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The following is an automatically-generated compilation of all talk pages for the Signpost issue dated 2012-04-30. For general Signpost discussion, see Wikipedia talk:Signpost.

Arbitration report: R&I Review remains in voting, two open cases (779 bytes · 💬)

  • Workshop submissions technically were due to close on 25 April 2012, not "some weeks ago" - that was the evidence phase. Clerks have left it open as some of us try to make progress.
  • It has been most interesting to be on the "receiving end" of an Arbitration Committee case (and of course I shall be seeing what can be learned to make the process better for others) - and I am immensely grateful to those who stepped into the firing line in what was, at times, an intensely frustrating discussion.

Rich Farmbrough, 11:27, 1 May 2012 (UTC).

Discussion report: 'ReferenceTooltips' by default (2,315 bytes · 💬)

  • Agree with Silver seren. A wonderful gadget. Very useful to me. MathewTownsend (talk) 15:44, 30 April 2012 (UTC)
  • Useful, perhaps, but murder on a slow connection. I disabled Popups after trying it for the same reason. Crisco 1492 (talk) 05:03, 1 May 2012 (UTC)
Why would connection speed matter? Unlike Popups, this shows you material from the current page. --Tgr (talk) 09:02, 1 May 2012 (UTC)
  • Nice tool. But it will highlight the source in the "References" section instead of opening a new pop-up if that particular source is visible in your screen. --SupernovaExplosion Talk 05:40, 1 May 2012 (UTC)
  • What if they enact the capability where you have to actually click on the reference for it to pop-up? SilverserenC 08:37, 1 May 2012 (UTC)
  • 👍 Like -- I'd use something like that. Click on it, pop-up opens, click on any part of the screen except to reference to go back. Crisco 1492 (talk) 10:40, 1 May 2012 (UTC)
Agree this click and open option would be great. This will help editors improve referencing. And give our readers this vital information more quickly (so hopefully they will become editors and fix it).Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 11:51, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

Featured content: Featured content spreads its wings (0 bytes · 💬)

Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2012-04-30/Featured content

News and notes: Showdown as featured article writer openly solicits commercial opportunities (3,607 bytes · 💬)

  • I have created a userbox for those editors who would like to declare that they are available to edit for pay. Cla68 (talk) 11:01, 1 May 2012 (UTC)
  • Wikipedia is not the appropriate place for you advertising yourself.--Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 11:58, 1 May 2012 (UTC)
  • What happened to Wikipedia in the news?SPNic (talk) 13:13, 1 May 2012 (UTC)
  • It is a shame that we have moved from the Good Faith era into automatically assuming bad faith. Paid editing is, and always will be, a contentious issue. However I would much rather have a thousand, declared, paid editors - following policy, than a dozen "submarine" paid editors, who may not be. The only egregious error here is saying "I am a moderator" without qualifying that. Paid editors should use a separate account and keep a clear distinction, and publish their client list. If they find their paid account is edit-warring with their main account, they know they have crossed a line. Rich Farmbrough, 17:47, 1 May 2012 (UTC).
  • it is certainly true that most university PR departments who try to write articles of faculty themselves do a notably poor job of it, and any experienced WPedian is likely to do better. But I wonder if the university that hired Cla68 is aware that there are a good number of editors who would be prepared to write such articles for free. DGG ( talk ) 21:19, 1 May 2012 (UTC)
  • I don't see a problem with paid editing, as long as the editing is done per established policy and guidelines. If someone wants to pay someone else to write an article which meets all the requirements for inclusion, more power to them. Think of it as a bounty of sorts. ···日本穣? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 23:08, 1 May 2012 (UTC)
  • Moving aside from the rights and wrong's of Cla's action, Tony and Jan have done a great job of covering these events and the different views. Nick-D (talk) 08:46, 2 May 2012 (UTC)
  • Gender gap: While we have known for a long time that editors appear to be 90% male, we also know that the percentage of Admins is significantly lower. It would be interesting to see some research on why disproportionately many females pass (or attempt or both) RFA. Apart from anything else it may give clues to why more women don't edit - for if RFA holds no fear then the many of the oft repeated ideas about barriers to editing may need re-evaluating. Rich Farmbrough, 05:31, 2 May 2012 (UTC).

Paid editing: Does Wikipedia Pay? The Consultant: Pete Forsyth (6,247 bytes · 💬)

  • Peter, the article you give as an example, Pixetell, is a good example of how your paid work relates to the work of other editors. The version originally written by the company;s writer was [1] , which was revised on the basis of objections and submitted for review on May 10 2010, as [2][User:DDcook/Article draft]; this was critiqued on the talk page by an excellent and stringent volunteer editor, now only semi-active. I gather you then guided the rewrite to produce the version that is now the basis for the article []http://wiki.riteme.site/w/index.php?title=User:DDcook/Article_draft&diff=next&oldid=363454536]. It was then improved further by that volunteer. Your contribution was to guide the user to rewrite properly, but it was the volunteers who found the problems.
I have been similarly asked by paid editors to review their work, and if I approve, move it into article space. This amounts to asking me to do the work of identifying errors, telling them how to correct them, and taking responsibility for the final product. I have recently stopped doing this, for unless I rewrite completely, the final product, though technically acceptable, is not of the quality I would write myself. I'll help volunteers or even naïve editors from an organization with rewriting, or even rewrite for them, but I see no reason why I should do for free the work of someone who is receiving payment for being an expert.
But the consulting you are now doing is of a different order. It includes formal instruction.[3] The Wikimedia Chapter of which I am a member offers similar workshops, without any charge, for anyone in tour geographic area--as do other chapters. I see the role of paid people, whether working free-lance or for the foundation, to be to carry out the necessary work which for a variety of reasons cannot or is not being done by the volunteers--but only that work. I do agree that much of the work you are doing is of that nature, work for which there are insufficient adequately skilled volunteers. You are supplementing the outreach of the WMF staff, and probably doing it better, for you have more Wikipedia experience than any of them. DGG ( talk ) 23:59, 1 May 2012 (UTC)
I see this as opening the door, although it's apparently been going on for a while. It drains my interest in improving articles and educating editors, as others are getting paid but not me. Maybe this is best for wikipedia and certainly the wave of the future. So it goes! MathewTownsend (talk) 01:24, 2 May 2012 (UTC)
  • David, since from our past conversations I know you are not shy about speaking up when you see a problem, it means a lot to me that you have found some value in the work I do. I agree with you that paid activities should not replace volunteer activities. I do in some cases, where available, steer clients toward free resources or workshops, in some cases to supplement what I am doing for them, or in others instead of proposing paid work at all. (For instance, I have gotten a couple inbound inquiries that were extremely straightforward, where the caller would have been happy to pay a couple-few hundred dollars to take care of an issue; but if it can easily be taken care of by sending a quick email to OTRS, or making a straightforward request on a talk page, I just send them that way. In some cases that means taking 20 or 30 minutes to put together some clear instructions for them, but I'm happy to do that sort of thing without charging.
The volunteer work I am still motivated to do, though, is generally stuff that it's unlikely anybody would ever pay to do. Recent articles I've worked on are of women in Oregon history, an interesting old ferry boat that was converted to a houseboat famous in 1960s San Francisco counterculture, and the extensive plan drawn up in 1904 that served as the blueprint for Portland's park system. I was never one to work on articles about moderately notable software products as a volunteer to begin with; and judging by the tiny number of Wikipedians that added substantively to the Pixetell article over the years, I don't think I'm the only one. -Pete (talk) 07:39, 2 May 2012 (UTC)
  • Peter's name comes up a lot on the issue of paid editing, so it's interesting to get some more perspective on what he does. I feel like there is a slight woosh, because he's focused on GLAM-type projects, where the editors are paid, but there is no COI. This is a bit different from where the controversy is. User:King4057 (COI Disclosure on User Page) 18:27, 2 May 2012 (UTC)
  • Though I don't have any GLAM clients, it's true that it's a major area of interest. But every organization engaging with Wikipedia needs to think through how to deal with its conflicts of interest. Every project involving Wikipedia must take stock of relevant COIs, and proceed with a clear and sound plan of how to deal with it ethically. I can't imagine what substantial content improvement project could exist in which COI is simply not a factor. Checking one's motivations and biases is always important when working on Wikipedia content, and all the more so when an organizational decision is involved. -Pete (talk) 20:33, 3 May 2012 (UTC)
  • Sounds to me like Peter's a paid editor by proxy. Same thing as directly editing. Peter tells them what to say, maybe reads over their printouts, maybe even sits right next to them as they edit? I don't really see the difference between "paid editing" and what Peter does. Glad he got friendly with WMF in 2008. Means he's probably immune from suspicion, I guess. I think it's more than a "slight woosh". MathewTownsend (talk) 20:53, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

Recent research: Barnstars work; Wiktionary assessed; cleanup tags counted; finding expert admins; discussion peaks; Wikipedia citations in academic publications; and more (5,524 bytes · 💬)

  • Another interesting research report! Thanks to all contributors. Pine(talk) 09:03, 1 May 2012 (UTC)
  • It appears the PRSA study (a) was bought into the PRSA Journal, i.e. they were paid to include it (b) went through a different "peer review" mechanism to the one usually used, so as to be able to be branded "peer-reviewed." And a CREWE member (Robert Lawton) has explicitly stated his intent to use said "peer review" as an excuse to use it as a "reliable source" for Wikipedia purposes. When I have more details nailed down I'll be making a blog post about this. But the tl;dr is that it was, from its inception, precisely the sort of brazen, cynical PR attempt to warp Wikipedia policies that people worry about from corporate editors - David Gerard (talk) 10:20, 1 May 2012 (UTC)
  • I excised the Leithner & al. article. It's a conference abstract from a 2010 conference, presenting research  that was covered in the Signpost at the time it was published in mid-2010. Circéus (talk) 17:23, 1 May 2012 (UTC)
Thanks for pointing to the 2010 paper and Signpost article (which I wrote myself). However, both were already mentioned in the text that you removed ("... reported in a 2010 viewpoint article in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association (JAMIA) (Signpost coverage)"). From this it should have been obvious that it had been a deliberate decision to include this item; the publication as such is certainly recent enough to be in scope (J Bone Joint Surg Br 2012 vol. 94-B no. SUPP XIV 13); and for better or worse this 2012 abstract will be read by people; it makes sense to give them the context that you noted. Therefore I have reinserted the item (modifying the wording a bit regarding the abstract). Regards, Tbayer (WMF) (talk) 22:42, 1 May 2012 (UTC)
  • A very thorough survey, good work! Thanks for that! Nageh (talk) 17:26, 1 May 2012 (UTC)
  • Wow! We have 388 different clean-up tags? I had no idea! --bodnotbod (talk) 12:38, 2 May 2012 (UTC)
    • We probably have a clean-up tag to clean up clean-up tags! Resolute 20:25, 3 May 2012 (UTC)
      • I have considered trying to clean it up, but I'm not sure where to start. Probably a RFC or working group, as you wouldn't want to go to TFD/CfD without a very good idea of what to change. Those 388 tags would probably assign article to just as many cats, even ignoring the per month cats. The silliest systems are where BLP templates/cats don't match the non-BLP versions. The WP:CLEANUP WikiProject might need a restart/reinvigoration. The-Pope (talk) 16:56, 4 May 2012 (UTC)
  • "To test their hypothesis, they determined the top 1% most productive English Wikipedia users among the currently active editors who had yet to receive their first barnstar."
    Well right there they are introducing a strong bias into the selection process by pre-screening high productivity editors who had not received any barnstar-style praise. It is clearly not a representative sample. Ergo I'm pretty dubious about the result. Regards, RJH (talk) 16:06, 4 May 2012 (UTC)
    • It is a valid result for highly productive editors. You are free to extrapolate this to less productive users, and I'd be interested in an argument why that should be dismissed. Nageh (talk) 17:15, 4 May 2012 (UTC)
      • It is a valid result for highly productive editors that have never received a barnstar. One might ask why they never received a barnstar. Was it because their work was generally not of a distinctive and/or quality nature? Does the undistinguished nature of their contributions make them predisposed to have a higher need for peer recognition? This is unclear, but mathematically it appears to be a biased selection. (Note that I'm not making claims about the quality of the selection pool: I'm just saying that these are unknown variables that are not accounted for by the control sample.) Regards, RJH (talk) 20:45, 4 May 2012 (UTC)
        • That is a fair point. Still, I'd be surprised if the result could not be somewhat meaningfully extrapolated to other editor groups (moreover as it may be a bit hard to assess the motivational aspect of barnstars on editors who are more often receiving barnstars anyway). What I am saying is that the result should be interpreted with some healthy bit of caution, but concluding that the result is pretty dubious seems a bit much to me. Nageh (talk) 21:02, 4 May 2012 (UTC)
          • Fair enough. I agree that peer recognition is good for the project and can be motivational. Guess I'm just getting skeptical at my age. Thanks. Regards, RJH (talk) 21:06, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

Technology report: What Git means for end users, design controversies and pertinent poll results (1,028 bytes · 💬)

  • Re NPT; it's far more than just a redesign. It includes far more metadata to allow editors to be able to identify pages with certain features without having to open them up individually, it maintains a running count of the amount of work still to be done, more accurate filters...to say "redesign" implies we've just made it have prettier colours, when actually there's a lot more functionality :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 10:10, 1 May 2012 (UTC)
    • Unfortunately, we were not able to deploy it today due to technical issues with the deployment system. Hopefully it will go out tomorrow instead. Kaldari (talk) 07:26, 3 May 2012 (UTC)
      • Again, more issues last night :(. We're talking it through now. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 12:54, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

WikiProject report: The Cartographers of WikiProject Maps (1,644 bytes · 💬)

  • Yes, these wonderful maps are not given enough attention or resources. This is a specialized area, and any software needs requested by this project should be considered by WMF. The maps add immensely to the project. MathewTownsend (talk) 01:32, 2 May 2012 (UTC)
  • I should really get involved in the SVG map making project, sounds like fun. I also had no idea that there was such a need for many more editors on that project.--Discott (talk) 14:17, 2 May 2012 (UTC)
You can : ) Yug (talk) 16:30, 4 May 2012 (UTC)


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