User talk:Iridescent/Archive 44

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How do you get such a forum-y talkpage?

Latest comment: 3 years ago76 comments25 people in discussion

Just curious, as someone who is often bored and interested in talking about Wikipedia-stuff, how did you get so much discussion ending up here? Was it intentional, or did it just kinda happen, and if so, why? Elli (talk | contribs) 06:11, 6 April 2021 (UTC)

There are many many interesting meta conversations that happen here. And speaking of meta, crossreferencing meta:Universal Code of Conduct/Drafting committee here. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 09:01, 6 April 2021 (UTC)

@Jo-Jo Eumerus: interesting. Does that need more applicants? Elli (talk | contribs) 10:13, 6 April 2021 (UTC)

meta:Universal Code of Conduct/2021 consultations/Enforcement is what resulted with regards to enforcement. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 11:20, 27 April 2021 (UTC)

Why did I feel the need to actually read that waffle? Seriously, they should just rename it "WikiProject Find A Pretext To Close Down Croatian Wikipedia" and save time. On the plus side, it looks like the fears that it will lead to a Great Purge are unfounded; this is all very much at the "as a last resort we may need to issue an admonishment" level. ‑ Iridescent 15:50, 29 April 2021 (UTC)

What do you guys think? Should I apply? The teaser is: "Do you care about safety, inclusivity, and friendliness in the Wikimedia movement? Are you interested in the guidelines and policies that guide it? Do you have any experience with how they are applied?" I mean, there's no one that can hold a candle to me on that last point. E Eng 14:24, 6 April 2021 (UTC) In all seriousness, maybe I should do it. Ha, ha! Just kidding!
Fram might beg to differ... Only in death does duty end (talk) 14:34, 6 April 2021 (UTC)

Yeah, but do they have Experience applying a trauma-informed lens and working within anti-racist and anti-oppressive frameworks? E Eng 14:42, 6 April 2021 (UTC)

I personally think the sensible thing to do is completely ignore UCOC since it's certain to fail. (It would probably be difficult to come up with a set of conduct rules that are equally accepted in towns 30 miles apart, let alone cultures on opposite sides of the world. The only way to come up with a set of conduct rules that would be equally appropriate in Beijing, Baghdad, Belfast and Berkeley would be to make them all such obvious things like "don't post credible death threats" that there would be no point codifying them in the first place.) As far as I'm concerned any engagement with it will just encourage them, but if we have to go through the motions of having the discussions, we could do worse than have someone like you who's been on the receiving end of Wikipedia's warped definition of "civility"—I'd assume the discussions will attract mainly the self-appointed Moral Police types and it would be good to have someone constantly reminding them that all the "problem users" they're trying to manufacture pretexts to purge have real people behind the stupid usernames. ‑ Iridescent 19:41, 6 April 2021 (UTC)

UCoC implementation meeting: [1]. The result: [2]. Seriously, why don't you join the committee and I'll be a sort of ex officio historical exhibit. E Eng 21:31, 6 April 2021 (UTC)

Universal Code of Conduct/2021 consultations/Roundtable discussions, if anyone's interested. ‑ Iridescent 2 14:04, 15 May 2021 (UTC)

I like that it's on Zoom rather than on a talk page. I know, MediaWiki talk pages are rather primitive, but still. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 14:17, 15 May 2021 (UTC)

The disadvantage there is the loss of historical record. What wiki software is very good at is "who said what, when did they say it, and what was the exact state of the discussion at the point they said it so we can see if an apparently inappropriate comment made sense at the time?". For something contentious like this, preserving the historical record of exactly who said what is important, otherwise it makes the inevitable "but nobody objected at the time!", "nobody from the Foovian community was consulted!", "I pointed out that (problem down the line) was going to happen and you told me there was a mechanism to deal with it!" etc arguments much more difficult to resolve. How many times have you seen Wikipedia issues dissolve into rancourous back-and-forth because a group agreed a party line off-wiki, or Arbcom issued a decision without making the thinking that led to it public?

Using Zoom also brings its own issues with it. We can reasonably assume that everyone in a Wikimedia discussion can access MediaWiki with no difficulty, but not everyone has access to Zoom. It's a bandwidth-hog which people on metered connections are understandably reluctant to use; it's also a rather dubious firm to which significant numbers of organizations block access from their networks for security reasons. (We're not talking a handful of paranoid cranks who think the gummint is comin' for their guns, but "if they don't trust it there's probably a good reason not to trust it" organizations like Google. I'm hardly in charge of nuclear launch codes, but it's nonetheless in my current contract of employment that I not access Zoom from any device on which I have or may in future have work-related material, and I'm not about to buy a separate device just so I can join a WMF meeting.) ‑ Iridescent 18:43, 17 May 2021 (UTC)

Note to self to avoid using the word "like" for sarcastic statements.

I am sooo looking forward to the day where all the repeat exams are over so that I can go back to article writing... Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 08:16, 18 May 2021 (UTC)

I've been more-or-less absent from anything substantive on Wikipedia for 18 months. I don't feel I've missed anything. ‑ Iridescent 15:50, 7 June 2021 (UTC)

Reply

Regarding the original question, this page isn't actually as forummy as it appears; although there's a lot of discussion on it, it you look at it it's almost always directly relevant to Wikipedia, rather than a general chatroom free-for-all. The reason it's so active (as far as I can tell) is the combination of a number of factors:

I've written enough to be reasonably well-regarded (even if not necessarily one of the top editors) on a wider range of topics than most of the active editors, which has put this page on the watchlist of a lot of disparate people from the "content creation" part of Wikipedia;
I was briefly on the arbitration committee, which put this page onto a lot of people's watchlists from the "inside baseball" part of Wikipedia;
I was involved (albeit tangentially) with some of the discussions around the relationship between the various WMF projects, which put this page onto the "broader meta issues" aspect of Wikipedia;
I've been an admin for a long time, which has put me on the watchlist of a lot of people who at some point came here to complain about an admin action I took and who never bothered to take me off their watchlists.

1–4 mean this page is on the watchlist of more people (627 at the time of writing), from a broader cross-section of the wiki than is usual, and as such comments on this page are more likely to attract the attention of other editors who might feel inclined to reply. That in turn leads on to:

Because this is a user talk page rather than a WP:-space page, it means it can be moderated to a much greater extent. I can discreetly remove potentially offensive comments and unfunny jokes to a degree that would cause uproar at an 'official' noticeboard, and on the rare occasions it becomes necessary can issue "any further posts from you will be reverted on sight" bans which would require a week of drama to apply at something like the Village Pump. (It also means I can turn a blind eye to socks and banned users to a degree which would never be allowed in WP-space, if I think they have something useful to say);
Likewise, because this is a user talk page it's largely subject to real-world standards of civility rather than the warped WikiSpeak definition of the term. People aren't going to be punished or have their posts redacted for making comments that happen to disagree with whatever the wiki-orthodoxy happens to be this week, and are going to be quickly shown the door for being obnoxious; the exact opposite of the situation on Wikipedia's official fora;
Although there are a lot of people who don't particularly like me, I have very few outright enemies on-wiki and have rarely become involved in the player-vs-player nonsense; as such this is a page on which most editors feel reasonably comfortable commenting both to me and to each other.

5–7 mean that in effect this page serves as a kind of neutral embassy; people who openly loathe each other and for whom commenting on each others' talkpages would be seen as a provocation can talk to each other on this page under the polite fiction that they're actually talking to me, while die-hard antis who'd never deign to legitimize the establishment by communicating directly with (e.g.) Arbcom or the WMF can post here in the knowledge that the relevant people will see it.

As well as these broader reasons, there are also a couple of more prosaic ones:

I've been around long enough to remember the traumatic events of 2007-ish which formed the modern Wikipedia community, but not so long that I was actively involved in them (the same also goes for a number of others in a similar position like NYB), so I can generally comment reasonably neutrally if people want to know why some particular thing is done in a particular way;
I do my best to give a full and honest answer to any reasonable question, rather than just a gobbet of "See WP:RGJGIOJF, WP:FJDKGRFI & WP:PEFJIESU" gobbledegook, so I've built up a reputation as someone to whom people come with questions;
(Boringly but relevantly) Because the nature of my real world life means I quite often disappear at very short or no notice for quite long stretches, the archiving is (usually) set to a month rather than the more usual 7–10 days to make sure questions don't disappear before I've had the chance to answer them, so stale threads hang around longer than usual and make the page look longer than it is.

It's worth pointing out that although this talkpage is the current one with the "secret backroom where the cabal meets" reputation, it wasn't the first and it won't be the last. When I arrived, User talk:Keeper76 was the place Those In The Know hung out, to the the extent that it got its own WP:AN/K redirect); the talkpages of Giano, Bishonen and Malleus all also had similar status at some point, as to a lesser extent do that of NYB ('lesser' because he tends only to get questions about Wikipedia's administration rather than the more general mix of questions I get asked) and EEng ('lesser' because a lot of editors find his entourage incredibly annoying and don't want to get involved with them) and probably others I'm not even aware of, and at some point the traffic on this page will die down in the same way it has on all the others. ‑ Iridescent 19:41, 6 April 2021 (UTC)

Replies to reply

My talkpage is one of the secret backrooms where the cabal meets? That is so, so sad. You have disparate people – I have desperate people. E Eng 13:17, 8 April 2021 (UTC) E Eng 21:43, 6 April 2021 (UTC)

It certainly is sad. We all know it's more like a dark and dank cellar. Martinevans123 (talk) 13:21, 8 April 2021 (UTC)

And I always thought it was the wonderful Arbitration Committee and administrator artwork at the top of the page that drew people here. :-) — Ched (talk) 20:56, 6 April 2021 (UTC)

Pretty sure the (lovely) artwork rotation is what convinced me to scroll down the page when I first arrived, so perhaps there's genuine substance to that point. Aza24 (talk) 05:44, 7 April 2021 (UTC)

I need to refresh those at some point, the current bunch have been up there too long. (At least two of them have been in the rotation for over ten years.) Maybe I'll just replace them all with cats. ‑ Iridescent 08:51, 7 April 2021 (UTC)

Sounds good, but only if they're cats by Giacometti :) Aza24 (talk) 15:35, 7 April 2021 (UTC)

Will they be siamese cats or ragdolls, though? Elli (talk | contribs) 15:38, 7 April 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for the in-depth answer! (didn't mean to imply the page was fourm-y in a policy-violating way, just that a lot more discussion happens here) Elli (talk | contribs) 06:05, 7 April 2021 (UTC)

One of the quirks of 2020s Wikipedia which was unanticipated by the people of 2000s Wikipedia was the extent to which significant discussions now tend to take place on user talk pages. It's not a healthy situation—it acts as a barrier to entry to newer users who are obviously going to be unaware of all the "WikiProject Horses is moribund but all the horsey people watch User talk:Montanabw so if you have a question about a horse article ask it there and someone will answer" situations—but with hindsight it was an inevitable consequence once we collectively began to be obsessed with conforming to arbitrary rules in project-space. ‑ Iridescent 08:51, 7 April 2021 (UTC)

I've always wanted someone to publish a Guide to User Talk Pages, giving recommendations on which talk pages to read and why. @Iridescent: Care to offer yours? Paul August ☎ 10:28, 7 April 2021 (UTC)

Mmmmm, but in my experience, with one or two exceptions, the owners of the best ones usually end up site banned! Which does tend to limit dialogue. Giano (talk) 10:31, 7 April 2021 (UTC)

Perhaps, but which ones (and why) do you read? Paul August ☎ 10:56, 7 April 2021 (UTC)

@Paul August, way back before the dawn of time we did try to compile a directory of "users whose talkpages would be a good place to ask questions about particular subjects and who are active enough that they're likely actually to answer". It proved imposible to maintain, and it always fit a little uncomfortably with Wikipedia's whole ethos to be essentially arbitrarily declaring some editors to be super-users.

@Giano, Wikipedia:Database reports/Most-watched pages by namespace#User / User talk hasn't been updated since 2017, but it at least gives a snapshot of which talkpages had a lot of people watching them four years ago (it's misleading, as a lot of the entries are just for admins who deleted a lot of pages and consequently had people coming to them to complain, rather than editors who had a lot of conversations take place on their talk, but it at least gives an indication). The only names I recognise as being sitebanned and people whose talkpages were genuinely busy are Eric (who was more of a deliberate wikicide than anything else) and Cirt (whose ban I don't think anyone would argue against). All the other names I recognise as having talkpages where a lot of people would go to ask actual questions—DGG, Bishonen, Moonriddengirl, NYB, Raul & Sandy, Kudpung, The Rambling Man, Dennis Brown etc etc etc—may no longer be as active as they once were, but aren't actually banned. ‑ Iridescent 11:13, 7 April 2021 (UTC)

@Iridescent: Well I wasn't thinking of anything like what you've linked to above (wow). I'm more interested in the personal opinions of knowledgeable editors like you (or the other readers of your page) saying which pages they like to read (and why), like a list of favorite books or movies. Paul August ☎ 11:49, 7 April 2021 (UTC)

That’s very interesting, and some names of people I hadn’t realised has disappeared. Giano (talk) 11:20, 7 April 2021 (UTC)

"3000 active editors"

(edit conflict) Looking at WP:HAU: ah, schedules approximated via timezone, because "writing an encyclopedia for fun" is presumably strongly correlated with having a totally normal schedule that's best predicted by what huge continent covering multiple timezones someone lives in. I remember you saying quite a few times that night shift employment is common amongst heavy editors?

I picked up pretty early "you have to go to user talks, not wikiprojects", but it's certainly not the most intuitive imaginable thing. It also has weird interactions with stuff like canvassing and talk page spamming. (I'm starting a newsletter; my options are apparently to advertise it either on moribund project talks, or directly hit up individuals I think might be interested, and both of these are fundamentally flawed.) "3,000 active users" is a number that rolls around my head a lot, because the consequence is one of the most important websites on the internet is, essentially, a small town, with accordant weird institutional quirks like "you have to know people to do anything, and the obvious institutions are mostly traps". The specific everything-is-hidden structure also induces cross-culture project shock -- I'm not sure if I find it weirder that every way to interact with the Wikivoyage community is on its sidebar, or that none of the ways to interact with the Wikipedia community are. Vaticidalprophet 11:27, 7 April 2021 (UTC)

It is really like a small town, isn't it? It feels big and intimidating, but there's just a lot of.... emptiness, devoid of people. The actual people are the same. Like Wyoming, or Vermont. Hey, could be worse - see literally any other wiki. Elli (talk | contribs) 15:24, 7 April 2021 (UTC)

The "3000 active editors" figure is misleading, as it's not always the same 3000 people but a mix of people drifting in and out, with an average of 3000 active at any given time. The analogy would probably be more akin to something like an airport, with a small handful of people who are present day-in-day-out, but the majority of people in constant flux. The social dynamic between the two is very different; in a town everybody knows each other, but a large part of the social driver behind Wikipedia is about interaction between people with very difficult levels of experience and ability and the misunderstandings that result. ‑ Iridescent 06:45, 8 April 2021 (UTC)

I'm reminded of the quote in Crocodile Dundee ... "Gosh, seven million people, all wanting to live together, New York must be the most friendliest place in the world." Ritchie333 ^(talk) ^(cont) 13:03, 8 April 2021 (UTC)

I think it depends on what you call "active editors". 140,000 registered editors made an edit in the last month. Typically, about 5,000 editors make more than 100 edits in the last month, and 10,000 average more than one edit a day. The number of "highly active editors" has been pretty steady for the last decade, with a dip here or there and an increase during the pandemic, but still averaging around 5,000 editors. (I think that the oft-quoted 3,000 number was based on the number of people making more than 100 edits per month, but the old stats site didn't count all edits, so those numbers were artificially low.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:18, 9 April 2021 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing I don't doubt that the 3000 figure is an artefact of the old Wikistats site, but but but… If you filter out the bots and limit the count to people who've edited actual content pages—which one could certainly argue is a more accurate measure of the number of "real" Wikipedia editors—then prior to the recent rise, the "active editor" count fluctuated fairly consistently within the 3000–3500 range. ‑ Iridescent 16:38, 9 April 2021 (UTC)

I wonder how it decides whether to count an editor as being "content" or "non-content". The numbers seem to add up, with no indication of duplication, but which one am I?

I don't think that we should say that people who spend their days at AFD or the ArbCom pages aren't "real" Wikipedia editors. Or, depending upon how it handles deleted edits, imagine someone whose edits are mainly using Twinkle to tag an article for speedy deletion. That can generate a large number of non-content edits, and the edit to the mainspace might not be counted. But would a New Page Patroller not be a "real" Wikipedia editor? WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:51, 9 April 2021 (UTC)

If only there was someone here who worked for the Wikimedia Foundation and could ask… The documentation for Wikistats is opaque and incomplete even by WMF standards, but when it comes to deleted contributions it looks like it used to count all edits deleted or otherwise, but in April 2020 the counter ceased to count deleted edits towards totals in order to eliminate a discrepancy between the old and new counter, and all the totals were retro-recalculated at that time. Anything based on editcounts is going to be misleading to some degree—people with multiple accounts will be double-counted, people with a "one big edit" editing style will be undercounted compared to those who do a string of smaller edits, and all the totals will be artificially skewed by people running bots and scripts on their main account. (Plus of course we're only counting edits on Wikipedia itself; someone editing Wikidata or Commons isn't going to show up.)

All that said, we probably do have enough data to generalize that the English Wikipedia community at any given time consists of around 10,000 regulars and a long tail of ≈50,000 long-term occasionals, with 3000–5000 people actually active at any given time. (FWIW, yes I would say that people who spend their days at AFD or the ArbCom pages aren't "real" Wikipedia editors, although maybe less so in the case of AFD since one could argue that deletion is technically a form of editing. If nothing you do has any effect on what readers see, you're not an editor you're a game-player. As you know, a deeply disproportionate number of Wikipedia's problems come from people without 'skin in the game' whose experience of Wikipedia editing is either outdated or nonexistent but nonetheless feel they have the right to tell other people what they should be doing.)

If a new page patroller genuinely has an editing pattern such as you describe, where they're racking up huge numbers of deletions but no other edits, let me know who it is and I'll remove the relevant userrights. New Pages Patrol and Recent Changes are about spotting potential issues and fixing them, not Wikipedia's equivalent of Space Invaders with an objective of zapping as much as possible; somebody who's doing nothing but hover over Special:NewPages tagging pages for deletion is somebody with a serious attitude problem. Even such a person would still show up as an active mainspace editor, since a significant proportion of their deletion tags would be inappropriate and consequently show up as "reverted mainspace edits" rather than "deleted edits" in the logs. ‑ Iridescent 07:01, 10 April 2021 (UTC)

Is clicking the big blue button in the mainspace the only way to be a "real" editor? I'm not sure that a simple edit to an article is more "real" than the edits I trigger, indirectly. I've written a lot of content-related policies and guidelines over the years. I provide advice and information to other editors. When other people make edits because of how I've helped them or to comply with the rules I've written, I'm still having a significant effect on what readers see. If the only thing I did was to help others improve articles, would you start considering me a "fake" editor? WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:04, 11 April 2021 (UTC)

If you made no actual edits yourself, then yes. I'm well aware (possibly more aware than most) that there's a huge They Also Serve factor on Wikipedia and that there's an absolutely vital rear echelon holding the whole thing together, but I'd look very askance at someone trying to rewrite content guidelines or policies, attempting to advise other editors, or any other "here's how you should do things" activity if they didn't have any relevant experience themselves. I don't think this is an unreasonable view on my part—if I went over to somewhere like Wikidata and announced "I've never actually edited your site, but here's a list of changes I think you should make" they'd be quite within their rights to tell me to do one. ‑ Iridescent 15:18, 12 April 2021 (UTC)

Enforced sabbaticals

I've long had the view that longstanding editors ought to take sabbaticals every now and then to recharge themselves. In my case, I had no reason to believe Wikipedia would be at all affected by my absences - and indeed it wasn't. So an average number of editors with a general turnover makes perfect sense; a static number would be quite worrying for the reasons just stated. Ritchie333 ^(talk) ^(cont) 10:56, 9 April 2021 (UTC)

Radical idea: mandatory admin sabbaticals: a 3-month tool-break required in every 3rd year of adminship. Breaks are needed! I found it was good to remember the kinds of things I could not do without the toolset. It would also help identify areas with heavy bus factor. –xeno^talk 12:19, 9 April 2021 (UTC)

For better or worse, we have a sense already of where the heavy bus factor is. More hands in AE may be good; three months of "AE without El_C" shock treatment, on the other hand, sounds like the kind of thing that kicks off the spiral that kills the site. Vaticidalprophet 12:43, 9 April 2021 (UTC)

I have to say I agree more with Xeno than with Vaticidalprophet on this one. As those with long memories may recall, I was (AFAIK) the first to put my money where my mouth was and say "desysop me for a year so I don't risk becoming part of a ruling class", and found it definitely worthwhile. (I haven't done it recently as I haven't been adminny enough to run that risk—and would oppose making it mandatory for the same reason—but it's definitely helpful for admins to experience Wikipedia without the unconscious deference.)

With regards the More hands in AE may be good; three months of "AE without El_C" shock treatment aspect, a process being dependent on the presence of a single person to function is a process that's dysfunctional beyond repair and we want that process to be exposed so we can get rid of it and figure out how to replace it. We have long experience to demonstrate that what pushes various parts of Wikipedia and the broader WMF ecosystem into mini-death-spirals is when that part of Wikipedia/Wikimedia relies on a single person or small clique of people to function; look at the history of any once-active but now-moribund process or website and nine times in ten you'll see someone declaring themselves "co-ordinator" shortly before the collapse. If AE is really so dependent on the presence of El C that it can't function without him, then the results of any AE decision involving anyone with any kind of relationship with El C (positive or negative) is by definition going to be seen as biased, which taints the whole process.

(On the topic of AE, to bang a drum I've long been banging I find the whole AE process both distasteful and illegitimate, and would urge every editor and especially every admin to completely disregard it. If Arbcom want somebody blocked or sanctioned, the arbitrators can damn well block or sanction them themselves, rather than trying to keep their hands clean by farming out the dirty work to a self-selecting posse of self-appointed WikiPolice. If on the other hand it's a more general conduct issue that's too trivial for arbitrators to bother themselves with but which happens to fall into an area affected by an arbcom decision, it should be taken to a more general noticeboard where genuinely neutral observers—rather than the handful of weirdos who follow WP:AE plus the friends and enemies of those involved who happen to have seen the notification on their talkpage—can discuss the issue. I don't think it's any great secret that I think the entire Arbcom model is hopelessly outdated and should be ignored until it drifts into irrelevance, but for as long as it still exists we should at the very least not be allowing them to operate their own parallel "super-ANI" for incidents involving people against whom a simple majority of Arbcom members have at some point taken a dislike.) ‑ Iridescent 16:22, 9 April 2021 (UTC)

No editor, admin, functionary, or arbitrator is irreplaceable. Nature abhors a vacuum. If there's actually a need, someone will step in. Kudpung and I ran NPP for a while. It's still going after we became less involved. CAT:CSD, WP:SPI, CAT:RFU, and many other areas have had their irreplaceable significant personalities come and go over the years. Someone always steps up. TonyBallioni (talk) 22:59, 9 April 2021 (UTC)

To a point. Nobody is essential, in the sense that we can always work around somebody's absence, but there are certainly aspects where the presence or absence of one or two individuals makes a significant difference. Compare Featured Articles before and after Raul was present to bang heads together when discussions got too meandering, or how WikiProject Greater Manchester went from hyperactive to moribund in a matter of days once it lost the three or so people who were driving it. Not to mention the ever-increasing reliance we have on tools which are dependent on the goodwill of their author(s); you only need to look at how old some of the tickets are on Phabricator to see what happens when something becomes dependent on a handful of people and none of that handful are active. ‑ Iridescent 23:19, 9 April 2021 (UTC)

What I know is that when I was active on the Russian Wikipedia, my main admin activity was cleaning up AfD. I was doing that for a couple of years, and the backlog during that period was at most two-three weeks, sometimes I managed to reduce it to zero. I left that project ten years ago, and the AfD backlog has been steadily growing, now it is over a year long. Does this make me irreplaceable? Certainly not. The community allowed the AfD backlog to grow because apparently it did not consider it important, and nobody volunteered to step up. Two or three admins can easily clean it up without overworking. Note that the community there is big enough, it is not like a project with three active editors and one suddenly leaves. Did my presence make a difference? Looks like it did.--Ymblanter (talk) 07:24, 10 April 2021 (UTC)

Oh, definitely; you only have to look at Commons:Admin backlog (currently at 75 months) to see what happens when a handful of admins was holding things together and that handful has subsequently lost interest or left. (I imagine Wikidata is going to start seeing serious fallout from the departure of RexxS fairly soon, as well.) What I'm saying is that projects as important as Commons or Russian Wikipedia shouldn't have any process that's dependent on one person; if the ru-wiki backlog is building up to an unacceptable level, then it's time to start looking at how to replace the process with something that will actually work. (Off the top of my head, some kind of super-WP:PROD where anyone—or perhaps anyone with a certain minimum edit number—can close AfD discussions as delete, and pages so tagged go to a holding category for a month. During this period, any admin—but only admins—can remove the deletion tag if they think it's been applied in error or if somebody has raised a legitimate concern; otherwise, the pages are automatically deleted by bot.) ‑ Iridescent 13:51, 10 April 2021 (UTC)

Yes, I fully agree that it is unhealthy for a big community when some crucial processes depend on a small number of users. However, it happens, and the communities often can not respond to these situations.--Ymblanter (talk) 15:13, 10 April 2021 (UTC)

To be fair I do think a good bit of the problem with categories for discussion there isn't just about admins but about the fact that the discussions don't get enough input to really have a consensus to close to. Elli (talk | contribs) 17:40, 10 April 2021 (UTC)

No, the main reason is actually that there are no clear policies describing categories, which opens broad possibilities for groups of users from all corners of the Wikiverse to lobby their interests.--Ymblanter (talk) 18:01, 10 April 2021 (UTC)

Well, that too - a 72-month backlog clearly has many problems contributing. Meanwhile, categorization at Commons is... crazy. Categories for each time displayed on a clock? For each ship by identification number? It's for people who were sad their categories at enwiki got merged and still wanted to play around with them (admittedly, I have created many categories too, but I feel like mine are slightly less ridiculous). Elli (talk | contribs) 18:26, 10 April 2021 (UTC)

Indeed, as an example, I uploaded this file a long time ago. It is a painting of a larch, and I was just watching how people were adding and adding categories describing the larch, until they (finally?) converged to commons:Category:Larix decidua (illustrations). On the other hand, as soon as it does not take my time, I do not mind. I am not using these categories, and I do not find them useful, but apparently some people do. The real problem is illustrated by this discussion, where a group of users tried to push a fringe spelling, did not want to accept any of the two reasonable options they were offered, painted pretty much everyone who did not agree with them anti-Belarusian chauvinists, and it took six and a half years and a reasonable admin to close this discussion. An unreasonable admin, who are plenty on Commons, could just agree with them, because they had a numerical advantage.--Ymblanter (talk) 18:49, 10 April 2021 (UTC)

You don't even need to be an admin to close CfDs unless you close them as delete - the backlog is so large, they just want people to close them, tbh. Elli (talk | contribs) 20:49, 10 April 2021 (UTC)

> I am not using these categories, and I do not find them useful, but apparently some people do.

Less than some Commons editors believed, apparently. BTW, Search is changing at Commons. You can see the new version if you are logged out or in a private/incognito window. Go to Commons, type something in the search box, and see what you get. Apparently click-through rates on the search page (which indicate that people are finding what they want) are way up in the new system. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:08, 11 April 2021 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing: well yeah, structured data is clearly the ultimate solution here compared to categories which just poorly imitate that (the trend being "put something in one category, then put that category in all the relevant categories"). Structured data does that better. Well, it could do that better. The whole model is a mess and I don't like thinking about it too much. Elli (talk | contribs) 22:51, 11 April 2021 (UTC)

I believe that the story was that "everybody" knew that searching for categories was the right way to find content on Commons. It appears that "everybody" was the same "everybody" that teenagers say is going to the party this weekend, i.e., "almost nobody".

I am not immune to this way of thinking; the main difference is that when I tell my story, I sometimes remember to preface it by saying that this is how I do it, and that I'm not normal. (In this particular case, of course, I'm one of the "nobodies". According to my web browser's history, less than 5% of my searches on Commons involve categories.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:17, 12 April 2021 (UTC)

Searching for categories on Commons doesn't work because the category structure is so haphazard, and haphazardly named too, plus they are only half-filled. You have to find a relevant file and then see what categories it is in. Structured data won't work because the majority of files have little or no data, or the wrong data or in the wrong language. Plus (thanks to Fae) all you get on most natural searches is 400 pdfs of old books (unless you know to exclude these). Johnbod (talk) 02:23, 12 April 2021 (UTC)

The new search looks pretty, but their relevance algorithm still needs work. As an example, I just searched "Cambridge University"; I'd expect pictures of things like chapels/churches, a couple of the colleges' buildings, a few logos, and maybe some rowing. But Commons gives me a few dozen images of (presumably) the same cricket match...? Compare to Google's results for the same term, limited by site. Using categorisation or structured data is probably not the solution, it's too difficult and infeasible to maintain. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 15:18, 12 April 2021 (UTC)

@Xeno: Now THAT is an idea I could fully Support. — Ched (talk) 15:45, 9 April 2021 (UTC)

Analogies-a-go-go

Just mentioning in passing that whenever someone asks me of good places to take the "temperature" of the project (often WMF staff, particularly newer ones), I start off by saying "first, watchlist Iridescent's talk page." I think you've pretty much hit the nail on the head in your assessment of the reasons for its popularity: diversity of comment, limited moderation (but at the same time, participants whose comments generally don't need that much moderation), and the lack of "official" status that allows users to let their hair down a bit. I've often thought this page was the most informative one on my own watchlist; I don't even bother with a lot of the supposedly more "important" ones like AN, ANI and Jimbo's page. Heck, I even strip off the majority of arbcom-related pages (except for those that directly affect me). Risker (talk) 03:34, 9 April 2021 (UTC)
- Said slightly differently: it's the page where people who either wrote the existing major policies or will write the future ones discuss what is going on. TonyBallioni (talk) 04:12, 9 April 2021 (UTC)
  - "The Congressional bar as opposed to the debating chamber" might be a more accurate analogy; your (Tony's) description makes me sound like I'm operating some kind of Masonic lodge. Risker's comment makes me mildly curious and regretful that @action=info only gives the number of watchers, not the names (and yes I know there are good reasons why we don't allow it). ‑ Iridescent 16:49, 9 April 2021 (UTC)
    - I wouldn't compare active participants on this page to congresspeople, but I suppose that sounds less sketchy than my description :D TonyBallioni (talk) 20:05, 9 April 2021 (UTC)
      - "Cop bar as opposed to the police station" maybe. (Although I'm not sure [comparing] active participants on this page to congresspeople is as far from the mark as you'd think. By my reckoning in this thread alone I count three former arbs, two WMF staff including the one with the unenviable task of trying to persuade the wikis to eat the shit sandwich being prepared at m:UCoC, four of those I describe above as having "the talkpages where Those In The Know hang out", and admins with a combined total of 79 years of +sysop status. Back in the old days that sort of group would have had Wikipedia Review screaming that they'd uncovered Wikipedia's equivalent to Bohemian Grove.) The important difference is that it's open and transparent, and not some smoky backroom where plans are cooked up out of sight. ‑ Iridescent 23:01, 9 April 2021 (UTC)
        You know, y'all should be nicer to him. If you'd lay off him, I could make him do an extra tedious project instead of me this month. (Legal's updating the language of the Privacy policy to say things like "payment account number" instead of "credit card number" or "applicable law" instead of "law". Extension:Translate is not my idea of fun.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:19, 11 April 2021 (UTC)

@TonyBallioni, re: I wouldn't compare active participants on this page to congresspeople. In my area (USA), I'd consider being called a congressperson very insulting. Perhaps even bordering on NPA, so I'm slightly leery of your description is. :-) I suppose location is key here. — Ched (talk) 23:12, 9 April 2021 (UTC)

Oh, I agree. That's the joke I was making. Let us not insult the participants here by comparing them to members of the United States Congress. TonyBallioni (talk) 23:27, 9 April 2021 (UTC)

dang, and here I am wanting to be the first congressperson to edit Wikipedia without violating policy! Elli (talk | contribs) 04:18, 10 April 2021 (UTC)

Just chiming in here to agree with everyone else that I watch this page partly because Iri's and my editing interests overlap occasionally but mostly because it's the best way to quickly get up to date on what's going on in project space and what actually matters and, of course, to add 12 years to Iri's count! ;). I have a long watchlist which includes AN, ANI, ACN, and most of the pumps, but I find the heat-to-light ratio there off-putting. Also, I enjoy the tangents and in-jokes here that would quickly be shut down elsewhere. Sometimes they're more enlightening than the original topic! HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 20:56, 11 April 2021 (UTC)

I'll chime in too, because just looking here today, I learned for the first time about Tarrare et al. and Wikipedia:Wikipedia records, and these are the kinds of things that I love to learn about from Wikipedia. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:54, 12 April 2021 (UTC)

If you like "weird 19th-century stuff", can I put a word in for Pig-faced women? It's not as salacious or offensive as it sounds (just a crummy name; PFWs are just a folklore motif, the name is akin to mermaids being called "fish-bodied women") but I find it astonishing that people even in well-educated countries were still believing this obviously lunatic idea almost into living memory. It also has some of Wikipedia's most surreal illustrations, and the sentence Once shaved, the drunken bear would be fitted with padded artificial breasts. Daniel Lambert is also an impressive feat (if I do say so myself) of writing in the "neutral to the point of dourness" Wikipedia house style without losing the innate weirdness of 18th–19th century culture. ‑ Iridescent 16:15, 13 April 2021 (UTC)

I'll just chime in too and add my pile-on to the reasons others have stated above. I really am semi-retired from this Wikipedia. In my pre-desysop times, I had 36,000 pages on my watchlist. On 1 March 2020 I deleted all but my article creations from the list and one talk page–this one. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 21:09, 14 April 2021 (UTC)

I watched this page because I heard there were good posts here, and boy, has it delivered on that promise. Thanks for making posts, everyone! jp×g 08:48, 22 April 2021 (UTC)

As one of the evil banned users you mention I don't have a watchlist, but this is one of the pages I always look at. There's no better place to take the pulse of what the people behind the scenes at Wikipedia. 92.40.168.74 (talk) 11:21, 22 April 2021 (UTC)

Requesting some article expansion help

Latest comment: 3 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Greetings,

Requesting you to visit following draft articles.

Pl. do help above with some article expansion if you find topics interested in.

Thanks and warm regards

Bookku (talk) 02:58, 6 June 2021 (UTC)

For Draft:Amina Dawood Al-Mufti, I can't really offer any comment, as this isn't a topic about which I know anything. What I will say is that—even in draftspace—in the absence of absolutely reliable sourcing this is a spectacularly defamatory biography of a living person (assuming the article subject is still alive, as there's no death date or mention of her death).

Ex-Muslims is really a matter for experts on the subject; "anyone can edit" doesn't mean "everyone should edit everything", and this is such a delicate topic that it really needs to be left to subject matter experts. While there are precedents for similar articles (e.g. Lapsed Catholic), I'm personally not convinced this article in its current form is really clear what its scope is. Is it about people who have explicitly renounced their former faith, about people who are culturally Muslim but non-practicing, about people who are nominally Muslim but don't follow any Islamic teachings (I can walk through any park in England and see people with a bacon sandwich in one hand and a bottle of white cider in the other who'd still tick the "Muslim" box on their census form), or some combination of the three? Whichever it is, the scope needs to be clearly defined. As I say, I'm not really convinced that we need an independent article on the topic—we don't have an equivalent Ex-Christians article, even though that's likely of more interest to English Wikipedia's readers.

As has been pointed out on the various talk pages already, it's also not clear how this differs from Apostasy in Islam. It also seems to give hugely undue weight to a handful of specific recent examples rather than being a genuine overview of a topic which goes back over a thousand years—as just a single obvious example, the Moriscos and Mudéjar (and indeed Spain itself) aren't even mentioned. ‑ Iridescent 15:50, 7 June 2021 (UTC)

GFDL

Latest comment: 3 years ago12 comments6 people in discussion

Hi! You uploaded these files as GFDL:

If there a reason you added GFDL for these files and not cc-by-sa-4.0 for example? --MGA73 (talk) 15:08, 22 May 2021 (UTC)

Context for confused TPWs. Vaticidalprophet 15:35, 22 May 2021 (UTC)

Yes I also wrote about GFDL there but per Wikipedia:Canvassing I did not want to link to that proposal :-) --MGA73 (talk) 17:51, 22 May 2021 (UTC)

I hope you add a license that's better suited to visual media like the suggested {{Cc-by-sa-4.0}}, Iridescent. File:Cats clawing couch.jpg is cute. (I imagine them saying "It's not what you think! We were having sex, not ruining your couch!") — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 10:04, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

I am not Iridescent, but I'd imagine since these are all {{esoteric file}} picking a licence practical for reusers isn't a high priority. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 10:06, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

Wikipedia exist only for reusers. Commons only exist for reusers. Reusers do not care if the file is located on Wikipedia or on Commons. They only care about the license (okay I know some ignore licenses and steal everything online but they should care). --MGA73 (talk) 10:30, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

Jo-Jo Eumerus, these are good candidates to become c:Category:Wikipedia lolcats if they had a license better suited to visual media. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 11:43, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

@TPWs, if anyone's wondering why so many people on the other projects complain that Commons is a failed experiment that's been overrun by a pack of Free Culture cranks, I direct you to this thread. (For the benefit of anyone coming late to this conversation, the "files that exist only for reusers" in question were a handful of old mobile snaps of my cat, not the Pentagon Papers.)

@Vaticidalprophet, regarding this edit summary this isn't some innocent new user who's accidentally stepped off the path; MGA73 has been pulling this "you have dared to upload a file to a site other than Commons, even if it's obviously an esoteric file that serves solely to illustrate a specific point in an en-wiki discussion IT MUST BE ASSIMILATED BY THE HIVEMIND" crap quite literally for years now. With specific reference to the history of this talkpage, here's a fairly obvious example. ‑ Iridescent 15:24, 28 May 2021 (UTC)

I helped with the GFDL proposal, and I am indeffed on Commons. I don't care if an esoteric file is kept local or if a local copy is kept because the uploader prefers that. GFDL is just not a suitable license for visual media. It saddens me that you have deleted these images. There was no need for that. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 16:18, 28 May 2021 (UTC)

@Iridescent: I ask because I would like to know. Not because I want to attack anyone. It is as simple as that :-) --MGA73 (talk) 12:32, 30 May 2021 (UTC)

If Commons were ever to commit to respecting {{Keep local}} and {{Do not move to Commons}}, then we wouldn't have this issue. Since that's about as likely as a hundred pieces of toast all landing butter-side-up, then the only way to stop the "esoteric file posted to en-wiki → Commons copies it → deleted on en-wiki as a duplicate of Commons → because it's an esoteric file of no encylopedic value it's deleted on Commons → whatever it was intended to illustrate is left unillustrated" cycle is either constant vigilance and repeatedly reverting the bots, or this kind of defensive licensing. It's certainly not ideal, but as things stand there really isn't an alternative. (Statement of the obvious perhaps, but even though GFDL isn't a good license to use for images because it makes it more difficult to republish, in all of these cases that makes no difference whatsoever since nobody would ever have a legitimate reason to republish them. It's not as if future historians are one day going to publish The Complete and Unabridged Correspondence of Opabinia Regalis and will now be forced to spend years arguing over what "We don't want anyone getting hot-headed" was a reference to.) ‑ Iridescent 15:50, 7 June 2021 (UTC)

Now hold on, are you saying my talk page archives aren't critically important historical documents??

I haven't been around much in a while, I hadn't noticed they were gone. Poking through my watchlist at lunch and was surprised to find my name! Pour one out for the esoteric file kittens. Opabinia regalis (talk) 20:14, 7 June 2021 (UTC)

RFA reform

Latest comment: 3 years ago69 comments23 people in discussion

Since I've issued a challenge of sorts to WT:RFA (see [3]) figured I might as well post it here in case any of your stalkers actually have good ideas for reforms. I think you're in the "it isn't actually broken" camp with me, but there's a pretty diverse group of people who comment here, so interested to see what people think. TonyBallioni (talk) 23:27, 3 June 2021 (UTC)

and here I was thinking that this talkpage would, for the first time in months, not have a massive RfA-related thread. Elli (talk | contribs) 23:35, 3 June 2021 (UTC)

We wait until the last one has dropped off before starting a new one. We like to keep Iridescent in a state of barely concealed frustration.... Only in death does duty end (talk) 07:25, 4 June 2021 (UTC)

I’ve been on hiatus for the last few months. Missed the last thread so I suppose I had to make my own. TonyBallioni (talk) 16:14, 4 June 2021 (UTC)

Actually no, you started the last one. It just became so massive that it only dropped off on May 26.-- Pawnkingthree (talk) 16:58, 4 June 2021 (UTC)

Lord. I must be going insane.I forgot I’d been on this topic before here. TonyBallioni (talk) 17:00, 4 June 2021 (UTC)

That's the only reason I made my comment xP Elli (talk | contribs) 17:19, 4 June 2021 (UTC)

Here's my take: If and when copyright, BLP backlogs (or other can-actually-get-us-in-serious-trouble problems, not merely a backlog of a deletion queue) become so large that that we start getting lawsuits, takedown requests, people complaining to journalists or even just the WMF coming down on us. Then we can say that RfA is broken and we need to fix it. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 13:13, 4 June 2021 (UTC)

Yeah, that’s basically my take too. TonyBallioni (talk) 16:14, 4 June 2021 (UTC)

I don't think avoiding lawsuits is the standard we should hold ourselves to. There are open CCIs older than some of the editors clearing them. Elli (talk | contribs) 17:01, 4 June 2021 (UTC)

You mean like how we have to wait until Miami and Shanghai are under water before people start doing anything about global heating? That's depressing. —Kusma (talk) 22:21, 4 June 2021 (UTC)

Well, the point is that humans generally are not good at taking pre-emptive action. See the history of pretty much every tragedy ever - there is almost always plenty of warning ahead of the event. I am not sure that Wikipedia can do better. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 07:45, 8 June 2021 (UTC)

Humans are fine when it comes to taking pre-emptive action provided that (a) it's demonstrable that there genuinely is a problem; (b) it's clear what the action needed to address the problem is, and (c) most crucially, it's demonstrable that the costs of the pre-emptive action are undoubtedly outweighed by the costs of ignoring the problem. (Depending on where exactly in Switzerland you are, there's a good chance you can look out your window right now and see the avalanche-control forests your government is busily planting; and since I think you're younger than me, there's a good chance the words chlorofluorocarbon and dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane mean nothing to you.) Generalizations about humanity don't scale well to Wikipedia, though; when you have a hardcore of only 4000-ish participants, there's always a reasonable possibility that no matter how important the job, none of that 4000 will want to do it. ‑ Iridescent 15:26, 8 June 2021 (UTC)

Well, both of these mean things to me but that's because I am an aspiring scientist, not because I am that old. I dunno about your age but I am sure it's considerably higher than mine. I don't think most people bother with doing the c) analysis until after it's happened. And if de:Schutzwald is to be believed the forests are not pre-emptive action. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 20:00, 9 June 2021 (UTC)

Discussion that's actually about RFA reform

In my opinion the only "broken" bit of RfA are people's unnecessarily high standards. There's so much oversight of admin actions that immediately ruling out anyone that doesn't have five years of tenure, over 20000 edits, and an FA to their name is counter-productive. All an admin needs to be is knowledgeable, experienced, and competent. If they can demonstrate this after being "only" here for a couple of years, fantastic. With this said, there definitely needs to be a balance. I'm sure all of us can think of half a dozen overzealous editors that would jump at the opportunity to be a Wikipedia administrator; think of the bragging rights! We have to manage to keep these editors around while they gain maturity before they'd ever manage to pass an RfA, and perhaps that's where the true problem lies. RfA wants/needs a cohort of people that enjoy editing, have the maturity to not be a nuisance, are at least slightly well-known, doesn't have a controversial past, understands what we're here to do, and wants to devote more of their free time into a project that would function fine without them. Unfortunately this cohort just isn't that big despite Wikipedia being the 13th most popular website. Perhaps it's because the community is steadfast on being aggressive to anyone that doesn't make the perfect first edit (but don't be too perfect or people will suspect you of socking). RfA isn't the problem, it's editor retention. Anarchyte (talk) 16:51, 4 June 2021 (UTC)

Anarchyte took the thoughts out of my head pretty much - particularly the final section about biting people who don't fall within a narrow window of "competent, but not too competent". I've seen people who have thousands of edits at other Wikimedia projects (so are quite obviously not socks, simply people who have learnt analogous processes) get snarky comments along the lines of "how did you find (e.g.) MfD by your third edit?", to say nothing of those who edit as an IP before registering. On the other hand, 'biting' of genuinely naive newbies seems to be far more prevalent than I remember it being in years' past - although I recognise that this may well be flawed memory on my part. I entirely agree that we should focus on retaining productive, community-minded editors, and reducing arbitrarily high standards at RfA. I know Vaticidalprophet is looking at something to do with how well standards correlate to actual RfA passes (apologies Vati, I can't recall the specific thrust of your research, just the outline!) and am looking forward to seeing some data as and when. firefly ( t · c ) 17:02, 4 June 2021 (UTC)

I appreciate that from a probability perspective based on past history, a new editor with a high level of understanding of Wikipedia's processes is suspect. But it's a pity that the reward for newcomers behaving exactly as many editors would recommend—read a lot of discussions and guidance to become familiar with Wikipedia culture before diving in—is to treat them with suspicion. isaacl (talk) 20:43, 4 June 2021 (UTC)

About the high standards, there's a circular problem. ArbCom has gotten so good at desysopping, that they have started making desysops that have been extremely controversial. So if the community lowers its expectations, and passes more admins at RfA who only go on to get the boot from ArbCom, then ArbCom has to decide whether or not to lower their standards. And if they do become more reluctant to remove sitting admins, then the community will become more skeptical of passing anyone who might not work out. Which ArbCom will see as a community expectation that admins must be held to a high standard. Which the community will see as a reason to relax RfA standards. And around and around it goes. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:14, 4 June 2021 (UTC)

I'm not personally concerned about this particular feedback loop. The arbitration committee evaluates an administrator's behaviour based on alignment with policies and community expectations. Commenters at an request for administrative privileges can cast a wider net, since they're looking for indications that future conduct will align with policies and community expectations. The community might choose to be more forgiving (or strict) in what they consider to be reasonable indications either way, but this doesn't mean it'll change its expectations for how administrators should act. A priori there's no reason to expect the arbitration committee to think that community expectations have shifted, just because more (or fewer) RfAs are passing than before. isaacl (talk) 22:32, 4 June 2021 (UTC)

That's true, of course; I was being a bit arch. But it is true that I have seen RfA supports based on "no big deal" arguments that ArbCom can always desysop, as well as opposes based on it supposedly being too difficult or time-consuming to go to ArbCom. And I've also see some Arbs say that they supported some desysops because of how they perceive what the community wants. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:39, 4 June 2021 (UTC)

Long aside about an individual case

I'm starting to cast doubt on the validity of my rant (in the last RFA thread here) on how opposers are treated at RFA. Considering some of the opposition on Vami's RFA right now—I'm bewildered to say the least. Aza24 (talk) 18:32, 6 June 2021 (UTC)

Everyone hates oppose-badgering until they see what opposes look like. (Contra: everyone loves oppose-badgering until they go in that column.) Vaticidalprophet 18:34, 6 June 2021 (UTC)

Indeed, well, in the past I've seen plenty of opposes that I considered legitimate but treated unfairly. Honestly it might be too big of a mixed bag to generalize but the truth of your statement & contra is so accurate that it's revealing. Aza24 (talk) 18:38, 6 June 2021 (UTC)

It also depends on the oppose, and on whether the "badgering" is actually badgering or just asking for clarification. I've occasionally been convinced to retract an oppose be someone disputing it and pointing out a fact of which I wasn't aware, and I've certainly seen plenty of opposes which if I were the closing crat I'd discount for providing insufficient reasoning. (Part of the reason I have a reputation as a serial opposer, despite opposing very few RFAs, is that when I do oppose I always try to provide a detailed reasoning; that in turn leads other people to quote me in their own opposes, so RFA regulars are used to seeing my name in the oppose section.) ‑ Iridescent 15:52, 7 June 2021 (UTC)

@TonyBallioni I assume you already know my position: before you start making proposals for reform, you first need to convince me it needs reform. I don't think the RFA process is broken, and I think most of the people who claim it's broken are just repeating what they've been told—that is, people have got so used to parroting "RFA is horrible and even highly qualified candidates fail" that they assume it's true, which in turn puts people off applying. My usual challenge to the "RFA is broken!" people stands; go to Wikipedia:Requests for adminship by year and give me a recent example of RFA being a broken process. (I don't mean "someone failed when I think they should have passed"—I can give countless examples of those as well as vice versa—but "someone failed despite the opposition being unreasonable" or "someone passed despite being clearly unsuitable".) There's a legitimate argument that should be had about deadminship processes, but that's a different matter and it doesn't make sense to treat them as a single entity unless we're going to go down the route of bundling RFA and reconfirmation.

@Aza24, I'm looking at Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Vami IV#Oppose and nothing obvious is jumping out at me (other than an oppose from someone with 216 mainspace edits, and "people not understanding the process and making uninformed comments" is the price we knew we were signing up for when we created the all-editors RFA watchlist notification). The other three lines of opposition—"overly zealous about copyright", "putting a self-described extremist into a position of authority potentially has a chilling effect on other editors" and "command of English isn't adequate for a position where one has to explain complicated decisions and where in doing so one will be perceived as a public face of Wikipedia" are all legitimate enough grounds for opposition regardless of whether one personally agrees with them or not. ‑ Iridescent 15:52, 7 June 2021 (UTC)

Well the climate of the RFA has changed rather quickly now. When I commented above there were only three opposes, and the one I was primarily referring to was the first—which spawned quite a bit of discussion and has been withdrawn anyways. I still find serious issue with opposes on the grounds of the political aspect (isn't it great when people speak for wikiprojects they have no connection to?), but those on copyright and/or inexperience I can at least see as stemming from a legitimate concern. Aza24 (talk) 20:51, 7 June 2021 (UTC)

My thought, as someone who knows Vami quite well, in response to "come back in six months" is "do you seriously think he's ever going to run again if this fails?". Vaticidalprophet 20:57, 7 June 2021 (UTC)

As someone who has repeatedly turned down offers to nominate me for RfA , and still will, by the way, not wanting to run again isn't a tragedy. In fact, given how stressful RfA is, it could well be a reasonable response depending on the particular person. We all have different tolerances for stress.

The real tragedy is if someone would, hypothetically, be chased off the project from a particularly uncivil RfA, a sure sign that RfA reform should've happened long ago. But, to my knowledge, this has never happened. I dream of horses (Contribs) (Talk) 01:33, 8 June 2021 (UTC)

There have certainly been "I never wanted to be an admin anyway" flounces in which an unsuccessful RFA candidate resigns from Wikipedia, if you count that. On the "RFA is uncivil" meme, I reiterate my comments back in February; if one is going to claim that the process is routinely failing then the onus is on the person making that claim to supply some examples of the process failing. Wikipedia:Unsuccessful adminship candidacies (Chronological) is public data; if the supposed unwarranted opposition and unnecessary rudeness is happening, there should be no difficulty finding some examples of it, and even hypercontentious RFAs like Fram 2 remained civil throughout. (On the other hand, Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship does have a well-deserved reputation as a cesspit, although it's calmed down somewhat since the glory days of Kudpung, Malleus and Chillum ranting at each other. I suspect that at least some of RFA's reputation for rudeness and arguments comes from people remembering a particularly foul-tempered exchange on a page with "Requests for adminship" in the title, but forgetting exactly where it was.)

Not naming names so as to appease the Great God AGF, but I'm confident that at least some of the instances where an editor disappears immediately following RFA are a result of the sockmaster deciding there's now too much scrutiny on that account. Given the number of adminsocks we've caught (Pastor Theo, RickK, Archtransit, Law just off the top of my head) it's foolish to think there aren't others floating around which we haven't spotted. ‑ Iridescent 04:46, 8 June 2021 (UTC)

Well, I don't think RfA is evil -- and am currently trying to reassure several other people whose first experience with it is this waking nightmare of one -- but even putting aside the current one, which is still hopefully on track to succeed and so not quite an example of an unfair RfA in win-loss terms (although certainly in ethical terms), I can definitely name an example. Vaticidalprophet 05:18, 8 June 2021 (UTC)

I'm obviously not a neutral commentator when it comes to that one, having posted quite a lengthy oppose, but I'd consider that a textbook example of the RFA process acting as it's supposed to; a candidate initially seemed non-problematic, some people raised concerns, and even though the candidate was still on course to pass they decided the honorable course was to withdraw as a significant number of participants had concerns. There are 60 opposes there, and on an admittedly quick skim I'm not seeing any that are illegitimate. There are some with which I don't agree—I've never agreed with the WP:NONAZIS essay except in specific cases where an extremist's presence on Wikipedia is creating a chilling effect—but it's hardly some kind of fringe position. ‑ Iridescent 05:49, 8 June 2021 (UTC)

It's no "a functionary called the candidate a criminal and multiple parties public-logged out-of-context Discord messages to paint the candidate as a racist", but I can't really look at it and confidently go "yes, this had exactly the right outcome for the right reasons", even though I agree the withdrawal complicates matters. Which kind of makes it difficult to discuss 'failed RfAs' in general -- a lot of fails are people who pull out where it's unclear what the outcome will be. Speaking more broadly, I can definitely think of cases where I agree with the outcome but think the actual positions that led there were horrendously off-base. (Though I still note both of these are much better than the current one.) Vaticidalprophet 06:02, 8 June 2021 (UTC)

Apologies if this is a statement of the obvious, but a significant proportion of the readers of this talkpage—if not an outright majority—are old-school Wikipedians/Wikimedians and/or active functionaries (either formally or informally), for both of whom open and transparent consensus is a genuine core principle, not just one of those buzzphrases people skim over without reading. As such this is definitely not a talkpage on which "people should be allowed to bitch off-wiki without their comments being made public"—which appears to be the line you're taking—is an argument likely to gain much traction. (If the Discord messages are out of context then fine, provide the context.)

My personal opinion, but one which I think is fairly widely shared, regarding IRC, Discord et al:
There are numerous occasions where privacy concerns or legal issues mean discussions need to take place off-wiki; there are some technical and cross-wiki areas where off-wiki discussions make sense and technical limitations mean for one reason or another the discussions can't be open; there are a few areas around editor recruitment and broader outreach where private off-wiki discussion is necessary; and there are a handful of situations where it's genuinely necessary for someone to take part in the private fora of something like Wikipediocracy to correct mistakes or explain why a particular action was taken. Outside the areas where there's a demonstrable need for discussions to take place in private, I consider participation in discussions about Wikipedia within private (in the sense of "not readable by anyone who cares to look") fora to be prima facie evidence of unsuitability to hold advanced permissions on Wikipedia. (The TL;DR summary would be "if you've nothing to hide why are you hiding, if you do have something to hide why should we trust you, and in either case if you're not comfortable holding discussions publicly why should we allow you to participate on a website which is all about public discussion?".) ‑ Iridescent 14:50, 8 June 2021 (UTC)

Personally I take a simpler approach to people which has rarely been proven wrong in my experience, and thats that people do not substantially change over time. Oh you get the occasional reformed person, but they often have profound and obvious changes in their behaviour, associations etc. The majority either stay the same or become more entrenched. What they do sometimes become is better at hiding/masking their views, usually as a result of unpleasant incidents, but they do not really change them. Frankly if someone has been a self-declared fascist in the past, making less-than-complimentary public statements about political topics on a widely logged and visible platform does not do a lot to convince me they have changed in any meaningful way. Only in death does duty end (talk) 20:07, 8 June 2021 (UTC)

Well, what fundamental property are you measuring? If you're measuring "political beliefs" - I'm sorry, but I highly doubt that - most people I know have played around with ideologies in their younger years that they've come to disagree with and (usually) regret.

If you're measuring "tendency to jump to extremes and post hot takes", well, I'd say that's a bit harder to change. But what the takes are about certainly do. Elli (talk | contribs) 21:03, 8 June 2021 (UTC)

I'd refine it a bit; people who have extreme / odd views as a teenager do have the possibility of growing out of it by the time they reach adulthood, though beyond that the odds are low beyond some extraordinary deus ex machina to trigger a life-altering change. To give you a personal example, in 1992 aged 17 I supported the Conservative Party at the election (I was a few months too young to vote), and thought The Sun's "If Kinnock wins today, will the last person to leave Britain please turn out the lights?" was funny. Come the next election, I'd grown up, started work, realised what self-dependency was and met people further down the privilege ladder than myself, and have never felt that way since. Ritchie333 ^(talk) ^(cont) 22:11, 8 June 2021 (UTC)

A phase of youthful extremism isn't unusual—a phase of "I've realized the world isn't fair, and these guys have a solution!" is practically a cliche, whether the dabbling be with evangelical religion or political extremism. (The mainstream political parties of the world are crammed full of former Trotskyists—and not just the usual suspects like Jeremy Corbyn and his circle, but die-hard rightwingers like Jeane Kirkpatrick.) In terms of more general drift, "people become more drawn to small-c conservatism as they get older" is absolutely demonstrable fact—the older someone is, the more likely they are to vote for whoever represents the status quo. (IIRC the age of 47 is usually the magic number at which people switch from "we need change!" to "keep things the same!". If people's positions stopped shifting after the age of 18 or so, you wouldn't see political adverts in newspapers.) There's also the obvious point that the definition of "extreme" depends very much on where you're watching from; Nigel Farage would fit squarely into the mainstream of US politics, and there's very little in Political positions of Bernie Sanders that would raise an eyebrow if it were said by Angela Merkel or Boris Johnson.

That said, as I understand it this doesn't directly relate to the recently-withdrawn RFA at hand, where as far as I can tell the issue wasn't a youthful phase but recent views. The waters are murky because so much of the evidence is hidden so I'm seeing it through the prism of how others are publicly discussing it, but from what I can see the problem here was that the candidate had recently expressed the opinion that he considered particular ethnicities and nationalities to deserve death. If that's the case, then we're not talking a reformed character who made some mistakes in their youth but someone who's either woefully detached from reality or genuinely evil, and in either case that's not someone we want on Wikipedia let alone in a position of authority where the public will potentially see them as the public face of Wikipedia. (In purely practical terms it would be virtually unworkable for someone in this position to be an admin. Even the most apparently uncontentious decision could and would be challenged if it transpired that one of the parties involved was a member of one of the nationalities that "exist to be killed".) ‑ Iridescent 19:00, 9 June 2021 (UTC)

Iridescent, hi, fun talk page by the way, I'm wondering about your interpretation of the sentiment that was expressed on the Discord and then raised as an issue at the RfA. If I remember correctly, the phrase deserve to be killed was used metaphorically by the candidate in the context of the oppressor. It's unclear to me how you got from that to thinking that the candidate considered particular ethnicities and nationalities to deserve death. Since this isn't related to RfA reform, feel free to respond in a new section or on my talk page (or not at all). ezlev (user/tlk/ctrbs) 19:26, 9 June 2021 (UTC)

(edit conflict) In my opinion those remarks have been somewhat distorted as they passed through the RfA grapevine, although I wasn't a participant in the original discussion and didn't see them live. As I understood it, the argument being made was that oppressed groups were justified in using violence to resist their oppressors. In particular, the full wording of the "exist to be killed" comment was "oppressors exist to be killed" (my emphasis) - not any specific nationality or ethnicity, but the general concept of "oppressors". Whether or not one agrees with the concept of violent resistance to oppression is a different discussion, but I really do not believe him to be either detached from reality or evil. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 19:41, 9 June 2021 (UTC)

@Iridescent: I must reply to this statement, because I have already been called a criminal and smeared off-wiki as a "german fascist" while my RfA was in progress. To believe I could be such a thing is to spit in the faces of everyone who saw enough good in me to support my candidacy, and especially my nominators. For what it is worth, I do not believe nationalities and ethnicities should be killed. I oppose the governments of nations such as Turkey and Azerbaijan, the United States and Saudi Arabia, Israel and Myanmar, for their participation in, and denial of, genocide and ethnic cleansing. I would be the most shameful hypocrite for believing such a thing. Where I suspect that insulting and hurtful hypothetical comes from is Friendly reminder that Palestine and Northern Ireland are struggles by a colonized oppressed against their colonizing oppressor. This is a belief that colonized people can legitimately use violence to persist as a people against a colonial power, not a belief that a people should be erased. I have wept bitter tears thinking that people could think I am such a monster, or still a fascist. –♠Vami _IV†♠ 21:59, 9 June 2021 (UTC)

Too many people in the RFA were happy to villain-ize you so they could feel better about themselves. For god's sake, a bureaucrat happily said they wouldn't vote for anyone who voted for Trump—I mean, am I just supposed to look past that?? Clearly, the process is gradually skewing away from "would this individual make a good administrator" and even those in the highest "positions of power" are happily admitting it. Aza24 (talk) 22:39, 9 June 2021 (UTC)

Meh, out of all the objectionable things said there, I don't think the "I wouldn't vote for someone who voted for Trump" is that unreasonable. Vami didn't vote for Trump, though, so it's not even particularly relevant here. Elli (talk | contribs) 04:26, 10 June 2021 (UTC)

Broadly speaking, yes, that specific objection is reasonable for a random editor to have inasmuch as any political objections are (I think "oppose, candidate disagrees with me politically" when that disagreement isn't an impediment to their editing is atrocious, but consensus does not currently concur). Narrowly speaking, that specific objection is absolutely not the way I'd have characterized that !vote overall, considering it was accusing the candidate of active fascism. Even more narrowly speaking, we're talking about a crat, and RfBs have failed for less. (To be clear, that's the "candidate can't be objective about X" objections, not the "those are some real unusual supports" objections, which Iridescent is perfectly familiar with considering he wrote the main one -- excluding all the latter still gets below RfB pass mark.) Vaticidalprophet 04:30, 10 June 2021 (UTC)

I wasn't a fan of that !vote overall, I just didn't have an objection to the part of it most people are complaining about. Elli (talk | contribs) 04:33, 10 June 2021 (UTC)

Sorry, I should have been clearer. My real objection is the fact that people are even introducing things like that as factors for Wikipedia adminship. We're *just* an internet encyclopedia and I don't see why political matters such as that should ever be even near relevant, unless there is direct examples of it being a negative thing. Aza24 (talk) 05:40, 10 June 2021 (UTC)

The main issue with Donald Trump is that he had/has a tendency to believe in and promote theories that are completely at odds with both (a) the due WP:WEIGHT in reliable sources, and (b) easily verifiable fact. And not only that, but as I understand it a sizeable majority of the people who voted for him also believe those theories. And this covers topics including last year's presidential election as well as climate change etc. What we don't need is editors attempting to skew our pages away from the presentation of these topics the way the world's reliable sources present them, and I would see that as a potential matter of concern to at least be considered. There's certainly no reason to ipso facto reject Trump supporters from being editors or admins and, as Ritchie says below, things like "I like his economic policies" or "I always vote Republican even though I dislike Trump personally" would be fine. Even someone who believed the election was "rigged" but showed no evidence of bringing that belief into article space would probably be fine. I guess I'm basically agreeing with you, and I did reject the opposition to Vami on political views, but just noting that "direct examples of it being a negative thing" is something that could potentially occur. Cheers — Amakuru (talk) 13:46, 10 June 2021 (UTC)

That Acalamari is a bureaucrat is completely irrelevant; when a bureaucrat votes in an RfA they are taking that hat off and casting it purely as an editor, as Acalamari made clear at the time.-- Pawnkingthree (talk) 13:10, 10 June 2021 (UTC)

Crats are a group of nineteen exceptionally trusted editors whose de facto role is "someone who is unusually trustworthy about RfA". Trying to distinguish admins acting as admins from admins acting as participants in ugly disputes is itself a recurring issue (see: half of EEng's block log). Crats are another level entirely, because what their role means is so wrapped up in the broader discussion, in a way that isn't true for admins. Vaticidalprophet 21:18, 10 June 2021 (UTC)

I think it's a lot more than half of his block log. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:23, 10 June 2021 (UTC)

I went for a conservative estimate. Vaticidalprophet 21:25, 10 June 2021 (UTC)

Vami IV, I'm going to play Devil's advocate for a second and suggest that Iridescent wasn't directly accusing you of wanting ethnic cleansing or anything like that. Rather, I think he was trying to explain what other people thought you said in the RfA, which is not the same thing cf. "The waters are murky because so much of the evidence is hidden". I know Iridescent well enough to know that while he can occasionally call a spade a spade, he generally does so politely and in a way that will make people stop and think, and he's not one to throw out character assassinations without a strong body of evidence. I also know from your reaction to this that's it's very clear you had no intention of ever suggesting such a thing.

Regarding some of the comments like "Nobody who voted for Trump should be an admin" ... there's a world of difference between criticising Trump the person, people who voted Trump "to pwn the lame-ass libtards" and the guy who said "I don't like Trump, but I thought his economic policies were the best so I voted for that". At least the latter of those is a viewpoint I can respect, even if I don't agree with it (largely because I think Trump is such a compulsive liar and a thin-skinned narcissist I wouldn't believe any economic policies he comes out with to be at all believable). And provided anyone in the latter camp can separate their personal view from the neutral point of view required by the project, there isn't an issue. I guess it's possible that the "pwn the libtards" group can do this as well; I just think somebody who uses that as a rationale to vote for someone probably hasn't got the required temperament and collaborative drive to last at Wikipedia very long. Ritchie333 ^(talk) ^(cont) 11:12, 10 June 2021 (UTC)

I think it's reasonable to not trust someone who would overlook such glaring character flaws simply for their own financial benefit. Elli (talk | contribs) 11:46, 10 June 2021 (UTC)

I still don't think at all that the worst part of that !vote was "I won't support Trump supporters". Vaticidalprophet 21:25, 10 June 2021 (UTC)

@Ritchie, my comments followed a lengthy rant on why I consider participation in non-public fora to be evidence of poor judgement in the context of Wikipedia because the lack of an audit trail means comments can be taken out of context and the very act of participation leads external observers to reasonably assume one has something to hide; and my comments were very carefully hedged with every variation on "going only on what's visible" in the thesaurus. I would have hoped it was obvious from context that my point is that because Vami IV was ill-advisedly engaging in potentially contentious discussion off-wiki, it made it much more difficult to refute the combination of allegations and insinuations that he's an anti-Semitic IRA-supporting cryptofascist; if the discussions had taken place on-wiki or in a public forum it would either have taken about 10 seconds to paste a link to demonstrate that the comments had been taken out of context, or one sentence to challenge the accusers to provide a link if he'd never made the comments at all. (If I'd thought he was an anti-Semitic IRA-supporting cryptofascist, I assure you I'd have been making the point in the oppose section of the RFA—which right up until it was withdrawn was on course to pass—and not in an inside-baseball sidetrack on my talkpage.) ‑ Iridescent 06:15, 11 June 2021 (UTC)

Aside about voting patterns and age

@Iridescent: It's a minor point that has nothing to do with RfA but you said: "people become more drawn to small-c conservatism as they get older" is absolutely demonstrable fact. Not quite. It's actually a highly debated topic in political science, where people argue over either life-cycle or cohort effects on political alignment and voting patterns (a central problem is, if most people just become keen on the status quo when they get older, then how does change happen?) A lot of ink and time has been spent on the topic from theoretical and empirical points of view – some key texts are introduced here. I'm not sure where I stand. A lot of people do abandon support for political extremes as they get older, though I also expect that most young people don't support extremes in the first place but do adopt certain core values which might be different from earlier generations (mediated through class, gender, religion and their own life experiences). Anyway, total aside. —Noswall59 (talk) 15:06, 10 June 2021 (UTC).

Don't mind the aside, I considered making it too! It's a fun question. I probably do tend to the age-mediated effect solely because it matches with everything else we know about the aging process across generations. Vaticidalprophet 21:25, 10 June 2021 (UTC)

There are obviously cohort effects—the gross oversimplification is that people have a tendency to vote against whoever was in power when they were in their late teens, and the "I remember what a mess Thatcher/Carter/Hollande made, I'll never support that party again even though it no longer bears any resemblance to the party they led" effect also has an impact. It's also muddied by the fact that for historic reasons a lot of the most significant work on long-term tracking of individual voters has taken place in the UK, and UK politics is characterised by parties significantly and repeatedly changing what they stand for (the Conservative Party has often been the group pushing hardest for radical reform), by people voting in terms of class or geographical loyalty rather than self-interest, and by people voting on purely local issues in national elections. All that aside, I don't believe anyone seriously disputes the basic point that under-40s tend to support "redistribution and personal freedoms", over-60s tend to support "security and stability", and something happens between those ages to flip enough people to have a statistical impact. (The 2019 United Kingdom general election was the worst result for the Labour Party since 1935; if the votes of retirees had been discounted, Jeremy Corbyn would currently be 18 months into building the Workers' Paradise.) ‑ Iridescent 06:15, 11 June 2021 (UTC)

The notion that an individual is liberal when they're young and becomes conservative as they get older is folk wisdom. It's true that older people (as a group) are more conservative than younger people. But that does not mean, and it is not true, that individuals get more conservative with age. It's not that young individuals are growing more conservative as they get older; they stay the same amount of conservative/liberal throughout their lives. It's that younger people ("new" people) are always more liberal than the previous generation, thus making the previous generation seem more conservative, even when they were once "the liberal generation." But people's political views don't significantly change over their lives (same with all views, really). Here's an article about this from last year [4] and from 1975 [5]. Levivich 12:12, 11 June 2021 (UTC)

I always thought that this [people becoming more conservative over time] is a kind of base rate fallacy - ideology and mores move on over time but people don't move as quickly. I am also not sure if what Iridescent calls "small-c conservative" is the same thing as "conservative" in the political sense, to say nothing that I'd imagine "conservative" in the US does not mean the same thing as in Switzerland or the UK. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 12:47, 11 June 2021 (UTC)

What Levivich said, though it is important to stress that party-voting and value-orientations are obviously different; parties change their policies, particular issues become more or less salient, and party identification can be more or less entrenched in some contexts (though again, this can be a generation/socioeconomic background thing). —Noswall59 (talk) 14:10, 11 June 2021 (UTC).

Small-c conservatism no longer has much relationship to "Conservative" in the political sense—it's where all these groups derive their name, but they've had in some cases centuries to change their policies. (The same is true of "liberal" vs "Liberal"; e.g. in Australia the Liberal Party is the voice of conservatism.) A small-c conservative is basically just someone who's risk-averse when it comes to major change.

Younger people ("new" people) are always more liberal than the previous generation, thus making the previous generation seem more conservative sounds like purest bullshit to me. If that were the case, the mature democracies of North America and western Europe would have spent the last 75 years drifting steadily to the left as the older cohorts successively died out. The reality is a much more nuanced picture of younger generations generally being more willing to embrace change (completely predictably; they're less likely to have assets or an established career to lose), but that change can equally well come in the shape of hyperreactionary figures like Margaret Thatcher, the Rassemblement national, or Billy Graham. ‑ Iridescent 14:42, 11 June 2021 (UTC)

I don't think younger generations need to be less or more conservative per se; the point is that whatever core views members hold, it doesn't change much as they age. To some extent, material changes associated with a life cycle might make certain policy decisions more or less palatable, but core values need not change that much (and a lot of evidence suggests that they don't). Begrudging paying a bit more income tax might make them more sceptical of where their money's going to be spent if a left-leaning party is offering a tax hike, but it's not clear that being in a better-paying job or becoming a home-owner would make someone less likely to support environmentalism or gay marriage, for instance. And, in some respects, Western democracies have shifted to the left on a number of core issues. In the UK as with a large part of the West, we can see clear advances in gay rights, promoting gender equality, adoption of new forms of technology, uptake of foreign travel, training in fundamentally different forms of work, etc. 75 years ago, homosexuality was illegal, there were huge cultural barriers to women working after marriage (at least in middle-class circles), most people worked in manual jobs and few people travelled abroad, partly because of money but also because a week in Skegness would do quite nicely. All of this is despite the fact that younger generations have tended to push for such changes from minority positions at least initially, and have therefore had resistance from more conservative cohorts. Not everyone of a certain age will take such views and it is never clear that they have to progress in one direction. —Noswall59 (talk) 15:17, 11 June 2021 (UTC).

The world is more liberal today than it was in 1946, and more liberal in 1946 than in 1871, and so on. Thatcher and Brexit aren't really counterexamples to that (nor are Reagan or Trump). Short periods of backsliding don't disprove that we are always marching steadily to "the left." Liberalism always wins over conservativism; change always wins over the status quo. That's human history in a nutshell, always and forever. Levivich 16:13, 11 June 2021 (UTC)

It was repeatedly claimed about Brexit, mainly by those wanting a second referendum, that so many old Brexit supporters had died since the first "advisory" referendum, that the newly eligible young pro-Europe voters would decisively shift the result a second time. It certainly was a long gestation, with the referendum in July 2016 and technically leaving the EU at the end of January 2020. We remained, however, in a comprehensive transition period for the rest of 2020, and are still in transition on some customs details till the end of June 2021. I think the claim had some basis: it wasn't like 50-year-olds started hating the EU simply because they were no longer in their late 40s, in any numbers to compensate for new voters. But reported voting intentions shifted around for many other reasons too. Brexit is a good counter argument to the idea that old people are conservative, as it was about as radial a leap in the dark away from the status quo as this country has made in recent memory. -- Colin°^Talk 13:52, 11 June 2021 (UTC)

That's an interesting point. Brexit, as something espoused by Conservatives/UKIP, is often assumed to be a product of the right, nostalgia and conservatism, yet as you say it was a radical departure from nearly 50 years of institutional membership. —Noswall59 (talk) 14:10, 11 June 2021 (UTC).

Change, in this meaning, I think, by definition, has to be in the forward direction. You choose "status quo" only against the worse option of moving forward; if you can, you'd ideally want to go back to the old days, and then start conserving that. Going back not indefinitely but to your chosen time in the history that you know of. Usedtobecool ☎️ 14:28, 11 June 2021 (UTC)

Brexit can be (and was) used as an example in either direction. In one way it was a huge leap in the dark, and a lot of hardliners at both ends of the political spectrum presented it as such; you had what remains of Thatcherism presenting it as the chance to build Singapore-on-Thames without those pesky Europeans trying to set rules about wages and conditions, and the hard left presenting it as a chance to build Socialism In One Country without having to worry about complying with state aid rules. The main thrust of both Leave campaigns was unquestionably one of small-c conservatism; every message they put out (other than the £350m straightforward economic argument) was a variation on "the EU is going to force change on the country, this is your last chance to prevent it". (For some reason the Vote Leave website is still live; you can see for yourself.) ‑ Iridescent 14:42, 11 June 2021 (UTC)

While (often dishonest) fears about the future (like Turkey joining the EU) were are factor, I'm not sure it was mostly about preventing externally driven change. The campaign posters aren't congruent with why people voted, though they no doubt were influential. And sure, some of the gentrified political rhetoric was English nostalgia for an imaginary better past. But commentaries describe the bulk of the Brexit vote coming from a deeply unhappy-with-the-status-quo group of voters in England and Wales, outside of London. A big reason the remainders lost was their argument that it was just fine how it is, when for many people it really wasn't. The earlier Scottish referendum was in a big way influenced by a suggestion that remaining in the UK was the only way for Scotland to keep the benefits of remaining in the EU. Leaping out of both the UK and the EU was a radical step too far. It didn't quite work out that way, though. -- Colin°^Talk 15:56, 11 June 2021 (UTC)

Nomination of Anti-urination devices in Norwich for deletion

Latest comment: 3 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Anti-urination devices in Norwich is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Anti-urination devices in Norwich until a consensus is reached, and anyone, including you, is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article.

Mighty Antar (talk) 11:37, 14 June 2021 (UTC)

Steps in Scotland

Latest comment: 3 years ago33 comments10 people in discussion

Scale-and-platt (AfD discussion)

This is of course scale-and-platt staircase, not the title given. Given that George Scott-Moncrieff called it "new fangle" in xyr Edinburgh, perhaps your Manchester Wikipedian Vacuum might turn its eye towards architecture in Scotland, what century exactly this "new fangle" came about, and how come Patrick Stewart built some at Scalloway Castle (Howard 1995, p. 75). I don't remember that particular episode of ST:TNG myself. Uncle G (talk) 16:22, 16 May 2021 (UTC)

Howard, Deborah (1995). Scottish Architecture: Reformation to Restoration, 1560–1660. Architectural history of Scotland. Vol. 2. Edinburgh University Press. ISBN 9780748605309.

With the disclaimer that Scottish architecture is well outside my area, as far as I can tell this is just an archaic Scots term for what the rest of the world would call a standard straight flight of stairs. If that's the case, then it's certainly not "modern" in any possible sense of the term—"a straight line of steps cut into a hillside or rockface" is a feature that literally goes back to the paleolithic. Even if we're going for a narrower definition of "freestanding straight flight of steps with an open space beneath", that at the very least goes back to Roman insulae; it's just the natural evolution of "a ladder leading to a hole in the ceiling being fixed into place to stop it wobbling".

I would guess (emphasis on guess) that "new-fangled" in the context of Scottish architecture refers to straight flights instead of spiral or turnpike stairs becoming common in Scotland for the first time at the very tail end of the Middle Ages. Medieval Scotland was permanently in a state either of war or of preparing for war, and land wasn't scarce compared to southern England or continental Europe. As such, most buildings tall enough to need staircases would have been built as defensive fortifications (or at least as defensible residences). In the context of pre-gunpowder warfare, a spiral staircase, and particularly a spiral staircase enclosed within a stone tube, is by far the most practical design. There's no straight line-of-sight for an attacker below to loose a bowshot at a defender above, horses will refuse to climb spiral stairs, one can't build up any kind of momentum for a charge up a curve, provided there's an enclosing stone wall to the staircase there isn't space to level a spear, and the design forces anyone climbing the stairs to do so no more than two or three abreast. As such, a handful of defenders at the top of the stairs hold off even the most determined conquering army pretty much indefinitely until the food ran out, all the while firing off arrows at the beseiging army camped out below. (This isn't unique to Scotland; tall buildings with curved stone staircases are a common design feature of medieval fortifications across Europe.)

In that context, a straight flight of steps is an explicit statement of confidence; it's essentially using architecture to say "I'm such a big deal, I'm confident nobody would dare attack me". In the late 16th century period we're talking about, with Scotland politically stable, the marriage of James and Anne negating the risk of Norse attacks, English victory over Spain putting an end to the imminent prospect of Catholic invasion, and everyone on both sides of the border aware that the Union of the Crowns was inevitable, it would have been the first time for a millennium when the primary concern of Scottish architects wouldn't have been "how do I prevent invaders burning this building down?".

As I say, this is all off the top of my head rather than from any specific knowledge. This paper (which I can't find freely available anywhere and have no intention of paying £25 to read, but some TPW will probably have access to) will likely have what you're looking for. If you're after more specific material on Scottish architectural history, Wikipedia has (or at any rate had) very good relations with the Scottish GLAM sector—User:Sara Thomas (WMUK) should be able to point you towards the relevant museums and archives. ‑ Iridescent 16:28, 17 May 2021 (UTC)

FYI, that paper is available through WP:TWL's EBSCO access (part of the bundle), under Academic Source Complete. Vahurzpu (talk) 16:42, 17 May 2021 (UTC)

Thanks—I keep thinking that I ought to sign up to TWL, but I don't do enough on Wikipedia any more to justify it, and I find there's relatively little on there that I actually need which I can't easily get elsewhere. Despite the good intentions I don't really like the basic premise of TWL; IMO academic papers and news media are both in general bad things to use as Wikipedia sources. In my experience, for most topics except very recent developments, if it's covered in a book then the book is a better source to use, and if it's not covered in a book then that in itself is a massive red flag that the academic paper or news story is probably not something we should be including. Newspapers in particular are virtually never appropriate for anything other than direct quotes and "this is how it was received at the time" commentary. It appears to me that TWL by its nature points readers towards potentially inappropriate sources, potentially biased sources that don't necessarily make their biases clear (to bang one of my regular drums, Wikipedia has a long-standing problem with "but this was published by an academic press so it must be true!"), and sources which are behind paywalls and consequently difficult for most readers to verify and to read in context. ‑ Iridescent 18:34, 17 May 2021 (UTC)

If you have 500+ edits, 6+ months editing, 10+ edits in the last month, and no active blocks (which I suspect is true of virtually everyone who frequents this page), you can just log in and start using many of the sources. I never filled out an application. Also, while the Library Bundle (the subset of TWL that you don't need to apply for) is pretty academic-journal focused, there are some academic books available through it. Vahurzpu (talk) 00:21, 18 May 2021 (UTC)

That's worth knowing—is this a new feature? I remember TWL as requiring all kinds of "I solemnly swear that I have a genuine need for this source" oaths before they'd let you in. I still stand by my basic objection about it encouraging editors to use inappropriate sources out of context—unless one really knows what one's doing it's very hard to weigh the validity of academic papers. (It's why for medical articles, where Wikipedia unintentionally promoting crank theories has potential real-world consequences, we have such a strict focus on review articles and textbooks even though it means the articles aren't up-to-date with the most recent writings.) ‑ Iridescent 18:17, 18 May 2021 (UTC)

Yeah, it's pretty new. I think an email about it was sent to anyone who had previously had a TWL subscription, as I did. Graham87 05:51, 19 May 2021 (UTC):

I still stand by my basic objection about it encouraging editors to use inappropriate sources out of context—unless one really knows what one's doing it's very hard to weigh the validity of academic papers. That's why one had to always consult ALL sources related to a topic, except these that are facially unreliable. JoJo Eumerus mobile (main talk) 10:55, 23 May 2021 (UTC)

You can't consult all the sources if you can't afford them, and Wikipedia:The Wikipedia Library means that a lot more editors can afford to consult paywalled sources.
I don't think that anyone consults all the sources. It's not physically possible for any human to read all the sources on some topics (e.g., Cancer). Life's literally too short, even if you "only" try to read everything in books and academic journals published during recent years.

WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:00, 25 May 2021 (UTC)

Yes, the belief, or suspicion, that all sources need to be read or at least consulted is part of the syndrome that drives FAs to cover smaller and smaller topics, and part of the reason why our articles on microtopics (that nobody much reads) are in most areas far better than our articles on broad topics that get hundreds or thousands of views a day. Johnbod (talk) 02:57, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

FACR says only "thorough and representative survey of the relevant literature".

I wonder whether the bigger problem is that on general subjects, everyone thinks they know what they're talking about, whereas on niche subjects, it's more obvious to us that we don't. Any Wikipedian likely knows (or at least believes) a hundred things about cancer, but few of us will know anything about a minor hurricane in 2011 or a train station in the middle of nowhere. Even if I made an exhaustive survey of the relevant literature for cancer, I would expect half a dozen editors to say that it's putting too little attention on the detail that happened to catch their fancy when their relative was diagnosed. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:48, 28 May 2021 (UTC)

Trust me, "an exhaustive survey of the relevant literature for cancer" has fallen well outside human capabilities for some time now. Even oncologist specialists in a single broad cancer type have difficulty keeping up. But in any case, a WP article would have no room for 99.9% of it, & it would not meet WP:MEDRS in any case, mostly because it's primary. When I took Pancreatic cancer to FA some years ago, I had a few quibbles/complaints from medics & researchers, but I don't remember any from patients or relatives. Not nearly enough to put me off improving much-read articles. Johnbod (talk) 14:36, 28 May 2021 (UTC)

Perhaps that would be an issue - I've seen people trying to add insufficiently weighty details to articles before. Me, the thing with broad topics is that I don't like writing articles on topics unless I can read all the sources that discuss the topic. And that becomes more time consuming the broader the topic - as of this edit African humid period has 3290 sources in Google Scholar alone. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 08:39, 28 May 2021 (UTC)

There's also two purely practical issues.

Firstly, relatively obscure topics are paradoxically typically easier to source; if a person has only been the subject of three biographies we can just say "Alice says this, Bob says this, Charlie says this", whereas for someone like Charlemagne it may be easier to acquire a big stack of books covering the minutiae of his life, but it then entails a long exercise in "which aspects do we leave out so as not to make it too long?" and "how are we going to address each of the instances where the sources disagree?".

Secondly, and probably more importantly from Wikipedia's point of view, the topics that get tens of thousands of page views may be more significant than the topics that get fifty page views, but they're also much less stable. Volcano gets 110,000 pageviews per month while Coropuna gets 500, but every passing IP feels the need to add their commentary to the former (sometimes good faith, sometimes less so) all of which needs to be constantly checked if it's not going to deteriorate into grey goo, whereas the only people likely to edit the latter are people who have something useful to add.

(As I've said before, I think that in general the concept of "core topic" is a misconception. To me the important topics are those where readers can't easily find reliable coverage elsewhere; Israeli–Palestinian conflict may currently be our highest-viewed non-pop-culture article, but it would inconvenience precisely nobody if we were to delete the page completely and replace it with Israeli-Palestinian conflict.) ‑ Iridescent 15:25, 28 May 2021 (UTC)

We've never agreed on the question of what you call "core topics", so I won't go there, but my experience is that even very highly viewed articles are pretty stable once done properly - the ones that are evidently a load of crap compiled by a multitude of people with little knowlege of the topic are the ones where "every passing IP feels the need to add their commentary". Readers are pretty good at detecting the difference between the two types. And very often instability is entirely concentrated on a sentence or two, or even a single word, normally in the lead. For biographies it will be usually be nationality, dates or places of birth or death etc. The rest goes untouched for years. Plus highly-viewed articles are generally highly-watched articles, so don't need in fact to be constantly checked by the main editor. Johnbod (talk) 16:40, 28 May 2021 (UTC)

Perhaps it depends on the discipline, but not all academic topics are covered with books. Also, I've often seen that since books take a lot longer to produce they tend to be outdated rather quickly. In particular, in the geological or climatological articles I have written relying on books would leave us with outdated stubs.

On the other hand, it's true that academic papers can be a problem when they are used shortly after publication, because they don't have much feedback yet. When I do my yearly update of all my articles, finding articles that corroborate or contest earlier research is one of the key aspects. I actually feel a little guilty at having authored Cumbre Vieja tsunami hazard for these exact reasons.

Totally agree on newspaper articles, though. Aside from the same "recent" issue as academic papers, in my experience newspaper articles tend to oversimplify stuff and are generally less reliable than more specialized sources. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 08:24, 18 May 2021 (UTC)

@Jo-Jo Eumerus, how long (weeks? months?) does it take you to do your yearly update of all your articles? WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:30, 18 May 2021 (UTC)

About three full days, i.e a week or so. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 17:35, 18 May 2021 (UTC)

Newspapers are useful in a few specific contexts—they're a quick-and-easy way to demonstrate that people at a particular time thought something was worth writing about even when you don't have a specific source that says "In 1897 this topic was considered important". I can't think of any context when they'd be appropriate for actual facts—as far as I'm concerned if a topic is so new that no legitimate sources yet exist, it's not a topic Wikipedia should be covering at all. (If I ran Wikipedia, I would quite happily have articles like Donald Trump or Syrian civil war end circa 2018 with a "for information after this point try Google".) ‑ Iridescent 18:17, 18 May 2021 (UTC)

That reminds me that I probably need to go back to Uturuncu and Cumbre Vieja tsunami hazard and add some references to newspapers discussing them, as they have received attention in the non-specialized press. My main concern would be that folks might take this as a licence to use them as sources, which I don't think they are reliable for. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 08:35, 19 May 2021 (UTC)

I think you should go and have a look. The basic no-questions-asked offering of The Wikipedia Library is not "JSTOR plus newspapers" but also several academic publishers including chapter access to some books, tertiary sources like the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography and tools that help you find other sources like Oxford Bibliographies Online. We do have a bias towards easily available online sources. But I don't think TWL makes that problem worse, rather the opposite. Verifying articles and reading everything in context is difficult without access to an excellent library, and TWL helps to solve that a little, at least for editors.

As for newspapers, I think quoting from the original articles is a good thing to do when combined with a reading of secondary sources (that are often based on the very same articles), and reduces the propagation of transcription errors and misunderstandings when lazy people just copy from each other. (Disclosure: my article that relies most heavily on newspapers is 1886 St. Croix River log jam). —Kusma (t·c) 08:56, 19 May 2021 (UTC)

Newspapers are fine for that kind of use, in conjunction with secondary sources to say "this is what was reported at the time". For something uncontentious like the logjam there isn't really an issue—there's not a risk that we're going to be giving undue weight to a pro-log or anti-log position—but just look at how those same 1886 newspapers are treating the Government of Ireland Bill, the Carrolton Massacre, the formation of the Compagnie du Congo pour le Commerce et l'Industrie, or the defeat of Geronimo, and you'll understand why I have deep reservations on treating contemporary news reports as impartial sources.

If I ever come back to any significant degree I'll have another look at TWL, but to be honest I doubt I'll be back to any greater extent than occasionally dipping my toe in to maintain skin in the game. ‑ Iridescent 15:03, 19 May 2021 (UTC)

I think one reason to have a look around is that when you know what's available in https://wikipedialibrary.wmflabs.org/users/my_library/ you can send other editors there to get what they need. It's probably easier to say "Go to TWL and look it up in Oxford Art Online yourself" than to do it for them. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:50, 21 May 2021 (UTC)

That link tales me to a page which reads—in full:

The Wikipedia Library Card Platform
You have not agreed to the terms of use of this site. Your applications will not be processed and you won't be able to apply or access resources you are approved for.
My Library
Instant access 0 Individual access 0
You have no active proxy/bundle collections.

with no apparent "accept the terms of use" button to make it go away—there's an "Apply" button, but that just leads to a list of publishers which in turn is topped with the same You have not agreed to the terms of use of this site. Your applications will not be processed and you won't be able to apply or access resources you are approved for. warning. I imagine if I directed any users who weren't already members to it, they'd be more confused than when they started. ‑ Iridescent 05:52, 21 May 2021 (UTC)

It may be being blocked by your browser/popup/adblocker. You should get a popup that walks you through a TOS acceptance. I just tested it on firefox with uBlock at a quite low level and it worked. Only in death does duty end (talk) 07:51, 21 May 2021 (UTC)

Or maybe you need to start at https://wikipedialibrary.wmflabs.org, where you should find a blue "Log in" button. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:31, 22 May 2021 (UTC)

Nope—that takes me to a different page (see right) but still with no "logon" button. The big blue "My library" takes me to the "You have no active proxy/bundle collections" page I mentioned before, while "Apply" takes me to the page to apply for specific resources (AAAS, Adam Matthew, Al Manhal etc etc etc) not the general library bundle. (I have—eventually—figured out that if I click on "terms of use" and scroll all the way to the end of the very long document that pops up, there's an "I agree with the terms of use" check box that needs to be ticked, but realistically it's not reasonable to be expecting newer editors who aren't familiar with WMF developers' "always put it in the least obvious place" quirks ever to figure that out.) ‑ Iridescent 15:48, 28 May 2021 (UTC)

Since your username shows in the upper left corner of that page, I suspect that the reason you weren't seeing the button to login is because you were already logged in. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:53, 30 May 2021 (UTC)

Yup I know I'm logged in—my point is that despite being logged in, I can't access any of the things I'm logged into. (As I say, I've eventually worked out that after logging in I then need to click "terms of use", scroll to the end, and tick a checkbox before I can see what the library contains, but for anyone unfamiliar with how WMF developers design their sites that's totally unintuitive; I'm sure most readers will just get to that error screen and assume the site's gone down. ‑ Iridescent 15:51, 7 June 2021 (UTC)

@Uncle G: @Iridescent: ah hello :) Feels like something that the Scottish Civic Trust might be able to advise on / point in the right direction, happy to enquire with my contacts you'd like - drop me a line if that's helpful - sara.thomas@wikimedia.org.uk. Sara Thomas (WMUK) (talk) 11:18, 18 May 2021 (UTC)

Nice to hear from you—hope all going well with you! ‑ Iridescent 18:17, 18 May 2021 (UTC)

New message from Jo-Jo Eumerus

You are invited to join the discussion at User talk:Meta:Talk:Library Card platform/Design improvements § Comments on both. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 18:45, 25 June 2021 (UTC)

I don't see any glaring issues, although the whole thing seems to have been designed with small laptops in mind—on my larger desktop monitor there's a lot of white space with the selections scrolling off the edge, which gives the impression that there are only a couple of entries.

I don't really want to get involved in Meta discussions unless there's no alternative. In my experience they waste everybody's time; thin kind of "we invite consultation" exercise invariably (and I mean invariably results in a bunch of back-and-forth discussion, followed by whoever started the initial request for comments (be it the WMF or an individual developer) announcing that the result of the discussion is 'consensus' for whatever they planned to do all along. ‑ Iridescent 03:17, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

So how do I fix the dashes and apostrophes?

Latest comment: 3 years ago10 comments6 people in discussion

Does this have something to do with my browser, keyboard, or a WP preference? How can I fix it so that others don't have to clean-up after me? The little "insert" symbols for dashes at the bottom of edit view don't work for me - the place the dash wherever they feel like it, not where my curser is located. I also have the script to "fix dashes" but it's not working either. Is it Chrome or Firefox that's at issue? Atsme 💬 📧 00:34, 17 June 2021 (UTC)

@Atsme, the presence of "curly quotes" suggests that it's a computer problem. What device/operating system were you using for that edit? This is not an unusual problem for people who are editing on the desktop site from a smartphone or a tablet. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:10, 17 June 2021 (UTC)

MacBook Pro...same laptop I always use. Oh wait...come to think of it, my laptop keyboard wasn't working back in December, so I used a USB keyboard that was only half-assed compatible while I waited for the new keyboard. Ok, that problem's solved, any thoughts about the — - ?? Sometimes I can use the "Insert" menu below in edit view and insert a — but it doesn't always insert the dash where I'm trying to insert it, so I use my keyboard -. Is there a workaround? Atsme 💬 📧 05:26, 17 June 2021 (UTC)

I edit old fashioned wikicode using the fully functional desktop site on Android smartphones without using any less functional visual editors, mobile apps or mobile sites. And I never encounter any such problems with dashes or curly quotes. Go old school and all will be well. Full functionality is important for serious smartphone editing. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 05:33, 17 June 2021 (UTC)

Atsme was also using "the fully functional desktop site" when making this edit, which introduced curly quotes. @Atsme, looking through that article, you probably need to watch for two problems: one is that when you switch to your phone/tablet, it'll give you curly quotes by default. I have heard that you can change this in your phone's settings, and presumably if you ask your favorite web search engine, you'll find the directions for doing that.

The second is that if you copy and paste curly quotes into the editing window, you have to replace those manually. This usually affects people copying citations or quotations. It sometimes affects people who write articles in word processing documents (e.g., if you're writing while you don't have an internet connection), and later copy and paste it to Wikipedia. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:24, 18 June 2021 (UTC)

It looks like that particular edit was done with a wiki browser (outside Edge, Chrome, Safari etc.) called Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser, but it's a bit complex unless you're used to that type of independent dedicated browser. The two tools I find most useful for those kinds of edits are: General formatting which requires you adding a line to your specific common.js file (there's a quick easy link in the installing section) which then adds a link to the left of your editing window called "General formatting". When you have an open edit window, click on that and it will show you what changes will be made, then scroll to the bottom where it has your standard "Publish changes" button to make the edit. Another one I find useful is the Auto ed tool. Similar to install, and adds a tab at the top of your editing window, and functions in the same manner of showing what edits will be made, and you confirm that by again clicking the typical "Publish changes" button. — Ched (talk) 05:58, 17 June 2021 (UTC)

(talk page watcher) Atsme, if you're using a MacBook Pro, holding down "option" ("alt" on older models) should cause the hyphen key to give you an en-dash instead – like that. Best, Wham2001 (talk) 07:02, 17 June 2021 (UTC)

General formatting is installed and will practice using it. I am now trying the option key and here is the result – and here is the result without it - Yay, it works. Sorry for cluttering up your page Ir but progress has been made. Thanks to all for your help!! Atsme 💬 📧 19:39, 17 June 2021 (UTC)

⌥ Option+⇧ Shift+- will give you an em dash. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:25, 18 June 2021 (UTC)

@Atsme, in addition to all the above, the important thing is "don't lose the slightest sleep over it". No reader in the history of Wikipedia has ever been confused by –, —, − and -being used in place of each other, since they all look almost exactly the same and the meaning is always clear from context. (Curly quotes is a slightly different matter, as those can mess up machine-reading, plus when curly and straight quotes are mixed the incinsistency is actually noticeable to readers.) Don't worry about using the 'wrong' formatting when it comes to dashes and quotes, as someone will eventually fix it in the background. (When you see me making edits like that, it generally meansthere's some kind of sports event happening which I'm interested enough to be watching, but not interested enough to devote my full attention to.) ‑ Iridescent 03:27, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

A goat for you!

Latest comment: 3 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Goats are very expensive. This edit cost me 700 dollars. Keep up the good work!

V. E. (talk) 20:14, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

Thanks… ‑ Iridescent 06:44, 6 July 2021 (UTC)

Did you know …

Latest comment: 3 years ago6 comments5 people in discussion

… that if it takes one editor this long to clean up GNIS rubbish in Category:Unincorporated communities in Clay County, Kentucky, we will have a truthful encyclopaedia once more, no longer telling the world that Plank is an "unincorporated community", in about 137 years?

I did it to get some grasp of the scale of the problem. Uncle G (talk) 21:12, 31 May 2021 (UTC)

If I Ruled The World we'd have some kind of WP:Requests for damnatio memoriae process for these walls of bot-generated pseudoarticles (Category:National Register of Historic Places by county, I'm looking at you). Unfortunately we don't and—as with the mass archive dumps on Commons—there will always be sufficient people who'll say "but a small percentage of the editor in question's contributions are legitimate, so we have to go through everything manually otherwise it's throwing the baby out with the bathwater!". Since that's enough to get any proposal closed as "no consensus", and none of the people proposing we review all everything manually ever seem to be very keen to volunteer to do the job themselves, the crap just continues to build up. The only way I've found to cope with it is to take a "flowers grow in sewage" approach and just ignore the dross and concentrate on things that are actually salvageable. ‑ Iridescent 16:25, 7 June 2021 (UTC)

@Uncle G: I would gladly participate in some kind of Wikipedia:WikiProject GNIS cleanup if such a thing were to exist. Hell, I'd set it up myself if we could get together a dozen people who cared enough. I always have fun with these whenever they ahow up at AfD (going over USGS quadrangles, etc). jp×g 08:37, 11 June 2021 (UTC)

Put me down for it as well, although it's probably a lost cause by now. ‑ Iridescent 14:09, 9 July 2021 (UTC)

In response to your request, I'm tempted to say something like "I can't believe you're dumb enough to participate in that effort", but then I might get blocked. E Eng 16:57, 9 July 2021 (UTC)

Kudos for restraining yourself. A wise decision. Usedtobecool ☎️ 17:16, 9 July 2021 (UTC)

Long TFA and short notice

Latest comment: 3 years ago10 comments2 people in discussion

Thank you today for Opening of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, introduced: "Don't let the rather dull sounding title put you off, or give the impression that this is a dull piece about a formal ceremony. The opening of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway is right up there with Siege of Vienna and Storming of the Bastille as a true turning point in world history, and in terms of the history of engineering is as core a topic as Wright Flyer or Transistor. Before 15 September 1830 the nations of Europe were rural, quasi-feudal economies in which most people rarely travelled more than a few miles from their birthplace unless they happened to be pressed into the military or were persecuted into fleeing their country, and unless one happened to work for a few experimental collieries or textile mills, one would not only pass one's entire life without ever seeing a non-animal-powered machine, one would likely not even understand the concept of "engine". Within 20 years of the L&M's opening, Britain was a democratically-ruled industrial and military superpower, Manchester was the focal point of the world economy, and the rising nations of Prussia, Russia and the United States were coming to see the implications of being able to move large numbers of armed men at short notice to any point on their borders, and larger numbers of the land-hungry poor into the more empty parts of their lands.

All this is fairly well known—chronologically-arranged "history of the industrial revolution" displays usually begin in 1830, and Rocket is the first thing one sees on entering London's Science Museum's showpiece Making the Modern World gallery—but the actual events of the day are generally glossed over in histories. In reality, the opening of the L&M wasn't the triumphant unveiling it's generally presented as; it was a complete fiasco. Six and a half hours after they were due, four of the eight locomotives used in the unveiling limped back, after a day of death, rioting, mechanical failures and general incompetence, including the death of one of the guests of honour. The disasters of the day led to the event being far more widely reported than would normally have been the case for a corporate opening ceremony, and what stuck in the minds of newspaper readers around the world wasn't the chaotic lack of organisation or basic design flaws; it was that there were these new things called "machines" which were cheaper and faster than horses/peasants/slaves. A significant chunk of world history after that point can be traced directly back to the events of this one rainy autumn day in Lancashire."! (which so far is the record in intro length)

The infobox wars are dead, see? --Gerda Arendt (talk) 06:46, 22 May 2021 (UTC)

The infobox wars are dead in the sense that the Thirty Years War is over; the "make a desert and call it peace" approach may have brought it to a halt, but a fight ending because there's nobody left to fight isn't any kind of victory for anyone involved, particularly somewhere like Wikipedia where we can't afford to lose one editor let alone the at least half-a-dozen we've lost either wholly or in part because of—lest we forget—a dispute over how to display numbers. (It does occur to me that Opening of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway is a good example of an article that clearly wouldn't benefit from an infobox.) ‑ Iridescent 15:25, 28 May 2021 (UTC)

I think they are over in the sense that nobody tried an infobox for that article, nor any other that I remember, this year, which is good. - I hope some will come to see that and return. - See my talk today, - it's rare that a person is pictured when a dream comes true, and that the picture is shown on the Main page on a meaningful day. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 10:29, 30 May 2021 (UTC)

With a little more time: I haven't called it peace, and I don't think it is, and I wish it was. What can we do?

What I saw of the disputes - which is a limited view, I missed the first seven years, and see only my limited topics, classical music and opera - told me that it is not about how numbers are displayed, but that some believe the numbers should be displayed also for those who for whatever reason are not served well by prose, - also.

In the specific case of {{infobox opera}}, that meant not only adding, but removing the "operas by composer" sidebar. In 2021, the last of those sidebars was deleted, and - in the edit linked to above - an infobox inserted, not by me.
In the specific case of classical composers, we still have many composers where principal editors believe an infobox doesn't summarize a creative mind sufficiently, as if there was any claim an infobox should do that. Does the lead? I often doubt it.
In the specific case of actors, I am not interested. I wonder why people leave the project because an infobox was uncollapsed, but what could I do?

Did you know that I had a bet that Richard Wagner would have an infobox by 2020, and when 2020 came I didn't care any more? Instead of the time-sink of disputes, I write "my" daily little article, and the last time one of these infoboxes was questioned was Psalm 149, in January 2018. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:38, 1 June 2021 (UTC)

"My" article today: Theater am Aegi, translated from German by LouisAlain. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:41, 1 June 2021 (UTC)

The original Infobox War—the one between advocates of "every page should have an infobox", "the default should be that pages have an infobox unless there's consensus not to on a particular page" and "whether a given page should have an infobox is a matter for the people who wrote it" has ground to a stalemate, ironically with exactly the same consensus as before the five years of arguing about it. The various smaller scale arguments and proxy wars ignited by it are still burning as brightly as ever—to take a single but fairly representative recent example which I've been doing my best to ignore, read Template talk:Infobox station/Archive 4 and tell me Wikipedia is now free of people obsessively arguing about what should display in the top corner of the page. ‑ Iridescent 15:51, 7 June 2021 (UTC)

I said many times I missed the original war - and and am not unhappy about it. I noticed it for opera, it was heated and wordy, and it's over, or let's say not burning dangerously. When reviewing I often ask, for operas and their singers and composers: "How do you feel about an infobox?" (having understood that it's an emotional thing), and the typical answers are "yes, done", or "I am am not against them but have no time to make them". Haven't heard "no way as long as I am ~~in control~~ the principal editor of this article" in a while. Could that be an example? --Gerda Arendt (talk) 20:29, 7 June 2021 (UTC)

ps: happy that in the unabridged conversations of Opabinia regalis, at least the cat of artificial mockery survived ;) --Gerda Arendt (talk) 20:39, 7 June 2021 (UTC)

(Sorry, didn't notice your reply before). While "I own this article" is A Bad Thing, I don't necessarily disagree with variations on "I am the principal editor of this article". The people who wrote the articles often are the best qualified to comment on how best to cover that topic; in judging consensus, I'll give considerably more weight to "I have spent the past decade writing about cheese, and in my opinion Stilton cheese has such a complex history that trying to summarize it in an infobox will actively mislead readers" than I will to "I've never displayed any interest in cheese but I'm going to put an infobox on Stilton cheese because I think it looks better" (and ditto for arguments in the other direction). As you presumably know, one of the major issues driving the original infobox wars was driveby editors—and one driveby editor in particular—descending on biographies of complex characters like Stanley Kubrick whose careers genuinely can't be summarized in a handful of statistics, and demanding that infoboxes be added for aesthetic reasons even though the nature of the topic meant either arbitrarily omitting key information, or including it all at the expense of making the infobox look like a medieval scroll running the length of the page. In those circumstances, "When we wrote this, we intentionally omitted an infobox for good reason" is IMO a completely valid argument, even if technically it violates the sacred "no vested contributors" principle. ‑ Iridescent 14:07, 9 July 2021 (UTC)

(sorry, I almost forgot this discussion, and now was out, and have little time, preparing a weekend with opera concert and family meeting, travel involved) I understand editors caring about an article and feeling responsible, and it's perhaps a topic for some other time. Today, and briefly: this was opera, and no infobox opera will be a scroll roll because it was designed to be brief. In this particular case, I had not looked who wrote the article, and had forgotten the previous discussion, and IF I had looked, I would not have added an infobox, knowing the principal editor's preference. Not to have looked was my mistake, and I said "sorry" in the discussion. - In the meantime (several years), things changed: 1) the former alternative (a sidebar with always the same portrait of the composer and all operas by the composer, but hidden), was deleted, 2) the editor hasn't edited in years. The 2021 discussion was shorter than 2015, and my expectation is that there will be no other. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 21:07, 9 July 2021 (UTC)

You were right ... again.

Latest comment: 3 years ago73 comments19 people in discussion

I recall a discussion back in maybe 2019 where you said if I wanted to get those extra admin buttons back, then I should do so while I still could. You also mentioned something along the lines of how things were headed in the future. I don't have the diffs at hand, and it's not worth really looking; but, the bottom line is that you were again correct. Just thought I'd mention it. — Ched (talk) 20:01, 12 July 2021 (UTC)

I took a look at that thread much earlier in its process, and it's unfortunate to see it evolve into a direction that makes me angry to read it. Why do admins insist on speaking for what non-admins think of a situation? What I think reading that thread isn't "Good, the rights and virtues of non-admins are defended by people not treating adminship as a higher caste", it's "Admins are so wildly defensive, rank-closing, and focused on the preservation of their caste that they'll spend multiple section headers bullying someone for doing what at the time he assumed the honourable thing". Vaticidalprophet 20:38, 12 July 2021 (UTC)

I don't see how you could possibly interpret that thread as any kind of closing of ranks—by my count, the admins participating in it are split virtually 50/50. (The crats are fairly united in supporting a strict-constructionist interpretation of policy as written, but that's to be expected; there are two decades of precedent for "crats should avoid anything that looks like supervoting".)

It's worth pointing out, for anyone who hasn't read it in detail and is just looking at the summary, that this appears to be a fairly unique set of circumstances. Usually these cases are variants of either "this admin is making a token edit every year to avoid being flagged as inactive" or "I was inactive but am now active again and have realised that some of the things I'm doing would be easier with the admin toolset". In these cases, I think that despite the grumbles we get the balance about right—sure there are always going to be a handful of legacy admins gaming the system, but the alternative is reconfirmations every time an admin has been busy in real life, and a perverse incentive which rewards people for never taking time off. In this case we have a former admin who explicitly resigned and RTV vanished and has been inactive by any reasonable standard for years. My 2c is that the crats have made the right call here—they did the right thing both in interpreting the current policy as giving them no alternative but to return the admin bit on request in these circumstances since policy as written is clear, and in pressuring the former admin to withdraw the request since if he'd got the bit back and actually tried to take any administrative action, he'd have no credibility and any admin actions would have been reasonably open to challenge. ‑ Iridescent 21:26, 12 July 2021 (UTC)

@Vaticidalprophet, sometimes people who aren't in positions of relative power are reluctant to insert their opinions into discussions of who gets to keep the power. IMO it's a good thing if people who are in positions of relative power do bring up what people not in those positions have said in the recent past about the power structure. I feel like you're saying that admins shouldn't be advocating for non-admins.

Also where are people trying to protect admin privs by arguing to limit admin privs? —valereee (talk) 21:32, 12 July 2021 (UTC)

I can't speak for VP obviously, but I think I can answer regarding where are people trying to protect admin privs by arguing to limit admin privs?. One of the standard conspiracy theories of some of the antis is that Wikipedia's admins are intentionally trying to make RFA more difficult and trying to find pretexts to desysop admins, to increase the exclusivity of the admin corps and consequently increase the power of existing admins. It's a theory that's very obviously wrong—RFA has never been easier to pass since "handed out to Jimmy's drinking buddies" days, if anything we're much too slow to desysop admins even in cases where someone very evidently is no longer trusted, and anyone who'se seen anyone try to organize anything on-wiki will know how improbable is the idea that "the admins" as a collective group could organize anything secretly without someone leaking—but "Wikipedia is run by a cabal who circle the wagons to protect their own and reject anyone else who tries to join" has been repeated by so many people for so long I wouldn't really blame anyone for believing it. ‑ Iridescent 15:38, 15 July 2021 (UTC)

I wouldn't really blame anyone for believing it I agree, although I also think one quickly learns that many people hold a non-traditional philosophy on some topic or another, often a bit detached from reality, and I think one quickly learns to tune those out. There's some kool-aid of this type I bought into when I didn't know better. I think many people have and spread their own tidbits of this kind though (I probably have mine, and I'm guessing you have yours). ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 15:53, 15 July 2021 (UTC)

I don't blame them, but I think they're probably gullible. That's not uncommon these days, though. Always amazing how many people think a conspiracy by more than two could possibly stay a secret. —valereee (talk) 16:09, 15 July 2021 (UTC)

The real question is why some admins think that non-admins generally want adminship to be harder to get. There are non-admins and admins who stand on both sides of this, and good arguments here shouldn't be based off of what we suppose other people might think. Elli (talk | contribs) 16:13, 15 July 2021 (UTC)

On non admins who want adminship to be harder to get, that's certainly a group which exists, although they hold this belief for a variety of reasons.

There's a small but vocal group who genuinely feel Wikipedia has too many admins;
There's a larger group which believes that admin status is too easy to get and allows unsuitable candidates to pass who subsequently abuse their new position and can only be removed with much needless infighting (I have a good deal of sympathy for this position);
There's a particular subgroup of the WP:HTD tendency which subscribes to the view that the original idea behind Wikipedia was sound, but it's become hijacked by a byzantine bureaucracy, and people who genuinely support Wikipedia's goals have a duty to make existing structures unworkable to force the community to come up with a better governance model (this isn't a common position now, but it's sincerely held by a lot of people who joined Wikipedia early on and miss Wild West days when there was more of a license for members of the In Crowd to goof around);
Not on the topic of becoming an admin but on the subject of reducing the number of admins, there's a very vocal group which feels that Wikipedia is dominated by a gerontocracy of people who joined up between 2005–2008, feels that the field needs to be cleared to allow a fresh crop of ideas to take root, and genuinely believes that there's an existential battle for the future of Wikipedia between pre-boom and post-boom editors in which old admins are operating as a bloc to gatekeep against anyone with fresh ideas. (WAID will pop up to vehemently deny it, but it's my firm belief that this is the house position of the WMF when behind closed doors; there's been a definite "if the community reject our ideas, we need to replace the community" feel to their recent output.);
Most obviously but easy to overlook, there's a steady trickle of people who failed RFA and of desysopped-for-cause former admins, who have an "if I can't play with the toy nobody else should have it either" attitude. Some disguise it more or less successfully by finding legitimate-sounding pretexts; some don't even try to hide it.

I'm sure there are others as well, but those are the ones that spring to mind. ‑ Iridescent 18:55, 15 July 2021 (UTC)

Whatever WMF think (& I expect you are right), that is certainly the house position at WMUK, though pursuing it for several years has meant that what they think about anything doesn't matter much to anyone. Johnbod (talk) 19:00, 15 July 2021 (UTC)

Johnbod, having attended the WMUK AGM recently I am entirely unsurprised that they feel there needs to be some sort of replacing of the admin corps with people more amenable to whatever they may dream up. I’m glad nobody seems to listen! firefly ( t · c ) 19:52, 15 July 2021 (UTC)

I think there's some level of misunderstanding here -- I'm talking about non-admins who want adminship to be harder to get, as is Elli, and we're both suspecting some admins think these positions are much more...mainstream? amongst non-admins than they are. The types of people in question, I recognize all the archetypes (that last one in particular has been coming up a lot lately). I don't think the admin corps as a whole is trying to make adminship harder, because as you note that's ridiculous on the face of it. I think there's a broad misunderstanding amongst a lot of people about how mainstream the "non-admins who think admins are an evil circling cabal trying to protect their ranks constantly" position is, and that this has the frequent consequence of making admins look more like a bunch of wagon-circlers than they are, by way of trying too hard to avoid the reputation. Vaticidalprophet 19:32, 15 July 2021 (UTC)

Tying in with my points 3 and 4, bear in mind that the people setting the pace on Wikipedia—the admins, the content writers, WMF employees and contractors, the self-appointed Power Users, and equally (and we sometimes forget this) the equivalent self-appointed Power Users among Wikipedia's critics—are all groups in which the 2005–08 cohort is massively overrepresented. For people who remember Wikipedia c. 2007—when policy was sometimes quite literally written by supporters of one position trying to get as many supporters of the other position as possible blocked and forcing through the change in the window of opportunity that created—the notion that the internal dynamic of Wikipedia is a kind of wacky dialectic between opposing cabals each trying to defend their own turf, seems totally reasonable. (I know it's a drum I regularly bang, but it's worth reading through old debates just to get a feel for how horrible old-school Wikipedia used to be.)

TL;DR summary: admins (and crats, and arbs…) sometimes give the impression they believe huge numbers of people consider them a corrupt clique interested only in self-preservation, because most of them remember a time when huge numbers of people did consider them a corrupt clique interested only in self-preservation.

(The antics of the WMF decidedly don't help in this regard. It's hard to say "no, it's a myth that Wikipedia is dominated by a clique who may have come in to the job with the best of intentions but over time became interested solely in preserving their positions, trying to force through their pet agendas, covering their friends asses when they get in trouble, and seeing if they can somehow abuse their position for cash" when Wikipedia is in turn run by a body dominated by a clique who may have come in to the job with the best of intentions but over time became interested solely in preserving their positions, trying to force through their pet agendas, covering their friends asses when they get in trouble, and seeing if they can somehow abuse their position for cash. Just gonna put this here.) ‑ Iridescent 19:24, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

I don't actually remember the last time any staff member mentioned admins at the English Wikipedia to me. Months? Years? I searched the internal wiki and the chat system, and the most recent thing I found was a pair of notes about the 2019 RFA/reform discussions (which I wrote). I don't think the WMF actually thinks about enwiki admins as a group all that much. Maybe someone in the Anti-Harassment team would, but I think they mostly talk to the Stewards and the global sysops. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:57, 17 July 2021 (UTC)

Certainly in my comment, I didn't mean admins as such, but the 2005–08 cohort generally, most survivors of which are admins. Perhaps Iri meant the same. Johnbod (talk) 02:31, 17 July 2021 (UTC)

I did say an existential battle for the future of Wikipedia between pre-boom and post-boom editors in which old admins are operating as a bloc to gatekeep against anyone with fresh ideas (my emphasis) which was worded carefully; I'm accusing the WMF (or elements within it, anyway) of believing that the existing Wikipedia community is out of step with the WMF's long-term vision and that the current admins-and-arbs power structure acts to protect the interests of this group. (I don't know enough about WMUK to comment, but can certainly believe it; for a group that's supposed to represent coverage of and editors in the UK, they certainly spend a disproportionate amount of time whining that the UK is over-represented on Wikipedia.) ‑ Iridescent 06:40, 18 July 2021 (UTC)

I don't have that impression. I think that most staff would struggle to name even a few handful of English Wikipedia admins that they disagree with. (They might be able to name a few people they disagree with, but most of them aren't admins here, or even part of the core community here.)

Work-me sits down with a handful of PMs each week. Here's a list of the wikis whose names were mentioned this week, in the order found in my notes: Wikisources (primarily Indic languages), Meta-Wiki, MediaWiki.org, Arabic Wikipedia, Czech Wikipedia, Hungarian Wikipedia, Spanish Wikipedia, Portuguese Wikipedia, and Wikidata. That's it. It's mostly mid-sized, non-English-speaking communities in non-wealthy countries. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:29, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

"RFA has never been easier to pass"

> RFA has never been easier to pass

So long as candidates feel like they are required to constantly watch the page and respond quickly to all questions, lest anyone misinterprets your inactivity as "not being willing to answer The Community's™ Questions", then it's not easy. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:19, 17 July 2021 (UTC)

But my usual challenge when people make "RFA is hell because [insert claim] always happens" claims; is there any evidence that this is actually happening? Here's the list of every RFA in reverse-chronological order (and here's just the failed ones if that's easier—what's the most recent example you can find of an RFA failing unfairly? (By "unfairly" I don't mean "there were legitimate concerns which I don't think disqualified the candidate, but enough people disagreed", I mean "more people than a couple of the usual serial opposers opposed for an unfair reason".) People opposing for dumb reasons have always been around—"an administrator needs a more fear-inspiring username" goes right back to 2006—but RFAs failing based on unreasonable opposition is, as far as I can tell, a meme spread by people who've failed RFA for legitimate reasons and are trying to discredit the process, rather than something that actually happens.

(On the specific issue of not answering RFA questions, if someone didn't answer any questions at RFA and hadn't given notice in advance that there might be delays, I'd see that as a legitimate albeit harsh reason to oppose. Anyone in the position where they're submitting a serious RFA ought to be familiar enough to know that the process lasts a week and questions are part of that process, and either time their nomination for a period when they expect to be available or post a clear "I only edit at weekends so won't be able to answer anything asked after Sunday" warning. Ignoring legitimate questions—as opposed to a one-line "I don't consider this relevant and won't be answering"—in this context is no different to any other "light the fuse and run" disruption such as filing arbcom cases or featured artice nominations and then disappearing; IMO "a prerequisite for being a good Wikipedia admin is being willing to answer good faith questions, so not answering the optional questions and not providing an explanation as to why they're not being answered raises concerns about future accountability" is an entirely legitimate ground for opposition. ‑ Iridescent 06:40, 18 July 2021 (UTC)

I am sure I've said this before, but I think there is a distinction between the the merits of the outcome of a RfA and the merits of the way that outcome was achieved. And I strongly suspect that the "RfA is hell" meme is more about the latter problem than the former. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 20:31, 18 July 2021 (UTC)

But even on that basis, the same challenge applies—if you're going to make the 'RFA is hell' claim there needs to be some evidence of hellish RFAs (whether successful or unsuccessful).* The existing process is cumbersome and time-consuming, but IMO the idea that it's some kind of institutionalized hazing ritual is a meritless claim. Yes, certainly people ask too many pointless questions just to hear the sounds of their own voices; and yes, the whole principle of the 'oppose' section is unpleasant since it's never nice to have people lining up to explain why they don't trust you. But, any open process for vetting candidates for a job is necessarily going to include both "electors are entitled to ask questions" and "people are allowed to criticize the candidates".
*Quick history lesson for TPWs who weren't around at the time; while there have been problems with RFA and suggestions about how to reform it since the RFA process was created back in the early days, the "RFA is hell" meme originated with Jimmy Wales's "RfA is a horrible and broken process" back in 2011. That in turn was in response to this RFA, which, I think, with the benefit of hindsight most reasonable neutral observers would consider an instance of RFA working as it should.

An RFA process that didn't include elements that were potentially awkward or unpleasant for candidates would of necessity need to be either an "all must have prizes" process where anyone meeting an arbitrary activity threshold gets the bit, or a black box process where comments in support of and opposition to a candidacy are submitted privately to a panel which meets in secret to make a decision. WMF Legal have consistently said they'd veto the former, and while the latter would be technically workable—it's how we grant CU/OS permission currently—granting Arbcom the ability to bestow adminship would be wildly (and rightly) unpopular, and a separate Admin Approval Panel would both create yet another layer of bureaucracy and turbocharge Wikipedia's systemic bias since over time the panel would reshape the admin corps to reflect its own biases and prejudices, which in turn would reshape the community as people with differing views came to feel unwelcome and left, which in turn would strengthen that particular bias on the panel come the next set of elections…

We don't just hang on to the RFA process because we're inherently conservative and we hate change, or because people have some kind of vested interest in preserving it. We hang on to the RFA process because despite megabytes of discussion—including some like the discussions Kudpung and WereSpielChequers organized that examined potential changes in great detail—nobody has yet come up with a workable alternative. ‑ Iridescent 05:06, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

I think that someone else was Kudpung's main colleague in his big study, though I've long been active in that area - and we've had some tweaks since including a slight drop in the support threshold. But my take on the RFA process is that major reform is logjammed by groups of people who at least think they have an interest in preserving parts of the status quo. The downside of a consensus system is that you don't always need a majority to prevent change, 40% is more than sufficient, and RFA has at least two such blocking minorities. One is over the block button, the other deletion. Attempts to reform RFA often come in the form of making it easier to get one or other tool. I suspect that attempts to unbundle deletion are disproportionately opposed by people like me who are at least somewhat inclusionist. The block button I'm less clear about, but I think that part of the thinking is to prevent a "civility police" from being formed. Of course the one area where you don't need to get consensus is in imposing a new or higher defacto criteria for adminship, if 40% are prepared to oppose for "lack of template talk space edits" then whatever the 60% think, template talkspace edits would become part of the de facto criteria. That said, I'm now largely in the camp of thinking that RFA's reputation is worse than the reality. With very few people actually looking at candidates' contributions, it is now an open book exam that pretty much any active, civil Wikipedian could pass. Remember the results are far from a normal distribition, the successful candidates usually pass by acclamation. Ϣere SpielChequers 07:54, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

This is my opinion as well, mostly. RfA has a reputation as a "nightmare hellscape" because of 'outliers' - specific RfAs which cause an outsized amount of drama and unpleasantness. I am in no way minimising the fact that if you are involved in one of these events it can be extremely unpleasant, but it isn't necessarily the default option. As WSC says, most candidates these days pass by acclamation. We do have to be careful here that we're not falling for selection bias - namely that nominators only put forward extremely uncontroversial, overly-qualified candidates because they view RfA as a process that will eat anyone else alive, but I don't see any evidence of that happening. (With apologies to Iridescent for continuing yet another thread about RfA on their talk page...) firefly ( t · c ) 10:38, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

I'd imagine there's a slight selection bias at work, in that candidates who know there's likely to be significant opposition are nowadays less likely to accept nominations, but I doubt it's statistically significant compared to the number of uncontroversial candidates who are scared off running because of the largely apocryphal horror stories they've heard.

I suspect—based purely on anecdata and impressions, nothing so mundane as facts—that off-wiki interaction is much more of a factor in determining whther candidates run than it ever used to be. When we have RFAs with credible candidates (i.e., not self-noms from obviously unqualified candidates) that attract significant opposition, a fairly consistent theme seems to be a support section filled with "I've met this person at a meetup/training session/editathon and got on well" and/or "I've interacted with this person a lot on IRC/Discord and got on well", and an oppose section filled with "I don't know this person but based on their on-wiki contributions they seem problematic".

Regarding the one area where you don't need to get consensus is in imposing a new or higher defacto criteria for adminship, if 40% are prepared to oppose for "lack of template talk space edits" then whatever the 60% think, template talkspace edits would become part of the de facto criteria, is this really actually happening? You occasionally see a de facto criterion like this become fashionable—"lack of content creation experience" is the classic, and "never participated in AfD" comes up a lot as well, but I've never seen an unreasonable one gain traction that I can think of. In my experience the de facto pseudocriteria that gain traction (as opposed to the occasional "oppose, doesn't agree with my pet peeve" cranks) are pretty much invariably variations on "nobody should be a manager until they've worked on the shop floor", which isn't a particularly fringe position either on Wikipedia or in the real world.

(Statement of the obvious perhaps, but if 40% are prepared to oppose for "lack of template talk space edits", then participation in template talk space is obviously an issue a significant number of Wikipedia's editors consider important, and the correct response is "how do we encourage people to participate in template talk space?", not "look at these idiots who think template talk space is important". The way in which we collectively mob people who raise what they consider legitimate concerns, when those concerns don't reflect the concerns of the majority or at least the majority of those who participate in such discussions, has always been one of Wikipedia's less attractive characteristics.) ‑ Iridescent 14:15, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

I think we haven't had any big issues with new de facto criteria since the expansion of voter numbers brought by advertising on the watchlist. About offwiki -- I'm not sure there is a very large influence of meetup based offwiki interactions (compared with, say, dewiki, we have a very weak meetup culture concentrated only in a few large cities). But there is a lot of email and other offwiki interaction with nominators during RfAs, and I'm not sure that's a good thing. —Kusma (talk) 15:11, 20 July 2021 (UTC)

One still sees variations on "doesn't have [arbitrary number] edits" or "hasn't been active for [arbitrary period]", but I'd say those are again variations on "one shouldn't be an officer unless one's served on the front line".

We don't have a meetup-based culture to anywhere near the extent of some projects (to be expected—the geographic distribution of English speakers means that the overwhelming majority of even the most active en-wiki editors will never meet each other whereas most German speakers are clustered within a couple of hours travel of each other), although there are a few meetup cliques like DC and London that one definitely sees engaging in block votes. A more general phenomenon of a split between those who know someone (on- or off-wiki) and those who don't certainly exists—it doesn't seem fair to name names, but it's not hard to think of examples where the support section is filled with variations on "I know and trust this person" and the oppose section is full of "I find the nomination unconvincing and don't understand why so many people are supporting". (Or on rare occasions the opposite; a candidate who looks good on paper and has a support section full of "I don't know this person but they check all the boxes" and an oppose section full of "they look good on paper but in my encounters with them they've proven to be untrustworthy". Those are often the RFAs that get nasty.)

I wouldn't take one-on-one off-wiki interactions as necessarily a bad thing—there are sometimes perfectly good reasons why a given conversation is better off taking place in private. (I'd even include the example you seem to be discussing in that RFA thread you link. "I'm considering running at RFA, can you give me a second opinion in private as to whether you think I'm ready, before I go public and potentially gove myself a reputation as over-ambitious if it turns out I'm obviously unqualified" would IMO be a legitimate use of email.) What I would say is that "this candidate is active on IRC/Discord/etcetera" would shift my approach to any given RFA from "this candidate is probably suitable, it's the job of the opposers to explain why they shouldn't be trusted" to "this candidate is probably untrustworthy and it's the job of the nominator and candidate to explain why I should overcome my reservations". It wouldn't automatically make me oppose, but it would certainly make me much less likely both to support at RFA, and to trust a particular editor's judgement more generally. ‑ Iridescent 10:53, 21 July 2021 (UTC)

Aside about IRC

Why does it shift your thinking, Iri? I've found it shifting mine at least slightly in the same direction, and I've kind of struggled against that as it doesn't seem fair and makes me feel like a grumpy old fogey shaking her cane at these damn kids on their skateboards. —valereee (talk) 14:55, 21 July 2021 (UTC)

Not Iridescent's spokesperson, but I suspect it's a combination of a) one's contributions to these venues can not so easily checked as on-wiki conduct and b) Wikipedia has plenty of forums and venues for people to talk - and policy/guideline expects discussions with on-wiki effects to occur on-wiki-, so being active on these off-wiki venues makes one wonder why they are doing so. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 17:08, 21 July 2021 (UTC)

In my case its because IRC is a hive of scum and villainy on a par with Mos Eisley. I wont go into all the details, but if you want to create a catalog of admin abuse, you can do worse than start with looking closely at any on-wiki conversation that includes "on IRC...". The current discussion at VP over if to treat Discord logs the same as IRC (and so thus enabling exactly the same secretive abusive behaviour) just means I will treat Discord exactly the same as I did IRC. Log everything anyway and then publically leak it off-wiki. Only in death does duty end (talk) 17:29, 21 July 2021 (UTC)

↑ What they said. One of the primary reasons Wikipedia (and WMF projects in general) function at all is the culture of transparency and the basic principle of "no matter how weird the decision appears, it's always possible to retrace the thinking that led to the decision being made unless there are legal or ethical reasons for it not to be public". Except in a very few specialist use cases such as assisting people whose accounts and IP addresses have been accidentally hardblocked or the (rare) cases that are workshopped on Arbwiki to allow the arbs to discuss potentially defamatory allegations, there's literally no legitimate reason for Wikipedia editors to be discussing Wikipedia on any system that isn't publicly logged. This is so ingrained in the culture that even usually vehemently anti sites like Wikipediocracy adhere to this basic principle (they may hide some of the nastier discussions behind "you must have 300 posts before you can see this" walls or similar to prevent all and sundry stumbling across them, but the principle of openness is there).

As such, I consider participation in discussions about Wikipedia on a non-logged service (except on the rare occasions when there's a legitimate reason) to be prima facie evidence of an attitude that's incompatible with the values of Wikipedia—thus, unless there's a particularly good reason for me to ignore my concerns, someone active on IRC or Discord is by definition going to be someone I won't trust to have access to functions like blocking and deletion where the process leading to every decision needs to be open.

If you want an analogy, I view Wikipedia admins who are active on IRC et al in exactly the same way I view politicians or police officers who are active in the Freemasons, and for exactly the same reasons. Decisions being taken in a forum in which not all parties are able to participate—or even the potential for decisions being taken in a forum in which not all parties are able to participate—violates a basic ethical principle of equality and of people in authority doing their best to operate without fear or favor, and an admin or potential admin who doesn't grasp that is someone who shouldn't be an admin. ‑ Iridescent 18:33, 21 July 2021 (UTC)

Thanks, all. Okay, feeling better about shaking my cane. Damn kids could knock somebody down. :) —valereee (talk) 18:39, 21 July 2021 (UTC)

Although I should be clear, I have no issues with IRC or Discord themselves as tools. Being extremely active in a number of gaming communities and gaming in general, Discord is an invaluable resource, and I was Oping IRC chans when the current crop of discord users were still glints in their father's eyes. The problem here is that they want to use it while simultaneously attempting to make what is said/done there opaque and unaccountable. Discord automatically logs everything and the history is accessible to anyone who joins. Prentending otherwise and trying to write into policy that that functionality doesnt exist jumps straight to the top of my stupid ideas list. Only in death does duty end (talk) 21:10, 21 July 2021 (UTC)

> In my case its because IRC is a hive of scum and villainy

IRC is also the hive of the Stewards and mw:Ops. Painting it with one brush might not serve us well. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:41, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

I can't speak for OID, but in my personal opinion that's no credit to the Stewards and mw:Ops. I struggle to think of any reason why either of them should deliberately be making decisions in an environment that isn't logged, given that they're both routinely making decisions for which an audit trail of exactly how a given decision was reached might prove necessary. If they don't want to have discussions in a wiki environment (understandable, MediaWiki isn't great for multi-person discussions), it's not as if there's a shortage of legitimate online collaboration tools. ‑ Iridescent 14:18, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

Aside about candidates' absence during RFA

Picking up on Firefly's comment: Yes, the risk of becoming one of those "outliers" is a risk that I imagine sensible people might want to avoid. Consider this: if you get cancer, statistically speaking, it's probably an instantly curable non-melanoma skin cancer or a cancer growing so slowly (prostate and thyroid are popular) that you'll die of old age before it causes serious problems. But who here is going to volunteer to get cancer, just in case it'll turn out to be one of the unpleasant ones?

We do have data about what RFA is like. We have evidence, e.g., that an editor went offline during RFA last year, and a day and a half later, someone's on the talk page wondering what to do about this unusual absence. We have evidence that editors leave. We have evidence the feelings are bruised and relationships broken. Is it worth the cost? Some editors believe that it is. But "worthwhile" is not the same as "harmless". WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:49, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

I'm not seeing it. We have evidence that people aren't happy if RFA doesn't go the way they want, but the same would be true whatever the process. Since WMF Legal compels us to have a vetting-style process rather than an automated system based on editing levels/duration, then unless we rubber stamp every application some people aren't going to get what they want. Human nature being what it is, some people are going to flounce out, whatever the process used. (If by editor went offline during RFA last year you mean Guy Macon, that was because he was rushed to hospital and was unable to participate, not because he stormed out and refused to participate.)

As long as we have any process where not everyone gets their way—which for any discussion involving more than a couple of people means every process—people being unhappy with the outcome is going to be inevitable. I've yet to see any evidence that RFA as a process is any more 'horrible and broken' than any other process that has the potential to make people on the losing side feel that they're not valued. (For a concrete example, List of fugitives from justice who are no longer sought which I've previously used as a candidate for Wikipedia's Worst Article is currently up for deletion. It's clearly an inappropriate article and clearly ought to be deleted, but when it is deleted there's a high likelihood the editor who's racked up 800+ edits writing it will resign in disgust.) Nobody said RFA is "harmless", but given Legal's insistence it's an unavoidable harm, and I've yet to see any evidence that the current model isn't the least-worst option we have. ‑ Iridescent 06:16, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

My point isn't whether he was unable to participate vs flouncing out; at that point, nobody knew why he was off wiki. My point is that RFA has an unwritten expectation that Thou Shalt Edit Every Single Day During Your RFA Week. I don't think it's necessarily a bad expectation, but it is a standard that some otherwise decent candidates will find difficult. It is, as I said initially, one of the things that makes RFA "not easy". WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:58, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

To be fair, Administrator nominees should stay involved on their RfAs so that they may answer these questions or any other comments raised on their RfA. Absence by the nominee from the RfA process during the seven days it is open can harm the chances of success. is in the instructions—it's not some sneaky secret protocol those mean participants are using to entrap innocent candidates. In my experience the voters always give the benefit of the doubt if someone says in advance "I'm not going to be available every day", "I only have free time at weekends", "I don't edit on the Sabbath" etc—or if they come back following a disappearance with some variation of "sorry, I was hit by a bus, can we restart where we left off?". In the absence of such a declaration, I'd consider "the candidate is expecting 200+ people to each spend a significant amount of time reviewing their history, but isn't responding to the concerns that are raised" to be a legitimate reason to look askance at a candidate; we traditionally have equally low opinions of people who take a fire-and-forget approach to starting RFCs, nominating articles at GA, etcetera. ‑ Iridescent 18:36, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

As I said, it's not necessarily a bad expectation, but it is one that some otherwise decent candidates won't find easy.

(I don't imagine that any of those advance warnings would endear the candidate to reviewers, either. If it's a one-off thing, then why did you open an RFA this week? If it's an ongoing thing, then you aren't dedicated enough to be an admin, and someone will worry that if you get the mop, you'll screw up just before you have to be offline for the next two days.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:47, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

I've never seen anything like that. Even in Arbcom elections, where a baying mob jumps on the slightest sniff of even the most hypothetical problem, nobody has a problem with variations on "I'm not available 24/7, I have a life" provided fair warning is given. (The community takes a dim view of the RFA equivalent of ANI Flu, when the candidate unfortunately becomes too ill to participate the moment an awkward question is raised, but that's a different issue since it points to legitimate concerns about future accountability.) ‑ Iridescent 18:59, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

Aside about WP:CLEANSTART

Oh, thought of an example of a pseudocriterion: "candidate must declare every account they've ever used", which came up so often it was eventually added to Wikipedia:Sockpuppetry as a de facto rule. This one particularly irritates me—there are completely legitimate reasons for clean starts, but it puts anyone who's done so in the position of either not mentioning it and having a sword of Damocles hanging over them should it ever be discovered, declaring the prior account and thus voiding the point of a privacy-related clean start, or mentioning the account without disclosing what it is and forever having snide "what have they got to hide?" whispers behind their back. ‑ Iridescent 17:23, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

We have had a Cleanstart candidate pass unopposed in the last year, disclosing that they had a former account, but not disclosing what it was. I was the nominator then and I'm happy to give email advice to others who want to run but are in similar situation. Ϣere SpielChequers 16:01, 24 July 2021 (UTC)

Our formal policies on the matter are mutually contradictory. As it stands policy is literally simultaneously "you must list all your former accounts at RFA", "you don't need to list your former accounts but you must disclose their existence and inform Arbcom of their names", and "you're under no obligation to disclose anything provided you're not doing it to be deceptive". Wikipedia:Clean start#Requests for adminship says You are not obliged to reveal previous accounts; however, it is strongly recommended that you inform the Arbitration Committee (in strictest confidence if you wish) of the existence of a previous account or accounts prior to seeking adminship or similar functionary positions (i.e., you're under no obligation to tell anyone, but if you haven't even told Arbcom then don't expect anyone to defend you if your former account comes back to bite you), while Wikipedia:Sockpuppetry#Inappropriate uses of alternative accounts says You may not run for positions of trust without disclosing that you have previously edited under another account (i.e., a prospective admin following Wikipedia's own written policy at WP:CLEANSTART would be in breach of policy).

Last year's example about which you're talking was someone who was happy to disclose that they had a previous account, but just didn't want to say what it was. Even in that case, they only notified a single, trustworthy, arb of the previous account, rather than following the actual instructions (Adminship reflects the community's trust in an individual, not an account, so when applying for adminship, it is expected that you will disclose past accounts openly, or email the arbitration committee if the accounts must be kept private. Administrators who fail to disclose past accounts risk being desysopped, particularly if knowledge of them would have influenced the outcome of the RfA.), and as such are theoretically nominally liable to summary desysopping if a particularly assholey wikilawyer tries to push the point at WP:BN.

If we take "you must email Arbcom if you're not willing to disclose the former accounts openly" as the actual policy rather than "you don't need to disclose your former accounts but it may be held against you if you did not mention it at the time if issues around it are later uncovered", I wouldn't hold it against anyone if they refused to run at RFA (or did what Hammersoft did and just inform one arb rather than the whole committee). Almost all the people who've been on Arbcom over the years have been decent people trying to do the right thing (even if I've often disagreed with them about what the right thing is) but it only takes one bad apple to create a situation where either your details are published or you're being extorted with the threat of your details being published, and some of these apples aren't just overripe but downright rotten. ‑ Iridescent 13:35, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

Sorry for interjecting and sorry about placement here; I didn't really know where to add this to this conversation. Feel free to move my comment if it makes any sense to do so. The reason I didn't inform ArbCom is that there have been multiple breaches (and some suspected ones) over the years. I don't trust ArbCom, as a body, in the slightest. Given that such information can lay around permanently, and come before the eyes of people who aren't even on Wikipedia yet, the idea that information within ArbCom is secure is laughable. Data that isn't retained is data that can't be breached. The opposite is true as well. --Hammersoft (talk) 17:23, 2 August 2021 (UTC)
I'm trying to decide what exactly you mean by "the opposite". EEng 18:52, 2 August 2021 (UTC)
- Data that is retained is data that can be breached. --Hammersoft (talk) 19:29, 2 August 2021 (UTC)

This isn't an easy circle to square, but there are two points I would pick up on. Firstly as per that RFA I think it possible to disclose the "existence of a previous account" without disclosing the name of that former account. Secondly the risk as I see it is if the former account is subsequently uncovered and people are saying "Oh if I'd known that was who you were" or "you said this was the only account you had edited for in the last six years, and that account was at the heart of a crisis four years ago". Judging by recent precedent, if someone runs at RFA saying "I had an account as a teenager that got a bit controversial at times, but I don't have the password and that account hasn't edited for more than nine years." then I doubt that the community would see that as reason to oppose an RFA, or would be calling for a desysop if the original account was unmasked, unless that is the new admin was to use the tools to settle old scores from nine years earlier. In other words, that route is fine if your former account was uncontentious or enough time has passed. Whilst anyone running on the basis that "I had an account as a teenager that got a bit controversial at times, but I don't have the password and that account hasn't edited for more than two years." would in my view be over optimistic at the community's short termism. I leave it to others to guess where the breakpoint is between two years and nine or who other than NYB would be acceptable to check and vouch for a former account. Ϣere SpielChequers 15:32, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

and as such are theoretically nominally liable to summary desysopping if a particularly assholey wikilawyer tries to push the point at WP:BN. Well, it turned out that some portions of the SOCK policy never had community support to begin with and misinterpreted the underlying discussions (although the close was more conservative than the consensus in the discussion).

Slight tangent but what I find more worrying are the number of PAGs out there that contain text that purports to be consensus but likely has no support to begin with. English Wikipedia has like what, 300 PAGs? For example, likely most of the 91 pages in Category:Wikipedia naming conventions lack broad consensus. Several of these 'guidelines' are still hosted in WikiProject space. Some were marked as guidelines immediately on creation with next to no support at all. I suspect "guideline" meant a lot less in the old days than it does now, where they're now held as inviolable commandments whose violation results in a block. Creating a new one also seems relatively difficult due to the WP:CREEP opposes. The latter is probably enough to tank most naming convention -> guideline RfCs nowadays, so you have to wonder how many of those conventions would pass an RfC now if they had to go through one. And that's just the ones whose entire existence is a problem; the others probably have several clauses with minimal backing.

About ArbCom's record-keeping, it's apparently impossible to actually delete their private wiki records (WMF Legal would say it in different words: Regarding wikis, it is possible to actually delete something from the Wikipedia database, but you're right that it's done very rarely because it can disrupt Wikipedia's site stability. Actual deletion is used in, for example, removal of child sexual abuse material.), and there's no solution yet for the mailing list problem (although Legal is optimistic that it may become easier [in terms of technical feasibility] going forward to delete old threads from Arbcom emails, either upon request or after a long time of them no longer being useful. -- of course, it'd then need a few willing arbs willing to sift through two decades of emails). I feel like these facts alone should make a "requirement to disclose to ArbCom" untenable. You can decide to trust a specific individual, but can't really evaluate whether you trust future arbs whose names nobody knows. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 11:55, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

I'll make an aside about your second-paragraph tangent to this aside. I agree that there are PAGs out there that probably have little consensus. I have the feeling that they sometimes get created, especially in relation to technical things like templates, redirects, and categories, by users who have some particular pet-peeve, and who then flaunt them as The Rules^TM. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:53, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

There isn't a clear right answer, as the lines are blurry and depend on the exact circumstances. I suspect quite a few people—particularly anyone who's been around long enough to pass RFA—couldn't name all their former accounts even if they wanted to. I know I've certainly created assorted throwaway accounts for things like demonstrating the account creation interface which are theoretically "sockpuppets", but which I couldn't list if you put a gun to my head; none of them have ever done anything remotely controversial, but each is theoretically a grenade waiting to go off if anyone ever were to somehow make the connection. There's also an even blurrier line about the meatpuppetry/sockpuppetry distinction: if I live with someone who's also a WP editor, and we occasionally use each other's accounts accidentally or to save the hassle of logging in and out, then the accounts are technically socks; but I wouldn't feel particularly inclined to list my exes or my family members on a public page like RFA for the assorted stalkers and psychos to pore over. It doesn't matter whether there would be opposition at RFA for failing to disclose accounts in these situations, or if someone would subsequently be calling for an admin's head if a failure to disclose came to light; what I'm saying is that the potential has a chilling effect on candidates in this situation.

Regarding English Wikipedia has like what, 300 PAGs?, you're probably out by at least an order of magnitude. The {{Wikipedia policies and guidelines}} template is transcluded over 3000 times, and by no means all policy and guideline pages bother to include it—there are vast numbers of "guidelines" like Bagpipe player notability guidelines, the Manual of Style for Stringed Instrument Tunings and Guidelines for writing about Van Halen (yes really), where one person decided to codify their pet hobby horse circa 2006 and since nobody else gave a shit, it's stuck around for so long it's now "established practice". (As I may have mentioned once or twice, the process by which WP:Five pillars went from "highly dubious personal essay about one particular editor's personal priorities" to "holy writ" purely by virtue of all the existing editors ignoring it so nobody ever bothered to question it, and subsequently a fresh generation of editors seeing it and assuming it was some kind of official statement of principles, is IMO the platonic ideal of this particular failing of Wikipedia.)

I don't know for sure—it's been a decade since it became Someone Else's Problem—but AFAIK the inability to delete pages from Arbwiki is nothing to do with legal liability and just an artefact of how MediaWiki works, in the same way that short of tampering with the servers it's impossible to completely delete a page from Wikipedia. I can't see why Legal would care in any case; Arbwiki isn't the juicy Secret Backroom Of The Cabal which some of the more excitable conspiracy theorists believe, it's a dull mix of draft wordings, a handful of discussions of matters with potential privacy issues, and a vast stack of "User:Alice is a co-worker with User:Bob and as such may show up as a false positive on checkuser" routine disclosures. From memory, the only thing I ever saw on there which would have caused even a flicker of interest were it to have leaked was the arguments about who would be invited to join the ~~Provisional Emergency Government~~ "Advisory Council on Project Development" during the fiasco of the failed coup in 2009, and the only reason I even remember that is that I noticed I was one of the names that had been considered and rejected. ‑ Iridescent 15:38, 30 July 2021 (UTC)
Apologies to Alice and Bob for the unintentional pings; it never occurred to me that these would both be actual real editors rather than blocked-out placeholder accounts like User:Example. ‑ Iridescent 17:00, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

Two clarifications: The {{Wikipedia policies and guidelines}} template is transcluded over 3000 times -- I don't think most are PAGs. That template is transcluded on a lot of WikiProject main pages apparently, and on a lot of pages that aren't PAGs. But even for actual WikiProject guidance, I don't think one could go to AN requesting a block against a user for not obeying a WikiProject ordinance.

Re the ArbCom data, last time I posed the question I was directed to Legal by the arbs. The paragraph was in relation to but it only takes one bad apple to create a situation where either your details are published or you're being extorted with the threat of your details being published. But as for whether it's a legal issue in other contexts, I'd imagine some admins would interpret an argument in the affirmative as inherently being a WP:NLT violation, so perhaps not the best place to discuss that part. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 17:53, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

This is definitely not the best page to be saying I don't think one could go to AN requesting a block against a user for not obeying a WikiProject ordinance. It was before your time, but this was the talkpage on which this discussion took place, which in turn set the chain of events in motion that led to one of the most ill-tempered Arbcom cases in the project's history, which in turn led to the current cold-war stalemate over the concepts of "local consensus", "article ownership" and "subject matter expert" and on in which circumstances the views of people with a strong interest in a particular field should take precedence over general policies and guidelines on articles in that particular field. I can assure you that not only do people go to AN requesting a block against a user for not obeying a WikiProject ordinance, without even trying I can think of at least a dozen long-term editors who've been banned, blocked, forced into retirement or subjected to very strong topic bans over the issue. (As I type this, this thread is still open on this very page; the relationship between policy, guideline, and local consensus is a live issue, not an obscure meta debate from the distant past.)

That's not what "no legal threats" means. If you were to post "I demand Arbcom delete anything in their archives that mentions me or I'll sue", that would be a legal threat, but just asking questions regarding "is it legal to talk about people behind their back under the laws in which Wikipedia operates?" and "are there ever circumstances in which server-side deletion would be preferable to super-oversighting at staff/dev level?" are straightforward questions. (Unless the name on your passport is "Procrastinating Reader", or you own a business callled "ProcrastinatingReader" that could potentially suffer as a result of material the WMF is hosting, then even in a privacy-hardline country like France a judge would laugh you out. For Recital 26 to apply, there needs to be a hypothetical means by which someone could connect User:ProcrastinatingReader to a real-life person.)

What the "sensitive personal data held by the WMF" actually looks like

To reiterate my earlier point, I think you're vastly overestimating the amount of information Arbcom and other secure WMF sites like the functionaries list hold about even long-term abuse cases, let alone common-or-garden editors. We tend to shroud Checkuser in mystery—even though it's open-source software and anyone who case can see exactly how it works—because it serves a useful deterrent purpose if people think The Man might be watching them. In reality, aside from IP addresses and useragents, the only information on you the WMF could hold even if it wanted to is information you've provided to them or information you've provided to someone else who passed it on to them. Unless you're either the subject of a Wikipedia article or you're one of those people who's chosen to post their life story on their user page, Papa John's almost certainly holds more personal information about you than the entire WMF ecosystem combined does, even if you've never bought a pizza in your life. (Ever noticed that when browsing the internet, you see adverts for things connected to other sites you've visited, but you don't see adverts related to pages you've browsed on Wikipedia? There's a reason for that. It's easy for the activities of some of the creepy sleazeballs in SF and on the BoT to mask the fact that the sleazeballs are very much a minority, that the majority of the people gathered around the money pit aren't cynical snouts-in-the-troughers and at least think they're doing the right thing, and that for all its faults the WMF tends to be one of the most ethical organizations within Big Tech.) ‑ Iridescent 20:24, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for posting that CU image. (I also went and looked at the others in its commons-cat.) I always wondered what it looked like. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:44, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

Aside-to-an-aside about data retention and data transfer

Well, if you're sure I won't be blocked for it... The username isn't personal information, but IP addresses are (Recital 30); meta:Data retention guidelines confirms the WMF considers that personal information. If I had an old account with my real name (FTR: I don't) and go ahead and email ArbCom about it, I'd say that's also processing personal information, since now the WMF would be processing my real name.

CU being shrouded in mystery, as well as the lack of really any policy on how data can be stored, really does just leave one guessing as to exactly what the storage requirements of that data are. It's clear that data in the tool is stored for 90 days before being deleted, perhaps with some leftovers in the backups, since that part is open-source[6]. As far as I know, and quite reasonably of course, data is kept longer for various reasons including anti-abuse efforts. There's no policy on where that data can be stored, I presume on your computer is acceptable, but say it's on CUwiki. I think we agree that information on CUwiki is kept forever, since it is technically impossible to delete it. Immediate next thought is what constitutes reason to store someone's personal information (forever). There are various examples I've stumbled across at SPI but I don't keep notes or something. Off the top of my head there's CommanderWaterford. Here a CU confirms that data is being stored about that user, but at the time the user had no CU blocks. Checking their talk page archives reveals this discussion. (Perhaps there's other context but immediately the apparent "policy about disclosing former accounts" to get involved in backend issues seems to contradict Wikipedia:Clean start, but that seems to be a separate policy issue.) As far as I can see, and I can appreciate perhaps there's more pertinent private data such as IP blocks that I'm not privy to, there was no apparent master identified, no concrete belief of abuse other than them "obviously not being new", and although one former account was disclosed it doesn't appear to have been a sockpuppet. So ultimately, why was CU data retained forever about the user?

They're not the only case, and perhaps are a more justifiable one than the average since there was at least a discussion with a CU onwiki about the possible issue. I'm not really saying anyone did anything wrong in any of these cases, but I think there's a transparency problem here. No provisions in the CU policy or data retention policy exist for when the decision to forever retain personal information can be made. It's probably very defensible for WP:BKFIP who has perhaps over a hundred CU blocks. But, and sorry if it sounds a bit conspiracy but in the absence of transparency it seems a reasonable conclusion to me, there's no reason why a CU couldn't decide there's a reason to store your data or mine, never informing us about it, and it seems no policy would forbid them from it. Since we don't know data is being stored, there'd be no reason to email ArbCom/the Ombuds to complain. Even for BKFIP I'm not sure permanent storage of data is legal (banks delete information after 7 years; credit record bureaus even delete fraud indicators after 6 years[1]), and according to my conversation with WMF Legal their policy would have deletion at 10 years of such data. But, since it's impossible to delete data on CUwiki, how exactly are they going to do that after the 10 years is up? Never mind data stored on a CU's computer (perhaps enwiki CUs decide not to do it, but can the same be said about CUs across Wikimedia? And then there's the IPs/associated data floating around in IRC logs of non-WMF networks; apparently such approaches aren't uncommon on other projects.)

That's just one element of the CU problem, in my eyes. The ArbCom problem is a separate one, and I think if people are disclosing past accounts that contain their real name there needs to be a good process for its retention. For example, if ArbCom had my real name due to a past account and I appeared to retire for a couple years, I think that data should be erased since any reasonable processing basis seems lapsed. If not a legal issue, solely for the fact that a mailing list full of information, going back to 2003, and some of it being identifying that's never deleted, seems like a ticking bomb.

In regards to Papa John's, I remember reading (but may misremember) you have a marketing background and I don't so I'm not saying you're wrong at all, but isn't advertising data usually stored by advertisers like Google, and I believe Papa John's wouldn't store any identifiable information about me? (I did buy a pizza from them once, in store, so I guess I might be on a CCTV reel somewhere. The pizza wasn't really good to be honest.) Google seems to have a pretty tight sharing policy.

[1]: equifax . co.uk/crain/retention (blocked by spam blacklist) ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 21:41, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

I definitely don't have a marketing background—I'm not sure where you saw that—but I do have a security background, and the amount of information even the most innocuous companies syphon up about anyone who interacts with them is eye-watering. (Some jurisdictions mandate that companies disclose what information they're gathering, albeit the disclosure is generally buried in a well-hidden link on an obscure subpage. To stick with Papa John's, this is what they're gathering; the equivalent list for Wikipedia is buried here.

As per my earlier comments, Checkuser is a piece of open source software, not a mystic ritual. The user manual is here, and anyone who's sufficiently curious about how it operates can just install MediaWiki on their own computer and play around with it. On a non-WMF site, you can amend $wgCUDMaxAge to whatever you like to change the time data is held for, but on everything WMF-run it's religiously set at a maximum of 90 days. There's obviously no way to stop an unscrupulous CU from copying data and storing it offline, but anyone caught doing this would be hauled over the coals for breach of trust. One of the CUs or arbs would obviously be better placed than me to advise, but to the best of my knowledge they don't store any IP data at all on the private wikis (other than the same very vague "usually uses this IP range" type stuff we also keep publicly at WP:LTA); AFAIK the only personal data on Arbwiki is of the "this user is married to that user" and "these two accounts are the same person but don't want to make the link public" type. US law about what constitutes "data" in this context is fiendishly complicated and governed by legislation introduced post-9/11 which was left intentionally vague to create loopholes for spookware like MARINA to operate; if WMF Legal are claiming to be certain about anything, take it with a huge pinch of salt since the test cases have yet to happen and as such it's literally not possible to say what the legal status (as opposed to good practice) is regarding a lot of things like this. If you prod SMcCandlish, he used to work for EFF and consequently is one of the few people here who's actually competent to talk about this kind of thing (although obviously bear in mind that EFF has their own particular angle on information security). ‑ Iridescent 22:55, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

Hi Iri, long time no speak, but to your point on people overestimating what is on private wikis, I'm one of the more active en.wiki CUs on cuwiki and I go months at a time without logging into it much less adding stuff to it. en.wiki CUs barely use it. It's primary use is by non-English projects. En.wiki CUs tend to just email each other directly for a second opinion since there's almost always another CU active who has experience with someone who is a repeat customer. That isn't really the case for other projects, so they use it more. I've seen multiple LTAs who don't even have pages speculate as to all the mysteries we keep there. It's just not the case.

Directly to your question on IP data: it is stored on cuwiki, and can be raw CU results. That being said, like I mentioned above, its rarely used on en.wiki except in cases where someone's been a recurring problem that lets their old account go stale or in cases where you want a bunch of people to review the data. Other projects use it more often for the reasons I noted above. TonyBallioni (talk) 23:09, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

@TonyBallioni: To the extent that you can and want to comment, where and why was data stored in the case I mentioned? ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 23:20, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

There can be a few reasons and none of them have anything to do with storing data on cuwiki or offline. In no particular order: the CU log is forever by design, and we are very open about this (Risker can comment more about the rationale.) If you check SPI with any frequency you will see us mentioning things like "based on the log". In other instances CUs who have been around a long time and have dealt with a case before will remember where it was just because they've been the one who has been dealing with it forever. There's nothing nefarious about remember the geography, ISP, etc. of the repeat sockmaster who you've check 20 times over 6 months. In other cases, someone has a non-normal geography for the English Wikipedia (i.e. not in the US, Canada, UK, India, or Australia) and at least for me, those stick out.

In the case above, I checked because the account fell into the pattern of a legion of LTAs who aren't particularly competent at fighting vandals, try to get involved behind the scenes, rush to get involved in areas because they want to pass RfA, etc., mass welcome new users as a way to prove involvement, among other things. If you want an example, Zawl is probably the most well known, but there are many others, and they all tend to blend together, so the exact master might not be known at the time of running the check even though they display the same behaviour that is a trend of multiple sockmasters that create substantial work for the community. The CheckUser policy explicitly allows for checks to be run without a known master if there is legitimate belief that an account might be violating the sock policy--an account coming back to acquire permissions such as AWB that they'd been denied or blocked for abusing is a violation of the sockpuppetry policy, and when the behavioural evidence suggests it is a returning user who may have been blocked or had other problems, checking to see if it is does not constitute a violation of the policy.

To your question about if data was stored: I checked my email. All I said was to look at the CU log and it ruled out the accused puppet from being a CW sock. I've also never stored any data locally on my computer. TonyBallioni (talk) 23:53, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

I've also never stored any data locally on my computer. Yeah, I didn't really think enwiki CUs did it, but as I say I'm not sure the same is true across Wikimedia. I've seen several comments on meta about CUs on other wikis doing it. According to a steward it even used to be the advice of the Ombuds Commission. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 00:09, 31 July 2021 (UTC)

I mean, I think you're taking what revi said pretty out of context. There's a mailing list set up for people to share IP data over email that is used all the time, and there's nothing at all in the policy that prohibits the sharing by email. en.wiki CUs do this frequently as well. Again we don't hide this, and I think we say enough I'll email you or check your email to get it across that we do discuss results via email, and the access to nonpublic personal data policy foresees people having data in places that are not the CU tool or cuwiki (When a Designated Community Member’s access to a certain tool is revoked, for any reason, that member must destroy all Nonpublic Personal Data that they have as a result of that tool; the only way it can be destroyed is if you have it off the tool.) I don't really think anyone stores massive text files of CU data on their local hard drive, and I'm pretty sure that isn't want revi was suggesting was being advised. TonyBallioni (talk) 00:21, 31 July 2021 (UTC)

I didn't say "massive text files", but storing or transmitting IP data via email or IRC is the storage of personal data on non-WMF-controlled servers (be it in log files stored on personal hard drives, Google's email servers, or Freenode's servers).

For clarity though, my point is neither on the validity of the checks (which I'm sure is fine), or the technical data exposed by the tool, or a claim that any current practice violates any Wikimedia policy (as I said: There's no policy on where that data can be stored, there's no reason why a CU couldn't ..., etc), or that anyone is behaving nefariously. It's solely about a perceived lack of transparency, and on some parts just dubious processing, on the means and duration of manually storage or transmission of that data, especially long-term.

That having been said and reading the Access to nonpublic personal data policy you link, although I see it's clearly disclosed in the CheckUser policy, where in the nonpublic policy is that (the sharing by email) permitted? Strictly speaking, isn't transferring and storing data on third party servers technically sub-processing and subject to the requirements of Article 28? And, in effect, you're saying that (some) WMF users' IP data is being transferred and stored on Google's servers (assuming the hypothetical CU is using Gmail)? ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 01:00, 31 July 2021 (UTC)

I'm not a lawyer so I don't comment on anything legal; my advice to all editors, admins, and functionaries is to do the same for a variety of reasons, not limited to the ones Iri hinted at above.

On your transparency point, I disagree that we aren't transparent about how data is stored and transmitted. The overwhelming majority of what we've been discussing is publicly documented, and if it's not, you could easily diff to it because enough people have talked about it that anyone who wanted could find it. We could likely mention cuwiki exists on the CheckUser page, but its not exactly a secret and we openly discuss it exists. The fact that the culog is forever should be readily apparent to anyone with an understanding of mediawiki (all of its logs are forever), and again, this is something we very openly talk about. The use of email and IRC are public on the page, and stewards openly discuss giving CUs access to them on m:SRP. Very little of the mechanics of how we work off-wiki here isn't known.

Especially given the current data, ecclesiastical, and journalism scandal of the minute, I hardly think an organization that very openly discusses how data is stored and used, has some of the most rigorous data scrubbing out there (its 90 days to the nanosecond in CU), and honestly doesn't collect all that much from you is the best target of a data storage transparency stand.

You could certainly find ways to demand more transparency, but most of that would be adding a few words that no one really opposes and is already public knowledge to documentation pages, and the CU page is hardly the only policy page that could have more detail on technical things that everyone knows but no one has bothered to write down. Anything more than that risks being a bureaucratic process that would serve a handful of people who are curious about the exact email providers of CUs or the like, but wouldn't actually tell you that much. Also, as an aside, I'm pretty confident that the WMF uses Google as their email provider as well. TonyBallioni (talk) 06:27, 31 July 2021 (UTC)

This is definitely getting into the long grass, but Gmail would be considered a processor under GDPR in these circumstances, and as such covered by Article 28(3). (Opinion not legal advice but in this case I'm confident on it.) Whatever one's personal thoughts on Google, neither the WMF nor any individuals are ever going to be prosecuted for working on the assumption that Google can be assumed to be processing data in line with their legal obligtions. If third parties weren't permitted to pass data to and from Google it would literally shut down 7% of the internet instantly; since not trusting Google would presumably also imply not trusting AWS, that would take a further 30%-ish down with it, and we'd already be looking at total economic collapse scenarios. (If it's the basic principle of your personal data being processed by Google, Microsoft and Amazon to which you object, then assuming you have or ever have had any one of a job; a computer; a plane ticket; a telephone; a motor vehicle; a home address; a bank account; a subscription to any product or service; a hotel reservation; a social security/national insurance number; an email address; a credit card, I have some bad news for you…)

Statement of the obvious perhaps, but the usual reminder that GDPR is EU legislation and UK GDPR is UK legislation, and the WMF is in the US. The European Commission (and to a much lesser extent the UK ICO) will occasionally go after US companies, but it tends to be over the unnecessary mass processing of sensitive personal information, not "technically this could be considered personal data" stuff like IP addresses. (A decent rule of thumb is "if this data leaked into the public domain, could it potentially put someone at any kind of risk?".) GDPR is good practice to follow wherever you are, and there are some specific actions which Wikipedia/media functionaries who live within GDPR countries probably ought to avoid (as an admin I try to avoid using cookie blocks if at all possible, for instance), but if you're entertaining WR fantasies of the admins being rounded up and thrown in a dungeon or of an Apple-size fine landing on Jimmy Wales's doorstep you're liable to be disappointed.

Other than that, then What Tony Said. Apologies if I'm misunderstanding you, but you're giving the impression of someone who believes the paranoid cranks. In reality Wikipedia isn't a corrupt and secretive behemoth, it's a radically open project that happens to have had a handful of corrupt and secretive characters pass through its ranks, and the radical transparency just means that the sleazebags and grifters are more visible than they are elsewhere, even though they're fewer in number. All your concerns seem to be concerns with the structure of the internet itself, not with Wikipedia per se. ‑ Iridescent 06:46, 31 July 2021 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure even CUs are classed as processors for article 28 purposes. Hardly any of the requirements of that article are met in the case of Google/Freenode/etc or CUs; I'd be happy to enumerate, but I don't sense there's interest for me to do that and I don't want to clog up your talk page too much. There's a difference between Google consumer (i.e. anything @gmail.com) and Google for organisations. [7] For the former, If you use a consumer version of Gmail, Drive or other Google product, the Google Terms of Service and Privacy Policy apply to you. Google doesn’t offer a Data Processing Agreement for the consumer versions of Gmail or Drive. Google does not act as a data processor for the consumer version of these services. i.e. they're the data controller for any information stored on such accounts, and such information is open to the usual uses for them (it's not a secret that Google scans emails for consumer accounts, although it apparently stopped doing so for the purpose of ads). Processing is more restricted for organisation accounts, for which they do have an agreement, but CUs are obviously not using such accounts. TLDR; These accounts are distinct from the Google accounts used by WMF employees. Such processing, since it has no appropriate contract, fails 28(3), and in any case fails 28(2) since it's really sub-processing (WMF -> CU -> Google).

My concern is neither about the structure of the internet or that there's a secret conspiracy. But it is straight negligence or sloppy processing by the WMF. There are very good reasons why you don't use MediaWiki software to store personal information, or damn mailing lists, and it's because they make responsible data practices a nightmare and largely impossible. And I guess personally I'm just surprised, given the furore over copyright image descriptions or about RedWarn (an opt-in non-WMF script) running on non-WMF infrastructure, that there's no concern that the WMF's data processing of personal information in this area is completely foul of EU law, which it's required to comply with and they admit so at the bottom of the privacy policy. (And probably US law too, since they're registered in California and the CCPA has similar requirements.) They don't even comply with their own set requirements, such as 10-year disposal, since such disposal is technically impossible. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 09:30, 31 July 2021 (UTC)

I also don't think the idea that a steward/CU has explained a specific practice in some diff somewhere (if you can find it), and that you can piece together the processing if you can find all such diffs, is 'public disclosure' or 'transparency'. That's substantially more difficult than even understanding the obscure legalese-worded privacy policies that are so condemned these days. I'm not even familiar with most of these diffs and I actually tried to find them, so it's largely hopeless for the random IP signing up to an account. It's not a reasonable expectation IMO, doubly so for a Big Tech company like the WMF. Imagine if Google gave you a data dump of their mailing list and said "All our privacy practices are somewhere in here. Hence, we consider ourselves transparent and them publicly disclosed." ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 10:20, 31 July 2021 (UTC)

I was pinged to this thread but between Iridescent's general take and Tony B.'s CU-related specifics, I don't think I have much to add. PR is probably right to raise concerns like this, though I don't have enough background detail to know if the concerns are precisely valid. But they're questions that need exploring. That is, WMF spends way, way more energy going down every copyright law rat hole (to a full-on paranoid level) than ensuring privacy and security compliance, and it shows. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 10:23, 31 July 2021 (UTC)

Just two comments: based on the way you're discussing these issues, I'm going to assume you're not a lawyer. My take anytime similar issues have come up has always been that the Foundation's legal team are professionals with more experience in these new and ambiguous areas of the law than most lawyers, and if there is one thing the Foundation is good at it is quickly determining what is likely to get it or volunteers sued. While these might be valid questions to raise to them as professionals who are paid to make these determinations, raising them as a part of the discussion of the role of community volunteers is armchair lawyering at best, and using legal terms to create a chilling effect and create fear at worst.

On the transparency point, I think you are missing the point that Iridescent and myself were getting at. Everything we are discussing has been publicly documented in general terms. My point about being able to easily find a link to where it was discussed is that if this was really not transparent, you wouldn't find people willing to talk about it so openly, either as part of doing the job, or when responding to questions about how things are handled. Ironically, if we were to document everything to the level you seem to be wanting, it'd probably be more dense than the legalese you're criticizing as not being transparent, and even less people would read it than currently do. To borrow a word from Iridescent, the only people who would read it would be cranks who obsess over privacy and are far outside the mainstream of even pro-privacy organizations and movements.

I have no objections to adding clarifications to public facing pages, but saying that our already transparent stance on that isn't transparent because it might have some areas where there could be small changes to the wording to make it clearer isn't a fair characterization from where I'm standing. TonyBallioni (talk) 14:33, 31 July 2021 (UTC)

I feel like you're putting words in my mouth, and that comment seems like a bit of a deflection tbh. Nobody said anything about anyone getting sued (much less a volunteer; "by the WMF" was in italics). Saying the WMF is not complying with laws, which it very obviously isn't, is not the same thing as saying they'll be sued for it. The errors are blatant, to which I haven't seen a substantive response yet, and I'd only be repeating myself to say it all over again. It's not like I'm asking for a sentence to be added to the CU policy describing how you name pages on CUwiki...

Recall this discussion about RedWarn turned into the 'privacy and security issues' of using 'an external CDN' hosted on Google, and again that was a non-WMF, opt-in, unofficial userscript. Here you're saying there's no real issue with data collected directly by the WMF about all users being passed around like loose paper, given to Google under consumer arrangements for them to do whatever they want with it, left around in Freenode's logs (a network that was subject to a "hostile takeover"), permanently stored because the WMF doesn't want to pay a dev to move to a decent system or implement a deletion mechanism, having no arrangements in place for the transmission of data in the first place, etc... ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 15:14, 31 July 2021 (UTC)

Sharing of private data ought to be done via an end-to-end encrypted channel, such as encrypted email. Regular email is as private as sending a postcard by snail mail. isaacl (talk) 14:39, 31 July 2021 (UTC)

I did some research back in 2015 on (at the time) current CU practices as a prelude to seeing what they would conflict with GDPR (my job at the time involved prep work for potential legal issues over data rentention). I also got answers to all the process questions from either other sources and the technical aspects by loading up the CU module myself in a test wiki and playing around (thats all sitting in a folder off-wiki on my drive somewhere). I have no idea how much they have changed since then, but I would need to be persuaded by someone reasonably competent (which rules out the WMF staff) that personal data (as defined by GDPR) is being monitored, stored and deleted in a timely and secure manner in line with GDPR regs. As it stood, the practices in 2015 were absolutely in breach of GDPR as it was subsequently implemented, so unless they drastically changed how they operated, that state would continue. In terms of Iridescent's "The WMF is in the US" - this is true and affords the WMF a reasonable level of protection as a corporate entity. Fortunately GDPR and other relevant general data laws allow individuals to be prosecuted. Which should give any CU or WMF staff member resident in the UK/EU pause for thought. You absolutely do not have protection (as an EU individual or as a US individual) if you run a check on an EU/UK citizen and share that information across international boundaries. Tell me, how much use do functionaries and staff get out of IRC and Mailing lists again where the other members could be anywhere in the world? I cant remember but did Jimbo flee the UK after the Tories came into power... The only reason I have not personally put in a complaint to ICO over it is because the WMF and individuals with the relevant access to personal data have not pissed me off personally enough. I was close with WP:FRAMGATE, but since Fram has more class than the scumbags who labelled them a harrasser and compiled a dossier on him, if he wasnt interested in shanking them, I wasnt on his behalf. (My advice to Fram from a legal standpoint was just to SAR the members of ARBCOM who were in the EU and get them to hand it over.) Only in death does duty end (talk) 08:08, 2 August 2021 (UTC)

Thanks OID. The questions in your sandbox are excellent, and also clears up what Tony was getting at with the "the log is forever" stuff. That's pretty horrifying TBH, and makes a joke out of "90 day retention" and also the "10 year disposal" of any other class of information. The WMF knowingly deciding to do nothing about these issues says a lot about how much they value their users' privacy and data.

Since Hammersoft was interested in answers to the questions I'd asked them, he'll probably be even more interested in the ones you did. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 10:26, 2 August 2021 (UTC)

I will say I cant speak for anywhere else in the EU, but ICO in the UK absolutely do have appetite for going after foreign big names at a corporate and an individual level if they think the breach is legitimate. I will also say that being a volunteer is no real defense either. ICO has had a number (and not an insignificant number) of cases where breaches were as a result of indiscriminate volunteer access to PII. Usually involving charities. Allowing volunteers to store PII on volunteer hardware for example. It would be trivial for me to formulate a complaint using the 2015 circumstances under the current regulatory environment. The outcome wouldnt necessararily be certain, but I can gurantee you it would be investigated. Of course who knows, the WMF might have tightened up their processes since then :D I have not had cause to dive back into it. Yet. Only in death does duty end (talk) 11:27, 2 August 2021 (UTC)

Might interest you

Latest comment: 3 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion

And your wise institutional memory might be useful. E Eng 21:01, 9 July 2021 (UTC)

Meh. "Harassment" is one of those words that doesn't mean the same thing in Wikispeak as it does in English. In the context in which it's being discussed there, it means "people shouldn't be allowed to have any opinion that isn't my own"; as such, it doesn't matter what consensus the discussion reach since the admins will just ignore it and go with the real-world definition of "harassment". For all Wikipedia's faults, when it comes to cases of genuine harassment the administrative apparatus is generally both quick and efficient at clamping down on it. ‑ Iridescent 21:52, 12 July 2021 (UTC)

Pornhub, Classic Nudes & Copyright

Latest comment: 3 years ago43 comments10 people in discussion

Not sure you are aware of this, but seminal porn site PornHub (sorry I couldnt resist that one) has opened a 'Classic Nudes' section. I hesitate to link directly to a porn site here (I am sure you can find it) but the Daily Beast has a story on it. I came across it (sorry sorry) in a thread at the other place and thought you might have some thoughts on the copyright aspect, given the history of Wikipedia/Commons editors in their approach to appropriating art on display in museums. Only in death does duty end (talk) 15:58, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

Sorry if I'm being dense, but ... you couldn't resist that one what? E Eng 00:30, 23 July 2021 (UTC)

There is a double meaning to 'seminal'. Which in the context of Pornhub could apply either way, or both at once (much like a lot of its content). Dont make me explain terrible puns! Only in death does duty end (talk) 08:16, 23 July 2021 (UTC)

Sorry, still don't get it. Probably some obscure literary reference, I guess. E Eng 13:45, 23 July 2021 (UTC)

EEng, I'm not sure whether or not you are kidding about still not getting it. But, assuming that you really don't get the pun: seminal–semen. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:11, 23 July 2021 (UTC)

Tryptofish, I'm not sure whether or not you are kidding about not being sure about whether or not I was kidding. But anyway, I'm vaguely intuiting that it's not an obscure literary reference after all, am I right on that? E Eng 11:11, 25 July 2021 (UTC)

Alternative "everyday literary reference". Martinevans123 (talk) 11:18, 25 July 2021 (UTC)

As a very vague rule; on Wikipedia, assume anyone saying they don't get a joke is telling the truth. We have huge numbers of people with English as a second language, people on the spectrum who genuinely don't grasp jokes, or just people from places where the words in question have a different meaning. ‑ Iridescent 14:21, 25 July 2021 (UTC)

You must be joking. Martinevans123 (talk) 14:30, 25 July 2021 (UTC)

Yes, EEng, you are right on that. Iri, I imagine that EEng is in the category of people from places where the words have a different meaning, although I have no idea what that place or planet might be. Normally, I do assume someone is telling the truth about it, but EEng (the little squirt^[FBDB]) is such a performance artiste that I wanted to check. Anyway, I think it's now well past the point where everyone can go back to the seminary. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:18, 25 July 2021 (UTC)

This is probably the closest we'll ever, um, come to an appropriate moment for me to point out that men ejaculated in Sherlock Holmes 23 times. (At least one of these was followed by the insatiable Holmes's declaration that "I know where the stable boy sleeps.") E Eng 09:14, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

~~But did he even notice?~~ It's ok, apparently they did it in a canon. Martinevans123 (talk) 09:23, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

@EEng: Amateur. John Bennett Shaw covered this territory and more fifty years ago. Newyorkbrad (talk) 09:29, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

Best line: He cuddled the misshapen butt into his shoulder, giving a little sigh of satisfaction. E Eng 15:56, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

Soon followed, if one looks up the original, by "a long, silvery tinkle." (EMPT) Let's not go on. Newyorkbrad (talk) 20:33, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

By now, I should have learned never to try to explain anything to EEng! --Tryptofish (talk) 22:23, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

Yeah, Mr. So-called Lord 'Pedia EEng Whimsy, shove that in your lah-de-dah Deerstalker hat and smoke it!! Dotty L. Sprayers123 (talk) 22:39, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

Sorry, I don't get it. Probably some obscure literary reference, I guess. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:40, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

I wish I could get these obscure puns. Oh, rats! Martinevans123 (talk) 14:15, 23 July 2021 (UTC)

This all goes to show that the meaning of "seminal" can be a bit ... fluid. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 10:17, 31 July 2021 (UTC)

Here comes Bomis 2.0. --Tryptofish (talk) 16:29, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

None of the original images are in copyright as far as I can see so there's no question of infringing on the legal rights of the creators, and the artists are all long dead so there's not even an ethical question of upsetting them. I suppose there's a theoretical copyvio issue regarding the photographs of the original artworks, but I assume Pornhub isn't based in a country that recognizes sweat-of-the-brow so I doubt their lawyers are losing sleep. This kind of thing isn't anything new—tableaux vivants recreations of classic artworks as a pretext for live nudity in countries with theatrical censorship is a tradition dating back at least to the 19th century (Olga Desmond was a particularly famous example). It might annoy the curators at the Orsay, but this is ultimately no different to the 80s fad for porn parodies with names like Romancing the Bone and Sperms of Endearment. ‑ Iridescent 17:16, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

(adding) On a further Google, it looks like the Louvre and Uffizi are suing them for "violating the cultural heritage code", but even in the unlikely event that a court finds against Pornhub I'm certain the ECJ would overturn it. The cultural heritage laws are to allow the government to prevent artistically significant works being taken out of the country without consent, not to prevent people copying artworks; the implication that Wikipedia needs to pay the Uffizi for the privilege of hosting our Venus of Urbino article (which is the precedent that would be set) would have the sole result of making the French and Italian legal systems the laughing stocks of Europe. ‑ Iridescent 17:38, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

(adding again) And the Louvre has now withdrawn legal action. That was quick. ‑ Iridescent 17:44, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

In addition, I think that this story would not have attracted as much attention as it has, were it not for the tie-in with porn. If there were some aficionados-of-fine-arts website that displayed images of these works (indeed, not unlike quite a few user-pages here), it would have passed without news coverage, unless the museums had their lawyers go after that. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:21, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

Indeed; other than their original videos for which Pornhub presumably owns the copyright, there's nothing there one couldn't find on Commons. Bridgeman/Corel and National Gallery/Wikimedia were about specific technical points—in the first case whether a photograph of an artwork could be considered as creating a new work, and in the latter whether ultra-high-resolution images which required expensive technical skills to create could be resold by third parties without either crediting or paying the creator of the photograph. I'd consider the chances of the ECJ ruling straightforward, standard-resolution copies of public domain images to be zero (albeit if the Uffizi really wants to waste time, they could possibly make a case that photographs of the sculptures passes the threshold of originality). If anything, one would think the galleries would welcome the publicity, since presumably at least some of the one-handed readers might be motivated to visit the institutions in question and spend money in the gift shop. ‑ Iridescent 18:52, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

If anything, one would think the galleries would welcome the publicity, since presumably at least some of the one-handed readers might be motivated to visit the institutions in question and spend money in the gift shop. In theory maybe but I suspect that the "porn bad!" instinct is going to overrule that consideration. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 12:20, 23 July 2021 (UTC)

With or without their selfie sticks?? Martinevans123 (talk) 12:27, 23 July 2021 (UTC)

Meh. If the galleries are genuinely so Think Of The Children, the Orsay can quit selling every conceivable variety of L'Origine du monde tat (another candidate for the coveted "Wikipedia's Worst Article" award FWIW), the Tate can hide A Copulating Couple in a dusty backroom and stop putting on exhibitions with titles like Exposed: The Victorian Nude, and the Uffizi can stop having The Birth of Venus as the first image on their website. ‑ Iridescent 14:21, 23 July 2021 (UTC)

*Orsay Gift Shop tips: I went for the Handy Bed Duster and the Do-It-Yourself Courbet Welcome Doormat Kit. Martinevans123 (talk) 14:48, 23 July 2021 (UTC)

Don't even try—the Orsay's gift shop is at Joy Division Oven Gloves levels of beyond parody (as to be fair are most other gallery gift shops if they think there's potential to fleece tourists). Van Gogh skateboards at €550 a pop, anyone? ‑ Iridescent 15:27, 23 July 2021 (UTC)

Vincent Ear Muff in the shape of a sunflower? Martinevans123 (talk) 15:38, 23 July 2021 (UTC)

One of the more ironic outcomes for a bit of Vincent memorabilia :-) MarnetteD|Talk 19:37, 25 July 2021 (UTC)

I can do you a Vincent covid mask if that'll do. Seriously, "slap an artist on it" tat is beyond parody. ‑ Iridescent 16:01, 23 July 2021 (UTC)

Ah Iri, you're a real scream! Martinevans123 (talk) 16:08, 23 July 2021 (UTC)

Bad as these are, at no point do they approach the level of tat I saw on a visit to Knock in Ireland (wife's family are Irish Catholics), of a souvenir dinner plate with Padre Pio' face on it, complete with light up neon (small battery) round the edge, gold embossing, the works. It was on another level of tasteless. Sadly I cant find a picture of it. No one does hideous souvenir tat quite like the religious. A contradiction (as an athiest) I have never really understood. Only in death does duty end (talk) 10:49, 24 July 2021 (UTC)

"No surrender!!" -- Paisley Bathrooms 123 (talk) 10:55, 23 July 2021 (UTC)

With my serious hat on, it's probably more about cultural expectations than anything else. The RCC has 2000 years of precedent for "make the religious imagery as garish as possible to make sure people see and understand it" (those renaissance altarpieces that look so serene and understated when they're hanging in giant museums are very in-your-face when you see them in little village churches). As such, devout Catholics (who are presumably the target market) see the garishness as a signifier of "this is a religious image" rather than of tackiness, in the same way that if I see an album cover with a brightly-coloured and over-detailed drawing on it I don't think "this looks cheap and tacky" I think "this album is going to be drum-heavy psych". Secular artists can be just as over-the-top tacky—cue my usual plug that if you're ever in Brussels, visit the Wiertz Museum which is possibly the most jaw-dropping assemblages of bad taste ever assembled under a single roof, while someone could write (and possibly has written) an entire book about how consistently hideous 9/11 memorial artwork is. ‑ Iridescent 12:14, 24 July 2021 (UTC)

There ya go, Iri. But I do agree. Martinevans123 (talk) 12:22, 24 July 2021 (UTC)

That Venus de Milo is quite 'armless, you know. Martinevans123 (talk) 18:38, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

As per WP:WHAAOE, I'm now wondering about Fine art souvenir. Martinevans123 (talk) 20:42, 23 July 2021 (UTC)

I'm not too worried about the more commercial stuff in museums, as for tat I have a pair of aboriginal cufflinks and came back from Easter Island with a cuddly Moai. However copyright law does leave us with some images that are now in the public domain because the elderly photographer is long dead, but where the nubile young subject might still be alive, or have extant family members who would not be convinced that appropriate model consents were given. In my discussions with museums I've pointed out that some content is best not published, and not just the stuff where the copyright is debateable. Ϣere SpielChequers 17:12, 24 July 2021 (UTC)

There's a lot in museums that probably shouldn't be republished, either because we have concerns for people involved or their descendants, because the standards of what's acceptable have chenged (as anyone who worked on art articles when Ottava was active will know, a lot of European religious art could be considered child pornography by a strict reading of US law), because it's from one of those cultures where reproducing artworks or photographs is considered offensive, or just because selling it in the gift shop would be tasteless and would bring the museum into disrepute.

That said, while museums rightly should be able to decide what they sell in their own gift shop, and rightly should be able to decide which parts of their collection should be on display and which should be in storage, preventing the redistribution of public domain works for anything other than legal reasons is a bad idea. "Slippery slope" arguments are usually bogus, but well-intentioned moves like "we've removed certain portraits from our online catalog because they show the families of slave traders" sets a precedent, and it's a very short distance from there to governments or pressure groups leaning on institutions to censor their archives once that particular precedent has been set. ‑ Iridescent 06:48, 25 July 2021 (UTC)

Precious anniversary

Latest comment: 3 years ago3 comments1 person in discussion

--Gerda Arendt (talk) 06:37, 16 June 2021 (UTC)

Thank you today for The Sirens and Ulysses, introduced as an "enormous William Etty painting which currently takes up almost an entire wall of Manchester Art Gallery, and depending on your point of view is either a technical tour-de-force and a predecessor to later attempts to combine realism and aesthetics, or the nadir of early 19th-century tasteless kitsch. It still retains a surprising ability to startle unsuspecting gallery visitors coming across its life-size naked women/rotting corpses/oiled-up musclemen combination for the first time.

This is slightly unusual for a painting article, as many of the elements one usually finds on visual arts articles don't apply. TS&U was painted 178 years ago but spent 155 of those years out of public view, and the period in which it was on display (1839—1857) overlapped with the ascendancy of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, whose painting style was diametrically opposed to Etty's, and Etty has never come back into fashion. Thus, there's no "legacy" section to speak of, since there's only one other work any art historian considers inspired or influenced by TS&U. (This is the work in question, which I don't consider remotely similar, but we need to reflect the sources etc etc.) In addition to this, Etty had a very literal does-exactly-what-it-says-on-the-tin style—his works tend to have titles like Male Nude with Arms Upstretched or Female Nude in an Landscape—so there's no symbolism to explain other than a brief explanation of the myth of Odysseus and the Sirens for people who aren't familiar with it. ..."! - nicely coinciding with my 12th and a birthday. The birthday will come in the next DYK set, and I'm undecided about keeping the image for the person, a tad too much of a siren. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 06:19, 2 August 2021 (UTC)

I decorated with a photo, not a painting. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 14:20, 2 August 2021 (UTC)

Congrats! The Sirens and Ulysses

Latest comment: 3 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Hello Iridescent, so exciting to see the main page today, congratulations! You may remember that we worked together on the GA review. The article is really looking good. All the best, my friend Prhartcom (talk) 16:58, 2 August 2021 (UTC)

@Prhartcom thanks! That one was the start of something of a long detour; I'd intended just to write about this one painting, but found Etty's back story so interesting that I ended up writing about a dozen more in the series..

Just gonna put this here—by my count this was both the most-viewed TFA since 2019 and the most-viewed visual arts TFA ever. I'd love to think it's a sign that the readers actually prefer more unusual arts-and-architecture topics to the more traditional Hurricane of the Week fare, although I suspect it owes more to the fact that the painting is so horrible that people click on it just to see what it's all about. (That said, there's obviously something about Etty that strikes a chord with readers. He appears four times at Wikipedia:Today's featured article/Most viewed, and the only other visual arts articles to make the list are Roman temple of Bziza and Rosetta Stone.) ‑ Iridescent 15:12, 9 August 2021 (UTC)

In popular culture

Latest comment: 3 years ago7 comments5 people in discussion

Hi, doing "oral history" research based on your statement on the origin of the phrase but am having trouble verifying. Found this edit from March 2010 by an IP. The Gunpowder Plot in popular culture was created by another user. But that is all I can find. Do you recall anything more? -- GreenC 16:07, 12 August 2021 (UTC)

Per my comment elsewhere, I've found other IPC pages that predate it. The conversations that led to Gunpowder Plot in popular culture were between Ottava, Malleus and myself, but I couldn't begin to guess where they took place—I'd guess on one of the FAC subpages but certainly wouldn't put money on it, it could have been almost anywhere on-wiki or even on Wikipedia Review. ‑ Iridescent 16:12, 12 August 2021 (UTC)

If we are getting into the history, this IP can push the first mention of “In popular culture” at Gunpowder Plot back to 2005, which is practically prehistoric.[8] WP:IPC and WP:WPPC themselves go back to 2007.

The intention of the separate Gunpowder Plot in popular culture article was surely to create a proper home for more modern and less important material away from the serious historical article.

Or rather a forked graveyard to bury any low-brow stuff: as one of the ahem principal authors / owners called it on the talk page, “trivial crap” consigned to a pail closet. Whoever was that was again. The moving finger writes; and, having writ, moves on. 82.132.229.48 (talk) 17:59, 12 August 2021 (UTC)

Alright, 2005 a new benchmark. Wikipedia forensics. (we should probably move further to IPC Wikipedia_talk:"In_popular_culture"_content#Origin_of_phrase_"In_Popular_Culture"). -- GreenC 18:35, 12 August 2021 (UTC)

We can put a floor on it, since this search of Nostalgia Wikipedia doesn't find any instances of that section heading. The first (persistent) must therefore be after December 2001. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:50, 15 August 2021 (UTC)

Batman got the section title one day after the nost: archive, and kept it until July 2005. —Cryptic 13:05, 15 August 2021 (UTC)

I think we have a winner! WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:39, 16 August 2021 (UTC)

Nomination of Anti-urination devices in Norwich for deletion

Latest comment: 3 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Anti-urination devices in Norwich is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

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Elmidae (talk · contribs) 14:44, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

Gender gap research

Latest comment: 3 years ago49 comments13 people in discussion

Related to User talk:Iridescent/Archive 43#Break: underrepresentation, and placed here so that I'll be able to find it in the future:

"Other research on Wikipedia has found evidence of content bias that cannot be attributed to existing prejudices in secondary literature, but is the outcome of biases in the editing process". WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:38, 29 June 2021 (UTC)

I read it, and it troubled me on multiple grounds. Let me specify first that I support the expansion of content covering underrepresented populations (as in my recent start of Ora Nichols), and that I recognize that this study was not under the auspices of the WMF.

It says that the en-wiki guidelines for reliable sourcing reflect academic orthodoxy but not cutting-edge academic theories, that we tend not to adopt the content preferences of activists, and that our culture tends to say that if you want to change something, then the onus is on you to make the case for the change. Like those are bad things.

Rolls eyes.

It seems to me that there are good reasons to expand coverage by including more notable topics, but not to regard that as a reason to change norms for sourcing – although I have no doubt that POV-pushers and righters of great wrongs would love to enact what the authors want to do. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:43, 29 June 2021 (UTC)

I'm not sure that this is really a fair summary. I'm not saying I agree fully with the paper (for example, I would invite them to compare their claim that w:fr:Project:Sources fiables was written by one editor against reality), but I think that some of their complaints are legitimate. For example, if you want to write a full and neutral article, and you know that people holding one view tend to write in one type of source and people holding another view tend to write in another, then excluding one or the other of those types of sources has the effect of not writing a comprehensive and neutral article. In some cases, this may be a perfectly reasonable and ultimately harmless limitation (e.g., hard sciences). In others cases, it might not. I remember reading, many years ago, about a journalist saying they were all surprised by the outcome of a political election. His summary was that the media had believed the results of pre-election polls, even though they knew in that country that expressing support for the opposition party was literally illegal. We probably make similar mistakes. We probably exclude Lived experience too much to give a truly faithful picture of the world. That's probably a consequence of writing an encyclopedia, which is inherently about summarizing broad trends rather than representing the full diversity and complexity of the world. We rely too much on WEIRD research, and we misrepresent how educated individualists work as being how all humans throughout all time and all cultures work. That's less okay, and we probably make similar mistakes in other areas, too. For example, we write about educational systems, but only formal academic programs, and not about how people learn the thousands of things that they need to know for day-to-day life, such as how to wash laundry or what to do if the washing machine starts leaking. We aren't perfect, and we aren't going to be, because we're making choices that limit our ability to do some things. We should own the costs and benefits to our choices. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:56, 30 June 2021 (UTC)

Me, I found the There are psychological stakes of intervening, especially for users who fear they either do not know enough or may be penalized for participating in the wrong way interesting - isn't this the justification that Iridescent mentioned for having stub articles? I have used that argument on TVTropes as well, actually. Having taken stock of doi:10.1145/2700171.2791036 though - the source for the statement mentioned by Whatamidoing - it seems like it says that most of the biases are carried over from real world ones, with only certain specific aspects being editor-borne. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 08:05, 30 June 2021 (UTC)

That's my impression, too. Also, I'm not sure where "editors decided to have an encyclopedia" falls into that spectrum. There are some unavoidable exclusionary consequences of choosing to write an encyclopedia. An encyclopedia produces a summary, which excludes some things, and it is based on previous works, which excludes other things. We could probably come up with a few other ways in which an encyclopedia is exclusionary. IMO the correct response to that charge sounds more like "Yeah, that's how encyclopedias work" than "We're not guilty of anything!" WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:18, 30 June 2021 (UTC)

I should give a bit more nuance to what I said originally. I'm certainly not saying "we're not guilty of anything!" I recognize that our editing culture tends to be resistant to proposals for change ("instruction creep!"), and also reflects conventional wisdom. However, we chronicle social change as it occurs, but we are not here to catalyze it. I think that is something that the authors of the paper fail to grasp. And I intentionally cherry picked those points from the paper that most stood out to me as seriously flawed. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:58, 30 June 2021 (UTC)

I generally agree with Tryptofish here. We certainly have well-documented issues, but the paper seems to miss the fact that Wikipedia's function should be to document, not to commentate or act as an agent of change. I tend to have a very relaxed view of what constitutes "reliable sourcing"—as far as I'm concerned we get far too hung up on assessing sources, and provided we make it clear exactly what has come from where so readers can check the potential biases and problems for themselves most published material is acceptable as a source—but the whole thrust of the paper seems to miss the point that Wikipedia is summarizing all sources not just the most recent and that until new theories and new angles become 'established wisdom', they should only be getting minor mentions in the relevant articles.

As with so many of these problems, IMO part of the cause is our misuse of the term "encyclopedia". We inherited our "the free encyclopedia" slogan from Larry Sanger's Nupedia pipedream and it's never been a good description of what we actually do here. Welcome to Wikipedia, the moderated aggregation service that anyone can edit might not have the same zing, but would lead to fewer misunderstandings. Both the Wikipedia community and the WMF tend to be fairly lax when it comes to hammering home the fact that Wikipedia's primary defining characteristic is neither "Wikipedia is really big" nor "Anyone can edit Wikipedia", but is "Wikipedia exists only to summarize existing published content"—it's always led to endless confusion among both readers and prospective editors. ‑ Iridescent 03:49, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

But all encyclopedias (since about 1850 anyway) "exist only to summarize existing published content", at least in theory. Like WP, they may have a seasoning of OR. Johnbod (talk) 13:55, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

But everyone else—even sprawling behemoths like Encarta—have (or had) some kind of threshold. To repeat something I said in 2008 (!) in a different context, "In some ways, I think a lot of these problems stem from a basic mistake on Jimbo and Larry's part when they used the word "encyclopedia". This is a holdover from Nupedia days, and while it may have been what they were aiming for it is not what today's Wikipedia really is. An encyclopedia is a collection of articles in a standardised format written in a similar style, with a low enough number of articles that a central style can be enforced (Larry's original FAQ talks about one day reaching 100,000 articles) whereas in practice todays Wikipedia (WP:NOT notwithstanding), containing 2,663,761 articles, is actually a de facto web host of loosely interlinked pages, with a somewhat heavier than usual level of moderation; however, many of our core process are still atavistic throwbacks to that idealised vision of Larry's in which all articles would be written to the same level and where there was a basic presumption that most contributors would be well-educated and well-qualified (it's only a few months since Jimbo said "admins should be college students or graduates")."

We might like to recite "Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information" like it's some kind of mantra, but in reality that means not including laundry lists like this, not "there are topics too arcane to cover". (Call me when Britannica has pages on Dicerca lugubris or (Si Si) Je Suis un Rock Star.) Twas ever thus; we had articles on Procopius of Caesarea and Nude celebrities on the internet before we had an article on France, we had 1973–74 Buffalo Braves season before we had Chemical weapon, and as I may have mentioned once or twice before Donegal fiddle tradition predates Donegal, Fiddle or Tradition. ‑ Iridescent 18:39, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

Hear hear. Example text I am sure I've complained elsewhere about this tendency to misuse WP:INDISCRIMINATE to apply to topics rather than structure. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 10:38, 6 July 2021 (UTC)

I see this glass as half-full; our articles are remarkably consistent in style given our size, & while our coverage is eccentric, by far our main problem is that articles tend to remain largely unchanged for over a decade, regardless of their adequacy. Johnbod (talk) 18:48, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

My current favourite low-hanging redlinks are in prehistory, where my recent overhaul of Prehistoric religion led to the conclusion our coverage is...spotty. Lots of very broad redirects (Neolithic religion, Prehistoric China) and some redlinks that could probably never be beyond CONCEPTDAB but are still pretty weird twenty years in (Prehistoric culture). Speaking of CONCEPTDAB, Tortilla is a fantastically poor article, and was illustrated by an equally awful photo before I fixed it a couple days ago. I can see the argument both for the "write broad articles" stance and the "write niche articles" one, and think they're better framed as complement than contradiction. Vaticidalprophet 18:55, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

If you want really easy low-hanging fruit, head on over to pop-culture topics (authors, musicians etc) who were big in their home countries (and hence the topic of lots of coverage and hence lots of sources) but were either never translated into English or never took off in English-speaking countries. If you really want the full "shooting fish in a barrel" experience, look at the music or fiction charts of regimes whose current inhabitants now try to blot from their collective memories—provided one spoke the language and was willing to wade through old and mostly non-digitized books and magazines, one could probably not only take someone like Britt Kersten (de) from redlink to FA with minimal effort, but could write a respectable article on each of her insanely high number of albums. ‑ Iridescent 20:10, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

(adding) If you want to stick to the English language, pick a once-popular author who's fallen from favor and start working your way through their books, each of which will almost certainly be notable. I'll toss the bone of Enid Blyton bibliography to start with. ‑ Iridescent 20:12, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

Going back to what you said earlier:

> Wikipedia is summarizing all sources not just the most recent

This isn't true. We do not use all sources because we reject some sources as being unreliable. Even when a source is reliable for a given statement, we may reject the whole thing on grounds of NPOV.

We disproportionately declare unreliable the publications that marginalized authors have the most access to (e.g., websites run by individuals, magazines catering to a niche audience), and even when a marginalized view gets published in academic journals, we'll frequently find a way to exclude it. We might be making the right choices for our goals, but we are not summarizing all sources.

This paper cites research that accuses us of bias that goes beyond what's available in sources, such as this paper, which finds that articles about women are more likely to mention their spouses by name than articles about men. This isn't because you can't find out the names of the people married to male CEOs, actors, or politicians; it's because editors here at the English Wikipedia applied their biased human judgement on a case-by-case basis and decided, through their aggregate actions, that family relationships matter more when describing a woman than for describing a man. The bias goes deeper than whether a reliable source is technically available. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:32, 9 July 2021 (UTC)

I queried a DYK recently because some wanted to include the fact she was 20 years older than her husband in the hook. Amazing! Definitely one of the more interesting/important/surprising things about this woman! —valereee (talk) 21:49, 9 July 2021 (UTC)

So weird...neither Melania Trump nor Donald Trump seem to even mention the age difference. How can this possibly be? —valereee (talk) 22:02, 9 July 2021 (UTC)

I think Wikipedia amplifies the bias present in our sources because of our lack of diversity, and we likely are making the problem worse because of it. Having a Wikipedia article has I suspect become a shorthand for whether someone/something is interesting enough for our sources to write about. It's a circular problem. I was shocked to discover recently that WNBPA didn't have an article. Seriously? Someone who has zero interest in basketball has to in 2021 write the article about the first women's pro athlete trade union -- an article that wasn't even redlinked anywhere -- apparently because none of the sporty types here thought that needed an article. But we've got articles about some yahoo who played in a single baseball game in 1884 and about whom we know really nothing. What does that tell someone looking for information on those two topics about their relative importance? —valereee (talk) 21:20, 9 July 2021 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I agree with you wholeheartedly about things such as gender bias when including the name of a spouse. It's a fault in society that carries over into how we write here, and no less than NPOV indicates that we need to correct such faults in our writing.

There are disputes all the time about whether sources that are unreliable for many things can be reliable for some things. (A gender-independent example is using Fox as a source for sports scores.) But I would need to see some pretty strong data to be convinced that we do that, selectively, in a way that is gendered or that works against disadvantaged groups. We probably do that more in a way that disadvantages the US political right. As for sources that marginalized people have the most access to, we probably give too much emphasis to sources that are online (and thus available to everyone with internet access), simply because it's easier for someone writing here to Google something than to go to a library or buy a book. I realize that some people have more access than others to private libraries, such as university libraries, but I'm having trouble picturing the kinds of sources that are readily available to the disadvantaged but not used here, unless that means stuff like Facebook and Twitter. As for marginalized views getting published in academic journals, we treat those as primary sources. When those academic journals come to treat those once-marginalized views as worthy of further analysis in the form of secondary sources, we are more likely to cite them. It seems to me that a view that is marginalized is, by definition, one that should have lower due weight here, and I continue to maintain that our role is not to "right great wrongs", so our content should reflect, over time, how once-marginalized views have become more widely accepted, but it's not our role to get ahead of that curve or to do social work to make change happen sooner. So – research that concludes that Wikipedia does not attempt to facilitate societal improvement is concluding accurately, but when that research editorializes that we are wrong to be that way, then the authors don't understand what we do, as opposed to us not understanding what the authors would like. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:30, 9 July 2021 (UTC)

It often is "stuff like Facebook and Twitter", except likely more obscure platforms. You can have an author who is very important inside a tiny group but whose subject matter doesn't "sell" in mainstream publications, but who might be a fixture at all the websites that matter to the tiny community. To put it another way, how many articles about, say, Afro–Latino trans folks have you seen in any source that a Wikipedia editor would instantly recognize as reliable? But those people exist, and their unique experiences exist, and their distinct viewpoints are documented in writing that people in that community recognize as reliable sources about their group – and it's not likely to be in Wikipedia, precisely because we don't represent all the sources in the world. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:23, 9 July 2021 (UTC)

This is what these authors mean by "The integrity of Wikipedia is a function of the size and breadth of its community". If the 'baseball lobby' is bigger and stronger than the groups of editors interested in women's sports and labor unions, then of course we're going to have articles about some guy who got paid to play a game for a couple of hours almost a century and a half ago, and of course we'll be missing articles about major organizations. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:14, 9 July 2021 (UTC)

That's interesting. Of course, when I wrote "stuff like... ", I was saying that disparagingly, because those websites are full of genuine nonsense (Q-anon, anyone?). If there are online discussions in small communities that en-wiki overlooks, I would hope that the more "Wikipedia-friendly" secondary sources would comment on them. But they probably sometimes don't. The question then becomes whether or not we can draw from such online discussions without veering into original research. I'm reminded that some Wikipedias in languages other than English do not share our prohibition against OR, because OR is often their best source material. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:31, 9 July 2021 (UTC)

Interesting. How do the Wikipedias that don't prohibit OR distinguish the good OR from the completely made-up OR? Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 22:44, 9 July 2021 (UTC)

I read about this a long time ago, and am no expert, but my impression is that they really don't make such a distinction. This is principally something that happens for languages used in third world countries, with small Wikipedias, and it's used for things like: "when you walk down the street in this town, this is what you see." The idea as I understand it is that anyone who lives in these places can directly observe things about their own culture, but finding published sources about that would be difficult. My impression is that they do this mainly for local culture, and presumably would not do it for things outside their local area that are routinely covered in published sources. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:04, 10 July 2021 (UTC)

Yep. —valereee (talk) 22:42, 9 July 2021 (UTC)

Is the reply tool working as intended? This seems very odd. —valereee (talk) 22:50, 9 July 2021 (UTC)

@Valereee, if you replied to my earlier comment (the one that's now sticking out in the middle), then the answer is 'yes'. It's 'logical' if you understand HTML list structures but can produce odd results. Every choice will always be wrong in some circumstances, so they're just choosing which types of wrong they'll be. If we're lucky, then the devs will some day let us adjust the indentation manually before posting (though probably not on the mobile web site, because making it work on a smartphone means that you can't see any indication of horizontal position before posting.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:25, 12 July 2021 (UTC)

I remember reading an old archived conversation here about the Blyton books. It gave the example of "even the ones that exist, like Noddy Goes to Toyland, are stubs". I see the article in question has since been edit-warred into a redirect as per wp:nbook - no indication of notability. Beautiful world. Vaticidalprophet 05:26, 6 July 2021 (UTC)

In fairness, it read in full Noddy Goes to Toyland is a 1949 children's book by Enid Blyton, the first in the extremely successful Noddy series. It was published by Sampson Low, with illustrations by Harmsen van der Beek., so redirecting it was probably the sensible move. As I keep saying, Wikipedia's "if it's notable it needs a stand-alone page" often doesn't make sense—for a linked series of topics, provided the individual entries aren't so long they'll overwhelm the parent article it makes more sense to have them all on a single page so readers can compare and contrast the individual items at a glance. ‑ Iridescent 06:50, 6 July 2021 (UTC)

I trend pretty heavily towards a quality-based view of inclusion over a hard notability one ("a high-quality article is definitionally almost never non-notable per "our definition of notability is that reliable sources discuss it in reasonable depth" and "we only say what other people have already said"; a shitty article is a disservice to readers and in a number of fields actively dangerous, and IAR is a high virtue"), but while our current system penalizes people for saying it I like to be as honest as I can when basing decisions off quality rather than notability so [people can see how the argument works and decide if they prefer it/people who disagree can just disregard it and dig in their heels] (reader's choice). In context, I am wearily certain the specific redirecter here was making his decision based on certainty the article actually failed NBOOK and not solely on the fact it was a substub. Vaticidalprophet 07:00, 6 July 2021 (UTC)

My general rule is "if you can write a thousand words about the topic without padding, it's almost certainly notable, if you can't it almost certainly isn't". On Noddy Goes to Toyland, going by the editor in question's interests it looks like they're based in Malaysia. Someone in the UK or Ireland would be aware just how much of a staple of popular culture the Noddy series is and know instinctively that any book in the series and particularly the first is going to be pretty much automatically notable even by World Book Encyclopedia terms let alone Wikipedia terms, but for someone unfamiliar with the topic and going only on that one-sentence pseudoarticle, I wouldn't blame anyone for assuming it's a piece of irrelevant ephemera. ‑ Iridescent 07:28, 6 July 2021 (UTC)

I'm fairly confident Begoon was British, and he was the one undoing the redirect, not the one adding it (which was three separate parties, the final redirecter with the NBOOK summary a US-based editor with a penchant for PRODing half of Special:NewPagesFeed). I use a slightly lower word count, but agree with the basic premise. Vaticidalprophet 07:54, 6 July 2021 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) Oh I recognise that editor! ⁓ Pelagic ( messages ) 05:20, 14 August 2021 (UTC)

Real Blyton fans know The Faraway Tree was the pinnacle of her work... #moonface #noddysucks Only in death does duty end (talk) 11:22, 6 July 2021 (UTC)

The Secret Island and The Secret of Moon Castle, all the way 100%. 92.40.176.104 (talk) 11:26, 6 July 2021 (UTC)

What? You like The Secret Series (Enid Blyton) better than The Famous Five (novel series)? WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:57, 9 July 2021 (UTC)

Getting back to the issue of whether or not we are genuinely an encyclopedia, I take the point that we are more haphazard than that. But, as the other side of the coin, I want to point out that for readers, they generally come here to Look Something Up. Unlike frequent editors, most readers don't really keep track of uniform standards. They just come here to search for a particular bit or bits of information, and for them, that's like an online encyclopedia. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:45, 6 July 2021 (UTC)

But if "place where people look things up and hopefully find the information they want" is the definition, "encylopedia" would equally (if not better) apply to Google. Wikipedia (along with other curated-information sites) is something so new there isn't yet a word for it. "Encyclopedia" is the term that's come to be used for sites like this because that's the term Wikipedia uses, but it isn't really a comfortable fit—an encyclopedia in the traditional sense of the word is characterized by being written (at least in theory) by subject-matter experts, whereas Wikipedia is in many ways closer to Buzzfeed than to the World Book. ‑ Iridescent 13:51, 9 July 2021 (UTC)

Me, I think that "compendium of diverse information, subdivided in articles" is the definition of an encyclopedia and does not cover Google since Google only sends you to articles without hosting them oneself. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 16:23, 9 July 2021 (UTC)

I agree with that: one goes to Google to look up where to find the information. An encyclopedia is not a directory of entries saying "to find out about this subject, go to here". --Tryptofish (talk) 19:04, 9 July 2021 (UTC)

I don't really find much in the paper that useful. They can't figure out a way of making their argument accessible to people who aren't other graduate-level students who have taken courses on epistemology in the last ten years (I have spent way too much time this evening trying to figure out what the hell 'triangulation' is, and what that would actually look like when applied to Wikipedia.) Whenever there's discussion about loosening notability or sourcing criteria, I have to point out the obvious result of doing so would be more biographies about barely-notable men, not some explosion of women bios that would close the gap. That doesn't change unless you get more people editing, and if your only recommendation on getting more people to edit is "just drop your sourcing standards so I can quote this press release", you're working very hard to make Wikipedia actively worse. Maybe that would suddenly get a bunch of women and disadvantaged communities editing, but I think you're more likely to just end up with more articles pushing pseudoscience or promoting a product. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ^talk 22:33, 9 July 2021 (UTC)

That, exactly. "Loosening standards to encourage writing on underrepresented topics" would mean all underrepresented topics, not just those underrepresented topics the WMF wants. I can provide impeccable sourcing for the fact that a dog was stolen outside Marks & Spencer in Hampstead in October 2020, but that doesn't mean we want Camilla (dog) ever to be a bluelink.

What I could imagine happening someday, which would be expensive and time-consuming but do-able, would be to roll out the combination of an improved CiteUnseen and a hugely increased use of {{Ref supports}}/{{Ref supports2}} to highlight questionable sourcing in article text to all readers (rather than the current "opt-in and only highlighting within the reference section which nobody ever reads anyway"). If we had some way to clearly differentiate to readers "this is a statement which we're confident is true" and "this is a statement from a potentially unreliable source", we could be much more lenient about allowing questionable sourcing without compromising our credibility. Unfortunately, since the {{Ref supports}} template family have the unfortunate side-effect of making the wikitext utterly incomprehensible to anyone not totally fluent in wiki-gibberish, it probably wouldn't be practical until the VisualEditor rollout is complete, which I imagine on an optimistic timescale might be some time around the end of the century. ‑ Iridescent 21:45, 12 July 2021 (UTC)

I expect VisualEditor to be replaced before the end of the century. Whether it is replaced first or finished first (for whatever definition of 'finished' you choose) is anyone's guess. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:33, 12 July 2021 (UTC)

My definition of the VE rollout being "finished" in this context would be the point at which it becomes genuinely possible for an editor to do all the things a typical editor does on Wikipedia, without ever once seeing a piece of either wikitext markup or HTML. I wouldn't expect wikitext to vanish, but I can see it reaching a point where it becomes the equivalent of Lua modules, as something where 99% of editors are vaguely aware that it exists and does something behind the scenes, but have no reason to learn it. "The point at which anything a typical editor might reasonably be expected to do can be done more easily in VE than in wikitext" if you want a TL;DR summary. ‑ Iridescent 05:59, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

If "the end of the century" means 2099, I expect Wikipedia to be replaced by then. And me to be replaced by then. --Tryptofish (talk) 15:13, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

That was my point, that the WMF moves at such a glacially slow pace that any improvements they make are generally obsolete by the time they're actually doing what the developers promised they'd do. (I wouldn't be so sure that Wikipedia will no longer exist in 2099. The brand name is powerful and the overheads of keeping the lights on are essentially just hosting fees, particularly if the readership drops and consequently the server load fades away. It wouldn't surprise me if it becomes the 21st century's equivalent of Jane's Fighting Ships, The Sky at Night or National Lampoon, vegetating in a moribund and near-readerless state for decades because nobody wants to be the one who pulls the plug.) ‑ Iridescent 19:05, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

Yes, that could well happen. As for whether anyone pulls the plug on me... --Tryptofish (talk) 20:51, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

I wouldn't give up on the Sky at Night, space projects involve long lead times, and it is cheap to reuse old clips, on a "here is what they told us before the launch" basis. Astronomy and space have this ability to suddenly catch the public interest, so it makes sense for the BBC to keep the Sky at Night ticking over. As for Wikipedia, I'm begining to mellow somewhat re the long term. I can't see a company coming up with a cheaper business model for writing and maintaining an online encyclopaedia, and while there are some risks from states, technology or academic organisations, I'm not expecting to still be around, let alone compus mentis by the mid century let alone the end of the century. I think we are making the transition from a new internet phenomenon to a hobby dominated by pensioners as so many other sedentary voluntary organisations are. By 2099 we may have merged with U3A, had the volunteers replaced by AI or morphed into a joint university project where universtities judge MA and final year undergraduates on their contributions to Wikipedia articles. But for the next decade I'd settle for the WMF coming up with a tablet view in addition to mobile and desktop views that was as editor friendly as the desktop view. Ϣere SpielChequers 15:20, 14 August 2021 (UTC)

Regarding I can't see a company coming up with a cheaper business model for writing and maintaining an online encyclopaedia, a cheaper model wouldn't be necessary provided someone comes up with a better model. (I can buy a horse for less than I can buy an automobile, but I know which would be my first choice for commuting.) If (for instance) Facebook decided they wanted to host their own Wikipedia fork to discourage users from navigating outside their ecosystem and no longer seeing adverts—something not exactly beyond the bounds of possibility—it would at minimum deal a body blow to Wikipedia, even if they only succeeded in poaching 1⁄4 of the editors. (If they were smart, and did things like approach the most active article editors offering cash-for-exclusivity—and thus retaining their own neutrality since they wouldn't be told what to write, just not to write for Wikipedia—they could probably send en-wiki into a death spiral within a month, particularly if they could persuade Google to stop top-ranking Wikipedia even when the Wikipedia page is clearly awful quality.)

The WMF—despite appearances—aren't stupid; they may not know when they'll be forced to fight another war of attrition against another Knol, but they know the day will one day come. They aren't building up the enormous cash reserve purely so Jimmy can splash around in it like Scrooge McDuck. ‑ Iridescent 13:33, 16 August 2021 (UTC)


Vertraut den neuen Wegen (trust the new ways) written thinking of RexxS and matching the pic seen here "Everything old is good ..." ;)