User talk:Jimbo Wales

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Status of Flagged Revisions in German Wikipedia?

Can someone tell me how flagged revisions is used in German Wikipedia?--Jimbo Wales (talk) 11:01, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

According to de:Hilfe:Gesichtete und geprüfte Versionen and other relevant guidelines:

• General features

• is used to indicate that a revision is neither a sighted nor quality version.

• is used to indicate that a revision has been sighted by a regular editor and does not contain obvious vandalism

• might be used to indicate that a revision has been checked by a qualified technical expert and contains no factual errors or misleading omissions. However, this feature is currently not in use yet.

• Trusted editors are grouped into two types of reviewers: Passive and Active sighters. The latter are allowed to review the edits of other users, while the former have their edits automatically marked as sighted but they do not have the right to review the work of others.

• Requirements

• To automatically attain the status of a passive sighter, a user account must be at least 30 days old and contain at least 150 unsighted edits or 50 sighted edits. Deleted edits and all edits made in the last two days are not taken into account. In addition, the user must not be blocked for any offense, he must make at least 7 edits over a period of at least three days, and he must edit at least 8 different articles. The edit summary must be used for at least 20 edits.

• To automatically attain the status of an active sighter, a user account must be at least 60 days old and contain at least 300 unsighted edits or 200 sighted edits. Deleted edits and all edits made in the last two days are not taken into account. In addition, the user must not be blocked for any offense, he must make at least 15 edits over a period of at least three days, and he must edit at least 14 different articles. The edit summary must be used for at least 30 edits. The proportion of reverted edits must not exceed 3% of the user's total edits.

• Alternatively, there is a noticeboard for users to manually apply for the right to sight articles. Passive sighting rights are granted to users who can demonstrate that they are willing to work constructively, while active sighting rights are generally, but not always, granted to users with Stimmberechtigung - which could be loosely translated into English as the right to participate in voting processes, such as WP:RFA and consensus discussions.

• All admins have the right to remove sighting rights, especially to prevent abuses.

• General sighting of articles

• The manual sighting of articles is similar to the reviewing of pending changes on semi-protected pages of the English Wikipedia. This can only be done by active sighters.

• The automatic sighting of articles takes place when an already sighted article is edited by a passive or active sighter. If a passive sighter edits an article with unsighted edits (e.g. from an IP address), the article will be marked with unsighted revisions until it is manually reviewed by an active sighter.

• The sighted revisions of an article can only be reverted by active sighters.

• Current discussion

• There is no consensus yet on how to implement the quality reviewing of articles by technically competent editors.

• It seems that they are still discussing how to certify a user as technically competent.

• According to de:Hilfe:Gesichtete_und_geprüfte_Versionen#Pr.C3.BCfen, the technical reviewing of articles by qualified editors may not be implemented after all. The page claims that the Wikimedia Foundation is refusing to allow the implemention of the sighting system for other Wikipedias (???)

• Disclosure: I have active sighting rights on the German Wikipedia, so I may be able to answer related questions from other editors, but I don't work behind the scenes and I can only translate what their guidelines say. I hope this was helpful.

-A1candidate (talk) 16:07, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

There are no current discussions on flagged revisions in German wikipedia.

Sighted versions have been widely accepted and even appreciated for years.

And for years, no one has been trying to launch Quality versions.

Any further questions? --Niki.L (talk) 19:50, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

And maybe it should be added that it is a widely accepted tool for the quality management and that a removal like indicated by the acting against the community consensus pro flagged revisions in the Norwegian Wikipedia would cause the next big disturbance between the WMF and the German Wikipedia. Sorry if it sounds like i assume bad faith, but honestly i have no reason anymore to assume good faith on the foundation's side. --Julius1990 (talk) 20:10, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

For some discussion about not turning on flagged revisions in Norwegian see bugzilla:64726. (Personally I am opposed to flagged revisions of any kind based on wiki-ideological reasons, but do not have any data that supports either side in this argument). —Kusma (t·c) 07:36, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

There is some analysis, stats, comparison and recommendations for flagged revisions at meta:Talk:Flagged Revisions#Comparison of some Wikipedias. See also de:user:Atlasowa/gesichtete Versionen. I think it's a successful feature on deWP (and plWP, fiWP), very very effective against vandalism, spam and the degradation of articles over time on a large scale. The careless attitude of WMF [1][2] is making me mad. --Atlasowa (talk) 09:29, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

Maybe you are more interested in the cultural issues. Edits by anons and new users to deWP don't go live until an experienced editor looked at them and approved them as "not vandalism". Of course often the "sighter" can determine more about the quality of an edit than just "vandalism"/"non vandalism", but officially this is the primary purpose of the feature and anyone can and should "sight" every article, no matter if he or she is an expert on the topic. So we use it as first line of defense in our quality control, the second line would be the watchlist used by editors who see themselves as responsible for a given topic. deWP does not use bots to determine the quality of recent changes - or at least by far not to the degree of enWP. We use this feature a lot in explaining about quality in Wikipedia, and we get universal approval for it in the public. No one I ever talked to complained that he or she feels excluded because his or her edits do not go live immediately. --h-stt !? 12:20, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

Actually the flagged revisions have at least two points of benefits: First: If vandalism happens the read-only user does not see it. Second: Theoretically every edit is seen by at least one "sighter" so it is unlikely that vandalism is more unlikely missed at all. The feature helped to improve and the archieved quality level of our articles. What now was told to NO:WP is just again ridiculous. --Matthiasb (talk) 13:43, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

A few follow-up questions, if I may: (1) what percentage of articles fall into the sighted category? (2) Is it usually the case that sighted/accepted edits are acceptable, or do some unacceptable ones get overlooked? (3) What is the usual backlog? Do different types of articles have different rates of backlog? (4) Are there issues with edit conflicts, where a second editor edits text that has already been edited in a not-yet-accepted change, and how are those handled? Thanks, Newyorkbrad (talk) 14:11, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

1. all - Flagged revisions are implemented as mandatory for the article _edit>and category^/edit space at deWP.
2. Plain vandalism is reverted to 100%. Really bad edits that are not vandalism are detected almost all of the time, say 98%
3. median or max? median a few hours, max 14 days.
4. sure. all of the time. Experienced editors look for newish, not yet "sighted" revisions and flag them before they edit an article themselves. If several new editors edited "on top of" each other, I do a diff over all versions since my last time at the article and evaluate the diff. If there are valid and unwanted edits mixed together, I have to look for the one version that inserted the unwanted information (or deleted the good one) and revert just this edit. Or I edit the page manually neutralizing the offending edit without reverting it with the software feature. hth --h-stt !? 14:48, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

Have added and category to your edit. --Matthiasb (talk) 16:58, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

Additional answer at @Newyorkbrad: (and Jimbo, off course): It is not clear what are the goals the WMF has set. Maybe they hope that Wikipedia draws more editors, which add information like that. However deciding wether this edit is helpful or not is a bit more complicated than recognizing vandalism in which the F-word is added or parts of the text are removed, and obviously the additional workload for regular users to verify such modification seems to be of no concern in the WMF strategy. --Matthiasb (talk) 18:01, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

@Matthiasb:, you are completely mistaken about the concerns and strategy of the Wikimedia Foundation. The Foundation seeks to make the editing process easier for everyone - this is not trivial to do obviously and it is not helpful when people take a combative attitude when one is not warranted.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 19:43, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

There is no "everyone" in Wikipedia. There are one one side a bunch of people with very different level of education and/or interests (from high school pupils to professors emeritus), which share one thing: they want to improve the Wikipedia and do this by different means. There are people who fix spelling errors, such who contribute contents or images, other care on categorizing, repairing rotten links and there are people patrolling articles and remove vandalism or clear up POV edits. And then there is the second group who adds vandalism and POV edits. For a big part in the English Wikipedia the fight against vandals is done by bots; in other language versions such bots are not available (wether there are no skillful bot users or language specific factors make this impossible is another question). The linked example is probably an edit which is strategically welcome but we must be aware that there is a price to pay for such edits. Likely the info was added by a user on-site so certainly that was no vandalism, yet another editor has to verify it and, since no source was given, first has to find such a source. It is nice that the editing process vor mobile device users was made easier, but on the other hand there are other users who get more workload by making editing process easier for some users. And obviously citing the entrance fee table at the box office isn't feasable unless the users uploads a photo of it ;-).

Considering Mr. Forresters decision not to implement the FR in NO:WP I see a bunch of wrong prejudices on the FR. That starts with the statement that there a big costs zu implement it (and this is stated with the EN:WP) what is not a case study at all as we know that the English community rejected the first version of the feature (as it was implemented in DE:WP) and asked for other specifications. This was redone twice, if I remember correctly, causing also the need to modify in parts the feature software which already was implemented in DE:WP. I don't see that the Norwegian community asked for some exotic or intricated configuration of the feature so I think such considerations are unsubstantiated.

The other point risen up above and elsewhere is wether FR makes Wikipedia harder to edit. It makes not. The normal user edits the article the same way wether FR is turned on or turned off. But it is harder to bring and keep in vandalism into Wikipedia since the FR make sure that every potential harmful edit gets seen by an experienced user. And that makes it easier for those vandalism fighters. As I understood it in bugzilla:64726 the Norwegian community suffers in the way that the number of editors patrolling potential vandal edits is dwindling quickly while the number of such edits stays constant. If the community won't be able to deal with vandalism anymore quality goes down and editor numbers are dwindling yet more faster. And it seems unrealistic in a country of 5 millions to find new users easily. If the Norwegian community think it needs FR to deal with vandalism IMHO it is not the task of Mr. Forrester to deny this request but to fulfill it to the fastest.

One might argue that FR turns away users but that is not proven, even if we look on statistics of the DE:WP, where IP edits significantly dropped in early 2007 already, more than a year before FR started. To my knowledge there was no study for the reason but (since I came in summer 2006 and was still kind of newbie in that time) there was a climate within some prominent users of that time in the German WP in which IP edits have been considered malicious per se. Some reverted their edits only because of they came from IP. It took some time to sort this out, and FR helped on the way.

I don't know what exactly Mr. Forrester and Eric Moeller are up to with the FR, but I am almost sure, they are wrong. They simply could have asked the German WP community – even if they must have the impression that the Germans are completely a ship of fools ;-). So if I could give some advice it would be to reopen Bug 64726 and fix it ASAP. Simply believe the Norwegians that they need it.

BTW, Mr. Wales, there is no need to accuse me of a combative attitude where none is present. Though English is not my native language I am sure that a combattive attitude would appear totally different. Have a nice day --Matthiasb (talk) 21:02, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

What Wikipedia is in the Eyes of the World

This comment is the epitome of Wikipedia's philosophy:

https://en.wikipedia.org/enwiki/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Fringe_theories/Noticeboard&curid=12106325&diff=622984669&oldid=622971221

what Wikipedia has become in the eyes of the world, is the place on the internet where the people who express opinions like the above about the "other guy's" religious beliefs, are encouraged to label all the practitioners whom they are persecuting as "cultic types, not very wikifriendly" etc in his appeal for like-minded souls. The whole world by now knows this is the kind of place wikipedia "Fringe Theory Noticeboard" openly is and that these are the very same editors who typically get backslapped, rewarded and promoted, because the range of permissible world views tolerated among wikipedia editors seems to be getting more and more restricted to only those who see the world your way. 71.246.152.192 (talk) 11:33, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

I think it unfortunate to refer to other editors in that way, but it sounds like he's legitimately asking for help in improving some decidedly poor articles. If Wikipedia has a reputation for taking a pretty hard nosed approach to cults and fringe theories, then I am proud.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 11:56, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

Most people see their beliefs as something very personal and private, nobody wants to see their own firm beliefs or religion wind up on the wikipedia official "fringe theory" list, and the origin of the term is from "lunatic fringe", is inherently pejorative, and should never have been embraced by a "neutral" or professional project. If editors want a blog where they can plot and scheme whom they are going to anathematize next, at least it should not be on-wiki with wiki endorsement. 71.246.152.192 (talk) 12:00, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

You are mistaken. The term 'lunatic fringe' would be pejorative, of course. But 'fringe' is not inherently pejorative and conveys information that the reader needs. Do you have a specific page that you think has been categorized unfairly or incorrectly?--Jimbo Wales (talk) 12:05, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

In fact the phrase "lunatic fringe" is far earlier, and the use of "fringe" in that sense is derived as an abbreviation of that expression. 71.246.152.192 (talk) 12:10, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

Oxford Dictionaries: "The outer, marginal, or extreme part of an area, group, or sphere of activity:" [3]. Not necessarily pejorative in any way. Martinevans123 (talk) 12:23, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

I'm sorry, when I said "in that sense" I meant in the sense of the phrase "fringe theory". The phrase "fringe theory" and "lunatic fringe theory" was unheard of before the 70s at the earliest and was slang avoided by balanced works; the earlier phrase it is derived from, "lunatic fringe", dates to Theodore Roosevelt. 71.246.152.192 (talk) 12:41, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

Language evolves? We're not all stuck in the 1970s? Personally, I think Roosevelt was perfectly sane. Martinevans123 (talk) 12:44, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

Pretending that a pejorative or disparaging term is not, isn't the same as language evolving. 71.246.152.192 (talk) 12:50, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

You're quite right, it's not. But why should I pretend? Is this all full rubbish or lunatics too? Or is it just not on the main stage? Martinevans123 (talk) 13:23, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

Our real problem here is that there any mild epithet like "fringe" or "lunatic" ought to pale in comparison to our epithet for people who take reliable, relevant sources out of Wikipedia articles. We try calling them deletionists, vandals, POV warriors, censors... it's all somewhat accurate but there's always some defect in the word that they use to say "oh, no, that's not us, and there really isn't such a thing!" We need to craft a decently offensive epithet that can lock onto that particular behavior like a missile. Wnt (talk) 13:50, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

Luckily I am not Subud myself, or I would be much more incensed to see them brought up as "fringe", and I know little about them other than that the few Subud colleagues and friends I have ever known, never did me any wrong that I can recall. I hardly know what their beliefs are, but I doubt fringe theory is appropriate to characterize many things like this that it gets thrown around on too much. I took a look at the article and talkpage for talk:Subud now and see a low amount of discussion including about some critical source, but I am too uninformed on that one to have an opinion. 71.246.152.192 (talk) 15:15, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

Edinburgh is definitely full of lunatics and rubbish. -mattbuck (Talk) 14:01, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

I trust Alistair can count on your vote. Martinevans123 (talk) 14:12, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

• IMO WP:FRINGE is rather misused. I think it is used a lot to stifle other opinions and viewpoints by dismissing them as "fringe theories". Remember, there are real people out here who wholly believe in these beliefs. To them, they are not fringe theories. To them, other theories are fringe theories. "Fringe" and "Psuedoscience" are very nice buzzwords, but they are subjective and Wikipedia should not be the final arbiter of what is "normal" and what is not. KonveyorBelt 16:06, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

Fringe to anything only means on the edge of the mainstream which in itself is not pejorative. As well, today's fringe may be tomorrow's Nobel Prize so we don't need to psychologically turn our noses up at fringe topics. However, fringe should not be used as a sledge hammer to exclude that which is notable enough for Wikipedia or content that is significant per sources for Wikipedia. Unfortunately fringe is used as an excuse to exclude legitimate content, and often hides bias.

Cult is a word that pigeon holes often based on subjective interpretation. We might do well to follow the academics who are more likely to define aspects which contribute to something being non acceptable to majorities rather than use a word that has become a cliché driven word for orgs we don't understand or perhaps like. In an encyclopedia the academic route might be more dignified and well ... academic.(Littleolive oil (talk) 17:45, 27 August 2014 (UTC))

Hear! Hear! Fringe noticeboard seems to be home to a light of t%*$-^ss academics who are terrified some brilliant new minds will unseat their carefully constructed nest. Or people who just don't like competition of ideas. And occasionally editors who see sheer nonsense being pushed by single issue meat puppets. Carolmooredc (Talkie-Talkie) 21:42, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

Biographies of politicians created as part of election campaigns

In the course of working at AfC I quite frequently see attempts to create advertorial biographies of politicians who are busy campaigning for election. Sometimes the article authors are quite blatant about their intentions to use WP as a campaign vehicle while others seem to try to do it "under the radar". Now AfC has the ability to filter out blatantly promotional articles but I presume many such articles may be created directly in mainspace too. So I'm thinking maybe we could institute a prohibition against the creation of new biographies of politicians while they are busy campaigning. Though some of the subjects might already be notable, such as a former large city mayor running for a state or national level office or their notability is for something else prior to their political career, some are first time candidates who would actually only become notable if they were to win the election, except that the media attention generated by the campaign itself sometimes does push them over the GNG threshold. If an prohibition against such article creation for the duration of electioneering is not acceptable to the community, perhaps we could devise a variant of the "COI editor" tag that says something like "This article may have been created in furtherance of the subject's election campaign" which stays on the page until the election is over. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 14:09, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

I'd go for the flip-side solution (although both options will require policy change) that a candidate running in an election that is considered notable get a page (at least a stub) and, while still requiring that sources meet RS for that area, and BLP, etc, have a tag placed on them that allows deletion discussion after the declaration of official results. After that 'election period', the 'candidate' notability ends and normal rules apply. Some unsuccessful candidates may have pages avoid deletition because they're engaged in the community, state/province etc, while 'winners' may still be deleted. But, for the election period, they should get a pass. Just my two cents... AnonNep (talk) 15:45, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

I would vigorously oppose that, as the Wikipedia would get drawn in to debates on just what candidates would be eligible for this. Many U.S. political races have a dozen or more candidates from the legitimate parties all the way down to the...to be frank...kooks, who run on bizarre one-issue platforms. If we're going to say "no kooks", then we get into drawing an arbitrary "X is worthy and Y is worthy but Z isn't", just like the debate committee gets into with its "you must be above 20% (or whatever) in the opinion polls in order to be included" thing. I'd rather just use the existing notability rules on the books rather than create a new system for the campaign season. Tarc (talk) 16:53, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

Democracy can be scary but the way I see it working, the constituency is Federal, state/province/council and local (for which we usually have pages), in English language countries, as represented by EN:WP (we don't have to host an English version of every possible candidate page for non-eng-wikis, or a contentious Puddley-on-Marshes Women's Institute AGM). All candidate pages (if anyone bothers creating them) get a banner with 'no delete' from start to end of polling period as agreed at a constituency level. They meet a 'local' RS level (shire/county newspapers etc without fear of delete because there's no 'Google Books' ref) but only for the voting period). Then the tag goes and they can be ProD'd like any page. As it is, existing notability policy has bias for any 'new' candidate who has a media record nationally - I suggest, given them all equal footing for the election period (which they've agreed to by becoming candidates). AnonNep (talk) 17:42, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

If you're wanting an encyclopedia to be an up-to-the-minute source for elections, then you're really in the wrong business here. Steer people interested in this to Ballotpedia, where even the 5th-tier candidate for sewer commissioner in East Toad Strangle, Nevada gets a page. Tarc (talk) 17:53, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

For US politics, nice aside ... but not for the world of en:WP in many other countries. As I said at the start, I responded to 'stop candidate pages' with an 'allow candidate pages' on en-wiki, by adopting a defined constituency base (which we have, pretty much, page/category wise) with an election period timeframe tag and more localised RS (all of which would need consensus, just like 'No candidate evaaa!!!'). We do have candidate pages for local elections if someone is wealthy enough/media savvy enough, so let's allow at least a time-limited stub for all, with usual rules applying to all (including the winner) at the end. No requirement for 'up-to-the-mintute', it is, what it is. AnonNep (talk) 18:08, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

If a person cannot satisfy the general notability guideline, then they should not have an article. Period. This suggestion that a stub of an article should be allowed to remain in the project in contravention to existing notability policy, even on a limited-time basis) is not something I would ever be in favor of. Tarc (talk) 18:51, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

Nice try but no Straw man, dude. I'm not suggesting 'a stub of an article should be allowed to remain in the project in contravention to existing notability policy' but that, given the reported infux of candidate articles during elections they should be allowed, during the election period, suitably templated, with local issues/sources prioritised. At the end of the election period delete as per standard policy - the result makes no difference. AnonNep (talk) 19:09, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

There's no strawman here, I can't help it if you're tripping over your own back-pedalling words. It's very simple; create an article on a candidate; if it passes WP:GNG, WP:NPOL and the like, then it stays. If it doesn't, then it gets deleted or redirected to the article on the race. No grace period, no waiting til the election is over, no special protection. Clear? Tarc (talk) 19:25, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

You're repeating the Straw man. All reasonable qualifications given above. AnonNep (talk) 19:37, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

(ec) I'm pretty sure that's quite incorrect. Any article that passes GNG should be kept, but the bazillion special notability guidelines all set up "alternate criteria" for articles that fail GNG. I assume for example that we would want a candidate to have a page if his opponent has a page, even if only one passes GNG. Personally I think we should trash all the novelty notability guidelines and make a short paragraph in GNG about rounding out a complete set of individuals when most are notable and they are all most notable for the same reason. I realize that the novelty guidelines are frequently abused to claim an article fails even though it passes GNG but every time I've looked the guideline itself hasn't been what's to blame, it's the user misapplying it. But because they're more confusing than useful, we'd be better off without them. Wnt (talk) 19:40, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

Something of substance to discuss, finally. There has been confusion for years as to exactly what the purpose and function of the "sub notability guides" actually is. At one time I did think that it was like a safety net that could "save" articles that failed the GNG, but as time has gone on I think they serve more as a complement. A subject still has to meet some form of general notability, the subs just provide a fine-tuned, subject-specific way to get there. Like the infamous WP:PORNBIO that provides passage for a person who wins a noted adult film award; that can get them in, but some reliable source somewhere still has to take note of the person for his/her article to bew truly safe. Tarc (talk) 20:15, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

Funnily enough, a similar discussion arose out of WP:NJournals just now. I would put it this way. We are writing en encyclopaedia, and so to write an article on a subject it is necessary to have independent reliable sources. Verifiability tells us we cannot write an article any other way. However, there are a few things we can say without independent sources, although without those sources the article would be little more than an entry in some kind of directory. The supplementary guidelines are there to record decisions about what kind of directories we are willing to tolerate even when the entries are not truly be encyclopaedic. Some of those supplementary guidelines are, in my personal view, far too liberal/lax, and almost all of them seem subject to intense wikilayering even when they are self-proclaimed as supplementary guidelines, as essays or whatever. Perhaps the time has come to review and harmonise some of those supplements? Deltahedron (talk) 20:31, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

I'd love to see most SNGs diluted or deprecated , but it'd be an uphill battle. It was tortuous enough to strip WP:Pornbio of wording that granted an article to anyone thjat was just nominated for an award, or won a group award. Tarc (talk) 23:31, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

• Campaign bios are an absolutely inevitable part of WP's future. Articles For Deletion actually treats politician biographies more harshly than any other category, I think; simple GNG sometimes doesn't cut it there for low level elected politicians covered in the media for their campaigns and ordinary job activities. That stuff just doesn't "count" towards GNG. High level elected politicians are auto-Kept, as they should be; unelected politicians are either deleted if not part of a major ongoing campaign, or redirected/merged to coverage of that campaign. In short, there are already tools to use to weed out much of the politicized POV campaign dreck... The idea of a new flag for campaign bios isn't a bad one. Maybe something more neutral, like "The subject of this article is currently participating in a political campaign" would be sufficient warning of possible (probable?!?!) content shenanigans. Carrite (talk) 16:29, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

• @Carrite I like the idea of the "currently campaigning" tag. It would be relevant to new as well as even long established articles of undoubtedly notable politicians which may be prone to shenanigans by supporters or opposers. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 20:30, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

anent this topic: Wikipedia_talk:Biographies_of_living_persons#Categories.2C_lists_and_navigation_templates and Wikipedia:An#RfC for discussions concerning political issues, claims, BLPs and the like during "silly season". Collect (talk) 17:01, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

• If we can get a small percentage of the $6 billion, then we'll do all the necessary work to make room for such wiki pages, making sure these pages are consistent with all of our policies. Count Iblis (talk) 17:09, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

• I agree with Carrite that we handle politician biographies quite well at AfD, and have a pretty well established consensus of which biographies we keep, delete or merge. Bios of high ranking elected officials are kept, bios of unelected candidates for high office are redirected to articles about the campaign, which are easier to keep neutral, and bios of small town mayors and council members are usually deleted. By the way, many political biographies get very little disruptive editing. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 20:44, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

At AfC we sometimes get campaign staff moaning at us for declining their advertorials because "it's really important that this article is accepted because my boss is standing for election / because his opponent has an article so he must have one too / because the voters need to know about her...blah blah blah. The standard reply is of course "try again after he's won". My concern is about articles that are not actually deletable - but are abused for campaign purposes by supporters as well as opposers. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 21:44, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

I think that creating a new warning flag as you suggest could be done BOLDly, could it not? Carrite (talk) 22:16, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

I'm toying with a RfC regarding what we do with bio articles that fail both GNG and the narrower NPOL. I was astonished recently to see that one AfD for a general election candidate had resulted in a redirect when, at least in my limited experience of the things at AfD, they are usually deleted. I got nowhere at WP:RFD because of issues of what might be called policy compartmentalism - people dealing with narrow scopes instead of big pictures. To give an extreme example of the problem, in 1996 one constituency in India had over 1000 candidates. That's not a typo. - Sitush (talk) 13:36, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

Actually, it looks like WP:GNG now makes really low-key reference to the subject-specific guidelines; it seems like maybe they are becoming deprecated. I think what we need to phase them out entirely is that in the GNG, we should say that if an article topic is

• part of a well-defined, objective set of topics (all Indian regional candidates, all British hereditary peers, all asteroids, all Irish soccer teams)
• in which most of the members pass GNG requirements (the Indian candidates might fail this from what you say)
• in which there is merit to complete and equitable coverage of the category (to have a complete catalogue of extrasolar planets, to ensure all candidates in a general election are treated equally)

Then we should have an article on it. After that, we should treat the special notability guidelines like the archives of a noticeboard, as past decisions about how to implement specific distinctions. Maybe a new noticeboard should take over to replace their continued development and refinement. Wnt (talk) 15:38, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

I think we're just leaving ourselves wide open to some serious BLP problems: politics is a rough-house environment at the best of times but the idea of monitoring thousands of additional, often transient, BLP subjects during an election campaign is pretty scary. There is a conflict between being neutral and being notable, sure, but Wikipedia is not a democracy and we do not have to follow democratic principles. In fact, I'm not convinced that a lot of so-called democracies follow democratic principles: for example, broadcast air-time given to politicians on public service radio and television varies widely. - Sitush (talk) 17:54, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

Have in mind that an article of a certain politician, written during the elections, may not always be the result of someone trying to promote the candidate. It can also be written the usual way: someone noticed a topic (that man) with coverage in the press, and which is not included yet in Wikipedia, and so starts an article about him, reporting what do the newspapers say about him. It can also be a page written from the other side of things, a page written by the opposing party that tries to highlight the negative info about the candidate. Cambalachero (talk) 19:26, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

Sexism in drug testing and begging for your support dealing with Arbcom in another 6 months.

To the best of my knowledge and evidently Wikipedia's as well, sexism in drug testing isn't noted by any secondary medical studies, just the head of the NIH repeatedly and in recently passed legislation. However Binksternet is just deleting this every time I add it to any relevant article, even non medical ones. Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't Wikipedia trying to get more women to edit, talking about this might help a bit. Rationalwiki let me stay a systems operator, and several people there would vouch I'm more help than harm on their wiki, please let me return to editing the CensoredScribe accoun, I believe I've proven I can avoid mass categorizations and make rather unique edits to topics like Buddha and Plastic that may be of use to society. My problem area is fiction not non fiction. Exiled Encyclopedist (talk) 06:15, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

FWIW, there is no law and it doesn't effect pharma companies. The editorial you keep citing is by Francis Collins, the Director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which funds basic research in universities. The NIH is saying it is going to require scientists that get funding from the NIH (which is basically every biomedical researcher that is not working in pharma in the US) to do experiments on male and female cells, animals, and to the extent they are working with human subjects (which is more rare for NIH-funded research), humans. Pharma doesn't use NIH funding - they use their own money. The NIH is entirely separate from the FDA, which is the agency that approves drugs and has leverage over pharma - in other words, could (within the law) require pharma to submit data from testing drug candidates on male and female cells, animals, and humans. There is no mention of new law in the editorial - the NIH will implement these changes in the contracts through which it funds research. The FDA is not affected by this, nor is pharma. Jytdog (talk) 10:28, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

A Google Scholar search will find lots of secondary medical literature relating to the issue of sexism in drug testing, going back decades -- for example http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199307223290429 in the New England Journal of Medicine (open access). The basic policy point is that you shouldn't make universal generalizations unless you have sources that directly support those universal generalizations. You can't assert that something doesn't exist simply because you don't know of any examples of it. Looie496 (talk) 14:26, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

It is an important issue so people should just find lots of refs and understand them and the whole subject before entering them. Really could be a whole article, if done right. Carolmooredc (Talkie-Talkie) 21:45, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

Levitin's statements about Wikipedia and expertise

I happened to catch the tail end of this WBEZ radio interview with neuroscientist Dan Levitin in a discussion related to overcoming information overload that I wanted folks to give a listen to. Here's an excerpt, but please check out the last 5-6 minutes of the interview for a little context:

...the problem is that the Wikipedia model, as it was stated by its founders, is that they don't consider that expertise exists, effectively. Anybody can edit. And an expert has no greater standing than a non-expert. So, the problem is that for any given entry, an 11-year-old can go in and change it. And it could be about something really important...

...now, Wikipedia says, "sooner or later, someone will set it right," but that's not always true. The idea is that the 11-year old [who has an imperfect understanding of the topic] may change the article to reflect their non-expert understanding. Eventually, an expert might come along and fix it, but if the 11-year-old is relentless enough with the edit key, the 11-year-old is going to win the battle of attrition because the expert will just give up...so, the problem is that information can be quite unreliable, and there's no way for the average user to know.

(I'm sure a lot of editors have heard concerns like this from somebody at one point or another. I don't know that it's a very common story here, but there it is nonetheless.)

Levitin goes on to explain that because unreliable information is so easy to access, it's important that as a society, we should reinforce ideas that "expertise exists," and that "we don't all have an equal voice in things like the truth and facts," because some folks have better access to information (like journalists), and that such expertise should be "spoken about" and "promoted."

There's a lot to talk about here, so I'll just say my piece. I don't actually believe that every expert feels this way about Wikipedia in terms of reliability, but I think experts do not contribute to Wikipedia for reasons not unlike what Levitin spoke about. I do wonder what we can do to make sure people with domain-specific expertise can be made more easily aware of guidelines like writing one level down and systems we have to tackle things like disruptive editing, so they can start editing with the right expectations about the project. I, JethroBT ^{drop me a line} 07:19, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

I will try to contact Prof. Levitin to correct his misunderstanding. It is simply not true that I believe that expertise does not exist. And it is obvious that in Wikipedia that the model he describes of the editing process is wrong.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 13:12, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

He's wrong to some degree, but not entirely. When we have a group of competent editors maintaining an article and watching it closely, then an "11 year old" won't be able to corrupt it. The problem comes in for articles that draw only limited interest from maintainers. In neuroscience (Levitin's area and also mine), we have articles such as brain fitness, brainwave entrainment, and binaural beats that contain content I don't think is justifiable, but when I have tried to clean them up, I ran into resistance from, um, enthusiasts, and was unable to recruit enough support to overcome it. (I'm not willing to take on 1-vs-1 contests, because in that situation a person who is willing to revert-war will always overcome a person who refuses to.) Bottom line: this problem is not as pervasive as the passage above makes it seem, but it does exist. Looie496 (talk) 13:39, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

Indeed. Sometime one can even a consensus of such users. Look at Talk:Commutative_property#Requested_move_2011. JMP EAX (talk) 04:20, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

• The problem raised by JethroBT should concern us all and the somehow caricatural editing model described by Prof. Levitin has a lot of truth in it. I have a couple of expertise fields myself. However very seldom I take the initiative of editing the articles on those fileds. The reason is I don't want to subject myself to any kind of edit war or negotiation with some very active editors who have distorted or popular ideas about the subjects. Yes, it is possible to circumvent these difficulties if you are patient enough, persistent enough and can get the support of other editors. However many of us (including me) can't spare the time and the effort to fight that kind of war. Just my 2 cents. Alvesgaspar (talk) 13:41, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

In the more political areas persistent editors putting in garbage and removing RS -- including in BLPs -- is a constant struggle. It would be so nice to edit in areas 15 year olds don't care about and 35 year olds were editing collaboratively in. Carolmooredc (Talkie-Talkie) 13:44, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

He is largely correct, but he does miss that experts have considerable leeway to publish. For example, the experts can create an accessible, approachable web site for the public that clearly states the principles and bears the imprimatur of their department or scientific organization, then cite it in the article. So while I sympathize with his perspective very much, I think the best place for him to fight for his POV is by creating an off-wiki resource. In general, where you don't want crowdsourcing, where you want one or a few named authors to have the final say, that's an off-wiki project. Wnt (talk) 14:16, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

Indeed if the expert really is one, he/she will, almost unavoidably, have access to entire libraries of the highest quality independent reliable sources, thus "squashing" the hypothetical 11-year-old edit warrior's nonsense should be trivially easy. The problem with some experts that I've come across while working at AfC is that they simply don't grok that "because I say so" is not a valid reference. If experts would simply learn to cite instead of assert they'd have a far easier time here. "Citation, not assertion" could be a variant of VNT for experts. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 16:36, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

The counter-argument to this is laid out with terrifying plausibility at User:Jnc/Astronomer vs Amateur. Deltahedron (talk) 18:20, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

When working with experts in their respective fields the only real problem I've encountered has been when their own unpublished research contradicts something or other in the article attributed to other experts. There isn't just one expert in other words. Eric Corbett 18:31, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

That can be a problem too. There are indeed some [controversial] areas in which some experts have used Wikipedia to further their own viewpoint, typically related to their own research/publications. I seem to recall that some such experts were even banned by ArbCom. As with everything else, whenever a topic is controversial it will attract the more extremist editors, including experts who think elbowing out competing viewpoints, including from Wikipedia, is the way to further their viewpoint and their career. This is unfortunately one of the few incentives that the Wikipedia editing model does offer to experts... JMP EAX (talk) 04:46, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

Speaking to that point about access to sources, at the end of that interview, Prof. Levitin mentions the need to educate people on the difference between "valid and invalid sources," which is definitely important whether you are an editor or a reader. I'd also argue that the average Wikipedian who has made some nontrivial amount of contributions probably knows more about how to distinguish sources that than the average adult. I, JethroBT ^{drop me a line} 18:13, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

@Jimbo Wales:: I am not sure if Mr. Levitin discriminates between the WMF board and you, and recent developments support very indeed that the Board of Trustees really believes in what Mr. Levitin is critizising. It seems that the whole strategy of the WMF is based on quantity instead of quality. It might be necessary to forward the statement It is simply not true that I believe that expertise does not exist. And it is obvious that in Wikipedia that the model he describes of the editing process is wrong. above to the board members. Maybe they should write it down 100 times – by hand of course, not by copy and paste ;-) --Matthiasb (talk) 18:11, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

Indeed, I too am looking forward to hearing more from the WMF Board chair on his opinion that Our entire approach on knowledge dissemination is based on the western idea of an encylopedia and referencing other written sources in order to back up articles. Yet a lot of cultures around the world have a different way of disseminating (and consuming) knowledge. We should be able to get adapt our model to these cultures as well (celebrating the diversity and seeing new opportunities) [4]. Deltahedron (talk) 18:44, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

• The Stalinian saying is worth repeating here: Quantity has a quality of its own. It's how you get google juice and thus money. (And a monopoly too.) This is the model on which Wikipedia and Stackoverflow (and its network) is based. Ironically, this is also how you get impenetrable articles (impenetrable for the general public). Once you attract enough attention as a content platform, the long tail will contain articles written by the experts who only address experts. Again ironically, these "fringe" (from an audience viewpoint) articles are usually more factually/technically correct than the ones of more general interest. JMP EAX (talk) 04:26, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Real Life Barnstar
	Good Job for making wikipedia. Bobherry talk 13:41, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

Some thoughts about MediaViewer, my Statement of Principles, and the community's relationship with the foundation

One of the key statements that has been made is that the Wikimedia Foundation is in violation of #4 of my well-known Statement of Principles (User:Jimbo Wales/Statement of principles) so I want to spend a little bit of time specifically discussing that issue.

Here is my original: "4. Any changes to the software must be gradual and reversible. We need to make sure that any changes contribute positively to the community, as ultimately determined by me, in full consultation with the community consensus."

And here is how it is stated today: "4. Any changes to the software must be gradual and reversible. We need to make sure that any changes contribute positively to the community, as ultimately determined by the Wikimedia Foundation, in full consultation with the community consensus."

I must say that I am surprised and pleased to see how well the principle has held up over time and how clearly it still expresses some important ideas.

It is worth noting first and foremost what it does not say. It does not say that software changes must be approved by community vote. It does not say that community consensus is the primary principle for deciding whether some feature should be implemented or not, but rather that changes contribute positively to the community, as decided by the Wikimedia Foundation. And finally it says that the Wikimedia Foundation should make that decision in full consultation with the community consensus.

What should that consultation look like? It should look a fair amount like what we have seen in the past few weeks but without the wheel-warring and drama. Remember that this feature, which can be changed easily, has already been improved to overcome sensible objections and resolve the sorts of issues that are normally caught by live deployments. I look forward to the Foundation's plan to have an incremental rollout process to reduce drama around this sort of improvement.

Here's a view of the future that I think is a disaster for the community: suppose we adopt as a new policy, which has never existed in any formal way, that every community votes (looking for majority levels of support) on every new feature and whether they want to turn it on or off by default. The result is that the software development gets even slower and we fall further behind than where we are today because it becomes impossible for the developers to have a clear view of how it works in all the different environments. The amount of effort that would need to go into addressing every feature variation on each of hundreds of wikis would be exponentially higher as each of them will needed to be identified, monitored, tested and coded.

And here is a view of the future that I think is fantastic for the community: the WMF invests a lot more resources in engineering and product including building a proper consultative process with the community, and introducing incremental roll-outs (to 1% of the editors, then 2%, then 5%, or similar) so that problems can be identified and fixed before we have a huge drama. In this vision we don't have a set of features that are voted on to be turned on and off, we have a dynamic and ongoing healthy conversation about how to improve things.

I have personally been frustrated in the past many times with the disastrous product roll-outs that we've seen (I am not talking about MV, but I'm sure we all remember Flagged Revisions and the Visual Editor). And I want that to change. By hiring Lila, we have committed to making that change and she's investing in building up capacity to get things done in a better way. And we in the community need to support that and call people out on some particularly unhelpful and false attitudes (boiled down to the essence: the WMF is against editors - there are many variants of this claim, all false).

Has the Foundation screwed up? Yeah, sure, lots of times. Has the community screwed up? Yeah, sure, lots of times. Is there a better way? Yes.

What I'm asking people to do is, as I used to say, "relax a notch or two." Let's calm things down for a couple of months. It seems that the Foundation is about to remove (or has just removed) the superprotection of a javascript file in German Wikipedia, and I beg the German Wikipedians to work to reduce tension by not implementing the controversial javascript hack again. And then let's have a real conversation about what improvements need to be made to the MediaViewer and expect that the Foundation will indeed make those improvements.

And then the more important task - let's talk about and help the Foundation design a sane process for community consultation on developing software. And let's not do this in the sense of a political battle or power struggle but rather "Assume Good Faith," and understand that software decisions made by committee or community vote is not a functional process (and indeed, has gotten us to the sorry state we are in today) but that equally, software created by developers who have a poor understanding of our real needs doesn't work either. Let's work on a better way that is both efficient in terms of getting software that works produced and effective in terms of meeting our real needs as editors.

Peace is the first step, so let's chill.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 19:32, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

Peace is the last step, not the first. Let's not forget that there is no singular community, but there is a singular WMF. Eric Corbett 20:42, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

I hope that this is not the WMF view because, having seemingly got their "preferred version" and removing the superprotect at de-WP pretty much with the proviso that no-one upsets it, it is easy to imagine the organisation being keen to promote platitudes about peace and chilling. If it is the WMF view then we're in a bigger hole than I thought. And, no, I don't think MV can be separated from the prior "botched" rollouts because it, too, was botched. - Sitush (talk) 20:51, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

@Jimbo Wales: -1! Sorry for bad english: you simple miss the point. If you want us to relax, give use a reason. all what i see is...candy. we don't want to block new software. we do not say, "no, MV never!". We just say, at the moment, MV only for those, who want him. (funny fact: MV is betasoftware (oh yeah, it is!), but it is not listet under beta software in your preferences) If MV gets fixed and gets better functionality, the opinion of the german community can change. but this opinion depends at most of the fact that you (WMF) respect us. (as long as you (WMF) offend us, the don't like you (WMF) and your (WMF) new gadgets)

So. If you want peace with us, respect us. We are not children. we have a will. We are wikipedia. We can decide. Every "chapter" can decide which is best for the "chapter", because you (WMF) guys in SF can decide what ist maybe beste for WMF, but you don't have the view for us locals. And I'm sorry for that. If you had this missing view, many things would be easier.

So, repect us. Don't try to overrule us. If you overrule the people, it may work for a while. But sooner or later (histroy will tell you that) the people will rise up. and if you (WMF) would know german histroy well, you could understand why the germans are so much...pissed about you try to establish a dictatorship. the last dictatorship in germany fell 1989, because "we are the people" (not sure if the translation of "Wir sind das Volk!" is correct).

So please, come down. PLEASE stop offend us. Please, don't try to fight us. "War never changes. It only becomes more bloody and brutal." —Rep. James E. Van Zandt

If you move on with this aggression, wikipedia will lose. Maybe not in the short, but in the long run. War never has winners, only one side wins in war, this is death. And death never picks a side.

So long... Shadak (talk) 09:54, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

Appreciate and support statement

• I want to thank you Mr. Wales for giving us the above statement, and say that I fully support all of the points it clarified.—John Cline (talk) 20:05, 28 August 2014 (UTC)
• no more power struggle? to be clear: no new superpowers for the staff? really? I can't believe it! thanks =) --Sargoth (talk) 20:39, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

I don't actually have a strong view on the fundamental concept of "superprotect" particularly for site-wide javascript. I do have a view that rolling it out in the midst of an emergency was unfortunate and gave rise to conflict that should better have been avoided. But in general I think that admins who edit site-wide javascript in that way are disrupting Wikipedia to make a point and if that's going to happen, then a natural consequence will be to alter the rights of admins to prevent it. (A good idea might be to spread the ability to edit a superprotected page to admins who have pledged not to use it disruptively.)--Jimbo Wales (talk) 20:58, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

• And neither should you believe it. Eric Corbett 20:44, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

  Why not, Eric? This is precisely the kind of toxic and unhelpful comment that I am asking the community to call out. The Foundation is keenly interested in improving processes, and Lila in particular has been hired to beef up the engineering and product capabilities of the Foundation. If you want to just piss all over everything with the view that people (me?) are lying, then I have a good idea for you: find another hobby and leave the community to work for positive change.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 20:55, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

I think the word "toxic" is one that you would do well to expunge from your vocabulary, or at least only use when you're referring to actual poisons. I have several good ideas for you as it happens, but I'll do you a favour and spare you the details. Eric Corbett 21:08, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

It is an apt word and I will not shy away from using it. What it means in this context is "killing a conversation". It is inappropriate to immediately reach for suggestions that I am lying or that the WMF is lying. It's toxic and you should stop it. If you have good ideas, then by all means, don't spare me, put down your poison pen and share them.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 21:23, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

It's an apt word for mushrooms, for me non-native speaker, with a killing flavour. I would not have guessed that another meaning might be "killing a conversation", and I had no idea that kind, generous, forgiving and compassionate people would apply it to "personalities". There must be better words. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:39, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

What's killing the conversation in this context is the situation at de.wp where Superprotect has been lifted but the WMF has made it implicitly clear that any more changes to disable MV, consensus or not, will have consequences. BethNaught (talk) 22:14, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

Dear Jimbo, above you wrote: "I think that admins who edit site-wide javascript in that way are disrupting Wikipedia". Wouldn't it have been much easier to warn and - in consequence - de-admin said German admin? For what good has this Superprotect been invented - either as a concept as well as a script? There would have been many more ways to stop a wheel-war, but inventing a new role was the least effective of them, as we have seen for the past few weeks. In my opinion it was neither wise nor effective to invent such a user role. I may be complaining, but facts do stand, and a broad gap has broken into our communities. This is not something the German (and Austrian and Swiss, as we stand as one) section should be blamed for, but it takes two to begin a war, and a wheel-war as well. These are only thoughts of an ordinary German user, but I hope you will consider them. --Altkatholik62 (talk) 23:12, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

@BethNaught: exactly! As I said here. At present the message seems to be that everyone is supposed to chill provided that the developers get their preferred version. The WMF has to realise that it cannot exist without the community. Sure, it will retain its umpteen million articles but unless it locks them down then it will be complete mayhem (as it already is on some of the smaller language-specific versions). And if it does lock them down then it will also be complete mayhem because all the faults/errors/BLP & copyright violations etc will remain and nothing will improve. Stop thinking like Ayn Rand or whoever on LSD and begin living in the real world. A first step would be to make all significant software change opt-outable from Day One and to make them so not merely for the editors but for the viewers. That gives freedom of the individual and limitation of "big government" which, I rather thought, was one of Jimbo's personal philosophical preferences. But maybe I've got that wrong. - Sitush (talk) 00:48, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

• Thanks for taking the time to write this out, Jimbo. I am reassured to hear things about more incremental rollouts to address bugs early on and investing in better engineering support for building and debugging new software. So far, it seems like a lot of the substantive conversations on Flow over at Mediawiki have been constructive in part because the rollout has been deliberately limited. I think the community generally ought to critically scrutinize new software (and it seems to me that dev teams should value such scrutiny), but I also hope that the scrutiny will be motivated by a desire to help develop a better system rather than a desire to reject it outright and perpetuate an "us vs them" mentality. I, JethroBT ^{drop me a line} 00:24, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

A candid question

• I have a single question, the same I've been asking from the very beggining without getting an answer. Knowing that giving up (while the product is being developed) implementing MV as the default viewer for everyone would considerably deflate the present tension between WMF and the community, why that step was not taken already? Considering the present situation of conflict it would certainly be more important to deflate the tension than to stick to some obscure operational agenda. If you want to chill, that is certainly a good step to begin with. Alvesgaspar (talk) 20:36, 28 August 2014 (UTC)
  • I am not the decision maker on that, but I can tell you why I think it would be a bad idea: because most of the concerns that people had at the beginning have already been addressed, and the rest are on track, then I don't see how that would do anything other than reinforce the perception that the right way forward is for people to engage in wheel-warring and protests about software features. There is no question (none) that the future involves MV enabled universally and by default, and so the right question is what needs to be fixed about it? I don't think having a religious war about it is the right way forward for the community. As I said in my letter, the real way forward is for the Foundation to invest in processes to make sure that (a) software is developed that we need and (b) it is rolled out in a professional incremental way so that major problems aren't suddenly thrust upon the community without warning. We have to move away from the idea that voting is the right way to decide software issues - voting doesn't lead to good software and it doesn't give rise to consensus - it gives rise to bad and unusable software such as what we put up with every day around here.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 20:53, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

    (edit conflict) You're setting up a straw man, as the issue has never been about voting for software features. What it's always been about, and is still about, is the the WMF's forced imposition of software that frankly isn't fit for purpose, or even nearly ready to be deployed site wide. Hence the current lack of trust in the WMF developers. With new initiatives such as Flow waiting in the wings, what guarantee do we have that this pattern has changed? That was of course a rhetorical question, to which the answer is "none". Eric Corbett — Preceding undated comment added 21:03, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

The issue is in very large part about voting for software features, which is something that has been happening for years to ill effect. As to "what guarantee" I don't know what you are asking for or what you would like to see? We've changed CEOs and specifically brought someone in with a strong remit to invest more in engineering and product and there are rapid transitions taking place in those processes. A modern and sane incremental rollout process is being developed so that we can avoid the sudden release of "not fit for purpose" software. What I am asking everyone - even you - to do is to put down your swords and join a dialog about how to improve things. Nasty comments that imply people are lying are just absolutely not helpful. And if you aren't here to help, then you shouldn't be here at all.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 21:13, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

If I'm not here to help what? You seem to have lost track of what this project is nominally about, so let me give you a clue. It's not about software or creating an ever-increasing bureaucracy at the WMF. Or is it? Eric Corbett 21:23, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

Again, poison without content. If you aren't here to help build an encyclopedia, then you shouldn't be here at all. And helping to build the encyclopedia includes helping to have a proper and constructive dialog about software development. Simply pissing on everything all the time is not helpful at all. And if you are going to keep doing it, then do it somewhere else.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 21:26, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

You're simply making yourself look like an idiot. Why don't you do that somewhere else? Eric Corbett 22:00, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

I rest my case.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 22:08, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

What case is that? You've yet to make one. Eric Corbett 22:22, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

Content vs ...well, you said it. It is always sad to see someone unable to live up to the principles (or dogma, as it were) they claim to espouse. Hopefully everyone can get more involved in the work of building an encyclopedia of good (not just allegedly good) content. Nikkimaria (talk) 00:43, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

• • • Sorry Jimbo, but the only religious dogma I see here is your conviction that the future involves MV enabled universally and by default. From my own experience and the comments I have read from many others, MV is presently a nuisance for the editors, most especially those dealing with images. Unfortunately your own words suggest that the real reason for WMF to keep MV enabled by default is to keep its face. Not a very good start. Alvesgaspar (talk) 21:10, 28 August 2014 (UTC)
      • That's not a religious dogma, it's just a fact. MV is not going away. If it is "presently" a nuisance for editors, then the solution is to fix it, not to have some religious opposition to it for no reason. "Keeping face" is not a factor here at all - what is a factor is that modernizing what happens when you click on an image to provide a better experience for both readers and editors is going to happen. Is. That's, again, not religious dogma but a fact.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 21:13, 28 August 2014 (UTC)
        • Thus it is not a religious dogma that the future involves MV enabled universally and by default but an exercise of authority. It will be that way because you and WMF say so. That is the only rational conclusion that can be drawn from your words. Sorry to suggest that WMF just wants to save the face. It is much more than that: they want to say in very clear terms who is in charge. Sorry Jimbo, you have failed to convince me that MV cannot be disabled as the deafult viewer while it is not ready, despite the positive effect it would have on the present conflict. Alvesgaspar (talk) 22:58, 28 August 2014 (UTC)
        • I think there is a "problem" here in that the MediaWiki software is really quite usable as it is. I really don't think MediaViewer adds much to the experience (and it seriously gets into my way when I need the meta-information, but that's an aside). So people come up with projects like VE or MV that look good and have a superficially convincing user story, and hence get approved and funded. Then the people involved become invested in the projects, and the projects take on a life of their own. An argument like "we have worked for two years on the feature" or "we have invested a million Euros into the feature" are not really good reasons to deploy a feature in the face of stiff user resistance. In fact, they should be entirely irrelevant. But that's very hard on a project manager tasked with delivering a project, or developers which have done their best to deliver a feature as specified. I don't know a good solution, but smaller, more incremental steps and much better communication between foundation and users would be a step in the right direction. I think your phrasing above is wrong. "Modernizing what happens when you click on an image" is absolutely not a value in itself. "Provid[ing] a better experience for both readers and editors" is. But that judgement is up to the readers and editors. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 22:08, 28 August 2014 (UTC)
          • MedaiWiki software is not "quite usable as it is". It is a usability nightmare in many ways. I am not aware of anyone at the Foundation or anywhere else who has made an argument like "we have worked for two years" or "we have invested a million Euros". If they have please point it out to me so I can go and explain to them the fallacy of Sunk costs. Modernizing what happens when you click on an image *is* a value for the same reason that following universal standards is a value. Readers and editors (particularly new editors but all editors) have a right to expect that Wikipedia will follow good web design principles and not do weird things for no reason.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 22:14, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

The German Community is well aware of Erik's Statement:... If you want a WMF that slavishly implements RFCs or votes to disable features upon request, you'll need to petition to replace more than just one person. In fact, you should petition to reduce the staff dramatically, find an administrative ED who has no opinion on what to do, and exclusively focus on platform-level improvements and requests that clearly have community backing. This is not the org we want to be. ... Erik Möller,VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation --Niki.L (talk) 06:13, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

• I strongly disagree on the usability issue. Of course, the MediaWiki front-end is not particularly sexy, and it's easy to find individual aspects that could be improved. But it is fit for purpose, as can be seen by the fact that Wikipedia is among the top 10 websites of the world. I've seen the statement that "other websites are passing us left and right", but if they do, where are they? Technical snazziness may be sexy, but it does not necessarily contribute to usability. Indeed, many organisations who have set up MediaWiki for internal purposes have not updated it in the last 5 years or so - because it works as it is. Hurdles to Wikipedia participation are not technical, they are social, both within the community (where processes and expectations have risen) and in society at large (where for large groups, participating in an encyclopedia or any collaborative knowledge project is simply outside their scope of experience). Learning Wiki markup is trivial compared to substantially researching any given topic and writing a sourced article. Edit conflicts are annoying, yes, but they nearly exclusively occur in talk pages and, wiki space debate forums, and maybe the reference desk. I can't remember when I last had an edit conflict when working on an article. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 08:38, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

That you, Jimbo, call flagged revisions a desastrous rollout shows that you are completly blind to the facts. For the Foundation who is obsessed with quantity and has no idea how to keep quality of the content high it may appear so. From the communities point of view it is a different image: on the German wikipedia there was first a consultation (Umfrage), then a test and then the feature got accepted in two polls (Meinungsbild). That is how the process of rolling out software features has to look like. Then the Foundation finally will just present features that actually work and make a step foward. Did you hear any complaints on Echo? Why not? Because it works and helps! Dis the readers feedback tool get accepted in the German Wikipedia? No, because a limited test didn't convice (or better to say it convinced me personally that my initial pro position to the feature was wrong). Your autocratic vision will destroy Wikipedia, not that the software isn't any near facebook-like experiences. --Julius1990 (talk) 22:21, 28 August 2014 (UTC) PS: How many big, long, important articles have you written in comparison to those who tell you that the software is very usabale actually for this task? I really can't take you serious anymore with such kind of statement.

Julius1990, I feel you haven't actually read my statement. So before I address your particular points, I want to ask you to go back and read what I said. I am not calling for an "autocratic vision" but precisely the opposite. I am calling for the Foundation to move away from autocratic software development and rollouts and instead invest real resources in a formal process to engage the community throughout the entire software development process. So my position is exactly the opposite of what you seem to think.

As to the specifics. The rollout of Flagged Revisions in English Wikipedia was a disaster. That it went well in German Wikipedia is not due to the Foundation having a good rollout strategy but because the process put into place in the German Wikipedia by the German Wikipedians was a good one. Here in English, we had a massive fight over a confused poll that different people interpreted in different ways and it ended in Flagged Revisions not being used at all, and ended (unfortunately) in the Foundation throwing up their hands and refusing to invest more resources in improving the feature. I support FR and wish that English Wikipedia would copy what the Germans are doing with it, but that isn't going to happen because the rollout left so much sadness in its wake that I don't see any appetite from the community to seriously revisit the issue.

That the software is usable for technically sophisticated users to write long and important articles is not in question and should not be disturbed. But many aspects of the software could be improved both for experienced and technically sophisticated users AND for new editors and readers. Setting up a false dichotomy that leads you to the conclusion that any change is bad is an error. What we should be asking of the Foundation and what the Foundation is promising are the same thing: serious and deep consultation with the community so that software efforts are properly prioritized to solve the problems that we actually have. We need to move away from the autocratic approach of the past, in which features were developed with insufficient community input, then rolled out to us en masse, followed by riots and votes. That process is wrong. Instead of autocratic top-down approaches, we need serious collaboration.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 09:26, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

There were some complaints about Echo but the issue got resolved fairly fast. I think a javascript hack was deployed until the developers conceded the point. It related to the disappearance of the orange box that notified you when you got new talk page messages. The developers, frankly, need to spend more time listening: they may be ace coders but they're often on their own path and it really does not relate to the basics of why Wikipedia exists etc. A good start might be to ditch Möller, who may be one of the greatest coders who has ever lived but clearly has no clue when it comes to liaison. I'm not convinced about the "we've brought Lila in to address the software issues" (paraphrase) argument, either. Sue Gardner seemed to spend an inordinate amount of time attempting to address systemic bias issues and that failed, so if Lila's appointment is really about software then I'm not hopeful. Chief Execs are supposed to drive, encourage etc, yes, but if they are so specific in their interests then they are not well-rounded leaders. - Sitush (talk) 00:01, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

Response to your request on my talk page

Jimmy, re: this message --

Suggesting that I relax is one thing, but requesting that I stop doing something is entirely another. Could you clarify which you are doing here?

Since your request is about the open letter I wrote requesting that WMF reverse a couple of bad decisions, I think it's relevant that numerous people have praised its clarity and its measured nature. It may not be perfect, but I have good reason to disagree with the notion that it isn't "relaxed." I can't know for sure, but I suspect your bias/COI may be influencing how you read it. -Pete (talk) 21:01, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

What I'm saying is that the fight is over. You won. Superprotect has been lifted (or is about to be, I'm not 100% sure) in German Wikipedia. The other question is a deep and fundamental question that needs to be answered with dialogue and discussion. It makes no sense in the long run for us to have a situation where hundreds of wikis each have a completely different configuration based on local voting. That is not a viable process and we already have huge problems to the extent that it has happened. Look at Flagged Revisions as a great example. It's a feature that I love but that English Wikipedia has mostly chosen not to use, and other communities are using it in a variety of configuations some good, some bad. This makes long term support virtually impossible for the Foundation. We need to be pushing hard for reunification of software features across the projects.

So you've wrapped together two very different issues. One of them is now moot. The other is in need of a complex and thoughtful discussion, not a petition.

So yes, I'm asking you to relax but I'm also asking you to declare victory and be done with it. There is no need to continue the petition.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 21:06, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

I invite you to read this update on the talk page of the petition, which I wrote after the announcement from Lila and Erik. In summary, a "superprotect" that is enforced by the lingering question of whether or not the WMF will overreact if an elected administrator should choose not to honor its "request" is in no way preferable to a "superprotect" that is a fully technical feature. This is a point which I thought had gotten through, when @Eloquence: acknowledged the problematic lack of clarity in the original announcement of the decision to overrule the English Wikipedia's RFC -- but perhaps not. -Pete (talk) 21:15, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

I have read that and I think it confirms what I'm saying. The first point is moot. The second point, in contrast to your own words, is "about long-term decision-making processes". MV is not going away and an important principle is being established here. As I understand it (and again, I'm not the decision maker) the Foundation's answer to the second demand is "no". And the reason for that is precisely "long-term decision-making processes". What I'm asking you to do is join a conversation and to be a positive influence (as you always are) on that, in the knowledge that the Foundation is massively ramping up investment in the relationship between what the developers are doing and what the community wants and needs. We have to move away from this model of panicky rights battles and mass petitions in a tone of adversary, and move to a position of remembering that we are all there for the same reason: to build something amazing.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 21:20, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

Since you see that the answer to the second request is "no," surely you can see how counterproductive it would be for me to declare victory. Even if I believed we had achieved a victory (which I do not), it would be a betrayal to the 700+ people who have signed the letter with both bullet #1 and bullet #2. I have no authority to overrule them. There is no victory as long as the WMF continues to prioritize its own goals over the reasoned objections of huge numbers and an overwhelming ratio of volunteers -- whether that prioritization is expressed through technical means (superprotect) or social means (creating ambiguity around what is a "request" vs. a "demand").

Speaking for myself, I would very much like to see something very similar to the Media Viewer deployed as the default option; and I know this to be true of many (but not all) of the other people who signed the letter. But it must be a mature product first. At present, I have misgivings about the processes the WMF has created and maintains for evaluating the maturity of the product. Permitting local communities to roll back the default state, at present, would be a practical and clear acknowledgment that the present state of the software may not be sufficient, even if WMF is not (yet) capable of fully grasping what is needed. -Pete (talk) 21:37, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

If you would "very much like to see something very similar to the Media Viewer deployed as the default option" then the best way to get there is to understand now that the Foundation is not going to disable it but is investing huge resources in fixing it. (Which, by the way, is not hard because it's pretty damned good already and just needs some tweaks.) The petition has had all the impact it is going to have.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 21:43, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

Edit conflicts (discussed below) are among of the most frustrating things my students have encountered (in addition to experienced editors). I would not be surprised at all if it accounts for a major portion of the people who would like to contribute to Wikipedia, but throw their hands up in frustration after trying for a while.

But if the WMF goes about trying to address edit conflicts in the same way it has approached other recent software improvements, do you feel confident it would avoid drama and discord? That it wouldn't create new problems that are bigger than the one it aims to fix? (Some seem to feel that Flow will do that, though I am not familiar enough with it to have an opinion.) If you're not confident -- what can be done to address that?

I assure you, it's not just a few tweaks to how WMF advertises upcoming changes, and it's not inviting more volunteers to give up their time without pay to do work that others are paid to do. It is vital that the WMF start hiring people whose (deep) expertise lies in operating within complex social systems, to supplement the engineering talent it has pursued. It really should have that capability at or near the top of the organizational chart -- some of the things WMF's executives and board members say are truly astonishing for an organization of WMF's size and importance. And the WMF must be able to predict at least sometimes what actions will lead to massive unrest, and not continue to be taken by surprise.

One thing that would help a great deal is if WMF organizational leaders (several or all of them) could improve their ability to accurately repeat back the arguments made by those opposing their decisions. Understanding a problem is absolutely vital to being able to find a solution to it. It may be that something like nonviolent communication training for execs would be an effective and low-cost first step.

I do look forward to participating in the effort to get Media Viewer ready for release, even though it will involve significant uncompensated time. At this point I think it would be the right thing to do, if and when the conditions are right, and I appreciate your invitation. However, I am not willing to participate while the MV remains enabled by default on sites where a clear decision has been made to disable it. -Pete (talk) 22:08, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

The Foundation under Lila's direction is committed to radically ramping up investment in engineering and product. So yes, I am confident that things in the future will be different from things in the past. If you are not willing to participate in constructive dialog to move that forward because you are climbing the Reichstag dressed like Spiderman over MV, then you will be sorely missed. We are no longer in an era where voting to disable key software features is accepted. We are moving into an era of constructive dialog and debate. I hope you will change your mind and be a part of that future. --Jimbo Wales (talk) 22:18, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

I appreciate your call for relaxation, but I am not sure how you square that with talk about religious wars, or caricatures of climbing the Reichstag. -Pete (talk) 22:24, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

If the products enabled by default would have a minimum quality, for readers and contributors, this debate would be superfluous. Treating everyone with semi-working features because it looks bad from the engineering perspective if a deployment gets significantly delayed due to needs for improvement is somewhat disruptive. Have you ever tried the mobile version of MV with an iPhone 4? Zero information. Not zoom-able. Closing does not work while loading. I think I am going to file 3 bugs right now; which will take me about 30 minutes. So if you claim that the majority likes MV on mobile, which numbers are you referring to?

While I appreciate the engineers' efforts to reach out an look how pages like Flickr, Google+ and Facebook present their images, I miss considerations on whether we want to become Flickr/Facebook/Google+ or on how we are different and how this should be reflected in software. I am aware that there are eye-candy versions of Wikipedia developed by third parties, so we must catch up to not loose readers to them. But some features are simply not ready for production. This has been recently proven for mobile uploading. I consider the amount of time volunteer Lupo spent proving this situation and cleaning up unhelpful mobile uploads to 3 hours per day. Not only did the development team didn't take copyright violations serious (perhaps they should talk to your legal department), their statistics were also wrong and are still inferior to those Lupo provides. bugzilla:62598 for the full story. But again too many words I think, let's just improve! -- Rillke (talk) 02:08, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

Indeed, m:Community_Engagement_(Product)/Process_ideas might be a good place for those interested to join that conversation. Deltahedron (talk) 21:27, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

Thank you. And don't forget - the Foundation is committed to correcting what, in my view, has been a serious underinvestment in engineering and product over the past few years. So don't shy away from process ideas that actually require the Foundation to hire people.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 21:30, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

The Superprotect is still there. This one superprotected page is un-superprotected now, yes, but members of the "staff" user group still have the right. A user right that wasn't needed in 13 years and a user right that tells the community "you are silly children" and "you can't take care of your things". --Drahreg01 (talk) 21:29, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

While I don't support Superprotect as it is currently implemented (particularly not as a "staff-only" right - that kind of thing just introduces unnecessary divisiveness) I think that the general principle of it is valid: that there is no reason to allow admins to disrupt Wikipedia to make a point by editing the sitewide javascript. I think there can be reasons for technically proficient admins to edit sitewide javascript but it is a major security risk and potential point of conflict and so in general I don't think there is any valid objection to shrinking the group who has that right.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 21:33, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

Admins who don't know a thing about JavaScript (like me) will never edit the sitewide javascript. Admins who do know but don't act resposibly with their right to do so will soon loose their admin-flag. The community will make them loose it. We don't need people with "super power" to manage things that can be managed within the local community. --Drahreg01 (talk) 21:51, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

Drahreg01, the drama on English Wikipedia came when an admin who did not understand JavaScript edited the sitewide JavaScript. Even he admits that the code someone produced didn't do what he thought it would do, and that adding that code was an error in judgment. And it's almost impossible to lose the admin-flag on this project, unlike on most other projects. So I quite disagree with your reading of the situation. Risker (talk) 22:39, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

@Risker: and You say, the English Wikipedia would not be able to solve this drama without the Foundation stepping in? Of course people will always make mistakes, and then the mistakes will be solved. Trusting the communities means, it will not be solved everything immediately. Maybe some things have to be talked over, maybe there are different positions, and a compromise must be found. Of course, if the Foundation doesn't have this trust anymore, they can always reign like dictators, force their position without discussion and threaten opposing voices. I accept, that some office actions must be enforced immediately and without discussion. These are legal matters or maybe software changes, that are a direct threat to the future of the Foundation/the projects. And of course the question, if a Mediaviewer is in opt-in- or opt-out-mode is of that kind - or is it not? --Magiers (talk) 08:58, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

To understand that Jimbo and the Foundation staff would need to have actually any insight how the projects work. But they don't have it and they don't even care to get it. --Julius1990 (talk) 22:08, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

I'm afraid that's true. The only solution on the table now is to spend more money and employ more people, rather than fewer and better people. Eric Corbett 22:14, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

For the record: If you prefer such war metaphors, „the fight“ is not „over“ unless superprotect is abolished altogether from all Wikimedia projects. The Foundation has lost its face and the trust it once had and should therefore think about how to rebuild its reputation.--Aschmidt (talk) 22:18, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

I don't understand the statement that "It makes no sense in the long run for us to have a situation where hundreds of wikis each have a completely different configuration based on local voting." Isn't MediaWiki supposed to be highly customizable, with many features that en.wikipedia doesn't even use? Isn't it supposed to be useful even for sites that have no affiliation with WMF? By having different configuration options WMF simply tests this diversity and customizability. Wnt (talk) 00:48, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

It is this approach which has stalled software progress for many years. It is unwieldy to manage and test hundreds of configurations and for most sites who use MediaWiki, there is no interest in these kinds of customizations. MediaWiki will of course remain highly customizable but there are limits.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 09:17, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

Example of bad software

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T72163

In this short discussion, I have had multiple "edit conflicts". This requires me to know how to scroll to the bottom, find my text, dig through that and find the words that I wrote, copy them to my buffer, then scroll up, find the place where I wanted to put them, and paste. And save again. In the hopes that no one has edited in the meantime to generate yet another edit conflict. The number of times I have had this experience on any other website? Zero.

This is the kind of thing that needs to be fixed, even though we've lived with it for 13 years. A lot of interesting things have happened with web development and AJAX and all that, and we're creaky and ancient by comparison. If we do not give the Foundation space to develop new concepts then we will cause ourselves infinite grief.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 21:39, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

Has that problem even been looked at by WMF developers? Perhaps they should focus on those types of problems (i.e. what we all agree are problems) than what they deem problems. Go Phightins! 21:45, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

Yes, this is one of the many problems that the "Flow" design concept is about. See here for more. One of the things that I'm hopeful about is that significantly increased investment in product and engineering will mean that ideas like this will be made stronger and built sooner and rolled out incrementally so that we don't have too much "shock" due to "not fit for purpose" software being sprung on us.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 21:49, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

What about in articles? Go Phightins! 21:51, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Very few developers, or even Jimbo himself, ever edit articles, so what happens when editing them is of very little interest. Eric Corbett 21:57, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

A different use case and I think a more difficult problem. Talk pages have a different editing dynamic - people mostly don't edit other people's comments (and the rules for doing so are quite strict). Article pages are intended to allow people to edit other people's words. So improving detection of automatically resolvable edit conflicts in article space is worthwhile but a different problem. I'm not personally sure of the state of the art in this area.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 21:55, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

There's an extension called Liquid threads already, no need for flow. --Sargoth (talk) 21:54, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

LiquidThreads, while interesting and cool, doesn't solve all the problems that Flow is designed to solve. But in essence I think both are the same thing, and Flow is the more recent and modern approach to the problem.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 21:57, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

There's talk at WT:Flow of rolling it out as a test case to help areas. The community really needs to put a policy together to control the use of Flow (when and where it is used, flow →text conversion and vice versa, personal choice for user talk pages) before the WMF gets too keen and messes something up. For example, archiving needs to be sorted before deploying to any high volume discussion page. BethNaught (talk) 22:10, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

I don't believe neither in LT nor in Flow. Aside the fact that a lot of discussions take place outside the talk page names room, mainly RfCs and such discussions an implementation of flow will break the English Wikipedias quality mangement system entirely. Just in case the developpers are not aware of it, they should take a look on the bunch of categories Talk:Hurricane Sandy is sorted in and on the bunch of templates the talk page is plastered with, one for every wikiproject the article is affecting. De facto almost every EN Wikipedia article has a talk page with at least one of those templates. Frankly spoken I fear that Flow is just another feature with which Wikipedians will be unhappy with. If I had to decide it I would abandon it and start with working on a Wikidata based referencing system. Footnote management of Word for DOS 5.0 was more user-friendly than the fumbling with <ref>…</ref> and <references/> --Matthiasb (talk) 22:13, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

Well I agree, but since the WMF is clearly going to impose Flow on us whether we like it or not, we need to agree on a common policy position. BethNaught (talk) 22:16, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

This is what I'm trying to call people's attention to - this meme is outdated and dead. The Foundation is not going to impose Flow on you whether you like it or not, the Foundation is going to invest hard resources in working with the community to understand the problems with our discussion system in order to fix them the way we like them. "Flow" is the overall name for that effort, but nothing about Flow is finalized and it will become what the community wants it to become. This false concept that it is the WMF versus the community needs to end.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 09:12, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

And what if the community decided that in the end it didn't want Flow (or its successor)? Is that statement an undertaking that Flow will not be enabled if there is community consensus against it? Given the situation you can't expect me to believe that. BethNaught (talk) 09:18, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

That position can only be bend over and pucker up. Eric Corbett 22:46, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

Eric, I have asked you repeatedly to stop posting content-free nasty remarks. If you do it again, I'm going to ask you to stop posting to my talk page completely, and ask everyone to remove your comments the moment they are posted. You are not being helpful, you are simply causing conflict for no reason.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 09:10, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

Actually the problem with editconflicts improved much within the last eight years. Nowadays edit conflicts now only occur in one of the following cases: 1) you're beginning to edit after the last existing edit of the page and another user is adding a new section before yo're saving your edit. 2) Yo're editing at two or more different places within one section and another editor is saving his edit while his edit is somehow between the two places you edited. 3) More than one other editor edited while you were typing your edit.

Eight years ago you already got an EC when two editors edited elsewhere on the same page. A Tip: ever copy your edit in the buffer before hitting the "save" button. (That also ensures that your edit is not lost in the case of a hamster hickup.) --Matthiasb (talk) 21:59, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

textarea, -jkb- (talk) 22:02, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

I think Jimbo is absolutely right that we need developers to focus on this sort of uncontroversial core development - things to make the site work better, not differently. I think that eliminating edit conflicts is closely associated with getting a better "diff" comparison --- it's inexcusable that whole paragraphs can be misaligned due to trivial edits, making it impossible to tell if reference data has been removed or numbers changed. (If you can recognize that two edits are separated within a paragraph, it should often be possible to merge them easily, and color coding the changes would work much better) This kind of comparison has been the object of intense development in the genome analysis community, with programs like ClustalW and BLAST: this is pretty much the same task, to create "the right" alignment. Wnt (talk) 00:39, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

A question for Jimbo

@Jimbo Wales: Through this thread, you have remained insistent that mediaviewer should remain default for all users. Why? It is still being developed and refined. This is exactly what WP:Beta features is for. "If it is "presently" a nuisance for editors, then the solution is to fix it, not to have some religious opposition to it for no reason." So it is being refined, I'll give you that. But no matter what you add to the program in terms of stability, a house with no foundation will fall. Even if it gets better 3 times over, 3 times 0 is still 0. In fact, I'm not even sure the premise of MV is sound. Consider this. You have to click two times at least just to access the file description page. This may sound like something good, but it is not. Looking at the inner workings of Wikipeda helps people understand and learn the processes, and for me personally it encouraged me to join once I discovered it was not anarchy nor someone's personal blog as so many professors insist. Also, who needs the social media links? Do you think anyone would really use it?

So let me pose this question to you. Is your long term goal for Wikipedia better content or better aesthetics? KonveyorBelt 01:22, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

I am not insistent that it "should" remain default. I am simply communicating the message from the Foundation that it will remain default. That's not a question that is open to debate at this time.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 09:07, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

Translations

Jimbo, on request by an author at German-language Wikipedia, I have translated some of your posts in this section to German and will maybe add some more. The translations are here: de:Wikipedia Diskussion:Diskussionen mit WMF#Statements von Jimbo Wales (deutsche Übersetzung). I see that some of our activists already found your talk page, more are to come. --PM3 (talk) 02:26, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

Extremism breeds extremism

Re: Jimbo's [fairly extremist statement, IMHO]: There is no question (none) that the future involves MV enabled universally and by default, and so the right question is what needs to be fixed about it?. I had my reservations about signing meta:Letter_to_Wikimedia_Foundation:_Superprotect_and_Media_Viewer (which I regard[ed] as rather extremist), but after reading Jimbo's statement it is clear to me that the current situation would not have happened without his behind the scenes approval and support. It is basically a case of the [sole remaining/active, co-]Founder pushing his pet interface over the will the community. So now I signed the petition without reservation (I'm signature number 661!), and I encourage everyone else who cares about avoiding the repetition of such events to sign the petition too. All this other Jimbo talk about peace is really just throwing dust in the eyes of the fools. Jimbo's peace is just pax imperia. JMP EAX (talk) 05:08, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

You are mistaken on every point. I am not behind the MV. I had no role in designing it, promoting it, advocating for it internally. I didn't even know about it until it rolled out. When I tell you that the future involves MV, I am not advocating for it, I am explaining a fact. An uncontroversial one, actually, since I don't think anyone seriously argues that we should not improve the way media is displayed on Wikipedia.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 09:05, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

Are you seriously suggesting that MV is uncontroversial, even in the light of the RfCs at enwiki, dewiki and commons? I don't know how you got that impression. BethNaught (talk) 09:09, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

The patent absurdity of this whole circus is that it would stop immediately if the WMF would adopt the following simple rule for new extensions: Every local community is entitled to holding a binding vote under their existing rules to decide on whether the new feature will be opt-in or opt-out by default for logged-in editors. This respects the needs and wishes of the contributors, and doesn't affect the readers either way. Heck, if the vote goes for opt-in, the WMF can even chose to implement opt-in default for the existing editors, and switch to opt-out of new accounts (as they will be used to having the feature active while being anonymous). Problem solved. MLauba ^(Talk) 08:14, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

This is a really core point: the path you are describing is hell. It will not work. It is not possible to improve the software over time if hundreds of wikis have hundreds of different software configurations and requirements. We in the community are always - and quite properly - pressing the Foundation to improve the software we use. We need to press for unification across all languages so that new features can be developed in a coherent and logical fashion. What you propose would be outlandishly expensive to the detriment of achieving anything actually useful for the encyclopedia. The idea that we should be designing software by RfC and then voting on configurations needs to stop now. That process is braindead and broken and will not work.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 09:05, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

I think one of the key issues we face is that unlike other extremely popular websites such as eBay, Amazon, Facebook and Twitter, the community has sufficient strength to be able to successfully challenge software changes. A few years back, when Facebook added banner images on all pages and made other unilateral usability changes, some people went "waaah this sucks!" as any sufficient proportion of a mature userbase naturally would - but their rants were suppressed as they had no effect. You will get to this stage when a site is sufficiently popular that saying "I don't like this - screw you lot" and voting with your feet to go elsewhere for your encyclopaedia writing isn't effective.

I have no opinion on MediaViewer directly but I know that it will not be to some users' tastes, and a smaller subset of those users have time and motivation to protest vocally, as they believe it will have effect. Perhaps WikiWand is the answer - a third party skin that you can use that has no connection with the WMF or the community. If you don't like it, you are free to ignore it and old school Wikipedia is still available for you. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 09:15, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

Jimbo, I don't know if I should call you too simple too naive (很傻很天真). Since the image filter referendum drama, it's disappointingly clear that each Wikimedia project is dominated by one kind of mindset so different to the other. Still the problem of MV is its superficiality. Wikipedia (or Wikimedia) is not Facebook, we don't need something that consume extra processing power to achieve something already feasible with the current design (albeit less friendly in WMF's opinion). It's that old "if it's not broken, don't fix it" mantra. Wikia has forced MV for years without opt-out whatsoever (unless you switch back to monobook skin), that still doesn't change my habit of opening the media file in another browser tag just for avoiding MV. -- Sameboat - 同舟 (talk) 09:34, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

MV doesn't take any materially higher amount of processing power. And yes, Wikipedia/Wikimedia is not facebook - no one wants it to be. What we do want it to be is better. I am calling for a complete move away from practices of the past, and major investment (as promised by the Foundation) into collaboration with the community rather than willy-nilly release of features that aren't ready for prime time.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 09:41, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

Another journalist who is dead wrong (according to Jimbo/WMF) [5] I'm sure. And another: "The Foundation has a miserable cost/benefit ratio and for years now has spent millions on software development without producing anything that actually works. The feeling is that the whole operation is held together with the goodwill of its volunteers and the more stupid Foundation managers are seriously hacking them off." JMP EAX (talk) 09:26, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

Other than the extreme nature of the comment ("without producing ANYTHING" is too strong) why do you think I would disagree with that? This is precisely the point of the new CEO and new direction - to radically improve the software development process. That statement, while too strong, is indeed an accurate depiction of what has gone wrong. I've been frustrated as well about the endless controversies about the rollout of inadequate software not developed with sufficient community consultation and without proper incremental rollout to catch showstopping bugs.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 09:43, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

Unfortunately, that's not all there is to this (i.e. just a series of gaffes). The first journalist elaborates in another piece: [6]: “Wikipedia is described as a "community", but this is a strange sort of community, in which the devoted contributors are ‘taxed’ without being represented. Needless to say, writing and maintaining Wikipedia entries is laborious unpaid work. To devote oneself to contributing to Wikipedia thus requires a huge sacrifice – a significant personal opportunity cost. Yet as with the examples above, everyone profits from your work, except you. If you’ve contributed for years to Wikipedia you must now accept a new political economy: you have permanent lower-caste status, and have simply been working hard for other people to get rich. The list of profiteers from Wikipedia is a long one: from little scrapers to massive search engines to the Foundation’s lucky elite. (Now you can begin to see why Jimmy Wales espouses his medieval views on copyright – weakening property rights means everyone profits from the work except the person who creates it).” Did you get any good press over this Jimbo? Cause I can't find it Google News... Must be "the right to be forgotten" at work or something like that. JMP EAX (talk) 09:47, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

Going to bed

3% power left on my computer and no charger handy. 11:19pm. Going to bed. Will engage again in the morning.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 22:19, 28 August 2014 (UTC)