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The following is an automatically-generated compilation of all talk pages for the Signpost issue dated 2018-10-28. For general Signpost discussion, see Wikipedia talk:Signpost.

Discussion report: Mediation Committee and proposed deletion reform (1,645 bytes · 💬)

  • Thanks for the note about the PROD discussions, of which I was not aware until now. Seems the biggest non-snowball issue is the questions about whether to notify or not to notify, to which I say there should just be one easy answer... someone should just write a bot to take care of the notifications for everyone. – wbm1058 (talk) 21:00, 28 October 2018 (UTC)
  • Having any topic the subject of "a five-part RfC" strikes at the very heart of what's wrong with Wikipedia: the very laudable goal of being completely transparent and consensus-driven results in pages and pages of text that simply cannot be read and considered in full by any of the participants, much less the sorry sod who has to close the discussion. Wikipedia should not be available only to pensioned retirees.--~TPW 01:38, 30 October 2018 (UTC)
  • I may have been the first editor to recommend the abolishment of Medcom, about a year or two ago. Interesting, that the community has picked up on the topic. GoodDay (talk) 16:59, 30 October 2018 (UTC)
  • After reading this article I'm not sure if I had forgotten Medcom existed, or was never aware of its existence to begin with. -Indy beetle (talk) 05:50, 2 November 2018 (UTC)

From the archives: The Gardner interview (468 bytes · 💬)

English Wikipedia editors with >100 edits per month[1]

The active editors seems to have leveled out. Any idea what the 1-year retential rate looks like these days? T.Shafee(Evo&Evo)talk 01:14, 29 October 2018 (UTC)

From the editors: The Signpost is still afloat, just barely (2,018 bytes · 💬)

  • Relative to last issue this may be thinner, but there's certainly plenty of content in this edition. Keep up the good work! -Indy beetle (talk) 02:16, 29 October 2018 (UTC)
    • Hear, hear! I always enjoy reading the Signpost. Brilliantly incisive and inspirational for my meager efforts. No Swan So Fine (talk) 09:22, 29 October 2018 (UTC)
  • Good stuff and worth reading, thanks team! --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 14:27, 29 October 2018 (UTC)

If I ever find enough time to weigh in I may join the effort, but that might have to wait a decade or more.--~TPW 01:27, 30 October 2018 (UTC)

  • +1 to the above. Thanks for keeping the Signpost up and publishing. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 04:28, 31 October 2018 (UTC)
  • +2 to the above. Very much appreciate your continued efforts, even if the editions are 'thinner'.. Buckshot06 (talk) 15:25, 31 October 2018 (UTC)
      • +Need a hand? I could come out of a lomg Wikibreak and handle featured content again. Adam Cuerden (talk) 20:51, 1 November 2018 (UTC)
  • I hope we can keep the Signpost going! It's a good wiki-newspaper! PrussianOwl (talk) 21:07, 6 November 2018 (UTC)

Gallery: Planetary views (3,263 bytes · 💬)

  • Great pics! Anyone know what's up with the two "Earth at night" photos? The 2016 take appears to show much reduced land light over the one taken 20 years earlier. Have the lights actually been reduced? or is there something I'm missing?  Paine Ellsworth  put'r there  21:44, 28 October 2018 (UTC)
  • Thank you, Bri, I had suspected that a different baseline was used, which makes their comparison very misleading. I'm sure that from an astronomer's viewpoint, professional or amateur, it is much harder to see the dimmer stars from even a small city than it used to be.  Paine Ellsworth  put'r there  17:27, 29 October 2018 (UTC)
  • Situation seems hopeless what with people spreading out, most of whom are deathly afraid of the dark.  Paine Ellsworth  put'r there  22:21, 29 October 2018 (UTC)
  • I can almost hear Also sprach Zarathustra playing in the background...-Indy beetle (talk) 02:59, 29 October 2018 (UTC)
  • I clicked on the image of North America taken from space and was surprised to notice that the photo was taken by a satellite called Suomi NPP, and remembered that I was the original author of that article, back in January, 2012. Cullen328 Let's discuss it 07:53, 29 October 2018 (UTC)
  • A lot of people leave their porch lights on in the Eastern United States. I believe the cause has a lot to do with our (american) culture's fascination with horror films. See Wikipedia for more information. There, look I just solved another problem that human beings have caused. I really should be invited to more Senate hearings. Barbara ✐  ✉ 09:06, 31 October 2018 (UTC)

Humour: After the apocalypse, when zombies and aliens take over the Earth in a thousand years and dig up Wikipedia's servers but can only find talk pages without their accompanying articles, what will they think?? (1,861 bytes · 💬)

:D Wut a nice way to start my day :D Lourdes 16:14, 29 October 2018 (UTC)
All of these have been at Wikipedia:Talk page highlights for a while (the most recent one having been added in 2015). Double sharp (talk) 03:16, 31 October 2018 (UTC)
Oh yes they have! It seems like only a few editors dig deep enough to find these tidbits. Lucky for me I only had to do some pasting with attribution. Talk page discussions on Wikipedia are also in the public domain, people. Barbara ✐  ✉ 09:13, 31 October 2018 (UTC)
Thanks for the chuckles :-). Just to clarify, talk page discussions aren’t in the public domain in the legal sense. Adrian J. Hunter(talk•contribs) 03:03, 2 November 2018 (UTC)

I want to know if the Apple Cabal ever meets with the Lumber Cartel... AnonMoos (talk) 08:47, 4 November 2018 (UTC)

Nice job. Greatly appreciated, and just wow! :) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mulstev (talk • contribs) 22:35, 26 November 2018 (UTC)

In focus: Alexa (1,567 bytes · 💬)

Thank you for giving an insightful reflection. I think it accurately reflects how many people think about this and I also think that most people are left with the same level of not really knowing what to do about it. Its a difficult challenge and we can only hope that we can find timely answers as this kinds of technology changes the way we engage with information. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 15:44, 29 October 2018 (UTC)

  • Fascinating piece and excellently written. Thank you, Barbara Page, I really enjoyed reading this article. I'm not entirely certain how I feel about the situation. I am certainly happy that all this information becomes available to people, but the lack of attribution is certainly an issue, and one that should be relatively easily fixed. Surely, the Foundation could go up against Amazon for this, but I don't know if anyone involved really truly wants that.... ~Maplestrip/Mable (chat) 15:45, 29 October 2018 (UTC)
  • I think it's important to know lanai is from the Hawaiian language, not really native to Florida. Alexa did not tell me this; I found out for myself. Bri.public (talk) 15:59, 29 October 2018 (UTC)

In the media: Bans, celebs, and bias (1,499 bytes · 💬)

  • Regarding Jimmy Wales and WikiTribune, he and cofounder Orit Kopel wrote recently that "We are looking to hire new journalists – our old staff was great, but we are now focusing much more on community support, and so we are looking for journalists with extensive wiki experience, and journalists with fact checking passion." It remains to be seen exactly how that will play out, but he clearly hasn't given up on the idea of a mix of paid staff and volunteers for creating content. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 20:54, 28 October 2018 (UTC)

News and notes: WMF gets a million bucks (2,257 bytes · 💬)

Hmmmm. I was only inactive for one year but I guess it felt longer for some of you folks. I missed you all, too! Thanks, Barbara Page and Kudpung. Liz Read! Talk! 00:40, 29 October 2018 (UTC)

Why wasn't Kudpung's re-adminship mentioned? Graham87 06:18, 29 October 2018 (UTC)

Happened on the same day as our new-content deadline. ☆ Bri (talk) 12:54, 29 October 2018 (UTC)

It's probably worth mentioning too that the community has established an interface administrators. All 12 temporary interface administrators have been confirmed as permanent interface administrators, subject to the six-month inactivity rule in the new policy. Deryck C. 10:32, 29 October 2018 (UTC)

Op-ed: Wikipedia's Strickland affair (43,581 bytes · 💬)

"from which we can only conclude that they simply don't know what an edit war is"

Or, perhaps, the author doesn't know what sarcasm is. Maury Markowitz (talk) 19:20, 28 October 2018 (UTC)

  • User:GreenMeansGo makes a great point with the alternative timeline. Regardless of your thoughts before the prize being awarded, Wikimedians did what they do and reacted superbly quickly. That is indeed something to be proud of. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 19:22, 28 October 2018 (UTC)
  • "No one 'has an article on Wikipedia.'" Yes they do; in the same way that "Winston Churchill has a statue in Parliament Square", "Queen Victoria has a portrait in Buckingham Palace" and "Douglass Adams has a biography available in all good libraries". Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 20:22, 28 October 2018 (UTC)
  • I agree that no blame can be attached to Bradv for declining the Afc - the backlog is a long one, we're all volunteers, and time is limited. However, Chris's claim that it was the right decision is going too far. Her fellowship at the optical society is a prestigious academic position of the sort making academic notability automatically met. The article, which was short and uncontroversial, should have been moved to main space. Bradv acknowledges as much in his opinion piece, that with hindsight he wishes he'd spent a bit more time checking the details out. We should concentrate on any measures we can take to give us a better shot at getting this right in the future.  — Amakuru (talk) 21:03, 28 October 2018 (UTC)
  • The line "why didn't Wikipedia have an article about Whatever" does show that there is a complete misunderstanding about how articles are created on Wikipedia. I think there is a presumption on an editorial board who weigh up the merits of all the topics in the universe and put out a list saying "OK, these topics are worthy" and then articles are assigned to people to write them. (And of course some encyclopedia-like publications do work that way, so it's not unreasonable). I note, from doing outreach, there is a common public misconception that donations to Wikipedia go to paying for the bulk of the content to be written and, that while most people know "anyone can contribute", they seem to perceive the contributions of volunteers as additional to work of these paid writers. Of course, anyone reading this probably realises that you need 3 things for a Wikipedia article to exist, a notable topic and an editor that feels like starting it and an editor that possessed the ability to demonstrate notability. Strickland had the first two, but not alas the 3rd. Kerry (talk) 21:08, 28 October 2018 (UTC)
  • While some might say that the Strickland incident was a failure by AfC, I would say both No and Yes. No, because I think anyone who does AfC reviewing (and if you haven't, you should not comment!) will know it is very soul-destroying, and clicking "Decline - notability not established" becomes the almost-automatic response. Yes, because there is a structural failure with AfC which could be fixed. At the moment, AfC reviewers are working in a "pool of all articles" sorted by time waiting for a review. Unless you are familiar with a topic space, you may be unfamiliar with the special notability rules in that topic space, you may lack the ability to distinguish the reliable sources, and you may simply not recognise an "obviously notable" topic (Americans are unlikely to recognise significant cricket players, Australians are unlikely to recognise leading political figures in Sierra Leone, etc). We really need to look at creating a series of sub-pools within AfC around topic areas, so reviewers can focus on the topic spaces they are more expert in. I think that would improve AfC reviewing for both the reviewers and the submitters. Much of the AfC work relates to Biographies (often probably Autobiographies) of Living People so having that pool broken down into the various sports and professions that seem to be massively over-represented would be a good start. Kerry (talk) 21:08, 28 October 2018 (UTC)
I think an underappreciated aspect is that by and large the incentive is for AfC reviewers to decline. It seems far more likely that an AfC reviewer will catch flak for accepting an article than the reverse. Therefore the incentives make decline the "easier" option for reviewers. This is not a comment on Brad's actions specifically, just on the overall state of AfC. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 21:13, 28 October 2018 (UTC)
  • I very much appreciate GreenMeansGo's piece. It is incredibly inspirational and motivating. The "alternative timeline" makes me feel quite proud, and I think the piece is a good overall takedown of the general coverage on the controversy. I also appreciate Chris Troutman's criticism of the "linguistic error." It may seem like nitpicking, but it is a use of language I pay attention to quite a lot as well, as language shapes thought. We write about subjects, we don't write for the subjects. Similarly, I agree that having a stub or poor start-class article is honestly little better than just having no article on a subject at all. In general, I very much enjoyed reading this article. It is a shame that this incident may have caused a lot of stress on quite a few people. ~Maplestrip/Mable (chat) 21:27, 28 October 2018 (UTC)
    I'm glad you found it motivating Maplestrip. I compiled the timeline first and wrote the rest second. There was a lingering doubt about what I would find when I started tracking down the diffs, and I was very pleased that our worldwide community of volunteers wound up mostly getting me excited about their own motivation. I was somewhat later saddened by the fact that when the MacArthur Geniuses were announced this year, everyone had already beat me to the punch and I couldn't write any of the articles myself :P. GMGtalk 21:35, 28 October 2018 (UTC)
    Actually, Nobel Prize winners are taken care of within seconds after the announcements. The only one I ever managed to start myself when the peace prize was given to four human rights organizations in Tunisia, I got to write one of them and only because I speak French, and all sources were in French.--Ymblanter (talk) 16:59, 30 October 2018 (UTC)
  • I would like to comment on the original deletion of the article as a copyright violation. This practice must cease. If the subject is presumed notable, the article should be reduced to a stub with a single lead sentence, preserving, if possible the sources, categories, talk page and infobox. I've had a lot of copyvio-deleted articles re-created in this manner. In the early days I also retrospectively authorised dozens of articles that were copyvios of my own work. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 21:36, 28 October 2018 (UTC)
    Hawkeye7, I'm not convinced a tiny stub is better to have than no article. I know I'm drawn to redlinks; I don't know about others. Is a good article more likely to evolve starting from nothing, or from a stub? I suppose that's the kind of question that could be answered by research. Ntsimp (talk) 01:51, 29 October 2018 (UTC)
    An example. Some thoughts:
    • Not every new article is linked to, so red links may not exist.
    • Many editors will not touch red links, the assumption being that the creator will return to them. (This is often the case with stubs too.)
    • Others annoy me by going around removing red links
    • A common assumption about deleted articles is that they should not be re-created.
    • The best thing that you can provide a future article builder with is sources. In the case of Donna Strickland, the Optical Society bio would have provided the bedrock of a complete article. It was the main source used for both the draft and the current rewrites in any case
    • The presence of a link on a Wikipedia page assures that it will get archived. If an article is deleted, its sources may become lost as well.
    • Had the article in question not been deleted, it would never have had to go through the AfC process
    Hawkeye7 (discuss) 04:27, 29 October 2018 (UTC)
  • All the newspapers and websites criticizing Wikipedia for not having an article about Strickland have no idea how Wikipedia notability works (and apparently made no effort to find out). If any of those newspapers and websites had done a good article about this physicist, we would have had a good source about her and evidence of her notability. Wikipedia is a "trailing indicator" indeed. We are doing good work, but we don't do original reporting. That's the media's job. They didn't do it.  SchreiberBike | ⌨  22:19, 28 October 2018 (UTC)
I've been here from the start and I don't understand the rules any more, and you're complaining that the rest of the world doesn't? One cannot imagine a better illustration of the problems the Wiki is having. 13:06, 29 October 2018 (UTC)
I understand where you are coming from. There was a time where people who have made a significant contribution in their field and with a source to back it up are notable. The Chirped pulse amplification was deemed to be notable and I see no reason why the inventors cannot be notable, the issue of AFD then is not necessary. I like the response of the foundation, because if you edit enough you realise, internally, wikipedia editors give an image that they have created a great system but it is an imperfect system and acknowledging the imperfections and moving when you cannot do anything about it is fine. A key imperfection is we do not have enough expert content writers and most of us are not experts, but we all do our best and we move on.Alexplaugh12 (talk) 00:28, 3 November 2018 (UTC)
  • This was a great addition to this month's The Signpost. The three perspectives are all valuable in their own right, and are much better than anything the professional media wrote about the lack of a Wikipedia page for Strickland. GMG's alternative timeline is something seriously worth repeating offsite by WMF or by an independent journalistic outlet, and is something truly remarkable (I see a future TED Talk in the works). While I don't necessarily agree with Chris Troutman's choice of polemics, I think he makes the valuable point that this got so much coverage due to two main factors: (1) Public ignorance over the internal functions of Wikipedia, and (2) The popularity of the narrative that women are discriminated against in society. I don't mean to debate the realities of the gender gap (there is one, and its significant) or reject the notion that women face bias here and elsewhere (they absolutely do). But its quite obvious that it's "trendy" to discuss misogyny right now in the Western media, especially on Wikipedia. Not only does this unnecessarily drag our website through the mud, it creates a single-minded focus on fixing only one problem (which I worried about in an op-ed several months ago) and potentially creating a few others. Hopefully some more-informed journalists will in due time give us the in-depth, comprehensive coverage we deserve. On a parting note, I wish someone here had conceded that Maher did emphasize that Wikipedia's biases are reflection of what it takes in, and that affirmative action is not the solution here.-Indy beetle (talk) 00:53, 29 October 2018 (UTC)
  • I agree with a lot of what User:Chris troutman wrote, but if they're going to give a lot of attention to the precision of wording, they should be taken to task for their own failings in this regard. Two places where it's especially egregious amidst all the bile is 1) where they say that Women in Red encourages slacktivism, as if the whole point of the project wasn't to actually edit and create articles, and they have results to show for it as well. And 2) that to create articles about women on Wikipedia is to introduce bias. Countering systemic bias doesn't mean introducing bias. That's not what bias means, and we should stop extending the meaning of bias to suit the narrative of the op-ed. Opencooper (talk) 01:13, 29 October 2018 (UTC)
  • I'm quite sure Chris chose the word "slacktivism" deliberately because we discussed this prior to publication. I'll let him speak for himself further on this subject. ☆ Bri (talk) 01:40, 29 October 2018 (UTC)
  • I've reviewed tens of thousands of new articles and AfCs, and I've looked at even more reviewed by others. I've made errors, and so has everyone else who has done any substantial amount. Thinking back over my past work, I've made about 2% errors in these processes. I could do better if I were better at recognizing when I was too tired to continue, but I doubt that I or anyone else would ever do much better than 1%. I'm not suggesting these are exact numbers, and I mean clear errors, not ones where I and the eventual consensus disagreed--the community is often erratic. Ideally each AfC decline should be checked by someone else, but in practice this only happens when it gets resubmitted. Since there are too few AfC reviewers for the workload, this is not now practical. It is exceedingly unfortunate when an error is this conspicuous, but it could happen to any of us. DGG ( talk ) 03:31, 29 October 2018 (UTC)
@DGG: I think your estimate of the best reviewers having an error rate of 1-2% is correct. Based on your experience how would you say those errors are distributed? Is the error rate more likely to be in declining notable submissions or accepting ones that aren't? Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 03:41, 29 October 2018 (UTC)
At AfC, I think it's at least 3/4 erroneous declines. The usual cause is reviewing too fast or when tired, and the very large number of totally unacceptable submissions at AfC creates considerable skepticism. To see that something is not hopeless requires thinking. For my more extended comment about this, see [1] I note that the reviewer of this particular article does not think they made an error in declining it, [2], but I consider them unambiguously wrong in their interpretation of our guidelines. The guideline for accepting drafts is that as an article it would probably pass AfD, and this would, because the referencing inadequacies were easily fixable. The reviewer thought they had to be fixed first. (There's also disagreement over whether they were adequate even as they were in the declined version, [3]) DGG ( talk ) 04:22, 29 October 2018 (UTC)
@DGG: I am obviously familiar with the Stickland incident - we are leaving comments to an article all about that after all. What I find interesting is that if your 75% estimate of errors in declining is true, my guess is that AfC reviewers receive 75% (or more) complaints about articles they've accepted rather than rejected. This feels like a structural problem that only reinforces what mistakes there are. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 04:28, 29 October 2018 (UTC)
Erroneous declines probably vary by subject area. For academics it is probably like 80% or more since many reviewers have a disdain/disregard for WP:NPROF/the actual standards at AfD for academics, while for corporations it is probably much lower since the standards are actually (and should be) high on sourcing. I agree on there being a structural problem; because NPP and many people review accepts, erroneous or quick accepts get flak while quickly declining hundreds of drafts with many incorrect ones can easily be missed/ignored, because most of the declines are correct because of the sheer number of unacceptable drafts, and any complaints from the AfC submitters are swept away into obscure user talk pages (and how many people are going to still be active to complain two months later when the decline is done?). Galobtter (pingó mió) 06:27, 29 October 2018 (UTC)
I can only talk about mine: most objections I see on my own talk p. are about articles I declined. Most of them are by coi editors; a few convince me I may have been wrong. Almost nothing I accept has ever been challenged successfully at afd. DGG ( talk ) 05:17, 29 October 2018 (UTC)
  • All the healthy discussions here about the Strickland case just proves how vital The Signpost is, and why it needs to be kept. Frankly, no Signpost, means no central place where such vital issues can be discussed. werldwayd (talk) 12:44, 29 October 2018 (UTC)
  • Re Troutman's "Honest Wikipedians will admit that Strickland ... did not clearly satisfy academic notability criterio prior to her Nobel win": I will admit no such thing. Strickland's stellar citation record (two papers with over 1000 citations in Google scholar and half a dozen more with over 100, WP:PROF#C1) is largely unchanged by the new prize, and the declined draft clearly stated her fellowship and presidency of a major society (#C3 and #C8 respectively). So she easily passes three criteria when only one is enough. I find the implicit assumption of bad faith by Troutman offensive. —David Eppstein (talk) 16:38, 29 October 2018 (UTC)
  • +1. What the honest Wikipedian should admit is that, whether one likes NPROF/the way it is interpreted at AfD, the article 100% would have survived AfD. Galobtter (pingó mió) 16:44, 29 October 2018 (UTC)
nonsense. PROF says nothing about "two papers with over 1000 citations in Google scholar and half a dozen more with over 100" because it's very subjective. PROF says nothing about h-index, numbers of citations, etc. Bradv made a call and I agree. I'd've !voted to delete that article, too. Chris Troutman (talk) 17:24, 29 October 2018 (UTC)
I mentioned three criteria. You are arguing against only one of them. Even that argument would fail, badly, at any actual academic AfD. And your personal ignorance and repudiation of our academic notability standards does not justify your claims that people disagreeing with you must be dishonest. —David Eppstein (talk) 17:58, 29 October 2018 (UTC)
I also would have !voted to "keep" per WP:PROF#C1, #C3 and #C6. Had the draft come to my attention back in May, I would have promoted it to main space, with some cleanup work. XOR'easter (talk) 21:20, 29 October 2018 (UTC)
It is nonsense to claim that Strickland ... did not clearly satisfy academic notability criteria prior to her Nobel win. Take a look at her citation profile on Google scholar which can be viewed by anybody with an Internet link [4]. It shows that over 8000 other scientific papers had cited her work before she was awarded a Nobel Prize. There were 8000 sources: no more were needed to give notability under WP:Prof#C1. The mistaken decline of the AfC came from the failure to follow the WP:SNG WP:Prof guideline. However, there is no gender bias here. I see many BLPs of male (and female) academics taken to AfD at Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting/Academics and educators on similarly spurious grounds. Such things happen frequently, and the AfD nominators usually get away with a WP:Trout. The reviewer in the Strickland case had the misfortune to be caught in the headlights. Xxanthippe (talk) 00:13, 30 October 2018 (UTC).
Surely Troutman meant that the Strickland article did not meet the notability criteria! --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 12:53, 31 October 2018 (UTC)
@John Maynard Friedman: Please read the relevant criterion more carefully. It is entirely about the achievements of the person the article is about, and not about the state of the article. —David Eppstein (talk) 16:16, 31 October 2018 (UTC)
  • Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales himself, publicly threw Bradv under the bus Am I missing something obvious about where this is coming from? It looks like this was the relevant thread on his talk page, but it doesn't look like he ever responded. GMGtalk 17:07, 29 October 2018 (UTC)
    @GreenMeansGo: I was writing in response to this tweet. I had wanted to include a screencap in this piece for context but I was told fair-use images can't be used in The Signpost. Not only did Jimbo tweet this misleading qz.com piece he blamed Wikipedia (qz.com linked to the diff of Bradv's declination) rather than provide some nuance about our notability criteria. Chris Troutman (talk) 17:20, 29 October 2018 (UTC)
    Ah. I suppose you could have used Template:Tweet, but it may be a bit too late for all that. GMGtalk 17:29, 29 October 2018 (UTC)
  • The uproar has been unfair to Bradv. Most reviewers would have followed standard notability guidelines and declined the article. AfC is inundated with articles about entertainers, businesses, and business people and we are in great need of reviewers. There are many fewer articles about professors. So we don't expect reviewers at AfC to understand the nuances of notability for academics. WP:PROF outlines what we see as forming the reliable, independent, in depth written record of notability. This is quite different from that expected of topics that get covered in the press, and rules which cover regular notablitiy are applied differently. As a result most articles about notable professors get declined at least once, if not multiple times. Some of us come along later and look at the declined articles for academics, but we don't get to all of them. (My list of those to rescue has been neglected.) The solution is for more editors to become AfC reviewers and frequently look for drafts in their areas of knowledge and interest. This would reduce the load on those who are carrying most of the review burden. Some projects, such as Wikipedia:WikiProject Physics#Newly created articles already display drafts in their areas of interest. The Donna Strickland draft was on that list in March, and could have been seen by a knowledgable reviewer. StarryGrandma (talk) 22:29, 29 October 2018 (UTC)
to clarify, I agree with StarryGrandma that this has been unfair, and I apologize for overly strong language myself. There is a range of way to do reviewing, and the way Bradv does it is well within the accepted way, and his determinations are in general similar to mine. DGG ( talk ) 05:24, 30 October 2018 (UTC)
  • User:GreenMeansGo's article is solid and impressive, and the timeline is so inspiring! Meanwhile, we know why the newspapers jumped on this. They had little on Strickland, and so turned to Wikipedia for information, and felt let down when we had nothing to give them. Journalists these days rely on Wikipedia quite heavily. But we are not writing for paid professionals who should already know this stuff to slack off by copying our research, we are writing for the general public. And by the time the general public wanted to know about Strickland, we had the article they needed. We didn't have the copy ready for the journalists to republish under their own name and take the money and grin, but we had it by the time the public wanted it, and that's what we are about. We did our job, unpaid, collaboratively, and we did it well. The journalists did not do a good job, moaned about us, and took home their pay. SilkTork (talk) 17:09, 30 October 2018 (UTC)
  • "The so-called journalism" ... "these so-called news sources". You may as well have called them "fake news", Chris troutman. This kind of wagon-circling rhetoric may be comforting but does nothing to help the community improve our editing or engage with journalists and readers. Fences&Windows 00:05, 31 October 2018 (UTC)
@Fences and windows: "You may as well have called them "fake news" but that's not what I did because that's not what I mean. I think Wikipedia and its many left-leaning editors deserve better than to be pilloried for imagined misogynist bias. My so-called "wagon-circling rhetoric" has brought condemnation from editors like you, so please remind everyone I am merely trying to defend this institution where we volunteer. I meant to deride partisans who act based upon political beliefs rather than stick to the facts. Chris Troutman (talk) 02:04, 31 October 2018 (UTC)
  • Thanks to all who put in the work writing these. Things are always more complicated when you look at them closely. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 04:51, 31 October 2018 (UTC)
  • The only insightful journalism on this topic is here in The Signpost because this is the only place to get a comment from the subjects in the story. The negativity that traditional publications have against Wikipedia is getting tedious. The external media are so quick to blame Wikipedia for their own bias against women and other underrepresented groups, as if those publications expect Wikipedia to do the original journalism and research which is their work in addition to our usual activities of promoting their articles with summaries, citations, and a huge audience. Wikipedia's biggest fault is that it merely lessens rather than eliminates the bias which originates in other media. Other media outlets should quit framing their ethical problems as a reason to seek a competition with Wikipedia. They should be cooperative to us in the same way we show good faith to them. Blue Rasberry (talk) 12:59, 31 October 2018 (UTC)
    • BR is correct. In my experience working in topics a bit beyond the more familiar, a major challenge is to simply find adequate information. Take, for example ancient Roman history, which was a very male-dominated environment (to say the least): beyond a few dozen individuals, our knowledge of women of the time -- no matter how prominent or important -- is often limited to little more than a name, if that. (Consider the example of Ignota Plautia, whose existence is presumed by experts; we don't even know her name.) The best book on women of the Early Roman Empire is by M.T. Raepsaet-Charlier, Prosopographie Des Femmes De L'ordre Sénatorial (Ier-IIe Siècles) (1987), in French, which is rather difficult to use if one does not know the language. Or to paraphrase BR, when it comes to bias, if the material is not easily accessible (or not accessible at all), Wikipedians cannot eliminate it, only lessen it as far as the material allows us. -- llywrch (talk) 04:03, 4 November 2018 (UTC)
  • Note: Sociologist Salvatore Babones has come out in our defense. I wonder if anyone in the media will take notice. -Indy beetle (talk) 15:45, 31 October 2018 (UTC)
Unfortunately he misunderstands the issue. Before her Nobel Prize, Strickland qualified for a pass of the WP:Prof#C1 guideline with flying colors on the basis of her science citation record [5]. The omission of her article was not due to any systematic bias in Wikipedia, but because an editor did not follow the guidelines. Xxanthippe (talk) 22:04, 31 October 2018 (UTC).
@Xxanthippe: It is you that misunderstands. PROF is a subjective criterion. It does not specify how many citations are enough to pass, just as it does not specify which academic societies are prestigious enough. Your belief that she passes PROF only exists in your imagination. Bradv was not wrong to come to a differing conclusion and you should apologize for your accusation. Chris Troutman (talk) 22:30, 31 October 2018 (UTC)
Almost all of our criteria are subjective criteria. There is nothing special about WP:PROF in this regard. (Or did you somehow think that the "in-depth" part of GNG was purely objective?) In all cases, what the criteria mean is how they are interpreted at AfDs and AFCs. And according to how these criteria have been interpreted in the vast majority of past academic AfDs, the declined draft was an easy pass of multiple criteria. Your hand-wringing about how we can't specify anything completely objectively so we can't use these criteria at all and must hold blameless the people who interpreted them badly comes off as casting around for excuses rather than a worthwhile argument. —David Eppstein (talk) 22:47, 31 October 2018 (UTC)
The interpretation of guidelines, as is everything on Wikipedia, is established by consensus. In the case of WP:Prof, the consensus has been established by hundreds of AfDs and over a decade of debate on the WP:Prof talk page. By that consensus Strickland was a clear pass before her Prize. Before editors enter a new area they would do well to familiarise themselves with consensus that exists there. For any area in Wikipedia, the more prior knowledge that an editor has, the better will be the edits they are likely to make. Xxanthippe (talk) 00:09, 1 November 2018 (UTC).
The point is he gets the main point - she was failing GNG because of the media's lack of coverage. The technicalities of whether deletion was correct in the light of BEFORE/PROF and such are secondary. I could as well note that in theory, PROF cannot override GNG, through of course, yes, it often does. IMHO, the draft was poorly written, it was essentially declined because in the AfC process it was reviewed by someone with above-average requirements. It could've been accepted, and if it was submitted to namespace without AfC process it probably would'be never been considered for deletion. But bottom line it was a poor draft, because it was hard to find good sources for her, and she was not famous until she got the Prize. Wikipedia still is missing articles on many people with borderline+ level of fame, just like she was (until she became famous). The problem is not that we occasionally err on the side of caution, given the spam/vanity flood we are facing. The problem is that we lack volunteers to write more content. If we had people writing this, up to and including people interested in gender-gap related issues, there'd be no problem. The media coverage which implied the article was deleted because we are sexist was plain wrong, as SB points out, we are no more sexist then the world's coverage at large. Wikipedia is the reflection of the worlds' gender gap problem, not a source of it. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 06:49, 1 November 2018 (UTC)
I could as well note that in theory, PROF cannot override GNG, through of course, yes, it often does. Incorrect. The Notability page itself says that a topic "is presumed to merit an article [if it] meets either the general notability guideline below, or the criteria outlined in a subject-specific guideline listed in the box on the right" — the very first of which is WP:PROF. XOR'easter (talk) 14:26, 1 November 2018 (UTC)
Yes, and I'd very much like to see where the consensus for that is, because the most recent RfC I'm seeing on the relationship between SNGs and GNG concluded There is clear consensus that no subject-specific notability guideline, including Notability (sports) is a replacement for or supercedes the General Notability Guideline. GMGtalk 14:36, 1 November 2018 (UTC)
WP:NSPORT is not WP:NPROF. The former says that it is a supplement to the GNG; the latter says that it is an alternative. XOR'easter (talk) 19:06, 1 November 2018 (UTC)
And the RfC seems to have reached a pretty clear consensus on SNGs generally. GMGtalk 19:07, 1 November 2018 (UTC)
An RfC that spent almost all of its time talking about sports figures reached a consensus that has apparently had vanishingly little impact on later, lengthy debates on the same topic (see also here). I don't think that's much of a consensus, particularly when the RfC was listed as being about whether the criteria of WP:NSPORT should be tightened or not. And, on general principle, I'm fine with different notability guidelines playing somewhat different roles. Sometimes, we're trying to make judgments about topics that get a lot of news coverage on a regular basis, and sometimes, we're not. So, sometimes the relevant question is, "How much coverage until it counts?" and sometimes it's "What, other than mainstream media reporting, indicates significance?". XOR'easter (talk) 19:21, 1 November 2018 (UTC)
It is indeed presumed to merit an article, and then WP:GNG is needed to prove that it actually does merit an article. The point of having specific criteria is just to make our life easier, since someone who meets WP:PROF or WP:NFOOTY is very likely to meet the general notability criterion, and it is much easier to check these criteria than to perform a thorough literature search (and remember sources could be in other languages, offline, or behind the paywall, and often need an expert to understand what they are saying). If someone really insists on checking the article no WP:PROF would save it. In the case of Strickland (which I know because I am a physicist and in a related field) there must be some specialized review articles which say that the chirped pulse technique was first proposed by Strickland and Coumou and is a widely used method in ultrafast optics. Just to dig them out, one needs an expert in ultrafast optics.--Ymblanter (talk) 17:08, 1 November 2018 (UTC)
It is indeed presumed to merit an article, and then WP:GNG is needed to prove that it actually does merit an article. That does not reflect the practice of actual deletion discussions. Nor is it indicated by the plain wording of WP:N. Presumption refers to the fact that a "more in-depth discussion might conclude that the topic actually should not have a stand-alone article", but would instead be better treated as part of another article. XOR'easter (talk) 18:55, 1 November 2018 (UTC)
  • The article could have been improved with a discussion of the issues relating to academic notability. There was also an opportunity to critique the incentive structure of Wikipedia by pointing out that reviewing articles is a way for editors to earn status from the Wikimedia community. This "grind" combined with a poor understanding of academic notability results in summary rejections. AugusteBlanqui (talk) 21:12, 1 November 2018 (UTC)
  • As several have already noted, the draft that was declined (and I don't fault Bradv too much, he was following accepted practice if not explicit guidelines) would have certainly survived AfD. It is distressing that that drafts must meet a far higher standard to be accepted than articles do to be kept. Until these standards can somehow be brought into agreement, and I have no idea how, AfC is functioning to exclude worthwhile content and to distract new editors from the far superior option of simply moving the draft to mainspace themselves (or even, heaven forbid, building a page in mainspace). This is the most significant of several interconnected issues—others include automatic G13 deletion, lack of collaborative tools, and allowing giving some editors a non-discussable veto over others—that make draftspace/AfC a net negative to the project at this time. (Of course, given ACREQ, it's also essential to the project—what a mess!) A2soup (talk) 22:07, 1 November 2018 (UTC)
  • Thanks to those who wrote these insightful perspectives, and the Signpost team for publishing them. I echo the comments that the accuracy of the facts and the thoughtfulness of the discussion here is of a far higher standard than that seen in external media. the wub "?!" 19:03, 2 November 2018 (UTC)
  • This, collectively, is a fabulous defense of our work at Wikipedia. I think the takeaway is that it was easy to spin this into an eye-catching story about a solidly noncontroversial source of knowledge. I'm not going to vilify media companies for using this angle, because the motivation comes from a good place. The problem here is a lack of awareness about how we edit. A great alternative spin that journalists should consider is the idea that Strickland's article didn't pass the review process because women don't get their fair share of press or even peripheral website coverage that often passes for a notability reference. Is that a problem with Wikipedia, or our society as a whole? Icebob99 (talk) 20:09, 4 November 2018 (UTC)
  • Maybe we ought to ask these publications that want to vilify Wikipedia a simple question: Why weren't THEY writing about her prior to the Nobel win? If they had been, the article would have had enough sources and been accepted, and we'd never have had this conversation. Seraphimblade Talk to me 02:47, 7 November 2018 (UTC)

Opinion: Strickland incident (15,798 bytes · 💬)

Bradv, you certainly have nothing to feel bad about, you were just doing a volunteer task that you took on and you did it well. A key point you made is that there have been many other Nobel Prize winners who did not have an article before they won the prize. So this was not unusual, and certainly not a gender-bias incident. But journalists and editors "jumped" on the story, and the angle they used - woman wins Nobel Prize previously shunned by Wikipedia - was, given the previous history of the non-existence of articles about many winners, a stretch. "Wikipedia gets unfairly bumped around again by the media" seems more accurate. Thanks for all of your good work here. Randy Kryn (talk) 19:33, 28 October 2018 (UTC)

  • Bradv, the only point I can see at which events could have been done differently, which you touch upon as "AfC sorting", is to tag the declined draft with the relevant WikiProjects. It's not in the flowchart, and it's only in the reviewing instructions for accepted articles - and even that is currently being challenged.
There was certainly nothing "wrong" in your assessment of the draft as it stood. Asking AfC reviewers to rewrite and research articles would be inviting the collapse of the system under an un-satisfiable workload. I'm sorry for the grief you took on the wiki's behalf.
As for the news coverage - re-write it in your mind as Lazy journalists turn to Wikipedia for cut-and-paste material to meet their deadlines. Find nothing. Decide to write outraged item about Wikipedia instead as being the quicker and easier option. Cabayi (talk) 20:52, 28 October 2018 (UTC)
  • Bradv - My own $0.02 is that you were spot on. AfC deliberately doesn't involve a BEFORE check (given our current backlog set-up we'd melt under it - it would be more like an enforced RA). No attempt to reach out by the news sources to anyone who actually knows something about AfC. Rather unimpressed by the press statements by a couple of senior figures in Wiki who should know better. Thanks for writing this nice and calm response in the wake of a fair chunk of unwarranted hostility. Nosebagbear (talk) 21:18, 28 October 2018 (UTC)
  • A very common misunderstanding is over "significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject"; this is a requirement for notability, not for high-quality sourcing of the article. It doesn't mean, as one editor thought, that an article on netball needs to be written from books about cricket. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 21:46, 28 October 2018 (UTC)
  • Bradv, I looked at the draft you declined, and you were correct to decline it as lacking independent sources, which are required for every article on any subject. You did nothing wrong here; the media just (rather understandably, I suppose) doesn't understand how our processes work. This was not a case of "gender bias", as evidenced by the finding that a third of Nobel winners had no article at the time of their win. I would not support AfC reviewers having to do a "BEFORE" type evaluation, as declining a draft is very different from nominating for deletion. The point of "BEFORE" is to avoid wasting the community's time with a deletion discussion when even a cursory look for references would have revealed that enough exist even if they aren't currently cited. Declining a draft doesn't remove the article or require a discussion, it just tells the creator that they've got some more work to do. Seraphimblade Talk to me 22:12, 28 October 2018 (UTC)
  • I consider the decline unambiguously erroneous. The guideline for accepting drafts is that as an article it would probably pass AfD, and this would, because the referencing inadequacies were easily fixable. The discussion above is based on the view that they had to be fixed first. AfC is not for determining notability, so the question of whether the sources were adequate to show notability in the declined version is irrelevant. (I personally think they were-- that obviously reliable primary sources are sufficient, though not ideal, but even if I thought otherwise I would have accepted. Frankly, I guessed at the time that it was declined because President OSA had not been noticed, which would have been an understandable error. ) DGG ( talk ) 04:32, 29 October 2018 (UTC)
    @DGG: I've been discussing this incident with a variety of editors for nearly a month now, and I'm having considerable trouble understanding your comment. I believe I reviewed my own actions honestly, and I've gone over every aspect of the AfC project from top to bottom trying to understand what might have gone wrong. Every aspect of what you just mentioned is covered within the essay, yet you somehow still see it differently. You characterize my actions as unambiguously erroneous, which, frankly, is incredibly confusing and a little hard to take. Bradv 04:57, 29 October 2018 (UTC)
placeholder until tomorrow, but I'm going to strike the "unambiguously". DGG ( talk ) 05:08, 29 October 2018 (UTC)
  • I've been wondering if we should do something about our communication towards editors here.. Our nomenclature is rather clinical and "Declining a draft" might potentially be interpreted as "topic declined" or simply be interpreted as discouraging further pursuit. I was wondering if perhaps the usage of more engaging words like "requires improvement", "not ready for publication" or similar to encourage people might make a difference. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 16:00, 29 October 2018 (UTC)
@TheDJ: - it's definitely not an evidently wrong idea, but there are cases where I feel that the slightly stronger language of Decline (but not "Reject") is apropos. This disagreement is purely within me, so I imagine that we might get a fair set of mixed views on the matter if you raised it in AfC. Perhaps a gentler one for referencing and a decline for advertorial et al? Nosebagbear (talk) 18:36, 29 October 2018 (UTC)
@Nosebagbear and TheDJ: To 'decline' something is to refuse it politely and rather formally (I am sorry to have to decline your offer). 'Reject' suggests that what is on offer is felt to be not good enough (an article or book which a publisher has rejected). – BET. Reject is the far stronger word and is more final, personally I would reserve it for clearly inappropriate or totally inadmissible submissions. Decline leaves a more temporary notion such as 'decline (for now)'. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 22:53, 29 October 2018 (UTC)
@Kudpung: - I do reserve reject for very rare cases, hence why I delineated it from the "slightly stronger" - in effect, reject is a rough indication that if it is re-submitted, it should at least be considered whether to send it to MFD. Nosebagbear (talk) 23:25, 29 October 2018 (UTC)
  • How is the OSA not a reliable source for its own officers? 73.222.1.26 (talk) 18:12, 30 October 2018 (UTC)
    The OSA is a reliable source for its own officers, but was it clear that being an officer of the OSA conferred sufficient notability? How would that have been established? If I had reviewed the draft as it stands, I would also have asked for better sourcing to establish notability. The problem is not with the subject of the article, it is with the insufficiency of the article. It is not the reviewer's responsibility to fix the article. It is the reviewer's responsibility to not pass the article if it is not ready.
    Do we see anyone blaming the author of the article? That would also be unreasonable, as they were under no obligation to write it. One might as well blame everyone else who didn't write it or fix it. There is nothing special about the way this draft was handled. Cheers, · · · Peter (Southwood) (talk): 19:32, 30 October 2018 (UTC)
  • Bradv, I have a great admiration for your transparency and bravery in this Opinion piece. Not everyone would have responded as you have and I think knowing the background of the event (not-having-a-Strikland-article event) is very helpful in sorting things out. Barbara ✐  ✉ 09:20, 31 October 2018 (UTC)
  • I don't recall having worked in AFC, so I don't have a full understanding of the process. From Bradv's explanation above, it seems that what he did was standard, which I find odd. What is the purpose of AFC if all that happens when an unregistered, inexperienced user submits this article, is that the article gets a template, and the user gets a template, and the article is then ignored. Nobody is benefiting from that at all. If the article had been created in mainspace it would have fared better, especially if it had been taken to AFD where people would have made an attempt to strengthen sources. While I understand and sympathise with Bradv's explanation that this is what AFC does, and they can't do any better, it does seem odd that an article that is not obviously crap, and has significant enough indicators to alert people to the notability of the subject (there is clear assertion of notability - enough to withstand a Prod or a Speedy, and clues are that she co-invented something on which we already had an article which mentioned her by name - Chirped pulse amplification, and was given several awards, two of which we have articles on - Research_Corporation#Grants_Programs:_Cottrell_Scholar_Awards and Sloan Research Fellowship - the latter indicating that "Since the beginning of the program in 1955, 43 fellows have won a Nobel Prize", and she was an Optical Society President - all of whom, bar two at the time of submission, had articles on Wikipedia: The_Optical_Society#OSA_presidents). If the article had been created in mainspace and submitted to AFD, it would have fared better than going through AFC under the current system. So, I don't see that Bradv did anything wrong, but I do see causes for concern in AFC if the system is geared not to assist an article other than put templates on it and the user who created it. If, as Bradv argues, asking the reviewers to do a bit more than accept or reject articles will lead to an even greater backlog and a reluctance to get more volunteers involved, then perhaps we need to consider the process itself, or even if AFC should continue. Does the AFC acceptance process set the bar too high (after all we do have AfD for dubious articles)? Or could the process be more geared to assisting the article, rather than accepting or rejecting a user's submission. The inexperienced user who created the article has done their bit, and should not be expected to carry the burden - we should take that on as experienced Wikipedians. One suggestion could be to send declines to AFD rather than back to the creator (who may, as in this case, already have left Wikipedia). Whatever we do, we cannot allow decent draft articles like Donna Strickland to be simply templated and left ignored in limbo. SilkTork (talk) 11:20, 31 October 2018 (UTC)
  • Where BEFORE comes into play at AfC is when nominating a draft for deletion at WP:MFD, which is an attempt to gain community consensus that a draft has no value to the project and should be deleted. Bradv is wrong here, BEFORE plays no role in the normal AfC process whatsoever. All AfC drafts are automatically deleted with no BEFORE after 6 months with no edits per WP:G13, and had the Nobel been awarded just a couple months later this draft undoubtedly would have already been speedied in this fashion. This is the normal state of affairs; as many have noted, Bradv did not act out of line with community norms. This case can hopefully lead the community to recognize some of the more perverse consequences of the relatively new G13 criterion, especially in combination with the importance ACREQ has conferred on AfC. A2soup (talk) 01:03, 2 November 2018 (UTC)
  • Thanks for writing this, but you don't mention the strongest claim for notability in the draft, in the last sentence ".... and served as the OSA president in 2013." Being one of their fellows isn't imo prima facie evidence of notability, but being president probably is - we have at The_Optical_Society#OSA_presidents a huge list - all now blue though at that time at least one was red. But I must say when I first looked at it (after the Nobel) I missed the significance of that too, and thought the draft didn't demonstrate notability - but then I don't edit declining things in areas I'm not very familiar with. Looking further at the OSA presidency & hearing what those better informed said about her citation index figures then pursuaded me I was wrong. I hope the University of Waterloo (Associate Professor only) and Royal Society of Canada (not a fellow) feel equally embarassed. Johnbod (talk) 04:38, 4 November 2018 (UTC)
  • Writing a first article can be bewildering, and the AfC system appears to only cement that state of affairs. I miss the days when someone could actually write a stub and other editors would expand upon it rather than rushing to delete it. I'm all for deleting when it's appropriate but the climate of eradication has given rise to yet another bureaucratic hoop through which no one should have to jump. This isn't the encyclopedia that anyone can edit, it's the encyclopedia that only the few have the tenacity to study the culture over a long enough time that they are willing to edit.--~TPW 02:04, 21 November 2018 (UTC)
  • What an interesting read, and terribly insightful as well to someone as unfamiliar with the AfC process as myself ^u^. (Reading this after it being mentioned on the December edition of the Signpost). Santacruz ⁂ Please ping me! 22:05, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

Recent research: Wikimedia Commons worth $28.9 billion (3,113 bytes · 💬)

The research on the value of Wikimedia Commons brings to mind this issue's Alexa essay. What's the commercial value of having such snippets, or the Google Knowledge Graph, also 99.99% powered by volunteer contributions? ☆ Bri (talk) 02:28, 30 October 2018 (UTC)

  • All companies which reuse Wikipedia's content are accruing a debt to society and owe the public commons. The law is not a guidebook for what corporations should do, but only a set of minimal expectations for behavior which are far below the level of human decency. Even though it is not illegal to take from wiki without giving back, it is wrong behavior which brings shame to any person or organization associated with it. Commons and Wikimedia projects bring value to all people and organizations. Companies which get money from wiki project should give back. The employees, customers, neighbors, and anyone socially connected to anyone reusing free and open content from wiki or anywhere else has a duty to educate, pressure, and expect that anyone who uses the commons should give back to it. Blue Rasberry (talk) 13:23, 31 October 2018 (UTC)
I have to politely disagree. I have contributed many images to Commons and always understood the CC-BY license to mean what it says when it allows free commercial use. Several of my images have been used that way. Sometimes I have been asked permission, which is courteous, but not necessary. In one case a major publisher had one of my images for sale in their catalog (it was in a paper they published), which is clearly not ok and they removed it on my request. Outside of that and proper attribution I expect nothing in return, nor should any other contributor. It might make sense for the Wikimedia foundation to track commercial use (perhaps with a page to accept reports of such use) and send a friendly fund-raising letter, but that is different from saying commercial users have some duty to support Commons. They don't. That's what free means.--agr (talk)

Measuring the economic value of any free product or free service is often more an exercise in scholarship than a valuation of something tendered, and of course the value of Wikimedia Commons may be more social than economic. But a study that references the waiting time between each use of content as the price of use increases may provide insight into the economic value of Commons, and as the price of use increases the distribution of waiting times would likely follow well known measures in statistics. Then again, twenty-some-odd billion dollars is a good starting point.Tamanoeconomico (talk) 20:47, 21 November 2018 (UTC)

Special report: NPP: This could be heaven or this could be hell for new users – and for the reviewers (8,033 bytes · 💬)

  • ...improved tools for them to use which only the Wikimedia Foundation can develop -- WMF software is open source. There are hundreds of volunteer developers who have contributed to MediaWiki, and Page Curation is no different. Any developer is able to contribute to it. — MusikAnimal talk 16:29, 29 October 2018 (UTC)
This is not strictly accurate - the Page Curation extension is indeed very different, it was developed directly and exclusively for the precise needs of the Wikipedia encyclopedia(s) and it was developed by paid WMF employees on the decision of the then WMF executive officer and vice executive officer. They are therefore the people who should provide the support for the software they developed. Volunteer MediaWiki software developers are arguably more specifically interested in developing MediaWiki software for all its other, non-Wikimedia Foundation uses. Wikipedia editors were never supposed to develop the software as well - else, why would a WMF exist and with a $75M budget that comes exclusively from the work of the content providers - the content for which, ironically, New Page Curation exists? And which exists for the very reason and purpose of keeping the corpus clean and free of all that Wikipedia is not and hence upholding the tenets of the Foundation and its founders - and keeping the donations flowing. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 21:16, 29 October 2018 (UTC)
I'm not here to argue, or comment on the other low blows in this article, but saying only WMF can work on this extension is patently false. — MusikAnimal talk 01:03, 30 October 2018 (UTC)
Where does it say that, MusikAnimal? Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 16:31, 30 October 2018 (UTC)
@Kudpung: I believe MusikAnimal is referring to his original citation of a passage from the first paragraph of this piece: ...improved tools for them to use which only the Wikimedia Foundation can develop. Airplaneman ✈ 17:51, 30 October 2018 (UTC)
Indeed. That sentence could have been better worded. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 23:25, 30 October 2018 (UTC)
@MusikAnimal: I don't understand what you are implying with 'low blows' but perhaps this serious low blow for New Page Reviewing in the last few hours will shed some light on the need for the article above and clarifying just who is dealing low blows to whom - Vexations who due to this has now completely retired from Wikipedia was one of the most prolific reviewers. If after all this time Mr Horn's department, whose mandate is ostensibly not user retention per this discussion, still doesn't accept the importance and priority of developing tools for NPP, and continues to lose users and patrollers, Wikipedia will end up with no gatekeepers for new content at all, and the Foundation will be to blame. I don't know what Barkeep49 and Insertcleverphrasehere make of all this, but it's already happening, and you're wondering why The Signpost reports on it? I feel I have wasted hundreds of hours over the last 10 years shepherding the process until I jumped ship in March last year, and even if the NPP crowd don't want me on board anymore, the volunteers are sick of being the WMF's galley slaves. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 23:27, 3 November 2018 (UTC)
Hundreds of hours over ten years? That's, like, a couple of weekends each year. MPS1992 (talk) 00:22, 4 November 2018 (UTC)
@MPS1992: Coordinating NPP can be a lot of work, something I'm just beginning to realise after spending around fifty hours in the last few weeks trying to organise everything for the community wishlist push. I believe that Kudpung meant hundreds of hours each year over ten years. He's been one of the most active reviewers ever, and has done more for NPP than anybody else. He's gotten a bit jaded on the process (it is amazing he lasted so long), but he isn't the only prolific reviewer we've lost. I'd think again before doubting his commitment to the project. — Insertcleverphrasehere (or here) 10:06, 4 November 2018 (UTC)
Well it's a shame someone decided to retire, but that is their decision. As far as I can tell the proposal was well made, likely to be a popular one, and it would seem Danny shares the same sentiment. You should continue to pursue it. All I can say is Community Tech's commitment to the top 10 wishes is genuine, and I suspect Page Curation improvements would receive special attention. The "low blows" I'm referring to in this article are the mockery of this process and the team. Page Curation was not developed by Community Tech, and it is and always has been under the purview of the Growth team (or the other historical variations of that team). Remarks like there is not an available category for requests for work on core software extensions seem to undermine the wishlist system, and frankly it doesn't make any sense. Probably most of the wishes pertain to an extension, and extensions are by definition not part of core. Most people don't know what extensions are anyway, so we wouldn't want to confuse people by creating a category for it. Anyway, the purpose of your publication is totally fine... I definitely am not wondering why The Signpost reports on it. This sort of thing is exactly what you should do. The factual inaccuracies aside, the tone could be much better, but this is merely my opinion. I assume there won't be another Signpost in time to advertise voting on the proposal, but you should feel free to advertise in any way you can. I sincerely hope it pans out. If I were able to vote on it, I would :) — MusikAnimal talk 20:29, 4 November 2018 (UTC)
MusikAnimal, many of us neither know or care whether it is an extension, an apple, a core, an API, Ajax, Java, Perl, Python, or PHP - they just want the tools to do the work they are not paid for, and they want those tools developed by the people who are paid to do it. And if that isn't clear, here's an analogy: You don't need to know how an internal combustion engine works to be able to drive your car, and you can drive that car for free, but you expect your paid garage man to fix it when it's broke. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:02, 11 November 2018 (UTC)

Special report 2: Now Wikidata is six (0 bytes · 💬)

Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2018-10-28/Special report 2

Technology report: Bots galore! (0 bytes · 💬)

Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2018-10-28/Technology report

Traffic report: Unsurprisingly, sport leads the field – or the ring (9,502 bytes · 💬)

  • I wonder, is Ugh. Don't remind me that this guy is on the Supreme Court. What a sad, sad day for America. Please, never mention this name to me ever again, unless it's part of an impeachment effort. an accepted way to comment on a sensitive political issue? Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 19:54, 28 October 2018 (UTC)
    Does anyone know if traffic reports are conventionally supposed to be NPOV like articles are? --Joshualouie711talk 21:26, 28 October 2018 (UTC)
    Under the recent generations of leadership of The Signpost it seems there is less emphasis on NPOV here than before. I think we should be careful about it. Bias is bias, and even if its only a traffic report, I think its best to keep such statements to the op-eds. It also contributes to the narrative that Wikipedia is a collection of left-leaning perspectives. And a comment such as the one made about Kavanaugh betrays an American-oriented bias, which I think is most disappointing for our users. I doubt the editors have ever made such comments about politics outside the West, and that in its own right shows a different from of bias, regardless of where the relevant comment falls on the left-right political spectrum. -Indy beetle (talk) 22:58, 28 October 2018 (UTC)
    Indy beetle some people still fail to understand that The Signpost is not a collection of Wikipedia articles: The "Traffic report" section reports on the most popular articles on Wikipedia during the latest publication period, serving as a guided commentary on what was hot and what was not with the readership. As with the "Featured content" section the "Traffic report", serving as a curated list, generally has a lighter tone compared to the rest of the publication. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 08:31, 29 October 2018 (UTC)
    Bias is bias and it is ubiquitous; there is no escape from bias by virtue of its nature. Omitting and segregating objectionable content does not free it from bias, nor are the objections from a place beyond bias, so relying on such omission and segregation to avoid bias is only successful insofar as the readers deem it no longer objectionable according to their biases. This is a problem not of insufficient objectivity or neutrality, but in the legitimation of objectivity and neutrality as coherent concepts and achievable goals, since only a belief in the latter can sustain the former. Unfortunately, Wikipedia clings to its fictions because they are useful and fundamental to its self-concept, so much so that their rejection is such an existential threat that only the faithless would do so. Beyond that, it is a problem of insufficient participation, since only through participation can one represent one's own perspective.
    The views of any post are those of its author, and the views of The Signpost are those of its team, since any creative work is a reflection of its creator. The same is so with biases. It is therefore unreasonable to expect any body to embody that which is beyond its constitution. If someone wishes to change those views and biases, then they are free to effect that change, in this case by participating in the creative process of producing the next issue (whether here or at the Top 25 Report, from where the "Traffic report" is sourced). Just as the response of the Wikipedia community to the gender gap and other systemic biases has been through content interventions such as WikiProject Women in Red, the response of anyone who objects to the content and biases of The Signpost can intervene by writing and editing it before publication. This cannot free it from bias anymore than anyone can be, but it will help ensure the content is not deemed objectionable by the readers according to their biases, since their participation will ensure their biases are better represented in the publication. —Nøkkenbuer (talk • contribs) 19:28, 29 October 2018 (UTC)
    We sign the articles for a reason, it's not only a list of the popular articles, but in a way incorporates the opinion of the writer about them. And mostly, with a comedic tone to make reading more fun - to the point that when someone complained about bias, Wikipedia Humor was added atop the Top 25 Report. igordebraga ≠ 18:43, 3 November 2018 (UTC)
    You may have noticed that this is not an article. If you need a box to put it in, it is an essay, with a byline, in Wikipedia space. If you don't like it, you may claim a full refund from your vendor. Or write your own.
    Thank you to all the Signpost writers for your efforts to keep us informed and amused. 213.205.240.199 (talk) 23:35, 28 October 2018 (UTC)
  • Just a note of appreciation for all the work you put into this page. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 21:22, 28 October 2018 (UTC)
  • How many pantomime performers break bones during Their performances? Sad to see such a crude bias here. MPJ-DK (talk) 12:40, 29 October 2018 (UTC)
As in other professional wrestling promotions, WWE shows are not legitimate contests, but purely entertainment-based, featuring storyline-driven, scripted, and choreographed matches, though matches often included moves that can put performers at risk of injury if not performed correctly. This was first publicly acknowledged by WWE's owner Vince McMahon in 1989 to avoid taxes from athletic commissions. Since the 1980s, WWE publicly has branded their product as sports entertainment, acknowledging the product's roots in competitive sport and dramatic theater. - that is a direct quote from the lede of our article on WWE. I didn't pen the piece to which you refer, but to describe it as a crude bias is highly unfair. Stormy clouds (talk) 19:36, 30 October 2018 (UTC)
  • Did anyone else feel like Lindsey Graham was describing Wikipedia:Requests for adminship with stunning accuracy during his volcanic speech? Here's the transcript. Graham wasn't the first Republican to say that the hearing wasn't a job interview, but he hit RfA right on the head with "you're looking for a fair process? You came to the wrong town at the wrong time, my friend." and "This is going to destroy the ability of good people to come forward because of this crap." When he shouted "your high school yearbook!", he chillingly pointed out all the years-old incidents always brought up at RfA. There is also room for philosophical debate: Graham said "To my Republican colleagues, if you vote no, you're legitimizing the most despicable thing I have seen in my time in politics.", and there's often a lot of controversy about those who support RfA candidates purely because the oppose votes seem unsubstantiated. I hope I'm not turning anyone off RfA by saying all this 😕. wumbolo ^^^ 19:00, 29 October 2018 (UTC)
No. DS (talk) 02:24, 1 November 2018 (UTC)
Clarification, please
  • What does "this sell" mean in the phrase, "story which captivated the world this sell", in the item about Khashoggi? – Athaenara ✉ 04:08, 12 November 2018 (UTC)
  • There were some funky typos in the original incarnation of that week's Top25 report. I'm sure someone will have a look and fix this one. My best guess: "this cycle" was intended. ☆ Bri (talk) 04:49, 12 November 2018 (UTC)
  • @Athaenara:, @Bri: - whoops. Meant to say week. My phone goes for some very curious autocorrects. Sincerest apologies, rectified now, thanks for highlighting it. Stormy clouds (talk) 07:11, 12 November 2018 (UTC).
  • Thanks, Stormy clouds, you've wrapped this up. – Athaenara ✉ 08:16, 12 November 2018 (UTC)


  1. ^ "Wikipedia Statistics (English)". stats.wikimedia.org.
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