Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 14:59, 14 January 2014

Jimbo welcomes your comments and updates – he has an open door policy. He holds the founder's seat on the Wikimedia Foundation's Board of Trustees. The three trustees elected as community representatives until July 2015 are SJ, Phoebe, and Raystorm. The Wikimedia Foundation Senior Community Advocate is Maggie Dennis.

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Please treat people with dignity and with common sense

I am talking about this case. I explain the situation in a few words.

1. the user is sysop on one of Vietnamese language Misplaced Pages.
2. The user was blocked from English wikipedia 2 years ago for disruptive editing.
3. The user has never socked before requesting the unblock on AN yesterday.
4. The user is not interested in editing English wikipedia.
5. The user is asking for the unblock only because being blocked and templated here on English wikipedia is damaging his reputation on Vietnamese wikipedias.

Please treat him with dignity and with common scene, and unblock the user or at least remove the templates from his user page. 76.126.140.7 (talk) 12:20, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

If your summary is really factually correct, then I agree with your conclusion. If for no other reason than WP:SO.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 15:17, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

To the best of my knowledge my summary is correct.

Jimbo, Misplaced Pages has problems with decreasing number of editors. I'd like to give you some suggestions on how to make Misplaced Pages, more sane, more friendlier place with less drama and more content editing.

1. It is good to remember that enforcement of any Misplaced Pages's policy is not nearly as important as well being and health of a person.
2. Behave first like humans and second like Wikipedians , not the other way around.
3. Don't impose indefinite blocks.For an established contributor a maximum block duration should not be longer than one year. Here's why:some editors will not return after the block expires. The ones who do return could always be re-blocked, if they don't behave. It takes only a minute to block somebody. On the other hand the arbcom spends days discussing appeals and then there are thousands of pages of insanity on drama boards.This is not rocket science, only common sense.
4. Treat people with dignity and kindness. You will achieve much more this way, if you really want a user to stay away versus punishing him.
5. Delete banned users list. It is an absolutely unneeded scarlet letter.
6. Stop the community bans. It will remove lots of dramas.Besides let me please quote Tarc on the subject of the community bans: "What this sort of thing comes down to is how many supporters you can line up vs. how many opponents they can line up. It's like World of Warcraft, sometimes there's just too many orcs and not enough humans."

Please listen to me, Jimbo. If my suggestions are incorporated it would benefit some editors, but most of all it would benefit Misplaced Pages.76.126.140.7 (talk) 16:17, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

Why does this remind me of mbz1 and the recent AN drama, dear Comcast IP? Someone not using his real name (talk) 08:27, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

You're exactly right, and we could make a few conclusions of it:

1. There are more than one person who is not going to edit wikipedia, but is bothered about being blocked here. Such people should be unblocked because keeping them blocked violates the policy that blocks are not for punishment, especially not for the real life punishment, and in a worse case scenario reblock takes only a minute.
2. Sometimes different people are expressing the same sentiments, but it doesn't mean they are the same person, Jehochman
3. It is rather sad that somebody who is not a member of the Misplaced Pages community should ask the community to act as humans.

I think anybody can get unblocked with a simple appeal after 6 months of not socking. The banned user list is necessary to coordinate enforcement. If a editor doesn't get along well with peers, they can be excluded. Jehochman 12:15, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

Jehochman, the user who is being discussed here is not banned. He was blocked by a single admin. He hasn't socked for two years. Why don't you go ahead and unblock him now?

But you're mistaking about special offer. For example Willbeback hasn't socked, and he made a public apology, and he is still blocked, which IMO is wrong. If he wants to edit Misplaced Pages why not to give him another chance? Reblock takes only a minute. Besides, Jehochman, what is a point in non-socking, if somebody as you states that non-proxy IP from Germany and non-proxy IP from US are operated by the same person at the same time? IMO SO is a silly policy anyway. Much better proceed like that. Let's say somebody misbehaved. Don't block him. Instead make him to serve the community service. For example a user could be allowed only to revert vandalism for 6 months, or something like that.71.202.123.162 (talk) 14:17, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

I don't think anyone should lump together and put all kinds of "socking" on the same level - there's positive and negative socking. The ones who continue their negative behaviour under "socking" should not be equalized to the ones "socking" in a positive and constructive way, by behaving well, contributing to the quality of Misplaced Pages, doing nothing but constructive edits and comments etc . Generally refusing anyone who "socked" to get unbanned is therefore counterproductive to the overall quality of the project.--37.230.10.40 (talk) 13:11, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

Per talk page, I have now unblocked this editor. He's promised to be true to his word and not edit here, and I'll see he sticks to that agreement - Alison 01:28, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

Alison's response is the correct one, but the case still illustrates serious flaws in the administrative system.

• Trongphu's talk page access was revoked for making one (1) indignant remark in response to an excessively severe block, a comment which, unfortunately, seems fairly well justified whether you take it to refer to en.wikipedia or the USA in general.
• The recent ANI discussion criticized Trongphu for not using the Misplaced Pages:Unblock Ticket Request System and "socking" (their intentional misnomer for evading a block through what would otherwise be a legitimate use of an alternate account) by signing his username to an IP post. Still, I have to ask: why wasn't this matter resolved via the email address he was first given - unblock-en-l@mail.wikimedia.org? Something's not working there.
• The totally obnoxious front page that Misplaced Pages gives blocked users is not just wrong in Trongphu's case or for Asians afraid of "losing face" - it's wrong for everyone. It exaggerates the significance of the blocks people hand out, and when it comes to labelling Trongphu as a suspected sockpuppeteer for making a parting comment (ironically, the same behavior that just got him unblocked!), it was outright defamation, at least in a moral sense.

We should enact the following reforms: 1) remove all Scarlet Letters from main User: pages. 2) Do not route unblock email requests to /dev/null. 3) because you should actually be reading all unblock requests, mailed or not, there's no reason not to revoke talk page access only when the blocked user posts a substantial number of unreasonable "unblock requests", like ten or twenty non-responsive answers, or at least two or three that contain material so problematic (such as "outing") that you feel the need to 'oversight' them. Wnt (talk) 15:58, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

• I don't want to see this fall off Jimmy's talk page yet, without it being addressed. It's rare that I agree with Wnt, but he makes some excellent points here, which I think should be put to the wider community. Let's please fix the block template to make it more useful and less offensive, and less confusing to all. There is a use to tagging userpages where accounts are actively being misused and tracking them provides value, but there is little point in keeping them after a while, and less point in using them as a Scarlet Letter; a mark of shame. The same applies to the LTA page. If the issue is long over, why does the page still exist? If, at some time, it needs to be restored, it takes seconds to simply undelete it. Similarly, with revoking talk page access, there are some cases where talk pages should be immediately and permanently restricted - everyone gets that - but time and time again, I've seen talk pages being locked down waaay before they should be. Admins should be willing to at least go the extra distance in dealing with blocked editors, rather than just shutting the doors early, usually out of frustration - Alison 19:09, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

Paid editing by WMF employee on oDesk

Blog post

Mailing list discussion

Can't the WMF make it clear to its employees and contractors that doing stuff like this is very bad for public relations? Hell might be other people (talk) 12:27, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

I'd love to hear from Sarah on this. However, it's worth pointing out as a correction that Sarah has never been a WMF employee to my knowledge. Still, I very very strongly condemn such editing, and this is no exception. (Except that I'd love to hear from Sarah on this as it doesn't seem 100% confirmed yet.)--Jimbo Wales (talk) 15:15, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

• I don't know exactly why, but you sound just like a spoof David Cameron writing here.  Giano  19:47, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

Seems strange that if Stierch has "never been a WMF employee", her Misplaced Pages user page says "Although I work for the Wikimedia Foundation" and "I also am the Program Evaluation Community Coordinator for the Wikimedia Foundation". Or, it is possible that Mr. Wales is making a hair-splitting distinction that Stierch may be a "paid contractor", but that doesn't make her an "employee", which may be the case. Trust me, we're all waiting to hear from Sarah on this, and she's been notified (for almost 15 hours now) on her Talk page. - 2001:558:1400:10:78BC:4C64:2414:814F (talk) 15:24, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

I'm not trying to make a hair-splitting distinction. I just don't know and have received conflicting information.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 20:03, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

• I thought she once did a research project for the WMF (about women editors, I believe), but was never hired as an employee. Which would be working for the foundation without being an employee... not sure on my memory of this though. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 03:01, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

Good grief. She is on the staff. She's also possibly as popular as Jimbo in some circles (if not more so), so I hope Jimmy will leave it at a very very strong condemnation. --SB_Johnny | ✌ 03:13, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

• Fair enough, though I should note that she was listed as a Community Fellow until 31 October 2013. Not sure when she was hired as a staffer. It could just be that she hasn't updated her profile on EN Wiki. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 03:23, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

I just got this from the Foundation: "although she started as a volunteer, and then was made a Fellow, Sarah is currently an employee of the WMF".--Jimbo Wales (talk) 12:29, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

Why did you "point out as a correction" something that you hadn't confirmed before correcting? - 2001:558:1400:10:FC49:2FE8:A83C:ECDE (talk) 16:40, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

• Actually, she was notified of the blog post and the mailing list, but not of this discussion. Pinging @SarahStierch: so she knows about this. Rgrds. --64.85.217.168 (talk) 16:29, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

It appears that Sarah has found enough time for Teahouse greetings, but hasn't penciled in an appointment to respond to Jimbo here. - 2001:558:1400:10:FC49:2FE8:A83C:ECDE (talk) 16:40, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

As this is obviously a staff matter and I'm a board member, I can't comment at the present time except to repeat my usual principled objections to such things in the strongest possible terms.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 16:55, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

It's also a WP matter. If it's OK for Sarah, a WMF employee, to hire herself out for $44.44 an hour, or $300 per WP article, then obviously it's OK for any of the rest of us editors to do the same, and your "principled objections" are nothing more than pissing in the wind. Eric Corbett 17:04, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

Yes, it is also a WP matter and I encourage you to make your thoughts known to the Foundation. I'm just saying that I'm withholding further comment at this time because it is a staff matter. I did not mean to imply that it is not also a community matter.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 17:06, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

The foundation is highly unlikely to take my thoughts on anything seriously so I won't be bothering. FWIW I don't see the same problems with paid editing that you and many others do, but Sarah's case is unusual in that she's the first WMF employee to be caught editing for money. Is she the only one? Does the WMF have a staff policy in place that either allows or disallows such paid editing? Eric Corbett 17:17, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

I can confirm that my e-mail to the Foundation regarding Stierch remains unanswered, more than 24 hours later. And as long as we're talking about WMF employees doing paid editing, I believe there is some outside "Misplaced Pages consulting" that Pete Forsyth has been doing while he has been an employee (though he seems to have his head screwed on right, about noting the distinction that COI poses). And, who could forget that 2004 classic moment when future WMF Deputy Director Erik Moeller hung out his calling card, saying "If you want me to contribute more to Misplaced Pages than I can do in my limited spare time, you can pay me to do so: PayPal me some money to moeller at scireview dot de". Good times, good times. - 2001:558:1400:10:FC49:2FE8:A83C:ECDE (talk) 18:17, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

There are quite a few who've been doing "paid Misplaced Pages consulting", just think of the Gibraltar and Qrpedia episodes for instance. So maybe we should all down tools until we're paid as well? Eric Corbett 20:58, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

It's interesting how the last edit that Stierch made to Misplaced Pages before the allegations of paid editing broke, was to welcome VJSWarren to swing by the Teahouse sometime. No possibility at all that VJS is Victor J. Sordillo of Warren Township, editing without disclosing his conflict of (self) interest, right? - 2001:558:1400:10:FC49:2FE8:A83C:ECDE (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 21:02, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

Not really, beyond "a lot of new editors have a COI", which is to be expected, anyway. - Bilby (talk) 01:52, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

It's becoming increasingly clear to me that I and others in my position are being taken for mugs to be exploited. Which perhaps we have been to be fair. Eric Corbett 21:25, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

It's been over a day and a half since Sarah was notified of this conversation. She has made changes to her user page, welcomed a person to the teahouse, and removed a talk page note. Don't you think WMF employees and administrators owe the community a reasonably prompt response for allegations of this serious nature? Can someone take this to ANI? Hell might be other people (talk) 06:11, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

• @JW. I would suggest that what you need to do is try to accept this is a normal thing and to help come up with a mechanism in which paid editing is both transparent and supervised. This is not going to mean the death of Misplaced Pages, there will always be committed volunteers. There are just some things that are not going to happen without financial stimuli and there will always be people willing to do a job for money. It is normal. We just need to make sure that this is being done on the up-and-up, according to NPOV. Obviously, paid editors have an incentive to cheat NPOV. This is why they need to be watched. Regulation, not prohibition. One would think that as a libertarian capitalist you would be all over this notion... Carrite (talk) 06:22, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

Sarah has been invaluable to Misplaced Pages over recent years - her work on community outreach, setting up the Teahouse, and encouraging women to become involved has been wonderful, and her efforts have been some of the best on WP. I'm strongly opposed to paid editing, but I also have a great deal of respect for Sarah, and I hope that we can keep in mind that she is a very valuable contributor. In regard to engaging with the community here about the allegations, I'm confident that Sarah will when she can - at the moment, her first priority is, I assume, to engage with the WMF, as this is primarily an issue that that they need to work out, and I expect that most of her focus right now is on that side of the equation. In regard to WP, we've repeatedly chosen to permit paid editing, and while some of us (myself included) may wish the the community took a real stance, it hasn't. From WP's perspective, at worst (if it is true) she is guilty of doing something that is "strongly discouraged".

I'm sure that Russavia will make sure that this doesn't go away on the mailing list, (as much as it leaves a sour taste that it is Russavia raising this), and editors here will similarly make sure it is addressed on WP. Giving her time will hurt no-one. - Bilby (talk) 10:34, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

Well said. NE Ent 11:34, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

"No registration required," "we respect your privacy," and "no paid editing" are fundamentally incompatible. You can't have all three at once. NE Ent 11:34, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

That is my perspective as well. Once that notion sinks in (and I didn't always feel the way I do on the matter), the question becomes: What's the real problem and how should it be addressed? And the answer to that, I feel, is (1) POV editing is the problem (which we all agree is not good and not permitted); and (2) supervision of potentially POV-driven paid editors is the answer. But you can't supervise them if you're chasing them around with shotguns because they are going to, quite reasonably, hide... The situation needs to be regularized. Carrite (talk) 16:54, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

Not my perspective. That analysis is as simplistic as saying "neutral" and "point of view" are "fundamentally incompatible;" or "encyclopedic" and "copyright (or "BLP"), are "fundamentally incompatible." Sure, that is all true, in a sense. But our policies like NPOV are not just prescriptive, they are aspirational and informational: 'this is how you should act/what you should do' in this situation. Moreover, our policies are primarily self-executing: 'this is what I do, here, when no one is looking.' In my view, what is fundamentally incompatible, is saying here is "full and neutral information," while concealing COI. COI, itself, is information the reader deserves; and financial COI is a well known and easily defined COI. Unlike a "point of view" which every human knows every other human has; COI, as normally understood and reasonably defined, is just not something every writer has. Alanscottwalker (talk) 19:11, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

The point is that enforcement is impossible in a system in which anyone can anonymously establish a WP account and in which "outing" (revelation of real life identity and relationship to the article subject in question) is considered a wikicrime... I think we can all agree that COI needs to be identified. Carrite (talk) 04:46, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

• In regards to Bilby's comment that "wae've repeatedly chosen to permit paid editing, and while some of us (myself included) may wish the the community took a real stance, it hasn't": Indeed. The community has recently told at least two different administrators that (their particular) paid/COI editing is acceptable and not incompatible with adminship. A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 15:23, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

Except they did both, iirc, added "connected contributer" to their one article, when it was brought to their attention - even, if people will be lenient with the honest, the upfront (even the belatedly, so); they still resist the not up-front (per: 'the coverup is worse' or 'the failure to disclose what should be disclosed is seen as less than honest'). As for Sarah, now she must publicly choose, which interest (in her conflict) to serve. Alanscottwalker (talk) 19:14, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

I would add that the fact that they are admins is probably seen as irrelevant, in that they are already expected to either act as an editor, or act as an administrator, and writing articles is seen as acting as an editor not as an administrator. Our "involved" concept for admins is already a specialized COI regime (o.t.h., if they took admin acts with respect to their own content the outcome would often be different). Alanscottwalker (talk) 23:04, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

Even the policy page acknowledges that paid editing is not proof of a conflict of interest. If the person soliciting the paid creation of an article says "Please write me a neutrally worded, factual article about this subject" and neither the project nor the WMF have a policy against paid editing, the conflict is quite minimal. (Limited, then, to whatever benefit the writer might perceive she can obtain by writing something more aggrandizing than a neutrally worded, factual article.) Nathan 21:48, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

That's one of the problems with the guideline. But let's not get into that again - the whole subject is tiresome, and is obviously not changing anyway. I'm grateful to whoever it was who raised this (let me guess.....), whatever the motives may or may not be. While initially I discounted such posts as "trolling" intended to embarrass the project, I am beginning to see that posts highlighting paid editing by Foundation-related editors at least keep the issue alive. Coretheapple (talk) 22:12, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

Those of you who are looking to put her head on a platter for not responding to this should bear in mind that her employer (the WMF) may have asked her not to discuss the issue "on-wiki", or even with her cat. It wouldn't be the first time for that particular organization (which is ironically dedicated to sharing knowledge). Assuming that's the case, Jimmy, perhaps you could nudge the good folks at legal to at least allow her (or you) to say that's why she can't talk, rather than leaving her to look like a x-no-evil monkey hung out in front of the people who she's worked with the past few years. --SB_Johnny | ✌ 22:43, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

• Well, that can't be the reason now as she no longer works for the WMF. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 00:44, 9 January 2014 (UTC)
  • Maybe, depending on the severance agreement. It's at best fuzzy as to whether she actually breached any policies or not, so some sort of agreement must have been reached before parting ways. In any case, perhaps the nice folks who were rooting for her head will be satisfied now, and those with an interest in doing so can imply that she was fired for breaking policy. --SB_Johnny | ✌ 01:05, 9 January 2014 (UTC)
    • "Breaking policy" my Derry Air. Frank notes, quite correctly (though a bit of an understatement), that it is "frowned upon by many in the editing community and by the Wikimedia Foundation". Agree that there could be NDAs which last after employment ends, though. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 01:11, 9 January 2014 (UTC)
      • Our collective vagueness and indecisiveness in setting "policy" about these matters, combined with the tendency of too many of us to sniff blood in the water and then circle and pounce and bite, results in real pain to real people. It has happened too often in the past, and now again. This real living, breathing, feeling person must certainly be feeling anguish right now. She is indisputably devoted to the Free culture movement and has been widely liked and respected. It is quite sad that some take pleasure in trying to take Sarah Stierch down, just to score some sick point in the Misplaced Pages wars. SarahStierch still has my affection and respect, and always will. Cullen Let's discuss it 07:18, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

Like Montanabw 20:06, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

• • • • • Well said, Cullen. I supported her at her RFA and I do not regret that decision. She is capable of writing neutrally despite a COI, an ability that few editors have (I only know of one other, who has been able to bring several company articles to GA class). I do think that a COI declaration would have been in order, but Sarah has not violated policy and should not be thrown to the wolves. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 09:20, 9 January 2014 (UTC)
        • One of the ways to further the free culture movement is to help prove the concept of the free culture economy. People who are good at writing articles getting paid to create articles for the public space isn't exactly a horrific outcome. Sarah is getting burned because she embarrassed Jimbo and Sue (both of whom who have been all over the media declaring war on paid editing), and because the WMF is incredibly short-sighted.

          Sadly, Cullen328, the "on-wiki" point scoring probably isn't over yet, but the WMF will no longer be implicated. --SB_Johnny | ✌ 13:00, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

          • COI disclosure and complete transparency combined with keeping to WP:NOADS and anyone can edit seems to be the wave of the future in my humble opinion. We already have tons of people POV-pushing and doing copyvio cut-and-paste off of PR sites for free around here, we know how to handle people who are tendentious and disruptive. Poor editors will get slapped whether they are working for free or for pay. No sense running more trolls and socks underground. This has the feel of marijuana legalization; tons of people doing, it might as well be out in the open so it's easier to keep an eye on it. Montanabw 20:06, 9 January 2014 (UTC)
            • Marijiuana legalization is a good comparison. Two U. S. Presidents have been pretty clearly shown to have smoked marijuana, and that's not counting the one who "only inhaled". That's why a certain editor keeps bringing these cases of admins and WMF employees who edit for pay, here to Jimbo's talk page — to show the hypocrisy of calls for prohibition and shaming for something that good members of the WP community are also and already doing. First Light (talk) 21:02, 9 January 2014 (UTC)
          • I'm not familiar with the details of this Stierch case—I just want to say that the issue has never been paid editing in general, it's always been about paid advocacy editing. You're right: getting paid to create articles for the public space is not a horrific outcome at all. The problem is not that people are getting paid to create encyclopedic content (however rarely that happens)—the problem is that people are paying in order to advertise and polish the images of their products and their businesses. Customers haven't been paying MyWikiBiz, Wiki-PR, WikiExperts, etc. because they want to create encyclopedic content for the public—they're doing it specifically to advance their financial interests by using this site to host their advertorials—any other assessment of their behaviour is insincere.
          • Now is there a solution? Many have said opposing the practice is futile, because it will just go underground. This is far from the truth. The truth is that most business people have no interest in disreputable practices such as taking advantage of a charitable organization—it's just that they do not know that that is what they are doing. For example, most people don't know the difference between Misplaced Pages and Google Places for Business in terms of policy or content controls (hey they both show up on the side in Google results, don't they?). Simply setting policy, and making clear to the public what this policy is, will do most of the work for us. That's why in the past few months as policy has been debated and the Foundation has released a couple of press releases explicating their position, there has been a large backlash from the people who run these reputation management business—they depend on their clients being misinformed as to the nature of Misplaced Pages and acceptable behaviour thereon. --Atethnekos (Discussion, Contributions) 21:05, 9 January 2014 (UTC)
            • After there have been three RfCs on an issue, posting arguments in favor of the losing side of the RfCs, no matter how good those arguments are, is pretty much a waste of time. I didn't much like the results either, but we all have to accept the fact that there is a clear consensus and move on. --Guy Macon (talk) 22:48, 9 January 2014 (UTC)
            • I wholeheartedly agree with your assessment Atethnekos. Eric Corbett 21:53, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

• So do I. A vast amount of waste motion, misunderstanding, and unnecessary work deleting and explaining, would be saved if the screen new users see before they sign up said, in letters of fire:

  "Misplaced Pages is not a place for you to tell the world about yourself, your group, your client, or your company. If that is what you want to do, this is not the site for you".

JohnCD (talk) 22:45, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

• Me too, and I also agree with Guy Macon. We need to accept the fact that if left to the community, paid editing will continue to flourish. The community has spoken. Let's move on. If the WMF wants to act on the issue, the ball is in their court. Coretheapple (talk) 23:07, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

• Tim Sampson, "Wikimedia staffer loses job over edit-for-cash scandal," Daily Dot, Jan. 9, 2014. Carrite (talk) 18:45, 9 January 2014 (UTC)
• Statement from Wikimedia. --Guy Macon (talk) 22:48, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

  Posted almost a day ago by User:Crisco 1492 in this thread. Ihardlythinkso (talk) 10:39, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

"allegations of sexual orientation"

A detailed list of allegations of sexual orientation of living persons is wikilinked to their BLPs in Outrage (2009 film). I suggest that since the "sourcing" is almost entirely interviews with the filmmaker and reviews of the film, that they do not suffice as "strong reliable sourcing for allegations of sexuality on Misplaced Pages." Others feel that if a newspaper lists the name as being in the film that such is sufficient to list the allegations in the article on that film. I suggest "allegations" about living persons should have strong and specific reliable sourcing, and interviews with a person making an allegation do not actually suffice to support reprinting the allegation online. Cheers. Collect (talk) 17:32, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

Another weigher in and sad it is proper to list allegations as long as they are sourced: Thus "XXX book alleged that George Gnarph murdered Sally Gnarph" would be ok, but we can not say "George Gnarph murdered Sally Gnarph" which I find an interesting parsing. My own opinion is that "XXX book made allegations noted politicians were secretly gay" is appreciably different from having "XXX book says George Gnarph is secretly gay." For those below who shout "forumshopping" I would point out that Jimbo has specifically said that posting on his user talk page is not forumshopping. Collect (talk) 17:55, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

Forum shopping aside, this is an entirely disigenuous summary of the situation. The point is that such allegations are what the film is all about, apparently. It is a notable work that not only contains that en passant: it is actually built mostly of that. It is like having a film entitled "Cyclopia, the kitten-eating Wikipedian". While the allegation that I eat kittens would be a BLP violation if it was a poorly sourced sentence somewhere, if there is an article about a notable work that allegates that, we are required to cover it.--cyclopia 17:44, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

We are actually not required to cover anything. We have editorial judgment. A notable film that makes BLP violating allegations can be described without our necessarily repeating those allegations. alanyst 17:47, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

Right, we have editorial judgement. In this case, since such allegations are not a minor or secondary part of the film, but are the film, and are in turn sourced to dozens of secondary sources, such judgement requires us to repeat them. Otherwise we're omitting what the film is about, which is our very task. Just to make things clear: What if such allegations were in the title? Should we censor the title? Delete the article? --cyclopia 17:56, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

Here on Misplaced Pages, if an editor is reported for WP:OUTING another editor, it is well understood that discussions can take place on-wiki about the doxing allegations so long as they do not repeat the substance of those allegations; and indeed those who repeat the allegations (thereby perpetuating the doxing) are liable to be sanctioned. Most editors take this restriction in stride and manage to comment on the matter without violating it. For some reason it is less well understood that rumors and speculation that violate BLP can be similarly discussed in an article without repeating them, and that repeating them is perpetuating the risk of harm to living persons. In this case, it's not too difficult to figure out that the allegations made in the film can be characterized in general terms ("claims of hypocrisy by several well-known conservative figures whom the film alleged to be secretly homosexual, including a former Republican governor, a Fox News anchor, ...") without tying those allegations to specifically named individuals; and this would still give the reader a clear idea of what the film was about. alanyst 19:48, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

This is not a BLP violation. BLP is about how we deal with living people. This is instead about how a notable creative work deals with living people, not us. Notable work does notable allegation, it is not us doing un-notable allegations. --cyclopia 11:44, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

• To get a sense of what's going on here, I suggest other editors have a look at Collect drawing an equivalence between being gay and treason, of all things. Shocking. Nomoskedasticity (talk) 17:50, 7 January 2014 (UTC)
  • I also compare contentious claims to many things -- including murder and eating goldfish -- but nowhere did I say that being gay is the same as treason -- so please drop that weird and inapt claim. Cheers. Collect (talk) 17:56, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

I think there is good reason to treat the film's allegations with great care, particularly when they have not been confirmed in any other sources. And sources which merely repeat the allegation of the film (reviews of the film, for example) do not qualify. I think this is particularly true in articles about the person rather than the article about the film. (That is, I think it could make perfect sense to describe the film as alleging that X, Y, and Z are closeted homosexuals, while at the same time holding that the allegation is not sufficiently credible to put into the biography of the person.) As a final note, one way to possibly diffuse the emotion around this situation is to think of this way: whatever anyone's views are on homosexuality and allegations of homosexuality, the point is that these people are being accused of hypocrisy. Whether you are pro- or anti- or neutral- any issues relating to homosexuality, I think we can all agree that calling someone a hypocrite is a pretty big deal requiring better sourcing than an activist documentary is likely to provide.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 18:01, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

Collect has repeatedly pointed out that we should follow BLP, but Collect should acknowledge that WP:WELLKNOWN is the relevant portion of BLP. WELLKNOWN covers this exact issue quite well. This kind of forum shopping is atrocious; it splits the conversation over too many pages. Binksternet (talk) 18:08, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

@Jimbo: I agree absolutely with your view on the need for better sources. And I agree completely that a biographical article should not contain material about sexual orientation based solely on an activist documentary. But the question here is a bit different: Outrage is a notable movie whose central premise is the identification of allegedly closeted and hypocritical individuals. We can't neutrally and comprehensively describe the movie without alluding to the allegations it makes about the sexual orientation of named individuals. After all, the movie is essentially a vehicle for these allegations. It's a tricky situation, and I cannot pretend optimism when it comes to the ability of a self-selected group of Wikipedians to deal sensitively with a nuanced and politically charged topic. MastCell  18:14, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

(ec)The primary problem is that the article lists (say) several refs for each claim --- and each ref traces back to the same actual source - the film and filmmaker. Allegations about sexual orientation are a particular sore spot on Misplaced Pages, and it is obvious that specific standards must apply to all articles relating to living persons. WP:WELLKNOWN applies to reliable sources making allegations -- a source reporting that an unreliable source made an allegation is not a source for the allegation per WP:WELLKNOWN and it is a misuse of that section to suggest otherwise -- in fact it is the scurrilous repeating of allegations that is the bane of Misplaced Pages. Cheers. `Collect (talk)

The problem is that same actual source, the film, is the subject of the article. And the allegations are all what the film is about. If we don't cover the allegation, we also do not cover the film. It is a film made of allegations. Also: Similar situations arise constantly. Take Barack Obama citizenship conspiracy theories. Are the people making the conspiracy theories -that is, the original sources- reliable? Hell no. Is the theory damaging to a living person? Oh yes. Yet it is a massively notable set of conspiracy theories, reported by secondary sources, and therefore we cover it, including the fringe allegations. --cyclopia 19:27, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

We could simply state that allegations are made about politicians -- and then not mention names nor wikilink to their BLPs. Do you see how easy that is? And since there are not actual reliable sources making the allegations we can actually follow WP:BLP !! Cheers. Collect (talk) 19:30, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

Sure we could. We could also move Barack Obama citizenship conspiracy theories to A president citizenship conspiracy theories and avoiding mentioning his name at all. Do you see how easy that is? But wait, that something is easy doesn't make it right. In article about a notable movie, if we don't want to be ridicolous, we should just report what the movie says. In detail. Even if it's bad stuff about people. If you have issues with that, take it to the movie authors, not WP. --cyclopia 22:35, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

In public life, there comes a point at which, even though an alleged fact is not notable or well-sourced, the fact that the allegation has been made is itself both indisputable and noteworthy. (The canonical pre-Internet example is the allegations of adultery against Gary Hart in the 1984 presidential election; the allegations were circulating and hurting Hart in the poll results, and the newspapers couldn't well report that Hart's support was dropping without explaining why. See Michael Kinsley's essay on this in Curse of the Giant Muffins.) This type of situation is more common both within and outside Misplaced Pages than people ordinarily think of; compare this hypothetical example, which is based on several of our actual articles. It would be relevant in this instance to assess whether the people at issue are likely to be harmed by our reporting of the allegations at issue. The notability of the film is also relevant; we might not be able to avoid mentioning the subject of a number-one film in the way we could avoid dwelling on allegations in an obscure one. Newyorkbrad (talk) 20:25, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

The film grossed under $300,000 total, and did not make the "top 100 films of 2009". It is not a "number-one film." Nor did most newspapers enumerate those mentioned in it. I had hoped you would regard the primacy of WP:BLP but fear you are of the "it got printed so we should have it in the encyclopedia" camp :(. And there is no rationale for wikilinking living persons from that article. Cheers. Collect (talk) 21:17, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

Collect, you're grossly misrepresenting Brad's point and accusing him of disregard for WP:BLP, both of which are indications that you've officially jumped the shark and should step back for awhile. This isn't a simple issue. It's one that serious, reputable publishers have struggled with. Some reputable outlets (e.g. the Los Angeles Times, the Miami Herald) have published the names of those featured in the film, while others (e.g. the Washington Post, NPR) have omitted them out of respect for the subjects' privacy. NPR struggled quite a bit internally with this issue. It should be clear that responsible publishers differ on this challenging question, and ridiculous oversimplifications aren't helpful here either. MastCell  04:08, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

Gosh -- you seem to appear a lot lately regarding any post I make. Brad is fully capable of noting if I misunderstood what he wrote -- but you do not make a good interlocutor. The reputable publishers did not print the list of allegations. '

None of them printed the comprehensive list of names

None printed detailed rumours about them appended as they are in this article. Period.

This "article" includes gallons of innuendo, and precious little fact. Asserting that this is a "ridiculous oversimplification" is pure and simple bosh. Did you read the current article, Brad? Cheers. `Collect (talk) 13:38, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I agree with Newyorkbrad. And I disagree with Collect, in this particular case that we should omit the names. However, i do think that the article on the film should make it very clear to what extent, if any, reliable sources independent of the film have confirmed these allegations, or reported them as fact, and that unless they have been well confirmed, they should quite probably not be mentioned in the individual biography articles. DES 21:21, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

That is already done, there is no mention whatsoever in the Charlie Crist article that any rumors or media reports have been made, nor that he is the subject of a film. Sportfan5000 (talk) 21:37, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

• Update: I removed the contentious material and will prevent it from being restored until there have been discussions and a consensus about what to include and how to reference it. The situation that existed was appalling. There was list of rumors with a heap of shoddy references to the film or other sources that were simply parroting what the film said. It was as if somebody was trying to make up for the lack of quality references by supplying a large quantity of substandard references. The general principal is "when in doubt, keep it out". Once there has been time for thoughtful discussion, an uninvolved admin will hopefully summarize the discussions and document a result, which can then be implemented. Jehochman 14:22, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

One of the things that I did was visit the individual Misplaced Pages pages of some of the named politicians to see what we do about it there. In some cases, we cover what is obviously a legitimate issue in their biography - repeated allegations, sometimes court cases, etc. In at least one, we either don't mention the allegations at all or barely mention them. I haven't done enough research to be certain but preliminary research suggests that the individual articles have it about right in terms of what we report.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 14:41, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

I cleaned up one of those individual articles, where I found unsourced information which according to the article had been "discussed on local radio programs in his district" "the mainstream U.S. print media did not cover the story". There was undue weight/hit piece problems with the article, and it may still not be totally ok. Iselilja (talk) 15:01, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

Jimbo has correctly noticed that there is a different treatment of the film article versus the individual biographies. Before the recent removals and complaints by Collect, our article about the film reflected the consensus reached previously on BLPN that the film article would name the people who are outed in the film, but the individual biographies would not name the film unless it was a major element of that person's life, as seen in high-quality reliable sources.
Unfortunately, Jimbo has taken an untenable position regarding what sources we might use: he wrote here that "sources which merely repeat the allegation of the film (reviews of the film, for example) do not qualify." This position cannot be entertained or there would be no sources available at all. It is absolutely necessary that the references actually refer to the film. Binksternet (talk) 18:39, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

I said no such thing and strongly disagree with it. My position is as far as I can tell the same as yours! --Jimbo Wales (talk) 11:40, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

I'd emphasise the word "merely" in what Jimbo said. We should ideally use sourcing that shows the significance of the allegations to the film when considered globally - passing mentions that the film contains an allegation may not be enough. If I'm misunderstanding, then the alternative interpretation that we should be looking for sources that make the allegations independently of the film rather than just repeating them would be untenable. I don't think we should be thinking in terms of categories of sourcing (reviews, new stories etc) but in terms of what a particular source tells us about the degree of relevance of the information to the article. Formerip (talk) 20:37, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

You are trying to make sense of the Jimbo statement, which is admirable. However, he said film reviews are not appropriate for film article references. Try making sense of that. Binksternet (talk) 00:44, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

I said no such thing. If you come across something I have said which sounds ludicrous you may rest assured that you should read it again, with precision.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 11:40, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

No, I agree that wouldn't make sense, as I have indicated. What is true is that we shouldn't consider something noteworthy just because it is mentioned in a film review, particularly if there is a BLP concern. What we should do is give consideration to the way the information is presented in the review. Does the review give the impression that we are dealing with an important aspect of the film, or does it merely give a mention in passing? Formerip (talk) 00:59, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

I would note that I am far from the only editor evincing concerns about the casual disregard for the WP:BLP policy here. As for the false claim that if the article stuck only to what the film says that there would be no article at all -- that is pure straw man here. An article about a film can surely describe awards it has received, its monetary success, and a précis of the content of the film. This article, unfortunately, exceeds that proper remit for an article on a film. Collect (talk) 20:14, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

I don't see any "casual disregard" for WP:BLP here. Quite the opposite, I see people trying to have a serious discussion about a complex issue requiring us to balance comprehensive encyclopedic coverage of a notable movie with the privacy of the movie's subjects. MastCell  21:49, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

Exactly. Collect has yet to acknowledge the relevance of WELLKNOWN to this topic, WELLKNOWN being one section of BLP. It seems to me that Collect imagines BLP has no such section.

To Collect's point about the article needing a suitable synopsis of the film—if I were to write one, it would contain in prose what you see in the bulleted list of people who were outed in the film. Collect doesn't like the list; doesn't want it in the article. However, Collect argues for "a précis of the content of the film", this being a prose-format synopsis containing the arguments and assertions made in the film, these arguments and assertions being the outing of Larry Craig, Charlie Crist, and so on. To me, having the list of names and a synopsis of the list is the same thing. Binksternet (talk) 23:11, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

This looks like BLP enforcement gone wild (again). When I look at the old version I see people have gotten together a dozen sources for some of these. It's not even consistent - they took Craig out of the article but we still have Larry Craig scandal. Misplaced Pages should not be seen as a collaborative experiment in how to whitewash history and reshape reality, and even if it were, I would say homosexuality is not an allegation; it's not "negative material"; it's not an "attack"; and that should be acknowledged. Wnt (talk) 02:21, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

Come on, of course it is if it's unwelcome and person doesn't think its true. Being called "a Catholic" or "an American" or "a moderate" or "open-minded" or anything else can be pejorative and defamatory if the person don't agree with the label. (Anyway the main point being made in the film is not that the people are gay but that they're hypocrites, which is prima facie defamatory.) Herostratus (talk) 15:11, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

Despite the seriousness of the allegations made in the film, our article about the film should plainly state what are the allegations. Binksternet (talk) 01:28, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

I agree with this, Binksternet—but for those individuals who have not conceded the film's claims concerning them, those allegations can be covered quite well without naming names. There is precedent for this: respected mainstream media organizations CNN, NPR, and The Washington Post all covered the film and its controversial allegations without naming the individuals, according to the Outrage article itself. For those individuals who have publicly conceded the accuracy of the claims concerning them, there is no potential harm to them and thus the article can name them; but we must assume that there is a risk of the not-conceded claims being erroneous and therefore harmful to their subjects if promulgated in association with their names. alanyst 03:01, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

That's quite a sweet deal, unless the "alleged" closeted hypocrites keep their mouths shut, we'll expose them for lying and deception. It would align with NPOV to show what reliable sources stated before the film came out, which under threat of one admin was deleted, and show that reliable sources also reported which people were featured in the film. All of this was also deleted by the same admin, with accompanying threat. Meanwhile, we're missing the point that that is the core of what the movie is about closeted hypocrites and the mainstream media which is complicit in a double-standard when sex scandals are gay sex scandals (Larry Craig one of the main exceptions). That the majority of these cases are also Republicans is also a part of the story, and feels like part of the opposition to Misplaced Pages covering this with due weight. Sportfan5000 (talk) 04:22, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

Alanyst, newspapers can and do choose which politician's names to reveal in their coverage of scandals. In reporting on the film, Variety named politicians Larry Craig, Charlie Crist, David Dreier, Ed Koch, Jim McCrery and former NRC chairman Ken Mehlman. Variety did not name Ed Schrock, Mary Cheney or Shepard Smith. The Los Angeles Times named politicians Larry Craig, Charlie Crist, David Dreier, Ed Koch, Jim McCrery, Ed Schrock, newscaster Shepard Smith and former NRC chairman Ken Mehlman. The Los Angeles Times did not name Mary Cheney. Rolling Stone magazine names only Craig, Crist and Mehlman. The Huffington Post named Craig, Crist, Dreier, Koch, McCrery, Mehlman but not Schrock or Cheney. Time Out Chicago named just Craig, Crist, Koch and Cheney. So you can see that various periodicals choose various names to print. Lucky for us, Misplaced Pages is not censored. If a name is printed in any reliable source, we can repeat it for the reader. We do not have have censor-type editorial policies like the Washington Post which only named Craig, plainly stating that they would not name any others. Binksternet (talk) 04:43, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

My point is that the subject of the film can be covered without naming names, as proved by its having been done by respected media organizations that are not generally viewed as biased towards Republican interests. Whether it should be covered without naming names is a question of ethics and editorial policy; and I firmly believe that for us on Misplaced Pages, both the ethical choice and the policy guidance of BLP weigh against naming names where there is a risk of harm to living individuals should the claims be wrong. Encyclopedic coverage does not mean indiscriminately repeating everything ever published about a subject; thus it is not censorship to choose not to publish certain things when they run afoul of our editorial policies. alanyst 05:13, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

Your concern was embodied in the 2013 consensus wherein the film article carried a full account of the film (as it should) but the various biographies affected by the film were not to carry the film's allegations unless local consensus determined it. The example that was given was that we say on David Icke's biography that he thinks the British Queen Mother is an alien-sourced reptilian, since that is one of the things he is known for, but we do not say so on the Queen Mother's biography. Binksternet (talk) 05:35, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

Icke's theories about the queen are different because they are such that mentioning them won't significantly increase the chance of anyone believing them or make them seem more credible. So mentioning them doesn't have similar BLP problems.

And when we do this for theories that might have a chance of being believed, like Obama's birth certificate, the people involved are so well known and have so much said about them already that Misplaced Pages's influence on their lives is negligible. Ken Arromdee (talk) 15:49, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

That's a reason to include past rumor information. Part of the point of the film is that despite sourcing and now a film 5 years ago, these claims are largely ignored, No reason to believe that their use here will invigorate new discussion at all. Sportfan5000 (talk) 12:00, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

Is that a real argument? Sort of like saying "after a while, a falsehood becomes true enough that no one is harmed" or the like? I can not find any Misplaced Pages policy which could remotely support that argument at all. Nada. If something is contrary to Misplaced Pages policy, it remains contrary to Misplaced Pages policy. Even after five years. the massive list and "references" was not in the article for five years -- it was put in the article in April 2013. Well under a year. Actually about 8 months total. Cheers. Collect (talk) 14:13, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

You're right, Sport's argument was not such a good one. I notice, though, that you jumped on him for not arguing policy. Could you make a statement about WELLKNOWN, which is policy? I don't think you have addressed its directives with regard to the film Outrage. Binksternet (talk) 17:11, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

The misuse of WP:WELLKNOWN has been present in a great many articles. It applies only where strong reliable sources ("multitude of reliable published sources") documenting the allegation or incident exist and requires that such material be noteworthy, relevant, and well documented. The examples fail that test. They are rumours, weakly sourced to a film by a blogger, and are not shown to be noteworthy, relevant or well-documented per WP:BLP. As they fail on all five grounds out of five, "WELLKNOWN" is no more than a dingy piece of lace here. Cheers. Collect (talk) 18:20, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

That's a pretty ripe piece of opinion. There are several people for whom "noteworthy, relevant and well documented" is amply satisfied in this connection. Your application of such a broad brush here shows more ideological predilection than sensible analysis. But that's to be expected, I think. Nomoskedasticity (talk) 18:32, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

Is there a reason for that aside? I did not edit in any way based on "ideological predilection" whatsoever, nor is my position in any way "ideologically motivated" nor do I give a damn what anyone's "ideology" is - I just follow what the community has said is "policy" and that is damn fine enough for me. No matter what your own "ideological predilection" might be. Cheers. Collect (talk) 01:00, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

My recent edit experience

I am sorry but I am extremely, extremely frustrated with my recent edit experience. I edited the Mazda article yesterday to add a little information about keiretsu.(See ) My edit was deemed 'irrelevant' and was quickly reverted. It seemed to be a judgmental call and editor(s) refused to engage in any serious discussion. My attempt to draw in attention at the Administrators' noticeboard was quickly shut down, by the same editor.

My question is: is there a place in Wiki for editors like me, who lack time and experience, to contribute, and to reflect the ideas of many? Or the Wiki community would only accept those few with more experience and time. The outcome would mean whether this was my last participation into this (once) great project of you. Sincerely,--Now wiki (talk) 19:08, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

Step #1 is discuss at Talk:Mazda, not the user talk pages. Try that first, but be aware it may take a few days or a week to attract enough users. Step #2 is Be patient. Otherwise, the next steps to take are listed at Misplaced Pages:Dispute resolution (i.e., WP:3O, WP:RFC, WP:DRN, etc.). If your edits are correct and appropriate, they will eventually prevail in some form, but be prepared to accept compromise and/or rejection. Rgrds. --64.85.215.214 (talk) 20:00, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

• Try editing 20 different pages before getting demoralized: It is easy to imagine WP having degenerated into a hostile place which rejects all newcomers; however, try to update several articles, and compare the experiences when working on each page. If a person only visited the beaches at Nice (France) they might conclude all beaches have stones, or only swam at Mombasa then conclude all beaches have seaweed, or only walked at Virginia Beach, VA then might think all beaches have extensive white sand. Edit 20 articles for a few days and compare a variety of results. -Wikid77 21:32, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

I asked the user in question to bring the discussion to the talk page, but he decided to file an admin report instead. I agree with 64.85 above, relax, everything can wait a few days (or months) as nothing is on fire. And I would like to add: assume good faith. Cheers, hope you decide to stick around,  Mr.choppers | ✎  23:29, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

@Mr.choppers: I invited you to participate in the talk page here , didn't I? But you chose to remain silent apparently.---Now wiki (talk) 14:48, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

Um, I'm sorry I guess I didn't clarify that I meant the article talk page (I now know you're not entirely familiar with Wiki etiquette, but you came across as if you did - my bad), but you also can't expect me to reply immediately as I too have to work. By the time I got home you had already filed an ANI. I would recommend a bit more patience before going to such lengths in the future.  Mr.choppers | ✎  23:55, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

Also, your ANI report was closed by uninvolved user De728631, not by Thomas W.  Mr.choppers | ✎  12:12, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

Advertorials in The New York Times

The New York Times has begun to publish content provided by paying advertisers.

• Revamped New York Times website criticised over paid advertorials | The Drum (8 January 2014)

Google reports many search results for paid news. This trend has ramifications for Misplaced Pages policies and guidelines on reliable sources, as specified in Misplaced Pages:Identifying reliable sources.
—Wavelength (talk) 22:51, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

The New York Times has published paid advocacy advertisements since at least the 1950s, and I think well before that. One of them was the starting point of the famous US Supreme Court case Times vs Sullivan. Why should the policy of the NY Times (a private organization) control or even significantly influence that of Misplaced Pages (a quite separate private organization)? DES 23:53, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

• Because if it's not marked or the statement that this is a paid advertorial is missed, editors may insert advertising junk as actual information, because it's in the NYT. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 00:01, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

• True, but the linked story above says that all such "advertorials" are being marked, at least for now. Yes, editors will need to take care to check, but then editors using the print version (or scanned editions) might run into these from any date, and would still need to take care. DES 00:07, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

• I agree with you, that we still need to take care. However, there is an increased possibility of such advertorial junk getting through as the paid advertisements go online (and if the "Advertorials" are marked in really small font, who can blame editors for missing it?) — Crisco 1492 (talk) 01:54, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

This is actually the oldest, original application of the FTC's guidelines about misleading advertising - adverts that masquerade as legitimate news reports. Accusations that journalists re-published PR-provided stories as if they were independent journalism is also one of the oldest criticisms of PR, dating back to the early 1900s when AT&T allegedly pushed out pro-monopoly propaganda through newspapers it had paid advertising relationships, that would also (depending on who you ask) publish stories provided by their PR department with a journalist's byline on it in exchange for advertising dollars.

I don't think the NYT would ever cross that line of sponsored adverts without a disclosure. However, a better question is whether the disclosure is prominent enough, such that a Misplaced Pages editor will notice it. I was on the plane about a month ago reading what I thought was an article in the in-plane magazine. As I read, I noticed it was totally glowing - in tiny print at the top left corner it said it was an advertisement, but I did not realize it until I was 4 paragraphs in.

I don't think there is anything to do about it though. They are obviously not reliable sources and any editor has the good sense to know it. Some editors may accidentally use them not knowing it, but there are no preventative measures that can be deployed to prevent it and those mistakes will probably not be many. CorporateM (Talk) 16:04, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

Right. This sort of thing is done generally and it's called native advertising. Slate has been doing it for awhile; they used to mark the articles, but they had a recent redesign and I don't know if they still do. As you can see here The Atlantic does this also, and apparently also Forbes and the Washington Post and HuffPost are going there too and probably most everyone else either is doing or will do. Certainly the Misplaced Pages also does this, although we don't mark the articles and of course there are other differences.

I'm not nuts about this, but as a long-term business strategy it's preferable to "let's slowly die" which I guess is the other main option on the table for these publications. As long as the advertisements sponsored articles are marked it's not a problem per se, exactly. Where the problem comes in IMO is the new dynamic. IMO it's healthy if the relationship between the editorial and business departments has a good dose of referring to the other as "ignorant bean-counters" or "la-di-da prettyboys" (as appropriate) after a couple drinks. And so this sort of cooperation with advertisers rather than just selling them space is not a good trend. But here's a counterview, that nothing much has changed.

But anyway this is a general thing and not specific to the Times. It'll be interesting to see how this plays out. I would not be surprised to see the notices getting smaller and pretty well hidden, and I think the FTC is going to be pretty reluctant to interfere with a revenue model that may be essential to America having large functional news publications. This may then devolve such that there's space for boutique publications with a sales model based specifically on not hosting sponsored content. Who knows. But definitely a trend for Misplaced Pages editors to be aware of. Herostratus (talk) 15:32, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

It's been a prominent topic with both the FTC and PR reps. I go to a monthly marketing meetup that I attended yesterday and native advertising became the topic of discussion for the full hour. On one end you had ppl asking how they can get the disclosure smaller so ppl are more likely to read the article without glazing over it as an advert. On the other, there were ppl asking if it was prominent enough to be ethical/legal. In all the examples we actually saw, there was no disclosure the headlines/links were sponsored, but once you clicked on the link, it went to www.corporatesponsor.com and it was overwhelmingly obvious who authored the content (but not until after you clicked the link to read it). I haven't seen any cases where I could credibly see an actual disinterested, non-pov-pushing editor genuinely mistake it for a reliable source though. However, we could only guess that it may get there at some point. CorporateM (Talk) 18:49, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

German User Jamiri abusing legally protected artist name / Account who tried to report this immediately banned following a Cease and Desist Notice

New wiki-inventions for 2014

The month of January might be a good time for people to think of new ideas for Misplaced Pages, such as new inventions for wiki typesetting. Most technology tends to be copy-cat ideas, so new ideas require special effort, such as the wp:VPIL Idea Lab noticeboard page. For example, for years we have wanted to link to an external webpage, but also link some words in a title back to local Misplaced Pages articles. Now, the Template:embwlink ("embedded wikilinks") can format an external-link address with some words wikilinked to local pages. As two examples:

• {{embwlink|"Common |] |in Design"|url=http://loc.gov}}
       → "Common Thermodynamics in Design"
• {{embwlink|"Tests Confirm| ] |Case In|]" |url= http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=2199&dat=19761207&id=w9MxAAAAIBAJ}}
       → "Tests Confirm Swine Flu Case In Wisconsin"

Although 2-way linking seems simple enough, to link both an external webpage plus local pages, it has taken years to reach this point, due to the problem of highlighting the 2 forms of links, where the external-link text has a light-blue hue (or reset by "exhue=#0000cc" or such). For years, there was a mental barrier to not mix external/internal links, and even some guideline standards might have thwarted the invention of dual-embedded links. In general, very few new ideas are introduced in societies, and a study of "re-inventing the wheel" has confirmed that, historically, the wheel was rarely re-invented but, rather, copied by other civilizations. It takes special effort to encourage people to promote new ideas. Even with the new Lua script-based templates, the vast majority of Lua modules just redo the markup-based features, with relatively few new ideas at this point. Instead, 2014 could be the year to greatly advance new ideas, along with minor improvements to the old technology and procedures, and perhaps fix the trivial wp:edit-conflicts or other major bugs. -Wikid77 (talk) 10:32, 9 January, revised 06:27, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

In its best moments Misplaced Pages is like an anarchy, but indeed cultural stability is by far anarchy's most significant weakness. In a society where all are free, equal and independent, there is no easy way to propagate change, while those who follow leaders can find themselves in blitzkrieg or moon projects or Cultural Revolutions very quickly. Still, innovations are not always such a good thing, and those examples above definitely fall into that category: we shouldn't have to duck and weave between words looking for a link, or have multiple external links to the same place. I would suggest a simpler solution along the line of "Tests Confirm Swine Flu Case In Wisconsin" or even "Tests Confirm Swine Flu Case In Wisconsin" but introducing a new icon and getting people to use it is one of those changes which are very difficult to propagate. I've scribbled up lots of little things like Module:MapClip that I think should be generally useful, but to move people to actually use them would take a substantial PR/advertising campaign. Wnt (talk) 14:21, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

Perhaps we need another noticeboard, specifically for new ideas which are backed by implementation or detailed instructions. The concept of links-within-links is a logical follow-on to the simple, one-level links, and in computer science, such "recursive" linking would be a natural feature but requiring multi-level highlighting, such as:

• The new stage play is ]?]]]]

I think there you're trying to .gif the English language. One play based on another based on a person should be introduced with three separate phrases, whether or not they happen to use some of the same words. Wnt (talk) 18:33, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

The main issue is to indicate the levels of embedded, nested wikilinks, which I have denoted above as light-blue for external-link text. A related problem is to define recursive footnotes-within-footnotes (wannabe nested reftags: "<ref>xx<ref>zz</ref>yy</ref>"), such as explaining a complex pronunciation of a term which needs multiple sources to document the pronunciation aspects, and the #tag syntax "{{#tag:ref|..}}" provides some help. -Wikid77 (talk) 17:22/17:41, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

I know you meant well by that, Wikid, but to be completely frank it's one of the worst ideas that I've seen in a long time. (I also particularly dislike the comments about "mental barriers" and so on that you chose to accompany it with, by the way.) I don't know a way to ask you to get rid of it without making it sound like I'm threatening you, which is absolutely not something that I would ever do; so I'm just going to bring it straight to WP:TfD, hopefully to get community consensus that it's not something we should ever use. Sorry. — Scott • talk 15:07, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

So rush to delete the new template? See TfD for {embwlink}. -Wikid77 12:41, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

• We should always be open to new inventions, but it is worth discussing then first as experience has shown that not everything that technically can be written and theoretically might help the site actually works in practice. One suggestion though, I think that with the rise of the mobile phone based editors we really need a mixed casing option that will mixcase a highlighted bit of text. The tempting alternative is to simply revert such additions as shouty and usually unsourced. ϢereSpielChequers 16:22, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

  @User:WereSpielChequers, could underlining of text help to denote the wikilinks? For mixed-case text, {{fixcaps|TEXT FROM MOBILE PHONE IN /ANYTOWN}} gives "Text from mobile phone in Anytown " -Wikid77 17:41, 9 January, 12:41, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

1. "LOC".

Sorry about the snark-tag after 'improved'. But I really fail to see how having multicolored links *within* other links, is a good idea. Recursion is elegant, but not for everyone. And no, going all last-millenium and underlining hyperlinks is very Netscape 2.0 (which is distinct from web 2.0 or whatever you want to call it. "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler." HTH. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 02:04, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

We've got options out there at least as css code for editors who want to change the colour of links. I use an option that shows one liners separately to longer articles. If people who wanted to increase the emphasis of wikilinks could choose more striking colours would that achieve your objective Wikid77? If so I suspect we already have the technology or could implement it, though I don't know how popular it would be. ϢereSpielChequers 11:00, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

That's another interesting idea, and users could color-code the major/minor wikilinks rather than just one style, such as a new {highlink}. -Wikid77 12:41, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

Distinguishing information purely by color is bad for accessibility and should only be an opt-in feature. See the W3C's notes on the topic in their guide to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. — Scott • talk 14:00, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

Yup, I think that having it opt in if it happens at all is one thing we all agree on. I'm not seeing any particular difficulty or downside with that, but I'm still not clear whether there is much demand and whether there is any benefit which we could point to to justify asking someone to code this. ϢereSpielChequers 19:31, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

• The wikilinks could be coded by gray-shade colors. Embedded wikilinks would probably be useful in every article with external links. -Wikid77 06:27, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

Mentioning Sarah's cause for dismissal and her 'mistake'

Jimmy, why the hell is Frank Schulenburg making public statements about why Sarah was let go? This is opening the door for Sarah to sue WMF for damaging her reputation even if the statements are true. He also mentioned that, "everybody makes mistakes" which is damaging Sarah's reputation as Frank is implicitly stating that Sarah made a mistake. Frank is neither a legal nor an HR professional. If anything, it should be Joady Lohr (HR Director) making the announcement and it should be as short as possible: "The WMF announces that Sarah is no longer an employee of the Foundation. We wish Sarah the best in her future endeavors." But mentioning why she was let go? The scandal has now been picked by the media and Sarah's name and the cause for her dismissal and her alleged mistake are spreading out: Bad mojo Jimmy, bad mojo. Can any HR American/California attorneys and Public Relations professionals chip in this discussion please? What would be the best course of action for the WMF right now? —Ahnoneemoos (talk) 13:12, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

Your analysis is incorrect. Sarah did make a mistake.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 17:36, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

Arguably, she made several mistakes: not declaring COI on the talk page of each piece and gibraltaring one on the main page as a Did You Know? snippet. As for the paid editing, that's not banned by en-WP policy although WMF may have employment contracts that you know about and we don't. Speaking of which, is there non-disclosure language which is keeping SS from speaking on the matter? Carrite (talk) 23:26, 10 January 2014 (UTC) ///// Note: redacting the comment on gibraltaring, after further scrutiny of her edit history it is my considered opinion that the piece in question wasn't a paying job, as it was worked on repeatedly over time. My apologies to Sarah. Carrite (talk) 04:03, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

What's done is done. Can't unring the bell. Reverse Streisand effect. Sorry for the cliches but it seems best to say little, now (especially given your speculation what someone may do or may not do in court). Alanscottwalker (talk) 14:48, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

• It's not libel if it is true. End of case. Also, she can be counter-sued as the door swings both ways, which people should remember every time someone mentions a lawsuit when raised as an alarm. Search legal records for massive countersuits awarded. -Wikid77 (talk) 15:30, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

  No, it's defamatory whether or not it's true. That it can be proven to be true is a defence against a libel charge. Eric Corbett 22:48, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

The elements that must be proved to establish defamation are:

• 1: a publication to one other than the person defamed;
• 2: a false statement of fact;

that is understood as

*a. being of and concerning the plaintiff; and

*b. tending to harm the reputation of plaintiff.

In addition, if the plaintiff is a public figure, he or she must also prove actual malice.

Source: Electronic Frontier Foundation --Guy Macon (talk) 00:32, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

Ahnoneemoos asked for a PR professional to chip-in and I do have a PR background. In my opinion, it was a pretty standard letter and the cause of the layoff would have been presumed by the media anyway, who regularly watch Jimbo's page for Misplaced Pages stories. If the community wanted it handled with discretion, the community would have had to do so in the first place, by emailing Jimbo/WMF rather than posting here, but in most cases that is not what the original poster wanted. However, it will be very hard for WMF to fight against covert, non-neutral paid editing when their own staff and partners have been exposed for similar practices. For that reason, if I were in WMF's shoes, I would have been forced to advise the same action, as regrettable as it may be. CorporateM (Talk) 18:16, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

• Well, this is real news now: Unfortunately, Stierch is taking the media flak over the fact that we can't come up with a clear answer and a consistent policy, one way or the other, about anything. Wnt (talk) 23:04, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

• Real news? Are you sure? Have you compared the Independent piece with the Ars Technica piece, to see how much they differ and if they are separate articles? --Demiurge1000 (talk) 06:49, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

• I'm not saying I want to start an article about it based on GNG (the thought may have crossed my mind, but it's absurd). All I'm saying is that sometimes I actually read The Independent, not as an external link but as a newspaper site. Wnt (talk) 06:58, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

• Jimmy, you and the WMF did the right thing. I hope this discovery will act as a catalyst to prompt further remedial actions by the WMF and yourself. The editing community should have little to no say; we are talking about the good reputation of the project, critical to editor retention and public trust and acceptance. As for the adminship status of this editor, enacted by over 200 !voters in 2012, it should be removed at once. Repeat, the administrator flag should be removed at once, by you or an office action if need be. Thanks again for seeing this overall problem as significant-to-crucial. Jusdafax 06:29, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

Petition to un-gag Sarah

Oh my. I go away a few weeks and ....wow.--Mark Miller (talk) 03:41, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

Petition for administrator standards

The undersigned urge Jimmy Wales to pressure the WMF to insist that any newly-appointed administrator on the English Misplaced Pages, before taking up their office, avow they will not engage in paid editing; and also disclose any paid editing or COI editing that they have engaged in previously.

• --Demiurge1000 (talk) 00:09, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

Is administrator status an "office"? If this is important to you, why not ask the question during RFA? What do you propose doing about the 2,000 or whatever administrators already minted? Do you think that the most problematic paid editors at WP are administrators, or are they actually non-administrators? What is the policy basis for JW having approval rights of those approved for administrative buttons? Carrite (talk) 00:56, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

• Nah, just unbundle the tools and return it to "no big deal". Rgrds. --64.85.215.43 (talk) 00:53, 11 January 2014 (UTC)
• Support—John Cline (talk) 01:00, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

I have suggest this in the past and believe it is fundamentally required.—John Cline (talk) 01:00, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

You'll probably have to make sure they also provide an official notary public's affidavit that they did not cross fingers while swearing their oath of undying loyalty. Unless the WMF flies all newly elected admins to the nearest chapter to swear them in. MLauba 02:09, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

Your imagination is either very active, or very limited.—John Cline (talk) 08:01, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

• Oppose until such time as a fixed policy which is 100% against paid editing is established. There is no reason to hold admins to an ideal which does not have wide enough support to actually become a coded policy. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 04:16, 11 January 2014 (UTC)
• The only relevant "vow" is the WP:Terms of use; if the WMF wants to do this top down, they would need to consult some lawyers and try to work up a wording to go in there, whether it affects everyone or only admins, and then if desired editors could hold a plebiscite on it (at the rate things move on WP, if they get the ball rolling now, they might squeeze it in with the next ArbCom election). (note I'm not actually calling for this; a vote is a poor substitute for political organization) Wnt (talk) 06:40, 11 January 2014 (UTC)
• Support: minimal and obvious. If there really is a "bright line rule," and that's not just a figure of speech, then this should be a no-brainer. Don't you think so, Jimbo Wales? Further comment: I just read about the Sarah Stiertch dismissal for paid editing. Assuming the reports are correct that she left the Foundation for that reason, it's outrageous. There are no rules against paid editing on Misplaced Pages. There should be, but there are not. Rather than throwing this person under the bus, the Foundation should change its terms of use to prohibit paid editing. Persons currently engaged in the practice should stop what they're doing, but not subjected to ex post facto penalties. If the Foundation feels so strongly about paid editing (which would be great), it should take action. Coretheapple (talk) 21:12, 11 January 2014 (UTC)
• Oppose. The English wikipedia can simply establish this as policy, including provisions for a desysopping process as appropriate. And that's not a bad idea. And it's probably unlikely that candidates who refuse to make this commitment will succeed in the future, even in the absence of a formal policy. Hullaballoo Wolfowitz (talk) 21:47, 11 January 2014 (UTC)
• Support ...at the very least. (Comment: knowing that some 'are' being paid to work on articles has taken the wind out of my sails, frankly, for working on this Project, and I am no longer willing to put long-term effort into difficult pages like BP, or into addressing the recent takeover and spin-job to the Cannabis articles by WikiProject Medicine. Not for free, anyway.) petrarchan47tc 22:01, 11 January 2014 (UTC)
• Support - who ever came up with the idea that it was ever ok for an admin to engage in paid editing? Hasn't it been obvious from the very beginning of the idea of "admin" that they would not be working for somebody else while they were working on Misplaced Pages? That said, I'm not sure that this page is the best spot for an RfC, or that the words "urge Jimmy Wales to pressure the WMF" are right. I think a simple petition to the WMF board to please make this clear, in light of the recent scandal, to the folks who are looking to create new "paid-editing rights" that it just doesn't fly to have an admin (or WMF employees for that matter) accepting pay from anybody other than the WMF to edit Misplaced Pages. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 22:31, 11 January 2014 (UTC)
• Oppose - Administrators are just editors with extra buttons for the performance of site maintenance tasks. There are already mechanisms to remove tools from abusive administrators. I'm opposed to anything which creates the impression or reality that there are two distinct castes, administrators and non-administrators. Carrite (talk) 21:28, 12 January 2014 (UTC)
• Seek community consensus, instead of appealing to Jimbo. I would likely support a policy like this, but this is not the way to put it into place. Ross HillTalk to me! 22:17, 12 January 2014 (UTC)
• Oppose I do not think we should isolate sysops from other editors by holding them to a separate set of rules than that of other editors. In doing so you will be ultimately transforming being a sysop into something that should be no big deal. I agree that paid advocacy is a problem, but it is a community wide one. Mkdw 02:39, 13 January 2014 (UTC)
• Oppose. As pointed out above, we need to have a policy on paid editing that prohibits such activity before demanding that administrators not do it. I think it's clear by now that the bright line rule is not actually Misplaced Pages policy, either de jure or de facto, even though Jimbo wants it to be. I am also of the belief that such a policy is unwise because as a bright line rule it has no exceptions similar to the exceptions editing your own BLP has, and per IAR *everything* has exceptions. It also encourages outing. Ken Arromdee (talk) 01:08, 14 January 2014 (UTC)
• Support - Paid editing or whatever one calls it has a corrosive, corrupting effect that ripples throughout this project. We hold admins to a higher standard, via community consensus, that they be given the tools. In my view it is absurd not to request a pledge from all admins to not take cash or favors of any kind in exchange for their broad powers, including the block button. These powers set them apart from other editors the way an armed policeman is different from the average citizen, in terms of influence and chilling effect. And no matter what some may say here or elsewhere, there is a very real caste system at work in Misplaced Pages. Jusdafax 01:43, 14 January 2014 (UTC)
• Oppose What? First, Jimmy cannot do that. Second, the Wikimedia Foundation cannot do that. And third, the English Misplaced Pages community, by no means, has expressed unity against paid editing. — ΛΧΣ 04:07, 14 January 2014 (UTC)
• Comment This suggestion is just unrealistic at this point, even if it had support, since we'd have to poke and prod the 1,400 administrators we currently have. Regards, — Moe Epsilon 04:23, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

Heaven forbid we should upset admins with a poke or prod to pledge not to do COI editing or act in other ways as paid agents. And the Wikimedia Foundation can take any action it deems needful to preserve the perception and reputation of this online encyclopedia. Jusdafax 05:57, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

Jusdafax: Back in reality, they have already made this "pledge" by going through the rigmarole of the dying RFA process, by showing they would not damage the project in any way with their tools, etc., etc. Why do we need extra confirmation that they won't do what they know is already frowned upon by the community? We wouldn't have given them tools if we thought they were going to be engaging in paid editing, that is pretty clear. We already expect them not to. Do you think a "petition" or "pledge" with a signature from every administrator would even make a difference here? Say this had already been the case, we had every administrator on record, including Sarah, who told us they would not engage in paid advocacy. She still engaged in paid editing as an administrator when she knew it would not be taken kindly to here in 2013/14. A pledge is empty, and we have to trust those we give the tools to. Likewise, we can't slap every administrator on the wrist for the actions of one editor. Regards, — Moe Epsilon 06:14, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

Perhaps you are unaware that another admin has recently admitted to "paid advocacy editing." To date I know of no actions taken to correct that. The community is deeply divided and arguably compromised. Something needs to be done asap to correct the existing precedent of admins editing for money. I take a hard line, myself, and call for such admins to be not only desysopped, but banned, as an example that there will be zero tolerance. Enough is enough. Jusdafax 06:39, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

Yeah, I've followed the paid editing discussions as well, including the suspected paid editing of another administrator and other discussions, and I'm aware the deep divide. To me, if you previously expose your COI and still improve an article, then it shouldn't be a problem if it's a net positive for Misplaced Pages. The problem is secrecy and the 'shock' of exposing someone being a paid editor. We shouldn't be discouraging paid editing, as much as we should be encouraging transparency. Had Sarah previously disclosed that she was going to be using another account, linked to her main one so everyone knew who she was, that was used in mind of COI and relevant policies to improve articles for pay, there would be considerably less drama. Their edits could easily be scrutinized if they were making malicious edits (such as deleting criticisms of who they are getting paid from) and they wouldn't have to hide it from us. Paid editing is going to occur, just like vandalism will always be around. "Banning" paid editing isn't going to happen, because you can't stop it. It will only make paid editing harder to detect and that isn't what we need, we need to know where paid editing is happening. Regards, — Moe Epsilon 08:18, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

Reliability

Hi Jimmy. I sometimes begin my day by patrolling Misplaced Pages:Recent changes (medicine). I have a feel for the reliability of our medical content. It's mostly not bad, and safe, It is about 10% complete, and hardly a day goes by when I don't notice someone - usually in good faith - putting seriously wrong health-related information into Misplaced Pages. Fortunately, there are editors far more diligent and dedicated than me scrupulously watching medical articles and catching a lot of the false information. But some slips through because it sounds plausible and cites a reliable source behind a paywall, or because the non-expert patrollers such as me who check the edit misread the source in the same way as the contributor. The errors that slip past patrollers usually sit in the article until a reader corrects it, which can be anywhere from days to years.

Sorry, I haven't kept a list of the medical errors I've encountered over the years, but there have been some awful ones. One that sat in an article for months told readers that the prognosis for a disease is far worse than it actually is. I have removed unsourced dosage information that had sat in Misplaced Pages for years.

Jimmy, we want to make the sum of all human knowledge readily available to all; but the present model militates against that goal.

I think Misplaced Pages needs to become a reliable source, with all of its published content reviewed for accuracy by the same standard (or higher, ideally) of scholar that reviews our highest quality reliable sources. We have a duty to provide reliable articles if we are to be true to the foundation's mission.

What do you think? --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 14:39, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

And how should we achieve that? Should the WMF hire thousands of professionals to do full-time article reviews? Should we freeze all contributions until a professional has reviewed them? Shall we reinvent Nupedia? If you assume 3 million articles, and 10 minutes each for review, that would require something like 600,000 scholar-hours just for a first pass to say noting of keeping up with changes for continuing reviews, or 15 weeks full-time effort for a staff of 1,000. If you assume a more realistic 1 hour per article, that is 1 1/2 YEARS of work for that same staff of 1,000 working 40 hour weeks on this alone. This would cost something over US$100 million/year. And it would still drastically slow down volunteer contributions. I don't think this is practical. DES 15:00, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

It would be simpler to have top banner: "Don't believe a word of the following text". -Wikid77 15:47, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

Seems unnecessary given so many people argue that Misplaced Pages is failing because they overheard their brother's best friend's father say that Misplaced Pages is so unreliable. Resolute 00:09, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

I have an answer to your questions but take it to my talk page or open another thread. Here, I just want to know Jimmy's sentiment regarding Misplaced Pages becoming a reliable source. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 15:03, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

Typically, Jimbo has advised people to place articles under pending-changes review (or similar). Medical pages are not a crisis, but for a real problem, consider distracted driving and especially "Texting while driving" (editing pages from car mobile phones) as perhaps much more dangerous (20x-100x?) than drunk-driving. Only allow WP usage from mobile phones with driver-detection lockout? -Wikid77 (talk) 15:47, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages follows the example of God: in order that people have the choice to do the right thing, they have the choice to do the wrong one. We can be confident that the right information will win out in the end. Any administrative structure - including the pending changes idea - simply takes that choice out of the hands of many and puts it into the hands of a few. There are many ways to do medical harm through deletion and rejection - for example, by the unthinking and sometimes bigoted or mercenary rejection of alternative ideas from other cultures. The United States has never been able to catch up with the progress made in the Soviet Union on phage therapy for bacterial infections and low-dose interferon treatment for flu, or Chinese traditional medical use of a wide range of natural substances such as ursodeoxycholic acid for avoiding gallstone surgery, simply due to bureaucratic and cultural obstacles. I do not want to enable any mechanism that could cause the knowledge of such things to be suppressed. Wnt (talk) 17:15, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

EC @Wikid. In my experience doing any sort of an edit from a mobile phone is difficult and though there are young and youngish people who will laugh at me for that, I suspect that is a major part of the reason why our editing community is broadly stable whilst our audience grows with the Internet. But with the mobile phone likely to be the internet access of choice for many of the areas of the world where we are currently weakest, I can't see the WMF agreeing to bar all but the most hi-tec mobiles from editing. ϢereSpielChequers 17:26, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

• Most people should know by now to take Misplaced Pages with a grain of salt, especially with smaller articles. I would support having a short medical disclaimer at the top of a page as discussed earlier here. KonveyorBelt 17:21, 10 January 2014 (UTC)
  • Sure, and most people should know by now to wear their seatbelts, yet the average ER sees a steady stream of unrestrained passengers involved in motor-vehicle accidents. If our approach is to present seemingly authoritative information and to depend on the reader's inherent skepticism and critical-thinking faculties, then I think we're asking for trouble. I can describe instances in which real people have been negatively affected in very real ways through their misplaced faith in the accuracy of Misplaced Pages's medical content, although I've generally hesitated to do so because there are significant privacy issues involved. I've come to believe that some sort of visible medical disclaimer or expert editorial control is essential, and I say that as someone who's spent virtually his entire Misplaced Pages career trying to make this project a credible, reputable source of accurate health information. MastCell  17:53, 10 January 2014 (UTC)
• My experience is that on the whole quality is still increasing, but I for one would welcome a bit more priority on that. If the aim is to increase reliability there are several things that we could do, some being easier to sell to the community than others. For example, it would be good to see some research funded into the contrasting experiences of DE and EN wiki since DE went down the route of flagged revisions on all articles. If the result was that as some of us expect flagged revisions makes for a more effective barrier against vandalism then I think we could finally sell the idea of flagged revisions to the EN wiki community. ϢereSpielChequers 17:58, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

Most people older than about 3 years know that they need to go to a doctor in case of medical problems. So, this issue isn't a problem in practice. What may be a problem is that people don't typically go to the doctor to ask about general health issues, like diet, exercise etc. But here we should note that official medical guidelines have typically been in the wrong. E.g. the amount of exercise people need has consistently been underestimated in the medical literature (assuming that the latest guidelines are correct). The results of medical science have been very useful to deal with diseases, but it has in general not been a big success to optimize the health of healthy people. Not only were healthy people prescribed too little exercise, they were also prescribed margarine containing 29% trans fats, told for many decades that vitamin D is dangerous for the unborn child etc. etc. Count Iblis (talk) 22:04, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

The angel on my shoulder is telling me to ignore your effort to drag this post off-topic. The devil on my other shoulder is telling me to spend the next 4 paragraphs explaining in detail how far off-base your contentions are. MastCell  22:43, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

Most people older than about 3 years know that they need to go to a doctor in case of medical problems. They know, but in actual practice they fail to do so sometimes. Knowing may be half the battle, but actually executing your knowledge is the other half, and sometimes people don't do that. KonveyorBelt 02:32, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages was not created by the World's dictator to enforce his nanny state policy. If you read Kip Thorne's book about black holes (forgot the exact title), you'll read about arguments he had with his Soviet colleagues about lack of freedom in the CCCP and homeless people freezing to death in the US.Count Iblis (talk) 10:28, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

• I love the appeal to emotion here, Anthony. Start with a non sequitur related to medical-themed articles to try and scare people then post the already tired argument of making all of Misplaced Pages a "reliable source". Except, you haven't actually given a reason why we even need to. You say the current model "militates against" the goal of making the sum of all knowledge available to all without explaining why. Truthfully, I think it is your proposal that militates against this goal, not the current approach. To be even remotely feasible, your approach would be required to build barriers that prevent editing, and would create a multi-tiered system for both articles and editors. Resolute 00:20, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

Why are you always so rude? I'm sorry if I wasn't clear. The problem with the current model is anyone can live edit. Randy can go to our Squamous-cell carcinoma article and tell the world that sunbeds are the best treatment. There is nothing in the "anyone can edit" model that entails any nutter must be able to see his thought-bubble go live the moment he clicks "save."

To be clear, I'm proposing a two-tier model for articles: reliable and not so. Once an article achieves featured status via the current volunteer review process, it then goes to a group of independent scholars who fact-check. An article that passes FA and expert review is then locked, and further editing and updates are done in the Misplaced Pages:Drafts space. Once a draft has passed featured article review and expert review again, it goes live and the cycle repeats. Such articles would be labeled prominently for our readers as having been reviewed for accuracy by experts A,B,C and D on X date and each would carry a prominent invitation to readers to collaborate on the current draft.

Of the 25,000 medical articles on en.Misplaced Pages only 58 are featured medical articles, and some of those will need their featured status reviewed before they go to expert review. So, at least to start with, we're not talking about a huge task.

I'm not proposing two tiers of editors. Reviewers are not writers or editors.

I've started with medicine because that's a topic area I know, but if the physics project would like to start a similar process, why not?

Any costs incurred in the expert review should be picked up by one or more of the various charities in the topic area whose mission includes education or outreach. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 04:46, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

You don't see how your two-tiered system stifles Misplaced Pages? You are insisting that any article that reaches a certain level be blocked away from the masses until so-called experts can review, then re-review, then re-re-review, .... And yes, reviewers are editors in your model. They are the privileged class of editor permitted to dump all over those doing the hard work. But what is most curious to me is how your proposal doesn't even solve the problems you argue. You complain about how easy it is to vandalize these articles or add misinformation... yet you propose to leave 99.8% within the medicine scope alone as prone to any form of undesirable type of edit you can imagine. And for that remaining 0.2%, you propose that other charities waste their resources on a redundant process here? You'll have to forgive my bluntness, because I don't see how this proposal does more good than harm. Resolute 05:21, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

Anthony, our more conscientious editors are probably more faithful with their sourcing than many medical researchers. You don't have to go far at all to find some ral sourcing gaffs and sweeping assumptions in medical papers. What would we do if WMF paid an expert and they introduced some assumptions, because "they know it's true" despite sources saying otherwise? Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 05:31, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

I agree about the slackness of some papers that slip through the peer review process in some journals. That's why we have to set a high standard for the expert-review of our FAs. Having named expert reviewers will help with that - they won't want to have their name on a poor-quality article.

I haven't made myself clear enough about the role I envision for the expert reviewers. They won't - can't actually if we are to keep the crowdsourcing process that is the engine of this project - have a veto. If reviewers have veracity concerns about an article, we can ignore them and publish - we just won't be able to tell our readers it's been checked by experts for accuracy. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 07:45, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

• I should indeed be relieved to hear you say that you're looking only to protect 58 or so featured articles, because it makes your scheme all but irrelevant. However, even in those 58 articles there are quite a few reasons to reject a lockdown scheme. To begin with, we have a few like Anti-tobacco movement in Nazi Germany and Alaska Mental Health Enabling Act which are political or social articls. We have several biographies such as Ryan White which MEDRS should have very little role in at all, except for a few background sentences. And we have a lot of hard-core biological articles like DNA and virus and influenza which is where I really get concerned, because articles like this ought to be updated freely and continually to keep abreast of cutting edge research! Going through the list I would only acknowledge about 28 as being about medical conditions per se. Looking at the first of these, I see that Acute myeloid leukemia has one single unsourced sentence about various agents in clinical trials, presumably because the MEDRS fanatics would say heaven forfend that we actually link to useful sites that keep updated lists of clinical trials, primary sources describing the ongoing research ideas (even from good journals and accurately described), etc. (And no, the way to fix the article is not to delete that sentence!) So ... no. I'm not buying what you're selling. I should also add that the fallacies of "medical reliability" do have much in common with the fallacies of "filtering" content. You seem to assume that people can come to a consistent "editorial judgment" about what is good and bad, that people can agree on classifying content even when it affects what opinions will be presented, and that our concerns about presenting "bad" material should outweigh our imperative to allow good content to be assembled. None of these should be the case. Wnt (talk) 06:32, 11 January 2014 (UTC)
• @Anthony If your concern is that "There is nothing in the "anyone can edit" model that entails any nutter must be able to see his thought-bubble go live the moment he clicks "save."" Then though I might express things differently, broadly I agree with you, and would commend the German language Misplaced Pages where they have implemented a flagged revisions system. On DE wiki if you aren't a trusted editor then someone else has to approve that edit before it goes live. Pending changes does something similar, but only for selected articles. Either system I would contend could do more for our medical accuracy than something confined to 58 articles not chosen for their problematic nature. ϢereSpielChequers 07:27, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

WSC: 58 articles to start with. I expect that all important (or simply all) medical content will be reliable within five years if this model is actively supported by the WMF and the medical specialties and charities.

Jimmy supports the flagged revisions model, I believe. What I'm proposing for medical FAs is similar in principle but raises the bar to the level of "reliable". --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 07:45, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

OK in terms of outreach to medical charities etc you might be interested in what the chapters are up to (I'm a part time WMUK employee myself though I wasn't involved in the breast cancer event). It's currently early stages for this sort of expert collaboration, but yes we are working with outside experts to improve quality on Misplaced Pages. Of course as chapters we have to work with the grain of the community, so the exact form of outreach to medical expertise may not be as you wanted. But I like to think we are working in the same direction here, and I've yet to hear anyone object to this particular sort of expert outreach. ϢereSpielChequers 08:27, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

Yes, we share the same goal as Doc James and several other WP:MED editors. But only I am saying outreach to specialist and expert bodies is futile unless we can offer them stringent peer-review and articles locked between reviews. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 12:34, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

• It makes sense to consider the inherent POV issues that arise from allowing a team of editors to represent one type of medicine and to silence all else, as it happening with WikiProject Medicine. The encyclopedia is not a health manual. Under the guise of saving gullible readers, information about medicines of other types, times and cultures is being systematically erased or spun so that only Western, alopathic medicine is represented here in a good light. I've seen articles on diet (GAPS), on acupuncture (German acupuncture trials), and herbal medicine succumb to the hostile takeover of this POV. The Western health care industry has saved many lives, but it is also the industry responsible for the third largest cause of death: medical mistakes. Scientifically-approved medicines accidentally kill someone every 19 minutes, and in 2010, were the fourth leading cause of death in the US. Given these stats, it makes sense that this industry, as much as Big Oil or Monsanto, would have an interest in controlling Misplaced Pages's coverage of related articles, but I think this should be heavily questioned. IMO, if we're going to hand this coverage over to a team, the encyclopedia should require a more well-balanced one that includes naturopaths, experts in herbal medicine, and so on, to offer a more well-informed, worldly view. petrarchan47tc 02:13, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

  Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. Anywhere between 210,000 and 440,000 people needlessly die in U.S. hospitals every year due to medical errors. Strangely, physicians in the U.S. earn more than those in Europe, Canada, and Australia. Viriditas (talk) 03:30, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

  • A visible Do not take medical advice from Misplaced Pages disclaimer is a great idea, with the added benefit of allowing for a more universal (encyclopedic) coverage of issues. petrarchan47tc 02:57, 12 January 2014 (UTC)
  • "that includes naturopaths, experts in herbal medicine, and so on" ← not a good idea to let people who believe in various magicks have free reign over medical content. Fortunately Misplaced Pages at least aspires to be taken seriously and so there is policy keeping the woo at bay (just). I don't think anybody has proposed that the existence of a disclaimer should be an excuse to tolerate nonsense in medical articles. Alexbrn 06:36, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

Agreed, this would lead to the WP:GEVAL fallacy. Misplaced Pages articles on medicine should not be held to different standards of editing from other articles, but like WP:BLP articles, they need particular care and attention.--♦IanMacM♦ 06:59, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

Alex, your understanding of nonsense is in another part of the world considered medicine. This is an encyclopedia. This obliteration of the Ayurveda article is a prime example of what I'm talking about. There must be a middle ground between a totally Western POV and dangerous quackery. You are arguing, if I understand correctly, that we are saving people by not including this information about Ayurveda, for example? You are calling herbal medicine "majick" and showing the very POV I'm trying to call attention to. Someone with that attitude should not be working on articles about herbal medicine. petrarchan47tc 09:52, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

• Any "middle ground" between correct and incorrect is ... incorrect.
• You disapprove of my linked revert? Generally in any article (not just in Ayuervedic ones) we don't let edits stay which remove well-sourced content and dump a copyright-violating essay along with 95 crappy unformatted references into the article body. Is that how you want our medical articles to look?
• We need to make sure that we follow policy is describing fringe things: it is important these topics are presented neutrally. Alexbrn 10:19, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

I think we should include references that explain other perspectives. Here's my try at it; to me this seems indeed to append the "correct" and the "incorrect", which I feel is appropriate. The sad truth is that no matter how dogmatic we are about our "scientific method", I have seen it defined in many different ways, and I have not seen experiments showing that one definition of the scientific method "works" better than another. In practice it involves some incredibly arbitrary decisions, like anything that is less than 5% likely to happen by chance is a publishable result. This Ayurvedic person says that Ayurveda uses inductive reasoning, which I would call the older, pre-Baconian version of the scientific method - I don't think it works as well as our scientific method, but I've never seen an experiment saying just how well, and I know that we have thousands of drugs that were discovered, at least as potent prototypes, by people armed with nothing but the bad old inductive way of doing things. Wnt (talk) 15:29, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

The article is in a sorry state, and IMO your edit improves it :-) Alexbrn 15:34, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

Proper editing takes time and research; to delete material without looking at ways to fix the article, such as better sourcing, especially at the rate you're doing it, hurts the encyclopedia. petrarchan47tc 02:43, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

Have you actually looked at the edit I reverted? You'd leave copyright violations and page-breaking text dumps in place would you? Alexbrn 06:11, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

The preceding edit was not good. However, I wish that people reverting edits would at least preserve the source as long as it is relevant, even if they delete all the text, and if they can keep a bit of the text, that's better still. It is my belief that the citations + direct sources (images/videos) make up 50% of the total value of an article (a sort of equipartition theorem) and generally speaking I try to preserve the ref even if I feel the associated content needs to go. Wnt (talk) 07:12, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

• It is this kind of blanket dismissal of ("magicks") that is the problem. Herbal medicine is based on a large database of empirical knowledge, which continues to expand to this day, and has been the source for many of the drugs since produced on a synthetic basis. Nor is the transition to chemical synthesis always a good thing (except for the person holding the patent). For example, modern society is accustomed to accepting that aspirin and related salicylate drugs cause many thousands of deaths every year from gastrointestinal bleeding. By contrast, natural willow bark contains a mixture of salicin and other unidentified activities with similar effects, and does not cause gastrointestinal bleeding, because the complex natural esters that come on the salicylic acid hold together better during digestion than the ad hoc acetyl tacked on by drug merchants looking for a way to say that they 'neutralized the acid' in salicylic acid. So yes, it is true, in the ancient city of Ur a thousand years before the birth of the biblical patriarch Abraham, the pharmacists sold a version of our best-known painkiller which was safer and better than one of the few drugs that the medical bureaucracy sees fit to allow on the shelves as 'safe' for use today. Wnt (talk) 10:05, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

• What is horrifying to me is that folks who so easily dismiss these non-alopathic forms of healing have placed themselves 100% in charge of Misplaced Pages's coverage of the topic. They have come in to the suite of Cannabis articles, for instance, armed with little more than a (stated) anti-herb POV, and have completely rewritten the Cannabis articles using the MEDRS that falls in line with that POV, ignoring for the most part MEDRS which shows positive effects or less-damaging effects. THC has been used as a medicine for thousands of years without a documented death. Marinol, the pharmaceutical version of THC, has been around 35 years and has killed at least 4 people so far. "Western" medicine is a very new baby on the scene, and is mostly experimental, with a heap of dead bodies in its wake. I would call it both fringe and dangerous, and I would argue that the group representing this industry on Misplaced Pages needs to be closely monitored. I am complaining here because I can't possibly take them on; they are powerful, have no fear of using bullying tactics and revenge editing, work as a group and have the support of the most influential Wikipedians, from what I can see. Who is here to defend the encyclopedia? The fact that 90% of Wiki editors are Westerners is narrowing our focus more than we may appreciate, and certainly, one would assume, more than the millions around the world who use ancient and non-western healing modalities would appreciate. petrarchan47tc 00:46, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

""Western" medicine ... I would call it both fringe and dangerous" ← you're probably going to have a bad time editing medical content on Misplaced Pages then, particularly if you try and push that backwards view into the articles. Alexbrn 08:34, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

No one should be able to push their views onto articles unless supported by RS - and your view of non-Western medicines is being pushed daily by your edits. To work on herbal medicine articles whilst holding an entirely negative view of the subject is akin to a born-again Christian editing the Abortion article. petrarchan47tc 20:10, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

• An example of WikiProject Medicine and their use of MEDRS: in this version, the work of multiple independent editors who researched and discussed the science on the "death by cannabis" claim for months; in this, Project Medicine's fix. In the former, THC has only killed rats when hash oil was injected into the bloodstream (since, after-all, it is a non-toxic herb). In the latter, it turns out that humans have died from cannabis (but only the junkies). petrarchan47tc 03:15, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

Actually, I find the cut-down version unsatisfactory also because it takes out the J Clin Pharmacol reference about occasional strokes and heart attacks and the recommendation against it for those with cardiovascular disease. I'm all for medical marijuana and drug legalization, but we have to face reality: there's nothing potent enough to do good that isn't potent enough to do harm. (where drugs that influence human metabolism are concerned) When sources exist to document that, we should include them, and if they're perhaps wrong, we should include the sources explaining why they might be wrong. In this case, however, it appears that the risk continues to be believed - they could have updated to that source, and I'd be semi-alright with that (though I always like two better than one), but deleting it is just irresponsible. If WikiProject Medicine in fact is responsible for excluding sources that discuss potential risks of marijuana use, contributing to the popular party line that marijuana is absolutely risk-free, then they are the ones spreading dangerous misinformation. You don't have to add stuff to do that! Wnt (talk) 05:50, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

The risk is due to an increased heart rate, which is the same risk that shoveling snow would have on one with heart problems, and lasts from 20-60 minutes. We did a lot of research for that section, and this came up in our findings. On another note, I just noticed the last paragraph in WikiProject Medicine's version in the Effects section is nothing but a complete dismissal of medical cannabis, and entirely US-centric. This is far from neutral coverage and an example of the kind of spin I'm trying to point out petrarchan47tc 07:15, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

In furtherance of the above, I added - definitely not my best work, but at least a swipe of the paintbrush. Wnt (talk) 07:03, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

The new source looks useful. There is some material on this topic at Effects of cannabis#Cardiovascular effects - one of the problems with this big "suite" of articles is that they're badly organized. Alexbrn 07:56, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

• In other words, dangers weren't removed, coverage exists in a different place. As for the Effects coverage, "it works for pain and nausea" are the only positive effects mentioned. Yet, when I added this MEDRS source to the Medical Cannabis page, it was removed by Dr Jim because "we already cover this with better sourcing". Since these positive effects are covered, there should be an indication of it in this summary. This summary does sound like it was written by someone who hates the subject. In this section, Cannabis sounds incredibly dangerous and barely effective as medicine. It is also the case that the majority of science comes from the West, where only 6% of studies are geared toward finding anything but negative effects. This understanding is not being allowed to be added to the encyclopedia, and has been removed/reverted every time, regardless of the MEDRS to support it. Basically, in my view, NPOV is more important that MEDRS. One can have a page full of proper sourcing, but it can be a hack-job all the same. petrarchan47tc 19:41, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

Hi Jimmy - as you've stated that you support a visible medical disclaimer, I think it would be really great of you to say so at the ongoing RfC on the topic. Seeing that you do could give a lot of people pause for thought and would almost certainly attract a lot of support that might otherwise have gone unsaid. — Scott • talk 13:44, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

Petra, regarding: "the inherent POV issues that arise from allowing a team of editors to represent one type of medicine and to silence all else, as is happening with WikiProject Medicine," I think we have the policy settings about right (insisting on reliable evidence for all safety and efficacy claims and implications) but I do see zealous editors on all sides gaming or simply ignoring the policies occasionally. In my experience, disputes in the alternative and fringe medicine area are mostly over misinterpretation of policies or sources - which if habitual is a behaviour not a policy problem - and about the weight to be given to different kinds of sources - self-published skeptic blogs, alternative medicine journals, etc. - and I can't envision a policy change that would resolve the latter by fiat. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 12:34, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

Realize that some editors who don't work solely on medical or human health articles were/are not familiar with WP:MEDRS and may not be guilty of intentionally nefarious actions. petrarchan47tc 19:41, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

Article titles and section headings

Misplaced Pages:Manual of Style#Article titles (version of 14:42, 10 January 2014) has this point.

• Use "sentence case", not "title case"; that is, the initial letter of a title is capitalized (except in rare cases, such as eBay), but otherwise, capital letters are used only where they would be used in a normal sentence (Funding of UNESCO projects, not Funding of UNESCO Projects).

Misplaced Pages:Manual of Style#Section headings (version of 14:42, 10 January 2014) includes the following statement.

• "The provisions in Article titles (above) generally apply to section headings as well (for example, headings are in sentence case, not title case)."

Misplaced Pages:Simplified Manual of Style#Capital letters (version of 00:23, 4 January 2014) includes the following statement.

• Use sentence case for article titles and section headings – Tips and pointers, not Tips and Pointers.

Many new pages do not use sentence case for article titles, and many new pages do not use sentence case for section headings. Correcting those aspects of those new pages, before other pages have links to them, is easier than doing so afterward, when incoming links also need to be corrected.
Misplaced Pages:New pages patrol (version of 12:23, 4 January 2014) "is a process by which newly created articles are checked for obvious problems." User:AlexNewArtBot (version of 20:23, 28 December 2013) has a list of pages that list new articles by WikiProject. I have on my watchlist a few of those list pages (for example, User:AlexNewArtBot/EnvironmentSearchResult for Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Environment), and I have frequently used them to check new articles for mistakes in letter case in article titles and section headings. (Sometimes I leave an article unchanged when I am not certain of what choice to make in regard to letter case.) I have usually used these edit summaries.

• revising letter case—WP:MOS#Article titles
• revising letter case—MOS:HEAD

There are so many new articles that need to be checked, that many other editors can assist in checking them, even if only in selected subject areas. If every editor read and understood Misplaced Pages:Simplified Manual of Style before starting new articles, then (to a large extent) the most important features of Misplaced Pages:Manual of Style would be correct from the beginning, and those features would not even need to be corrected.
—Wavelength (talk) 20:55, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

• Writing articles is a major division-of-labor burden: After months of studying policies, guidelines, "in-house style" and the 6 W's (Who, What, When, Where, Why & hoW), many people will begin to realize how the whole effort of writing and illustrating an article (with wp:lede context, wp:infoboxes, wp:reftag wp:footnotes, left/right staggered wp:images, dot-locator maps, data wp:wikitables or wp:charts, conversion/format wp:templates, and typical wp:categories) is just way too much work for the average "one person" to handle, and hence teams for specialized labor must be involved to reach good-article level, beyond having encyclopedic coverage of the topic, written with clarified text and relevant wikilinks. Now, any questions as to why people would then quit Misplaced Pages after head-to-head confrontations with hostile users, or losing whole new paragraphs to wp:edit-conflicts, or being asked to update marginal pages with wp:data hoarding of wp:UNDUE trivia clogging the system? -Wikid77 (talk) 07:01, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

Perhaps I have excessively high expectations. If your question is non-rhetorical, then my answer is "No, I have none."

—Wavelength (talk) 17:06, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

@Wavelength. On the encyclopaedia that anyone can edit it is not part of the process to expect every editor to read and understand the manual of style. It isn't hugely important if an article is temporarily non-compliant with MOS, certainly not as important as it being free of vandalism and falsehood. MOS changes are things that take place in the background, much like the typo fixing that is my speciality. I celebrated Xmas by trawling through a subset of our articles that contained the word manger and secularising over a hundred of them. You'd be astonished how many sports teams had been lead led by a container of hay in the manager's dugout. I suppose some fans might argue that would be an improvement as unlike a manager a manger is unlikely to contradict the instructions given by the fans to their team. I'm hopeful that most of those fixes will stick and that some people may even learn that manger is not an approved abbreviation of manager. But I'd rather that our fellow editors made their contributions and left me to correct a particular type of mistake then they failed to edit because someone told them to read a style guide before they started editing. ϢereSpielChequers 07:47, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

I gave some thought to whether to mention this, and to how to say it simply and gently. Even an expert speller can make spelling mistakes. The word "led" (past tense and past participle of "to lead") rhymes with "lead" (referring to a metal), but the word "read" (past tense and past participle of "to read") rhymes with "red". The word "than" rhymes with "man", but the word "then" rhymes with "men".

—Wavelength (talk) 17:06, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

Ah finally spotted for the fraud that I am. Truth is I'm not really an expert speller. I just find particular common mistakes and pursue them across the pedia:) ϢereSpielChequers 19:11, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

Wiki-paid-y a? (The Times of India)

I know that User:Wifione is on a "wikibreak" and the issue slowly faded away ... this is just for your information. Btw, what if Wifione returns to editing without addressing this problem? Do we let it be? I mean ... he's an administrator here. --Vejvančický (talk / contribs) 12:49, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

it would be best if he just doesn't come back.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 16:57, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

Mr. Wales, at the outset, let me offer my apologies to you and to the editors concerned that I couldn't comment on the discussions on this issue the last time you had initiated the same on this talk page. As Vejvančický mentions, I was on a wikibreak (which I generally take during this time of the year). I do wish to mention here that I've initiated an editor review at Misplaced Pages:Editor review/Wifione. I'll be grateful if you and concerned editors could direct all your questions/comments with respect to my editing to the review, as this would allow the community to have a consolidated platform for current and future use, to review my editing. In case you should wish me to respond to specific questions, please do list them out at the review and I'll try my best to provide comprehensive clarifications (and apologies, in case I've made editorial mistakes). Thanks for the patience. Best regards. Wifione 21:15, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

Can you explain in your own words the nature of your conflict of interest?--Jimbo Wales (talk) 14:37, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

I commented at Misplaced Pages:Editor review/Wifione. --Vejvančický (talk / contribs) 07:45, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

Jimbo Wales: It would be best if he just doesn't come back. Apologies, but I think that, although this is of course your personal opinion with no power whatsoever, we shall let Wifione explain things first before closing the door. Also, I still don't understand why going against paid editing when such paid editing is done in accordance to our rules. It just looks unethical to me to measure all types of paid activities with the same bar. — ΛΧΣ 03:59, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

Google Translate working well or less poorly

Just FYI. As you might know, Google Translate now is handling verbs well better in German text. This is an update, because years ago, I had noted how, in numerous German sentences, the verbs would be omitted (unlike 2004-2005), to the point where novice translators would have had severe trouble with translations. However, this month, I ran about 50 tests and found that all worked well, retaining all verbs in each German translation (Swedish text had been translating well for years). Compare English-to-German in Google Translate:

• English: Author Isaac Asimov was, is, and shall be known as a prolific writer.
• German: Autor Isaac Asimov war, ist und wird als überaus produktiver Autor bekannt sein.
• English: Sally sells seashells at the seashore; she shall succeed with selling.
• German: Sally verkauft Muscheln am Meer, sie sind mit dem Verkauf erfolgreich zu sein.
• English: Two sisters between twelve and two in Schwabing have vanished.
• German: Zwei Schwestern, die zwischen zwölf und zwei in Schwabing sind verschwunden.

Although some words could have better equivalents, the overall phrasing now produces sensible results. We can recommend users to help translate articles using Google Translate to handle many portions. -Wikid77 (talk) 23:00, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

Are you joking? It's bad enough that people here often write on subjects they are not familiar with, now you want to encourage people to do this using a language they do not speak? The mind boggles. Kevin (talk) 02:58, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

Funny how research can overcome a subject one is not "familiar with". Perhaps you should try it and stop writing about things you are only familiar with. ;-)--Mark Miller (talk) 06:09, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

Kevin, the problem isn't using Google Translate, which can help editors write and expand articles. The problem is editors using it poorly and not checking their work after they use it. Your argument is flawed. Viriditas (talk) 03:18, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

Could someone update the article on Google Translate with some information about what the copyright status is of the translated documents, specifically, whether Google asserts any rights over these versions? Wnt (talk) 04:42, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

• Do you understand German? The second example re-translates to English as "Sally sells seashells at the seashore; they (the seashells) are with the sale. To be successful". The fact that all verbs are retained does not give this the same meaning as the English original. If subtle errors are introduced like this, it will be very hard to find them, especially if you also rely on Google to "translate" your WP:RS. The third example tells me that two sisters, who have vanished between 12 and 2pm. (and then there is no further verb to finish the sentence). So your very examples demonstrate that Google "Translate" has no place in an encyclopedia unless you wish to completely sacrifice factual accuracy. —Kusma (t·c) 10:58, 13 January 2014 (UTC)
  • I say this very rarely indeed on WP, but it's definitely merited in this case: LOL. — Scott • talk 12:16, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

  The issues raised by Kusma are not a joke, but rather valid minor concerns, because we have seen people run Google Translate on a whole text and upload the results without checking for awkward phrasing, where other editors must edit and restate some of the wording. (Of course, awkward text also exists separately!) See below: "#Google Translate still has problems". -Wikid77 14:03, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

Google Translate still has problems

Warning: As noted in the prior discussion, there are still some problems with the German phrasing generated by Google Translate, and in some cases it negates the verb, at times inserting "nicht" ("not") or omitting it to reverse the meaning. Also, when translating German-to-English, then the results often generate the wrong pronouns for the context, such as swapping sie as "she" to "they" or such. Overall, the translated text should not be copied verbatim, but adjusted by people who know the basics of verb conjugation, the declension of nouns, and use of subordinate clauses with die or daβ (etc.). In general, if an entire paragraph has been translated, then there are likely to still be wording problems in the result. Yes, unfortunately, common sense still applies to translations. -Wikid77 13:35, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

and it does help to also have some familiarity with the subject, and be able to tell what the intended meaning is likely to be, because otherwise the English though it might be correct is unlikely to be clear and idiomatic. It further helps to be familiar with the subject as written about in German to know the customary way that language expresses things, which is not just a matter of translation. DGG ( talk ) 15:45, 13 January 2014 (UTC) (

I use Google Translate extensively, and it is my impression that it has gotten much better. However, it has not reached the point where I would consider including a translated quote without vetting by an editor with bi-lingual knowledge.--S Philbrick(Talk) 17:48, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

Errors like this (negating verbs and similar) can easily cause huge errors which are hard to spot. For example, I showed this document (a legal statement by Allmänna reklamationsnämnden) to someone, who tried to translate the document using Google. The last sentence reads "Moderns yrkande skall således bifallas." but Google translates this as "The mother's claim is therefore rejected." which is the exact opposite of the original Swedish text. Scary. --Stefan2 (talk) 17:55, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

Wikimedia would seem to have all the proper circumstances for developing its own electronic translation: extensive dictionaries, nearly identical texts, computing resources, a multilingual community, and a fair number of people interested in coding. I bet all you need is to make a bit of a media splash and you'd have a thousand people interested in trying to develop some aspect of a free automated translation program just for the street cred. What is Misplaced Pages meant to be, after all, but the diametric opposite of the Tower of Babel, a project of decentralization and humility? Wnt (talk) 18:49, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

Anonymous reviewers

I'm curious if you want to share your opinion about this. Someone not using his real name (talk) 23:56, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

Seems like a fairly cowardly decision by the Virginia Court of Appeal there. If they felt the need to state a reluctance to rule a legislative act unconstitutional, it stands to reason that they think it might be but didn't want to take responsibility so kicked the can up the hill. Resolute 03:40, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

I think the article at The Atlantic does a good job of presenting the complexity of the issue. I think that anonymous speech is important, but that responsibility for one's words is also important. Anonymity gives honest people a way to make themselves heard without retribution. Anonymity also gives vicious people a way to abuse and defame without retribution. The right approach is to give broad protection for anonymous speech, but for that protection to be limited - i.e. I don't mind if there is a process whereby an independent judge can make a determination that unmasking is the right thing to do.

At the same time we should remember that while difficult, achieving true anonymity is possible online, and achieving a level of anonymity that will make do for all practical purposes is actually quite easy. Tor works well enough to cover someone's tracks for any civil court case. Might even be enough to hide you from the NSA. Barring that, spoofing your mac address and logging into a random open wifi hotspot is pretty damn good too. My point is not to say whether that is good or bad (although I think that, on balance, it is very good) but to point out that it's a fact. If the Yelp Seven commentators/libellers were stupid and set up sockpuppet accounts from a single ip address or computer, then the court actually can make the decision. If they were sensible, no court could compel the release of information that would tie this back to actual people.

A further thought is that it should be possible in this case for the judge to settle the question. At least in theory Yelp could reveal the names to the judge, and Hadeed Carpet Cleaning could reveal their customer list to the judge, and then he or she could see if there's a match. Of course, Yelp likely doesn't have real names but just ip addresses, and there's the further step of tracking down those ip addresses. Hadeed could pay for it and the judge could hire an independent firm to investigate it. All of this is hypothetical but could in theory happen if the law were set up correctly.

And finally I'd have some questions about what Yelp's policies are. (I have no idea.) One way for this to be resolved amicably would be for Yelp to look into it themselves and if they see sockpuppeting they could just delete the comments. Or they could contact the posters and ask them to supply some kind of proof that they actually were customers. (A receipt for example.) Of course depending on how they do it, this could be expensive for Yelp so they will be reluctant to take on the burden. But it is a burden that might be well worth it, if it helps alleviate the impression that many people have that Yelp reviews may often be tainted by crazy people or competitors with fake complaints. I don't know enough about Yelp to say whether they do a good job on this right now or not, though!--Jimbo Wales (talk) 11:21, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

This is a time for pragmatic utopianism, the zealous pursuit of freedom of expression. The more measures courts take to track down and punish fraudulent Yelp reviews, the more weight they will carry; and since technical experts might always be immune from the law, this permits them to do real damage to reputation with impunity. If we abolish libel lawsuits for all media not enjoying government monopoly or franchise, the Internet may be full of false insinuations, but people will have to learn not to believe them because they could be a routine part of business. Companies seeking to be reputable sources of reviews would actually need to take the precautions you suggest. The overall result should be that prominently placed bad reviews that do damage to business go on, but become harder to fake. Wnt (talk) 14:32, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

I disagree. "Trade defamation" has never been held to be "protected speech" AFAICT. The case at hand may very well be "trade defamation" and thus the court really had no option but to enforce the law. Just as Misplaced Pages ought to be wary of being used for advertising it must be absolutely vigilant against trade defamation, and those who promulgate it. Collect (talk) 14:39, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

Except that Hadeed has apparently shown no evidence of actual defamation. My read on that story is that this is probably a SLAPP suit and an attempt to suppress criticism. Resolute 15:02, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

From the limited facts given, it is unclear to me what it is. I would say that in such cases we are generally going to have to count on judges with good sense deciding. That's error-prone of course, but I don't know any other solution. It doesn't quite make sense to me as a SLAPP suit, though, because depending on the exact text of the review, what is unmasking going to do, if these are real customers? It's not like employee whistleblowers who might be fired, etc.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 15:56, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

Naturally. If you owned a carpet cleaning company and managed to annoy some customers over the years (and let's face it, it's surely inevitable), wouldn't you prefer not to be criticised in a way anyone else could learn about? Anyway, even the Brits have recently discovered some limits to their libel laws. I recommend not putting our own cojones in the soup. Nomoskedasticity (talk) 15:09, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

Collect - I recognize it has not been upheld (after all, I was disagreeing with a court decision here). But the courts have gradually moved toward recognizing more of the First Amendment's potential over time. Moreover, there will have to come a time when we stop relying on the dead hand of dead men's words to protect our freedoms, a day when we learn from all we've seen and advance a new conception of freedom of thought and discourse that casts aside many of the 'exceptions' that have been claimed in the past. Wnt (talk) 16:23, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

Actually the courts are apparently quite supportive of the plaintiffs in trade defamation cases - which papers have you been reading? As for "dead hand of dead men's words" -- I suggest that your opinion is in the minority, and the minority on Misplaced Pages as well. Collect (talk) 18:33, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

I think you misunderstand. I value constitutional rights, but they need to go further; they were adopted by ordinary people, and they can be reinforced by ordinary people as surely as they can be weakened by them. But whatever happens, the U.S. is just one country, coming toward to the end of its days, and for the principles to endure we must be prepared to support them universally by belief rather than merely by tradition. Wnt (talk) 20:39, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

FWIW re the merits of the case: we don't know what really happened, but according to the Better Business Bureau the entity has had 33 complaints over the last three years. (You cannot make a complaint to the BBB without providing your name and address by the way.) Is that a lot? Yeah guess so; compare for instance to Superior Rug Cleaning (selected at random) with zero complaints in the last three years, which is probably closer to typical for a small business, since going to the BBB takes some time and effort and people usually only do it when they've been stonewalled by the company. So hmmmm. Running a business is hard, so I don't want to rag on them, but it looks like they might be putting themselves in a position where the Streisand Effect might come into play.

Which won't help liberty, because the annoying thing is that if the Hadeed Seven do indeed turn out to be legitimate complainants, that won't effect the case law (I think). Future judges won't say "Well, Judge Smith read the law to allow that identities could be exposed in situations like this, but it turned out the plaintiff's case was completely bogus, which just shows how these things can be used strategically to quash legitimate complaints and intimidate future complainants, so I'm not gonna do that". They will say "Well, Judge Smith read the law to allow that identities could be exposed in situations like this, and that's that; that's the precedent, and I'll follow that". Right? IANAL but isn't that how case law works? Herostratus (talk) 03:35, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

The Day We Fight Back

Note to those just arriving at, or re-arriving at, this discussion: there seems to be emerging support and excitement for a proposal by Jehochman, below. Please engage with that now, rather than a blackout, as there also appears to be emerging consensus that a blackout is not right at this time for this issue.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 14:29, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

Note: occurs in middle of 2014 Winter Olympics, 6-23 Feb 2014. -Wikid77 04:12, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

Just putting this out here for preliminary discussions: The Day We Fight Back.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 16:44, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

If WP:RS articles surface we should certainly write a WP:NPOV article on it.--Cube lurker (talk) 17:05, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

So is the plan to shut down Misplaced Pages again for a day?--MONGO 17:23, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

I doubt that is what Jimbo means, regardless of anybody's opinion on government surveillance and related issues, they do not threaten Misplaced Pages directly enough, imo, for any action to be taken. Snowolf 19:05, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

No kidding. But aside from shutting down the website for a day, what other means of protest are both available and obvious enough to make our opinion obvious.--MONGO 19:20, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

And how long do we "fight back" against the amount of data Google and others collect? Intothatdarkness 17:26, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

Uhm...without that Google data collection...Misplaced Pages articles would not appear in a google search. Some collection is part of how your search engine provides data to you.--Mark Miller (talk) 03:11, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

• Have essays or related articles ready in time: We can use the words "avoid" or "counter" while the word "fight" is problematic because of connection to wp:ANI WP:BATTLEground mentality, but there might also be conflicts with some users who like mass surveillance. I suggest a new essay "wp:Avoiding mass surveillance" but be prepared that everything new will be dragged to AfD or wp:MfD and allow extra time for people fighting against any progress to improve coverage. Meanwhile, it is good for people to remember those who have been arrested over false perceptions, and those celebrity sex tapes, with people a few months underage, have led to charges of child pornography where perhaps 19 is considered legal age. It is good to remind people to clear the browser's temporary files, to erase controversial work files, and beware of mobile phone zoom-lens cameras at an Internet cafe, or even in public restrooms. There are cameras and snooping everywhere. -Wikid77 (talk) 18:16, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

Yet another case where Misplaced Pages should avoid politicizing itself. I recall posting several times on this user talk page asking if Misplaced Pages were co-operating with "collection agencies" (pun intended) and was assured Misplaced Pages was not so doing. That is far different from the "action" being called for in a political manner. Cheers. Collect (talk) 18:38, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

I agree. SOPA connected to Misplaced Pages, but I don't think this connects enough for action. Seattle (talk) 19:30, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

Another useless protest? Can we avoid politics and attention-grabbing gimmicks and just focus on building and improving the encyclopaedia? Thank you.--ColonelHenry (talk) 19:52, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

Agreed. There are enough internal issues here that should be addressed as it is. Intothatdarkness 21:52, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

• Three comments, based upon our SOPA experience:

First, because of our community consensus policy, Misplaced Pages cannot respond as fast as reddit.com or icanhas.cheezburger.com can. If we are going to participate, we need to hammer out the details now, not later.

Second, before Misplaced Pages got on board the SOPA protest, news sources kept speculating on us: "but will Misplaced Pages join the protest?" Misplaced Pages joining or not joining is a very big deal.

Third, we need to be really careful not to overuse the idea. Misplaced Pages protesting one thing in four years has a lot of impact. Misplaced Pages protesting four things in one year has far less impact. --Guy Macon (talk) 20:56, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

Beyond any other protest activities, the focus could be on "consciousness raising" as providing information which people might expect, about mass surveillance. Even with the Golden Globe Awards on Sunday, Misplaced Pages was mentioned in discussing the "red carpet" as an obvious website to check for background information. -Wikid77 01:17, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

Well, that too. The mass surveillance articles can always use help. petrarchan47tc 02:26, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

The relative importance of this thing needs to be considered, though. It's true that if Snowden's revelations came along ten years from now, the potentially watered-down effect of Misplaced Pages's response would be a nonissue. But revelations such as these have no precedent in history, so the third point may have less validity than the first two. petrarchan47tc 21:31, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

Snowden merely provided further confirmation of what many already knew.--MONGO 21:43, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

He provided hard-core, undisputed evidence straight from the source which has enjoyed 8 months of nonstop, excellent media coverage and sparked indignation and action across the globe. Previous NSA whistleblowers and Congresspersons like Wyden were all but ignored, and have expressed deep gratitude that Snowden blew the lid off this story so that it can finally be addressed in open courts and by the general public. Remember, "We don't spy, not wittingly" was the NSA's accepted line prior to Snowden. petrarchan47tc 21:54, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

Quite. And the UK's GCHQ is just as guilty. Eric Corbett 21:59, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

Et al. petrarchan47tc 23:13, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

Oh dear..some countries with similar forms of government, outlooks and language have been working cooperatively behind the scenes...big shock! Thank goodness Snowden blew the lid off all these things or else we would have all been in total darkness as to the nefarious activities of big brother.--MONGO 02:33, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

"The fact that this has made it to the floor of the House of Representatives is unquestionably good. It is another step…in the march to a real debate,” Wyden said, and added that Snowden’s disclosures made it possible. “We wouldn’t have had that seven, eight weeks ago.” This fact was acknowledged—albeit begrudgingly—by other House members... during a... hearing with officials from the Department of Justice and the NSA. “Snowden, I don’t like him at all, but we would’ve never known what happened if he hadn’t told us,” said Representative Ted Poe." * petrarchan47tc 02:45, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

• “So, today I’m going to deliver another warning: If we do not seize this unique moment in our constitutional history to reform our surveillance laws and practices, we will all live to regret it,” Wyden continued. “The combination of increasingly advanced technology with a breakdown in the checks and balances that limit government action could lead us to a surveillance state that cannot be reversed.” petrarchan47tc 03:21, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

A little while ago it was proposed that we join with various multi-national corporations in taking a stand for Internet freedom, and I commented that we would be better aligning ourselves with other Internet non-profits. I still think that, but the aesthetics of the facebook banners they are proposing leave me a little cold. The Franklin quote: try telling that to Winston Churchill. And I'm particularly nonplussed by the image of of some guy (is it Rosanne's husband? have they run it by him?) who's so annoyed with the NSA he's about to kill his work colleagues. I know its just what some random people thought would grab people's attention, but it strikes a tone that's a bit too right-of-centre for my liking. Maybe Misplaced Pages should be part of this once they've had a re-think about what it is they want to convey. Formerip (talk) 01:53, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

• Is Snowden's revelations and the spying a big enough deal that we need to shut down Misplaced Pages? That's the question we should be asking. KonveyorBelt 01:58, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

It's a campaign about putting a banner on your site, not about shutting it down. Formerip (talk) 02:14, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

• The question we should be asking is what can we do to support people's right to read freely, without fear that their reading habits on Misplaced Pages will be used to harass them somehow. This would be a good time to remind people that "Freedom from fear" means freedom from being oppressed and targeted for harassment based on your Internet use. For those who think this is "no big deal," I'd suggest you take a look at "Top Secret America," a reputable, open-source book and website that came out way before Snowden, and get a handle on what we're talking about here. When serious thinkers in intelligence ethics are formulating arguments along the lines of, "Well that guy was a national level legislator, he should have known better that he's fair game for anything anyone can possibly dig up by hacking his digital trail and exposing it to the public ..."-- with social norms like that, what chance do the rest of us have to defend ourselves against smears, harassment or worse? Who's going to want to run for public office under those circumstances?

• We already know one thing we can do to support people's right to read freely without fear that their reading Misplaced Pages will be used to harass them. We can set up a TOR exit node in Misplaced Pages's server room, set up so that it can only access Misplaced Pages and Wikimedia, and with the ability to edit Misplaced Pages blocked. That way, anyone can read Misplaced Pages in an untraceable way. --Guy Macon (talk) 05:48, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

• For my part, I would like us to take a stand in favor of the general principle of informational self determination. That's how we run our site-- and that's how people want to live, they want a say in what is done with the information collected about them, and how it is used. Djembayz (talk) 03:33, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

• I'll pipe up as a marketing guy. A message is most effective when it matches the format of the media. We're an encyclopedia. On Feb 11, I suggest we fill our front page with articles, blurbs and news about mass spying and privacy. That will send a strong message, and help educate people. It's sort of like what we do on April 1, except serious instead of foolish. Jehochman 02:22, 14 January 2014 (UTC)
  • Like Exactly what I was going to add, including mentioning that we could have a very, very compelling set of DYKs on the subject. First Light (talk) 03:17, 14 January 2014 (UTC)
  • Like Djembayz (talk) 03:36, 14 January 2014 (UTC)
  • Like Jehochman's idea is a fine one, which stands to reason since he's versed in this sort of thing. Without prejudice to other ideas, let's push this forward. Herostratus (talk) 03:44, 14 January 2014 (UTC)
  • Like This is brilliant. Jehochman has found just the right balance between silence and blackout. --HectorMoffet (talk) 05:24, 14 January 2014 (UTC)
  • Like What I love about it is that it is NPOV and still allows us to show, in a neutral way, that we think the issue is important. Let people make up their own minds - but let them be informed when they do. As a side note, and I guess this is an odd place to put it but people are probably curious - I am generally in favor of a blackout in cases where we can have a real material impact, i.e. just before a major vote that is about to do something awful. But a blackout with no specific ask, with no specific legislation looming, strikes me as overkill.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 14:26, 14 January 2014 (UTC)
• I've put Olympics hatnote, above, to remember "11 February" (Tuesday) occurs in middle of 2014 Winter Olympics, 6-23 Feb 2014, when many Wikipedians will be updating thousands of articles to provide coverage. Already, the pageviews of "2014 Winter Olympics" have doubled since early January. -Wikid77 04:12, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

What percentage of readers will visit the Misplaced Pages home page when they're here, do we know this? petrarchan47tc 04:38, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

Yes, we do know the percentage as a steady rate, from pageviews of Main_page during the prior 2010 Winter Olympics (Feb. 2010 Main_page stats), as 5.1 million/day unchanged during the event (2014 average: 9.0 million/day). However, the Olympics will take space on the Main_page, as covered each day. Also, "viewing" does not mean reading the page, and so a Main_page banner might be needed to get attention on 11 Feb. -Wikid77 06:00, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

If we decide to say something, we'll almost certainly want to add a link to our statement near the top of every article for the day. --HectorMoffet (talk) 05:27, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

First of all...this is NOT a Misplaced Pages protest. Just because Jimbo brought this to our attention here does not mean he is sponsoring this or involved in any way. Guys...this has been out there for a while and Jimbo is not the first to share this. If you don't want to take a stand as a group because that is what our guidelines and policies state then don't...but those guidelines and policies ARE NOT TO CONTROL US AS A GROUP and/or whatever we want to support or protest as that group. Those policies and guidelines are meant to help us write articles not control us as a community.

I support this Jimmy!--Mark Miller (talk) 04:58, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

Also, as noted above, we can expand (or highlight) the related background articles, beyond "mass surveillance" without actually protesting any specific issue. -Wikid77 06:00, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

Very strong support. Let's not go black over this, but a banner and a tailored main page are fitting. It just wouldn't look right for all our closest allies to participate only to have Misplaced Pages remain silent on an issue of such gravity. --HectorMoffet (talk) 05:58, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

We could use the same mechanism we use to put Jimbo's smiling face on our fundraising banners. --Guy Macon (talk) 06:11, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

Support for HectorMoffet's every word. petrarchan47tc 07:37, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

Support for banner and main page educational words and pictures. Let the 💕 spread the news. Jusdafax 07:50, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

• We should not silence our coverage of the Olympics. That and other things can continue while we highlight the issue of Mass Surveillance. Jehochman 11:06, 14 January 2014 (UTC)
• Support Jehochman proposal.--S Philbrick(Talk) 13:53, 14 January 2014 (UTC)
• Support as clearly educational in contrast to a blackout which would be the opposite of educational and what we need is to educate our readers generally, and specifically on this issue. Annoying them with no wikipedia will irritate people without informing them of these very real surveillance issues. I do though wish wikipedia would allow editing with tor, the use of which is one of the best ways we can all show our opposition to mass surveillance♫ SqueakBox talk contribs 14:38, 14 January 2014 (UTC)
• Comment I could only see supporting this if it was expanded to deal with the sort of surveillance conducted by Google and other tech companies on a daily basis. Otherwise it's just more politically-motivated electronic masturbation. Is Google's surveillance "good" because they do it in the name of advertising profits? If we're going to NPOV it we should include all these activities. Intothatdarkness 14:41, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

• Created Misplaced Pages:The Day We Fight Back in a similar vein to the April Fool's Day Main Page campaign, due to the already-overwhelming support for Jehochman's brilliant compromise. Please add to the basic framework I created (and partly ctrl c, ctrl v'ed off the AFD pages).--Coin945 (talk) 14:59, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

Wikimedian in Residence

Are these paid positions? Is there any evaluation of competence before this WMF stamp (or more substantial support, if any) is handed out? Someone not using his real name (talk) 21:54, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

Yes. No. Eric Corbett 21:57, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

Many WiR positions aren't paid, Malleus. And there's always at least some evaluation of competence done by the institution hosting the WiR - the degree of which varies depending on the institution. More than one museum has previously chosen not to host a WiR because they didn't believe the potential damage to their brand was worth it, and most WiR positions have competitive application processes. WMF isn't involved in vetting competence normally for the simple reason that WMF doesn't support most WiR positions much if any. Kevin Gorman (talk) 22:01, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

So some are paid then, as I said. Eric Corbett 22:03, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

Yes, some are paid. I couldn't give you a good idea of what fraction are paid off the top of my head, but definitely a good bit are. I responded to your original post because it made it sound like all were paid and no competency evaluation was done, whereas only some are paid and at least some competency evaluation is almost always done by the hosting institution unless someone got snookered. Kevin Gorman (talk) 22:06, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

(edit conflict)Hi SNUHRN; some are paid and some are not - it usually depends on what the institution hosting the WiR wants or is able to offer. Some WiR's do receive support from the Wikimedia Foundation, but the number is normally very small. A few WiR's have been funded by the WMF - any WiR funded by the WMF should be listed here. Kevin Gorman (talk) 21:58, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

So, if some outside organization is paying someone to edit <whatever>, the WMF will just happily give the "Wikimedian in Residence" seal of approval, without any other checks? And does the WMF take its own cut from such funding? Someone not using his real name (talk) 22:25, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

The Wikimedia Foundation generally isn't consulted about particular WiR positions before they're implemented. Anyone can go to a cultural institution and try to convince them to fund such a position, in the same way that anyone who edits Misplaced Pages can call themselves a Wikipedian. Kevin Gorman (talk) 22:30, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

Doesn't seem to be a very healthy position for the WMF to be in. Eric Corbett 22:33, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

How would we react if a private corporation, as opposed to a cultural institution, decided to fund a WiR? --S Philbrick(Talk) 22:37, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

I think we could expect a Holy War. Eric Corbett 22:41, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

If the corporation were open about it, allowed the WiR full editorial freedom, encouraged collaboration with any corporate archivists, etc., why not? It could be a nice example of good-practice paid editing. It wouldn't be popular in the community, absolutely. I'd be wary, myself! But I'd support it as a valuable experiment. The worst-case scenario would be that the community backlash was too much for the corporate WiR. The best-case scenario would be that Misplaced Pages gained a shining example of good practices in corporate engagement—which helps make a case against people hiring sketchy PR outfits and other such nonsense unhelpful to our encyclopedic goals. {{Nihiltres|talk|edits}} 22:58, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

Ok, what I conclude from above is:

1. If some external organization finances a WiR, it's "their money, their problem" with respect to evaluating the competency of the applicant
2. if the paid-for content sucks badly enough, it lands in the lap of Misplaced Pages's editor community to WP:SOFIXIT
3. still no word on whether the WMF takes a share from external WiR grants

Someone not using his real name (talk) 23:14, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

Usually people hired as WiR's are pre-existing Wikimedians, so if their content sucks as a WiR it probably sucked beforehand. Competence is required, and Misplaced Pages's community can deal with incompetent WiRs in the same way it can deal with any other incompetent editor. The WMF doesn't take a share of funding that external entities put towards their WiRs, and generally speaking this both would not be worth it in terms of the overhead for WMF, and wouldn't be in WMF's interest anyway (because WiR partnerships are something that WMF should generally want to encourage.) Kevin Gorman (talk) 23:26, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

Email from Miss Bono

Hi Jimbo, I am not spending a lot of time in Misplaced Pages for conection problems and I wanted to let you know that I have sent you a couple of emails. Please, if you read them, can you reply back? Also, if you see this message, can you reply via email? I dont know when I will be able to check my Misplaced Pages account. Thank you very much and have a wonderful 2014. Best wishes, -- Miss Bono 00:15, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

Just answered!--Jimbo Wales (talk) 14:48, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

Instant CirrusSearch ready while indexing

Although the overall search-index is still being populated, we can already run instant near-real-time searches (including pages updated within recent hours) by using the new CirrusSearch backend on typical Special:Search for text. For example, to search user-talk pages about recent "SOPA protest" discussion, use:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/Special:Search/?search=User_talk%3A%20%22SOPA%20protest%22&srbackend=CirrusSearch

Note the user-talk prefix is "User_talk%3A" where colon ":" is encoded as "%3A" and spaces are "%20" in the URL encoding.
Alternatively, just run a typical wp:wikisearch (MWsearch), and then rerun the URL with "&srbackend=CirrusSearch" appended, to also search pages recently edited within the last few hours. Currently, the search-index seems about half-populated, but it is being expanded ASAP without overloading the wp:Job_queue(s). Anyway, for recent edits, the CirrusSearch results seem current, while the remaining older pages might take another day or two to be indexed. Because the search-results have the same format (except with recent edits also searched), I think the long-term plan is to switch to CirrusSearch as the default index, rather than MWsearch as re-indexed daily 4-6 am overnight, once users feel the overall instant results are dependable. -Wikid77 (talk) 05:31, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

Naked woman in Niqāb as an illustration of adequate muslim dress

There is an article on Russian Wikinews on «How a muslim woman should dress in public» (translation). The picture in the lead section implies that they may go naked, provided that they wear niqāb (and site admins reverted my attempt to remove the picture). May I ask for your opinion: can this be an acceptable behavior on Wikimedia sites? --Grebenkov (talk) 13:27, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:Invitation to edit

A while ago you commented on a trial I was running of an invitation to edit. I didn't analyse the results because it quickly became obvious to me that the sample size and duration were too small to say anything at all.

I don't know how to determine the duration and sample size necessary to draw meaningful conclusions from a study like this, I wasn't confident anyone involved at the time did, and I don't know anyone who does. If I could get sound advice on the study design, and help with the data analysis, do you think I should proceed with a bigger trial? --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 13:47, 14 January 2014 (UTC)