User talk:Jimbo Wales/Archive 218

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Archive 215

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Archive 217

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"Undocumented immigrants" versus "Illegal immigrants"

Jimbo, I noticed where the term "illegal immigrants" was changed to "undocumented immigrants" in Marine Le Pen's Blp. I'm thinking that for an encyclopedia, "undocumented" is too vague as it could mean a legal immigrant who has lost their documents. Also, the term "undocumented immigrants" is a whitewashing Weasel word as it implies, by its vagueness and benignity, that no crime has been committed. It would be easy to just use whatever term is in the source, but, I think the traditional "illegal immigrant" is necessary for an encyclopedia for factual clarity purposes and to differentiate the group from legal immigrants. What do you think? Nocturnalnow (talk) 04:46, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

Try discussing it on the article talk page. 79.73.246.67 (talk) 11:06, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

You misunderstand. I am only using the Le Pen article as an example. I am asking whether we need to have one phrase to use consisdently in our editing, unless its a quote, and I am suggesting we should and that that term should be "illegal immigrants" for clarity and neutrality puroposes. Nocturnalnow (talk) 17:27, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

The technically correct term is probably illicit, not illegal, as it's not a criminal offence in France as far as I can tell. The largest single group of "illegal immigrants" in the UK is American students overstaying their visas, according to an article I read last year. Is that "illegal" as in big-scary-Muslamic illegal? Guy (Help!) 11:36, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

Guy, you have formed an insulting, to me, false opinion. We took in 50,000 legal Syrian refugees in Canada last year and aim for another 40,000 this year. All under our Liberal Justin Trudeau led government. I am proud to say I am a LONG time member of the Liberal Party of Canada and I support everything we do to help any refugees, including muslims. I actually do not think I have ever seen a scary muslim. Your inference is offensive and you owe me a huge apology ! I simply feel that here on Wikipedia we can be the most useful by being reality grounded and not fall onto either side of the current polarization, which I think is largely an internationalism/nationalism polarization. Nocturnalnow (talk) 17:43, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

We should follow the common usage of reliable sources, as it is not our job to take a position on such matters. Wikipedia is not a battleground. And I second the suggestion that this be discussed on the article talk page.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 12:12, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

Great! What is the common usage ? Nocturnalnow (talk) 17:43, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

I guess I should use a yahoo exact phrase search...hold on. 2,500,000 "illegal immigrants" and 1,320,000 "undocumented immigrants". So does that settle it Jimbo ? Nocturnalnow (talk) 17:57, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

Jimbo WalesYou misunderstand. I am only using the Le Pen article as an example. I am asking whether we need to have one phrase to use consisdently in our editing, unless its a quote, and I am suggesting we should and that that term should be "illegal immigrants" for clarity and neutrality puroposes.Nocturnalnow (talk) 17:43, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

Seems like a bit of a misnomer as undocumented and illegal are not the same thing; one can enter a country legally and overstay, making one illegal but not undocumented, such as a British perosn entering the US on a tourist visa and staying beyond its expiry date but still having a legal passport. An undocumented immigrants implies having entered the country illegally without documentation such a Honduran person entering Mexico illegally. Which makes what Jimbo says entirely correct. ♫ RichardWeiss talk contribs 12:22, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

Good point; both examples fit the "illegal" word but both do not fit the "undocumented" word. Nocturnalnow (talk) 17:43, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

Probably the neutral way would be to use the term relevant to the statement or conversation using it. If it is about presence of immigrants which is in violation of the laws of that country, the term "illegal" is probably most appropriate for that statement / conversation. If it not and about lack of documentation, undocumented would seem more appropriate. North8000 (talk) 16:42, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

I'd agree with that. Nocturnalnow (talk) 17:43, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

I have no idea what view you think I have formed, I was merely pointing out that the last article I read on the subject said that the largest single group of illegal immigrants in the UK is American students overstaying visas. Guy (Help!) 20:13, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

Some opinions may be based on a single out-of-context experience and may not be accurate. Other opnions may be based on extended patterns of behavior and are likely to be very accurate. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 144.15.255.227 (talk) 21:02, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

And some may be based on official statistics. Guy (Help!) 23:26, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

In French, the common term is "sans-papiers", which literally translates to undocumented people. The term is used extensively in French media, and it shouldn't be surprising that English press translating from French news outlets would use "undocumented immigrants" in this context. An article about a French politician is exactly the wrong Reichstag to pick for climbing here. MLauba ^(Talk) 22:44, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

https://blog.ap.org/announcements/illegal-immigrant-no-more 184.96.138.160 (talk) 23:20, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

The correct term is what the sources use. "Undocumented immigrants" is a slightly broader term, since after all an immigrant could be 100% legal and legitimately not have documents - lost in a fire, six years old and can't find her mommy. It is up to the individual news reporter or study author to use that term correctly... and if they don't, that's not our fault nor our fix. Wikipedia can't actually do better than the sources it relies on. But we can and should use both terms in an article when there are some sources for one and some for the other and when it is possible to reliably source "illegal immigrant" the narrower term should be able to take precedence. We should not be banning words for political correctness. Wnt (talk) 20:59, 4 March 2017 (UTC)

"Internationalists" aka globalization promoters effect on Wikipedia

I'm rebooting this discussion because although it is (somewhat) interesting, it appears to have virtually nothing to do with Wikipedia. If there is a Wikipedia angle to be discussed, then by all means let's do it, but if people want to discuss political theory generally, there are better places for it than here.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 11:23, 2 March 2017 (UTC)

The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

Jimbo, 2 questions.

1 What do you think about the importance of the self declaration of many important people as them being an "internationalist"? For example, David Rockefeller made a somewhat bizarre and defensive statement embracing the term: "Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as internationalists and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure—one world, if you will. If that's the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it." Are these these self declarations important enough to be emphasized in a Blp?

2 There seems to be a widespread growing divide and polarization, in Europe particularly, between the political leaders who mostly identify as internationalists and the people/voters who prefer nationalism, as with the Brexit vote. I think national sovereignty and globalization are mutually exclusive, what do you think ? And how does this growing divide impact the reliable sources we use? Nocturnalnow (talk) 23:05, 25 February 2017 (UTC)

Not just Rockefeller. 174.16.120.139 (talk) 16:30, 26 February 2017 (UTC)

Short answer to number 1. A person's politics should be reflected in an article about them to the same extent that the reliable sources mention it.

Number 2 can be addressed from many different directions, but I'd say first that if you are looking for the meaning of life in an encyclopedia, you're looking in the wrong place. Second, very many Wikipedians are internationalists - after all on en:Wiki we have to deal with Brits, Irish, Americans, Canadians, Ozzies, Kiwis, Indians of at least 2 types, South Africans, all sort of Europeans who speak English as their language of education, work, homelife, or just as a useful 2nd language. Third, you seem to assume that the nation state is the natural way that the world works, but it really is only about 200 years old (as the major form of political organization). Four, you ignore that political, technological, and cultural integration has been bringing us all closer together for millenia. Sometimes it goes faster or slower, sometimes we get it wrong and have to back up and try again, but we are still coming closer together all the time. As an illustration consider the US political system over the last 150 years. In 1867, large railroad sytems were just coming into existence, farmers could drive their horse drawn wagons about 10 miles into the nearest city to bring their harvest to market, and return home the same day, and the county was the governmental unit that most affected most people. In 1917 the railroad networks were well established and automobiles (and paved roads) were just coming in. A farmer's harvest might travel a couple of hundred miles in one day. And the state was the political unit that most affected most people. In 1967, computerized communication systems were just coming in, harvests would travel several hundred miles in a day, and the national (federal government most affected most people. Do you see a pattern here?

Finally Imagine there's no countries. It isn't hard to do. Nothing to kill or die for."

Smallbones_(smalltalk) 03:25, 26 February 2017 (UTC)

Yanni says something similar to "Imagine" at his concerts. I see the pattern, but Brexit may have been the first of many tears in the pattern. I think the more nationalistic publications are likely to gain strength at the same time as the historically reliable main stream sources are, at least in my opinion, becoming much less reliable with their details and certainly less neutral. Nocturnalnow (talk) 06:34, 26 February 2017 (UTC)

Or maybe that first tear was the dissolution of the Soviet Union, or the separation of Pakistan and Bangladesh, or the split of Singapore from Malaysia, or even the dissolution of the Roman Empire. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 12:18, 26 February 2017 (UTC)

Stephan Schulz, you provide a Non sequitur because the international expansions you refer to were all acquired by force; the current globalization effort is occurring through voluntary acquiescence by national political leaders who almost never put the exchange of political and economic sovereignty for promised security and increased global commercial opportunities to a vote of the people they represent(ed). I stand by my observation that Brexit was the first rebellion by the people from the current political and economic global empire creation project. Btw, you left out the Mongol Empire, the largest of them all, so far, I think. Nocturnalnow (talk) 22:44, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

Just some short input on this from my side:

Re 2: I strongly oppose the view that national sovereignty and globalization are mutually exclusive. However I'd rather speak of local sovereignty than of national sovereignty with the nation being just one scope. Respecting national identity and preserving local sovereignty at the current level of current nations is imo crucial to preserving peace and stability. Current political leaders don't do the former from what I can see and do not listen to their peoples. This is one of several reasons why I think that our current socioeconomic order and democracy are failing. And this, in turn, is a reason for why I think that it's so important that we, right now, make sure Wikipedia persists and is sufficiently resilient. For instance I think the Brexit was a very bad thing - however it could have been prevented if people saw their political leaders acting on behalf of them. I'm greatly in favor of globalization and self-identify as World citizen and still I oppose globalization in many ways that it's occurring now and also (at a level that's less important to me) identify as German and would like to have local spheres of decision-making scope. I think the view that we can simply abolish nations is naive (and I once had this view). Also, and most importantly, I think that there's not one nationalism and one globalism. Please have an open mind to these things. For instance a world citizen and probably Lennon aren't in favor of power simply shifting from politics to multinational corporations similar to pestilence over cholera. I don't have much trust in our current structures and personally think they'll fail rather soon − e.g. Trump is already deconstructing the US empire and the international order − I just hope we'll get out of this without a major war or chaos and potentially with improved structures at the other end (for the latter I think that Wikipedia is crucial).

And lastly concerning the reliable sources we use: we need to incorporate all major view-points, not just the ones we agree with. A growing divide makes it our job to neutrally and appropriately inform about all aspects and sides of the divide.

--Fixuture (talk) 15:09, 26 February 2017 (UTC)

Fixuture, regarding your last 2 sentences directly above, I agree 100%. I also feel some Déjà vu back to the 60s, albeit from the opposite ends of the political spectrum, which feels exactly the same as what Dylan expressed in Ballad of a Thin Man "Something is happening here/ But you don't know what it is/ Do you, Mr. Jones?". Nocturnalnow (talk) 22:59, 26 February 2017 (UTC)

Globalization only seems to be opposed to nationalism if you're in the developed world. The inflections showing so in that curve are due to taxation of those rich countries' working and middle classes exacerbating instead of compensating for self-interested, rational outsourcing which helps developing countries as much as it helps the first world's rich. Complaining about globalization instead of how developed countries tax their poor and middle class shows a lack of understanding of the facts. Who will join the call for solutions which support first world consumers instead of shouldering them with tariffs and limiting the freedoms to live, work, and employ people where one pleases? 174.16.120.139 (talk) 16:24, 26 February 2017 (UTC)

@174.16.120.139:

Complaining about globalization instead of how developed countries tax their poor and middle class shows a lack of understanding of the facts.

No - that's just your point of view.

Taxation, here, would just be attempts of artificially fixing underlying problems.

Who will join the call for solutions which support first world consumers instead of shouldering them with tariffs and limiting the freedoms to live, work, and employ people where one pleases?

I'm not sure what solutions you are talking about. And for tariffs please have in mind that those don't just shoulder first world consumers but also stimulate local production which is important for sovereignty, control and autonomy as well as for the environment and potentially work conditions among other things. Also it's not (just at least) the "freedoms to live, work, and employ people where one pleases" but also market pressures which aren't freedoms but are better described as necessities.

Globalization is great but outsourcing work to wherever wages are lowest, work conditions seriously violating human rights and human health, on the long-term sustaining poor economies of less developed countries by depriving them of their intellectual basis and polluting the environment by unnecessary, excessive transportation around the globe among other things are not.

--Fixuture (talk) 16:59, 26 February 2017 (UTC)

My "point of view" happens to be an established mathematical and historical fact. Wealth is trickling down to foreign countries because rich people, including Donald Trump, will use foreign labor or suppliers to get the best deal. If they don't, consumers bear the brunt of increased prices.

We have an article about what happens when countries try what you and Nocturnalnow are advocating: Import substitution industrialization, which in its "Results" section says, "import substitution was 'both unsustainable over time and produced high economic and social costs.,'" because, "lack of competition [and] reduced innovation and efficiency ... restrained the quality of [locally] produced goods, while protectionist policies kept prices high .... power concentrated in the hands of a few decreased the incentive for entrepreneurial development .... exacerbated inequality .... reduced the incentives for business risk, resulting in decreased efficiency .... large deficits and debts resulting from import substitution policies are largely credited for the resulting Latin American crisis of the 1980s."

Real solutions would involve shifting the tax burden from the working and middle class in developed countries to their rich, including negative taxes if that is what it takes to make up the difference in what their rich are gaining from what their working and middle class are losing.

Your complaints about human rights and health do not comport with the facts. 174.16.120.139 (talk) 17:36, 26 February 2017 (UTC)

@174.16.120.139:

My "point of view" happens to be an established mathematical and historical fact.

No it's not; it's your (and some others') point of view.

Wealth is trickling down to foreign countries because rich people, including Donald Trump, will use foreign labor or suppliers to get the best deal

Well that might be true within the current structures. But to what extend, to whom and in what ways? And why should the current ways of wealth trickling down to less developed countries be even remotely optimal?

If they don't, consumers bear the brunt of increased prices.

That's for sure (at least at the beginning and for most relevant products). I wasn't saying otherwise and it's why I explicitly said "those don't just shoulder first world consumers"

We have an article about what happens when countries try what you and Nocturnalnow are advocating

I never said that I'm advocating this and I don't think Nocturnalnow did so. For me: I just oppose the imo biased argumentation against tariffs that you made and think that there might be something good to it in certain ways / types / products / areas or in some of its end-results.

Import substitution industrialization [...]

Well, those are good points. As said I don't advocate tariffs per se, never said otherwise and only made counterarguments to what I think was a one-sided assessment of this.

Yes, stimulating local production and disadvantaging foreign products can be deeply problematic within current structures in which e.g. collaboration isn't happening and knowledge isn't shared between countries, organizations and individuals the way it could.

Real solutions would involve shifting the tax burden from the working and middle class in developed countries to their rich, including negative taxes if that is what it takes to make up the difference in what their rich are gaining from what their working and middle class are losing.

Please see Wealth tax#Disadvantages. Some issues would be for instance wealthy simply leaving the country / moving their basis elsewhere. Plus it will never happen to a sufficient extend due to the influence of the wealthy. It's not a real solution but an infeasible suggestion of an artificial fix.

Your complaints about human rights and health do not comport with the facts.

This statistic is not related to my point and does not support your point. Please take a look at the facts, data and research on working conditions in e.g. India and China.

And if you're wondering why the statistic is as it is: it's because of technology and science.

--Fixuture (talk) 18:32, 26 February 2017 (UTC)

But it is true that as countries become more developed and wealthier, their populations begin to demand improvements in their quality of life that comport with those found in the United States and other Western developed nations — worker rights protections, pollution controls and environmental regulations, improved safety standards, etc. Working conditions and pollution standards in India and China are surely not to that level *now* but they are surely improved over where they were 50 years ago, or even 10 years ago; even the Communist regime in the PRC has had to respond to public pressure from within and without and make strides toward cleaner, more sustainable economic development. The internationalist viewpoint is that the only sustainable way of lifting all boats is to raise those standards worldwide. On the other hand, it is precisely in the ethnonationalist movements that we see politicians ignoring and rejecting improvements in worker rights and environmental standards in the name of "economic competitiveness" — thus Trump's attempted dismantling of the EPA, nonsensical rhetoric about reopening coal mines, and ignoring the scientific proof of climate change in favor of dumping more and more carbon into the global ecosystem. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 18:45, 26 February 2017 (UTC)

Well said,NorthBySouthBaranof, however you can not be sure that "lifting all boats.... to raise those standards worldwide" is a good thing, e.g. there is an interesting movie Babies (film) which helped convince me that its presumptuous and, in the case of many lower standards countries and/or locations within those countries, downright wrongheaded to assume the actual people there are going to be better off with the higher standards. Also, the old expression "mind your own business" has extra validity when we actually look at the results when foreign military intruders, do-gooders, and various international organizations start meddling in countries to "help them out". The examples of this fucking up accomplished by outside interference are voluminous:

Haiti=deadly cholera was imported from UN agency personnel after a hurricane
The Middle East particularly has been fucked up totally (with maybe a million civilians blown up) by multi-national forces and do-gooders pouring in to "help" this or that country in some way.
Afghanistan now produces 90% + of the worlds illicit opium, which finances al queda and their total production per year has gone up 3,000% from 185 tonnes in 2000 to about 5,500 tonnes now. (ironically this reference might be a good example of important stuff the DM sometimes highlights that others don't). In addition the number of heroin addicts within Afghanistan has soared. All the while, western countries, including Canada, are pouring many billions of dollars of "financial aid" into this narco-state officially named "The Islamic Republic of Afghanistan".

And then there is the reality of the growth of the profits made by assorted do-gooder agencies, NGOs, and war profiteers. The internationalist viewpoint, as you say, may, in general, be altruistic for most internationalists, but their actual results for real people in countries where they have butted in have been atrocious, from any objective analysis, imo. Nocturnalnow (talk) 17:35, 28 February 2017 (UTC)

as countries become more developed and wealthier, their populations begin to demand improvements in their quality of life [...]

Indeed, but I don't see how that would be a point for the current state of things or the economic globalization as we know it. This is happening despite of it and often in direct conflict with it. For instance if one country raises its worker protections and rights their products and services become more expensive causing corporations to retrieve their goods and services from countries with lower protections and rights with that being a major deterrent of such improvements. In addition and in support of that governments and companies can crush, suppress and prevent such demands to be made or gain traction.

The internationalist viewpoint is that the only sustainable way of lifting all boats is to raise those standards worldwide.

Well it's a philosophy or narrative that doesn't have any real and effective ways of making that happen and is actually structurally in conflict with that goal.

On the other hand, it is precisely in the ethnonationalist movements that we see politicians ignoring and rejecting improvements in worker rights and environmental standards in the name of "economic competitiveness"

Yes, the ethnonationalist philosophy is even worse. From my point of view while what you're calling the "internationalist" worldview or narrative only inherently leads to pressures of structural violence, massive inequality, environmental pollution and potentially chaos and unrest the ethnonationalist philosophy in any of its popular variants can lead to said plus easily war.

--Fixuture (talk) 19:24, 26 February 2017 (UTC)

When statements recount data from observations, they are facts, not merely points of view. Again, this graph shows exactly how wealth is trickling down to developing countries from the first world. It's not optimal at all, it's merely satisfying the law of supply and demand where the greatest supply of labor is available in developing countries who are therefore able to undercut first world workers who demand more money for their work. A wealth tax is a property tax, but we're talking about income effects, and the right way to address the issue is by adjusting income taxes, not imposing a wealth tax. Finally, if you think conditions in China and India are bad, I assure you they are worse in e.g. Bangladesh and Sub-Saharan Africa, where they outsource, but they are uniformly improving everywhere. 174.16.120.139 (talk) 19:54, 26 February 2017 (UTC)

Aside

Globalisation basically means putting more power into the hands of transnational bodies, the vast majority of which are corporations. The idea that globalisation is a conspiracy of the political left, as Bannon seems to think, is perverse. To be an internationalist is not the same thing as supporting globalisation. To be an internationalist is to view oneself as a citizen fo the world, and one's country as a partner in the global community of nations. My understanding of old is that internationalism is a leftist or liberal position, based on equity and participation for people, and globalisation is a right or libertarian position based on the obvious extention of the idea of corporate personhood to the point of corporate nationhood. I may have bene wrong about this for my entire adult life. Or Bannon may be a deranged wingnut. Or indeed both. Guy (Help!) 21:17, 26 February 2017 (UTC)

^Agree. --David Tornheim (talk) 22:06, 26 February 2017 (UTC)

"On business taxes, it's really about making U.S. companies competitive. We need to create a level playing field for U.S. companies to be able to compete in the world. And they just haven't had that opportunity." --U.S. Treasury Secretary Mnuchin It's a clear race to the bottom. The politicians don't really believe corporations will hire more domestic workers; in fact they would be vulnerable to shareholder lawsuits if they attempt to do so in any substantial way. The politicians are correct to expect, however, that they will be rewarded with more newly-unlimited corporate donations. The real international problem is that when a country as large and with as much output as the U.S. needlessly cuts corporate taxes, other countries are forced to follow suit or suffer a recession. The politicians know this, and are counting on it to maximize their corporate contribution reward. Literally everyone else loses. 174.16.120.139 (talk) 22:33, 26 February 2017 (UTC)

You know what, I am absolutely and utterly sick to death of this horseshit. Thank god, I found something that I can comment back to it on like Wikipedia. I understand all the theoretic garble and labels like left and right which are being slapped about everywhere these days, not excluding this conversation. And I do not like to ever stifle objective debate however, you guys are talking about real people here… not graphs, not numbers, not your own life sucking and you not being as rich as you’d like, not moaning about how the world doesn’t seem to be right in your own vision, how YOU are a globalist, how you are an internationalist…. All this horse shit is meaningless when you do absolutely nothing but sit there and talk about it.

As a child, I was abused, I did not have a choice in the matter, thus I went into care. It felts like society had left me, no one like you people had been around for me then. But you know what that experience told me something about the REAL world not just how to say big words but it taught me how to mean them. In later life, I fought tooth and nail to get into university and guess what, I got there. I had to not be so pessimistic and discerning about problems of the world and take my finger from my ass and do something, act on my beliefs. Eventually I graduated with a Bachelor of Laws (Hons) And a BSc … now I am a Lawyer who conducts and helps conduct research…. And guess what… I am still bloody young.

Like I said, I don’t want to stifle debate but for god’s sake stop talking about people like me as if we are facts and figures behind a charade of academic vocabulary and speak of people like they are people. →ὦiki-Coffee^{(talk to me!)} _{(contributions)} 22:21, 26 February 2017 (UTC)

How? I feel the same frustration but I don't know how to talk about what's happening in the world other than in abstract, inhuman terms. I'd love to learn what to do to make these concepts more accessible. 174.16.120.139 (talk) 22:33, 26 February 2017 (UTC)

@174.16.120.139: Which concepts more accessible? Its not so much an issue of accessibility as it is promoting the idea of being genuinely decent to one another and understanding that education alone does not give one the key to the universe. There is an amount of personal intimate experience with real world problems required in order to deduct how to resolve them. Many people that I have seen are lost in their own never ending story of personal vanity which dampens their ability to be objective about issues in society because their main concerns are issues with themselves. When you have experienced certain things in life like I have you come to a realisation that pleasures are fickle things which can very easily be taken away. When you have to genuinely fight to overcome adversity in life rather than get lost in endless self-indulgence it becomes apparent that the need to collaborate and be good to one another is all the more vital for survival. I have depended on the kindness and humanity of other people and thus I understand the need for those things to exist in society. But you also come to the realisation that mere talk is cheap and action is absolutely essential in order to produce a quantifiable result. →ὦiki-Coffee^{(talk to me!)} _{(contributions)} —Preceding undated comment added 23:08, 26 February 2017 (UTC)

Even highly educated people are oblivious to many of these issues. Every corporation on the planet has a vested interest in making people sure that lowering taxes on corporations is a good idea. Executives' bonuses are calculated based on how successful they ultimately become in pushing that agenda. The amount of money involved dwarfs that of tobacco or even fossil fuels, and we all know how much time, effort, and astroturf are pushed on those topics. So some of the most educated people on the planet are frequently on TV, in newspaper columns, and interviewed on respectable web sources explaining concepts which for all intents and purposes are deliberately false propaganda. How do people obtain personal intimate real world experience to produce quantifiable results against those campaigns? 174.16.120.139 (talk) 02:23, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

I am the son of a teacher, and the first person in my branch of family to attend university. I went to a thousand-year-old school on a direct grant, and I worked my way through University. I have experienced at first hand the way the very rich view the not so rich. I have friends in India whose income and lifestyle are dramatically below what I would consider acceptable. I think the political and financial polarisation of the world is a major problem. I would like to see more consensus building, rather than less, which has been the trend recently. In the past decade or so we have seen the very wealthy wreck the world's economy, demand that the rest of society bail them out, then take the money as if it were their right and continue as before with no thought to repayment. The crash of 07-08 seems to me to have resulted in a massive net transfer of wealth upwards.

I'd like to see consequences for lying to the public. No, an immigrant did not take your job, a robot took your job, and there will never be another job for you because you want your goods to be cheaper. That's a big conversation, and it's one politicians - left and right - seem very determined to avoid. It's like there are two warring parties in opposite corners of a room that's entirely full of elephants they won't acknowledge.

And for me, it is all about people. 100%. Everything comes down to people. Lack of empathy is Trump's biggest fault, IMO, and the same applies for a host of other demagogues. They understand people only well enough to press their buttons, not to appreciate what makes them who they are. Guy (Help!) 15:29, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

Guy, I agree and I think that unnecessary wars are the worst thing that crappy and/or lying politicians cause. For that degree of wrong there is no consequence that can make up for such a deed. In Canada, there are lots of opportunities for people to start their own business. I don't know why more don't do it, especially now that working for companies has become so unrewarding and insecure. Nocturnalnow (talk) 05:22, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

One thing that is obvious is that →ὦiki-Coffee is definitely not a phony, and that is partially the answer to 174.16.120.139's question "How do people obtain personal intimate real world experience to produce quantifiable results against those (propaganda) campaigns." In addition to the awful sources of experience that Wiki-Coffee endured, defining life experiences will also come to anyone who never, ever says or does anything phony, and who also engages with every person you meet as if he or she is a friend, from the McDonald's employee to the big shots....and then, with any extra time, get political...it does not matter on which side of the spectrum...just get political. And 1 person, any person, can have the effect of an earthquake for the power of good in any society, with the help of God; and God, as well as good souls, are all around to help. We all know this, but few of us take action, because action is work, and action is risky. But at the very least, anyone can choose to never say or do anything phony, even if they were brought up to be a phony and are in the habit of being a phony. This all ties into selection of reliable sources. There are lots of phony sources which are oozing phoniness. And there are a few really objective and reality based sources. So, as more and more of us choose to be real all the time, and phony none of the time, we'll be choosing the reality based sources, and ignoring the phony sources. And that will improve the encyclopedia et al., imo. Nocturnalnow (talk) 04:55, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

I would like to present a reasoned counter argument to the statements "just get political. And 1 person, any person, can have the effect of an earthquake for the power of good in any society" and "We all know this, but few of us take action, because action is work, and action is risky.":

It is self evident that the ability of politicians and political organizations to deceive us is far greater than our ability to detect deception. This can be clearly seen by just thinking about the many times that a large group of educated and intelligent people have looked at the exact same data and come to completely different conclusions. Another glaring misconception is the belief that you can tell how well someone will run a country based on how well they give speeches or how well they do in debates. The one has almost nothing to do with the other.

Instead of "get political" I say "get apolitical". Don't favor either side. In particular, make your Wikipedia editing apolitical no matter what your political position is.

Instead of "take action" I say "stay inactive". In particular, consider not voting when your vote will not change the result. During the last election, Wyoming voted 174,248 (70.1%) for Trump, 55,949 (22.5%) for Clinton. Hawaii voted 266,827 (62.2%) for Clinton, 128,815 (30.0%) for Trump. If you live in one of those states, you could have stayed home and the result would have been the same.

Instead of "One person, any person, can have the effect of an earthquake" I say "Usually, one person doesn't make any difference at all". You should only "take action" in those rare cases where taking sides has a chance of changing the outcome -- and none of us have the slightest clue as to which side to take to get a good outcome.

Be apolitical. Edit Wikipedia according to WP:NPOV. --Guy Macon (talk) 15:20, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

@Guy Macon: I am slightly confused as to your narrative especially when you say that You should only "take action" in those rare cases where taking sides has a chance of changing the outcome. Firstly, that statement assumes that acting means taking sides, no it does not. Action does not mean political or at least not in the context I mentioned it. Maybe consider the view that society needs the individual and the individual needs the society. There is never one without the other so keeping them balanced seems important to me.

Furthermore, I am unsure as to what your philosophy is given the information you just stated. It is quite all over the place to be honest, not sure if you are trying to say that collaboration is useless based on some notion you have or you’re just being pessimistic about the role of individuality in society. Either way, you seem to have an interesting view on the matter. I do agree with you that remaining strictly apolitical on Wikipedia is very important on ensuring objective content. →ὦiki-Coffee^{(talk to me!)} _{(contributions)} 18:45, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

How is it possible to act in response to a deliberate campaign of persuasion without taking sides? 174.16.120.139 (talk) 05:40, 28 February 2017 (UTC)

Profound question, 174.16.120.139. Just imagine you are standing in a field with a strong wind pushing you backwards. You have 3 choices; allow the wind to push you back, use all your strength to stand still in the face of the wind, or walk into the wind. Standing still is analogous to not taking sides and is probably the hardest of the 3. But the difference between the force of wind and the force of persuasion is that a wind is tangible/obvious, where a campaign of political persuasion is often stealthily applied, by intent, as in psychological operations. Which begs the question, do people who are being brainwashed realize they are being brainwashed? Nocturnalnow (talk) 22:39, 28 February 2017 (UTC)

@Nocturnalnow: How about a concrete example? Suppose I try to persuade you that you should (A) smoke tobacco, or (B) eat a greater proportion of fruits and vegetables. Suppose you wanted to comment about my motives, and in particular whether or not I am acting in your interests. How can you do that while remaining neutral? I think most people who are successfully brainwashed remain certain that they have not been; otherwise they would be critical of what they had been persuaded. 184.96.138.160 (talk) 08:27, 2 March 2017 (UTC)

Guy Macon, you brought back a very old memory which, being from Macon (no pun intended), was both shocking and funny. The first day I went out for a walk in Toronto, the city was covered with bright red posters showing a fist up in the air with the words in caps "DON'T VOTE, THEY'RE ALL THE SAME!". And the posters, in small print at the bottom, said Marxist–Leninist Party of Canada. Guy, the thing to remember is that in most democracies the voters are not so predictable as you outline. Its not uncommon to see polls switch 20-30 points in Canada in just the last week of any election, municipal, provincial or even federal. Hell, just in the past 22 years we've had a socialist government, a liberal government and a conservative government here in Ontario. I sympathise with what you are saying, but for us in Canada and the U.K., I don't think its too relevant. Nocturnalnow (talk) 23:06, 28 February 2017 (UTC)

A real choice? I can only imagine what that is like. Perhaps if we here in the USA say that we are sorry and ask really nice, Elizabeth II will agree to take us back... :) --Guy Macon (talk) 00:54, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

lol. a guy with a name like Macon was born to be cool (puns intended) Nocturnalnow (talk) 05:22, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

My late father used to joke that the US could take the UK over at any time: just revoke the Declaration of Independence and then as soon as the parliamentary constituencies were established the House of Commons would be run by either Republicans or Democrats! :-) Martin of Sheffield (talk) 12:36, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

As one Guy to another, the UK is also melting down right now. It feels very much as if the world has collectively decided that being peaceful and tolerant and inclusive is much less fun than hurling shit at each other. Guy (Help!) 16:08, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

Even China's newest five-year plan wants to follow Europe in replacing the graduated income tax with a VAT. (Page 42: "We will complete across the board the reform to replace business tax with VAT." Page 63: "We will reduce taxes and fees for enterprises by lowering the proportion of their VAT.") When society's burden is shifted to the poor, they don't tend to blame the domestic officials who are doing it to them because that would mean taking responsibility for complicated politics. Instead they blame the "other," countries in this case. The concordant nationalism stokes racism and religious prejudices. 184.96.138.160 (talk) 08:27, 2 March 2017 (UTC)

What does "rebooting" mean in this context? Do you want the discussion of how powerful interests shape public debate to achieve specific political ends in their favor refactored with more specific references to bias in articles? The sections you hatted already refer to articles several times, and the question about what it means to be neutral when writing about persuasion campaigns remains to be resolved. I'd be interested in your thoughts on those questions, Jimbo, and you never addressed the initial question in the first paragraph to you about BLPs, either. 184.96.138.160 (talk) 17:52, 2 March 2017 (UTC)

Word of advice... Jimbo might take you more seriously if you identify which former/current User you really are, or are we to believe that your single-purpose account just joined Wikipedia for the first time a few days ago? I mean, really. Give the busy man a break. At least he identifies himself by name and leave an "open door". - 2001:558:1400:4:88F0:1C03:C016:9186 (talk) 18:30, 2 March 2017 (UTC)

I get a new IP address every time I power off my electronics when I leave the house for more than a few hours, and am apparently not the only one who finds the resulting editing experience more pleasant than the alternatives I've tried. 184.96.138.160 (talk) 18:51, 2 March 2017 (UTC)

184.96.138.160, I think your question is a good one as well as your observations. Hopefully they will not be ignored. Nocturnalnow (talk) 21:35, 2 March 2017 (UTC)

Well, thanks, but one of my questions was to you: if you're writing an article about powerful or wealthy groups trying to persuade people to support a proposal opposed to their own interests, how do you do write about that in a neutral way? Is it possible to write, for example, about the money spent to defend tobacco use after the 1964 Surgeon General's report without implicitly taking sides? 184.96.138.160 (talk) 19:40, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

Great question, 184.96.138.160, quite profound actually; the answer is: "Yes, absolutely."

There is one tool that is helpful in a situation as you describe, that is critical thinking. Once you deploy critical thinking, all of the persuasion campaigns, advertising, propaganda et.al, melt away and then you can write about realities. For example, I believe there may be certain uses of smoking for weight loss or management and raw tobacco for healing a wound...I'm not sure but the point is, you can do your own research of reliably sourced info to construct a non-biased article. Nocturnalnow (talk) 22:40, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

In terms of specifics, I mean. I'm sure everyone would accept that, "the tobacco industry spent $X billion trying to keep people from reducing their tobacco consumption," is neutral, but the moment you report accurate reliable sources which say the industry used psychological techniques trying to make smoking appear fashionable, or even that they were deceptive, are you still casting the issue in a neutral light? 184.96.138.160 (talk) 23:16, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

Tobacco products have been vilified since the 1970's so any article written now has a healthy dose of recentism. The main danger of tobacco smoke is the inhalation of burnt organic matter (i.e. marijuana smoke isn't healthy, nor is a forest fire). One of my favorite interviews I discovered was Mike Wallace interviewing Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger that has a live cigarette commercial right in the middle. Nothing like a journalist shilling for big tobacco. Abhored by recentism but acceptable when the interview] occurred. --DHeyward (talk) 03:22, 4 March 2017 (UTC)

What was on the other channel when that interview ran? "Republican President Dwight Eisenhower’s idea of a significant marginal rate cut was to push the top rate down to 91 percent from 92 percent. Corporate taxes hit 50 percent. Jobs proliferated, wages rose, and the economy prospered." Three generations later, Wikipedia's Economics article, read by 4,300 people each day, says, "Tax cuts allow consumers to increase their spending, which boosts aggregate demand." How would the 50s and 60s have been different if Wikipedia was available then? 184.96.138.160 (talk) 04:27, 4 March 2017 (UTC)

Asked at Talk:Economics#Tax cut claim in Fiscal policy section. 184.96.138.160 (talk) 23:22, 4 March 2017 (UTC)

Scientology tax status history redux

Jimbo (also pinging @Xaosflux:, @JzG:, @Wnt:, @Panyd:, @Only in death:, @Anthonyhcole: and @John Carter: as you all commented too), you said on this page a couple of months ago that you'd "got curious about the history of Scientology and their tax status with the IRS". I'd written about this about 20 years ago but hadn't touched it since, so I thought I'd give it the Wikipedia treatment. Here it is: Tax status of Scientology in the United States. Hope you find it informative! Prioryman (talk) 15:10, 4 March 2017 (UTC)

Thanks. I listened to a very interesting podcast interview with Ron Miscavige recently. If the IRS ever investigates their use of "church" funds for stalking and harassment, they could be in real trouble. Guy (Help!) 16:56, 4 March 2017 (UTC)

I doubt the IRS would have any motivation to do this, but in any case unless the CoS is very stupid I doubt that they use tax-exempt money to pay for the stalking and harassment activities. They collect donations from members for the "defense" of Scientology, which I would guess are not considered tax-exempt funds. One member alone, Bob Duggan, says he's donated more than a third of a billion dollars, so they have no shortage of money. Paying a couple of private investigators $20,000 a month to surveil Ron Miscavige is peanuts. (The PI they hired to go after IRS officials was paid $1 million for 18 months' work.) Prioryman (talk) 07:00, 5 March 2017 (UTC)

A cult with savvy accountants and rich marks. Well, we already knew that. Guy (Help!) 17:36, 5 March 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for the ping, reading now. — xaosflux ^Talk 18:54, 4 March 2017 (UTC)

Holy Moly! There is obviously a lot I don't know about this group... I nominate Prioryman for the Sacred Order of the Adamantium Cojon. Is it unanimous? Wnt (talk) 20:56, 4 March 2017 (UTC)

Amazing! Now let's hope the IRS jumps on them for violating enurement clauses... Panyd^{The muffin is not subtle} 14:55, 5 March 2017 (UTC)

News media have bicker bias

(split from "/Archive_217#News articles about Wikipedia rarely flattering"). Wikid77 (talk) 13:56, 5 March 2017 (UTC)

As for unflattering news coverage of Wikipedia, the news media seem to have a "bicker bias" for which issues to headline, and so the press complains in July 2009 about lack of WP photos: "Wikipedia May Be a Font of Facts, but It’s a Desert for Photos" (pages have poor or no photos). Likewise, when W~leaks released purported emails of John Podesta (campaign of H. Clinton), the shocking revelation should have been how the private emails noted former Secretary Hillary Clinton was discussing the concerns of many so-called "disaffected voters" for years before other candidates were lauded as better because they talked about concerns of left-out voters "overlooked" by Clinton, I mean really. But no, instead the Podesta emails were reported for bickering among campaign officials, as if shocking news that personnel in a campaign could have disagreements. Nowadays, the shocking news about the Mike Pence email controversy is that he has complained about Hillary Clinton's emails as worse, by falsely claiming that she deleted emails when requested, rather than the actual results of the extensive FBI investigation(s) which concluded the routine purging of old Clinton emails was a periodic cleanup, and not evasion, nor evidence tampering, nor obstruction of justice because the computer techs had wiped the servers long before email requests and without knowledge by Clinton. Instead, the Pence email controversy should have been reported for maintaining private Indiana emails, for 2 years[!] after the Clinton email news began, by the very act of Mike Pence, as then Indiana Governor, to use a non-secured AOL account for Indiana government, beyond the official email system, and outside the Indiana laws to preserve or archive official emails for later public inspection (source: [1]). It was like Clinton-redux-anyway for 2 more years, except instead of Clinton's secured private email server inside her New York home, Mike Pence used an open, public AOL account to discuss governor's security with no private storage of data, which of course was hacked, with evidence of hacking ([2]). However, the news media have a bicker bias, and so the headlines now are Pence complains (again) about Clinton emails, not Pence violated Indiana's public-access laws for years, storing emails in a private, hacked AOL account, even 2 years after Clinton controversy. Let's hear, "Lock him up! Lock him up!" -Wikid77 (talk) 18:54, 4 March 2017 +source. Wikid77 (talk) 05:20, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

Update: found, "Lock him up!" source: MSNBC 03/03/2017, which also noted some Pence emails were so confidential that the State of Indiana did not release them because "too confidential or sensitive" for public view. -Wikid77 (talk) 05:20, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

(also see: "#Another unflattering news article"). Wikid77 (talk) 13:56, 5 March 2017 (UTC)

Why do you have special permissions although you are not elected?!

The title says it all. Many people wonder: are you Wikipedias benevolent dictator? Please answer the question. 78.52.216.224 (talk) 14:56, 5 March 2017 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Role of Jimmy Wales has a community write up on this topic. — xaosflux ^Talk 15:30, 5 March 2017 (UTC)

Thank you, sir! That would answer my question: Jimmy is Wikipedias benevolent dictator! 78.52.216.224 (talk) 16:05, 5 March 2017 (UTC)

No, I am not the benevolent dictator of anything. I do have a special constitutional role in the governance of English Wikipedia, and I consider that an important set of "checks and balances" on our governance. But I have only very seldom taken specific action, and not at all for many years now.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 17:04, 5 March 2017 (UTC)

But others do give the appearance of taking specific action on your behalf. Sometimes I see editors, especially administrators, justifying their actions or opinions by "Jimmy Wales agrees" or "Jimmy Wales has said this" or similar, and they often do it by citing comments or opinions you have made on this page. I think you have a right to expect to be taken note of when you talk here publically about matters that would affect broad Wikipedia policy or the direction the project is going. But, in the end, this is just a user's page, not a noticeboard page that discusses issues in a more formal way, so I think you should discourage the practice of editors citing your words here to justify their actions. It might also cut down on the number of supplicants coming to your page expecting you to express an opinion on this, that, and the next thing! Tiptoethrutheminefield (talk) 16:59, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

I recommend that you link to Wikipedia:Argumentum ad Jimbonem whenever you see people doing that. And if they try to argue with you about that, tell them that Jimmy Wales said so! (haha).--Jimbo Wales (talk) 17:41, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

Like. ALso: Nazis. Because, you know, it was inevitable. Guy (Help!) 08:58, 7 March 2017 (UTC)

We have a Governor General here who also has a constitutional role in governance, and its really cool in an unexplainable way. He's almost always a nice guy, just like Jimbo ; hardly anybody thinks about or knows about what exactly he does for us, but everybody likes having him around. Nocturnalnow (talk) 00:45, 8 March 2017 (UTC)

Studopedia (online encyclopedia)

I have just discovered Studopedia (http://studopedia.su), which has the top-level domain (TLD) .su (Soviet Union). My understanding of Russian is limited, but Wikipedia:Local Embassy lists 11 Russian-speaking editors (User:Abdullais4u, User:Brandmeister, User:Brateevsky, User:Calaf, User:Evgenior, User:Maxim, User:MaxSem, User:Music1201, User:Orthorhombic, User:SkyBon, User:Fenikals). Also, Wikipedia:Translators available lists some of those as well as some others: User:Daniel Case, User:Halibutt, User:Aleksmot, User:Anthony Ivanoff, User:BACbKA, User:Interchange88, User:Smack, User:TMW, User:VKokielov, User:XJaM). Is Studopedia a reliable source for Wikipedia editors?
—Wavelength (talk) 02:53, 7 March 2017 (UTC) and 05:05, 7 March 2017 (UTC)

I just took a quick look. It looks interesting, I'd be surprised if there is nothing like it in English (maybe Cliff's Notes?). It's just an extensive set of lecture notes and I'd guess it could become very extensive. A couple of problems I can see. 1) What level is the course from which the notes are taken? It looks like they could be anywhere from senior-high school level to senior - university level. It would be nice for people going in to know what they are getting. A more serious problem is that no author or instructor is given. So where do the notes come from? It would be a copyright problem in the US (and likely in .RU too) Traditionally university faculty members own the rights to all the instructional and research material they produce, but by contract this can be modified. I doubt if many folks in Russia ever considered this problem. After 70 years or so of everything being free from copyright, the idea that lecture notes could be copyrighted might seem quite strange to most Russians. So the short answer is "No it can't be used as a reliable source because it hasn't established itself yet as a site that fact checks the material and there probably is a copyright problem." Smallbones_(smalltalk) 05:15, 7 March 2017 (UTC)

It is not feasible to evaluate sources for copyright problems - that's their problem. That said, the presence of a "Copyright infringement?" link at the bottom of the page is kind of a tip-off for the non-Russian speaker that this is probably crowdsourced content that is simply being posted to the site by various editors without being looked at by multiple eyes, i.e. that there is not much of an editorial process aside from relying on readers to notice a plagiarized article now and then. That probably does make it an unreliable source. But the definitive place to ask this is WP:RSN. Wnt (talk) 12:07, 7 March 2017 (UTC)

My DuckDuckGo search for studopedia found these web pages.

—Wavelength (talk) 00:55, 8 March 2017 (UTC)

Why are our Reliable Sources downplaying the CIA/MI5 snooping of smartphones, signal, smart TVs etc.

Jimbo, Anybody who uses a smartphone would be interested in this story that broke last night. But the way the biggest U.S. Reliable Sources are downplaying this story reinforces my view that they are not so reliable because they selectively emphasize or downplay stories based upon no apparent logical connection with the importance, to the public, of those stories. Let me show you what I mean:

The New York Times only have a link on their to last night's article in their "europe" section.
The Washinhgton Post front page just links to last night's article in the "switch' section.
CNN has nothing on the front page except a link to an opinion in their "tech" section telling iphone and smart tv consumers not to worry

The British Telegraph does have an informative article which includes MI5 connection and
The Daily Mail has an article with the most interesting information, information which is mentioned only tangentially in reliable sources. Nocturnalnow (talk) 15:36, 8 March 2017 (UTC)

Perhaps I'm missing your point, but the New York Times page one lead story today was about the CIA leak. Long story with accompanying piece. Haven't checked the rest. Coretheapple (talk) 18:07, 8 March 2017 (UTC)

I don't think you're missing his point - it's just that his claims are false. Mainstream sources are very far from ignoring the story, it was the lead story everywhere that I've seen. Even now, it is front page above the fold on all three of CNN, BBC, and Washington Post. I haven't checked others, but I'm pretty sure it is more or less the same everywhere. Nocturnalnow, you'd be a lot more persuasive if you'd post complaints grounded in facts. This is Wikipedia, where wild false claims aren't really how we go about discussing things, ok?--Jimbo Wales (talk) 18:16, 8 March 2017 (UTC)

Coretheapple and Jimbo, I see that the washingtonpost.com and nytimes.com now have stories on their front page, but did not at the time when I looked at them yesterday. I still do not see a story on cnn.com's front page. Jimbo, I do not ever intend to make any false claims here. I do my best to add value to the discussions. Maybe I am not doing a good job of adding value in your opinion and maybe your opinion is shared by most. I value my time too much to waste it, but so far I think I am contributing in a positive way to the discussions, overall, here on your talk page. Nocturnalnow (talk) 16:13, 9 March 2017 (UTC)

I'm just wondering if its possible that we get a different version of these papers in Canada from what you guys are seeing? Nocturnalnow (talk) 16:18, 9 March 2017 (UTC)

As of right now, 4:23pm Thursday, looking at it from London, I see that CNN.com has this as the top 2 stories on the upper right hand side. Picture of Julian Assange. Then two headlines: "WikiLeaks: CIA hacking details would help tech firms" and "WH slams 'double standard' on WikiLeaks". Geolocation is always a possibility but I have a feeling you may have simply overlooked this.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 16:24, 9 March 2017 (UTC)

Interesting, Right now at 4:53 E.S.T., http://www.cnn.com/ has a photo of a polar bear in the top centre and the upper right side has a list of "top stories", top 4 about Obamacare and no picture of Assange. Nocturnalnow (talk) 22:01, 9 March 2017 (UTC)

To the extent, it is location specific, it is irrational that Nocturnalnow, would argue that, that somehow has to do with reliability, at all. Such things for 24 hour newsfeeds, generally determined by editorial judgments which include algorithms. In general, readers of CNN Canada, just might not care about what Nocturnalnow, says they should or what he would require them too (and what it has to do with his reliability would be only the question of Nocturnalnow's reliability). Alanscottwalker (talk) 16:47, 9 March 2017 (UTC)

Alanscottwalker, you have a good point ( albeit couched in ad hominem and 100% faulty mindreading). If I had realized that what I am seeing here is so different from what is on the USA and UK websites, I likely would not have started this topic. So, I have learned something about 24 hour newsfeeds and algorithms, and thank you for that. Nocturnalnow (talk) 23:07, 9 March 2017 (UTC)

@Nocturnalnow: all I can tell you is that from where I sit in the northeast USA it is getting saturation coverage from every media outlet known to man. Coretheapple (talk) 18:07, 9 March 2017 (UTC)

Thank you, I'm very glad to hear that as I think its an important story for everybody to know about. Nocturnalnow (talk) 23:07, 9 March 2017 (UTC)

Strike a committee to review the reliability of our Reliable Sourcss

So, I think now is a good time to ask our most experienced editors, especially administrators and regulars on the Reliable Soures noticeboard to volunteer for a committee to do a complete review of our reliable sources which have our presumption of reliability and report back to the community with some sort of "Reliability Rating". Nocturnalnow (talk) 15:36, 8 March 2017 (UTC)

No way. See WP:BURO. Also see Lazyness is a virtue. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 15:53, 8 March 2017 (UTC)

"reinforces my view that they are not so reliable" - See Confirmation bias --NeilN ^{talk to me} 15:54, 8 March 2017 (UTC)

You also should look at WP:RECENTISM - this hunger you seem to have for the latest sensation is just out-of-step with encyclopedia writing. Also. passim, to one of your earlier comments, your reliance on Google to research needs some work if you are serious about where to find who published an AP story.-- Alanscottwalker (talk) 15:59, 8 March 2017 (UTC)

That you think the Daily Mail has "the most interesting information" says it all. The measured report of the BBC here, is much more nuanced and relevant. Karst (talk) 17:32, 8 March 2017 (UTC)

I don't comment at WP:RSN as much as I used to, but...

First, a reliable source is one with a reputation for accuracy and fact-checking. The argument Nocturnalnow puts forth above has nothing to with reliability.
Second, if you read WP:RS, it says that reliable sources are not required to be neutral, unbiased, or objective.
Third, I'm not sure that the examples provided represent bias (even if that argument mattered). As I type this, CNN currently has 4 references to this story on their front page, including a a large red banner at the top of the page.

A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 17:58, 8 March 2017 (UTC)

ok, forget all about any examples or any specific sources or me, what does the encyclopedia have to lose by having a formal internal review of the reliable sources which we have a presupposition of reliability? Nocturnalnow (talk) 18:05, 8 March 2017 (UTC)

I think it's a good idea, but it seems very unlikely to me that it will lead to the conclusion you are hoping for, which I think might be to elevate certain tabloid-y sites to be the equivalent of sites that you seem to be complaining about more on the basis of WP:IDONTLIKEIT than anything else.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 18:18, 8 March 2017 (UTC)

Jimbo, I can't read your mind and I know you are not reading mine accurately, so please stop pretending you can read my mind. That's a very bad habit that lots of people in general, including editors here, fall into, thinking they know what someone else's thoughts are. There is actually a lot of empirical research showing that assumptions people make about what someone else is thinking are more often wrong than right. And like it or not, a lot of editors will feel much more comfortable in throwing negative ad hominem assumptions into discussions when they see you do it; and that (throwing ad hominem assumptions into discussions) you must agree, I think, really breaks the flow and hurts the constructiveness of any discussion. Not to mention our AGF foundatuion block. Otoh, I am really glad you see the possible usefulness to Wikipedia of such a review...and as you infer, it may even help to minimize the content from less reliable tabloid type sources. Nocturnalnow (talk) 16:38, 9 March 2017 (UTC)

A good idea? Really? We probably have hundreds of thousands of sources that have a presupposition of reliability for specific content. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 18:34, 8 March 2017 (UTC)

Sure, it's a good idea, as good an idea as having editorial boards (if we wanted to be more organised in presenting information) but that does not mean it is feasible> Alanscottwalker (talk) 18:42, 8 March 2017 (UTC)

Where There's a Will There's a Way. Nocturnalnow (talk) 16:58, 9 March 2017 (UTC)

It might be an idea but I see the responses going two ways. 1) Utter lack of interest from experienced editors, citing some form of "a source's measure of reliability depends on what it's being used as a source for". 2) Interest from Nocturnalnow's fellow travelers which turns into something, judging from the comments above, the community largely ignores. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 19:09, 8 March 2017 (UTC)

Once again, I don't think anyone can predict that the community is going to ignore something in advance, and such a prediction may turn out to be wrong...and in this case, I would even bet that this community would not ignore the results of such an effort. And the prediction based upon the few comments above, is an unscientific prediction in the extreme. Nocturnalnow (talk) 16:51, 9 March 2017 (UTC)

A review would be nice sure, but I do feel like it would be generally impossible, or reflect house POV at the end anyway. I personally have a hard time here lately with the sources that get wide useage, jezebel, buzzfeed etc. Even when I first joined 12 (12! wtf) years ago, these sources would have been marginal at best on the most basic of facts. Not to mention the "Scholars" that somehow deserve a voice because they put out a book or study. Just a big meh from me, good luck. Arkon (talk) 22:09, 9 March 2017 (UTC)

To resist the incoming snark, yes I know those sources I mentioned didn't exist at the time I joined. That "type" of source, is, was, and will most likely always be undue into the future. If it's notable enough, there will be better sources. Arkon (talk) 22:12, 9 March 2017 (UTC)

National Mario Day

It's MAR-10, so Happy National Mario Day, Jimbo! 86.20.193.222 (talk) 14:54, 10 March 2017 (UTC)

Opinion

Please give your opinions on "Wikipedia:Village_pump_(policy)#RfC_Inclusion_of_WP:1 Rule as a guideline.2C policy or process for the English Wikipedia" if you can, thank you.→ὦiki-Coffee^{(talk to me!)} _{(contributions)} 21:32, 10 March 2017 (UTC)

Question about your vision

I would like to know your opinion on the banning of sources with the effective circumvention of timely and local discussions about context. Thank you for your time. Endercase (talk) 23:39, 5 March 2017 (UTC)

In general questions can be handled better if you provide context in the form of links etc. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:42, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

First of all I don't really care about the daily mail thing. However, that is not the only effectively banned source. I do not have a full list however, I am trying to get that put into place should the users choice that banning sources is the way they want to go. Here is where I followed "policy" and brought up the issue. Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard actually does not have the right to generally ban sources (current policy) but they don't really seem to care if they have the "right" or not; wp:bold I guess. My POV is that the removal of sources from a page without discussion on that page's talk even after POV resistance is encountered violates NPOV. My understanding of policy is that that discussion would continue there until a consensus is reached or until a peer escalates to a higher order noticeboard board. Currently, that is not occurring and the user simply cites a ban and leaves. I believe that this is leading to the Chilling Effect here and has caused a portion of different POVs (Anarchists and the like) peers to leave as they feel their POV is not being considered or valued and they don't want to "fight all of Wikipedia" (escalate). While sometimes they start hiding behind an IP or sockpuppet, quite often they just leave. The users that are removing information under the guise of "helping" are often very rude, uncommunicative and elitist further leading to the argument from authority (btw that article needs updated, see talk page) fallacy and to chilling effects. Endercase (talk) 13:50, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

First, there's no policy text I'm aware of that prohibits banning sources. You might want to check out out spam blacklist that stops WP:REFSPAM links from being added. Second, yes, a properly advertised RFC on a relatively central and relevant page can result in recommendations or guideline or policy changes. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 14:01, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

(EC)NPOV states that articles are to be edited in a neutral manner. Not that sources are required to be neutral. If 'Anarchists and the like' are leaving (citation needed) because they feel their POV is not being listened to, thats because it isnt. Wikipedia doesnt care about the POV of editors except where it affects their editing. Their personal opinion is irrelevant to the content of an article, only what is verifiable in reliable sources. If an editor edits from the standpoint of their personal POV, they are already breaking a core editing policy. The reason why some sources are de-facto banned for most uses (except as either primary or opinion pieces) is that their content is skewed wildly by their POV. There are also plenty of sources that have a clear and marked POV but are considered reliable because of their editorial practices, quality, staff etc. In short, I dont think you understand the NPOV policy, its application to editors, or how it relates to sources. Only in death does duty end (talk) 14:13, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

If we don't reject some sources, then we must accept every source. Including [ http://zapatopi.net/blackhelicopters/ ]. --Guy Macon (talk) 15:34, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

The purpose of the post was not to argue about policy but to ask an opinion. However, I am not arguing that sources can't be banned. I am arguing that Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard can't ban sources without having a discussion about banning in general first and changing the policy that the board is for reviewing "whether particular sources are reliable in context." Also if a logical and cited POV is not represented or even acknowledged in a so-called "NPOV" stance then it can not be called NPOV. In my experience, new editors will stick to editing one or two articles and may be experts in those topics. The centralization of power and discouragement of discussion when it comes to determining the reliability of sources discounts those editors' knowledge base and may result in missing specific types of information: information on shadow banning, other types of censure, or other specialized information. I believe that current policy suggests that these users should be allowed to state their case and have a real discussion for their sources' use in context on that particular article's talk page (where they feel comfortable) prior being required to move elsewhere. Additionally, those editors are not currently allowed to join in on an active discussion on the reliability of a particular source as those discussions have been archived. This requires they start a new one which can be very intimidating for users that do not hang out in the noticeboard and are not aware that all peers are equal. This leads to them not representing their POV to the community. It is my understanding of NPOV that all relevant and logical viewpoints that wish to be displayed may do so with attribution and citation as long as they have "due weight". Endercase (talk) 15:44, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

Sources are "banned" by adding to the filter. There is no actual "ban," otherwise. There is general editorial disapproval of some sources (such disapproved sources are generally described in various Wikipedia policy and guideline, and more particularly applied to various sources (sometimes, that happens in a more formal discussion, yes at the RsN). It is usually pretty consistent across articles. Sorry, if you can't convince others something is reliable or generally reliable, it's not. Alanscottwalker (talk) 15:58, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

Actually, other peers (the ones doing the removal) will not even engage in discussion on the reliability of a particular source in context. As I mentioned earlier, they simply cite the "ban" and will not engage further. Endercase (talk) 16:04, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

I believe Endercase is referring to editors (including me) removing material from Stealth banning that was using Breitbart and Infowars as sources, because they do not meet WP:RS. Endercase's position seems to be that making such a judgment about a source constitutes an NPOV violation. (Please correct me if I'm wrong.) I have stopped engaging because I have nothing further to add. Trivialist (talk) 16:43, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

Ah I wondered what kicked this off. Yes it is highly unlikely that consensus is going to arrive anywhere (including RSN) to state in an article that <insert social media> stealth/ghosts alt/far right commentators - sourced to Breitbart and infowars. Those sources are highly unreliable for that particular information. Only in death does duty end (talk) 16:59, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

I am not just referring to my personal experiences. I would like to keep this particular discussion about the meta. I am not saying that making that judgment violates NPOV, I am saying that making that judgment without a discussion particularly one about context violates NPOV and the citation of a closed general discussion by Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard is irrelevant as that board can only make judgements about sources in context. Additionally, argument about if banning then make list. Endercase (talk) 17:15, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

Please actually read the close. "Consensus has determined that the Daily Mail (including its online version, dailymail.co.uk) is generally unreliable, and its use as a reference is to be generally prohibited, especially when other more reliable sources exist. As a result, the Daily Mail should not be used for determining notability, nor should it be used as a source in articles." No absolute bans or "must nots". In the meta sense, use some common sense. We're generally prohibiting the use of such things like the National Enquirer, whatever the context. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 17:36, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

That was not the consensus of opinion based on views expressed in the RS discussion - nobody's opinion supported that result! Almost all the banners wanted an absolute total ban, even having it hardwired that a url link to the Daily Mail would be blocked. The opposes wanted no ban. So I don't see how that close can be said to represent a consensus of opinions. It should have been the full thing or nothing. Also, there is a weasely vagueness about "should". It's my experience here that "shoulds" either become "musts" or remain as "shoulds" according to the power status of those arguing the point. Guidance should be a "should", policy should be a "must", imo. Tiptoethrutheminefield (talk) 22:30, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

Please stop saying things that are not true. There was a strong consensus for an edit filter that gives the user trying to link to TDM a warning that he/she is free to ignore. There was no consensus for an edit filter that prevents the user from linking to TDM. --Guy Macon (talk) 07:54, 7 March 2017 (UTC)

Sources fall into three broad classes: generally reliable, assumed to be accurate unless proven otherwise; generally unreliable, to be reviewed case-by-case; and never reliable. The Mail was considered in the first, but should have been int he second. That is all that changed. The approach to sources of the second class has not changed, and the handling of Daily Mail links post-RfC is fully consistent with that. It's not on the blacklist (which would prevent linking). More importantly, I have yet to see any credible case advanced as to why deprecating use of the Mail as a source, damages the project in any meaningful way. As a tabloid with a dubious reputation, deprecating use absolutely is consistent with normal practice. Some people make arguments analogous to WP:OTHERSTUFF, but that's not an argument for including the Mail, it's an argument against including others (e.g. the Express, which is also bloody awful, but a much smaller problem). Guy (Help!) 09:24, 7 March 2017 (UTC)

As the question is quite general, I will answer quite generally. I think that a good way to think of this is in terms of context. I think that an absolute ban on linking to a site under any circumstances should be applied only to a very narrow set of cases (malware, shock sites, persistent perpetrators of spammy links from wikipedia articles, etc). I think that in all other cases, context has to be considered, but that context can and generally should include an overall presumption based on longstanding history. If we have as available sources for a particular article peer reviewed academic journals and high quality newspapers and magazines, then relying on a tabloid as a source would really require a strong contextual justification.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 17:38, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

That actually is essentially the position of everyone who took part in the RS discussion and who opposed the blanket ban (I know, I was there - and opposed it). Nobody thought the DM was a good source to use, but the opposes wanted things decided on a case-by-case basis, knowing (I think) what a can-of-worms would result from having such a ban (not the bad publicity, but that it would be unworkable and that the ban proposers if successful would make a move on more and more sources). Tiptoethrutheminefield (talk) 22:12, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

That seems like an unusual conclusion to me, as I think what I said very strongly supports the result that we got to. The Mail is generally not reliable enough to use as a source, but we leave open the possibility (with some good justification) for using it where appropriate.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 00:14, 8 March 2017 (UTC)

Wrong. The successful proposition was explicitly for "a demonstrable need to use [the Dailly Mail] instead of other sources" and that was the close, in line with the consensus. Alanscottwalker (talk) 22:51, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

Exactly.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 00:14, 8 March 2017 (UTC)

No, that was the position of pretty much everybody, whether for or against. Misrepresenting the nature of the debate is routine but should be avoided. It came down to: is the Daily Mail generally reliable or not? And the answer was, not. Everything else falls out from that. The consensus is pretty clear. The Mail is not usually reliable, for the reasons discussed at length in the RfC, so any use of the Mail requires a context-specific justification. And let's be honest, the conclusion that the Daily Mail is unreliable is not actually controversial. They have a long history of articles promoting climate change denial, they printed egregious lies about immigration, especially during the lead up to the Brexit referendum, their inaccurate health coverage is the stuff of legend, and many - if not most - of the stories in Mail Online are churnalism. Guy (Help!) 09:18, 7 March 2017 (UTC)

My latest favorite is this one which is archived here in case they edit it. This story appeared 5 days ago and is substantially false, and has been debunked.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 00:14, 8 March 2017 (UTC)

Well we all know that was fake because it used 'magazine'. Who buys a magazine for that these days.... Only in death does duty end (talk) 09:04, 8 March 2017 (UTC)

We have an article on magazines... --Guy Macon (talk) 14:36, 8 March 2017 (UTC)

Jimbo, Here is an article about that very case: [3] Key quote: "And you wonder why Wikipedia recently banned the Daily Mail as a source for information on the community encyclopedia? This is why." Other coverage:[4][5][6] --Guy Macon (talk) 14:36, 8 March 2017 (UTC)

@Jimbo Wales: Really? That's what you consider a "debunking?" By Mashable no less? Despite it being clickbait that lured you in, and picked up by a number of news sites we consider reliable, the part they got wrong were fine details. A man was found dead on his vast quantity of pornography. The death wasn't noticed for at least a month because the magazines absorbed the decaying body fluids. It's main message is that many people in Japan die without being missed until decay indicates their death. If that's your favorite example of what the press gets wrong, there are no reliable sources in the news media. --68.228.239.7 (talk) 23:27, 9 March 2017 (UTC)

I feel like the high quality newspapers and magazines are no longer consistently reliable. Nocturnalnow (talk) 01:06, 7 March 2017 (UTC)

Feelings are not facts. Yes, all media have the chance of errors, and getting things right is hard. The Mail appears to have a substantially different approach to these matters than the kinds of papers we should normally accept. It's really worth noting that this is not an issue of politics - there are extremely respectable right-leaning news outlets, and there are extremely questionable left-leaning news outlets. What we are after is a general level of reliability such that we can consistently rely on a source. The Mail, by broad consensus, doesn't do that.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 00:14, 8 March 2017 (UTC)

I just heard about a story about the CIA infiltrating the 2012 French elections. That seems important to me, but a google search does not show many of the higher quality papers covering it. Only abc and Natl. Post with a Canadian angle. I searched the NY Times and CNN and could not find it there. I just heard about it for the first time..point being, I think that part of being reliable is to report all important news. Nocturnalnow (talk) 01:25, 8 March 2017 (UTC)

The fact that you feel this is an indication that you lack basic common sense. --JBL (talk) 14:02, 8 March 2017 (UTC)

On a semi-related issue, one of Trump's many claims was that terrorism is under-reported. When he was going off about terrorism attacks not being covered, the BBC wrote this article, I assume as a non-direct reply, to state 'Yes we (and others) did cover all this stuff'. Of particular note in that article is that Sean Spicer when reeling off his list of terrorism attacks, left out the significant ones directed at Muslims/non-whites. (Which incidentally most news orgs did cover anyway). Only in death does duty end (talk) 14:21, 8 March 2017 (UTC)

We have always banned certain sources due to abuse, but I don't think that's what you mean. I suspect you are talking about the Daily Mail RfC and the fact that sources such as Breitbart are normally rejected as sources. This is just Wikipedia working as Wikipedia should. We remove predatory open access journals, we remove sites that have a poor reputation for fact checking. And the value of inbound links form Wikipedia is such that these sites always complain bitterly. Guess what? We don't care. Guy (Help!) 09:09, 7 March 2017 (UTC)

In my case was not about the bloody Daily Mail. It currently appears as if all right wing American sources are banned. They are used they are removed without discussion and require a specific exemption for use. When reverted they are removed again, once again without discussion. When discussion are made on the specific users' talk page are made they cite the lack of general reliability of these sources. In my specific case, there was absolutely no discussion about specific context prior to being told that I should escalate, but that escalation was entirely pointless (which is just the polite way of saying "F*** Off, I don't like you"). All of this is completely visible and open. At best their bans fall under Wikipedia:Dispute_resolution#Community_sanctions but as it is site-wide instead of "in a particular area" it does not even qualify, as such their actions represent a large change in policy, discussion must be made about banning in general as they wp:bold and avoided it. As of now, we have a number of users running around removing all sorts of cited information because it came from sources they don't like. I take "This page is for posting questions regarding whether particular sources are reliable in context." to mean that determinations made on a sources reliability must reference context and can not be general. WP:CONTEXTMATTERS you can't just logically say "X is not reliable by Wikipedia standards" See WP:BIASED. I believe the general "ban everything that I don't like" syndrome here is partly caused by WP:QUESTIONABLE "Questionable sources are generally unsuitable". However, if you keep reading it continues with "for citing contentious claims". If the cited claims aren't contentious there should be no problems. As such the use of X source shouldn't automatically cause editors to remove it. I think that there are editors that just search for the use of sources they don't like remove them along with the information. For instance the claim that shadow banning disproportionately effects Right leaning accounts isn't contentious in my POV and is easily verifiable though independent research. Yet, still the source then the information was removed citing wp:due. Because, I didn't have any sources after they removed Breitbart for not being reliable. I have also been accused of WP:FORUMSHOP by posting here, and would like feedback on that. Endercase (talk) 21:13, 8 March 2017 (UTC)

Its not really a "left"/"right" thing, its an establishment/everybody else thing. Nocturnalnow (talk) 23:39, 8 March 2017 (UTC)

@Nocturnalnow Kinda hard to tell without a master list, do you have one? Endercase (talk) 16:55, 10 March 2017 (UTC)

Endercase, no I don't, and its a good idea for somebody to create one. The E.U. and Saudi Arabia would be two good places to start. Nocturnalnow (talk) 22:48, 10 March 2017 (UTC)

Closing remarks: Considering that this was a request for input and that input has been given I'm not sure why this is still open. I consent to it being closed if that matters. I would like to thank Jimbo Wales for allowing me to ask this question and even answering it. It really is amazing that you still have an open door policy here. I have been accused of being wp:nothere partly due to these posts. If anyone has any POV on that please share that view on Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents. I really am sorry that I upset other users by my actions. The open nature of Wikipedia is wonderful but can lead to folly, I guess. Endercase (talk) 00:33, 11 March 2017 (UTC)

COI account (undeclared)

Jimbo, take a look at the edit history of the account User:Jatucker. Does it strike you (potentially) as a self-interested account that's here to promote Mr. Tucker and the FEE organization, rather than to generally assist Wikipedia in becoming a wonder of the world? - 72.238.54.247 (talk) 14:36, 11 March 2017 (UTC)

ANI thread about individual paying network of editors to work in WP

Just wanted to post about this ANI thread: Vipul's paid editing enterprise. Am unaware of precedents for this. Thread is long but I think the issue should get thought through carefully (hopefully without drama) Jytdog (talk) 08:18, 10 March 2017 (UTC)

I agree that it should get attention from all, but I think drama is absolutely called for when the spirit of any human endeavor is at stake. Nocturnalnow (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 23:28, 10 March 2017 (UTC)

oy. that is drama. Jytdog (talk) 08:04, 11 March 2017 (UTC)

I'm smiling,Jytdog, because you are correct. Nocturnalnow (talk) 15:31, 11 March 2017 (UTC)

An interesting Afd discussion re: Should WP have an article that tends to revolve around Trump's attacks of the American press?

Hi Jimbo, An Afd discussion regarding an article that tends to revolve largely around Trump's attacks of the American press, is going on at Afd discussion. I thought you might find this discussion interesting. Thanks, Scott P. (talk) 20:29, 8 March 2017 (UTC)

Indeed. I agree by the way with those who say this article is a WP:COATRACK.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 10:50, 9 March 2017 (UTC)

Actually, I have come to realize that it is indeed currently more of an "essay article" than a "balanced article." I thank you kindly for reviewing it. I am considering making a suggestion to the Afd group that it be currently turned into a redirect, and that I and a few "more neutral friends" might try to work on it for awhile to make it more neutral, and then possibly resubmit it. If you might happen to have any further comments on this possibility, they would be most appreciated. Scott P. (talk) 03:55, 10 March 2017 (UTC)

Also need a WP guideline re Trumpisms

I also think WP needs a guideline about "WP:Coverage of Donald Trump" because he has said/done so many bizarre things, and explain to editors how Trump got elected by fake news about Secretary Hillary Clinton in minor plurality primaries (with no run-off elections) and winning by average 5 votes per precinct, apparently where low voter turnout, to offset massive Clinton +3 million popular vote where higher turnout. Such a guideline +sources is needed to explain bizarre ideas, such as build-a-wall (from deep foundation) despite 40% of illegal immigrants are visa-overstay (not fence-hopping) and drugs are smuggled via hundreds or thousands of under-border tunnels, some of which extend miles (several km) underground, while even small border walls are known to violate wildlife migration regulations as reason for courts to deny wall construction. Likewise explain Trump's sex-molestation comments and wild claims of Obama "wiretapping Trump Tower" with no motive and zero evidence but being investigated by Congressional committees, while Trump University still investigated for fraud, and Trump investments transferred to a trust where Trump is sole benefactor as if clears conflict-of-interest collusion; plus Trump raved, "I love Wikileaks" which is known to assist treason in leaking hundreds (thousands?) of U.S. classified documents, while Trump condemned Secretary Hillary Clinton ("Lock her up") for receiving only 25 secret emails on her private email server over 4 years. To many Wikipedians, the recent coverage of Trump would be mind-boggling, as the minimal background to knowingly edit pages about Trump, in the context of the chaotic, twisted nature of Trump's comments and actions. As one comedian noted, "Donald Trump has been President for 35 years now; at least that's what it seems". However, this is not funny to Wikipedians, but rather a swamp of extremely disturbing information to sort into coherent text. -Wikid77 (talk) 22:14, 8 March 2017 (UTC)

We don't have guidelines covering such narrow subject matter, and this is hardly the place for such a discussion. One would have hoped a veteran editor with 10 years of experience would know that. Trump may have said some bizarre things, but your examples aren't convincing. You claim Trump is making claims with zero evidence, then you assert he won based upon "fake news". Can you appreciate the irony?--S Philbrick (Talk) 23:20, 8 March 2017 (UTC)

Thank you for characterizing a discussion about Donald Trump as "irony" because that so concisely indicates the problem of editors imagining Trump is somehow merely ironic rather than shockingly out-of-touch with mainstream views and court decisions across the world. As I noted above, the guideline would include sources, such as the old 2016 reports of wall-harming-wildlife news:

"The Environmental Impact of the U.S.-Mexico Border Wall" at Newsweek.com (2016-02-26)
"What would Trump's wall mean for wildlife?" at BBC News (2016-09-01)
U.S. courts have prevented further wall construction per wildlife regulations.

Similarly, dozens of other sources could be linked to explain the bizarre level of comments by Trump, as background for editors when editing the related WP pages. -Wikid77 (talk) 19:47, 9 March 2017 (UTC)

You missed the point. You made a claim, without evidence, which turns out to be false, even while railing against someone for purportedly doing that. Do you now understand the irony?--S Philbrick (Talk) 22:17, 9 March 2017 (UTC)

I noted Trump won by low voter turnout in some precincts and by fake news, such as noted in source "10 Times Trump Spread Fake News" (2011-2016). Donald Trump repeatedly stated fake news, as false reports where candidate Trump got 59 four-Pinocchios ratings (source: [7]), and won the 2016 U.S. presidential election while those voters noted they believed Trump in his fake news. -Wikid77 (talk) 20:43, 10 March 2017 (UTC)

You didn't "note" it, you conducted Original Research and posted your own conclusion, accompanied by zero evidence. I hope you don't edit Wikipedia articles the same way.--S Philbrick (Talk) 14:02, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

The policy and guidance implications are not new. Only the volume of crap is different. As I have said before, I do not know whether we should have an article on shit Donald Trump says or whether it should be a project page, but there is definite merit in collecting a list of the claims he has made and the objective assessment of their merit, because otherwise we're going to end up with endless arguments over whether a particular claim should go into some other article or not. Example: should the article on Obama include the bogus accusation of wiretapping? I say no, obviously. Guy (Help!) 11:13, 9 March 2017 (UTC)

I see value in the creation of a FAQ, perhaps created in a central place, so it could be transcluded on multiple relevant pages, in the same way we have done so for other contentious issues.--S Philbrick (Talk) 14:03, 9 March 2017 (UTC)

I like that idea, slightly overly colorful title of shit Donald Trump says. Perhaps the title could be a slightly more stodgy and encyclopedic sounding Informationally challenged Trump statements, no..... how about: List of poorly documented Trump claims? Scott P. (talk) 04:36, 10 March 2017 (UTC)

Probably, the thing to do for now, is just write good articles, and not the COATRACK above. I haven't looked into it much but "Deep State (United States)" might be such an article. [8] or at least a section of some article. Alanscottwalker (talk) 15:49, 9 March 2017 (UTC)

It seems underestimated to imagine "COATRACK" when I think the reality is more like Trump is swimming in a vast "Cesspool" of info-sewage, and that is the reason a project page is needed to provide background for unsuspecting editors. -Wikid77 (talk) 19:47, 9 March 2017 (UTC)

Trump's doppelganger

I think everyone would agree, Trump's new leadership of the "free world" represents a new social phenomenon that may have significant implications for how the world in general consumes information for some time to come. Whether or not what I will call the "Trump news cycle effect" will have a positive, negative, or neutral effect on information consumption is something that is most probably not agreed upon. As I pointed out in the Afd for the new Ethical Journalism article, I do have my own admittedly biased personal opinion, that if Trump were to succeed in his apparent attempts at fully discrediting the traditional American news media, eventually this could spill over into even discrediting our humble institution the now "traditional" American encyclopedia media! Obviously my last statement here is not agreed upon by all, but I contend that it is worth at least considering and discussing respectfully and rationally.

The fact that Trump seems to have in one way or another profited for years by perpetuating various conspiracy theories, and the fact that over the years Wikipedia has managed to expose many widely published conspiracy theories for what they truly are, would seem to me to naturally tend to put WP in a sort of a primarily adversarial position regarding Trump, especially for however so long as he continues to make wild unverifiable claims. Were Trump's doppelganger an aspiring WP editor, trying to weave his wild claims into articles, he would probably get himself permanently banned here within a matter of hours!

So, the question is, would it be helpful to write an FAQ regarding the new "Trump news cycle effect" and how WP intends to specifically deal with it? In my not so humble opinion, for sure! I would propose that for starters everyone who has commented in this section might possibly be invited to serve on such a committee. Scott P. (talk) 03:34, 10 March 2017 (UTC)

I just noticed WP page "Big lie" to explain getting people to believe a preposterous claim by repetition (as a news report), which is so big it would be obviously false, as noted in the U.S. 1941 O.S.S. report (but enough people could believe a big lie to sway elections). Likewise, to create a distraction by yet another outrageous newsflash is another old tactic which could distract from refuting fake news before the public has time to process how they have been duped by a barrage of fake claims shotgunned into the mainstream news, unaware how the echoing of such false claims across numerous news outlets often will empower fake news rather than clearly diffuse and refute the substance. To stop a firehosing of numerous fake claims, the hose should be shutoff as much easier than carefully clearing the swamp of false info-sewage. People must stop repeating the false claims, as easier than trying to refute the complex details of how the myriad lies are false. -Wikid77 (talk) 05:18, 11 March 2017 (UTC)

Suggested kernal for a "Trump Guidelines" project?

I have now put together here, a "suggested kernal" for a "guidelines project" as suggested above. I would very much appreciate anyone's comments, and/ or suggestions for improvement, revision (or deletion) of it.

Thanks,

Scott P. (talk) 19:52, 10 March 2017 (UTC)

However, the tactic of creating a WP FAQ page might be more effective to inform enough editors about the shocking hundreds of fake-news issues to beware, as well as the prior 7 years of distortion, such as noted in source, "10 Times Trump Spread Fake News" (2011-2016). -Wikid77 (talk) 05:18, 11 March 2017 (UTC)

Another source estimated Trump had "at least 194 false" remarks during 50 days in office: "How President Trump has already hurt American democracy — in just 50 days" (2017-03-10). -Wikid77 (talk) 08:44, 12 March 2017 (UTC)

I have been approaching the situation from a larger angle, recognizing that much the situation about reporting about Trump is just as much the fault of the press losing their objectivity over the last several years as it is about the growing divide between political and ideological spectrums - a situation that is far wider than just Trump, as it can be seen to include the ongoing culture war, the "safe spaces" in colleges, Black Lives Matter, Brexit, and much much more. A lot has to do with balancing WP:NOT#NEWS and WP:DEADLINE with NPOV and other facets, basically - in 5, 10, 20 years time, how much of this mudslinging from all directions (no side is innocent here) is appropriate encyclopedic content. I've only started putting together ideas at User:Masem/RSPoly for this, and far from a presentable proposal, but it is along the same lines of applying caution rather than being up-to-the-minute. --MASEM (t) 19:18, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

Proposed draft now begun for "Trump fact-checking article"

I've just started a proposed draft of the proposed first article in this project, which is linked to from h e r e. This thing is going to take a lot of time before it will be ready to move into article space, and I just spent as much time as I will have for the next several days on this. Any help by anyone else to format and incorporate all of this data into the page would be most welcome. Thanks, Scott P. (talk) 06:55, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

With all due respect to your initiative, this looks like a one-sided attempt to criticize the incumbent US President. With a spattering of Reductio ad Hitlerum for good measure… Not Wikipedia's job, not at all. (Not WP's job to lionize him either, obviously.) — JFG ^talk 18:16, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

Russian Government Youth Group

Was wondering if in your view the following is good news "Russian Government Youth Group Wants to Make Wikipedia More Patriotic · Global Voices"..--Moxy (talk) 05:40, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

Thank you for publicizing that article written by Kevin Rothrock for Global Voices Online and posted on February 24, 2017.

The information is relevant to the work of editors in Category:Wikipedians who contribute to the Russian Wikipedia and Wikipedia:WikiProject Russia/Members and Category:Wikipedians in Russia and Category:User ru.

I invite everyone reading this to examine what Jehovah's Witnesses have published about Russia.

—Wavelength (talk) 00:56, 14 March 2017 (UTC)

New term: fake tweets

The U.S. news media has used the term "fake tweets" which provides a more-definitive term, compared to the general phrase "fake news" which some have limited to indicate fake news agencies. The term 'fake tweets' also reduces the propaganda technique of reappropriating the term 'fake news' to imply, or insinuate, that somehow mainstream news sources were essentially faked news sites, as an attack not only on U.S. news agencies but also other news sources across the world. Wikipedia currently has extensive coverage in "propaganda techniques" but limiting the impact of propaganda could be explained in "antipropaganda" or "anti-propaganda techniques" such as not repeat a false claim when refuting details but only refer to the general remark or fake tweet indirectly, perhaps reworded as a "non-memorable paraphrase" to avoid empowering the original false claim in repetition. -Wikid77 (talk) 09:32, 12 March 2017 (UTC)

A search in Google Scholar does not reveal many sources about "anti-propaganda" and there seems to be more talk indicating shutdown or elimination of propaganda sources. It will require more study to expand "Antipropaganda techniques" to write a collection of clever methods to diffuse the impact of propaganda, rather than burn/silence it. -Wikid77 (talk) 21:30, 14 March 2017 (UTC)

Also found some sources for 'Trumpspeak' as topic: I was also unaware people have been writing about so-called "Trumpspeak" (or "Trump-speak") for several months now. It seems to be a form of utterly self-righteous rhetoric, posted in 140 characters or less. People have tried to imitate Trumpspeak in other matters. For example, if we had a similar Wikispeak, people might say:

"Saw Wikipedia today. Excellent. Very popular. Yuge numbers. Never any errors. Amaze-zing. Users never quarrel there. Un-believable. Great stuff. Believe me."

You forgot to put "Sad!" (or "Unfair!" or "Something with an exclamation point!") at the end. Shock Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 18:41, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

I think there could be enough sources already to explain the characteristics of Trumpspeak to readers. -Wikid77 (talk) 17:19, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

Upcoming blue SAVE button & larger buttons

This is just an FYI reminder of the planned MediaWiki update to reset the edit Save-Changes button as a larger blue Save button, as well as other larger buttons. See the related wp:TECHPUMP thread over there: "wp:Village_pump (technical)#Heads_up_on_a_UI_change". Some users were troubled by the prior MediaWiki shrinking of the Edit-Summary text size. -Wikid77 (talk) 22:02, 14 March 2017 (UTC)

Quiz versus trolls

NRKbeta, a division of NRK (the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation), is acting against trolling by requiring readers to take a quiz about an article before they can post comments about it.

Website fights trolls by making readers pass a quiz before commenting—James Titcomb for The Daily Telegraph (March 2, 2017)

—Wavelength (talk) 00:32, 15 March 2017 (UTC)

Excellent idea! But isn't this going to "unfairly" impact the people--especially from the U.S.--who insist on "alternative facts" and claim that any article written by the "MSM" can't be trusted? Is it really "fair" to insist they actually read the article before insisting it is wrong? ;) --David Tornheim (talk) 00:44, 15 March 2017 (UTC)

Another unflattering news article

Out this morning but I cannot link to it (a) as the outlet in question is now an 'unreliable source' and (b) it outs one of our editors. Notwithstanding, it raises many points that I have been concerned about over the years. For example

the supposed exercise in democracy [to ban the source] took place in virtual secrecy, and was supported by a mere 53 of WP editors, or 0.00018 per cent of the site’s 30 million total, plus five administrators.
Yet WP remains happy to use the state propaganda outlets of many of the world’s most repressive and autocratic Left-wing dictatorships as a source for information. 'Wikipedia has not, for example, banned the Chinese government’s Xinhua news agency, Iran’s Press TV or the Kremlin mouthpiece Russia Today'. (They didn't mention the Kazakhstan affair, though).
the ban raises troubling questions about free speech and censorship in the online era.
90 per cent of editors are men, and most are white. Only a tiny proportion come from outside the developed world.
WMF refused to answer questions.
WMF has huge cash reserves, average salary of employees estimated at £90k, yet WP calls itself a 'small nonprofit'.

Peter Damian (talk) 11:25, 4 March 2017 (UTC)

It is always good to take concerns over Wikipedia seriously. That is important for our public image and to prevent discreditation.

was supported by a mere 53 of WP editors, or 0.00018 per cent of the site’s 30 million total, plus five administrators.

Well, that's the fault of users who prefer passivity over participation. And note that this passivity can be a good thing if you are mostly neutral on a topic or aren't knowledgeable in that area. But it's not a fault of Wikipedia.

the supposed exercise in democracy [to ban the source] took place in virtual secrecy

Didn't it take place at the very visible reliable sources noticeboard? But if that's what some got from it we should now think about how to make such discussions known to editors to whom it matters. For instance should or was a note added to the DailyMail article? What more could we do here?

Yet WP remains happy to use the state propaganda outlets of many of the world’s most repressive and autocratic Left-wing dictatorships as a source for information. 'Wikipedia has not, for example, banned the Chinese government’s Xinhua news agency, Iran’s Press TV or the Kremlin mouthpiece Russia Today'. (They didn't mention the Kazakhstan affair, though).

Well if they're reliable they should be allowed to be used. If they continuously make false claims and the like we should have the same discussions about them. They don't necessarily need to be "banned" - discouraging their use or establishing ways to and groups that track their usages would be other, potentially more constructive, ways to deal with them.

the ban raises troubling questions about free speech and censorship in the online era.

Let them cry. If that puts pressure on journalists and news agencies to actually do their job that is good. It's not censorship but simply the recognition of the state of unreliability of a specific source.

90 per cent of editors are men, and most are white. Only a tiny proportion come from outside the developed world.

Well that's largely not Wikipedia's fault but of female and non-white people as well as those not coming from the developed world. Of course the social structures around them need to be considered (such as education systems) and hence we can't really say that it's (at least mostly) their fault. But that indeed means potential bias. Here we should probably continue making Wikipedia easier to contribute to.

WMF refused to answer questions.

We, the community, need ways to answer these questions. They shouldn't be reaching out to WMF but Wikipedia which is us editors (and admins & WMF people). I already suggested pages and ways for said here.

WMF has huge cash reserves, average salary of employees estimated at £90k, yet WP calls itself a 'small nonprofit'.

Good point. Relevant to this is this Signpost Op-ed: "Wikipedia has cancer". Per m:Wikimedia Foundation salaries Sue Gardner and Lila Tretikov are getting ~$300.000 per year. What the heck? One could say that executive directors should probably earn more and that they could work in other positions where they could earn much more. However this is far too much considering that it's donated money that could be used for improvements of Wikipedia. It's not enough to make salaries transparent if they're too high (and the last ones are from 2014). If I would work for WMF if I'd totally suffice with under $20.000 to leave all the rest to Wikipedia so that development projects can be funded. I don't think that the job of executive directors can't be carried out properly by other people who are also taking up less financial resources. I think we need ways for the community to dismiss WMF workers and decide on new ones.

--Fixuture (talk) 12:53, 4 March 2017 (UTC)

I think you should reconsider how you are thinking about salaries. The average php developer salary in San Francisco, California, is nearly $120,000. The idea that the WMF should pay a maximum of $20,000 is basically saying that in exchange for the privilege of working at WMF, people should give up 5/6th of their earning potential. Instead, I think that the WMF should pay fair market salaries taking into account the fact that we are a nonprofit and can never really fully compete with the kind of earnings people can get with stock options, etc. at other organizations. The Daily Mail acts like our salaries are out of line - but they are absolutely clearly not out of line at all.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 16:58, 5 March 2017 (UTC)

As a volunteer php developer supporting two important editor workflows (WP:RM and WP:PMG) I earn zero dollars. Until a WMF developer leaves and actually takes a paying job elsewhere and is willing to reveal what they earn there (or takes a pay cut to join WMF), it's only speculation to give a figure for what "earning potential" WMF programmers are sacrificing. I don't know what my "earning potential" is these days but I'd be content to make $10,000 for my part-time work. I feel I'm being taken advantage of a bit when I'm not paid anything. I don't envy the younger guys who have student loans and mortgages to pay off. wbm1058 (talk) 15:48, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

wbm1058, thank you for your work. You are correct about salary speculation and I feel you should be paid an honorarium of at least $10,000. Nocturnalnow (talk) 00:44, 7 March 2017 (UTC)

@Wbm1058: I'd also like to thank you! Please know that your work is valued by the community even if you don't get any feedback or returns.

What I would suggest to Jimbo and the WMF would be to realize that a non-profit running on donated money is not the same as an ordinary company and that there are probably many capable people who would love to work for Wikipedia with a way underaverage pay so that more money can be used to improve Wikipedia. That would also mean that the most passionate would work for Wikipedia. I don't mean to in any way offend anyone working for the WMF but I do think that while they may be doing a good job and are passionate there are many people who are more passionate. It's not a bad thing if salaries are way below average (as long as they're not unreasonable and enough for living of course). Actually most donators wouldn't expect and probably oppose such high salaries to be paid. Wikipedia should try to be as cost-efficient as possible.

Instead of hiring one developer with an (apparently bizarrely high) average income hire 5 more passionate ones. Such could be hired from the volunteer developers, such as Wbm1058, who already contribute without reward. Also I have no sympathy for giving that much money to executive directors: they are running on donated money and this money was not for luxury life but rather improvements to Wikipedia with employees having an average lifestyle of the average donator. If you don't do that you unnecessarily waste money, risk disturbing donators and miss opportunities to critically improve Wikipedia.

--Fixuture (talk) 23:38, 7 March 2017 (UTC)

Thanks guys. I appreciate the support. Just noting that this edit, which included a {{ping|Wbm1058}} to me, did not trigger an entry to my notifications list. Seems like a bug; I've noticed this before, so wonder how many pings I miss. Perhaps your refactoring of previous comments in the same edit is why this wasn't picked up by the notification system. But, as I know that notifications are somewhat unreliable, I make a mental note to check back in on recent discussions. wbm1058 (talk) 16:32, 8 March 2017 (UTC)

Well, that's the fault of users who prefer passivity over participation. And note that this passivity can be a good thing if you are mostly neutral on a topic or aren't knowledgeable in that area. But it's not a fault of Wikipedia.

The time period before the RFC is closed should be a very long time period when it is about doing whatever was done re: DM. At least 6 months.

Didn't it take place at the very visible reliable sources noticeboard? But if that's what some got from it we should now think about how to make such discussions known to editors to whom it matters. For instance should or was a note added to the DailyMail article? What more could we do here?

Maybe we should put a small notice in the publication in question when such a RFC is underway, if it looks as if the result of the RFC will be the same result as the DM RFC.

Let them cry. If that puts pressure on journalists and news agencies to actually do their job that is good. It's not censorship but simply the recognition of the state of unreliability of a specific source.

Its hard to disagree with any assertion worded like this "raises troubling questions" as that assertion, imo, only says the event is something worth talking about and thinking about, which is something that most of us are willing to do ( talk about and think about what happened in the DM RFC )

Nocturnalnow (talk) 15:49, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

Well if they're reliable they should be allowed to be used. If they continuously make false claims and the like we should have the same discussions about them. They don't necessarily need to be "banned" - discouraging their use or establishing ways to and groups that track their usages would be other, potentially more constructive, ways to deal with them.

I don't recall a single RSN discussion where RT was decided to be a reliable source. The consensus in respect of RT is, as far as I know, similar to that re the Daily Mail: use only in exceptional circumstances. In any case, this is WP:OTHERSTUFF. We should not use any of those crappy propaganda outlets either! Guy (Help!) 09:14, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

CNN is just as much of a crappy propaganda outlet, except their propaganda brainwashes people not on behalf of a political/national entity, but rather on behalf of the global political, economic, and especially cultural, establishment....with their "anonymous" sources and their "my sources (often unnamed) tell me that", and nowadays even holding round table discussions among their own employees giving the misleading appearance of being a discussion which represents all viewpoints of an issue. I mean, their propaganda perpetuating and repetitive dribble is actually much worse today than any other propaganda vehicle I've ever seen...perhaps on par with Pravda in the 1960s. Its utterly amazing to me that any critical thinking news junkie can not see that. Nocturnalnow (talk) 15:49, 9 March 2017 (UTC)

30 million users is wrong. That's the number of registered accounts. According to Special:Statistics, only 141k of those have been active in the past month, and many of them will be vandals and sockpuppets. Moreover, from sampling Special:ListUsers, many if not the majority of accounts never edit. BethNaught (talk) 13:06, 4 March 2017 (UTC)

That's a funny article and probably quite accurate - I will not link to it as it seems to name a wikipedia editor - anyways, you edit here and you take your chances - don't think you are incognito and free to spout whatever you want without any comeback or retaliation, the mail has a lot more resources to defend itself than you have as a not for profit volunteer wikipedia editor. The Daily Mail is a decent enough source for simple basic details as are hundreds of others that we use - the new york post for example - stronger multiple sources are better for controversial details. I disagree with the total rejection of the Daily Mail- that was unnecessary - it is no worse than many other sources that are regularly used here. Govindaharihari (talk) 13:16, 4 March 2017 (UTC)
- Btw the policy is WP:OUTING - the url can't be added here due to that.

I disagree with the total rejection of the Daily Mail- that was unnecessary - it is no worse than many other sources that are regularly used here.

But it wasn't "totally rejected". The ban said that it's "generally unreliable and its use as a reference is to be generally prohibited, especially when other more reliable sources exist" which means that it under some circumstances, and when exercising common sense it could still be used if no other sources exist and other editors of the article are okay with it. Potentially the {{Better source}} template could be used in these rare cases. --Fixuture (talk) 13:39, 4 March 2017 (UTC)

"Funny" is indeed for me too the first thing that came to mind when I read it. With some indignation they declare "The Mail is the only major news outlet on the face of the Earth to be so censored" – Well, they forget of course that Wikipedia has declared itself even more unreliable than the Mail (I don't even know whether we needed a vote for that). By the time I came to the paragraph that reads "It should be noted here that, ironically enough, the Mail wrote to all its writers and reporters three years ago instructing them never to rely on Wikipedia as a single source, such were the concerns about its accuracy" I was of course LOL. Sorry to see their gutter-journalism approach to the topic (which prevents us to link to it for the obvious and at least intentionally offensive OUTing). Otherwise I can't imagine a comedian that could have done a better job at producing something for people to laugh with. --Francis Schonken (talk) 13:42, 4 March 2017 (UTC)

On second thought, seems a lot like a comedian promising to shoot in their own foot in their next show – and does so, with a real gun. Since the show was such a huge box-office success, they do the same with their other foot in the next show. Should one not rather take pity than laugh? So I end up feeling morally conflicted whether it isn't a bit too perverse to laugh with it. Let them shoot in their own foot as much as they like. If they think that is a decent way to make a living, who are we to comment on it? Deny recognition seems a more reasonable approach, maybe they would, in the end, stop maiming their own limbs? --Francis Schonken (talk) 15:08, 4 March 2017 (UTC)

Organizations that are non-profit and built upon pursuing a good cause are the ones that can have the most intractable problems because they tend to lack needed structures and checks-and balances. This is because, for those types of organizations it seemed like such "weren't needed". A few of the common issues for these are too much power in ivory towers, making ivory towers hard to penetrate and too removed from scrutiny, overpayment of the top 1 or 2 persons, defacto control of the board by the top 1-2 persons, bad binding decisions coming from places that are too isolated and less expert at making them, and using the imprimatur and instruments of the organization to pursue the political or other off-mission ends of certain groups. Getting more of these instruments in place would do much good. North8000 (talk) 13:42, 4 March 2017 (UTC)

I think the biggest point here is the danger of outing. If you upset a major corporation, especially a news outlet, they will come after you if they so wish. And proceed to libel you. Anybody with an online profile that is in any way recognizable is at risk. Editors who are in any way recognizable should steer clear of these sort of debates. --Jules (Mrjulesd) 14:01, 4 March 2017 (UTC)

In my post I had Wikipedia in mind. North8000 (talk) 14:11, 4 March 2017 (UTC)

Sorry North8000 I wasn't really replying to your post, just making a general statement.--Jules (Mrjulesd) 14:52, 4 March 2017 (UTC)

Cool. It was indented under mine but fixing that clarified that. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 21:45, 4 March 2017 (UTC)

Yes, it is ironic that the Daily Mail objects to Wikipedia calling the Daily Mail, only a little more reliable than Wikipedia calls itself (which is, not at all). I previously noted that the Daily Mail's having to tell it's reporters not to use Wikipedia as a source (as late as 2014!), shows just how unreliable the Daily Mail would have to be, with such foolish reporters that they have to be told that. I cross-posted some of this this at AN: In addition to the Daily Mail's false name calling, that Slatersteven notes, Five closed the discussion, but no they were not all administrators, and it's probable that more than five administrators participated in the discussion. Another falsehood in the Daily Mail article is the suggestion that the month long discussion was secret, and that only those who "haunt" the Reliable Source Noticeboard (that's decidedly not secret) participated -- all false. I don't even watch the page, and I found out about it in public, while it was on-going. Now, of course, its not an absolute "ban" anyway, see, The Daily Mail does not run Wikipedia. Further, it looks like the Daily Mail is the only one who is anti-free speech and anti-free thought - sorry, in a free world, people are more than allowed to determine the Daily Mail is "generally unreliable", but perhaps the Daily Mail does not like free speech. Alanscottwalker (talk) 15:03, 4 March 2017 (UTC)
- Where does the article say that the discussion was 'secret'? Of course it is hard to tell which article we are talking about because Wikipedia does not allow us to link to it. user:Peter Damian —Preceding undated comment added 16:25, 4 March 2017 (UTC)
  - On what basis did you conclude that Wikipedia does not allow us to link to The Daily Mail? --Guy Macon (talk) 16:28, 4 March 2017 (UTC)
    - Well let's test that hypothesis. Peter Damian (talk) 17:59, 4 March 2017 (UTC)
  - Peter Damien, you're the one who called it "secrecy" and you specifically based that on the false suggestion made by the Daily Mail article. Alanscottwalker (talk) 16:33, 4 March 2017 (UTC)
- the exact words of the article were 'this supposed exercise in democracy took place in virtual secrecy'. Peter Damian (talk) 17:46, 4 March 2017 (UTC)
  - Unless, you and the Daily Mail also falsely claim people including the Daily Mail, itself, puts stuff on the public internet in secrecy, there is nothing "in virtual secrecy" about it (at, get this, a page called, "WIKIPEDIA:Reliable Sources Noticeboard" -- posted for a month -- it's hard to get more not secret) - just bad reporting by the Daily Mail. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 17:59, 4 March 2017 (UTC)
The Daily Heil responds to criticism by doxxing. But it's not alt-right, absolutely, definitely not, even though that's what the alt-right do. On the plus side, it is always good to have a Wikipedia decision confirmed by the subject. And that's basically what the Heil have done here: printed an article perfectly exemplifying the reasons why they are not reliable. Guy (Help!) 16:59, 4 March 2017 (UTC)

And it appears that User:JzG ("Guy") responds to criticism by completely deleting what I say here without so much as mentioning there is something missing after he's done. The difference between the two is that the Daily Mail operates far beyond the reach of Wikipedia policy, where not even England's nasty libel laws actually prevent them from writing the articles they do, and where they have an audience of over a million people a day. Wnt (talk) 19:26, 5 March 2017 (UTC)

Hopefully its ok with Guy and Wnt if I reinsert Wnt's comment without the link as I find his thoughts important to Wikipedia processes: "This is ridiculous. Let's start by............ linking the news story], because it makes some significant points that we would do well to consider. If it also incidentally names a Wikipedia editor, I am not convinced this is a relevant policy issue. The Mail claims this was already public on a Facebook profile, and they've sure as hell made it so. The relevant issue, as is nearly always the case, is not "WP:OUTING" (coming up with some kind of secret personal information) but actually "WP:Opposition research" (we may not have a link but the issue is described somewhat sanely in the policy) - I don't care who ............ is or if he's ever posted something some narrow-minded person might look at askance; this debate should be about the issues, not the person. We can do that - but we only do that if we are willing to read the article. Pulling down the windowshade does not actually stop the oncoming train. And making a holy fetish, complete with chicken bones and muttered spells, out of the act of "linking" a page rather than typing daily mail wikipedia into Google and taking the first hit (as I did, and hopefully everyone else weighing in) is an affront to the internet, to html, and to all things sane and good that died during the money-grubber takeover of the internet in the early 2000s. When I think of all the grave sins and blasphemies committed by Tim Berners-Lee when he first suggested putting references in angle brackets with strategic "a"s, I wonder if burning his entire country at the stake would be sufficient to propitiate Huitzlopochtli for his wicked thoughts. And in fact, I'm not reinventing the wheel here - what Wikipedia:Linking to external harassment actually says is Web sites that do not routinely harass have in the past become engaged in an isolated or specific dispute with a Wikipedia editor. It is not normally necessary to remove such links. Removing links to the official website of an article subject due to side-effects of a single dispute is rarely necessary and may be unwise.

+

Now the Daily Mail deserves proper ridicule for resorting to ad hominem about the person who proposed a vote when fifty-odd misguided people did thoroughly win the discussion. They also go wrong in suggesting PressTV has no such "black mark" when in fact it simply was so derided that nobody bothered to hold a vote. (Amazing how much easier it is to refute a story if you read it) But that doesn't change the core issue that Daily Mail has a point when they say that they are being condemned for a small number of remarkable articles, by a very small proportion of the Wikipedia community." Previous in quotes written by Wnt and removed by Guy.Nocturnalnow (talk) 22:37, 5 March 2017 (UTC)

@JzG: I'm feeling a combination of disgusted and scientifically curious. A link to a history link is apparently OK with you, though the direct link isn't; the search is OK; and the link (not mine) to the relevant editor's talk page is OK but maybe not the editor's name (though I realize that wasn't your doing above) ... you do realize this doesn't make any sense? It reminds me of the US government response to Wikileaks, the art of trying to keep a secret when everyone knows it.

Anyway, let's try an offline style cite to check an earlier hypothesis: Guy Adams (2017-03-03). "The making of a Wiki-Lie: Chilling story of one twisted oddball and a handful of anonymous activists who appointed themselves as censors to promote their own warped agenda on a website that's a byword for inaccuracy". Daily Mail.

I should add, in response to edit summary/talk page comments, that I regarded the voters as "misguided" in the sense that this debate guided them to the wrong conclusion... another equivalence, as far as I'm concerned, which seems to disturb you. It's not that Daily Mail is such a great paper, but to single it out for near-total rejection when it has, by all appearances, an editorial process structurally similar to many others seems out of line to me. And it's not that I approve of their foolhardy ad hominem logic, which only angers the Wikipedia editors they would have liked to see demand a revote, but not citing sources out of pique isn't a valid response to that. A free discussion is necessary for us to devise an appropriate response. Wnt (talk) 02:01, 7 March 2017 (UTC)

Free discussion does not mean linking to articles that doxx people for doing things you don't like. Doxxing is a dick move, a signature tactic of the alt-right. Your post included a link to the doxxing, followed by a characterisation of everyone who disagreed with you as "misguided". You stated that as fact not opinion. Did you think either of those things was actually helpful? Guy (Help!) 09:31, 7 March 2017 (UTC)

I think it is very helpful for a discussion about a news article to link to that news article, because it makes it easier for the moderate and neutral readers in the room to casually weigh in with their opinions. Those of us who already have an opinion on the matter followed it, but they might have provided useful perspectives and some sense of consensus. And we did need to discuss the article because it affects Wikipedia, not just now but in the sense that we can expect further shenanigans from Daily Mail going forward. As for the word "misguided", you put a lot more emphasis on it than I do. Wnt (talk) 12:21, 7 March 2017 (UTC)

Some kids living in a glass house, living in childish ignorance of its structural fragility, decided to throw stones at a neighbouring house. They are then are surprised and shocked when their own house gets damaged by the inhabitants of that other house in retaliation. Personally, I blame the adults, not the 53 kids. Lack of adult supervision! Tiptoethrutheminefield (talk) 17:12, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

The childishness appears to come from a very few minority of even the opposes. What happened was the relatively weak and numerically small oppose argument in general lost on the merits of the discussion because apparently, they did not read the proposal, which was never for an absolute ban, and no absolute ban was in the close.

Also, the foolish, recklessness and unreliability of the Daily Mail is evident in its ad hominem, and again its many falsehoods, and its admission against interest that until 2014, its apparently stupid or venal reporters thought Wikipedia a good journalist's source. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 15:09, 7 March 2017 (UTC)

I'm reasonably acquainted with WP:OUTING but this is the first time I've encountered that policy used as a reason not to post a link to a news article outing an editor. The closest I could find was "Posting links to other accounts on other websites is allowable on a case-by-case basis." Am I missing something? I had a hell of a time finding that Mail article since no link was posted. Coretheapple (talk) 00:14, 8 March 2017 (UTC)

Thats how I interpret it also. The link is on AN/I I believe. I'm nto quite sure abotu the whole thing, is the guy who wrote the Mail article an editor?L3X1 (distant write) 00:08, 14 March 2017 (UTC)

Comment re:OP First off, it wasn't secret, I knew it was going on, btu being anew user, didn't get involved with it, and second, I am (i believe) the highest RfC participant (160/mo), so if you complain about a great turnout of 53 editors (!) join the feedback request service. L3X1 (distant write) 22:10, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

I pretty much agree with FixUture, the only problem here is that a very rich org. goes around begging for money like its the end of the world every year end while implicity threatenign to run ads if they don't get funds. That bugs me, and I told the WMF that in a survey. And as for banning leftists, what about rightists? Perhaps there should be a barnstar for attending a thousand RfCs. I wish the FRS included AfDs also. It is insane that an article can be deleted because of nom +1 !vote. Also, some AfDs get relisted over and over and over again, because nobody comes and votes. Wikipedia has problems. The Mail throwing a vengful hissyfit because they are no longer considered a RS is not one of them. PS. Not all Mail refs are going to be purged, and no doubt the Mail is going to be cited in the future. Them being deemed non-RS just tells all editors to take what they say with a grain of sodium, and ot not be suprised if a Mail citation is removed/disputed. PPS that .000018% number is very nice, until you remeber all the SPAs and NOTHEREs and dead 'pedians and VOAs and MIA and dormant accounts. Not to mention the 30%+ percent which are created and never used. VALIDALTs too. There is a page on here somewhere which gives the percentage of 30/500s which were active in the last 30 days. Hear me now believe me now, it a small percantage of "30 million". 53 of 5 thousand is a much less shocking off the wall number. Which brings up another point, the Mail seems to think 30m editors could be mobilised to vote, have they ever seen a popularity poll with more than 50K people in them? Do they, as a established news and opinion provider, not know how hard it is get to people to an official venue to display their opinion? L3X1 (distant write) 22:35, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

WMF response?

This should be something that the WMF takes very high interest in, and it is imperative they do something about it. Here we have a major news agency doxxing editors, send reporters to harass family members of editors, and damaging Wikipedia's reputation. We cannot allow chilling effects by angry third parties, because, as someone points out at AN, the DM now has an email address for people to report that they've been "wronged" by Wikipedia, and there's a lot of people with vendettas out there. The WMF issued a statement clarifying what it means to "ban" a source, but what now about the fallout from the incident? If I had no reservations about editing Daily Mail articles or articles on other subjects that would stoop so low as to dox people, I certainly do now, and many people likely feel the same, so I think it is important the WMF take some action or make a statement of some sort. Pinguinn 🐧 22:25, 4 March 2017 (UTC)

It is not clear that a WMF response would be in any way productive on this particular point. I can say personally: yes, they are horrible and bullies and what they said to attack a charity volunteer is appalling. But even me saying this much risks further attacks from them, or picking up the specific insults by other media outlets. (Though I hope that any journalists reading this will have the good sense to realize that the most dignified thing to do is not further the damage to a private individual by repeating the attacks.)--Jimbo Wales (talk) 17:01, 5 March 2017 (UTC)

Wikipedia editors are fair game for doxing. Editors here think they add all sorts of attacking personal content to the www with total impunity, well, great, they get feedback - If that fear of personal retribution helps them stop adding undue and attacking content about living people - good. Govindaharihari (talk) 23:20, 4 March 2017 (UTC)

And of course, it's totally fair when accurate, balanced, correctly weighted information that's also highly embarrassing or unpopular with the subject gets them harrassed. Yup! Of course! Editors here should only add positive and subject approved information. Ravensfire (talk) 01:56, 5 March 2017 (UTC)

I vehemently disagree with Govindaharihari's opinion that Wikipedia editors are fair game for dox'ing. The idea that a large group of people deserves something so invasive, due to the transgressions of a few is despicable.... Now i do agree that in the current climate, dox'ing is something that every editor has to take into account, due to the very real possibility of it. But that an editor so openly argues for harassment towards any of our contributors has me very concerned. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 10:08, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

User:TheDJ - Users that deliberately come here to violate wikipedia policy and guidelines and add non neutral content are the ones I was talking about not the large group of policy compliant well meaning neutral wikipedia editors. Govindaharihari (talk) 20:24, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

Pinguinn is correct that some bad PR may be on the horizon. Especially re: "DM now has an email address for people to report that they've been "wronged" by Wikipedia and there's a lot of people with vendetas out there." I must add that there are people who feel they have been wronged by Wikipedia who do not have a vendetta; I know this because I am one of them. Obviously I will not be complaining to anybody outside of Wikipedia, but the single biggest infraction of my freedom of speech ever, imo, occurred when EdJohnston wrote this in the results section of the process that banned me from all editing re: Americanpolitics post 1932: "A review of contributions suggests that Nocturnalnow has wide-ranging ideas for correcting articles on American politics," and his assertion was linked to this comment of mine on User:Muboshgu's talk page where I said simply this:"I do not have an anti-Clinton agenda. I just think there is a tendency among editors to give high level U.S. politicians a non NPOV positive slant on their BLPs. Its obvious I think. Just look at the difference between Nixon's lede and Putin's. Putin's BLP is much more NPOV I think, whereas Nixon, both Bushes and both Clintons' ledes are over-weighted on the positive and puffy. If I am correct, its likely a natural result from a majority of editors who look up to the office of President of the United States and the people who occupy it; I don't have that predisposition." The original request was only for a ban on Huma Abedin Blp, but Ed took my comment on Muboshgu's talk page as an important indicator of "wide-ranging ideas for correcting articles" and used that indicator to suggest expanding the ban to include all American politics.

Can you imagine someone using your defensive self explanatory comments on a person's talk page to dramatically expand a requested ban from being on 1 article to covering all post 1932 USA politics???

Its not the fact that I was banned from US politics, its that fact that such benign wording on a contributor's talk page was used to justify the dramatic widening of the ban. Not to mention that there should have been, with any attention at all to fairness, a separate request made for such a wide ban because there may have been some editors who would have joined the discussion and objected to such a wide ban. Ed did give me a heads up when he suggested the dramatic widening of the ban, but that still would not have had the broader interest of a separate bigger request.

So, I add my own feelings of being wronged, not by an individual really but by the process, which unfolded the way it did in my case, to support this proposal that WMF give more attention to its PR and also, I think, to the processes here which contribute to so-called "wronged" individuals. In my own case, it still burns my ass that some honest and well meaning words I used on Muboshgi's talk page were hunted down and used against me by an Admin, even though the ban is obviously considered a good thing by even Jimbo. But, I do think WMF should do some sort of examination and grading of all aspects of our, Wikipedia's, operations. Nocturnalnow (talk) 17:37, 5 March 2017 (UTC)

The Daily Heil is setting out to do what all axe-grinders do: find other people who also have an axe to grind, in order to manage the cognitive dissonance caused by the fact that they didn't get what they want. And the usual suspects will gleefully feed them the usual crap, and it will all blow over, just as it always does.

However, I think we should run a sweepstake. I want Sheldrake. Also on the list: Kohs, Chopra, the EFT cranks, acupuncturists, homeopaths, chiropractors, and a few wildcards including Friedwardt Winterberg and the woman who runs fisheaters.com. In fact, blacklisted spammers are likely to be the Mail's most fertile source of grudge-bearers. Guy (Help!) 09:23, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

I doubt the chiropractors will want to raise their head above the parapet at the moment, but some of the Homeopaths are probably ~~bonkers~~ lack sufficient self-awareness enough. Only in death does duty end (talk) 10:11, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

Open offer

I make the following open offer to the Mail: I will personally open the RfC to reverse the consensus re. the unreliability of the Mail if they do any two of the following:

Tackle the problem of churnalism, by making it easy to report PR stories planted in the Mail (especially Mail Online) and withdrawing those which are clearly just recycled press releases. Michael Marshall has a loooooong list of examples, many of which are repeat offenders.
Make corrections and clarifications substantially more prominent, both in print and online.
Remove the "sidebar of shame", the clickbaity pictures of half-naked slebs, mostly female, mostly with headlines that could have been written by an adolescent boy.
Fix their obvious hypocrisy in simultaneously running "BAN THIS FILTH" and "HANG THE PAEDOPHILES" alongside "all grown up" features detailing which celebrities daughters have recently acquired breasts.

Ideally they should fix all four, but baby steps, eh? Guy (Help!) 09:30, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

That's a great idea, Guy. Nocturnalnow (talk) 16:07, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

@JzG: The last two demands on your list are things that have absolutely no bearing on their reliability as a source (those women actually have breasts, I've done some spot checking), and for you to cite them as things they could do to change your vote conveys the strong suggestion that you voted against them at least in part based on personal bias against their point of view. Wnt (talk) 02:09, 7 March 2017 (UTC)

Wrong, but in an interesting way. They actively participate in the paparazzi culture, covert and illicit (if not illegal) surveillance and other tactics that allow them to obtain prurient content that violates privacy and objectifies women. Their determination to pursue such content has led to their place at the top of the list of offenders under the Editors' Code of Practice: [9]. It's not a stretch at all to assert that this seriously undermines their credibility and their reliability. And the direct cause of this goes directly to the question of reliability. Paul Dacre has transformed the Daily Mail from a mid-market Nazi apologist arsewipe to a click farm. His legendary abusive style and the aggressive targets he gives the inexperienced journos who make up the majority of his reporting force, combine to create a culture where clicks matter more than accuracy. The sidebar of shame and the "all grown up" soft core paedo porn are two of the most visible signs of this. If they vanished, you would know that there had been a substantial cultural shift away from clicks and, by implication, back towards actual journalism. Guy (Help!) 08:56, 7 March 2017 (UTC)

Godwin's Law? Martin of Sheffield (talk) 10:59, 7 March 2017 (UTC)

Not in this case. The Mail literally supported the Nazis. Guy (Help!) 11:47, 7 March 2017 (UTC)

Oh, dear. A full 47 breaches of the Editors' Code of Practice. To the libel-courts, the chain gangs, the gulags of Kolyma with them! Seriously ... when did it become Wikipedia's responsibility to punish ethical lapses? By censoring what sources our readers are exposed to??? This comment reinforces what I've feared from the start -- the people voting against the Mail are not really angry about what they get wrong, since there are a lot of newspapers that print too many falsehoods. No, the real fear may indeed be what they get right, that they might push the line and send out reporters to get some facts that Somebody Better Than Us doesn't want us to know about or share with one another.

The Daily Mail has never knowingly "sent out reporters to get facts that Somebody Better Than Us doesn't want us to know about", they are one of the most fawning press outlets with a middle class aristocratic snobbery that would out do a 1000 Hyacinth Buckets. Mostly they deal in salacious details regarding gay celebs and the extra-marital affairs of village vicars. Otherwise they aren't above making shit up:

http://www.thefrisky.com/2014-11-06/the-daily-mail-fabricated-a-controversy-over-t-shirts-to-sully-a-womens-rights-organization-and-it-worked/

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2013/10/04/daily-mail-controversy/2923271/ 91.231.145.250 (talk) 12:09, 8 March 2017 (UTC)

It's not that I'm such a big fan of the Mail - I just don't want their point of view excluded, and the argument above is not about unreliability but about going the extra mile. Also, I should add that your first source calls out the Mail for fabricating news that shirts were being made by sweatshop labor. It says the workers are paid $40 a week, twice the minimum wage for Mauritius ... which makes the Mail a liar. Hmmmm. I mean, I don't know what would happen if the Fawcett society ear-marked 1% of the $85 retail value of those shirts ($0.85) to go to the worker each time he made one. Probably war, famine, apocalypse, the end of the global economic system and worse. I just gotta kinda like a newspaper with poor enough quality control that it doesn't immediately shitcan an author for asking why that couldn't happen because it is so obviously unthinkable. Wnt (talk) 00:14, 9 March 2017 (UTC)

The Mail does not have a POV that is in any way interesting to an encyclopedia. Its view point can be described as xenophic "Little England" it chooses to highlight disapproved behavior by people that are not White, Male, Christian, UK born, and Middle Class. The actual facts can be obtained elsewhere without the vicious nastiness of its editorializing. When you can't find the facts elsewhere then 100 to 1 you are dealing with made up shite. 91.231.145.250 (talk) 14:20, 9 March 2017 (UTC)

I've had this kind of debate here before, for example on whether to use the Wikileaks cables as sources. In the past people have generally made the right decision, saying ethics be damned, we don't care how we got the cables, we just want to keep track of the reliably obtained facts we now know to have the most correct article. And that's how it should be. I have a president who got in office by promising to torture people - what the hell patience am I supposed to have for evaluating the "ethics" of whether it is OK to cite a paper with 47 scandalous abuses of long lenses and objectification of women?? We should be here to collect and analyze the data, not to punish and censor according to the ever-changing standards of what is 'ethically' appropriate. Wnt (talk) 12:00, 7 March 2017 (UTC)

Correct. Including or excluding the data/information based upon the source is a form of Ad hominem reasoning which is the laziest and craziest form of non-reasoning. Nocturnalnow (talk) 21:56, 7 March 2017 (UTC)

Daily Mail and the Blackshirts

The Guardian December 2011 'Don't damn the Daily Mail for its fascist flirtation 80 years ago'. Mentions the 'knee-jerk stupidity of saying that the Daily Mail used to support fascism'. Notes that 'the Mail was not the only paper to carry articles supporting Oswald Mosley's blackshirts. The Daily Mirror did too'. The article that Guy links to above is about the English Blackshirts, not about the Nazis (the German National Socialist Party), was written by Rothermere in January 1934 under his own byline, and the same article also appeared in the Mirror. Moreover 'Harold's son, Esmond (Rothermere the Second) assumed control of the Mail before Harold died in 1940. Its coverage from the outbreak of war the year before reveals not a scintilla of support for Hitler.' Peter Damian (talk) 18:30, 8 March 2017 (UTC)

We should consider the problems with the media of today. Goebbels could never have imagined that in a future science-fiction like world where not only the mass media would be totally out of State control but also citizens would be able to make news via electronic media, that a democratically elected US government could get away with making propaganda. Count Iblis (talk) 19:04, 8 March 2017 (UTC)

I thought the "Nazi" thing got mentioned, here, only because the 2017 Daily Mail article that you brought here a few days ago was the first to refer to "Nazis" in a very bizarrely reasoned, as well as mistaken way. I thought the following comments on AN[10], were apropos on that (and sorta funny):

". . . Still, never too late to try to be more reliable. A shame that they introduce a claim that "Blacklisting is a term which in its modern context was popularised by the Nazis, who drew up a ‘Black Book’ of 2,820 Britons". The Nazis didn't use the term or even publicise their list: it was only after the war that the list "became known in tabloid-speak as the ’Black Book’.”[6] Can we expect the Daily Mail to salvage its reputation by publishing a correction to their claim? . . dave souza, talk 23:24, 6 March 2017 (UTC)
I notice in passing the Daily Mail itself routinely uses the word "blacklist" in its articles. Recent examples here and here. -- Euryalus (talk) 00:34, 7 March 2017 (UTC)
The Nazi connection is also (you'll be shocked to hear) something the Daily Mail has just made up; "blacklist" in this sense has been standard English usage for centuries. (His memory was stored with a blacklist of enemies and rivals, Gibbon, Decline & Fall of the Roman Empire, 1788, if you want a high-profile concrete example.) ‑ Iridescent 19:44, 7 March 2017 (UTC)"

(oops, links did not get transferred but I can get them if anyone wants)

-- Alanscottwalker (talk) 19:43, 8 March 2017 (UTC)

No, it was Guy's comment that the Mail literally supported the Nazis. It's a common criticism, because of that article 80 years ago. I'm not saying that other criticisms may not be valid, of course. Peter Damian (talk) 22:13, 8 March 2017 (UTC)

Rothermere may have written an op-ed article 80 years ago but the paper continues in the same dishonerable tradition. Not so long ago they published photos giving the impression that it was foreign truck driver that were using mobile phones:

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/gary-lineker-daily-mail_uk_58199439e4b0e43b59aca3c1

Earlier in the year just before the EU vote I had the misfortune to see a copy of the Daily Mail where almost every page featured some court case involving someone from Eastern Europe. The impression being that only foreigners were responsible for crime. Maybe not quite the same as depicting Eastern European Jews as vermin but close enough. 91.231.145.250 (talk) 10:42, 9 March 2017 (UTC)

FWIW, post-Brexit the Mail has mostly lost interest in vilifying East Europeans; the villain-of-choice has gone back to being "asylum seekers" ([11], [12], [13], [14] all from the last couple of days), although the old standby of "The Blacks" gets the occasional run-out. ‑ Iridescent 11:16, 9 March 2017 (UTC)

This is why they are called the Daily 'Hate' Mail in addition to the Dail Heil. When not singling out foreigners they have fallback hate feminist figures, and leftwingers. Michael Foot always referred to them as the Forger's Gazette. 91.231.145.250 (talk) 11:54, 9 March 2017 (UTC)

Just for clarity, I agree with what I assume is a nearly universal consensus that the behavior of the Daily Mail 80 years ago should have no bearing on how we evaluate it today. Their behavior this week in terms of a propensity for printing false stories, on the other hand, is conclusive.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 11:02, 9 March 2017 (UTC)

Surely no bearing on how we evaluate current issues? One of the complexities of our position is that we don't just use current sources. If someone is writing about the coronation of George V then they might well be citing a very old copy of the Daily Mail. I would hope that at some stage we could come up with a more nuanced rule that includes any eras where the Daily Mail has sufficient journalistic standards to be treated as a generally reliable source, and any subjects that kept standards of fact checking and neutrality such as say sports coverage re results and matches if not "gossip". Ϣere SpielChequers 11:46, 9 March 2017 (UTC)

If someone is writing about the Coronation of George V, the Daily Mail could only have limited and restricted use to begin with, because for that it would be at best a primary source, and one of the reasons primary sources are not the basis for Wikipedia history article's material is because they are often a) unreliable in detail, being caught up in the rush of the moment, and b) unreliably interpreted. Alanscottwalker (talk) 14:12, 9 March 2017 (UTC)

Agree, Jimmy. The Mail is unreliable because of its current practices, not anything in the past. And this subthread exists because some people subscribe to the common but fallacious notion that if you can undermine a small part of any comment, then the entire argument falls :-) Guy (Help!) 11:59, 9 March 2017 (UTC)

"some people subscribe to the common but fallacious notion that if you can undermine a small part of any comment, then the entire argument falls". Well said, Guy, I run into this fallacious notion in Wikipedia discussion a lot, even from Jimmy. Otoh, it forces me to be much more careful and exact about my choice of words. Nocturnalnow (talk) 22:16, 9 March 2017 (UTC)

If A implies B, and you undermine A, then of course your argument falls. However I am not sure what Guy's argument is. Peter Damian (talk) 06:51, 10 March 2017 (UTC)

He's saying that mentioning the Dail Heil in a comment is simple abuse and it is a mistake to take the polemic as part of the actual thrust of the argument. So one might say that "Statement X by the orange sack of shit that is currently the Pussy-grabber of the United States is wrong because of Y" and that the veracity of the words 'pussy-grabber' and 'orange' are not actually part of the argument being propounded. 91.231.145.250 (talk) 09:32, 10 March 2017 (UTC)

Asylum seekers, villains of choice etc

I checked some of the links above and could not find any discernible difference between those and the results from Googling 'Daily Mirror asylum seekers' ("Failed asylum seeker sex offender tried to kidnap girl from Tesco and vowed to 'kill every British etc" "Asylum seeker who 'wanted to suicide bomb train'", "An asylum seeker who raped a young woman as she walked to her boyfriend's home" etc etc.) The key issue, as Jimmy says above, is reliability. I am not sure the Mail is any better or any worse than any other paper with its target audience. The story which we can't link to complained that

'No further steps were taken to gauge the opinion of Wikipedia’s wider user base, or to establish if there was any evidence to support the contention that this paper is somehow ‘unreliable’'.
'All of them were apparently of the view that the Mail is far more inaccurate than any other news organisation on the face of the Earth. Yet they failed to cite any data to back up their contention'.
[redacted editor name] simply claimed that this newspaper had more of press regulator IPSO’s sanctions against it than his favourite title, The Guardian. He failed to state that The Guardian is not regulated by IPSO, so can’t possibly have been sanctioned by it.
According to IPSO’s own report, the regulator’s figures suggest the Mail’s record is better, not worse, than our peers.

I am not defending the use of tabloids as sources, indeed I rarely use newspapers as a source. But why has the Mail been singled out? Peter Damian (talk) 19:00, 9 March 2017 (UTC)

It hasn't. The Sun, Mirror, Star etc. have routinely been deprecated as sourcing for anything remotely contentious for many years. This was simply bringing the Mail into line with this, especially as its recent record of inventing stories is actually worse than those mentioned above, as was pointed out at the RfC given the Press Complaints Commission stats. But the real point is - the chances of the Mail being the only source for any news story is incredibly small, and if it is the only source, there's a fair chance it's probably inaccurate. Why use a source with a proven track record of unreliability when there are plenty of others available? Black Kite (talk) 19:07, 9 March 2017 (UTC)
- Exactly, there are plenty of publications on the penalty bench of (non-)journalism, and now it was time for them to join that bench. It's unique that it was noticed outside of Wikipedia. Which says more about journalism again, then about wikipedia and its editors. All this is, is a temper tantrum. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 12:15, 10 March 2017 (UTC)

As far as I understand the current state of affairs, if someone cites the Mail for something, it is not allowed (in general, though in specific cases it can be cited). While if someone cites The Sun, it's not automatically disallowed, though others may frown on using a tabloid as a source. In this sense, The Mail is indeed singled out.

In general, the wider public is ignorant of Wikipedia's internal bureaucracy as it is. Even if, in practice, the Mail is treated in the same way as other tabloids (I don't know if it is), an explicit rule forbidding its use in most situations is a more serious matter. Kingsindian ♝ ♚ 15:26, 11 March 2017 (UTC)

And now Tom Utley

And now an article by Tom Utley. My son's imaginary affair with Myleene Klass and why I know Wikipedia publishes any old nonsense Mail Online 10 March 2017. The first part is a recycled version of a piece he wrote years ago after his Wikipedia article was vandalised. He continues:

.. here was the allegedly politically neutral Wikipedia, which publishes any old rubbish with impunity, impugning a highly popular mainstream newspaper — a paper fully answerable to the courts and the toughest Press regulatory regime in the free world, for every word and fact it prints.

.. the pressure on my own industry from unregulated websites, which not only spread vile pornography, terrorist training videos and fake news, but draw advertising away from the Press.

Could Sir Tim Berners-Lee ever have imagined, I wondered, that one of the effects of his invention of the internet would be that such a purveyor of dodgy assertions and outright falsehoods would become the world’s number one source of information?

Peter Damian (talk) 18:25, 10 March 2017 (UTC)

Here is the original article from 2008. Peter Damian (talk) 18:29, 10 March 2017 (UTC)

The crocodile tears of the Daily Mail that they are more reliable than Wikipedia is just good farce (congratulations on meeting an extremely low, neigh nonexistent, bar) -- Wikipedia policies and guidelines, already expressly say that Wikipedia is unreliable as a source. As for Utley's critique of the internet, in general, all well and good, but then again he is publishing on the internet, which gives much irony to his column (especially when he appears to laud the Daily Mail for its success on the internet, and its evils.) Alanscottwalker (talk) 12:54, 11 March 2017 (UTC)

Neigh as in horse? Peter Damian (talk) 15:11, 11 March 2017 (UTC)

Sure, goes with crocodile, in an animal theme, and makes me think of the way Mr. Ed use to laugh, at the ridiculous (oh, the irony). Alanscottwalker (talk) 16:31, 11 March 2017 (UTC)

From a public relations point of view, the argument that ‘Wikipedia policies and guidelines already say that Wikipedia is unreliable as a source’ is irrelevant, of course. Outside the little echo chamber of the people who contribute here, many people think that Wikipedia is reliable (‘as Britannica’ etc). So this article is bringing it to the attention of a pretty wide audience that it isn't. Which is a good thing, I suppose. Peter Damian (talk) 19:02, 11 March 2017 (UTC)

It is wonderful when people are informed readers but they should have learned about this elementary aspect of information in early schooling, not wait to get it from some columnist (leaving aside, will they pay attention?). Alanscottwalker (talk) 19:15, 11 March 2017 (UTC)

I believe the medical editors wanted a banner over every medical article saying that the information in it might be completely wrong, but someone resisted - might have been the WMF. I will check. Peter Damian (talk) 19:22, 11 March 2017 (UTC)

There was an RFC. As I remember it the oppose arguments were along the lines of a standard banner warning would get mentally blanked out by users, and it was better to focus on improving articles. Ϣere SpielChequers 19:30, 11 March 2017 (UTC)

How well did that work? Peter Damian (talk) 19:38, 11 March 2017 (UTC)

Wikipedia does not have disclaimers or spoiler warnings. Caveat lector. On medical articles we, the editorial community, hold content to higher standards. That's as it should be. It's up to us to ensure that the quality of content is best when the consequences of error are highest, biographies and medical articles being two obvious places. Guy (Help!) 22:40, 12 March 2017 (UTC)

Wikipedia has disclaimers and provides a link to its general disclaimer at the foot of every page, including this one. As we see that this is easy to miss or forget, it might be better to make this link more prominent by placing it at the top of the page, rather than the bottom. Andrew D. (talk) 20:05, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

The Daily Heil has such a long history of publishing bullshit motivated by the agenda of their editor that I think we're entitled to ignore their no-doubt short-lived foray into spiteful retaliation. And frankly, if they do find significant errors and identify sources that would fix them, we win anyway. Guy (Help!) 17:08, 12 March 2017 (UTC)

They've certainly reached a new low with this Wikipedia "revenge" vendetta. ♦ Dr. Blofeld 13:20, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

The article was generally well written and started off quite persuasively, but he jumped the guard rail with his complaint about vile pornograpy and terrorist training videos. This is still the Internet and we are still proud of our vile pornography and terrorist training videos! Because sometimes you still want a laugh, and because maybe one day when the fanatics come to your neighborhood and start killing people you want to be able to do a little more than complain. Wnt (talk) 12:37, 16 March 2017 (UTC)

Graham McCann and Michael Cole

‘Two writers describe their Kafkaesque experiences when they found their entries were littered with mistakes’ [15] Interestingly it mentions Dr Blofeld, who is the author of this edit in April 2015, nearly two years ago.

In the spring of 1979, due to intense lighting used by Kubrick, the set burst into flames and destroyed the building [i.e. the Timberline Lodge]; it had to be completely rebuilt.

As far as I can tell, this is complete fiction. It is still there. Note the spurious citation (Baxter 1997, p. 321). This has always been the weakness of Wikipedia. It insists on citations, but these are never checked. Peter Damian (talk) 07:11, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

I assume thats John Baxter's 1997 biography of Stanley Kubrick. Have you read it? Only in death does duty end (talk) 10:15, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

Can't see a real problem here. During the making of The Shining, there was a fire on the set in February 1979, and Kubrick is shown in a photograph here. However, the article should make clear that it was the film set in the UK that burned down, not the actual Timberline Lodge. I'm not sure if this error has been copied from the book, because I haven't seen it. Baxter's biography of Kubrick is here.--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 11:18, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

There's a lot more to this story than lets on. Firstly in writing the Cary Grant article I was subject to trolling by several editors who persisted on trying to disrupt progress because of disputes of Grant's alleged homosexuality. The McCann article was a redlink and started by another editor. When the complaint about the McCann article appeared, and there was this IP claiming to be McCann, naturally I thought it was one of the trolls as one of them had earlier tried to claim that McCann wasn't notable and even took it to AFD. It soon became apparent though that one of the trolls of the Grant article contacted McCann by email, begging him to complain and get it taken down. So naturally I wasn't wonderfully polite when this nasty IP appeared or sympathatic to the "concern" because it looked like one of the trolls was trying to game the system by forcing a complaint. A number of experienced editors agreed that because McCann is one of the best known biographers in the UK it would seem strange to delete the article. The article had a resounding keep at two AFDs, and I explained this to McCann that the community had voted to keep it on weight of his publications, some top biographies of top Hollywood stars. I made an effort to try to get McCann to identify all of the errors and correct them but he did little but throw his weight around. I found him unbearable and rude, and I tend to reflect how people treat me. The article does nothing but recite what is published elsewhere. McCann even admits in this DM article that his issue is "trivial". One of the "errors" McCann claimed was that he's never contributed to the DM, yet his own website claimed it, plus with this article now it makes him look a laughing stock, given DM's own reputation. I certainly do not make it a habit of going around leading a "circus" of people who protect articles, very rare in fact that I would do so, and if a BLP complains I would always make a big effort to iron out inaccuracies. BTW, bringing up the Kubrick article now Peter is in exceedingly poor taste and comes across as jumping on the bandwagon. Why do you need to mention this on Jimbo's talk page and infer that my work is riddled with inaccuracies? There was a fire in 1979 which destroyed the set and any claim that the lodge itself burned down was unintentional.. I don't think I wrote that.♦ Dr. Blofeld 12:56, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

Well what you actually wrote was "In the spring of 1979, due to intense lighting used by Kubrick, the set burst into flames and destroyed the building; it had to be completely rebuilt." It did follow straight after a sentence talking about Timberline but was in a section that discussed the Elstree sets, so a simple 'Elstree' before 'set' would have removed any ambiguity due to placement at the end of the paragraph. Hardly a big deal, if it was earlier where the sets were being discussed more obviously, it would have been perfectly fine. The insertion of the 'ie the Timberline Lodge' by Peter makes it look far more obviously wrong that it actually was. Only in death does duty end (talk) 13:37, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

Hardly worthy of mentioning.. I notice this DM has also crudely inserted a video by Julian Assange, as if he is the head of wikipedia. Malicious stuff, and worrying because they seem to know that Jimbo detests Wikipedia and WikiLeaks being confused.♦ Dr. Blofeld 13:48, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

Well it's been corrected now. My point in mentioning it was the slipshod editing issue. Peter Damian (talk) 18:20, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

Really? Because I thought your point was to a)claim it was completely made up (it wasnt), b)claim the ref was 'spurious'(again it wasnt) and c)by selectively placing your incorrect opinion into the middle of what was presented as a quote by yourself, to imply Dr Blofeld had deliberately inserted false material into an article. Thats very far from pointing out 'slipshod editing'. Generally if you are going to be pedantic when you point out others faults, its a good idea to actually be cast-iron before you do so and not resort to deliberately misleading prose when playing to the crowd. Only in death does duty end (talk) 10:49, 14 March 2017 (UTC)

Whatever the intended reference of 'the building' – note the definite article 'the', it is the actual reference that matters. There was no ambiguity in the meaning, even if it differed from the intended meaning. Peter Damian (talk) 18:21, 14 March 2017 (UTC)

Or, you could admit to having made a schoolboy error, and actually earn a bit of the respect you seem to want. Guy (Help!) 18:48, 14 March 2017 (UTC)

As already noted above, the error has been fixed. Respectfully yours, Peter Damian (talk) 19:39, 14 March 2017 (UTC)

Is it worth it?

I can certainly understand why DM was banned as a source as the paper does publish too many dubious, poorly written articles, this recent one by McCann is a prime example. They didn't get their facts straight in publishing it. Personally I've always found it a useful source for articles on country houses, hotels and restaurants, the content produced isn't all bad. But if the paper is going to start publishing attack articles on Wikipedia every day, is this really worth it? I know DM is widely criticized as a source, and judging by the public comments, most people don't take them seriously, but it is still a major newspaper and it's not going to do us any good to keep seeing childish articles attacking Wikipedia. Do we keep the ban on it as a source and just deal with the blows? How long is the "revenge" article writing going to continue, a week, a month, a year? Perhaps if we had a large scale RFC, one involving hundreds of editors they could stop claiming only a very small percentage were responsible? ♦ Dr. Blofeld 16:21, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

Honestly it should just be ignored. It could run 'wikipedia are bad' articles every day for a year and the worst that will happen is... those articles will get more eyes on them. Once they finish spitting the dummy they will get bored and move on to something else. Their readership is the middle-class, mostly white, central-right-to-right-wing conservative/new Labour voter. In short, not the sort of person who is going to care too much about what wikipedia says, compared to what the Daily Mail tells them is ruining the country this week. Wikipedia being 'wrong' is not a pressing issue for someone who is worried those darn immigrants are taking all the jobs/comitting crimes/causing cancer. The Daily Mail tailors its content for its readers - there is a reason why it is one of the biggest papers in the UK. It will soon enough learn that performing half-arsed researched hatchet jobs on wikipedia will not make them money. Only in death does duty end (talk) 17:07, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

We don't need to care about them or their tantrums. Unless we think there's even the tiniest chance that the decision would be overturned, holding a secondary RfC or similar would serve only to undermine the perceived authority of the original decision—exactly what they're trying to do. If someone seriously wants to overturn the decision, then sure, they can start an RfC, but otherwise the raw number of contributors to the original discussion doesn't matter—it's supported by silence. {{Nihiltres |talk |edits}} 17:05, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

The problem though is that people do care. Enough people cared about the recent DM article to make me feel like I was being lynched. People care when ever any negative article is written about wikipedia, particularly BLPs, regardless if it's a paper like the DM. They're going to continue writing articles about numerous editors and events and potentially we're going to lose good editors in the process.♦ Dr. Blofeld 13:19, 15 March 2017 (UTC)

I couldn't disagree more strongly with User:Nihiltres position, We don't need to care about them or their tantrums - An up front and personal banning of the daily mail was a very bad decision - they are no worse than tens and tens of American sources that we do use. I disagreed totally but had the feeling it was an Anglophobic USA centric vote and kept out of it - why upset them, they are a million dollar professional news reporter - just use them sparingly and take care with any disputed content. As for supported by silence - it is not silence - it is too late - the decision is made and very high public profile and retracting it is imo impossible at this time. Govindaharihari (talk) 20:09, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

This is a personal attack on the Daily Mail (corporations are people, right?), so what would you expect them to do. Focus on the content, not the contributor. Focus on the cited article, not on the publisher. I was unaware of this until after the fact, and would not have supported it. – wbm1058 (talk) 01:34, 14 March 2017 (UTC)
- No. Per WP:SOURCE, the publisher is a focus of the matter. And no, it's not a person. Alanscottwalker (talk) 09:25, 14 March 2017 (UTC)
  Of course my tongue was stuck in my cheek when I said that corps were ppl. Making blanket subjective determinations on whether a particular newspaper is a "mainstream" newspaper or not is asking for trouble, in my opinion. A particular publication may be more reliable for certain topics than others, and we shouldn't ban a paper for the domains in which it's unreliable at the expense of citing them as source in domains where they are reliable. wbm1058 (talk) 12:41, 14 March 2017 (UTC)
  - No. First, there is no ban, of the kind you are describing. Second, sorry you don't like Varifiability policy, but either get it changed or follow it. Moreover, it's not just a matter of "mainstream", and one of the reasons "mainstream" is there is because in general newspapers are a bad source for this tertiary source encyclopedia that really wants good secondary sources. It is, moreover, also a matter "reputation for fact checking and accuracy". Alanscottwalker (talk) 14:21, 14 March 2017 (UTC)
    In Wikipedia, verifiability means that other people using the encyclopedia can check that the information comes from a "reliable" source. This is indeed a variable policy as the subjective determination of reliability is variable. True verifiability is when a claim can be verified by checking the primary sources. This isn't original research, it's just verifying someone else's original research. wbm1058 (talk) 14:56, 14 March 2017 (UTC)
    - Thanks for the underlining of spelling but your point got lost. WP:SOURCE (which focuses inter alia on the publisher) is WP:V policy, so your not wanting to focus on the publisher makes no sense under that policy. Alanscottwalker (talk) 15:04, 14 March 2017 (UTC)
Let's welcome whatever sunshine is provided. That does not mean all claims will hold water, but the ones that do, corrections can be made. Alanscottwalker (talk) 09:53, 14 March 2017 (UTC)

McCann's treatment was appalling

2 August 17:14 McCann writes a long comment complaining that 'It is a poorly researched article that provides only a partial, imbalanced and in places, in my view, strangely misleading impression of my past work'. He gives a few examples of the problems.
18:38 Dr Blofeld replies saying that McCann is notable, then immediately adds [16] 'If you're really Graham McCann, prove it. Otherwise shut up.' The rudeness starts there, no?
Blofeld then gratuitously states [17] that McCann has 'tried to make a lot of money out of the public'.
McCann (05:59, 3 August 2016) asks politely how he is to prove that it is he, then [18] complains about the 'silly pseudonym', and objects that 'you're just some volunteer without any known expertise or qualifications, but your presumptuousness is now going too far, and that line above about intentions and money is one gratuitous piece of abuse too far'. As for the 'shut up' remark 'I wonder if Jimmy Wales knows how his volunteers behave on here? I doubt he's proud. '
Then Blofeld calls him [19] 'some snotty lecturer in a Hooray Henry university who thinks he can bully "lesser folk" on wikipedia because he is a respected author', then calls him a 'repellant [sic] creature'. McCann replies 'Well, you've certainly revealed all the chips on your shoulder here, haven't you.' [20].
Oh yes, in response to McCann's complaint about the 'shut up' remark, some apparatchik says "We Don't feed the trolls. You should read WP:Civil and implement it. Your approach has not helped your cause or credibility."
Disgraceful. Is this how we treat victims of BLP abuse?

Peter Damian (talk) 18:14, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

Indeed, I have to agree with PD here (and was just about to post something to that effect at ANI, when people told me the matter was already discussed here). This BLP subject was treated with an incredible amount of aggression, condescension and scorn by the main article author, User:Dr. Blofeld, and the fact that the complaint was then summarily dismissed and brushed off by no other than Dr. Blofeld's perennial tag-team partner User:SchroCat, acting like a cynical bad cop / good cop pair, is just the icing on the cake. I would have blocked both users on the spot, had I noticed the case back at the time. I do believe it is vital that Wikipedia be seen doing the right thing here, even when under unfair attack from the Mail. A public apology to this article subject on behalf of Wikipedia should be the least thing. Fut.Perf. ☼ 18:37, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

Somebody agrees with PD? Shock. Peter Damian (talk) 18:46, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

@Jimbo Wales: McCann asked 'I wonder if Jimmy Wales knows how his volunteers behave on here?'. Would you like to answer? Peter Damian (talk) 18:48, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

I'm with Peter Damian and Future Perfect on this (now, PD, you know I've agreed with you many times); I too wish I'd seen it at the time. I'd at the least have topic banned @Dr. Blofeld: from the article like a shot. This post — "If you're really Graham McCann, prove it. Otherwise shut up" — followed by the IP asking how he could do that ("Tell me how and I will"), followed by no reply from Blofeld, is just heinous. Way to bring Wikipedia into disrepute. Blofeld's reply to criticism today shows him as perfectly well pleased with his own conduct, and ready to attack the article subject some more ("pompous oaf"). Bishonen | talk 18:56, 13 March 2017 (UTC).
- I didn't see this latest post by Blofeld until now. This is way beyond the pale. I have blocked Dr. Blofeld for two weeks. Fut.Perf. ☼ 19:03, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

I thought blocks were not used as punishment. Blocking someon for an action last year seems to be nothing but punishment. All the best, The Bounder (talk) 19:47, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

The edit he was blocked for was today. Black Kite (talk) 19:50, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

It's especially troubling that even after the extraordinary sequence of events that brought this to people's attention, the editor still posted a self-serving and highly questionable account of the dialogue with McCann. Factchecker_atyourservice 19:13, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

I agree with you too, Peter Damian, I just looked at the McGann talk page, and Dr. Blofeld compounded the problem with his recent posts. An admin should be there redacting. There should clearly be a topic ban, whatever else happens. Alanscottwalker (talk) 09:46, 14 March 2017 (UTC)

I'd say McCann and Cole are two of the approximately 40% of internet users who have personally experienced harassment. How's that project to deal with this issue coming along? wbm1058 (talk) 01:59, 14 March 2017 (UTC)

If you haven't already, you might want to look at the Site That Shall Not Be Named. There's a new blogpost about it there. Black Kite (talk) 09:55, 14 March 2017 (UTC)

Michael Cole (public relations)

I believe Michael Cole (public relations) is our current article on Michael Cole. As noted on Talk:Michael Cole (public relations), this article was deleted on 18 November 2014. It was re-created on 16 February 2017‎. As Mr Cole noted, "The possibility of mistaken identity is just one of the hazards in the path of a person with as common a name as mine", and indeed I removed a {{press}} mention of the Daily Mail article from Talk:Michael Cole (writer). – wbm1058 (talk) 03:14, 14 March 2017 (UTC)

Any chance of some stats?

After several days the Daily Mail still has an article up with the second subheading asserting the "ban" had the support of "just 0.00018 per cent of site’s ‘administrators’". To be fair, the article contradicts the subheading by claiming that as a percentage of "editors", plus five administrators - incidentally 0.4% of all our administrators including inactives, so an error of three orders of magnitude. Each individual admin is close to 0.1% of all our admins and 0.2% of our active admins, so 0.00018% of us is closer to an admins beard trimmings than an actual admin. They also claim that while "banning" their site we are still happy to use, or not putting a black mark against: China's Xinhua news agency, Iran’s Press TV, Russia Today, North Korea's Korean Central News Agency, and a site called Exaro. Does anyone have a tool available that could work out how many times we do use each of those sources as I suspect it is rather less than we use the Daily Mail. Also does anyone have a tool that could trawl the archives of the reliable sources noticeboard and list any advice given re those sites? It would be embarrassing if someone once made the mistake of getting their Koreas confused or something similar. The risk of assuming that all their claims are incorrect is that they might have spotted something and sneaked that into the article so that months later they could announce that they'd tipped us off and we'd ignored them. Ϣere SpielChequers 11:44, 14 March 2017 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not a democracy. It doesn't have to send out millions of ballot papers to every editor every time a decision is made, and uses the principle of WP:CONSENSUS instead. There had been a consensus for a long time that the Daily Mail is a problematic source, particularly for WP:BLP articles, but I opposed the "ban" because it looked like singling out the Mail for special criticism when there are plenty of other problematic sources.--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 12:37, 14 March 2017 (UTC)

(Full disclosure : I personally strongly dislike the Mail, but have occasionally used it as a source for shopping / fashion based topics; I abstained from the decision to ban it and think a total ban is the wrong decision) I've had a stat counter of BLPs that cite the Daily Mail on my user page for some years. It has stayed pretty constant around 1,700 - 2,000 in that time. In particular, I think articles like Lucy Mecklenburgh (that had a number of Mail citations that have recently been removed) probably aren't a net positive to Wikipedia. Either the articles that cite the Mail have low traffic and are not looked at very often, or the community in general is broadly comfortable with citing the Mail in BLPs, at least to the extent of not being picked up as disruption by the anti-vandalism crowd. Ritchie333 ^(talk) ^(cont) 13:15, 14 March 2017 (UTC)

There is no absolute ban on the Daily Mail. As for the government propaganda outlets, I have participated in discussions where their use was also deprecated. What is also apparent from reading the RfC discussion is that both the large majority and most the minority, deprecated the Daily Mail in their comments (that is what consensus is). Alanscottwalker (talk) 14:28, 14 March 2017 (UTC)

I'm not suggesting we need to reopen the RFC. I appreciate the difference between what we have done and the "ban" that the Daily Mail has reported, but I think that's a relatively subtle difference compared to their saying we haven't done something similar to the other sites mentioned, though I'm not sure about Exaro. Having had a quick look at them, at the least Exaro are in a different category to the press department of North Korea. Ϣere SpielChequers 14:58, 14 March 2017 (UTC)

I have opened a chat at the BLP noticeboard regarding this issue with the idea to bring the Daily Mail back on board a bit and rather than specifically single them out to treat all similar sources in the same way. The opening comment is here Wikipedia:Biographies_of_living_persons/Noticeboard#The_daily_mail - all input appreciated. Govindaharihari (talk) 20:07, 14 March 2017 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Admin's Barnstar
	Thanks for creating Wikipedia! To4oo4 (talk) 18:14, 15 March 2017 (UTC)

I think it's nice that Jimbo is finally getting his long-deserved barnstar. So long without recognition. It's about time! Coretheapple (talk) 19:02, 15 March 2017 (UTC)

DONTBITE the noobies. Carrite (talk) 01:52, 16 March 2017 (UTC)

Aw, don't be a pill. Coretheapple (talk) 15:32, 16 March 2017 (UTC)

Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Certain admins here are slightly over zealous at the moment. →ὦiki-Pharaoh^{(talk to me!)} _{(contributions)} 21:02, 16 March 2017 (UTC)

If I had absolute power I could've easily just banned you for life instead of consulting the community about a topic ban. Jimbo does have something akin to absolute power, but he has been very restrained in using it, which would seem to contradict your premise. Beeblebrox (talk) 21:10, 16 March 2017 (UTC)

Neither of you has anything resembling absolute power. Your only real power is the power to prevent someone's words from appearing on one particular website, and even then you have far less power than I have on my personal website. You cannot extract a penny of taxes from anyone. You cannot lock them in a concrete box forever with no access to a lawyer and torture them. You cannot decide to kill a US Citizen someone in a foreign with no trial, incidentally killing a bunch of bystanders. The lowest-level clerk working for your city and the rookie cop right out of the police academy have far more power than either of you. For something close to absolute power, look at George Pullman, Kim Jong-un, Robert Mugabe, Enver Hoxha, Nicolae Ceausescu, Rodrigo Borgia, or Jim Jones. And the Stanford Experiment suggests that any of us can be corrupted by power. --Guy Macon (talk) 00:35, 17 March 2017 (UTC)

I believe, with Adolf Berle, that power is "the ability to make a decision and cause others to comply." By that standard, every administrator on this site has some degree of limited power on this site although even JW's power is somewhat constrained. The question of state or private violence is quite separate from decision-making authority. "Absolute" power is a chimera although there are some very powerful people in the world, indeed. Carrite (talk) 00:41, 17 March 2017 (UTC)

I definitely agree with User:Wiki-Pharaoh. There have been situations where I have made properly sourced edits, then be reverted by admins and their cronies, which may also include other admins. This is total gang-editing. An example would be for the article regarding Umami. I properly establish the subject as not being scientific fact, and even clear some other confusions. I was totally gang-edited by admins and others who arrived for the specific reason of reverting me. This I am sure of, although it is technically speculation. But I do believe common sense should dictate here. And this is only one example. There is a very strong presence of paid advocacy by the Sony corporation and Blizzard Entertainment concerning the world of video games. Again, I make proper edits or bring up logical points of reasoning and am promptly shut down by biased admins and their friends. This needs to stop. I admit, the things I post in Talk may be... colorful at times, but the actual content or reasoning I provide is always logically sound, or valid. This is truly becoming ridiculous. Gualt Mariana (talk) 02:46, 17 March 2017 (UTC)

@GR.no: Please stick to one account. I've blocked this one. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 02:52, 17 March 2017 (UTC)

A Wikipedia wide new policy is needed to ban "paid for" editing

Hi Jimbo, It is obvious to me from the mere existence of this and other "paid for" editing content, that a defining moment has come upon Wikipedia.

My own opinion is that drastic and final action is required in the form of a new policy which would suggest or even require a permanent ban on any and all editors who engage in "paid for" editing as well as complete removal from the encyclopedia of any edits which have been made in exchange for any type of compensation. What is your opinion on this issue? Nocturnalnow (talk) 16:14, 12 March 2017 (UTC)

Not going to happen. The Sangerites won't allow it, because they are chummy with Kohs, the prototypical Wiki-profiteer. I think there should be a CSD criterion for undeclared paid articles (i.e. TOU violations) but even that failed. People seem determined not to allow robust or drama-free actions to control paid editing. They like the drama, I reckon, and they like "winning" against the admins who tend to find and try to stop it. Guy (Help!) 17:04, 12 March 2017 (UTC)

Its an obvious existential threat to the character and essence of Wikipedia being a vehicle of free and uncompromised information and history, so giving even an inch is not an option. Nocturnalnow (talk) 22:32, 12 March 2017 (UTC)

Nothing says "drama free" like a caste of administrators running around deleting articles on the slightest suspicion of paid editing without regards to notability of the subject covered or adherence of the writing style to the precepts of NPOV. </sarcasm font> Carrite (talk) 03:24, 16 March 2017 (UTC)

Just for the record, I am always extremely gentle with COI and paid editors. I have proposed making ALL edits paid edits with the option to donate the pay to WMF. I am never against people being paid but the needs of this encyclopedia come first. THIS is a different animal entirely and I still do not believe that Vipul's group understands why it is so serious. Besides the obvious of creating a rogue offsite group operating under their own rules here, breaking hard-earned policies here with impunity, I am most disturbed because this project is constantly under threat of being accused of "paid propaganda". That is exactly what the astroturfing, fake "grassroots" editing via third-party(!) paid editing has caused here and yet when it is right in our very faces and they sign their names to it some of us don't seem to know how to handle it.TeeVeeed (talk) 08:05, 16 March 2017 (UTC)

Need to prove harms more than fanatical free-edits:

Another major issue is to weigh benefits versus harm, where many editors might add needed pages, even if paid, plus prove paid-editors are not fixing numerous non-paid edits. For example, IP-address users are a major source of hack-edits, but meanwhile as login editors focus on fixing thousands of small errors/typos, I often find complex, convoluted errors being fixed by IP editors as if usernamed editors are far too busy to take time to fix contextual errors while overwhelmed by thousands of small errors not autofixed by templates or generated by Bot-edits such as hundreds of invalid, red-message cite parameters "DUPLICATE_...=" hideously added by User:Citation_bot, while only IP editors have time to "debug" complex errors (or time to prank pages). Perhaps today's paid-editors are tomorrow's core support staff. Hence, must prove overall, long-term harm from their relatively meager pay, perhaps to cover medicine costs not covered by their king's or president's healthcare plans. -Wikid77 (talk) 18:00, 12 March 2017 (UTC)

I don't accept that binary choice. I hope, assume, and believe that the majority of IP-address users are spending their time fixing stuff out of a desire to be constructive to the project and useful to society. If some of them sometimes make edits for which they get paid, then they have to know they may get "fired" similar to a policeman knowing he can not turn on his siren just to hurry to his moonlighting job. Nobody has to prove that jaywalking is less efficient than crossing at designated spots in order to support the jaywalking rule. The onus is on the group that wants to change the rules to prove that the change is in society's best interest. Nocturnalnow (talk) 22:32, 12 March 2017 (UTC)

I seriously dispute that paid editors are adding "needed pages" - or rather, that Wikipedia needs these pages, rather than the subjects (who are almost always selling something). We've said since the beginning, pretty much, that creating an article on yourself or your company is a bad idea, and paying someone else to do it does not make it any better. Autobiographical articles introduce problems of neutrality and WP:OWNership. Paid articles add an additional financial incentive, since payment is often contingent on the page remaining in place for a certain time. Volunteers have to check for bias, and the spammers have a vested interest in fighting off anyone who tries to make the article objective, or nuke it as spam or as failing to establish significance.

I am disgusted with those who fight tooth and nail to retain spam articles and enable spammers. Paid editors are spammers. Pure, simple, unambiguous. They are parasites on a charity-funded, volunteer-run project. Virtually everybody here gives time to Wikipedia because we believe in sharing knowledge freely. Paid editors are vermin whose only thought is: how can I profit from this? Technically, they are not forbidden. In the same way dogs are often permitted to foul public places. Don't expect those who have to clean up after them, to view this as anything other than a problem. Guy (Help!) 22:52, 12 March 2017 (UTC)

I agree entirely that there should be a complete ban on paid editors. My hunch is that those who have been opposing the ban have probably been mostly paid, and should therefore be exccluded from commenting unless first fully and prominently disclosing their "pay status." Anyone with a few bucks and a little technical savvy can easily create legions of nearly untraceable but faithful and loyal sockpuppets. Is there even any functional way of accurately determining how many sock puppets may have been clamoring against the ban? Scott P. (talk) 22:58, 12 March 2017 (UTC)

I also agree that paid editing should be banned, 100%, no exceptions. I have advocated this for many years, and recent events only deepen my conviction. This should be a top-down decision, with editor input not required or even solicited. Jus da fax 23:17, 12 March 2017 (UTC)

If the top waits for the bottom, and the bottom waits for the top, it will take so long that it will in fact never get done before it's too late. I say since so far the "top" has not yet given any impression of being able to organize itself on this question, perhaps it is now time for those of us at the bottom to begin to take the first steps towards organizing regarding this one very critical question. Scott P. (talk) 23:51, 12 March 2017 (UTC)

The only reason for permitting paid editing is the impossibility of actually banning it effectively. We could only accomplish such an effective ban if we abandoned the principle of anonymous editing. Possibly it may become necessary to do this to preserve our other values, but I don't think we are at that stage of desperation yet. Thus, the reason for permitting declared paid editing is to provide a route for having it done isn a controlled and legitimate fashion, where we can see it for what it is , and evaluate articles accordingly. By providing a route for paid editors to do their work honestly, we provide them with encouragement to come forward; if we did not, we would only encourage them to hide from us more effectively. I don't like this conclusion--I wish thee were some other solution. But I do not think there is, and the last thing we need here is an increase in the number of unenfoceable rules, which only give people reason for contempt of our policies. The most important thing we can do is to develop more effective way of removing bad content no matte who may have contributed it. DGG ( talk ) 02:59, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

Right. And I think we need to be much firmer about kicking out paid articles. Whether that means speedy deletion or moving to Draft or user space, with a template that says not to move to mainspace without proper review, sourcing check and removal of spam links, I don't much mind. I have had it up to here (holds hand above head) with people who bend over backwards to give spammers what they want and what they pay for. Some people think that paid editing being tolerable provided it's declared, is the same as paid editing being welcome. It is not. Smert' spamionem. Guy (Help!) 11:56, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

It is technically possible to do good paid editing eg: getting paid to go through every single unsourced BLP and either adding inline citations to reliable sources that cite everything or deleting them if that's impossible. However, I say "technically" because "paid editing" is so synonymous with "spam" that nobody thinks of doing it. Actually, I'm annoyed about this because paying somebody to edit the boring, unexciting and uncontentious druge-work on Wikipedia would actually be a serious benefit to the project; but I'm sceptical it'll happen because of the stigma of paid advocacy. Ritchie333 ^(talk) ^(cont) 12:41, 15 March 2017 (UTC)

At Wiktionary, we've had small-scale success with that kind of paid editing (for boring and uncontentious drudge work), though it has still been controversial. The original discussion is here, and some of the controversy can be seen here, if anyone is curious. —Granger (talk · contribs) 14:27, 15 March 2017 (UTC)

I think it won't happen mainly because the people with the money are interested in promoting their businesses, not improving the project. The whole problem, it seems to me, is that most paid editors, and all those who pay them, are not here to build a great encyclopaedia, they are here for personal profit. Anyone with money who genuinely does want to build a great encyclopaedia can probably best do so by paying for access to reference materials. Guy (Help!) 17:16, 15 March 2017 (UTC)

Right, we can't have it both ways. If paid editing/undeclared COI editing is the supreme problem, then let's get rid of anonymity. It would also clear up 97.23% of vandalism, by the way. I'm all for it. Failing that, let's not persecute paid editing so that it may be seen and supervised. Carrite (talk) 03:26, 16 March 2017 (UTC)

Getting rid of pseudonymity won't get rid of COI editing. Putting a real name on your account doesn't mean disclosing every job you have or every client your employer asks you to do some work on. It will mean that anyone writing neutrally and fairly on contentious pages about commercial organisations will be at much greater risk of vexatious law suits, so it does mean at least partial surrender in the fight against spam. As for vandalism, there is a theory that using a real name or what looks like a real name prevents vandalism whilst not deterring goodfaith editors. The theory is being tested by our rival Citizendium and I'd like to see a bit more success there before we imitate them. There is an alternate theory that vandals do the minimum necessary to vandalise, while many goodfaith editors are lured in by making their first edits so easy they don't have to create an account. On that theory banning IP editing would lose us a larger proportion of our new good faith editors than our vandals, whilst making vandalism a little harder to find. That doesn't strike me as a good move, especially as our antivandalism tools have got much more efficient over the years, but despite many experiments, we have not yet found a better way to recruit new editors than the edit button and making the first edit as easy as possible. Ϣere SpielChequers 10:26, 16 March 2017 (UTC)

Related "Help"

FYI: In today's mail . . . Wikipedia:Help desk#"For hire" Wikipedia writers/editors (permalink) -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 23:06, 12 March 2017 (UTC)

Commercial edits and sockpuppetry

As I understand it WP has not yet invested anything in protecting against technically hacked sockpuppetry (e.g. IP spoofed). By inviting paid editing, does this not also invite those with the money to hack? Unless and until WP is willing to both invest in state of the art technical protection against sockpuppet hacking tom-foolery, and to instate a matching ban on paid editing, isn't WP just another leaky boat that eventually will sink? Isn't the level of the trust that the public has for us, which we have carefully built up over years, just going to slowly dissolve back into the sea of commercialism and vested interests from which we first arose, as our ship slowly sinks beneath the waves of the new "fake news"? Scott P. (talk) 23:11, 12 March 2017 (UTC)

Museums should edit their collections

Perhaps request many museums to limit their collections to 1,000 pages of major items, as combining similar items as multi-list pages, but I would think more museums could pay employees (part-time?) to edit pages about their collections, perhaps limited to 100 pages at first, to help focus on major items. Ask them to cite the related sources about the listed items. That is a reasonable use for paid editors. Likewise artists could edit their gallery as major artwork pages, and explain techniques such as "elliptical effect" just as "Chiaroscuro" /kya-ro-skoo-ro/ is explained as a WP article. Likewise, musicians should be encouraged to edit the major pages, such as help explain Victory at Sea composition "Guadalcanal March" for theme, structure, and any solo parts. Those people are likely to edit other pages as well. -Wikid77 (talk) 19:52, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

There's a myth about the TOU and WP:PAID that these policies stop editors who are paid by GLAMs as Wikipedians-in-Residence, or paid as curators, or janitors or whatnot, from editing Wikipedia. Or sometimes the myth is about stopping university professors from editing, or maybe that editors here want to interpret TOU and PAID as saying that. Those myths are just false. See TOU FAX and Wikipedia:Paid-contribution_disclosure#Wikipedians_in_residence. I'd certainly be glad to have all these folks edit, and the only time I hear about somebody suposedly wanting to ban them, is from another person who is arguing this as a reason to not enforce the TOU and WP:PAID. Can we just stop spreading these myths? Smallbones_(smalltalk) 20:49, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

No museum has anything like 1,000 pages on them and their objects. Generally museums aren't sufficiently interested to get their staff to do much on WP, but there have been cases where interns and volunteers have been encouraged to add pictures and external links. Sometimes this done to excess, amonting to spam (yes, you, Brooklyn Museum). The project reported on here was a successful iniative to do this in a managed way, getting very useful links to the free book downloads available from the Metropolitan Museum of Art added where appropriate. Johnbod (talk) 14:47, 14 March 2017 (UTC)

Well, English WP has over 1,000 pages with The Louvre, with a thousand pages for the 1,400 painters among the Lourve collection, linked on page "Catalog of paintings in the Louvre Museum". However, the detailed pages about various items in the Louvre should be expanded. -Wikid77 (talk) 16:44, 15 March 2017 (UTC)

That's totally different; please don't muddy the issue. Category:Louvre & its subcats add up to some 300-400 articles, possibly the largest number for any museum. The category on French Wikipedia looks a good deal smaller. Johnbod (talk) 17:06, 15 March 2017 (UTC)

So what can we do?

Paid editing is not something that we have to accept. The community can do something about it. I'll just use the words "paid editing" instead of "paid advocacy editing" or "undisclosed COI editing" because we all know that the large majority of paid editing is both undisclosed and is used for commercial advertising (i.e. advocacy). While fine distinctions might be made for a few cases - I'd prefer we all grab the bull by the horns and just talk about the major cases - and then carve out the few exception that we should consider, e.g. Wikipedians-in-residence at GLAMS, university professors who are not promoting their universities, Wiki-chapter employees working at Editathons, etc.

The first thing we should do is formally make Jimbo's bright-line rule part of the WP:PAID policy. Does anybody really want paid editors directly editing article pages?
We need to get the message out to all the various corners of Wikipedia that paid editing is not allowed, e.g. to AfD, AfC, and it seems we have to let the Arbitration Committee know that we expect them to enforce the rules.
The WMF should have a media campaign to let the media know we don't accept paid editing. If they don't do it, editors need to do it themselves (though this will be a bit clumsier)
We need to target the companies that openly state that their business is to put paid edits into Wikipedia, e.g. the Wiki-PRs, and Wiki Experts of the world. (more on this later)
we should forbid paid editing where the jobs are posted on open job posting boards, e.g. through a change to WP:PAID.

There are lots more things we can do, please just list them below. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 01:09, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

How do we "all know that the large majority of paid editing is both undisclosed and is used for commercial advertising (i.e. advocacy)"? Have these statistics been borne out in any sort of scientific way? Perhaps this could be a job for someone like Nigel Shadbolt of the Open Data Institute, but then, both of those articles have been edited by conflict-of-interest and paid PR personnel, yet that doesn't stop Sir Shadbolt being made a featured guest at an upcoming Wikimedia Foundation fundraiser. Perhaps the Wikimedia Foundation and its "movement" should get its own act together before the Community attempts to prescribe new rules that largely will be unenforceable? This problem has been around since at least 2006. If it hasn't been fixed for nearly 11 years, maybe it isn't the problem you imagine it to be? - 2001:558:1400:4:C8C8:1264:3081:1628 (talk) 15:46, 15 March 2017 (UTC)

Some of this will require changing policy a bit. I have to note that the basic RfC process is subject to manipulation, e.g. after the Wiki-PR scandal I suggested a a straight RfC on the bright-line rule, and then suddenly 5 confusing variants were also put forward, making the whole process into a farce, and nothing could be passed. (Of course a few months later, with the RfC supervised by WMF legal, the Terms of Use change passed 80%-20%).

I suggest that we get a process here that allows for a reasonable discussion of the alternatives, and then a straight vote from the maximum number of users. In particular, getting two groups to propose policy changes - one that proposes strengthening paid editing restrictions and another that proposes "kinder, gentler paid editing policies" should come up with straightforward proposed changes. When these 2 sets of changes are proposed, an RfC should be run for 30 days, with a banner on en-Wiki to bring in the largest possible group of !voters. Anything else will likely leave the policy in a state of confusion. User:Jimbo Wales, would you support such a proposal for a mega-RfC for this mega-question? Smallbones_(smalltalk) 03:02, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

The simple thing would be an RfC that would a) validate that WP:PAID as policy (it is policy, but some have called for an RfC to validate that, which I think would be a good idea); and b) propose that the "peer review" aspects in the COI guideline be made part of the PAID policy. These two things would probably fly, in my view. Jytdog (talk) 05:46, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

I see no need for an RfC on paid. It is alread firm policy, supported by both the community here and by the foundation. There are some differences between the community and the WMF-legal view, but they are compatible, as the WMF view is that their statement is the minimum, and that we may have further restrictions. And we do, in that we regard editing by an employee under the terms of his employment to be paid editing, and the WMF does not . Given our ability to extend the rules, our rule is valid, tho we can not expect the WMF to take legal action except on the basis of its own rules. (There are laos considerable differences between the WMFview of when outing is appropriate in the investigation of paid editing and our much more restrictive position. Again, it is acceptable that we may have a more rigid position, and I thin the general consensus here is clearly in support of our rules, though many of want to make some modifications for borderline circumstances . I think RfCs can often confuse not clarify the issue, and an incremental approach is more likely to be successful. DGG ( talk ) 08:00, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

User:DGG - I found it remarkable that the majority arbcom statement responding to WMF's legal statement, which is here, didn't refer to WP:PAID as policy and in fact said: The paid editing and harassment policies are up to the local community to decide. Please note that the community has never decided anything about "PAID"; we just posted up the PAID policy and have been living our way into it. The majority Arbcom statement also put the terms of use well outside the policy framework of en-WP policy where it said: Being doxxed and treated in ways the community has defined as harassment is not a reasonable consequence of noncompliance with a website's terms of use. Neither statement comes even close to acknowledging that PAID is en-WP policy. We are talking about the majority of Arbcom here, speaking directly about the intersection of WP:HA and... well, in their view, this "website's terms of use". The 2015 Arbcom "Finding of fact" on the Wifione case still stands, as well. It is here sand said: The Committee has no mandate to sanction editors for paid editing as it is not prohibited by site policies. The arbitration policy prevents the Committee from creating new policy by fiat. The Committee does have, however, a longstanding mandate to deal with activities often associated with paid editing—POV-pushing, misrepresentation of sources, and sometimes sockpuppetry—through the application of existing policy. You put those two things together - a lack of explicit recognition that PAID is en-WP policy in a statement where there was every reason to do so, and instead the opposite was done, and an explicit statement that Arbcom isn't touching paid editing because there is no policy regarding it... and there is a clear problem with our.. jurisprudence, in my view. And in any case, as I said above, I think an RfC validating that PAID is policy would fly pretty easily. Jytdog (talk) 05:55, 15 March 2017 (UTC)

A word about arbcom. Most Arbcom members doesn't care much about paid editing, because very few of them have the experience in screening or improving articles. The terms under which arbcom works in fact prohibit involvement with article content. What everyone on arbcom does care about is privacy and outing, because we deal with the interpersonal consequences of this,and are continually involved with trying to limit damage from some often very difficult situations. Arb com needs to do this, because these are questions involving privacy which nobody else can handle,so it's understandable that they sometimes do not see much beyond it. What most of the members of arbcom objected to in the WMF statement was the demephaiss on the danger of outing. As I see it, arb com has been going for years on the assumption that the WMF not only backs, but requires, the stringent enWP policies on this. Most of the members wee very startled and very upset, to find out otherwise; to find out that the level of privacy the WMF requires is not quite the same as enWP, and that it does not necessarily prohibet outing in some situations. (The EWMF still does permit us to have stricter rules if we can enforce them, but they will only enforce their own rules according to their own interpretation.) for years arb com has been able to deal with all questions about whether there should be exceptions by saying the Foundation would not allow it; we are now faced with the need to actually justify them on their merits. (my own view is that the WMF statement was in some ways unrealistic, but it is much closer to my own position than the arbcom statement, which I refused to sign.) Fortunately, it doesn't matter as far as prohibiting paid editing goes; it only affects how the community can investigate. DGG ( talk ) 08:35, 15 March 2017 (UTC)

User:DGG Thanks for your reply and it is interesting and useful to hear about Arbcom's focus on OUTING and why that is. You however (unintentionally i am sure) did not address the point, namely that Arbcom did not recognize that PAID is en-WP policy and in fact treated PAID like it is not en-WP policy - the use of the phrase a a website's terms of use was just so ....telling. There is a hole in our policy and governance framework right there. Jytdog (talk) 18:52, 15 March 2017 (UTC)

I agree with DGG and Smallbones. However, as far as expanding beyond the parameters of the Foundation TOU, I expect there will be just another round of circular arguments, as there is a substantive body of opinion that has no problem with either COI or paid edits. Thus the Foundation, which is the only really aggrieved party here, must act if anything is to be done. Coretheapple (talk) 22:50, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

Regarding the idea that "paid editors ... are parasites on a charity-funded, volunteer-run project." All of our contributions are under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License, which allows anyone to share—to copy, distribute and transmit the work, and to remix—to adapt the work – for any purpose, even commercially. Hence, the CC BY-SA 3.0 License allows Google to siphon traffic from Wikipedia by adding their own version of our infoboxes to their search results. Search results that include advertising that makes Google one of the most profitable companies in the world. It seems that everyone is allowed to be paid for an editor's contributions, except for the editor themself. The problem with these proposals is that they are unenforceable, if your focus is on the contributor and not the content. The only way to make them enforceable is to require all editors to register, and provide their name and current employment when they do. Just as we Americans provide our name and occupation to political candidates when we contribute money to them. – wbm1058 (talk) 02:31, 14 March 2017 (UTC)

Sure, anybody can copy material placed in Wikipedia (under the CC BY-SA 3.0 License). But material placed here cannot be adverts and if it is paid for that must be disclosed. There's nothing contradictory about that. It is just the conditions you agree to if you want to contribute here.

If companies want to license their adverts CC BY-SA 3.0 License they don't need to place it in our articles. They can put it on their own websites. They can even put it on our talkpages.

All that's required of them now is that they disclose the paid status of their edits so that these can be reviewed by unbiased editors. Since the large majority of them don't do this, we know that that large majority is not editing in good faith, and we need to take greater efforts to enforce our rules.

There's nothing unenforceable about our rules on paid editing, beyond the usual "100% compliance and enforcement are not expected" that goes along with almost any rule anywhere. There is a problem with some of the arbs and some admins who refuse to enforce our rules. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 05:11, 14 March 2017 (UTC)

How can you prove that anyone was paid for their edits? Do you have CIA/NSA-like capabilities? Can you see the bits flowing into their bitcoin accounts? Did you see their contracts or agreements with the person(s) that paid them? wbm1058 (talk) 12:55, 14 March 2017 (UTC)

How can you prove anything? Nothing is ever 100% certain, not convictions in the court system, not generally accepted scientific theories, but we can get strong evidence. One of the main problems is admins who require 100% certainty. We are not bound by legal standards of proof. We should certainly require strong evidence, however. Some of the types of evidence we should consider are:

Promotional edits, aka advertising. Most folks in capitalist economies can easily recognize adverts. It's not even a matter of personal opinion in most cases. If the edit only gives the good points about a certain business or product, and ignores most of the negative points it's very likely an advert. There's a certain writing style that advertisers and PR flacks just can't seem to avoid, that is very recognizable. There are almost certain give-aways like the inclusion of product lists, a list of offices or other locations, and list of business awards that nobody ever heard of. Of course if admins require "CIA/NSA-like capabilities" they are not going to accept any of these as proof of the edit being an advertisement, but editors don't have to accept such obvious intentional blindness on the part of admins.
New editors who show up with detailed knowledge of Wikipedia's rules, especially of the rather strained arguments often used by apologists for paid editing. Isn't it time we just take this as an indication of bad faith? Isn't it time that we take this type of editing, together with obvious promotional editing, and tell the editor "Please explain what you are really doing on Wikipedia - this looks like an obvious case of paid editing"?
Single purpose editors and sleeper accounts are readily recognizable. We regularly use such evidence in making decisions about articles when paid editing is not involved. Why not use the same evidence when paid editing is involved? I’d place editors in the same category, when they disappear when something bad happens to a company that they’ve been promoting. Certainly no editor is required to edit at any time, but when a company is closed down in a major market by regulators, and nobody shows up to edit the article for weeks, it is evidence that paid editing was going on.
Editors do partially disclose, or “make mistakes” when they are questioned. I suspect that the 2 main reasons for this are 1) we don’t let people and small companies know our rules well enough and 2) unethical companies hire individuals who assume that what they are being hired to do is within our rules, and who try to answer our questions honestly. Of course there are others who are just arrogant sobs who try to BS their way out of any questions.
Announcements on job posting sites.
Articles about non-notable or marginally-notable companies, especially when these companies are sleaze-bag operators like Banc De Binary

How many other types of evidence would you require to show strong evidence that paid editing is going on? There are many more, but if you can’t find enough here, I suspect you just don’t want to enforce our rules against paid editing. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 17:10, 14 March 2017 (UTC)

I don't doubt that paid editing is going on. But the problems you cite are not exclusive to paid editing, and it's unknown what percentage of editors responsible for these problem edits are paid. I think the majority of promotional, advertising-like edits are not by paid editors, or by editors whose primary or only task is to edit Wikipedia. Some of these may be people whose Wikipedia-editing tasks only represent a small fraction of their overall job duties. Furthermore, whether an edit was paid for or not is not relevant to determining the merit of that edit. An advertising, promotional-like edit is the same regardless of whether it was paid for or not. Governments don't distinguish between self-prepared and professionally-prepared tax returns when they decide whether to accept them or not, do they? Now, if a tax-preparation firm has a pattern of submitting fraudulent returns then the government will sanction them. Part of the problem is that the governing body has to want to identify and prosecute abusers. A government that fires a third of it's tax return auditors shows that it isn't serious about going after tax cheats. If the WMF refuses to allow the community to require a minimum experience level of editing existing content before allowing the creation of new content, it shows that it isn't serious about slowing down the "abuses" that concern you so much. You must be familiar with how new pages patrol and articles for creation are just totally snowed under by this kind of content creation. The WMF doesn't seem to really care, even if they give this lip service. To them it's all about increasing "community engagement"... the more editors the better, even if many of them are just "drive-by" editors who create only one article and then disappear until that article is up for deletion. wbm1058 (talk) 22:08, 14 March 2017 (UTC)

Your argument is:

The majority of people who insert advertising into our articles aren’t paid for it
Besides, it’s irrelevant if they are paid or not
Some people cheat on their taxes, other people hire professionals who cheat for them (????)
Besides, it’s all the WMF’s fault

None of this is at all relevant to my statement that "Paid editing is not something that we have to accept.”

You really ought to be ashamed of yourself for trying to peddle such nonsense in public.

If you really don’t want to enforce Wikipedia’s rules on undisclosed paid editing, just say so, but I think the honorable path would be to resign your adminship if you refuse to enforce the rules. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 01:37, 15 March 2017 (UTC)

You missed the point I was making with my analogy to tax preparation. Your question Does anybody really want paid editors directly editing article pages? seems to assume that all paid edits violate some policies or guidelines, and by extension, all taxpayers cheat on their taxes and all tax professionals help them cheat. I disagree. Most taxpayers are honest. They use professionals because tax law is complicated, and they don't understand all the laws, and have difficulty filing their tax returns without help. Just as Wikipedia's rules are complicated, and inexperienced editors have difficulty getting their first article to stick. I see a lot of the mistakes these editors make, as I catch them in my patrols for {{error}}s and such. It does get tedious after a while to keep cleaning up all these rookie mistakes. I wouldn't mind if they got help from someone else, as that would free up my time for more interesting stuff. If someone gets help – paid or not – and that help produces well-cited, neutral-point-of-view content that doesn't violate any policies, I have no problem with that. You should focus on the paid editors who are producing non-neutral advertising, promotional copyright-violating content only cited to the subject's own website, content that spreads fake news, etc. – anything that blatantly disregards policies. Those paid editors should be dealt with severely in a criminal court of law. We're volunteers here; I don't mind if you work that beat, but it's not my first choice. If pay were on offer for working that beat, I might reconsider. I have no problem with, say, University professors getting paid for enhancing physics articles. You know, the way Britannica does it. wbm1058 (talk) 05:17, 15 March 2017 (UTC)

Yes, the principle of WP, the basis by which we all collaborate, is that we are freely contributing our efforts to make contentthat anyone can use, even if the people who use it make money doing so. Commercialism and paid writing is part of the world, and we work for the benefit of the entire world. People write promotional content do not work for the entire world: they work for their own company or organization only, . Instead of contributing NPOV information for anyone to use, they are contributing bias in the hope of people adopting it. (There are to be sure unpaid zealots and fans doing the same thing, but they are more easily identifiable, they too are a real danger, but we know how to handle them. The danger form them has been obvious from the very beginning,and our rules from the beginning have dealt with it. I do not think there can often be good quality paid editing, and would rather see it abolished totally, but at least our existing COI rulea and the TOU will identify it so it can be watched. It's very hard to watch otherwise, because most of it is devoted to advertising companies and organization that nobody here cares much about. I have seen some barely acceptable paid editing--I have never seen good paid editing--the declared paid editors who also work as volunteers invariable produce much better articles as volunteers; the fact of being paid means they must satisfy their customers, and their customers are paying them because they want advertising. Academics don't need the incentive of payment--they typically want to spread their ideas without it; this can give them a COI, but not a paid COI; this gives the possibility of non-POV, and needs to be watched, but other academics will do it: they are very good at watching each other. DGG ( talk ) 08:22, 15 March 2017 (UTC)

Very well put. Guy (Help!) 09:37, 16 March 2017 (UTC)

Smallbones proposal

-withdrawn, please see the conflicts of interest section below. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 17:03, 16 March 2017 (UTC)

I think Smallbones's proposal directly above is well crafted, thought out, detailed and deserving of a "support/opposed" input before it gets lost in the weeds.

Apologies for moving this (from the second comment in this section). But if I'm making an RfC-type proposal, I like to be precise. My only quibble with the way it looked before is that the ToU prescribe how changes can take place to this part of the ToU/WP:PAID.

Applicable law, or community and Foundation policies and guidelines, such as those addressing conflicts of interest, may further limit paid contributions or require more detailed disclosure. A Wikimedia Project community may adopt an alternative paid contribution disclosure policy. If a Project adopts an alternative disclosure policy, you may comply with that policy instead of the requirements in this section when contributing to that Project. An alternative paid contribution policy will only supersede these requirements if it is approved by the relevant Project community and listed in the alternative disclosure policy page.

Quick note

The ANI about Vipul's enterprise was generally sparsely commented on, and is likely to drift off the ANI page without being closed (which is some ways surprising to me, in other ways not). But because it is likely to be archived without action, I am planning a specific RfC about that, as we as a community should provide concrete feedback with respect to that concrete enterprise. In my view, focusing on the concrete and arriving at reasonable measures that can gain consensus and establish useful precedents, is a much better way to move the community forward than yet another broad RfC about paid editing, generally. Jytdog (talk) 19:06, 15 March 2017 (UTC)

Thank you Jytdog for bring the Vipul matter to my attention and maybe to some others' as well. As I stated before, I think this behaviour...paid editing..is an existential threat to the essence of Wikipedia being an uncompromised and free source of the most accurate information and history. Thus, in order to give this matter the attention it deserves, I endorse Smallbones's proposal as being the the best way of getting as wide as possible input from Wikipedians, in a really broad Rfc, as Smallbones suggests. Smallbones' proposal is a no-lose and the best next step in dealing with this, imo. Nocturnalnow (talk) 14:49, 16 March 2017 (UTC)

Hi User:Nocturnalnow you are welcome. I am not sure you are aware of how divided the community is about paid editing, and perhaps more importantly, how difficult the issues are, with privacy being a fundamental value in WP. If you really care about these issues, please read the section on my user page here where I summarize those issues. That is based on my experience listening to the community and my own reflections on the policies and guidelines and on my work on these issues in articles and user Talk pages.

The tensions between the values of privacy and content integrity were poorly navigated by WMF legal in their statement on exactly that issue (see WP:Wikimedia Foundation statement on paid editing and outing) which led to a strong rebuke/correction by Arbcom, which you can read here where they emphasized the value of privacy and how that ties into our opposition to harassment. See also the Talk page of the WP:HARASS and the last 5 archives or so, where people have been negotiating for months, literally, to try to find some way to loosen OUTING when dealing with paid editing. No luck so far. And please really read what everybody is saying there.

Looking at what the community itself says... you can hear the community speaking on the issue of paid editing are Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/Paid_editing and its talk page (!) from 2009. Likewise, this RfC and its talk page from the summer of 2012, and the discussion about the failed policy proposal, Wikipedia:No paid advocacy that happened in the fall of 2013. See its archives (really) and especially the RfC in Archive 3 of its talk page: RfC: Should WP:BRIGHTLINE become policy?. Please really read them like you were a closer trying to assess consensus. The policy issues are serious, as is the tension between the values that the harassment policy and COI guideline embody (with privacy being a more fundamental value, as is reflected in one being a policy and the other a guideline).

Looking at the continuum, there are hardcore anti-paid-editing advocates on one side, hard core "I don't care if you are paid to edit - it is content not contributors" on the other side, and in the middle, is the bulk of the community, that doesn't like paid editing much but values privacy deeply.

Moving from abstract discussion to concrete cases and actions... at ANI the community doesn't tolerate paid editing when it is undisclosed and obvious (see a case that was unprecedented when it was brought a few months ago - FoCuSandLeArN, an editor with 70K edits and in good standing, was indeffed for undisclosed paid editing at ANI FoCuSandLeArN here in a brilliantly written filing (how you do these things, really matters) ... and there are several ANI cases where undisclosed paid editing was pretty obvious but the focus was on other behavior/content policy violations (see the Earflaps case and the Tonyeny case, and there are others. Also on the ground, I was indeffed 6 months ago for violating OUTING when I made a stupid mistake when dealing with an editor with a very apparent COI, and if I ever make a mistake again I will be indeffed with no appeal. It doesn't get more concrete than that.

But again if you read past community discussions, there is no easy way to navigate the tension between privacy and integrity in abstract policy discussions.

I really don't see how yet another broad RfC will get anything done, and in fact I see it is damaging as the community knows it is divided and this will just be exhausting and dispiriting for everybody.

There is no simple solution here. Jytdog (talk) 15:59, 16 March 2017 (UTC)

User:Jytdog, thanks again, I will read the info and think about it all. Nocturnalnow (talk) 22:50, 16 March 2017 (UTC)

User:Jytdog, I am still catching up on the history of this issue, but I am encouraged by your sentence here, "It is pretty easy to tell by reading an article with WP's policies and guidelines in mind, if an advocate has had a big influence on it." in the sense that this easy "tell" may be a simple way to enforce COI while staying within our privacy and harassment policies. I'm thinking that this may be an ironic situation where the authorities of Administrators which allow for a certain degree of judgment can be employed to block and ban editors who are obviously engaging in advocacy, without even bringing up or looking into whether or not they are being paid or employed. So, the result would, hopefully, be the removal of the edits of all advocates...paid or unpaid....as well as kicking them out of the community; within our existing processes of course. Several editors at the recent ANI discussion have stated variations of "a quick block" on paid editors, e.g. "SUPPORT mass nuking of all 'Timelines' including the medical and EA advocacy related ones. Indefs on Vipul, Simfish, Riceissa, Ethanbas and Wikisanchez for long term coordinated meat-puppetry and abusive editing. Inlinetext (talk) 06:32, 13 March 2017 (UTC)".....perhaps that can apply to all advocates, most of which as you say are likely obvious to the seasoned Admins.? Nocturnalnow (talk) 15:14, 17 March 2017 (UTC)

User:Nocturnalnow, this is incorrect. It is not for the 'edits' to "tell" their COI but the 'editors' who are supposed to declare it in advance. In fact per the WP:COI guideline paid editors like Vipul's are not supposed to edit articles directly, with disclosure or without it. If the community decides to retain Vipul's "Timeline of ..(trademark)" series (as seems pretty likely), it's a distinct possibility that some consumer group (or another aggrieved person) is going to seek damages for Wikimedia's non-disclosure from the employer and WMF once the 35 day grace period expires. Of course, it appears that WMF has not been formally informed :-) so they have no actual knowledge of all this as yet and their countdown is not running. Inlinetext ([[User talk:Inlinetext|talk) 18:37, 17 March 2017 (UTC)

Inlinetext, I want to emphasize that I am seeing a possible solution opportunity in the content ofUser:Jytdog's sentence: "It is pretty easy to tell by reading an article with WP's policies and guidelines in mind, if an advocate has had a big influence on it.".

An opportunity to completely bypass the "paid,unpaid,privacy and self-declaration" contortions by simply encouraging our Admins. to use their own experience, observations and judgment to quickly, using their existing authority, bring advocates of all type to heel by way of warnings, blocks and reverting edits made by advocates of any kind. Nocturnalnow (talk) 19:20, 17 March 2017 (UTC)

NocturnalNow admins who go rogue (different from WP:Rogue admin) eventually get their bit yanked. Things have to follow processes established by the community. But sure any editor can bring an edit warring case, supported by diffs; anybody can be brought to ANI for showing a sustained pattern of POV/TENDENTIOUS editing or behavior. Sometimes that is difficult to show especially on issues involving complex content. I have brought a few long term POV-pushing cases at ANI and had them go nowhere, as it takes a lot of work and time sometimes for others to dig in and see the pattern in order to even start judging, and on top of that wiki-politics too often get in the way. Sometimes it is pretty easy to show. And mind you, such cases can be brought against somebody who is overzealous about COI/paid editing as well, and this is very likely going to happen to Inlinetext soon. Jytdog (talk) 19:45, 17 March 2017 (UTC)

Nobody is talking about going rogue, just more aggressively using existing Admin authority to deal with advocates. If an innocent editor is mistakenly identified as an advocate, he/she has an appeal process or can go to ANI themselves. At the least, you can shut down the advocates who, as you say, are the most obvious about it. I am sure the community would much rather have aggressive anti-advocate administration rather than getting stuck in this unsolvable COI/paid editing/unpaid advocacy/privacy/ conundrum. I would also note that this may have become, intentionally or not, a victim of "constructive confusion"....a situation which has become much more complicated and confusing than need be which tends to favour the status quo or whomsoever has the most staying power in the debate. Nocturnalnow (talk) 15:11, 18 March 2017 (UTC)

I am exactly talking about "aggressive use" of the tools when I talk about going rogue. The community worries about this, specifically on this issue. For an example, please carefully read Wikipedia:Requests_for_adminship/Brianhe, which was hard to watch. Jytdog (talk) 21:58, 18 March 2017 (UTC)

One difficult thing re COI editing is that often you are looking for something that isn't there. Specifically negative information. You can block someone for removing sourced negative information from an article, but you can't block someone for writing a couple of apparently neutral paragraphs about an organisation without mentioning any scandals they happen to have got involved in. Ϣere SpielChequers 14:21, 18 March 2017 (UTC)

Insist on honesty - everything else about this should follow from that. Most importantly, readers should be able to find the COI of the writers we impose upon them to read and rely upon (it's how writers with COI do it in the real world, they either 1)don't write or 2) disclose), and honesty is actually the only way Wikipedians work together, at all. The only other thing that could possibly be imposed from the WMF, beside any other idea, is 1) Higher hurdles for business articles and 2) higher hurdles for BLP's. To do that (close to right), the WMF needs a broad consultation with the community from community knowledgeable people on their side (perhaps with highered outside consultants, too). Alanscottwalker (talk) 14:47, 18 March 2017 (UTC)

re: 'Insist on honesty'. I think Vipul has been exceptionally honest in attempting to correlate his feelings for Wikipedia, Effective Altruism, Wikipediocracy, WMF etc. at Should you donate to the Wikimedia Foundation?. This clearly shows, to me at least, Vipul's advocacy why netizens should not donate to Jimbo's mailers/ WMF and instead donate/sponsor/pay directly to Vipul's selected EA users for EA's advocacy on Wikipedia. This is a long term agenda of motivated abuse for an ideologically motivated off-wiki agenda including SEO elements. Inlinetext (talk) 17:56, 18 March 2017 (UTC)

I agree about higher hurdles for BLPs and business articles. Everything else but that has been tried. Frankly, given that COI is a Foundation and Jimbo issue, as those are the two harmed parties, I've come around to the view that volunteer editors shouldn't expend too much time on the issue in the abstract if they won't. It's like the old joke about the boy scout forcing the old lady to cross the street. The boy scout wants to do his good deed. But the old lady doesn't want to cross the street. I question whether Jimbo and the Foundation are willing to take additional concrete steps on this issue. If they're not, why should we get all exercised about it? Coretheapple (talk) 14:22, 19 March 2017 (UTC)

Coretheapple, I may be a minority, but I am not motivated by anything Jimbo or WMF do and I do not expect or hope they will do anything...I see this project and issue of societal importance and value and believe the contributors can do whatever needs to be done. Nocturnalnow (talk) 21:42, 19 March 2017 (UTC)

Nocturnalnow Well certainly, Same here. But there are limits. Over a period of years I've become weary of the lack of interest in the subject from the so-called "community," the opposition from many, and inadequate action by Jimbo and the Foundation, who are the affected parties here. Yes there are occasional legal actions by the Foundation. There is that TOU. There is occasional jawboning by Jimbo. That's it. That's all it ever is. I "Joe Coretheapple," anonymous, brilliant Wikipedia editor, stand to lose nothing if Wikipedia goes to the dogs due to COI editing. That's not even my name. Even if it was, so what? I don't own this site. I have nothing at stake. They do. Coretheapple (talk) 22:22, 19 March 2017 (UTC)

Nope, you've put in 20,000 edits, Jimbo 13,000, you've got 50% more at stake than he does; whether you or he knows it or not. Time is one of the few things that can't be replaced..and effort is one of the few things of value. Nocturnalnow (talk) 00:32, 20 March 2017 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Original Barnstar
	Thank you Jimbo for creating the excellent online encyclopedia site Wikipedia. Without you, none of us would be here right now. XboxGamer22408^{talk to me} 02:30, 21 March 2017 (UTC)

Closure of DMOZ (Open Directory Project)

DMOZ (http://www.dmoz.org) has announced its closure, and has benefited from editors in Category:Wikipedians who contribute to DMOZ (User:Abernaki, User:Arthur Rubin, User:Basilwhite, User:Bonadea, User:Breckket, User:Col. Hauler, User:Dan Koehl, User:David4286 User:David4286/Notes/userboxes, User:Dozen, User:Eric-the-Bun, User:GastelEtzwane, User:Gerald Tan, User:Guoruei, User:Jh75, User:Koavf User:koavf, User:Lovecoconuts, User:MirDoc, User:Mjquinn id User:Mjquinn id/UserBoxes 2015, User:Nevit, User:Photofox, User:Rjw62, User:Seas2day, User:Steve Hart, User:Thadius856, User:The chicken lady, User:The Coldwood, User:Venudxb User:Venudxb/userboxes, User:Xixtas). Can anyone explain why DMOZ has decided to close?
—Wavelength (talk) 18:47, 15 March 2017 (UTC)

I found some information at http://www.jasminedirectory.com/blog/dmoz-is-officially-closing/.
—Wavelength (talk) 21:48, 15 March 2017 (UTC)

Well that was sudden - announced the ninth, closed the 14th. It may have been a shared community project, but I wonder if now the only way that data is available is in copyrighted extracts... Wnt (talk) 14:51, 16 March 2017 (UTC)

External links search shows 1055 results in all namespaces. For links from article namespace, it is possible to look for archived versions at the Internet Archive Wayback Machine (https://archive.org). Also, Template:Dmoz is linked to from more than 5000 pages.

—Wavelength (talk) 15:26, 16 March 2017 (UTC)

An interesting historical footnote. Many years ago, when Wikia was working on a search engine, we approached AOL about buying Dmoz from them. They were very unreceptive, claiming that they had plans to increase investment and rejuvenate the project. They wouldn't even discuss a price nor any possibility of a deal. I predicted then that they wouldn't really do anything with it, and in fact they didn't do anything with it. The only surprise is that it took them this long to shut it down. It's a sad outcome, I'd say, for what was once a very interesting project.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 17:56, 16 March 2017 (UTC)

Thank you for that information. If it is not too late, then I propose that the Wikimedia Foundation approach AOL again about buying DMOZ. If it is too late, then I propose that the Wikimedia community develop its own multilingual web directory as a new Wikimedia project.

—Wavelength (talk) 21:18, 16 March 2017 (UTC)

I am grateful for the static mirror at http://dmoztools.net.
—Wavelength (talk) 20:25, 17 March 2017 (UTC)

It is under a CC BY license. No need to buy it unless of course if we want the name and logo I guess. We can otherwise simply restart it and continue where they left off. I approached them a few years back regarding collaborating. However from what I gathered the community was nearly non existent than.

If we were to take this on, one of the issues will be spam. They had the partial benefit of needing approval to contribute which as they have failed was not really much of a benefit. But they did not turn into a spam site. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 01:43, 19 March 2017 (UTC)

I last looked at it about three years ago, and thought it pretty poor quality - very US-biased and with a lot of near-SPAM. Lots of dead links, and no doubt even more now. I think it would be just be a distraction for our community. Johnbod (talk) 17:32, 19 March 2017 (UTC)

Clearly Wikipedia shouldn't just take a losing venture and continue it as is. However, WMF should always be on the prowl to collect and distribute useful information. So the first thing is to host a dmoztools.net like site, not necessarily somewhere prominent, but somewhere that ensures it remains as a resource for Wikimedia projects that might emerge. Next, evaluate how WMF should do a directory. Wikipedia famously is 'not a directory', but we could have something that is. Key thing is to establish a clear purpose and idea behind it - we might want a short list with strict objective criteria for notability, we might want the Yellow Pages, but what we don't want is to leave the site open to subjective arguments between inclusionists and deletionists who can't decide whether something belongs or not .. or do so based on an under the table payment. But all that comes second - first thing is, get the existing data. Someday someone might sort though it, or they might start from scratch but take it as a bad example. Wnt (talk) 23:19, 19 March 2017 (UTC)

The problem, of course, is spam. Here is a possibly crazy idea: charge everyone a dollar for inclusion in the directory, but the WMF doesn't get the dollars. Instead they go to The Pew Charitable Trusts Global Penguin Conservation program ( http://www.pewtrusts.org/en/projects/global-penguin-conservation ). --Guy Macon (talk) 13:29, 20 March 2017 (UTC)

Johnbod, I am not aware of Wikivoyage (or any other Wikimedia project) being a distraction. Also, some editors might be better for a directory than for Wikipedia.

—Wavelength (talk) 14:32, 22 March 2017 (UTC)

This may be of use:https://www.resource-zone.com/forum/t/dmoz-closure.53420/ it looks like the community isn't quite dead and plans a relocation. Endercase (talk) 02:51, 22 March 2017 (UTC)

Average Wikipedia editor

Jimbo, you're quoted in The Guardian saying... "Wikipedia’s co-founder, Jimmy Wales, concedes that the average wiki-entry editor is typically 'a 26-year-old geeky male with a PhD'." Do you honestly have data showing that the "average" editor holds a PhD? I perceive that PhDs may be more common in the Wikipedia editor population than in the general population, but that it is nowhere near the "average" case. - 75.99.174.82 (talk) 16:47, 20 March 2017 (UTC)

I just have to say that the phrase "that the average wiki-entry editor is typically" is from the Guardian, not part of the Jimbo quote. "Average" and "typically" really shouldn't go together in the same sentence. "Typically" might refer to "median" - or it really is not mathematically defined - but "average" really has to be a math concept, so what the Guardian said is either very informal or total nonsense.

As far as the general idea, off the top of my head, in the US people holding PhD's or other terminal degrees are much less than 5% of the population. So it would seem very doubtful that 50% of Wikipedia editors hold PhD's or equivalent. As far as Masters degrees and other advanced degrees, I'd be surprised if over 50% had advanced degrees. But if you said "had formal education beyond an undergraduate degree", i.e. taken some classes after an undergrad degree, I wouldn't be that surprised by it. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 17:35, 20 March 2017 (UTC)

I doubt that the Guardian would print "total nonsense", given that Jimmy himself sits on the Guardian Media Group board. - 75.99.174.82 (talk) 17:51, 20 March 2017 (UTC)

I don't see how that follows at all. Are you under the impression that Jimbo spends his day vetting Guardian copy?--S Philbrick (Talk) 19:52, 20 March 2017 (UTC)

Oh, I'm not surprised at all these days, even to see an occasional grammatical mistake in the NY Times. Newspapers these days aren't at all what they were when it comes to copy-editing. As far as math in newspapers, I think it's always been the case that most journalists don't know their square root from their elbow. Have you ever noticed that they will always have an outside source when they present numbers? They're afraid to add 2 + 2 most of the time. I don't even trust journalists on most papers to know the difference between millions of dollars and billions of dollars. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 18:04, 20 March 2017 (UTC)

Anon, you didn't give any indication of where the quote is from, but that's obviously not accurate and nothing that I would have ever said. I frequently say that there are roughly double the percentage of PhDs in the Wikipedia community than in the general public, which does not mean that Wikipedia is mostly written by PhDs. And I often say that just after talking about the average age and percentage of men. It may (but should not) surprise you to learn that newspapers make little errors like this all the time - even good newspapers - caused by mishearing something or writing notes quickly and then reconstructing the conversation later. My own view is that to the maximum extent possible, interviews should be recorded and the transcript and audiofiles published alongside every article, but this is not common practice at any newspaper. If you'd like to send me a link to the article, I can ask the Guardian for a correction.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 18:12, 20 March 2017 (UTC)

Ok, I did a bit of research on my own. Anon appears to be quoting from this opinion piece, written by Shahidha Bari, who appears to not be a regular Guardian journalist but someone who submitted a piece to them. I assume she is Shahidha Bari a university lecturer whom I have never met or spoken with, as far as I know. But where did the phrase originate?

Further research uncovers what I think is the earliest occurrence of the phrase in this piece by an excellent journalist whom I do know, Jemima Kiss. She says that I said it at Wikimania in Haifa. Perhaps I presented some demographic data in my speech, which I assume is online somewhere. And if so, perhaps someone energetic could watch it and see if I screwed up there.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 19:39, 20 March 2017 (UTC)

I was busy editing during that speech. However I am concerned about the journalist's use of the word "concedes". It implies that there is something wrong with having reference material written by 1. The geeky, 2 Males, 3. 26 year-olds and 4. PhDs.

All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 22:51, 20 March 2017 (UTC).

I could see someone (not necessarily Jimbo, into whose mouth I have no intention of putting words) saying something like the purported quote "a 26-year-old geeky male with a PhD" as something of an off-the-cuff...sketch? caricature, perhaps?...of the traits and demographics heavily represented within our active editing population.

26-year-old: Wikipedia's editors skew younger than the general population. In a 2011 Wikimedia survey of Wikipedia editors, the median editor was under 30.
male: Wikipedia skews very male. The survey said about 90%.
with a PhD: Wikipedia's editors are more likely than the general population to hold advanced degrees. The average editor surveyed held at least a bachelor's degree, and 8% had a PhD. (In the general U.S. population, the fraction is less than 2%.)
geeky: Wikipedia attracts individuals who are enthusiastic about sharing their specific knowledge. As far as I can tell, however, the survey did not attempt to specifically quantify 'geekiness'.

I wouldn't expect such a statement to be taken literally (and, perhaps out of context) and requoted years later as fact. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 22:48, 20 March 2017 (UTC)

The OP certainly did take it over-literally years after the original statement. I don't have the time to view the whole video but suspect it didn't originate there. The story appears to be a "game of telephone" passed along at least 3 times. This likely happens with lots of journalism.

Jimmy was interviewed in Feb 2011 by Aida Edemariam who said

"Wales's profile echoes, in many ways, that of a typical contributor: 85% are male, generally well-educated, and often computer programmers" note: no "PhD" and no "average"

This was linked to as a source by Jemima Kiss in August 2011 who wrote "Jimmy Wales described the typical Wikipedia editor as a 26-year-old geeky male with a PhD." Note the introduction of "PhD" but no "average."

Shahidha Bari (an academic in Romantic Literature - it's nice to see all academics aren't math geeks) in an opinion piece this month, put in 2 sentences about Wikipedia in an otherwise unrelated piece and added "average."

Besides illustrating how the "telephone game" works, it also highlights our need for a new editor survey. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 00:41, 21 March 2017 (UTC)

After 5 years median editor age 22 became 27

From the surveys in 2008 and 2013, the replies gave a higher median (middle) age, from 22 to 27 years, where in 2008 about 48.7% stated their ages as 21 or younger.

In the U.S. schools, students were deterred from using Wikipedia around 2007. One of my nieces had explained how her teachers advised to avoid Wikipedia because "anyone can edit it" and there was no way to trust what a page said afterward. I think editors found system-wide pending-changes tended to lag in approval, as overwhelming the editor workload. However, limiting the pending-changes to major pages could reduce "fake data" in major pages where mistakes otherwise would be seen by thousands of readers. The next 5-year survey interval after 2013 would be 2018, but has any group estimated the recent age distribution of Wikipedia? -Wikid77 (talk) 15:07, 21 March 2017 (UTC)

My sense is that we are all getting older.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 15:53, 21 March 2017 (UTC)

An astute observation. Lectonar (talk) 16:10, 21 March 2017 (UTC)

Depressingly true, but better than the only known alternative. Guy (Help!) 13:44, 22 March 2017 (UTC)

Some of our recruits are silver surfers - people who retire nowadays are usually PC literate, whilst we struggle to recruit editors from the tablet and especially smartphone generation. So I'm not surprised that the average age appeared to rise five years in five years, in fact I'd not have been surprised if it was rising faster than that. It isn't likely to have been down to schools telling people not to trust wikipedia, that has been going on as long as we have been well known. Ϣere SpielChequers 16:51, 21 March 2017 (UTC)

Median and average. Quite different things. See Median. Leaky Caldron 16:58, 21 March 2017 (UTC)

My thoughts are, that in the early days it would have been very easy to pigeon-hole WP has having a cohort of many more editors with PhDs' than the average population – as it is a big part of their academic remit to disseminate knowledge, so they would naturally gravitate here. Likewise, more geeks. WP (or should I use the generic term of Wiki in this case) was a new type of document management system back then, which very few (other than geeks) understood fully. WP has moved on to the extent that even “silver surfers” like myself, can navigate their way around and contribute due to better 'help' documentation. So the avereage age is bound to increase. Think, the use of this discussion is to encourage the exploration the current demography of editors, so to see as where we should make more effort to making it more welcoming to all. --Aspro (talk) 19:05, 21 March 2017 (UTC)

We would know the answers to these things if WMF took surveying the Very Active Editor population seriously, which they do not. Carrite (talk) 04:17, 22 March 2017 (UTC)

Maybe we could recruit more editors from the smartphone generation if we actively told people that it is useful and fun to edit Wikipedia on a smartphone. I turn 65 next week and am a highly active editor who uses the desktop site on an Android smartphone. The silver surfer generation IS the smartphone generation as are all generations, and there are billions of Android devices in operation worldwide. Yet our consistent message is "people can't really edit by smartphone". How ridiculous. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 07:20, 22 March 2017 (UTC)
I don't think I'd want to be called a "silver surfer" but there are some amazing pluses and some minus to recruiting folks from that generation.
- 1st there are something like 21 millions folks aged 65-75 in the US and many of them have lots of free time and would find contributing to Wikipedia a wonderful way to keep intellectually active.
- Many who live in retirement communities, and many others who don't, will have exceptionally good access to the internet and to books and libraries. Just checking around for some rough figures, I was surprised that the numbers in US retirement communities is only something like 250,000 - 1,000,000 depending on the definition.
- They would combat a very large systematic bias that often goes unnoticed on Wikipedia. Excluding topics like geography and history (less than 30% of our articles), its clear that well over half of our articles are about things that have happened since 1990. It may come as news to most of our editors, but lots of things happened in the world before 1990. Even our history articles are likely skewed to post-1990 events.
- Folks who are 65 now have lived with PCs for over 30 years and with the internet for over 20. Don't assume that they don't know about technology.
- I know from personal experience that people older than 85 contribute greatly to Wikipedia. I sometimes help one person on another project who seems to fit this category, and even though his contribution to Wikipedia is indirect, I'd put the value of his contribution to Wikipedia as higher than most of the people who regularly contribute to this page.
Minuses
- Don't assume that everybody in this generation is a smart phone user (e.g. my thumbs are much too big and clumsy to do anything interesting with a smartphone) or don't have some physical disabilities or other reasons why technology is difficult to use (I've certainly met people with issues along these lines)
- This is an incredibly diverse group of people. More so than for people who grew up in today's connected (i.e. homogenized) society. But that should probably go in the plus category.

Smallbones_(smalltalk) 17:11, 22 March 2017 (UTC)

Compare ages on Instagram begun in 2010

I would expect each younger generation to "burn-out" or "migrate" onto other time-consuming websites, such as focus on Instagram, begun in late 2010. Now 7 years later, have schools or colleges warned students to avoid Instagram as a pool of non-refereed pages where "anyone can post" a page of unverified photos or videos? -Wikid77 (talk) 23:51, 21 March 2017 (UTC)

Students do not often do research for term papers using Instagram. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 07:23, 22 March 2017 (UTC)

Agreed, although I have seen a couple - unsurprisingly on the subject of social media and its influence. QuiteUnusual (talk) 12:28, 22 March 2017 (UTC)

Conflicts of interest

Hi Jimbo and stalkers!

Your attention is respectfully drawn to Wikipedia talk:Conflict of interest, where the community has decided to establish a conflict of interest task force. In due course a second RfC will be needed to establish its constitution and terms of reference.—S Marshall T/C 14:26, 16 March 2017 (UTC)

Yes, this is very important and looks like a reasonable way forward. It will take a lot of work to fully implement it however. I've got some ideas but would like to hear what others think. The full close of the RfC started by User:Casliber (the with help from many arbs apparently) is here. I'll quote at length from the close however.

"The Wikipedia community shall appoint a task force of trusted editors to act as referees in matters related to conflict of interest and outing. The nature, composition and constitution of this task force was not widely-discussed here, and should therefore be the subject of a separate RFC ....The duties of this task force are not hard to derive from this RfC. It will detect, deter and prevent conflict of interest editing; and to enable this, it will receive, collect, and evaluate allegations about conflicts of interest. It will deliberate in private, and so it will need a reasonably secure point of contact where it can be reached in confidence....The task force's powers and remedies are much less clear, except insofar as they are contained in milieu #4 (which empowers the COIN task force to identify people or corporations who are engaging in paid editing). We suggest that the task force's first order of business should be to consider the circumstances in which it would be right to do this."

That leaves a lot on our plate. I'll suggest getting an ad hoc committee to write up a proposed policy, with lots of input from the community.

Smallbones_(smalltalk) 16:52, 16 March 2017 (UTC)

BTW, I'll withdraw my proposal at User_talk:Jimbo_Wales#Smallbones_proposal. This task force is likely a better way forward. If it doesn't work out, I'll likely bring it back. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 16:58, 16 March 2017 (UTC)

The RfC close was apparently reversed. Can someone please explain what's going on? - Bri (talk) 00:26, 17 March 2017 (UTC)

User:Bri - Preceding discussions of the close of which I am aware, were here and here and here. Jytdog (talk) 05:09, 17 March 2017 (UTC)

@Smallbones: I wish you had not withdrawn your proposal. We don't need a task force to ban paid editing. The task force might actually stand in the way of it, being composed of COI editors. I stated my opposition to creating a task force here. I plan to expand upon my explanation. --David Tornheim (talk) 21:46, 17 March 2017 (UTC)

I understand entirely. Regulatory capture is always a concern, but I think we can minimize the chances. A do nothing "task force" (we need a new name) would be worse than nothing. To minimize the chances, I'll suggest getting tf members from several different places, e.g. elections held at the same time as arbcom elections, some members appointed, perhaps by the WMF and another set by ArbCom. The starting roster of members would be the most important. Perhaps the first set can be appointed the same way the first arbs were appointed? :-) But ultimately we have to trust the community. I trust that very few editors or readers want hidden advertising in our articles. Getting a new institution on Wiki rather than being required to appeal to a group who have made clear that they don't see paid editing as a problem, would be a step forward. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 22:34, 17 March 2017 (UTC)

I have misgivings about such a task force on several grounds, chiefly that I don't quite understand how it will improve the current rotten situation. It's almost like creating a task force to make hell cooler. That's my first reaction, but I just don't know. Coretheapple (talk) 22:43, 17 March 2017 (UTC)

I do not believe any single effort will improve this issue much. It is going to require a bunch of measures. I think it is worth trialing such a group though but not as the only solution. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 01:47, 19 March 2017 (UTC)

Given that the Cult of Anonymity on Wikipedia ain't going away anytime soon, and given the fact that without the ability to "out" COI editors (paid or unpaid) the chore of "proving" paid or unpaid bias is essentially impossible, it occurs to me that instead of tilting after windmills with an "Anti-Paid Editing Task Force" or what have you, the better solution would be for more severe enforcement of our doctrine of NPOV. I think broad agreement might be out there for really beating the living shit out of POV editors as they emerge, without regard to organizational affiliation or employment status. Think outside the box. The problem is the bad editing. Take those who do bad editing to the executioner. I think there might be broad support for that. Carrite (talk) 02:26, 19 March 2017 (UTC)

Well there are right now 3 ANIs now aiming to do just that, two of them non-conflicted POV pushers, one on a paid advocate. Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#Probrooks and Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#TBAN_for_Korvex_from_biblical_archeology and this one on the paid advocate Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#Riceissa. Jytdog (talk) 15:55, 19 March 2017 (UTC)

@Carrite: The "cult of anonymity" exists for one very practical reason - because Wikipedia is not and should not be in the position of really being able to identify editors. Whenever people for some reason think that they can do otherwise, they come up with some idiotic idea like getting a scan of a driving license. Problem is ... scans can be messed with. Easily. Now the banker's solution would be to call that "identity theft" - say people shouldn't do it, but when they do do it, blame anything that happens on whoever happened to have his name cut-and-pasted onto the alleged scan, or at least try to intimidate people badly enough that they take up most of the work of checking back to see if someone is giving their name, rather than expecting a bank to do it. Problem is... Wikipedia isn't Goldman Sachs, it can't get this kind of forgery to be a police priority, and nobody really cares that much if some scammer perpetrates a few edits in their name, so that won't happen. Which means we're not identifying people. Now some of us make a virtue of necessity, call that a choice - and for us it is a choice, in the sense that we hate the surveillance state - but it's not really a choice we could practically change. If it were otherwise we would long since have been overruled by the NSA/Palantir spy lobby, some of whom apparently claim to track sockpuppets on Wikipedia. But we don't have their tools and we wouldn't trust what they told us they found even if we wanted to.

Well, here's how we do it. Yes, driver's license for a start. And registration confirmed through a functioning email. And logging of IP numbers and retention of the data, with no false shame about "fishing expeditions" hunting down elicit multiple accounts. Foolproof? No. But it would take a massive bite out of duplicitous accounts and vandalism. Not happening anytime soon, mind you, but there will come a day when the costs of the current worship of anonymity are outweighed by the benefits of wiping out POV editing and vandalism. Carrite (talk) 01:30, 20 March 2017 (UTC)

@Carrite: Oooooo. A functioning email - well, there's a lock no spammer can get past! Seriously, it takes a very conventional editor indeed not to know a way or two past the email papers-chase. Then there are IP addresses, indeed the preferred method of tracking for all manner of police, but ... how is Wikipedia going to do anything with them? You have a number from Comcast and the IP of an editor who was part of a paid editing network and now you want his name and new IP ... how are you going to get it? Even before they put down the extra five bucks for a VPN. You can say that "nothing is foolproof" but all this would only keep out people who are so inept that they shouldn't be working for a paid editing operation anyway. And in the meanwhile, it has a huge cost - that extensive database of real names and email and IP addresses you want will sing a lorelei song to sue-happy lawyers and totalitarian enforcers all over the world, who are not interested in whether an editor is part of a paid network, just whether they can shake him down for $5000 for citing an allegedly illicit copy of a document or hit him with a hundred-million-dollar libel lawsuit because he mentioned a story in a foreign newspaper that people in his country aren't supposed to be reading. (compare [23]) Your cure is thousands of times worse than the disease, and it doesn't even cure the disease. Wnt (talk) 14:16, 20 March 2017 (UTC)

I agree. Not only is the cure worse than the disease, but this whole "anonymity" trope is nonsense. Not only can identities be faked (drivers license images can be photoshopped -- are we going to ask for the real ones?) but even if you had people walking into a local "Wikipedia office" to register and be fingerprinted we'd still have COI editing. Maybe even more. Meanwhile, non-paid voluntary editors would be deterred because they don't much want to identify themselves given the large volumes of kooks out there and the litigiousness of society. However, the well-motivated and sometimes compensated COI editors would self-identify, "complying with the rules" as they always love to say they do, and then go ahead and do their COI editing because the rules allow it. Funny how the people pushing this nonsense don't want to make COI editing against the rules, as in "policy" as opposed to the weak guideline we have. Coretheapple (talk) 14:29, 20 March 2017 (UTC)

Nor is hunting for POV editing really going to be that effective, because Vipul's network wasn't really looking to push POV, so far as people could tell. (it would work on some paid editors of course) I mean, maybe they could have dug up some dirt on the companies they edited about but can you ban an editor for not looking for salacious news stories and just posting facts and figures? Speculatively, it appeared their most suspicious motive might have been to provide SEO to certain sources they cited - but citing an occasional obscure source is not practically bannable either.

I think the main angle of attack on paid editing is always going to be by the INPUT. The same way that a criminal enterprise operating via mail always has to take in funds somehow, and can be caught by it. No paid editing enterprise can get really big without being heard of, and then if we can get in a fake customer or employee the lid will get blown off. Or, someone will just talk. I mean, the Army can't keep its secrets, so why should a boiler-room PR operation do better? Wnt (talk) 19:55, 19 March 2017 (UTC)

Carrite is going to have a stroke when he reads this but I'm not far from that position myself, in the sense of the community expending great effort to deal with a reputational issue for the Foundation and Jimbo personally. By all means go after paid editors, but the idea of taking great amounts of time to create mechanisms is an underwhelming notion. It's their problem, they can and should fix it. No es mi problema. Coretheapple (talk) 19:34, 19 March 2017 (UTC)

Well, no one is going to have a stroke reading my view: I think this (Carrie's approach) is very much the wrong approach. Remember that conflict of interest leading to NPOV is only part of the problem - the problem is also whether we want to tolerate and (through poor decision making) encourage a culture of corruption to emerge in Wikipedia. Let me draw an analogy which many of you will have heard before - suppose a big case is pending before the Supreme Court involving software patents which might massively benefit one party in a case. And suppose it emerges that 3 of the 9 justices have lucrative consulting contracts on the side with that party. Would we accept in any way an argument saying "Oh, as long as they disclose the payments and show their legal reasoning in detail, it's fine. A judge could be in the pay of a company and still be neutral in judging their case." That's incredibly obviously wrong and it is a very good analogy to this perennial and universally rejected proposal that we should allow whatever paid advocacy and just judge the results. Nonsense.

Instead we should recognize that anonymous editing is an important value in some limited cases, but that it comes with it a serious side effect in terms of people using anonymity not to feel more comfortable in pushing for NPOV editing, but in terms of POV pushing.

And finally, note what the proposal for "beating the living shit out of POV editors as they emerge" would do to the intellectual quality of the debate on difficult topics. Are we going to start using the ban hammer every time someone comes into an article to say "Hey, this article is biased, and I don't agree with the past consensus here. Here's why..." Disagreeing with other Wikipedians on what actually constitutes a neutral presentation on a topic is our highest calling and our most important success. I would not like to see us enter into a more severe approach to dealing with people who are arguing with us about whether we are being neutral or not.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 19:47, 19 March 2017 (UTC)

Note, Supreme Court justices can and do have financial conflicts of interest potentially, and it has not brought down our constitutional form of government quite yet. A conflicted justice can sit out from an affected case, especially if they disclose their potential conflicts in the first place. This would suggest that disclosure is the wiser path than prohibition. - 75.99.174.82 (talk) 19:51, 20 March 2017 (UTC)

I just proposed some kind of tagging system on the conflict of interests page. Also, I think that it would be beneficial to make the new page reviewer right be able to be granted to editors that aren't really interested in reducing the backlog, but that still fulfill all other "requirements". RileyBugz ^{Yell at me} | _Edits 19:50, 19 March 2017 (UTC)

@Jimbo Wales: I'm with you in spirit, but the constant debating has taken on a spinning-wheels quality. The community isn't going to do anything. Full stop. You and the Foundation must act. Don't rely on the volunteers, if COI bothers you. The most that can be done from the volunteer perspective is to play wack-a-mole with paid editors and COI editors. Hell I had an admin/checkuser laugh in my face, metaphorically, when I asked her to please stop editing the article on the website she co-founded. That's the attitude you face. No es mi problema, hermano. Coretheapple (talk) 20:07, 19 March 2017 (UTC)

Jimbo Wales, the anonymity aspect is not the fix for C.O.I. as multiple phony I.D.s are proliferous, I think, especially with so many migrants without status in the U.K. and elsewhere. COI profiteers would be the first to buy some phony ID to use for Wikipedia registration, I imagine. Coretheapple thinks you can do something in an administrative, governing capacity about COI, maybe he's right? I don't get the impression you're thinking hard enough, I could be wrong. Blaming anonymity is certainly low hanging fruit and won't fix COI....could even make it more sophisticated and embedded. Nocturnalnow (talk) 01:19, 20 March 2017 (UTC)

Re that NPOV suggestion: absolute red herring. Coretheapple (talk) 01:45, 20 March 2017 (UTC)

One way to solve NPOV problems that may or may not be due to COI is to make all edits to Wikipedia articles to be proposed edits like the current pending changes, system which must be approved by a majority of 3 editors (to deal with POV problems in the approval phase). If an editor rejects a proposed edit the editor must give a reason, the original editor will get the feedbacks if the edit ends up being rejected by 2 or more and doesn't get implemented. The editor can then try again by taking the feedback into account. Count Iblis (talk) 01:30, 20 March 2017 (UTC)

I certainly feel some of Coretheapple's frustration. Why, for example, won't the WMF make an effort to let people know that we do not appreciate paid editors editing article pages? But ultimately it is up to the community to clean up the mess left by paid editors. If you don't like a rip-off firm like Banc De Binary advertising on Wikipedia and the various levels of Wikipedia poobahs don't do much about it, who else is going to clean it up? (to be fair, some admins helped a good deal with BdB)

Some comments at WT:COI and the above comment by @Wnt: reminded me of something else we can do. It seems to some that we try to tackle the small paid editing fish, when we should be targeting the big fish, the big commercial paid editing companies who advertise on the internet, including on their own websites.

We could simply require that the commercial companies include a notice on their websites and online advertisements that they will follow Wikipedia rules and that all clients, employees and contractors should first read WP:Paid,

or, if they don't post the notice, then the company (and its owners, officers, employees, and contractors) are prohibited from editing Wikipedia..

That should certainly cut down on misled clients and employees, or spread the word that we have rules that must be obeyed by paid editors, probably both. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 01:45, 20 March 2017 (UTC)

That's a good idea. You've done outstanding work on Banc de Binary (the subject gives me headacches) and there;s no question that kind of work should continue. Not because we're doing Jimbo or the Foundation any favors but because it's rhe right thing to do. However, as I've said before, and I think I may still have an essay on my user page to that effect, I've become a firm believer in the notion that paid and COI editing is ultimately not a volunteer issue. Editors should be careful not to get stressed out over it, expend excessive amounts of personal time dealing with it, and by all means avoid putting themselves in any kind of legal jeopardy over it. Coretheapple (talk) 01:49, 20 March 2017 (UTC)

I would disagree with that. I originally thought of something similar to what you are saying, but that would apply only to articles with occasional COI editing, but I think that it would not be beneficial at all. It would take years for one to filter through the recent changes, much less if one has to get one's edit approved through a process. This would stagnate Wikipedia, and it goes against our fundamental principles. RileyBugz ^{Yell at me} | _Edits 01:50, 20 March 2017 (UTC)

I assume you are answering Count Iblis's proposal. I don't think that flagged revisions would slow down the process that much, especially if it were limited to business articles where most of the paid editing problems lie. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 02:30, 20 March 2017 (UTC)

I'm puzzled too. Perhaps Riley can clarify. Coretheapple (talk) 02:52, 20 March 2017 (UTC)

How Count Iblis is proposing this basically means that one would have to go through a vote to accept every revision. Flagged revisions could be not too horrible, but it depends on how they are implemented. I would actually be ok with flagged revisions if they are limited to certain articles with previous COI editing. Second, it would be able to be confirmed by extended confirmed editors (I thought about autoconfirmed, but that would be too easy to game). And possibly third, the revisions would not have to be approved, but instead the revisions would just be tagged through an edit filter, so that it is easier to check them. RileyBugz ^{Yell at me} | _Edits 03:13, 20 March 2017 (UTC)

Yes, I agree that flagged revisions for every edit would simply slow things down to a halt, and not just curb COI editing but editing in general. By the way, with all due respect to all concerned, this discussion is precisely why I am so weary of this issue. We talk and talk. Jimbo weighs in and then steps away, The discussion is archived. Nothing is done. Really a waste of time by well-intentioned editors who care about the subject but, collectively, are incapable of doing anything. Coretheapple (talk) 14:37, 20 March 2017 (UTC)

I think this is an example of what I consider to be our biggest difficulty with our decision-making processes: there can be a strong consensus that something needs to be done, and not consensus around any one option, and so nothing gets done - often for years at a time. I would say that we have a pretty strong consensus that we need to be making a lot more admins than we do, that the current process is not fit for purpose in that it is unnecessarily unpleasant and doesn't select for the right things such that many good candidates are not becoming admins, but we have no consensus about exactly what to do about it.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 18:15, 20 March 2017 (UTC)

But I don't see very much consensus at all on any aspect of COI. I'm surprised the guideline has even survived. Also, this COI thing is unique in that dealing with it is complicated, time-consuming, wearisome, and also that it is fundamentally your problem, yours and the Foundation's, You get hurt, in the reputational sense, by COI and paid editing. Individual editors do not. Thus I would expect to look to you guys for action. Coretheapple (talk) 18:32, 20 March 2017 (UTC)

I wanted to comment on folks downplaying or not understanding the importance on anonymity in Wikipedia. It's not just anonymity per se. The main point is that it is the only finger in the dike of what would otherwise be one of the most real-world-destructuve privacy-violating major websites anywhere. Wikipedia is an eternal easily searchable public database of every edit an editor has made in their entire life, and exactly when (date and time) that they made it. North8000 (talk) 20:04, 20 March 2017 (UTC)

Either we value privacy or we don't. If we don't, then we go Carrite's route and we can manage COI like any knowledge-producing organization does -- people edit under their real identities and have to disclose COI and not edit directly where they have one, and if they violate that, they get disciplined. Or we uphold privacy and we have to work with painstaking carefulness based on what people actually do and say in Wikipedia. (There may be some middle ground where we can loosen OUTING a little some way, but we have not found that needle-eye path yet despite a lot of effort)

All the railing against the Great Evil of COI/paid editing is just empty agitation and a waste of energy if you are not working to change OUTING or doing the painstaking work on the ground, edit by edit. Jytdog (talk) 22:17, 21 March 2017 (UTC)

Jytdog, Coretheapple, I have a possible solution to the COI issue as well as many other issues, which I will present to Jimbo as a new topic because this solution will reach far broader than simply dealing with COI issues. Nocturnalnow (talk) 19:04, 22 March 2017 (UTC)

Jimbo Wales, here another difficulty of consensus: a consensus is attacked by an ever stronger persistence of a group represented by one user only. There is evidence for the attempt to declare a „clean nazism“ in one section of WP.de. Good? Not so good? Anyway, the godfathers, i.e. administrators, mind their own b.--BaneshN. (talk) 22:30, 22 March 2017 (UTC)

Commons Publish-Changes button separated from Show-Preview

Another FYI. On Wikimedia Commons, the new Publish-Changes button is active now and further separated from "Show Preview" so even small-device users will be less likely to accidentally click "Publish" when reaching for nearby "Show Preview". Previously, on small screens such as smart phones, a tiny "Save" looked very similar to "Show" (as both 4 letters), and now "Publish" looks quite different to avoid accidental click on "Publish" (save) when in a hurry to "Show" preview to recheck changes. This is a great ergonomics improvement for mobile-phone desktop view, where otherwise explaining how the tiny "Save" and "Show" buttons looked too similar (and were too close together in rapid editing) could be difficult to explain. Beyond that, I would perhaps rename "Show Preview" as "See preview" and rename the template-preview mode as "Run Preview" for further distinctions, unless difficult to translate into other-language wikipedias. -Wikid77 (talk) 17:00, 24 March 2017 (UTC)