists and folk cultures under free licenses that we can use. If China had announced a similar campaign we would have lost our minds by now. -Indy beetle (talk) 08:24, 27 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
    • Actually, some time ago we has a really big fuss when Israelis launched a similar wikipedia campaign to counter the bias in the you know which conflict. Although I do not remember whether it was government-based or just a a wikiactivism. Staszek Lem (talk)
    • @Indy beetle: Wikimedia Ukraine already works with the Ministry of Culture, notably on Wiki Loves Monuments (e.g. here). This collaboration was very active two governments ago, the previous Minister of Culture was less interested, and there is no Minister of Culture at the moment (lost in reorganisation). WMUA is also working on release of all government websites under the free license (the Ministry of Culture is one of the few that have not done this move yet) and would be obviously interested in getting materials from the Ministry of Culture under a free license — NickK (talk) 23:09, 27 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • The Ukrainian MFA already canvassed people to Sukhoi Su-25 in 2014 ([1]) and launched a not-so-veiled accusation against Wikipedia editors, depicting them as Russian agents. I'm not sure this is really a friendly and policy-abiding party that we want onboard. --MarioGom (talk) 14:17, 27 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • The press release in Ukrainian was not corrected ([2]). I assume the softer language is only directed to the international audience at English Wikipedia. --MarioGom (talk) 15:04, 27 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Why do we devote an entire paragraph to criticism of the Internet Archive's National Emergency Library, but don't give any space at all to the Internet Archive's POV, for example https://blog.archive.org/2020/03/30/internet-archive-responds-why-we-released-the-national-emergency-library/. Isn't the Internet Archive supposed to be our ally? At the very least our reporting about it should be neutral and give space to both sides. Kaldari (talk) 23:23, 29 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
    • Thanks for this. The above blog certainly gives a more well-rounded view of the controversy. I believe the author's view was that announcing the availability of the books through the Internet Archive, gave one side of the story, and the final paragraph gave another side, but as I said, the blog makes the whole thing more well-rounded. Finding balance, of course, is never easy. Smallbones(smalltalk) 23:54, 29 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
    • Hi Kaldari, I built the article from various articles submitted at our suggestions page. I included that section to show that not everyone was happy with the internet archive, and exactly because I think we, as Wikipedians generally only look at this from one side, without considering the people who may disapprove. My thinking was that most people already understand the IA's operating principals, and thus it was more important to present the other side than. I would also add that I did not see that post, and could certainly have included it. Eddie891 Talk Work 00:08, 30 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Very interesting to read about the Ukrainian campaign right after seeing this rename request. Ivanchuk, a Ukrainian chess grandmaster, formerly a candidate for World Champion, suddenly decided that English Wikipedia should be transliterating his name the Ukrainian way rather than the Russian way. When it was pointed out that our usual English-language sources would be a snag, he went to FIDE (the World Chess Federation) and had them fix their listing for him. Of course other sources, such as the chess press, cannot be immediately brought around, but this was sufficient for editors to come to a consensus to change the name of the article about him. Ivanchuk is very well known in chess and I have to wonder if we are going to see more of this kind of thing. Bruce leverett (talk) 00:51, 30 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • To be clear, I welcomed the statement re. Ukraine because the original statement said that they would be working with the Ukrainian WMF chapter, and I trust WMF chapters to guard the integrity of the project. I spent a long time clearing out and blacklisting Russian fake news and propaganda sites, mostly from articles about the Russian invasion of Ukraine and annexation of Crimea. Several articles presented the fiction of a spontaneous grassroots uprising against Ukrainan nationalist oppression of Russophones in Donbass - a narrative strongly contradicted by independent sources. The GRU invests a lot in propaganda, and I would be astounded if there were not active Russian paid agents editing those articles. If WMF Ukraine can ensure that the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs follows our policies, then I do indeed see this as a net positive for the project. Ukraine is trying to move from kleptocratic oligarchy to Western democracy, and deserves all the support we can offer. Guy (help!) 19:41, 30 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Trying to move? YOu must be kidding. Probably listening to Ukrainian propaganda too much. Since 2014 corruption increased enormously. New president, as it always happened, promised to fight corruption, but he doesn't. The most egregious case is making dirty money on military supplies. Mass evidence collected, but no move. I guess that's why there is still shooting in Donbas: big money involved. Russia backed off long time ago when their idea of "Neo-Novorossia" sizzled. Of course Russia never gives Crimea back, but Donbas could have been easily reintegrated back under minimal political concessions. But Ukrainian nazis think that Poles, Russians, Hungarians who live in Ukraine, are Untermensch (but this doesnt prevent ukro Gastarbeiter in millions. Due to coronavirus Polish argiculture is in grave danger due to lack of cheap wetback workforce). Ukrainian WMF chapter is obviously just the same overrun by ukronazis, if you read ukrainian wikipedia , which glorifies killers and robbers. Staszek Lem (talk) 19:54, 30 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
    • Ukrainan nationalist oppression of Russophones - fake news? oh really? you can speak russian as long as you support nazionalist agenda. But say a word against nazis in Russian, you will quickly get a fist into your face and the defense in court is that they were fighting Putin's agent. Staszek Lem (talk) 20:01, 30 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
      This is really fake news. You can see from my page that I am a native speaker of Russian, I support neither far-right nor radical pro-Russian groups (like most Ukrainians) and I got a fist into my face from neither. As a board member of the Ukrainian chapter, I find your label of a 'ukronazi' insulting — NickK (talk) 21:49, 1 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Staszek Lem: - you should be very careful about personal attacks and even about BLP violations. Please do not call people "ukronazis," "wetbacks", "Untermensch", and, smearing an entire nation "neoNazis and racists ". In any case you seem to be proving all the Ukrainian complaints about propaganda. Please drop the stick or just avoid this page if you can't. Liz gave you a polite warning early on. I tend to be more direct. Smallbones(smalltalk) 20:20, 30 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

When I say ukronazis, I mean ukronazis, not the entire ukrainian nation. When I say wetbacks I mean people toiling for a dime, and it is not an insult for ukrainians, but for Poland, which takes an advantage of the rampant poverty in the neighboring country. When I wrote unermensch, I was presenting the worldview of ukronazis on non-ethnic citizens of ukraine, and so on. BLP, personal attacks? seriously? You are welcome to file a complaint. In any case, I am taking your advice and moving away from this subject. BTW, FYI, just in case, I am not editing Ukraine-related topics due to my COI: I hate what is going on in Ukraine now. Staszek Lem (talk) 20:42, 30 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
    • As I mentioned elsewhere, I experience harassment from Ukrainian users on a daily basis. The only reason for this harassment seems to be that I state that my mothertongue is Russian. I expect this harassment to increase in May due to this propaganda campaign.--Ymblanter (talk) 20:23, 30 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • I spent a long time clearing out and blacklisting Russian fake news and propaganda sites - that's what we all are doing here: keeping Wikipedia neutral. The engagement of a whole government is as clear WP:COI is it can be, whatever noble motives are declared. Staszek Lem (talk) 20:59, 30 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • I personally don't think you can really call them that, as in fact that isn't correct, Ukraine is not associated with this type of behaviour, this broken ideology. Rawsar (talk) 18:31, 19 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • One of the best ways to ensure NPOV is to have an environment where different points of view are well represented. Ukrainian content and editors have been grossly underrepresented on the wiki, I see this initiative as something that will encourage people interested in this subject to participate more. Berehinia (talk) 21:52, 30 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

On the bright side: What's making you happy this month? (1,258 bytes · 💬)[edit]

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  • For this month, while staying home aside from my daily activities I'm also playing some mobile games like Azur Lane, BanG Dream! and The Idolmaster and watching virtual youtubers. Virtual Youtubers are active and their popularity surely boosted right now.--Vulphere 17:02, 27 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Playing through some old video games on an emulator. It's refreshing to play especially if I'm also submitting content to another wiki regarding them. —Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) 23:40, 28 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Working on a couple of kitchen recipes while spending more time at home than I am used to. The chicken-cheese-green chile enchiladas are just about perfected now. BSVulturis (talk) 04:56, 4 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Opinion: Trusting Everybody to Work Together (7,481 bytes · 💬)[edit]

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  • An interesting text, thank you! I have shared it with some colleagues at the Foundation. Ijon (talk) 21:25, 28 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Thank you very much for this. An ongoing objective for MobileFrontend is to get rid of it, or in other words phabricator:T158181. A while ago we wrote mw:Principles, building on Ward Cunningham's wiki design principles which are still valid nowadays.

    Interestingly, in recent months the WMF seems to be focusing more on the core features of the wiki, for instance Special:RecentChanges, and less on bells and whistles: maybe some long-neglected issues will be fixed, but there's also a potential for deeper damage if hybris emerges. (Or just poor allocation of resources: for instance the revision limit has been "temporarily" reduced from 5000 to 500 for months now. One would expect a 100+ M$/y org to be able to provide us a more performant database than in the past, but seems not.) Nemo 06:59, 29 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

    • Thank Ijon and Nemo_bis for the comments. The Phabricator task and the Meta MediaWiki page you mention are closely related, and I'm now following both. -Pete Forsyth (talk) 02:04, 1 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'd like to summarize, and briefly respond to, comments on this essay from elsewhere on the web. I'll try to add more as they come up.
    • Mike Linksvayer observes that it's more like three essays. This resonates; I found it challenging to find the proper scope for this essay. The three topics Mike identifies all overlap substantially, and I relished the opportunity to explore them all in one place. Editors Joseph Reagle and Jackie Koerner were very helpful in helping me modify the scope. I hope to go into more depth on various topic in the future.
    • Charles Matthews suggested various related ideas.
    • Adam Hyde (founder of FLOSS Manuals etc.) remarked on the "DIY" look of MediaWiki software, compares it to the punk rock aesthetic, and thinks some might feel more inclined to touch and interact with it than they would in a more polished interface. -Pete Forsyth (talk) 02:04, 1 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Trust[edit]

There are some systemic factors that make trust difficult
  1. The lack of adequate references. While there are certainly a lot of online archives containing historical and technical data, there are a huge number of documents available only in hardcopy or available only to members of particular organizations.
  2. The lack of an effective dispute resolution mechanism. I've given up on large edits because content is often determined by who has more stamina.
  3. The lack of volunteers. Wikepedia badly needs more editors with a technical background, but not enough are willing to volunteer and not enough organizations are willing to offer the editorial services of their staff pro bono. This leads to articles with significant errors that nobody is willing to correct in a timely fashion.
  4. The presence of circle squarers and other cranks, and plain vandals. Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 19:07, 1 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]


I only read a fraction of this long editorial. I find the internet resists long-form writing, preferring bits and snippets of hard fact, and the last thing Wikipedia needs is one more long opinion piece. It needs doers, not talkers. Software is secondary at best. If you don't have skilled, mature people of good will who like rolling up their sleeves to work together, it doesn't matter what tools they have. Technical improvements are far down my wish list for Wikipedia. It looks like a lot of wasted time and effort that could be better spent somewhere else. "Ask not what..."
Vmavanti (talk) 03:59, 3 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
"If you don't have skilled, mature people of good will who like rolling up their sleeves to work together, it doesn't matter what tools they have." I see, so you argue that Wikipedia should never have been created, we should have insisted on Nupedia instead of trying a new software. Nemo 07:53, 3 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Did I say that? Where? I don't see how anything you wrote proceeds logically from anything I wrote. When I was kid, my mom used to say to me and my siblings, "Aren't your little legs tired from jumping to conclusions?" The temptation to read between the lines, interpret, and extrapolate is common, but, like this article, it helps very little.
Vmavanti (talk) 14:11, 3 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
We could certainly use better tools. Teaching at editathons I spend much time explaining the things Visual Editor does poorly, and often newbies fail to understand how to use Talk Pages because they need to learn an old-fashioned markup language before they can ask questions about such matters as, uhh, how to use the markup language. And all this silly stuff about indent and outdent and reply-links and four tildes and "My talk page or yours".
Last year I started doing Quora and it's quite easy. Many writers there do excellent long-form essays on complex topics, probably because they get paid for good work. Some participants there make the suggestion that Quora is better than Wikipedia, which of course is dumb since that's not the purpose, but if a similar level of technical development work could go into Wikipedia forums and mobile usage we would attract, or anyway keep and develop, more new, smart, content editors. Jim.henderson (talk) 00:46, 4 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
No one needs to learn markup to edit Wikipedia. Or the Visual Editor. Just some basic templates. Colored syntax helps. Sourcing is easy with the pop-up menu templates, but many people don't use them. I don't know why. I don't know what the big deal is about colon indents. I see experienced editors use asterisks. Why? A colon is easier to type than an asterisk. Four tildes: the upper left corner of the keyboard below the ESC key. That's easy. Let's get real. If people can't get the easy stuff right, should they even be editing? No. Talk pages? There's a misnomer. Many people don't respond, and when they do, it's not helpful. Strangers pop up to insult you. Administrators pop up to insult you. There ought to be discussions, but it's usually more like a wrestling match. To repeat my point, tech matters are not high on my long list of priorities for Wikipedia. A lot of people might want to take a look at the proper use of the comma. Maybe stop using the words "launch" and "subsequently" every other sentence. Study impartiality. Maybe stop writing love letters to people and causes they admire. I have found Quora to be nearly useless.Vmavanti (talk) 02:46, 4 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Recent research: Trending topics across languages; auto-detecting bias (531 bytes · 💬)[edit]

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If you only have 5 minutes to read the dissertation about data quality in Wikidata, be sure you read the research summary in page 149. (numbered 171 in the pdf) Diego (talk) 16:58, 27 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Traffic report: Disease the Rhythm of the Night (1,246 bytes · 💬)[edit]

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WikiProject report: The Guild of Copy Editors (3,266 bytes · 💬)[edit]

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  • Nice article. I'm proud to be part of the Guild. Miniapolis 20:21, 26 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Thank you, GOCE members, for what you do. The quality of article prose is so important to a good reading experience. -- Black Falcon (talk) 22:20, 26 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • I do a bunch of copy editing ad hoc as I come across errors, but I wasn't familiar with the guild before this, so this was an interesting read! One question I'd curious to know: To what extent is the correction of errors automated? Is there work being done to try to get more bots flagging or directly correcting common errors? {{u|Sdkb}} talk 19:14, 29 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
    In my experience, articles tagged for copy editing need manual fixes that can be performed only by human editors. There are bots and AWB- or script-wielding editors who take care of common problems, often before we arrive. Tools and projects related to making articles read better and more consistently, in no particular order, include User:Citation bot, Wikipedia:Typo Team, items listed at User:Ohconfucius, and more. – Jonesey95 (talk) 22:05, 29 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Although copyediting is not easily replaced using semi-automatic tools, there are exceptions – algorithms can be used to counter semantic redundancy (removing errors such as repeated "and" and "the", constructions such as "use" instead of "utilise", or "to" instead of "in order to") and expand commonality ("second-year" instead of "sophomore"), or frequent errors ("comprised" instead of "comprised of").These are well within the realm of script, and I would welcome such changes to be incorporated therein. --Ohconfucius (on the move) (talk) 14:09, 30 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Thanks to all. As a former newspaper guy and journalism prof (yes, I taught the AP Stylebook), I do quite a bit of copy editing on WP just to keep my hand in. I was a Guild member for a while, but I took my name off because I prefer simply to jump around and make edits when and where I feel like it. My best to all. BeenAroundAWhile (talk) 02:19, 11 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • The important question is "copy edit", "copy-edit" or "copyedit". Not really – but the choices above made me think. Hats off to the Guild. SchreiberBike | ⌨  00:10, 16 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]


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