Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/Single/2015-07-15

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The following is an automatically-generated compilation of all talk pages for the Signpost issue dated 2015-07-15. For general Signpost discussion, see Wikipedia talk:Signpost.

Blog: Wikimedia Foundation releases third transparency report (343 bytes · 💬)

An alternative viewpoint: meta:Wikimedia Foundation Board noticeboard#Accountability to the community --Guy Macon (talk) 15:15, 17 July 2015 (UTC)

Featured content: When angels and daemons interrupt the vicious and intemperate (4,799 bytes · 💬)

Free what?

Any chance that "free reign" could be corrected to "free rein" in this article? The former is a natural mistake to make, but the expression refers back to the days of equestrian transport: keeping a horse on a tight rein meant exercising a lot of control over it, while giving it free rein meant allowing it to do whatever it liked. See, for instance, the Oxford Dictionaries blog on the subject. Thanks-- Ammodramus (talk) 14:27, 19 July 2015 (UTC)

"It was the pesky autocorrect" the editor lied unconvincingly. Xanthomelanoussprog (talk) 14:53, 19 July 2015 (UTC)

Guineas

"Gentlemen were paid in guineas and tradesmen in pounds" is constructing an elaborate theory where none is needed. In the 19th century, items sold at auction were priced in guineas and items sold direct were priced in pounds—when it comes to guineas, the 5% difference between the guinea and the pound is the auctioneers commission (e.g. if something were sold at auction for 100 gns, the seller would receive £100 and the buyer would pay £105). The practice has disappeared for artworks as Sothebys and Christies no longer price in guineas, but it persists at some auctioneers like Tattersalls to this day. – iridescent 09:27, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

Payne offered 60 guineas, paid 130 pounds and received 770 guineas. I presume the latter was a direct sale. Xanthomelanoussprog (talk) 10:24, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

The 770 gn was the price paid at auction by Whitworth (18 May 1854), and Payne would have received £770—if you see a price quoted in guineas, it's almost always going to be an auction price. I've no idea why Payne made his original offer in guineas rather than pounds, but have just checked the source and it definitely is. Payne had married into the nobility in 1826 (and inherited Newarke House), so I suspect it was new-money insecurity about how one ought to behave. – iridescent 10:38, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

Thanks- I've amended the entry. Just found the bit about Whistler- him versus Leyland over the Peacock Room, but unfortunately the website I found it on doesn't give the source (it claims "[Leyland] insulted Whistler by writing his check in pounds, the currency of trade, when payment to artists and professionals was customarily made in guineas.") Xanthomelanoussprog (talk) 10:53, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

I don't think Iridescent's statement about "guineas for auctions, pounds for direct sales" is correct. Googling (trollope guinea) and (trollope guineas) turns up a mention in The Eustace Diamonds of horses hired from a livery stable at three guineas, and one in Doctor Thorne in which a character suggests spending fifty guineas on a dressing-case. Elsewhere in Eustace Diamonds, Lizzie tells Lucy, "I'll give you a hundred-guinea brooch... You shall have the money and buy it yourself". None of these items, particularly the hired horse, appear to be bought at auction. I don't have the book at hand, but I believe that Daniel Pool's What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew states that guineas were considered more genteel than pounds. Ammodramus (talk) 12:01, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

The Whistler story came from a biography published probably early 1980s (which is when I read it) but I can't remember which. Payne's wife was dead by 1826 (Elizabeth Towndrow) as he received a grant of arms in memory of her and her father in that year. The way the grant is described in secondary sources seems to suggest that Payne already had arms, and the Towndrows didn't. Not sure about literary evidence, as "I'll give you a hundred-pound brooch..." has a certain weightiness to it… Xanthomelanoussprog (talk) 17:08, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

Yes, plenty of retail prices were in guineas well into the C19. It was only in 1816-17 that the sovereign coin replaced the guinea (coin). You find an over-average number of prices that are multiples of "21s." well into the 20th century too, mostly in posher contexts, but even for things like books. Only decimalization in 1971, and the inflation of the following years, truly killed the guinea, outside horseracing. Johnbod (talk) 21:01, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

In the media: Shapps requests WMUK data; professor's plagiarism demotion (6,317 bytes · 💬)

Re "Reselling Wikipedia": When do editors get their cut? Serious question. EllenCT (talk) 01:30, 17 July 2015 (UTC)

"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." -> CC-BY-SA 3.0: "You are free: to Share—to copy, distribute and transmit the work" -> ""Distribute" means to make available to the public the original and copies of the Work or Adaptation, as appropriate, through sale or other transfer of ownership". Serious answer. --PresN 02:12, 17 July 2015 (UTC)

It's legal, just unethical, given the price point. Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 03:48, 17 July 2015 (UTC)

I fail to see how "charging too much" is in any way unethical, with the obvious exception being when someone is required to purchase something and there are no alternatives. Charging too much when the buyer can get the same thing elsewhere or can simply choose to do without isn't unethical. By the way, I have a Commodore 128 for sale, a bargain at $1000. Any takers? (smile) --Guy Macon (talk) 14:11, 17 July 2015 (UTC)

Sure, if a customer knows that they can get the same information for free from Wikipedia, it is not unethical to charge whatever the market will bear. But deceiving the customer, or even just allowing him or her to think that the book is in some way different from free material, is unethical, bordering on fraud. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 14:35, 17 July 2015 (UTC)

There is no legal or moral requirement that a seller must disclose that the same item is available elsewhere at a lower price, even if the lower price is "free" (ignoring the fact that Wikipedia does not provide content in printed form). (BTW, I am selling copies of Slackware Linux for $25. Any takers? (smile).) If they give proper attribution, that is enough. I would agree that they should provide attribution in the product listing, not just after you make the purchase and open the book. Not disclosing that information pre-sale would indeed border on fraud. --Guy Macon (talk)

Deliberately taking advantage of the ignorance of buyers is widely seen as unethical. Gamaliel (talk) 14:53, 17 July 2015 (UTC)

+!. Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 06:13, 18 July 2015 (UTC)

+1. It's basically the same as when Dell charged people to install Firefox. —George8211 / T 16:02, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

• "Freelance editor working from his outline" sounds more like ghostwriting than editing. Is it customary for university professors writing for academic publishers to employ ghostwriters? ~ Ningauble (talk) 16:07, 17 July 2015 (UTC)

• Ghostwriters, per se, no? Freelance assistants and editors? Graduate students? Yes. So you can get away with a lot if you call it one thing and not the other. Gamaliel (talk) 16:41, 17 July 2015 (UTC)

• Hey, I did it. One of the last books I bought at Borders was "How Wikipedia Works" which is only a collection of articles. I learned; I enjoyed. Books are pleasant. Books are good. I agree with the girl in the excellent "Teens React to Encyclopedias" video; the loss of books is sad, though like her I mostly read glowing screens nowadays and a few people like to carry a non-glowing E-book. Price? Paid authors get only a tiny fraction of cover price; most the money goes for things that the Internet nowadays does quicker and cheaper and, except when I really want to read paper, better. Jim.henderson (talk) 16:03, 18 July 2015 (UTC)

• Comments like this in the media frustrate me greatly: "We know very little about the tiny world; its Wikipedia entry is 3,000 words shorter than that of Cybertron, fictional home planet of the Transformers." This fails to take into account all of the material in Category:Pluto, which goes into great detail. There is of course no such thing as Category:Cybertron. KConWiki (talk) 17:13, 18 July 2015 (UTC)

The accessibility of material on Wikipedia to somebody more familiar with traditional media is certainly a problem. How would a reader of an article know that clicking on the "category" link would take them to related pages? And once in the category page it is not exactly easy to find and navigate to the material that is of interest. If done properly the books built from Wikipedia content can provide additional value to justify their cost by structuring and organising material in a way that suits other readers. QuiteUnusual (talk) 12:47, 21 July 2015 (UTC)

• Yes. Internal links and WP:See Also are intended to take care of that. Wikipedia:Navigation templates were made to go even further. However, those articles that have a navbox generally have too many, and they are too big, so they are presented in collapsed form, which is fine for us insiders but not for our audience. Jim.henderson (talk) 00:19, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

Op-ed: On paid editing and advocacy: when the Bright Line fails to shine, and what we can do about it (8,663 bytes · 💬)

• Who decides "deserves careful scrutiny"? — Neonorange (talk) 02:01, 17 July 2015 (UTC)
• It seems to me that fixing a typo or other trivial maintenance work could be done by COI editors if, as suggested in this op-ed, they clearly flagged in their edit summary that they are a COI editor and that other editors are encouraged to review the edit for appropriateness. I'm considerably more concerned about the work of undeclared COI editors than COI editors who are transparent and are making good-faith efforts to comply with Wikipedia policies. Unfortunately, there seem to be a substantial number of COI editors who don't know the rules, and some who actively engage in unethical conduct. How to improve this situation is under discussion in many places, on and off wiki, among good-faith editors. --Pine^✉ 05:40, 17 July 2015 (UTC)

• There are a couple of paid COI editors who I assist by carefully examining the version they prefer (typically posted in their userspace) and any comments from other editors on the article talk page and then replacing the existing article if it is an improvement. Often I suggest changes first. Of course I take full responsibility for what I post, and the paid COI editor must follow the advice at Wikipedia:Plain and simple conflict of interest guide or I will not help him/her. I would be willing to expand the number of paid COI editors I help in this way, and I encourage other Wikipedia editors to help as well.

The best way to discourage stealth/biased paid COI editors is for their customers to see that they are wasting their money paying for edits that are quickly removed, and to see that money spent on paid COI editors who follow WP:BPCA and WP:PSCOI results in a much-improved article that doesn't get reverted. As editors, we need to support the good guys and hinder the bad guys. --Guy Macon (talk) 13:56, 17 July 2015 (UTC)

• With regard to "if Flagged Revisions were to make a comeback", it sounds like the authors think this doesn't exist on the English Wikipedia. But it does. It's called "pending changes protection". You can see the queue here. So one option to the COI issue would be to have a mechanism by which a COI editor could put a proposed edit into that queue - for example, a "Submit as a pending change" button. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 17:20, 17 July 2015 (UTC)

• We have things called Wikipedia guidelines and policies. The "bright line rule" is an attempt to make a fake guideline/policy that has not actually gone through the procedure one normally goes through to make a real guideline/policy. Ken Arromdee (talk) 19:41, 17 July 2015 (UTC)

• This seemed contradictory. You expect someone with a conflict of interest to disclose it, and then not edit the topic for which they have a conflict? Does that really seem likely. What if someone doesn't disclose it, but only makes good solid edits with reliable sources, no one was hurt. Popish Plot (talk) 19:54, 17 July 2015 (UTC)

• I would be okay with "emergency" edits like BLP- and vandal-fixes and other edits that a banned editor is allowed to make. I would also be okay with respect to edits to pending-change-protected articles OR where the edit is similarly "held for review, a mechanism where paid editors could make clerical/maintenance edits as described in the Signpost article, provided that the edit is clearly labeled "paid edit." A new "paid edit" tag for such edits would be very helpful for those watching the change-log. I would be against opening paid editors to making edits that are immediately visible unless that same edit would be allowed by a banned editor (e.g. BLP-violation and vandalism-undoing edits). — Preceding unsigned comment added by Davidwr (talk • contribs)

• "The best way to discourage stealth/biased paid COI editors is for their customers to see that they are wasting their money paying for edits that are quickly removed." Guy Macon has it exactly right. The problem is that the client is almost always paying for biased editing and the editor is promising that the editing will stick. Like all Wikipedia's editing problems, policing this behavior is labor intensive. Solving this problem is otherwise unrealistic. Chris Troutman (talk) 11:09, 18 July 2015 (UTC)

• The "bright line rule" is not actually a guarantee of safety--I see it more as a minimum expectation. The real rule is WP:NPOV, and the number of paid editors I trust to always follow what I consider NPOV is very low. Many of them have by now learned enough not to f=delete negative material, but the inclination to insert positive material that a true npov editor would not have inserted is almost always there. More to the point proposed here, I have seen on wiki and at otrs a considerable number of company PR staff wishing to make routine updating changes. For about 2/3 the cases, there's no problem at all--often it's just a mater of substituting the new logo. For the other half, either they are trying to insert advertising under the guise of routine fixes--not necessarily in bad faith,; rather, they do not really understand the difference, or the article has so many previous problems that it needs drastic rewriting or removal, and the updating may well be to material which should be there in the first place. It is extremely hard for any editor to be truly NPOV in all respects--if we didn't care about it, we wouldn't be working on it. But in practice monetary compensation has a unique effect that other forms of pov do not. (that doesn't mean that some of them aren't equally harmful in other ways--I'm thinking of edits by fans of a performer or political supporters of a POV, or alumni of a college), DGG ( talk ) 09:36, 19 July 2015 (UTC)

• You said "if we didn't care about it, we wouldn't be working on it." By and large, that's true. However, every now and then when I have a few moments to spare, I click "random article" and either do clerical cleanup or actually add content to an article whose subject I don't really care about. I guess you are right in one sense though - I spend time working on "it" not because I a care about that topic or that article but because I care about the project as a whole. There are others - mostly those who "patrol" things like new-pages/recent-changes or who patrol cleanup- or similar categories - who edit articles whose contents they don't care about much more than I do. Yes, I know you know all of this already, I'm writing it more for the benefit of new editors and non-editors who may stumble across this page. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 04:06, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

• Most non paid editors and paid WiR care about the encyclopedia. Paid advocacy editors generally only care about the articles they are being paid for and about the happiness of those who are paying them. This is a critical difference and not one that can be easily dealt with. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 19:38, 21 July 2015 (UTC)
• For me, the apparently solid consensus speaks volumes. ResMar 04:56, 22 July 2015 (UTC)

Traffic report: Belles of the ball (5,219 bytes · 💬)

I never thought I'd see a week where there were women in six of the Top 10 spots, for good (Gooooaaaalll!) and for ill (licking doughnuts?). Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 23:08, 16 July 2015 (UTC)

Is there a reason why Wambach's sexuality is mentioned - and so prominently too (I'd never heard of her before and thanks to this listing, the first piece of knowledge about her I learned was that she was gay, before I found out what her job was, which is the far bigger deal). The other five women's sexuality isn't mentioned, and neither is that of the only man on the list. It really does make Wiki look like some schoolboy-giggling-at-the-lesbians type when we mention, let alone lead, with something like this. - SchroCat (talk) 11:10, 17 July 2015 (UTC)

Homosexuality and transgender issues are fairly hot topics right now, so that could explain why she is so high on the list regardless of her performance in the tournament. Serendi^podous 11:52, 17 July 2015 (UTC)

They are always hot topics, but highlighting this lady's sexuality without explanation does nothing but create some divide, pointing out that she is "different" from the others on the list, simply becuase of her sexuality. Our write up suggests she is high because of her retirement, not her sexual preference. If it were down to homosexuality and transgender issues being "fairly hot topics", there would be others on the list, and a more definite connection to the topic. I'm going to take it out becuase it's not doing anything useful, constructive or informative where it is. - SchroCat (talk) 11:59, 17 July 2015 (UTC)

Calling "citation needed" on this list is pretty pointless. All we have to work with is the numbers. We have no information as to why the numbers are the way they are, and sometimes the reasons are not obvious. Serendi^podous 12:04, 17 July 2015 (UTC)

Making claims like "Homosexuality and transgender issues are fairly hot topics right now" (to which the citation needed tag was referring) is also pointless, especially when trying to justify including text which doesn't need to be there. There is no connection between these "hot topics" and the need to mention her sexuality. The lady is a professional athlete: treat her as such, or go through and add the details of sexuality for all the others on the list, male and female. - SchroCat (talk) 12:07, 17 July 2015 (UTC)

Why is Carli Lloyd, who scored the winning hat-trick in the final, at no 7, while Abby Wambach, who scored one goal in the entire tournament, is at no 2? There has to be a reason. Maybe it's because she's retiring from international football; maybe it's because she's a married lesbian at a time when gay marriage is dominating the political discussion in the States. Who knows? But I think that both possibilities should be mentioned. When I typed her name into google, the first suggestion that came up in the search box was "wife". Serendi^podous 12:19, 17 July 2015 (UTC)

If you can find a reliable source that points to the reason for her being ahead in the list, then go ahead, but otherwise we're down to your personal opinion, which is absolutely no good reason to lead with the something so spuriously connected. Public affection and selection of reading matter is fickle - David Beckham creates headlines constantly, and had a higher profile in news reports, google hits and Wiki views than his his on-field exploits demanded at times. - SchroCat (talk) 12:25, 17 July 2015 (UTC)

[outdent]If you look at the Google results for the week in question, you will see that they are dominated by mentions of her kissing her wife after the win. Serendi^podous 12:45, 17 July 2015 (UTC)

WikiProject report: What happens when a country is no longer a country? (1,297 bytes · 💬)

• What we call countries, and regard as immutable, are fluid in so many ways. It's great that Wikipedia documents this. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 23:07, 16 July 2015 (UTC).
  
• I didn't even know we had a project of former countries. I gotta keep this in mind, because it could be a valuable resource in another year or two. TomStar81 (Talk) 01:25, 17 July 2015 (UTC)
• I'd notice that Wikidata has a lot of similar interesting usecases: how to say in Wikidata using statements that a country (or a type of administrative division and all its divisions) no longer exists ? It happened this year for french cantons (an old divisions that was still used for elections) disapeared ? We can deprecate the statement, or put an end date as a qualifier to the statements, put them as isntance of a class former administrative divisions, and so on. It poses ontological problems wrt. the Wikidata data model and its intended meaning. TomT0m (talk) 10:04, 17 July 2015 (UTC)