Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/Single/2024-01-31

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The following is an automatically-generated compilation of all talk pages for the Signpost issue dated 2024-01-31. For general Signpost discussion, see Wikipedia talk:Signpost.

Comix: We've all got to start somewhere (1,635 bytes · 💬)

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What in the world? How is that improving an article? - The Master of Hedgehogs ^{(always up for a conversation!)} 17:13, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

Well, fixing the article, but same thing. - The Master of Hedgehogs ^{(always up for a conversation!)} 17:14, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

I guess "fixing" is in the eye of the beholder (even if they are blindfolded). BTW, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street#Synopsis sure is lengthy. ☆ Bri (talk) 17:23, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

Okay, now I understand. - The Master of Hedgehogs ^{(always up for a conversation!)} 17:29, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

I'm reminded here about how one has a pet "fixed". -- llywrch (talk) 00:11, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

If the previous edit accidentally duplicated a lot of content, this could be a true "fix", but I assume this was a blanking accident. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:02, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

Maybe it's just the start of the fix, that's why it's a replacement as well. Alfa-ketosav (talk) 14:52, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

Disinformation report: How paid editors squeeze you dry (20,009 bytes · 💬)

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Great article. I've seen these advertisements, and of course knew what they were offering was not deliverable, as most if not all Signpost readers would. However the general public won't know this, at least a significant portion will take the adverts at face value. Perhaps sharing this article through the "socials" is the way to go. All the best: Rich Farmbrough 15:50, 31 January 2024 (UTC).

• An interesting read, thanks. Celeste Mergens has been a redirect to Days for Girls since 2018, but this mention has reminded me to add her book as "Further reading" in the article. PamD 16:05, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

Thanks, Rich. Yes I'd love to see this spread via social media, the mainstream press. Help save some people from being scammed, and help Wikipedia at the same time. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 16:08, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

• This should be syndicated out to all mainstream publications rather than staying just on Signpost. – robertsky (talk) 16:15, 31 January 2024 (UTC)
  • It's licensed CC-BY-SA 4.0. Go for it! Smallbones_(smalltalk) 16:30, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

@Robertsky and Smallbones: I know a specific newspaper that might be very happy to report on this, given their portfolio... : ) But seriously, should we contact them? Oltrepier (talk) 14:54, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

• I've occasionally started an article after a "Please make an article about me!" request at the Teahouse etc. Just because a COI-editor wants something it doesn't have to be wrong, hence the only 95% failure rate for paid articles, I guess. One requester I saw said pretty much "Hello, I'm about to release a new book, and my publisher said it would be a good idea for me to have a WP-article. I also think I'm ok per WP:N, so please put my draft in mainspace!" And after some editors looked at it (and edited it), they did. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 18:21, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

Great reporting! It also seems worth noting that the LinkedIn page for Elite Wiki Writers (archive) claims that they have "51-200 employees" and were founded in 2011. Regards, HaeB (talk) 19:26, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

You can learn some more about them at WP:PAIDLIST#Sybex Lab. Elite Wiki Writers is just one of their many fronts. MarioGom (talk) 21:53, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

• "They were globally locked by the WMF following a sockpuppet investigation, where 41 editors were blocked and confirmed as sockpuppets of CharmenderDeol." - Afaict those locks were made by stewards, not the WMF. Vermont (🐿️—🏳️‍🌈) 22:46, 31 January 2024 (UTC)
  • @Vermont: Good catch, I'll change "the WMF" to "stewards". That said, global locks and the use of stewards to make blocks, is something of a special case in blocking sockpuppets, often involving the WMF. There's a special place in the sock drawer for people who declare that they are paid editors and then work with undeclared socks. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 16:18, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

    Smallbones, we generally lock any UPE socks with activities on more than one project, or where associated accounts are active xwiki. This covers a lot of UPE firms' sockfarms, who often make articles on multiple projects, create Wikidata items, and upload non-free photos to Commons. Vermont (🐿️—🏳️‍🌈) 17:53, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

• I've actually been pinged a couple of times by people asking if someone claiming to be me really was. The answer, of course, being "Good God, no." I suppose they ducked the scam, but if they're doing things this blatantly fraudulent, wouldn't it seem that law enforcement could take some action on it? Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 05:06, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

Schemes like this, sadly, are probably not on FBI's list of priorities due to other stuff like business scams to the tune of half a billion dollars a year. And in the U.S., sub-national police and AGs really don't do much about internet crime as far as I know. My own state AG's official website for internet crime says "our efforts are limited by the office's lack of original criminal jurisdiction" and refers the reader to the FBI. Maybe things are better elsewhere. ☆ Bri (talk) 06:22, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

I don't entirely disagree with @Bri: on the effectiveness of reporting to the authorities, but I doubt that it hurts anything either. Don't put all your trust in the government to get back your money for you. You need to take steps to protect yourself, first, last, and always.

And a word about WP:No legal threats is needed here. It doesn't do anybody any good, to spout off on how you are going to report a crime, and it could get you blocked here. But when you registered for Wikipedia, you don't park at the door your right (and sometime duty) to report crimes. In short don't talk about it, though when you think it is the right thing to do, just report the crime to the authorities.

You might think that, in the US, you should report to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission aka the FTC. From what I've seen, they take a lot of time trying to come up with the right general policies, publish these policies widely, then perhaps make a big splash with a few big cases. Which big cases? A fairly partisan group of 5(?) commissioners ultimately decides. In short, I think they'll come up with good ideas and policies most of the time, but aren't going to have speedy or effective enforcement. IMHO.

The FBI runs the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3). It looks like it's fast and confidential to make a complaint. I don't know how effective it is. It may be the best you can do. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 16:49, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

Hey Shaun, I think your statement concerning the low likelihood of paid editors actually influencing content is way too optimistic. Multiple sting operations have demonstrated that it is possible to get even quite absurd, or absurdly promotional, content into Wikipedia. I recall one focused on Bollywood and one on German politics that was demonstrated on German TV – the paid content was only removed after the programme aired. A former Wikimedia official in Germany (has?) had a successful paid editing firm for years ... Will look up the Signpost report later when I've got a mo. Regards, --Andreas JN466 10:08, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

Signpost references:

• Paid promotional paragraphs in German parliamentary pages The Signpost, 26 September 2021
• Wiki-PR's extensive network of clandestine paid advocacy exposed, The Signpost, 9 October 2014

The Bollywood sting operation was by an Indian journalist who said in 2020 that paid editing in the Wikipedia biographies of minor Indian celebs was well organised, lucrative and pervasive. I can email you details if you are interested; I don't think it was covered in the Signpost. I don't know whether his claims were accurate either, but I would imagine that because of the smaller volunteer pool paying attention to pages of Indian singers, actors, etc., capturing them would be easier than it would be for equivalent European or North American minor celebs. Andreas JN466 13:29, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

• Andreas, these are all good observations. My most straightforward response is that the general lack of success of the industry is why these incidents you point out are so newsworthy. More specific to this article: scams of the kind that this article describes are perpetrated by actors who don't even care about whether or not edits "stick" on Wikipedia. The only reason they can make money at scale like this is because success on Wikipedia is irrelevant to their business model. Lots of community members dedicate much of their volunteering time to rooting out UPE from marketing companies. In my role supporting them, I'm consistently impressed at how good they are at these investigations.SSpalding (WMF) (talk) 00:21, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

  @SSpalding (WMF) The thing is, Shaun, the Magazin Royale programme didn't report on an exceptional instance of successful content manipulation by paid editors. They approached a paid editing firm run by an ex-Wikimedia Germany board member and asked him to place specific (in this case quite nonsensical) phrases into the German Wikipedia article on a small political party. At 100 euros each. Ahead of an election. And that attempt was instantly successful. The exact phrases demanded appeared in the article. No volunteer noticed or reverted these insertions. (And the paid editor in question was also active in the English Wikipedia, reviewing and approving hundreds of articles at Articles for Creation.)

  There is another kind of (suspected) paid editing that is very hard to defend against. I think MarioGom has also had experience of this. This is a drip, drip, drip method of adding promotional content to existing articles which over time can flood and completely distort a topic area:

  • Wikipedia:Conflict_of_interest/Noticeboard/Archive_92#Kazakhstan, 18 September 2015
  • Walled gardens of corruption, The Signpost, 7 October 2015

  It is true that volunteers are active and vigilant, but it is also true that it often takes volunteers years to notice and address these situations. In short, Wikipedia is imperfect (as is the media in general ...) and I am always wary of implying otherwise.

  This said, I don't doubt that there are lots of people trying their hand at paid editing who are absolutely hopeless at it and/or defraud their "clients". Regards, Andreas JN466 10:16, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

I had a sense that the Indian promotion was well organized a few years ago when I was more active at the conflict of interest noticeboard but never saw independent investigation about it. Would love to see that link. ☆ Bri (talk) 15:32, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

For the kind of company discussed in the article (e.g. Sybex Lab, Abtach), their success rate is extremely low. Most of their articles never reach mainspace, the few that do usually do not last very long. That does not mean, however, that there is no other UPE content making it into mainspace. There is certainly a large amount of it, both from more sophisticated actors as well as the long tail of freelancers. MarioGom (talk) 16:54, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

• Jared sounds like a mensch and it was good of him to talk to signpost. Jared, if you're reading this, comment on the talk page of your article "Hi Im Jared" and post the links you sent to the scammers. Somebody will find it and update eventually! Or if you have social media, you can just ask "Can someone update my Wikipedia page?" Lots of updates have been triggered that way. jengod (talk) 17:47, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

  There is also the Mandel-method. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 17:54, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

• i've talked with what i'm 99% sure is an outpost of this scam. i'll spare you the mudslinging, but here's the bullet points:
  • they claim to have "15-20 moderators", and refuse to disclose their usernames
  • they posted a list of articles which they created (they did not create them)
  • they have "packages" which cost $500, $700, $900, and $1500, offering such perks as 3 Months Maintenance with the 5 Edits
  • they specifically said they do not disclose that they are paid editors on wiki

fun stuff. ltbdl (talk) 15:16, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

• I think you got it! The only thing that surprises me the least bit is the $500 price point. But that really shouldn't matter to them - when you are only selling a puff of hot air, the margin is always 100%.
• There could be a contending view though, the basic format is used by other companies (or at least I think they are other companies). Lots of people know the basics of this scam. The only way to combat it may turn out to be "let everybody - including their customers - know how it works." Smallbones_(smalltalk) 22:06, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

  I think most of this "market" is about 2 companies in Karachi, Pakistan (Abtach and Digitonics). Most websites of this kind are connected to one of these, just fronts. There are many other UPEs and scammers, but this particular modus operandi is particular to a very small subset. MarioGom (talk) 18:50, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

• Hah! That "Elite Wiki Writers" site claims they won the last WikiCup! Just based on that I know they are a scam :) BeanieFan11 (talk) 01:50, 4 February 2024 (UTC)
  • Hey @BeanieFan11:, congrats on your win. It's a shame to see somebody else trying to grab a piece of the glory! I went to check on their side of the story, but they weren't answering their chat this time - rather than chasing me around their site every 10 seconds with another chat request! If they are reading this story, maybe you can count that as another victory. It's hard to chat and rip off customers if they know they've been caught in another lie. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 02:23, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

Break

• Hacker News discussion. Good work, Smallbones, deserves to be widely read. --Andreas JN466 10:08, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

  Smallbones, have you seen this one? Someone on Reddit's r/wikipedia subreddit linked to it today. It starts like this:

  • I received an email from someone who claims to be a Wikipedia "admin". The email ends with "[....@wikipediaafd.org](mailto:....@wikipediaafd.org)". It stated that a page that features my work is flagged for deletion by another admin, and unless I pay editing fees, it will be deleted and banned permanently. [...]

  Was posted about a month ago. Andreas JN466 20:28, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

  Sadly, wikipediaafd.org is known to those who've been dealing with VRT and such. That one is plain extortion (+ identity fraud, trademark violation...). I hope the domain is taken down soon, but they'll come back quickly under a new one. I'm planning to write more info and maybe proposals for further action, specific to AFD extortion operations. MarioGom (talk) 18:09, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

Help stop paid editing! If you have ideas on how to better stop paid editing, please leave them at Wikipedia talk:Paid-contribution disclosure. If you have particular incidents you'd like to discuss, please note them at WP:COIN.

There's another notice near the top of User:Smallbones. Either or both of these used together could get the main point across if admins want to protect themselves from being falsely named in an extortion scheme.

While I did briefly see this case last month, it's pretty old news that scammers claim to be admins. And very few admins are or have been actual scammers. The whole thing was addressed at Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/IncidentArchive1144#Another dumb AfD scam. I think the best way for admins as a group would be to confirm a rule that no admin can accept paid editing work (with a few crystal clear exceptions like a) work on behalf of the WMF or a chapter, b) as Wikipedian-in-residence at a bonafide GLAM). It would just make it easy for us to tell the world "Don't even think about a Wikipedia admin doing paid editing for a scammer. It will never happen (again)!" To be fair I've only seen about 4-5 cases documented over 20 some years. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 02:08, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

Does the reverse happen? People paying to get their Wikipedia article removed (because it is mainly about something embarrassing they did in their past)? Prolete (talk) 20:53, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

Absolutely. I've on more than one occasion seen someone stating they're someone's "official representative" or the like. They're more often trying to whitewash an article than get it deleted entirely, but when those efforts are thwarted, they sometimes then start asking how they just delete the whole article. (Of course in those cases, one must be cautious; sometimes there really are legitimate BLP problems and those shouldn't be overlooked just because they're raised clumsily.) Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 21:46, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

In focus: The long road of a featured article candidate, part 2 (5,636 bytes · 💬)

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That is a pretty good, and pretty accurate, description of the process. It gets easier with practice. But, yes, we are all quite, quite mad at FAC. Gog the Mild (talk) 15:37, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

I'm not sure if that means everybody is angry at FAC, or if the people running FAC are insane :-) RoySmith (talk) 15:44, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

It's a heat/kitchen ratio and one's preferred location to either. 2.28.124.91 (talk) 15:57, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

I enjoyed reading this. Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Roy! I agree with you on most things. It's silly that we worry about the length of a horizontal line and the whitespace around it in 2024 but it's easier if you just do it as a habit rather than try and go back and fix it later, much like with citation consistency (which I also agree gets a little bit silly, but I can see why it's nice to have all citations to the same publication look the same). I also agree that writing at FA level makes your writing better in ways you don't necessarily notice. Most of all, I find it's nice to have your work reviewed and be found to be of a good standard and to get idea for improvement. There's no such thing as a perfect article and FAC is all about critical commentary so someone will always find something to say. Keep up the good work! HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 17:14, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

Interesting read. I'm slightly puzzled that reviewers comment on things like endash spacing without actually fixing it themselves. All the best: Rich Farmbrough 20:37, 31 January 2024 (UTC).

Many reviewers like to keep hands off to avoid any implication of a conflict of interest. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 07:10, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

I would feel fairly comfortable fixing a dash while reviewing an article, but then again, I would fight someone if they change my date style, so I guess it's reasonable to be hesitant with making any style changes. ~Maplestrip/Mable (chat) 14:42, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

Not sure if this is common knowledge, but many subject areas have specialized bibliographies usually in paper form -- although I wouldn't be surprised if online databases also exist. Further, academic periodicals will offer review articles that discuss recent publications in the topic of that periodical: for instance, Journal of Roman Studies used to provide at 5-year intervals a review article of epigraphic works published in the last 5 years. (It's been over 7 years since I've seen the last to appear, so JRS may have ceased this series.) However, these tools may not be available for popular culture topics, but your local friendly reference librarian can help you identify the ones you will find useful. -- llywrch (talk) 00:06, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

Excellent article; as good as anything I've read on what it's like at FAC. Thanks for writing this. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 03:19, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for this ... I too have had a recent experience with what I had hoped would be a similar FA success story that has only gotten as far as GA so far, despite plans made several years ago to get it to FA with the idea of getting it on the Main Page for a major anniversary late last year. That didn't happen (I should perhaps write a story about this one; it would be an interesting complement to yours as it does not end in total success). But I learned some of these same things in the process, and I have now put an article in FAC PR (something I didn't know about until you mentioned it before), already a GA, with the idea that I could get it to FA and get it on the Main Page for another anniversary date just over a year off. We'll see. Daniel Case (talk) 05:23, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

When responding to reviewer comments, it is often easier to edit from bottom to top, so changes you make do not disturb the reference numbering above. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 07:10, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

FAC is an important process on Wikipedia for sure, but I think it could benefit from more guidance and support. Reviewers and long-time participants of FAC assumes that people would come to FAC with a perfect piece of work and that mentality has slowly drive newcomers away. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 12:56, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for sharing your experience. It is highly useful for new nominators to FAC.Arjunaraoc (talk) 04:34, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

In the media: Katherine Maher new NPR CEO, go check Wikipedia, race in the race (7,768 bytes · 💬)

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On a side note not exactly related to this Signpost article, I was kinda shocked when former South African cricketer AB de Villiers told that he literally had tears in his eyes after reading the Wikipedia profile of Guyanese and West Indies cricketer Shamar Joseph. I myself started the article on Shamar Joseph but I literally wrote based on facts from a Cricbuzz article written by Bharat Sundaresan on the incredible rags to riches story of Shamar Joseph. Well AB quoted to have said "Do yourself a favour, go read about his life on wikipedia! Literally had tears in my eyes while reading about his journey. Inspirational to say the least". Abishe (talk) 16:42, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

• @Abishe: thank you for bringing that great story here to The Signpost. Thanks for starting the article. And it even appears to be news, much of this seems to have taken place in Australia in January 2024. Now I don't understand anything about cricket (some variant of baseball, right?), but it's a heck of a story and even got a couple of tears from me. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 18:00, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

Literal who?

Since when should anyone here care what rando Matt Walsh says? (And arguably, since when in the past week, or 6 months, should anyone care about Nikki Haley either?) More seriously for a WP publication, the article in question does not claim nor quote Walsh as implying that WP reports on anything like Haley's skin color. The entirety of the article that has to do with WP is a quote from Walsh: ... And when I found out, like most people, I said, what? Nikki Haley isn't white? And I had to go check Wikipedia, and sure enough, like, oh, she's from -- her family's from India. I had no idea.

So how does article this warrant even a mention here, much less 200 words? SamuelRiv (talk) 18:44, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

We pick ITM items based on a mix of tips, personal interest, and patrolling of news aggregation newsfeeds. This one happened to appear on my radar the third way, indicating that at least the aggregator thought it was newsworthy. It's worth pointing out that Matt Walsh is deemed a notable commentator by our own standards (I decided not to link his name in the item for reasons). Two of us on the Signpost team worked this item, so I'll stand by to see if the other author has anything more to say about it. ☆ Bri (talk) 19:21, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

Am I the only person who sees a conceptual switcheroo in this? First of all, just to address the elephant in the room here, Nikki Haley is not really brown... So, if Nikki Haley's brown, she's only brown in the sense that any white person is brown. I'm not doubting that Haley's family is really from India. They are. But the point is that if she doesn't tell you she's brown, you would never know. In fact, like most people, I didn't find out until this election cycle that Haley is Indian. And when I found out, like most people, I said, what? Nikki Haley isn't white? And I had to go check Wikipedia, and sure enough, like, oh, she's from -- her family's from India. I had no idea. All that to say her stories of anti-brown persecution strain credulity from the start.

He's complaining that Nikki Haley claims she's brown, says he didn't believe it until he checked Wikipedia where he found out that her family is from India. I would have thought that any political commentator would have known that she was ethnically Indian back when she was UN ambassador, or maybe during last year's debates when two Indian-Americans, Haley and Vivek, were on the stage together. But he's not talking about Indian ethnicity, the elephant in the room is her skin-color. So, according to him, he hears Haley is brown-skinned and checks out Wikipedia and sure enough learns that she is Indian. Totally bogus IMHO. The rest is just as bogus. No discrimination in SC in the 1980s (!). That she is creating stories about anti-brown persecution. (Just bogus).

ML King said "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character". Walsh would disagree with me on this being an important priciple, I'm sure. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 22:01, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

SF Gate

I'm noticing that an SFGate article was mentioned in this, but is attributed to the San Francisco Chronicle. While the two newsrooms were connected historically, they were split in 2019 and have since then been independent of one another. My apologies for not catching this before publication, but would someone please correct the attribution in the article? — Red-tailed hawk _(nest) 20:47, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

User:Red-tailed hawk Good catch! It's SFGATE. I thought I keep pretty good track of these things, but, 5 years after the fact, I guess I haven't. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 22:31, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

In brief

I took a look at the article Military operations in Ukraine (from 2022), and it is as you'd expect, for example citing from "westerners" only Nicolas Sarkozy and Elon Musk on the territorial integrity of Ukraine. Related articles are similarly partisan. All the best: Rich Farmbrough 09:08, 1 February 2024 (UTC).

Tell it like it is

The New York Post was shocked to learn that Katherine Maher, the new NPR CEO, had tweeted in 2018 that "Donald Trump is a racist".

The Signpost missed an opportunity to note that former reality television actor Donald Trump has been accused of racism since at least the early 1970s (see Racial views of Donald Trump), and that the New York Post has been shilling for Trump since the 1980s.[1] Viriditas (talk) 23:28, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

Harper's Magazine

"Comprised of" isn't a "grammatically incorrect phrase". Even Giraffedata himself says it isn't. Nardog (talk) 01:45, 12 February 2024 (UTC)

News and notes: Wikipedian Osama Khalid celebrated his 30th birthday in jail (2,861 bytes · 💬)

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• Justice for Osama and Ziyad. Oltrepier (talk) 19:34, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

  +1. I just noticed he now has a biography: Osama Khalid. Andreas JN466 21:22, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

  +2 Sandizer (talk) 22:47, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

• "... at one independent affiliate event, the organization’s leaders brought in army members to do military style exercises with children, resulting in its suspension until new leadership was elected" -- Well then it wasn't independent, was it? Sandizer (talk) 22:47, 1 February 2024 (UTC)
• With regard to the report on child rights, I wonder what the Foundation could possibly do about this point (from the exec summary)

Risk: Exposure to harmful content (CRC 19)

A child may be exposed to unwelcome and inappropriate content on the platform. Content that may be classified as “harmful” on pages of Wikimedia projects include bloody or violent images (e.g., medical images), content detailing self-harm or eating disorders, hateful or racist speech, pornography, sexually explicit images, and child sexual abuse material. JMWt (talk) 08:35, 6 February 2024 (UTC)

There are some interesting and possible recommendations mentioned in the previous 2022 Human Rights Impact Assessment:

• Provide access to a geotargeted suicide prevention hotline at the top of the articles on Suicide Methods.
• Create child safeguarding tools, including child-friendly guidance on privacy settings, data collection, reporting of grooming attempts, the forthcoming UCoC as well a “Child’s Guide to Editing Wikimedia Project” to help advance the right of children to be civically engaged.

The first one was "ongoing" and the second one was "no action and pending full child rights impact assessment", according to previous comments by WMF human rights team. Thanks. SCP-2000 14:01, 6 February 2024 (UTC)

Opinion: Until it happens to you (4,649 bytes · 💬)

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Damnit, now I need spaghetti Bolognese. All the best: Rich Farmbrough 15:38, 31 January 2024 (UTC).

@Rich Farmbrough: That was the plan all along... : D But seriously, thank you for the feedback, I appreciate it! Oltrepier (talk) 19:26, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

I'm reminded of the time -- many years ago -- where I typed in Google a very distinctive sentence from material I added to the article Lake Tana. (IMHO it was distinctive because it was an awkward & clumsy sentence.) And I found that what I wrote about the largest lake in Ethiopia had been copied in the webpages of a couple dozen travel agencies headquartered in Ethiopia. I contemplated alerting someone to this, but let it go: so much has been stolen from various Third World countries that I could tolerate a little plagiarism. Especially as it was not my best writing. -- llywrch (talk) 23:39, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

@Llywrch: I think we might assume good faith about that, too... : D Oltrepier (talk) 21:43, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

Heh. I remember one of the websites that used that sentence even commented on the oddity or awkwardness of the sentence. So I'm convinced that they copied the Wikipedia article. But as I wrote above, I really don't care that it happened. (On the other hand I've found a number of NGOs working in Ethiopia copy paragraphs from Wikipedia into their reports without attribution, so that might be worth pursuing for plagiarism.) -- llywrch (talk) 23:59, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

It’s all too common. There’s a fair chunk of The Tottenham Outrage and Walthamstow Tram Chase: The Most Spectacular Hot Pursuit in History that was directly lifted from the text I wrote for Tottenham Outrage and Siege of Sidney Street. Our Outrage article was written in mid 2016; the book was published in mid-2017 and there is no attribution or recognition of either article in the book. - SchroCat (talk) 22:57, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

@SchroCat: That's sad, especially because the author likely made a profit out of that book... Oltrepier (talk) 21:45, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

• The very first Wikipedia article I wrote in 2009 was a biography of an acclaimed Dutch-American coppersmith, Dirk van Erp. Roughly five years later, I was visiting a very well known Northern California art museum that I will not name. I noticed that they had a small temporary exhibition of eight or ten of van Erp's works, with a sign on the wall - a brief biography of the artist. Sure enough, about 2/3 was lifted word-for-word from my writing, without attribution. I felt a strange combination of pride and irritation. Cullen328 (talk) 01:48, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

A couple of years ago a local history page on Facebook that I follow included a piece that I recognized was taken word-for-word from what I had written in Wikipedia, without any attribution. I did complain to the admin for the page, and it was taken down. I am well aware that act will not stop or slow down plagiarism. - Donald Albury 09:04, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

Well over a decade ago, something I had written about an obscure facet of American telephone switching systems was proposed for deletion for copyviol. Turned out, it was vice versa. It was clear from our article history that I had written it bit by bit onwiki, and the British site had copied mine, not noticing that it was irrelevant to British switching practice at the time (and spelt in Yank style). Soon our copyright police became more thorough in their investigations. Jim.henderson (talk) 05:01, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

Template:Backwards copy has its uses. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 09:30, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

I had something similar come up during my GA of James Tissot with a pair of random art blogs. One was so lazy they actually copied the wikisource markup for the image files without copying the images themselves. Orchastrattor (talk) 16:21, 7 February 2024 (UTC)

Recent research: Croatian takeover was enabled by "lack of bureaucratic openness and rules constraining [admins]" (2,781 bytes · 💬)

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While we don't have and explicit anti-regionalism policy we do have MOS:COMMONALITY which encourages use of English that will be understood across the English speaking world. This might be called an anti-insularity 'policy'. All the best: Rich Farmbrough 20:13, 31 January 2024 (UTC).

As machina translation matures, the concept of language-independent Wikipedias (or websites) will become increasingly obsolete. More and more people are using machine translation for web content; I see it in my students (Korean and Chinese) who just machine translate everything (all websites, including Wikipedias). Some are then confused - "why there are different Wikipedias"? That's the sign of times. In a decade or two merging all projects will be a major issue, and predictably, it will take decades to implement, to the puzzlement and amusement of most users who increasingly will have default auto-translate feature running in their browsers. (Related to it, learning of languages will be incraesingly marginalized - and this is happening already; google for Korean or Chinese recent policies - i.e. cuts and reduction of incentives - for language learning). The writing is on the wall. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 01:17, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

As seen in Star Trek. Everybody has a little translator stuck in his ear and they all just speak and hear their own language. We expected it to arrive in two or three centuries. Of course it will be culturally a mess. Native speakers of English are approximately one culture, as is usual for a language, though our attitudes often magnify the little local differences. Jim.henderson (talk) 00:30, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

 Comment: This was a hysterical read, considering the fact that Serbian Wikipedia absolutely did not escape a similar fate — IмSтevan ^talk 16:31, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

 Comment:The quote "lack of bureaucratic openness and rules constraining administrator behavior" could more to the point be frased as; 'lack of accountability' Andrez1 (talk) 12:24, 5 February 2024 (UTC)