User talk:Jimbo Wales: Difference between revisions

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 current trustees occupying "community-selected" seats are Doc James, Pundit and Raystorm. The Wikimedia Foundation's Lead Manager of Trust and Safety is Jan Eissfeldt.

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It's a frustrating struggle and there are lots of excuses for it. But surely we can make room for Ben Wallace's high school,

Absolutely the article needs expansion. Photographs. Alumni. Extracurriculars. Demographics. It hasn't happened in the 15 or so years the subject has been excluded from mainspace and it's not going to happen while it's stuck in draftspace with so many important subjects the are being discriminated against in a continuation of a long and ugly history here and elsewhere. 21:03, 16 May 2021 (UTC)

Translation: Half-formed stubs continue to be rejected even when the subjects are Black. Also FloridaArmy continues to insist that any criticism or rejection of his articles is due to racism. Guy (help! - typo?) 22:55, 16 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

If we're going to editorialize in the title, let's get to the point. The backlog at

WP:Articles for Creation is over 4 months. FloridaArmy is (uniquely) under restrictions to use this process. We need to do something to fix it. I'm not suggesting Jimbo should ask the WMF to pay reviewers to clear the backlog, but we are getting close. User:力 (power~enwiki, π, ν) 23:07, 16 May 2021 (UTC)[reply

]

力, fair. But also the reaosn FA has to go through AfC is that his articles are so often deletable. And he still flatly refuses to accept this. Guy (help! - typo?) 23:23, 16 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Which article have I had deleted User:JzG? Why are you always lying about me and my work here? Ugly. FloridaArmy (talk) 23:34, 16 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

FloridaArmy, Per [1]:

FloridaArmy is prohibited from creating new articles in mainspace or participating or AFD. AFC is available for new articles they want to create

Also:

I have closed the ANI discussion having found consensus to limit you to 20 AfC submissions at a time.

I understand that you continue to reject these restrictions, and continue, periodically, to assert that those editors who do not accept the articles you submit, are racist (see numerous prior threads here).

This is the single biggest and most persistent

WP:NOTTHEM violation I can recall. Just saying. Guy (help! - typo?) 23:42, 16 May 2021 (UTC)[reply

]

@力: paying people to do AFC is untenable because (a) financial COIs are the biggest existing problem at AFC and adding more won't help; (b) incentivising quantity of reviewing over quality will just cause NPPers huge problems and make the encyclopedia substantially lower-quality; and (c) there are very few people talented enough to do AFC properly, and it doesn't matter how much money you give people—you can't create that talent overnight. AFC is a symptom of the last 10 years we have spent scaring off newcomers and massively and inordinately overworking the few brave souls who do the bulk of the unpleasant but necessary work none of us want to. First the problem will manifest itself to the volunteers, then to the readers, and then Wikipedia will be an inferior-grade Urban Dictionary forgotten to the ages and replaced by Google's UnbiasedTruthsWiki (paid for by 93 governments and 600 companies) or whoever comes along next. That is, if we aren't ready to hear some hard truths and make some drastic changes. — Bilorv (talk) 14:05, 17 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Bilorv, in part, yes, but there's also the problem of the transition of the project from the barn-building phase to the curation phase. New articles are, proportionately, much less likely to be about some genuinely important subject, and much more likely to be either news stories or advertisements.

Only one person gets to start the article on general relativity. Directory entries on commercial real estate properties? A rather different matter. Guy (help! - typo?) 14:18, 17 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

• Someone dishonestly keeps changing the thread title I used to "Long backlog at AfC". I have restored the correct title and it better not happen again. FloridaArmy (talk) 23:32, 16 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  FloridaArmy, that's because you keep asserting that the slowness in accepting your torrent of often-marginal drafts is due to racial bias, and if you keep doing that then I am afraid you're going to end up banned. We're trying to help you here. Guy (help! - typo?) 07:16, 17 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

• Maybe it would help it we would categorize drafts, that might attract more reviewers to look at things they are interested in. Also, if the subject is notable and the problems aren't severe, I think it's better to just move a draft to article space. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 14:39, 17 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • @Alexis Jazz: I think this would not help, simply because there are such a small cohort of reviewers that review wide subject areas that categorisation would cost more reviewer time than it saved. We just need more people giving a helping hand. It doesn't matter how efficiently you use 20 hours of cumulative reviewer time per day if they've got a job that takes 50 hours per day. — Bilorv (talk) 00:39, 18 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

    Bilorv, there currently is a daunting 5150 submissions on the AfC queue. I could review drafts all day and not make a dent in that number. But if there were a category with Netherlands-related drafts, I could probably clear it out entirely. This creates achievable goals, which is important if you want to attract more people to work on it. I found there actually is some rudimentary categorization at Category:Draft articles so I need to take a look. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 04:15, 18 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

    @Alexis Jazz: yes, I've reviewed at AfC for years (though only a few at a time), so not only am I aware of how daunting the queue size is, but I've seen that increase steadily from 2,000 and I'm worried that it will continue to increase at this space until we reach a breaking point. The categories you've linked to are for drafts, not articles submitted to AfC (and the majority of categorised drafts are currently not submitted). There's no categorisation system you can suggest that would be accurate and not take up more reviewer time than it saves. In the time it will take me to tag drafts as Netherlands-related, I can actually just decline half of them (and leave the promising ones to someone else). And if you make the submitters categorise it then they will not to so or get it wrong.

    I'm aware of the issue of motivation, but the biggest problem is simply what you say: someone could review drafts all day and not make a dent in that number. We have about a dozen heroes on this site (not me) who do exactly this, and otherwise AfC would have collapsed already, but as a result of this never-ending task most of them will burn out, and the problem steadily worsens. The solution is to just get more people so that no one person is responsible for reviewing all-day every-day in order for the process to not collapse tomorrow.

    Forgive me if I'm wrong but I can't see that you've ever reviewed anything at AfC, but you seem perfectly skilled enough to do so. In that case, why not just let your motivation to be to review 2 drafts a day for the rest of the month, and if you need to be held accountable to that target then make a tally on your userpage or user talk page (or hell, my user talk page if you want)? — Bilorv (talk) 11:22, 18 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

For the avoidance of doubt

I think FloridaArmy's section title is wholly inappropriate, it is an implicit accusation of racism against the editors who patrol and review drafts, and it forms part of a pattern of conduct by FA in which he has routinely in the past accused others of bigotry for failing to accept the flood of articles he writes. FA is under two restrictions, one on article creation, the other on rate of draft submission, because of his tendency to produce under-sourced articles that fail to establish notability. The section title indicates that he still views his articles as beyond reproach and still cannot ascribe any motive other than racial bias to his failure to have every single article speedily accepted. That is, to my reading, distinctly unmutual.

Drafts are perennially backlogged. No evidence is ever presented that FA's articles or subjects are being singled out. I think FA has friends here and I would appreciate it if they could persuade him to stop presenting every failed draft as some sort of racist crusade. Thank you. Guy (help! - typo?) 15:05, 17 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

If nothing else, I didn't need to read past the title to know who it was; it was obvious even with the malformed signature. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 00:06, 18 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The Blade of the Northern Lights, right. And sooner or later, disruption that is consistently founded on an assumption of bad faith, will lead to more serious consequences. I don't want that. I want FA to understand that sometimes when an undersourced draft is rejected, it's because it's undersourced, rather than because Wikipedia is a giant edifice devoted to suppressing African-American topics. That's offensive to the many people who are trying to help him, but whose help he evidently considers insufficient (because he thinks he should be allowed to just create articles, as he's said many times before). It's also offensive to our community of draft reviewers. Guy (help! - typo?) 12:42, 18 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

My recommendation

Even if a concern is raised in an awkward way, by someone with a long history of campaigning on a subject, the concern itself should be approached seriously and not dismissed based on the messenger. It is entirely plausible - and indeed likely in many cases - that even when contributors are all individually making every appropriate effort to be not-biased, there still is a systemic bias caused by structural issues which we may - or may not - be well positioned to address.

To FA, I recommend that you take this to heart. It's highly unlikely that accusing individual editors of racist motives is correct, and doing so will only tend to irritate them in a way that isn't really going to lead to outcomes that you desire. To others, particularly those who might feel falsely accused of racism, I recommend to set that feeling aside and look to the content - is there an issue which we can and should address around equity in terms of the listings of high schools?--Jimbo Wales (talk) 08:36, 18 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

In terms of the specific examples given by Florida Army, I have these observations:

• Larry Bird's high school was Springs Valley High School in French Lick, Indiana - we have an article that is, in my own view, typical of our lower quality high school articles. Other than Bird's attendance there, it appears to be a perfectly normal and not particularly noteworthy school. (I'm sure it's a fine place and no offense is meant.) Whether we should even have articles like that is a related topic.
• Jerry's West's high school was East Bank High School in East Bank, West Virginia - we don't have an article, so I'm not quite sure why Florida Army listed it as an example for consideration.
• My high school was Randolph School in Huntsville, Alabama. I note that there are some significant differences here which may be interesting to contemplate. First, obviously I'm not a famous basketball player. Second, this is an independent private school. It doesn't surprise me that it's listed while many others in the area are not. (I'm not saying that is right, I'm saying that it doesn't surprise me.) The school I would have attended based on where I lived, S. R. Butler High School (now closed) is also listed, and it is said that it was on the "failing schools list for the state of Alabama."

What I take away from all this is that there are some interesting questions to be asked here about the systemic issues around entries on high schools in the US. Are private schools more likely to be listed than public schools? Are schools which appear to be listed mainly due to a notable graduate more likely to be so depending on the race of the notable graduate? What is the racial makeup of schools that we list, versus the overall population? Is that right? What improvements could we make?--Jimbo Wales (talk) 08:52, 18 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

People often write about the schools they attended. Therefore, it is logical that schools with a demographic that does not have a big intersection with that of Wikipedia editors, may be written about less. I am unsurprised that schools in largely working-class or otherwise deprived areas are therefore under-represented. This, however, reflects an issue with Wikipedia as a whole, not one with people working at AFC or elsewhere. Insinuating that AFC are rejecting drafts because they have an antipathy to the subject matter is ludicrous as well as offensive. Black Kite (talk) 12:13, 18 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Correct. My only point on that is that we shouldn't just push back on the offensive insinuation, but also think about potential solutions to the broader problem. I'll note that my quick look at schools in my hometown doesn't give any conclusive results. According to our entry on the city, Huntsville has 6 public high schools, plus a few private schools. Columbia is a redirect. Grissom has an entry. Huntsville High has an entry. Jemison has an entry. Lee has an entry. New Century Technology has neither. And one school that used to be well-known but is now gone, Butler, has an entry. There isn't an obvious socioeconomic pattern to those facts.

I think it would be really interesting for someone (Florida Army, are you interested?) to take a broader look at the pattern across more cities. Do we have a systemic issue with underrepresentation of some schools? With Black Kite, I will not be surprised to learn that we do, specifically due to the reasons mentioned.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 15:13, 18 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Madison County where Huntsville is located appears to be 72 percent white. All but one of its high schools seem to have articles. The one in Gurley doesn't. It looks like that's a small community so likely a small school. Greene County, Alabama apparently only has one high school and it doesn't have an article. I looked in order alphabetically at the Black Belt counties of Alabama and the the first one, Bullock County I think, has an article on its school I created in 2020. The second one has the oldest high school in Alabama. It also has an article. That's as far as I've gotten.FloridaArmy (talk) 06:55, 20 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

• My findings are that schopls that served African Americans are typically excluded from coverage on Wikipedia. This is also true for other subject areas, as I noted in my initial thread title. And even when drafts are submitted they are often rejected.

• So for example in Alabama's Black Belt the only high school's serving those counties are usually missing. So we know nothing about alumni. Nothing about demographics. Nothing about the very issues you said would be interesting to look into Jimbo. This despite the challenges and controversies of even opening high schools for African Americans before the 1960s Civil Rights movement and the challenge of keeping high schools that did serve African American students open after integration (Blacks were sent to white schools and their high schools usually closed or downgraded). It's an ugly area of discrimination.

• It's frankly sickening that the outrage and attacks aren't focused on fixing the problem but instead directed at those highlighting the problem and trying to get the situation improved. Ome editor lent a hand on the high school I provided as an example and now it is off to a good start. Alumni cam be added. It's history expanded. Photos included. But very sadly this is very much the exception. Dozens of single sourced articles on unremarkable athletes and other subjects are added every day but dare work on high schools that served African American sudents, often only one in an entire county, or try to introduce and entry on one of Oscar Micheaux's lesser known films and knives come out. Indeed the barn doors are closed. Some editors think the important subject are already covered. We need leadership on this issue. It's a harmful, bigoted, and unWikipedian outlook that has made it more and more difficult to do the work that is needed and make newcomers with and interest in Wikipedia welcome. FloridaArmy (talk) 21:14, 24 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• FWIW, our articles on U.S. schools does not properly reflect the 2017 RFC (here) that reduced
  WP:ORG (as to avoid COI issues). I am unaware of any large-scale attempt to go through all existing high school articles to determine which ones clearly pass these notability guidelines, so key here is just because we have articles on high schools should not be taken to mean that these have community consensus to be kept (this is to both Jimmy Wales' point on surveying what's there, and FloridaArmy's point about underpresentation of black schools). We really ought to have a mass review of all US high schools (at minimum as a starting point), of which I assume would number in the thousands, and merge/redirect those that are barely notable to their appropriate locality. Once that's done, then we can talk about surveying what are kept, and determine if we have a systematic bias, if that bias is internal to WP (due to editors) or external (due to sourcing problems), and if there are solutions. I will say that there's absolutely no reason that any high school cannot be mentioned as a redirect and discussion on the article about the locality that the school is in, since nearly all US cities and towns have standalone articles (per the principle that WP is a gazetteer) and coverages aspects like local school systems. We don't necessarily need a standalone article on every single school, but we should have a search term and a reasonable landing space for nearly all public high schools at least. (private ones, that's a different story) --Masem (t) 21:43, 24 May 2021 (UTC)[reply
  ]

Pldx1, what are you talking about? — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 02:40, 25 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Don't forget the chess club. Randy Kryn (talk) 02:50, 25 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Pldx1, it is a high school not a college. Did you mean one professional baseball player? Any high school with a baseball program will produce countless amateur baseball players. If you are aware of reliable sources describing how this school deals with gender issues or its soccer program (if it exists), then please feel to expand the article accordingly. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 02:52, 25 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Tangentially related thought

I think the big problem here is that forcing FA to go through AFC is not an appropriate use of AFC. AFC has a backlog of ~5000 articles and is not good for notability edge cases, which is what FA's drafts tend to be. AFC is good for weeding out spam and other garbage. Notability edge cases should get community review at AFD. (My perspective on FA's article creation restrictions, however, was !outvoted at ANI.) I do think there are problems with systemic bias--including against topics relating to African Americans--in Wikipedia, and I also think there are problems with FA doing a halfass job with the articles he writes, both of which probably contribute to his articles languishing or being declined at AFC. But the big problem is that he shouldn't be at AFC in the first place. If his articles are too much of a burden for AFD, he should either be banned from creating articles or rate-limited in his article creations. I would disagree with either of these courses of action, but I think AFC is an even worse option. Calliopejen1 (talk) 18:03, 26 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

If FA had only added well referenced articles about clearly notable topics to main space, or if FA had taken on board the criticisms and changed their ways, then that editor would not be subject to those editing restrictions. But FA shows no sign of changing their ways and clearly favors quantity over quality, which is quite sad. Twenty years into this project, the quality of our articles is clearly more important than the quantity of new articles. I write new articles, slowly and carefully and thoroughly. And not a single one of the articles I've written has ever been seriously challenged. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 00:31, 29 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Typical examples of high schools serving African Americans not being covered

• Lewis High School in Macon, Georgia. Important and influential high school with notable faculty. Destroyed by arsonists. Covered on Wikipedia? Nope. FloridaArmy (talk) 01:42, 30 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

• I can't even get a disambiguation page approved for the three Draft:Greene County High Schools. I think two served mostly African American students. FloridaArmy (talk) 01:46, 30 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• The Southern Christian Institute article didn't even say what kind of school it was before today. FloridaArmy (talk) 22:17, 30 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• We are 1/4 on Draft:Langston High Schools. Interestingly named for two different prominent African Americans. FloridaArmy (talk) 13:54, 1 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Please make Read & Edit

2) These wikis are losing huge number of potential edits due to the absence of an app. Many wikis are in direly need more contributors. For instance, the translations content in English Wiktionary is very less and will be much needed for the new Wikifunctions project.

3) For a majority of population, a smartphone is the only device they can afford/have. So please ensure the services reach them and that they also can contribute. The old Wiktionary mobile app had 1 million+ downloads, but app development stopped.

4) Wikimedia should have been in the forefront of having Progressive web apps. Other top websites already have it.

5)

6) It is an obligation of WMF to develop Mobile apps with full editing capabilities for the community.

So please make it. Thank you! - Vis M (talk) 00:52, 20 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

WP:THEYCANTHEARYOU. These apps for the most part just need to die. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 01:55, 20 May 2021 (UTC)[reply

]

That should be blamed on WMF's irresponsibility to fix issues. A lite/progressive web app actually prevents such issues as the exact web app is just put inside a wrapper to act as a mobile lite app.

I beg to differ on the "apps should die" part, they should be well maintained but more simplistically and with full functionalities including editing, navboxes, categories, etc. I really like responsive MonoBook/Vector-new skins for mobile and I wish that they will just put it in a wrapper to make a lite app - Vis M (talk) 05:18, 20 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Vis M, just make a shortcut to https://en.m.wikipedia.org on your homescreen? — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 06:07, 20 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, actually lite apps does the same. Shortcut url to homescreen will make it into an app. Twitter's story. I was requesting lite apps to make wikis accessible for more people and potential editors. - Vis M (talk) 22:36, 20 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

If I'm reading this right as an explicit dismissal of potential editors from Africa and China, I'm shocked. I don't know what makes you an authority on access to technology in the developing world, but from my own anecdotal experience I know many communities in India have (pragmatically) access to smartphones only (I don't really care what you can buy for what price on Amazon in your country), and that living in poverty is not really anything to do with whether you are reading Wikipedia (in which case, you can be editing as you read) or whether you have some amount of free time. Of course, many people in India and Africa do speak English, but there are other language editions of Wikipedia too. China is a special case because of its firewall. — Bilorv (talk) 12:48, 21 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Bluetooth keyboard and using the mobile site. It doesn't matter how much you spend on app development: until smartphones get keyboards (they used to, but really tiny ones) you can't edit too comfortably on them. It's a hardware problem. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 15:31, 21 May 2021 (UTC);[reply

]

I don't know why you think it's acceptable to say sentences like, Even in Africa and China: if you can't afford food or rent you should not be wasting time editing Wikipedia while starving under a bridge. Astonishing. — Bilorv (talk) 15:46, 21 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Bilorv Oh, that's not right. I re-wrote my reply at some point before publishing it, the first part of that sentence you quoted is some strange Frankenstein leftover of the initial version that ended up in a different context, which made it rather unacceptable. I've adjusted it. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 15:52, 21 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Bth sides are, well, I think the most accurate word would be "over-extreming" this. In most poor countries, people are not SO poor that they are living under bridges; rather, they can afford rent, basic necessities and perhaps a luxury or 2. And most of all, nearly everyone in poor countries have smartphones. Poor countries do not mean everyone there is poor; rather, people are poor in relation to the world. In their respective countries they might be middle-class. Either way, people are not so desperate as to not be able to afford basic necessities and things like that, but they certainly don't have enough in the bank to afford fancy laptops (not to mention the electricity cost, my parents still bother me about it even in America). A mobile app would be a great help to people with smartphones wanting to maybe make a few edits to Wikipedia, help out with things they know about (perhaps things in their own nation!!!). It is generally known that apps are better suited for mobile use than mobile sites, and an app is a great idea, requiring minimal work and upkeep while extending access to millions, or even billions.RealKnockout (talk) 16:51, 21 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

RealKnockout, an idling laptop with the screen turned on (no monster gaming laptop, low/medium screen brightness) consumes <10W. Running for 16 hours/day would cost roughly $1/month in Europe. In the US I think about half that because less tax. I assume (given the US flag on your user page) that you use America as a synonym for the US. Your parents are not concerned about $0.02/day, they just want you to get away from the computer. In a few places it could be considerably higher, but electricity should generally not be the problem. an app is a great idea, requiring minimal work and upkeep Are you a developer? An app is a ton of work and an massive burden to developers. They already have to make sure that changes in the software work well on the desktop site, the mobile site, in various browsers, on various devices with various input methods and screen sizes and resolutions. (and they already can't fully test/manage this!) Having to develop and support apps for Android, iOS, Windows 10 Mobile (on a tight budget you don't get the latest model smartphone), KaiOS and possibly others is just a pain. Improve the mobile site? Fine. Platform-specific apps? Don't waste developer time. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 18:32, 21 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

A simple lite app for major platform can be adopted by many other sister wikis as well. Can serve millions of people by spending mere few hours of developer's time- Vis M (talk) 05:48, 26 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

• Please don't. I'd rather energy be put towards making the regular mobile editing experience great. So few of our editors or readers use the app. Apps just aren't as popular or necessary these days, when you can make a stunning mobile site. The phrase "there's an app for that" reflects the fact that there are too many apps, not too few. CaptainEek ^{Edits Ho Cap'n!}⚓ 17:22, 21 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  The single-task-oriented user interface of mobile phones doesn't allow serious use of tabs/windows and IME this makes adding rule-abiding citations a much worse chore than on desktops/laptops. Perhaps this is the root cause behind Alexis Jazz's complaint. What I don't see is how a PWA could fix this problem. It's really just a HTML/JS webpage, and possibly one that breaks compatibility with older and/or non-ubiquitous browsers. Daß Wölf 23:12, 21 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  WP:THEYCANTHEARYOU. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 01:58, 22 May 2021 (UTC)[reply

  ]

  this part of the problem has always had an easy workaround. We should encourage people with inadequate interfaces or connectivity to just put free-form references as best they have them in the articles as they go, and not even think about the details of getting them formatted correctly. We have no shortage of people who know citation formatting. It bothers me every time I see a draft rejected because of improper formatting when the information needed is actually present in some manner. DGG ( talk ) 06:11, 25 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  DGG, fully agree. Fixing citation formatting is no problem. But the only person to know the source for some added fact is the person who adds it. If a URL is provided in the edit summary or inline that's okay, it's fixable. If it's missing, there is nothing to fix. I also think that if a draft is about a notable subject, is comprehensible (fairly low standard) and adequately sourced (even if that's done inline), it's better to stick some problem tags on it, move it to article space and let the WikiGnomes do their magic. This as opposed to rejecting it and tagging it for G13 6 months later. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 06:45, 25 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  CaptainEek My request with this "lite app" post is that the mobile website should be developed so well according to the best modern standards that it should be possible to just put the mobile web app in a wrapper to make lite app. I am not requesting a native mobile app. Mobile apps would actually offer better quality edits than desktop to certain wikis like Commons, Wikt & Wikivoyage - Vis M (talk) 07:59, 22 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

• I will state my contrarian opinion based on many years of experience. There are 7.8 billion people on Earth. In the past five years, 7 billion Android smartphones have been sold. Almost every prospective editor on the planet has access to a smartphone. The so-called "desktop" site works perfectly on modern Android phones and is fully functional. I have done 99% of my edits on Android phones for almost ten years. I have written many dozen new articles, expanded hundreds of articles, taken articles to GA, became an administrator with over 300 support votes, blocked thousands of bad actors, answered thousands of questions at the Teahouse and help desk, all on Android phones. They function exactly like miniature handheld "desktop" computers on the "desktop" site. The only time I use an actual desktop computer is to work on large image files. When a smartphone user edits using the desktop site, the WMF has no way to track and analyze those edits. It is as if editors like me do not exist and are therefore entirely disregarded and ignored. And vast amounts of money and programmer time are poured into apps and the mobile site, none of which have never worked as well as the desktop site for editing, and still don't in 2021. It is an ongoing tragedy and I see no prospect for change. Smartphone editors continue to be sent by default to an inferior way of editing, and the vast majority have no way of learning what I know by experience. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 01:03, 29 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Jimmy, it might be useful if you could weigh in on

It would be inappropriate for me to comment without some serious research and reflection. I'm looking into it and thinking about it, but of course the only thing I'm likely to argue for is thoughtful adherence to our best and highest principles, rather than weigh in on a detailed question.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 15:14, 27 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. I think we are facing this sort of 'its urgent and important' (to borrow from the Eisenhower_Method) argument that we should just throw out encyclopedic (historical and political) content since it allegedly could be dangerous or misleading. Maybe wikipedia's first time to face this type of wartime common enemy logic, on a bigger scale. Jtbobwaysf (talk) 19:54, 28 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

This is not one of the Covid topics where we might be giving incorrect biomedical information and thus produce dangerous consequences. This is rather a disputed hypothesis, where the original hypothesis might properly have been classed as fringe, but which has received greatly increased serious coverage from the most respectable possible sources. The question here is straightforward: do we acknowledge it when the consensus in the outside world changes, or do we hold to what we originally wrote, however divorced it may become from reality? Our Covid coverage has been one the highpoints in WP history in its completeness, objectivity, and rapid response to a critical situation, but failure to recognize change is making us look ridiculous . DGG ( talk ) 00:20, 29 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Much of this "change" is people taking the quotes of scientists who, in essence, are simply describing the scientific method, and then original research and wild speculation to turn those quotes into endorsements for the theory (often when the person has explicitly said they don't believe it's the likely hypothesis, but rather one that should be investigated). At least a few users have directly said on Wikipedia that China is being cryptic, and that they would only be cryptic if they leaked the virus from their lab, and therefore the theory is true. A fallacious argument, of course.

Collaboration generally relies on trust. Naturally people cannot read entire sources and the context in which sentences were placed, so one often trusts that a user's quote is an accurate reflection of the source. When there's a non-trivial number of users who have been misrepresenting or exaggerating sources for months it becomes difficult to take seriously, at face value, when they say the sources now support the change (something that was said a month ago, and two months ago, and three months ago, etc...) And naturally everyone isn't going to immediately drop what they're doing to scrutinise a (possibly) new swath of sources when the previous set turned out to be a gigantic waste of time. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 12:44, 30 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

'I'm a scientist, i'm employed but a "trusted entity", i quote the scientific method, i state my opinion absent of evidence, and if anyone disagrees it is a conspiracy.' Then wikipedia editors jump and exclaim 'we have MEDRS and have achieved medical consensus' ;-) Jtbobwaysf (talk) 21:05, 30 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Still the same old thing... Wikipedia already has an article on misinformation as well as one on investigations, that already make clear that it may take years to really understand some details, that a lab leak hypothesis was suggested and investigated yet also considered unlikely. The rest is classic

forum-shop and would like WP to always push more speculation and as a side effect, suggest conspiracy theories about the reliability of the WHO, Chinese officials, Wikipedia and its editors, etc. —PaleoNeonate – 22:07, 30 May 2021 (UTC)[reply

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This is not entirely clear to me. What I mean is: the consensus in the mainstream media (which is the relevant media for this, rather than MEDRS sources, as it is a social/geopolitical question, as opposed to a medical question) seems to me to have shifted from "This is highly unlikely, and only conspiracy theorists are pushing this narrative" to "This is one of the plausible hypotheses". We can reject conspiracy theorists and agenda-pushers, but we should not in the process blind ourselves to what is being said in reliable sources. I should note: I have not reviewed the relevant article(s) and so I am commenting here about general principles rather than arguing the case for or against any particular change.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 15:37, 1 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Jimmy Jim Jimbo Jumbo Jimmo Jum, I was just curious to ask this question: What was your first edit on the entire website? Pink Saffron (talk) 01:44, 28 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

In an edit that was lost on the first day or so, I wrote "Hello, World!" on the homepage - to test the Usemod wiki software that I had just installed. The earliest saved edit is attributed to office.bomis.com (because I was working in the office that day) and is something like "This is the new WikiPedia".--Jimbo Wales (talk) 10:17, 28 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Our discussion of the history of Wikipedia's earliest edits is at Wikipedia:UuU. (This name made some degree of sense at some time in the past). —Kusma (talk) 10:51, 28 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

What made you come up with the idea to create this amazing encyclopedia? I'm an admin on svwp and don't visit here as often but came here to ask you this :-) EPIC (talk) 18:34, 30 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]