Comments

The following is an automatically-generated compilation of all talk pages for the Signpost issue dated 2014-01-29. For general Signpost discussion, see Wikipedia talk:Signpost.

**Arbitration report: Kafziel case closed; Kww admonished by motion (2,128 bytes · 💬)**

Kafziel's user page has not been changed to reflect that he is no longer an administrator. Shouldn't this be done? Chris Troutman (talk) 22:40, 1 February 2014 (UTC)
- Yes, it should be done, but the user page is fully protected (and has been since 2008), so it will take an admin to change the page. And since Kafziel is no longer an admin, I believe that he can't personally edit it anymore. So someone probably should ping an admin, or post at the admin noticeboard. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 23:28, 2 February 2014 (UTC)
  - Better yet, an admin can unprotect the page so Kafziel can do it himself. Epicgenius (talk) 13:05, 3 February 2014 (UTC)
    - I think that an admin should remove the admin userbox; and that the page should be reduced to semi-protection on request by Kafziel, but not beofre. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 20:05, 16 February 2014 (UTC)
Can someone point me to the page with the Administrator Accountability policy? It's obviously a very important policy, ratified by the community at large at some point, because ArbCom says that it overrides the WP:NOTCOMPULSORY policy; but when I search for it, all I can find are failed policy proposals like WP:Administrators/Administrator Accountability. Hawkeye7 (talk) 01:18, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

WP:ADMINACCT. EllenCT (talk) 04:15, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

Thank you! I knew it was somewhere! Hawkeye7 (talk) 05:20, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

News and notes: Wiki-PR defends itself, condemns Wikipedia's actions (7,569 bytes · 💬)

A very well written article—conveys the facts without unneeded hyperbole or speculation, yet still manages to lay out a pretty damning critique of Wiki-PR's self-PR efforts. Nice work. Kaldari (talk) 02:00, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

+1 from me. Nick-D (talk) 05:04, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

The Wiki-PR case gets more bizarre every day. They are still advertising on their website that they'll help businesses create articles on Wikipedia, but "Our consultants help you abide by Wikipedia's community rules and guidelines. We respect Wikipedia and its rules against promoting and advertising. And we never directly edit Wikipedia ourselves." Their "Page Monitoring" and "Crisis Editing" services make clear that they intend to assert ownership of the articles. How this can be done while they are under a community ban is a serious question.

Perhaps they mean that they just write the articles and the reactions to "crises", and their clients actually post the Wiki-PR material on Wikipedia. But that would just mean that they are advising their clients to break our rules.

The ban has obviously hurt their business, as they've been on a PR campaign, giving interviews saying that they have or had hundreds of editors but that they weren't sockpuppets. Of course, hundreds of meatpuppets is as bad or worse. They also claim that they are being demonized because one of the reported sockpuppets didn't work for them. But, of course hundreds of sock/meatpuppets did work for them.

The following about CitizenNeutral (presumably a Wiki-PR editor) is quite disturbing, and I hope you'll clarify it.

"Much of CitizenNeutral's early editing was filled with tagging articles for conflict of interest and puffery, which Wiki-PR commonly did prior to contacting the article's subject."

It doesn't seem to make any business sense to tag articles as breaking the rules, and then contacting the subject, unless they then solicited business. That sounds a whole lot like a shakedown -should we call it a "wiki-shakedown"?- trash the article, then go to its "owner" and say something like "don't worry, just pay us and it will be fixed."

If that is indeed the meaning of the quoted sentence, I'll ask that this aspect of the investigation be pursued further. If it checks out, both the community and the Wikimedia Foundation have to do something about it. We cannot allow Wikipedia to be used as a stage for shakedowns.

Whatever the final resolution of the Wiki-PR case, the overall paid editing problem isn't going to just disappear. Every 3 or 4 months another paid editing scandal comes along. Sooner or later we need to take decisive action, sooner would be much better. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 02:43, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

Hi Smallbones - I didn't write this piece but have contributed a lot of research to both this and other Wiki-PR pieces, and was talking to Ed while he was writing it. I can confirm that, yes, that is the intended meaning of the sentence. Multiple people in positions to know had previously suggested to me that Wiki-PR explicitly trashed the articles of businesses before approaching them in many instances, especially in the earlier stages of their operation. The CitizenNeutral user account is the first non-IP user account that obviously fits that pattern that can be definitively linked to Wiki-PR. (It's worth noting that Jordan French has reached out to me via email to state that Wiki-PR and CitizenNeutral had no connection whatsoever. He declined to suggest a possible alternative explanation for CN's behavior when asked, and to me - and multiple admins who reviewed CN's editing patterns, no other explanation appeared even remotely likely.) Kevin Gorman (talk) 21:39, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

I can see what you mean from CitizenNeutral's contributions and on his talk page. If you can really connect him to Wiki-PR, and if they really did contact the subjects of the articles he trashed with offers to make it all go away for a fee, then it starts to look like racketeering. In which case I'd think you should just contact the Wikimedia legal department

Smallbones_(smalltalk) 03:49, 3 February 2014 (UTC)

Page monitoring and crisis editing don't necessarily involve asserting ownership, if all they do is explain policies and guidelines, advise people which noticeboards are available, etc. That is the sort of thing Jimmy Wales explicitly welcomed. It's clear that that is not what Wiki-PR have been doing in the past, but it is something a paid consultancy is absolutely entitled to do (and I understand it's what companies like Wiki Strategies e.g. do). Andreas JN 466 13:59, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

See also related discussion here. Andreas JN 466 14:06, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

Wikipediocracy shows up again. I wonder what their interest is in this? Nobody should try to invent a distinction between "owning" an article and "managing" an article. From my experience with Wikipediocracy, there is no point trying to discuss paid editing with them - they are for it, no matter what. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 15:21, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

It's worth noting that Jayen has publicly said that he isn't fond of Wiki-PR's behavior, thinks they belong banned, and has gone as far as to run a blog post slamming them, as well as inviting me to run a more detailed blog post about Wiki-PR than has been run elsewhere, and one with more details than I could provide on-wiki even if I wanted to. I haven't done so, but I don't think he would've extended such an offer if he was terribly fond of all forms of paid-editing. Kevin Gorman (talk) 21:39, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

WLM got 8 in 1000 images to FP/VI/QI ... that is actually pretty good. The background rate for all commons files is 3.1 in 1000. These are mostly QI, and many many more images would qualify if they were submitted for review. 17% usage also sounds pretty good relative to the usage of all commons files. --99of9 (talk) 03:08, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

“[CitizenNeutral] was blocked as recently as 27 January”

For what reason ?

“A later focus was on recreating deleted articles, nearly all of which had been deleted for being authored by Wiki-PR.”

Deleting an article for being authored by Wiki-PR is against Wikipedia policies and guidelines.

--Nnemo (talk) 19:38, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

Recent research: Translation assignments, weasel words, and Wikipedia's content in its later years (1,539 bytes · 💬)

Lovely game instructions. Should be adapted into, I don't know, Wikipedia:Your first article and somewhere in Help or some such place. Jim.henderson (talk) 16:34, 3 February 2014 (UTC)
re: 80 percent of academics listed on the Wikipedia page American Sociologists are male, while in reality less than 60 percent of American sociologists are male. Did they count the %% for (fe)male sociologists in Encyclopedia Britannica? This phrase is constructed as if to uncover a male cabal in wikipedia. I would have believed in this if 80% of the wikipedians were our respected venerable academic sociologists themselves. But I am pretty much sure that an average wikipedian couldn't care less about a gender of a sociologist. In wikipedia our notability criteria is a major threshold. And if there is less women bios in wikipedia, this simply reflects the fact that our whole wide world wide web of academia gives less prominence to women academics, and that's it. Yes, wikipedia is a mirror of wikipedians' interests. Yes, pokemon and pornstars are better covered than sociologists of any gender or sexual orientation. But I don't believe in a sharp watershed of wikipedians' interests over "male vs. female sociologists". Staszek Lem (talk) 02:44, 4 February 2014 (UTC)

Traffic report: Six strikes out (3,245 bytes · 💬)

Re ""why is important information like view counts outsourced to volunteer servers liable to crash or lose functionality?" - because until recently the analytics team was two men and a dog ;p. I understand that a pageviews API is in the pipeline, just as soon as we've (a) built a system that can actually host the pageviews data and (b) worked out what precisely a pageview is. Ironholds (talk) 05:32, 2 February 2014 (UTC)
Referer data should be available in a way that doesnt compromise privacy. i.e. aggregate data, just like access log data. e.g. how many hits come from Google, Facebook, BBC, etc is not a privacy problem. Also when a single Internet webpage includes a link to a Wikipedia page that sends more than 200,000 hits our way in a month, that referer data is really useful and doesnt affect privacy. Even at low referrer rates for smaller timespans, e.g. 100 or so per day, there is no issue. I couldnt find a relevant enhancement in the bugzilla database. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 08:15, 2 February 2014 (UTC)
That data is in the request logs, so building a system that can even store those logs is a dependency. Ironholds (talk) 03:52, 3 February 2014 (UTC)
@Ironholds:, 'is' should be 'isnt'? John Vandenberg ^(chat) 04:35, 3 February 2014 (UTC)
No, the referrer for a page is in the request logs as they currently stand. The problem is that the volume of requests is such that the WMF is still building a system that can store them, which is kind of necessary to have, say, a reliable API for this kind of information. As an example; if we look just at Mobile, and ignore everything that isn't a direct request (in other words, ignore requests for page elements), we're talking 70 million rows of data every day. Ironholds (talk) 04:45, 3 February 2014 (UTC)
Thanks for clarifying. So you have the request logs stored. It isnt a new scale problem. It is at most a 2x expansion. The WMF already provides raw pageview data, and academics and hobbyists would want raw referer data that would look almost identical to the raw pageview data.

A separate issue is providing a user-friendly system for accessing the data. WMF pageviews infrastructure is a lot more mature now, and WMF may want to deliver referer analytics tools in the new style of infrastructure, but that is a layer on top. And a new system to process referer isnt much different from processing pageviews, so it should be fairly straightforward since the WMF has conquered most of the relevant problems with pageviews. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 10:54, 3 February 2014 (UTC)

WikiProject report: Special report: Contesting contests (12,894 bytes · 💬)

I seem to recall the WikiGrail is another example of wiki contests. Though it sadly appears to be dormant at the moment. Hopefully a member of WikiProject Christianity will revive it. The C of E God Save the Queen! (talk) 20:35, 1 February 2014 (UTC)

There's also the Monthly DAB Challenge which is a friendly competition to see who can disambiguate the most links in a month. Except for once or twice there is no money in it, and then just a nominal amount. The contest structure has a way in which one can check to see if an editor is working constructively or not, and I've only been aware of a few people trying to game the system. Try it it's fun. SchreiberBike talk 22:07, 1 February 2014 (UTC)

WPMILHIST is having a backlog drive this month (February) to focus on World War I articles ahead of the centennial of the start of the war. I'm participating primarily because there will be awards, regardless of the fact that I'm a history major and I've been a member of the WikiProject for months. I participated in the AfC drive that just ended as well as the GA drive because they're handing out awards, too. I've worked on articles like Rudy Boesch and Ernest C. Brace just because, but it's nice to have a barnstar or Wiki Chevrons to display for your hard work. Often real scholarship and research is too tiring to not have an incentive. Chris Troutman (talk) 22:28, 1 February 2014 (UTC)

It's been my experience that people trying to notch up a high number of "Did you know?" main page mentions can be more annoying in creating or greatly expanding articles on subject that they know very little about... AnonMoos (talk) 06:47, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

This was the first time the Stub Contest was run, and it was not intended or predicted that mere re-rating would turn out to be easily the most effective strategy for gaining points. Next time the rules will I'm sure be adjusted, as the WikiCup ones have been many times. In any case, we do have '000s of "stubs" that aren't - partly I think because editors are reluctant to re-rate their own expansions, and these days no one else may come along to do it. I lost my inhibitions over that ages ago. I wasn't aware that there was a real problem with excessive/wrong re-rating, and the class criteria are somewhat subjective anyway. Johnbod (talk) 02:07, 6 February 2014 (UTC)

The total points awarded in the Stub Contest was 18324, of these 7250 (39.57%) were for sub-expansion with bonuses and 11074 (60.43%) were for re-rating. I think that these numbers are without some arithmetic mistakes that are seen in the current scoreboard. The ratio is approximately 40:60, so what is wrong with that? Snowman (talk) 15:39, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

I think that over 99.9% of the rerating was valid. There will always be some grey areas and I am keen to open that up for discussion before the next running. Looking over the stubs I was fascinated by what folks found and expanded. Each contest I have resurrected I have done so for a reason. I have edited knee-deep in content for several years here and feel I have a sense of what our content is like and where it is being improved (or not). I saw many pages or broader material lying stagnant (apart from vandal reversion) for years, with main improvements restricted to GA, FA or DYK pushes alot of the time. The thoroughness of the FA (and to a lesser extent GA) processes means that broad/core articles are very difficult to buff to this level successfully. I resurrected the Core Contest as a means to lure folks in a fun way to attack some of these articles. The Stub contest I revived after noticing that the vast proportion of DYKs were new articles rather than expanded stubs, and sought to induce folks to do this. Also induce folks to work on larger unreferenced stubs that might be too ambitious to buff for a quick DYK. As an afterthought I tacked on the rerate, and was surprised by where the bulk of entries were.....but I think this was worth it as well. This has been a journey and an experience and I hope has brought some editors together to feel more part of a community. Sven's criticisms are valid and I hope he joins discussion on how to run the next contest (as I hope to run it again midyear).Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 12:59, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

Contests as paid editing

The key fact is that the editor is not being paid by the subject of the article or someone with a conflict of interest. -- Ssilvers (talk) 20:34, 1 February 2014 (UTC)

Great point, Ssilvers, I fully agree. --Hispalois (talk) 22:01, 1 February 2014 (UTC)

I recall that in the Gibraltarpedia contest, it was the Gibraltar Tourism Ministry who sponsored the prizes (the top prize being a trip to Gibraltar). Andreas JN 466 22:04, 1 February 2014 (UTC)

Also ... The receipt of money outside of Wikipedia is not participating in Wikipedia. The money contract portion that controls paid editing is outside the consensus application of Wikipedia policy and procedure. Payment for edits is tied to a particular external interest and results in intractable positions on article content (at least as long as the money flows). Paid editors can double their earnings by covertly using two accounts to accomplish one goal, particularly where a middle person is between the payor and payee, and payors can increase the chance of successful results by paying two editors to accomplish one goal. -- Jreferee (talk) 12:52, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

nonsense, you mean, you don't like how they participate. I voted for the "bright line", but the failure to have consensus, means that the community would rather throw rocks than provide clear rules.

the deification of "policy and procedure" would be funny if it weren't so sad. will you now elevate policy over good relations with the Foundation, or the quality of Wikipedia? it's no wonder outsiders would pay others to edit, since the culture is so toxic and opaque. the trend is that only the paid editors will remain, to edit around the ideological admins. wikinews here we come. Duckduckstop (talk) 18:08, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

Comic Sans

:'( – all I've got to say. Cloudchased (talk) 17:07, 3 February 2014 (UTC)

My kids hate Comic Sans too...what is it with that font?? Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 13:00, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

@Cloudchased:@Casliber: I don't see comic sans... I just see the default font. -Newyorkadam (talk) 13:30, 11 February 2014 (UTC)Newyorkadam

Mind you, I appreciated the pink, at least. Cloudchased (talk) 16:13, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

@Cloudchased: I don't see pink either... :o -Newyorkadam (talk) 16:17, 11 February 2014 (UTC)Newyorkadam

Newyorkadam We're talking about the graph. Sᴠᴇɴ Mᴀɴɢᴜᴀʀᴅ Wha? 19:48, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

Oh :P -Newyorkadam (talk) 20:25, 13 February 2014 (UTC)Newyorkadam

Context

I think that Sven was appropriate in starting a discussion on re-rating issues he noticed in this year's Stub Contest, which took place in December 2013. I think that it is important to add that he made his comments on re-rating on the first day of the contest. The resulting discussion was not prolonged; the discussion was started on 1 December 2013 and the last comment in the thread was made on 2 December 2013; see archived comments at Wikipedia_talk:Stub Contest/2013 archive#Problems with the reassessments done thus far. I think that Sven's comments may have helped to orientate some of the competitors as they began re-rating articles, as did much of the discussion about the contest at around that time. The contest may or may not have seen some teething problems; nevertheless, I think that the judges and competitors worked together with editing quality, fair application of the rules of the contest, and a element of fun at the front of their minds. Snowman (talk) 22:14, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

There certainly were a lot of good re-ratings, but throughout the contest there were also reassessments that were made that I would have left as stubs (including two that I passed over and someone else re-rated later). Ultimately, it comes down to individual editors' perceptions as to the boundary between Stub and Start. Where I differ from my colleagues is in the application of the line "It is usually very short; but, if the material is irrelevant or incomprehensible, an article of any length falls into this category" from the assessment guideline. Sᴠᴇɴ Mᴀɴɢᴜᴀʀᴅ Wha? 20:14, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

Numbers

The Wiki had 48,830 fewer Stubs at the end of the 2013 Stub Contest than at at start of the contest. The contest scoreboard shows that 11,074 Stubs were re-rated at part of the competition (the current scoreboard has some arithmetic errors). Stubs were re-rated to a higher class or to Redirect, Disambiguation, List class and so on, because of all sorts of pages being wrongly classed as Stubs. Snowman (talk) 23:50, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

@Snowmanradio: Don't forget ChrisGualtieri's re-rates. -Newyorkadam (talk) 00:19, 13 February 2014 (UTC)Newyorkadam

I have not included those, because User ChrisGualtieri withdrew and deleted all his submitted re-rated articles from the competition and they do not appear on the scoreboard. I understand that a hefty proportion of the amendments that he did were the removal of the Stub template from articles that were already rated as a Stub in WP Banners on the relevant talk pages and that such amendments do not affect the total Stub count as calculated in the Signpost article. Snowman (talk) 13:43, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

@Snowmanradio: I actually did include them in the count; note that the sentence says, "Overall, 48,830 articles were re-rated from stub to start (or higher)-class during the contest." It doesn't say that 11,074 stubs were re-rated in the contest, it just says that during the time span of the contest, 48,830 articles were re-rated. -Newyorkadam (talk) 20:23, 13 February 2014 (UTC)Newyorkadam

I am aware that the sentence in the Signpost article is referring to the reduction in the count of of all relevant WP banners on talk pages on the entire en-Wiki. My point on numbers is that the scoreboard for the contest recognised 11,074 re-rates, which I think would be a relevant number to use when talking about the what the Contest achieved. Snowman (talk) 22:21, 13 February 2014 (UTC)