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The following is an automatically-generated compilation of all talk pages for the Signpost issue dated 2014-06-25. For general Signpost discussion, see Wikipedia talk:Signpost.

Discussion report: Media Viewer, old HTML tags (0 bytes · 💬)

Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2014-06-25/Discussion report

Exclusive: "We need to be true to who we are"—Foundation's new executive director speaks to the Signpost (38,768 bytes · 💬)

Maybe I'm an idiot, but could the article please clarify what "CIO" means? CIO#Titles lists a variety of options. Jenks24 (talk) 10:27, 29 June 2014 (UTC)

I thought it was clear; I've added [clarification]. Tony (talk) 10:37, 29 June 2014 (UTC)
Thanks. Jenks24 (talk) 11:07, 29 June 2014 (UTC)

Wow, what a great interview! I know everyone at the Signpost is overworked and I happened to have some time, so I went ahead and transcribed it for all the people who can't listen to .ogg files or are deaf or are on phones or whatever. I hope that's helpful and saves somebody some work! :-) Of course, I did a pretty quick job so anyone should feel free to fix it or mess with the formatting if I made mistakes. Best, Keilana|Parlez ici 15:31, 29 June 2014 (UTC)

Amazing. Tony and Lila both.
Thanks for the transcription, Keilana, I have boldly moved your transcript to the end of the article. —Neotarf (talk) 21:02, 29 June 2014 (UTC)
I have now gone through the recording in detail and added some minor tweaks.—Neotarf (talk) 23:49, 29 June 2014 (UTC)
Thanks Neotarf, I appreciate it! :) Keilana|Parlez ici 00:26, 30 June 2014 (UTC)
  • Such nonsense. I just got done reading about Quora's misogyny problem. It would seem that the best way to make online communities more female friendly is to block the troublemakers. No amount of encouragement and mentorship is going to overcome the awkward teen boys flirting with female Wikipedians or the prolific editors with long histories of offensive comments. We already have a means to fix the problem and that is for admins to block offenders on site and for WMF to pursue the ISPs of the inevitable sockpuppets. I'm disappointed that the new outsider management's solution is to reinvent the wheel. Chris Troutman (talk) 01:15, 30 June 2014 (UTC)
    • MetaFilter has a similar approach. That, and the $5 membership fee. —Neotarf (talk) 04:36, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

Since the transcript has been removed, I have moved it to my userspace here should anyone wish to read it. Keilana|Parlez ici 03:04, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for that. I know of deaf editors who would not be able to access it otherwise. I *never* listen to interviews, and would not have heard it if you had not started the transcription. The ideas are complex and are easier to study when you can see them written out. And these ideas deserve a wide currency.
But one thing I learned from working with Tony is the importance of sound. You really have to listen to an interview to catch the nuance. When it comes to framing issues, Tony really understands the foundation backwards and forwards. For instance, the idea of spending in the Global South being about travel to conferences--this is an issue that deserves to be considered, and would be hard to pick up on by just skimming the transcript. So please listen to the tape as well, if for no other reason than to be reminded that all Australians do not sound like Crocodile Dundee. —Neotarf (talk) 06:23, 30 June 2014 (UTC)
Tony1, why did you remove the transcript? — Scott • talk 13:27, 30 June 2014 (UTC)
Given that it was originally an audio interview, Tony was attempting to put the focus on the audio rather than the traditional text-based medium. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 13:32, 30 June 2014 (UTC)
Actually, no, it is an audio interview. And that is central to its meanings. I don't understand the feverish insistence on instantly degrading it into other modes. We are very happy to make available a transcript for the hearing-impaired. Otherwise, you'll need to wait at least a few days. Tony (talk) 13:53, 30 June 2014 (UTC)
What is "central to its meanings" supposed to mean? Frankly, it sounds like pretentious babble. It's disappointing that you prioritize your creative stylings above everything else. — Scott • talk 15:06, 30 June 2014 (UTC)
You could try being less personally offensive. If you want to acquaint yourself with the basics, Halliday's short book, Written and spoken English (1986, I think), is a revelation. But I'd have thought my previous point was obvious. Tony (talk) 15:14, 30 June 2014 (UTC)
Mmm, no, I shan't be reading a book because you can't answer a simple question. Pretentious babble it is. — Scott • talk 15:35, 30 June 2014 (UTC)
Mmm, no, I shan't be providing you with an answer just because you can't understand a simple clause. And your attacks are breaches of the civility policy. Mind that. Tony (talk) 15:40, 30 June 2014 (UTC)
Utter codswallop. You wouldn't know an "attack" if it hit you in the backside. — Scott • talk 15:52, 30 June 2014 (UTC)
@Scott: Please do me this favor: Show Tony the respect you'd like him to show you for the time being. I'm not asking you to be anything but yourself, but I'd really appreciate it if you gave me a chance to talk to Tony about his concerns without any distractions from the edits on this page. If you can't do this for Tony, please do it for me; you know I'm asking this in good faith as your friend. -wʃʃʍ- 02:34, 1 July 2014 (UTC)
I find it far easier to read a transcript than to fiddle about with audio format. And I suspect I'm not alone in this opinion. If you insist on some "central to its meaning" rubbish, you'll find you have a much smaller audience. -- llywrch (talk) 15:52, 30 June 2014 (UTC)
If you don't want to listen to it, that's just fine by me. It is also a breach of the civility policy to call what someone says "rubbish". You need to re-acquaint yourself with the policy. Tony (talk) 16:06, 30 June 2014 (UTC)
First thing I did when I saw it was an audio interview was look to see if there was a transcript. I read Signpost in the single page display, so I wasn't able to view the comments. I actually came here to comment and see if anyone could put together a transcript. I'm going to go ahead and link to @Keilana:'s transcript on the file page on Commons. Zell Faze (talk) 17:29, 30 June 2014 (UTC)
  • Ahem, glass houses and all that. On offensive editors being blocked and cleaning up the atmosphere: of course, overdue (by about seven years), as a few of us have been saying, and the community at large has to see that. On the WMF and value for money, of course "lean" is good; but "lean and mean" is a neat formulation there of what overcorrection looks like. The volunteers themselves deserve better than stick-and-carrot as an underlying management strategy. Charles Matthews (talk) 15:55, 30 June 2014 (UTC)
Well, for starters, they're about 20 years apart, and a whole hell of a lot of testosterone in between. :) -wʃʃʍ- 00:30, 1 July 2014 (UTC)

I've added a convenience link to the transcript to the body of the article. Not only hearing impaired-users, but also those reading Wikipedia on the go, among others, can more conveniently access the transcript than the audio version. The objections above to including or linking to the transcript are completely unpersuasive. The alternative to the link is posting the entire transcript here in the comments section. Newyorkbrad (talk) 22:21, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

...and I see that my addition has been removed, for no comprehensible reason. I have re-added. If it is removed again, I will not restore it a third time, but I would ask others to comment on the matter. Newyorkbrad (talk) 02:00, 1 July 2014 (UTC)
I have resigned from my position as a Signpost writer because it has now been locked the way you want it. It's disgusting. I'm outa here. Tony (talk) 02:09, 1 July 2014 (UTC)
In my capacity as the Signpost's editor, I've locked the page (as Tony notes above). I'm not going to comment on anything else for the time being. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 02:11, 1 July 2014 (UTC)
Well, to state the obvious, none of that is what I wanted or expected to happen. Newyorkbrad (talk) 02:13, 1 July 2014 (UTC)
Of course, NYB. I'm certainly not blaming you; I'm simply caught between a rock and a hard place, and probably will continue to be for the time being. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 02:19, 1 July 2014 (UTC)
There are no reports of a sysop ever having protected the "right" version.
Comment has been invited, so here is comment. Even though it appears that the Signpost is published under CC BY-SA license, this edit summary here makes it look like Tony expected to release the copyright for the interview in exchange for an agreement that a transcript would not be published: "no transcript here, or links, for the moment. That was the deal in my releasing copyright". But according to what was put in plain view for the public, which can be viewed in this version, a transcript was planned specifically: "The Signpost will release a transcript of the interview next week." This makes it look like the Signpost staff is merely busy as usual and did not have time to do the transcription. This is exactly what the individual who posted the transcript stated as a reason for doing it--to help out an overstretched staff.
But what was the real intention? As can be seen from this example of traffic statistics from a previous edition of News and Notes, the page views for this weekly feature decline rapidly after only a few days. So was the intention to publish the transcript only after interest in the piece had died down? It seems like this might only serve to bury and marginalize Lila's words.
As it ended up, there was a series of rapid reversions, bordering on an edit war, and as usual, the piece ended up getting protected at the Wrong Version. The only thing left to do in a case like this is to affix a Wrong Version tag to the article, except that it is protected, so no one can affix anything. —Neotarf (talk) 06:37, 1 July 2014 (UTC)

@Tony1: I'd like to hear about your concerns. I'm an audio guy myself, and I appreciate how much communication can be lost in every step from visual->audio->text. How bout we take it off-wiki for now? You can email me at wllm@wllm.com. I'd be honored if you dropped me a note. -wʃʃʍ- 02:38, 1 July 2014 (UTC)

If NYB's edit-warred version remains, I'm likely to vanish from all WMF sites for good. Tony (talk) 07:09, 1 July 2014 (UTC)
I have to say that I really don't care about this as much as Tony seems to. Newyorkbrad (talk) 09:09, 1 July 2014 (UTC)

Thanks Tony, I enjoyed listening to this great interview with Lila. One clarifying point: In my experience, the majority of editathons in North America have actually cost $0 to the Wikimedia movement, with a few covering snacks that might go up to $100. So, this is not at all a drain on global resources, but rather a creative use of local Wikimedian volunteer effort.--Pharos (talk) 11:49, 1 July 2014 (UTC)

The_ed17, you've now taken to fighting back the addition of the transcript link. Your latest change gives the justification that you "now believe that a talk page link is sufficient". As I pointed out to you in the edit summary for the edit you reverted, it is not, because talk page comments do not appear on the single-page edition. I also commented that "Either provide accessibility correctly across the board, or admit that you aren't interested" - that stands. If you genuinely believe in providing for our hearing-impaired readers, or indeed alternatives to visual content for our sight-impaired readers, you will ferociously seek out every possible location where you can do that, and ensure that you do. But you're not. What you're doing here is, for lack of a better phrase, paying lip service to accessibility, because the alternative is your project buddy going off in a huff. It's sad to see that respectable Wikipedia editors can be taken hostage by such behavior - doubly so when the only people that are really inconvenienced are the ones with special needs that we need to put extra work in to cater for. And since I haven't said it already, Keilana deserves a commendation for her fast work in putting that transcript together. That's what it looks like when somebody actually cares.

I'm not going to edit the page again, it's clear how the deck is stacked around here. — Scott • talk 15:29, 1 July 2014 (UTC)

Scott, just in case you didn't read my comments above, I'm going to quote myself—"I'm simply caught between a rock and a hard place, and probably will continue to be for the time being"—and note that I, too, have thanked Keilana for her transcript work. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 15:46, 1 July 2014 (UTC)
And one of those two outweighs the other by several orders of magnitude. I've said all I'm going to say. — Scott • talk 15:54, 1 July 2014 (UTC)
Scott, you have discredited yourself to such an egregious extent by your abusiveness on this page (not to mention your abuse at Wikipediocracy) that you can expect no one to treat you seriously as an editor or a Wikipedian—and certainly not as an administrator, oddly a position you still have. Tony (talk) 08:51, 2 July 2014 (UTC)
Reading this cryptically hostile exchange is really upsetting to me, as an experienced editor for five years, married for 33 years to a deaf woman, mother of my two sons, who edits Wikipedia occasionally, but wants better accessibility for the hearing impaired. Why in hell would anyone belittle the needs of hearing impaired editors? Why the threats to resign and the locking of pages? I am a literal kind of guy. What in the hell is going on here? Can't you all just grow up? Cullen328 Let's discuss it 07:13, 2 July 2014 (UTC)
According to Wikipedia:Accessibility dos and don'ts, your questions, or some of them, would be well put at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Accessibility. Charles Matthews (talk) 07:23, 2 July 2014 (UTC)
Thank you Cullen328. Getting some input on this from people who are personally affected is immensely valuable. — Scott • talk 08:51, 2 July 2014 (UTC)
I would like an answer to that too. In the last 4 hours, I have received 13 consecutive emails from Tony. —Neotarf (talk) 07:26, 2 July 2014 (UTC)
Are you sure your device hasn't gone haywire? Charles, anyone who wants to can access the link to the transcript, which has been here high on the talkpage since shortly after publication. Why would you bother people at the Wikiproject accessibility? Tony (talk) 08:48, 2 July 2014 (UTC)
My device is working fine, Tony1. Why is it , again, that you are battling and threatening to resign? Please restate the "principle" that overrides the needs our hearing-impaired editors. Because I completely fail to understand the point you are trying to make. Cullen328 Let's discuss it 09:16, 2 July 2014 (UTC)
@Tony1: Well, a good friend of mine is involved in the accessibility Wikiproject, for one thing; and also, faced with a distressed editor, I like to be able to offer something helpful. Accessibility here is usually framed in terms of articles being read by screen-readers for those who need those. I don't have an informed view of other aspects, but that would be a forum in which to raise such points. "Adjourning" discussions of points of principle is one of the better ways to deal with them, I find. Charles Matthews (talk) 10:10, 2 July 2014 (UTC)
As usual, you're right, Charles. But I'm puzzled as to why a link on the talk page in one of the first few posts, which has been there almost from the start, wasn't sufficient. (It has now been boosted by the addition of a yet more prominent "link" through further edit-warring by this abusive Scott person, who is still an admin, which should be a concern to all of us.) I expected the audio version to be the primary mode. That was the design and motivation in the first place. So the arrangement was that a link not be provided on the actual article page. If people don't like audio, don't listen. Hearing-impaired: see link on this page. End of story, as far as I'm concerned, except for the wanton personal abuse. Tony (talk) 11:40, 2 July 2014 (UTC)
@Tony1: Such things are and remain editorial decisions; but the discussion here should surely carry some weight. Charles Matthews (talk) 11:57, 2 July 2014 (UTC)
Charles, absolutely no weight, I'm afraid. I don't engage in that kind of discussion with abusers like Scott Martin—nor adult editors who are shrill. Tony (talk) 12:17, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

I've posted some general comments on the transcript issue here. Comments on that would probably be best made there rather than here. In an attempt to return discussion here to the actual interview, I've re-read the transcript and the point about results-orientated assessments and funding was well made. At one point, Lila Tretikov said: "This is one of our top priorities: to ensure that we actually have good, consistent, clear, and monitorable measurements across our organizations". It will be interesting to see what those measurements will be and how it will be decided what to measure. Carcharoth (talk) 00:34, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

Find some other mug to do it—and who's willing to cop large-scale abuse. Tony (talk) 00:46, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

All drama aside, I'd like to point out that a lot of non-native English speakers are much more confortable reading a transcript than listening some audio-only version of an interview. José Luiz talk 00:55, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

First, you make an extraordinary presumption that second-language speakers might prefer written to audio. Speak for your individual self rather than generalising to a billion people, thanks. Second, the link to a transcript has been on this talkpage almost from the start. What are you complaining about? Third, the transcript itself was just appallingly done. Mistakes all over the place. False renderings of both what Lila Tretikov and I said; even a spelling mistake, just fixed. Bad punctuation (rendering it ungrammatical in a few places). Bad typography. Failure to use square brackets where appropriate. Failure to remove stammerings (e.g. "of, of") per standard practice (but ahs and ums were not transcribed—got that one right). It has since largely been fixed through my prompting, although I'm not touching that burning carcass myself. It was even slightly damaged recently. Tony (talk) 01:21, 3 July 2014 (UTC)
I’m really surprised with the tone of your answer to something I merely pointed out as a feedback. I’m not “presuming” anything because I’ve been working in non-english or multi-lingual projects here for four years now and I’m sure most people outside Europe struggle to write and do not speak or understand spoken English at all (read anything in steward elections on meta, for instance – votes, presentations etc. – really bad English all around). My feedback is that for many volunteers English is not even a “second language”, but only a language they have to deal to be informed or to better interact with others. I applaud the “appalling” as much, much better than nothing and here’s my thanks to whoever did it. Finally, if you took my comments as presumptuous or personal, my sincerest apologies. I know English well enough to understand the interview, but I really think an “official” transcript accompanying the audio would have been better in this particular case. Thank you and I really hope you can snap out of this “angry state of mind” you’re in right now and read this only for what it is… José Luiz talk 12:17, 3 July 2014 (UTC)
It was an offensive post. Which bit of "Second, the link to a transcript has been on this talkpage almost from the start. What are you complaining about?" don't you understand? Tony (talk) 13:03, 3 July 2014 (UTC)
I would personally prefer transcripts for languages I am not as familiar with, it gives me a text to plug into translation programs.
Not everyone who reaches a different conclusion does so because they are an "enemy". Different opinions are expected and should be encouraged. That is the whole purpose of discourse, as tool for learning and a reality check for any unexplained assumptions. When your rationale for every assertion is "because I say so", it's time to step away from the keyboard.—Neotarf (talk) 13:06, 3 July 2014 (UTC)
Neotarf, as one of the chief abusers, you should step away from the keyboard yourself. Delusional. Tony (talk) 13:10, 3 July 2014 (UTC)
How is working on the production of a transcription "abusive"? Are you forgetting your own extensive transcription of the WMF Metrics meeting less than a year ago? —Neotarf (talk) 13:55, 4 July 2014 (UTC)

For what it's worth, I did the transcript in less than an hour - good is the enemy of perfect and I figured that, since it's Wikipedia, someone would come along and fix minor errors. I'm really glad to see that people have fixed the minor errors and hope that people continue to do so. :) Keilana|Parlez ici 03:28, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

  • Drama aside, Wikipedia's handling of sound files is garbage and without a transcription there is about 0% chance I would have absorbed the information created by Tony's excellent interview with Ms. Tretikov. He clearly feels disrespected about something and really shouldn't. See WP:OWN. I think Scott needlessly tossed petrol on the fire and deserves a whack of a fat trout for that. So: can the drama and can the personal meanness. Nice interview, Tony. Put aside your preconceptions about the superiority of an audio file to a transcription. Thanks for your efforts; take a short break to cool off and get back to work with renewed enthusiasm... Carrite (talk) 13:22, 3 July 2014 (UTC)
    • Take your fish and put it back in the river, Tim. It's obvious where the drama here comes from. You only have to to look at the conversation above this one. The Signpost's editor was also perfectly placed to prevent the problem, but he bottled it. Thankfully, productive conversation is happening elsewhere that will hopefully bypass this in future. — Scott • talk 13:33, 3 July 2014 (UTC)
    • Agree with what @Carrite: just said personally. I haven't read the other thread yet, but this thread appeared to have gotten rather out of hand. Zell Faze (talk) 16:00, 3 July 2014 (UTC)
  • I am sorry to say that I find it deeply ironic that this type of alpha male chest-beating is exactly what drives women editors away. I enjoyed reading the transcript by the way, as my time is limited and I am blessed with a fast reading speed. Jusdafax 19:42, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

Arbitrary break

So a number of things about this whole thing really annoy me. Firstly as a partially deaf person myself, almost all audio on the internet (and a good portion off the internet) sounds like the teacher in Peanuts. I get by with a combination of lip-reading people in person, and subtitles/close captioning for TV/Film. For pure audio streams a transcription is *necessary* for me to get anything out of it. There is software that can do it for me automatically, or more usually I rely on a provided transcription. As I am probably a special snowflake amongst deaf people ;) I tend to read transcripts in parallel with the audio streams - the audio provides tone and emotion, the transcript provides meaning. Which is pretty much how it works with visual media and subtitles. There are also plenty of youtube vidoes that are pure audio in origin but are uploaded with subtitles for the partially hearing-impaired. Now taking that all in, watching the above prima-donna act made me really angry. So angry in fact I had to deliberately avoid posting here because I could not be sure I would not say things that would get me blocked. Not only do I feel *personally* insulted that because of a condition I am getting second-class treatment, but more importantly, that people (and by people, I mean the signpost editorial staff) are willing to capitulate to someone who *knowingly* in advance required conditions that actively discrimnate against those with a disability. There is no possible way anyone involved when faced with 'no transcription for the first week' could not forsee that it deliberately and willfully discriminates against the deaf. Even if the plan was to 'eventually' provide a transcription its unacceptable treatment in the modern world. Especially given that Wikipedia is probably 99% a TEXT-based project. Now the above merely made livid. After all everyone who has a disability is *used* to people with Tony's attitude. It doesnt matter what your disability is, that sort of thoughtless lack of consideration from others is a daily occurance. What really set me off is Tony's response to Jose Luiz above. Language barriers are also an accessbility issue, and the response Jose received to his perfectly reasonable comments was not on. Only in death does duty end (talk) 23:27, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

It's a really offensive post. Just which bit of "the link to a transcript has been on this talkpage almost from the start" can't you understand? Stop moaning about your disability and stop abusing me. I have a disability too. I don't moan about it. Tony (talk) 23:36, 3 July 2014 (UTC)
I didnt think my opinion of you could actually get lower, but you managed it. Firstly as numerous people have pointed out, 'its on the talkpage stop whining about it' is not good enough. Talkpages - depending on page display method - are not automatically transcluded. And thats just the most obvious reason. There is *no excuse* for why its not provided with the audio file directly and prominently on the signpost page itself. Secondly, I dont think you actually comprehend how insulting it is to say to someone 'stop whining about your disability' when they are expressing a concern with how your actions have directly affected them. 'I have a disability too, I dont moan about it' is even worse. As a person with a disability you should be *more* enlightened when it comes to respecting others issues, not prioritising your personal wants above others when you know it will cause them issues. Only in death does duty end (talk) 00:10, 4 July 2014 (UTC)
I now have a lowest of the low opinion of you, too. And don't presume to know how I think about disability and accessibility. I stand by my comments above concerning your offensive post. This will no doubt feed the trolls and abusers, fine: they feed on that kind of stuff. Now:

Memo to community: Abuse, belittle, insult me further, and I'll bite you back. I've had enough of this, and if you think you're changing the way I think—except the reminder that this is a sick, toxic community—you're mistaken. Tony (talk) 00:24, 4 July 2014 (UTC)

And how far are you willing to go in order to "bite" the users who collaborated to produce this transcript, in spite of your secret agreement? Maybe sending a few nasty emails telling editors they are "the enemy" and to "get out", or telling them to "fuck off"? What about blackmail--is that all right, if you are intent on preventing transcription? How about telling someone you intend to disrupt their email service, then spamming their email with huge file transfers? How far are you willing to go with intimidation tactics? —Neotarf (talk) 14:15, 4 July 2014 (UTC)
  • Tony, you are in the wrong on the basic issue here. Rather than accepting that with grace and a spirit of self-criticism, you're lashing out and getting nasty. You need to stop that, you need to apologize to those you have wronged, and you need to go find a beer and a warm sun and chill out for a while. I have no idea why you're going on like this. Time is limited, an interview of this length should have been presented as a transcription with an option to click a link for the actual audio, not the other way around. We all know that once a person contributes something to WP and clicks the save button, the following comes into play; "By clicking the 'Save page' button, you agree to the Terms of Use and you irrevocably agree to release your contribution under the CC BY-SA 3.0 License and the GFDL with the understanding that a hyperlink or URL is sufficient for CC BY-SA 3.0 attribution." And that includes adaptation of your work. We've got a specific policy about this, not a guideline, a policy, which I again call your attention to: Wikipedia:Ownership of articles. That doesn't even touch the very real issue of accessibility for the hearing impaired or those who can read English but might not understand spoken English well. I'm befuddled that a person of your talent has gone off the rails on this matter like you have. Carrite (talk) 17:33, 4 July 2014 (UTC)
    • No, you've got it very wrong: you need to be apologising to me, not the other way around. As for Neotarf, just why this person has not been blocked for posting very private material about me on two talkpages—since admitting publicly that "when I posted it that it would be oversighted"—is a symptom of this sick community. Tony (talk) 04:34, 5 July 2014 (UTC)
      • Tony, I can see that you and Neotarf have a history. From what I can see that is best brought up elsewhere. Trying to get that resolved in public could be very messy (and might not end up resolving anything to anyone's satisfaction). If you are going to pursue formal dispute resolution, it would be best not to do it on this page, but to take it to user talk pages or a private venue so that the dispute between you two does not continue to affect the discussions taking place here. On a separate issue, I would like a response from you and Ed (The ed17) to the questions I raised on the Signpost talk page, but I'll follow up on that on The ed17's talk page. Overall, if any passing admin is watching, this might be a good point to bring the discussions here to an end and hat them, as it looks like everyone has said what they need to say and it would be best to move on or take the discussion elsewhere. Carcharoth (talk) 06:36, 5 July 2014 (UTC)
        • Indeed, Tony and I worked together closely for the course of a year, when I was writing the arbitration report for the Signpost, which makes his hostility towards me now doubly saddening. —Neotarf (talk) 11:56, 5 July 2014 (UTC)
        • There's nothing like personally attacking people over whether or not to include a transcript under a video in the project namespace to take time away from editing articles, right people?Seriously, though, we should just have a nice polite discussion. Both opinions have reasonable arguments.Personally, I support including a transcript to further accessibility.Thine truly,--75* 01:49, 18 July 2014 (UTC)

Featured content: Showing our Wörth (1,925 bytes · 💬)

Gotta say that this weeks issue was beneficial for Featured Topics. After reading that SMS Wörth became a Featured Article (read it before it was published), I found out that Battleships of Germany reached 50% featured content, turning it from a Good Topic to a Featured Topic. Let it not be said that the newsletter is useless. GamerPro64 04:01, 29 June 2014 (UTC)

  • Oh, promotion is automatic? — Crisco 1492 (talk) 05:09, 29 June 2014 (UTC)
    • Yes it is. Once a topic has at least half be of Featured Articles or Lists, it automatically becomes a Featured Topic. No nomination needed. GamerPro64 05:20, 29 June 2014 (UTC)
      • Well, in that case... making FTs just got a lot more attractive. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 05:26, 29 June 2014 (UTC)
        • Ooh, that'll be fun to write up for next week! Adam Cuerden (talk) 05:52, 29 June 2014 (UTC)
  • On the subject of Flotilla, I'm happy to say that the developer released a treasure trove of screenshots and cover art under a free license some time ago, allowing the article to be vastly better illustrated. The images are at Category:Blendo Games. Sven Manguard Wha? 04:48, 1 July 2014 (UTC)

News and notes: US National Archives enshrines Wikipedia in Open Government Plan, plans to upload all holdings to Commons (6,577 bytes · 💬)

  • I posted a fairly lengthy response to wikimedia-l regarding the state of bot-created stubs at the Vietnamese Wikipedia. – Minh Nguyễn (talk, contribs) 08:54, 29 June 2014 (UTC)
    • Hey Mxn, I've updated the article above with information from you. Thanks! Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 15:25, 1 July 2014 (UTC)
      • Thanks, The ed17. It can be misleading sometimes to compare active users across different language editions, because for instance Catalonia probably has better Internet penetration than Vietnam. But the number of active users is lower than many in the community would like: we're #25 among Wikipedias by views per hour but only #117 by editors per speaker. I think most view it as room for the community to improve – or a metric to game... – rather than as a knock against bot operators. – Minh Nguyễn (talk, contribs) 08:57, 2 July 2014 (UTC)
  • I do hope there will be a contribution towards Wikipedia to assist -- it sounds like a lot of servers, storage and bandwidth will be consumed by this project. Wikipedia is free, but the hardware most certainly isn't.203.12.85.25 (talk) 03:55, 30 June 2014 (UTC)
  • This headline is dubious, to say the least. NARA isn't uploading all its holdings. It's uploading all its digital images. Big difference. 32.218.35.228 (talk) 16:23, 30 June 2014 (UTC)
    • I wouldn't have wrote it in the article had Dominic not directly said "our goal is to have all of our holdings ... available on Wikimedia Commons". :-) Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 18:49, 30 June 2014 (UTC)
      • The corollary here is that another of our big goals is that "one day, all of our records will be online." These are big goals when we are talking about more than a billion records, but the point was intentional that we are not limiting ourselves to previously digitized material. Our goal is that Wikimedia Commons should be an end point of the digitization workflow for all future digitizations, too. Dominic·t 21:45, 30 June 2014 (UTC)
  • This is utterly absurd. NARA has billions and trillions of records. There is no way on earth that it is going to upload them all to Commons. The last estimate I saw of how long it would take NARA to digitize its holdings was > 1000 years. (See: [1], [2].) There is obviously some misunderstanding or miscommunication here. This probably just refers to NARA'S extant digital images, not to all its holdings. 32.218.35.228 (talk) 22:19, 30 June 2014 (UTC)
  • Who's to say this pace doesn't pick up at some point? Anyway, to clarify again, this is about their entire holdings. Ed [talk] [majestic titan]
  • Credulous, aren't you? The pace would have to pick up 1000% in order for the 1800 year estimate in the NY Times article to be reduced to 18 years. What has changed at NARA in the past 5-6 years to account for such an overwhelming change in pace? Nothing. Not one single thing. (Or perhaps the Koch brothers died and left all their wealth to NARA, and I missed the news.) You can believe whatever you like, but neither a flat earth nor the assertion that NARA will upload all its holdings makes the least bit of sense. 32.218.35.228 (talk) 00:30, 1 July 2014 (UTC)
  • Just because a mission goal is big and audacious doesn't mean it is absurd. I think Wikipedians, who work for the mission of "a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge" will naturally understand this. The "billions and trillions of records" is made-up number, overstating the holdings (which may be several billion at most) by orders of magnitude. But, in any case, it's true that NARA has a lot of stuff yet to digitize before it can be uploaded. It is also true that it has millions of records already digitized which we aim to put on Wikimedia Commons, and that in itself is no small task. Dominic·t 00:59, 1 July 2014 (UTC)

Press coverage: TechCrunch, Techlicious, Gigjets, InTheCapital, Smithsonian Magazine, and Fedscoop. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 18:23, 4 July 2014 (UTC)

Tangential: Financial Express (India). Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 02:11, 27 July 2014 (UTC)

Recent research: Power users and diversity in WikiProjects; the "network of cultures" in multilingual Wikipedia biographies (1,142 bytes · 💬)

Is it possible to obtain a copy of [3] without using LinkedIn or Facebook? I was particularly impressed with the refutation of Panciera, Halfaker, and Terveen on page 483 of [4] and I personally can confirm that to the extent I am a former "power user," the reluctance on the part of administrators to enforce the reliable source criteria has led to a lack of interest in further contributions on my part. I am very glad to see [5] and [6] and hope they both lay a strong foundation for the future. Good luck. EllenCT (talk) 03:01, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

Pinging User:Hanteng regarding the first question. Regards, Tbayer (WMF) (talk) 06:44, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

Traffic report: Fake war, or real sport? (301 bytes · 💬)

WikiProject report: The world where dreams come true (0 bytes · 💬)

Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2014-06-25/WikiProject report


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