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See also Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Osmosis RfC and Wikipedia:Osmosis.

Osmosis concerns

See also: User talk:Jimbo Wales/Archive 227 § Osmosis: Wikipedia medical articles hijacked by paid editors working for private foundation
See also: Wikipedia:Osmosis/Issues

I see that, for medical articles, Wikipedia is no longer primarily a collaboratively edited text & image encyclopaedia, but a platform for documentaries created by a private third party. Videos which Wikipedians have no ability to edit, nor our readers any ability to verify facts against sources. This is not Wikipedia. -- Colin°Talk 11:06, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

while I partly agree w/ your assessment, what similiar quality of videos do we have that is comparable w/ [1]?--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 11:59, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
Wikipedia is a volunteer-created collaboratively-written encyclopaedia. Their quality is a concern, actually, not a feature. If I want to watch a program on epilepsy, I'll turn on the BBC. If my attention span on the subject only reaches 8 minutes, then I guess there is YouTube. What part of these videos fits in any way whatsoever with Wikipedia? It is educational and has a free licence, so Commons can host it. But it doesn't belong here. I created WP:MEDRS so editors could work together on creating articles with the highest quality sources. Now we have one editor adding and edit warring unsourced videos into all our major medical articles. I ask myself what was the point of WP:MEDR if it can be ignored when the content is a video rather than text.
For the YouTube generation, this is now Wikipedia: unsourced content brought to you by a billionaire's private foundation. -- Colin°Talk 12:14, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
Ok, we need to review each on on its merits, and errors (if found) need to be pointed out to the creator. I must say, I thought watermarks were not allowed on images, in which case the intro with the name cant remain. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 13:26, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
Cas Liber, I don't think this is a "case by case" issue. The problems are fundamental. The topic of a Wikipedia article has been produced in video format, hosted here and embedded in the lead of 300 of our medical articles. This content is not collaboratively editable and does not conform to any of Wikipedia's fundamental polices or guidelines. I have now found three articles where Doc James edit wars to retain these videos when editors find problems, and I have no doubt there are many more. I'm not surprised by this because I have not found Doc James capable of collaborative editing, but these videos take that to the extreme. Since when did fixing issues on Wikipedia require "pointing out to the creator" and waiting for them to get around to re-doing a video. This is a wiki. I'm supposed to be able to change it. Quickly. This is article content WP:OWNED by Osmosis and forced upon us by Doc James. Additionally, is anyone here happy that WP:MEDRS doesn't apply? The fundamental for Wikipedia use by students, journalists, etc should be that we provide sources so they can check the facts and jump off to other professional publications where they can read more. This is not possible in an "article-as-as-video". This stuff belongs on YouTube.
Cas, would you be happy if someone came along to one of your featured articles, and inserted a bold paragraph in the lead. It begins with "Content created by Osmosis", contains several factual errors, and ends with Facebook and Twitter links to Osmosis. When you press the Edit button to revise it, you are told to fill in a form and your complaint will be forward to Osmosis for consideration. Meanwhile you are unable to remove or revise it. That's what we have here. It is "content" and our content and behavioural policies must apply. I think all of it should be removed from WP. Editors may link to it if they find it meets our WP:EL policy. -- Colin°Talk 13:41, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
You raise some valid points but I am unhappy with your approach. You talk about Doc James being uncooperative, but you are insisting that your solution be implemented immediately regardless of the views of other editors. It seems to me that there is a possibility of a productive discussion that reaches a consensus. (My own view is that I would like to know more about this. Having worked on a lot of neuroscience articles, I understand very well how valuable media is and how difficult it is to get media that we can use at all, so I'm afraid that applying a strict MEDRS approach will simply result in us having nothing but text in our articles.) Looie496 (talk) 13:58, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
Where have I "insist[ed] that [my] solution be implemented immediately"? I have started a discussion. Unlike some here, I'm not edit warring on any articles. Looie496, which part of "collaboratively edited" is not important aspect of Wikipedia to you? This isn't a animation clip of some neurons firing. It is the entire article topic in video format. Written by a paid employee of private foundation. I'm all for short video clips. They can be individually sourced if they make any claims or are inserted into an article in a way that makes a claim. And they can be replaced just like photos and other static images. An entire 10 minute documentary that covers the whole article topic and yet obeys none of the rules of Wikipedia is not appropriate. -- Colin°Talk 14:14, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
@Looie496: I have broad concerns about the direction WP:MED has taken in recent years, and this is a very good example of the other, similar problems. For a good view of history, I recommend that everyone reading today click on the History tab at WP:MEDRS, and go to the first, oldest entries. This project seems to have lost its way since the time we fought so hard for quality sourcing in health and bio medical content. Editing for the overall medical integrity of our articles has been replaced by three competing concerns: translating leads, building some little box thingie to spread our increasingly outdated content, and installing videos that are against the very core of everything we accomplished with MEDRS. We used to work beyond leads of articles; have we given up? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:51, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
  • It would be fine to add a link to their YouTube videos under External links, but embedding them into articles means we are offering free advertising to a company that is selling these videos to medical students. There are free videos and then there is Osmosis Prime at $9–$18 a month. Clearly having the free videos embedded in high-traffic Wikipedia articles means more people might sign up for Osmosis Prime. According to Osmosis's terms of use, the company behind it is Knowledge Diffusion Inc., 571 Mather Mail Center Cambridge, MA 02138 (see Bloomberg).
I've already seen two cases of volunteer editors explaining at length what is wrong with a video, and either the company rep or Doc James saying the video will be updated. This is the worst aspect of paid editing: that unpaid volunteers end up doing their work for them. Doc James and Ocaasi, can you say how this came to happen and what the role of the WMF was? SarahSV (talk) 14:27, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
Hi @SlimVirgin:. WMF played only an initial role in this. We fielded the request from our partnerships team who had been contacted by Osmosis. I set up an initial meeting. From there it was a handoff to Wiki Project Med Foundation, and I was acting in my capacity as a member of Wiki Project Med Foundation where I was previously the outreach coordinator and a board member. I documented our plan here Wikipedia:Osmosis, laying out what was intended on a public page. That was the entirety of my role; the rest was handled by several members of Wiki Project Med Foundatin. Cheers, Jake Ocaasi t | c 16:29, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
Hi Jake, thanks for the reply. Because you created Wikipedia:Osmosis with your WMF account, I assumed the WMF was involved. SarahSV (talk) 17:40, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
SV, I am having problems with them even as an External link. They raise concerns for me with respect to verifiability and reliability, and in the medical case, are quite at odds with MEDRS (which we would not likely have today were it not for Colin's insight and incisive editing). These people are creating videos without the knowledge of the recent highest quality sources we require in medicine. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:17, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
Sandy, I should have said that they might be okay as External links, but not if there are sourcing and accuracy issues. Allowing a private company to host its own material within the body of articles is an odd thing to have done, especially when it's in the business of selling paid versions of the videos, so I'd like to know how this came about. SarahSV (talk) 15:45, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
I agree they are better in EL, based on what I've seen. If they are seriously outdated, then they should be removed until they have been updated. On most topics there is a ton of serious medical vids that could be used. Having just watched an Osmosis one for the full 10 minutes, on PanNETs (not yet linked from the article, it had a clear if slow-moving explanation of what the pancreas does, and where tumours can start, but only super-brief bits on diagnosis and treatment. In my usual area of art history, we have large numbers of 4-5 minute videos from Khan Academy embedded in articles, which I'm fine with. The video is obviously helpful, they use decent academic art historians, and being out of date is not a serious issue. Actually many medical articles would benefit from a curated group of say 3-4 video links in EL. I don't at all like the DMOZ/now Curlie links that is all many articles have in EL - I think most have not been properly updated for years, and they are wildly US-centric. There is a lot of excellent stuff on You Tube, but also a lot of mediocre stuff by doctors, and of course much pure crap/fringe. Johnbod (talk) 16:29, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
I see it was discussed at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Medicine/Archive 76#Videos in December 2015. SarahSV (talk) 16:31, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
You'll have to translate "cow-having ". Johnbod (talk) 16:38, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
have a cow, verb. cow-having = nominalization. Jytdog (talk) 16:45, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
Ok, not known in UK. We have kittens. Johnbod (talk) 17:12, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
SlimVirgin good on you for finally going and finding the original discussion. It has been discussed other times as well as this search shows. Jytdog (talk) 16:37, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
And at Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Osmosis. SarahSV (talk) 16:48, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

Currently travelling. So will comment in full in a bit. A few points, the videos are under an open license. Readers have requested videos for a long time. The scripts for the videos are posted for comments by our community before they are produced. The group will make updates and corrections based on feedback. References are previded. Might be good to have refs by page. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 17:13, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

reset

  • (edit conflict) As I understand it the "unmet need" being addressed here is video content that is appropriately licensed and good quality. Along with more and more users accessing WP via mobile (which has led us to put more work into ensuring that first sentences are tight and not cluttered) another thing that is happening is that more and more readers want video content (this was discussed a bunch in the movement strategy discussion).
I look at the video thing with some askance and have not engaged with it - I work on text, exclusively. A-V content is never going to be editable by dinosaurs like me (and apparently, like Colin) - we will need good collaborators to work with, on creating and updating such content, where we have it.
But as I understand it, the desire here was/is to meet that stated "unmet need" of our users -- people who want knowledge. That is kind of the baseline that in my view this discussion should start from.
With that in mind, it is my understanding that per open.osmosis.org the for-profit company has made a ton of videos available under the CC 4/0 license, with funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
That's a good thing.
That is also advertising for the for-profit company.
The question as always with these things, is where in the line between what helps us meet our mission and what is too much helping the company with advertising?
The same kind of issue arises with many collaborations - the Cochrane people sometimes overcite Cochrane, WiRs sometimes end up promoting their host institution. These are not simple issues.
If we keep the osmosis videos (and I am not opposed to keeping them) I think there are some things that could be done to make them less advertising-y, like getting rid of the social media links. I think it is OK that they would be named as creators at the end. A link to their website there would be OK too, I ~think~. Jytdog (talk) 17:14, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
So why not just add links to videos as ELs? Well one is that this does not promote OA licenses. Note Khan videos are not under an OA license. Second is that these ELs do not end up in offline versions of Wikipedia. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 17:24, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
This is not okay, because they are using the free videos to get people to buy Osmosis Prime. The free videos are on YouTube (under the standard YouTube licence), and the pitch is "if you do like those videos, you should definitely try out OsmosisPrime". If we want videos so badly that we're willing to hand over free advertising space inside articles, I'm sure the pharmaceutical industry (or really anyone) would happily produce high-quality "free" videos in exchange for being allowed to advertise. SarahSV (talk) 17:32, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
No they are not using the free videos to get people to buy Osmosis Prime. The videos are useful to many independent of other ways they raise money (such as providing quizes) Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 05:15, 27 March 2018 (UTC)
To be clear the cc 4.0 videos are on the commons, not on youtube. we are not linking to the youtube videos. Bringing in the youtube postings is not helpful and distracting. Jytdog (talk) 17:52, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
The YouTube links are relevant because you can see there that the free videos are offered as a taster to encourage people to buy Osmosis Prime. It's therefore important to them to get eyes on those free videos, and Wikipedia is ideal for that purpose. As part of the arrangement with Wikipedia, they asked to be placed in the first section of articles (above the fold): "James and other medical editors will place the videos in the first sections of articles (but below the infobox) as appropriate." [2]
Re: Knowledge Diffusion Inc., they were given a $250,000 grant in January 2017: "In collaboration with WikiProject Medicine and the UCSF-UCB Joint Masters Program, Osmosis will undertake a 12-month pilot project ..." [3] $100,000 from TEDCO in December 2017. [4][5] In January 2018 Coverys, the insurance provider, announced that it was investing in them: "To date, Osmosis has focused on medical students but is working to gain traction with a number of additional healthcare provider segments including nursing, physician assistants, pharmacy, dentistry and others." [6]
Pinging some editors interested in WP:PAID: @Smallbones, Coretheapple, Kudpung, and TonyBallioni: SarahSV (talk) 21:42, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
I acknowledged above that they get advertising from it; that is basic business - we don't need any "proof" of that; the youtube videos are indeed completely irrelevant and a distraction. We are not linking to them.
Any partner with whom we collaborate, from the British Museum to Cochrane, gets exposure through those collaborations.
There are obvious problems with execution of this specific collaboration. That does not mean the whole thing is Evil.
Doc James is generally very, very leery of collaborations with businesses and as he is one who has been most involved in this, I am withholding judgement until he has a chance to weigh in with more background. Maybe we will keep them and fix them; maybe we will get rid of them. The drama is premature and unhelpful. Jytdog (talk) 22:00, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
It's hardly premature; this was set up in December 2015. What happened here is that someone decided it was okay to let a for-profit company effectively add a few unsourced paragraphs to medical articles—paragraphs not written by specialists and not capable of being edited—topped and tailed with their company logo. And hard to work with because you have to sit through a whole video. And when people tried to remove them because they contained mistakes (or disputed material), they were reverted and told to seek consensus, even though there was no consensus to add them in the first place. See this revision for apparent WMF involvement. That's the sort of thing you were railing against when it came to Wikidata. SarahSV (talk) 22:16, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
What is premature is the judgement embedded in the section header and the part above the break, and the framing you, Colin, and SandyGeorgia have put on this, that the collaboration is fundamentally evil. I set up this sub-section as a "reset" to try to have a calm discussion.
We may decide that the existing videos are too promotional for the collaboration partner and should come down. That is one issue. (I lean that way btw)
Whether the whole collaboration is unworkable is a separate issue. That is a larger discussion and we don't have the background from Doc James to understand that yet; that part is premature to actually figure out now. It may well be that the Osmosis folks represented that they were going to set up a separate nonprofit to carry this stuff and never did. It may be that the execution turned out different than what was planned. It may be that we should walk away from this -- it may be that we can reset it. There is a lot to discuss and it isn't cut and dry.
A collaboration partner willing and able to make high quality, cc 4.0 licensed video is not a potato to be thrown out the window in some mad rush to judgement spurred by someone acting like our house is burning down. Jytdog (talk) 22:31, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

@SlimVirgin: interesting (and troubling) info you are producing. Thanks for taking the time. I am also wondering about the Wiki Project Med Foundation role relative to WMF.[7] I do not know how the relationships are set up, but I would think that WMF would not want anyone serving in any WMF capacity to participate in creating content on medical articles, or determining what goes in them. It has immunity as an internet service provider that hosts user-generated content; as such, it is typically concerned that neither it nor its employees run the risk of creating medical content which could be wrong, misleading, or incomplete. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:38, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

Another perennial ax-grinding issue. This discussion is hopeless. Jytdog (talk) 22:46, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
Jyt, you are generating the appearance that anything you disagree with is ax-grinding. No matter how many people chime in to say they see the problem. And yet, you do not seem to see how this approach stalls WP:MED, how that has affected content, and how the stalling leads to fallout at places like Jimbo talk. What I am seeing lately in here is that we just can't talk about, and work on, content anymore. I no longer even consider bringing my requests for help on articles to this talk page. I just don't see a content focus anymore. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:51, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
SandyGeorgia, I was wondering about that too. Jake, would you mind telling us whatever you know about this? You created Wikipedia:Osmosis in December 2015 with your WMF account, and listed on the page the five people who were involved: James Heilman, representing WikiProject Med Foundation; Rishi and Kyle from Osmosis; Sylvia Ventura, WMF Strategic Partnerships, and Jake Orlowitz, WMF Community Engagement. That does make it look like a Wikimedia Foundation–Osmosis–WikiProject Med Foundation project. SarahSV (talk) 22:51, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
SlimVirgin, you also noted above the 4th point, "James and other medical editors will place the videos in the first sections of articles (but below the infobox) as appropriate." How did the idea of placing videos below inboxes come about, in terms of standard layout? Do none of our MOS guidelines matter anymore, and why did we allow an external organization, making money off of this, a preferential place in Wikipedia articles? Who makes decisions of this nature? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 05:11, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

Looking at the page Wikipedia:Osmosis posted by Jake (User:Ocaasi), I see issues from point 3 onwards ...

  1. Jake will document the pilot plan (this page)
  2. James will introduce this concept and sample videos to Wiki Project Medicine
  3. WikiProject Medicine will decide if the video content, quality, and type is appropriate for a pilot on 10-50 articles.
  4. James will work with Rishi to identity most-needed videos for popular articles (use mobile pageview data and v:1.0 tool)
  5. Kyle and Tanner will upload the videos to commons using a compatible format with complete metadata and useful descriptions
  6. Fil will assist Kyle in uploading translated subtitles to videos on commons, and place the videos in the first sections of non-English articles (but below the infobox) as appropriate
  7. James and other medical editors will place the videos in the first sections of articles (but below the infobox) as appropriate
  8. Osmosis will track video views and traffic and report back on changes
  9. Additionally, Osmosis will add an edit/comment link to their internal teaching tools which incorporate embedded Wikipedia content
  10. Future opportunities may explore using Osmosis learning tools (flash cards/quizzes)

Starting with point 3, what I see in archived discussions are samples of the problems now being revealed. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:41, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

Yes, that was all in 2015. The vids put up for editor review at Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Osmosis have mostly not received any, and where they did there is no indication that comments were acted on to change anything. No sign of "Osmosis will track video views and traffic and report back on changes" there - has that happened? On a project I did with the Metropolitan Museum of Art their stats often showed the bulk of their views for a particular item coming via WP links. Johnbod (talk) 17:54, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
That is a good point about the lack of review of the content and lack of response when there were reviews. We have not been keeping up with that. (good on User:soupvector for having done some of that) Jytdog (talk) 18:20, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
That editing did not feel particularly collaborative. I urged that the script editing be done in WP space so that it would be "our" content to retain/reuse as desired, to no avail. — soupvector (talk) 21:08, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
That is a useful datapoint, yes. A collaboration partner that is not responsive, is not optimal. Jytdog (talk) 22:06, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

Above User:Doc James claims "more and more readers want video content". I see from the linked page that it actually includes my video of a plasma globe! Does it actually say in the link that our readers don't want to read articles, they want the article as a video instead? Or that they'd like our text articles to have more videos for visual content. You see, unlike The Blue Planet nature documentaries, Epilepsy is not a visual topic. You can illustrate a few things like neurons firing or a person having a seizure with a short video clip. But fundamentally, readers come to Wikipedia to read sourced articles on topics. They don't come to spend 10 minutes watching a YouTube video instead, because, well, because YouTube. Is this actually WMF policy now, to just forget collaboratively editing text by volunteers, adding sources, and just get some billionaire foundation to create article videos instead? Please let me know if it is, so I can shift my talk page from "semi-retired" to "fully-retired". -- Colin°Talk 21:38, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

When I researched subjects finding out about pancreatic cancer online, some did look at videos, but these were mostly shortish "my story" ones by patients. The prominence the medical research charities and NHS etc. give these shows that they appeal to many. Some did look at "a doctor explains" ones though. Johnbod (talk) 00:36, 27 March 2018 (UTC)
I will dare a response here. You have come at this like a bull in a china shop. I linked above to the WMF strategy effort, which includes surveys showing that our userbase wants video content. That is a thing.
My sense is that videos are intended to serve as an AV version of the WP:LEAD. One can, in good faith, view that as useful or not. It is kind of an interesting idea in my view.
There are other issues about collaborations generally that arise here.
There are also issues about the specific execution - the links and logos on the videos, whether we have carried our weight in reviewing them, and whether Osmosis has been responsive when changes were requested.
And the issue of who has the skills to edit something is quite distinct from whether people can edit them. The videos are cc licensed so anybody can make a derivative work of them, who has the skills and software. I cannot edit lua templates, but that doesn't mean that templates in lua are unWikipedian. I just don't have the skills. Other people do.
Those are all things that rational people can discuss. Running from forum to forum (I think you are up to 4 now) screaming bloody murder is not rational nor much "grown up" (à propos your remark here) Jytdog (talk) 21:52, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
Did anyone say we should stop providing text content? Nope not once, not ever.
Do we have data on viewership? Yes we do, at least on Wikipedia / Commons. Some data is here Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 05:12, 27 March 2018 (UTC)
  • edit conflict
There are two issues here: One, that an aspect of WP editing is being supported monetarily by a wealthy foundation. Second, and the one I want to comment further on is that medical/ health related articles have real world consequences. All content in health related articles must be verifiably and reliably sourced. As well, and because of that editors must be able to edit the content. I have long felt that health related articles should be edited by experts and then locked. But then who are the experts one wonders. Second to that, if not locked readers should be welcomed with an article tag telling them the article can be edited by anyone. Now adding video content that is not sourced and that cannot be edited is a further step in the direction of content that is "dangerous". While this problem could extend to all articles there is an aspect of danger present when dealing with MEDRS.
There is an issue underpinning much of this problem and that is a desire to have articles so accurate that can be safely used by physicians and medical students. It scares me to think medical students and physicians could be using articles which can be edited by anyone, anyone at all, even 11 year olds. No one can watch all of these article all of the time...and all that means.(Littleolive oil (talk) 22:25, 26 March 2018 (UTC))
@Littleolive oil: Yes (as you supported back then). This is another discussion, so I hope you don't mind the new break (please change it to a title of your choice). No one should be trying to watch every medical article on Wikipedia; a prominent disclaimer would still help. And I am pretty sure the number of active medical content editors has declined since the problem was first raised at RFC. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:43, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
No problem at all in separating this out. And thank you. I think there is a bottom line, which is my point on this, to which all other arguments must take second place and that is the articles must be as accurate as is humanly possible. That means videos which are not editable, verifiable or reliable cannot be used. Everything else is layered on top of that. I'm writing the obvious but sometimes the obvious gets lost in the complex, and sometimes, once the obvious is taken care of everything else falls into place.(Littleolive oil (talk) 22:56, 26 March 2018 (UTC))
utterly dead, beat to death, smitheereened issue. for crying out loud. I am logging out for today, i have had it. Jytdog (talk) 22:46, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
Jyt, this is looking much too personal for you. Could you allow any discussion to proceed on its merits? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:54, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
File:Abscesses 1.webm - Cut version

As a proof of concept, I've just edited File:Abscesses.webm and uploaded a new version File:Abscesses 1.webm, which is resized to 720p (to reduce the file size for Wikipedia use) and has the opening and closing credits removed, although I've left the "Open Osmosis" logo at the end. It's not a difficult job to do in Open Shot Video Editor (FOSS), nor did it take more than about 15 minutes. I understand that I couldn't correct any factual errors, but it may assuage some of our concerns about promotion. I also expect that Osmosis may not be too pleased (or maybe they won't worry), but their videos are released under CC-BY-SA 4.0 and are therefore "fair game" from that perspective. I can see that re-doing 300 videos would not be a trivial task, but we do have crowd-sourcing on our side. --RexxS (talk) 01:56, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

Medical editor trends for 2013 to 2016. Includes editors from across all languages. (data)
User:RexxS please see Commons:Watermarks. In particular the legal issues wrt removal of "copyright management information" (such as the title, author's name, copyright notice, etc.) Moving them to the file description page may not be viewed as sufficient by some, as the file still becomes more able to be copied elsewhere and then without the title, organisation name, copyright notice, etc, etc. The WMF advice is that "due to this lack of clarity, individual editors who are considering removing watermarks "should seriously consider the legal issues involved and consider consulting an attorney before doing so"". In other words, don't do this without explicit written permission from the copyright holder. Users should also be aware of the legal requirements in the CC licence wrt documenting changes made. For Wiki text this is done for you in the file history. For media, you have to do it explicitly on the file-description page. "shortened by 24 sec and resized to 720p for use in Wikipedias" is probably not sufficient unless you explain what you cropped out. -- Colin°Talk 08:50, 27 March 2018 (UTC)
Colin I think you need to read c:Commons:Watermarks and understand that it has no more standing than an essay. Nevertheless, it is clear there that promotional watermarks are unacceptable and should be removed. I'm afraid that the rest of what you wrote is simply scare-mongering (especially as the DCMA has no standing where I live). To be specific, you misquote the CC BY-SA 4.0 license, This what it actually says:

You are free to ... remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose ... Under the following terms: You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made.

It defines "appropriate credit" as "the name of the creator and attribution parties, a copyright notice, a license notice, a disclaimer notice, and a link to the material" and "indicate if changes were made" as "indicate if you modified the material and retain an indication of previous modifications". In addition it's obvious that your concern about future illegal adaptations cannot restrain an editor from creating legal derivatives that comply with the CC-BY-SA 4.0 licence: no-one can be held responsible for future misuse by others, otherwise no adaptation would ever be possible. My adaptation meets every condition of the licence – in fact it goes beyond what is required: I am only required to indicate if I made changes; there is no requirement to document what the changes were. Since I have not replaced the original, but have linked to it on the file description page, anyone can compare the files freely. --RexxS (talk) 10:55, 27 March 2018 (UTC)
Are you a lawyer, Rexxs? Really, you can do what you like because fundamentally the only person at legal risk when you upload content is you. But please don't offer legal advice or suggest other editors are safe to remove "copyright management information" from videos. Commons editors have largely stopped doing this. We're volunteers and nobody has your back. It isn't worth the risk. -- Colin°Talk 11:49, 27 March 2018 (UTC)
We always get the scare of "are you a lawyer?" don't we? Well, let's say I am (or was, or my daughter is), does that alter your position? No, I thought not. Please stop trying to frighten people away from legitimately editing content that is freely licensed, simply because you want no solution other than complete removal. Of course everybody is free to remove promotional watermarking; this isn't "copyright management information", it's merely an advert. If you're so sure that my adaptation is a breach of copyright, feel free to go ahead and nominate it for deletion on Commons - they take copyright very seriously there - and see where that gets you. Until then, you need to stop trying to patronise other adults who are perfectly capable of reading a licence. --RexxS (talk) 12:23, 27 March 2018 (UTC)
User:RexxS we can simply request that they do this going forwards. And ask them to update all the ones going back.
Per a wealthy foundation, I do not get it, what is wrong with the creation of content being supported monetarily? The NIH allows some of their staff to edit Wikipedia on staff time. Do we now have members of this project who are going to decry that? Are we out to end the existence of WiRs?
The videos ARE being produced based on reliable sources and by experts. Yes I realize that you prefer academic to more easily accessible language. Academics do not need us though. And we do a greater good by using accessible language. I have been in disputes with a few people over this including SV and Sandy.
Here are the sources for this video.[8] Sources ARE provided if you look / ask.
The main page of Wikipedia announces "the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit". We also have a disclaimer at the bottom. Sure some people want more.
How is the health of the medical community? I have been tracking that from 2013 to 2016. It appears to be fairly stable. Still trying to get numbers for 2017. Am likely going to hire someone to calculate the numbers as I do not have the technical skills to do so. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 04:36, 27 March 2018 (UTC)
Doc, we need to move in a direction where there is recognition: a) they are commercial links, not even acceptable in External links; b) editors can remove them just like any other ELNO, without c) being responsible for making sure they fix their inaccurate content. You have an example as real as can be at Talk:Dementia with Lewy bodies. The consensus criteria is dated 2017 (and contains knowledge that pre-dates 2017). The video is 2018. Either they don't know how to do the research, or they don't understand the topic; they don't understand REM sleep behavior disorder, they don't understand the onset of symptoms in DLB, and they don't understand the different kinds of memory. It is not my job to help them make money-- I am a volunteer Wikipedia editor. My role is to delete content that doesn't meet our guideline and policy, and that is a disservice to our reader. How can we be expected to find the time to write articles, deal with trolls, and also educate these people so they can make money, and why should we? The DLB example is much too clear to be ignored, and we've now got about a half dozen others that we know of. It is pretty unlikely that most of their 299 videos do not have similar problems. Without a workable solution that recognizes how serious this is, an RFC to the broader community should be considered. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 05:25, 27 March 2018 (UTC)
Sandy,
1) The claims that they contain grave error is false. Even after I showed that they did not mis a core symptoms you persist. Yes they do not use the exact language you wish or the font you like. Yes they are written for a general audience. But that is who we are supposed to be writing for.
2) No they are not "commercial links". They are videos about medical topics released under a fully open license. This is exceedingly rare and in fact amazing.
3) With respect to REM sleep behavior disorder they state "symptoms: sleep disorder like sleep walking and talking in sleep" I also do not think we should use the exact technical language you want in the lead. Does that mean that they and I do not understand REM sleep behavior disorders? No, what it means is that we care more that Wikipedia's leads are accessible to people than that every complicated detail in it complete fullness ends up in the leads of our articles. Our leads and these videos are overviews. The body and sub articles are there for the full details.
4) My goal is to try to make our content accessible to a very large number of people. I do this in multiple ways a) by writing the leads in easy to understand language b) by working to provide video content for those who might have limited reading ability (through partnerships with Osmosis) Or simple prefer to learn by video c) by translation into other languages in collaboration with many folks both inside and outside Wikipedia d) by building offline apps in partnership with Kiwix e) by working with folks at Internet-in-a-Box to get Wikipedia's medical content out to those with no access to the Internet f) by improving our content here in collaboration with medical schools, schools of pharmacy, Cochrane, the NIH, the CDC, the World Health Organization, and other.
From what you write here and elsewhere maybe our goals are not compatible. I have discussed these goals at length here on this talk page for years. I have developed consensus for this goals both through discussion and by being bold. This has required countless hours of personal effort, with great personal and financial sacrifice. The efforts have been gradual over years. You have not joined these prior discussions. Now here you are criticizing all this work after being absent for so many years, without reviewing all the discussions that have come before. Apologies but this makes me deeply disappointed... Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 06:53, 27 March 2018 (UTC)
James
1) I hope that, as a physician, you value precision in medical terminology. They are wrong. Not just in language. In timing of onset, and in distinction of types of memory and in the onset of that memory loss. They were wrong at Breastfeeding. Quick vs. sudden are significant terms in neurology-- they are wrong at Tic disorders. The answer to those, of you accusing me at WT:V of falsehoods are on my talk, but please, hear what others are trying to tell you.
2) They are making money off of the advertising that is driven to them thanks to us ... well, not all of us. If commercial is the wrong word for that, my apologies, but same thing.
3) REM sleep behavior disorder is not "sleep walking and sleep talking". You are aware as a physician that those are separate entities. RBD is dream enactment behavior during REM sleep. It can be as simple as flinching, flailing legs or arms-- no walking, no talking need be involved (although they may be). The description is inaccurate in ways that leads to misdiagnosis, so who are we educating, and why educate them incorrectly? That matters to us, right? We wouldn't do it in an article, so why a video? They Are Wrong. You are trained to value precision in medical description and terminology. They don't seem to be. I am surprised at you defending them.
4) Some of the direction here is driving inaccuracies into the leads of every article I see. This is not Simple Wikipedia. (A thought: why not have the translation project work off of simple Wikipedia, since that is the level they want?) Seeking the most dumbed-down sources and driving them into the lead of every article quite often has resulted in errors-- both blatant, and of significant nuance. Leads are summaries per Wikipedia guideline for a good reason.

I recognize and appreciate your personal sacrifice, dedication, and effort. It is indisputable. I do.

But. I ask that you listen to other editors, and realize some of these projects are costing us (us being WP:MED in terms of content guidelines we fought to gain long ago, that are now being undermined ... do you know what it is to have gotten MEDRS accepted as a guideline?? What other Project can claim a change as important as that one was? Why would we now defend poor content, because it is in videos?

The loss of Colin to medical editing was no small thing. Why do you think I have also been absent, Doc? Content is being degraded, and working on it is harder and harder, with less and less of a collaborative spirit. I merrily left behind the utterly inexcusable prostate suite to go work in an entirely different area, where an article badly need to be rebuilt from the ground up, knowing I could do it, not remotely expecting to hit this wall. Editing here is supposed to be fun, not driven by the commercial interests of outside projects. I would not be pointing out that two of the editors who were the first involved to bring this Project MEDRS are uncomfortable editing in this environment. Please, listen to others. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 07:32, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

1) "Quick" versus "rapid" are not exceedingly different. Yes the DSM5 refers to tics as rapid.
2) They are not making money off of us any different than say the Lancet or the BMJ.
3) They say "Sleep disorder" first. And than mention a couple possibilities. Many sources mention sleep walking during REM as one aspect of DLM.[9] And it is a classic one.
4) Are these videos perfect? No. Could they be improved sure. Is Osmosis will to collaborate definitely. Should the Osmosis 2 sec intro be trimmed? If we want we can, meh. Should we be deleting every video made by this group because one or two people do not like the font they use? No definitely not. Not without a clear consensus. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 07:49, 27 March 2018 (UTC)
Doc your Lancet/BMJ analogy does not work on any level. We are putting videos with prominent advertising of a link to a source that hosts a commercial store with products for sale in the leads of articles, which our readers can't miss. Lancet/BMJ are in sources, at the bottom. Which readers may not even click on. And our readers aren't driven first to advertising when they click on a source-- they are driven first to the content of a journal article.

If an editor puts sleep walking incorrectly as text into an article to describe RBD, any other editor can instantly fix it. We cannot fix Osmosis errors, nor should we have to. We are not paid to edit for them, yet they make money off of being given a highly preferential position on Wikipedia.

It is curious that there was no consensus, either here or wiki-wide to breach so many content policies and guidelines with these videos, but now you want consensus to delete them. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 07:59, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

There is nothing that when clicked on brings you to the site in question. This of course is unlike DOIs. When you click on these you are often brought to a page were you can pay for the article in question.
Yes I get it, you do not want to edit or work on videos. Others of us feel differently. And finally sleep walking is not incorrect. It is indeed a symptom of DLB.
Osmosis actually makes more money off of Youtube (they get more views there plus they get ad revenue). What they do allow by using an open license is for use to also have there videos which people can watch for free without ads on Wikipedia and in our offline compilations. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 08:19, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

I am very concerned by this statement "My goal is to try to make our content accessible to a very large number of people. I do this in multiple ways a) by writing the leads in easy to understand language b) by working to provide video content for those who might have limited reading ability (through partnerships with Osmosis) Or simple prefer to learn by video c) by translation into other languages in collaboration with many folks both inside and outside Wikipedia d) by building offline apps in partnership with Kiwix e) by working with folks at Internet-in-a-Box to get Wikipedia's medical content out to those with no access to the Internet"

These are perhaps goals of some in WikiMedia Foundation generally and some are goals for third parties (Kwix, Internet in a box) and some are goals for other Wikipedias (translation). The are not obviously and naturally goals for English Wikipedia, which is our primary purpose. This is a text-based hyperlinked encyclopaedia where we collaboratively edit text (and only text) to produce educational encyclopaedic content. We supplement these articles with images and other audio-visual clips, which reside on Commons, and are not collaboratively editable. If you have a mission to create educational videos, covering whole article topics, then that is not Wikipedia's mission. We are not YouTube. Go talk to WMF about creating a sister project WikiVideo. I have seen too many times Doc James pervert our article content to suit his pet projects, which are not aligned with English Wikipedia. Four years ago I saw him spend his time dumbing down our leads to baby language in the assumption that this made it easier to translate or with the idea that this was Simple English wikipedia, for those who find English hard to read. We saw him try to force one citation style template on us, in order to make copy/paste translation easier. We now see him claim these videos must be embedded into articles so that his offline app partnership can include the video. That's your partnership Doc James, your goal. When has the wider Wikipedia community agreed to have a commercial third party create article-videos embedded in the lead of our articles? Would you be happy to read political articles on Wikipedia created and sponsored by Fox News? Get a grip. -- Colin°Talk 09:13, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

Subject matter expertise

W.r.t Doc James's statement that "the videos ARE being produced based on reliable sources and by experts", I strongly disagree. There are many red herrings in this sprawling discussion but this issue of expertise is core to our mandate. The main writer of Osmosis's video on breastfeeding, Philip Boone, is a medical resident whose most relevant qualification is having graduated from medical school, a whopping two years before working for Osmosis.

My impression when I first saw this video was, "Wow, this guy is totally incompetent when it comes to breastfeeding. Your average La Leche League leader down the street knows more than he does." Reading his LinkedIn profile gave me no reassurance. (If anyone's wondering what kinds of qualifications make someone an expert in the medical specialty of breastfeeding, Ruth Lawrence's bio lists some.) I would be interested in seeing more profiles of Oasis's script writers - I suspect that hiring actual experts is not their business model. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 16:10, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

No not a medical student User:Clayoquot but a A resident in Pediatrics/Medical Genetics at Harvard. Also has a PhD.
Additionally the script was edited by an attending pediatrician at Stanford.[10] Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 23:24, 27 March 2018 (UTC)
I said he was a medical resident. I did not say he was a medical student. Doc James, please read more carefully. His PhD is in genetics which has no relevance to breastfeeding. It's interesting that the script was edited by an attending pediatrician, and such glaring errors still got through the review process. Hmmm. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 01:46, 28 March 2018 (UTC)
Yes apologies misread. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 03:03, 28 March 2018 (UTC)

How are these not spam?

There are definitely issues surrounding the medical appropriateness of these videos, which others have brought up. There is even the philosophical question of Wikipedia having essentially "frozen" and practically unverifiable content. Putting that aside, as reasonable people may differ on those questions. There is one point where I can see no reasonable argument and that is the matter of hosting advertisements for an outside organization and from what I have seen these are straight up spam.

Sure, they allegedly provide some good information but they exist to promote a company and sell subscriptions. Issues with medical content aside, these videos simply fail WP:NOTPROMO and, in their current form, are unacceptable for use on Wikipedia. Period. I sure would like to hear how anyone thought these were acceptable. Really, I am all ears. Do we now differentiate between good spam and bad spam? Anyway, my thought is that any discussion of the merits of these videos should probably take a back seat to this fundamental violation of Wikipedia core content policy.

The simplest way to address this would be to edit each of the video files to remove the spam sections of the video. I have, however, read that these files are not editable? Is that the case? If so I assume that it is but a minor thing for those who arranged for these videos to ask Osmosis to provide the content without the advertisements and links. If Osmosis is not willing to do so then they are intended as spam and need to be removed for that reason.

Long form video may have a place in Wikipedia's future but not as an advertising vehicle for an external organization. Jbh Talk 00:22, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

They can be edited, of course. See above. --RexxS (talk) 01:58, 27 March 2018 (UTC)
and RexxS example ameliorates the main problem ...IMO--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 12:35, 27 March 2018 (UTC)
I mentioned the videos couldn't be edited based on this comment posted by Colin. I could be wrong. Apologies if so.(Littleolive oil (talk) 02:33, 27 March 2018 (UTC))
Well....they can be edited as long as by "edited" one only means "cut down". Practically speaking, it's extraordinarily difficult to make even minor changes or additions to the content of these videos. (Though removing the Osmosis logos and credit sequences would resolve one of the issues with this content: the violation of the spirit of WP:WATERMARK and MOS:CREDITS.) TenOfAllTrades(talk) 03:23, 27 March 2018 (UTC)
Yes, it would be extraordinarily difficult, and probably require expensive technology, to make changes or additions in the style of the original video. It would probably be quite hard even for Osmosis to do this because some of the original creators of the videos no longer work for the company. But hey, it wouldn't be too hard to splice in new content if we weren't trying to make it look consistent. A Wikipedian could, for instance, create a 60-second clip, in whatever tool and style they want, that summarizes the errors in the video and points out that the author of the video is a nonspecialist medical resident. And then that clip could be quite easily spliced into the start of the Osmosis video and re-uploaded. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 03:56, 27 March 2018 (UTC)
oh, I like the way you think, Clayoquot! Jbh, "I sure would like to hear how anyone thought these were acceptable." 'Tis a mystery. And I have pondered it. Fundamental violation of ... just about everything ... and no one even noticed for years (I have an excuse, I wasn't editing :)

Perhaps people have found creating content to be too hard, so are happy to outsource content they just manage? Perhaps with the overall decline in Wikipedia editing, no one is home anymore? Perhaps ... no one cares anymore? I really cannot understand how we got so far off track with this. I just wanted to work on a really badly outdated article, and hit this. We can't edit away the errors, and I can't understand why we would want to. Dementia with Lewy bodies had 100,000 hits on one day only this week (I can't figure out why), on March 21,[11] and the article was a wreck at that point. How many of those people said to heck with Wikipedia, and went first to this video? Our medical content has become a vehicle for someone else to make money, while we slave away like ninnies.

So, in the series from Ocaassi I re-posted above, Step 3 never happened. We could start with asking why that never happened, and why the project proceeded without that consensus, and even if it had happened, why anyone ever thought that WP:MED was a place where consensus could be generated to breach all manner of policy and guideline.

Or we could get on with figuring out how to get rid of the things. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 04:18, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

Sandy, I'm pretty sure the 21 March spike was tangential to a bit of celebrity sensationalism here, rather than any organized effort. LeadSongDog come howl! 17:56, 27 March 2018 (UTC)
@LeadSongDog, thanks! I did not think it was any organized effort, but I have been looking for what drove the spike. I'm not sure that particular article is it, although the event may be. Usually a spike that high is because some event happens where there is a direct link on the news source or webpage to the Wikipedia article, and I haven't been able to find anything like that. Another thing that happened on March 21 was an exciting new research discovery related to Parkinson's. Or perhaps a #MeToo site linked to us, per the Mindy thing. Anyway, I brought it up because I had barely begun work on that article on 21 March, and it was in pretty bad shape. Anyone coming to Wikipedia probably said WTH, and went for the video instead. I am now about halfway through improving the article, and picked up six new journal articles today when I was at the hospital. I wish it had had a 100,000 spike next week! Thanks again, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:28, 27 March 2018 (UTC)
@LeadSongDog, oops, you're right-- now I see it-- it does link to us. Darn, what a missed opportunity to spread accurate updated info about DLB. Had I started a week earlier ... SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:32, 27 March 2018 (UTC)
Malheureusement, there will always be another opportunity. Your effort isn't wasted. LeadSongDog come howl! 20:05, 27 March 2018 (UTC)
I support Colin's position. There is no "case by case"--the issue here is an over-arching one and he is absolutely correct in his interpretation of consequences. I won't write at length here. Outriggr (talk) 04:28, 27 March 2018 (UTC)
Some people (in fact many people) want video explanation. All the videos this group makes are going to be released under an open license so that we can potentially use them. All the ones we currently use are under an open license currently.
Yes they also have a subscription model for test questions from what I understand. If people are unhappy with the opening and closing credits they can be removed. Just because they produce other stuff that they offer under a subscription model does not mean that they stuff they offer under an open license is an "ad" for that subscription stuff. Their viewership via Youtube is greater than that via Wikipedia and they earn ad revenue there. Other medical video produces have declined to release there videos under an open license. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 04:53, 27 March 2018 (UTC)
Some people (in fact many people) want to marry someone beautiful, become rich, have a family, die old in bed. None of this is justification for this material on Wikipedia. Go find another WMF project for this, a project that doens't care about collaborative editing by volunteers, who is happy to see paid editors, who only wants expert editors, and is happy to present jokey videos about serious diseases, written for American medical students, as in any way appropriate for a general international audience, which might actually consist, you know, of someone with the medical condition. -- Colin°Talk 19:52, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

Claims of COI

With respect to COI editing, the concerns mainly occur when the person producing the content in question have a COI with respect to the subject area in question. That is not the case in these examples. This is a red herring which distracts from the difficult work of actually dealing with serious COI issues. Osmosis do not manufacture a treatment for the condition in question. They are not paid by a PR agency or company that does.

Another examples is that the NIH does not have a COI when working on Wikipedia about PTSD. Osmosis does not have a COI when they produce a video about abscesses. If people are unhappy with the social media links I am sure they would be fine with removing them and because these videos are under an open license we can remove them ourselves.

The claims that there is a grave COI issue here is like arguing we should not use references to the Lancet as that advertising the Lancet or data from Cancer Research UK as that is an add to that charity. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 04:48, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

Open-Osmosis are funded by a foundation created by the billionaire behind Jonhson & Johnson. As a private foundation, albeit one that on superficial examination appears to be a good cause, they can emphasise and censor whatever aspects they wish. Do they support abortion, promote abstinence from drink, encourage condoms for safe sex, support vaccination, deny global warming, accept the medical use of marijuana, promote equal education and opportunities for women, think AIDS is God's punishment to gay people, condone prostitution, think vitamin C is the answer to all heath problems, etc, etc, etc. No idea, but as a private foundation, they are totally entitled to believe and promote whatever nonsense they want, should they wish to. The same is not true of the NIH or Cancer Research UK. What we do know is that Osmosis is "A better way to learn", "A fully customized learning platform driven by data, science, and the technology of the future." and you can start your free trial here. :-) -- Colin°Talk 07:56, 27 March 2018 (UTC)
This comparison is only smoke and deception.
  • Suppose that, in some future, Wikipedia advertises for the Lancet. How many physicians would change their mind about subscribing to the Lancet (apart, may be, from cancelling their subscription) ?
  • Suppose that, here and now, Wikipedia advertises for Osmosis. How many students will subscribe to Osmosis (despite the warning: never ever trust Wikipedia about human health, or any other critical topic) ?
Pldx1 (talk) 08:23, 27 March 2018 (UTC)
I don't understand your two suggestions. Wikipedia does not "advertise" for anyone, and has no plans to. The degree to which the Osmosis videos are adverts or fremium content teasers for their paid subscription videos, is up for debate. If the Lancet were to recruit doctors to create content for Wikipedia I would also be concerned, as such content would be subject to the editorial focus of the Lancet and its publisher. This is why Wikipedia is fundamentally a volunteer created collaboratively edited project. I have no problem with commercially created images or short video clips such as an electron microscope image of cells or a chemical reaction. These single-topic media files are self-asserting -- editors can judge if they are what they say they are, and add or remove them if there is conflict. Entire article-topic videos are a different matter, where a narrator presents their own version of the article text spoken out loud, and offers their own personal opinion on what aspects of the topic to cover and avoid. It is quite notable that these clips were originally created for medical students -- the focus is all wrong for the general reader. So we have the editorial focus of Osmosis, not of Wikipedia. That is the very definition of "Conflict of Interest". And any complaints by editors on Wikipedia are met with edit warring by Doc James, and a possible promise of a future revised video, which it seems, does not often come. These are well documented facts. -- Colin°Talk 09:00, 27 March 2018 (UTC)
Dear User:Colin. Sure, you don't understand what I have written: an hypothesis is not a suggestion ! Reading again, may be ? Pldx1 (talk) 10:40, 27 March 2018 (UTC)
@Pldx1:, you say that Wikipedia does not "advertise" for anyone, and has no plans to, but that is a substantial part of what this is about. A (prominently placed) link to an external site that advertises. It has long been accepted that links to copyright infringing sites were themselves contributory copyright infringement. If WP accepted links to {political|medical|media|fashion|younameit} advertising, how much worse would the fake facts problem get? If the video has intrinsic value, clean out the advertising (it isn't CC-BY-SA-ND), host it on Commons, and give the same simple attribution as any other media there to satisfy CC-BY-SA. If it doesn't, then there's no hiding behind the offsite hosting: linking to it is contributory to advertising. LeadSongDog come howl! 14:24, 27 March 2018 (UTC)
Dear User:LeadSongDog. The one who said Wikipedia does not "advertise" for anyone, and has no plans to was not me, but User:Colin. Moreover, it seems clear, at least for me, that Colin intent was to say Wikipedia should must not "advertise" for anyone, and has plans to continue to enforce it's "no advertisement" policy. Pldx1 (talk) 17:41, 27 March 2018 (UTC). Pldx1, you bad guy ! Yet another mess with must/should despite of RFC 2119 ! Pldx1 (talk) 18:40, 27 March 2018 (UTC)
Ooops, sorry for the confusion. However, "should not" doesn't capture my intent. "Must not" is closer: it is practically an existential threat to WP. Does anyone seriously believe the WMF would survive as a commercial advertiser in direct competition to Google? It has to be avoided at all cost. LeadSongDog come howl! 18:27, 27 March 2018 (UTC)
  • Colin, re: the "charitable foundation creating educational videos under a free license" mentioned on Jimmy's page, what is the charitable foundation?
Knowledge Diffusion, Inc. owns osmosis.org and open.osmosis.org. The osmosis.org terms of use say: "'Osmosis' means any website, mobile application, or Internet service under Knowledge Diffusion’s control, whether partial or otherwise, in connection with providing the services provided by Knowledge Diffusion, including osmose-it.com and freetext.org ... In an effort to promote the dissemination of open educational resources (OER), Osmosis.org has chosen to share much content under Creative Commons licenses using the banner 'Open Osmosis'."
The company has used Wikipedia to build brand recognition, which helps it to sell Osmosis Prime. Doc James, you're usually pretty savvy when it comes to this kind of thing. Other contributors to Wikipedia don't have this kind of courtesy extended to us—e.g. that our work will always appear above the fold, and that we get to add a link to a company of our choice next to our edits. SarahSV (talk) 16:16, 27 March 2018 (UTC)
User:SlimVirgin there was no agreement or requirement that the videos occur above the fold. As an overview of the topic in question I simple felt that often it fits well in the leads of articles. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 18:35, 27 March 2018 (UTC)
Doc, that choice of wording was seen and edited by you, so it is understandable that the appearance of an agreement is there. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:42, 27 March 2018 (UTC)
PS, also, considering point 7, would you mind if I take the video out of the infobox at tic disorder? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:44, 27 March 2018 (UTC)
Yup I would mind as it is appropriate IMO. We have discussed the DSM5 wording in a bunch of places. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 19:22, 27 March 2018 (UTC)
SarahSV, according to https://open.osmosis.org/, "With support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation". -- Colin°Talk 17:09, 27 March 2018 (UTC)
@Colin: I think that means they got a grant from that foundation. But Jimmy said: "A charitable foundation creating educational videos under a free license is a good thing." That gives the impression that Osmosis is a charity, but it's a for-profit company. SarahSV (talk) 17:13, 27 March 2018 (UTC)
They were creating a non-profit arm when we discussed collaboration. Will follow up to verify that. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 18:35, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

Here's an example of how the association with Wikipedia helps their marketing (bold added):

Coverys, a leading medical professional liability insurance provider, announced today the investment in two separate organizations, Knowledge Diffusion, Inc. (Osmosis) and Pack Health, LLC (Pack Health). Both organizations provide innovative resources that help improve patient outcomes and support provider performance. Osmosis is a medical and health education technology company with headquarters in Baltimore, Maryland. It has an audience of more than 500,000 current and future clinicians between its advanced learning platform (http://www.osmosis.org) and popular YouTube channel (http://www.youtube.com/osmosis). Osmosis leverages its video learning platform to create and disseminate co-branded video content that is visually appealing, clear, and concise. It also has a strong partnership with Wikipedia, which features Osmosis content on health and medicine articles. To date, Osmosis has focused on medical students but is quickly gaining traction with a number of other critical healthcare provider segments including nursing, physician assistants, pharmacy, dentistry, and others.

SarahSV (talk) 17:20, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

If you look at the Cochrane website you will also notice that we are one of their three key partners.
Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 18:37, 27 March 2018 (UTC)
Doc James, yes, and that makes Wikipedia look good. But the Osmosis partnership makes Osmosis look good. Also, Cochrane didn't ask for a certain amount of space in hundreds of articles, or try to specify where in the articles that space had to be. Would you consider releasing more information about how this came about, particularly re: "James and other medical editors will place the videos in the first sections of articles (but below the infobox)"? [12] I accept that you acted with good intentions, but that requirement is a bit of a red flag. SarahSV (talk) 18:47, 27 March 2018 (UTC)
User:SlimVirgin it was User:Ocaasi (WMF) that added that text. It was however never a requirement of this collaboration but only one possible suggested spot. Have removed that wording from the page in question. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 19:08, 27 March 2018 (UTC)
Doc James, thanks, I saw that it was Jake who added it, but I'm wondering how it came about, i.e. who first suggested it and when. That one issue shows that this was about marketing. Another thing that puzzles me is that the videos are aimed at medical students, whereas you normally insist that articles be aimed (as far as possible) at the general reader. Several of the ones I looked at would be too technical for most readers.
SlimVirgin I honestly don't recall how the issue of video placement was raised and discussed, but it was coming from a place of at least mutual benefit for Wikipedia. There has been a lack of quality multi-media on Wikipedia amidst a media-consumption environment where people increasingly seek video content and explanations to help understand concepts. For that reason, having a video 'above the fold' was important for discoverability, so that people would find and watch them. Osmosis was offering open-licensed, high-quality medical content in a format we very often lack; it was seen as a potential boon to our articles. They offered the content and said, more or less, "wouldn't it be cool if when people read about a medical topic there was a high-quality, free video they would find to help understand it?" There weren't any strings attached that I can remember about the videos having to be in one part of the article versus another. It was basically, "take our content and put it where it will be useful to readers." --Jake Ocaasi t | c 19:54, 27 March 2018 (UTC)
Jake, thanks for the explanation. That helps. My concern was that they had insisted on that placement. SarahSV (talk) 22:57, 27 March 2018 (UTC)
SarahSV Osmosis needed a bit of education about where video placement was appropriate. Their initial idea was that it could be in an article infobox(!), which we explained would never happen. We explained that any video would have to be below the first section header, as a minimum. From there they didn't insist on anything, it was merely a matter of taking content that seemed a good fit and finding a good place for it in the article. --Jake Ocaasi t | c 16:22, 28 March 2018 (UTC)
Ocaasi Infobox placement has happened, at tic disorder, and Doc James has said I may not move it out of the infobox. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:02, 28 March 2018 (UTC)
More Osmosis marketing that mentions WP (interview): "Today [2017], Osmosis is an educational platform with over 65,000 users, seeing an incredible growth of 670,000 views on YouTube and millions of views on Wikipedia (being the largest provider of videos to Wikipedia.)" SarahSV (talk) 19:23, 27 March 2018 (UTC)
SarahSV do ou think those "millions" are just page hits for the medical pages touching the preview image of each video, or actually people clicking to watch the video? -- Colin°Talk 19:38, 30 March 2018 (UTC)
@Colin: they seem to be for the videos. See Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Video views: "Total up to Nov 28 2017: 7,267,901". Also see partnermetrics.wmflabs.org, which says 8,771,485 and gives a breakdown per video. [13] SarahSV (talk) 21:41, 30 March 2018 (UTC)
The epilepsy video is number 104 in that list and gives the figure 38,885. There's also a daily breakdown if you click on "details" after each filename. SarahSV (talk) 21:46, 30 March 2018 (UTC)
Interesting. I remarked earlier that dementia with Lewy bodies had a huge spike in hits on 3/21, which LeadSongDog discovered was related to a Guardian article on Mork/Mindy that linked directly to DLB on Wikipedia.Guardian article. Well, the article got 100,000 hits, and the video got only 368. Either something is off in the hit counter, or the idea that our readers want videos isn't borne out here. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:52, 30 March 2018 (UTC)
@SandyGeorgia: that's file number 164 on that list. Overall 2123 views. Interesting what you say about the 21st. And bear in mind that people clicking doesn't mean people watching the whole thing, although everyone clicking would have seen osmosis.org. SarahSV (talk) 22:34, 30 March 2018 (UTC)
@SandyGeorgia and Colin: I'm also wondering why the views are listed at partnermetrics.wmflabs.org if the WFM had nothing to do with this. SarahSV (talk) 22:59, 30 March 2018 (UTC)

SarahSV, thanks for digging into this. I agree with your concerns and points. I think the most charitable we can be here, is to assume an astounding degree of naivety and lack of thinking through the issues. Wrt what Jimbo wrote, well I don't think he sees this conversation, so you'll have to take it up with him on his talk page. I agree he didn't pick his words carefully or accurately. I also don't really see any difference between charitable foundation and commercial organisation if both are privately funded. Unlike a public charity which is answerable to the public (as Oxfam found to its cost) or a state-owned institution. -- Colin°Talk 19:58, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

  • James, I think you should regard yourself as having a conflict of interest when it comes to these videos. They were added to articles following an agreement, in December 2015, between two Knowledge Diffusion employees, yourself and two WMF employees, Sylvia Ventura, WMF Strategic Partnerships and Jake Orlowitz, WMF Community Engagement. The agreement said that you were representing Wiki Project Med Foundation, not the board of trustees, but it's impossible not to notice that everyone involved was either WMF-related or from Knowledge Diffusion, Inc. And Wiki Project Med Foundation isn't the community.
Since then, you've effectively functioned as a Knowledge Diffusion rep, restoring videos when editors object, and fielding requests for corrections. It's unfair of the company to leave you in that situation while the company account, OsmoseIt, has barely been active. I appreciate that you're acting in good faith and that you genuinely don't see it this way, but people involved in a COI often think there isn't a problem, and it isn't a question of good or bad faith. See WP:COI: "That someone has a conflict of interest is a description of a situation, not a judgment about that person's opinions or integrity." The fact is that you're trying to wear two hats, and it isn't fair to put you in that position. SarahSV (talk) 17:35, 28 March 2018 (UTC)
User:SlimVirgin no I do not have a COI with respect to these videos. I do not wear a "hat" at osmosis if that is what you are claiming. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 17:45, 28 March 2018 (UTC)
@Doc James: everyone involved in the agreement about the videos has a COI: the Knowledge Diffusion employees have a financial COI in relation to the company and its videos (not in relation to the video topics), and are paid editors if they edit here on behalf of the company, and you, Jake and Sylvia have a general COI in relation to the videos (and arguably in relation to the company). WP:COI: "Any external relationship can trigger a conflict of interest. ... COI emerges from an editor's roles and relationships, and the tendency to bias that we assume exists when those roles and relationships conflict." SarahSV (talk) 19:32, 28 March 2018 (UTC)
Hum so User:SlimVirgin I have COI with respect to the National Institutes of Health, Cancer Research UK, University of California San Francisco, Slacker School of Medicine, the World Health Organization, Cochrane, National Organization for Rare Disorders, National Libraries of Medicine, National Health Services, etc because I have spoken with all these groups about Wikipedia?
Am I required to declare this in every edit summary? Thankfully the WMF increased the length of edit summaries to allow this, though I think the community was looking at shortening the edit summaries as they felt they were made too long. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 19:43, 28 March 2018 (UTC)
You reached an agreement with a private company to do something on their behalf that has turned out to be contentious. Now that people are removing the material, you're edit warring. Yes, if the same thing had happened followed an agreement between you and the World Health Organization, it would also be a COI; it's just much worse when it involves a private commercial interest. James, it's very much in your own interests here to be gracious and step back, and let the community reach a decision independently of you. SarahSV (talk) 20:13, 28 March 2018 (UTC)
This is an extreme missunderstanding of what COI is. You are invalidating any efforts to do anything that uses external material. Yes there is an interest here to not paint Wikipedia as a cesspit of debate over nothing, where there is no possibility of aquiring future content donations. This is not COI, this is interest. An entirely non-conflicting interest. What you are suggesting is that supporting Wikipedias fundamental mission statement is COI. Carl Fredrik talk 20:19, 28 March 2018 (UTC)
agree w/ CF appraisal--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 20:26, 28 March 2018 (UTC)
@CFCF and Ozzie10aaaa: see Bernard Lo and Marilyn J. Field (Institute of Medicine, 2009): "A conflict of interest is a set of circumstances that creates a risk that professional judgment or actions regarding a primary interest will be unduly influenced by a secondary interest" (bold added). [14]
James has acted on behalf of commercial interests (a secondary interest) and believed he was also acting in WP's interests (the primary interest). WP wants material that complies with its core content policies, including V. The company wants space in articles to increase its brand recognition, but unfortunately it has chosen not to comply with V, although it could do so by releasing the scripts with inline citations.
Now that the issue has become contentious, James refuses to step back to allow uninvolved people to handle it, and is edit warring to restore the videos. That places him in a conflict in the sense that "a set of circumstances has created a risk that his judgment or actions regarding his primary interest have been unduly influenced by his relationship with the company". Note: we can't know whether his judgement has actually been unduly influenced, and nor can he; the point is that the risk has been created by the relationship with Osmosis. SarahSV (talk) 20:57, 28 March 2018 (UTC)
I do not agree with your assessment that Doc James has acted on behalf of a commercial interest. I believe this focus is extremely misguided and is akin to suggest that preferencing high-impact factor journals is acting in the commercial interest of said journals in a way that is problematic. Your interpretation of COI can implicate any actions as COI.
The word to note here is unduly, which this case clearly is not under any interpretation. You seem to advocate disinterest. Carl Fredrik talk 21:04, 28 March 2018 (UTC)
Can you say what you mean by "you seem to advocate disinterest"? SarahSV (talk) 22:22, 28 March 2018 (UTC)
I'm also not seeing any CoI issue. Collaborating with Osmosis is like doing GLAM outreach. Wikipedia:Osmosis shows that Doc was willing to work with Osmosis to improve Wikipedia. It does not show that he has secondary interests in Osmosis itself. I really wish Doc hadn't edit warred, but I believe he did it out of conviction that the videos help Wikipedia's readers. Adrian J. Hunter(talk•contribs) 12:55, 29 March 2018 (UTC)
Yes, I believe that Doc James acted in good faith, with the motive being to help benefit the Wikipedia visitors and community's interests. I do not at all believe Doc James is motivated by money or that there is any evidence of this. Remember editing Wikipedia is something you don't get paid for. Someone out to make money would not waste their time editing Wikipedia for free as Doc James has done so for many years.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 19:44, 30 March 2018 (UTC)
No question about Doc James' good faith intentions, and I never even contemplated that he might be receiving any compensation of any sort for any part of this. His dedication is clear, even if I disagree with some of his areas of focus. (And I commend him for pulling the plug himself, and doing the work himself rather than leaving it to others.) But in a situation involving paid editors (the Osmosis guy), and an agreement that was (until recently) vague to other observers, it is important to avoid even the appearance of COI, lest he open himself to the charge of proxying for paid editors. I hope what Doc learns from this is that the edit warring portion put him too close to running that risk. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:00, 30 March 2018 (UTC)
The COI is obvious. WP:COI: "While editing Wikipedia, an editor's primary role is to further the interests of the encyclopedia. When an external role or relationship could reasonably be said to undermine that primary role, the editor has a conflict of interest." James arranged for paid content to be added that violated WP:V, WP:MEDRS, and WP:NOTADVERTISING: "Wikipedia neither endorses organizations nor runs affiliate programs."
When the videos were first added, James took someone to AN/I for pointing out that Osmosis is for profit. He wanted to call them "a group" and kept reverting the addition of "for profit". That's COI editing right there, as was restoring the videos when others removed them. SarahSV (talk) 20:18, 30 March 2018 (UTC)
Regardless, Doc James's motives were that the videos benefited the viewers. He has experienced 'rejection,' per the RfC, lots of stress and the realisation that his good faith efforts (countless hours of work) are now wasted being forced to delete the videos. I am sure that he will reflect on all the criticism and learn from it. There is no point in keeping kicking him when a good man is down. He has been punished more than enough.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 23:19, 30 March 2018 (UTC)
I like to believe/hope that people learn from their mistakes. The problem with conflict on the internet is that, just as one time zone is settling in and settling down, another time zone is waking up, and the conflict is reignited. I'm looking at a holiday weekend, followed by the start of radiation therapy for my husband, which will involve hours of driving every day for a long time. It's beautiful out where I am. I wonder if we might not all go enjoy our weekend, let things settle, and come back to try and solve problems with clear minds? This has not been pleasant for anyone. Peace, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:38, 30 March 2018 (UTC)

@James, Carl, Sandy, and Sarah: (and anybody else interested) I'd like to share my view on COI. I have found when working with Wikipedia, that it is vital not just to avoid conflict of interest, but to avoid any appearance of conflict of interest. The very nature of pseudonymous editing, and online collaboration and interactions make it difficult to prove or disprove that a COI exists most of the time. I don't think I have a COI concerning Osmosis – I'd forgotten we had any connection with them, to be honest – but I agree that if I take a position on this dispute, I leave myself open to an accusation of COI. It matters not a jot that I think I can take a position without being affected by an external interest, it's not in the best interest of a focused debate to open the door to tangential issues. I'd like to step away from this dispute, and I'd strongly recommend that all parties consider the same. I'm still willing to offer what technical help I can, if asked, but there's precious little left to be gained from further churn, in my opinion. Colin has kindly taken the time to reach out to me off-wiki and I think we can remain on good terms going forward. You can rest assured that I'll take the time to talk with James privately about what lessons we've learned and how we can do better in future. We're all in this for the same reason: to create a wonderful encyclopedia that everyone can use, and we could use some comradeship to get that going again. Cheers --RexxS (talk) 23:55, 30 March 2018 (UTC)

I appreciate RexxS's comments here and agree - the lesson regarding avoiding even the appearance of COI (or other impropriety) is underscored in medical education (with many cautionary tales); for this reason (and because I was overseas for the past 5 days) I have stayed away but have now caught up with what's transpired. Will just add that very strong feelings should be enough to give one pause. — soupvector (talk) 01:56, 31 March 2018 (UTC)

ongoing?

Doc James it appears from the Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Osmosis that no new videos have been posted since 2016. Is this collaboration no longer active?

Also are you are aware of any instances where Osmosis has changed a video in response to feedback? If so would you please provide diffs of that? thx Jytdog (talk) 14:19, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

Yes ongoing. They updated the celiac disease video based on feedback. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 23:26, 27 March 2018 (UTC)
That was in March 2016. [15] SarahSV (talk) 19:35, 28 March 2018 (UTC)
Yes, but It was not enough. I can not accept that the video is not improved because it requires a lot of time of work: "To give some perspective, making edits to these videos does not take 2 seconds. The edit we made on your suggestion took a couple of hours of work --OsmoseIt" or because "We feel your other suggestions are an expansion of the scope of the video, beyond what we want to cover for our target audience. --OsmoseIt". This is Wikipedia and we have to comply with Wikipedia policies and objectives, not Osmosis team objetives. See more detailed explanations here.
I believe that the videos are educational and a good initiative. I agree that they could be included in Wikipedia, as long as they meet these criteria: that Osmosis update them continuously and that they are correctly referenced / supported by current verifiable sources, as we do with the text of the pages, and always taking into account the feedback with other editors, dedicating the necessary time (as Wikipedia editors do...) and complying with the Wikpedia policies.
In my modest opinion, I think that one mistake has been to centralize the discussions in the Osmosis project. I think it should have been talked directly on the specific talk pages of each disease, so that it was visible to everyone. Many editors certainly did not know about the Osmosis project. In the discussion of this project, linking to specific discussions and talking about other general issues related to the project itself. --BallenaBlanca 🐳 ♂ (Talk) 13:51, 28 March 2018 (UTC)
Oh, my God!! I had not seen the IBS video until now . I just saw it and I was horrified!! (I really only saw in depth that of celiac disease) If this is what Osmosis specialists get to do... it's better not to have any video than to have this! Videos are educational and a good initiative, but they have to be of quality. --BallenaBlanca 🐳 ♂ (Talk) 23:57, 28 March 2018 (UTC)
I reverted your removal of the IBS video. There is nothing factually wrong with it to justify a "horrified response".--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 02:02, 29 March 2018 (UTC)
BallenaBlanca, thanks for the examples. I've added them to Wikipedia:Wikipedia is not YouTube. Great illustration of how the community cannot edit these videos and why that is a problem. We are the mercy of a private third-party who does not share our agenda -- they have their own paying audience to worry about. -- Colin°Talk 14:16, 28 March 2018 (UTC)
Colin thanks for your kindness.
I want to say that I do not feel comfortable with this situation, I do not like to enter into these disputes. I just want to give my opinion from the medical point of view because I think that at least in the case of the video mentioned is of extreme importance. Other Wikipedia nuances are beyond my knowledge.
I want to add that I have no doubt about the honesty and good intentions of Doc James. I think he is a neutral and collaborative editor, one of the most valuable that Wikipedia has and the pillar of articles on Medicine. I admire his work and I am saddened by what is happening. --BallenaBlanca 🐳 ♂ (Talk) 14:40, 28 March 2018 (UTC)

Update (Osmosis concerns section)

I have had a discussion with folks at Osmosis about many of the issues raised above:

1) They have agreed to remove both the front bumper and back bumper from all videos. Attribution will remain on Commons in the usual spot, as will the notice of what license they are under.

2) They will update the collaboration page here which has obviously fallen out of date.

3) They will produce a new video for breastfeeding to address the concerns that were raised here by User:Clayoquot and User:Gandydancer. As well as fix the other issues mentioned. They will put in place better mechanisms for up dating videos / addressing feedback.

4) I have followed up with respect to their NGO status. They are looking at two possibilities, creating an NGO group for Wikipedia work and becoming a Benefit corporation. They have not accomplished either yet.

They will put together a timeline for when these efforts will be completed. Best Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 19:19, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

Doc James, I would say you need community consensus before continuing with this. They're not going to keep updating videos for free, so these are always going to lag behind, and volunteers shouldn't have to spend their time helping Osmosis staff correct them. SarahSV (talk) 19:27, 27 March 2018 (UTC)
Why would they not continue to update videos for free User:SlimVirgin? All these videos are already under a free license, why would they not have an incentive to keep them updated? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 19:40, 27 March 2018 (UTC)
They have agreed to fix only one of the problematic videos. Doc, I have not wanted to extend the debate to every detail that is wrong with every video, but this will not suffice as a solution. (You are overlooking the "suffer from" POV at tic disorder among others, and the coeliac problems expressed at Jimbo talk, and the still poor text at dementia with Lewy bodies, and we haven't even systematically evaluated others.)

We are seeing the same walled garden problem here that led to this issue happening in the first place, as is mentioned at Jimbo talk; this is a Wikipedia-wide issue, and yet we are seeing proposals on one Project page, with no acknowledgement of the extent of the issues these videos create ... in spite of almost no support for these videos in the wider discussion at Talk:Jimbo. We are also seeing no movement here on the matter that whether these videos are in individual articles is a matter for consensus, and without resolution, we could be headed for the dreaded infobox territory.

It seems that most of the issues have surfaced now, and Colin has had an opportunity to put forward the essay at Wikipedia:Wikipedia is not YouTube. I agree with Colin that moving to RFC too fast is not conducive to good resolution of problems, but it appears that, if we are not quite there yet, we are approaching the time when we should begin to consider who will draft a Wikipedia-wide RFC. It is usually best to have two people, who represent the opposing viewpoints. This situation is not sustainable, and the sooner we get broad consensus, the better in terms of minimizing the issues we will face on many articles.

I echo SV's concern that you not continue to proceed, Doc, as if this were a one-person or one-project matter. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:47, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

No this is not entirely correct. They have agreed to fix a number of videos, I just mentioning this as one. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 20:32, 27 March 2018 (UTC)
No, they did not fix the CD video, only a small part. Look at my comment above. --BallenaBlanca 🐳 ♂ (Talk) 14:02, 28 March 2018 (UTC)
Sandy Georgia, SlimVirgin — I would like to point out that this is absolutely not a one man project by Doc James, but in fact a collaboration among a large group of editors. Doc James simple does most of the work, and I find it would be a massive shame if this were to stop just because of a small minority loud voices criticized everything. If the videos are bad we can remove them from specific articles, if they aren't then there is no issue — there is no reason to put the project on hold because they can't be edited. Most editors are horrible at editing images, that hasn't stopped us from including them on articles. Carl Fredrik talk 12:52, 28 March 2018 (UTC)
Hey everyone! Thanks for sharing your concerns with me and my team. I really appreciate how passionate you are about the content itself and the mission of Wikipedia. I just want to add some clarity to some of the issues mentioned here.
1) Both myself and my team would like to be good citizens of Wikipedia. I feel that having us in the community will help foster conversations around how video can enhance wikipedia.
2) I regularly add videos. There are 300 or so which you can see here
3) I do read and respond to feedback, including your suggestions about saying “person” not “patient”. My team made that transition a while ago, and since then they have continued to improve our language to be more inclusive. I’d be open to dialog on how to receive more constructive feedback from the community for existing and future videos.
4) When I upload videos, I’ve been putting the sources in the video description, but for some reason that information isn’t displaying. Not sure why, I thought it was working fine until I looked back at it today. Definitely something I can fix now that we know it’s a problem.
5)I’m willing to remove the branding and social media links from the end of the videos. We’ll be keeping the CC-BY-SA 4.0 license and the credits so that we adhere to CC attribution guidelines from the CC content we use within our videos.
I’m looking forward to working with you all to address your concerns, and to find solutions that work for us all. Thank you!OsmoseIt (talk) 23:36, 28 March 2018 (UTC)
thank you for posting your remarks--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 02:33, 29 March 2018 (UTC)
We at Osmosis have been following the conversation closely, and we respect the open and honest discussion. We recognize that there’s a broader conversation around video content on Wikipedia, and while that conversation evolves, I’ve coordinated with James to have our videos taken down. Once the Wikipedia community has updated the guidelines for video, I’m happy to work to align our content so that it’s in keeping with those guidelines.OsmoseIt (talk) 00:57, 31 March 2018 (UTC)
thank you for your comments, I (and I'm certain many of the editors here) welcome the opportunity to afford our readers text, as well as, video (under updated guidelines) for better overall articles, again thank you very much--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 01:11, 31 March 2018 (UTC)
@OsmoseIt: You are answering here, but you have not answered this other message posted by me 47 minutes before this of yours (at 00:10, 31 March 2018), in which I pinged you.
Take this opportunity to show your good faith to our community. You are wasting time, every day thousands of people are misinforming with these videos. Is this what Osmosis want?
The only reason one can think of not to remove them is that you give more importance to the income with the advertising that each video has incorporated, take this opportunity to show that this is not the goal of Osmosis.
Thank you very much. --BallenaBlanca 🐳 ♂ (Talk) 07:44, 31 March 2018 (UTC)

Point of order

In what capacity is Doc James acting, here? Is Doc James a representative of Knowledge Diffusion (the company) and/or Osmosis, or is he holding himself out to them as a representative of Wikipedia?

I don't doubt that James is acting in good faith or that he has what he believes are the project's best interests at heart. However I am not sure why we are relying on James to be our sole conduit to Osmosis. Why is he in the position to choose which requests, suggestions, or concerns get passed on to Osmosis staff, and why is he posting responses on their behalf? Osmosis and Knowledge Diffusion should have their own representative able to engage directly with the Wikipedia community. It's not fair to Doc James or to the Wikipedia community to ask Doc to serve two masters here. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 20:01, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

User:TenOfAllTrades I have no formal relationship with Osmosis or Knowledge Diffusion and do not represent them in any manner. I do however generally consider their videos to be useful for our readers. And thus I generally supported adding them and still support keeping them (with modifications).
I was involved with convincing them to use an open license and to upload their videos to Wikipedia starting back in 2015. I began this when one of there members (a pediatrician at Stanford) was still working part time at the Khan academy. That organization released three of their videos under an open license as you can see here
Khan was not interested in releasing further videos under an open license however. When Osmosis formed they were much more interested in using open licenses and working with us.
In these discussion I speak on my own behalf. Happy to ask them to respond here directly if people wish. Looks like some are simply push to remove the videos entirely though. This does not really require them to join in a discussion. Having them join a discussion is only required if people are interested in collaborating. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 20:30, 27 March 2018 (UTC)
(edit conflict) I have agreed with almost every word you have written in the discussion about the videos here and at Talk:Jimbo, User:TenOfAllTrades. (I mean that, precisely - almost every word). But really. "serve two masters"? That is your first slide over into the lala land that Colin et al are painting.
There is no big dark thing going here.
Doc James has advocated for accessible content for a long time. That is what the translation task force is all about, for example. As already discussed in the 1st post about this here at WTMED, Doc James started working with the folks at Khan Academy (a nonprofit) on medical videos for WP, and the person Doc James was collaborating with there left Khan and continued the work at Osmosis.
It seems to me that Doc James likes the videos since they are meant-for-the-public educational material that are freely licensed, and reasonably good quality. (they are not "created for med students" as Colin keeps saying). They arguably help us meet our mission.
All that said i totally agree that it would be great to have osmosis reps in the discussion; it would have been great if there had been more dialogue all through this time period. Jytdog (talk) 20:37, 27 March 2018 (UTC)
OsmoseIt, 23:47, 14 March 2016 (UTC): "The target audience of our videos is for medical students ..." SarahSV (talk) 23:17, 27 March 2018 (UTC)
"Serve two masters" is reasonable idiomatic English in context, where it was ambiguous what role(s) Doc James held officially or unofficially with respect to Wikipedia and Osmosis. And even though (I don't imagine) it was his intent, has has functionally been Wikipedia's envoy to Osmosis, and also Osmosis' spokesperson here. While your vigorous defence of James' honor is admirable, it's neither necessary nor helpful for you to ratchet up the drama by accusing everyone else of being too dramatic. Picking on Colin doesn't help your argument, either; I hope you'll dial that back.
There doesn't have to be a "big dark thing" conspiracy for there to be a "substantial suboptimal thing" needing relatively prompt attention. Knowledge Diffusion and Osmosis, with the support of Doc James and what seems to be a very small group of other Wikipedia editors, embarked on a substantial project to insert content from a particular source into prominent places in prominent articles, without a great deal of oversight or review (until now). We seem to be agreed that there should have been more dialogue through the process up to now, and that the community is very uncomfortable with delaying that dialogue much further now. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 00:18, 28 March 2018 (UTC)
I respectfully disagree, and will point out that any activity on medical articles on Wikipedia is always the result of what a small group of Wikipedia editors do. Carl Fredrik talk 20:25, 28 March 2018 (UTC)

Subpage agreement please

Should we set up a central page for listing issues with individual videos? I would rather not have to engage talk-page-by-talk-page, and think a subpage would provide more eyes on the issues. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:29, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

Yes a good idea. Started one here Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 20:37, 27 March 2018 (UTC)
I am concerned that that may be a bit of a cart-before-the-horse approach to this situation. Before we get to dissecting and closely critiquing individual videos, we should probably consider whether or not we intend to retain these videos at all, in substantially similar form as inline article content.... TenOfAllTrades(talk) 00:25, 28 March 2018 (UTC)
Yeah they were my thoughts too....Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 00:38, 28 March 2018 (UTC)
Agreed. I don't intend to continue evaluating any of them, but putting it in one place was a containment effort. I don't want to deal with this at each article. Given the absence of support for these videos in the broader community, it would be nice if they could be removed from the articles mentioned now, but on the other hand, I have no interest in heading towards Infobox Wars. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:18, 28 March 2018 (UTC)
+1 At the moment I don't see any community-wide consensus for these articles-as-videos. I think they should all go. -- Colin°Talk 07:22, 28 March 2018 (UTC)
There is no need for such community-wide consensus. There is however need for local consensus on each article, which can be implicit (i.e. they were not removed or immidiately criticized). However, if you wish to remove all the videos there is need for commnity-wide consensus, and I would dare say that if you wish to remove any specific video there is need for local consensus on that article. I oppose any removal that is not based on specific issues with the individual video. Carl Fredrik talk 13:02, 28 March 2018 (UTC)
Forget about "implicit" when they were inserted without notification and without edit summaries. I would like to mention, again, that WT:MED has shot itself-- and all our past efforts-- in the foot, by acting like a walled garden. Specific issues with the videos are outlined in numerous places. And local consensus at WT:MED to breach all manner of Wikipedia policy and guideline is overruled by ... well ... everything. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:19, 28 March 2018 (UTC)
(ec) The onus is on editors arguing for inclusion of content to achieve consensus in favor of it. Content that was added under vague edit summaries doesn't receive special privileged protection—hanging around hoping not to get noticed doesn't get you tenure here.
In the discussion here and at Jimbo's talk, I've seen mention of something like 300 videos. It's not reasonable to insist on having three hundred separate, sparsely-attended discussions which touch on the same general concerns. (Even if far fewer videos were in articles right now, it still wouldn't make sense to do fifty, or twenty, or even a dozen duplicate discussions.) Article-by-article discussion(s) in the way you propose would be the correct and usual approach if there were a broad preexisting consensus that these sorts embedded video summaries were acceptable to the Wikipedia community, and the only concerns raised here were about specific video details.
Absent an existing general consensus, an insistence on three hundred article-by-article discussions is just a way to avoid engaging the issues and grind down opposition with bureaucracy. That's not cool. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 13:34, 28 March 2018 (UTC)
The whole thing is not cool. Specifically, that protracted attacks on Colin are implicitly accepted by active editors in this project, several of whom are admins. And, unlike the Infobox Wars, in this case, there is obviously an explicit breach of core policy, so I am done with concerns that we are headed down that path. Either someone drafts an RFC, or the videos start going. And anyone who watches the personal attacks continue in here,[16] coming from one editor who has been admonished many times, and does not speak up, is a weanie to be lashed with a wet noodle. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:40, 28 March 2018 (UTC)
PS, WP:NPOV is also core policy. In the year 2000, the requirement for "significant distress or impairment" in Tourette syndrome was removed from the DSM, in recognition that the majority of people with TS are not impaired or distressed. Since 2006, I have kept the POV words, "suffer from" out of the TS suite of articles. Now we have a video with that POV installed at tic disorder. What were people thinking when they did this? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:59, 28 March 2018 (UTC)
CFCF Every single one fails core policy WP:V, one of the three Core content policies. WP:MED has no authority whatsoever to break this with local consensus (which there is none -- none of these were ever discussed on article-talk prior to insertion and most were inserted by stealth with either no edit summary or just the word "added").
IMO every single one of them can and will be removed with the following rationale:
Per WP:V "any material whose verifiability has been challenged or is likely to be challenged, must include an inline citation that directly supports the material." This video does not contain any inline sources, nor any means to tie sources to specific facts and claims made. Per WP:V, "The burden to demonstrate verifiability lies with the editor who adds or restores material" and "Any material lacking a reliable source directly supporting it may be removed and should not be restored without an inline citation to a reliable source" This material must not be restored as-is.
And unlike Doc James, I shall use an edit summary when doing so. I did not create WP:MEDRS so that a private company can insert articles-as-videos with a free pass to ignore the medical sourcing requirements everyone else has to follow, and inline-citation requirements that everyone on Wikipedia has to follow. No exceptions. WP:NOTYOUTUBE. -- Colin°Talk 13:31, 28 March 2018 (UTC)
The videos have so far been near-exact copies of the ledes, which are either sourced or don't need in-depth sourcing. Providing the videos with sourced transcripts for the commons description may be a good idea, but is not obligatory. I also strongly object to your user-essay WP:NOTYOUTUBE. I also see you wrote it yesterday, and it does not strengthen your argument here to link it as a policy similar to the other WP:NOT rules. Carl Fredrik talk 15:13, 28 March 2018 (UTC)
  • Carl, the videos I've looked at are not near-exact copies of the leads. This is material that doesn't comply with WP:V and WP:MEDRS. The insertion of it into Wikipedia helps Knowledge Diffusion, Inc. commercially by increasing brand recognition, and that helps them to sell Osmosis Prime. They're quite clear about the connection between the free and paid on YouTube. SarahSV (talk) 16:27, 28 March 2018 (UTC)
  • The videos I looked at are nothing like the leads. CFCF, could you please provide an example of a video that is a near-exact copy of an article lead? Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 16:36, 28 March 2018 (UTC)
  • CFCF, this is completely untrue in every case I have looked at. And even if they were, the last thing we need is another external project driving the content and sourcing in our leads-- we already have that with the translation project. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:06, 28 March 2018 (UTC)

The videos I've seen are primarily copies of ledes, and the organization has been responsive to changing any videos with specific issues. The transcripts should be available, and if we simply centralize these somewhere comparing them with the ledes is very simple. This conduct risks alienating any future collaboration, so I would suggest we instead look at constructive solutions and level criticism at specific issues, preferably one at a time. These videos have been around for a long time, and it is not possible to handle all this discussion at once without entirely ruining the prospect of any future videos. Carl Fredrik talk 20:24, 28 March 2018 (UTC)

General issue of long article-topic videos

I have created the essay Wikipedia is not YouTube. As with all essays, it offers one viewpoint and set of opinions that isn't necessarily shared by the whole community and has no pretensions to represent consensus (yet!) Constructive edits to the essay by those who share some of the views/opinions expressed are welcome. Editors who have opposing views can rant on the talk page, if they can remain civil, or create their own essay. In particular, Doc James and Jytdog are expressly discouraged from editing the essay or its talk page due to their current civility issues on this topic and me personally. Editors with experience writing guidelines or crafting our very finest articles, such as User:SandyGeorgia, User:SlimVirgin, User:WhatamIdoing and User:Graham Beards are very much encouraged to comment/edit. Feel free to ping others. I should note that I may not always be as active as some here, so if you have the urge to make significant changes, please discuss first and remember there is no rush.

My aim with this essay is to discuss the problems with long article-topic videos, and at present conclude they are not appropriate for Wikipedia. I have no problem with them being hosted on Commons and being used in some other WMF project. The issues above, of paid editing, COI editing, proxy editing, promotional material, the privatisation of Wikipedia content, edit warring, bullying, and chucking WP:MEDRS out of the window, are not covered. That's being discussed above and elsewhere. -- Colin°Talk 20:51, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

w/ regard to[17]Medical articles should be everything they need to be(not just text), to therefore inform our readers via ...text, audio and video...IMO--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 13:34, 28 March 2018 (UTC)

Prior discussions at WPMED about the collaboration

Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 01:07, 28 March 2018 (UTC)

Thanks James. One thing I noticed in the March 23 link is that Doc James added videos to three articles with an edit summary of "Added". As Doc James is widely trusted to make competent edits and "Added" is nonspecific, many article watchers would not have checked his additions. If this is his usual edit summary for the 300 videos, I would guess that there are videos on some of our articles that the regular watchers of the article haven't noticed. I am not suggesting that Doc James was deliberately hiding anything. Just pointing out that the videos might be have received even less review than we think. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 03:47, 28 March 2018 (UTC)
There is no obligation to provide an edit summary, and as this has been discussed extensively before this seems like conspiratorial thinking on your part in order to justify this inane discussion. Carl Fredrik talk 12:59, 28 March 2018 (UTC)
agree w/ CF--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 13:07, 28 March 2018 (UTC)
CFCF 1) Where has the possibility that regular article-watchers might not not have noticed the additions of the videos been "discussed extensively" before? 2) How does one manage to read "I am not suggesting that Doc James was deliberately hiding anything" and conclude that the writer thinks there is a conspiracy? 3) Some aspects of this discussion are inane (and hysterical and counter-productive) but there are also serious issues about content quality that are being raised and taken seriously by all sides. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 16:30, 28 March 2018 (UTC)
1) The project has been discussed extensively, not the prospect, which is not what I suggested. 2) The conspiracy is the notion that editors would not have noticed the additions. 3) But these are not possible to discern due to the sheer volume of discussion. I find myself responding to the same thing at 5 different places, and unable to follow the 10+ simultaneous discussions (I do not have time to respond to discussions 24/7), in part because the same questions and arguments are presented over and over again. It would be preferable to let this cool down and then discuss potential solutions calmly. The solution to remove all videos is not on the table. Carl Fredrik talk 20:28, 28 March 2018 (UTC)

When I were a lad, we used to judge potential admins on whether they gave useful and honest edit summaries. Don't know if this still goes on, but Help:Edit summary says "When editors stand for Adminship, their RfA pages include statistics about how often they have provided edit summaries in the past." James is an admin. Just saying. -- Colin°Talk 20:35, 28 March 2018 (UTC)

What kinds of videos do our readers want?

The reason that I see repeatedly given for keeping the videos is that Wikipedia readers want "more videos". In the July 2015 discussion linked to above, there's an interesting comment from WhatamIdoing, linking to an update on the WMF strategy discussion that giving us this "more videos" request. I watched 20 minutes of video that she linked to, and read the slides.

In that presentation, I am seeing the requests for more videos. I'm not seeing any indications that in this research, we have asked questions like, "What do you want to learn from videos that you aren't currently learning from article text?" Or: "Can you give me an example of an article that ought to have a video, and tell me what should be in that video?" Or that we showed samples of videos to readers with accompanying article content and asked, "Is this video helpful? Is this what you were hoping for? How is it better than just having article text?" Not grasping and communicating the needs behind a so-called requirement, so you understand it only at the most superficial level ("more videos") is one of the main reasons technology projects fail. It's why all software developers love this cartoon.

I'm bringing this up because I fully accept that most readers want more videos, but... what I find hard to believe is that most readers want videos that consist almost entirely of bulleted lists on Powerpoint slides, with a narrator reading the text that is on the slides. Everyone I know detests that kind of video. Especially when the content of text is as exciting as a start-class version of an encyclopedia article and when a more complete encyclopedia article is right in front of them. Some editors here (or maybe only one?) like that kind of video and know people who like that kind of video, but I hypothesize that they are a small minority of the population.

If we are going to sink volunteer resources into reviewing video content, we should start with thorough user-centered research into what kinds of videos are actually useful to readers. Then we can make strategic decisions as a community to acquire or develop videos that will meet those needs. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 04:29, 28 March 2018 (UTC)

Well their video on pneumonia on YouTube got 133,500 views in the last few months.[18]
Their video on tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS each have about half a million views. The tuberculosis one has 5,500 likes to 98 dislikes.[19] The HIV/AIDS one has 3,200 likes to 106 dislikes.[20]
IMO that is fairly impressive. And I can assure you all these views were not just me. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 04:46, 28 March 2018 (UTC)
Clayoquot, very interesting. It seems James has misinterpreted "we want videos" to mean "we don't have the attention span to read Wikipedia articles. Please can you do it all like on YouTube." Their popularity on YouTube is irrelevant. Cat videos are popular on YouTube and we don't have one of them in every article. James has forgotten that this is a collaboratively edited encyclopaedia. -- Colin°Talk 07:11, 28 March 2018 (UTC)
That isn't a misinterpretation — we can simply cater to both those who read articles and those who view videos. We know that nearly no one reads entire Wikipedia articles, so I think you're the one who's missinterpreting and being disingenuous to boot. Carl Fredrik talk 12:55, 28 March 2018 (UTC)
And this discussion: "I don't think these videos add anything of value to our articles. The blood flow through the heart video is simply a repeat of what is stated or implied in the article. There's nothing of educational value that is not already described in detail in the main article. I would be more impressed if you could find a video of a cardiomyocyte beating in a petri dish or in vivo, or something similar that expands upon, rather than repeat, the information in the main text." was replied by James "Different people learn in different ways.". Yes, they can go learn this way on YouTube. -- Colin°Talk 07:14, 28 March 2018 (UTC)
Then you don't need to watch the video. We don't direct people to Youtube because Wikipedia represents uniquely non-commercial information. There is nothing wrong with us presenting information in several different modes. Carl Fredrik talk 12:55, 28 March 2018 (UTC)
But the information is unsourced. If you want to introduce a special rule that says videos in medical articles (or perhaps all articles?) are a type of material that need not comply with WP:V, the onus is on you to gain consensus for that change. SarahSV (talk) 16:34, 28 March 2018 (UTC)
The videos are supported by references, just not inline ones. Plus we do not require inline references in the WP:LEAD as long as the content is supported by the body of the text. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 16:45, 28 March 2018 (UTC)
Where can I find the information that shows the references that they used for the videos? Clearly in the case of the Breastfeeding video there are glaring mistakes that are obviously not based on acceptable refs. Furthermore, it is not only what is included in the video, it is what is not included. For example at Breastfeeding they list five health effects for babies while our article lists many, many more than that. If one only looks at the video they come away with an entirely different understanding of health benefits than if they had read the article. This should clearly show that its hard to cram a whole article into a ten-minute video and should not be attempted, at least in some cases. Gandydancer (talk) 17:06, 28 March 2018 (UTC)
User:Gandydancer It is also hard to fit an overview of an article into the text of our leads. Yes trade offs do occur.
Referencing is not as consistent as it should be. You can see the references at the end of the script here
Working on getting the scripts for all articles. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 21:32, 28 March 2018 (UTC)
The videos aren't leads. Outside leads, per WP:V, "[a]ll quotations, and any material whose verifiability has been challenged or is likely to be challenged, must include an inline citation that directly supports the material." SarahSV (talk) 17:09, 28 March 2018 (UTC)

The vidoes are part of the ledes, and are often based on exact readings of the ledes. They are sourced, and a blanket challenge on all video content is not acceptable practice. Video files have no specific policy, but images are not covered by the same criteria as text, and it would be improper to begin by throwing away all these videos, which is very very counterproductive to Wikipedias goals. Carl Fredrik talk 19:30, 28 March 2018 (UTC)

Carl, at least three editors have told you that the videos have no resemblance to the article leads, and I asked you over 48 hours ago to provide an example of a video that is based an article lead. You have yet to provide a single example of a video that does, and you continue to spread this meme. Are you sure you want to be on the record as the guy who keeps waving this flag without any evidence that what he's saying is actually true? Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 20:30, 30 March 2018 (UTC)

What does Osmosis plan to do with the inaccurate videos?

Celiac disease

This video has been removed from the corresponding Wikipedia page (coeliac disease), but is still available on Wikimedia Commons. I have chosen to edit it in this way (see video). At least, whoever sees it there knows what he/she is seeing. A video about celiac disease, which is a systemic disease that primarily affects the intestine, made by (see credits at the end of the video): "an Assistant Professor of Pathology at the University of Minnesota School of Medicine and School of Dentistry. Before deciding to teach full time, (she) completed a pathology residency and fellowships in hematopathology and molecular pathology. (...) (she) creates materials for medical students, dental students, and allied health students."

I am concerned, however, the hundreds of thousands of people who watched, are watching and will watch it on YouTube (currently more than 200,000 visits).

  • Edited: On 30 March 2018 approximately 201,000 visits.
  • On 17:07, 2 April 2018 (UTC) 204.601 visits
  • On 02:00, 7 April 2018 (UTC) 206.789 visits (and there is still no response from Osmosis...)

I worry that the prestige of Wikipedia may also be compromised.

What does Osmosis plan to do with the videos we are detecting that contain outdated or inaccurate information...? --BallenaBlanca 🐳 ♂ (Talk) 13:36, 30 March 2018 (UTC)

I believe you will need to go ask them. With respect to deleting from the commons, it is my understanding that folks on the commons don't care if things are accurate or not. Jytdog (talk) 20:28, 30 March 2018 (UTC)
Thanks for your answer, Jytdog. I ping OsmoseIt, it's the way I can think of to contact Osmosis.
I am saying this here because it is an important issue for all of us, since Osmosis has gained prestige by saying things like "We're also working closely with Wikipedia's WikiProject Medicine team, who are putting these videos in Wikipedia articles". I did not know until now that they were uploading their videos on YouTube. I was stunned to know it.
I am very sorry that such a positive initiative has ended like this. As I said, they should have talked on specific talk pages, dedicating enough time to each video.
Today I have visualized a couple of videos more. The one of the cirrhosis is quite well (although forgets to mention the esophageal varices among the associated complications, that can be broken, provoke hemorrhages and cause the death) and I'm sure that many other videos are also valid. The video of ulcerative colitis talks about certain treatments, but does not mention the biological drugs and goes on to talk about colectomy as a cure for the disease, but precisely surgery is what we have to try to avoid, which is an important point to emphasize.
As the objetivs of Osmosis are honest, undoubtedly focused on offering quality and accurate information, and not misinforming, and they know what is happening here, I am sure that they will not have any problem in removing at least from YouTube the videos with important irregularities and redo them with the help of a specialist in each subject. We are talking about a very high visit rates, IMO it is a very serious issue. I believe that they have to take this proposal and this opportunity to improve its contents as a positive part of this experience. I'm not sure if this list is complete:
  • Breastfeeding.
  • Lewy body dementia
  • Celiac disease.
  • Irritable bowel syndrome.
  • Crohn disease.
  • Ulcerative colitis.
--BallenaBlanca 🐳 ♂ (Talk) 00:10, 31 March 2018 (UTC)
@OsmoseIt: You answered another message 47 minutes after this one of mine , but you have not answered here, in which I pinged you.
Take this opportunity to show your good faith to our community. You are wasting time, every day thousands of people are misinforming with these videos. Is this what Osmosis wants?
The only reason one can think of not to remove them is that you give more importance to the income with the advertising that each video has incorporated, take this opportunity to show that this is not the goal of Osmosis.
Thank you very much. --BallenaBlanca 🐳 ♂ (Talk) 07:50, 31 March 2018 (UTC)
And still no reply. Health care workers take the "above all, do no harm" oath. Some of these videos are doing harm. As already mentioned, a baby fed on breast milk alone after six months of age will suffer serious physical effects. That said, IMO most mothers would ignore such obviously incorrect advice. But the video's claim that breast augmentation/reduction only rarely effects milk supply is highly likely to cause harm since there is plenty of similar misinformation included in blogs supported by plastic surgeon's associations, ect., who are more than happy to gloss over the subject of decreased milk supply. That Osmosis has not removed their breastfeeding video from YouTube as yet is just absolutely reprehensible, IMO. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Gandydancer (talk • contribs) 20:07, 2 April 2018 (UTC)
So you are apparently basing that very strong claim on this ref, which is from an advocacy organization from 2008 = that was the ref in our article where breast surgery is discussed.
A 2017 review in PLoS one (PMID 29049351) says "While there is evidence that both breastfeeding and breast reduction surgery are beneficial, it is unknown whether breast reduction surgery impacts breastfeeding and whether any breast reduction technique differentially preserves the ability to breastfeed." and it concludes "In summary, techniques that keep the column of the subareolar breast parenchyma intact appear to provide a greater likelihood of breastfeeding success. ". With regard to breast implants, the most recent review i could find was from 2014 (PMID 25332722) and it found a correlation between breast implants and reduced breast feeding; it did not attribute causation and it noted that the evidence base was weak.
Our article was based on an old poor quality source. Our article.
Folks here are acting as though a) WP is perfect and b) no source is useful or even allowable if there is any mistake in it or something they don't agree with. I don't find that position reasonable. (I fixed our article) Jytdog (talk) 20:45, 2 April 2018 (UTC)
This would be a much nicer place to work if you'd stop trying to read other's minds and then explaining their poor thinking and the superiority of your own intellect. No, I did not use the advocacy group and it's insulting for you to suggest it. I wasn't even aware that it was in the article. If you read the review (which I posted to the talk page some days ago) you will find exactly what I said on the talk page: There is next to no factual information on the web but there is a lot of misinformation. So finding nothing from WHO, the CDC, etc., and apparently not bothering to check for reviews Osmosis just pulled something right out of their ASS, namely "it must be very rare!," and went with it. Telling women that are considering surgery that it only rarely effects successful breastfeeding when we really don't know, is not acceptable IMO. (Also, @Clayoquot: did include some information on the talk page as well - which I have not yet looked into.} BTW, thank you for fixing the article and please note that it didn't take an act of congress to make the correction, which is the way WP is supposed to work. Gandydancer (talk) 16:08, 3 April 2018 (UTC)
The claim that any and all breast-reduction or augmentation surgeries "only rarely affect" breastfeeding would be an extraordinary claim by Wikipedia's standards. For one thing, even reducing a woman's confidence would count as "affecting" breastfeeding. Perhaps they meant "rarely totally prevents", with the obvious case of total prevention being intentional removal of all milk-producing tissue to treat or prevent breast cancer? This survivor story has always stuck with me; even certified lactation consultants seem to have difficulty with the concept of "not biologically possible". Anyway, we don't like to over-simplify things, and I think that this was over-simplified. Let's do something better. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:21, 4 April 2018 (UTC)

BallenaBlanca — The collaboration has been called off, it is very unlikely thre will be any responses. Carl Fredrik talk 08:39, 7 April 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for your answer, Carl. You are so kind.
I do not think that is incompatible with good education and courtesy, and above all, honesty towards their followers, the people who with all the best will have helped them from Wikipedia, and their goal of "informing" (not misinforming).
Can they really stay without doing anything, knowing the tremendous mistakes they have made in some videos? I can not understand it. --BallenaBlanca 🐳 ♂ (Talk) 09:46, 7 April 2018 (UTC)

Osmosis grants and timeline

In case this is helpful, here's an overview of Knowledge Diffusion/Osmosis grants and how the company became involved with Wikipedia. It has received several grants or other investments, often referring to its relationship with Wikipedia, WikiProject Medicine or Wiki Project Med. It's currently applying for $100,000 from the Wikimedia Foundation. In May 2016 the company said: "Our current library of videos are the official medical teaching videos on Wikipedia (e.g. Zika virus, pneumonia, and jaundice), and garner over 200,000 views/month and hundreds of positive comments" (bold added). [21]

  • May 2014: Knowledge Diffusion Inc., operating as Osmosis, received $150,000 from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation "to help Osmosis make its platform accessible to all clinical students". [22]
  • 17 December 2015: Ocaasi (Jake Orlowitz) created Wikipedia:Osmosis with his WMF account stating that a partnership had been formed with Osmosis. Those listed were "James Heilman, Wiki Project Med Foundation (not in role as WMF Board member); Rishi, Osmosis; Kyle, Osmosis; Sylvia Ventura, WMF Strategic Partnerships; Jake Orlowitz, WMF Community Engagement". The page said: "James and other medical editors will place the videos in the first sections of articles (but below the infobox)." [23]
  • 22 December 2015: Osmosis began uploading their videos to Commons. The company account is User:OsmoseIt (Commons), identified here as Kyle.
  • 24 December 2015: Doc James began adding the videos to the lead or first section of articles. [24][25][26][27]
  • 1 January 2017: A new account, Chrisbospher, objected: "I really like the idea of creating med ed videos, but can't help but feel that since Osmosis is a for-profit education company (https://www.osmosis.org/plans) charging $199/year, that it is disingenuous for us to help them with free advertising via wikipedia." James opened an AN/I because Chrisbospher twice changed James' description of Osmosis from "an organization" to "a for-profit organization".
  • January 2017: Osmosis received $250,000 from the Hewlett Foundation: "In collaboration with WikiProject Medicine and the UCSF-UCB Joint Masters Program, Osmosis will undertake a 12-month pilot project to help medical school faculty and students integrate OER [open educational resources] into their curriculum ..." (bold added).[28]
  • December 2017: Osmosis received $100,000 from TEDCO (Maryland Tech Development Corp) in December 2017: "Knowledge Diffusion Inc (DBA Osmosis), located in Baltimore, provides an operating system for health professional’s education. Reaching more than 500,000 current and future professionals, Osmosis offers a personalized learning platform ..." [29] "The startup creates medical education videos that are distributed widely through Wikipedia and YouTube" (bold added). [30]
  • January 2018: Osmosis received an unknown amount by Coverys, a medical professional liability insurance provider: "Osmosis leverages its video learning platform to create and disseminate co-branded video content ... It also has a strong partnership with Wikipedia, which features Osmosis content on health and medicine articles. To date, Osmosis has focused on medical students but is quickly gaining traction with a number of other critical healthcare provider segments including nursing, physician assistants, pharmacy, dentistry, and others" (bold added). [31]
  • January 2018: Osmosis applied for $100,000 from the Wikimedia Foundation: "We intend to grow the pool of editors of Wikipedia’s health-related topics by expanding Wikipedia-editing opportunities for health professional students ... Osmosis videos have been made in collaboration with members of the WikiProject Medicine community and are posted on the relevant Wikipedia pages" (bold added). [32] According to Mjohnson (WMF), the application made it to round 1. [33]

SarahSV (talk) 16:13, 29 March 2018 (UTC)

Diligence appreciated. Greater concerns about Doc's edit warring these videos into articles. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:27, 29 March 2018 (UTC)
Thank you, Sarah. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 18:48, 29 March 2018 (UTC)
  • noting, since SlimVirgin didn't, that she joined the discussion at the talk page of WMF grant proposal, citing the several discussions here, and selectively pinged Colin and SandyGeorgia there in this diff. That would be the definition of canvassing. Whatever Jytdog (talk) 19:20, 29 March 2018 (UTC)
    • One would have guessed that Doc James already knew (apparently he did not, but that was just revealed). BTW, considering this fellow has 33 mainspace edits, this is a marriage between the worst of two nightmares (the education program and Osmosis). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:49, 29 March 2018 (UTC)
  • This is disturbing that they are representing themselves as being officially partnered with Wikipedia. Natureium (talk) 19:51, 29 March 2018 (UTC)
  • I see references to partnership with 'Wiki Project Medicine' above in this section. Doc James does this refer to WP:MED or meta:Wiki Project Med? Did the Wiki Project Med Foundation have any role in this? Also, since you seem to be the primary POC for this can you address how they came to be allowed to make representations such as "Our current library of videos are the official medical teaching videos on Wikipedia"? (Wikipedia has official videos?!?) And otherwise use Wikipedia in their publicity material? Finally, is there any written agreement relating to these videos?
    As you know better than most, one of the biggest issues Wikipedia faces, and which is of considerable concern to many of the volunteers here, is the effects that commercial interests have on Wikipedia content. I, and I would think many others, would be very interested on how this came to pass. Thank you for your indulgence in this. Jbh Talk 21:13, 29 March 2018 (UTC)
    • Refers to Wiki Project Med Foundation. Agree the wording "official" is incorrect and unfortunate. There is no formal signed agreement between either myself or WPMEDF and Osmosis. Just as we have no formal signed agreement with the World Health Organization, National Institutes of Health, University of California San Francisco School of Medicine, Radiopedia, or Ecgpedia beyond them agreeing to release certain materials under an open license which occurs via OTRS. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 21:45, 29 March 2018 (UTC)
      • Doc James, please don't keep making those comparisons. This is a small for-profit company that has obtained free advertising on Wikipedia for years, as well as hundreds of thousands of dollars, always mentioning its connection to Wikipedia (a connection the community wasn't aware of), including claiming to supply "the official medical teaching videos on Wikipedia". [34] Now it has asked the WMF to give it $100,000. Please consider releasing all the information you have about this. SarahSV (talk) 21:53, 29 March 2018 (UTC)
      • By the way, just to be clear, I'm not accusing the company of any wrongdoing. They've taken what was offered and can't be blamed for any of this. My concern is how it came about from the Wikipedia end of things. SarahSV (talk) 22:02, 29 March 2018 (UTC)
        • I am not sure what you think I have on this? I am not and have never been involved in their communication side of things. I have never approved or was even aware that they were using the phrase "official medical teaching videos on Wikipedia" and have just send a request that they stop.
        • Basically I liked Khan Academies work (but it is under an NC license). When the division that was at Khan working on medical videos moved to Osmosis and agreed to release their videos under a license we allow, I saw that as a positive for our readers. We discussed this nine times over the last few years on this page. Sure the majority now appears to disagree with further collaboration. So be it.
        • Yes they are a small for profit that has received "hundreds of thousands of dollars" in grants. They were when we began talking working on becoming a not for profit. That they has not occurred is concerning. They have however received no money from the WM movement as of now. And with being disallowed on EN WP I am sure will not in the future. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 22:05, 29 March 2018 (UTC)
          • Okay so based on this RfC I have requested that they "remove any mention about being in collaboration with Wikipedia". Plus I have recommended that they withdraw the grant application from the WMF. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 22:16, 29 March 2018 (UTC)
            • Thank you for writing to them. The issue wasn't really discussed nine times, James. You posted a few times about it and a very small number of people responded. Regarding the WMF grant application, it passed round one, and a decision was due to be reached on 26 March, according to the schedule. When you say they received no money from the movement, I wonder how much that advertising space was worth over the years. SarahSV (talk) 22:20, 29 March 2018 (UTC)
              • No,, SlimVirgin — The project was discussed, and thoroughly. It is now ruined, and I hope you're happy. Carl Fredrik talk 12:16, 30 March 2018 (UTC)
                • It was never a mystery that the people behind a firm like Johnson & Johnson were unlikely to approve of what was going on here. CFCF, please show more maturity; this has been a difficult situation for everyone involved. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:22, 30 March 2018 (UTC)
                  • Struck, as Doc James has indicated that he was the one who pulled the plug, not J&J. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:34, 30 March 2018 (UTC)
                    • While a critical approach is mostly healthy, this is just wrong. Do you think anyone would want to wade through this shit-storm? I certainly don't, which is why I moved this pointless discussion elsewhere, so that we can get back to doing useful stuff, and avoiding the types of stuff you so thoroughly despise:

an obsession with strict compliance over common sense, the increasing domination of policy-wonks, an accelerating decline in the number of editors actually active in content work of any kind, entrenched US west coast and south-east English cultural bias, and simultaneous (and contradictory) unhealthy fixations on the concepts of "anyone can edit"

This is the only characterstic of the debate, where people who never edit medical articles join up with those who've been gone for years to complain about "not being informed" or of "false local consensus".
Carl Fredrik talk 22:24, 30 March 2018 (UTC)
Carl, I don't know if this phrase translates to Swedish. I was "editing medical articles" while you were still wearing short trousers. I created and helped write the book on editing medical articles. Every single time you have ever written "per MEDRS", you've been quoting me. I made that an official guideline, with help from the very people you've been attacking. That was a hard battle, and you have no idea how much abuse and conflict was endured to achieve it. Without me and them, that would still be merely an essay, or tagged as a failed proposal. The reason I gave up editing medical articles is entirely down to Doc James and attacks from his worshipers. And I'm far, far from alone in this. You might want to think about that, and think about what Wikipedia is. Please just read the first two paragraphs from Wikipedia:About and think about what it says. Have a great Easter. -- Colin°Talk 23:02, 30 March 2018 (UTC)
Colin — I don't know how well you speak English, but I see no need to translate your message into any other language. Regarding age, I don't understand how that is at all relevant, since Wikipedia does not even consider credentials, opting instead to focus on the sources that each individual uses. If you meant something else with your comment about shorts, I can tell you that I wear them rather often, including while writing this. That you started MEDRS is also not at all relevant, seeing as MEDRS has been rewritten so many times that hardly anything you wrote remains, and parts of the guideline are authored by me. It also doesn't mean you have any right to interpret it beyond that of any other editor, or that the portions you wrote are of any greater importance. When I write "per WP:MEDRS" I quote the guideline in its entirety, not the selected passages you helped write, so in essence I am also quoting myself. I am very greatful of Doc James's work here, for many reasons. Likewise, I wish you a pleasant holiday. Carl Fredrik talk 23:12, 30 March 2018 (UTC)

Break 1 — COI again

Note: I've unarchived this. Carl, please allow it to be archived in the normal way. People may still want to comment. SarahSV (talk) 15:43, 30 March 2018 (UTC)

  • @CFCF: – did you really try to close this still active discussion by archiving, while you had outspoken views on the content matter of the debate (as expressed above)? ...serious red flag I'd say. --Francis Schonken (talk) 15:59, 30 March 2018 (UTC)
No, I wanted to get rid of this shit-storm from this page, because it is pointless and bogs down everything else. I linked it in the RfC, where I hoped we could contain it. Apparently I was wrong, and more bickering about nothing can continue here. SlimVirgin, Francis Schonken Carl Fredrik talk 22:27, 30 March 2018 (UTC)
    • Not only that, he archived it with the edit summary "archival bug", [35] and added to the top that it had been moved it to the RfC page. But in fact he moved it into the archive. [36] In addition, Carl is a director of Wiki Project Med, [37] the non-profit that reached the agreement with Knowledge Diffusion/Osmosis, so he has a conflict of interest. SarahSV (talk) 16:06, 30 March 2018 (UTC)
No, that is not what a COI is. I want to use the material because I believe it is good for Wikipedia, and I was open about that this style of debate ruins any chances to get new material. I take no remuneration, which should be obvious to anyone. So if my conflict of interest is that I want to improve Wikipedia, then so be it! Carl Fredrik talk 22:37, 30 March 2018 (UTC)
I have updated the links from WP:CENT, User talk:Jimbo Wales, and WP:VPP to point to the new address for the RfC, since it's been a couple of hours and CFCF hasn't bothered to do it himself. What the hell, User:CFCF? TenOfAllTrades(talk) 16:13, 30 March 2018 (UTC)
That is how things go in here. Sheesh, this thing has more arms than an octopus. JFW serves on that board, yet opposed the video inclusions. Did CFCF ever declare his COI in these discussions, or did SV have to dig it up? Anthonyhcole served there, and he just sounded off at User talk:Jimbo Wales about Jytdog's behavior in all of this. Honestly, people, it is long past time for WP:MED to look beyond the walled garden. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:19, 30 March 2018 (UTC)
I make matter of point to respond here declaring: I do not have any conflict of interest in this issue! Carl Fredrik talk 22:40, 30 March 2018 (UTC)
@CFCF: you have a COI in relation to the Osmosis–Wikipedia–Wiki Project Med "partnership" because you are a director of Wiki Project Med. SarahSV (talk) 22:53, 30 March 2018 (UTC)
No I don't @SlimVirgin: — please explain what conflicting motivation I would have. There is not even the possibility of a COI here. My engagement there is on par with my engagement in this WikiProject. To interpret that as COI is false and is in essence a made-up non-issue and an attempt to smear me for nonsense. What do you think I have to gain? Carl Fredrik talk 23:00, 30 March 2018 (UTC)
@CFCF: COI has nothing to do with motivation or gain. It is a description of a situation. You have two roles here: (1) a primary role as Wikipedia editor who is expected to uphold the policies and guidelines, including WP:V and WP:MEDRS, and respect community consensus and norms, and (2) a secondary role as a director of WikiProject Med. The community is currently questioning the actions of WikiProject Med (why it became involved in that partnership, why it tried to impose content on the English Wikipedia that didn't comply with V and MEDRS, why it allowed the advertising, why it didn't fully consult the community in advance, and so on). Therefore your two roles currently clash. It has nothing to do with your views or motives.
WP:COI: "Determining that someone has a COI is a description of a situation. It is not a judgment about that person's state of mind or integrity. A COI can exist in the absence of bias, and bias regularly exists in the absence of a COI. ... COI emerges from an editor's roles and relationships, and the tendency to bias that we assume exists when those roles and relationships conflict" (note: "tendency to bias", not actual bias). SarahSV (talk) 23:21, 30 March 2018 (UTC)
@SlimVirgin: — No, without potential motivation, there is no potential interest — and with no interest I am bemused as to how there can be a potential conflict of nothing. Yes, conflict of interest is determined based on the potential of conflict of interest, but you don't even have that here. Mere association (I have spoken to a staff of Osmosis, at that time telling them that I liked their videos) is not conflict of interest. The goals of WPMEDF, I assure you are not as much in line with Wikipedia's, but the exact same as Wikipedia's. They are even designed and articulated to be the same, and no one on that board is there for any other purpose than to further the goals of Wikipedia within the health and medical field. We are an open group of focused editors who joined up because we thought we could help Wikipedia better by organizing ourselves formally. I can add that membership is free, the meetings are all public, and the minutes are all available.
I see no community questioning of WPMEDF, rather you, SandyGeorgia and Jbf, and that does not make "the community". [Edit for clarity]Whether Putting the judgement of specific members of the board or [the judgement] of a decision to question is fine, and I'm not going to debate that. I agree that this discussion is about an issue that can be percieved to be caused by the board. However, that is just us depending on how you see it "messing up", or doing something good, not us having a conflict of interest or ulterior motives. I still find the videos good, even if they should never have had the boiler-plate in the end, but that's just not a conflict of interest. When you missuse such a label so frivolously you're potentially harming cases where there is real conflict of interest. Carl Fredrik talk 23:36, 30 March 2018 (UTC)
I can add that the only other place I've ever been accused of a conflict of interest was to a few images I uploaded from Sobotta's Textbook of Anatomy, and tried to add to the Human penis article (among a few hundred others). I was accused of self-promotion for trying to add the images. That was equally stupid to this. Carl Fredrik talk 23:39, 30 March 2018 (UTC)
CFCF, this is my hope for all of us. Maybe if you let it sit a while, and come back and read SV's definition of COI (which does not imply bad intentions or financial gain), and revisit the RFC on a new day, with a fresh mind, you will see it differently. The community is questioning what happened here. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:46, 30 March 2018 (UTC)
There is no way that this situation can be interpreted as a conflict of interest, beyond what I state here: I think Doc James does good work, and I've had a beer with him a few times at Wikimanias and think he's a decent guy. If that is enough for me to need to disclose a COI when I vote on things he votes on, then maybe I ought disclose a COI for this. But, I'm not going to do that, and if Wikipedia requires that at this time, I have no hope for its future.
Otherwise I appreciate your suggestion to let this cool down SandyGeorgia. I would like to archive the discussion on this page, not to "hide" anything, but rather because it is fruitless. Regarding the accusation of COI here, I will fight to the very end to prove that there is none. I'm just hoping I don't have to, and that we can all be spared the time-sink. For now, I need to get to bed. Carl Fredrik talk 23:56, 30 March 2018 (UTC)
Carl, if you want to read about COI, Davis and Stark 2001 is helpful. COI has nothing to do with "ulterior motives" or any other kind of motives. It is a description of clashing roles, relationships and interests ("interest" as in "stake") in a particular situation. SarahSV (talk) 23:59, 30 March 2018 (UTC)
Reading that book, it stipulates a number of issues needed for a conflict of interest to arrise, including: a relationship, a judgement, an interest, and a proper exercise.
Regarding relationship it states: "it must involve one person trusting another to do something". Here I trust adherance to Wikipedias norms and codes.
Regarding judgement is states: that judgement must be influenced by either relationship or interest. If they are in their turn not influencing, there is no COI.
Regarding interest — we discussed that, there is none beyond the interest of Wikipedia
Regarding proper excercise: there will have to be something that I should have done that can be impacted by #1,2,3 — Which is correct, but without 1,2,3...
So, if we follow that definition, what we find is A. I have a relationship with Osmosis in that I have spoken to them and rely on them adding content to Wikipedia. B. I have a relationship with Osmosis in that I trust them to donate content that adheres to Wikipedias policies.
Both these points are exactly true for my relationship to all editors on Wikipedia, including you. If we define COI like this, we are doing ourselves a massive disservice. Carl Fredrik talk 00:39, 31 March 2018 (UTC)
just noting for the record, that while CFCF liberally commented on and !voted in the RFC, RexxS (talk · contribs) had the good sense not to enter a !vote, as he serves as secretary on that Board. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:54, 30 March 2018 (UTC)
Also for the record: I do consider it good judgement that Rexx opted not to vote, but not because he is on the board, but because he avoided this cesspool. Carl Fredrik talk 22:46, 30 March 2018 (UTC)
  • (edit conflict) I am getting more and more concerned about the whole COI issue re meta:Wiki Project Med in this matter. I concede the good intentions of everyone involved but we are seeing the reason we restrict COI editors on articles play out in spades here. There seems to be a complete inability to see that the goals and best interests of Wikipedia may not always congruent with those of meta:Wiki Project Med.
    In this case the desire for video, evidently for the Offline Wikipedia project, seems to have caused some of our most outspoken anti-spam editors to welcome material which clearly promoted a for profit company. Beyond that meta:Wiki Project Med, in effect if not in intent, was held out to be able to speak for the editing community at large. Nor do I see any real follow-up with Osmosis, for instance looking to see how they are/were characterizing their relationship with Wikipedia and/or The Wiki Project Med Foundation or conflation of the WP Med Foundation (an independent corporation) with WP:WikiProject Medicine (the community of Wikipedia editors).
    I simply can not imagine an agreement which does not address, nor seemingly show curiosity about, the use of the parties' names and endorsements in promotional material. Maybe that is a failure of my imagination but... damn that is a pretty 'front and center' issue considering the name recognition of 'Wikipedia'. I guess I can imagine a bit since I see no indication that meta:Wiki Project Med can authorize the use of the 'Wikipedia' name but in that case I would think is incumbent on them to make absolutely sure (as in put it in writing sure considering they were negotiating with someone who also had a 'hat' as a Wikipedia board member) there was no use of the 'Wikipedia' name by Osmosis. Jbh Talk 16:39, 30 March 2018 (UTC)
You fundamentally missunderstand either COI or the goal of Wiki Project Med. It does not have separate goals from those of Wikipedia. The only "promotion" were the single second slides in the videos that we've stated should be removed (and should have been removed per commons:Commons:Watermark) — but the idea of using donated material on Wikipedia is not a COI.
The way you frame it, asking any actor to release something under a CC licence so that it can be used on Wikipedia is COI. Carl Fredrik talk 22:34, 30 March 2018 (UTC)
  • Meanwhile, over at ANI, Colin is under attack (replace with: there is a filing on Colin) for quite accurately pointing out that "Osmosis: Wikipedia medical articles hijacked by paid editors working for private foundation", and Jyt wants the two of us given a "timeout". There is an amazing factor of people being out of touch in here. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:54, 30 March 2018 (UTC)
Very obvious misrepresentation, SandyGeorgia. I will bring this diff over there. Jytdog (talk) 17:15, 30 March 2018 (UTC)
@Jytdog: Please explain "obvious misrepresentation"? At ANI, JzG is objecting to the language Colin used, and you said: "I think Colin and perhaps also SandyGeorgia need a timeout". If you do not provide an explanation of what you believe I am misrepresenting, I cannot understand your objection, or strike any wording. So please explain. Feel free to use my talk or yours. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:48, 30 March 2018 (UTC)
replied at ANI. Jytdog (talk) 18:13, 30 March 2018 (UTC)
Struck and rephrased above, per this. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:27, 30 March 2018 (UTC)
It is still a misrepresentation. Jytdog (talk) 20:21, 30 March 2018 (UTC)
So, rather than put us all through another round of getting you to say why, I will just strike the whole thing. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:29, 30 March 2018 (UTC)
  • The Osmosis co-founder Shiv Gaglani made the Forbes "30 under 30" list last year: "Osmosis, cofounded by Shiv Gaglani, is a health and medical education company that reaches nearly 500,000 health professionals as well as patients and their family members. The company produces animated videos on topics from aneurysms to Zika that have been viewed more than 25 million time[s] since January 2016 in over 200 countries." I wonder how much of that is thanks to Wikipedia. SarahSV (talk) 18:10, 30 March 2018 (UTC)
    Well, at one point they say they were getting two thirds of their views from the videos on Wikipedia — "This Med Student Took a Leave of Absence and started Osmosis". Medical School HQ. 9 November 2016. Retrieved 2024-11-16. ("Osmosis … being the largest provider of videos to Wikipedia." -- "In January the entire month we had 5,000 total views on YouTube. This month we just wrapped up October, we had 670,000 views for the month of October. So we're seeing like 10,000+% growth rates, and now we're 54,000 subscribers on our YouTube channel as I mentioned, and then you can add like another million or so views from Wikipedia which is cool. (emp mine)) — Yup, sure is "cool". This is why everyone wants to get product placement on Wikipedia. Jbh Talk 19:22, 30 March 2018 (UTC)
    I can't tell from the way that article is written what time period the million views covers. I'd like to know what it would have cost if they had had to pay. MonetizePros estimated in 2013 that Wikipedia could make $2.3 billion a year from ads. SarahSV (talk) 19:48, 30 March 2018 (UTC)
    Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Video views. "Total up to Nov 28 2017: 7,267,901". There's another figure at partnermetrics.wmflabs.org: 8,771,485. See <https://partnermetrics.wmflabs.org/mediaplaycounts/api/2/category_playcount/all/Videos_from_Osmosis>. SarahSV (talk) 19:57, 30 March 2018 (UTC)
    I understand that 670,000 video views means a revenue of approximately US $670, for a typical YouTube channel. The relative growth sounds impressive, but that's not even enough to buy a decent microphone. (Also, they would get nothing at all for the million views that happened here.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:09, 30 March 2018 (UTC)
    agree w/ WAID--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 23:05, 30 March 2018 (UTC)
    @WhatamIdoing: the point is brand recognition. The videos had eight million hits on WP. Even if people immediately clicked away again and didn't watch the videos, they would have seen "osmosis.org". SarahSV (talk) 22:41, 30 March 2018 (UTC)
    It's important to note that a Shure SM57 or SM58 can be purchased for less than £100. WAID should be ashamed of peddling such misinformation! --RexxS (talk) 18:10, 31 March 2018 (UTC)
    As an alternative to having a conversation about what constitutes "decent", I think I'll concede your point. There are people who might say that I've got the equivalent of an advanced degree in wikilawyering, but I think I'd have a hard time making an honest case against those. I will only say in my defense that I had something like the Neumann U87s in mind, and describing them as merely "decent" is not entirely fair, either. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:16, 31 March 2018 (UTC)
    @WhatamIdoing: I think people are fundamentally mis-valuing the views. They are hosted on Commons and there is no ad revenue based on clicks what matters is the rate at which views are converted to sales of subscriptions. Osmosis lists its 'Most popular' at $399/yr. According to this article the conversion rate for Facebook education ads is 13.5%. So the high estimate of the value of those one million views is $54,904,900.00 Even if we assume the true conversion rate is 0.135% we are talking about over $500,000.00 per million views. That is an lot of kick-ass microphones. Now consider that those million views were for a month back near the beginning of this. That was what? two and a half years ago? So, ball park, Osmosis made sixteen million dollars four million dollars off of this collaboration. Jbh Talk 23:56, 31 March 2018 (UTC) Just saw above that they only had 8,000,000 views. Still a low-ball estimate of $4,000,000.00 is not a bad return for them Last edited: 00:05, 1 April 2018 (UTC)
How on earth did you come up with those numbers? We can't have a discussion here if you make up numbers. That's not a low-ball estimate, that's an estimate based on nothing. Conversion rates are click-rates and depend on costs. You're just making stuff up.Carl Fredrik talk 12:09, 1 April 2018 (UTC)
Actually, it's worse than an estimate based on nothing. It's an estimate that is made to look like it's based on something, while just being a very high number you pulled out of your ear.
Carl Fredrik talk 12:19, 1 April 2018 (UTC)
  • @Jbhunley: I'm guessing that because they asked the WMF for $100,000 recently they didn't make millions out of the subscriptions. But I do think the advertising was worth a great deal to them in terms of brand recognition, and it allowed them to say to grantgivers that they ran the official Wikipedia medical video library. What puzzles me is this: once they said they were willing to release the videos, all they had to do was upload them to YouTube under a free licence. Then Wikipedians could have removed the company name, uploaded all or bits of them, and had normal content discussions about whether to use them in particular articles. Instead, there's a meeting with a WMF trustee and two WMF staffers, an agreement about where to place them, talk of a partnership, then tracking the pageviews for them at <https://partnermetrics.wmflabs.org/mediaplaycounts/api/2/category_playcount/all/Videos_from_Osmosis>. SarahSV (talk) 00:12, 1 April 2018 (UTC)
    @Jbhunley: actually let me correct what I said about them not making millions. In fact, we have no idea. They list a staff of 35 at <https://www.osmosis.org/>. SarahSV (talk) 00:17, 1 April 2018 (UTC)
Then let me simplify it for you SlimVirgin — picking through each point you bring up, clarifying why everything you state as a problem is actually entirely in order:
1. Whether they uploaded the videos to youtube or not is inconsequential for Osmosis, but a large burden for any editor. It amounts to about 5% more work to upload videos here and at youtube. However, to rip from youtube, reformat and reupload is far more work, and would be work for someone who did not have the expertise to do any of that. It would also damage the quality of the videos, because they would not be ripped from lossless files (not very important, but is worth bearing in mind).
The boilerplates should still have been removed before uploading (in that case by Osmosis), but as no one here though it consequential enough to do so, or to edit the videos afterwards — it was simply set aside for the future. Not because such a removal wasn't allowed, or that no one could do it, but because no one found it important enough. I would have done it, but I didn't have the time, and I didn't find it a big deal enough to complain.
2. The meeting with the WMF trustee, that is Doc James (who I might add is the most active volunteer here) was between him and Osmosis primarily because he was the one who started the whole idea. That isn't to say he didn't try to get others involved, even petitioning people multiple times here on this very page. Neither is there any fault in his being a trustee as seems to be implied, and the meeting was never an attempt to go behind anyone's back to add the videos in any clandestine way.
3. The discussions were about how to best utilize the videos, and not discussing this would have been a grave mistake, because as with any donation of time or effort you want to ask: a) What can be provided; in order to compare it with: b) What is needed; in order to come up with: c) The best potential use of the donated materials. The materials were tailor-made for Wikipedia, and with input from Wikipedians, so it is only natural to have a meeting on how this can be done. The meeting was all about how to run a project with input from Wikipedians. This is sort of the point of all organizations surrounding Wikipedia. This is the point of donations to Wikimedia. This is what they do. Just saying, "here this stuff exists" does not create a useful collaboration, and does not allow Wikipedians to influence the process of making the sausage.
4. Tracking of pageviews is a very important part of any collaboration. If an organization is willing to donate anything, telling them that people actually see, read, or watch their additions — that is the biggest possible incentive to continue donating. That this was their measure, rather than incoming links is actually a massive plus for them as an organization. They focused on how many people saw and benefited from their content, not how many came to YouTube or donated money on their website.
I find that throughout this entire endeavour there has been an extreme lack of good faith towards Osmosis. They've tried to do the right thing the whole time, and while not perfect — they've been lambasted far more than is reasonable. They even went so far as to look into a non-profit simply in order to donate videos, but again, thought this less important than actually donating materials. There seems to be an irrational hatred towards anything that has a for-profit focus, one that is completely disconnected from reality. I can tell you that I've worked a full two days of my life in the for-profit sector, the rest in non-profits and government — because I do not wish to work for profit, but this downright hatred is crazy. It borders on calling into question each editors motives because they have a day job, where they make money, thus a profit motive. While there may be donations going into Osmosis from billionaires, the people (mainly 1 individual) doing the work is not a billionaire, and the sums he has to work on are not astronomical. Some would even call them meagre. It surprises me not at all that this criticism wasn't levelled towards the actual content (or omissions) of the videos, but rather at the funding model.
And a last point:
5. — They never did any advertising on Wikipedia. Maybe the boilerplate at the ends of videos was undue promotion, but no money ever changed hands, and there was no agreement that any advertisement should occur. Neither was there any sponsorship agreement, and no one discussed whether the boilerplates were necessary. They were completely understood in that their videos, as courtesy of the CC-BY-SA license — could be altered at any time, which of course covered removing the boilerplate. This is also one of the reasons that among those who cared, the boilerplates were given second priority — if anyone ever complained we could fix them then, much like any watermark. This is what is called the procrastination principle, and has been a major principle for Wikipedia and the Internet since its inception (it would be a massive shame to lose this principle, there is a good book on the topic in Jonathan Zittrain's "The Future of the Internet"). Had this only been about removing the boilerplates, allowing for a short period to remove these — there had been no issue here, but this is about the attitude of the debate, and the onslaught and assumption of bad faith that has plagued this discussion.
The point is, if this abrasive attitude is held against all potential non-perfect donators, we will have no donations whatsoever. And with the crazy accusations of COI that have been cast here — we're very likely to lose editors following this discussion. I feel very much on the verge of giving up Wikipedia over it. Carl Fredrik talk 00:52, 1 April 2018 (UTC)
CFCF, let me say first that there is no assumption of bad faith on my part toward Osmosis. They have done nothing wrong as far as I'm concerned.
I've been editing Wikipedia since 2004, and I've seen a lot of changes in that time. One of the major changes is that the Wikimedia Foundation introduced some good governance. Before they did that, people just did whatever they wanted, and there were some very bad situations as a result. Good governance involves understanding why issues such as these embedded videos matter, and why they matter.
It saddens me that the response was "assume good faith", rather than "yes, you have a point; here's what happened exactly; and here's how we'll avoid it in future". Instead, we got serial reverting, personal attacks, a premature and biased RfC, and scolding about AGF. The videos were removed, but only when it became clear there was no choice. It's disappointing. What is needed is a discussion about what has happened to this wikiproject and how to get it back on track. SarahSV (talk) 01:14, 1 April 2018 (UTC)
I find it very hard to believe that there was no assumption of bad faith in this debate. And even if you personally did not assume bad faith, as a collective it has been strongly implied that either Osmosis or WPMEDF have had ulterior motives, ranging from backing from Johnson & Johnson to having personal COI regarding any support for the venture.
I am happy if our WikiProject as well as WPMEDF acts in the interest of improving Wikipedia, and not in the interest of avoiding stepping on any toes, or saddening anyone. The move towards less confrontational behavior from some organizations may be less motivated by doing what is right, and more about ensuring future survival. As we are today WPMEDF has no staff and is in the fortunate position not to have to worry about steady revenue streams, or fallout from the source of that stream.
I am not very interested in the future survival of WikiProject Med if it can not do its best to improve Wikipedia. I'd rather run 100 programs of which 10 are outstanding and 5 which are controversial — than to run 15, of which 5 are pretty mediocre and 10 that are pointless. I hope the community here at WPMED can get behind this, and accepts that screwing up now and then is in the spirit of Wikiedpia.
This is also why I can confess that we messed up with the boilerplates, but not that we had any ulterior motives. Our intentions have always been in Wikipedia's best interest. I still think this project did and could have continued to provide good content for Wikipedia, and I continue to disagree with you and the result of the RfC. I can also not say that we're doing anything wrong, and absolutely not that the WikiProject is off track. We should be messing up, because if we grow so stale as to want to avoid any screw-up I know we only exist for our own sake, and not for fulfilling the goals and dreams that we aspire to. Carl Fredrik talk 01:35, 1 April 2018 (UTC)

(edit conflict with SV/CF thread) SarahSV, I have lots of issues with how this whole collaboration was handled. As described, it would have been easy to just do it right. I can postulate several paths to where we are but when I put my analyst hat on and apply competing hypotheses to the information I have, the product stinks to high heaven. My guess is that there were some kinks There are evidently no contemporaneous notes on the discussions with Osmosis which could be used to place the actions we see in context. I, personally, can not imagine not documenting the shit out of the negotiations, agreement and execution of something like this collaboration. Not only is it basic due diligence, it is Cover-Your-Ass 101.

I do not know if it is worth it to dig into the whole mess. Much of it is the purview of the WMF since it involved a board member and an independent foundation which, having a page on Meta, has at least the appearance of being sponsored by the WMF. The information we have could easily be interpreted and presented as a hanging indictment. But to what end? We as editors can only address behavior on-wiki so all we can do here is brow-beat someone who contributes much to the encyclopedia and to the movement in general. It would lead to a drama fest and result in the loss of many good editors and wound the relationships of many others. Is there an outcome that would be worth it? Jbh Talk 03:25, 1 April 2018 (UTC)

if you consider that what happened here is symptomatic of other, similar, yes. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:28, 1 April 2018 (UTC)
To Jbhunley, to adress your "lots of issues":
1. Nearly everything that occurs on Wikipedia is informal, including I assume that initial meeting. All my interactions with Osmosis were very informal. As I stated above Cover-Your-Assing is not something I wish to engage in, because it eats up time that other projects could have benefited from, and it relies on us feeling that we might be doing something bad. If I feel the need to Cover-My-Ass I know I am doing something that matters more to me than it does to Wikipedia.
2. You know what was really trying to Cover-Your-Ass and be transparent at the same time (a better trade-off, because there is a positive outcome rather than just thinking about yourself)? Writing the agreement of understanding. And that just blew up, because I assume no one here has read it, or understood that it entailed no money changing hands, and only an assumption that anything Osmosis did was supposed to follow Wikipedia guidelines and policies. So, Cover-Your-Assing seems here to have caused problems rather than solved them — meaning an entirely informal, no-paper-trail agreement would have been better. That is not a good idea, and I'd rather advocate transparency to the point that it is feasible and doesn't take more time than actually running projects. Wanting to Cover-Your-Ass is the opposite of that; by releasing doctored and fine-print minutes you're essentially saying nothing about how the process actually worked. The trail for this project is apparent everywhere, with 10 occasions of discussion on this very page, and a separate discussion page over on the project page. You're judging people harder because they're trying to be transparent, which isn't fair.
3. The WMF never involved anyone, Doc James (a volunteer) involved the WMF — and that was only because they jumped on the idea when others didn't, not for any ulterior motive. These collaborations are what they do, and even if the WMF isn't perfect, they're not going to try and run these types of things behind the backs of anyone. They have the resources to run these projects, and we should be using them as best we can. There was never any question of them being arbiters of the project, or not allowing additional input — the fact was that there was no additional input beyond "that's a good idea — keep it up". Pretending that there was, or would have been is false or at the very best hypothetical and plagued by hindsight bias. The WMF was involved, specifically these staffers, because they are/were community members with in-depth knowledge of how to engage the community. If you're only objecting to this because it was the WMF — then I'm happy to ignore that comment. If you're going to assume that anything done by any foundation is de facto bad there is no way to "Cover your ass", because the goalposts will always be moved. And this is apparent, because we are now ignoring the agreement, choosing to focus on the initial meeting. It's a fallacious argument, and there is nothing to stop us from going further if details from the meeting arise. We can just ask, "But who took contact?" and whether they reached out asking "We want to add sponsored content and advertising to Wikipedia, how do we do that?". These are false arguments and a logical fallacy.
4. Having a page on meta means nothing, it only means that one was created by an editor. I've created plenty that have no relation to the WMF beyond the pretense of "maybe being vaguely relevant to the larger community in the future". Meta is not a place for the WMF, it is a place for any cross-project group — any group that works on more than just a single Wikipedia, or just on commons. And even to affiliate yourself with the WMF, all you really need to create a user-group that is officially recognized is to band 3 people together and draw up some bylawys and and purpose. You can even have a usergroup that focuses only on reviewing the decisions of other user groups. So to say that you can only focus on on-wiki decisions is wrong. Heck, most of the board meetings of WMF chapters are open to the public, and I've listened in on several through Skype/Phone that I've had very little to do with. You could even try to get yourself elected, it isn't that hard.
5. You can interpret the information as a hanging indictment as much as you like — but that would be false. There isn't so much as a suggestion of anything real being done wrong here apart from a) non-perfect transparency (yes, you weren't in the room) and b) not removing the boilerplates at the end (yes, that should have been done). But this is the reality of the world — you couldn't have been there — and even if we had allowed for the opportunity, nothing is to indicate that anyone would have been there (the collaborative spot to help draw up video scripts was ignored.
6.There is a need to meet people in real life, because the world at large doesn't work like Wikipedia. Wikipedia is a wonderful place, built upon wonderful rules that state how anyone can join up and discuss, and that there is no hierarchy. To assume that everyone understands this, or that everyone joining up is always possible, even when soliciting outside content donations — is just not feasible. Location, time-zones, work, etc., all get in the way. And sometimes you just wouldn't get into the discussion — You can't be in the room when I ask the radiology department about donating anonymized X-ray pictures, and you can't be there when I talk to agencies about releasing their content under CC-licences. In part because I would never even get to talk to them if I suggested I need to bring a Skype monitor to the meeting because I couldn't be trusted to do it on my own. This is in part because of physical constraints, in part because of human psychology that doesn't much align with Wikipedia's rules and norms; and in part because I have 10x more meetings trying to get collaboration, than I have actual collaborations (and I do quite little such work). Doc James and the Foundation does 100x more, and if they were to document every initial meeting in detail they wouldn't be doing anything but documenting.
TL;DR — I sincerely hope we don't start trying to Cover-our-asses, because that would mean we feel it's more important to make sure we are perceived as do-gooders — than it is that we actually do good. Focus on the results, not on the minutiae of what could potentially be wrong with the process (at least when you have no indication that anything is wrong). Carl Fredrik talk 12:03, 1 April 2018 (UTC)

Reflecting on the above

It's a shame we were led to believe this collaboration was with a part of Khan Academy that had forked into a seperate nonprofit.

The thing that stands out for me here is the seeming lack of concern about the serious errors in these videos on the part of their most enthusiastic defenders.

The whole area of collaborating with outside partners is fraught. WPMEDF is still finding its feet, and I'm sure there is a role for an entity like it in helping volunteers to develop partnerships with aligned nonprofits. I'd prefer to see it led by a team with a greater committment to accuracy, though. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 10:39, 1 April 2018 (UTC)

Anthonyhcole I respect your contributions to Wikipedia very much, and it was a shame that Osmosis was viewed in the lens of being a non-profit. I was not entirely aware of this myself, and it only came to my knowledge recently that they had considered a non-profit split-off group, but judged it unnecessary for the time being. It is now regrettable that they did not do this, but I'm not sure it would have made much difference. It would absolutely not have made any difference in what materials were donated.
Where I find an error is in the belief that there was no commitment, or a faulty commitment to accuracy. Individual videos have been discussed, and parts of them deemed worthy of changing. However, this isn't really on the grounds of accuracy, and there have been very few comments regarding the accuracy of the videos. Our content disputes on Wikipedia are similarly often not about "this being wrong", but rather "this is better". What the issue has had more to do with is whether a) finding an aspect of the video to be improved means it should be taken offline until the fix/improvement is applied, and b) whether we should allow any medium that is difficult to edit on Wikipedia.
For a) there have been dissenting opinions, which here reached the volume that the project entirely faltered, and for b) I think this discussion isn't worth having, because we already accept hard-to-edit content such as images and other videos. I know you've spent a lot of time looking to commission an image of a nerve that it to your liking. Having such an image uploaded would have meant it was very difficult to edit for most users — but that is not the same as to say it shouldn't be allowed. I would even wager that any good anatomical drawing is more difficult to change than these videos are.
So, while I'm sad and disappointed about the way this project has died off and of certain aspects of the discussion, including my own conduct, I don't think anything speaks to a lack of adherence to accuracy. Carl Fredrik talk 12:46, 1 April 2018 (UTC)
It always bothers me when people put a sharp line between for-profit and non-profit groups. Non-profits are not inherently more effective, more moral, or more committed to the cause (whatever their stated cause is). We know, for example, that washing marketing through non-profits is a tactic that the dietary supplements industry uses to get around legal restrictions about marketing dietary supplements as effective cures. Critics of the Red Cross Blood Services in the US can tell you quite a lot about the non-protection provided by non-profit status; RCBS has been accused of both financial exploitation and insufficient attention to patient safety over the years. On the other side, your plumber and auto mechanic are for-profits, and you probably should trust them more than most non-profits. We consider Nature (journal) to be an excellent source, and it's always been published by a for-profit organization, without even an attempt to pretend that a non-profit org or professional society was involved.
The only difference between a non-profit and a for-profit is whether someone legally owns it (and therefore is entitled to take any leftover money home at the end of the year). Non-profit staff can earn millions of dollars a year (and some do), they care about revenue (in my experience, they care even more than a typical employee in the for-profit world, because the line between "get this revenue today" and "my next paycheck will happen" is usually very obvious to them), they can be careless and ineffective, and they can be motivated by something that we disagree with. For-profit staff can be awesome and ethical (and since most editors work in the for-profit world, I hope that's true of all of you). The case-by-case people and goals matter, but IMO the technical legal status is usually minor or irrelevant. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:57, 1 April 2018 (UTC)
WhatamIdoing, quite agree. In additon there is the factor that a privately funded non-profit is accountable to nobody. As I note above with post at 07:56, 27 March 2018, they can believe and promote any agenda they want. A public charity, reliant on donations from the general public and perhaps some funding from government, is quite different, as is a firm selling to consumers who may choose to take their business elsewhere. Wikipedia is fundamentally volunteer driven and there is a safety-in-numbers where no one person's beliefs, opinions or "alternative facts" can rise much above the crowd. With these videos we had the opposite, where they were developed by employees and one firm was able to totally dominate the presentation-of-facts in several hundred of our medical articles. The wider community has said "Hell no; what on earth were you guys thinking?". I don't get the impression that WP:MED has got that message. -- Colin°Talk 20:32, 1 April 2018 (UTC)
Colin — These videos were developed together with Wikipedians and with several attempts to involve the community. The scripts were not written by the same guy who made the videos. There was no case of "dominating the presentation-of-facts". The wider community has said nothing: there is a majority that opposes the videos — but don't conflate what you think with what the community consensus is. Carl Fredrik talk 20:53, 1 April 2018 (UTC)
Reflecting on the whole affair I can say this: As the major editor of the Breastfeeding article I am grateful to see the video finally removed. Clayoquot and I brought up the video errors four months ago and were brushed off and the errors were called "minor", which is not the case at all. Only Doc James even responded, no one else (though not even he responded to the second request). Were it not for Colin opening a discussion on Jimbo's page this seriously flawed video would still be included at the Breastfeeding article. So of course I am grateful but on the other hand the problem remains that one editor, Doc James, was able to direct the decisions related to the information included in our breastfeeding article. I am concerned that too much wikipedia influence has been bestowed on some editors while others are seen as not really knowledgeable enough to dispute the decisions of those "on high". Gandydancer (talk) 21:18, 1 April 2018 (UTC)
I had wished there were many more focused medical editors on Wikipedia who could counterweigh the influence of the editors we do have, who have to patrol an often unreasonably large corpus of articles, but we're having a real problem attracting more people with in-depth knowledge — and that is a shame. What I however would like to point out is that the discussions are often seen by far more people than actually do comment, and I often forego commenting when I see others who seem to be handling a situation well.
I can't speak to that specific instance, but often consensus can be reached with the minority view being judged to be the correct one. James nearly always backs his arguments up very well, and uses high quality sources and good reasoning. I don't think it was de facto wrong that the video remained in the article until recently, if he judged the issues to be minor. I happen to like the video and feel it is informative. When WikiProject Medicine was accused of using the "MEDRS bludgeon" on the RfC page I expressed something that may be relevant here: "We also have a large number of editors that are very knowledgeable in their fields, and sometimes coming across them and being proven wrong can feel like a "MEDRS bludgeon", but that doesn't mean it's [bad conduct]."
I can also point out that nearly all edits I've made to the Breastfeeding article were reverted very quickly, and not by James. I also found it very difficult to edit that article in the face of a single editor. Carl Fredrik talk 22:06, 1 April 2018 (UTC)

Sometimes I see a photo on Flickr that would be a nice addition to Wikipedia, and I ask the photographer if they could flip the switches to release it under a Wikipedia-compatible license so that I can add it to an article. Sometimes they say yes, and I say thank you and send them a link to the article so they can see their work on Wikipedia. And then we never talk again, unless I see something else from them that I like and re-initiate the cycle by asking for it. Work has been donated and the creator has been acknowledged and thanked. The End.

What happened here seems to have been different. Instead of arranging for a donation and saying thank you, a new and enduring thingy called a “partnership” was arranged. The terms of the partnership were never written down, but it’s clear from the past few days of discussion that people at the WikiProject Med valued it highly. For them, the partnership itself had a value that was distinct from the value of the content Osmosis had already donated. As humans, when we value a partnership, we try to protect it.

The above context may have some bearing on some events from last November that I found extremely odd at the time. I removed Osmosis’s video from the Breastfeeding article. I pointed out that it contained factual errors including one that, if the watcher believed it, could lead to growth problems, anemia, and feeding problems in babies. Nobody argued with my assertion that this was an error, or questioned whether babies might be harmed by it. However, Doc James said, “The issues you have raised are minor. Adjustments can be made,” and put the content back into Wikipedia knowing that it was erroneous and harmful to babies. It is painful to write that last sentence, but we need to ask ourselves what would make a good editor do this kind of thing.

Why did this freakishly bad edit happen? Here’s a hypothesis: Doc James wanted to protect the partnership. He knew that what Osmosis wanted was video views. He knew that Osmosis lost some revenue streams when it released content under an NC-licence CC-BY-SA license, and that it expected other revenue streams would get a boost as a result of having the content viewed on Wikipedia. Doc James knew all this and didn’t want Osmosis to be unhappy, so he didn’t allow error-ridden content to be even temporarily removed while the errors were being fixed .

Now of course, I don’t know what exactly went on in Doc James’s head. But it is certainly plausible that his sense of duty to Osmosis’s business has affected his judgement as a Wikipedia editor. Doc James does what he believes is good for Wikipedia. And he was convinced that protecting the partnership would be good for Wikipedia, so it is not hard to see why the partnership was protected to such an extent that Osmosis thought it was Wikipedia's official supplier of medical videos.

I’m much less inclined to AGF when it comes to Osmosis’s behaviour. They could have hired specialists to make sure the information in their scripts was correct, but in at least a few cases they were too cheap or rushed to do so. The level of naivete I am seeing with respect to Osmosis’s finances is stunning. Carl said, "They even went so far as to look into a non-profit simply in order to donate videos, but again, thought this less important than actually donating materials.” The point of setting up a non-profit is not to have the non-profit donate things that the company owns. The point is to receive donations with legally enforceable assurance to the donor that the donation will not be used to line the pockets of corporate investors. Promising to set up a non-profit arm and then not doing so, while asking for and receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars in grant money, should raise alarm bells awfully loud. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 04:58, 2 April 2018 (UTC)

Linking with this comment of Clayoquot: The errors in the celiac disease video, a dangerously outdated, simplistic and inaccurate information, which speaks of CD as if it were just a simple digestive disease, ignoring that CD is a chronic autoimmune systemic disease, suppose to condemn approximately 80-85% of celiacs, both adults and children, to remain unrecognized, undiagnosed and exposed to developing very serious health complications, among which are various types of cancer (both of the digestive system -with an increased risk of 60%- and other organs), many cardiovascular diseases, neurological and psychiatric disorders, other autoimmune diseases, and osteoporosis,[1][2][3][4][5][6][7] and also refractory celiac disease (which no longer responds to the gluten-free diet)[8] and in rare cases (mainly in children) the so-called "celiac crisis", a sudden onset life-threatening syndrome.[9][10] The video about IBS starts talking about inflammatory bowel disease like the ones with similar symptoms and forgets to talk about celiac disease, which by far has a higher prevalence and which is the diagnosis that most celiac patients receive during years or their whole life, so it brings us to the same point of danger (in addition to other inaccuracies and forgetting to mention the NCGS). The video of ulcerative colitis happily speaks of colectomy as a "cure" and forgets warning that surgery must be avoided at all costs and forgets to talk about certain treatments.
If you, who are reading this, think that the video is correct and that I exaggerate (it does not matter if you are a doctor, a specialist in gastroenterology, a pediatrician, a teacher of dentistry as the author of the video, or a layperson in medicine), then is a confirmation of my concerns and you should read this from the WGO (a small example, among the abundant current scientific literature): World Gastroenterology Organisation Global Guidelines (WGO) (2016) The most important obstacle to implementing the recommendations is poor awareness of celiac disease by patients and physicians. Among gastroenterologists, there is a sense that celiac disease does not require follow-up by a specialized physician after diagnosis and may be considered a minor condition in comparison with irritable bowel disease (IBD) and inflammatory bowel syndrome (IBS).(...) There is an urgent need to increase awareness among primary-care physicians and pediatricians about the wide diversity of clinical manifestations. and this [38].
I have changed my choices temporarily in the Rfc for these reasons. --BallenaBlanca 🐳 ♂ (Talk) 18:24, 2 April 2018 (UTC)
References

References

  1. ^ Han Y, Chen W, Li P, Ye J (2015). "Association Between Coeliac Disease and Risk of Any Malignancy and Gastrointestinal Malignancy: A Meta-Analysis". Medicine (Baltimore) (Meta-Analysis). 94 (38): e1612. doi:10.1097/MD.0000000000001612. PMC 4635766. PMID 26402826.
  2. ^ Hadjivassiliou M, Duker AP, Sanders DS (2014). Gluten-related neurologic dysfunction (Review). Handbook of Clinical Neurology. Vol. 120. pp. 607–19. doi:10.1016/B978-0-7020-4087-0.00041-3. ISBN 9780702040870. PMID 24365341. {{cite book}}: |journal= ignored (help)
  3. ^ Ciaccio EJ, Lewis SK, Biviano AB, Iyer V, Garan H, Green PH (2017). "Cardiovascular involvement in celiac disease". World J Cardiol (Review). 9 (8): 652–666. doi:10.4330/wjc.v9.i8.652. PMC 5583538. PMID 28932354.
  4. ^ Hourigan CS (2006). "The molecular basis of coeliac disease". Clin Exp Med (Review). 6 (2): 53–9. doi:10.1007/s10238-006-0095-6. PMID 16820991. S2CID 12795861.
  5. ^ Ciccocioppo R, Kruzliak P, Cangemi GC, Pohanka M, Betti E, Lauret E, Rodrigo L (Oct 22, 2015). "The Spectrum of Differences between Childhood and Adulthood Celiac Disease". Nutrients (Review). 7 (10): 8733–51. doi:10.3390/nu7105426. PMC 4632446. PMID 26506381.
  6. ^ Green PH, Jabri B (Aug 2, 2003). "Coeliac disease". Lancet (Review). 362 (9381): 383–91. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(03)14027-5. PMID 12907013. S2CID 39188931.
  7. ^ Nadhem ON, Azeez G, Smalligan RD, Urban S (2015). "Review and practice guidelines for celiac disease in 2014". Postgrad Med. 127 (3): 259–65. doi:10.1080/00325481.2015.1015926. PMID 25702766. S2CID 25325537.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  8. ^ Woodward, J (3 August 2016). "Improving outcomes of refractory celiac disease - current and emerging treatment strategies". Clinical and Experimental Gastroenterology (Review). 9: 225–36. doi:10.2147/ceg.s87200. PMC 4976763. PMID 27536154.
  9. ^ Fasano A, Catassi C (2012). "Clinical practice. Celiac disease". N Engl J Med (Review). 367 (25): 2419–26. doi:10.1056/NEJMcp1113994. PMID 23252527. celiac crisis, a rare life-threatening syndrome, mostly observed in children, that is characterized by severe diarrhea, hypoproteinemia, and metabolic and electrolyte imbalances
  10. ^ de Almeida Menezes M, Cabral V, Silva Lorena SL (2017). "Celiac crisis in adults: a case report and review of the literature focusing in the prevention of refeeding syndrome". Rev Esp Enferm Dig (Case reports. Review). 109 (1): 67–68. doi:10.17235/reed.2016.4073/2015 (inactive 2023-12-13). PMID 26912167.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: DOI inactive as of December 2023 (link)
  1. No, this was exactly like that — the only difference was the wanted to continue donating stuff — taking into account what the community requested. This is no different from your Flickr contact saying: "Have you seen this too? Do you want me to release it as well? It'd be really cool to see people using this on WP."
  2. The terms were written down, in the memoranda of understanding — the same agreement that was shunned and called into question
  3. If I recall that was down to a single word choice, whether something was likely or possible. I can only in the strongest sense possible denounce your theory that "babies where coming into harm". I in fact have several times, being shunned by others on that article, argued that breastfeeding is far less important than we make it out to be — when there is access to clean water. I have high quality sources, which have repeatedly been ignored — but for this fact I actually thought the video went too far in what it expressed, and would have liked it to give this less weight, not more. There is no possibility whatsoever that the video, which would primarily be viewed in countries with access to clean running water — has damaged or harmed a single child.
  4. There was no bad edit. Some part of what you say on motivation is true, but more importantly Doc James made the edit because he truly thought the issue minor and inconsequential. I disagree that there was an issue at all, and in fact would have liked the opposite of what you argued for. And of course he wanted to protect the partnership — if he saw that the videos were doing good — any actions to make sure more were made are entirely in line with Wikipedia's goals. This is not an ulterior motive. As long as he believed the issue truly was so minor as to be inconsequential — he did not break from Wikipedia's policies or guidelines in reinstating it. He knew that Osmosis wanted their videos to be useful.
    This is exactly the same thing I do when I try to reason with an editor I find has the wrong idea about something. I value their future potential contribution more than I value their current erroneous reasoning. I try to correct them, and try to make them understand why things should be a certain way. This is the way we all should be acting, and you'd be amazed at how often I gloss over minor issues because I find it would be worse to launch a full out attack on an editor. And this is where I agree there are issues, which I strongly contest here.
  5. James had no sense of duty towards Osmosis's business — rather he had a sense of duty towards Wikipedia that included not alienating a well-intentioned contributor who's only ever error was to include a 2 second licence plate at the end of videos. We're making a mountain out of a mole-hill, and these watermarks would never have garnered this backlash pretty much anywhere else — and I think much of the backlash is completely irrational. They have, and we have all concluded that these could just be removed. It is entirely up to us to conclude that they should be removed, but we should never assume that it was obvious for anyone that they should have been disallowed in the first place. Nowhere else would this have been obvious, and Wikipedia is not alone in the world. We might do things our way, but we should at least have some understanding that it isn't immediately obvious, and should not lambast people for not understanding it immediately. This screams of WP:DONTBITETHENEWBIE, even if no one cares to call them that, just because they are an organization trying to do good, rather than a bumbling individual.
  6. I find the immidiate assumption that there was bad faith a problem. They did hire specialists, and the videos all have, on the same boilerplate we've decided should be removed — a short section that says "reviewed by so and so MD". While this also isn't what we normally do on Wikipedia — it completely invalidates your argument. The videos were also produced with input, or at least the opportunity of input from the community. I also disagree regarding your assessment of non-profits, with my take falling much closer to WhatamIdoing's. It is true that there is a legally enforceable assurance to the donor that the donation will not be used to line the pockets of corporate investors — but I fail to see how it is any better when there can be a fully legally permissible incentive to line the pockets of highly paid executives within the non-profit. What you're also ignoring is that there was never ever any question of any solicitation of donations, or of money changing hands. If such a large grant had passed from the WMF to Osmosis you can trust that there would have been much quality control from the WMF to ensure that they were getting what they had bargained for. It is possibly here that creating a non-profit would have been necessary, but when we're just talking about just donating materials — the stakes are lower. It seems to me that we are assuming that the grant would have gone through without any control of the funds, without contemplating that it could probably not ever have gone through without a non-profit being created.
Carl Fredrik talk 07:01, 2 April 2018 (UTC)
Regarding point 5, "not alienating a well-intentioned contributor who's only ever error was to include a 2 second licence plate at the end of videos." the reason many people were opposed to these videos is that there were a lot of errors in them that weren't easily correctable. The name plates were a minor problem compared to this. Natureium (talk) 15:47, 2 April 2018 (UTC)
That just isn't true. The errors were almost all very minor, the only one to speak of anything but trivial errors with any credibility (i.e. backed up by sources, not sentiments) is BallenaBlanca. All other cases have been disputed, with sources supporting the so called errors, and often not supporting the "corrections"m, and the presense of many of the "errors" has in fact been questioned entirely. No one else has discussed the accuracy of the videos as a problem. The primary accusation has been "Well, the videos could be inaccurate" — that isn't the same thing Natureium. Carl Fredrik talk 20:59, 2 April 2018 (UTC)
Everything "challenged and likely to be challenged" needs a source, per WP:V. Readers should be able to check the sources for themselves, and change things if they find mistakes. That's the fundamental point of Wikipedia. Adding videos that mimic content, without sources, that no one can reasonably edit, targeted not at the general reader but at medical students, changes the nature of this project. That's not even to mention the promotional aspect. SarahSV (talk) 21:13, 2 April 2018 (UTC)
Carl, regarding the errors in the breastfeeding video, Osmosis has pledged to revise the video and Doc James said today on his Talk page, "I agree that other foods should be introduced at 6 months and agree that restoring that video before that was fixed was an error on my part." The only person who still thinks the breastfeeding video has only trivial errors is you. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 06:06, 3 April 2018 (UTC)
And, we only know of the errors that have been mentioned here. We don't know how many other errors there may be in the videos, because there was no process whatsoever for vetting them with topic experts. Also, CFCF, when you call the problems "trivial", that demeans a core policy of Wikipedia (NPOV). I spent two years developing the Tourette syndrome article, and twelve years keeping the POV words "suffer from" out of the tic disorder suite, per DSM-IV-TR. To have a video stuck in the lead of a Featured article that undoes all of my attempts at NPOV does not feel "trivial". It would also have been good practice to have the video makers be aware of our guidelines (that is, not only MEDRS, but also MEDMOS): Avoid saying that people "suffer" from or are "victims" of a chronic illness or symptom, which may imply helplessness: identifiers like survivor, affected person or individual with are alternate wordings.
It's also troubling, Carl, that you continue to assert that the errors were disputed. They weren't. But saying that 'til we're blue in the face doesn't seem to be getting anywhere. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:13, 3 April 2018 (UTC)

Parameters for videos

  • I am hopeful that everybody will stop litigating this. The videos have been removed from en-WP and there are several reasons for that. But they are gone.
We have a lot of work to do to build consensus about parameters to determine if a given video is useable in light of the policies and guidelines and where they can/should be placed in articles, and the subsequent problem of finding anybody willing to make them and license them openly. But further argument about the specific set of now-gone-and-never-coming-back-as-they-are videos that have already been posted and then removed, is not helpful with respect to building an encyclopedia.
It ~may~ be that we can edit some of those already-existing videos into useable chunks, and I might try seeing if I can find some useful chunks and if I do I will post them here for discussion with respect to the general issues. But not anytime soon. This is all way too hot and will be for a while. Jytdog (talk) 14:12, 3 April 2018 (UTC)

Let me say first that I don't think that the mechanics behind the Osmosis videos is all that enigmatic: I suppose they're slide-shows (PowerPoint or some such) with a voiceover. @OsmoseIt and Doc James: (or anyone else) could you clarify whether or not that assumption is correct?

If that's the production facilities one needs to engineer such videos, i.e. slide-show software and a computer with a microphone, a set of rules does not seem too difficult. Proposing a rule set just out of my head... (proposal:) A slide-show video can only be used in en.Wikipedia under following conditions:

  1. The native file format of the slide-show software is a format that can be uploaded to Commons (if Commons does not accept e.g. OOo Impress files nor anything else in that vein we're already end of the road until that is sorted; if some such file format is possible, continue with next steps of the proposal:)
  2. Text should exclusively be typed, and use a non-proprietary font (the handwritten scanned slide backdrops of the Osmosis videos would no longer be allowed). The guidance to comply to is MOS:TEXTASIMAGES.
  3. Images used in the slides should be available at Commons, with a suitable license making it possible to use them in this way (basic open source proceedings).
  4. Slides should be uploaded to Commons in the native *editable* slide-show file format. The description on the media page should indicate which images (if any) were used for the slide, that is: they should be listed with their Commons file name.
  5. Voice-over recordings should be available in an open audio file format, and uploaded at Commons; the voice-over recordings should be available for every separate slide; Voice-over and related slide should have no discrepancies: the simple rule should be that the text is read aloud as it appears in the slide, e.g. if the text of the slide says something is 32% then the voice-over should not read that as "around thirty percent" – background noises, and certainly ambient music should of course be avoided in the recordings
  6. Video formats of slide-shows (one or more slides, with a synchronised voice-over) have a description page that links to all involved files, uploaded separately in Commons.

All of this should make it easy to rework a slide, re-record its voice-over (don't care whether that's a different voice from the next or previous slide), after which a potentially longer video can be reconstituted, & uploaded to Commons (presumably under the same name as the previous one).

On content, a video can only be used in en.Wikipedia if it complies to Wikipedia's guidance on the matter of course: not a WP:POV FORK, WP:Verifiable, etc. Possibly the WP:V part can be satisfied like for images: if its verifiable in the article where the video appears, then the video should not have a separate reference: this entails that if the article content changes and is no longer compatible with the video content that then the video should be removed on sight until the discrepancy is fixed.

Probably that is no more than a rough first approach, needing still much in the sense of fine-tuning, but I suppose this, or something very similar to it, could work. Also, this is not just something for medical videos, so this should get a broader consensus than the local one here at MED. For clarity, this does not exclude other types of videos not based on slide-show software, but for text-based videos this might provide a MO. --Francis Schonken (talk) 15:17, 3 April 2018 (UTC)

I don't honestly think there is any point in WP:MED determining the parameters for videos. Firstly, there are a number of WP:MED regulars who still don't get why the community rejected them. And secondly, there's really absolutely nothing medical about the requirements for videos. This should be a topic the whole community discusses, with examples of good and bad content (there's a whole Commons to go find videos from). at Wikipedia:Wikipedia is not YouTube a number of editors have added some videos considered good-practice, and in particular User:Pigsonthewing offered two that seem a very good idea. He approached a local film production company to ask for surplus footage that was otherwise sitting on someone's hard disc in the discard pile. This is simply professional video that wasn't needed for a particular project. There must be similar things available for medicine and health topics. Even a simple thing could really enhance our articles: a particular kind of cough, an odd walk that is a sign, a hand tremor, someone using a walking frame to get around, brushing your teeth, etc, etc. No $million budget needed. No WP:V issues. An immediately useful for all language Wikipedias. Anyway, if you want to take this further, I suggest WP:MED get out a bit more and meet the rest of the community. They don't bite. -- Colin°Talk 17:24, 3 April 2018 (UTC)
  • Just a note. I didn't create the section header and I don't think that now is the time to discuss anything about the videos. Really. Please let this video stuff go for a while. Like a month. Please. Jytdog (talk) 17:46, 3 April 2018 (UTC)
  • I, too, am done with videos. The Osmosis problem has been identified, aired, and addressed; long-term solutions need to involve the broader community.
    Now I am wondering over at User talk:Doc James why we have a situation going on with WP:TTF that is reflective of the very same "walled garden" problems that led to the video situation. And this page is too clogged to even think of talking about it here. Although this isn't the right place either, because effectively freezing articles like epilepsy so they can be translated kinda gets into all the reasons we don't have stable versions, so it is a Wikipedia-wide discussion.
    I suggest that further discussion of the video situation might go at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Medicine/Osmosis RfC. Now that the RFC is placed on its own page, it also has a talk page. Another good place to talk about how to address future video proposals is Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia is not YouTube-- something concrete might come out of discussion there. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:17, 3 April 2018 (UTC)

Chrisbospher

Following on from Clayoquot's post above, it's worth noting again that a whistleblower, Chrisbospher (talk · contribs), arrived in January 2016 to warn about this. He wrote that he had "the advantage of being more familiar with Osmosis, since they have not been producing medical videos for years and the new employees have been around for a few months at the most. Additionally, I have the advantage of knowing that many of the 'medical content editors' at Osmosis are convinced by the CEO to work for free as if they are contributing to general med education, only to have their work directly be put behind a paywall that is sold to students and institutions." [39]

On Commons he nominated the videos for deletion with the edit summary "Delete request for image due to violating community rules on advertising." [40] See Commons:Deletion requests/Files of User:OsmoseIt: " ... they are being used as a free advertising/marketing tool for (http://www.osmosis.org/plans), which is a for-profit education software company. Specifically, each video begins with a logo and link to visit their main website. ... This would be akin to H&R Block uploading an informational video on the wiki tax brackets page with their logo and website at the beginning, and is against the spirit and rules of wikipedia."

Doc James, WhatamIdoing and OsmoseIT argued against Chrisbospher on Commons. OsmoseIT: "The videos being created are part of a non-profit branch of Osmosis currently being set up. We're currently applying for our tax-exemption status." Chrisbospher: "If they change their corporation to a non-profit I'll eat my hat."

Here on WikiProject Medicine, Chrisbospher changed James's description of Osmosis as "an organization" that had split off from Khan Academy to "a for-profit organization", pointing out in the edit summary that "there is no affiliation with Khan academy" and "Framing this as an education initiative when it's for-profit is wrong." [41] He also wrote: "Imagine Bank of America posting info videos with a link to their website on wiki pages regarding personal finance." [42] James reverted the addition of "for profit". When Chrisbospher changed it again to "for-profit company", [43] James took him to AN/I: Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive909#User:Chrisbospher. SarahSV (talk) 16:08, 2 April 2018 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Drop_the_stick_and_back_slowly_away_from_the_horse_carcass...--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 16:40, 2 April 2018 (UTC)
  • Thus, we have a three layered horse. User:Doc James talks on behalf of OsmoseIT, User:CFCF talks on behalf of Doc James, and User:Ozzie10aaaa talks on behalf of CFCF. But, assuming that we are not faced with a galactic conspiracy, all these assertions are null and void. None of them is an authorized spokesperson of the other (did I misunderstand something ?). When any of them were telling us this or that about a non-profit OsmosisIT, that was only empty words, since the non-profit Osmosis has never existed. Now, we have something that amounts to some forecasts by User:James. To emit a binding decision about the future weather, one has to be the boss of Thunder. And to emit a binding decision about the future behavior of the for-profit OsmosisIT, one has to be the boss of OsmosisIT. But User:James is not the God of Thunder (did I misunderstand something ?).Pldx1 (talk) 21:31, 2 April 2018 (UTC)
The wonderful thing with CC-BY content is that it can never be paywalled, so that doesn't seem to be very apt criticism. Additionally, that deletion request was closed independently, and there has been nothing to indicate that any of those accusations were or are true. Yes the logos should have been stripped, but pulling up someone saying this one time back in 2016 isn't enough to point out wrongdoing. It wasn't brought up again, and with comments about "we should do this" and "we should do that" all the time — no one though it important enough to fix. Once again, to state that there was wrongdoing because one person said this in 2016 is hindsight bias. Yes, we're pretty clear that the current consensus is that such boilerplates should never be used, but that isn't the same as saying it was a major overlooked issue. Watermarks are everywhere on Commons, and according to the procrastination principle I mentioned previously, they're removed as people find time to remove them. This is akin to saying that such watermarks should be immediately removed from 10,000 images — not something that can be done in an afternoon, especially not with this volume of discussion going on, much of which needs to be responded to in order to insure misunderstandings aren't propagated and that the discourse turns one-sided enough that people can't even find the rebuttals. Carl Fredrik talk 21:10, 2 April 2018 (UTC)
It seems clear by now that neither you nor James is willing to learn from this. I think the next step should be to ask the WMF to look into it, because what happened here was fundamentally wrong, in all kinds of ways that you seem unable to see, Carl, and the WMF was itself involved. SarahSV (talk) 21:22, 2 April 2018 (UTC)
I believe there is much to be learned, but I am adamant that we not learn the wrong lessons. If what we get out of this is to be afraid of doing anything that might benefit the community, because it could potentially some time in the future be construed as problematic — then we're either forgetting or intentionally ignoring several of Wikipedia's fundamental principles. If what is to be learned is that WPMEDF is a corrupt and horribly incompetent organization as has been insinuated several times, then likewise I refuse to learn that.
As a Wikipedian, and as a human I will err — and I will do so again in the future, many times. We should not be presenting this as some case where we could have foreseen community backlash. Hindsight bias is a dangerous ally, and a very fallacious rhetorical technique to use.
Implicit consensus, on the other hand is a fundamental principle of Wikipedia, and that this project has run over 2 years, with videos both praised and criticized across many different articles indicates there was nothing wrong with the project until this bout of backlash. We should not construct hypothetical scenarios, where an imagined community would have acted differently if it had know about these things earlier. Many lessons can and have been learned from this debacle, but I hope that a need to be afraid is not one of them. Carl Fredrik talk 21:45, 2 April 2018 (UTC)
Regarding, "There was nothing wrong with the project until this bout of backlash," I don't think that's so. It flouted WP:V and the spirit of "anyone can edit", four months ago Doc James insisted the erroneous claim, "Breast milk contains all the nutrients a baby needs for its first year", remain in a video embedded at the top of Breastfeeding, saying it would be fixed and it never was. Our partner was erroneously presented to the community as a nonprofit corporation. I'm sure I've missed some other massive flaws. I agree it's important we don't take away the wrong message from this, but I'd like to see some sign from you and James that you acknowledge this project had serious problems from the outset, and that you understand the nature of those problems. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 18:34, 3 April 2018 (UTC)

Next steps

Anthonyhcole — In light of your comments I've thought through the issue considerably. I expressed myself poorly when I said "there was nothing wrong with the project", that is simply not true. To rephrase: I believe the project operated under an implicit consensus and that the understanding was it only meant to augment Wikipedia, and that all was done in good faith.

I am willing to concede that there were a number of problems with both minor and major issues in the videos. Of the handful I saw prior to this discussion, I found none to which I objected, and I did not see any immediate errors in any videos. I found the scripts to correspond and build well upon the ledes and/or contents of articles. Essentially, I viewed the videos as alternative ledes, albeit with a slightly different tone. Most of the issues raised were in my view relatively minor — including some that have by others been called major.

What I see as the resounding error is how a lack of closed captions and transcripts has made it difficult to verify that the scripts have adhered to articles. Some of the discrepancies that have been pointed out throughout this discussion are trivial, but I understand that in the light of perceived deviation from WP:V — these too have been interpreted as very problematic. I must admit that I never really thought of this as an issue — but see now that it can be seen as an unreasonable burden to watch a slow-paced, several minutes long video in order to compare it with the article body. That is at the very least true, when we account for how this would be a many hours long task, simply in order to transcribe all the videos properly before starting to compare them. I also realize that this flies in the face of an otherwise insistence of reliably sourced statements in article ledes — something which I still strongly support in medicine as most statements can and will be questioned. It is unreasonable to expect that texts such as these can be thoroughly reviewed in a few minutes, and by that I mean: double checking so that each source verifies the claims it is used to support. The mere act of having visible sources that support facts as potentially verifiable is very important — however, videos without released and sourced scripts fail this on multiple levels. On several occasions accurate statements have been questioned (as is entirely in order) — and found lacking obvious supporting refences despite these being present or implied in articles. This should never have occurred, and I have in a wish to include videos deviated from my own recommended best practice.

Originally, I assumed all videos be captioned and released with transcripts, as the project started off by inviting the community to discuss and edit scripts. The step to stop posting scripts for community review, once it was deemed too few members involved themselves with the review (often none commenting) was a major mistake. I believe in fact that this was the single action that did this project in. To assume that the lack of interest alone meant that this essential step of vetting could be skipped was dire.

It is perhaps following this, and my original enthusiasm that the medium influenced how I (and others?) later interpreted WP:BLUESKY and WP:LEDE in a way that was inconsistent with my attitude towards sourcing on Wikipedia. I now understand that my insistence that the videos correspond to ledes, makes this all the more pertinent. With other video materials (or images) we have not had the same requirements for WP:V. This in turn has caused me to view the videos in a contradictory fashion: as both alternate ledes, and as supplementary material with different WP:V requirements.

I went back to review some of the videos today, and I am ashamed to admit that I have engaged in motivated reasoning to promote the inclusion of the videos. I strongly object to the essay Wikipedia:Wikipedia is not YouTube, as it ignores much research showing how messages conveyed through multiple different formats tend to offer the both best sustained and immediate learning. Having videos on Wikipedia is I believe an important evolutionary step for us — but my insistence on including these particular videos at every cost was in poor judgement.

I found myself very alone at times in this debate, and I believe that others supporting videos on Wikipedia did so as well. The onslaught has been massive, which prompted me to attempt to respond to more queries and accusations than I have been truly able to. I have therefor taken shortcuts, made assumptions and responded inaccurately at times. I felt a strong need to clear myself of accusations of conflict of interest, which I still consider patently false. The same is true for the idea that narrated videos are bad for Wikipedia, which I strongly object to. I realize that aspects of my conduct have not helped this situation, and that I have also exhibited what is known as the backfire effect. To have my motives questioned has caused me to double down on my initial position, without considering other potential issues. If nothing else I hope that this can be a point of learning for other Wikipedians.

A large influencing factor has been how I perceived the initial discussion — as a massive wall of text that started on Jimbo's talk-page and came here with ready-formed notions of the project’s intent and a large helping of assumed bad faith towards those who supported it. This may not be true, but with the immediate insistance to remove several years worth of work — this is how it was perceived. The additional antipathy advocated by some towards any continued collaboration, including to fix the videos — made me want to defend the project more strongly. To lose a collaboration that has run for years, which I believe could have benefited Wikipedia much in the future is regrettable, and I acted to preserve it. Retaining a positive relationship with collaborators that know little of Wikipedia's process was nigh on impossible — and some of my most desperate attempts to salvage what remained reflect that. I am neither proud of my actions or the result as a whole.

It has been expressed that this WikiProject is insular and does not welcome outside views. This I perceive has in part been due to the antagonism expressed towards some of our fundamental principles. I find that this WikiProject is not so much insular as very welcoming to those willing to contribute, but essentially ignored by the broader community — that is until some issue is found that is objected to, when these types of major debates ensue. Many of our principles, such as MEDRS are simply extensions of broader community norms, such as WP:RS — which already stipulate that content likely to be questioned should adhere to stricter standards. MEDRS acknowledges that medical content is very likely to be questioned and that finding the most appropriate medical sources is difficult for the uninitiated.

This text took me quite a while to write, I may go back and clarify aspects.
(Diffs: [44], [45], [46], no diffs for spelling/grammar fixes)
I will also be taking a break for a shorter while to contemplate what went wrong. I hope this can be taken as the starting point for a discussion on the merits of videos rather than what was wrong with specific cases (better to keep that to individual talk pages). I hope my analysis of the situation can shed some light. Carl Fredrik talk 21:21, 3 April 2018 (UTC)

Thank you Carl for making this statement. Those are very good insights into the dynamics of polarization. I wish you a peaceful time off. Best, Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 03:42, 4 April 2018 (UTC)
Yes, thank you Carl. The fact that WP:V and WP:RS don't apply to images has worried me for some time. I can see how that fed into this Osmosis project and hopefully this event will prompt some discussion, eventually, about the lack of verifiability and reliability across many images used on enWP.
There's a lot to think about here, and I really appreciate your insights above. If you do step away for a bit, please come back soon. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 04:21, 4 April 2018 (UTC)
The suggestion to put inline references within the scripts and link the scripts to the video could potentially solve the WP:V and WP:MEDRS issues. Still will not make updating super easy though. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 04:28, 4 April 2018 (UTC)
We don't, AFAIK, have any exemption from WP:V/RS for images. Just it appears common sense. To some degree a single image can often be verified. You can look at the image on Commons, its category, and confirm that is indeed a photo of Big Ben, or look at other photos of Big Ben and agree they are the same. So perhaps many images don't fall into the "challenged or likely to be challenged". But when they do, an inline citation can be put into the caption or file description page (e.g. File:Ketogenic diets pie MCT.svg). For the videos at WP:NOTYOUTUBE they don't make any claims other than to be what they are: a video of a plasma lamp glowing, etc. Editors disputing that could remove that single image. I don't think the script solves the problem and begs the question about what the video is actually adding and whether a narrated lecture is in any way appropriate for WP. Guys, this is not a problem for WP:MED to discuss and resolve. You need to take this to the whole community, and also hand it off to someone who didn't edit war to protect a $2million investment by his partners. Really, stop trying to do this yourselves. - Colin°Talk 08:11, 4 April 2018 (UTC)
It is not unreasonable to try for a local consensus for WPMED before trying to convince the rest of the community, one way or the other. At best a robust and usable guideline could be developed which would have general application on English Wikipedia. If a way can be found to fit video and WP:V/MEDRS together it would be a strong starting position for a site wide RfC. Can it be done? I don't know. I see no immediately obvious solutions, but somebody else might. · · · Peter (Southwood) (talk): 14:52, 4 April 2018 (UTC)
I still think that it is perfectly possible to have a list of sources that should verify the contents of a video, in just the same way as a reference should verify the contents of a piece of article text. The description page for a video has plenty of room for sources and I can see no reason why we should not expect the same standards of RS/MEDRS for those. If you look at File:Abscesses 1.webm, you can see an example. if you look at File:Achondroplasia 1.webm and compare it with File:Achondroplasia.webm, you'll see that I cleaned up the references a little (and excised "Wikipedia - Various pages" for obvious reasons). That wasn't too hard. If the source does not support the video, or more sources are required, we have perfectly good maintenance templates to flag that up. When it comes to sourcing, there's no point in re-inventing the wheel, when all it needs is a fresh set of tyres to take on a new job. --RexxS (talk) 16:35, 4 April 2018 (UTC)
Having a prominent transcript with inline referencing and inline maintenance templates would be a good solution to WP:V for videos. I don't think our current technology supports this well - for one thing, the maintenance templates reference Commons templates, not en-wiki templates - , but that could in theory be fixed. Capacity for inline referencing is absolutely fundamental to WP:V. By the way, I have re-added "Wikipedia - Various sources" to File:Achondroplasia 1.webm in order to preserve transparency to readers about what sources the author used (WP:SAYWHEREYOUREADIT). Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 17:08, 4 April 2018 (UTC)
Any maintenance templates would need to be added where the video is used, e.g. in a Wikipedia article, not on Commons. There would be little point in adding a monolingual maintenance template there. I've reverted your addition of "Wikipedia - Various sources" to the Commons video that I uploaded. It's neither a reliable source, nor has it any value in informing the reader where to look among our 5,000,000+ articles for a source. I'm not interested in playing your blame-game, but if anybody wants to level the criticism that the original video used unreliable sources, the original video is still there on Commons to refer to. --RexxS (talk) 18:09, 4 April 2018 (UTC)
  • There is a disease, where people are gradually losing their own memory, but I don't remember it's name right now. Nevertheless, I quite clearly remember people who were asserting, high and loud, that these videos were easy to edit. How shall we evaluate the technical expertise of the said persons in the next coming technical discussions about the topic? Pldx1 (talk) 13:39, 4 April 2018 (UTC)
  • By demonstration? If someone claims a thing can be done to a video, they can show and tell. This is at least easier than proving a thing can't be done, which can be tedious. Easy is also a relative thing. what is easy for one may be near impossible for another. Some competence may be necessary, even spcial software. Nevertheless showing the before and after is reasonable evidence of something done between. · · · Peter (Southwood) (talk): 14:52, 4 April 2018 (UTC)

The other issues

I would say that the concerns raised about the Osmosis videos fall into three broad categories.

The first category of concerns – mostly what is being discussed immediately above – go to our educational and informational mission as an open encyclopedia.

  • Long-form video presents unique challenges with respect to editability. For anyone without access to the original narrator, for instance, correcting something as a small as a single word of narration often means re-recording the entire voice-over. Videos aren't susceptible to the same easy discussion and revision that text is; we're much closer to a binary take-it-or-leave-it situation.
  • Long-form video presents particular challenges with respect to WP:V and sourcing. Do we require inline notes at the bottom of the screen? Endnotes at the end of the video? Footnoted scripts? Throw up our hands in despair?
  • Long-form video often has accessibility issues, unless great care is taken to ensure consistent and complete captioning.
  • For long-form video summaries, how do we decide which articles get them, and who decides if they stay or go, and where do they appear in the article? Who signs off on the script and storyboard?
  • Is it appropriate or viable to present many of our topics in a long-form video format at all?

Those are difficult enough, certainly. I don't pretend to have exhaustively summarized them here, either. In any case, there are two other categories of sometimes-uncomfortable questions and concerns that we shouldn't lose track of when dealing with collaborations in general, rather than videos specifically. These thoughts have been bubbling in my head since the Osmosis issue first gained wide visibility, and they're thoughts that should be on hand from the outset when contemplating content collaborations going forward. So...

The second category of issues relates to how information about collaborations like this one should be discussed, communicated to the community, and monitored, and how the parameters of such projects should be established and modified.

  • For this collaboration, on-wiki notifications seem to have been confined primarily to WP:MED's talk page. Special:WhatLinksHere/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Medicine/Osmosis and Special:WhatLinksHere/Wikipedia:Osmosis are both very short lists. Both of those pages were little-watched and infrequently-updated.
  • The scale and scope of the project wasn't clearly set in advance, and there wasn't a widely-publicized invitation to review the collaboration after any milestones (say, after the first 10 videos). There wasn't an announcement at the outset or in the interim that "We're going to put 300+ videos up". Again, nothing made it to WP:CENT or the Village Pump or any widely-watched "general interest" policy pages.
  • Relatedly, differences in degree can eventually become differences in kind—to borrow the old saw, "Quantity has a quality all its own." Something that might have been tolerated as a stretch of Wikipedia's convention if deployed on a small scale or as an isolated video or two takes on a different character when it becomes a campaign across hundreds of articles.
  • Where contributed content was added to Wikipedia articles, it was done without meaningful edit summaries. (The one-word summary "(added)" got a lot of use; sometimes there was no edit summary at all.) We probably could have had this discussion much earlier and much less acrimoniously if something positive like "(New summary video from Osmosis collaboration. Help out at WP:Osmosis!)" were used, or if a talk page template had been added, or other active recruitment steps had been taken.
  • There is a difference between what I would call 'passive' and 'active' transparency. Passive transparency is what you get when a project answers questions when asked; active transparency happens when a project makes an effort to draw the community's attention to what they're doing. This collaboration had some of the former and very little of the latter. CFCF has made repeated reference to the idea of "implicit consensus"; the problem with passive transparency is that "nobody outside a narrow circle of insiders really grasped the scale and nature of what was happening" gets mistaken for consensus, and those insiders feel badly abused when the dam breaks.
  • The collaboration seems to have been organized, managed, and driven by representatives of the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) and the Wikimedia WikiProject Med Foundation (WPMEDF), rather than by anyone wearing a plain old English Wikipedia hat. Perhaps there should be more emphasis on consultation with the actual encyclopedia projects.
  • It's possible that different standards should apply (perhaps I should say different amounts of caution are required?) when considering collaborations with for-profit companies versus non-profits versus advocacy organizations versus other NGOs versus government agencies. More on this in the third category section.

The third category relates to a certain...naiveté...about the nature of marketing and the potential commercial value of some collaborations.

  • Wikipedia and Wikipedians have always expressed an intense and near-universal distaste for advertising on the project. While we acknowledge the need to give credit to our contributors (and indeed get quite upset when contributors aren't properly acknowledged) we also have very tightly regulated the ways in which that credit is given. Text edits get credit in the article history, not inline. Image contributors receive credit on the description pages, not in the article. We regularly trim out external links to video and other content when we feel that the balance between informational value and promotion (of the external site) leans too far towards marketing. We reject images which are watermarked. Collaborations need to bear these sensitivities in mind.
  • In this particular instance, Osmosis was giving away what amounted to 'free samples' of their commercial product: a subscription service supplying educational videos aimed at medical students. Those samples were placed prominently in relevant Wikipedia articles, with Osmosis branding appearing at the beginning and end of each video, and links to Osmosis social media (YouTube, Facebook, Twitter) at the end. There does not appear to have been a discussion about the nature of acknowledgement given in these videos, and how or why that should differ from other inline media appearing in Wikipedia articles.
  • There seems to have been an agreement or understanding that this branded content would be placed in prominent, privileged positions within Wikipedia articles (infoboxes or the first section of the article body), and Wikipedia's Osmosis project members appear to have been willing to edit war to keep them there. We should again not fail to appreciate the commercial value of that position and protection.
  • It appears that Osmosis was...not entirely forthright about its plans to divorce its "open" operations from its business operations. And even if they had created a separate "open" foundation, it's questionable whether or not the distinction would have been anything more than cosmetic. Linking prominently to "open.osmosis.org" (which has a prominent ad for Osmosis' commercial product when you scroll down the page) and pretending that doesn't have promotional value for "osmosis.org" is flimsy stuff.
  • There have been comments made to the effect that No one will want to collaborate with us anymore because we just threw out all of Osmosis' good faith effort on a whim. Frankly, Osmosis got something like two years of prominent marketing placement on hundreds of Wikipedia articles, and two years of claiming a formal relationship with Wikipedia in their marketing and promotional materials. Whatever it cost them to produce their videos was a bargain compared to the value of the product placement that they got here. Any reduction in new collaborations won't be because Osmosis was treated poorly—it will be because we're unlikely to give away the store so willingly in the future.

Okay, that's what I've got. I'm not saying we need to resolve these questions (or even necessarily have a discussion about them) right now, but I wanted to make sure that I got them out there so that they would be available for the next collaboration. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 14:05, 5 April 2018 (UTC)

I think this is an exercise in orogenesis. The policies and guidelines that apply to all our content apply. No special considerations should be applicable. If a video is licensed appropriately and in an acceptable format it may be considered. The content must be verifiable, and appropriate for the article. It may not be unduly biased or constitute advertising. It must be acceptably accessible and follow relevant MoS closely enough to be appropriate for the article. If it meets all the criteria for inclusion, it may be included. If someone challenges it, they must be specific enough to allow verification of the claimed problem. If the problem is found to be important enough, a local consensus to delete would be sufficient. While disputed a boldly added video must remain reverted until discussion is over. Even if there is only a small amount of the content that is sufficiently unsuitable, the whole thing must go until it has been fixed, and may not be reinstated without local consensus. Fixing the problems may be a lot of work, even impossible, but that is how it goes. This may make substantial videos very difficult to include in medical articles. So it goes. It may be better to split them up into short videos. We find out by experience. I may have missed a few details, but it is really a molehill, not a mountain. It is up to the creators of videos to ensure they are suitable if they want them to be used. We do not guarantee that any content will always be acceptable. Change happens. · · · Peter (Southwood) (talk): 19:43, 5 April 2018 (UTC)
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