Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/Single/2016-02-10

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The following is an automatically-generated compilation of all talk pages for the Signpost issue dated 2016-02-10. For general Signpost discussion, see Wikipedia talk:Signpost.

Blog: Wikimedia Foundation removes The Diary of Anne Frank due to copyright law requirements (6,544 bytes · 💬)

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Who owns the copyright? Smallbones_(smalltalk) 05:48, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

The Anne Frank Fonds, I believe. Gamaliel (talk) 05:53, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

This seems to be an issue for a number of works and authors from around 1920 and onwards. One should think that it would be possible to set up a Wikisource look-a-like outside the formal control of the Wikimedia Foundation but in the Wikipedia spirit by Wikimedia chapters on, e.g., European soil. I myself has been keen on entering works of Carl Nielsen who did in 1931, and not at all thinking there could be copyright issues. I am now wondering whether, e.g., da:Min pige er så lys som rav from 1920/1921, falls within the rule. — fnielsen (talk) 17:22, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

da:Min pige er så lys som rav was composed in 1921. If it was published before 1923, then the copyright expired in the United States at the latest 75 years after publication, per {{PD-1923}}. On the other hand, if the song remained unpublished for some time and wasn't published until 1923 or later, then the copyright expires 95 years after publication in the United States.

The copyright term in the United States is very different to the copyright term in other countries, so the copyright will typically expire at one point of time in the source country and at a completely different point of time in the source country. The United States copyright term can be either longer or shorter than the European copyright term, but will usually be different. The Little Mermaid (statue) is an example of a situation where USA provides shorter copyright protection than the source country. The statue is in the public domain in the United States because it was published (put on display) in 1913 (more than 95 years ago), but it remains copyrighted in the source country because the sculptor hasn't been dead for 70 years.

About Wikisources outside the United States, note that s:nl:Het Achterhuis (Anne Frank) was set to redirect to wikilivres:Het Achterhuis (Anne Frank), which is hosted in Canada. In Canada, the copyright usually expires 20 years before the copyright expires in Europe. --Stefan2 (talk) 17:55, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for the information. I believe the song (at least the text) was published in 1920, so for this particular song there should not be a problem if the cutoff is 1923. But I wonder about the year 1923: It does not make sense with 2015 minus 95 years. Which act or convention does that year come from? — fnielsen (talk) 19:06, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

The Copyright Term Extension Act. The United States copyright term was extended by 20 years, but only if the copyright hadn't already expired. --Stefan2 (talk) 19:19, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

• No doubt that, since Judge Scalia died just this week, the US Supreme Court would reach an other conclusion now that the originalist can no longer explain that a work not written by a US citizen and not written or first published in the US and not owned by a US organisation or person can be copyright-protected worldwide because, as the founding fathers had envisioned, the internet servers could be in Florida. -DePiep (talk) 17:55, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

Lessig's case did come before the Supreme Court - and they ruled (I think it was 6-3 or 7-2) that copyright is regulated by Congress, not the Supreme Court. - kosboot (talk) 18:27, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

Which does not exactly mootify my point. -DePiep (talk) 21:40, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

Where the WMF could fit in

Numerous American media companies are responsible for lobbying Congress that passed the Copyright Term Extension Act, resulting in the current default term of 95 years. Who was fighting against all these media companies? Aside from Lawrence Lessig, almost no one.

The Wikimedia Foundation has long been identified primarily as the host for the various Wiki- projects. It is only on rare occasions that the Foundation takes a stand on other issues. As the preservation (not the shrinking of) the public domain is an issue that is central to all the Wiki- project, it is my hope that the Wikimedia Foundation—preferably in conjunction with other interested organizations such as the Internet Foundation, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Center for the Study of the Public Domain (at Duke University)—would band together and start regularly promoting the necessity of preserving the public domain. There has to be a counterbalance to media companies's lobbying, otherwise we'll see copyright terms continually increase, with the erosion of exceptions (such as fair use). -- kosboot (talk) 21:26, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

Hi kosboot, you should take a look at the Wikimedia Blog's "copyright" tag. Ed Erhart (WMF) (talk) 00:31, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

Thanks Ed Erhart (WMF) - yes I've been following these small but significant steps. But there's always a need for more message and of a louder frequency. Perhaps for each Public Domain Day, all of these organizations can issue a joint statement, or joint blog or some joint message. The vast majority of people don't know about these issues until they come up against the law for unwarranted duplication, or other things. Really, when January 1, 2019 comes around, the Internet Archive and Wikisource should have significant amounts of new material that will have just become public domain, and a strong message indicating why it is important for the public domain to be continually replenished (in part because it fuels the economic engine of the economy). - kosboot (talk) 04:32, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

Featured content: This week's featured content (351 bytes · 💬)

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Wonderful pictures and articles, these are some of the best articles/photos that Wikipedia has. It is superb!BOTFIGHTER (talk) 09:14, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

In focus: An in-depth look at the newly revealed documents (3,456 bytes · 💬)

Data sources

If Fox News or TeleSUR have the slightest chance of appearing as data sources of this searching project, I will campaign to stop it. --NaBUru38 (talk) 14:04, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

Could we see the page that recommended pulling in Fox News? - Dank (push to talk) 14:14, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

File:Wikipedia Search April 2015.png --NaBUru38 (talk) 14:22, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

Okay, it's under "United Nations Security Council ... Source: Foxnews". I expect people will want some explanation. - Dank (push to talk) 14:33, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

Curation

Regarding "Establish curation process." When I see the WMF talk of "curation" I see them continuing to add more hamster wheels to a cage which already has in excess of a ten-to-one wheel-to-hamster ratio. Get a clue: we can only run on one wheel at a time. Tools which enable us to run more efficiently are what we need. How this "curation process" is likely to pan out: teams of low-paid "curators" in various third-world countries will work tirelessly to push the importance of their sponsors' favored articles and move them to the upper echelons of search results, overwhelming any efforts of independent curators. Either that, or it will only take 12 months to establish an 11-month "curation backlog". Wbm1058 (talk) 04:04, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

Asked and Answered

At User talk:Jimbo Wales#Basic question about the scope of the grant I asked the following question:

"Will whatever does the searching just search things that we control (Wikipedia, Wictionary, Wikidata, Wikibooks, etc.) or will it be searching things that other people control (other websites, for example)?" --Guy Macon

The reply I got was

"I recommend reading the actual grant agreement. There is nothing in the deliverables which includes searching things that other people control. Whether or not a fully realized future result would include, as an example, a tool for editors and readers to quickly find results in open access research, etc., is an interesting question (I think it sounds great) but not one which is at all proposed for this first stage. Media reports and trolling suggesting that this is some kind of broad google competitor remain completely and utterly false." --Jimbo Wales

I followed up with:

"Jimbo, if things ever change and they start talking about searching sites that the WMF doesn't control, please let me know..." --Guy Macon

And the response was

"Sure. We don't have, and won't have, the resources at our disposal to even contemplate a Google/Bing style search engine, and all the talk about that is just that - talk based on nothing. I can envision - but this is not current planned and isn't even in a serious brainstorm yet as far as I know..." . --Jimbo Wales

I trust Jimbo, based upon ten years of experience dealing with him. If any WMF or Knight foundation documents appear to contradict the above, then either those documents are lying, someone is doing something without Jimbo's knowledge, or someone is reading too much into what are essentially marketing documents and not paying enough attention to the deliverables. --Guy Macon (talk) 01:21, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

In the media: Jeb Bush swings at Wikipedia and connects (3,708 bytes · 💬)

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• Hmm do we need an additional controlled random from among top 20% of articles as an extra choice. Popularity randomness; topic randomness, etc. Some nice ideas though it isn't truly random at that point, and crowds into the left hand side channel. Though once you have a search result allowing someone to research for a similar article might be some fun. — billinghurst sDrewth 06:30, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

Unemployed kids

"they're probably unemployed kids with student debt"

I wonder why. --NaBUru38 (talk) 14:24, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

Like Heh. Upvote. Herostratus (talk) 16:10, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

Randomonium

The author should try Special:RandomInCategory. Although it would be better if the randomizer would also pick pages from subcategories. --NaBUru38 (talk) 14:30, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

I played Randomonium and got really lucky:

• My first random article was Jagatipur, a town in Nepal. I have been to Nepal, and got within about 100 miles of that town. But I hadn't heard of it, so I clicked on.
• Next was Thatcher Island near Boston. I worked about 12 miles away from that island for several months, and perhaps I even saw it from the coast at one point. But since I didn't know it by name, I clicked again.
• Third hit was the 82nd Street MAX light rail stop in Portland, OR. When I lived in Portland, I regularly passed through that station.

My game ended, with a score of 3. --KSmith (WMF) (talk) 00:05, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

I've become lucky, today my first click led me to Land Ho!, a film I've read about before. Brandmeister^talk 17:55, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

Took me 40 to land List of airports in Iceland. Lots of villages in Middle East, footballers, albums and TV shows that I have not heard of. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 22:04, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

Interesting that you can win a Pulitzer without knowing the difference between a web site and a web page. Never mind, other quality dailies have used the phrase "web sight". All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 13:32, 17 February 2016 (UTC).

What is he talking about?

Is there any evidence that the Jeb Bush Wikipedia article had these things like him wanting to be a movie star? Alexis Ivanov (talk) 16:44, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

The Signpost article makes it clear that the "rock climbing" claim was in the Wikipedia article. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 13:32, 17 February 2016 (UTC).

Note also a number of revdeled edits as well - there is a strong chance than many edits are improper on that BLP. He was, for example, in the category of "sextet sibling groups", described as a Limp Bizkit fan, "pimping all the hoes" and going out with male prostitutes, that his brother was Yasser Arafat etc. All in just the past three months. Collect (talk) 16:19, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

News and notes: Another WMF departure (2,495 bytes · 💬)

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Siko

Several inaccuracies in this piece. For instance:

• Siko was not a c-level exec. She was a Director. She reported to Luis, the Senior Director of Community Engagement. Which leads me to....
• Maggie did not replace Siko. Maggie replaced Luis, on an interim basis. To my knowledge Siko's replacement has not been named. Whomever that is will presumably report to the Senior Director of Community Engagement, currently Maggie (interim).
• For reference, the org as described on WMF wiki is not bad for this section.
• Maggie has a work username as well... User:Mdennis (WMF), which is arguably a better one to link to here, since the other is for her personal editing.

With that said, from my perspective, Siko's departure is deeply troubling. I regard her as a close friend and a rock-star colleague, and her departure does not posit good things. Luckily, I'm confident that the Department is in good hands with Maggie at the helm. Note: Opinions are mine and mine alone, and may not reflect the opinion of my employer, Wikia Inc., or Jimmy, our Board Chair and Founder. -Philippe (talk) 05:57, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

• The comments in her announcement to the WM mailing list are almost certainly going to be interpreted to mean that Transparency, integrity, community and free knowledge are qualities she felt were lacking within the Foundation. That, the mass exodus of other executives, and the huge kerfuffle at the Board of Trustees are, IMO, signs that some rot appears to be setting in. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 06:10, 15 February 2016 (UTC)
  • I agree w/ Kudpung's comments--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 13:16, 15 February 2016 (UTC)
• I've made some edits for accuracy. Full disclosure, I expressed my appreciation for the work Siko has done at the WMF in the mailing list thread following her announcement. Risker (talk) 06:10, 15 February 2016 (UTC)
  • Risker and Philippe, thanks for the fixes. This was written late and fast, and by myself. But that's no excuse. Tony (talk) 06:42, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

Special report: New internal documents raise questions about the origins of the Knowledge Engine (18,374 bytes · 💬)

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The thing is, to be honest, does any of this drama matter? We all know what the end results are going to be. The WMF is going to do whatever the heck they want no matter what anyone else says, they'll spend a ton of time and money on a technical project in the face of opposition, they'll release "in beta" a broken, buggy version that sort of resembles what they promised to release, and years later it will still not be done and will get quietly shut down. For a non-profit that so desperately wants to be a "tech" startup, they have a terrible track record at actually producing usable software projects, much less managing their PR cleverly. --PresN 05:52, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

It matters if the Foundation alienates enough volunteers that they quit & many or all projects -- Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Commons -- go into a death spiral. It doesn't look good if someone is known as the "ED that killed Wikipedia." -- llywrch (talk) 06:21, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

@PresN: I would tend to agree, but I find two of the bullet points in the application worth serious attention. In section 4 ("Activities"), WMF lists as two of their initial tasks:

• Develop prototypes for evolving wikipedia.org, which will become the home of the knowledge engine.
• Answer this targeted learning question: Would users go to Wikipedia if it were an open channel beyond an encyclopedia?

From these two bullets, it appears that there is some sort of plan to release the knowledge engine as an overhaul ("evolution") of Wikipedia as a whole. If they follow the usual buggy, "in beta" pattern, it could be catastrophic. Even if the project is executed to perfection, there needs to be serious community discussion about "evolving" Wikipedia into "an open channel beyond an encyclopedia" (with this context, it seems clear that "beyond an encyclopedia" means "instead of just an encyclopedia"). It's a wee bit distressing that the WMF applied for and received funding to plan the fundamental transformation of Wikipedia.org without any community consultation. Or maybe I'm just reading it wrong. A2soup (talk) 06:29, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

Last time I checked, Wikipedia was an encyclopedia with search capabilities, not a search engine backed by an encyclopedia. If the WMF wants to build its own search engine, so be it, but call it something else (Wikisearch?). MER-C 06:58, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

Agree 100%. If they really want to leverage the name, they could call it "Wikipedia Search" or "Search by Wikipedia" and put it at search.wikipedia.org. They could even link it prominently on wikipedia.org. All of that would be fine by me. But let's leave the Wikipedia search box for searching Wikipedia exclusively, at the very least until the knowledge engine has been completed, rolled out, and proven to be successful over a period of years. A2soup (talk) 07:03, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

The impression I get from the materials is that the public document access/updated search are just a part of the new framework. It looks as if the idea is to leverage the name/domain to attach to a GUI which accesses data from across Wikimedia's projects as well as certain other databases. But I agree that it does not feel like the right answer. This can only create confusion for users and volunteers alike, and who knows what the technical or community implications could be. Maybe there's something to this knowledge engine notion; it genuinely seems like something I might be very happy to see come to fruition. But sell it on it's own merit, with it's own domain/branding. It's notable that these documents present a great deal more focus on whether readers/end-users would react to the idea of a conceptual overhaul and facelift, and considerably less focus on how the community of volunteers would view the change. Mind you, I'm not the type to view absence of evidence as evidence of absence--that is, maybe it was paramount on their minds. But something just seems off in the way the WMF seems to be viewing this process, like they are putting the cart before the horse, in more than one respect. Snow ^{let's rap} 07:58, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

I'm sure everyone here agrees that Wikipedia's search functionality isn't great, and spending some of this money to improve it is non-controversial. I wouldn't mind an additional sidebar on our search results that say "hey, Wikivoyage has a travel guide on X" or "Japanese Wikipedia has an article on Y" (in Japanese), but the full knowledge engine concept with its Google-like GUI needs to be a separate Wikimedia project with its own branding. "Wikipedia Search" or "Search by Wikipedia" are not sufficient because they dilute Wikipedia's brand and purpose, which is strictly to build a free content encyclopedia. MER-C 08:21, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

• I'm curious as to which community is being referred to when the June 24 attachment offers: "Open curation via vast, international community of editors." Does anyone know how the curation is meant to work?

I also wonder which advisory team is being referred to: "We’re focused on creating resources and tools for an open knowledge-engine community, and building on the input of an advisory team." SarahSV ^(talk) 07:41, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

"However, these statements are flatly contradicted ..." - Uh-oh Mister Ranger isn't gonna like this, Yogi! (n.b., that's older US slang which means "The authorities shall be displeased by your bold action"). The above is excellent work overall, my compliments. But there's a bit of background context which would have avoided a slight misstep there. When they talk about NOT compete with Google, they mean they aren't building a complete-web database, funding by advertising, to try to get a piece of that amazing money-machine that's been mastered by Google (the amounts involved are enormous). Rather, they're focusing on a restricted segment, and going for a different strategy for support. Now, the following remarks are purely speculative and the product of a very jaded and cynical person. Given Wales's previous Wikia Search project, and the extensive Google connections with the current Wikimedia Foundation Board, I would be extremely wary that this project exists to help Google in further improving its search results (that's indeed not competing with Google!). The spam and junk battle is ongoing. If Google can get Wikipedians to "volunteer" to mostly work for free in refining algorithms and curation, aiding it even more than they do already, that's advantageous to both Google and the Wikimedia Foundation people (who will likely somehow eventually end up with tangible reward, while you will get the joy and happiness of having oiled the amazing money-machine, excuse me, helped distribute knowledge to the world). Perhaps the proponents of the project will say I am an idiot for such thoughts, but always ask, "Who benefits?". -- Seth Finkelstein (talk) 08:00, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

Quite right. I mused about these possibilities in last week's op-ed: Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2016-02-03/Op-ed. Have a look, Seth, if you missed it.

There is another related issue: while the example in the early mock-up shown above included a result from Fox News, it's unclear how that intent has evolved. More recent documents seem to indicate a search engine whose results include open-access sources only. Is that the intent today? (The answer will probably be crickets, but hey, it doesn't hurt to ask.) The notion of "disappearing" all copyrighted information from search engine results, creating a universe of knowledge that consists of freely copyable sources only, might be attractive to some (most of all Google and other Silicon Valley players, which would be free to reproduce salient bits of this content on their own search engine results pages and slap ads on it), but I'd find it a bit Orwellian. Andreas JN466 08:25, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

Excellent piece! I particularly liked the line about "unpaid hamsters driving the spinning cogs ..." with the picture of the "Volunteer". I obviously concur with your conclusions, though I take a somewhat more minimalist reasoning path based on the economics of search engines and the business models. Note I suspect the "open access" aspect is primarily not ideological, but pragmatic. Google Books has involved a long, expensive, copyright lawsuit. Outside the US, Google News is also embroiled with various disputes with copyright laws. The Wikimedia Foundation, even with its current budget, doesn't have the money to risk being a lawsuit target in such a dispute (those lawsuits are also matters of enormous amounts of money). -- Seth Finkelstein (talk) 10:13, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

Great idea.. terrible management

The more I see of this, the more I like it actually. Step 1, let's improve search, discovery and exploration within our own websites, then slowly pull in more stuff (everything that is open), then see if we can do some open model to even pull in the rest of the world. As a 10 year vision it's actually something that I have been waiting for.... Everyone knows that there will be left and right turns along the way, and marketing bullshit speak, and what not. Maybe we will get there, maybe not, whatever, at least it's a point in the future to strive for (and actually a pretty achievable one I suspect). But once again, it's a total F'up of communication towards the community. It is pathetic. It's shameful. And the worst part is that it's apparently equally bad handled internally, causing staff to feel the exact same way. (addendum: and yes. also managed badly towards the knight foundation of course). —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:23, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

Very much agree with TheDJ’s message above. Jean-Fred (talk) 10:58, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

+1 Wittylama 11:27, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

+2 Daniel Mietchen (talk) 23:32, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

From Knight Grant Agreement page 9, a fourteen-sized engineering team at WMF costs circa 2,500,000$ a year (wages, equipment, travel, computers, coffee pots and perhaps buildings too). This amount will be paid out whatever the team will be committed to: creating another Gather, gathering another Create, searching for Knowledge, knowing about Search, or any other inventive item Discovered™ by the Heads of General Staff. It seems that, instead of funding three years full scale, the Knight Fundation only funded 10% of the first year of the Discovery Team, with some obligation of results (that's the meaning of a restricted grant). Maybe this was a prudent move since, for the moment, instead of a piece of Discovery©, the result is rather another piece of WikiShitStorm©, a distributed application aimed at disheartening the granters. Pldx1 (talk) 10:00, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

I would look first at the idea that the funders want to see if anything at all useful will result, rather than throw money at something where the grantee basically can't deliver anything more than a report on how the money was spent (i.e. the funders want to have some indication that there's an avenue worth pursuing) -- Seth Finkelstein (talk) 10:10, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

Data sources

If Fox News or TeleSUR have the slightest chance of appearing as data sources of this searching project, I will campaign to stop it. --NaBUru38 (talk) 14:04, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

I would very much like to know who wrote the mockup that included a sample search result attributed to Fox News, and what they could conceivably have been thinking. This seems spectacularly imprudent. MarkBernstein (talk) 16:12, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

I'm guessing that it was actually meant to be provocative. If it had been BBC news, possibly no one would have noticed it, so they went opposite to that, even though it probably isn't very realistic. It is meant to stand out and communicate: "We [as a community] could even get as crazy as doing this".

Also can we please allow people the freedom to sketch ideas ? Not everything that is discussed or sketched or mocked needs to be accounted to death. If we start treating every single variation of an idea as a long term plan, then we are curtailing people's creativity beyond reason. That's not really healthy. In design you often initially step out of your comfort zone, before building a new one. Anyone who doesn't understand something like that... well that person should probably not read all of the essays that Wikipedia hosts either. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 16:31, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

"Also can we please allow people the freedom to sketch ideas?"

This is an actual plan, and a very bad one. --NaBUru38 (talk) 21:32, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

Eh no, it's one of several sketches accompanying a plan —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 07:41, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

Copyright

I would very much like to know if the copyright owner of the "April 2 - FINAL- Knight Search Presentation - 04.02.15.pdf", i.e. the Wikimedia Foundation, decided to make a public release of this document, that seems to be an internal document. Pldx1 (talk) 16:24, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

@Pldx1: You should ask Gamaliel, who uploaded the screenshot on Commons under CC-BY-SA 3.0, licensing which we obviously cannot verify. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 17:38, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

What if it works?

There's a lot of negativity in the comments above, about the competence of the WMF to manage the creation of a good, unbiased, advert-free search engine (or whatever they would like it called). This is hardly surprising, after Visual Editor and Media Viewer. But supposing they get everything right this time? Who would lose most? I think I now understand the recent appearance of several Google employees on the WMF board. Maproom (talk) 00:06, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

Wikimedia is a community of people that produce and share educational resources. Developing and maintaining a search engine is stretching the terms "produce" and "resources". --NaBUru38 (talk) 21:34, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

The shadow

A shadow hangs over the WMF. The board should have never exercised its "rights and privileges", like some tyrant, in such a fashion as they did, to police our representatives like some sovereign. This public act by the board has as much tact as calling a person a cunt. And since, so many of us have viewed the WMF board as corrupt (as in bribery), and viewed this corrupt product with extreme bias.

The logic of a simpleton I admit. But please tell, would it not be equally OK to pass an Act of the People of Florida dissolving the WMF and taking possession of its property? (You better believe the courts in San Francisco, California (as in the WMF terms of use) would give full faith and credit to such an act, and I don't think Jimbo would be able to successfully re-incorporate his trusteds.) Would that not be at least equally acceptable as this nefarious, recent act of this trusted board, in terms of the excuses we've been given?

We have identified a flaw in our government, and it is time that, just as the people of people of Florida rule Florida , that the community regain trust in this trusted board. Or whatever negative feelings we have towards this project will grow in time into general contempt for all things WMF. int21h (talk · contribs · email) 07:01, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

Wikidrama

"An open data engine that’s completely free of commercial interests"? – THE HORROR!!!!!!! If the people in question had known there would be such an outcry over goals like "Credible", "Publicly curated", "Open source" and "Unbiased by commercial concerns", they would probably have tackled it differently. But unfortunately they can't read your minds retroactively.--Anders Feder (talk) 06:46, 19 May 2016 (UTC)

Traffic report: A river of revilement (1,076 bytes · 💬)

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• There is now a Google Doodle task force that improves articles featured by Google (set up just after Frederick Douglass). These are highly visible articles that attract many people to Wikipedia, and – whether they're here to edit or just read – deserve the very best. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 17:55, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

This is great news! Now if only we could figure out a way to improve them before the Doodle goes live... Serendi^podous 22:13, 15 February 2016 (UTC)