This is an archive of past discussions on Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.
I thought that was a little strange, but I don't know who originally pinned it, and I didn't want to mess with something I didn't understand the purpose of. It's in reference to the cover image (I assume because there's no convenient way to give CC attribution in the image itself) -- maybe we could just put a small overlay on part of the image indicating its author and license, or use a public domain image (which we still attribute somewhere, just not the pinned tweet, which is quite valuable real estate).jp×g07:07, 31 July 2022 (UTC)
Oh, wait a minute, it literally is a public domain photo. Sorry, I still have learning to read on my to-do list. I guess we don't need to provide attribution so aggressively in the first place. jp×g07:32, 31 July 2022 (UTC)
IMO the pinned tweet should normally/always be the current issue, so that subsequent tweets don't bury the main link. Headbomb {t · c · p · b}09:02, 31 July 2022 (UTC)
Anyway, on that note, maybe we should have a different cover image. Here is a table of my analysis.
Advertisement shilling a... series of BuzzFeed News branded stationery items (we all know times have been tough over there)
As far as I can tell, the thing every fancy-ass paper does is they use a fancy-ass version of their logotype for the header image. Local news uses a photo of the city's skyline. Some publications which already have a well established signature in-house design style use high quality art drawn in that style. This gives us the option of "establish a signature in-house design style and become high-quality artists", "take a long-exposure nighttime photo of the Wikipedia skyline", or "our logotype". jp×g07:32, 31 July 2022 (UTC)
I suppose there's the option of using the Wikipedia globe as a little background image. Presuming we're allowed to. Or we could ask an A.I. to design it. Because that's our thing now? Adam Cuerden(talk)Has about 8% of all FPs01:24, 1 August 2022 (UTC)
I'd go for the logotype. I think the fake-old look of our logotype is actually a bit dorky, but it's established now. AndreasJN46611:08, 2 August 2022 (UTC)
Did we end up with a decision about the Twitter header image here? Btw here are relevant instructions from Twitter regarding dimensions and cropping. Regards, HaeB (talk) 00:55, 1 September 2022 (UTC)
August issue is out
The publishing script didn't mess up too bad, I don't think -- the only thing that didn't go through was trying to add the "next" links in articles from last month. Although the prep for this issue did take about an hour longer than it had to, because my Internet is not very good. Oh well. I managed to get images put together for everything, which I will put on the main page. Someone else can dick around here and archive the rest of the threads from this month (just do it manually, though -- we still haven't cleaned up the mess from the last couple months of OneClickArchiver). jp×g00:01, 1 September 2022 (UTC)
Thanks, and applause! ;)
The image choice looks fine to me, except that I find the Wikimania one very confusing. Also, it seems that the last item (From the archives) has no image?
Regarding the layout on WP:POST, can we find a way to make sure that an image and its associated article do not end up in separate columns?
Regarding archiving of this talk page, I would still recommend to just let the bot do its work like on other talk pages (also because some threads may still be active).
I will try to take care of the usual @wikisignpost Twitter announcement in about seven hours or so, unless EpicPupper or someone else wants to take this on.
I didn't read both notices, thought you (all) wanted this manually archived. Do you want it reverted? ☆ Bri (talk) 00:46, 1 September 2022 (UTC)
Yeah, the way it is is fine. I think there were a couple sections with ongoing stuff that ought to stay on, but I can take care of those later. jp×g00:47, 1 September 2022 (UTC)
I also note that in your above link, the clusterfuck didn't come from this page, but from /Suggestions and other pages. Headbomb {t · c · p · b}17:59, 1 September 2022 (UTC)
@HaeB: Oh, that explains it! I was looking through the archives to find examples of the messed-up archive sections last night, and I totally failed to find any, and I was starting to doubt my own sanity. Who all was fixing them? Some barnstars are in order, because this is a task I'd been dreading for months. jp×g23:02, 2 September 2022 (UTC)
Mailing list announcements
Andreas, are you going to do the mailing list post(s) again this month? (FWIW, I continue to think it would be best to use a/the "official" Signpost email address for this. But I'm not sure if EpicPupper or anyone else has sorted out the access issue yet.)
I forgot to mention last time that we have a nice pre-generated output for these, ready for copying and pasting.
I've posted it, using the pre-generated output (thanks!). [2] While I am happy to continue doing it, I agree it would make more sense for it to come from an official account. Cheers, AndreasJN46608:29, 1 September 2022 (UTC)
It means nothing, they're just copy pasting from the village pump / AN (or wherever that's at now) and going rawrawrawraw. Headbomb {t · c · p · b}10:24, 2 September 2022 (UTC)
Indeed; I'm not quite sure what the actual provenance of this story is. It could be the case that the WPO poster found about this independently, or it could be the case that the tidbit in question was getting passed around somewhere else. It could also be the case that this is a big-ass nothing, as seems to be implied below (although it may still be kind of a "strange news" item in itself even if the causes are totally quotidian and benign). Rawrawrawraw, as they say. jp×g19:35, 2 September 2022 (UTC)
Most of the duscussiob is here. I've only spent an hour or so, looking thru this but it looks quite overblown. A WMF employee in quality assurance made some test changes to article short descriptions (not seen by readers?) and reverted them in a couple of minutes. It's not paid editing per policy, the discussion started with a block, the block to me looks like it could have been avoided just by asking the editor what he was doing. There are a lot of folks describing the block and the extensive discussion as a "collective climbing of the Reichstag". It would take a lot of work to check out all of this, but right now it just looks overblown. Smallbones(smalltalk)17:10, 2 September 2022 (UTC)
Here's my summary of the discussion
WMF software test employee (let's call them Jane) was unaware of the test account naming policy
Jane created several accounts for legitimate QA testing
None of the accounts were declared to enwiki community
Jane was running test edits on the live enwiki
The testing on enwiki was also not declared to the enwiki community
The test edits involved deliberately tripping edit filters with profanity
The test edits were reverted by Jane in ~1 minute
Someone else in the enwiki community saw the edits and started a vandalism investigation
Concurrently or due to the vandalism investigation the several accounts created as #2 were discovered by checkuser
One or all of the accounts were blocked by enwiki administrators
Jane opened an OTRS ticket to explain who they were and asked to be unblocked
Jane has also been communicating with the community on their enwiki user talkpage
Legitimate QA testing is designed to improve the encyclopedia therefore doesn't actually merit being called WP:Vandalism, though it was clearly useful to start the investigation in #8 as such
WMF T&S is going to educate the WMF software team so this doesn't happen again
Discussed at Village Pump but not resolved as far as I can see is whether a WMF employee doing routine maintenance is a "researcher" as defined at WP:NOTLAB. Item #4 could be a enwiki policy violation if true.
Speaking of WO, given that we're now (rightly) crediting tarantino in ITM with the discovery of the MacMasters toaster hoax, I think we should also link to the WO blog post that sparked Rauwerda's Input Mag article. It's a solid piece.
As for the Village Pump hubbub, I agree with Bri's summary. In a better world, with better relations between WMF and community, this would have been handled with much less fuss. AndreasJN46619:11, 2 September 2022 (UTC)
My inclination is not to link anything that could be considered an attack site, but I don't know how bad WO is nowadays. I know it used to be pretty meanspirited 10 years ago. Adam Cuerden(talk)Has about 8.1% of all FPs23:59, 2 September 2022 (UTC)
I'll support what Adam wrote and the only reason I won't go way beyond that is that I don't want to insult anybody or cause needless controversy. Everything in WO is suspect as far as I'm concerned. AGF does not apply. Based on 99% of their history, it might be the opposite. We should never link to them. Rarely, I think we should acknowledge that they exist. But that's about it. Smallbones(smalltalk)14:15, 3 September 2022 (UTC)
I can't say what a terrible idea I think this is - both the recommendations in the PDF from the German chapter (which represents only people living in the country, not all German speakers) and the idea that we should put the recommendation forward as something reasonable for Wikipedians to discuss. In the last couple of issues The Signpost has had 3 articles or major article sections editorializing against fundraising by the WMF. Are we all really comfortable engaging in a campaign against WMF fundraising?
The German country chapter goes well beyond this. It is recommending (despite a proforma denial that they are making recommendations) that the whole structure of the Wikipedia movement be changed. As I read the recommendation, it would result in the WMF becoming a mere secretariat answering to a council of country chapters, which would almost surely be controlled by the few country chapters that can raise a surplus of cash from within their borders (including using online banners). It looks to me something like a proposed takeover of the WMF by at most 6 country chapters. I doubt that most of these country chapters are actually interested in doing that, and that complete chaos would ensue.
If the EiCs are interested in publishing something from the German chapter, I recommend that the EiCs ask the German Chapter to rewrite their Signpost article to concentrate on their actual recommendation. Right now there are only a couple hundred words on the actual recommendation. I'd also like to respond in a pro-con type article. I can give them a good draft to consider a week before publication. I wouldn't need to see their Signpost draft since I have the recommendation pdf. Smallbones(smalltalk)16:32, 9 September 2022 (UTC)
I'm absolutely in favour of running a piece with an opposing view in parallel – or if not in this issue, then in the following one, like we did some years ago with the Wikidata series:
As for a pro-con article, Nikki, Smallbones and I did something similar once before: Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2021-06-27/Forum. It worked quite well (though Smallbones may have something with less back-and-forth in mind in this case).
At any rate, I think it is an important discussion to have; and WM Germany is the second largest organisation in our movement, so their opinion has weight. AndreasJN46619:38, 9 September 2022 (UTC)
I'd be up for something in this format or similar. with a few warnings and at least one requirement added. The warnings
It's quite a job editing something like that (I edited it), getting both sides working together to make the article even though they're on diametrically opposed sides. @JPxG: would you agree to edit it if both sides agree?
I don't think that I could respond to something officially written by the German Chapter (the pdfs), are too officially composed with approx. "we're not making any recommendations" in there. I'd hope that they could find *somebody* who agrees enough with the basic recommendation, that I could actually disagree with something they write.
Otherwise there's no point in having a discussion.
Since I won't be able to assume that the writer exactly follows the pdfs, I'd want to see a good draft 10 days before publication and I'd provide mine at the same time.
BTW I assume the writer would say something like "The WMF should be reformed into a secretariat serving a global council formed of country chapters who raise the main chunk of Movement money on their own with a monopoly on fundraising within their borders." Of course the writer could determine their own position and arguments and I'd respond to those, but the quoted text (my summary of the recommendation) is what I object to in the pdfs.
@EpicPupper and JPxG: Do I need to keep mentioning this here? It's kind of a thing I do as part of my workflow, so I have time to get in and revise, so it's going to be every month. This month, it's the CommonsComix, From the Archives and - most likely before the end of the month - Featured Content that are marked as postponed that are me getting ahead on next month, and just need kept for next month's publication.
Thank you so much! Once I saw it, and that face, I knew there had to be something done with it. If we get another hoax this month, I'd say swap this one into this issue, and delay the "Anyone can edit" one. Adam Cuerden'(talk)Has about 8.1% of all FPs01:26, 8 September 2022 (UTC)
One I'm still workshopping is:
I know I want to have something in the sky as the cause of it, but it's too late to just put "What is Wikipedia's definition of a recession?" there. Adam Cuerden(talk)Has about 8.1% of all FPs01:35, 8 September 2022 (UTC)
Queen Elizabeth
I guess we might have an article about how people edited about the Queen's death and about her successor? A lot of debates at Talk:Charles III right now (including about the page's title and the infobox picture). wizzito | say hello!21:39, 8 September 2022 (UTC)
It'll be in the traffic report. I don't think we need to cover more, unless there's some Wikipedia connection that happens at some point. Headbomb {t · c · p · b}23:27, 8 September 2022 (UTC)
Did I hear correctly on the NPR story that there were ~300 edit conflicts per minute? I'd like to know how to verify that. ☆ Bri (talk) 17:41, 15 September 2022 (UTC)
Neutrality
The Nieman Lab article (ITM) contains a little gem: Anton Protsiuk, programs coordinator at Wikimedia Ukraine, said that the Russian authorities have been fairly unsuccessful in promoting their point of view on Wikipedia, and that Russian-language Wikipedia has been largely neutral in terms of describing the war.
Surely there is a certain lack of self-awareness here? Needless to say, that is the one bit OpIndia seizes upon in their copycat piece (which we'd have to have specifically whitelisted for the page, if we want to link to it in ITM). Thoughts?
Isn't it obvious? He is saying (or quoted as saying, who knows what he actually said ...), in effect, "The other side we are at war with has been unsuccessful in having their view represented, therefore the presentation is neutral."
The very dictionary definition of "neutral" is "not favoring either side in a quarrel, contest, or war".
Neutrality is simply the wrong word to use here, it's like passing the ball to the opposing team at the six-yard box. It's helping the other side score. What OpIndia made of this, riffing on our definition of NPOV, is, Anton Protsiuk, the programs coordinator at Wikimedia Ukraine, said that the Russian authorities have been fairly unsuccessful in promoting their point of view on Wikipedia. This is a shocking admission from Wikipedia, as the platform claims to accommodate all viewpoints. Millions of people (OpIndia has millions of readers) will read that and nod.
He could have said something like, "I think we have done a fairly good job of keeping unchecked rumours and conspiracy theories out of the articles and stuck to established facts." --AndreasJN46620:10, 11 September 2022 (UTC)
Neutral, here, can be assumed to mean neutral in the WP:NPOV sense. Especially since we know very well that the Russian POV is very disconnected from reality. Headbomb {t · c · p · b}21:27, 11 September 2022 (UTC)
Well, WP:NPOV means (my emphases) "representing fairly, proportionately, and, as far as possible, without editorial bias, all the significant views that have been published by reliable sources on a topic." If you want to argue that disregarding Russian sources is "neutral" then you are forced to make the argument that Russian sources are not "reliable". However, then you also have to argue that saying so doesn't make you guilty of "editorial bias" – and that is a hard sell with anyone who is not firmly on your side already. To anyone on the opposing side it will simply sound like hypocrisy.
I mean, imagine a Russian making that argument. In fact, you don't have to imagine it, they are making that argument. They're saying Western sources are full of disinformation, disconnected from reality, not reliable. Their search engines now tag them just like Twitter is tagging Russian and Chinese (and some Western) sources as unreliable, in a sort of tit-for-tat.
And if Russians were now to tell you, on top of all of this, that eliminating all Western viewpoints is how they make sure that their news media is "neutral", you'd just feel even more disgusted. (Well, perhaps you wouldn't feel that, but I would ...) I know full well that Russia and China are authoritarian states without the benefit of a free press, and that the truth is bent, to a greater degree than in the West, by those in power. But even so, I think it's impossible to credibly claim to be "neutral" in a situation like this, and that it's counterproductive and needlessly inflammatory to try to make neutrality a talking-point.
A bit of humility would be better, especially since we know that a few years after the conclusion of such conflicts (think Vietnam, Iraq), Western reporting is generally found to have told a few whoppers as well. YMMV. --AndreasJN46622:18, 11 September 2022 (UTC)
I'm not saying that the truth is the average of two sides: if both sides lie, the truth may well be found somewhere that's orthogonal to both. What I am saying is that it is not very effective PR to claim that by excluding the viewpoint of the country you are at war with, you arrive at something that others should agree is "neutrality." AndreasJN46600:33, 12 September 2022 (UTC)
Yes, it might be worth asking him via email. Overall, he seems to be somebody who knows a lot about Wikipedia. I'd even say that I tend to agree with him for the most part, but what's his alternative? It would be funny if ... Follow the illustration. Smallbones(smalltalk)03:39, 12 September 2022 (UTC)
A comment they made on that video: "Wikipedia doesn't aspire to be an “overview.” I don't know why people keep saying this. It aspires to be the only place people get their information about anything, and it's been very successful at being that." ––FormalDude(talk)03:47, 12 September 2022 (UTC)
I'm not sure that is Wikipedia's aspiration, but it is how it is largely used in practice. Even visitors here rarely click on source links, as studies have shown. Users of Siri, Alexa, Google Assistant etc. who are offered Wikipedia content can't even do that. The goal of all these tech companies is indeed to be the only or main place people go to for knowledge because that maximises profit, and Wikipedia serves them well enough. AndreasJN46608:50, 12 September 2022 (UTC)
I've just emailed him to ask whats going on. With his article being deleted five (5) times, plus 2 related articles, plus at least 1 current draft (what happened to the other one?) plus other very suspicious circumstances. We just needed to ask. He's a professional journalist, posts his email, and asks for comments. He knows the drill: he can deny everything, or decline comment or ignore the email or answer it. Any of those improves the article. There's no need for anything related to outing. Smallbones(smalltalk)01:10, 13 September 2022 (UTC)
@Gråbergs Gråa Sång: Thanks for the link. There's not a whole lot of new info there, but the discussion there does seem to indicate reasons why McCullough might be biased. I'm thinking he might be trying to become the new Larry Sanger. The admin, afds, and illustration discussions at WP:VP are pretty interesting. I wonder if we can use the illustration? BTW, he didn't answer my invitation to comment. Smallbones(smalltalk)17:59, 23 September 2022 (UTC)
Thanks @Adam Cuerden: This *may* be key to the ITM section. Can we trace where that attribution came from? If it is from the original uploader then we're finished. If we can't do that somebody might say we're trying to out somebody - and that we might even be helping a Joe jobber. I have to remove your additions until I can verify the attribution. Smallbones(smalltalk)04:50, 24 September 2022 (UTC)
WereSpielChequers asked me to drop a note here regarding this, as there was some talk about being concerned that discussing me in conjunction with this in the Signpost might be seen as doxxing me. I just wanted to say that I have no problem being discussed here. I've not watched the video, and don't intend to (I have better things to do with my time than watch someone moan about this project); consequently, I don't know exactly what it says about me, beyond what I've heard reported elsewhere. But I can't imagine that there's anything to be discussed that I wouldn't want aired publicly. The only aspect of my life I tend to play close to the vest (outside of personal discussion among friends) is my politics, and that's largely due to considerations of my job more than anything else. I hope that covers the concern - if not, please let me know what else you might need from me. --Ser Amantio di NicolaoChe dicono a Signa?Lo dicono a Signa.20:19, 24 September 2022 (UTC)
[J.J. McCullough] seems to be trying to replace Larry Sanger as Wikipedians' most disliked commentator with a 22-minute YouTube video titled "Why I hate Wikipedia (and you should too!)
I just came here to say the same thing. The assumption is that Wikipedians will immediately "dislike" anyone who criticises the project the way McCullough has done. That sounds needlessly petulant ... it's also possible to just, you know, be mature about it, agreeing with some of his points and disagreeing with others, without getting unduly exercised by a bit of criticism. AndreasJN46616:43, 30 September 2022 (UTC)
I was amused to see that J. J. seemed to criticize the golf entry as an example of one of those collections of rambling, disorganized wiki-content. I re-wrote much of the article in 2009 when I was 15. Schierbecker (talk) 05:44, 26 September 2022 (UTC)
Death of Michael Gabler
Michael was not particularly active on the English Wikipedia, but has taken many photos which illustrate our articles. Thought it might be nice to include some this month in some fashion. I've gone through his Commons Featured Pictures, and here are some which are in use on enwp:
You're suggesting 2 galleries in one issue - one with a different rubric, perhaps "obituary" or maybe even "Celebrating his work". Is that correct @Adam Cuerden:. 2 major points, a) I'm not going to write a classic obituary. Since an obit is the toughest format in journalism b) I'll suggest no other Signposter try it either. If @Rhododendrites: and MG's friends want to get together and write an obit - that would be fine with me. The NY Times has several people working full-time in the obit department, who write up obits well ahead of time and report in a proper journalistic format and get all the details and the overall story right as close as can be expected from human beings. Other good newspapers try to do something similar. but IMHO it'salmost never good enough. The problem is that you have to sum up a person's life in a limited space and folks will see something different than you see and you cannot make even a perceived mistake without deeply offending somebody. Family and friends are already deeply upset - they can't be blamed for this, of course. So whatever you write - unless you are a consummate professional like the NY Times reporters - you are likely to offend somebody. To get around this some reporters praise the deceased with flowery over-done text. To me that is the worst option. Some papers have very limited formats, just giving the basic facts in an almost-fill-in-the-blank stories. I don't like that either. So why not do something different? All we really know editors by, in many cases, is their work. With photos this is easy. Just give the basic facts and then show what they did. I think most people would like that. Fortunately, this is not my call, but it is a sincere warning. Smallbones(smalltalk)16:41, 15 September 2022 (UTC)
I'd say just call it an "In focus", and do it gallery format. But that's my opinion. Or we could make my "Gallery" an "In Focus". Or just have two galleries. I don't really think anyone would care. Adam Cuerden(talk)Has about 8.1% of all FPs01:50, 16 September 2022 (UTC)
Um, I just noticed a 2022 case that was missing and added it. But still we maybe should have a year-end report. ☆ Bri (talk) 16:48, 13 September 2022 (UTC)
I added two more cases, but note that we seem to have switched over to a "suspend and desysop" thing for the last three admin cases, so I updated the chart to distinguish desysops following a suspend cases, and "plain" desysops that followed a full case. Maxim(talk)17:16, 13 September 2022 (UTC)
NPR story on Wikipedia
NPR aired a story about folks editing Queen Elizabeth's Wikipedia article after her death. The link is here but the story hasn't been posted yet as they usually post full segments after NPR's program has aired, so it'll probably be up tomorrow. LizRead!Talk!00:38, 15 September 2022 (UTC)
We should collectively decide how to approach this RfA. It might end up being decided via 'crat chat. Some comments have come up about the candidate's participation at a Wikipedia criticism site. Is that worth discussing in our pages? The RfA will close about 10 days before our writing deadline, so maybe we just wait and see what happens for now. ☆ Bri (talk) 17:39, 15 September 2022 (UTC)
RfA currently at 'crat chat with 72% supporting votes. I thought the discussion was newsy, here's a taste (Barkeep49): [T]he current "all or nothing" is a symptom of increased standards and "perfect" candidates rather than a suggestion that this problem is not currently an issue at RfA. It was kind of my take too, we've had an unusual run of near unanimous or actually unanimous RfAs, which is not normal looking back. ☆ Bri (talk) 02:01, 20 September 2022 (UTC)
@FormalDude: Thanks for writing up the questions and asking some "hardball" questions. If @ScottishFinnishRadish: wants to answer all those questions, that would be great. I'll suggest though that you cut down the number of questions or maybe consolidate a few, so that he can focus on giving good answers to just a few, say 5-7 questions. Otherwise he might not have the time. If you look at interviews in the mainstream press, the magic number seems to be 5 questions per interview. Smallbones(smalltalk)18:20, 23 September 2022 (UTC)
Interview looks great, I just finished copyediting and added it to article status table. If anybody wants to link some of the vocab quiz items like LTA, NPOV, COI, UPE it might be more readable for the less versed in our Wiki-arcana. ☆ Bri (talk) 18:01, 28 September 2022 (UTC)
@Bri: Thanks for the copyedit! I just added a footnote to the article, but I'm not sure if I formatted it correctly per Signpost standards. Could you take a look at that as well please? ––FormalDude(talk)02:21, 29 September 2022 (UTC)
The 'crat chat
Just had a quick scan of the 'crat chat and ... wow. 7–4 split by the 'crats, resulting in promotion.
Extended content
Consensus
28bytes
primefac
lee vilenski
worm that turned
nihonjoe
amandanp
uninvitedcompany
No consensus
silktork
dweller
xaosflus
warofdreams
I don't think I have ever seen anything like that discussion. Do the bureaucrats agree on what the discretionary range is? One of them said we have no consensus to promote but ... we should promote (emphasis in the original). I'm just ... wow. ☆ Bri (talk) 00:02, 22 September 2022 (UTC)
Awwww, I really hoped that, should something like this happen, we could finally cement that consensus requires (at least implicitly) consensus that the consensus is consensus, and thus consensus in favor of that consensus as being sufficient consensus for consensus to be considered consensus, ad infinitum. Would've made things cleaner, regardless of the fact that mentioning it makes "consensus" no longer sound like a real word. But alas, nobody started a process for determining if 7-4 bureaucrats is sufficient to judge something as having consensus. --Yair rand (talk) 07:58, 22 September 2022 (UTC)
That isn't how I read the cratchat - for starters the 7/4 figure you quote was before Nihonjoe and I made it 9/4. Cecropia, Dweller and Xaosflux then all indicated that though they didn't see consensus to promote in the RFA they agreed that the crat chat should be closed that way. So if you want the raw numbers 9 crats read the RFA as concensus to promote and 5 didn't, four recused or abstained and three didn't participate, including two who haven't edited in several months. 9 to 5 is not a close result, especially with 3 of those 5 agreeing that the cratchat should close as a success. There was discussion in 2019 about moving the cratchats to a consensus model. That discussion was prompted by some narrow majorities. People interested in pursuing such a change may wish to revisit Wikipedia_talk:Bureaucrat_discussion#Improving bureaucrat discussions. But it would have the effect of at least partially reversing the community decision to change the discretionary zone from 70-75% to 65-75%. ϢereSpielChequers12:07, 22 September 2022 (UTC)
Sorry, when one 'crat says what I quoted above, and another one says the RfA did not have consensus, [but] this CratChat clearly does I think it’s reasonable for a seasoned 'Pedian to say “huh?" and I can’t even imagine the mind of someone new to all this who expects a plain yes-or-no to the question "was there consensus to make this individual an admin or not?" ☆ Bri (talk) 02:44, 23 September 2022 (UTC)
Hi Bri, The first seems clear to me, with the second my only quibble is whether we describe the crat process as a consensual one as it has had some narrow majorities in the past. Both of those comments were made by crats who were clear that while they didn't see consensus for promotion in the RFA, once the cratchat was 9-5 they agreed that the cratchat should close with promotion for the candidate. This was my first crat chat, and I was among the 9 who did see consensus to promote in the RFA. Had things been different, had four of my colleagues read the RFA the other way and the raw vote been 9-5 for no consensus, I suspect I'd have been in the position of saying that while I read the RFA as consensus for promotion I accepted that the crat chat should close as the RFA having no consensus for promotion. Putting this another way, if the raw vote among the crats was 13 to 1 with the one outsider saying that in their view "we have no consensus to promote, but we should close the cratchat as promote" would you still say "Huh?" ϢereSpielChequers19:01, 23 September 2022 (UTC)
13.38 year cryptocurrency criminal scam/hoax on Wiki
Member states of the World Sports Alliance appears to be a hoax/scam article running since April 29, 2009 (and still going) making it the 21st longest running hoax. There's quite a few complications, so I'm just writing this to set it down in writing the first time and get some feedback.
Asa Saint Claire was sentenced last week to 42 months in federal prison plus 3 years supervision for scamming $600,000+ from investors [4] which mirrors the conviction report [5], which call it his organization.
There are no real sources in the article. Footnotes are mostly explanations. Sources are more like "See also". There was also an article Word Sports Alliance[6] which was quickly deleted the first time on March 16 2009, and twice later (2013, 2017) via speedy deletions (2009, 2017) and a prod (2013). User talk:World sports alliance made 2 edited and was blocked for spamming, and edits disappeared the same day [7]
It's doubtful that the cryptocurrency scam was the purpose back in 2009 (Bitcoin only really got started about 2010). Part of me says "AGF" thinking that he couldn't have started this as a scam/hoax that far back - maybe it was just "wishful thinking" on his part. But when somebody gets convicted and thrown in a federal prison, it's hard to assume good faith. There is an existing website for the "organization" (did it ever have any real documented existence?) at [8] which seems to be a sporys/charity site (with no links to anything credible) but some links get info cryptoscam territory [9]. Ultimately it's impossible for me to say that the organization even exists. other than their own say-so and the US Courts which only associate it with Saint Claire.
We are definitely going to submit the promised article in time for your formatting for the upcoming issue. The best column for it would be "In Focus', could you reserve that slot for it please? Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 12:36, 18 September 2022 (UTC)
@JPxG and EpicPupper: Just wanted to confirm that we are going with the September 30 date that Headbomb had put in provisionally [10]. (Generally speaking I think we should stick with the last Sunday of the month as our established custom. But this month, next week Friday works for me personally too.) Regards, HaeB (talk) 02:41, 22 September 2022 (UTC)
On the 19th, POTD was Queen Elizabeth. TFA was Elizabeth II, and, much to both I (POTD co-ordinator) and Wehwalt (TFA co-ordinator)'s surprise, DYK was an Elizabeth II special.
I knew TFA might go Elizabeth II when I started the process, but didn't know for sure until a lot of work had been done. I think Wehwalt learned when I told him. We both learned about DYK on the day, as far as I'm aware.
This has started one of those Talk:Main Page threads that go on at... great length. This one happened one section under the discussion of whether we should rush procedure to allow an Elizabeth II POTD, which mentioned the TFA.
I don't want to deny people's feelings on the matter. If they feel it was too much attention to Elizabeth II, that's fair. One person suggested the POTD discussion should have also been linked from the Village Pump. Which is probably the most actionable thing in that whole discussion, and fair.
At the same time, it's one of those discussions that get quite nasty. While I get that people may have been caught unawares, there was literally no opposition until the day of, every discussion up to then was enthusiastically in favour, so acting as if the people organising the Main Page should have known better, or as if no attempt was made to tell them is a bit counterfactual. It's also the case that themed main pages, outside of the occasional holidays, come about maybe every few years. A two-week turnover time from death to funeral date was about the minimum such things could possibly have been done in - and, well, in the absence of the extreme pageantry (and accompanying shutdown of the country) found in a state funeral, there's not much point. Point being: The circumstances that allowed it to happen at all are unique enough that I'm not sure there's any lessons to learn that will ever apply again.
Perhaps you might acknowledge a mistake in having POTD add an image to a topic already covered at TFA, rather than suggesting that the Signpost should continue to fan the flames? You already knew TFA was running Elizabeth when you started the POTD thread. A very few people thought it was a good idea to double down on coverage; it turns out that maybe it wasn't such a good idea, and the overkill probably would have gotten complaints even if DYK had not pushed it over the top by converting the entire main page to Elizabeth. (ITN is a different matter; there was a thread somewhere where someone indicated they would pull the funeral ITN to avoid duplication, and it's unclear what happened there.) What is the benefit in fueling the flames of a mistake? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:19, 23 September 2022 (UTC)
This is simple facts: It was discussed, in public locations, to nothing but support up until the day of. This doesn't invalidate complaints about it. People have every right to say they think it was a bad idea. But they don't get to say there weren't attempts to give them a chance to object to it beforehand. Further, it wouldn't have happened in the first place had they brought up their objections beforehand. Oddly enough, the part that I honestly think was the most questionable aspect - that the image was rushed to main page before the FPC even closed - to my knowledge hasn't been criticised at all. I've even said repeatedly that if that's a problem to anyone, I'd wholeheartedly apologise for it. It was against standard procedure. That's why I felt it was incredibly important to make sure the community supported it before doing it.
Thing is, I'm open to criticism, but I didn't even discover there was a main page discussion until about 9, 10 pm on the day. I'm not psychic, and there's nothing I can do if every indication in the leadup is that something will be completely non-controversial.
The thing is, I'd feel I was doing a worse job as a co-ordinator if I didn't bring the suggestion forwards. It was suggested to me by someone I'm not going to mention here because I'm not going to make them a target. I worked with them to improve the suggestion, and then brought it to the community. If a Main Page co-ordinator isn't meant to listen to people, what's the point of having one?. Adam Cuerden(talk)Has about 8.1% of all FPs20:05, 23 September 2022 (UTC)
600 Featured Pictures likely in October
Also, probably should note I'm at 595 featured pictures at the moment - really, a bit higher, as I include only ones I had substantial input into restoring and preparing, not ones that I just nominated or don't feel I did enough (I also have halves in the count) - There's currently two up at WP:FPC (with four votes each, one short of quorum), and a couple more I'm holding off on nominating until the ones in the queue are passing. Adam Cuerden(talk)Has about 8.1% of all FPsAdam Cuerden(talk)Has about 8.1% of all FPs19:08, 23 September 2022 (UTC)
Masnick says, Under the law, Wikipedia cannot “censor” based on “the viewpoint of the user.” But, Wikipedia is constantly edited by users. Even if you were to claim that a user chose to edit an entry because of the “viewpoint” of the content, how would Wikipedia even prevent that?
This argument doesn't seem to hold water. After all, such deletions would not be made by the Wikimedia Foundation (the social media platform in this case) but by users (from whose actions the WMF is isolated by Section 230). Moreover, with every edit, users agree to the WMF Terms of Use, which state clearly that this is a collaboratively edited reference project (rather than a microblog site like Twitter) and participation is subject to project policies.
Note that to link OpIndia we have to apply for an exemption as it is blacklisted ... really kind of crackers. Here is a not blacklisted source: [13] The OpIndia article is here: opindia. com /2022/09/delhi-court-issues-notice-to-wikipedia-over-deletion-of-tuhin-a-sinhas-page/ AndreasJN46619:05, 27 September 2022 (UTC)
@Bri: Need your advice please. When you and I were running The Signpost a few years ago, I seem to recall some complaints that articles were not sourced. On the other hand, our predecessors sometimes stripped sources out and admittedly, traditional newspaper articles are not cluttered with refs and footnotes. The NPP team's article is extensively referenced in order to avoid suggestions that the content is made up or, the usual complaint that it is taken out if context. If you have a moment, please let me know what the current Signpost policy is on displaying sources. We have no objections to leaving them out and the article would look nicer. If readers require them, they can always be cited in answers to post-publication comments. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 21:45, 26 September 2022 (UTC)
I'm not aware of a formal policy on this. Why not leverage the medium and publish the main article with a link to an annotated article for the people who want to see the sources? ☆ Bri (talk) 23:24, 26 September 2022 (UTC)
If it helps, I generally use plain hyperlinks to sources instead of references. You know, like, - well, let's presume our reference link is wikipedia.org for a moment, I might just link it somewhere in the text it cites. However, Bri's idea might also be good if there's too many sources. Adam Cuerden(talk)Has about 8.1% of all FPs00:25, 27 September 2022 (UTC)
@Bri:, a last minute update has been made to the In Focus article. We hope there is time to include this before it is trancluded to The Signpost proper or whatever happens next. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 01:25, 30 September 2022 (UTC)
My 2 cents: Sort of interesting but what former CEOs do after stockpiling their celebrity salaries on the WMF for a few years on the work the volunteers do for free is probably not exciting news. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 06:10, 28 September 2022 (UTC)
Coolest Tool Award
Hello! I'm a Developer Advocate with the Technical Engagement team and would like to announce the call for Coolest Tool Award nominations similar to the entry we have here(under | Brief Notes) for previous editions. I made a request on the talkpage | here 2 days ago, but I'm not sure if that's all I need to do.
Can we have the above announcement made as part of this coming publication?
SSapaty (WMF) (talk) 12:54, 29 September 2022 (UTC)
Publishing time Friday
Do we want to tweak the publishing time? It's currently set to 2000 UTC = 1:00 PM my time, US West Coast / late afternoon East Coast on a work day for most people. ☆ Bri (talk) 17:17, 29 September 2022 (UTC)
Need a decision from E-in-C team. Otherwise, it is what it is. I'll be on the road and stuff today but I'll do what I can. ☆ Bri (talk) 14:35, 30 September 2022 (UTC)
I had already pinged them about this above last week (as mentioned there, while it works for me personally this particular month, I would really prefer us to stick with the usual "last Sunday of the month" choice in general, for the reasons you mention).
I'm almost sure I can't finish the Gallery in time, shall we hold it over?
FC is nearly done, if someone can help (like I've been warning I needed for a while), it should be done, otherwise, just drop the undone featured lists and we can try and catch up next month. But for heaven's sake, please publish at least the finished part; trying to do two full months at once would be unreadable. If I can't get help when I need it, I'm just going to stop providing any blurbs for featured lists as I find them painful to summarise because basically every one of them is on some very specific topic that doesn't easily edit down, and honestly, there's often some bad grammatical errors that I feel I need to fix in the list-article first. Like, here's the opening to one of the FLs for this month, at least before I copyedited it.
“
The Melon Music Award for Song of the Year is an award presented by Kakao M at the annual Melon Music Awards, using data from Melon's streaming service to present awards to artists who have had exceptional performance during the year. Since 2009, the Song of the Year category has comprised one of the ceremony's daesang (grand prize) awards, alongside Album of the Year, Artist of the Year, and later Record of the Year (the latter was presented for the first time during the 2018 ceremony).
”
I spend most of my time fixing up the articles' leads to some minimum standard. But I've been exhausted, and last momnth we had two featured lists and seventeen featured articles. This month we had twenty-eight articles and twenty-two lists, and I still did over two-thirds of them before completely burning out, while trying to fulfil the request to make the summaries shorter in the process, which is actually a lot more work, because basically none of them are written in such a way that allows one to summarise them easily. Sure, people say the first paragraph should summarise the whole article briefly, but no-one does that anymore. I can do FC alone if there's 2-10 lists. I can't keep up with the current FLC trends. Adam Cuerden(talk)Has about 8.1% of all FPs03:07, 30 September 2022 (UTC)
Adam, are you striving too much for perfection? I contributed three "short and sweet" synopses here. I don't want them to seem dismissive of the contributors' efforts, but this just took a few minutes to pick out the high points in the lede that caught my eye. I could do the rest the same way if it works. ☆ Bri (talk) 14:33, 30 September 2022 (UTC)
The deletion report reads a little different than usual. There's a note on the article list page stating it could be an Opinion, which seems more appropriate to me. I'm going to boldly do this in just a few minutes if somebody doesn't pipe up to the contrary. ☆ Bri (talk) 20:38, 30 September 2022 (UTC)
Finishing up?
If there really are 4 hours to go before publishing deadline, then I may be able to finish up the writing part of In the Media. For now, I'll concentrate on the major stories, but can get to the brief within 2 hours. I'll likely be able to get to the obit as well - though I hate to rush an obit.
I did check most of the articles last night (bad habit, I know) and, except for one, all look ok or better *CE needed of course* The exception is the Special report. As written, I don't think it meets our minimum standards for articles; certainly not for a Special report.
Real life has intruded, and I'll likely be off-Wiki for the next 3 months, or at least off-Signpost. Nothing serious, but some things just take time to do. @Bri, WereSpielChequers, JPxG, Jayen466, and EpicPupper:
Funding policy is one of my least favorite things to read or write about and I admit to just skimming the special report. Can you provide any specifics on what would need to be changed to make it publication ready? ☆ Bri (talk) 19:58, 30 September 2022 (UTC)
A complete rewrite. It's written in bureaucratese and doesn't say what the are really proposing. It's a super-radical plan to make all fundraising operated and controlled by individual country chapters. It follows up an earlier proposal that country chapters "own" the WMF, rather than basically being subordinate to it (in many ways). Now you read the current Signpost page, it's real hard to tell what the proposal is. They say they are not recommending any particular action, only that we consider something that is not clearly stated. So why write 2 long proposals about it? If they were to remove the bureaucratese and clearly write up their proposal, we could publish it, but I think most folks would think it is a silly proposal. Smallbones(smalltalk)20:27, 30 September 2022 (UTC)
Agreed regarding bureaucratese and lack of context - this announcement seems to be targeted at movement governance insiders who have enough knowledge about context to decode possible concrete meanings of the proposal. I'm not fully versed in the current state of such debates and haven't read the entire text. But on first glance Smallbones' hunch seems plausible that this is part of an effort to give Wikimedia chapters (such as the author's employer) vastly more control over Wikipedia donation money, at the expense of WMF - neither of which are mentioned in this draft Signpost piece. In other words, this research report appears to have been created to serve as ammunition in a fight over very large sums of money, in an attempt to reverse decisions made a decade ago - compare our much less obtuse coverage from back then about the "Haifa letter" etc. (e.g. Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2012-02-27/News and notes - btw if someone reads the full text of this new report, it would be interesting to summarize if and how it addresses the concerns raised back then, e.g. "a model that privileges geography above all else is the wrong one for our movement"). It's surely a notable viewpoint worth covering in the Signpost, but not in this form.
I really dropped the ball on this one, but perhaps the final hour can be our finest hour. LFG, ladies and gents. jp×g23:27, 30 September 2022 (UTC)
Well, there we go. Next month I will be around sooner than two seconds before we run -- some stuff was left out and I didn't get to spend as much time as I wanted on other stuff. But that was then and this is now... jp×g23:59, 30 September 2022 (UTC)
Andreas JN466 20:27, 7 September 2022 (UTC)
Sorry for the edit conflicts; I wasn't aware of them at my end at the time. Best, Andreas JN466 22:24, 10 September 2022 (UTC)
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