Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/Single/2016-01-27

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The following is an automatically-generated compilation of all talk pages for the Signpost issue dated 2016-01-27. For general Signpost discussion, see Wikipedia talk:Signpost.

In the media: Media coverage of the Arnnon Geshuri no-confidence vote (1,517 bytes · 💬)

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Re:The Corbin Bleu article's many translated versions. The leading editor of the English version (both in number of edits and the amount of content added) has been blocked for sockpuppeting, so the most obvious reason for all the translations is that paid editors were responsible. Many of the versions are just straight translations of most of the English version, many are just straight translations of the first line only. I'd guess many are just from Google Translate, without further translation. His popularity doesn't explain anything - if he had 10 times more pageviews in English, the article wouldn't even make the top 1000. His popularity with teenagers or Saudis doesn't explain anything - I don't think these folks are known for their ability or willingness to translate articles. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 13:27, 28 January 2016 (UTC)

That makes sense. Wikipedia has always been a primary target of social media advertising due to Google SEO. I don't know of an easy mechanism to monitor cross-language puffery or how to tackle it given the inaccessibility of so many languages. -- GreenC 18:20, 28 January 2016 (UTC)

News and notes: Geshuri steps down from the Board (2,819 bytes · 💬)

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• Well done. Thanks for the timely and appropriate resignation and best wishes. I hope you will use your skills and aptitudes for the betterment of the encyclopedia. Edison (talk) 05:51, 28 January 2016 (UTC)

• What about making the following suggestion to all the San Francisco big ones: "Maybe, you should phone all these discontent employees, and see if they are recruitable". A recent poll in the Wikimedia circles described this practice as highly commendable. Uncomfortably, this would left open the question of what to do if some of them have never been phoned ? Pldx1 (talk) 09:05, 28 January 2016 (UTC)

"Blame the employees": Brilliant move! Strange the Board nor Google thought of this escape — or didn't they? -DePiep (talk) 15:45, 29 January 2016 (UTC)

• I appreciate this decision. - Hopefully this event triggers the reshaping of WMF as a membership organisation [1]. --MBq (talk) 10:42, 28 January 2016 (UTC)
• re: The Board has indicated that you were appointed for your expertise in human resources. - For me it indicates that WMF lost its major purpose and started evolving according to Parkinson's Law. Forget Wikipedia. To manage WMF staff is vital and HR skills are vital. I am wondering, if WMF non-software staff takes a half-year hiatus, will Wikipedia collapse? Staszek Lem (talk) 01:03, 29 January 2016 (UTC)
• "I googled his name, I saw that he had been at google" We've read before about Jimbo and his "googling" for people and what that leads to. Clearly, the next non-binding petition at Meta ought to be asking for Jimbo to leave, too. Chris Troutman (talk) 13:26, 29 January 2016 (UTC)

• It would never had happened if WMF had a policy of asking wikipedia community to write a detailed bio for pre-selected members. Wikipedia is very efficient. They should know. Jul~frwiki (talk) 05:29, 30 January 2016 (UTC)

• Or, just putting candidates before the community for scrutiny, rather than the current super-sekrit closed-door model where we don't even know who nominated Geshuri to the board. --71.119.131.184 (talk) 23:14, 30 January 2016 (UTC)

Op-ed: Lila Tretikov: the WMF needs your input in developing our strategy (11,309 bytes · 💬)

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Dear User:LilaTretikov_(WMF). I have the feeling that, when the Executive Director of the Wikimedia Foundation releases some piece of software, the reaction of the so-called community is strong rejection. The usefulness is challenged, the quality of the underlying code is vilified and the process ends into an attrition war. This pattern has been seen for VisualEditor, MediaViewer, SuperProtect, Flow, and now Gather. What is the opinion of the Executive Director of the Wikimedia Foundation about this repetitive story ? Pldx1 (talk) 08:31, 28 January 2016 (UTC)

While it has been true in cases you mentioned, you can see our increasing track record of successful software releases in 2015 here. We do need to evolve our tools, for you and for those to come, so you can better manage knowledge. Talking helps (although is hard to scale). Incremental change vs. big change helps. But in the end if we are not tolerant of each other, we end up wasting precious time and no-one benefits in the end. Change is hard. LilaTretikov (WMF) (talk) 23:55, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

Very good questions. The aims of most of these software developments - especially VisualEditor and Flow - are precisely those aims outlined above, and shared by much of the community: to make editing and discussion easier for newcomers and thereby "empowering more people from all walks of life to share in knowledge" and "growing the quality and depth of all free knowledge". Without innovations like those, this project will fail. Therefore I'm glad that VisualEditor is now here to stay but very disappointed that Flow has been shelved. It works superbly well, and the only real insurmountable problem it faced was the attitude of the naysayers. WaggersTALK 12:50, 28 January 2016 (UTC)

Yea, sure, every sales department knows customers are the greatest obstacle to the progress of all these wonderful products produced. Staszek Lem (talk) 22:42, 28 January 2016 (UTC)

Unfortunately, "collaboration" has begun to take on a negative connotation with respect to the communities' interaction with the WMF, more along the lines of the WW2 usage, especially due to recent events. The WMF board can best be described as ignorant, and has recently shaken the communities' confidence to the core. The WMF executive has best been described as inconsiderate and incoherent, and recent actions of the board will do nothing to encourage cooperation (instead of more confrontation). I can't help but get the feeling that whatever your status before this fiasco, you are now a lame duck executive director, who's next battle with her staff will be her last, and if my time spent on voting for WMF board members was any indication, community participation is futile. int21h (talk · contribs · email) 10:43, 28 January 2016 (UTC)

• A careful reading of the piece—which might be seen by the cynical as feel-good corporate talk—reveals several interesting statements. First, there is a striking admission that the last medium-term plan failed in many respects; the global south and the gender gap are mentioned. Second, the message is clear that the WMF intends to stop planning for the whole movement, and from now will focus on itself (“we will limit the scope of this strategic planning to the Foundation as one global organization within the broader movement”). This is adjacent to a number of generally warm and fuzzy (but meaningless) statements about “the community”. Third, the primary focus will be on the reach of WMF sites in terms of readership. This may represent a renewal of the (failed) global south strategy.

  Memo to WMF: I don't think warm and fuzzy is working on the community in the way you might intend. Better to be straight, even if sometimes it might appear to be a little blunt. Tony (talk) 11:21, 28 January 2016 (UTC)

  • I agree in part, though I would say that it is a good thing they are restricting their strategy to the Foundation. It is our job as English Wikipedia volunteers to make the long term goals for the English Wikipedia community as a significant chunk of the movement, and for some reason we fail in this. Personally I think we should be capturing the ideas on Meta and moving them to the English Wikipedia to start setting up our own "English Wikipedia long-term strategy", setting out our vision for long-term collaborations with Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons, other language-pedias, gendergap issues, and all the rest of it. When we do it ourselves, we preserve transparency and make it possible for future generations of English Wikipedia editors to follow our thinking in a structured way, rather than trying to reverse engineer strategy discussions conducted by the Foundation for the entire Wikiverse. In theory these strategies should line up, but in the examples mentioned above (MV, VE, etc), they don't Jane (talk) 15:52, 28 January 2016 (UTC)

• we should be capturing the ideas on Meta .. where/what do you mean? Thanks. -- GreenC 18:10, 28 January 2016 (UTC)

If you read many of the responses to the Strategy discussion on meta, you cannot help but notice they are based largely or in part on the English Wikipedia. We should copy these to an English Wikipedia WikiProject Strategy page. That's all I meant. Jane (talk) 14:17, 30 January 2016 (UTC)

Jane, OK. I was wondering where the strategy discussions are. Is there a central link, or is a diffuse? Thanks! --GreenC 18:10, 30 January 2016 (UTC)

• Your strategy need be no more complicated than complete the most items in the 2015 Community Wishlist as possible. The fact that you "can't actually work on ten unrelated projects at the same time" is disheartening. The top ten is just the tip of the iceberg of issues that need addressed. Enough of these "high-in-the-clouds" surveys already. Wbm1058 (talk) 19:12, 28 January 2016 (UTC)

• I don't understand this comment by Wbm1058. We need to first simplify, not complexify. Complexity arises out of simplicity, not the other way around. Long term strategic planning needs to be simple and flexible as technological innovation in informatics is increasing exponentially. We should have only one overarching concern: are we improving the lives of people and are we helping them to improve their own lives with our products? My biggest concern as of late is the lack of clear major summaries and "takeaways" from our topics. Too many people focus on nonsensical, meaningless trivia and neglect the importance of what our articles actually say and what our readers gain from them. As editors, our goal is not just to write about a subject, but to help our readers see how the topic fits into the larger conceptual structure of ideas, and to allow them to critically think about it and see how related topics fit together. Out of those explicit connections true meaning arises. We simply don't do this (except in terms of mostly hidden, abstract categories) and this is our greatest shortcoming. What's the point of knowledge if our readers don't understand it? Newton saw further into reality by standing on the shoulders of the ancient giants of knowledge who contributed the foundation needed to raise our older understanding of the universe to a new level. In the same way, every article on Wikipedia is tied into and connected to every other article, but this is left mostly unstated and unexamined in the vast majority of our topics. These connections must be made clear for our readers to benefit from any real understanding. From these simple roots, a new complex structure emerges. How do all the pieces fit and why are they important? What have we learned? Viriditas (talk) 20:36, 29 January 2016 (UTC)

Perhaps technological innovation in informatics is increasing exponentially, but the Foundation's ability to quickly knock off relatively simple tasks seems not to be. The Foundation has completely taken content off the table of things they concern about; they are only interested in technology. Content is left almost entirely for the community to manage. Hence, there is no role for the WMF to play in strategic, long-term planning for the content of the encyclopedia, unless they are first willing to change the fundamental role that they have assigned to themselves. Wbm1058 (talk) 17:27, 30 January 2016 (UTC)

• The most important thing is quality. Wikimedia projects are full of information, but the reliability of that information is often questionable. I know that there is a nascent plan to make medical articles more reliable (and this is a good place to start) but I would like to see a WM initiative to support this with a view to rolling it out across more strands, and all languages. pablo 21:52, 29 January 2016 (UTC)

• 1. Reach: Reach every human being by getting into the ISP business and developing internet infrastructure where it doesn't yet exist, or cheaper options where it does exist.
  2. Communities: Empowering more people from all walks of life to share in knowledge – see above to make sure they have Internet access; build libraries in the places Carnegie missed, and offer more free access to high-quality paywalled sources (perhaps Aaron Swartz had some good ideas related to that)
  3. Knowledge: Growing the quality and depth of all free knowledge – I have no idea how the Foundation itself can do that. They rely entirely on unpaid, independent volunteers for this function. Wbm1058 (talk) 18:10, 30 January 2016 (UTC)
•  Done KeepGet the Wikimedia Foundation on track and accountable with clear and achievable goals: Complete x (fill in an appropriate number) items on the 2015 Community Wishlist by the end of 2016. Wbm1058 (talk) 18:30, 30 January 2016 (UTC)

Recent research: Bursty edits; how politics beat religion but then lost to sports; notability as a glass ceiling (3,006 bytes · 💬)

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• Re: gender asymmetry, lowering the bar for notability for some subjects but not others comes with the same kind of politics that "affirmative action" does (i.e., it's not pretty), and the implementation of different shades of notability could present technical hazards as well. Of course, I accept there's a problem. However, it's not entirely the fault of the Wikipedia -- much has to do with the fact that we can only rely on reliable sources that exist. Historically, such sources have given tremendous deference to men (stating the obvious, I think). It can likely be argued that even the current corporate media is warped in men's favor, not to mention big business's favor (but that's another topic). In essence, this may be largely unsolvable without addressing how we source information here. Perhaps it is possible to expand the circle of things that we call reliable sources? I'll leave that as an open question. Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 18:54, 28 January 2016 (UTC)

• I love this section czar 07:13, 29 January 2016 (UTC)

• The shift in focus on biographies has to do with their long-lasting influence. Politician's influences are remembered thousands of years, artists hundreds of years, and athletes mere decades. Older sports people are simply forgotten. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 04:30, 30 January 2016 (UTC)

• Re: The authors divide the biographies into public (politicians, businessmen, religion) and private (artists and sportspeople) and note that it was only in the last few decades that the second group started to significantly outnumber the first... though the paper is unfortunately completely missing the discussion of some important topics, such as the possible bias introduced by Wikipedia's notability policies. - So our politicians have officially bored us into non-editing. I must ring the claxons of alarm-bells to amass our WikiArmies of WikiLawyers and WikiPoliticians to correct this horrible WikiSituation wherein our real life governmental representatives are not discussed, in great and dry depths, on Wikipedia with lots of non-libelous sourcing and wording - oh wait, now I know exactly why we don't have as many "public" BLP articles. Cheers, Doctor Crazy in Room 102 of The Mental Asylum 06:25, 1 February 2016 (UTC)

• Thank you to the authors or doing this. Alanscottwalker (talk) 23:24, 7 February 2016 (UTC)

Traffic report: Death and taxes (3,786 bytes · 💬)

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Are the numbers for #7 (Making a Murderer) correct? If so, then it should be at the #5 spot. Kudos to the entire Signpost team on getting this issue out on Wednesday night. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 11:58, 28 January 2016 (UTC)

• Thank for the heads up Liz, I had the number from last week's chart and updated it. The #7 spot is correct.--Milowent • ^hasspoken 19:20, 31 January 2016 (UTC)
• Here is an interesting NYTimes op-ed on how we treat the dead, arising out of the death of Glenn Frey (#1 in this chart). I was never particularly a fan of the music of Frey or the Eagles, but I didn't want my commentary in #1 and #8 to be derogatory. I was struck by how the death of Bowie created so much more attention, when my sense is that the Eagles were for a time far more commercially successful.--Milowent • ^hasspoken 19:20, 31 January 2016 (UTC)

While the Eagles were undoubtedly more popular in the United States in terms of album sales, I'd argue that Bowie was more culturally influential, especially his impact on other artists. He also had a remarkably long career, there are a few times in his life where he could have said, "Enough, I'm retiring to my mansion" but he continued to make music up until the time of his death. As for Frey, he had some independent success in the 1980s and I imagined he toured a lot but he didn't have the consistent output of music that people cared about. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 21:03, 31 January 2016 (UTC)

What taxes?

Why is the title here "Death and taxs"? I don't see anything about taxes. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 07:16, 2 February 2016 (UTC)

Good question! - tucoxn\^talk 17:01, 2 February 2016 (UTC)

It is perhaps not a perfect fit, עוד מישהו and tucoxn, but I was referencing Death and taxes (idiom), the only certain things in the world.--Milowent • ^hasspoken 17:05, 3 February 2016 (UTC)