Frisch1

July 2011

Hello Frisch1. If you are affiliated with some of the people, places or things you have written about in the article Jennifer L. Canty, you may have a conflict of interest, or close connection to the subject.

All editors are required to comply with Wikipedia's neutral point of view content policy. People who are very close to a subject often have a distorted view of it, which may cause them to inadvertently edit in ways that make the article either too flattering or too disparaging. People with a close connection to a subject are not absolutely prohibited from editing about that subject, but they need to be especially careful about following the reliable sources and writing with as little bias as possible.

If you are very close to a subject, here are some ways you can reduce the risk of problems:

1. Avoid or exercise great caution when editing or creating articles related to you, your organization, or its competitors, as well as projects and products they are involved with.
2. Be cautious about deletion discussions. Everyone is welcome to provide information about independent sources in deletion discussions, but avoid advocating for deletion of articles about your competitors.
3. Avoid linking to the Wikipedia article or website of your organization in other articles (see Wikipedia:Spam).
4. Exercise great caution so that you do not accidentally breach Wikipedia's content policies.

Please familiarize yourself with relevant content policies and guidelines, especially those pertaining to neutral point of view, verifiability of information, and autobiographies.

For information on how to contribute to Wikipedia when you have a conflict of interest, please see our frequently asked questions for organizations. Thank you. noq (talk) 17:29, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

Thanks so much for the feedback. There is a close connection between the subject and myself. I was trying to follow guidelines by referncing articles and publications with the specific facts posted in question.

As to the notability, understood. She was the founder of a company that was acquired by a much larger company, which is particularly unusual for a woman-owned company in the United States. In addition, she has been cited by major media outlets dozens of times.

Please let me know if you don't feel that would qualify. I would have written more, but as a former journalist, I was trying to keep it to just the facts with specific outside references (Inc Magazine and The Post).

Frisch1 (talk) 20:20, 8 July 2011 (UTC)Frisch1

Climate "updates"

Before you make any more edits to (especially) locations in the PRC, please do not remove fields (e.g. humidity, precipitation days, sunshine hours) and reduce precision (from 0.1 °C to 1 °F; the former is 5.6 times more precise) as you did, for example, here. Moreover, the World Meteorological Organisation requires a 30-year record, and the 18 years that Weatherbase provides does not cut it.  The Tartanator  17:54, 25 November 2011 (UTC)

Hello  The Tartanator ...

Thank you for posting. On the pages I was updating, the data appears to be the 30-year summary from 1960-1990, based on the data I saw. The data I was pulling in from Weatherbase is a shorter observation period, but from 1992-2010, therefore more current. I will be sensitive to these updates in the future. I certainly should not have removed details, and do apologize for that.

No, almost all of the tables are from 1971–2000, with a few from the 1950's to the 2000's.  The Tartanator  00:33, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

Hello  The Tartanator  The data from the CMA is unfortunately inconsistent in the attribution, as that data is part of our overall dataset that we've normalized against other raw sources. Though it is labeled the 30-year from 71-00, it actually matches up precisely to the datasets from the NOAA and WMO for the 61-90 cycle (all of this data is usually the same reports provided by the national met offices, though we work off the raw daily records whenever possible to improve accuracy). Nonetheless, on my further updates, I have simply been fixing the lowercase year so the F/C conversions happen and fixing formatting. I have not added nor updated any further datasets on cities in China, except in cases where no tabular data is present.

weatherbase.com

Greetings, do you know what weatherbase.com's sources are for the climate data you are adding? I find it difficult to believe that there is reliable data for the most miniscule places in Alberta, such as Wagner, or places that no longer exist such as Masinasin. Hwy43 (talk) 21:27, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

Hello... (talk) In reference to Masinasin, there's data from both Environment Canada and the NOAA, in checking that specific example. We have a merged view of both sources in Wxbase.

The data sources specific to Weatherbase are a centralized, normalized system of climatic data, spanning more than 3 dozen sources. In about 20 of the cases, usually for more remote regions, we're pulling in the normalized averages from the national met offices, and joining the data to both remove redundancy, fix obvious errors. In the remainder of the cases, we're pulling in the raw daily records from archives, to stay more current, and updating the records and averages. Whereas the climate normals get updated every 10 years, the vast majority of our locations get updated annually.

I'd encourage you to check Weatherbase's background on the Net. It's been around for 13 years... The main focus is cleaning notoriously hard to read and find government data and presenting a unified view of the information that's human readable vs. targeted at meteorologists.

Let me know if you have any questions. We're populating several thousand wikipedia articles over the next few weeks for locations that don't have any climatological data. We've been cited (without permission, but it's fine) several hundred times on Wikipedia, and unfortunately we often found ourselves correcting transcription errors for which people thought Weatherbase had it wrong when in fact it was copied into Wikipedia wrong. We realized we were better off in the long run making sure Wiki had the information directly from our database, thus avoiding transcription errors. It's a win for Wiki to get the data direct from the source, and speaking frankly, better for Weatherbase as it eliminates errors from copying and retyping into weather tables...

Who is the "we" you refer to? Hwy43 (talk) 21:41, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

Feel free to check the Weatherbase page for information on the contributors. We don't subscribe to being anonymous, so folks always know who they are talking to.

It appears you represent weatherbase.com, so your edits have the appearance of a conflict of interest. Please read WP:COI before you go any further. Hwy43 (talk) 21:54, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

Please check the threads prior to this. We researched this prior to doing the insertions, including consulting with the Wiki community. We are representing no point of view, nor any editorial content, nor promoting any point of view. What we are doing is inserting statistical data, which inherently has no bias or point of view.

In order to avoid perception of conflict, note we cite the data in the reference vs: the more common link next to the information. In addition, as Wikipedia has a no follow policy, we gain no SEO advantage to this.

What we do gain is the elimination of the misrepresentation of our data by the manual insertion of errors by ensuring the information is coming straight from the database into Wiki.

Either way, while I appreciate your feedback, we are through the updates to Alberta and to articles that neglected to include climate data.

Your data is unsupported by the only meteorological organisation in Australia (Bureau of Meteorology) and the fact that the site has advertisments is clear that you are using Wikipedia to cite spam unreliable data. Per WP:COI, please cease adding or changing data with the weatherbase cite. Bidgee (talk) 04:56, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

BOM is actually one of the three dozen data sources we used. Per the 3rd paragraph of the WP:COI "Editors with COIs are strongly encouraged—but not actually required—to declare their interests, both on their user pages and on the talk page of the related article they are editing, particularly if those edits may be contested. Editors who disguise their COIs are often exposed, creating a perception that they, and perhaps their employer, are trying to distort Wikipedia. When someone voluntarily discloses a conflict of interest, other editors should always assume the editor is trying to do the right thing. Do not use a voluntarily disclosed conflict of interest as a weapon against the editor." I have disclosed that I am one of the founders of Weatherbase, and also my intent and purpose in populating Wikipedia with this data (which has already been used more than 600 times without permission prior to our taking an interest in ensuring the data is accurately represented). If you feel there is a bias in the statistical data presented, provide something other than your opinion. Per advertising, I am happy to provide you a list of hundreds of geolocation articles on Wikipedia that cite weather.com, weather2.com, worldweather.co.uk and a dozen other cites that similarly provide ads, none of which are BOM and all of which maintain statistical data as to the climatology of Australia. I am happy to review the veracity of your claims, however, we vetted this with wikipedia editors prior to posting this data. Thank you and I look forward to further data supporting your claims.

Fact is the data you have doesn't match the BoM's data. ie: Daly Waters (BOM). As a source I would use the BoM over any other site. Why? because it is reliable and advert free as well as being relevent to Australia. Bidgee (talk) 05:12, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

Where is this past consultation with the Wiki community? Where are the examples of misrepresentation of your data by the manual insertion of errors? I've never seen this website used by any editor in the past. In your website's business model, does increased traffic result in increased advertising revenue? Optically, it appears these additions and changes are intended to increase traffic to this website. Hwy43 (talk) 05:14, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

I see you posted here and got one reply with a suggestion. I see you did not respond. Did you ever post at Wikipedia:Village pump or Wikipedia:Requests for comment as suggested? Hwy43 (talk) 05:27, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

Search further. Hwy43, I believe you inquired above about examples of misrepresentation and the fact you've never seen this website used by any editor in the past. Would appreciate the results of your search on both counts. That's a fairly heavy accusation, and one that's answered in under five minutes by a search and looking at the edit history of the first 20 of several hundred results that a) show neither I nor anyone associated with Weatherbase posted the data and b) we've been cited since 2007 (possibly earlier but that's the earliest I've found). Let me know the results and happy to discuss further. - Apologies, as a quick sidebar, I do want to indicate that we have been cleaning up any references to our site that a) mis-reference the data (e.g. Weatherbase.com or Weather Base where the proper name is Weatherbase) and b) more commonly, fixing a bug in the Wiki system that doesn't translate C to F if you do not capitalize "Year" in the summary that causes the table to not translate the figure correctly). This is only done on pages that previously cited the data without our permission (though we don't mind it, as indicated above, but we want it to be correct if cited).

A review of your contributions confirms that you never did post at Wikipedia:Village pump or Wikipedia:Requests for comment as suggested. A single post here and not following up to the reply hardly constitutes sufficient consultation with the Wiki community. Hwy43 (talk) 05:59, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

Hwy43, let me know the results of your check on weatherbase never being cited before and that we've never corrected incorrectly transcribed data. Happy to carry on the conversation further once those claims on your part are addressed.

I asked for examples of misrepresentation and advised I've never observed another editor use it the past. I never said misrepresentation of your data on WP did not exist, and never said other editors have never used your website. Hwy43 (talk) 06:13, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

No but you posed the question. Just as I'm sure if I posed a question with no answer about your edits, you would ask for supporting data, I am simply doing the same. I have not questioned your motives or interest in maintaining articles about Alberta, nor any inherent interest, bias or commercial interest thereof. However, you have raised such a question in reference to my interest in adding data that previously was not present on locations in Alberta. I have provided answers that have led to further questions, and such questions can continue indefinitely, as any good lawyer would tell you. To reiterate, my two interests are a) ensuring if my data is going to be used, it is used correctly and b) enhancing the coverage within Wikipedia, a publication I've been using for years, by providing accurate data tied to the geocode of a page location. You raised the question of the bias, and I believe I have quoted the WP:COI that addresses this piece (paragraph 3). Appreciate if we agree to disagree. If there's specific concerns with the accuracy of the data, I'm more than happy to provide the original data sources and reporting stations that fed it. In Canada, it's primarily data from EC, NOAA stations, and, for the older stuff, the raw data that fed ISMCS v4.0. It varies by station, but those are the 3 core sources (there's WMO data in there, but our algorithms removed almost all of that as the WMO gets fed by national met offices, thus the core would have been the EC/NOAA...).

---

You claim that the data used (for Australia) is from the BoM, however the BoM stats say otherwise and three location you added data to don't even have a weather data (one does have another weather station within 20km but it isn't at the location which your data states its at). So the reliablity of your data is poor (not good as a source since the primary source is up to date).

Article	Weatherbase	BoM
Angurugu, Northern Territory	Angurugu, Northern Territory	Groote Eylandt Airport AWS
Barrow Creek, Northern Territory	Barrow Creek, Northern Territory	Barrow Creek
Borroloola	Borroloola, Northern Territory	Borroloola
Charlotte Waters, Northern Territory	Charlotte Waters, Northern Territory	No data (not even within 100km)
Daly Waters, Northern Territory	Daly Waters, Northern Territory	Daly Waters
Elliott, Northern Territory	Elliott, Northern Territory	Elliott
Maningrida, Northern Territory	Maningrida, Northern Territory	Maningrida
Minjilang, Northern Territory	Minjilang, Northern Territory	Minjilang
Newcastle Waters, Northern Territory	Newcastle Waters, Northern Territory	No data (not even within 100km)
Nhulunbuy, Northern Territory	Nhulunbuy, Northern Territory	Nhulunbuy DTW
Oenpelli, Northern Territory	Oenpelli, Northern Territory	Oenpelli
Uluru	Ayers Rock, Northern Territory	Yulara Aero (approx 18.4km from Uluru based on coords)
Yuendumu, Northern Territory	Yuendumu, Northern Territory	Yuendumu

Your website also contains a large amount of adverts and the fact that you have a ref attached to the link clearly shows you're using Wikipedia to promote your site. Please read WP:AVOIDCOI (which is in WP:COI) and WP:CITESPAM (due to the fact that the site's data is poor). Bidgee (talk) 12:13, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

Please find the responses below, with citations. Bidgee has made assertations that the data quality is poor. I can see how someone not familiar with climatology can come to that conclusion. Bidgee did a bit of googling to come to the conclusion. I, with a handful of others, have spent more than a decade researching weather stations, so we have a bit more experience in this exact area. Please see the results below all with citations.

Three stations below are stated as not having any weather data (Charlotte Waters, Newcastle Waters and Uluru). You can see from the links that is incorrect. One of the advantages of using multiple sources of data vs. just a single source is more comprehensive coverage. In addition, Bidgee cited Groote Eylandt as the source for Angurugu, when in fact BoM maintained a station there for a number of years, in recent enough history that the data is valid from a weather normals standpoint. An independent meteorologist in the Wiki community is welcome to confirm that fact. In general, for climate normals for non-scientific purposes (e.g. giving an idea of average temperature and precip vs. using for forecasting and actuarial models), you're safe to go back about 30 years. Further than that and the deviations start to become outside acceptable ranges.

I would ask on a go forward basis, particularly from Bidgee, that we look at the facts on the data vs. baseless assertations. To date, you have asserted: -- The data reliability is poor -- that weather stations do not exist when as documented below with citations the stations do exist -- That the sole motivation for this to promote my site -- That adverts somehow undercut the reliability of my information

I appreciate we are not going to agree on the last two points as that are opinion. The first two points however can be independently judged.

I'm happy to have a philosophical debate around the adverts and the motivation is to promote my site. The 3rd paragraph of WP:COI would indicate you should not jumpto that conclusion, but I doubt I'm going to change your mind on points 3 and 4, despite the fact that wiki's no follow policy would make it ridiculous on its face that I would be boosting my SEO ranking, or that by placing a link in a citation that links further down on a page that then links to my site is some manner of winning strategy. I certainly concede the point that being associated with Wikipedia is good for any site's reputation in general. But given my site has been around about longer than Wikipedia (since 1999), I don't think I need the boost. Given the ad revenue pays for the site's servers and all the founders work full time in other positions, we don't see this as a path to retirement.

Let's please instead focus this conversation around the first two accusations: that the data reliability is poor and that weather stations do not exist. From there, once we've had others outside myself and Bidgee evaluate the information below, I'm more than happy to discuss how best to proceed, if at all, with providing information for the benefit of Wikipedia as a whole.

The dataset. -- Of the 13 data points cited below, all 13 exist as valid data stations: -- 11 of the data stations are compiled from BOM data

  -- Stations that are still active are a result of an analysis of daily records to recombine the data into normals
  -- Stations that are no longer active use the monthly normals provided by BOM

-- 1 of the stations uses ISMCS data provided by the noaa -- 1 of the stations is lage enough that it is a blend, compiled from two sources, BOM and ISMCS

A note on the data selection. As a general rule, the more remote the area, the greater the paucity of data. Northern Territory would certainly fall into that category, thus the higher prevalence of single source stations (11 of the 13). As you move into more populated areas (NSW or Darwin), the higher prevalence in Weatherbase's data to have two or three sources for any one location, which allows our error correction and blending of the data sources to shine. This is particularly true in the U.S. where the density of co-op stations, NOAA-run stations and multiple stations sometimes within 1-2km of each other let us really refine the data.

I look forward to feedback on the below. As stated, I have stopped updating any Wikipedia articles until I get a read from the group here if and how to proceed. As you can tell from the above, I'm more than happy to respect community will and opinion on this topic. As you can also tell, I'm a bit sensitive at having thousands of hours of work over more than a decade railroaded by one person whose opinion as to the motive will not change, and therefore chooses to attack the quality of work.

Wiki	Weatherbase	BoM
Angurugu, Northern Territory	Angurugu, Northern Territory	Groote Eylandt Airport AWS
This is BOM data: Station ID: 014506 (http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/averages/tables/cw_014518_All.shtml). It was collected through 1989 and is within the time period to be statistically valid. It is not the station cited by Bigdee
Barrow Creek, Northern Territory	Barrow Creek, Northern Territory	Barrow Creek
This is BOM data: Station ID 015525. (http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/averages/tables/cw_015525_All.shtml). Temp data is through 1988, precip through 2010, same as BOM site.
Borroloola	Borroloola, Northern Territory	Borroloola
This is BOM data: Station ID 014723. (http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/averages/tables/cw_014723_All.shtml). Data through 2010
Daly Waters, Northern Territory	Daly Waters, Northern Territory	Daly Waters
The data here is merged and updated from ISMCS (station id: 96 4626) - (http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/rcsg/cdrom/ismcs/alphanum.html) and BOM (station ID: 014618). BOM stopped collecting temp data in '86, whereas temp data was available from the ISMCS through 96. The differences reflect combination of data on temp. In this case, the temp is going to be more accurate from Wxbase as it looks specifically at the most current 30 years, whereas the precip is likely to be more current from BOM due to more current info, though I'm not certain if BOM looks at the whole period back to 1873, which given the range would counterintuitively be less accurate, as pulling in data across more than 100 years can actually make it less accurate to reflect current norms
Elliott, Northern Territory	Elliott, Northern Territory	Elliott
This is BOM data: Station ID 015131. (http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/averages/tables/cw_015131_All.shtml). Data through 2010
Maningrida, Northern Territory	Maningrida, Northern Territory	Maningrida
This is BOM data: Station ID 014400. (http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/averages/tables/cw_014400_All.shtml). Data through 2007 for temp, 2008 for precip, same as BOM
Minjilang, Northern Territory	Minjilang, Northern Territory	Minjilang
This is BOM data: Station ID 014011. (http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/averages/tables/cw_014011_All.shtml). Temp through 1991, precip through 2006 same as BOM.
Charlotte Waters, Northern Territory	Charlotte Waters, Northern Territory	No data (not even within 100km)
This data is from the ISMCS (station id: 94 4751) - (http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/rcsg/cdrom/ismcs/alphanum.html). It does not appear to be a BOM station, but rather a WWAS data station. Data would be through 1996, but need to verify exact date
Newcastle Waters, Northern Territory	Newcastle Waters, Northern Territory	No data (not even within 100km)
This is BOM data: Station ID 015089. (http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/averages/tables/cw_015089_All.shtml). Older data, but statistically valid for climate norms
Nhulunbuy, Northern Territory	Nhulunbuy, Northern Territory	Nhulunbuy DTW
This is BOM data: Station ID 014512. (http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/averages/tables/cw_014512_All.shtml). Temp through 1985 precip through 2010
Oenpelli, Northern Territory	Oenpelli, Northern Territory	Oenpelli
This is BOM data: Station ID 014042. (http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/averages/tables/cw_014042_All.shtml). Data through 2010
Uluru	Ayers Rock, Northern Territory	Yulara Aero (approx 18.4km from Uluru based on coords)
This is BOM data: Station ID 015527. (http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/averages/tables/cw_015527_All.shtml). BOM maintained a station there through the 80s
Yuendumu, Northern Territory	Yuendumu, Northern Territory	Yuendumu
This is BOM data: Station ID 015528. (http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/averages/tables/cw_015528_All.shtml). Data through 2010

I don't have time to fully comment so I'll keep it brief. You can't mix data from two sources (even though it may work in the US), a number of reasons why it can't be done (When the BoM moves a site more then a few 100m). So don't try and turn this into "he doesn't know climatology" since I do. Fact is the BoM sources are updated monthly so they are up to date (some recording sites do lag when data quality is questioned) but you can find when it was last updated if you select "Main statistics". While Angurugu has stats, Groote Eylandt Airport is only 3.3km away and had a longer reporting history and is up to date. If the BoM doesn't have it then it shouldn't be used, ISMCS stations are not used by the BoM.

I could understand if a website had one or two advert but no more, for what ever reason. Why would we use a site with adverts when others what are ad free and have correct data! And I'm not the only editor to question your edits, so don't say there is when it's clearly not the case! Bidgee (talk) 20:59, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

Bidgee, I'll wait to hear from Hans and John Vandenberg on the topic. Ignoring the points on adverts, I'll address the data:

"You can't mix data from two sources." - Really. That's what The Weather Channel and every other meteorological organization does. Please back that statement up with a citation rather than an opinion that contradicts meteorology 101, which combines station data, nearby station data, satellite imagery and other information to create a forecast. Or the publications from the WMO that combine data to create the averages and normals. I'm not anonymous. You are (at least to me).

"BoM sources are updated monthly". Yes, and most normals and averages are updated once every 10 years due to the work involved and to smooth out data anomalies when producing normals. We update once per year where the data is available for exactly that reason, to take a full look at the data

"Angurugu has stats, Groote Eylandt Airport is only 3.3km away and had a longer reporting history". Patently false, and can be verified by looking at BoM data for Angurugu with 60 years of data (http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/averages/tables/cw_014506_All.shtml) and Groote Eylandt Airport (http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/averages/tables/cw_014518_All.shtml) which began collecting data in 1999. You are correct that this likely should be combined, as our algorithm looks for stations within 1 mile and this is just outside that arc. However, I will leave it for others to evaluate this statement and the data.

"ISMCS stations are not used by BOM". False. Actually a good number of ISMCS stations are *from* BoM. Check the link previously cited referencing AUBM stations. Most Met organizations maintain climate monitoring within their own borders, but the U.S., U.K., France and older data from the former Soviet Union (mostly falling off the norm charts) operated stations outside their border. ISMCS is collected by the NOAA.

"...ad free and have correct data!" Again, no acknowledgement that your initial 13 stations cited, you claimed four had no data on site, and all four have been shown to have data on site. I have yet to see any assertation backed up by verifiable fact on your part.

Bidgee, I have no axe to grind with you. If you'd like to have a discussion as to whether or not a site with ads should be used as a reference, I'm happy to have it, though we clearly disagree on the point. As stated, I'm no longer updating Wikipedia at all until this is resolved.

If this is turning into an I've-Been-On-Wikipedia-Longer-and-therefore-am-always right discussion, then I'll stay out of it and wait to hear from Mr. Vandenberg. I've answered all your data questions, corrected misstatements and am happy to provide further information to the wiki community and honor the response. You are a member of the community, but you are a member of the larger community, as am I now. I know seniority counts for nearly everything on Wikipedia. So all I can do is present the information and wait to hear back as to if to proceed and if so, how.

As I've directly commented to some folks on this thread, I'm fine if the decision is no. But being direct, I'll be darned if I'm going to sit here and be told my data and information is shoddy anonymously after a decade of work, without so much as a verifiable fact to back it up. It's not perfect, but it's accurate, and far more comprehensive than any single source.

I will wait for further word from others in the community.

A fast post-script to this message. I do like the fact that John Vandenberg and Hans are verifiable as to their backgrounds. I know the ethos on Wikipedia is everyone can be an expert. I'm not engaging in that discussion. However, as is readily verifiable on me: Weatherbase has been around since 1999. It has plenty of media citations and publications (as well as companies that license the data, as they do from met offices and commercial entities). This is all freely available information. I built the weather section on washingtonpost.com back in 1996, and again for AOL.com in 1999. I don't claim a meteorological degree, but have more than a decade of experience in the field as a personal passion. As a side note, I am a former reporter in Phialdelphia and in Washington, so I understand the discussion around COI and respect the healthy debate. Bidgee, it would be helpful to have some perspective on your expertise in the area. This is not a challenge, merely a question so others can effectively evaluate our discussions and points raised.

Going to keep this brief as I'm currently on a break. Again the BoM don't merge data from a single area unless it has moved a weather station a short distance (An example is Darwin Airport which was moved a few years ago and Canberra Airport [new site average is not online] (comparison [old site]) has moved in the past year or so, the BoM try and start recording a few years before the move [not alway possible] so they can see the difference between the two sites (data wise) which is then taken into account with averages for the old site).

ISMCS does use some BoM weather stations (as does a few other orgs) but the two locations I've stated do not have a BoM weather station.

No this isn't a "I've-Been-On-Wikipedia-Longer-and-therefore-am-always right discussion", I have concerns as do some others but you're not addressing them.

None of your business as to who I am, this would be like disclosing my address and phone number. Bidgee (talk) 03:27, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Feel free to stay cloaked in anonymity. Easier to attack someone's work when hiding. Let me know which of your concerns haven't been addressed and I'll continue to cite data. Can do this all day. You are correct that BoM doesn't merge data, nor did I say BoM does. However any number of meteorological outfits do, taking in government data sources, which by and large with universities are the only game in town worldwide for raw met data.

Appreciate the acknowledgement that some of your previous statements regarding the ISMCS were incorrect. Will wait for further acknowledgement regarding the time periods. You've made your case in regard to specific data above, and I've provided my response. I've provided my information as to my knowledge in this area, which can be verified. You have not. I will await feedback from a larger group prior to proceeding. Frisch1 (talk) 03:36, 28 November 2011 (UTC) Frisch1

Like other editors here, anonymity has nothing to do with me questioning your use of citing and your POV statments about your own website. Why doesn't the BoM merge data? Well Australia is very different to other countries in may ways (climate, technology [though it has improved with remote AWS but is costly] and remoteness).

Just because other orgs merge data doesn't mean anything (they have there reasons) but doesn't mean that its correct since data is recorded at different sites which have different climates (due to a number of factors, lakes, ocean, buildings, trees, roads, ect). Your use of merging data could be seen as original research (since the merged data is unpublished by other reliable sources) [in no way shap or form am I stating that your site is reliable, since per WP:USERGENERATED you're not an "established expert" (since you stated that you don't have "a meteorological degree")].

Sites with a lot of adverts (which yours does) are generally bad for a reader who is wanting a reliable source (reason why ad free reliable sources are/should be used), I have no issue if a site has one or two adverts but anymore is a negitive (whether you're trying to gover running costs) but since you admitted that you also pay yourself, then you have a vested interest in trying to attack anyone who questions your site.

Do not twist what I have said! I stated that the BoM does not use ISMCS weather stations for data, so my statment is correct. Bidgee (talk) 06:45, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

A whole lot more opinion on the above with no citations, though appreciate the grudging fact that it "could" be viewed as original research. 13 years, dozens of sources, thousands of hours of work. Thanks for the bone. As there's a great deal of marketing research out there on adverts, cite a source that says more than one or two is bad for readers (Sydney Morning Herald - 4 to 6 per page, New York Times, 4 per page, Weatherzone.com.au, 4 per page... oh but why go on, the market research they perform is wrong in your opinion). You've made up your mind. No citations, of course, or supporting facts, or even a single reference to BoM on methodology. This topic isn't a subjective judgement like, say, whether someone's photograph is better than yours. This is fact based. Cite facts. Frisch1 (talk) 14:00, 28 November 2011 (UTC)Frisch1

In terms on content the sites above have more content (excluding the ads) on display, hence 4 to 6 ads and the ads blend into the site unlike weatherbase which stick out like dogs balls (sorry but they do). Though I try and use and ad free source, if I can't then I'll use a reliable source which has little adverts. Bidgee (talk) 14:14, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

please pause

Hi, some concerns have been raised above, so please pause the operation until the community has finished reviewing your recent changes. Thanks, John Vandenberg ^(chat) 05:19, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

Hi John...

I'm happy to stop on Australia for now. Appreciate the concerns, and the optics that have been raised, but please feel free to both research myself, Weatherbase and particularly the veracity of the data. I don't mind questions being raised as to the purpose, but do take offense to being accused of spam and having inaccurate data from those who have spent little or no time on weather normals and whose primary concern seems to be I have google ad code on Weatherbase. Bill Frischling

John, as a side note, prior to looking at this initiative, we did a deep dive on the English Wikipedia. As a result, I've got a list of a few hundred articles that cite Weatherbase, and a few thousand that cite other commercial sources (such as the BBC, The Weather Channel, MSN, Pogoda.ru, Yahoo and others). Our methodology was simple: find any that cite Weatherbase and ensure the data is accurate, and find locations that cite no climate data and insert straight from our database to make sure the insertion is accurate. If there's a dropbox I can pop the spreadsheet in, more than happy to share.

Please stop entirely. I'd like to see your response to Bidgee re the Daly Waters data, because if your data is wrong for Australia it could be wrong elsewhere too. It might be an anomoly, or it could be a set of data that should be discarded, or your data might even be 'better'. I understand that you're not thrilled about the concerns that you're spamming Wikipedia; this is all the more reason to stop now so the community can see that you're happy to discuss the matter more before proceeding. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 06:50, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Not quite. "[P]lease pause the operation" means stopping all insertions of weatherbase.com. As your links include web analytics parameters that identify Wikipedia as the referrer, I am highly inclined to revert all of your edits as pure spam. No good faith editor will link in this manner. MER-C 06:55, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

Just in case you are not aware: (1) John Vandenberg is a member of Wikipedia's Arbitration Committee, not a random user. That implies that he has been selected as one of a good dozen for being, among other things, particularly clueful about how we do things here. It's worth taking him very seriously. (2) We have a spam blacklist. It is technically impossible to insert links to a website on that list. If you continue, I have no doubt that your domain will be added. (3) All our outgoing links are marked as "nofollow". As a result, they have no effect on Google rank. Hans Adler 08:30, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

As a note to the community I have stopped all edits to Wikipedia. As indicated previously, I am well aware there is a no follow policy on the links. Should this be viewed as acceptable, I'm happy to remove the refer links as they are standard. Should the community view otherwise, I'm happy to have all my links reverted and leave Wikipedia alone. But I seem to be caught in a question of my method of updating Wiki (en masse) vs a question of whether geopages should have weather (which seem to be the standard).

As it is clear I need to provide a meteorological justification to the data and methodology. I will be posting this in detail shortly. I would appreciate if one request would be honored: I have no doubt there are experts in meteorology on Wikipedia. I would appreciate one of them reviewing the data I post. I'm becoming a bit exhausted with Bigdee's assertation that because we have adverts we are spam. After 15 years of Internet experience, I can recognize when someone's mind is made up regardless of what information I provide. Bigdee clearly doesn't like sites with adverts. So the thousands of hours I've spent over the last 13 years on refining the data collection and normalization is tainted in his eyes.

If I am going to spend the time responding to someone who is an expert in the Northern Territory vs. meteorology in general, I would appreciate if my response on the data, methodology and historical naming conventions of stations vs. geocoded is both taken seriously and evaluated as such.

I certainly have no wish to offend the Wiki community. I have followed guidelines, disclosed I am the owner of of the site and otherwise am adding data that previously did not exist.

Hans John Vandenberg please advise in regard to having a wiki expert in meteorology take a look as well. I'll have the detailed response to the stations cited with all the origin sources, geocode information and methodology in comparison to the BOM later in the day GMT-5.

Also, if my responses are satisfactory, I am more than open to a more appropriate way to proceed, including just leaving things alone and letting things proceed organically. I didn't mean to offend anyone on Wiki or freak anyone out by going through a list en masse. So I'm certainly open to suggestions.

Thank you and again, my apologies if any offense was taken.

Hans, John Vandenberg - please see my response above to the data question. I am making no further updates until this is resolved. I would very much like to get past the data quality question before we move to the "motive" question. 4 of the 13 stations Bidgee cited as not having data all contain citations to the source. I also go into the methodology.

Thank you again for taking time to take a look at this. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Frisch1 (talk • contribs)

Why did you change the signature for John Vandenberg's comment from John Vandenberg to Hans Adler? Hwy43 (talk) 21:45, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

Probably a copy-paste error. I will fix that if you haven't done it yet. Frisch1, you don't need to copy the markup for people's names when addressing them. Just type their names out, then this can't happen. Also, please remember to type ~~~~ at the end of each post. This will insert your name, links to your talk user page and a timestamp. If you don't know how to enter ~ with your computer, just copy the symbols from somewhere or find them in the "insert" menu below the edit form. Hans Adler 21:52, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

Sorry, I am not going to look specifically at the stuff that you have dumped here, as I am not personally interested in meteorology. The default is that changing a large number of articles uniformly in a way that is potentially controversial requires a prior discussion and consensus. Large scale changes involving external links are almost automatically controversial, even if these links are to a scientific library, for example. And large scale changes of this kind involving links to a website with which you are affiliated are guaranteed to be controversial. See WP:REFSPAM, which may or may not apply here. Whether it applies, and if it doesn't, whether what you want to do is desirable and how it should best be done, must be discussed before it is done. A good place for such a discussion might be WP:Village pump or the talk page of WP:WikiProject Meteorology. Hans Adler 21:52, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

As mentioned, I've been on Wikipedia for a short period of time and am still learning the markup. I'm accustomed to HTML. Any error on the sig when copying is mine and unintended. With apologies.

Frisch1 (talk) 21:55, 27 November 2011 (UTC)Hans Adler that's good advise, thank you. Happy to shift the discussion. My only question: do both areas need to have consensus? Or can I engage in the topic in one area? Thank you and thank you for the info on the sig Frisch1 (talk) 21:55, 27 November 2011 (UTC)Frisch1

You should start the discussion only in one place, but ideally leave a short link to it in the other. Explain exactly what you want to do. Don't try to hide the fact that you have done it already and run into trouble. People will find out anyway, so it's best to be totally open about it from the start. Hans Adler 22:47, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

Forgive the basic question, but I don't want to be perceived as editing Wikipedia. There's a page here Guayaquil that has the fun error of the misstated "Year" tag that's mangling the imperial measurement conversion. Normally I'd just fix it, but I did pledge to do no edits until this is resolved. Would this be viewed as an acceptable edit to fix the data display error? If not, if someone can point where to post errors to be fixed, that would be wonderful. Apologies if I'm being hypersensitive, but these types of errors bug me. Thank you Frisch1 (talk) 04:29, 28 November 2011 (UTC)Frisch1

You are not under any formal restrictions, so you can safely use common sense in this case. More generally, becoming part of our community by helping out in ways that you didn't anticipate when you first came here is of course a good thing to do. It helps you to understand the perspective of other Wikipedia editors, and it helps Wikipedia editors to assume good faith when dealing with you. It's unlikely that anyone will misunderstand such edits, but to be absolutely sure you can use edit summaries as you did here. (By the way, that edit wasn't necessary because template names and template parameters are case insensitive. We usually try to avoid such edits that don't have an effect, because they make the history of a page harder to understand.) Hans Adler 07:38, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Thank you Hans. As a quick follow up, there's an odd bug in the Weatherbox template where if you say, for example year_hi instead of Year_hi, the temperature won't convert between F and C... It's a weird bug, but you will see Weatherboxes (the Guayaquil is an example above) where the conversion doesn't happen on the annual summary. I've seen dozens of examples of this. Thank you Frisch1 (talk) 13:53, 28 November 2011 (UTC)Frisch1

Summary

Can someone make a quick summary of what the problem is, as i may be able to help.Jason Rees (talk) 13:39, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Hi Jason... Thank you for agreeing to take a look. I've opened a thread here Climate Updates, but here's the command summary.

I committed a community faux pas when I began a bit more than a week ago mass updating pages with no climate information with Weatherboxes with climate info. I've operated Weatherbase for 13 years, which is a passion project, where I and two others normalize dozens of sources of climate data (NWS/NOAA, ISMCS from NOAA, WMO, SNM, BoM... the list goes on) for use by non-meteorologists. Wiki came on our radar (though I've been using it for years) when we found our data was being used without permission (which is fine). We noticed transcription errors in our data, bad attributions and some other messiness on occasion that we fixed. We thought (perhaps erroneously) that it would be better if we simply inserted the data ourselves, direct from our database, so we knew the information was both clean and correctly cited.

This caught the attention of some editors quickly, and raised questions around motive, spamming and in one case which frankly raised my hackles, the quality of the info (you can see the weatherbase.com thread above... ignore the editorial and take a peek at the tables of information). I'm exiting the thread from weatherbase.com with one editor as when "dogs balls" enter the conversation, I think there's no further useful discussion there.

I have identified 6,800 city and town level pages with no weatherbox present, and have this set, clean and ready to go. I'm more than happy to publish the data where it doesn't exist. It looks like on your user page you are way familiar with met data, so you know what I mean when I say it can be a bit of a pain to wade through, and we've got thousands of hours invested in parsers and some pretty fun algorithms to go through the data, find duplicates, append info, join data based on geoproximity (1 mile or less is our somewhat narrow threshold, and any merge is just identified... we need to take a look before doing it).

I've disclosed that I am one of the operators of Weatherbase, that it's a hobby site, it runs advertising which covers the server costs, and that it's a passion project. The three partners all have full time jobs and do it for fun (much like Wiki editors) and because we believe in it. I've stopped the Wiki updates and am waiting for feedback from the community (non dogs balls related :-) ) as to whether this is acceptable to proceed. If the answer is no, fine. If the answer is yes, want to know how best to proceed. Don't mind investing the time to update these pages.

I'm happy to have the data reviewed for completeness. We update on a yearly cycle for the weather norms. For first order stations, we'll build this from the dailies (not the hourlys). For the rest, or for dark stations (ones that closed in the last handful of years) we use the 30 years published by various met offices.

Would love some constructive feedback. More than happy to have a discussion on the merits. Thank you. Frisch1 (talk) 15:07, 28 November 2011 (UTC)Frisch1

I can only speak for myself, for what it's worth, and not for other people's views — but as far as I'm concerned, while climate data is certainly a nice thing to have in an encyclopedia article where possible, it's not a critical requirement, and accordingly we don't need or want to collate original research to create climate data for a location that isn't already covered in more authoritative sources. It's not an essential component of an encyclopedia article about a place, it's just icing on the cake — so for our purposes here, there's no value in turning to speculative sources that are calculating their own climate estimates for places which don't already have real hard data being published by a real weather statistics agency, because it simply isn't our top content priority.

That's especially true for an article like Wagner, Alberta, where all we have at this point is two sentences which assert and confirm that the place exists — we have no sourced content about its history, or about life in the community, or really much of anything besides its geographic location, which means there are far more important things that need to be added to that article than climate data.

I want to clarify that this isn't meant to dismiss your interest in climate statistics or your work on the website — but from the perspective of Wikipedia as a whole, taking into account our policies and procedures and the holistic view of our content priorities, climate data isn't a high enough priority to justify turning to non-official or speculative sources. Certainly it's important and relevant and interesting enough to be added to articles on places where an official weather agency actually has a real weather station collecting real weather data, but it's not such a crucial must-have that we need to break our rules about original research by triangulating other places' statistics to create a speculative data set just for the sake of being able to add something climate-related to an article. Bearcat (talk) 17:33, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Hi Bearcat, thanks so much for your feedback. It's a fair point on the sources, and I'm happy to have the data independently evaluated by someone in the met field. The reason why private companies that work with climate data exist is because the government met data is just that - usually pretty raw and single sourced. Separate from that, you make a completely fair point... for many of these locations, they need more than just an "I exist" and climate data. I'm not an expert in any one location, but simply offering my contribution. I don't know about the government, census, etc. of these individual points. But I do know the climatology for these points and it's what I can contribute, if the contribution is wanted, and am happy to put in the work to do so. Thanks for the feedback! Frisch1 (talk) 18:09, 28 November 2011 (UTC)Frisch1

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