Comments

The following is an automatically-generated compilation of all talk pages for the Signpost issue dated 2014-01-15. For general Signpost discussion, see Wikipedia talk:Signpost.

**In the media: Is Google hurting Wikipedia traffic?; "Wikipedia-Mania" in the New York Times (7,362 bytes · 💬)**

Block quotes

Why do many editors use pull quotes, as above, when they should be using block quotes? GeorgeLouis (talk) 22:54, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

Miami Herald

Fixed

The Miami Herald link goes to the Wire link from the next line. --Geniac (talk) 22:37, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

Good catch. Fixed. -- Brangifer (talk) 22:59, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

Decline in readership

The Wikimedia Foundation brought corrections to the counters, these go back to August 2013 ("Major overreporting in recent months has been fixed today"). There is less contributors, thus less articles' views (to modify a page, you usually load the current version ; and after once modification is noted, the Wikipedia engine sends the new version ; thus, one modification brings two views), and Wikidata -- one-year old -- takes care of interwikis (previously maintained by bots). Knowledge Graph is one amongst many factors to consider. Cantons-de-l'Est (talk) 01:03, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

I'm puzzled as to why folks see Knowledge Graph as leading to a decline in readership of Wikipedia. It actually increases the number of people who see Wikipedia material, without that readership being reported in our figures. Yes, the material is very brief, but it is from Wikipedia. For example, I just searched "Fisher Fine Arts Library" on Google and got a photo from Commons and a 50 word summary of the Wikipedia article. So everybody who searches for the library will likely see this Wikimedia material. The fact that they might not click through to the article has pluses and minuses - but it's clear that more people are seeing more Wikimedia material. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 16:09, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

And there are extra direct links to the full article and commons pictures, so anyone who likes the Knowledge Graph and wants more will visit us first. --99of9 (talk) 00:21, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

The stats here say the overreporting is fully fixed, and any errors due to it have already been eliminated from the data. So the data is accurate, according to the Foundation, and page views are indeed down by 12% in the English Wikipedia, 17% in the German Wikipedia, and so on. Looking at the data for non-mobile page views, the decline is even greater: a whopping 21% for the English Wikipedia, 30% for the German Wikipedia, 29% for the Spanish Wikipedia and so on. Countries like Russia and China where Google isn't the dominant search engine were less affected. A 21% decline in non-mobile page views to Wikipedia is a potential long-term problem: people who do not visit the site on their computer do not see the fundraising banner, and they do not become editors (you can't really edit on a mobile phone). Right now, the Foundation has plenty of money; but if this is the beginning of a long-term trend of declining page views, it may have a negative impact on both the number of new editors coming in to replace those who leave, and on revenue. Which is essentially what the Harvard guy quoted in the Times of India is saying. It also weakens the Wikipedia brand name, and may in time affect Wikipedia's status as a top-ten site.

Another thing is that Google has advertisements. If, over the long term, more and more Wikipedia content is viewed in environments that carry advertising, earning a re-user like Google billions of dollars a year, then that raises its own problems. In theory, there is nothing to prevent Google from forking Wikipedia today, and creating a Googlepedia filled with ads (and perhaps some added bells and whistles). The licence allows it. Google is unlikely to do that now, but long-term I am not so sure. It's done things pretty much like that before. Andreas JN 466 13:09, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

Yes, they're confusing hits for reads. As for multiple hits per edit, have we any ratios for logged in reads vs anon, or reads vs edits? Jim.henderson (talk) 00:00, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

This one of the kinds of commercial re-use that we write for, and that the free content movement is about. Google is very far from the only commercial mirror of Wikipedia, but it may be the wealthiest. --Hroðulf (or Hrothulf) (Talk) 12:20, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

Is the free content movement really about working for free so that others can earn money off your work? I'm not sure that's progress. Andreas JN 466 13:37, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

Some are bothered by that probability. Not me. Of my thousands of Wikiphotos, I've seen two used unattributed in a walking tour brochure and a small travel agency's Web site. With attribution, a British magazine and two New York area neighborhood newspapers. I know about these three because friends noticed the attributions. Probably dozens haven't come to my attention. Maybe hundreds. Somebody's earning money off the work I give away for free. It doesn't bother me. Jim.henderson (talk) 16:28, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

Judith Newman

Followup article here. - Jarry1250 ^{[Vacation needed]} 11:40, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

The article by Judith Newman makes clear that Wiki-PR is not conforming with the community ban and is asserting ownership of articles:

"(Wiki-PR) uses a lot of people, with different identities, to edit pages for paying customers and to manage those pages. The paid sock puppets are ready to pounce on edits that don’t adhere to the client’s vision."

Smallbones_(smalltalk) 16:09, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

Yes. It sounds like it's business as usual for them. Andreas JN 466 13:37, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

Wikipedia and Google

Kudos to Greg Kohs of Wikipediocracy for authorship of the blog post on the Google knowledge boxes and their potential effect on WP traffic. Carrite (talk) 04:01, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

News and notes: Wikimedia Germany asks for "reworking" of Funds Dissemination Committee; should MP4 be allowed on Wikimedia sites? (7,905 bytes · 💬)

CBC Radio player

The link mentioned in your article required Flash to play... isn't wikipedia supporting free audio playback?! 81.173.136.211 (talk) 21:45, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

Alas we don't control the world. Bawolff (talk) 22:55, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

TK's

Ahem. — PinkAmpers &^{(Je vous invite à me parler)} 22:21, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

Ack, right in the lead too—I've fixed them now. Thanks for the comment. Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 23:13, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

mp4 rfc

I'm not sure if I would consider the RFC a pass/fail type of things (Although I will admit that taken literally, it is "failing"). My impression was it was more meant as a finding of fact - The Multimedia team needed to know how the Community stood on this complex issue in order to figure out where to go from here. I would characterize it not as a barrier they are trying to overcome, but instead as a fork in the road. This is of course just my personal opinion based on the discussion taking place. I have no idea if this is how the multimedia team actually views the RFC or not. Bawolff (talk) 03:12, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

1st I'd like to ask "How many people can actually easily view the videos that are in this article?" My guess is that it is very low.
2nd, we should realize that Wikipedia still looks very much like a printed encyclopedia. It's probably the least video-friendly major site on the web, and that this hurts our overall educational mission.
3rd, the opponents of allowing MP4 state their opposition in terms of freedom, but rejecting MP4 on Commons reduces our freedom. Ultimately freedom is defined as enabling individual choices. Having the WMF ban MP4 does not enable individual choice. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 17:13, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

Smallbones: Using non-free file formats will make the situation for re-users of our content unnecessarily burdensome. You view freedom through the lens of giving the "individual" (I am unclear as to whether you are referring to the contributor of the work, the writer of the content, or the viewer) choice. I view freedom instead as being able to easily re-use Wikimedia projects' content, without worrying about royalties or the madness that is the copyright system. They are both noble goals, but I feel that my take is more in line with Wikipedia's mission. Sven Manguard Wha? 21:51, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

As an entirely practical matter, I don't see that having an mp4 file in Commons will cause anybody any burden for reuse. But not allowing mp4 does cause them harm, since a lot of material is simply not there in so-called "free formats". Does anybody charge individuals for using mp4 now? Does anybody sue anybody else for reusing CC-BY licensed mp4 files? I think the answer is no, and they are not expected to in the future, but theoretically they might. Please allow people the free-est use possible, and if something comes along to make it un-free then we can adjust. Not having video on Wikipedia does not seem to be a viable option. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 22:43, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

To answer your first question (Since its an objective, factual questions, the others are probably best debated on the RFC page) - based on [1], 59.3% should be able to view videos (and if they encounter problems, it would be a generic bug in mediawiki, the type that would affect both MP4 and the free formats equally). Additionally once java fallback (ie cortado) is un-broken, this number will increase by an unknown amount (A very rough estimate would be 14.3 percentage point increase based on 17.14% of users using browsers that would benefit from the java fallback, and about 84% of all people having java enabled [2] (Using other people's stats since we have no info about java enabled rates on Wikimedia). On the other hand, those java enabled stats could be unreliable or perhaps reflect a different demographic. Additionally java enabled-ness is probably not evenly distributed across browsers, however I would expect that the distribution be biased towards Safari and MSIE on desktop, since pretty much all mobile browsers do not have java, and java is less popular with technical-savy users, who also tend towards using firefox and chrome. Last of all, some may argue that java playback isn't really that good an experience (relative to native html playback like in firefox and chrome. Some may take this further and even claim native free format playback in android is not a good experience as its battery heavy), and thus discount these people as being people who can easily view video content. Anyhow, lots of not very well supported assumptions here when it comes to level of java support. Really all we can say is somewhere between 60-77% of viewers in total can view videos. If we enabled MP4, about 88% of viewers would be able to view video (The browser stats also include bots, as well as obscure browsers which aren't going to be playing video of any type) Bawolff (talk) 01:42, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

FDC critique

hello, I want to make clear that I do not fault WMDE! :) In fact, I agree with many of the comments (although many have been already recognized by the FDC and either addressed or left for discussion). I think that the overall net result of WMDE feedback will be positive. I basically commented on its shortcomings. The main problem for now, I think, is a lack of concrete suggestions. The only thing I do not particularly like in WMDE critique is the proposal to redesign the FDC process during the forthcoming chapters' conference, organized by WMDE, in a way planned, scheduled, and guided by WMDE. The exercise itself is not a bad idea, but its timing is very unfortunate. Most of the FDC members will not be present at the conference and they will be deeply involved in Round 2 of the current funding process. Also, the FDC review process scheduled 2 years ago is to happen in May - possibly offering a better starting point for improvement than the chapter conference itself (and Pavel from WMDE is a member of this review committee). Finally, as discussed on the mailing list, while imagining a total redesign of the process is a good approach (it allows to think outside of current constraints), perhaps involving Wikimedia activists outside of the chapters community would be beneficial, too. Pundit|utter 12:17, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

Op-ed: Licensed for reuse? Citing open-access sources in Wikipedia articles (14,394 bytes · 💬)

I agree that Wikipedia articles should signal the openness of references they cite. It doesn't really matter, though, because I still think books are better sources, even though they are practically never open access. The need for the source to convey the desired information should always control, with ease of access a secondary concern. (With most information, an open access source would convey just as much needed information as any other.) And also please be mindful of the UNIX wars when it comes to these so-called "APIs", and the potential downsides of well designed, well implemented, sorely needed interfaces that are nonetheless inferior to other interfaces (possibly due to issues completely unrelated to the use case). I see this as a particular problem with organizations based in the United States, where incompatible, proprietary APIs (usually carried over HTTP and JSON) are commonplace and not seen as a problem, essentially like what happened during the UNIX wars (where APIs were carried over libc and CPU software interrupts but were nonetheless largely incompatible). Int21h (talk) 00:29, 20 January 2014 (UTC)
The problem is that very few review articles are published in open access journals. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 01:22, 20 January 2014 (UTC)
Actually, there is a common convention (esp. medical articles) where the article title is hyperlinked to the online paper if and only if it is freely available. If the article is behind a paywall, then we still have DOI and PMID and the full citation for those with access to locate the paper in a couple of clicks. The difference here is that our readers only care that the paper is freely available, not whether the journal is Open Access. This also helps support those journals who make-free papers after a period of time, even if the content is not released under CC, say. This doesn't require any special tags or templates. -- Colin°^Talk 08:27, 20 January 2014 (UTC)
While I agree that it is frustrating (as a lay editor without good journal access) to click on a source only to be demanded $30 for 6 sheets of A4, we need to remember that nearly all good quality sources cost money. Professional quality books are not cheap to publish nor to buy. They suffer from the same issue that Doc James mentions with reviews articles (which we want to use rather than the primary research papers, which we usually don't want to use). What is the incentive for an author of a review or textbook to not only give their work away but actually to be charged a large amount of money to do so? Can someone explain to me how Epilepsy: A Comprehensive Textbook can be published Open Access? I would be interested to know if Open Access is generally only for primary research papers. Because if that is the case, then it has very little to offer Wikipedia as a provider of good source material. -- Colin°^Talk 08:27, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

Colin, open access primarily refers to academic papers, but there is also talk about applying the concept to other things like textbooks. Other terms, like open educational resources, are also applied to textbooks, but in any case, the proposal is to remove cost as a barrier to accessing the publication. This conversation started with academic papers because they have always been given away by the authors not receiving pay from the publishers to whom they freely gifted their writing to be sold commercially. Textbooks, in contrast, have not traditionally been written for free.

Open access is not just for primary research papers, and since I know you are interested in medicine, perhaps you should be aware of the NIH Public Access Policy which says that persons who receive US Federal Government Funding to do research must apply open access licensing to their research papers. This policy is making a range of papers open.

You asked about the incentive to write a textbook if it is to be given away. Open access advocates want to encourage a marketplace which produces and develops only textbooks better than exist now, and of course people must be paid to do this. The issue to be discussed is whether commercial marketing of textbooks is the best way to fund their production, or whether there might be an alternative funding model to grant access to the books without cost and still get the authors paid somehow. There are lots of proposals. In the case of the NIH policy, the argument is that if taxpayers in America fund research then commercial entities ought not receive this for free and then sell it to taxpayer-funded libraries and especially not if they have a high profit margin and there are other ways to manage this. Blue Rasberry (talk) 23:12, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

I can see the goverment funded research -> publish open model can work. But the book I linked isn't research and although you say people are looking at alternative models, it doesn't sound like anyone has found one yet. In these days of "austerity measures" I'm not optimistic government will step in to pay for the publication of dense academic material a small number of people might want to read, as opposed to publishers getting paid when people actually buy a book. It would probably be more cost-effective to pay for a few productive Wikipedians to read that material and make it accessible to a wider audience. I'm all for imaginative new ideas for publishing material and for lowering costs esp once we don't need physical printing. But we also need to ensure the traditional "editorial standards" are kept and that it doesn't become the academic equivalent of vanity publishing or blogs where anyone can publish any nonsense. Btw, although the researcher wasn't traditionally paid for their paper, publication of the research is the lifeblood of any researcher, so their career depends on it. One could say they are "paid" ever time someone cites their paper. -- Colin°^Talk 08:51, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

Thanks Colin. I agree that maintaining or raising editorial standards is a prime concern. Perhaps we can talk more sometime. Blue Rasberry (talk) 16:34, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

The issues raised so far are focusing largely on text-based information, while I tried to highlight the case for reusability more generally, including of non-text materials. Once you look at the latter, there is no principal difference between primary and secondary sources any more, nor between books or journal articles: all of them may contain images or multimedia files of use for Wikipedia articles. I think that if we are citing a source and know that it has given rise to a number of files on Commons, it would make sense to add that information to the citation. From there, it is only a small step to displaying license information, which would be helpful, for instance, to those who are looking for illustrations (e.g. for courseware, a conference talk, and open textbook or another Wikipedia article). It could also help raise awareness of the importance of licensing amongst readers of those articles, which for scholarly topics likely includes a good number of scholars (often from other fields) and students. For OA business models, see here for journals and here for books. -- Daniel Mietchen (talk) 23:56, 20 January 2014 (UTC)
As an open-access project, Wikipedia should encourage the use of other open-access sources in Wikipedia articles, such as through compiling lists of links to these sources to bring them to the attention of editors. But we should not have a policy where we encourage the preference of open-access sources (or any type of sources) for reasons other than the quality and reliability of those sources. Too often, many Wikipedia editors are reluctant to dig any deeper for sources than what they can Google up, and a small subset of them even react violently to the use of a source they can't instantly access. An openly stated preference for open-access sources would only encourage this disturbing trend. Instead of lamenting the quality sources we can't access, we should encourage editors to pursue the means they can access those sources: their local public or campus library, Wikipedia:WikiProject Resource Exchange/Resource Request, and donated database accounts (see Wikipedia:The_Wikipedia_Library). Gamaliel (talk) 18:23, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

On that I disagree. Kinda. I think. It depends on what you mean by policy. Open-access sources should be encouraged for reasons of verifiability--which is a reason "other than the quality and reliability". Sources that one "can't instantly access" negatively affects verifiability, and as such, negatively affects the quality of Wikipedia. Otherwise, I think we're going to have to come to some common understanding on how many thousands of dollars readers/editors should have to spend, and/or how many thousands of miles they should have to travel, to give effect to WP:VERIFY. Keeping in mind readers/editors could be anywhere on Earth--and beyond. Int21h (talk) 03:32, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

On sources that are completely equal wrt reliability and bias then freely-accessible is a bonus point that should be encouraged. But typically they are not. Encouraging freely accessible sources can actually introduce bias -- for example, when some newspapers are freely accessible but others aren't. Many of our high-quality articles on "serious" topics are sourced to books, and I wouldn't want people complaining they fail WP:V because they should use BBC Online instead. I should note that some readers have better libraries than others (my local library is useless) and not everyone is a student or academic with access to university libraries. So sourcing to pay-for media is a significant barrier for many editors. -- Colin°^Talk 09:42, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

Verification should never require travel or the expenditure of significant sums of money. In the vast majority of cases, all that is required is getting a library card, or filling out an interlibrary loan request, or making a post on Wikipedia:WikiProject Resource Exchange/Resource Request. We should encourage editors to take those steps instead of worrying about hypotheticals. Any verification that requires significant travel or spending is likely a matter for professional scientists and historians and not amateur encyclopedia authors. Gamaliel (talk) 18:48, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

Let me guess... you're American. In the UK, I can pay anywhere from £4.50 to £15 to borrow a book through interlibrary loan and wait 6-8 weeks for it to arrive and then be asked to return it soon after. And if the item isn't available (perhaps a reference work not for loan) then I can still be charged for the search. Nobody is going to go through such a process unless they are serious about editing the article, not just verifying one fact. I'm afraid your views on verification not requiring significant travel, time or expenditure are not held by any policy and neither should they. -- Colin°^Talk 20:21, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

Okay, I deserved that. I really should know better, being a librarian and having recently read a novel in which the main character is a frequent user of interlibrary loan in the UK. But there are other avenues to pursue for verification. And not every editor is going to be able to verify every citation, and there's nothing wrong with that. The alternative is much more unpleasant, that, as you said, we substitute BBC Online for books as sources. No one would take Wikipedia seriously at that point. Gamaliel (talk) 22:19, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

I'm a bit late to the party, but the claim "Not only this, none of the academic journals most cited on the English Wikipedia are open access (PLOS ONE breaks the drought at No. 22 on that list)." is misleading at best. Going back to the 15 January 2014 version of the compilation [3], we see that the Journal of Biological Chemistry is at the top of the list, and is a delayed open access journal (12 months embargo). Likewise for #3 PNAS (6 months embargo), #4 Genome Research (6 months embargo), #6 Cell (12 months embargo). Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 19:09, 11 February 2016 (UTC)

Technology report: Architecture Summit schedule published (0 bytes · 💬)

Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2014-01-15/Technology report

Traffic report: The Hours are Ours (1,156 bytes · 💬)

Where is the tool which allows us to see stats hour-by-hour? Rcsprinter (talk) @ 22:21, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

here. Serendi ^pod ous 22:42, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

I would guess that the explosion of the Alliance article has something to do with Firefly Online. --TKK! bark with me! 22:29, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

WikiProject report: WikiProject Sociology (3,440 bytes · 💬)

Social inequality

I am curious in regards to the statement:

I am still surprised that the topics related to social inequality are drawing so little attention; for all the press they are getting in media, and professional literature, there are very few Wikipedians working on them.

@Piotrus:@Meclee: Would you kindly elaborate. Why do you believee that the topic of social inequality is drawing little attention. Are there statisticsl measurements that determine this? Thanks in advance, XOttawahitech (talk) 19:56, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

@User:Ottawahitech It's a biased sample, but for example I was surprised that I was the first to create the entry on gender inequality in the United States a year ago or so. And most entries in the series "poverty by country" are missing (see how many red links are in the "Poverty in Europe" template visible in the poverty in Poland article - sorry, template not linkable directly). I could give you more examples, but wherever I look I see either articles that are missing or that are pretty poor (yeah, there are exceptions - and they are just that, exceptions). So, concluding, in the context of significant popularity for those issues - with the Occupy movement and whatnot - I am surprised all that activism/ranting (however one wants to call it) is not translating into significantly improved Wikipedia content. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 23:06, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

@Piotrus: Well I am glad I am not the only editor on Wikipedia who believes that NOT all notable subjects have alrerady been written about (as I have heard many, many times). XOttawahitech (talk) 23:28, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

@Ottawahitech:: As I argue in User:Piotrus/Wikipedia interwiki and specialized knowledge test we are still under 10% of complete coverage. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 12:41, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

@Piotrus: Impressive! I hope I can find the time to check it out carefully, and I wonder if user:The ed17 will consider covering this in the wp:signpost. Here is an old discussion I dug out on this issue that may interest you: Book_talk:Wikipedia:_The_Missing_Manual#Wikipedia already has articles about the most important topics?. XOttawahitech (talk) 15:37, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

I agree with Piotus that there is a lack of coverage. I would add that what we do have often contains outdated data and statistics. I wish I had more time to cover it, I spend quite a it of time putting together the most recent inequality data and statistics for classes I teach, but haven't been able to turn that into articles, yet. There are a number of statistics that can be used; the Gini coefficient was developed to compare inequality between countries, but I see it used now to even compare states in the USA. Meclee (talk) 05:31, 21 January 2014 (UTC)