Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2021-11-29/In the media

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• With all due respect to David, why is The Signpost covering his blog on Creative Commons that does not discuss Wikipedia in any detail? I was under the impression that this section is for 'Wikipedia or Wikimedia in the media', not 'what some admins are blogging about'. There is plenty of news from CC world that we never cover. Considering his blog is monetized (at the very least it is advertising his books), I am not sure we are following the best practices here. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 00:54, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
  • @Piotrus: Anything about CC is related to Wikipedia IMHO (Same for Section 230, IMHO). We report on a blog every 2-3 months. It just depends on the quality of the blog, and what they have to say. David Gerard's blockchain blog is the best source on everything related to crypto on the web. Though his sense of humour could use a bit of work. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 01:59, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

    I don't agree that anything about Creative Commons is related to Wikipedia (and equivalent to coverage in the media of Wikipedia). There are many different Creative Commons licenses that aren't relevant, and the arcana of copyright licensing isn't always relevant to the task of writing a crowd-sourced encyclopedia. In this particular instance, coverage of what the Creative Commons organization is sharing on social media is unrelated to how Wikipedia is covered. (Of course, this does not preclude covering this issue in another section of the Signpost.) isaacl (talk) 22:05, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

  • Almost everything we cover at "In the media" is monetized. It would be silly to exclude for that reason. ☆ Bri (talk) 02:16, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
• Annie Rauwerda, author of the Boing Boing article mentioned at the very end of this one, runs the Instagram account @depthsofwikipedia. Worth a look for a laugh, and almost notable enough for an article. ezlev (user/tlk/ctrbs) 01:51, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
• Desmond is advocating a highly idiosyncratic definition of "pornography" as applying only to illegal content. That might have been true 60 years ago, but currently, content that 99% of people would consider pornographic is completely legal in many Western countries. I expect that Desmond will have little success with any lawsuit, based on an objective evaluation of the content of the various magazines and websites that Desmond used to publish. Cullen328 (talk) 03:00, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
  • yes a "highly idiosyncratic" definition. I think folks in the US would have laughed at his definition starting about 1974? when Deep Throat came out and wasn't shut down. When did this level of legal obvious porn come out in the UK?

This story, to me, was the biggest mystery of the month. What did he hope to accomplish by doing this? Did he intentionally leak his lawyers' work for some reason? Who else would have leaked the legal work? His lawyers? Smallbones_(smalltalk) 03:38, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

It may reflect a "no publicity is bad publicity" mindset.--Kent G. Budge (talk) 17:33, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

• Fun Fact: In the second section it says "[...] this AfD entry." In Germany, there is a far-right political party called AfD. Directly after this sentence comes "Wikipedia may delete entry on 'mass killings' under Communism [...]" – Hidden message? -Killarnee (C•T•U) 14:45, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
  • Actually - no. When I wrote this I had no thought about anything related to German political parties. AfD is one of the most commonly used Wiki-abbreviations, and I think that fact, plus linking to the deletion discussion, and the word "deletion" in the previous and next sentences made it crystal clear what the subject was. But at least now I know how bizarre conspiracy theories are born. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 16:05, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

    A conspiracy theory about the AfD, that's something completely new. Usually, conspiracy theories come FROM the AfD. [1] But don't take it so seriously, that should be meant as a joke: "where there is trouble, the afd is not far" -Killarnee (C•T•U) 16:18, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

Frankly, it has always been weird to me that we type "AfD", considering Wikipedia:Articles for deletion isn't capitalized that way. I think it's mostly that "Afd" looks stupid, and "AFD" is obviously wrong since "for" would not be capitalized in any case. A compromise, I suppose. jp×g 12:31, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

 Off-topic @JPxG: Initialisms are basically always title-cased, is the thing. The only exception is in the sciences, where they regularly talk about "DNA" but always write "deoxyribonucleic acid" uncapitalized. As for the rest of us, we write "ATM" even though it stands for "automated teller machine", a phrase that has no business being capitalized except as a consequence of the fact that it's expanded from "ATM". (So, to put it another way, the expansion of an initialism is nearly always treated as a proper noun. At least until the acronym/initialism gets subsumed by the language entirely and detaches from its original expansion, as happened with "snafu".)

In isolation, "Articles for Discussion" would probably just become "AD", when made into an initialism; "AfD" would be used if the 'f' came from somewhere inside the word that started with "A".

(Ref: IMDb for Internet Movie Database, BeOS for Be Operating System, LaTeX (or L^AT_EX, more properly) for Lamport's T_EX — but TeX is a bad example all around, since the original name is actually made up of the Greek letters tau, epsilon, and chi. It's not an initialism at all, and Donald Knuth was a weird dude.)

Further, if there are other initialisms being used in the same linguistic space, all bets are off as to how they're forced to be distinct from each other.

There's also the further tradition of constructing backronyms from pre-selected initialisms/acronyms, and taking great liberties is practically the norm there. Both in real life, and in fiction.

"Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division."
"And what does that mean to you?"
"It means someone really wanted our initials to spell out 'shield'."

So, there's pretty strong precedent for "AfD", or... well, nearly anything and everything else you can think of, TBH. English has always been an IAR space, since long before Jimbo was even born. -- FeRDNYC (talk) 12:06, 4 December 2021 (UTC)

References

• Disappointing that The Telegraph didn't find anything about the keep side worth mentioning. Perhaps there was none when they wrote it. Or they thought that all their arguments were nonsense. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 15:22, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
  • The second half of Professor Tomb's quote above should do it. "I have read the Wikipedia page, and it seems to me careful and balanced. Therefore attempts to remove it can only be ideologically motivated – to whitewash Communism." I think he approves of the keep side and disapproves of the delete side. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 16:21, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

    Yeah, but it seems like that's about the article. Still no mention there's actually WP-editors arguing for keep. I'd like to see Harrison and/or Benjakob take this subject on. Maybe Harrison would be better, because paywall. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 20:18, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

    I see Fox picked "would be truly Orwellian" and "Stop left and woke censorship," from the keep side. Not necessarily a better approach, IMO, but they have their customers to think of. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 21:02, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

I was thinking that Fox News would wait until after the deletion discussion is concluded to write an article, but I guess they are too eager to push an anti-communist agenda. X-Editor (talk) 21:24, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

After the discussion closes as keep/no consensus there's not much of a story for Fox etc. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 08:39, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

@Gråbergs Gråa Sång: Good point, but how are you certain it will close as keep/no consensus? X-Editor (talk) 21:45, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

I can't be certain, but that's where my money is. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 21:52, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

And why is that? What's been decided and by whom? Do you know something we don't? DublinDilettante (talk) 22:12, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

@DublinDilettante: The person literally said that they can't be certain, so I'm pretty sure they don't know anything the rest of us don't. X-Editor (talk) 22:39, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

Was the question directed at you? Why are you harassing me and reverting my edits across multiple articles? It's weird behaviour. DublinDilettante (talk) 22:57, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

• I'm not too surprised at The Telegraph's skewed reporting. It has embraced the "culture war" and seems to have a thing for Wikipedia bashing. It uncritically published an article of Sanger's diatribe earlier this year. An upmarket Fox for British retirees? Jr8825 • Talk 14:01, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

• Japanese and Croatian wikipedia (among others) already have some content problems regarding nationalism, how are you guys surprised they're also pushing climate change denial? -Gouleg🛋️ ^harass/_hound 03:05, 30 November 2021 (UTC)
  • No, I wasn't surprised. I just thought I'd let Wikipedians know that it's popped up again. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 03:54, 1 December 2021 (UTC)
  • Croatian Wikipedia has certainly gotten better since the old admin team was ousted (in part thanks to yours truly). Let's also not forget that it also used to have a lot of anti-LGBT stuff on there too, so honestly I would be surprised if they didn't deny climate change. That wiki represented the confluence of many different far-right agendas pretty much held together by a group of 4 or so admins. There's still a lot of work that needs to be done to erase the damage they caused. –MJL ‐Talk‐^☖ 07:12, 2 December 2021 (UTC)
• "As bad as Holocaust denial"? ~ cygnis insignis 06:31, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

Holocaust 6 million deaths, communism-related 100 million deaths? No words.... --TheImaCow (talk) 12:40, 4 December 2021 (UTC)

• if benchmarking political influence, the English wikipedia entry on Imelda Marcos remains a highlight. [Anonymous Coward] — Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.200.4.206 (talk) 12:33, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

Just bad taste Smallbones(smalltalk) 03:54, 1 December 2021 (UTC)
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
"pOrN iS LeGaL!" Child porn: 👁️👄👁️ GeraldWL 01:27, 1 December 2021 (UTC)