Jump to content

User talk:Chris troutman

Page contents not supported in other languages.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Montgomery alligator (talk | contribs) at 20:55, 12 December 2022 (→בוזו: new section). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Committed identity: 53034b2749273e66509e3f88fd103b4882f16345902df017ef05f53fcdaa37eb69268ba4777ee04b32c2a6d6fc308063da7f51adb04a5addd52649c095c47659 is grammatical article for the hash function SHA-512 commitment to this user's real-life identity.
SMcCandlish's On the Radar

  On the Radar:  An Occasional Newsletter on Wikipedia's Challenges

— "Comments?" links go to OtR's own talk page, not those of the original news-item sources.
According to WashPo, WMF has tapped a South African nonprofit executive and lawyer to be its new executive director. While I've been saying for a decade that WMF has to stop hiring software- and online-services-industry people to run an NGO, and hire NGO people, this one – Maryana Iskander – is rather cagey and bureaucratic, or comes off that way in the interview.
  • First up is a belief that the WMF Universal Code of Conduct (drafted in supposed consulation with all WMF editorial communities but largely ignoring all their feedback) is the key to diversifying Wikipedia's editorial pool. (And as always in mainstream media, "Wikipedia" means en.wikipedia.org.) The entire UCC is basically a restatement of some key WP (and Commons, and Wiktionary) policies plus some WMF "vision" hand-waving. It's questionably reasonable to expect a largely redundant document, which was created for projects that lack sufficient policy development, and which has and will continue to have little impact on en.Wikipedia, to cause a sea change in who volunteers to edit here. That takes real-world outreach on a major scale. One would think a nonprofit CEO would already get that.
  • Next up, Iskander makes rather unclear reference to section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. This content-liability shield has been much in the US news lately, as a target of the Republican Party in its feud with "big tech", especially social media sites deplatforming far-right writers for anti-democracy propaganda and misinformation about the public health crisis. Iskander is correct that WMF isn't in a danger position in this, but the article strongly implies that Iskander and WMF are keenly interested and involved. Even when prompted, Iskander does not meaningfully elaborate, and just offers an education-is-important dodge. So, we need more actual information on what WMF is doing with regard to efforts to revise section 230.
  • Moving on, Iskander says something alarming: "Wikipedia has seen a huge amount of increased traffic around covid-19, [so has] worked on a very productive partnership with the World Health Organization to provide additional credibility to that work." That's hard to distinguish from a statement that WHO has editorial plants who WP:OWN the relevant articles. But it's cause for concern whatever the truth is. WMF should not be "partnering" with any external body to influence the encyclopedia's content (especially not one that has taken as many credibility hits as the WHO).
  • There's something potentially interesting in here, though devils could reside in the details: "a lot of the basic access issues might technically look different [between SA and US], but how people understand what information is available to them – how they access it – those issues exist everywhere". What is this going to mean on a practical level? Is MOS:ACCESS going to be better-enforced? Is Simple English Wikipedia going to be reintegrated into the main site as alternative articles? Is the mobile version of the site going to stop dropping features? Is WP:GLAM going to turn into a bigger effort? There are a hundred ways (sensible and otherwise) this statement could be made to affect policy, funding, and the end "product" (though one suspects nothing important will change for the better unless the internal culture of WMF's organizational leadership also changes in a major way, such as by diversifying the board of directors, toward more academics and nonprofit people instead of tech-industry rich people).
In short, I have hopes that Iskander's NGO background will make for a better exec. dir. fit than that last two we've had, but right out of the gate she's saying strange, too-vague, and even troubling things. And nothing in the interview actually suggests anything like a fix for WP's editorial diversity problem, which the headline suggested was going to be the focus.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  15:48, 15 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
[Comments?]
"It is possible to detect eerie echoes of the confessional state of yore", and today's far left is recycling techniques from fun times like the Inquisition." I've been saying this for years, and the article is a good summary of how "left-wing" and "leftist" do not always align with "liberal". It's an observation too few mainstream writers have been willing to make, but the truth of it explains a great deal of disruptive PoV-pushing on Wikipedia. Illiberal left-wing activism is often harder to detect, and harder for the average editor to publicly resist, than far-right extremism, which we tend to recognize then delete on sight.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  18:51, 10 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
[Comments?]
An Information Research survey shows that people's editing motivation is often "their desire to change the views of society", and also that they view Wikipedia as a "social media site". This isn't news to us, and the material doesn't have a huge statistical sample, but I would bet real money that it will be re-confirmed by later studies. This has systemic bias, neutrality, and conflict of interest implications (also not news). What we don't really think much about it is what this means for Wikipedia long-term, as everyone with an agenda becomes more aware that they can try to sneakily leverage Wikipedia articles to boost their side of any story, especially after the Trump 2016 US presidential campaign proved that powerful results can pulled off by organized manipulation of "social media" sites (whether WP really is one or not is irrelevant if the public thinks it is).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:28, 1 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
[Comments?]
The 2017 Community Wishlist Survey has closed; the results are here, and as disappointing as in previous years. This process is fundamentally flawed, for numerous reasons:
  • Only the top-ten proposals will get any resources devoted to them, no matter how many there are, or how urgent or important they are.
  • It's a straight-vote, canvassing-allowed, no-rationale-needed, short-term "popularity contest" – normal Wikimedian consensus-building is thwarted.
  • This setup encourages people to vote for the 10 things they want most, then vote against every other proposal even if they agree with it. Proposals cannot build support over time.
  • There's no "leveling of the playing field" between categories. Important proposals of narrower interest (e.g. to admins, or to technical people) never pass, only the lowest-common-denominator ones do – and the most-canvassed ones.
  • Too few Wikimedians even know the survey exists or when it is open, which greatly compounds the skew caused by focused canvassing – the intentional spikes actually determine the outcome.
I've drafted some suggestions for making it work better.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ<  18:08, 19 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
[Comments?]
If you leave a new message on this page, I will reply on this page unless you ask me to reply elsewhere.

Today's Events

January 8, 2025

Birthday
Burwellian, Callmemirela
Adminship Anniversary
Canley (2008), Edward (2005)
First Edit Day
BrownHairedGirl, Carcharoth, Googol30, HAL333, HistoryofIran, Kuru, TheSandDoctor
Other events:
You should know
23 This user talk page has been vandalized 23 times.
5.8This user has 5.8 centijimbos.
This Wikipedian remembers
Wadewitz.
—Wehwalt, July 30, 2014.
Depiction of W?F destroying Wikipedia with Visual Editor and flow.

New Page Patrol newsletter October 2022

Hello Chris troutman,

Much has happened since the last newsletter over two months ago. The open letter finished with 444 signatures. The letter was sent to several dozen people at the WMF, and we have heard that it is being discussed but there has been no official reply. A related article appears in the current issue of The Signpost. If you haven't seen it, you should, including the readers' comment section.

Awards: Barnstars were given for the past several years (thanks to MPGuy2824), and we are now all caught up. The 2021 cup went to John B123 for leading with 26,525 article reviews during 2021. To encourage moderate activity, a new "Iron" level barnstar is awarded annually for reviewing 360 articles ("one-a-day"), and 100 reviews earns the "Standard" NPP barnstar. About 90 reviewers received barnstars for each of the years 2018 to 2021 (including the new awards that were given retroactively). All awards issued for every year are listed on the Awards page. Check out the new Hall of Fame also.

Software news: Novem Linguae and MPGuy2824 have connected with WMF developers who can review and approve patches, so they have been able to fix some bugs, and make other improvements to the Page Curation software. You can see everything that has been fixed recently here. The reviewer report has also been improved.

NPP backlog May – October 15, 2022

Suggestions:

  • There is much enthusiasm over the low backlog, but remember that the "quality and depth of patrolling are more important than speed".
  • Reminder: an article should not be tagged for any kind of deletion for a minimum of 15 minutes after creation and it is often appropriate to wait an hour or more. (from the NPP tutorial)
  • Reviewers should focus their effort where it can do the most good, reviewing articles. Other clean-up tasks that don't require advanced permissions can be left to other editors that routinely improve articles in these ways (creating Talk Pages, specifying projects and ratings, adding categories, etc.) Let's rely on others when it makes the most sense. On the other hand, if you enjoy doing these tasks while reviewing and it keeps you engaged with NPP (or are guiding a newcomer), then by all means continue.
  • This user script puts a link to the feed in your top toolbar.

Backlog:

Saving the best for last: From a July low of 8,500, the backlog climbed back to 11,000 in August and then reversed in September dropping to below 6,000 and continued falling with the October backlog drive to under 1,000, a level not seen in over four years. Keep in mind that there are 2,000 new articles every week, so the number of reviews is far higher than the backlog reduction. To keep the backlog under a thousand, we have to keep reviewing at about half the recent rate!

Reminders
  • Newsletter feedback - please take this short poll about the newsletter.
  • If you're interested in instant messaging and chat rooms, please join us on the New Page Patrol Discord, where you can ask for help and live chat with other patrollers.
  • Please add the project discussion page to your watchlist.
  • If you are no longer very active on Wikipedia or you no longer wish to be a reviewer, please ask any admin to remove you from the group. If you want the tools back again, just ask at PERM.
  • To opt out of future mailings, please remove yourself here.

Bitey reply

This reply on User:Fastily's page was bitey. That isn't how we deal with newcomers. I'm not trying to be sanctimonious; I just couldn't not say something.  — Mr. Guye (talk) (contribs)  03:57, 10 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

For what it's worth, this is probably an SPA for promoting a (non-notable) African individual. There have been an unusually high number of these in the past few months, so Chris' exasperation is understandable. -FASTILY 05:16, 10 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I was not exasperated; I'm just a mistanthrope without much compunction. I've been biting n00bs since 2014, which is why I put it on my userpage. Confronting these nonsense accusations was, in this case, ultimately successful so I think you, Mr. Guye, are mistaken about how to deal with newcomers. Regardless, I acknowledge your criticism. Chris Troutman (talk) 02:06, 11 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

New message from DHSchool2003Student

 You are invited to join the discussion at User talk:DHSchool2003Student. DHSchool2003Student (talk) 01:03, 21 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Anti Vandalism

Hi, I saw your invite but can I ask something first? I'm mainly using my mobile as my lap top need throwing in the sea. Can I still join if I'm using my mobile (switching to desktop) or will I struggle keeping up with such a small screen? I'm getting a new laptop soon but not until after Xmas. Thanks, Knitsey (talk) 01:12, 27 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Knitsey: I have never used a phone to edit although I know some do. To that end, I can't speak to what your phone shows you using various tools. Please ask your question at the CVUA talk page or once you have selected a trainer. Were it me, I'd wait until you have something other than a phone or tablet but again, that's my experience only. Chris Troutman (talk) 01:20, 27 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Ok thank you. Knitsey (talk) 01:23, 27 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I do most of my anti-vandalism work on my phone. Twinkle and redwarn work fine using the desktop site on a mobile device. You just have to be careful with your fingers so you don't accidentally roll back. The most difficult thing is watching recent changes, as you don't have access to multiple open tabs or Windows at once. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 01:24, 27 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

ArbCom 2022 Elections voter message

Hello! Voting in the 2022 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23:59 (UTC) on Monday, 12 December 2022. All eligible users are allowed to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.

The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.

If you wish to participate in the 2022 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. If you no longer wish to receive these messages, you may add {{NoACEMM}} to your user talk page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 01:10, 29 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

בוזו

あなたの攻撃とヘイトスピーチの定義には根本的な欠陥があります Montgomery alligator (talk) 20:55, 12 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/enwiki/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Chris_troutman&oldid=1127088480"