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 SJ, Phoebe, and Raystorm. The Wikimedia Foundation Senior Community Advocate is Maggie Dennis .

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Don't avert your eyes, dig into the history of Richard Norton and the sadism festival at Arbitration Enforcement being conducted against him. Callanecc declares that Richard's creation of THIS article in mainspace in violation of a topic ban on direct creation of articles is worth a "three to six month" ban! Of course, he's going to graciously allow Richard_Arthur_Norton_(1958-_) to explain himself before imposing God's Will. This is sickening and illustrative of Wikipedia's problems retaining content writers of any merit. Carrite (talk) 15:03, 20 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The original Norton case involved copyvio issues. Are there new copyright concerns? And why wasn't this brought to Clarification Requests; it seems people are using that process more lately. —Neotarf (talk) 15:36, 20 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Some people like inflicting punishments. It's very attractive to them, sexy even. To me, all I see is a fat Southern cop on a motorbike, hiding behind a billboard with a radar gun reading 27 on a car with out of state plates, when all the locals know damned well that the speed limit is 20. Not sexy. But the reality is that Mr. Norton is one of Wikipedia's most prolific creators of new content and is on the verge of being driven out of WP by Vogonesque enforcement of WP:OBSERVEALLRULES, which replaced the ostensible 5th Pillar (IAR) long, long ago... Carrite (talk) 15:45, 20 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

(ec-ed away) - And no, there are no copyright issues, here or anywhere in Norton's recent work. Unfortunately, that isn't the issue at all. Carrite (talk) 15:59, 20 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Why can't we have good content creators that also...behave? Tarc (talk) 15:51, 20 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Because sitting around socializing and following rules and "behaving" is in many ways antithetical to the writing process. Some of the best content people are old and grumpy and just want to be left alone to work in peace. Richard Norton had the misfortune of making a passel of sourcing blunders years ago and it is an uncorrectable situation now that (a previous) ArbCom has ruled unwisely on the matter. Carrite (talk) 15:54, 20 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

In that case, now we have a different ArbCom, take it to

ARCA. For now, though, he still has a topic ban, and while I agree that if this incident was a mistake a block is an unfortunate outcome, there's no need to make borderline personal attacks on the enforcer. BethNaught (talk) 16:00, 20 August 2014 (UTC)[reply

]

Well, there's a lot of grizzled dinosaurs in IT too that would like nothing better than to be left alone in the server room. But y'know, it isn't 1991 anymore. Adapt, or die. Tarc (talk) 16:02, 20 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Hm. Ageism is alive and well here, I see. Are we going to be morally ambitious about that, too? - Sitush (talk) 10:29, 21 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

It isn't "ageism", what an ignorant thing to say. It's not ageist to expect older workers to perhaps not do some of the things they used to do in the workplace of the 70's and 80's. Tarc (talk) 18:21, 21 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Isn't it? You obviously do not live in the real world, where such tolerance goes on every day. This place and attitudes such as yours stink just as much as those against whom some people rant when it comes to civility. We do not all move with the times and as we get older, it gets more difficult to do so. So just shove us all out, eh? - Sitush (talk) 20:42, 21 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

If you can't stop clinging to some faint notion of a Good ol' Boys club, e.g. Mad Men, then yes, the shove is a'coming. Tarc (talk) 21:34, 21 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Really? I doubt it very much. You seem to be living on borrowed time here yourself, so I doubt you'll be among the shovers. Eric Corbett 21:41, 21 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Your colours are showing, Tarc, and they are not pretty. Much as I think this moral ambitiousness thing is a load of codswallop and I worry greatly about the common sense and even sanity of some people who adhere to it, the youth of this world get nothing without the sagacity of age. Or, as Newton said it, we stand on the shoulders of giants. People who favour reinventing the wheel at the turn of every generation are either incredibly immature or very stupid. For starters, such an approach would rule out all but current event sources here. - Sitush (talk) 23:39, 21 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@Carrite: I have understood the sexual component in these things for some time now, although it seems odd to say so. I suspect this is one of the real reasons it's so hard to get women and academics to contribute here, and not the socially acceptable "oh, I'm busy" excuse they usually give. But enforcement of these things has not been very consistent lately. —Neotarf (talk) 16:11, 20 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

For a lot a of people the equation is simply "hassle > reward/self-motivation". It's surely true for me in some topic areas. Life is too short to spend it arguing with the loonies and the obsessed on the interwerbz; As one (real-life) college of mine put it: that battle is lost before you even begin it. Of course one can reason that providing good content in non-controversial areas is simply giving a high-profile/google-juice platform for the loonies and the obsessed to soapbox from. But I think that anyone trying to get accurate info from Wikipedia on any topic seriously controversial is already foolish beyond salvation. So I'm happy to ignore such areas, the crazies who write there [which might not be all editors working there, but surely a lot of them], and the fools who might read their works. JMP EAX (talk) 18:18, 21 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

A prime example of how Wikipedia "solves" such problems is currently at ANI: [[1]] (I'm not involved, nor would I ever want to be.) JMP EAX (talk) 12:42, 22 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

• Since
  Corey Booker are looking at sentencing in the US criminal justice system, maybe it is time to rethink crime and punishment here at Wikipedia. We are criminalizing non disruptive behavior, solely because we can. We do not need escalating month-long blocks for people making typos. It does not serve a purpose. I am currently blocked from creating articles in Wikipedia space, and based on past performance, every 75 article creations or so, I will accidentally click a red link in Wikipedia space instead of my User space. No amount of draconian punishment will change the error rate. It makes no more sense than criminalizing spelling errors or arresting an Arizona State University professor for jaywalking. Look at the 150 or so articles I have created since being on probation at my user page. Will having me be discouraged for another year serve the readers of Wikipedia 10, 50 or 100 years from now? I have already dropped about 20 positions in my edit count since this started. Don't the people in the biographies I write deserve to have their stories read? --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 14:57, 21 August 2014 (UTC)[reply
  ]
  • It sounds like you have a slightly unhealthy obsession with your edit count, but otherwise I'm inclined to be sympathetic. There's a saying: who doesn't work can't make mistakes. The though question is of course how many mistakes are more trouble than worth... JMP EAX (talk) 19:42, 21 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    • It is not ego driven, it is one of the metrics of my productivity. The almost yearlong hiatus and drop in edits represents maybe 300 biographies that will never be written. I have an account with the New York Times and I read historical obituaries of obscure, but notable people. I work with the Library of Congress at Flickr Commons to identify people in historical images to give them context, and add biographies of those people to Wikipedia and add the images Wikimedia Commons. I asked if people would continue my work while I was banned but no one did. I doubt I will ever come across those people again in the New York Times in an archive that runs from 1851 to 2014 and must contain (163 years*365 days per year*5 notable obits per day= ) 250,000 or more notable obituaries. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 23:30, 21 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

See, that's pretty much the attitude that caused this whole situation, no offense intended. Once a person has tens and tens and tens of thousands of edits, it becomes physically impossible to check them all. So, if some of the early editing is sketchy (and who among us is 100% perfect in our editing from Day One?) — as a significant part of Richard's early work was — it is just so much easier to say, "Oh, this is not worth my time figuring out who is right and who is wrong — let's just flush the problem away." And, let there be no mistake, there are people who remain actively committed to doing just that in Richard's case. Well, I argue that is not the right way to approach this. Richard's a productive editor, a very big net positive to WP who remains hampered by "This Is Too Big To Deconstruct, So Let's Fetter Him" restrictions... It's really frustrating. I can't imagine how Richard feels. It can't be good. We have to end this "gotcha" culture at WP if we are going to expand our active contributor base, as we need to do. Carrite (talk) 20:36, 21 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

No one thinks of leaving messages on talk pages anymore, they just go straight for the drama boards. —Neotarf (talk) 20:48, 21 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict)@Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ):Not if you're copying them from someone else's material, no. Looking into your case, I see hundreds of man-hours spend on trying to check and fix your copyright violations, in two separate CCI's (those are Contributor Copyright Investigations, initiated when a pattern of copyright violation by an editor has been shown, where a bunch of editors stop their article work and go through the very time-consuming and tedious work of vetting an editor's entire body of edits, checking for and fixing copyright violations), in addition to ten appearances on the Administrator's Notice board plus a full-blown ArbCom case where you were strongly admonished (by 13-0 vote of the Arbcom), prohibited from creating articles (12-1), prohibited from uploading images (13-0), and prohibited from linking to any external sites to which you had contributed (13-0; this last being, I gather, to prevent you from from doing a clever end-around of our copyright rules by creating a website, posting copyrighted material there, and linking to it).

But you created an article anyway -- by mistake. So, you made a mistake. It's a pretty careless mistake but you can appeal on that basis and in all likelihood you'll be warned to be more careful and that's that. More worryingly, none of all this seems to have sunk in, as you seem to be living on the planet of I'm-a-special-exception self-justification and actually anticipate doing this again every now and then. This is troubling.

@Carrite:, It's reasonable that when a person who is prohibited from creating articles creates an article someone makes a case of this. So re your original post there's no excuse for describing this as a "sadism festival" for "fat southern cop" types who "like inflicting punishments". (Not only that, you disappoint by failing to even work in the phrase "jack-booted thugs", which is de rigeur for vicious and toxic rants like yours -- didn't you get the memo?). This is just loathsome and horrible as well as false. Don't do that. Herostratus (talk) 20:52, 21 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

One must be an artist with hyperbole and use it only when absolutely necessary. best, —Tim /// Carrite (talk) 21:15, 21 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Jmmy.

The Wikimedia Foundation envisions a world in which everyone can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. [2] But "knowledge" of something implies well-founded confidence in its accuracy. While Wikipedia is untrustworthy, it is sharing something other than knowledge. This is a problem for the foundation, since it is failing to realise its vision, but also for humankind, who deserves an encyclopaedia it can trust.

At Wikimania 2014 you said, "We're trusted slightly more than the BBC. Now, that's a little scary, and probably inappropriate. ... We all know it's flawed. We all know we don't do as good a job as we wish we could do ... People trusted Encyclopedia Britannica - I think it was, like - 20 points ahead of us. ... I'm not going to rest until people trust us more than they ever trusted Encyclopedia Britannica in the past." [3]

Are you doing anything at the moment aimed at either improving the public's understanding of Wikipedia's reliability or improving its actual reliability? If so, would you like to share those initiatives here? --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 11:14, 21 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Everything I do related to Wikipedia is aimed at those things, so I'm afraid I don't quite understand the question. I think one of the biggest changes is the hiring of Lila as CEO coupled with her intention to radically increase investment in software development to help make it easier for us to get our jobs done. There are many ideas that have been floating around for years but we haven't had sufficient developer resources to do them. (It is my view that in the past 5 years we have significantly underinvested in engineering.)--Jimbo Wales (talk) 12:56, 21 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. Could you please elaborate on how technological fixes will solve the unreliability problem? --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 13:03, 21 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I think there are many ways but let's just talk about one example. Watchlists are a very primitive way to surface new edits to experienced users. A more sophisticated "news feed" style watchlist could take into account a variety of factors to do a better job of showing us edits that need to be scrutinized and as well as new users who are writing in areas that we care about so that we can evaluate them, greet them, welcome them, coach them. Imagine if edits to articles that you personally care a lot about (medical articles say) were scanned and highlighted to people who are part of the relevant Wikiproject if they contain certain "likely problems" (for example, a link to a tabloid newspaper is probably not the best link in a serious medical article, but that's an editorial judgment that could, in some cases, make sense).

That's just one example and a random brainstorm by just one person (me) on some ideas that people have proposed over the years. But I hope it is indicative of the kinds of things that I have in mind.

Here's another one: I set up a link in my browser to go to a random female British author whenever I click it. I click it and see if there is some small thing I can improve. But this is very very primitive. What if, instead, the system could take me to an article which based on several factors is likely to need attention. (For example, if readers have expressed displeasure, or if someone recently posted on the talk page, or if an ip address recently edited it, or...)--Jimbo Wales (talk) 13:27, 21 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

It is worth noting that Wikipedia:Verifiability policy rates as "questionable" any sources that "lack meaningful editorial oversight", and that this class includes Wikipedia itself. Deltahedron (talk) 13:39, 21 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. How do you feel about scholars reviewing our medical content for accuracy, and us putting a prominent badge at the top of those articles, linking the reader to the fact-checked version? --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 13:41, 21 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Reliability of the information found here has to hinge on the verifiability of that information. Reliable sources...references...all of that tedious, unexciting stuff. It's quite frustrating when you know that something is true - to be unable to say it here because you need to reference reliable sources. But that's the only way we've ever found to increase both our reliability - and the perception of our reliability. When people tell me that Wikipedia can't possibly be reliable because any idiot can come by and put falsehoods here - I always tell them that if some fact really matters to you, then don't believe what Wikipedia says, click on the little blue number and read the original source of where we got that fact from. If there isn't a blue number - then forget that we ever said that. HOWEVER, if you just need to know something trivial, for idle curiosity - then Wikipedia is pretty darned reliable (and we have studies that show that we're at least as reliable as Encyclopedia Brittannica.

The problem is not our actual reliability (which seems to be pretty amazingly good) - but the perception of our reliability (which is kinda terrible). The bizarre part about that is that while our editor community is shrinking - our readership is climbing. That's odd...you'd think that if this perception of unreliability was prevalent, that fewer people would be reading Wikipedia. I suspect (without evidence) that convenience trumps perceived reliability for most people. If I want to know "Will there be another series of Crossbones (TV series)?" (darn...no!) then being able to tap the "W" icon on my phone and type one word into the interface to get the answer is ASTOUNDING. The fact that the answer might be wrong...0.1% of the time...is actually less critical. If I were instead researching how people used dockyard cranes in Medieval Europe (which I was actually doing last week) - then I still use Wikipedia - but not for the answers it contains, rather for the curated links it gives me to the source documents. In that regard, Wikipedia is more like a highly effective version of Google-search than it is an encyclopedia. It gives me the links to the source material, and functions kinda like the Brittannica "propedia" that summarizes and organizes the knowledge that can be found elsewhere.

The general public are also unaware of the fact that for any common question you're likely to be searching for the answer to, there are likely to be dozens of reliable editors watching articles and deleting incorrect information added by random idiots within a very short span of time...and those same random idiots don't get much fun from putting garbage into very obscure subject matter where it might linger for a while before being removed. Even when you point out this undoubted truth to people, we're faced with the problem that people are not good at estimating probabilities and risk. If a junk edit happens in (say) Theory of relativity - then it's going to be fixed in a matter of minutes. Since those changes happen maybe weekly - the probability of you landing on that page while the information is incorrect - multiplied by the probability that the change actually affects you - is a very, very small number. But people are bad at estimating risk...so that's a hard line to sell to people.

I'm not sure we need technological changes, or even changes to editing rules or habits to make us more reliable (although greater reliability is obviously desirable). Mostly we need public awareness of how reliable we already are - combined with education in how to use Wikipedia when the answer really matters...and when it doesn't.

SteveBaker (talk) 13:56, 21 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

So your argument would be that we are right and everyone else, including all the people who use the encyclopaedia, are wrong? Deltahedron (talk) 14:05, 21 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

More seriously, any useful risk assessment should include an estimate of the impact as well as the probability. While the probability of being misinformed about medical information may be low (I couldn't say), the impact of that misinformation may be very high. We regard that as an acceptable risk simply because we don't have to take it. Deltahedron (talk) 14:08, 21 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Sadly, Deltahedron, no one knows the probability of being misinformed about medical information. No one has done a rigorous systematic review of the various small studies into the reliability of our medical offering. I've looked at all of those studies, I think, and in my opinion, a rigorous systematic review is likely to conclude nothing can be inferred from them about the reliability of our medical content. Most have fatal design flaws including tiny sample size, dubious measure of reliability and opaque selection criteria. What's really needed is a large enough, well-enough designed study. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 14:21, 21 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

But that's my point. For something as important as medical advice, you really shouldn't trust Wikipedia - you should use it as a curated set of links to documents that are presumed trustworthy (or at least more trustworthy than Wikipedia). It's very easy for some random idiot to change the name of a drug as treatment for some condition - but much MUCH harder for them to point the references that back this up. We need to educate people that they really shouldn't take our information as "The Truth" in any situation where it deeply matters. So I'm quite prepared to take the risk that there really is a second season of Crossbones (TV show) in the pipeline (despite Wikipedia saying that there isn't) - because it's just not that important to me. In that situation, convenience trumps absolute reliability. But in deciding whether the drug my doctor just prescribed my kid has side-effects that might concern me, then I'm still going to go to Wikipedia - but I'll pretty much ignore what it says and follow the little blue numbers to the actual medical journals that report the studies done on the drug. SteveBaker (talk) 23:35, 21 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. I'm asking you to imagine a Wikipedia you can trust. Actually, I'm asking Jimmy to imagine a Wikipedia we can trust. I'd really like to know where he stands on the question of a prominent link on our medical articles to versions of those articles that meet

WP:MEDRS. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 02:02, 22 August 2014 (UTC)[reply

]

While I want Wikipedia to be as accurate as we can manage, I hope we never ask people to trust us. People shouldn't ever trust Wikipedia. They shouldn't ever trust Britannica, or the New York Times either; hopefully we can push that into the public consciousness as we try to make a point about how trustworthy (or not) we are. A stable version, which represents our best work? Perhaps a good idea. A version of Wikipedia we tell people they can trust? A truly awful idea. WilyD 13:19, 22 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Are you against the concept of people trusting all possible sources of information? Or are there some you think people should trust? Deltahedron (talk) 14:16, 22 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Well, okay we can have a long discussion of how we're talking about trust like it's a boolean quantity when it ain't. There are no sources of information people should trust completely, or distrust completely. But "Oh, you can trust this" reeks of "Oh, you can trust this completely", which is awful, yes. Of course, one could be using "trust/not trust" differently. WilyD 15:30, 22 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The foundation is the one talking about sharing knowledge. And, yes, I agree, trust should not be blind. And it is a thing of degrees. But there are some sources about which it is possible to say "I trust this". We can and should be one of those. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 12:49, 23 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sure you're right. However, even with the most perfect information about the risk, it would remain true that while we lay that risk off onto other people, it will give us little incentive to get things right. Deltahedron (talk) 14:25, 21 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I think we agree, we have a moral responsibility to minimise that risk as much and as quickly as possible. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 14:36, 21 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I think I was too compressed about risk. I'm not suggesting that WP or WMF accept legal responsibility for medical or other information in the same way as a doctor or othe rprofessional. What I am suggesting that that WP/WMF aspire to get things right and be reliable, say so in public and accept the reputational damage if we are not. If I publish an academic paper and it proves to be wrong, my reputation suffers, and I may fail to get a job or promotion. Fortunately in my area of mathematics, people will not be killed in the ruins of a collapsing theorem, but it could happen to others. If we absolve ourselves from all blame in advance by saying "you should have known how to use our encyclopaedia", then we insulate ourselves from all those real-world consequences. I would argue that WP's position should be: yes, we are an encyclopaedia, we aim and claim to be the best, most accurate and most reliable there is, and if we screw up then tell us so and shame on us. That way we take a risk and have an incentive to Get It Right. Technological tools are part of that; so are processes and culture. Have we got any of those right at the moment? Deltahedron (talk) 14:39, 21 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

In his state of the wiki address this year, Jimmy said with regard to our biographical assertions, we need to do more than the minimum required by law in portraying our subjects. I think that applies to the reliability question, too. The trustworthiness of Wikipedia is a moral vision thing, not a legalistic ass-covering maneuver.

I'm working on a strategy for this, and I'm in email discussion with another user devising another strategy. Both of our strategies involve the "current" or "dynamic" Wikipedia article sporting a prominent badge, linking the reader to the reliable version. So, I'd like to know where Jimmy stands on that. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 15:00, 21 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I agree on the moral point as well: we have an obligation to get things right. Deltahedron (talk) 15:16, 21 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

A system like

Watson (computer) could perhaps be trusted to not just highlight problems but also correct them. We would then only need to check if the correction made are appropriate. Count Iblis (talk) 14:56, 21 August 2014 (UTC)[reply

]

• Think software is the least important factor in improving reliability. I would venture that reliability is a function of the degree of expertise of editors in the topic they are editing. There is no bot that can recognize an article that makes wrong or otherwise problematic statements, or uses bad sources. There is also no bot that point out missing content and add it. That makes the key problem finding out how to attract and retain expert editors in different topic areas. I personally think that the biggest obstacle to retaining expert editors is that they are not generally willing to monitor what they write indefinitely nor to defend it in endlessly recurring discussions with laypeople with all kinds of different personal or partial perspectives. The idea of identifying certain revisions as reliable would certainly be one way of making it easier for expert editors to justify spending their time on writing for wikipedia. User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 20:12, 22 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

  I think that's absolutely right. What expert in their right mind would choose to spend the rest of their life riding shotgun? Eric Corbett 20:19, 22 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I endorse this view. Partially-informed enthusiasts will generally outlast more broadly informed laymen or experts in most topics, with the result that there's widespread content which sounds plausible and may appear to be properly-sourced but in fact reflects oversimplified, biased, or misinformed views of highly motivated but unqualified editors. This appears to occur irrespective of the underlying topics or categories. SPECIFICO talk 20:43, 22 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

A good example would be the the article Mass–energy equivalence. Which tells us in no uncertain terms that "mass cannot be converted to energy,[citation needed]". (I added the tag.) Of course the matter is actually of some fairly deep physical and philosophical debate as the SEP entry on the topic will show. JMP EAX (talk) 22:17, 22 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Another example is Quantum teleportation which assures us that quantum computers are useless basically as " For example, a qubit cannot be used to encode a classical bit (this is the content of the no-communication theorem).[citation needed]" (I have added the tag.) As to the persistence of some: that text was added by an editor who is blocked indefinitely, after the block... JMP EAX (talk) 07:18, 23 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Place a prominent link on an article to the version that has passed rigorous independent expert review?

In my opinion, it all hangs on the quality of the reviewers and their rigor. If this goes ahead, we need to have the highest standards; higher than any existing encyclopedia, journal or textbook review process. We should be the benchmark against which those are measured.

I think we should reverse the usual process, and have anonymous writers and named reviewers. We have to have anonymous writers - it's the way of this wiki and that's not going to change. Naming the reviewers would offer the readers transparency, and (if our reviewed versions become the gold standard of reliability) offer the reviewers prominent kudos. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 02:24, 23 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I'm curious how many experts you think it'll take to review 4.6 million articles, and how all those experts will be recruited and paid for. How strict would this review be? Would it be like GA? FA? Higher? And how would this system be integrated with the actual wiki? What happens to articles that don't pass this (presumably extremely stringent) review? --

talk) 13:04, 23 August 2014 (UTC)[reply

]

Jakob, I shall ask the relevant scholarly societies, ones with decades (some with centuries) of experience in peer review, to manage this independent external review process. And I'll ask medical charities with public education as part of their mission to fund it. The Wikimedia Foundation should not fund it, to avoid any semblance of undue influence over the process. Critical review of all our current best medical articles, and fact-checking all of our current medical articles will cost less (probably a lot less) than $10 million.

I'm personally only interested in making our medical content reliable. The idea is scalable, though, to any field well-covered by serious scholarship.

This won't affect any of our existing practice, but we will need to decide on whose reviews we should link to. That will require discussion (not here please) and new policy or guidelines.

Articles that don't pass fact-check won't get a badge with a link to the fact-checked version, and errors will be listed on their talk pages. Class As and FAs that fail critical scholarly review won't get the badge linking to the critically-reviewed version until they pass a critical review. The societies managing the review process should have most say in how the review process works. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 14:18, 23 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The "most read" ten thousand articles account for a huge percentage of usage, and we can remove "popular culture" as being intrinsically non-reviewable, alas. The 2010 list of "most read" pages shows the ones at the 10,000 level has only 2% of the readership of the top actual articles (about 90K down to under 2K views per day). I suspect that, barring web-crawlers, the top 10,000 actual articles account for well over 95% (possibly quite a bit more) of total page views. [4] confirms this a bit. Collect (talk) 13:36, 23 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

please came at,<-redacted-> — Preceding unsigned comment added by 198.163.53.10 (talk) 21:58, 21 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

?????? KonveyorBelt 22:31, 21 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

• True semitrue fact: parasites that kill their hosts imperil themselves and are thus biologically ineffective. So if you've got a parasite, maybe it is making you sick but it's probably not going to kill you... I hope this info brightens your day. Carrite (talk) 06:40, 22 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

False: Some parasites kill their host as part of their lifecycle. One in particular will take control of its ant host's nervous system to force it to climb large blades of grass and sit there. This makes the ant an easy meal for a bird, which the parasite needs to reach its next life phase. Perhaps this parasite induces wiki editors to leave phone numbers for people to 'came at' them. 204.101.237.139 (talk) 14:54, 22 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

• What sort of parasite? Is it some sort of vampire moose? Jehochman ^Talk 16:13, 22 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

• Folks, we all know the drill when someone states they have a medical problem (even if we think it may be spurious). IP editor, if you believe you have a medical problem, please seek medical attention at your nearest emergency/casualty department or from a qualified medical practitioner. Wikipedia and its editors (including Jimbo Wales) are not qualified to assist you medically simply by a post on the internet. Risker (talk) 17:18, 22 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

"Drill" is clearly medical advice. This 'Risker' character should be permablockbanned immediately. 88.104.23.102 (talk) 21:57, 22 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Some (many? most?) American English grammar books suggest that the correct abbreviation for September is Sept. except when used in a table where it can be abbreviated as Sep (without a trialing period) to keep the columns a fixed width. In January 2014, a small group of editors used one of their bots to change all instances of Sept. to Sep throughout all articles - effectively stating that their new grammar will replace what reliable sources use. In my opinion, this violates the suggestion to use American English in articles. Robert - Northern VA (talk) 18:57, 22 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Why are you asking this question here? And who has suggested that American English should be used in articles? Eric Corbett 19:36, 22 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

See

WP:ENGVAR.--ukexpat (talk) 19:42, 22 August 2014 (UTC)[reply

]

An article should not be edited or renamed simply to switch from one valid use of English to another.

I interpret these to mean that it is not appropriate to force one convention on every article - which is what their bot has done. So yes, I am trying to make it clear that a small group of people have violated the intent of the MOS by forcing a totally non-standard edit on the entire encyclopedia. Robert - Northern VA (talk) 00:03, 23 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Look it says "SEP". That Jules was such a fall guy. Martinevans123 (talk) 19:50, 22 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

"Sept" might be more common in AE, but I don't think "Sep" is actually inadmissible, so I don't think there's a real ENGVAR issue here. As to whether setting up a bot in this way is a good thing, that's a different question. Formerip (talk) 00:29, 23 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Really? "June" has the abbreviation Jun for one single reason - postmarks had space for three letters using interchangeable type - thus the earliest use I found for the three letter months is with them. Collect (talk) 12:51, 23 August 2014 (UTC) Appending: The "Bishop Marks" (first modern date stamps for letters) only had two letters for the month -- thus "IV" was June!). Collect (talk) 13:22, 23 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

That tiled calendar from the ruins of Nero's villa at Antium seems to pre-date interchangeable type by about 1900 years? (Didn't Bishop Marks use "VI" for June?) But I thought we were discussing September? Martinevans123 (talk) 13:35, 23 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I was addressing the modern three letter usage. And (to the English), I was J and V was U in the font used in the marks <g>. There was no need for any abbreviations being three letters until the era of the postage stamp and the need to date items in a fixed format. I found no earlier reasoning, but using a date stamp which had a specific limited space for the month "slug" was a clear basis for such abbreviations. Collect (talk) 13:45, 23 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Jimmy. At a recent and still outstanding arbitration request, several editors have said that a statement from you would help clarify the dispute. See here for one example. Would you have time to comment here or there? Thanks. Carcharoth (talk) 23:38, 22 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

• Are you suggesting that Sir Jimmy can override
  WP:Site ban at will? Why would his input be required? Don't get it. AnonNep (talk) 00:23, 23 August 2014 (UTC)[reply
  ]
  • Editors have always been given a degree of latitude on their own talk pages regarding this. Tarc (talk) 00:55, 23 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    • So
      WP:Site ban "Unless otherwise specified, a ban is a site ban. An editor who is site-banned is forbidden from making any edit, anywhere on Wikipedia, via any account or as an unregistered user, under any and all circumstances. The only exception is that editors with talk page access may appeal in accordance with the provisions below." needs to be changed? (It can be hard enough to keep up with formal rules, let alone informal ones) AnonNep (talk) 01:09, 23 August 2014 (UTC)[reply
      ]
• There is nothing helpful that Jimbo can say—this one is up to the community. If Jimmy announces that the banned editor's comments can be removed, media outlets will get a space-filler to the effect that Jimmy Wales refuses to consider reasonable and good-faith comments from new users who are only trying to understand how great wrongs can be tolerated! If Jimmy says he does not want it removed, the troll can post forever while expanding threads based on hot air, trying to make muck stick. No media outlet is going to take the time to understand that the comments are extremely lame, and are part of a long-term campaign to attack the no paid advocacy ("brightline") position promoted by Jimmy Wales (and to settle old scores). Johnuniq (talk) 01:44, 23 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Nail on the head.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 14:23, 23 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • If you don't like reading the words of banned "trolls", perhaps you should just unwatch this talk page. Being here isn't a right, this is still at its core just a user's talk page; not ANI, not the Village Pump, nor any other public forum. Banning users from this page happens via a simple "Jimbo says go away", not a community vote. There's no reason to argue against the opposite, i.e. "it's ok for me to hear from this person". Tarc (talk) 04:21, 23 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    • That's not right—it's up to the community. For example, you might revert a banned user and I'm not going to restore that and tell you to unwatch the page if you don't like it. This page does not belong to Jimbo. Johnuniq (talk) 06:16, 23 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
      • In fact, it does. As I've noted before, I have no problems with some banned users posting to my own talk page, and there's nothing you can really do about that either. Banned users adding content to articles is one thing (though if it is good content, it should remain); banned users simply asking questions of the project's nominal leader is quite another. If the question or comment is truly, crystal-clear trolling, then it can be removed by anyone. If the only reason you can give for a reversion is who the author was, then you're in the wrong. Tarc (talk) 13:49, 23 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]