Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/Single/2023-02-04

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The following is an automatically-generated compilation of all talk pages for the Signpost issue dated 2023-02-04. For general Signpost discussion, see Wikipedia talk:Signpost.

Disinformation report: Wikipedia on Santos (12,063 bytes · 💬)

I'm honestly shocked that you would treat the former Editor in Chief of Signpost this way. Santos has single-handedly written thousands of articles and all we receive is a smear piece. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Shushugah (talk • contribs)

What do you mean? That's ridiculous. Everybody knows that George Santos wrote this article himself! jp×g 22:09, 4 February 2023 (UTC)

Ok, I admit it - I am George Santos! But seriously, if anybody thinks I went too easy on him, please reread the first 3 sentences (and the sentences immediately following for the references). We've got several rules that I have to observe here, e.g. WP:BLP, WP:Harass, and WP:Outing among them. Admins and even some arbs have warned me about following these rules, and they enforce the rules unevenly. They do have a chilling effect. But what is stated here is what I know and can support with confidence, references and diffs. The non-Wikipedia part of the article is overwhelming, and true, and documented. The Wikipedia part is quite concerning, and may be a bit understated (consistent with WP:BLP). But ultimately the evidence related to such a publicly discussed accusation against one of our alleged editors, needs to be discussed dispassionately on Wikipedia. I am a bit concerned that the news articles that will be coming out soon about Santos will be biased against him because every newspaper knows that they can't be sued for defamation by Santos (I am not a lawyer and not offering legal advice here). Smallbones_(smalltalk) 03:18, 5 February 2023 (UTC)

Despite the fact I consider Santos a lying [expletive deleted], I found your moderate take on him in this article a refreshing change from the usual coverage. After all, the man has shown himself to be a compulsive liar time & again -- what more can be said on that accusation? Providing just the facts avoids repeating this well-known judgment. -- llywrch (talk) 08:54, 5 February 2023 (UTC)

Yep. That's what FactsOnly13 (talk · contribs) thought too. Andreas JN466 09:24, 5 February 2023 (UTC)

• It would appear to be redundant to try to embarrass Santos, as he has already done it pretty comprehensively himself. Truly a self-made man, just way to the left on the Dunning-Kruger curve. · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 09:36, 5 February 2023 (UTC)
• Could I at least have been credited as the one who found that three possible Santos socks had edited the article? And note the interesting fact that the Georgedevolder22 sock had been created in early 2019, long before his first run for office, long before his first edit. Daniel Case (talk) 20:50, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

Funniness aside, is this the first high-profile instance of a sitting U.S. congressman attempting to edit their own Wikipedia page? I'm sure other prominent or state-level politicians have done so. If so, I wonder how much we should be worried about this becoming increasingly frequent. Admittedly, we have time; most incumbent congressmen skew so old that the internet itself, much less Wikipedia, is a foreign concept. But as the inevitable weight of mortality pushes in a new generation of tech-savvy politicians, I'm curious as to how well-fortified Wikipedia is against attempts to self-edit articles by—let's face it—people more competent than Santos. Krisgabwoosh (talk) 22:25, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

• Off the top of my head, I can't name any other US Representatives who have edited their own pages, but there are lots that are very close. The IPs for the entire US Capitol were banned for awhile in the very early Wikipedia but I don't have details at hand. I believe the excuse was "silly staffers!" Lots of candidates or their head media people have been close to the line. e.g. the head PR guy for Newt Gingrich's primary presidential bid got into a fairly public discussion (as I recall) with Jimbo after some unpaid Wikipedians complained, he'd complained about their complaining. In 2008?
• An unsuccessful Virginia senatorial candidate (and later unsuccessful gubernatorial candidate) became notorious after bragging about his staffer's wiki edits to CNN.
• A couple US cabinet secretaries have been mentioned (hush, hush) on Wikipedia. There's much more.
• There's a couple that really stick in my craw.
  • A former president's business operation clearly edited Wikipedia openly a very long time ago, politely asking pesky editors to step out of the way and providing his work email and phone number. A 2nd case for the same organization seemed even more obvious to me, but ...
  • There's a pretty well-known former state legislator who has been credibly accused of statutory rape/sexual assault (by one of his relatives) but it was quite difficult for me to put the full story in his Wikipedia article. There have been extensive investigations (plural), new developments (focusing on campaign finance funds), international reporting, but no indictments yet. What sticks out to me was that he (or somebody with a very suggestive username) was the leading editor to his article. Many of his edits were adding Christmas card style photos every year showing him and his large family and beautiful wife. I guess I'll have to wait for any indictments.
• The UK bats above its weight in political UPE.
• One difficulty in all of this is that it seems that everybody has very strong opinions about the candidates during an election year, amateurs and professionals alike. So it's difficult to know the players without a scorecard. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 00:52, 7 February 2023 (UTC)

@Krisgabwoosh: Smallbones_(smalltalk) 00:57, 7 February 2023 (UTC)

My favorite bit of George Santos "lore" is that he claimed to be a "producer" on Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, the famously disastrous Spider-Man musical that kept injuring its actors. He would have been 22 years old at the time of its premiere. Of all the well-known musicals to claim credit for... why this one????? Axem Titanium (talk) 02:32, 7 February 2023 (UTC)

Krisgabwoosh, you asked, "Is this the first high-profile instance of a sitting U.S. congressman attempting to edit their own Wikipedia page?" Good question! In 2012 or thereabouts, someone wrote a script that tracked whenever there were edits from IP address blocks assigned to Congressional offices. The script then posted the relevant IP address and WP mainspace page name to Twitter. The account name was @CongressEdits (via WMF Labs). Both parties were brazen, and activity increased sharply around lunch time, Eastern Standard Time. I don't recall whether Twitter or Congress interceded, or perhaps if the feed continues to exist. The editing was quite prolific! Many edits were not to BLPs of Congress people but plenty were, or to other pages that raised eyebrows. Surreptitious Congressional editing also occurred in 2006, prior to Twitter.--FeralOink (talk) 13:49, 7 February 2023 (UTC)

I hadn't realized there was already a whole article about the subject! My worry is of these kinds of edits getting "smarter" for lack of a better word. It's quite easy when the editor is a staffer with an IP right in their boss's office, or when the editor openly states that they're work for U.S. reps. This stems from a lack of knowledge of what "anyone can edit" actually means. I loathe the day a politician hires a true professional to touch up their biography. Krisgabwoosh (talk) 16:42, 7 February 2023 (UTC)

Bzzzt, it's been going on, wholesale and in a well documented way, since at least 2011 (details via conflict of interest noticeboard). Take a gander at all the reputation management firms listed at WP:PAIDLIST if you want more evidence. ☆ Bri (talk) 16:52, 7 February 2023 (UTC)

Along those lines, I fought a SPA way back in 11 May 2006 who was trying to get material relating to Lost (TV series) into Wikipedia as fact, not as acknowledged fiction. (ISTR, one of the people who made those edits left a petulant note on my talk page complaining that I had nominated the article for deletion, but I can't seem to find it.) So fighting the forces to subvert fact on Wikipedia have been around longer than many current Wikipedians. (Ugh.) -- llywrch (talk) 23:16, 8 February 2023 (UTC)

Well, it's like Colin said on SNL ... what kid grows up and has as their life aspiration to be a star on the Baruch volleyball team? "It's like asking a kid what he wants to be when he grows up and he says 'I dunno ... assistant manager at Kohl's, maybe?'".

Seriously, I think, having worked heavily on the Santos article and knowing all the ins and outs of the story, that Santos was just, as many serial fabulists of his ilk do, appropriating someone else's story (his former manager at LinkBridge) into a context convenient for him at the time.

Putting himself on S:TotD actually is consistent with his other lies. He's smart enough not to tell things so incredible as to invite withering scrutiny, so he says he produced a failed musical, not a successful one, so people will be less likely to check. Likewise, telling people in the New York area you went to Baruch and Stern then worked on Wall Street is generally going to be taken on faith, in a way that it wouldn't if he'd claimed to have attended Harvard and Yale (but that, of course, is pretty much what he did with his employment history, as Goldman and Citi are pretty much the equivalent). He was also very smart not to pretend he had a military career ... compare with that guy who was running against Marcy Kaptur and turned out to have been greatly exaggerating his Air Force service (claimed to have been working ground crew in Afghanistan where he "couldn't shower for 40 days" when he was actually in Qatar on a relatively plush post). Daniel Case (talk) 21:05, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

Might as well get a list

We can start with this: Smallbones_(smalltalk) 19:54, 7 February 2023 (UTC)

• List of political editing incidents on Wikipedia
• United States congressional staff edits to Wikipedia
• Conflict-of-interest editing on Wikipedia

Featured content: 20,000 Featureds under the Sea (294 bytes · 💬)

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• Fun to read through, thanks for compiling this! —Ganesha811 (talk) 16:16, 7 February 2023 (UTC)

From the editor: New for the Signpost: Author pages, tag pages, and a decent article search function (7,293 bytes · 💬)

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• That author page feature is pretty cool! And you even did it retroactively for lapsed contributors like me. Not sure if that's for the best given the embarrassing columns I know I wrote back then... —pythoncoder (talk | contribs) 05:06, 5 February 2023 (UTC)
• Have you changed how the headlines are displayed on Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost? I use the "Use a black background with green text" gadget, and can no longer see the headlines on that page unless I right-click-and-highlight. Usually this is cased by someone setting a font to black. DuncanHill (talk) 08:31, 5 February 2023 (UTC)

  @DuncanHill: Define "recently"? The headlines on that page are indeed styled color: black, via a CSS signpost-snippet-title class defined in the page's TemplateStyles. But they've been that way for a good long while now.

  The only thing that's changed "recently" (and by that I mean, over 6 months but less than a year ago) was when TheDJ moved that styling into Template:Signpost/snippet/styles.css. Prior to that edit, it was done via a <span style="color:black">...</span> wrapped directly around the headline. It's possible the gadget handled the attribute-based styling differently than the current <span class="signpost-snippet-title">...</span> TemplateStyles class, though it applies the same color: black to the text. But we'd have to be talking about something that changed eight months ago, for that to be the culprit. Is that "recently"?

  If not, then it's worth considering that the entire site very recently changed its whole appearance; if the issue you're seeing started only days or weeks ago, rather than months, then perhaps the new skin is at least partly to blame? (Or, it's also possible changes were made to the gadget itself recently, in response to the new skin, that may have affected how it handles the Signpost contents styling.) FeRDNYC (talk) 13:33, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

  The format of the all headings from core has recently changed, perphaps the "Use a black background with green text" gadget has not been updated to account for those changes or needs additionally rules now, to account for the signpost ?? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 13:36, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

  @TheDJ and DuncanHill: That's what I'm thinking. Still... the main site headings get their color: #000 from a h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6 {...} rule in the global skin CSS, same as they always have. It seems like it would be possible to use standard heading tags for the contents-page headlines, with the existing <span class="signpost-snippet-title"> inside that. (Just like the site headings, which are an <hN> with a <span class="mw-heading"> inside it.)

  The TemplateStyles can still style the inner span as needed, but there's no need to apply any color styling because it'll already be inherited from the parent <hN>. That should allow the green-on-black gadget, or any other restyling tool, to handle those chunks of text the same way they do every other heading on the site. Would probably make everything more accessible for screen readers and the like, too, if each headline is an actual heading.

  We'd have to __NOTOC__ the page, of course. (Be kind of cool if we could not, since the new skin has the TOC in the sidebar where it won't mess up the page layout, but for other skins it'd look bad.) FeRDNYC (talk) 14:12, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

  Apologies — I have no idea where I got the idea that you said "recently" in your initial comment, but it appears that was entirely my imagination. FeRDNYC (talk) 13:38, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

  @FeRDNYC: I use Monobook, and always have, so presumably not the new skin. DuncanHill (talk) 13:50, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

• This is some high quality technical work! The author pages are particularly nice to have. Thank you to the team! —Ganesha811 (talk) 11:54, 5 February 2023 (UTC)
• I may be responsible for some of technical mess, I revamped the look and feel of the Signpost back in 2015. This is also where the tagging initiative started off—we were looking at all of the times we'd used the "Related articles" template and thought to ourselves, gee it sure would be nice if we generate these automatically. Ya'll should try out Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/Templates/Voter by the way. I built it in that era, and it's legitimately very useful reader engagement tool IMO, but I see that it hasn't been used since 2018. ResMar 20:17, 5 February 2023 (UTC)

Messy or not, you gave me a sturdy set of shoulders to stand on when building these features, which is all I could ever ask for -- hats off to you for all of that! ;^) jp×g 02:00, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

• Now, now, it wasn't impossible to find published articles in the past, you just had to use these neat things called "categories". And only be looking for articles from between 2005 and 2015. And it would also help if you knew what year the article was published and the column title. Okay, the new system is better, I said it. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 22:06, 5 February 2023 (UTC)
• Very cool; great work everyone! — OwenBlacker (he/him; Talk; please {{ping}} me in replies) 22:38, 5 February 2023 (UTC)
• Yes, it would be a neat graph: Uwappa (talk) 17:13, 7 February 2023 (UTC)

In the media: Furor over new Wikipedia skin, followup on Saudi bans, and legislative debate (4,635 bytes · 💬)

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• "Furor over new Wikipedia skin" didn't have much backing in the text, did it? Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 22:17, 4 February 2023 (UTC)

• Truly a surprise. /s — Preceding unsigned comment added by ThadeusOfNazereth (talk • contribs) 23:36, 4 February 2023 (UTC)

@Gråbergs Gråa Sång: Okay, you caught me. I have written it out into a section. jp×g 23:43, 4 February 2023 (UTC)

That at least is some furor, even if it wasn't in the media. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 12:23, 5 February 2023 (UTC)

Btw, who alleged that this was an uncontroversial implementation? Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 08:45, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

• Thank you for including the Atlantic article! As I pointed out here, Italian on-line newspaper Il Post also wrote about the extensive debate on the WMF's fundraising banners. They've already covered Wikipedia-related topics several times in recent years, so keep an eye on the (great) work they do, if you can! : ) Oltrepier (talk) 20:00, 5 February 2023 (UTC)

  @Oltrepier: Sorry, I missed your comment on the Suggestions page. Busy week. But I was aware of the Il Post article and posted it back in January at the Village Pump. It should really have been in the previous Signpost issue. I forgot. Next time you want to alert us to an Il Post article (or any other interesting article), do ping me in your post. I agree they're providing good coverage. Cheers, Andreas JN466 09:31, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

  @Jayen466 Don't worry, I totally understand. Thank you, anyway! : ) Oltrepier (talk) 09:49, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

• The Paranormal article appears to not appear anymore, here's an archive:[1] Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 10:30, 6 February 2023 (UTC)
  • @Gråbergs Gråa Sång: Thanks for trying to archive that, but it didn't work! It links to some sort of 2021 psychology paper instead of the article I briefly reviewed. At the same time, the article I reviewed is still in the pdn table of contents, but that doesn't link to the article either. Spooky! While obviously a fringe topic, I was strangely drawn to the article. It's argument was oddly convincing and pure nonsense at the same time. Double spooky! Smallbones_(smalltalk) 20:33, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

    @Smallbones I didn't archive it, I just searched it, but the link works fine for me. Some geo thing, perhaps. @Sgerbic, what do you see? And did you disappear it with evil sceptic-powers? Article still mentioned at [2] and [3]. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 21:13, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

    • I finally got the archive version. Maybe I'm just all thumbs today. Or it could be the strange weather we're having today. Triple spooky! Smallbones_(smalltalk) 22:30, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

      Gee I don't think I used my "special powers" this time. I get things confused with all the other evil I have to do these days. I'm quite busy. Sgerbic (talk) 22:34, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

News and notes: Foundation update on fundraising, new page patrol, Tides, and Wikipedia blocked in Pakistan (2,778 bytes · 💬)

• Just in case it wasn't clear, Avoided is both globally banned and WMF banned now. Izno (talk) 22:34, 4 February 2023 (UTC)

  Thanks. I've fixed the text to remove the ambiguity. Andreas JN466 23:23, 4 February 2023 (UTC)

• The article description (reproduced on Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost) mentions "Amanda Keton's WMF departure", but that topic isn't mentioned at all (it was covered in the previous issue instead). Relatedly, in the Pakistan story, it might have been more informative to describe Stephen as the WMF's (new) general counsel (consistent with his signature on the linked email) instead of just "a lawyer for the Wikimedia Foundation". Regards, HaeB (talk) 07:05, 5 February 2023 (UTC)

  Thanks. Fixed. Andreas JN466 11:08, 5 February 2023 (UTC)

• A thought about the decline in donations -- where one could suspect a hint that it was caused by community-approved messages: better donation income derived thru messages we volunteers can approve of, even if a smaller amount, than thru messages that we feel are unethical. -- llywrch (talk) 08:14, 5 February 2023 (UTC)

Of course a fund raising message that accurately says that it is to support WWF overall is going to get less donations than one that implies that more money is needed because English Wikipedia in jeopardy. The "less donations" is not a gauge of the merits of the change. North8000 (talk) 19:45, 9 February 2023 (UTC)

• "UPDATE: Pakistan's Prime Minister has stepped in and ordered the TPA on 6 February 2023 to restore access to Wikipedia in Pakistan." I think you have a bit of a typo here. IT should be "PTA" and not "TPA". There was no Talk Page Access involved here. ― Blaze Wolf^Talk_{Blaze Wolf#6545} 16:54, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

• Thanks, I fixed the typo. ☆ Bri (talk) 17:24, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

Op-Ed: Estonian businessman and political donor brings lawsuit against head of national Wikimedia chapter (6,067 bytes · 💬)

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• It is to be hoped that someone will soon translate the article into English. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:36, 5 February 2023 (UTC)
• From the Op-ed.

  "Estonian Wikipedians, on the other hand, have expanded the article even further and brought that directly to the attention of the media."

  Let's grab the popcorn and see what the Streisand effect can do. On the subject of the actual pension reform, one effect that has been seen elsewhere is that many pensioners withdrawing their pension savings then get bad advice and lose a lot of their pensions. If that happens here it will be interesting to see where fingers then start to point. Philh-591 (talk) 16:25, 5 February 2023 (UTC)

  There have been a number of court decisions that have ruled against Wikipedians and explicitly against Wikipedian anonymity (see previous Signpost issue for a French case, or the earlier case with User:Feliks in the German Wikipedia). In some German cases, courts have ordered that Wikipedia passages putting subjects in a false light be removed (which they have been, permanently).

  Seen against this backdrop, I find this sentence, "Estonian Wikipedians, on the other hand, have expanded the article even further and brought that directly to the attention of the media", a little troubling.

  The idea that Wikipedians can and will punish biography subjects who complain by expanding the coverage of whatever issue they are complaining about is apt to look an awful lot like an abuse of power by a mob of anonymous ill-wishers to outside eyes. That's really not the way to go. Allowing such perceptions to gain traction will ultimately bite this project in the arse. It also increases the legal risk for the Wikipedians involved.

  We all know that it is quite possible to write a flawlessly sourced attack biography, simply by being selective, highlighting certain aspects in the lead, etc. Courts are beginning to get wise to this too. In the Feliks cases, they explicitly called out this kind of editing and used it as a justification for why revealing the Wikipedian's identity was in the public interest. They argued (not unreasonably) that if you are an activist working in the public sphere, of which Wikipedia is now a very major part, then you can't expect privacy, especially if your editing is noticeably tendentious. (See e.g. [4] [German]; the €8,000 damages were overturned on appeal, but the Wikipedian still lost tens of thousands of euros in court costs and had his identity revealed.)

  Having said that, at the time of the diff quoted in the article, the Estonian bio seems to have looked perfectly fine to my mind. But the way it has been expanded since then it is beginning to look a lot like a WP:COATRACK, which is not good. Scrupulous adherence to WP:BLP policy, fairness, balance and neutrality should be the order of the day. Andreas JN466 12:59, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

  @Jayen466: does Estonian Wikipedia follow enwiki rules or does they have their own local rules? Just a curious question of mine. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contrib's.) 23:56, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

  Good point. I can't off-hand find an Estonian equivalent of WP:BLP in the interwiki links of that policy page. However, all Wikipedias are subject to the 2009 Wikimedia Foundation board resolution on biographies of living people. Andreas JN466 00:26, 13 February 2023 (UTC)

  @Jayen466: So to you it seems ok when a wealthy businessman tries to use intimidation to hide factually proven information, but you see it as a problem if people resist to it? This article is perfectly in accordance with our highest standards. Not an easy feat to achieve when dealing with a person who has made his fortune by giving out loans at extremely high interest rates, and whose significant influence in politics has raised more than enough suspicions.

  We don't have written out policies on all the topics. As practices are rather similar to what they are in English Wikipedia, then separate policy pages are not considered that important (importance lies more on the few differences than in many-many similarities). And as the number of editors is way smaller, then active editors know that anyway and can remember the discussions. The main difference is that the Estonian version is far more inclusive and with articles about people we don't mind if people edit articles about themselves as long as they stick to rules. Ivo (talk) 01:57, 19 February 2023 (UTC)

• Is it just me or does a web translation from Microsoft Edge of the article https://et.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parvel_Pruunsild change his name to Raft Brown Bridge? Tube·of·Light 14:01, 12 February 2023 (UTC)
  • "Pruunsild" is "brown bridge" in translation so it might indeed happen. Google Translate also provides some funny translation mistakes. Ivo (talk) 01:57, 19 February 2023 (UTC)

Opinion: Study examines cultural leanings of Wikimedia projects' visual art coverage (14,554 bytes · 💬)

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One issue in filling in the gaps of coverage on Wikipedia is that it can be difficult (although not impossible) to obtain the materials needed to fill those gaps. In my own experience writing articles on a non-Western country -- Ethiopia -- I found my public library often lacked the books I needed, & was forced to buy them. It would be helpful if the Foundation had a program to assist in getting these materials, which would benefit increasing information on these neglected subjects. (Yes there is Wikimedia Library, but that is but a single tree where Wikipedians need an orchard of resources.) -- llywrch (talk) 09:07, 5 February 2023 (UTC)

• Another of the many gaps gets some attention. That is fine, but it is just another one of many. We write about what interests us, what we have enough knowledge about to be able to describe usefully, and what we can find sources on. There are just not enough editors with enough breadth of competence to do everything at the same time. However it is good that these gaps get recognised, and I hope that more gaps will be identified, analysed and listed. It is part of knowledge to know which knowledge is poorly covered, and knowing what is missing may kick-start some enthusiasts to start filling in those gaps. Also, I agree that one of the things WMF can legitimately do is identify and document gaps and make useful sources available using donors' money. Donors can also provide good sources, possibly by making use of Wikimedia affiliates as custodians and distributors. · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 10:22, 5 February 2023 (UTC)
• llywrch Good point. One possibility would be a collaboration with the Internet Archive's book digitisation/book lending programme. The WMF could fund IA purchases; this would put the book online, so Wikipedians and the general public would be able to borrow the digital copy, one person at a time. --Andreas JN466 12:03, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

• That suggestion solves an ethical problem about requesting funds to acquire books. (It's not unusual to find that copies of an out-of-print academic monograph are priced at more than $100.) The Foundation buys the title, donates it to IA who scans it & makes it available to all, & not just one person who might vanish after obtaining the volume -- which would be a waste of money & discourage further grants for this purpose. -- llywrch (talk) 18:04, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

  @Ocaasi: Could you look into this for us? Cheers, Andreas JN466 18:09, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

  @Samwalton9 (WMF): Could you as the current Wikipedia Library Manager let us have your thoughts on this idea? Andreas JN466 02:54, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

  @Jayen466 @Llywrch This is an interesting idea. We've talked a few times about access to non-digitised works - as noted above it's especially relevant to areas of the world which are underrepresented in the library at the moment (i.e. most of it outside North America and Europe). There have been various attempts in the past (I can't find links at the moment) to purchase and ship books to Wikimedians. If I remember correctly they didn't really scale well due to admin time involved in sourcing and purchasing the books and the costs and shipping fees/logistics involved. If I recall correctly we decided that this program only really worked if it was being handled by Wikimedia affiliates who could more easily work with local editors and reduce shipping costs - I think some still operate a program like this. Sending those books to IA to scan might help make this easier and more worthwhile but I'm still concerned that the cost is hard to justify - is it worth spending dozens or hundreds of donor $ to get one digitized book and one citation out the other end (or none, if it turns out the text actually isn't as useful as you thought it would be - it might often be impossible to know until you've 'opened' the book)? Off the top of my head there are some other options we could explore here. The most obvious to me is that we could leverage our global volunteer network. We could create a system in the library which facilitates Wikimedians putting out requests for undigitised texts like a 'bounty board' for other editors to check in their local libraries for. They could then scan individual pages or type up the relevant passages. The obvious downsides would be that the editor doesn't get their hands on the full text, but the running costs would be effectively zero. What do you think? Samwalton9 (WMF) (talk) 10:01, 13 February 2023 (UTC)

  This is one of the previous attempts I'd seen - purchasing and shipping turned out to be really difficult, and very few requests were made. Samwalton9 (WMF) (talk) 13:27, 13 February 2023 (UTC)

• @Samwalton9 (WMF): Right now, if a given book isn't available at a local library -- & not all Wikimedians live in a community with a public library, let alone a university or research library -- there are only a few options said Wikimedian has to obtain that book: (1) look for a copy online (which might sometimes be a copyright violation, an activity I assume is not an option the Foundation wishes to encourage); (2) resort to InterLibrary Loan (which I assume is not an option if there is no local public library, or said library does not offer ILL services), but this only provides the book for a limited time, unless one photocopies the work (which again I assume is not an option the Foundation wishes to encourage); or (3) purchasing the book, which permits the Wikimedian indefinite access. If the book is less than $20, IMHO as a middle-class Westerner this is not an unreasonable cost, but I am finding more & more that the books I need have a price of over $100. For example, I am finding Encyclopaedia Aethiopica is a valuable resource to anyone performing research on Ethiopian topics, one of the areas we need to battle systemic bias over: many academic articles freely reference articles in this compendium of information. However, each volume is around $150 apiece, & at 5 volumes it is a steep price to pay for, & I am unaware of any library -- public or academic -- in my area having a set. I could cite other examples of important but uncommon or expensive works like this, especially academic monographs which are published in small numbers. Now I'm not saying that Wikimedians should have a carte blanche for expecting the Foundation (or an affiliate) to purchase any book requested, but I'd like to see a clear & publicized process where one could justify having a book purchased, then perhaps sent to IA for scanning & sharing with the general public. I've been a volunteer here for over 20 years, & I've never seen it announced that the Foundation or one of the affiliates is willing to do something like that; AFAICS Foundation grants appear limited to expenses like pizza & soft drinks for Wikipedia Edit-a-thons. -- llywrch (talk) 18:33, 13 February 2023 (UTC)

  I'm in happy agreement with @Llywrch (and recall purchasing a book costing about $100 myself in order to be able to finish a featured article ...) A digital library program like this would be a totally on-mission thing for the WMF to do – making free knowledge available. At any rate, if you're currently financing any book purchases at all, it would make sense to buy the book for the IA and have them digitise it rather than send hardcopies to an individual Wikipedian, or a group of Wikipedians.

  I also believe there would be partners that might like to come on board for such a program. For example – academics might draw up a list of standard works (especially in areas that are underrepresented at the moment) that should be available to Wikipedians to kickstart content generation. Etc. Andreas JN466 18:46, 13 February 2023 (UTC)

Seeing only seven "visual artists" out of 124 being non-western might be the most visceral indictment on Vital Articles I have seen yet. Of course, the only of these non-European artists I knew myself are Hokusai and Tezuka. (Oh, there's also Imhotep in here. Yay) It is an... interesting challenge to see how we can get a better grasp of non-European traditions as editors. ~Maplestrip/Mable (chat) 12:51, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

Oh, I missed Frida Kahlo as well on that list. There's also some people with a mixed background. I don't intend to get too much in the specifics of the content of the list, it's indeed filled to the brim with French and Italian names. Wikipedia is in a great position to write detailed articles on people from different cultural backgrounds. ~Maplestrip/Mable (chat) 12:57, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

Really interesting work! Thanks :). @User:MartinPoulter It would be great if we can get some proposals at Wikipedia talk:Vital articles/Level/4 to replace some Western artists with a more international cast. These VIT lists do get used for prioritisation, for instance in WP:The core contest and in Wikipedia:Discord/Team-B-Vital. Don't know enough about art myself to make sensible suggestions. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 12:41, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

This was a concern even back at the time when these lists were first made. Discussions of bias towards western Europe, the US, and the few times we managed to get outside of there, Japan. An artist can have great regional fame in, say, Kenya, but the rest of the world doesn't know about them. Meanwhile, in Kenya, they could name dozens of American movie stars. The cultural influence is not symmetrical, and it seems difficult for the concept of the "Vital articles" list to go against this cultural force too hard. It's hard for Wikipedia to make any subject more popular than it already is, no matter how well we write about it. We do have some useful lists for which regionally important articles need work, at least... ~Maplestrip/Mable (chat) 08:38, 13 February 2023 (UTC)

• Many interesting ideas here, thank you. On the specific question of Islamic art (I guess that's "religious" by definition), there is Islam's aniconism to consider, whether it was an absolute prohibition or (apparently) not. On non-representational Islamic art, we certainly do have coverage; Islamic geometric patterns, for instance, which I wrote some years ago, is illustrated with many handsome photographs from Commons. Chiswick Chap (talk) 20:25, 13 February 2023 (UTC)

  @Chiswick Chap: That article is so gorgeous and I'm really glad it's a GA! I notice that the article doesn't seem to mention any Islamic artists by name. I'm sure this is an aspect of Islamic artistic tradition too, but I would be very interested to learn about a Great Man who made beautiful Islamic art. ~Maplestrip/Mable (chat) 09:01, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

  Thank you. Yes, names are few and far between among the artists and craftspeople who made those things. Chiswick Chap (talk) 09:06, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

  We might be running into a bunch of cultural issues here. Here's a category of Islamic artists that might be of interest in this field, but I wouldn't be surprised if the architects have been lost to time, unlike the calligraphers. ~Maplestrip/Mable (chat) 09:24, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

  Cultural indeed. The idea of the "artist" as someone important is, far as I know, an invention of the Western Christian Renaissance. Before then, going back pretty much to eternity, anyone who was writing about painting or sculpture or tapestry etc was writing about the subject and paying little attention to the artist. Suddenly it became possible for an artist to be famous, comparable to a theologian or a military commander, rather than just an anonymous workman like a carpenter or smith. Globalization later brought this idea to the world, and nowadays the principal focus of art scholarship is biographical (for example, most WP articles on modern art are biographies) but for most of the world grist for this kind of art scholarship mill is only available for the past century or two, if that. Jim.henderson (talk) 15:41, 16 February 2023 (UTC)

  FWIW, Pliny includes a number of anecdotes about Greek & Roman painters & sculptors from the Classical period. So the idea of the artist existed before the Renaissance. (ISTR reading Chinese & Japanese accounts providing biographical information about painters in their respective cultural traditions, but this needs confirmation since my memory can be fallible, as I am often reminded.) -- llywrch (talk) 17:32, 16 February 2023 (UTC)

Recent research: Wikipedia's "moderate yet systematic" liberal citation bias (2,114 bytes · 💬)

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Ech. So they compared an international encyclopedia to American publications and claim it's bad we don't perfectly align with them? Most of the Anglosphere is left of America. Adam Cuerden ^(talk)_{Has about 8.2% of all FPs. Currently celebrating his 600^th FP!} 16:23, 7 February 2023 (UTC)

• Yeah a bit silly of a story - of course stuff will be more left-leaning, that's most of the academic world LegalSmeagolian (talk) 21:10, 7 February 2023 (UTC)

Most of the Anglosphere is the United States of America. Somers-all-the-time (talk) 04:36, 8 February 2023 (UTC)

2/3rds of the Anglosphere is a majority, but not so much of one that Wikipedia would be expected to match American biases. Frankly, the premise of the study is that American political biases are some objective standard that Wikipedia should be trying to emulate. Since that's not and has never been Wikipedia's goal, and given the weirdness of the dataset (Facebook user data and Media Bias Monitor?), it's questionable. Oddly enough, though, Media Bias Monitor itself rates Wikipedia as "least biased". Adam Cuerden ^(talk)_{Has about 8.2% of all FPs. Currently celebrating his 600^th FP!} 18:50, 9 February 2023 (UTC)

That InternetArchiveBot blurb is quite concerning. Any attempts to fix this issue? DFlhb (talk) 09:23, 9 February 2023 (UTC)

Section 230: Twenty-six words that created the internet, and the future of an encyclopedia (3,732 bytes · 💬)

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This is an issue that is only going to grow more serious, & glad to see some attention to it here. Critics from the left claim that social networking platforms offer profiling & recommendation mechanisms that allow groups to spread their propaganda to unwitting users. Critics from the right complain that they are the target of shadow banning. These social networking platforms depend on selling targeted advertising to stay profitable, while at the same time some form of moderation has been needed since the days of Usenet. -- llywrch (talk) 08:30, 5 February 2023 (UTC)

Only the walled-garden social networks depend on advertising. The Fediverse (which includes servers running Pixelfed, PeerTube, Mastodon (software)) generally has per-server moderation by the community running that server. And the Fediverse is certainly at risk from these sorts of legislative attacks. Of course, the walled-garden networks currently dominate in terms of numbers of users, like Britannica dominated in the early days of Wikipedia. We'll find out over the coming years how much bigger numbers of people appreciate interoperability, which effectively provides freedom of association (as opposed to walled-garden-ism). A diverse ecosystem is more likely to survive legislative attacks than a monolithic system. Boud (talk) 20:00, 10 February 2023 (UTC)

• The internet is far too broad for a one-size-fits-all rule about user responsibility and website operator responsibility. It is understandable that on Wikipedia our primary concern is that we can regulate ourselves and have largely volunteer moderation—which we do exceptionally well. Yes, our articles contain BLP violations and vandalism can last hours or longer. But there is simply no comparison to us and Facebook or even a typical large forum. We don't have large subcommunities promoting harmful medical misinformation or encouraging members to kill themselves; racist hate speech almost never lasts more than a few minutes; and so on.
  However, the anti-Section 230 arguments are often overlooked. See Carrie Goldberg's reasoning or watch The Most Hated Man on the Internet: revenge porn and incitement to violence is largely allowed to continue under the rule. It is perfectly possible to outlaw this activity without threatening Wikimedia.
  To redirect the subject to a "debate" around what contexts it is acceptable to tweet an image containing a Nazi swastika, as the media does, is grossly unhelpful. Freedom of speech is important: we need freedom to make information accessible even if it is against the U.S. government's military and political interests. But freedom from harassment, violence and emotional distress is hugely important too. — Bilorv (talk) 13:16, 11 February 2023 (UTC)

• My mistake for omitting personal harassment; I was trying to be balanced about the issues. That is a very important matter, but one that I do not see will be easily resolved -- due to anonymity & flexibility in identity -- if ever. --- llywrch (talk) 18:04, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

  Sorry, Llywrch, this was supposed to be a general comment rather than a response to you specifically (and definitely not meant to be a criticism). — Bilorv (talk) 13:34, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

Special report: Legal status of Wikimedia projects "unclear" under potential European legislation (2,261 bytes · 💬)

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• As with any of this stuff, I suspect at least some of the insanity will be toned down. The Linux kernel was first developed in Europe, so I can't see them saying "Oh, sorry, you can't run apt any more." But even if they come out with some crazy law like that, it won't shut down—it will just get hosted and run outside the EU by non-EU residents, and then not be subject to EU law anyway. It amazes me that people forget the Internet is global, so attempts to regulate it like that are a fool's errand, at least unless you could get every country in the world to agree on doing it. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 05:42, 5 February 2023 (UTC)

  I'm sure that Julian Assange will be heartened by your authoritative legal opinion that not being an American citizen or resident or even setting foot in the place and using servers located well outside the United States means that their laws don't apply to him and the United States cannot possibly attempt to take legal action against him for breaking its crazy laws. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 08:09, 5 February 2023 (UTC)

  Well, Assange never has gotten extradited to the US, has he? But I said nothing about being an American citizen. If the EU wants to do their thing, those of us who live outside it should just ignore them. I'm no more subject to EU law than I am subject to North Korean law, and I've got no problem calling Jong-Un "Fat Boy Kim". That's illegal as hell in North Korea, but well, I'm not there. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 10:46, 5 February 2023 (UTC)

• Not only EU. UNESCO's new regulation [5], USA's scientific papers [6] --Gannmmm (talk) 15:25, 5 February 2023 (UTC)

Tips and tricks: XTools: Data analytics for your list of created articles (2,026 bytes · 💬)

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• These are really neat. Thanks for sharing! I'm getting a bunch of "failed to fetch" errors at these two tools, though. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 00:26, 5 February 2023 (UTC)

  Thanks. Those two tools rely on a high number of API calls. I need to learn how to manage this in Javascript. PAC2 (talk) 06:43, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

• Great work, enjoyed messing around with these tools! I wonder what we could do to bring them higher visibility, so that editors can continue to discover them. —Ganesha811 (talk) 12:09, 5 February 2023 (UTC)

  Thank you. I've added some of my tools to Wikipedia:Tools. I think that this is a first step. PAC2 (talk) 06:43, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

• I definitely learned something interesting from these tools. Namely, that I need to go back and work on the Wikidata pages associated with articles I've created. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 16:37, 7 February 2023 (UTC)

  So that's a good news :) PAC2 (talk) 16:00, 8 February 2023 (UTC)

• After some months of unavailability, the tools have been repaired. See https://observablehq.com/@pac02/user-level-gender-statistics-for-wikipedia. PAC2 (talk) 06:00, 16 November 2023 (UTC)

Traffic report: Films, deaths and ChatGPT (1,350 bytes · 💬)

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• Uh, what happened to the first two weeks of January? Was Wikipedia closed? Or was data not collected? You mention Jeff Beck so I expected to see him on a list but he must have passed during the first half of January 2023. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 22:00, 5 February 2023 (UTC)

• It looks like the prior issue ran an 2022 end-of-year wrapup instead of the WP:TOP25 for the first two weeks of 2023, as it usually would have, and we didn't include those in this issue. ☆ Bri (talk) 00:03, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

• That's it, I chose to start with the period after the previous edition (published on January 16) rather than including week 1 and week 2. igordebraga ≠ 15:21, 6 February 2023 (UTC)