Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/Single/2012-11-12

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The following is an automatically-generated compilation of all talk pages for the Signpost issue dated 2012-11-12. For general Signpost discussion, see Wikipedia talk:Signpost.

Featured content: The table has turned (1,965 bytes · 💬)

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• Recommend replacing PETA with a clearer term, such as "the military group PETA", "PETA", "Pembela Tanah Air (PETA)", or something similar. In the United States, PETA (in all caps) most commonly refers to PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals). davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 21:40, 12 November 2012 (UTC)
  • Except for the fact that this feature generally does not link to other articles in the blurb. I could write "Defenders of the Homeland" but I was worried that would be WP:UNDUE. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 22:55, 12 November 2012 (UTC)
    • How about changing he became a leader with PETA during to he became a military leader with PETA during. This way, readers will have "military" in their heads by the time they get to the phrase PETA. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 17:25, 13 November 2012 (UTC)
      • Fair enough, except that's bound to have a "militant animal rights activists" reading somewhere down the line. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 22:23, 13 November 2012 (UTC)
        • Hmm, hadn't considered that aspect. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 22:45, 15 November 2012 (UTC)
          • I think the current wording is more explicit, — Crisco 1492 (talk) 22:58, 15 November 2012 (UTC)

News and notes: Court ruling complicates the paid-editing debate (8,128 bytes · 💬)

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• Thanks for plugging PC RfC3. I don't know if it's right to call it "final" since policy is never immutable, but it's the final one before we go live with PC level 1 on December 1. Let me know if you have any questions if you are going to do a piece on what PC level 1 is about. Gigs (talk) 14:25, 14 November 2012 (UTC)

• Although you mention the selection of a three-member commission to resolve any disputes concerning the upcoming election, I don't see any reference in this issue to the upcoming Arbitration Committee election itself. Given that the deadline for candidates to sign up will expire before the next Signpost appears, I wonder if it is possible to do anything to rectify that. Thanks, Newyorkbrad (talk) 15:04, 14 November 2012 (UTC)

•  Done NE Ent 15:46, 14 November 2012 (UTC) mutter, mutter, what am I now, NYB's personal clerk?

• "can be subject to claims from competitors or government authorities": what kind of claims by government authorities? This in my mind is the crucial question, whether such edits are being interpreted by anyone as "illegal", or merely as grounds to be sued by a competitor. - Dank (push to talk) 17:51, 14 November 2012 (UTC)
  • In the US the FTC has the burden of proof in their enforcement actions, which are civil actions. Generally the FTC seeks injunctions, but under limited circumstances can seek monetary relief. Violations of FTC regulations do not, by themselves, create a cause of action for private lawsuits, but private lawsuits sometimes follow FTC actions.
  • So to answer your question, it's kind of both. You can be sued by the FTC, customers, or competitors. It's generally not a criminal matter, so I guess it depends on how you define "illegal". All my comments are in relation to the US. Gigs (talk) 19:07, 14 November 2012 (UTC)
    • Thank you for your comments. The answer to this question depends upon national legislation. In Germany, you get sued by your competitor. In England, there are government agencies called Office of Fair Trading and Advertising Standards Authority that enforce unfair trading law - as far as I know. --Gnom (talk) 09:14, 15 November 2012 (UTC)
• Claiming that the ruling "complicates" the debate is pure spin on your part. It seems to me to simplify it very nicely: violating the bright line rule puts you at legal risk. I realise some PR people won't like it, but that's completely different from being in any way complicated. I would like you to detail precisely how it makes it more complicated, rather than simpler - David Gerard (talk) 09:20, 15 November 2012 (UTC)
  • I couldn't agree more, David! Thinks are getting complicated only for those who make corporate edits... --Gnom (talk) 15:22, 15 November 2012 (UTC)
    • I'm sure one of the writers will answer eventually - David Gerard (talk) 19:13, 15 November 2012 (UTC)
      • I am the author. That was my answer. --Gnom (talk) 19:15, 15 November 2012 (UTC)
      • I just read on your blog, "In Germany you could be prosecuted, and in Britain your competitors may be able to sue you for it" - I thought it was the other way round. Anyway, your statement, "The Signpost article claims with no justification that the ruling “complicates” the issue of COI editing, rather than making it much simpler, i.e. damn well listen to us and don’t do it." is correct. The ruling complicates the issue only for advcocates of corporate editing. --Gnom (talk) 19:28, 15 November 2012 (UTC)
        • Blog fixed. The headline seems to claim it complicates the issue in general - David Gerard (talk) 10:01, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

• Unless I misunderstand the German ruling, didn't the decision lat considerable emphasis on the fact that the German firm edited anonymous, as an aggravating factor? DGG ( talk ) 14:34, 16 November 2012 (UTC)
  • DGG, I think you're right. But I don't see the ruling as a particularly viable or practical or, indeed, meaningful in the bigger picture. I'll be very surprised if it doesn't turn out to be the precursor to further judicial judgements, either rendering this one as an aberration or modifying it into oblivion. Aside from the multijurisdictional nightmare, the edits are impossible to police; and there are several boundaries the court thinks can be made in practical terms, but that are clearly as boldly etched as fog. So why indulge in the pretence in the first place? For similar reasons, I'm uncomfortable with Jimbo's anti-paid-editing line: it's just unrealistic, even though I'd sooner have zero tolerance for PE on foundation sites if we could identify PE. [PS, Gnom was responsible for the lion's share of the article ... kudos to him. We did help with surface editing and some niggles and conceptual queries, which Gnom dealt with admirably, I believe.] Tony (talk) 11:25, 17 November 2012 (UTC)
    • Thank you for your comment. Yes, the judgment does emphasise that the edits were made anonymously. But then it also says that noone ever reads the talk pages. So, who ever reads the history? Even fewer people. So if the edits were made from an account that clearly states the business context, the average reader would still not see that part of the article was written by or for a company. I belive that this judgment will in fact be used as a precedent for injunctions in similarly controversial areas where paid editing is used to promote business, thinking of regulated industries like pharmaceutics. --Gnom (talk) 01:09, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

• Peoples' own interests affect what we think, what we do, and, inevitably, what we write. It is not a character flaw; it is a fact of life. It is true even if for the most honorable, fair-minded person. It is even truer of someone whose duty is to advance the interests of a client or employer.

Just today, I read a post by respected legal blogger. Unlike what he usually writes, this post began with an obviously one-sided statement of the issue in a judicial decision. I suspected from that first line that he or his law firm represented the party that this statement favored. The rest of the piece analyzed why the decision was wrong, with no explanation of why a unanimous 3-judge court decided decided the way it did. At the very end, the author disclosed that his firm was hired to appeal the decision. I read the case myself. Not only did the author slant what he said, but he left out material that any fair report of the decision would include. If that blog post were a Wikipedia article or stub, disclosure of the author's COI still would not give a reader a fair summary of the decision.

The German court was correct to base its decision on what a typical reader would assume and expect. That should be the basis of our policies as well.—Finell 03:33, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

• Thank you for your comment. I understand that you agree with the court and my reading of the judgment. Actually, I originally considered including a note in my post stating that the law firm I work for has nothing to do with the judgment (although I plan to discuss it with my media law colleagues in one of our next meetings, because, inter alia, it affects how we advise our clients on their social media policies). --Gnom (talk) 10:36, 21 November 2012 (UTC)

Technology report: MediaWiki 1.20 and the prospects for getting 1.21 code reviewed promptly (6,110 bytes · 💬)

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Next week's poll

Next week's poll is extremely subjective. All of the available answers (except "Other") rely on the assumption that lowest-priority bugs are worthless. I (and many other) strongly disagree. Lowest means in particular "Patches very welcome", and it is often a gathering point for motivated volunteers to write a patch and get an ACTUAL PROBLEM FIXED. Quite the contrary of "worthless". Please cancel this poll, as its results will necessarily be flawed and mis-used. Also: You write "This week saw a discussion [...]", so the least you could do is provide a link to said discussion. Previous polls were usually of high quality, so I am surprised by how obviously unethical this one is. Nicolas1981 (talk) 03:25, 15 November 2012 (UTC)

The poll reads:

This week saw a discussion about the difference between giving something the "lowest" priority and suggesting it will never be fixed. Which of these best sums up your response: Dealing with bug requests is a case of...

...telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, however brutal

...omitting "unhelpful" relevant facts, but never actually lying

...telling the odd white lie if it encourages future participation/engagement

Other / None of the above

Wow. That is just about the worst wording for a poll I have ever seen. It assumes that bugs are worked on in order of priority. That isn't even true where you pay the developers and it certainly isn't true when you have volunteers. Sometimes a lower priority bug is a very simple fix while the higher priority bug has you stumped. Sometimes you simply don't agree with whoever assigned the priorities. Sometimes someone else is working on the high priority task and you don't want to step on his toes.

But does the poll take any of this into account? Nope. It just assumes bad faith and decides that anyone who assigns a bug to the lowest priority must be a scheming liar and that only those who assign it a don't fix priority are honest and truthful.

I happen to like "won't fix" categories, but I use them to indicate bugs where even if you fix the bug your fix will not be accepted. For an example, look at the very first patent at List of Edison patents. That one is a classic "don't fix". See http://edison.rutgers.edu/vote.htm for details. In my opinion, this poll is POV pushing, plain and simple. --Guy Macon (talk) 08:31, 15 November 2012 (UTC)

While the Signpost's writing is generally quite good, several polls lately have been problematic. Perhaps you should run them by someone (perhaps a non-Signposter) for a) clarity, b) completeness, and c) objectivity before publishing them? --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 16:19, 15 November 2012 (UTC)

While there is a subset of bug reports that end up as "lowest" priority or WONTFIX (my guess is less than 10%), I don't see the relation to "Dealing with bug requests is a case of" which refers to ALL bug reports. When it comes to the available answers, what is "telling the odd white lie" meant to describe for a valid and normal or even critical bug report? There simply is nothing to lie that my mind can come up with. "Thanks for reporting, valid issue, should be fixed, patches will speed it up", but where and how to lie here in a way that "encourages future participation"? I don't get it, or my imagination doesn't work well on Friday mornings. --Malyacko (talk) 09:58, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

Some of these responses seem a bit harsh about the poll, but I do also tend to agree with you that lying does not encourage future participation. Being honest causes future participation because then people's time is not wasted. I could perhaps somewhat understand not wanting to mark a wontfix bug as wontfix simply because in some controversial issues the users will yell at you (StringFunctions anyone?), but that's not an excuse for not marking bugs how they need to be marked. Additionally I'm not sure where said discussion took place [but then again I haven't been following all technical discussion recently. There was one about RESOLVED LATER, but that's a tad different]. Bawolff (talk) 00:18, 17 November 2012 (UTC)

The second part of the question doesn't need to be related to the first and is not. The fist is only needed to pretend that the poll has some relation to news; the relation being that those discussions and changes had as a stated objective to communicate more clearly/truthfully the status of bugs. The proposed answers were not really problematic because they didn't affect the choice or understanding of what to do next (unless one used a lot of imagination), but they surely were not about what I consider to be the "dealing with bug requests" and I voted "Other" to represent it.[1] [2] [3] --Nemo 08:20, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

• Afterword: In the 2012-11-19/Technology report, Jarry1250 announced: "In response to apt criticism of last week's poll title, I have decided to retire the polling feature until I can devote sufficient time to administering it properly." I'd like to take the opportunity to thank Jarry and the Signpost team for their ongoing hard work producing fresh and engaging reports each week and helping to bridge the gap between editors and techies. — Richardguk (talk) 06:00, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

WikiProject report: Land of parrots, palm trees, and the Holy Cross: WikiProject Brazil (1,266 bytes · 💬)

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• Yes, the project is currently semi-active. Only few people discuss at its talk page.

—I am surprised to learn that WikiProject Brazil is not active. I have been a Top Contributor Volunteer of Orkut Help Forum (English) since mid 2010. And there I have talked to many Brazilian young people. All of them were very active and very energetic, really. Though Orkut and Wikipedia are different platforms, still, it is hard for me to believe that in WikiProject Brazil you are not getting editors with same energy and spirit what I saw in Orkut or Orkut forums! Surprising! --Tito Dutta (talk) 16:21, 14 November 2012 (UTC)

Try to recruit some of those Orkut folks to join WikiProject Brazil and contribute to the project's articles. –Mabeenot (talk) 05:13, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

Portuguese language Wikipedia seems to be quite active. --Tito Dutta (talk) 13:58, 16 November 2012 (UTC)