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The following is an automatically-generated compilation of all talk pages for the Signpost issue dated 2023-12-04. For general Signpost discussion, see Wikipedia talk:Signpost.

Comix: Bold comics for a new age (3,073 bytes · 💬)

Disinformation report: "Wikipedia and the assault on history" (12,084 bytes · 💬)

Just the idea of running a sock farm seems exhausting. I doubt anyone could do it sustainably without funding and lots of help. Just imagine the page-owners who would flock to check the linkbacks and categories and all the other stuff your pages need to continue to exist. I am sure dedicated disinfo trolls would agree, and they rarely make new pages but just manipulate existing ones. Just pondering the problem makes feel sorry for the paid trolls (of which there are many, I am sure). Jane (talk) 11:11, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

I agree. I would suggest the real power over notability and noteworthiness has shifted to the boutique public relations firms who offer to compose and submit news articles on potential clients' small businesses to major publications considered reliable at WP:RSP as freelance work. One such firm offered to do that for me about five months ago, for which they would charge $5,000 only if they were able to secure publication. Sadly there was no incentive to secure articles in multiple reliable sources or to secure the publication of certain facts or approximations thereof about which I might be particularly concerned. While the offer obviously intrigued me, I doubted a Wikipedia article would do much for my sole proprietorship consultancy LLC with a very low traffic business card website. I'm willing to share further details with reputable disinformation researchers, Signpost writers, or the like. Sandizer (talk) 11:33, 4 December 2023 (UTC)
Sady that seems to be a common approach (sort of like the common scam phone calls that still exist though fewer people have landlines these days). Wikipedia articles are only really needed for academici whose institutions add that to their list of qualifications. It's ironic, because those are the places that seem to dislike Wikipedia the most (probably because they get a lot of trash articles). I don't think other occupations require it and for small businesses it can be very hard to remove negative content, so it may even be detrimental. Kind of scary even. Jane (talk) 13:55, 4 December 2023 (UTC)
@Jane023: I also feel sorry for the low level "newby socks" who wander into that job, probably simply because the need some quick money and "paid sock" seems like a job that any literate person could do. In reality, they're probably less likely to be successful than most "good faith newbys" around here. See the essay in this issue. If they don't have previous experience editing here, they are bound to fail in a few months. Who's to blame if not the paid socks themselves? The people who hire them, both the ultimate client (who might not exactly know they are breaking our rules - but should be able to guess) and the employer, the folks who put the clients and socks together. To a lesser extent, I blame the WMF who don't often spread the word that undeclared paid editing is a real threat to Wikipedia. Other people who could let the world - including the clients and newby socks - know what's going on include some Wikipedians who are able to get the word out, but don't; and some in the mass media who will write about vandals and amateur socks on Wikipedia, but don't take the next step. Sorry, if I'm getting angry about this again. Anybody who has good information on socks should feel free to email me thru the Wikipedia email system (e.g. on my user page) for those who are signed up for the Wikipedia email system. Smallbones(smalltalk) 17:23, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

Glad you liked the tip that emerged from WikipediaSucks, SB. (Thank globally-banned Strelnikov.) It was the 14-hour days the unreliable narrator put in and the gut reactions his farming fictions were sure to engender which made me think "hysterical memory" a likely resonance... do see the New Yorker (§, §) if only for the lanternflies (another plague of low-costs?) -- SashiRolls 🌿 · 🍥 18:05, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

@SashiRolls: I hadn't seen the mediocracy website's take on it until I read your note. I can't dispute their conclusions, but will say that I think there would be a lot of false positives doing a complete investigation of this. And a complete investigation might take more effort than the Wiki-PR one did. I found out about the Harper's story on Google News (search for Wikipedia) on the day after our last issue. So I was a bit behind them. For now I'll be happy that this article is done and can be checked by future Wiki historians in our archives. My guess on their reaction when 1st reading it will be like mine was "they confessed to what?!". Of course if anybody has any evidence for a possible followup story, I'd love to see it. Smallbones(smalltalk) 19:41, 4 December 2023 (UTC)
Don't confuse WPO with WS: two totally different sites. You gave me the impression I'd introduced you to the story last month. My mistake. :) -- SashiRolls 🌿 · 🍥 19:50, 4 December 2023 (UTC)
Well I didn't disabuse you of the notion that you introduced me to it. I'd just read it, so what would have been the point? Quite strangely, while trying to process that huge text I was thinking of Wikipedia as being governed by The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether, and when you mentioned the kind doctor I just had to poke a bit and see what you knew.
I hadn't seen WS before - it's too depressing for me in any case - as is WO. Is the idea that people who aren't civil enough to join WO get to move on to WS? Smallbones(smalltalk) 00:01, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

After reading Lerner's "fiction" I find myself frustrated. This sort of behavior does the project – and the trust within – no good. Even this weasel confession is lacking any awareness of the harm done. Ckoerner (talk) 20:27, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

I think It was not about dominating or manipulating, but about empowering and illuminating. pretty much sums up the harm done Aaron Liu (talk) 14:57, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

What is for real, really, and how to make that stick. The short story was a funny reading with layers upon layers of slightly reframed 'facts', crossreferenced whitin the framework of the fiction. Linguistics, post-structuralism, why not a Ontological turn, wikipedia as a "Borgesian" Multiverse?

Why not? me screaming to the universe, is that going against the common [who?] misconceptions on what is for real? What do you feel? I am fine thank you. I may have Acquired a taste for ambiguity on the way.--Andrez1 (talk) 15:03, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

Update

On December 18, 2023 [1]WBUR's radio show Here & Now's reporter Scott Tong interviewed Lerner on the same topic as this article. (rebroadcast by NPR and its member radio stations). It's difficult to say how much Lerner confirmed or denied my conclusions, we weren't exactly on the same page, but pretty much on the same chapter. For example, he mentioned how he first learned about Wikipedia, but left out the part about his new girlfriend, the student who abused Wikipedia was in Lerner's class. He talked about methods to manipulate an article, e.g. establishing "primacy" (what is placed at the top of an article) and framing. The interview does suffer from switching back and forth between the reporter's point of view, Lerner's current and former points of view, and the story's narrators's point of view, much like the Harpers story does. By the end of the interiew you might feel that your conclusions about the article are strengthened, or that new questions have been raised. Smallbones(smalltalk) 02:06, 26 December 2023 (UTC)

Heard. Hindsight is easy, there is little in that interview that legitimizes a reading of the original short story as a confession.
Mistaking fiction for fact and setting off a moral panic in search of culprits; What did this story trigger in some readers?
Underlying premises in the WP universe's view of knowledge, the view of neutrality, how a so-called fact is bound to the person who understands and his framework. And can be reframed. (Given a non-essentialist point of view.) It was not thought along those lines.
Could it be that to the one who has a hammer, everything looks like nails?Andrez1 (talk) 17:27, 30 December 2023 (UTC)


The best evidence of a confession is above, but I'll repeat it:

bl: I've written a short story—or a kind of fictional essay (it's based on a real project of mine but all the facts have been altered)—about a young man's efforts to manipulate Wikipedia for the good (so he thinks) through the construction of multiple online identities.

Could that be any clearer? The interview just adds a few details, plus gives him an opportunity to say something like "sorry, it was just a joke." Which he didn't do. Instead, he says (approx.) the he "was just conducting an experiment."

Adding:I thought I should document that approx. quote. It's really about framing with the interviewer stating (at about 20 seconds) Wikipedia's rules "led one enterprising journalist to test just how much one editor could manipulate entries." Obviously referring to Lerner, never denied by Lerner. That frame carries through the entire interview. version with timer

So, naturalists observe, a flea
Hath smaller fleas that on him prey;
And these have smaller still to bit 'em;
And so proceed ad infinitum.
Thus every poet, in his kind,
Is bit by him that comes behind.
Jonathan Swift, On Poetry: A Rhapsody (1733)

Smallbones(smalltalk) 15:53, 1 January 2024 (UTC)


As you have earlier stated: "WBUR's radio show Here & Now's reporter Scott Tong interviewed Lerner on the same topic as this article." The angel given, the framing; was also the same.
Lerner never denied. Why should he? How could he? He have produce a piece of fiction and is helpful in giving clues on how it is written and how it may make sense to a reader.
Have you stopped beating your wife? The two journalists Tong & Smallbones does not take no for an answer.
Lets go for the details, there must be something here(?/!). I have seen that film before! Dejavue, Blowup all over again? Andrez1 (talk) 21:22, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

Essay: I am going to die (13,767 bytes · 💬)

  • Very well stated. — Maile (talk) 13:58, 4 December 2023 (UTC)
    Agreed, this is an effective essay. Turning readers into editors is not easy, but we need the pipeline operational! —Ganesha811 (talk) 14:04, 4 December 2023 (UTC)
  • Actually, I'm one of a few editors who's made an unusual amount of edits without, some would argue, creating "actual content." In fact, there's been times I've stubbified articles full of peacocks, weasels, and other forms of puffery. Even though I'm easily replaced by someone who WikiGnomes and also content edits, I'd say that my edits are still valuable, since it frees up the time of content editors to actually add content. (I'd trust the author realizes this, having had conversed with her in the past, but I fear others may protest to the contrary.) --I dream of horses (Contribs) (Talk) 15:42, 4 December 2023 (UTC)
  • When the current generation of active editors passes on, their replacements will probably be a mix of:
  1. The WMF eventually opened its purse and hired a real editorial staff and topic lead editors
  2. AI tools matured and allowed these editors to generate sensible copy for new articles
  3. The obsolete wiki markup is replaced with something more easily machine-editable
  4. Anonymous editing goes by the wayside
  5. Truculent editors are shown the door
  6. New editors are recruited from academia and news sites
  7. The Five Pillars are made into a nice needlepoint and displayed at WMF HQ
Or Wikipedia dies. →StaniStani 21:51, 4 December 2023 (UTC)
At that point, it would already be dead. What you're describing is not Wikipedia. Citizendium already tried something much like that, and well—it's been dead for a very long time. Seraphimblade Talk to me 06:11, 5 December 2023 (UTC)
(Ironically, even with all our values thrown away, the name would likely still be "Wikipedia", and this may become an issue one day. Forking is hard if the brand is stronger than the content and the community. "OpenOffice" to "LibreOffice", "MySQL" to "MariaDB", ... "Wikipedia" to anything else would be far more than just a technical challenge.) ~ ToBeFree (talk) 18:58, 5 December 2023 (UTC)
Predictions of the end of Wikipedia -- ssr (talk) 15:20, 10 December 2023 (UTC)
  • When AI tools mature enough to generate sensible copy for new WP articles, they won't have to. They'll just do that, custom made for the knowledge and tastes of the user, when desired. Meanwhile, at editathons I sometimes say, "No, I no longer think Wikipedia is too small, and seldom make Wikipedia bigger by adding good things anymore. Mostly I make Wikipedia smaller by subtracting bad things." It is perhaps an exaggeration, but I think it makes the point. No use expanding if we don't have enough maintenance workers checking for new bloat, spam, redundancy, lies, and other bad content from the many ignorant and the few malicious. Jim.henderson (talk) 05:17, 5 December 2023 (UTC)
  • The last paragraph sums up perfectly what I've learned about Wikipedia and how you should behave on it in my (almost) two first years of activity around here. Thank you! Oltrepier (talk) 09:28, 5 December 2023 (UTC)
  • Good article, but three things I'd add. Firstly the effect of SUL, Wikimedians on other projects especially other languages, will come visit here while logged in. They may even copy an image, but if they don't make an edit here they just count as a new account created here but not editing on this Wiki. My own account has gone live on 174 projects, about a sixth of the total, but on most of those I have zero edits and only on four do I have over a thousand, I expect many of you will be similar. Secondly, and probably much bigger, just over a decade ago we replaced a lot of vandal fighting with edit filters. So an unknown proportion of accounts with zero edits are vandals whose "contribution" was rejected as vandalism. OK not all of those filter rejections will be accurate, but those filters were thoroughly tested when they were first deployed. Maybe we need to review them now as the culture has changed and there could be a word which twelve years ago was almost always used in vandalism, but now it is the name of a successful song or Ukrainian village. Thirdly, and probably most importantly, the last decade or so has been the era of the smartphone. I have been told that despite my own personal failure it is technically possible to edit with a smartphone. But very few of our community are from the large proportion of internet users who only access the internet by smartphone, and in my opinion this is the biggest driver of the lack of growth of the community at least during the current era of the post 2014 rally, and probably for some years before during the latter part of the 2008-14 "death spiral" era of declining editing rates. "active editors" shows quite neatly the three thirds of Wikipedia's history thus far, the exponential growth of 2001-7, the increasingly misnamed death spiral era and our own normality, the post 2014 rally of 2015 to date. I no longer fret about this as much as I used to. I hope that one day an AI typo fixer will be trained on my contributions and take over such easily confused words as calvary/cavalry, pubic/public, preform/perform, manger/manager, minster/minister and causality/casualty, and maybe there are other tasks where AI can replace editors. But to really make a difference to editor recruitment we need to solve our smartphone problem. Maybe in the next few decades smartphones will go the way of punch cards and wind up car windows, and perhaps their successor(s) will be better editing devices. Maybe nothing much will change technologically in the next forty years and the community will then be rejuvenated by a generation of retirees who grew up with smartphones and don't see how they were ever a problem. I used to naïvely hope that the WMF would see the problem and get developers to fix it. ϢereSpielChequers 11:12, 5 December 2023 (UTC)
  • The essay resonates with me, but the comments also make good points. It is a complicated matter. Add to the list of problems that much of the low-hanging stuff has been done, sources are often hard to find, and even when found, are often inaccessible, and a large proportion of knowledge is ineligible because notability cannot be shown. · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 05:52, 7 December 2023 (UTC)
  • There will be editors, maybe even active ones, just that if the average editor doesn't last here for 25 years, there can be times when there will not be active editors in the top 1,000 (also, there may be times when there will be no active editors in the top 1,000 if the average editor does last here for more than 25 years, however, the longer they last, the shorter that time becomes). Also, there are many unregistered editors as well, editing approximately every second. However, if there are not enough active and well-behaving registered ones, missing articles will be long missing. Alfa-ketosav (talk) 15:23, 8 December 2023 (UTC)
  • Well, I for one am trying to fill the gap by writing an article on a subject that I'm honestly surprised we don't currently have an article about. (It's the kind of subject that you'd expect a white, suburban, educated, middle-class male from the US would have already written.) I haven't written much of this article because I needed to do some serious research first (e.g., it's context in a larger subject) which required collecting reliable sources, & now I'm trying to figure out how to present the material. But given enough free time, I will get it written, for non-Wikipedia reasons. -- llywrch (talk) 00:41, 9 December 2023 (UTC)
  • There was a time when scholarly papers and sometimes books were typed on word processor screens with 20 lines of 80 characters, and apparently there are now people who feel comfortable using a palm-sized screen to write a moderate sized Wikipedia article. My guess is no, content creators in this field and others will for a long time prefer a bigger canvas than is used in consuming the product. Certainly the software could be better; it's easier to write long Quora posts on a little touch screen than short WP articles and goodness, why can't Wikidata statements and Commons categories be easily entered in the field? Anyway I've been teaching newbies this year at a slower rate than before the plague, at fewer editathons. On average they're at least as bright as the ones before, but yes, their lesser numbers support the concern that as we old-time copyeditors slip into our commas, we won't be replaced. The Admin corps is already in such a situation. Jim.henderson (talk) 14:25, 9 December 2023 (UTC)
  • I would add to the second point of "What to do about this" to note that it's very discouraging to add good faith content and then find it's reverted by a Page Guardian When that happens I find myself wondering if I want to waste my time arguing with a trigger happy Page Guardian and eventually start looking for useful things to do elsewhere.
Doing something to discourage the behavior of Page Guardians might help to keep more of the productive editors that we do have. Perhaps there could be a reversion patrol to jump in with an independent view on any reversions which are other than reversion of obvious vandalism or the other instant reversions for policy reasons (libel, copyvio, etc.). 2A01:CB19:599:F00:212:4B42:693:9588 (talk) 20:33, 9 December 2023 (UTC)
I like your idea of reversion patrol. I have been thinking about that for a long time. We now have rollbacker, patroller, etc. But nothing like reversion patrol. Power is not balanced. And the reward system is skewed. This needs to be fixed. --Dustfreeworld (talk) 18:03, 14 December 2023 (UTC)
  • Except not really, as many IP editors do edit. I've made four edits in mainspace, more than 80 percent of registered editors. So it wouldn't need quite so many as it sounds. IP editors are rarely super prolific, but still, that's useful. 71.112.180.130 (talk) 15:28, 10 December 2023 (UTC)
  • Sheesh, if the numbers for editors are this bad, I shudder to think about the numbers for admins. We're down to how many monthly-active admins these days? How many successful RfAs per week? Somebody should do the math and figure out exactly how many years we have before we'll have to start posting to meta:Steward requests/Miscellaneous. --NYKevin 23:53, 12 December 2023 (UTC)
    A quick little regression on the number of active admins reported at Wikipedia:List of administrators/Active on today's day for the last 10 years suggests it'll be about half a century until we reach zero. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:32, 13 December 2023 (UTC)
    Some of our youngest current admins might still be around in half a century. But we go beyond any sort of reasonable crisis point long before we just have 1 admin. Aside from the number of admins needed to keep the deletion process running, we always need at least one admin at AIV. With fulltime staff it takes five people to have one person on duty 24/7 - 6 if you allow for holidays and sick leave. Doing that with volunteers needs a lot more, especially if you aren't running some sort of rota but just relying on having so many volunteers that there is always one around. That isn't an argument for a rota, if we ever get to the point where we need one, we immediately turn adminship into more of a chore that is harder to recruit for or retain volunteers for. And given the size of EN Wikipedia, I don't see we can do this with stewards from Meta.
    But to answer Kevin's point, the number of active editors has been broadly stable for a decade or more, our problem is that fewer and fewer of them are volunteering to be admins. ϢereSpielChequers 09:08, 13 December 2023 (UTC)

Featured content: Real gangsters move in silence (0 bytes · 💬)

Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2023-12-04/Featured content

Humour: Mandy Rice-Davies Applies (16,865 bytes · 💬)

  • I'm sorry, wherein does the humour lie? Bishonen | tålk 14:46, 5 December 2023 (UTC).
    I don't get it either. What's with the sunscreen? – bradv 15:04, 5 December 2023 (UTC)
    I'm also lost. I don't see the point of this. Doug Weller talk 17:04, 5 December 2023 (UTC)
    As in, "Mandy Rice Davis Applies [X-brand of sunscreen]". It's a crap joke, and not getting it makes you stronger human beings. ——Serial 17:15, 5 December 2023 (UTC)
  • I told you guys it was a worthless shitpost, you didn't believe me and clicked anyway, you deserve what you get! I used all the actual jokes for this issue in Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2023-12-04/Comix. jp×g🗯️ 21:43, 5 December 2023 (UTC)
  • This is far worse than bad humor. It's a voyeuristic attack on a woman, ridiculing her and denying her even the right to defend herself. Wikipedia is not a personal blog. This offensive content should be taken down.--agr (talk) 21:47, 6 December 2023 (UTC)
What? jp×g🗯️ 22:31, 6 December 2023 (UTC)
Yeah, what? Tim O'Doherty (talk) 22:53, 6 December 2023 (UTC)
"a voyeuristic attack on a woman, ridiculing her and denying her even the right to defend herself" Hey, bro, I hope she sees this. Chris Troutman (talk) 03:42, 7 December 2023 (UTC)
Mandy Rice-Davies died in 2014, Chris troutman. I agree with agr that the "humour" leaves a bad taste. Bishonen | tålk 04:21, 7 December 2023 (UTC).
What? Cremastra (talk) 13:17, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

This seems to have caused a gratuitous amount of offense, including being blanked for a speedy deletion request not once but twice. I can understand not thinking it's funny — I would put it in the bottom decile of jokes I've made — but I have asked numerous times and failed to get any sort of explanation of the offense going on here. I asked some of my friends in real life, ranging across various ages and genders and political inclinations etc, to read this and see what the problem was (perhaps "Rice-Davies" is some kind of ethnic slur I've never heard about) and none of them could figure it out either. Nobody has been able, hitherto, to explain how "applying to a job" or "applying sunscreen" constitute any sort of attack on anybody's character.

It's really not that complicated of a joke.

I don't know, maybe this is my cow tools moment, but I am somewhat disturbed by the idea that if a joke isn't funny, it must actually be some kind of secret other joke, which is extremely offensive but also for some reason nobody can be bothered to explain how or why. What are you people talking about? jp×g🗯️ 04:42, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

If there has been "a speedy deletion request not once but twice", maybe that should raise a question mark in the thought process. If there is something that is upsetting people, it doesn't matter whether you see it as a problem or not: others do and it may be the easier and more peaceful path to delete this and move on. (For me, despite re-reading this three times, there's zero humour in this, which is probably as good a reason as any for deleting it). I'd be happy to add a speedy deletion request to give it a third strike if you'd like? - SchroCat (talk) 09:42, 7 December 2023 (UTC)
Okay, so, to be clear, you are suggesting that an article must be retracted, out of process, if any random person says it should -- and not only that, but also that they do not even need to say a reason?
It has already been tagged (by the same person) twice and declined. Please feel free to take this to MfD, with the rationale of "I refuse to disclose a reason for why this needs to be deleted". jp×g🗯️ 10:17, 7 December 2023 (UTC)
No, I’ve rather obviously not said that at all. Out of process? It’s a dead end page. It’s doesn’t need a process or court hearing to remove it: deleting and removing the pointless link on the front can be easily done. You obviously don’t want to - that’s fine, life’s too short to argue over pointless rubbish, but there’s no need for you to be so uber defensive about it. If you’re ok with it annoying or upsetting people, there’s nowt I can say that will change your mind. SchroCat (talk) 12:52, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

It’s a mild, and to me, totally inoffensive, pun on the word "applies". Perhaps too subtle for some. Definitely not worthy of the offense apparently taken. Lighten up folks, it is not sexist, racist or any of the other "isms" it is fashionable to take offense to these days. The worst you can reasonably claim is that it missed its target audience (zing), but this is Wikipedia, everything misses part of the audience. Cheers · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 10:24, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

PS, Trouts are in a bin at the door. · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 10:31, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

The real failure here was not giving her a beard, a robe, and a white Russian and captioning it "Mandy abides." ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 11:36, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

  • This showed up on my watchlist just now. So far as I can tell, the point seems to be to riff on the existing page WP:MANDY. As there seem to be lots of editors who think they can do better, I suggest that the Signpost makes this into a caption contest. Andrew🐉(talk) 12:08, 7 December 2023 (UTC)
    "Mandy's application to the 2023 Arbcom elections caught some editors off guard, but others said 'well, she would apply, wouldn't she?'" Peter Southwood sums up my views quite well; I found it funny, I accept others might not, but I can't see how on earth anyone could be offended by this. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 13:45, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

Ms. Rice-Davis at the time of the photographs was an attractive young woman notorious for her sexual activities with famous persons, activities within her rights. She and her estate have some right to privacy. I do not see any justification for using her image on this page. On Wikipedia, her name has become a catch phrase for an important editorial debate on neutrality, but that is no justification for using her image as the target of sexist ridicule. If she were a man or an elderly woman would the joke work? --agr (talk) 16:48, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

Is the imagined application of sunscreen really sexist? ☆ Bri (talk) 16:51, 7 December 2023 (UTC)
According to the WP:MANDY, "Well, he would, wouldn't he?" is what Ms. Rice-Davis said about Lord Astor. Do you still consider it sexist if the genders are reversed? – bradv 17:41, 7 December 2023 (UTC)
"If she were a man or an elderly woman would the joke work?" Yes, if you put a photoshop of Donald Trump applying suncream to himself with a witty caption, I'd probably laugh as well. I sort of get your point that if MRD was a low-profile individual subject to harassment who wanted to stay out of the limelight, then BLP and harassment concerns would be a reasonable viewpoint. But our article (backed up by reliable sources) stated she milked the attention for all that it was worth and compared herself to famous mistresses in history. You can't have it both ways. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 18:20, 7 December 2023 (UTC)
WP:NOTCENSORED. It's a joke.[citation needed][clarification needed][according to whom?][need quotation to verify][fact or opinion?][how?][buzzword] Respectfully: get over it! Tim O'Doherty (talk) 18:33, 7 December 2023 (UTC)
It's not sexist and its not ridicule. If she were a man or an elderly woman would the joke work? Absolutely. Cremastra (talk) 13:19, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

WTF, people? It's just a really lame dad joke playing with the meaning of the word "applies" (she applies for a job, she applies sunscreen). It's not Groucho Marx, but it's certainly harmless humor and definitely not any sort of attack. If you don't think so, MFD is the right venue. – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:56, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

Contemporary culture seems dedicated to the proposition that outrage is a desirable emotion and should be sought at every opportunity. Smallchief (talk) 11:20, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

You misspelled her name on the fake CV; it's Rice-Davies, not Rice-Davis. BlackcurrantTea (talk) 12:50, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

@BlackcurrantTea: Oh, hell. I missed that. Fixed! jp×g🗯️ 02:46, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

What does applying for a job or applying sunscreen have to with applying some obscure Wikipedia "rules"? And what does Ms. Rice-Davies (who I, like 99% of living Americans, have never heard of) have to do with any of this? Why was she chosen for the joke? Why is the sunscreen branded "X", is this some swipe at Elon Musk's new name for Twitter? Sunscreen is a subtle hint about online reputation management? wbm1058 (talk) 14:41, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

I think you're overthinking this. The sunscreen is branded "X" because it's a standard placeholder, and see all the discussion for an explanation, once you've read WP:MANDY. 71.112.180.130 (talk) 15:17, 10 December 2023 (UTC)
"Well he would, wouldn't he?" is a famous quote? Really? Citation needed. Well, a girl needing a job would create a resume, wouldn't she? A girl lying on the beach in a bikini would want to wear sunscreen, wouldn't she? What's the point? wbm1058 (talk) 15:36, 10 December 2023 (UTC)
@Wbm1058: No citation required: see The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations[1]. Nice try, though. ——Serial 16:04, 10 December 2023 (UTC)
The citation I was looking for was for the alleged fact that this is a "famous" quotation. Are all quotations automatically made famous by their inclusion in a dictionary? If a quotation is truly famous, then you shouldn't need to look it up in a dictionary. wbm1058 (talk) 16:15, 10 December 2023 (UTC)
You said "citation needed". Don't get haughty when provided with one. Tim O'Doherty (talk) 17:22, 10 December 2023 (UTC)
@——Serial - And now with its own article. "Famous"[citation needed] or notable enough now? Eh? ;) Tim O'Doherty (talk) 16:12, 17 January 2024 (UTC)
Great work @Tim O'Doherty and Voorts:, and yes, that should stymy any further splitting of hairs. Or it should, shouldn't it?  ;) ——Serial 16:33, 17 January 2024 (UTC)
Who in their right mind thinks those essays are about something that can be joked about?
Israel is accused of flooding the Gaza tunnels. Well they would, wouldn't they? Just sick. – wbm1058 (talk) 15:58, 10 December 2023 (UTC)
...oookay? does anyone want to fulfil Godwin's law while we're on this type of topic? ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 06:05, 11 December 2023 (UTC)
I think he's taking the piss lol. jp×g🗯️ 07:08, 11 December 2023 (UTC)

I find this discussion far more interesting than the joke. Even after the joke was explained. -- llywrch (talk) 18:04, 11 December 2023 (UTC)

  • Well, she wouldn't have an E-mail address, would she. The visual humor is fine. But the top image does not read well. I'm using an iPad; I had to go to the original image and expand that to see the page as a resume. And photo-shopped at that—no emails at the time the unaltered photo was snapped. That refers to the whole affair, a ginned-up controversy. Reading the top photo sets the viewer to read the second photo correctly. A hat trick, if you will—not puns—visual humor. B for the, what? Visual metaphors? D for the presentation—imagine how it reads on a cell phone. — Neonorange (talk to Phil) (he, they) 08:32, 13 December 2023 (UTC) —
  • Francisco de Goya - Dogs Chasing a Cat on a Man on a Donkey. Which one is the editor of The Signpost?
    Francisco de Goya - Dogs Chasing a Cat on a Man on a Donkey. Which one is the editor of The Signpost?

Smallbones(smalltalk) 03:35, 17 December 2023 (UTC)

Seems to be a man in the middle attack. But the Signpost editor is obviously the cat, above the fray. — Neonorange (talk to Phil) (he, they) 20:17, 17 December 2023 (UTC) —
Visual humor should be a regular feature in Signpost. Hmmm, what metaphorically pairs with an image of "dead pig in the sunshine"? — Neonorange (talk to Phil) (he, they) 20:29, 17 December 2023 (UTC) —

Funny, stupid, and not offensive at all, except in how bad the pun is.Andre🚐 04:53, 25 December 2023 (UTC)

In focus: Tens of thousands of freely available sources flagged (4,449 bytes · 💬)

"a free DOI that is unflagged in Wikidata... Sadly, {{cite q}} makes it impossible to deal with it here"

No, it does not; for example:

{{Cite Q|Q55893751}}

could be changed by the bot to:

{{Cite Q|Q55893751 |doi-access=free}}

and would render as:

John Ruhl; Peter A. R. Ade; John E. Carlstrom; et al. (8 October 2004). "The South Pole Telescope". Proceedings of SPIE. 5498: 11–29. arXiv:astro-ph/0411122. Bibcode:2004SPIE.5498...11R. doi:10.1117/12.552473. ISSN 0277-786X. Wikidata Q55893751.

However, rather than adding metadata to multiple instances of the same citation, it's far more sensible to hold the data on Wikidata, and to render it as part of each citation from there - which is {{Cite Q}}'s purpose.

Those of us working on Cite Q, and on citation metadata on Wikidata, would have appreciated being informed of this initiative when it was being developed, in order that the functionality could be rolled out, and metadata updated (by a bot acting on DOI prefixes in exactly the same manner as described above), in parallel. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:39, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

@Pigsonthewing: Well, consider yourself notified. I would have thought Wikidata people monitored CS1/2 talk pages so that cite Q can remain up to date, but that doesn't seem to have been the case. But also {{cite Q}} and how it interacts with Wikidata is completely obscure (and we really should not be using it, ever), so no one involved expected it to throw errors like this.
Anyway, the current list of registrants can be gotten from the section that starts with
--[[--------------------------< B U I L D _ K N O W N _ F R E E _ D O I _ R E G I S T R A N T S _ T A B L E >--
in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration/sandbox
Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 21:18, 4 December 2023 (UTC)
Cite Q, and its interactions with Wikidata, are extensively documented. It is not "throwing an error". HTH. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 21:24, 4 December 2023 (UTC)
"throwing a maintenance message" then. As for |doi-access=, {{cite Q}} doesn't mention what its equivalent Wikidata property is. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 21:31, 4 December 2023 (UTC)
The template that Cite Q wraps throws a maintenance message, because it was changed with no notification to the people who maintain Cite Q. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 21:43, 4 December 2023 (UTC)
Assuming that all papers with a given DOI prefix are open access is not going to work well in practice, since many publishers have mixed approaches to making papers open access that have been published in their journals. I hope you've been automatically confirming this on a per-paper basis rather than just relying on prefixes? Doing this work on Wikidata to start with (and focusing on data that can be individually checked by a script, rather than blanket automatic assumptions) would have been much better. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 21:37, 4 December 2023 (UTC)
These are specifically for registrants that have their entire portfolio in open access. MDPI, Frontiers Media, Hindawi, BioMed Central, Athabasca University Press, PeerJ, etc... When they have a mixed portfolio, like IOP Publishing, things don't get flagged. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 23:42, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

In the media: Turmoil on Hebrew Wikipedia, grave dancing, Olga's impact and inspiring Bhutanese nuns (5,530 bytes · 💬)

  • By my count, Asticky received 14 barnstars. Maybe I'm just being grumpy here, but I thought the point of barnstars was for notable service, not the changing of a tense by an editor who has not otherwise contributed much. In this case, what seems to be rewarded is being the fastest to make an edit that others would surely have made. Opencooper (talk) 14:29, 4 December 2023 (UTC)
  • On George Santos, The Guardian could have made it clear that "Wikipedia biography" meant his user page, as the term is ambiguous. I would hope that his actual article never made the claim that he acted in Hannah Montana.-- Pawnkingthree (talk) 14:36, 4 December 2023 (UTC)
    I'm actually a little disappointed, but afaict, it didn't. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 15:09, 4 December 2023 (UTC)
    If you read Smallbones' February report, you will see that he tried to create a mainspace bio with the Hannah Montana untruth, but was stopped by an edit filter. ☆ Bri (talk) 15:13, 4 December 2023 (UTC)
    "He" being Santos, not "Smallbones"! - Smallbones(smalltalk) 17:29, 4 December 2023 (UTC)
    I would love to hear the story on why we have a Hannah Montana edit filter ;-) Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 19:24, 4 December 2023 (UTC)
    @Gråbergs Gråa Sång: actually, it's nothing so interesting as that; the edit was blocked for shouting. —Compassionate727 (T·C) 23:02, 4 December 2023 (UTC)
  • Just wanted to note that Avieson, the author of the Saturday Paper article about the Bhutanese nuns who helped improve Wikpedia, is an user herself, who goes by the nickname Doctor 17: thank you so much for what you've taught to them, it's incredibly inspiring! Oltrepier (talk) 21:31, 4 December 2023 (UTC)
  • Hi, just to clarify: the Wikimedia Foundation has been accepting Apple Pay donations on the web since 2021 which is when the linked article was posted. What's new this year is that users of the Wikipedia App on iOS can now donate using native Apple Pay without leaving the app. Peter Coombe (WMF) (talk) 20:49, 5 December 2023 (UTC)
  • Thanks for clarifying. The 2021 news story made it into my search for new items, reported by another news site in November 2023, referencing the Apple Insider 2021 story; I short-circuited the link but didn't notice the stale date. ☆ Bri (talk) 21:18, 5 December 2023 (UTC)
  • Spreading culture via Wikipedia, awesome work by Avieson and the nuns.Vulcan❯❯❯Sphere! 22:05, 5 December 2023 (UTC)
    (Not a comment on the article itself, a general observation) Given what's going on in Bhutan, keeping a very close eye on the Dzongkha Wikipedia would be in order. The government is somehow able to get everyone to pay no attention to the man behind the curtain as they systematically imprison, torture, and ethnically cleanse the Lhotshampa. As we've seen with the Croatian Wikipedia fiasco, smaller wikis can be hijacked for pushing propaganda. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 21:14, 6 December 2023 (UTC)
    That might be difficult, inasmuch as there aren't that many Wikipedians fluent in written Dzongkha. At least to my knowledge. (And I doubt there is a translation program that supports that language.) -- llywrch (talk) 00:26, 9 December 2023 (UTC)
  • Why the AI image of people arguing? Was it too hard for an editor to pretend to argue with someone else in a photo? LilianaUwU (talk / contributions) 01:10, 22 December 2023 (UTC)
    Why not? jp×g🗯️ 13:01, 23 December 2023 (UTC)
    Just my opinion but it's a silly image. I agree with LilianaUwU about using better images in the future. Viriditas (talk) 09:17, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

News and notes: Beeblebrox ejected from Arbitration Committee following posts on Wikipediocracy (5,945 bytes · 💬)

  • On the one hand, the incident raises questions about the effectiveness of Wikipedia's internal mechanisms in ensuring that ArbCom members adhere to the standards of confidentiality and integrity that their roles demand. On the other hand, the suspension of Beeblebrox underscores systemic issues that resonate with many other editors' experiences (myself included) of unfair sanction by the same committee, where the rationale for the sanction seemed obscure and possibly influenced by factors not entirely rooted in community policies and guidelines. The handling of Beeblebrox's case, especially the ambiguity surrounding their alleged misconduct, mirrors these concerns regarding the fairness and clarity of ArbCom procedures. The nature of Beeblebrox's suspension, stemming from their off-wiki activities and discussions on a forum that criticizes Wikipedia, further complicates the issue by introducing potential bias or conflict of interest. The decision to suspend them could be perceived as an attempt to silence or punish a member for participating in critical discourse about the platform, raising questions about the committee's tolerance for dissent and its capacity to remain impartial. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Normchou 💬 17:27, 4 December 2023 (UTC)
    None of the information revealed was critical of ArbCom at least not from my read of it. I have left a criticism of this year's committee as part of a question to every candidate running from ArbCom this year and no one has come to me with any objections. Barkeep49 (talk) 17:36, 4 December 2023 (UTC)
  • There's at least one more resignation in the past that was at least a little similar to the Alex Shih situation, but I suppose I'm not allowed to say anything about that either. I could have resigned and kept this quiet, but I chose not to because I felt that the committee needed to either publicly proclaim a total code of absolute silence on every single detail of every email thread, or to accept that maybe there were exceptions to this code of silence. And here we are. Just Step Sideways from this world ..... today 20:04, 6 December 2023 (UTC)
  • Beebs has posted a lengthy timeline of this pathetic "issue" on Wikipediocracy, currently in the area of the site blocked from web-crawlers and accessible only to registered accounts. So register an account and read it already, don't be a baby. It makes very clear what a bunch of petty, weak, group-think-intoxicated bureaucrats have congealed on En-WP's Arbcom and how utterly baseless their argument against him is. Why anyone would reward members of this crew with re-election, such as current candidates Wugapodes and Cabayi, boggles my mind. Carrite (talk) 17:39, 7 December 2023 (UTC)
    @Carrite Good to see we're getting into borderline-uncivil accusations of bad faith right off the bat. Good for you. Cremastra (talk) 20:09, 9 December 2023 (UTC)
Happy to help. Thanks for your passive-aggressive contribution to the workplace. Carrite (talk) 02:05, 10 December 2023 (UTC)
  • Vanitas vanitatum omnia vanitas. This reminded me of Cato. Anyway,

    Therefore hell hath enlarged herself, and opened her mouth without measure: and their glory, and their multitude, and their pomp, and he that rejoiceth, shall descend into it.

    — Isaiah 5:14
    ---Lemonaka‎ 11:38, 8 December 2023 (UTC)
  • It seems to me that when you have a 11-0 vote against you, (1) you're seriously in the wrong; or (2) the Arbcom is a totalitarian organization. I don't see much middle ground between those two explanations. Smallchief (talk) 15:12, 8 December 2023 (UTC)
  • Commenting on something other than Beeblebrox... Is Kathy Collins' appointment the first time someone from academia has been appointed to the Board of Trustees? Might it indicate the beginnings of a shift from an emphasis on technology to one on content? (I know nothing about Collins beyond what's in the article linked.) -- llywrch (talk) 00:18, 9 December 2023 (UTC)
    She doesn't seem to have ever been a professor - her positions in academia have all been "VP for Finance" and she previously worked for the United States Department of Transportation and the Office of Management and Budget. Not that any of that is "bad" experience, just not the sort that's going to lend itself to a focus on content. ThadeusOfNazereth(he/him)Talk to Me! 12:39, 11 December 2023 (UTC)
    Oh well. One can always hope that someone outside of the STEM environment might be appointed to the Foundation Board, thus giving the humanities some influence on the projects. -- llywrch (talk) 22:23, 29 December 2023 (UTC)
  • What Smallchief said. If there were serious doubt here, it wouldn't have been 11-0. ArbCom has enough problems agreeing with each other on other issues, but this one got them all in agreement, which in itself is noteworthy on such a controversial matter. --Elonka 00:26, 11 December 2023 (UTC)

Traffic report: And it's hard to watch some cricket, in the cold November Rain (2,082 bytes · 💬)

  • The Frozen FAC/GA demotion story is my favourite story in the Signpost this week, and it's a packed edition :) WaggersTALK 11:22, 4 December 2023 (UTC)
  • Suella Braverman ... called pro-Palestinian protesters "mobs" after they planned to disrupt the annual Remembrance Day services is a somewhat non-neutral way of describing a demonstration calling for a ceasefire that was scheduled to start several hours later and go nowhere near the Remembrance Day services at the Cenotaph. Perhaps Igordebraga might like to reword the mention of "plann[ing] to disrupt"? — OwenBlacker (he/him; Talk) 13:21, 4 December 2023 (UTC)
    Agreed. In fact they happened on different days - the demonstration on the Saturday and (most of) the services and ceremonies on the Sunday. Much of the faked outrage about this was deliberately designed to confuse the stupid into thinking a march on Armistice Day would somehow disrupt the marking of Remembrance Sunday, and it worked. WaggersTALK 13:57, 4 December 2023 (UTC)
    That entry wasn't mine (I'm the one who transcribes from the Top 25 but not everything is written by myself), but changed some wording given I had to fix the month on the most edited anyway. igordebraga ≠ 17:41, 4 December 2023 (UTC)


  1. ^ https://www-oxfordreference-com.wikipedialibrary.idm.oclc.org/display/10.1093/acref/9780199237173.001.0001/q-author-00001-00002860?rskey=sNUpqj&result=3
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