Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous)/Archive 60

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Village pump (miscellaneous) archive  

This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump (miscellaneous). Please do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to revive any of these discussions, either start a new thread or use the talk page associated with that topic.

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Identity of the American ISIS fighter

A year and a half ago Kurdish forces in Syria apprehended an American, said to be fleeing a rapidly deflating ISIS. I started an article American ISIS fighter. I predicted, at its AFD, that we would soon learn his name, when lawyers filed a habeas corpus request, on his behalf.

Habeas Corpus petitions were filed. But his name has been redacted.

It seems the NYTimes determined the name, months ago, through a review of captured Daesh documents. But they didn't publish it until a few days ago.

So, is a single source, even the NYTimes, publishing a name, based on speculation, enough to rename the article? Should the article remain at the current name, but include the name, saying it is based solely on NYTimes speculation? Geo Swan (talk) 20:51, 30 October 2018 (UTC)

I think the article should not be renamed, even if The New York Times has correctly identified the individual. Compare to Deep Throat (Watergate) and Afghan Girl, both of whose names are now known. I think the body of the article can say something like, "On October 29, 2018, The New York Times reported that the name of the American ISIS fighter is ..., having determined this from an ISIS document and public records." I've omitted the name so that it doesn't appear in Wikipedia, even talk pages, until there is consensus to do so. —Anomalocaris (talk) 22:59, 30 October 2018 (UTC)

You need to provide more evidence. Was it the New York Times or someone working for them? Do third party sources accept this? TFD (talk) 00:11, 31 October 2018 (UTC)

TFD: Did you read the article and click the link, viz: Charlie Savage, Rukmini Callimachi, Eric Schmitt (2018-10-29). "American ISIS Suspect Is Freed After Being Held More Than a Year". The New York Times. Washington, DC. p. A6. Retrieved 2018-10-30. The man, a dual American and Saudi citizen, was captured in September 2017 by a Kurdish militia in Syria. The Kurds turned him over to the American military, which held him as a wartime detainee at a base in Iraq while a court battle over his fate played out. The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said he was released in Bahrain, where his wife and daughter are living.{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) CS1 maint: url-status (link) ... The individual's name is in the linked article along with their reasons for knowing it. —Anomalocaris (talk) 00:23, 31 October 2018 (UTC)

No I had not, thank you for providing the link. Other media have now picked up the NYT story so I think for now we should follow their example and mention the NYT claim. When - and it should be soon - they start using his name without qualification, then we should follow that. TFD (talk) 18:45, 31 October 2018 (UTC)

Reject "supports the Second Amendment" phraseology

I began this discussion at Talk:Second Amendment to the United States Constitution#Reject "supports the Second Amendment" phraseology. Someone recommended that I move it to Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals) but Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous) seems to me to be a better fit.

A Google search for "supports the second amendment" (with the quotes) on English Wikipedia, "supports the second amendment" site:en.wiki.x.io, has 24 results. There are several problems with Wikipedia saying that an individual or organization "supports the Second Amendment". In many cases, Wikipedia would be echoing that individual or organization's own ipse dixit claim, which is not coming from a third-party reliable source. Even if it comes from a reliable source, the phrase "supports the Second Amendment" could mean many possible interpretations of the Second Amendment, so the reader learns nothing about the individual or group's actual views on gun ownership and carry. Most important, though, is that in most cases, "supports the Second Amendment" is used to mean support for an interpretation of the Second Amendment emphasizing an individual right to own and carry guns. Until District of Columbia v. Heller, U.S. courts had continually held that the Second Amendment did not include an individual right to own and carry guns, and in this point remains controversial. Notably, a Google search for "opposes the second amendment" on English Wikipedia, "opposes the second amendment" site:en.wiki.x.io, has zero results (although that will change when this page is indexed), which suggests that groups and individuals that support limitations on gun ownership and carry do not describe themselves, and are not described by others, as opposing the Second Amendment, which in turn means that groups and individuals that generally oppose limitations on gun ownership and carry should not be described as supporting the Second Amendment. (Without restricting to English Wikipedia, there are 213,000 results for "supports the second amendment" and only 50 for "opposes the second amendment", confirming my point.)

Wikipedia should not take sides in the disputed interpretation of the meaning of the Second Amendment and should not use phrases like "supports the Second Amendment"; instead Wikipedia should say more precisely that an individual or organization supports an interpretation of the Second Amendment that ..." or otherwise describes their views on what limitations should or should not exist with respect to gun ownership and carry. I look forward to a discussion on this topic, and if there is a consensus, we can edit articles that are out of alignment with that consensus. Here are some examples of language illustrating the problem:

• Gary Leif: Leif supports the Second Amendment and is pro-life.
• Matt Gurtler: He supports the Second Amendment.
• Phil Christofanelli: He supports the Second Amendment.

After consensus forms here, I would like to be able to refer to this discussion in future edit summaries to minimize risk of reversion. —Anomalocaris (talk) 07:19, 30 October 2018 (UTC)

The issue is what should replace "supports the Second Amendment." I suggest "supports an individual right-based interpretation of the Second Amendment." Those who disagree with Heller could be described as "supports a militia-based interpretation of the Second Amendment." SMP0328. (talk) 07:28, 30 October 2018 (UTC)

SMP0328.: I think the language would be based on what the individual or organization says. We don't need one-size-fits-all language that may not fit all. —Anomalocaris (talk) 08:22, 30 October 2018 (UTC)

Anomalocaris, Why do you think that? Do you think we should refer to Charles Manson as a wrongfully convicted person or David Koresh as the Messiah because that is how they described themselves? Do you have any policy or guidelines that support your position?TFD (talk) 17:20, 30 October 2018 (UTC)

Gosh, TFD, do we need a policy to allow us to quote people or describe their views? Mitch McConnell#Guns has five direct quotations of McConnell on the issue. John Cornyn#Gun rights has one three-sentence quotation of Cornyn. Both of these sections have additional material beyond the quotations that describe each legislator's views. Does this address your concern? —Anomalocaris (talk) 18:16, 30 October 2018 (UTC)

Sorry, you didn't say we should "quote people," you said "the language would be based on what the individual or organization says." I have no problem with saying that David Koresh said he was Jesus Christ, I just have a problem with saying he is Christ based on "the language would be based on what the individual or organization says." TFD (talk) 23:46, 30 October 2018 (UTC)

TFD: I think we agree; here is my view: If Joe Shmoe says, "I am Jesus Christ," Wikipedia can say, "He said that he is Jesus Christ," or "He said 'I am Jesus Christ,'" with a link to a source. For a claim like this, a self-published source by Joe Shmoe would be fine. If Joe Shmoe says, "I believe in the right of U.S. citizens to own and carry semiautomatic weapons with no limits on the number of rounds per clip," we can quote or paraphrase that as well, and again, a self-published source such as a candidate website would be a reliable source for this kind of claim, as the individual is talking about his or her own views. —Anomalocaris (talk) 00:34, 31 October 2018 (UTC)

I agree that "supports the Second Amendment" is a value-laden label and should be added to WP:LABEL. The Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is part of the American Bill of Rights and is supported by almost all Americans across the political spectrum. They however disagree on the amount of restrictions that can legally be imposed on the right. Almost no one thinks that there should be no restrictions. To say that someone supports the amendment implies that people who interpret the amendment differently oppose it.

Using the language from D.C. v, Heller is not helpful, since it implies that supporters of stronger gun control reject the theory that the amendment provides an individual right. Generally they disagree on the restrictions that could be based on that right. Very few people for example argue that prison inmates, people with criminal records or people below a certain age should enjoy a right to keep and bear arms. Most gun control arguments revolve around handguns and so-called assault rifles.

Also, I don't think that using the language of partisans is encyclopedic, unless we clearly state that that is how they describe themselves.

TFD (talk) 14:47, 30 October 2018 (UTC)

• I also agree that the phrasing is a problem; it is used to imply that people who support a different interpretation of what the second amendment means do not support it. It is redolent of a specific political philosophy to use that phrasing in a way that makes implicit claims about their opponents that aren't necessarily true, and Wikipedia should not participate in such line-drawing. We should be precise in our language, and use phrases such as "supports unrestricted gun rights" or whatever, but not "supports the second amendment", which is vague and politically charged. --Jayron32 15:06, 30 October 2018 (UTC)

• Agree with Jayron with one caveat: if there ever actually is a serious public movement to repeal the amendment (which seems unlikely currently), then it would make sense to use this phrasing, because it would be literally true. For example, it would make sense to say someone supported the Eighteenth Amendment at a time when it was being enacted or repealed. GMG^talk 15:21, 30 October 2018 (UTC)

• I would concur with that, but that's not what we have here. What we have here is a linguistic hijacking to defame one's opponent by implication. Wikipedia need not participate in such chicanery. --Jayron32 15:23, 30 October 2018 (UTC)

• Yes, the literal meaning is "I support a particular interpretation and legislative implementation of the 2nd Amendment". That's like saying "I support the 8th amendment" as code for "I oppose civil forfeiture". GMG^talk 15:37, 30 October 2018 (UTC)

Let me see if I understand the consensus on this:

• Bad: Dr. Hugo Z. Hackenbush supports the Second Amendment.
• Acceptable, but not great: Dr. Hugo Z. Hackenbush says that he supports the Second Amendment (especially of he says this a lot).
• Better: According to Dr. Hugo Z. Hackenbush, "the Second Amendment only applies to active military personnel named Jeff".
• Best: According to Professor Quincy Adams Wagstaff, "Doctor Hugo Z. Hackenbush supports an interpretation of the Second Amendment that allows personal ownership of thermonuclear weapons, but only for adults with no felony convictions".

All of this assumes that the claims about Hackenbush meet the requirements of WP:V, WP:RS and WP:WEIGHT.

Do I understand the consensus correctly, or did I get it wrong? --Guy Macon (talk) 09:10, 31 October 2018 (UTC)

Guy Macon: In response:

• Bad: Dr. Hugo Z. Hackenbush supports the Second Amendment.

Yes, that's bad

• Acceptable, but not great: Dr. Hugo Z. Hackenbush says that he supports the Second Amendment (especially if he says this a lot).

This would be kind of a place-holder until his actual views on guns can be quoted or paraphrased.

• Better: According to Dr. Hugo Z. Hackenbush, "the Second Amendment only applies to active military personnel named Jeff".

Well, if that's what he says.

• Best: According to Professor Quincy Adams Wagstaff, "Doctor Hugo Z. Hackenbush supports an interpretation of the Second Amendment that allows personal ownership of thermonuclear weapons, but only for adults with no felony convictions".

We don't generally need "according to", as this is implicit in the references we should supply. We might say, "In a 2017 interview with Terry Gross on Fresh Air, Dr. Hackenbush said that he supports an interpretation of the Second Amendment that allows personal ownership of assault rifles and bump stocks, but only for adults with no felony convictions."

All of this assumes that the claims about Hackenbush meet the requirements of WP:V, WP:RS and WP:WEIGHT.

Yes, of course. —Anomalocaris (talk) 07:24, 1 November 2018 (UTC)

Kastriot principality

Let someone rename article "Kastriot principality" to "Principality of Kastrioti", User:Doltjank is renamed the article in the last edit ... "Kastriot principality" (and "Kastriot Principality") it should be a redirect on article "Principality of Kastrioti" --SrpskiAnonimac (talk) 13:02, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

@SrpskiAnonimac: You can put request like this at WP:RMT. –Ammarpad (talk) 05:29, 27 October 2018 (UTC)

@Ammarpad: I do not know that, I do not know English. Can you do it if you know? --SrpskiAnonimac (talk) 12:33, 27 October 2018 (UTC)

SrpskiAnonimac,  Done Galobtter (pingó mió) 18:38, 30 October 2018 (UTC)

@Galobtter: Rename and article "Makovo, Republic of Macedondia" in "Makovo, Republic of Macedonia", wrongly written..."Makovo, Republic of Macedondia" should be deleted --SrpskiAnonimac (talk) 17:05, 1 November 2018 (UTC)

Requests for donations

Why do they only appear when one is not signed in? People who can be bothered to sign in are going to be more likely to contribute than IPs. Lilac Amethyst (talk) 16:32, 1 November 2018 (UTC)

They appear for logged in users as well, unless they have set their Preferences, under the "Gadgets" menu, and selected the option "Suppress display of fundraiser banners" . --Jayron32 16:40, 1 November 2018 (UTC)

Sock-puppets for hire & for-profits profiting from Wikipedia

This article opened my eyes: https://medium.com/s/powertrip/wikipedias-top-secret-hired-guns-will-make-you-matter-for-a-price-a4bdace476ae . Is there a place on these pages to discuss these things? 5.34.89.241 (talk) 05:48, 3 November 2018 (UTC)

See: WP:PAID. Blueboar (talk) 11:39, 3 November 2018 (UTC)

Hy

Note that Shin Seong-il died on 3 november according to Google. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.185.175.84 (talk) 13:04, 3 November 2018 (UTC)

Shin Seong-il has been updated to reflect his death November 4, 2018. —Anomalocaris (talk) 02:33, 4 November 2018 (UTC)

xkcd #2067 comic

Check out this xkcd comic.[1] Landmarks on the map (in gray) are links to Wikipedia articles with coordinates pointing to places in the United States. That's hilarious, isn't it? --Agusbou2015 (talk) 23:05, 3 November 2018 (UTC)

Always love me a good XKCD comic. Randall always posts something interesting. — AfroThundr ^{(u · t · c)} 02:48, 4 November 2018 (UTC)

As usual, Explain XKCD ( https://www.explainxkcd.com ) has a detailed analysis:[2] --Guy Macon (talk) 14:08, 4 November 2018 (UTC)

Self-nominations for the 2018 ArbCom elections are now open

Self-nominations for the 2018 English Wikipedia Arbitration Committee elections are now open. The nomination period runs from Sunday 00:00, 4 November (UTC) until Tuesday 23:59, 13 November 2018 (UTC). Editors interested in running should review the eligibility criteria listed at the top of Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2018/Candidates, then create a candidate page by following the instructions there. SQL^{Query me!} 18:07, 4 November 2018 (UTC)

Finding the Village Pump

Maybe I am getting dotty, but I could not find the Village Pump where I expected to get access to it, via the Community portal. Shouldn't it be findable there? How is someone not aware of it supposed to find it from the list of things we have? Kdammers (talk) 05:51, 3 November 2018 (UTC)

It's in the "Interact more" section at the top of the Community portal page. --Pipetricker (talk) 10:27, 5 November 2018 (UTC)

Loss of links to Goodreads

A recent - and in my view, very bad - decision at TfD was to delete {{Goodreads author}} and {{Goodreads book}}. I noticed today that the latter has been orphaned, and that we currently have virtually no article space links to the Goodreads website

The decision at TfD was to delete the template, and gave no mandate to remove the links, and so instances of the template should have been Subst:.

I can not find who deleted these links, but they should be restored. Links using the author template should likewise not be deleted. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 18:58, 3 November 2018 (UTC)

With the help of the dark arts and nefarious black magic which we shall not speak of - known as Webarchive'd tracking categories - I've found that many of these templates were removed by MarnetteD. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 19:19, 3 November 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for the ping J-JE. I was simply performing the task that I have done with numerous other items listed in the "too orphan" section of Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Holding cell. As I read the tfd discussion as well as this previous thread they indicate a WP:CONSENSUS for removal of the link per WP:ELNO. As far as I can tell there is no agreement for substitution. MarnetteD|Talk 19:30, 3 November 2018 (UTC)

The non-admin close falsely claims consensus for a proposition that was not proposed (indeed the very first comment on what was proposed notes that the only prior discussion (the one you also link to) found no such consensus; and the final post in that 2016 discussion says "this is not a blanket objection to Goodreads - there may be cases where the link is appropriate"). Nor would TfD have been the right place to propose it, in any case. Please restore the links you have removed. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:38, 3 November 2018 (UTC)

{{Goodreads author}} was placed in WP:Templates for discussion/Holding cell#To orphan. I don't understand why they were treated differently. I see the deletion rationale was that "Goodreads is a for-profit business" so we should be thankful that most newspapers run at a loss. Thincat (talk) 09:59, 4 November 2018 (UTC)

The rationale is Goodreads is a user-created content (UCC) service, and a social media service, which we generally don't link to per wp:elno #10 and #12. There are better and more reliable services that provide the same types of data. That we shouldn't be encouraging links to GR with a template. That wp:elburden "Disputed links should normally be excluded by default unless and until there is a consensus to include them" GR links are disputed by most editors (not all) as seen in multiple discussions. No one is trying to force a ban on GR but any use of the link should be justified on a per case basis without that I don't see reason to go out the way to keep them. It's non-trivial bot work to try and remove these templates while keeping the underlying link, that already have trouble with wp:elno -- GreenC 13:27, 4 November 2018 (UTC)

Just to be clear, is this a question about linking to goodreads completely, or is it a question about using a template to do so? Blueboar (talk) 14:07, 4 November 2018 (UTC)

The templates are already deleted. The question is handling of the deletion ie. remove the template and convert to a bare URL; or remove template entirely without a trace. The later is what was done, the former would require custom bot work and each day that goes by makes that considerably more difficult. I'm saying it's not worth the time and effort to bot this as the links are controversial anyway and should only be added with justification on a per case basis. -- GreenC 14:50, 4 November 2018 (UTC)

Do you have any evidence that the links that were removed by this ham-fisted deletion were not "added with justification on a per case basis"? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:57, 4 November 2018 (UTC)

ELNO #10 is about "social networking sites", not UGC, and #12 is about wikis, and even so allows linking to "those with a substantial history of stability and a substantial number of editors". There is clearly consensus to link to Goodreads in the articles using the deleted template, because it was not removed from those articles by their editors, prior to its deletion. There is, though, no community consensus not to link to Goodreads. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 20:11, 4 November 2018 (UTC)

There is clearly consensus to link to Goodreads in the articles using the deleted template, because it was not removed from those articles by their editors, prior to its deletion. That is not how it works. The WP:SILENT consensus by the links being in the article is overridden by the consensus at WP:ELN and WP:TFD that the vast majority of links were not appropriate; and so the use should be justified on a case by case basis. I'd say the main reason (as the closer of the Tfd) that people sought the removal, is that they didn't think Goodreads provided neutral and accurate material that is relevant to an encyclopedic understanding of the subject and cannot be integrated into the Wikipedia article due to copyright issues per WP:ELYES. Galobtter (pingó mió) 20:24, 4 November 2018 (UTC)

That is exactly how it works. And the TfD discussion reached no such consensus. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 10:12, 5 November 2018 (UTC)

Ok... let me try to clarify the situation: The two goodreads templates have now been deleted. 1) while that deletion can be challenged, this is not the venue to challenge it. 2) Assuming the deletion is upheld, the question then becomes, what next? Do we allow non-templated links or not... and if so under what circumstances? Blueboar (talk) 21:27, 4 November 2018 (UTC)

I think a discussion at WP:ELN could clarify that last question. Galobtter (pingó mió) 07:54, 5 November 2018 (UTC)

There having been no such discussion, there is no consensus for the removal of the links. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 10:12, 5 November 2018 (UTC)

I now see that even while this discussion is underway' {{Goodreads author}} has been deleted without subsitution, removing links from articles (example) This is outrageous. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 10:19, 5 November 2018 (UTC)

Yes, this is one of the flaws with automating our articles through the use of templates... if we delete a template, any link (or other information) that is automatically added by the template will no longer be added (and will in fact disappear).

The next step is for us to discuss why links to goodreads are beneficial (or not), and see if we can actually reach a consensus (as opposed to "no consensus") as to whether we should add them back manually or not. I have no opinion on this and am waiting to be convinced by the arguments of others.Blueboar (talk) 12:13, 5 November 2018 (UTC)

This would not be an issue had the deletion been handled properly, by first Subst-ing the templates 9as sis often done with other template deletions or merges). The next step is to restore the links, then someone can, if they wish, raise an RfC to remove them en mass. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 18:24, 5 November 2018 (UTC)

en wikipedia growth

why growth of en Wikipedia articles decrease than years ago example in 2006 add 665000 articles and in 2017 add 220000 articles Amirh123 (talk) 14:02, 6 November 2018 (UTC)

In part it was because, back in 2006, we were writing articles on “obvious” topics that did not require any specialization to write about. Those were topics that lots of people knew something about, and so it was easy for the average person to start an article about it. By 2017, most of these “obvious” topics were covered. We have shifted to writing articles on less “obvious”, more “specialized” topics. These are topics that fewer people can (or want to) write about, so fewer new articles get started. The pace of new article creation naturally slowed down once the “easy” topics were already covered. Blueboar (talk) 14:40, 6 November 2018 (UTC)

2005-2007 was the peak for Wikipedia quantity in most metrics: new articles, new users, number of edits etc.. After that there was a decline, but has since leveled off somewhat. Metrics on quality would look different. -- GreenC 15:21, 6 November 2018 (UTC)

Copyright of Automatically Derived Knowledge

Moved from Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)

While facts themselves are not copyrightable, at what point would a machine learning model that learned to ask and answer questions using wikipedia content be subject to the copyleft clause for wikipedia content? In terms of generative writing style, a model would be a statistical summary of the writing styles on wikipedia i.e. a derived work of the copyrightable presentation of the non-copyrightable facts. On the other hand, a reformulation of words based on reading other works is precisely what humans can and would do if they "ingested" wikipedia, and I don't believe there would be any issue with a human using wikipedia as a source of verifiable content and writing or synthesizing new text (for example question and answer texts) in their own words.

Related, is knowledge derived by analyzing meta data about wikipedia such as the link structure between articles considered derived content and therefore copyleft territory? Notabotyet (talk) 03:59, 10 November 2018 (UTC)

Interesting article from MIT about Wikipedia

I wanted to share this with the pump readers. Also posted on help desk and teahouse.

• http://news.mit.edu/2018/wikipedia-disputes-unresolved-study-1106

TimTempleton ^{(talk) (cont)} 22:46, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

"Edits to this page are currently being throttled"

If I attempt to post to Wikipedia:Reference desk/Entertainment, I currently get:

Edits to this page are currently being throttled due to an automated vandalism attack. If your edit is constructive, please ensure you are logged in to your account and try again in a few minutes. If you feel this filter is malfunctioning, you can report it.

Now, first, I have no intention of ever having a Wikipedia account. I'm talking about posting from an IP address, as I am doing here. And second, I understand that this "throttling" is going on because there have been ongoing vandalism attacks on the reference desks, and I have no problem with such actions being taken.

But there are still problems. First, there is no notification at the top of the page (as there would be if it was semi-protected) to say that this is going on. I only found out after I had composed my posting. That's not nice.

Second, there is no option (as there would be if it was semi-protected) to post an "edit request" to a page where someone more privileged can verify that the posting is constructive and post it.

Third, there is no explanation of what "throttling" even means, or what "this filter" is blocking.

Would someone please arrange for better information to be provided? --76.69.46.228 (talk) 15:14, 10 November 2018 (UTC)

You were hitting an abuse filter, and it is only possible to warn/notify you after you hit it not before. No one will explain to you what the filter is blocking as that will defeat its purpose. –Ammarpad (talk) 17:55, 10 November 2018 (UTC)

Wikipedia, like life, is not perfect. The anyone can edit mantra means stuff happens and there can be unfortunate consequences. I understand that some people don't want to create an account (I was like that for a month) but that solution is available and it's a matter of choice. There will be no public proclamation about the limitations because that would encourage more silliness. Johnuniq (talk) 23:40, 10 November 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for the answers. --76.69.46.228 (talk) 15:28, 11 November 2018 (UTC)

Photo request petition - please sign

Hi! Can you please sign the petition to TASS and RIAN requesting them to release certain historic photos for Wikimedia by adding your signature to the signature section? Also, please do spread the word to other Wikipedians. Thanks, --PlanespotterA320 (talk) 16:15, 11 November 2018 (UTC)

Flickr

I recently got an email from Flickr.

"After February 5, 2019, free accounts that contain over 1,000 photos or videos will have content deleted -- starting from oldest to newest date uploaded -- to meet the new limit. Members may always choose to download content over the limit at any time prior to these dates."

I've noticed many of the images in Wikipedia articles came from Flickr.

Perhaps we should make an effort to transfer over as much as we can before it's too late?

Benjamin (talk) 05:10, 13 November 2018 (UTC)

The Commons thread on this covers this a lot more. As for deletions, they have changed course. The images will not be deleted but normal (non-pro) users with greater than 1,000 images will just not be able to upload new images. --Majora (talk) 05:21, 13 November 2018 (UTC)

Worth noting, as linked in that thread, that Creative Commons licensed images shouldn't be deleted (at least no by Flickr). Still, this raises the issue that external websites can't be trusted to keep content forever. Sam Walton (talk) 13:30, 13 November 2018 (UTC)

Wiki Professionals Inc promises Wiki bio pages

I recently received this promotional spam. Most likely Wiki Professionals Inc is already known to the Wikipedia community, but just in case.  —Sothomensch (Tom Holzinger)

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   Fayetteville, NC 28306

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Sothomensch (talk • contribs) 05:12, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

@Jytdog: Your bailwick. I assume you know some admins who would be interested in this. --Izno (talk) 13:30, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

Yeah, I got one of those too a few days ago. How does the WMF address stuff like this? — AfroThundr ^{(u · t · c)} 09:11, 11 November 2018 (UTC)

"The real power of Wiki"? Now I want to make a Dark Dungeons / Wikipe-tan mashup... Eman235/talk 07:22, 13 November 2018 (UTC)

• Everyone should email them back and ask for a portfolio of their past work...for science. GMG^talk 11:30, 13 November 2018 (UTC)
  • Give them the sp@mnesty runaround. Eman235/talk 05:02, 14 November 2018 (UTC)

Change coming to how certain templates will appear on the mobile web

Change coming to how certain templates will appear on the mobile web

Please help translate to other languages.

Example of improvements

Hello,

In a few weeks the Readers web team will be changing how some templates look on the mobile web site. We will make these templates more noticeable when viewing the article. We ask for your help in updating any templates that don't look correct.

What kind of templates? Specifically templates that notify readers and contributors about issues with the content of an article – the text and information in the article. Examples like Template:Unreferenced or Template:More citations needed. Right now these notifications are hidden behind a link under the title of an article. We will format templates like these (mostly those that use Template:Ambox or message box templates in general) to show a short summary under the page title. You can tap on the "Learn more" link to get more information.

For template editors we have some recommendations on how to make templates that are mobile-friendly and also further documentation on our work so far.

If you have questions about formatting templates for mobile, please leave a note on the project talk page or file a task in Phabricator and we will help you.

Thank you!

CKoerner (WMF) (talk) 19:34, 13 November 2018 (UTC)

A quick note specific to English Wikipedia. This work is a follow up to the 2016 RfC related to the subject. The Reader web team made improvements in March 2018 in response – with this latest update being a continuation of that work. Thanks, CKoerner (WMF) (talk) 19:44, 13 November 2018 (UTC)

Headbomb is changing this OK with current English Wikipedia policy? -- Magioladitis (talk) 22:20, 13 November 2018 (UTC)

Volunteer retention, burnout and dropout in online voluntary organizations: stress, conflict and retirement of Wikipedians

I generally don't post information about my Wikipedia research here, but I feel this one is VERY relevant to our community, so here it goes :) I put my 10+ years of Wikipedia experience into writing this, as I think the issues I discuss there are something that is quite important for the project's (and our) well-being and future health. The official release is likely paywalled ([3]) but I did upload a pre-print copy to academia.edu ([4]), at worst, you need to create a free account to download it. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 04:09, 8 November 2018 (UTC)

Excellent paper; you made some really interesting points. I think everyone here should read this. Enterprisey (talk!) 05:19, 8 November 2018 (UTC)

Is there any chance that this could be made available at Wikibooks? --Guy Macon (talk) 05:25, 8 November 2018 (UTC)

[ https://books.google.com/books?id=DgZxDwAAQBAJ&pg=PR3&lpg=PA1 ]. --Guy Macon (talk) 05:30, 8 November 2018 (UTC)

@Guy Macon: An interesting idea, but it's an article, not a book. Well, a book chapter. Not sure if it is in-scope for that project.--_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 03:09, 13 November 2018 (UTC)

On reflection, it might be a better fit at Wikisource.[5] That is assuming that you own the copyright on your own words and that Emerald publishing didn't make you assign the copyright to them or not be published. See Open access and Copyright transfer agreement. --Guy Macon (talk) 14:46, 13 November 2018 (UTC)

TBH I don't know what is their archival policy and I can't be bothered wasting time to find it out, since I already put a non-paywalled copy up in academia. If someone finds out what policy they have, ping me and I'll see about uploading a free copy to wiki servers. It's pointless to do it before that, as some trigger happy paranoia admin may delete it just in case. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 09:24, 14 November 2018 (UTC)

template for requesting language check?

Hi, is there any maintenance template requesting that an article be checked by a native speaker of English for grammatical and/or spelling mistakes? Some hours ago, I overhauled some parts of maximal entropy random walk and wondered in some places whether the sentence order is correct (e.g. choose $S_{ij}$ stochastic matrix such that) or if nouns are missing articles (e.g. all vertices but the marked ones have additional self-loop or analogy to electrons in defected lattice of semi-conductor). However, not being a native speaker of English, I cannot decide whether this is just a matter of style.

If there is an appropriate maintenance template, please tell me so I can place it in the article; or, if someone just happens to have time, feel free to check the article now. --78.50.153.140 (talk) 19:31, 11 November 2018 (UTC)

Looks like {{Copy edit}} should do the job, since {{grammar}} and {{cleanup-english}} redirect to it. You can add a "reason=" parameter saying "grammar" or just "English" (I think that's clear enough). For that article specifically, I'm not a native speaker either, but indeed there are quite a few fairly obvious errors and your edits seem fine, so considering the backlog (~half a year), you could try fixing most of that yourself if you want. (For the first example, I believe that after adding the article, the style choose $S_{ij}$ a stochastic matrix such that... is correct, which may be useful when you want to clearly indicate the new notation before giving its very long definition, but otherwise it's too formal/archaic and the usual order is better). Tokenzero (talk) 11:46, 14 November 2018 (UTC)

YouTube

Was there any discussion about YouTube using Wikipedia content? Benjamin (talk) 06:48, 14 November 2018 (UTC)

Yes. A little discussion here after the feature went live. There were also some discussions before then which I can't locate now. There's also Wikipedia:YouTube links to Wikipedia. –Ammarpad (talk) 14:21, 14 November 2018 (UTC)

Queen Street (Toronto)

At Talk:Queen_Street_West#Requested_move_13_November_2018 I requested a move and got 2 supports. The idea was to move Queen Street West to Queen Street (Toronto), but I've found some issues. First of all, Queen Street, Toronto exist, which would become a redirect. I created a page at User:BrandonXLF/Queen Street (Toronto), that would become the new Queen Street (Toronto). The issue is Queen Street (Toronto) exist, so do we need to do a history merge (meaning Queen Street (Toronto) would have to be deleted)? If so, do we move User:BrandonXLF/Queen Street (Toronto) to it (which takes content from Queen Street West), or do we merge Queen Street West to it then add the content at User:BrandonXLF/Queen Street (Toronto) to it (I added a lot of extra content and rewrote/created many sections of the article). Of course, Queen Street West isn't being deleted so we can just provide attribution using {{copied}} and an edit summery? Is that sufficient? – BrandonXLF ^(t@lk) 02:55, 15 November 2018 (UTC)

I'll just provide atrrubution. If anyone has issues with that, just let me know. – BrandonXLF ^(t@lk) 16:05, 15 November 2018 (UTC)

Erie is within Pennsylvania

Currently, Category:Unassessed Pennsylvania articles has Category:Unassessed Lehigh Valley articles‎ and Category:Unassessed Philadelphia articles, but not Category:Unassessed Erie articles. Please add Erie as a category within Pennsylvania.--Dthomsen8 (talk) 13:48, 15 November 2018 (UTC)

 Added @Dthomsen8: You should just add the parent category in the subcat like you do in normal article pages. –Ammarpad (talk) 14:29, 15 November 2018 (UTC)

Thank you very much for your help.--Dthomsen8 (talk) 17:26, 15 November 2018 (UTC)

Backlog at New Pages Review - Vote NOW for better tools

NPR NEEDS YOU! New Page Reviewers operate the only firewall against junk, attack, spam, and undeclared paid editing which has aways made up the majority of a day's intake of new pages masquerading as articles. Community Wishlist Voting is taking place now until 30 November for the Page Curation and New Pages Feed improvements, and other software requests. The NPP community is hoping for a good turnout in support of the requests to Santa for the tools that are urgently needed. This is very important as the Foundation has been constantly asked for these upgrades for 4 years. The Page Curation suite of tools now stands a good chance of getting long awaited attention to the upgraded tools it needs, but it needs your help: whether you are an active patroller or just want a junk-free encyclopedia, the Community Wishlist Survey – needs you: Vote NOW, and do also consider applying to become a New Page Reviewer. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 12:01, 18 November 2018 (UTC)

Community Wishlist Survey vote

The Community Wishlist Survey. Please help translate to other languages..

Hey everyone,

The Community Wishlist Survey is the process when the Wikimedia communities decide what the Wikimedia Foundation Community Tech should work on over the next year.

The Community Tech team is focused on tools for experienced Wikimedia editors. The communities have now posted a long list of technical proposals. You can vote on the proposals from now until 30 November. You can read more on the wishlist survey page.

/User:Johan (WMF)

18:13, 22 November 2018 (UTC)

RFC:Backlog at Wikipedia:Contributor copyright investigations

There is a serious issue with a backlog at this page that needs urgent attention by the wider community and some measure to fix this issue permanently.

Wikipedia talk:Contributor copyright investigations#Backlog back to 2010

Lurking shadow (talk) 21:43, 15 November 2018 (UTC)

This issue seems worthy of some attention, so I made the above link to the discussion more prominent. --Pipetricker (talk) 13:10, 24 November 2018 (UTC)

Regality theory

I have looked for the article on the reagality theory but I have not been able to find it. Has it been deleted? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 181.22.87.129 (talk) 22:15, 23 November 2018 (UTC)

It has been deleted after discussion: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Regality theory. –Ammarpad (talk) 07:02, 24 November 2018 (UTC)

Makovo, Macedonia

Article "Makovo, Macedonia" needs to be renamed to "Makovo, Republic of Macedondia" (there are two more similarly written articles, see here: Category:Villages in Novaci Municipality...see also here: Makovo). Article "Makovo, Republic of Macedondia" should be deleted because it is wrongly written. --SrpskiAnonimac (talk) 15:42, 24 November 2018 (UTC)

Infoboxes of political bios.

May we have some input at two Rfcs occurring on the talkpage of Wikipedia:WikiProject Biography/Politics and government? It concerns infobox content of politician bios. GoodDay (talk) 16:52, 24 November 2018 (UTC)

Paid News

Please verify the articles of the user: الصبي الهندي, its showing something like paid news, the user is also updated the same articles in malayalam wikipedia, but there is no other articles are there with his id. Check the statistics In English Wiki, in Malayalam Wiki- Rajesh K Odayanchal (talk) 11:54, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

Fundraising

Hey Everyone,

Today, Tuesday 27th November @ 16:00 UTC, we will launch our desktop banner campaigns with mobile launching on Thursday. We expect to run the fundraising campaign on English Wikipedia in 6 countries: USA, Canada, UK, Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand. You may notice some final systems tests running between now and then.

Banners and Ideas

You can see all of our current most effective fundraising banners on our Fundraising Ideas page where you can also contribute any specific ideas or stories we should tell via social media, banners, emails etc. ( http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising/2018-19_Fundraising_ideas )

Like last year, we will come to you for ideas and suggestions to test. In addition to bringing in donations, we aim to use the campaign to educate all readers about Wikipedia and the community who creates it. The fundraising team’s A/B testing strategy works in iterative steps, so look at our banners and have a think about what one element you would change or add and how would you make it different. Think of sentences we can use to tell our story that would make you proud. Look at other non-profit websites and see if there are ideas that you think we should try.

To get people thinking, here is a list of things of what works and what does not:

WHAT WORKS

• Localisation - We refer to which country the reader is from, what day it is and the general type of device they use (mobile or desktop).
• Reverse Social Proof/Exceptionalism - Unlike other commercial or non-profits, our donors like to feel special. (They should. They are.)
• A personal, frank tone - Words like humbly or sincerely are important in asks
• Anchoring the donation amount - We refer to the $3 small amount, we refer to the average donation amount and in email we refer to past donation amounts.
• Coffee and Ubiquity - It works, mainly because it is something that is common in many people’s lives. Coffee, metro lines, libraries, public parks etc.

WHAT DOESN'T

• Social proof (http://en.wiki.x.io/wiki/Social_proof) - It’s a well known concept that individuals will align their actions to others in order to acquire acceptance from a wider group. It is a concept used very broadly in both commercial and non-profit worlds. We've been told by people from all industries, academics and from our communities that this works. For Wikipedia it doesn't. We've tried and tested and re-tested again and again. It really doesn't work for us
• Idealism - Wikipedia: As long as the internet/the world exists, we pledge that Wikipedia will strive to make it a better place. Stories of helping farmers or children across the world.
• Breadth - Facts like: English Wikipedia just passed 5 million articles. From Argentina to Zimbabwe, your gift keeps the world learning.

Reporting Issues

If you see any technical issues with the banners or payments systems please do report it on phabricator: http://phabricator.wikimedia.org/maniphest/task/create/?template=118862

If you see a donor on a talk page, OTRS, or social media with questions about donating or having difficulties in the donation process, please refer them to: donate wikimedia.org.

Here is also the ever present fundraising IRC channel to raise urgent technical issues: #wikimedia-fundraising ( http://webchat.freenode.net?channels=%23wikimedia-fundraising&uio=d4)

A huge thank you to everyone here who works to create and support Wikipedia and who make it a resource that people love and want to donate to. Fingers crossed!

Regards Seddon (WMF) (talk) 14:53, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

RfCs: uncalled races, open seats, "seats before"/"seat change"

Please comment:

• RfC: When has a candidate won an election?
• RfC: Definition of "open election" or "open seat"
• RfC: "Seats before" and "seat change"

Thank you. Levivich (talk) 01:51, 30 November 2018 (UTC)

Want administrative subdivisions

hi I want a web site to have all : Provinces, Prefectures, Counties, Cities, Districts and... more in all countries around world Amirh123 (talk) 15:32, 20 November 2018 (UTC)

If you want your own website, why are you coming to us? CoolSkittle (talk) 05:43, 23 November 2018 (UTC)

what site have all Provinces, Prefectures, Counties, Cities, Districts and... — Preceding unsigned comment added by Amirh123 (talk • contribs) 14:18, 23 November 2018 (UTC)

@Amirh123: I don't know about a website, but there is a book that covers this: Administrative Subdivisions of Countries: A Comprehensive World Reference 1900 through 1998. Knowledge questions are better asked at Wikipedia:Reference desk, you will get a better (and faster) response there. SpinningSpark 12:17, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

You may also find what you are looking for at our article List of administrative divisions by country, but there is no guarantee that we have included all divisions. SpinningSpark 12:49, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

Wikipedia: Requested Articles

Is there a time limit on how long red-linked requested articles should stay at Wikipedia: Requested articles? Vorbee (talk) 17:57, 28 November 2018 (UTC)

No. Just use common sense. After several years if entry remains red, then the odds are it's not notable. I know a lot of editors use to purge such redlinks. –Ammarpad (talk) 07:09, 2 December 2018 (UTC)

Another thing to do is to turn it into a redirect to an article that mentions the topic. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 08:32, 2 December 2018 (UTC)

What's the right venue to ask for more eyeballs on a proposed rollback?

I'm looking for the right venue in order to attract more eyeballs to a discussion about a proposed large rollback at Roman diocese. The discussion is already listed at two WikiProjects (and has garnered one response) and I've pinged the top ten editors. WP:3O doesn't seem to be the right place to go, because that's for disputes that have been "thoroughly discussed on the article talk page", and this hasn't been because the other party will not engage there or on his user page. WP:DR doesn't seem right either, since DR is "an informal place to resolve small content disputes" and this is not small, and not a dispute since they won't talk. WP:HD and WP:RD are not appropriate. So, where do I post to ask for feedback? I'm a bit nervous about pulling the trigger to reduce an article by 130 kb without a few more opinions, although I think it's the right thing to do. How do I get more eyeballs on this, or do I just go ahead and do it, and see if anyone objects? (Ping please.) Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 21:52, 1 December 2018 (UTC)

It occurred to me that if I'm nervous about it, other editors might be avoiding it for the same reason. It's a big, scary, rollback; I get it. Somewhere or other, I saw a list of "admins willing to engage on difficult editor disputes" or something like that; I wonder if there's something analogous for content issues, i.e., a list of "editors willing to engage on large rollbacks" or some such. I'm not afraid to roll this back to a stub and I'll do it if no one responds because it's the right thing to do, but I just think it would be better to have feedback first. Mathglot (talk) 22:12, 1 December 2018 (UTC)

Milevska Planina

Can someone rename the article "Milevska Planina" in "Milevska planina"...that the article be written the same as other articles about the mountains in Serbia and Bulgaria (see: Category:Mountains of Serbia and Category:Mountains of Bulgaria), with a small letter "P" --SrpskiAnonimac (talk) 23:03, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

@SrpskiAnonimac:  Done. In the future, this sort of request should be made at Wikipedia:Requested moves. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 23:35, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

@Ahecht: I do not know that, I use Google Translate

See this: Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous)/Archive 60#Makovo, Macedonia --SrpskiAnonimac (talk) 00:58, 30 November 2018 (UTC)

I want an article about me

Do you think these people would write and get accepted a nice article about me? I'm a great guy. https://www.legalmorning.com/writing-services/wikipedia-articles/ Rhadow (talk) 19:13, 1 December 2018 (UTC)

If you pay them enough, I am sure they would be happy to write one for you. Whether we would accept what they submit is another question entirely. Blueboar (talk) 19:23, 1 December 2018 (UTC)

User: Rhadow in order to have an article written about you, you would have to pass the notability threshold. Vorbee (talk) 16:35, 2 December 2018 (UTC)

If I have enough money to pay this outfit to write a vanity article about me, do you think that would make me notable enough? Rhadow (talk) 16:44, 2 December 2018 (UTC)

No. Britmax (talk) 16:47, 2 December 2018 (UTC)

Opening a new page for publishing my work on cinematography

Hi Team,

   I am interested in opening a page to publish my works in the field of cinematography. Kindly assist me in creating one.

Thanks & Regards, Ashokkumar — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ananee05 (talk • contribs) 16:03, 2 December 2018 (UTC)

@Ashokkumar: See User:Ian.thomson/Howto for instructions on how to write an article that will not be deleted. You are writing about yourself, so be sure to pay extra attention to the second set of instructions. Ian.thomson (talk) 16:12, 2 December 2018 (UTC)

English people and Little Englanders

These articles both feature a "Not to be confused with" notice to each other, but this seems more comical than functional to me. I can't see how anyone would assume that "Little Englander" is a generic term for English people, nor why anyone searching for the term "English people" would in actual fact be looking for this rather ephemeral article. It's as though we prefixed the article on Dawn French with a notice saying "Not to be confused with the ethnic group from France". Am I missing something, or should these notices be removed? --Newbiepedian (talk · C · X! · L) 18:42, 2 December 2018 (UTC)

@Newbiepedian: First, I'd make a good-faith effort to see if the question has been discussed on either article talk page or, in the case of English people, its archives. It's a fairly minor issue, so let's assume it has not for the sake of discussion. I personally would trust my own judgment and remove both per WP:BOLD, and see if either edit is challenged. If you lack that much confidence (and there's a lot to be said for reasonable caution and knowing the limits of one's experience and knowledge), you could raise the issue on both article talk pages and see if there is any disagreement. If none after, say, 10 days, then remove both. But regardless, a minor content issue such as this doesn't need to be brought to a public forum like Village Pump.
(Your choice of username doesn't show much foresight, if I may say so, although I believe username policy would allow you to change it at some future date when it has become grossly inaccurate.) ―Mandruss ☎ 22:49, 2 December 2018 (UTC)

New BAG nomination

I have put in my name for consideration of the Bot Approvals Group. Those interested in discussing the matter are invited to do so here. Thank you for your input. Primefac (talk) 00:42, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

Wikipedia Cultural Diversity Observatory: Phase 2 Monitoring the Culture Gap

I am writing to tell you that the project Wikipedia Cultural Diversity Observatory (WCDO) has presented a plan for a second phase to extend the project and provide tools based on the data collected.

As a reminder, the WCDO aims at providing valuable strategic data in order to fight for more cultural diversity in each Wikipedia language edition. In the previous phase, we collected the Cultural Context Content (CCC) datasets for all 300 language editions and provided some top priority articles for different topics such as women-men, geolocated, among others (named Top CCC articles). The infrastructure for the project has been set (datasets and website).

In this new phase, we plan to create many more tools and visualizations: Top CCC article lists based on community member suggestions, but most importantly, to create a tool to monitor the gaps on a monthly basis and serve it as a newsletter. This way editors are able to constantly see the efforts dedicated to create geolocated articles or cultural context content more in general related to other language editions.

Also, we plan to research on marginalized languages in order to see which have more potential to become a new Wikipedia language edition, start creating content about their cultural context ("decolonizing the Internet"), and increase the overall cultural diversity of the project. Most of the project efforts are dedicated to data-compiling and analysis. However, there is a lot of work to do in disseminating the results and tools so they can create more impact in helping local events such as contests. If you think you can join the project, please write us at tools.wcdo@tools.wmflabs.org. If you consider this may be helpful, please help us, provide some feedback and endorse the project.

You take a look at the project plan here: meta:Grants:Project/WCDO/Culture Gap Monthly Monitoring

Thanks in advance for your time. All the feedback is welcome. Best, --Marcmiquel (talk) 14:18, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

List all articles

First 5 articles on Wikipedia, as reported by API:Allpages sorted alphabetically

• !
• !!
• !!!
• !!!Fuck You!!!
• !!!Fuck You!!! And Then Some
• <5 million more>

-- GreenC 16:43, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

Yes, some bands and albums have weird names. Anomie⚔ 23:35, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

New Wikimedia password policy and requirements

The Wikimedia Foundation security team is implementing a new password policy and requirements. You can learn more about the project on MediaWiki.org.

These new requirements will apply to new accounts and privileged accounts. New accounts will be required to create a password with a minimum length of 8 characters. Privileged accounts will be prompted to update their password to one that is at least 10 characters in length.

These changes are planned to be in effect on December 13th. If you think your work or tools will be affected by this change, please let us know on the talk page.

Thank you!

CKoerner (WMF) (talk) 20:02, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

Question about other user's edits.

Don't know the correct board for this, but user keeps editing articles to add information that the article persons are christian, in places it doesn't need to be stated, but on the flipside has edited another article to remove information denoting that this person is Jewish, claiming that it is irrelevant information. Is this bad faith editing? @Tornado chaser: -glove- (talk) 00:08, 7 December 2018 (UTC) -glove- (talk) 23:57, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

Perhaps? It is certainly odd, and is arguably a disruptive removal of content. If I had come across this myself, I would likely have responded with a {{subst:uw-delete1}} banner (I see now that Tornado chaser actually did this already). Otherwise, just continue editing and wait for them to either explain themselves, get bored and stop being disruptive, or do something that is a more flagrant violation. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 00:13, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

What is the (better) corresponding page on English Wikipedia?

I would like to know which is the correct link in English wikipedia for [this] page.Adithyak1997 (talk) 07:19, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

Already linked to Wikipedia:Signpost. –Ammarpad (talk) 07:45, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

@Ammarpad: My main doubt is whether it was incorrectly linked. I think I have seen it in yet another page in English wikipedia with the same data.Adithyak1997 (talk) 10:29, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

Seems like we found the answer to this at WT:Wikipedia Signpost. (ping) --Pipetricker (talk) 15:53, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

how many wikipedia articles creating with bots

all wikipedias has 49 2000 000 articles I want know how many articles creating with bots — Preceding unsigned comment added by Amirh123 (talk • contribs) 17:49, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

It doesn't seem very likely. I'm not an expert on which user groups can create articles, but all new articles should be checked to make sure that they meet WP:GNG.--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 18:14, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

@Ianmacm: Amirh123 seems (to me) to be asking how many articles Lsjbot (and other bots) created across Wikipedias. It's probably somewhere around ten million. Jc86035 (talk) 18:35, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

For those who aren't familiar with Lsjbot (including me) it is a bot that can create articles. It was used extensively on the Swedish language Wikipedia to create stub class articles about living organisms.[6]--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 05:20, 8 December 2018 (UTC)

Form of language

There is a form of words on Referring to 1924 Prime Minister's Resignation Honours "The King has been pleased to direct the following be sworn of His Majesty's Most Honourable Privy Council:"

That seems to me to be archaic and unencyclopedic. It is a direct copy of the London Gazette announcement; wikipedia in 2018 is not bound to follow anachronistic rhetorical flourishes used in court announcements.

Although this much should be obvious to us all, User:Wikimandia objects that we should use this wording - see Talk:1924 Prime Minister's Resignation Honours.

I'd be grateful for discussion & opinion here, a posting on Wikipedia:WikiProject Orders, decorations, and medals having gone unanswered. --Tagishsimon (talk) 01:11, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

@Tagishsimon: No, I am afraid this village pump is not for discussing and solving such kind of content dispute. Try Wikipedia:Third opinion or see #Resolving content disputes with outside help for more appropriate venues. –Ammarpad (talk) 07:51, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

Thanks - done. I've asked that discussion be centralised at Talk:1924 Prime Minister's Resignation Honours#Form of language --Tagishsimon (talk) 11:49, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

Moving published articles to draft

Do we have a policy on when and how published articles may be moved to draft?

While it's better than deletion in some cases. I'm concerned that it occurs with no wider community attention, and may be a de facto as a "deletion by stealth".

Even speedy deletion requires two editors to be in agreement.

Perhaps we should have a template, like {{Db}}, but for this use case? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 12:16, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

Pigsonthewing, There's WP:DRAFTIFY. Perhaps also of interest is WT:Drafts#Non-reviewers draftifying pages Vexations (talk) 15:20, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

Thank you. Those links heighten my concerns. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 15:49, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

Renaming Zodiac Seats U.S. to Safran Seats

Please visit Talk:Zodiac Seats U.S.#Requested move 4 December 2018 to discuss moving Zodiac Seats U.S. to Safran Seats. --Jax 0677 (talk) 15:47, 8 December 2018 (UTC)

Won't somebody please think of the children?

You are invited to join these discussions:

Wikipedia:Deletion review#1960–61 United States network television schedule (Saturday morning)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/1980–81 United States network television schedule (Saturday morning)

Thank you.

Levivich (talk) 16:58, 8 December 2018 (UTC)

A comprehensive parent article about non-theatrical films

Shouldn't there be a main article that encompasses the subjects of non-theatrical films like Direct-to-video and Television film? The two articles don't need to merge immediately, but I was thinking: Direct-to-video films are often shown on TV, and Television films will eventually released on home media and digital anyway. Plus, there's a trend among streaming services (like Netflix and Amazon Video) that they offer original films. That's actually a blend of both mediums, because such services act like a mix of premium TV channels (without linear TV presence) and home media platform (without physical releases). JSH-alive/^{talk/cont/mail} 12:21, 26 November 2018 (UTC)

JSH-alive, The first step would be to come up with a title for the article that people would be likely to search for. · · · Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 04:34, 28 November 2018 (UTC)

Okay. Non-theatrical film, maybe? JSH-alive/^{talk/cont/mail} 06:22, 28 November 2018 (UTC)

It's not exactly what you are looking for but Non-linear media somewhat covers some of this.  DiscantX —Preceding undated comment added 23:56, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

That seems to be about on-demand media online in general. What I want is an article about the films that are not designed for theatrical release (A.K.A. direct-to-whatever films) in general. JSH-alive/^{talk/cont/mail} 16:05, 9 December 2018 (UTC)

Experiment: Eliciting New Editor Interests (Update)

Hi all. An update about the experiment for eliciting new editor interests mentioned here earlier. documented, the first design of the experiment did not result in enough responses in the second stage. We have iterated on it based on the learnings and designed a new one which has significantly reduced the steps and cognitive load which was required in the first trial. In the coming 48 hours, we will start reaching out to those who registered on enwiki in September 2018 or later to encourage them to participate in the new design of the experiment. We do not expect this test to have impact on experienced editors. If you do observe an issue, please ping me here or on the project's talk page. Thank you! --LZia (WMF) (talk) 23:27, 10 December 2018 (UTC)

What is being able to edit Wikipedia worth to you?

I'm working to measure the value of Wikipedia in economic terms. I want to ask you some questions about how you value being able to edit Wikipedia using a 10-15 minute survey.

I hope that you will enjoy it and find the questions interesting. All answers will be kept strictly confidential and will be anonymized before the aggregate results are published. Regretfully, my team and I can only accept responses from people who live in the US due to restrictions in our grant-based funding.

As a reward for your participation, we will randomly pick 1 out of every 5 participants and give them $25 worth of goods of their choice from the Wikipedia store (e.g. Wikipedia themed t-shirts).

• The survey: https://mit.co1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_7PtejPtV7DFvev3
• The study description: m:Research:How much do Wikipedians value editing Wikipedia?

--avi_gan Researcher, MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy ~~~~~

Page move request

Files Go has been renamed to Files by Google, please move Files Go to Files by Google (please keep the original page as a redirect page). Thanks. --XL-028 (talk) 03:13, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

XL-028, done; just noting that WP:RMTR is the page for requesting moves to be done that you cannot complete for technical reasons. Galobtter (pingó mió) 05:37, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

Heads-up: problematic survey research ongoing on English Wikipedia

There is currently an research survey being conducted by researchers at Dalian University of Technology. You can read about the research on Meta. The research involves asking Wikipedia editors for personal information, and then associating that personal information with their editing behaviors in order to construct personality profiles. EpochFail and I have asked the researchers a series of questions and urged them to follow best practices for responsible Wikipedia research, and to offer some basic documentation (e.g. data collection and retention, institutional review) demonstrating that this research will be conducted in an ethical fashion. The researchers have not responded adequately to our stated concerns. I am concerned that participating in this study will expose editors to risk, and recommend that editors not fill out this survey. Regards, J-Mo 20:14, 12 December 2018 (UTC)

They should have posted notification to the Village Pump anyway per WP:NOTLAB. GMG^talk 20:26, 12 December 2018 (UTC)

Important pages hidden from search engines

Some time ago, following this short discussion someone added {{NOINDEX}} to {{Undisclosed paid}}. As a result, pages on important topics such as Simon & Schuster, Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company, and Swansea University are currently excluded from Google search results (and, in the latter case, has been for a quarter of a year); despite no significant issues with the article content being identified on their talk pages. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:56, 3 December 2018 (UTC)

Update: Simon & Schuster tag removed. Apparently, the offending content was removed some time ago... Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:06, 3 December 2018 (UTC)

Technical issues

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T211043

I thought NOINDEX had no effect in mainspace? Wikipedia:Controlling search engine indexing#Indexing of articles ("mainspace") –xeno^talk 14:27, 3 December 2018 (UTC)

The articles named above do not appear in page 1 of Google results for their exact titles (though our categories, and non-English Wikipedia articles, do). The page you link to says {{NOINDEX}} "has no effect in the main (article) namespace unless the article is less than 90 days old", but its not clear whether that is 90 days since creation, or last edit. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 14:39, 3 December 2018 (UTC)

Hmm, my impression was that NOINDEX did not work on any article older than 90 days (from creation)..but articles with the {{paid}} template do indeed seem excluded from search results (but not knowledge graph). I'd ask WP:VPT, because I don't think that is supposed to happen. Galobtter (pingó mió) 14:57, 3 December 2018 (UTC)

I've pinged VPT requesting an answer, here, about the technical issue. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 15:36, 3 December 2018 (UTC)

• A look at Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company for example shows were ARE directing: <meta name="robots" content="noindex,nofollow"/>. — xaosflux ^Talk 15:46, 3 December 2018 (UTC)

  The '90 day' expiration was supposed to be fixed in phab:T166852 - I suggest someone open a phab ticket to investigate this further. — xaosflux ^Talk 15:49, 3 December 2018 (UTC)

  @Kaldari: can you take a peek at this? — xaosflux ^Talk 15:51, 3 December 2018 (UTC)

  Seems to be a glitch, that we should solve ASAP. –xeno^talk 18:17, 3 December 2018 (UTC)

  • • @Xeno, Xaosflux, and Pigsonthewing: In theory, none of those articles (if they are older than 90 days) should be noindexed. It does appear, however, that they are being noindexed and excluded from Google. I'll file a bug to get this resolved ASAP. In the meantime, I would recommend removing the NOINDEX template from {{Undisclosed paid}}. Kaldari (talk) 18:52, 3 December 2018 (UTC)
      • @Kaldari: Thank you! Please drop us the phab number for tracking when created. — xaosflux ^Talk 18:55, 3 December 2018 (UTC)
      • I've removed NOINDEX from that template per that. Galobtter (pingó mió) 19:02, 3 December 2018 (UTC)
• @Xeno, Xaosflux, and Galobtter: The bug has been fixed in master and should be fixed on English Wikipedia next Thursday afternoon PST. Kaldari (talk) 02:56, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

Policy issues

• Our drive-by tag-bombing process is not precise enough, or peer-reviewed enough, to use it to drive the deindexing process like this. Andy Dingley (talk) 15:02, 3 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Quite. Should the tag be noindexing by default? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:06, 3 December 2018 (UTC)
  • If people didn't want the articles about their companies taken out of the searches, they shouldn't have edited them. I'm sympathetic towards removing the template from articles where it is misapplied, but if an article has clearly been edited under a COI, and no one has sanitized it, tough noogies. I do partially agree with you, we should be doing a better job of using the tag appropriately, but insofar as such a tag is appropriately applied, it has the intended effect of discouraging paid COI editing. --Jayron32 16:08, 3 December 2018 (UTC)
    • "If people didn't want the articles about their companies taken out of the searches, they shouldn't have edited them." And what about the cases where there is no evidence that they have edited them? Or where the editor does have a COI, but there is nothing actually wrong the the content? Not to mention the fact that anyone can apparently have their competitors article removed from Google's index of Wikipedia by creating a throw-away account in their name. Or indeed the one about themselves, if they deem it too negative. Do we really want to give them that capability? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:17, 3 December 2018 (UTC)
      • Sorry, when I said "we should be doing a better job of using the tag appropriately" what I meant was actually "we should be doing a better job of using the tag appropriately". Also, when I said "I'm sympathetic towards removing the template from articles where it is misapplied" what I really meant was "I'm sympathetic towards removing the template from articles where it is misapplied". Sorry for the confusion. --Jayron32 16:21, 3 December 2018 (UTC)
        • Your sarcasm is unwarranted. In the cases I've highlighted, people would argue (and have previously done) that tags like this are correctly and appropriately applied. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:24, 3 December 2018 (UTC)
          • People will argue for or against any number of things. It doesn't mean that consensus is on their side. --Jayron32 13:23, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

  I agree; there's a reason why noindexing of mainspace pages is not supposed to be allowed (except within 90 days) - and I assume it is because it would be too prone to abuse, and it definitely shouldn't be up to unilateral editor action to do so; anything that isn't supposed to be viewed should be deleted. Galobtter (pingó mió) 19:05, 3 December 2018 (UTC)

My thought is that no, we should not be NOINDEXing mainspace pages, and the discussion on a page watched by only 180 editors was not sufficiently advertised to enact this change (though I think there could be technical issues at work, and the NOINDEX should be denied in the software). Is the Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act also hidden from internet search? If an article is inappropriate due to paid editing, merely sweeping it under the carpet is not the appropriate response. –xeno^talk 17:47, 3 December 2018 (UTC)

Yes, Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act was hidden from search bots (and so was not in Google results); I've removed the tag from the page, as it was added in September 2017, with no explanation on the talk page of what was supposedly amiss. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 20:00, 3 December 2018 (UTC)

• I'm finding it hard to think of a case when we should NOINDEX a mainspace page (at least as anything more than temporarily), without deleting it altogether. If there's such a problem, and we've clearly and reliably identified it, why isn't it either fixed, pruned or deleted altogether? Andy Dingley (talk) 00:44, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

• Consider this example: Special:Diff/868597398. Tag added by an IP, with no supporting information, nothing noted on talk page. (I've removed it) –xeno^talk 18:16, 3 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Like I said above, that would be a good technique for a comany's rivals (or other bad actor) to deploy. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 20:02, 3 December 2018 (UTC)
    • Indeed. It seems that the implementation was not working as intended. Great job bringing this for wider attention and hopefully this is fixed in short order. –xeno^talk 22:07, 3 December 2018 (UTC)
• I am minded to agree that putting NOINDEX into the "undisclosed paid" template was a bad move. Quite aside from the potential for abuse mentioned above, an "Undisclosed paid" template merely means that someone somewhere thinks that an article was written for pay, but without proof. I also notice that {{BLP sources}}, {{Copyvio}} and {{Medical citations needed}} don't NOINDEX a page even though they all indicate problems far more severe than paid editing (and the first two are also in the TOS). Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 08:42, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

Wikipedia and Voyager

As a thought experiment as it has been announced that Voyager 2 has entered interstellar space.

If there was an equivalent probe launched, with a modern version of the Voyager Golden Record, and Wikipedia was invited to contribute, what pages in particular should be included or created as showing what can be done? Jackiespeel (talk) 17:52, 12 December 2018 (UTC)

I'm not sure why the entire thing couldn't be included; a similar size and weight hard drive could probably hold as much or more information as all of Wikipedia. As of 2014, all of Wikimedia's wikis were about 23 TB according to Wikipedia:Size of Wikipedia. There are 30 terrabyte solid state storage devices [7] that you can hold in your hand. Though they are cutting edge and stupid expensive, they will, as all such things, come down in price and become more available in a few years. --Jayron32 18:26, 12 December 2018 (UTC)

Is there a more modern figure for 'the size of Wikipedia'? Material that could be created might include a slideshow-equivalent of the Main Pages, the evolution of a topic from 'first stub' to a Wikiproject etc.

Anyone wishing to create Wikipedia-Voyager and Wikipedia-Timecapsule should bear in mind the practical issues faced by the BBC Domesday Project. Jackiespeel (talk) 19:07, 12 December 2018 (UTC)

@Jayron32 Hauling that thing into space will cost way more than the SDD is worth, but I don't think a flash SSD is going to last 30,000 years of cosmic radiation to hit the next star system. Also, do you know whether the aliens talk SATA or NVMe? --Zac67 (talk) 20:25, 12 December 2018 (UTC)

So what could be included in WikipediaTimeCapsule(s) - terrestrial or piggybacking to some other place in the solar system other than 'a current snapshot'? Could a Wikipedia/wikiverse equivalent of the Library of Ashurbanipal be created?

The concept is a minor amusement/exercise in the practicalities - but it might have its uses (including getting round the theoretical 2038 problem etc). Jackiespeel (talk) 00:27, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

Pitch competition

Pitch competition (currently a redlink) seems widely used on WP and elsewhere, apparently referring to a competition in which participants pitch an idea to a group, which then decides which idea (if any) is best. A redirect to sales presentation seems off-target for competitions that are more like debates or persuasion than sales proposals, like research projects and Wikipedia policies. New article or a better target? —[AlanM1(talk)]— 02:20, 14 December 2018 (UTC)

@AlanM1: when searching for "pitch competition" or "pitch contest" I find things like https://southcarolinaaerospaceconference.com/pitch-competition/. Startups pitching in a competition for investor money and/or some prize. Sort of like Shark Tank, but they compete directly against each other. On Wiktionary it would probably be deleted as SoP. - Alexis Jazz 11:44, 14 December 2018 (UTC)

Very long pages

Our longest pages are, presently:

1. ‎List of giant squid specimens and sightings [732,759 bytes]
2. ‎List of compositions by Johann Sebastian Bach [720,509 bytes]
3. ‎List of compositions by Franz Schubert [715,917 bytes]
4. ‎List of Australian treaties [705,033 bytes]
5. ‎2016–17 Coupe de France Preliminary Rounds [690,244 bytes]
6. ‎List of members of the Lok Sabha (1952–present) [670,419 bytes]
7. ‎List of International Organization for Standardization standards [659,272 bytes]
8. ‎List of law clerks of the Supreme Court of the United States [656,613 bytes]
9. ‎Opinion polling for the United Kingdom general election, 2015 [656,161 bytes]
10. ‎2017–18 Coupe de France Preliminary Rounds [655,564 bytes]
11. ‎2018–19 Coupe de France Preliminary Rounds [652,633 bytes]
12. ‎List of third party performances in United States elections [652,538 bytes]
13. ‎1919 Birthday Honours [650,631 bytes]
14. ‎List of BMTC routes [644,099 bytes]
15. ‎Roush Fenway Racing [643,491 bytes]
16. ‎2017 in American television [639,597 bytes]
17. ‎Battle of Mosul (2016–2017) [637,308 bytes]
18. ‎List of unnumbered trans-Neptunian objects [636,764 bytes]
19. ‎Food Paradise [630,967 bytes]
20. ‎2018 in American television [621,078 bytes]

and we have more than 500 articles that are over 300,000 bytes. That is far too big.

I have started discussion on the talk pages of some of those listed above, as have others, so far mostly to little avail. What is to be done? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 21:10, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

In general they should be split up but to suggest anything at all risks replies such as "I think the only solution to this article is to delete it, per WP:TNT, and start over.[8] (But that editor later developed a more constructive approach). Our notability guidelines can be very unhelpful. If you split the topic of an article or list into subtopics you run the real risk of people saying the subtopic is not in itself notable and it cannot inherit its notability from its parent. People far too often take WP:INHERITED as a one-line rule when it was actually intended as nuanced advice. Thincat (talk) 16:38, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

" People far too often take <insert policy or guideline or essay> as a one-line rule when it was actually intended as nuanced advice. " is broadly true for every single piece of editing guidance at Wikipedia. --Jayron32 15:28, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

WP:INHERITED should be refactored because it is too broadly used. It is an essay not even a guideline. And it concerns "arguments to avoid in AfD discussions". That is all it is. Most of the time it is not applied that way rather as an actual rule for Wikipedia content. -- GreenC 18:40, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

I tried to add a caution to this essay, but was reverted because the essay is a "defacto guideline" (according to them). They then link to some NOTE guidelines of the special kind while ignoring other guidelines that contradict those and allow for inheritance. This essay is meant as an AfD discussion caution, not as a guideline for content. -- GreenC 01:15, 8 December 2018 (UTC)

Some current discussions, where there is resistance to splitting long pages, include: Talk:List of compositions by Johann Sebastian Bach#Problems with using this page and Talk:List of compositions by Franz Schubert#This article is far too long. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 12:45, 10 December 2018 (UTC)

Also Talk:List of United States Senate elections#Very/too long?; Talk:Opinion polling for the United Kingdom general election, 2015#Splitting and Talk:List of Confederate monuments and memorials#Ways to possibly shorten article. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 00:24, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

And Talk:Timeline of the presidency of Bill Clinton#Splitting proposal. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 14:32, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

And Talk:List of 2017 albums#Proposed: Splitting the List of 2017 albums into two articles; and Talk:Sub-national opinion polling for the 2015 Spanish general election#Page size. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 15:28, 14 December 2018 (UTC)

I think the above examples are ample evidence that we have an issue when it comes to gaining consensus to split over-long artciles. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 15:28, 14 December 2018 (UTC)

No enwiki TROLL page?

Why does enwiki not have a WP:TROLL page? Just when I needed it! It only links to mw and so. -DePiep (talk) 03:16, 15 December 2018 (UTC)

Internet troll maybe?--SamHolt6 (talk) 03:39, 15 December 2018 (UTC)

No free equivalent, but what is equivalent?

On The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt I had replaced File:Witcher 3 cover art.jpg with File:The Witcher 3 - Standard Edition Unboxing (Official Trailer) cover.jpg. I thought this was right because Wikipedia:Non-free content#Meeting the no free equivalent criterion says: "Non-free content cannot be used in cases where a free content equivalent, with an acceptable quality sufficient to serve the encyclopedic purpose, is available or could be created."

But it was rolled back by The1337gamer without comment.

When asked, The1337gamer said "Blurry, miscoloured, PEGI rating and says "PROVISIONAL" in the bottom left. Objectively inferior quality to the non-free version."

Uh yeah no argument there (though I don't think it's miscoloured), but the replacement is "an acceptable quality sufficient to serve the encyclopedic purpose" imho? But it isn't? I'm not sure I understand. - Alexis Jazz 11:36, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

Yeah no. Being somewhat higher quality is not a valid reason to prefer a non-free image over a free one. If this was the case we would be replacing scores of thousands of images with somewhat higher quality non-free versions. They're both versions of the official cover art, and so we have to go with the free one (though I'm not sure they really thought through the implications of releasing that video on youtube under a free license, but so long as it's official, that's not really our problem to second guess their corporate decisions). GMG^talk 11:42, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

@GreenMeansGo: Agreed. They release many videos with Creative Commons btw, also with gameplay. Their trademarks remain intact and in the end their business is selling games, not videos or covers. It greatly enhances their appearance on Wikipedia, which is surely worth something. - Alexis Jazz 11:29, 14 December 2018 (UTC)

Many you say? Makes me wish Video2Commons had a similar functionality to Flickr2Commons, where you could batch upload so long as the license checks out. At any rate, we should upload all the things. I'm sure Wikipedia:WikiProject Video games would be grateful to have these available for use in articles. GMG^talk 11:43, 14 December 2018 (UTC)

@GreenMeansGo: c:Category:Videos by Bandai Namco (I don't know how much there is we didn't import) - Alexis Jazz 11:46, 14 December 2018 (UTC)

Yeah, I was poking around on Commons and just saw that. I'll drop a note for WP:VG. GMG^talk 11:49, 14 December 2018 (UTC)

Someone needs to seriously reconsider this. BANDAI NAMCO does NOT own the Witcher IP or it's video games, nor to they develope or publish it. They handle physical distribution of the retail copies only. CD Projekt owns the copyrights. This is probably invalid licensing and someone should look really hard at this before they rush to use these images. -- ferret (talk) 13:24, 14 December 2018 (UTC)

I'm going to echo ferret on this one. In this particular case, there is no free equivalent because the purported "free" image is not actually free. Wikipedia has an imperative to hold itself to a higher liability standard to avoid legal action. Some PR rep accidentally releasing something they don't own on a CC license does not give us free reign to take it. Axem Titanium (talk) 19:31, 14 December 2018 (UTC)

@Axem Titanium: Are we not protected from liability for reasonably relying on the actions of an agent of the owner, with the worst case being that we have to remove the image if they decide to revoke (if that's even legally possible)? —[AlanM1(talk)]— 22:46, 14 December 2018 (UTC)

That reasoning only works when it's done from a position of genuine ignorance, as an innocent mistake. Here, we are fully aware that there has been a licensing mishap. To persist now is to knowingly commit a crime. Axem Titanium (talk) 02:12, 15 December 2018 (UTC)

• Centralize license discussion at commons:Commons:Deletion requests/Files in Category:Videos by Bandai Namco czar 17:16, 15 December 2018 (UTC)

Help to choose more appropriate title

There is an article named Student Day (Iran) as the anniversary of the murder of three students of University of Tehran on December 7, 1953 (16 Azar 1332 in the Iranian calendar), here the student refers to people who study courses in university, in other hand it is seen another anniversary about demonstrations of students to show their objection of Pahlavi on November 4, 1978 (13 Aban 1357), here the student refers to people who study courses in (elementary, secondary or high) school. By the way, I am going to collect some material relevant to 13 Aban anniversary as a paragraph into Student Day (Iran) or creating the new article, but I face with a problem for naming. How is it made difference between students who study in university and school? I exactly discuss the title.Saff V. (talk) 07:20, 15 December 2018 (UTC)

• The English language does not have separate words for students in school vs students in college/university... all are “students”. In the US, when English speakers have to make the education level clear, they specify by adding the level: “grade school student”, “high school student”, “college student” (the same is true in UK English, but the terms added for the various education levels are different). Hope that helps. Blueboar (talk) 12:20, 15 December 2018 (UTC)
• If the article is about a (quasi?) official memorial day, the infobox seems out of place, as it's about the events that are being memorialized. Also, the rest of the article is more about those events, so maybe the article(s) should be about the events, not the memorial day?

  I'll note that "college" or "post-secondary" (in the U.S. at least) is sometimes further divided by "under-graduate" (or "under-grad") and "graduate", distinguishing between students that are studying for a Bachelor's degree (or equivalent) and those that have completed a Bachelor's and are studying for higher degrees, respectively; all with or without hyphens. Not that any of those would be right for the article title, which, I think, should be named per a "standard" translation of the Farsi name (which appears to be the current name, "Student Day", right?), if it is to remain named for the memorial day. I.e. we can't rename the memorial day even though we think it might be ambiguously named . —[AlanM1(talk)]— 15:02, 15 December 2018 (UTC)

@Blueboar: Thanks for making it clear.@AlanM1:, the term of graduate usually is used for university students but one of the memorial days refers to high school students. In addition, memorial days are more notable than the events and based on "standard" translation we have to use "college student day (Iran)" and "high school student day (Iran)". Also, I will check that they were “grade school student” or “high school student”.Saff V. (talk) 11:18, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

Why bother with autoconfirmed?

Does the 10 edits and 4 days autoconfirmation have any value at all? The spammers just create accounts by the truckload, do 10 random edits to get them autoconfirmed, then warehouse the account until the next time they need to create an article. Has this really done us any good? -- RoySmith (talk) 22:51, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

The results of the ACTRIAL were positive, hence ACPERM recieving such wide support. Cesdeva ^(talk) 13:45, 18 December 2018 (UTC)

@RoySmith: That, and most people never intentionally "autoconfirmed grind", we usually stop them fast enough. SemiHypercube 13:50, 18 December 2018 (UTC)

It's not just that. A lot of LTA banned users will create autoconfirmation-buster accounts to get at their usual stomping grounds, turning those semi-protected pages into a very useful honeypot. —A little blue Bori v^_^v ^Bori! 21:40, 18 December 2018 (UTC)

Online discrimination

Off-topic

Wikimedia Foundation Administration D I S C R I M I N A T I O N    R E P O R T To whom it may concern, I noticed signficant amount of non-heterosexual discrimination on the website https://pricaonica.krstarica.com. According to their Terms of Service (https://pricaonica.krstarica.com/pravilnik/) all sorts of discrimination on any basis is prohibited. However, in practice, this Terms are being violated by their own operating team (moderators, administrators). They have practice of denying services to anyone identified as non-heterosexual. On the other hand, Terms states that indirectly or directly calling for chat about intimate topics is prohibited as well. Heterosexuals frequently make both open and indirect calls for intimate chat, and are always being ignored by their administration team (around 50 active operators at all times). Considering current social situation in the Republic of Serbia, sexual-orientation discrimination is prohibited by the Constitution of the Republic of Serbia. In practice, incidence of non-heterosexual oriented people being judged, assaulted and even murdered is quite high. Also, social stigma considering mental ilness and sexual orientation is also quite high in this country. What steps may I take? Thank you in advance. Vs6507 12:26, 21 December 2018 (UTC) @VS6507: We can not help you with potential legal problems. Nor would we in this case as that website is not controlled by anyone on this wiki, anyone on any WMF wikis, nor anyone at the Wikimedia Foundation. --Izno (talk) 13:28, 21 December 2018 (UTC) Thank you for the constructive comment. So, I am to contact local legal services for advice? Vs6507 14:32, 21 December 2018 (UTC) @VS6507: Yes. --Izno (talk) 15:12, 21 December 2018 (UTC)

Use of UTRS to appeal "community blocks" where talk page access was disabled after the fact?

This question has been bugging me. There were a few discussions in 2017 that led to the consensus that "community-imposed blocks" must be appealed to the community and cannot be unilaterally undone by an admin. But what about when talk page access was abused and then removed, and a block appeal is made by UTRS? How does the process work then? (Note that I a particular case brought this to mind, but it is already "too late" to affect that case; this is meant as a general question.) Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 16:08, 21 December 2018 (UTC)

In theory, UTRS could post an appear to the appropriate pages and let the community decide. Or the blocked user could email someone and try to convince them to post an appeal of the TPA revocation. In real life, the request would almost always be rejected, because people who end up blocked with TPA revoked are unlikely to he able to convince anyone that they should be unblocked. I suppose that if they put in a year making thousands of high-quality edits on Commons, Wiktionary, etc. they might be able to convince someone to repost an appeal. --Guy Macon (talk) 16:32, 21 December 2018 (UTC)

I would have that instead of an email to OTRS they would need to email ARBCOM and have request raised there, were all previously involved parties will get notified, enforceable conditions could be laid out, including topic bans, 1R etc. An OTRS agent requesting at WP:AN or WP:ANI would not get the true depth of the problem nor have community consensus. Gnangarra 11:11, 22 December 2018 (UTC)

Would the logical option not be to allow UTRS to make the judgement over whether to re-enable talk-page access, and then allow the normal community unblock request occur? Nosebagbear (talk) 11:32, 22 December 2018 (UTC)

Portals overwhelming our community page

Can we get some comments at the fact we list hundreds of automated portals on our community page. Pls see Wikipedia talk:Community portal#Time to get rid of the portal spam.--Moxy (talk) 14:45, 22 December 2018 (UTC)

SPER Backlog

Hello! If you are autoconfirmed and willing to help, there is currently a ~50 edit backlog of semi-protected page edit requests, see list at User:AnomieBOT/SPERTable. Thank you! — xaosflux ^Talk 16:36, 24 December 2018 (UTC)

Unresolvable content disputes?

Has there ever been a content dispute that was impossible to resolve?

I know that there are dispute resolution mechanisms, but is it possible for those to fail at establishing consensus?

ArbCom doesn't deal with content disputes, per se, so is there some other last resort for content disputes that has the final say?

Are there any issues where the community is pretty much evenly split?

Benjamin (talk) 19:09, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

It happens all the time. The goal of dispute resolution is not to create winners or losers, but to try to help achieve consensus if that is possible. There is no board, tribunal, or process to render judgment on content disputes because all content decisions here are to be made by consensus and "no consensus" is a perfectly acceptable, indeed the default, result. Regards, TransporterMan (TALK) 22:13, 18 December 2018 (UTC)

Topic-banning from a namespace or certain pages

Is topic-banning someone from the "Wikipedia talk" namespace and all village pumps allowed, or does t violate some obscure policy/guideline? Someone at AN wants to do this to me, and therefore prevent me from participating in most proposals. Kamafa Delgato _(Lojbanist)^{Styrofoam is not made from kittens.} 19:30, 23 December 2018 (UTC)

Topic bans can cover any combination of namespaces and pages. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 20:37, 23 December 2018 (UTC)

The short answer is: yes, a ban (topic or otherwise) can be construed as broadly or narrowly as the ban's language provides. Ultimately, there is no "right of participation" and the privileges provided are at the foundations sovereign discretion, in this case, delegated to a consensus of the editing community. The onus is on each of us, whom desire affiliation, to conduct ourselves in accordance with Wikipedia's terms of use to ensure we are not accruing the cause that generally precedes placement of any such ban. I am curious to know what you believe is the impetus for the discussion, whether a sanction is warranted or not (if so, what) and if one is, why are you unable to self-accord compliance, necessitating an external force such as a ban? The answers to these questions will go the distance in explaining/understanding how to best avoid any such process from being considered.--John Cline (talk) 21:52, 23 December 2018 (UTC)

wikiversity overwrites an FA (defacing the FA star)

See FA lead. It now has an extra link (image-link of an open book, see topright next to the FA-gold star). That wikiversitary link is a horror, and outdated. Bad attributions also. Que pasa? -DePiep (talk) 01:20, 25 December 2018 (UTC)

ping R8R - DePiep (talk) 01:39, 25 December 2018 (UTC)

@DePiep: can you expand on what you mean by "defacing"? This does not overlap the star on monobook or vector when I look at the page. — xaosflux ^Talk 06:15, 25 December 2018 (UTC)

FYI, that icon comes from {{Academic peer reviewed}} — xaosflux ^Talk 06:19, 25 December 2018 (UTC)

I have responded to the same query in WT:ELEM, and I'll copy my reply here:

I don't how you could conclude the WJS article would not have a star when it was, in fact, copied and pasted there from Wikipedia after the Wikipedia article had gotten its star. There, it was professionally peer reviewed and then the changes made there were reintegrated back into Wikipedia (and the journal emblem appeared soon after that). What remained in the WJS then was officially published. I am happy to have had the WJS review and I think their journal emblem rightfully belongs. That is to say, everything is perfectly fine.--R8R (talk) 10:41, 25 December 2018 (UTC)

I have little to add, other than that I've learned from Xaosflux's comment above that the icon came from an academic peer review, not a review by that particular journal. But this doesn't change my point: the article greatly benefited from the review and it is entirely fine to display that openly.--R8R (talk) 12:18, 25 December 2018 (UTC)

My questions: a. Meaning of the symbol is not clear to a reader (now initially answered). b. The link now promotes a second, older version of the same article. Which is confusing (and might be expected in section External links? OR, add superclass above/replacing FA star?). Having read R8R's comment and the icon's background, I'll have to take another look at this I guess. WP:Academic peer reviewed is missing, leaving only template for background. -DePiep (talk) 11:12, 26 December 2018 (UTC)

Invitation from Wiki Loves Love 2019

Please help translate to other languages.

Love is an important subject for humanity and it is expressed in different cultures and regions in different ways across the world through different gestures, ceremonies, festivals and to document expression of this rich and beautiful emotion, we need your help so we can share and spread the depth of cultures that each region has, the best of how people of that region, celebrate love.

Wiki Loves Love (WLL) is an international photography competition of Wikimedia Commons with the subject love testimonials happening in the month of February.

The primary goal of the competition is to document love testimonials through human cultural diversity such as monuments, ceremonies, snapshot of tender gesture, and miscellaneous objects used as symbol of love; to illustrate articles in the worldwide free encyclopedia Wikipedia, and other Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) projects.

The theme of 2019 iteration is Celebrations, Festivals, Ceremonies and rituals of love.

Sign up your affiliate or individually at Participants page.

To know more about the contest, check out our Commons Page and FAQs

There are several prizes to grab. Hope to see you spreading love this February with Wiki Loves Love!

Kind regards,

Wiki Loves Love Team

Imagine... the sum of all love!

--MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 10:12, 27 December 2018 (UTC)

Odd question regarding copyright

What do I do if I find an image being used as fair use which I can demonstrate is, in fact, 100% free to use?

Now, the fair-use image is a highly-scaled down, oddly coloured copy, but File:Elinorglyn.jpg - which doesn't have any information about where the image came from, who made it, etc - is very clearly the same as http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2014680673/ - which a little further research ( [http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/90714689/ is clearly from the same session) allows to be dated to c. 1908. In any case, it's {{PD-Bain}}.

The easy solution might be to just upload the LoC copy, and switch over to it, letting the mislabelled one be deleted, but I don't want to confuse things. Adam Cuerden ^(talk)_{Has about 8.8% of all FPs} 23:00, 25 December 2018 (UTC)

upload overtop of the original with the new source and change the licensing to PD, then tag it to be moved to Commons that way the whole history is preserved. Gnangarra 07:56, 26 December 2018 (UTC)

Just FYI Adam Cuerden Gnangarra, you don't have to tag the image for move to Commons. You can use Commons Helper which takes care of most of the particulars. You usually have to do a bit of cleanup on the Commons file, to account for templates that don't exist there, or exist under a different name, but that's about it. Incidentally, Commons Helper also applies the correct post-transfer speedy deletion tags across languages. So you can also use it to transfer files from projects where you don't speak the language, without having to look up that Template:Now Commons is vi:Bản mẫu:Hiện có tại Commons in Vietnamese. GMG^talk 13:25, 26 December 2018 (UTC)

+1; this is a quite useful tool. Thanks for the reminder of it's existence. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 14:22, 26 December 2018 (UTC)

@Gnangarra: Is the history useful in cases like this? Adam Cuerden ^(talk)_{Has about 8.8% of all FPs} 23:03, 27 December 2018 (UTC)

History is always useful, this has been here under fair use if someone else sourced the image via us then it'll matter to them for the same reason that is we need to document how we came about the image and why its been changed in resolution. Gnangarra 02:08, 28 December 2018 (UTC)

Claas Relotius

It might help to check any contributions sourced to articles by Claas Relotius, who falsified details in articles. WhisperToMe (talk) 10:03, 23 December 2018 (UTC)

Worry

Hello everybody,

There is an urgent need to discuss this with you.

We all felt sorry for what happened to the German magazine “Der Spiegel”. Years of lies and misinformation by a famous and trusted reporter.

What do we need to do to trust all the sources that Wikipedia is based on??? Alex-h (talk) 23:38, 28 December 2018 (UTC)

First of all, there is Wikipedia:General disclaimer, which explains why you should not trust Wikipedia. Wikipedia is fun to read, but should always be regarded as only a starting place for any serious research, using the sources cited in articles to dig deeper into a subject. As for the Claas Relotius articles that appeared in Der Spiegel, the encyclopedia has already been scoured to find and removed citations to his articles. There are plenty of us who try to ensure that controversial and obscure facts in Wikipedia articles have citations to reliable sources that support what is written in Wikipedia, but you should never rely on that, and should look at the cited sources yourself, it possible. Even though we try to use only reliable sources, it is impossible to thoroughly vet every book, journal, newspaper and website. Reputable publishers, journals and newspapers often make mistakes, or are taken advantage of by unscrupulous contributers. We expect such entities to acknowledge and correct or retract errors and falsehoods when they are discovered, in order to regard them as reputable and reliable sources. - Donald Albury 15:29, 29 December 2018 (UTC)

@Donald Albury: Happy New Year, I appreciate your valuable answer, I wish if I could have more details. Alex-h (talk) 13:36, 31 December 2018 (UTC)

You can easily search the name on Wikipedia to see a lack of referencing using this name. However it will be harder to detect links that do not indicate the name. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 23:07, 2 January 2019 (UTC)

Firstly this is more a topic for the reliable sources noticeboard than the village pump. But the reason why we treat some sources as reliable and others as not is that reliable sources try to get things right, and when as in this case they find that one of their journalists has been faking news they act, and as Der Spiegel is doing, they fix the problem. ϢereSpielChequers 06:16, 4 January 2019 (UTC)

Misuse of user talk page

I seek advice on the page User talk:Georges T..

That page contains an extensive piece of original research, apparently in violation of the policy WP:What_Wikipedia_is_not#BLOG. I have previously warned this user that they are misusing their user page. I don't think that User pages are ever eligible for deletion; and I'm not aware of any process for deleting the majority of the content from another user's talk page.

For what it's worth, I believe the material on that page is kooky, crazy nonsense. It's never been cited, because the author evidently can't get it published by any reputable academic journal. This editor occasionally makes changes to articles concerning timescales, such as Coordinated Universal Time - these changes are always reverted rather quickly. Remarks on the corresponding user page suggest that the user is bonkers.

It's worth noting that this user has opinions about copyright in material posted to Wikipedia that may diverge from Wikipedia policy (he expresses these opinions on his talk page). As far as I am aware, he is entitled to claim copyright in the material he posts, but he has automatically licensed that material to the whole world under CC-BY-SA as well as GFDL, by virtue of having posted it to Wikipedia. CC-BY-SA entitles the original author to demand attribution, but the GFDL does not confer any such entitlement. He has effectively given up all his rights under copyright, other than to sue someone who falsely claims to be the author. At least, that's the way I read it - IANAL.

Any advice welcome! MrDemeanour (talk) 12:57, 4 January 2019 (UTC)

The release under CCSA of his own material is his problem, not Wikipedia's.

What is our concern is that:

1. policy is that Wikipedia is not a publisher of original thought, and
2. the user page guideline forbids Writings, information, discussions, and activities not closely related to Wikipedia's goals.

So I have blanked the page, and left an explanation[9].

If the original research is restored, please notify me or leave a note at WP:ANI.

I have some concerns that this may be a WP:NOTHERE issue, because 276 of GT's 484 edits to edit are to his own user talk page. I am assuming in good faith and hoping that with the original research out of the way, GT will refocus on building an encyclopedia. We'll see. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 01:15, 5 January 2019 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous)/Archive 60#Makovo, Macedonia

Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous)/Archive 60#Makovo, Macedonia --SrpskiAnonimac (talk) 14:48, 28 December 2018 (UTC)

Agios or Ayios

Hello. Many places in Cyprus (and Greece) named after saints. For example, Agia Varvara, Paphos named after Saint Barbara.

The word saint in Greek Language is Άγιος (masculine) or Αγία (feminine). So most of the places in English are written as Agios but some of them are as Ayios (Agia or Ayia). The problem is that there is not a common "rule" for that. Or is there and I just don't know it?

Most places name are written with g and some with y.

• Ayia Marina Chrysochous and Ayia Marina Kelokedharon (the same name with Agia Marina, Nicosia)
• Ayia Napa (and Ayia Napa FC, a team named after the place)
• Ayios Dhometios
• Ayios Nikolaos Station
• Ayios Nikolaos, SBA

Should I move them and write them with g?

Xaris333 (talk) 03:33, 6 January 2019 (UTC)

WP:Common name. We do not make names, we simply report them. Rmhermen (talk) 17:58, 7 January 2019 (UTC)

Oswald Boelcke RFC

Hello,

There is a debate over the meaning of legacy for this individual--and by extension, to similar cases. All editors are invited to contribute to the discussion at

• Talk:Oswald Boelcke#Request for comment: Boelcke's legacy

Georgejdorner (talk) 18:43, 6 January 2019 (UTC)

Discover the world. Start with the sister cities

Dear friends and colleagues,

We invite you to take part in the international contest “Learn the world. Start with twin cities” which is held from 1 November 2018 to 1 March 2019 and is organized by “Wikimedia RU” together with partners. Web page of the contest: "Discover the world. Start with the sister cities The purpose of this thematic marathon contest is to create articles in all languages of the world about the sights of cities and regions of Russia and their foreign sister and partner territories. Twin cities and partner territories are territories which have permanent friendly relations for mutual acquaintance with life, history and culture of each other.

Winners of the contest will receive prizes regardless of their citizenship and location anywhere in the world! JukoFF (talk) 18:49, 10 January 2019 (UTC)

The order of professions in biography articles

Hello! Is it a common practice to organize the professions of a person in the introduction of a biography article according to relevancy? For example, in Jacqueline Kennedy's article, the intro says "Jacqueline Lee Kennedy Onassis was an American book editor and socialite who was First Lady of the United States during the presidency of her husband". Are there guideline for this order of professions (book editor then politician)? Or is it left to editors?--Reem Al-Kashif (talk) 15:59, 12 January 2019 (UTC)

Don't know if there's a guideline, but it seems common sense to order them in rough order of notability, and that is what is normally done. So the JO one just seems silly. She didn't become a book editor until quite late in life (about 46) anyway, and was probably not notable as that alone. Fashion icon may belong in that sentence. Johnbod (talk) 16:25, 12 January 2019 (UTC)

Thank you for your reply. That's indeed why I am getting confused. And she only worked as a book editor for two years or so.--Reem Al-Kashif (talk) 16:28, 12 January 2019 (UTC)

No, that was just the first job - she seems to have done it until her death, although I somehow doubt she put in a 40-hour week all those years. Johnbod (talk) 16:30, 12 January 2019 (UTC)

Oh, I see. Generally speaking, it seems like whenever a person is taking up more than one job, which is the case for many of the people for whom we have long articles, there is confusion on which profession should be put first. This is also reflected in the categorization of the articles. If one politician performs a minor role in a movie, they seem to be eligible to be in the "actors" category.--Reem Al-Kashif (talk) 16:36, 12 January 2019 (UTC)

I think a minor acting role qualifies an already-notable person for inclusion in a Category for actors. If there is disagreement this should be resolved on the article Talk page. I would concede that it is possible that the person should be omitted from the acting Category but I don't think there should be a rule or even a guideline about this. Involved editors should weigh in on the article's Talk page. That constitutes the all-important consensus. Same thing for listing professions in the lede. There isn't a right or wrong, in my opinion. Bear in mind that consensus can change, but probably not a "recent consensus".

Looking at the sentence I think it is fine: "Jacqueline Lee Kennedy Onassis (née Bouvier /ˈbuːvieɪ/; July 28, 1929 – May 19, 1994) was an American book editor and socialite who was First Lady of the United States during the presidency of her husband, John F. Kennedy, from January 1961 until his assassination in November 1963." I would say the internal link highlights the role of First Lady of the United States, not to mention the name John F. Kennedy. I also think the construction of the sentence benefits from getting the minor role of "book editor" out of the way before addressing the more complicated part of the sentence. Bus stop (talk) 20:39, 12 January 2019 (UTC)

Image identification

Hello english team,

I don't know if I ask on the good village.

I need some help identifying the third character on the left after Donal Trump and William M. Matz. I read somewhere it is Superintendent Keith Stadler. But I'm not sure, due to his Linkedin Profile. Someone can help me please ? Thanks a lot. --Gpesenti (talk) 23:46, 12 January 2019 (UTC)

I don't know the answer to that question, Gpesenti, but I think Reference desk/Humanities would be a good place to ask that question. Bus stop (talk) 00:36, 13 January 2019 (UTC)

Ok thank you Bus stop, I proceed. --Gpesenti (talk) 01:42, 13 January 2019 (UTC)

Notification of BAG nomination

I am just writing this to inform Village pump (miscellaneous) that I have requested to join the Bot Approvals Group (BAG). I invite your thoughts on the nomination subpage, which is located here. Thank you for your time. --TheSandDoctor ^Talk 05:41, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

Wiki Loves Africa 2019 around the corner : your help more than welcome

Hello everyone. In 2 weeks time, the latest (5th) edition of Wiki Loves Africa will launch on the theme Play for one month. Please check out the contest main page for details about the theme if you are directly interested and want to contribute pictures and join the fun online or locally.

But this message is also a pre-warning that hords of new and unexperienced users from Africa will join and upload pictures, that are often wonderful (but not really categorized or described) and sometimes terrible (blurred, irrelevant, promotional, copyrighted etc.). I would like to extend an invitation to you guys to help with image tracking and clean-up during the contest. If you plan to help heavily, please add your name to the team page so that we know where to go and who to ask if we have issues. But also, more generally, please help in keeping an eye on the general category where images will be uploaded (right now there is only a test picture from a painting from my daughter... but soon... we can expect probably around 10k images to look at). Your help will be tremendously and gratefully welcome.

Anthere (talk) 14:33, 17 January 2019 (UTC)

How to add reference about a guinness world record without an official blog post?

This question has been moved to WP:HELPDESK. User670839245 (talk) 07:52, 17 January 2019 (UTC)

Research project: The effects of specific barnstars

I'm a researcher studying the effects of rewards on motivation. My team and I would like to run an experiment with barnstars on Wikipedia. We'll use data analysis to identify editors who are making substantial contributions to Wikipedia and we'll post barnstars on their talk pages. Our goal is to see if specific types of barnstars elicit different types of motivation reinforcement for an editor. For example, if we reward an editor for doing copy-editing work specifically, are they more likely to continue doing copy-editing work?

Our goal in all of this is to find effective strategies for increasing the long term retention of editors. To us, it appears that identifying way to motivate volunteers to stay and contribute is very important. For the continued viability of Wikipedia. And anyway, it's good to recognize people for their hard work.

I'm posting here today to announce the project and to invite you to highlight any potential issues with us posting barnstars. See metawiki:Research:How role-specific rewards influence Wikipedia editors’ contribution for our proposed study design. There, you can find our criteria for selecting editors to receive barnstars. We're interested in your insights. We're also very interested in working with anyone who would like to collaborate with us in this experiment. --Diyiy (talk) 23:20, 18 December 2018 (UTC)

One problem with your experiment seems pretty obvious; The "reward" comes from an editor without any substantial contributions to the encyclopedia: you. Anyone who'd receive a barnstar from you would immediately notice that they're participating in an experiment. Vexations (talk) 22:36, 18 December 2018 (UTC)

@Vexations Thanks for pointing out this issue. We won't post the messages using the account of Diyiy (talk). We would like to collaborate with some highly experienced Wikipedia editors and ask them to help us post the barnstar messages. If you are interested, that will be great! We're also considering posting the messages using Robert Kraut's account, a senior contributor to en_wiki from our research team. --Diyiy (talk) 23:20, 18 December 2018 (UTC)

With no disrespect to Dr. Kraut, I would not consider an editor with under 500 edits to be a senior contributor to Wikipedia. To put things in perspective, according to WP:SERVICE, a senior editor has at least 24,000 edits (although it is worth noting that service awards don't really mean all that much and are really just a measure of how much time you spend on the site). _signed, Rosguill ^talk 02:23, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

@Rosguill Thanks! Following your and Vexations's suggestion, I just added one specific section in our research project description to look for volunteers - experienced Wikipedia editors - to help us with the posting. If you are interested, please let us know. -- Diyiy (talk) 05:13, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

• @Diyiy: I'm wondering what your criteria for Editors in the top 10% of those making edits adding substantive content or performing copy-editing actions are. Is the top 10% just an evaluation of edit volume? I would be interested in helping hand out the barnstars, but I'm skeptical that edit volume is really indicative of quality contributions and would feel uncomfortable handing out barnstars on that basis alone. Additionally, I'd suggest an exclusion criterion that should be added: editors who are watching this page or who have participated in discussions on this page while this discussion is on the page. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 07:15, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

@Rosguill: Great, we'll be very happy to have your help! So, top 10% will include two aspects: (1) in terms of the total number of edits in the last month, and (2) high portion of edits that are adding substantive content or copying editing. We have some prior work with Halfak (WMF) where we built machine learning models with reasonable accuracy to automatically predict what work has been done in a revision such as adding substantive content, copy editing, counter-vandalism, vandalism (You can find the details in this page). We will rank editors in terms of their total number of edits and the portion of adding substantive content edits or copy editing edits, and then select the barnstar recipient candidates from this pool. In this case, we could guarantee that our barnstar recipient candidates are making quality contributions, not vandalism or other type of edits. Your exclusion criterion makes sense - we need to exclude people who have participated in our project discussions ("Watching" seems a bit impossible to be excluded because of Wiki privacy issues). I added this to our research project description. --Diyiy (talk) 14:54, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

@Rosguill: In addition to the quantity metric, if collaborators also want to include a personal quality assessment , that would be fine. For the purposes of the experiment, the only requirements are that the editors getting barnstars should deserve them based on Wikipedia standards and that once the pool of deserving editors is identified (through a combination of automated identification and human judgment), those who get barnstars are randomly selected from the pool. Robertekraut (talk) 15:20, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

• Sorry but I'm not happy about this. Please see "Wikipedia is not a laboratory". The proposal could be regarded as somewhat "disruptive to the community" in diluting the value of the barnstar, which we would hope is intended as a sincere expression of appreciation from one Wikipedia editor to another. Now I wouldn't pretend the proposal is some kind of life-threatening intervention, but by its nature the experiment cannot seek the informed consent of participants and as such does not set a good example. Wikipedia editors are not lab rats and should not be fed barnstars to see if they scurry round any faster afterwards! Feel free to disregard this if other contributors don't see it this way: Noyster (talk), 18:36, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

User:Noyster The experiment is essentially Nudge theory, which the CIA uses to wage psychological warfare, so I'm sure it's safe and not distruptive... Cesdeva ^(talk) 18:45, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

I have to assume you're being somewhat ironic. I, too, am skeptical of turning barnstar-giving into a lab experiment, which seems a "blunt tool" (to quote Hannibal Lecter), although it's quite possible that to recognize adept but heretofore unrecognized editors in any way may encourage them to continued productivity, even if they're aware of their being subjects of an experiment. Dhtwiki (talk) 00:02, 20 December 2018 (UTC)

My delivery was a bit too dry. Ya i'm against making barnstar lab rats out of us without informed consent. I think you may be right; i've never been given a barnstar and my productivity has always been more sporadic than a randy mushroom. Cesdeva ^(talk) 00:40, 20 December 2018 (UTC)

User:Noyster I don't see the experiment as disruptive. We are proposing to give barnstars to a subset of Wikipedians who deserve them but haven't yet received any. I don't see how doing so dilutes their value. Barnstars are an established wiki recognition system, and we are proposing to use them for their intended purpose--to recognize some overlooked Wikipedians for their meritorious service. Wikipedia already uses machine-learning methods in the form of the | ORES service to identify bad behavior; In the experiment, we'll be using machine learning to identify good behavior. Our innovation here isn't the tool to identify people deserving of barnstars. Rather it is the attempt to understand the consequences of a common activity on Wikipedia, the giving of barnstars. Robertekraut (talk) 02:26, 20 December 2018 (UTC)

If you give out more barnstars than given previously, you could well dilute their value; but the main objection I see is that, for the recipient, instead of receiving an expression of appreciation from a grateful fellow editor, you are receiving something from people who are not working in the trenches with you and are just experimenting to see how you can be made to do more, better, faster, which can be easily felt as belittling. Given the complex set of inducements that I've experienced, where barnstars play only a part, I don't see how your study would show anything more than some minor and flawed correlation of effort to reward. Dhtwiki (talk) 06:12, 20 December 2018 (UTC)

• So, couple of thoughts. Given your exclusion criteria I'm not entirely sure how many editors are going to be left. Keeping in mind that most of the work on Wikipedia is done by a small minority of users, and a comparatively large number of those are going to have advanced permissions, and run or control bots, and virtually all of them will have at some point received a barn star. So based on just your exclusion criteria, I expect you're going to be well below the 50th percentile of most active editors that your considering, and I wonder how many of these are active enough to observe any appreciable difference in the editing habits. Also, how are you going to tell how many of ~300,000 active monthly users have never received a barnstar? GMG^talk

@GreenMeansGo: This is good point! We wrote computer scripts to look at the user page and user-talk page of each editor to see whether there is a barnstar type of message. Taking into account your concerns, we reduced the number of editors we are going to give barnstars (400 barnstars recipients and messages in total). We followed prior work in terms of inclusion and exclusion criteria . --Diyiy (talk) 22:43, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

I have removed my barnstars from my user page as I am not a tinpot general who wants to flaunt his medals, because I want my page to be uncluttered by what I regard as merely gaudy crap, and because I don't care whether I receive barnstars or not. My motivation to edit Wikipedia is purely to provide quality information for the enrichment of readers. Knowing that I have done something useful, and of quality, is reward enough. Therefore, surveying who has barnstars, and who has not, is a flawed procedure. Lots of editors delete barnstars or move them to a subpage, sometimes, and sometimes not, leaving a link on their main user page. The fact that they have a collection of stars to their credit is not immediately apparent. Your computer scripts cannot identify deleted barnstars. — O'Dea (talk) 18:44, 1 January 2019 (UTC)

References

Second, I'm not sure you have considered the confounding effect of the person giving the barnstar. Again, fairly small core community and many users are fimiliar with one another. If a user gets a barnstar from someone they highly respect, or even a conciliatory barnstar from someone they were previously in a dispute with, that could send a much different effective message than a barnstar from an anonymous person. GMG^talk

@GreenMeansGo: Yes, there seems a confounding factor about the relation between the giver and the receiver. It is challenging to assess whether the giver was previously in a dispute with the receiver or not. We plan to seek help from several senior editors to help us post the barnstar messages. This sort of reduces the variability in the giver's side. In this stage, we are interested in the overall effects on whether receiving barnstar is associated with higher productivity, and incorporating more contextual factors like the relation between givers and receivers will be our future research to look at. --Diyiy (talk) 22:43, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

Third, you want to give out 1,200 barnstars in one day?? Again, fairly small community, half of us have half of us on one another's watchlists, and that is well above a level that could be considered normal. I mean, I have currently 3,737 user pages on my watchlist. May users will have more. I have a hard time believing you don't run a significant chance of raising quite a few eyebrows and opening a few discussions trying to figure out what's going on. Not to mention that if I look at someone's account who is an established user, and I see that they've spent the last hour spamming 200 users with barnstars, people are going to start wondering whether these accounts aren't compromised, unless you have quite a large pool of editors handing them out, to the tune of only three or four each. GMG^talk 19:12, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

@GreenMeansGo: We mentioned this and will highlight this in our project description - "We will post around 50 barnstar messages per day (each volunteer will help with 10 barnstar messages) for one or two weeks for this barnstar experiment". In the updated project, only 400 editors will actually receive barnstars, not 1,200. Please let us know if you have any further questions --Diyiy (talk) 22:43, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

• Well, I'll be honest Diyiy, I think it's an interesting idea, and one that could actually inform practice here, and not just serve some esoteric academic interest. So I'm trying to work through things as best I can. (Also generally it's common practice to put comments one after the other, and not interspersed, although I get that you were trying to address each point.)

I think you need to test your exclusion criteria mathematically before you get married to it. In order to get meaningful numbers, you need to be testing users who edit several times a week, although not necessarily every day. I'm sure you've heard of the Long tail phenomenon with regard to online participation. That's true here too, and most of those ~300k active monthly users only make a handful of edits per month. So I expect there's going to be too much stochasticity in their editing behavior to draw any meaningful conclusions. In other words, their editing behavior is going to be much more influenced by what happens off-wiki, than what happens on-wiki. If you're not informed by that, then you're going to draw statistical conclusions that aren't based in reality. That is, unless you target those users in particular, but you can't mix the edit-every-day users with the rest, because there is a base level of time commitment that makes them meaningfully different in their behavior.

With regard to the "giving" user, the most pure measure would be to use a bot, but that's gaining purity at the expense of the native experience. At the very least I think you should either completely exclude admins from your participants, or have enough admins distributed evenly that you can statistically control for the notoriety that that permission in particular has among the community. You probably also want to exclude other "prestigious" positions, like anyone on WP:ARBCOM and anyone who is a major project coordinator, like WP:MILHIST or WP:FAC. You probably just want a blanket exclusion criteria for "givers" that says "do you hold any position in the community that would give you particular notoriety". (Although the reaction to "prestigious" members of the community giving recognition is a worthy question in itself.)

In regard to the volume, you just gotta slow your roll. Ten barnstars in a day is still entirely too much to seem natural. No editor on Wikipedia naturally gives out ten barnstars in a day. The most giving users might give out one every couple of weeks or every month. You're gonna have to space this out over time to get meaningful results if you are committed to the volume. Often the first thing a user does when encoutering another user is to look at their recent edits, and if they see multiple barnstars in their last 50 contribution (the default number displayed), then it's going to be a suspect. Of course that depends on the size of the effect, and if the effect is large, then a smaller sample size may be adequate.

Perhaps one alternative to consider is, rather than barnstars, to examine WP:THANKS. Thanks, while ostensibly logged publicly, are extremely difficult to access the log for, and so wouldn't get spoiled by volume. GMG^talk 23:22, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

GreenMeansGo you might be interested in this project. J-Mo 21:43, 21 December 2018 (UTC)

That is quite interesting J-Mo. Not least of which is the fairly large cultural variations in the use of the feature. Incidentally, it makes me wonder whether there is any coordination happening between meta and people like Bri over at the Signpost to regularly update the editorial staff when this kind of thing is published. GMG^talk 22:01, 21 December 2018 (UTC)

To be fair, I see less of a human subject problem when someone is only offering positive interaction. Compare a design where someone offered subjects on the street $10 randomly, to observe their subsequent behavior. But again, IRB needs to make a decision on informed consent. I'm also not totally convinced that submitting the IRB approval via OTRS isn't a thing we should be doing as a matter of course. GMG^talk 01:06, 20 December 2018 (UTC)

Break

I fail to see why the experiment is necessary. It would be better if the researchers found the data they're looking for in the existing logs and edit histories without handing out barnstars themselves. Vexations (talk) 23:24, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

Vexations, the difference is that one is randomly selected and the other isn't. I'm still interested to see what their IRB says with regard to consent to participate in a study on the part of the participants, but you can't draw very many meaningful conclusions from non-random selection. GMG^talk 00:08, 20 December 2018 (UTC)

GreenMeansGo, I guess what I'm saying is that I much prefer an observational study to a non blind randomized controlled trial. I'm not satisfied that the results of an observational study are necessarily less reliable than this RCT, given the flaws in the design of this proposal. To put it bluntly; all the participant will know they get the placebo. Vexations (talk) 02:07, 20 December 2018 (UTC)

GreenMeansGo This research proposal has been approved by Carnegie Mellon University's IRB, waiving informed consent. The reasoning is that the experiment doesn't expose Wikipedians to any more risk than they would otherwise be exposed to (i.e., receiving an unsolicited barnstar) and couldn't be practically done without waiving informed consent. Robertekraut (talk) 02:26, 20 December 2018 (UTC)

How can Carnegie Mellon waive getting informed consent from Wikipedia editors? The University has no power over nor any relationship with Wikipedia editors. I think it is a bad idea. - Donald Albury 02:55, 20 December 2018 (UTC)

IRB doesn't have any power over Wikipedia. We're free to ignore their recommendations either way. Approval does tell us that their design has been reviewed by professional researchers who haven't identified major ethical concerns. (I'd be interested to get input here from User:EpochFail and User:Jtmorgan.) GMG^talk 11:55, 20 December 2018 (UTC)

I'm not surprised that the CMU IRB approved this study. Believe it or not, waving consent in these types of situations is pretty common practice due to the low risk -- as Robertekraut mentioned. I definitely agree with GMG that we're not under any obligation to allow the study to continue. It is up to us if we would like to allow these kinds of experiments to proceed in Wikipedia. It's my opinion that, it's in our best interests to work through the details with the researchers so their work can proceed with minimal disruptions. As GMG points out, this research has the potential to inform practice on Wikipedia. I think GMG has raised some excelling points for the researchers to review (e.g. the disruption of sending out 1200 barnstars, the unreasonable filter criteria, etc.). Noyster has relayed some important concerns about how studies like this might dilute the meaning of a barnstar. I think that if the researchers can figure out a way to adjust their study protocol to deal with these sorts of issues and we help them figure out how to minimize disruption, then we'd be better off by allowing them to continue and demanding that they make their research results publicly available gratis (and maybe also open access) so that we can take our best advantage of their work.

Either way, I think the issues raised in this conversation represent a large set of valuable insights about how barnstars work in Wikipedia and how Wikipedians expect that they will be used. Personally, I'm very interested in how barnstars are applied and I've learned a few things from this conversation. I'd like to perform some analyses to if the data aligns with Noyster's assertions about the rate at which barnstars are applied. I think it would be fascinating to look for examples of highly productive editors who are working in a barnstar desert where no one notices or sees fit to appreciate the kind of work that they do. Maybe the researchers could find a way to help us generate a list of such editors and we could be the ones to send the barnstars to these under-appreciated editors. --EpochFail (talk • contribs) 14:25, 20 December 2018 (UTC)

More just musing really, but I do wonder what measurable difference there would be between private thanks notifications and public barnstars. In other words, is it the act of appreciation that makes a behavioral difference, or it is the public "token" displayed for others. But maybe that's a question of another day. GMG^talk 15:11, 20 December 2018 (UTC)

I get the occasional "thanks" (maybe once a week), which I do appreciate, but I don't remember getting a barnstar, and if I ever did, I didn't leave it displayed. I guess I ran in a crowd that didn't give out many barnstars (these days I feel like a bit of a loner, some of my Wiki friends have dropped out, and I just don't interact much with others). My participation in WP has waxed and waned over the years, but I don't remember feedback from other Wikipedians playing a role in that. - Donald Albury 16:43, 20 December 2018 (UTC)

• @Diyiy and Robertekraut: we don't give out barnstars to motivate people to stay, but to thank them for work we've noticed or something they've helped with. I'm concerned about the ethics of your proposal (not to mention that you may have destroyed it by discussing it in public). You plan to use the recipients by fooling them, not even letting them know they're taking part in research. In addition, lots of editors are addicted to editing Wikipedia and are not served well by anything that motivates them to stay. See this BBC report about social-media companies using social-validation feedback loops to create environments that are addictive and exploitative. Wikipedia shouldn't be involved in anything like that, at least not on purpose. Does the Wikimedia Foundation know about this proposal? SarahSV ^(talk) 22:11, 20 December 2018 (UTC)

• @SlimVirgin: One goal of this research is to develop bettter methods to recognize others' work. We have developed a set of machine learning techniques to predict whether an editor has made more than average specific edits around some skills such as adding substantive work or doing copy editing. Via this, we will be able to 'thank' editors who have done much but haven't received any thanks from Wiki community. For the ethnics of this proposal, as Robertekraut mentioned, it has been approved with a university's IRB. The reason why we discuss it here in public is to get valuable feedback and suggestions from Wiki editors before doing this work - people who have participated in this discussion will be excluded from our barnstar work. We have been discussing this proposal with EpochFail from Wikimedia Foundation. --Diyiy (talk) 15:31, 21 December 2018 (UTC)
• Well give them credit SV, we ask researchers to come & consult with us and they did so (indeed NOTLAB points researchers to the higher-profile Village pump (proposals)). But yes, the scheme would seem to depend on keeping the bulk of the editing community in the dark, with risk of harm not to individuals but to community interaction, by introducing an ulterior motive into one of our mutual recognition devices: Noyster (talk), 15:42, 21 December 2018 (UTC)

(EC) I should make it clear that I am not operating as WMF Staff when supporting this project. This project is not officially endorsed by the Wikimedia Foundation and I am not an official collaborator on the project. With that said, my professional opinion (Wikipedian-researcher who contributes content and tools for Wikipedians) is that finding ways for studies like this to proceed without causing disruption is very desirable and I think it is safe to say that we (the researchers and Research team) at the Wikimedia Foundation generally want to see good research on motivation and social reinforcement patterns to help inform movement strategy work, WMF Product development, grant making strategies, etc. I think about the patterns of addiction that SarahSV brings up quite often. I think that avoiding sending reinforcing messages to users who are putting in potentially unhealthy hours on Wikipedia is quite possible. In my work studying hours people spend on Wikipedia (pdf), there was a pretty clear divide between people who spent a few hours per day on average and people who were spending 8-10 hours every day. Maybe we should consider filtering these users out of the study so as to not risk harming them. It's hard to say as they are also likely the most deserving of a barnstar. I'm not an expert in addiction research, so it's hard to say how harmful a random barnstar could possibly be. In the end, it may be best to leave that judgment call to a real, live human rather than some quantitative threshold. If diyiy et al. were to develop a strategy to help experienced editors find editors deserving of barnstars (e.g. by producing a list with statistics), there could be a real live human deciding when to send a barnstar or not. --EpochFail (talk • contribs) 15:51, 21 December 2018 (UTC)

EpochFail, the proposal is to find a bunch of people who are doing unpaid labour—labour that might be damaging them and to which they may be addicted—and see what kind of poke will induce them to do more. Read the proposal (permalink) for yourself; they are quite clear about it. They want to know whether "activity-specific barnstars reinforce the actions that they reward".

From a practical standpoint, do you not suppose the recipients will notice something is amiss? The proposal is that 800 barnstars be handed out, which is disruptive. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if the involved accounts end up being blocked. I thought the WMF had to approve research that interferes with the community. SarahSV ^(talk) 20:57, 21 December 2018 (UTC)

SlimVirgin No, WMF doesn't have that kind of authority over any Wikimedia project community (and the communities themselves would probably not want WMF to have that power). Many of the researchers who work at WMF, including EpochFail and me, try to keep an eye out for research that could be disruptive or even harmful, and discourage it. We also hear about a lot of research proposals ahead of time, through our academic networks and by monitoring proposals on the Research index, and we try to encourage researchers to follow best practices—such as bringing their projects up for review and discussion in forums like this one. We do this for three reasons: 1) we care about Wikipedia, 2) we care about research ethics, and 3) we do research on Wikipedia ourselves, and bad research erodes community trust, which makes our jobs more difficult. That's one of the reasons I got involved in the crafting of WP:NOTLAB, too. As for the current project, I can vouch for the integrity and the scientific cred of the researchers involved. It's up to the community to decide whether this project should proceed. I think reasonable concerns have been raised, and that includes yours. Sounds like the researchers are willing to work with the community to address some of these concerns, and that the research—if allowed to proceed—may be better for the conversation. So the process seems to me to be working well, right here and now, with no WMF oversight. J-Mo 21:41, 21 December 2018 (UTC)

J-Mo and EpochFail, I don't have time to look for links, but I recall several discussions over the years about researchers being told they must gain approval from the WMF for certain kinds of research.

Regardless of that, the ethical problems are obvious. They plan to go ahead without any kind of consent (even generic consent to be part of a research study), despite the fact that the study has the potential to harm its participants. Research increasingly shows how harmful social-media addiction is, and this study aims to determine whether "activity-specific barnstars reinforce the actions that they reward".

Feeding or triggering an addiction is just one of the potential harms. The study also has the potential to embarrass or humiliate the recipients, who will be chosen only if they've never received a barnstar. Experienced editors will recognize there's something odd about the barnstar, because the proposed wording smacks of "your call is important to us", and because the accounts handing them out won't have many edits and will be distributing lots of them. Less experienced editors may not notice these things, and will believe that another editor has genuinely thanked them for their work. It's disrespectful to fool someone in that way, especially in public. Imagine if that editor follows up by thanking the account that posted the barnstar and trying to engage them in conversation. What then? Will the researchers ignore them or keep up the pretence? SarahSV ^(talk) 22:51, 21 December 2018 (UTC)

I am deeply confused by an argument that says we should not encourage people to edit Wikipedia. GMG^talk 00:46, 22 December 2018 (UTC)

From reading of all of this I fail to see the benefits to anyone, and also find the comments from SV quite disturbing in that the points that she raises seem to invoke, the responses to date appear thoroughly unconvincing.
I strongly object to this sort of behaviour on wikipedia, from ethical bases alone. If I read the responses correctly from those conducting this work, I sure hope that someone or other raises the ethical issue other than self or SV - this is so odd, as to give it a sense that we can do this under the radar, and a sense of without having any problems about it. JarrahTree 03:00, 22 December 2018 (UTC)

While I think the results of the study could be very enlightening, I agree that this sounds a little too disruptive and disingenuous: I guess I fundamentally don't agree with awarding barnstars semi-arbitrarily; if someone told me that my first barnstar was awarded to me as part of an experiment to see if my behavior changed as a result, I'd probably be a little disappointed and upset to be used as a lab rat. There has to be enough legitimate barnstars already awarded for real reasons to study passively, aren't there? Can't a study be designed as a strict observation of existing barnstar awards to accomplish the same thing? Is there some reason that the study must award its own barnstars? CThomas³ (talk) 03:14, 22 December 2018 (UTC)

I agree with CT , JT and SV these if I started getting barnstars as sort of lab rat experiment for a third party I would walk away. If I was to receive a complaint about an account just dishing out barnstars and doing nothing productive as an admin I'd warn them for being disruptive if it continued I block the account due to past experience WP:BEANS. Gnangarra 10:53, 22 December 2018 (UTC)

• Why not thanks? - I know it's been mentioned already, but if we can help them work the thanks logs that would seem a vastly better approach. 10 thanks a day is "merely" very eager, 10 barnstars a week, let alone a day, is insanely high. Additionally, I'd be find with receiving a semi-arbitrary thanks, but agree with the potentially counter-productive barnstar issuing. Nosebagbear (talk) 11:35, 22 December 2018 (UTC)
• Has the person organizing this research project considered vicarious learning - i.e. learning by seeing other people reinforced? It would be interesting to see whether people's motivation is increased if they see other people getting barnstars. Vorbee (talk) 17:40, 23 December 2018 (UTC)
• Totally ignoring the negative aspects of the mass spamming of barnstars, of the devaluing what is current just just a nice thought. Lets ignore the disruption, the potential for abuse, how do you even measure what the impact has, how do you tell the difference between motivation and opportunity? Everyone here is a volunteer they contribute what they can when they can, what we do know is that everyone contributes to wikipedia for their reasons. How can you tell that a barnstar is the motivator when it may be that they injured themselves and cant do other things, maybe they just got access to an interesting collection resources that they have been trying to access for a few years. Maybe they went on holiday and discovered a new area of interest, maybe they have been snowed in(or its too hot outside) and have nothing else to do. How do you establish that difference by looking at the current, what if you give a barnstar to a disruptive editor, does that reinforce poor behavior, what methodologies have go you propose to ensure that in motivating a person you dont embolden them to be more disruptive, do even have a plan in place to redress such actions. Gnangarra 15:53, 24 December 2018 (UTC)

The reason to do a true, random-assignment experiment to control for exactly the type of problems in interpretation that Gnan and Vexations have raised. Editors' motivations and availability to participate in Wikipedia vary between people and over time within the same person. The assumption in a random assignment experiment is that the people who receive the experimental treatment (i.e., a barnstar or a thanks) are on average the same as those who are in the non-treatment, control condition. Therefore, if the treatment and control groups differ on some outcomes of interest, such as the amount and type of work they do on Wikipedia, their willingness to talk on article talk pages, etc.) one can attribute these differences to the experimental treatment. The standard inferential statistics, like t-tests and regression analyses, gives an estimate about how likely the observed difference would occur by chance because of natural variations between people and time. Robertekraut (talk) 15:57, 28 December 2018 (UTC)

In the final analysis both "barn-stars" and "thanks" are means of communication. Correct me if I am wrong but in the final analysis this proposal is about something I would characterize as false communication. No one knows what I mean if I give them a "barn-star" or I send "thanks". I am communicating but it is never clear what I am saying. (Probably here as well.) There is a degree of unclarity whenever we deploy language to communicate ideas. The suggestion here is that we increase the noise that is present in verbal communication involving "barn-stars". I believe I have to oppose that. Bus stop (talk) 16:27, 28 December 2018 (UTC)

The fallacy here is that a barnstar or a thanks is a motivating factor, when we have a pile of studies that show the motivation behind a person contributions are distributed across many reason there is no singular reason why people contribute. How do value an contribution do allow for volume of content added, or number of edits, do you discount tool usage or promote it, what about the gnome areas closng AFD, CfD, protections and NPP. No two legitimate people contribute in the same way for the same reasons for the same amount of time. How do you stop people in the control group from receiving barnstars and thanks are going to remove them if they do. The whole issue is giving someone a barnstar and them then making 10 edits doesnt prove the barnstar motivated them. Gnangarra 17:05, 28 December 2018 (UTC)

The "thanks" that I receive are for specific edits I have made, and have always been from a user that I recognize as being active in editing the specific article. Random thanks from editors that I do not recognize would strike me as strange. - Donald Albury 17:23, 28 December 2018 (UTC)

I don't think "thanks" are always from editors one recognizes. One presumes the person passing along "thanks" is highly in agreement with some input you have made. I oppose this experimentation because it adds to the uncertainty over what motivates someone to use the tools of "barn-stars" or "thanks". There are many downsides to "barn-stars" or "thanks". Nevertheless I don't advocate abolishing them. But weakening them or making their significance less clear makes little sense to me. Bus stop (talk) 17:38, 28 December 2018 (UTC)

(edit conflict) What Donald Albury & Bus stop said^^^.

To me, Barnstars awarded among Wikipedia editors and the WikiLove messages I give and receive actually mean something. To use the Barnstars (and potentially the WikiLove system) in the researchers' proposed way devalues their meaning and processes them into something different, something that I personally would not appreciate receiving (you know, like the difference between White Stilton cheese and pasteurized-processed cheese spread...). Maybe the researchers should come up with their very own "Your-work-has-been-seen-and-valued-as-meaningful-by-a-team-of-researchers-at-Carnegie-Mellon-University-and-this-particular-recognition-and-your-continued-contributions-after-receiving-this-recognition-is-being-used-as-part-of-a-CMU-motivational-research-project" Barnstar/WikiLove thingy. Shearonink (talk) 18:05, 28 December 2018 (UTC)

I feel that pasteurized-processed cheese spread is being treated unfairly in this discussion. Bus stop (talk) 18:26, 28 December 2018 (UTC)

As an aside...To show pasteurized process cheese and its cheese spread that there are no hard feelings: Mmmmmmmmm...pasteurized-process cheeeeeeeese. Shearonink (talk) 21:46, 28 December 2018 (UTC)

Ahh, the delicate qualities of processed cheese! Bus stop (talk) 15:45, 30 December 2018 (UTC)

Break 2

If you want really see if barnstars work, try this find a sample size of users who meet at least the following criteria;

1. havent edited for more than 3 months
2. have made more than 2000 contributions, over at least a continous 6 month period
3. were in good standing at time of last edit
4. edited in both article and WP space

This criteria proves the people are long term editor who contributions are likely accepted, and importantly something the community would encouraged. Additionally they will be contactable by email this user. Divide the sample into 3 groups;

• Group A gets "we miss you, please return" barnstar.
• Group B receives and email with a similar request about being missed and that it would a good if they returned.
• Group C receives neither.

Measure their activity 1 day, 1 week, 1 month for however long you can. Then you're able to at least make a plausible causal inference about the impact of each style of contact including a correlation of the outcomes between each group both in the number and size of edits also the length of time they edit. Gnangarra 17:40, 28 December 2018 (UTC)

• I see that a similar type of barnstar research was done in 2014: Resvito, Michael; Van de Rijt, Arnout (2014). "No praise without effort: experimental evidence on how rewards affect Wikipedia's contributor community". Journal Information, Communication & Society. 17 (4): 451–462. doi:10.1080/1369118X.2014.888459.

Our experimental treatment was to assign an informal, peer-to-peer reward, or ‘barnstar,’ to contributors who had never previously received one ... We focused on the top 10% of Wikipedia’s contributor community ... we removed those users who had administrative or elevated privileges, and excluded ... the bottom 90% of contributors by edit volume in the prior 30 days. We also screened out users who had previously received a barnstar ... After stratifying the population, we conducted a simple random sample of 200 subjects from each tier. The treatment consisted of anonymously placing a barnstar on the subjects’ user-talk page ... The barnstar we chose ... expressed community appreciation for their contributions, but it was not tailored to any recipient-specific activities or achievements. ... Contrary to theory, rewarding less productive editors did not stimulate higher subsequent productivity. ... The experimental results show that rewards can be used to sustain productivity among highly-active contributors at the top of the distribution, yet are ineffective in this regard for less-active contributors.

I wonder whether they had consensus to do it. SarahSV ^(talk) 22:49, 28 December 2018 (UTC)

An earlier experiment by Resvito used a similar procedure:

We test the effects of informal rewards in online peer production. Using a randomized, experimental design, we assigned editing awards or “barnstars” to a subset of the 1% most productive Wikipedia contributors. Comparison with the control group shows that receiving a barnstar increases productivity by 60% and makes contributors six times more likely to receive additional barnstars from other community members, revealing that informal rewards significantly impact individual effort.

FYI, we contacted Resvito and asked more about the procedure in these experiments. They gave out barnstars using their personal accounts, which had very few contributions. They gave all the barnstars out during a one or two week window. We failed to ask them if got feedback and consensus from the community before conducting their experiment. Robertekraut (talk) 23:20, 28 December 2018 (UTC)

Summarizing the discussion about an experiment to examine the effects of barnstars

To try to summarize the discussion and reach consensus, here are what I think are the main points raised so far. Sorry if I’ve gotten anything wrong or missed important points, but the discussion has been long, meandering and continually changing. In the summary, I’ll generally use the general term “recognition,” where Barnstars, Thanks, and WikiLove are all forms of positive recognition, because many of the concerns raised in the discussion apply independent of the type of recognition.

• Need for the research:

Several Wikipedians, including User:GreenMeansGo, User:Jtmorgan, EpochFail and User:Cthomas3, thought the proposed research is asking interesting and useful questions about the downstream effects of Wikipedia recognitions, which may have implications for retaining valuable editors. GreenMeansGo suggests that it might be interesting to examine the effects of different types of recognitions – barnstars, which tend to be more public and have community defined meanings, versus thanks, which tend to less public and are based on the thanker’s private criteria.   Vorbee thought the question could be extended to examine the impact of vicarious learning by observing the impact on others who merely witness someone getting a barnstar.

However, User:Vexations, User:CThomas3 and others challenge the need for experimental research when the questions could be answered through observational methods.  We will indeed conduct the observational, correlational analyses that Vexations and CThomas3 recommend. But as explained several times in the discussion, a random assignment experiment is desirable because it is the best way to differentiate the ‘effects’ of recognition from ‘selection’, i.e., that people who receive recognitions at a particular time are likely to be different from those who never received the recognition or received it at a different time.

• Ethics: Harm to individual editors.

Several editors highlighted possible harm to the individual editors who would receive recognitions. User:Noyster, User:Cesdeva, User:CThomas3 and user:Gnangarra all mention some concerns about editors' dignity and autonomy by treating them as “lab rats” in which they are part of an experiment to which they did not explicitly consent.  This is indeed a legitimate concern and one we considered when weighing the possible benefits that Wikipedia and the scientific community would get from understanding the effects of recognition against this possible harm to individuals who receive them. Although reasonable people can disagree, user:Diyiy and I (along with our IRB) think the potential benefits outweigh these risks.

SarahSV raised the concern that receiving recognitions would harm editors more tangibly by increasing editing addiction. But this is a critique of Wikipedia’s recognition systems rather the research itself.  If receiving recognition increases editing addiction, then we should ban Barnstars, Thanks, and WikiLove and not research that tries to understand the effects of receiving them.

• Ethics: Harm to the community.

Several people raised the concern that increasing the number of recognitions distributed will devalue them and the devaluation will be even worse if the community believes they were being distributed as part of an experiment run by a “third party”.  I think this concern about the devaluing recognitions is the most important one raised in the discussion so far.

First let me dispel the ‘third party’ claim.  Although as Rosguill pointed out, I am not a senior editor with over 24,000 edits, I consider myself a member of the Wikipedia community. I am not just treating Wikipedia as a petri dish for research but am a community member concerned about the health of Wikipedia. By starting the Association for Psychological Science's Wikipedia Initiative, by recruiting PhD economists to evaluate and provide feedback on Wikipedia articles and by assigning Wikipedia writing assignments to students in my classes since 2011 and closely mentoring them as they worked on articles, I’ve been indirectly responsible for improving scores of Wikipedia articles. Indeed the only barnstar I’ve received was for “helping your students make welcome improvements across a range of psychology articles MartinPoulter.”

People have made a number of suggestions of reduce possible harm.

1. Distribute Thanks instead of Barnstars, because they are less visible. We are considering this possibility and would like more feedback on this decision. Our concern is that Thanks may have less powerful effects and have less clearly defined criteria behind them. If we distribute Thanks rather than Barnstars, we may need to distribute more of them.
2. Reduce the perception of spam by cutting down the number of recognitions awarded per day.  We have modified our original proposal and are proposing to distribute only 400 recognition and can spread the distribution over a longer time (e.g., 4 or 6 weeks).  
3. Increase the number of editors who will distribute the recognitions. We are recruiting editors to help with this.

• Other suggestions for improving the research

Discussants raised the question of who should give the recognitions. Some of the commenters thought the experiment wouldn’t work if the recognitions come from “from an editor without any substantial contributions” to Wikipedia. Others cautioned us if the recognitions come from administrators, project coordinators and others who have prestigious" positions.  Correlational research we have done shows that when editors receive feedback on their talk pages, the effects of the feedback on their subsequent motivation are generally stronger when the person providing the feedback is an administrator rather a non-administrator [Effectiveness of Shared Leadership in Online Communities]. For example recipients make more edits after they’ve received positive feedback, task suggestions or social comments and make fewer edits if they received negative feedback. Most of these effects are stronger if admins provide the feedback. However, our own experiments and those on [informal rewards in Wikipedia] by Restivo and colleagues show that feedback even from relatively new editors changes the behavior of those who receive it. We will try to recruit experienced Wikipedians to help us distribute recognitions, but if we fail, we'll continue with less experienced ones. Robertekraut (talk) 23:05, 28 December 2018 (UTC)

Robertekraut, I think you've made a good-faith attempt at summarizing what has been said so far. I had not yet come to a conclusion myself, so I will summarize my own ideas about this research in response: I think that all forms of deception are blockable offenses. That includes attempts at influencing editor behavior, even if it is intended to be beneficial. Simply put: If I say something nice to someone because I want them to stay, that's OK, as long as I make it clear that editor retention is my goal. If I do not make it clear what I am doing (study their behavior), I am deceiving the recipient and I deserve to be indefinitely blocked for my dishonesty. I would support blocks against anyone actively participating in this study, and I would also support a full ban on all research that involves any form of psychological manipulation, that is, any research that is not strictly observational only. Vexations (talk) 00:48, 29 December 2018 (UTC)

• I'd say this is a fair summary. I appreciate that you seem to have carefully taken in to consideration our feedback. The only other feedback I would give is that as far as rate goes, it may be helpful, once you have established participant givers, to ask them what their opinion is about how many barnstars might be given out in a "natural state" rather than trying to set some comparatively arbitrary measure. If such a study last four months, rather than six weeks, but still gathers reliable data, then that is not time lost. Regardless, I would not set a rate that would be higher than one per 50 edits, for reasons outlined above regarding the interface.

Overall, I think personally that more recognition should be given out by more people generally because we mostly do a good job at doing what we do and most editors are underappreciated. So I don't see the imminent harm in encouraging editors to do so. I don't really understand the argument that encouraging people to edit Wikipedia is somehow harmful. It's deeply counterintuitive given the ongoing editathons and workshops designed to do just that. But if anyone wants to explore the issue in more detail, my talk page is always open to all comers. GMG^talk 00:22, 29 December 2018 (UTC)

• The issue I see is that the trial lacks any understanding of the community that contributes, the assumption that a barnstar is a motivating factor for further contributions is a fallacy. Secondly the disruption this has the potential to cause is incredibly high, see WP:BEANS. I have yet to see anything that would satisfy me that such disruption has any value to the community and I would block participants actively spamming barnstars. Gnangarra 05:13, 29 December 2018 (UTC)
• I hope everyone realizes how extraordinarily easy it would be for someone to totally invalidate any conclusions this research project might reach. All they would have to do is follow the bot handing out barnstars, and then add a comment saying: “Note: this barnstar may have been awarded to you by a bot, as part of a research project to see how you react”. This simple comment would let editors know they are the subject of an experiment, and that would change their behavior... thus tainting your data sets. Blueboar (talk) 18:26, 29 December 2018 (UTC)
• It might have made sense to focus on barnstars 10 years ago, when they were much more widely used. There are all sorts of prizes and rewards that can affect behavior, but I think most of them are probably trivial as compared to specific personal appreciation expressed in an individual way. . Singling out barnstars by itself is I think a poor research design, though it is certainly easier than considering multiple factors. And, if anyone does think they are meaningful, then handing them out by bot would certainly be disruptive. DGG ( talk ) 21:16, 8 January 2019 (UTC)
  • Agree with DGG that the present-day barn-star is "specific personal appreciation expressed in an individual way" and for that I hereby bestow upon DGG one virtual barn-star. Bus stop (talk) 17:54, 10 January 2019 (UTC)

Relation to Facebook

Diyiy, Your user page User:Diyiy links to your homepage http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~diyiy/ where you state "I am supported by Facebook Fellowship" Can you clarify if and how Facebook benefits from the research that you propose here? Thanks, Vexations (talk) 20:49, 28 December 2018 (UTC)

Ah yes...thanks Vexations for pointing that out. I'd be interested to know this info as well. Shearonink (talk) 21:30, 28 December 2018 (UTC)

Let me respond, since I'm User:Diyiy's PhD adviser. Facebook fellowships are the result of a international competition to identify, encourage and support promising doctoral students who are engaged in innovative and relevant research in areas related to computer science and engineering. Facebook won't benefit at all from the research we've been describing. More information about Facebook fellowships are at [[10]]. Robertekraut (talk) 22:13, 28 December 2018 (UTC)

Robertekraut, if someone is being paid to do this, either directly or indirectly, whether as a result of employment, a grant, etc, then that person is a paid editor and subject to WP:PAID. This is a policy derived from the WMF terms of use. SarahSV ^(talk) 22:25, 28 December 2018 (UTC)

SarahSV, I'm not following your logic in this response. First, I think you are misstating the WMF's terms of use and the related policy, which is that editors must disclose their employers or clients if they are making paid edits. For example, when EpochFail edits articles or builds tools as an employee of the WMF, he is not violating Wikipedia's policy. Second, although Diyiy and I have jobs, Diyiy is not being paid by Facebook and I am not being paid by the National Science Foundation or my university to edit Wikipedia. Therefore, we are not making paid contributions, which are ones that involve contributing to Wikipedia in exchange for money or other inducements. Robertekraut (talk) 23:41, 28 December 2018 (UTC)

From an outsiders point of view, reading this conversation - this getting quite confusing - not being paid to edit wikipedia - but actually being paid to induce editors to respond to externally funded research? JarrahTree 23:59, 28 December 2018 (UTC)

Robertekraut, the terms of use and WP:PAID say "you must disclose your employer, client, and affiliation with respect to any contribution for which you receive, or expect to receive, compensation." Note: "and affiliation". Any contribution is subject to this, whether editing articles, posting on talk or handing out barnstars. The compensation can be direct ("here's $200; go and edit that Wikipedia article"). Or it can be indirect ("here's a research grant; using it to do research on Wikipedia would be an appropriate use of it"). When EpochFail acts on WP as an employee of the WMF, he discloses; if he didn't, he would be violating the terms of use.

Perhaps you and Diyiy could explain why you want to conduct this research and in whose interests. It seems unlikely to produce any result that you'll notice. If you do notice one, that could be because you've triggered someone's addiction. During the 2014 research, giving barnstars to less-active contributors made no difference, which the addiction hypothesis would explain. This is like going to a local bingo hall, finding the most active players, and doing something to encourage them. Will encouraging them make them play more bingo? Yes, just about anything will make some of them play more, and perhaps a lot of them play more, because some or a lot of them are addicted. Therefore, don't do that research. Similarly, don't tweak it to say "but we want to know whether doing X will make them play more in a certain way". That's just as unethical and just as unlikely to produce a meaningful result. Diyiy, what is your PhD topic? SarahSV ^(talk) 00:13, 29 December 2018 (UTC)

Robertekraut, perhaps it is helpful to link to the Research Summary at [11] Vexations (talk) 00:17, 29 December 2018 (UTC)

JarrahTree, Vexations and SarahSV, to make it clear, I am not paid by Facebook to edit Wikipedia; the proposed work has nothing to do with Facebook. This barnstar project is a follow up on our previous Wiki work about developing algorithms to identify editors' expertise and skills, and an extension on prior research Resvito, Michael; Van de Rijt, Arnout (2014). "No praise without effort: experimental evidence on how rewards affect Wikipedia's contributor community". Journal Information, Communication & Society. 17 (4): 451–462. doi:10.1080/1369118X.2014.888459.. --Diyiy (talk) 02:15, 29 December 2018 (UTC)

Diyiy, thank you for the response. Could you say what the point of this research is, and in whose interests it's being done? It seems related to finding ways to entice people into the behavioural loops so beloved of Facebook and others. What would be the benefit to Wikipedia? SarahSV ^(talk) 02:42, 29 December 2018 (UTC)

SlimVirgin As stated in our research proposal, the point of this work is to determine whether rewarding Wikipedia editors through barnstars for the type of editing they do most regularly, such as adding substantive content to articles or copy-editing them, increases their willingness to continue that type of work in Wikipedia compared to editors who are eligible but did not receive these rewards. By doing so, we can better understand whether barnstars on Wikipedia can motivate editors to upload their engagement. It also allows us to understand whether giving people barnstars that fits their behaviors increases editors’ contribution more than giving people generic barnstars. We also hope that this can provide some insights on how to timely recognize editors’ work (especially editors who do a lot of work but are unrecognized by the community) and foster their willingness to contribute to Wikipedia. Benefits to Wikipedia: (1) A number of editors who are doing great work will receive barnstars showing the community’s recognition to their contribution to Wikipedia, which may increase their willingness to contribute to Wikipedia in the future. (2) Our research can provide insights into Wikipedia with the development of barnstars guidelines. For example, if people who receive barnstars that fit their editing behaviors make more contribution in the future compared to people who receive barnstars that are too generic. --Diyiy (talk) 04:00, 29 December 2018 (UTC)

Communities never rely on one means of communication but rather have countless pathways for moderating the behavior of others. Barn-stars are one of a panoply of communication devices. Do barn-stars correlate to other encouraging or discouraging aspects of communication such as Talk page banter and edit summaries? Bus stop (talk) 04:36, 29 December 2018 (UTC)

Diyiy, can you reply, please, to the part of SarahSV's question where she asks "in whose interests it's being done?" For my part, I want to know why Carnegie Mellon wants to know about Wikipedian behaviour. What benefits accrue to the university? And is the experiment to be of benefit to any of the great mainpulators of public behaviour such as Facebook, Google, Twitter, or anyone who desires to sharpen their sophisticated tools even further? Does the university have corporate, government, academic, or other partners who seek to benefit from barnstar-motivation studies? Are you, yourself, a ripe candidate for recruitment by Facebook or similar, based on your current social experiment activity, or arising out of your Facebook fellowship? I am seeking full transparency about any hidden partners or researcher motivations. Cui bono? Thank you. — O'Dea (talk) 19:11, 1 January 2019 (UTC)

Someone referenced the "natural state" and I think this is a significant concept. The proposal is to tamper with the "natural state". The knowledge of newly coined tokens of recognition will be known to some and not to others, at which point we will have the "natural state" for those in the dark and the "enhanced state" for those knowledgeable of the proposed project. This state of affairs would be analogous to some of us using the standard English alphabet of 26 letters and another group using an English alphabet consisting of 30 letters due to the addition of 4 bogus letters. I don't think we should tamper with our communications system. Bus stop (talk) 00:53, 29 December 2018 (UTC)

They're not paid to edit, they're paid to research. There is a difference, and this is not forbidden by WP:PAID or anything. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 02:05, 29 December 2018 (UTC)

They plan to edit Wikipedia by giving hundreds of editors barnstars. There was a situation recently of an editor who was paid by researchers to close RfCs (or similar; I forget the details). There was a community discussion, opened by that editor as I recall, and it was agreed that it would be subject to WP:PAID, which entailed disclosure. SarahSV ^(talk) 02:31, 29 December 2018 (UTC)

They are paid to perform edits on Wikipedia, whether you call it research is irrelevant if they are actively spamming the community they will get blocked. The WMF has a team specifically employed for Community development any such active experiment that will impact the retention of the Community should have WMF support before proceeding. The whole experiment should be open with full details of what is taking place and declaration of funding sources and beneficiaries, every account sending Barnstars should clearly state they are participants. The outcomes should be freely published and accessible to the community, ethically everyone should be able to opt out of being spammed and having their contributions monitored. Gnangarra 05:12, 29 December 2018 (UTC)

Incompatible statements relating to Facebook

@Robertekraut wrote above at 22:13, 28 December[12]: Facebook won't benefit at all from the research we've been describing.

@Diyiy wrote above at 02:15, 29 December[13]: the proposed work has nothing to do with Facebook.

However, https://research.fb.com/programs/fellowship/#Eligibility_Criteria says very clearly: "Applications Must Include: 250-word research summary which clearly identifies the area of focus, importance to the field and applicability to Facebook of the anticipated research during the award (reference the research areas below)". (underling added by BHG)

(The acceptable topics are set out further down that page at https://research.fb.com/programs/fellowship/#Research_Areas)

Those statements by Diyiy and Robertekraut relating to Facebook appear to me be incompatible with the terms of the Fellowship.

So it seems to me that that:

1. Diyiy explicitly disclosed to Facebook that this area of research would have no benefit to Facebook, or
2. The proposed research is outside the scope of the Facebook Fellowship which funds Diyiy's research, or
3. Diyiy and Robertekraut's statements above are false, or
4. Diyiy's work on this particular project from funded by some other source which has not been disclosed

There may of course be some other explanation for this apparent incompatibility. But whatever the explanation is, I think it is important that Diyiy and Robertekraut promptly clarify exactly what is going on here. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 16:20, 31 December 2018 (UTC)

Diyiy and I should have been more precise when saying ‘the proposed work has nothing to do with Facebook’ and ‘Facebook won't benefit at all from the research we've been describing’. We should have said that Facebook does not benefit directly from our research and does not benefit more from this knowledge than do other online platforms. We started this research on the influence of social roles in Wikipedia in collaboration with the WMF and our first paper on the topic was published in 2016 before Diyiy received a Facebook fellowship . The proposed research should lead to generalizable knowledge about the consequences of bestowing recognition and the influence of social roles in online groups. This generalizable knowledge could be useful to many different types of online groups, including Wikipedia, open-source software development communities, online health support groups, peer-to-peer lending groups and many others, including Facebook's online groups.  Robertekraut (talk) 18:30, 2 January 2019 (UTC)

References

Opt-out

Diyiy andRobertekraut, what is the opt-out protocol for this research project? For example, is there a template users can place on their user page to exclude themselves from your research? Vexations (talk) 17:34, 29 December 2018 (UTC)

User:Vexations. In search of a more permanent solution, i've just created a category called Category:NOTLABRAT. Whether it is an effective deterrent to being involved in research or not lies in the honesty of researchers. I'm hoping to highlight this in a brief sentence in WP:NOTLAB. Cesdeva ^(talk) 00:46, 30 December 2018 (UTC)

I've highlighted the category with this edit to WP:NOTLAB. The edit wasn't the result of a consensus to make the edit, but it does reflect consensus among some editors (those listed) that they would like to be left out of research. Cesdeva ^(talk) 19:09, 31 December 2018 (UTC)

Yes to most research. But no thanks to this

This was mentioned on my talk page, so I came here with an open mind to it check out. All our contributions to Wikipedia are publicly visible, and much research has been done on them. Some of it is very valuable. In principle, more research is fine.

But having read the discussion, I am strongly opposed.

The good side is that the researchers came here to set out their proposal, and have engaged in a collegial manner with those who commented. Good marks on that score.

Points lost for the obvious folly of claiming that an editor with <500 contributions in near 12 years is a senior contributor. Others have explained why that is not so, but it raised alarm bells with me as an indication of a very poor understanding of the editorial community. On the day this proposal was posted, the editor ranked at slot number 10,000 in the list of editors by edit count had made 8201 edits. The numbers are no criticism of the editor with <500 contibs, whose efforts are evidently made in ways which don't accumulate a high edit count ... but this sort of data should have been well-known to the designers of the research project. It is a flashing red light that the researchers have done seriously inadequate homework about the nature of the community they are researching.

Homework aside, it's clear that the substance of this project is to monitor the effects of a program of systematic deception.

The project is misleadingly labelled as research, a broad spectrum term which includes observational and analytical processes, as I mistakenly assumed this to be. In reality, what is proposed is a social experiment: to measure how people behave when manipulated as part of an RCT. More points lost for not explicitly labelling the project as a social experiment.

This deception experiment is destructive, because Wikipedia is a trust community. It is composed overwhelming of volunteers who contribute without possibility of tangible reward, and mostly anonymously. We don't hear voices or see faces, let alone any of the social aspects of community of most collaborations. All we have is letters on a screen, and trust which is built up slowly on an assumption of good faith. We react very strongly against editors who deceive the community, whether by socking or by faking references or claiming false credentials.

So when someone gives a thanks or barnstar or a welcome or a friendly note, we assume that is out of some sort of good intent. As others noted above, there are complex permutations around good intent, but the core of it is that some human is trying to make a nice gesture. The community has repeatedly rejected proposals for a "welcome bot" — so much so that it is listed both as a perennial proposal and as a frequently denied bot. The reason is simple: human gestures are valueless unless genuine, and fake ones can be deeply corrosive.

This is a proposal to target hundreds editors with fake acknowledgements. Sure, they will be delivered by a human, but the decision will be made by some sort of bot. Every editor delivering such a message will be deceiving the recipient into believing that the decision is their own.

@Robertekraut defended this by repeating that the barnstars will be given to editors who deserve them but haven't yet received any. I think that misses the whole point of barnstars, Most editors know that >99% of the good stuff they do en.wp goes unpraised; the significance of the barnstar is not in the work done, but in the fact that a human being has been watching and decided of their own free will to extend praise.

Such deceit is highly corrosive. It doesn't just sour the relationship betweeen the two individuals involved; it sours the recipient's undestanding of the whole community. One fake reward makes all rewards suspect, and even the news that this is being planned will make editors more wary.

I am saddened to hear that CMU's IRB waived informed consent. It seems to be adhering more closely to the minimal requirements of the US's National Research Act than to the much higher principles of the Nuremberg Code. The deceit and manipulation involved here is miniscule compared to the deceit and manipulation involved in all the commercial, political and military uses of manipulative psychology to which universities turn a blind eye; but it is on that dark side of the spectrum.

I hope that Facebook's sponsorship of @User:Diyiy's work is at sufficient distance that there is no possibility of direction from the company. https://research.fb.com/programs/fellowship/ is vague about selection personnel and criteria, so I will AGF. But given the extent of Facebook's manipulation of its users, its spectre hovers overs this project, even if its malign influence is only as an indirect signal to the educational culture that its bread is buttered on a particular side.

Wikipedia has a lot in common with how the internet was in its pre-commercialisation days in the early 1990s: anonymous, quite anarchic, and driven by altruism rather than by money. This proposed social experiment reeks of the manipulation of users and and monetisation-of-retention which underpins the giants of the commercialised web.

Many thanks to Diyiy and Robert for their courtesy and civility in this discussion. But FWIW, my view is that this proposal doesn't belong on en.wp ... and that if it proceeds, sanctions should be applied to any editor who assists it without full transparency. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 15:39, 30 December 2018 (UTC)

PS In the discussion on meta, I have just posted[14] a request to @Diyiy to a) explicitly relabel her proposal as a social experiment, and b) to prominently disclose her personal sponsorship by Facebook.

I was shocked to find that the word "Facebook" is mentioned nowhere in m:Research:How role-specific rewards influence Wikipedia editors’ contribution. My ability to sustain an assumption of the good faith of both @Diyiy and @Robertekraut is fading fast, and I think that they both owe the en.wp community a fulsome explanation for this extraordinary lack of transparency.

(Personally, I also think that CMU should also be concerned about the lack of transparency, but that discusison belongs elsewhere.) --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 16:54, 30 December 2018 (UTC)

BrownHairedGirl, thank you for your post. I agree with your view of this. Diyiy, again, thank you for taking the time to explain.

I see the Signpost wrote about the 2011/2012 study: Restivo, Michael and van de Rijt, Arnout (2012). "Experimental Study of Informal Rewards in Peer Production". PLoS ONE, 7(3): e34358. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0034358 The Signpost explained:

During the experiment, it was noted on the Administrator's noticeboard/Incidents page that a seemingly random IP editor was "handing out barnstars", which led to some suspicion from Wikipedians. The thread was closed after User:Mike Restivo confirmed he accidentally logged out when delivering the barnstars. He did not, however, declare his status as a researcher, and the group's paper does not disclose that the behavior was considered unusual enough to warrant such a discussion thread.

See Mike Restivo's contribs for 21 February to 29 April 2011, when he handed them out. He posted this note on his user page on 17 February 2011 as an explanation of what he was doing, with no mention of a study. On 29 April he added a sentence about random selection, but still no mention of a study. Boing! said Zebedee opened an AN/I on 29 April in which several editors expressed concern. Others expressed concern on Mike's talk page, where he told them in an edit summary that he was handing out the barnstars "randomly", which wasn't the whole story. The paper said they had targeted the top 1% of users, minus those who had received a barnstar or were admins. "We then took a uniformly random sample of 200 users and through random assignment either awarded a barnstar (100 cases) or withheld the award in the control group (100 cases). Finally, we observed all 200 subjects’ actions for 90 days." Several recipients thanked him for the barnstars on his user page and on his talk page.

As Brownhairedgirl said, this subverts and undermines Wikipedia:Barnstars, which was started after the original barnstar was created in (I believe) 2003. These are genuine awards, given in good faith and often after a lot of thought about which one to choose and how to word it. A 15-year history of people being thoughtful and kind toward each other in what can be an aggressive environment is something to cherish and respect. That's just one objection among several others, including that the researchers don't seem to know what kind of editor they're targeting; that an unknown proportion of those editors may be addicted; that several may be under the age of consent; and that this kind of research (how to tempt people into behavioural loops that may not be in their interests) is something that Wikipedia, and I hope the Wikimedia Foundation, should distance itself from. SarahSV ^(talk) 04:10, 31 December 2018 (UTC)

Thanks, @SarahSV. I think you are right to draw such attention to the issues of addiction. Facebook's business model appears to encourage addiction, but Wikipedia should not treat its editors in the same way.

That is why I am so concerned that the @Diyiy's Facebook Fellowship was not disclosed either on her page on meta about this research or in her initial post on this page.[15]. It was only revealed to this discussion thanks to the diligence of @Vexations, who raised it in a post[16] ten days after @Diyiy's initial post.

My own further checking (see above: #Incompatible statements relating to Facebook) has given me further concerns about the candour and transparency of Diyiy and @Robertekraut. It seems to me that whenever more checking is done by en.wp editors, the story told by Diyiy and Robertekraut's story unravels a little more.

I understand that they may both be enjoying a break over the holiday season, but clarification is urgently needed on their return.

In the meantime, I think that Wikipedia's policies in this area need to be tightened up. The issues which I see so far include:

1. Clarifying the policy on WP:COI/WP:MEAT to explicitly forbid edits on behalf of a third party unless that external relationship is disclosed
2. Tightening policy to require that academics explicit disclose the source and terms of their funding.
3. Developing a policy on addiction. So far, all I see is a humorous essay at WP:Wikipediholic

I don't think that we need to wait for a consensus on this particular proposal to address the policy issues which it has revealed. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 16:47, 31 December 2018 (UTC)

BrownHairedGirl, I don't know how to interpret that WP:ADDICTED hosts a humour page, but we definitely need a serious page about it. We should also start a discussion once the holidays are over about banning this type of research and/or setting up an ethics committee of our own. SarahSV ^(talk) 17:04, 31 December 2018 (UTC)

@SarahSV. Yes to both. I particularly like the idea of our own ethics committee, and hope that it is an area where WMF support would be available. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 17:08, 31 December 2018 (UTC)

There has been previous discussion regarding setting up an internal ethics review in the form of a WP:IRB. See discussions that established NOTLAB as policy at Wikipedia talk:What Wikipedia is not/Archive 55. See also current discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (idea lab)/Archive 28#IRB Review of Research on Wikipedia to be submitted to OTRS. There's a few issues surrounding that:

1. We don't want unethical research conducted (obviously)
2. We need an independent verification of IRB approval
3. Although external IRBs may have a good understanding of scholarly research, they may have little or no understanding of Wikipedia
4. We don't want to discourage ethical research that could help us improve the project
5. We don't want to make following the rules so cumbersome that researchers forgo any pretense of doing so and just do what they want regardless (AKA the classic COI conundrum)
6. We should have proposals evaluated by editors who have some experience actually working with ethical evaluations of research involving human subjects. AKA, we don't want legitimate ethical research derailed because Wikipedia:Randy in Boise decided to turn community oversight into an ANI thread.

I've always been in favor of such a proposal. Whether it's logistically feasible and sustainable is a different issue though. GMG^talk 17:15, 31 December 2018 (UTC)

Thanks, @GMG. A few thoughts on that:

• Yes, obvs, to points 1–3
• You are almost certainly right about IRBs having little or no understanding of Wikipedia. This is an area where the WMF could help, by a program of systematically contacting IRBs (and whatever collective organisations they use) to explain the policies and ethical issues relating to Wikipedia.
• I would want to qualify or tighten yoir statement that We don't want to discourage ethical research that could help us improve the project. I get a whiff from this discussion that some WMF staff saw the potential gains for en.wp from this research project, but did little scrutiny of the downsides. I suspect that most research proposals will have some positive potential, and that the main issue will be weighing the potential gains against against the possibilities for harm. In other words, this is a an area replete with trade-offs, and we need to be clear about which issues are bright lines, and for other issues how the trade-offs are weighed. For example, I can imagine that some breaching experiments might be considered if carefully constructed.
• Yes to simplicity and clarity. That's commonly a failure of en.wp, where most policies and guidelines have grown far too verbose and unclear. There are some exceptions, such as WP:NOT, but in general instruction-creep and obstruction-through-verbosity are structural consequences of our WP:BOLD policy.
• Yes to an ethics committee of people with verifiable expertise. However, no matter what structures we set up WP:Randy in Boise or anyone else can launch an ANI thread whenever they like on whatever they like. (Hence the perennial question about ANI: does it drives its participants insane? Or merely attract those already insane?) What matters is that the ethics committee attracts enough community support to ensure that such threads are shut down quickly, as is mostly the case with Randy's zomg-arbcom-is-evil threads.

However, I am troubled by the apparent demise of m:Research:Committee, and the lack of explanation for its dormancy. Whatever happened to it should inform this work on en.wp. @Halfak (WMF): is there any writeup of what happened? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 22:08, 31 December 2018 (UTC)

I don't think proactively contacting IRBs is at all feasible. That's...I dunno...tens of thousands of IRBs globally, all of whom are under no obligation to listen, and many of whom will have no interest at all. As to this proposal, I'm broadly in favor of it, if done cautiously so as to not be disruptive. I'm of the opinion that we should encourage community engagement and mutual recognition, and that most of us don't do it enough. I think the ethical risks are minimal and that similar experiments with other online communities would also easily get an informed consent waiver based on risk to human subjects, and would be carried on without any input from the community at all. I think we need to carefully consider that the "advise and consent" role of the community here is done with the goal of minimizing/eliminating any potential disruption, with a keen eye that if we are too...verbose maybe...in that role, we effectively push research underground and maximize the disruption caused by uninformed research. I honestly think the online addiction thing is mostly a red herring, and that while it is perhaps an issue that we should have a response to as a community, it's not directly relevant to this proposal, and if followed to its logical conclusions, calls into question all types of community efforts, like workshops and editathons, all designed to increase community participation and longevity. GMG^talk 22:27, 31 December 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for writing this, @BrownHairedGirl:, I felt a general unease reading this proposal and your edit captures exactly why. Wikipedia editors have been handing out barnstars for 15 years now. Over this time I think one could gather enough data to form and show correlations re: whether getting more barnstars leads to more or fewer future edits, or whichever other hypotheses we can form, and let us know about their conclusions. If falsifiable results are needed, one could simply construe these conclusions as hypotheses and see if they pan out on 1-2 years of future data. By getting involved in giving out barnstars the experiment would obviously go quicker, but also create problems -- making this a blinded experiment in our environment would be tough job even for someone with a lot more inside knowledge than the people proposing this. We'd have to get very good at deceiving our peers, or we'd have a study of how Wikipedia is impacted by thinly disguised gamification ...unless these are precisely the aims of the experiment.

As tempted as I am to leave on this bombshell, I have to add that Diyiy's and Robertekraut's comments don't evoke someone with such sinister plans, rather people who still have a rather shallow awareness of WP's functioning and can't foresee these consequences. Still, even the more useful of these two by-product goals would have a limited use to Wikipedia, as senior editor retention is not our key problem. We've got thousands, probably tens of thousands people making thousands of regular edits on Wikipedia over 5-10 years or more, something few online communities can boast of. People who stay on Wikipedia for so long do so or quit due to their own internal motivation, and even genuine peer approval (let alone a calculated reward they can as senior editors see through the fastest) is not going to be a likely factor in it. This is a genuinely stressful hobby to devote time to; people who come here don't stay just for tea and cookies. IMO it would be better for us to focus such efforts into new user retention, e.g. to use gamification as a training wheel for new editors' motivation until they garner enough interest to withstand the rough ride of editing Wikipedia on their own. Daß Wölf 20:29, 2 January 2019 (UTC)

Manipulated Wikipedian behaviour cannot produce neutral science

The Barnstar system whereby editors spontaneously award the stars will be corrupted and distorted by turning the system into an experiment. It will deliberately manipulate formerly innocent and well-meaning Wikipedian behaviour, and turn it into a reward-seeking, unspontaneous activity. The purpose of the encyclopaedia is not to manipulate contributors, especially without their knowledge and consent, which is unethical "science".

A researcher should properly study the system as it is, as it operates now. Once the researcher becomes, instead, an experimenter — and she openly admits how her research actively seeks to change Wikipedian behaviour — she interferes with the system she proposes to study. This is not merely bad science — it is not science at all.

There should be no burden placed on Wikipedians, generous with their time, to opt out of manipulative experimentation. The default should be that they may be invited to opt in to being manipulated. And bear in mind, that an experimental subject, conscious of being observed, is liable to behave unnaturally, is liable to have his activity distorted by self awareness, which is therefore a distorted behaviour, and therefore presents activity for study which is no longer authentic. Thus, the behaviour to be studied is no longer valid, "clean" experimental data, and "scientific" conclusions drawn from it would be unreliable, to put it mildy. — O'Dea (talk) 18:12, 1 January 2019 (UTC)

...As someone who only has mediocre experience in research design, I'm going to field a guess and say that this comment is not at all informed by experience in research design. It does however reinforce my intuition that crowd sourced ethics evaluation is not feasible, and we should instead institute some type of formalized review process. GMG^talk 18:34, 1 January 2019 (UTC)

GreenMeansGo, are you proposing to abandon consensus-based decision-making in favor of appointing a panel of experts? Vexations (talk) 18:44, 1 January 2019 (UTC)

Specifically, I'm proposing we build a community based consensus to appoint a panel of experts. Alternatively, if we cannot do so, then we should consider scrapping the process of community review all together, or just keep it on meta off in a quiet corner. When a discussion like this degrades into broad musings on the philosophy of science, and not specific methodological critique, it is no longer productive in any meaningful way. GMG^talk 19:18, 1 January 2019 (UTC)

I think the 'broad musings' were just a long-winded way of pointing out that the researchers risk becoming confounding variables in their own experiment, and that perhaps passive observation would be better. Discussions like these are important and shouldn't be had in quiet corners. Cesdeva ^(talk) 19:30, 1 January 2019 (UTC)

GreenMeansGo, allow me to take a leaf from your book and "field a guess," as you say, that what sways you most is not the argument made, but any "barnstars" achieved in life by the proponent of the argument. Your ad hominem brushing aside of so-called "crowd sourced ethics evaluation" is not at all an honest, rigorous engagement. Anyone who pronounces from such a lofty self-erected perch may be incapable of anything other than mediocre experience in research design (your description). Fielding "guesses" and tossing out lazy ad hominems does not accord with the spirit of Wikipedian civility, not to mention respectable discussion. — O'Dea (talk) 19:36, 1 January 2019 (UTC)

Civility is not synonymous with entertaining nonsense for it's own sake. And it is not an ad hominem to say that your argument makes no sense and therefore I conclude that you have no idea what you're talking about and no experience in the areas on which you have expressed an opinion. GMG^talk 21:53, 1 January 2019 (UTC)

GreenMeansGo, you are guilty, once again, of incivility—you merely doubled down on it—by insulting a reasoned argument as nonsense without justification, and by speculating without foundation about an editor's experience (ad hominem attack). You merely dismissed an argument based on your pure fantasy about qualification or lack thereof, as opposed to the merit of the argument. That is incivility, as well as feeble practice. — O'Dea (talk) 22:09, 18 January 2019 (UTC)

Barnstars are of no real-world value, and in practice are awarded almost randomly. They are also open to counterfeiting, since anyone can make a "barnstars" page (or section on their user page), and put any barnstars they want on it. No one goes around checking to see if the barnstars added to such pages are legitimate. Probably no one looks at such pages at all. The idea that they influence editing behavior is therefore absurd on its face. bd2412 T 23:15, 1 January 2019 (UTC)

I would just like to echo GMG a bit -- what we should be concerned with is not whether an experiment will produce scientifically viable results or whether it asks a silly question. Rather, we need to ask whether it comports with Wikipedia policies and the community's ethical consensus. To put it succinctly, science is their area; Wikipedia is ours. That said, a very happy New Year to all. Dumuzid (talk) 23:22, 1 January 2019 (UTC)

• I'm going to take a different tack here. I believe that granting barnstars - traditionally given by one knowledgeable Wikipedian to another for a *significant* accomplishment - is very much the wrong thing to do. Maybe adding a "Wikilove" would be okay, and I wouldn't particularly have a problem with using the "thanks" feature. But giving the same copy-editing barnstar I earned for actually copy-editing an article on its way to featured status to someone who only fixed a few typos is, frankly, devaluing the hours of work I put in that resulted in *my* barnstar. Every single barnstar I have came as the result of significant effort on my part. I don't understand why the researchers have decided to grant what is, essentially, one of the highest interpersonal symbols of respect on the project to people who have not made the level of contribution that the rest of the community would expect to see when a barnstar is granted. It's like throwing a parade in recognition of successfully empyting the trash baskets, very disproportionate. If you're going to do something along the line of recognizing new users for their early contributions, please do so in a proportionate way that doesn't denigrate the barnstar-level recognition that Wikipedians give to Wikipedians. My personal belief is that it is insulting to the rest of us who *have* put in the hours and *have* worked hard for the recognition we've earned - and would devalue the giving of barnstars to the point that they would become meaningless in the future. Don't take this away from us. Use something else. Write a talk page post. Use the "thanks" feature. If you really, really have to, use Wikilove. But leave barnstars for serious, experienced Wikipedians to recognize other serious, experienced Wikipedians. Risker (talk) 23:53, 1 January 2019 (UTC)

• My concern is with the authenticity of barn-stars. Perhaps they are not 100% authentic but we should not take steps to degrade authenticity, which is to say that we should not do anything with barn-stars. The concept of "counterfeiting", mentioned by BD2412, is interesting because in my opinion the proposal is akin to counterfeiting barn-stars. I understand that BD2412 was speaking of Users counterfeiting their own barn-stars but I think the concept of counterfeiting is equally applicable to the proposal. Would any harm come from instituting the proposed experiment? Probably not. I don't mean to be narrow-minded but I don't think any good could come from it either. My concern is akin to saving species threatened by extinction. Are they of any super-well-known super-importance to mankind? Probably not. But "preservation" is a value that is intrinsic. Unless the costs of preservation are too high we should err on the side of preservation. In other words—leave our barn-stars alone. But I am one admittedly ignorant voice. If the proposers of the experiment have something important to say in support of their proposal I think we should all listen. Bus stop (talk) 00:26, 2 January 2019 (UTC)

Victim protection

How can the experiment protect the victims of testing on them, firstly in the active stage when encourages addictive outcomes, dirves peope away, or devalues the efforts of others. What happens if it draws attention on an editor in a not so friendly environment who wants to remain under the radar, we have had editors in prisoned and those who have died as result being an editor. What about in the future when a editor puts their hand for RfA and some points out that the small recognition they got had been part of an experiment and wasnt any indication that the community appreciated their contributions. What about the damage to Wikipedia as an independent reliable source of information when its editors are being manipulated for scientific research. Gnangarra 06:19, 2 January 2019 (UTC)

Withdrawing research proposal

Even though we think that our research would answer questions about the impact of recognition that are both scientifically interesting and useful to Wikipedia and that the research could be conducted in an ethically responsible way, we’ve decided to withdraw this research project.

The initial discussion we had with the community was valuable and constructive. It evaluated the value of the research (mostly positive), raised ethical concerns (e.g., concerns about devaluing Barnstars) and suggested ways to improve the research, by mitigating the ethical concerns (e.g., using Thanks instead of Barnstars as recognition) and by increasing the likelihood that the research would lead to meaningful results (e.g., by having multiple experienced editors issue the recognition).

However, the most recent discussions suggesting that the receipt of barnstars causes Wikipedia addiction and our research is corrupt because Diyiy has a Facebook fellowship were not very productive. Despite our best intentions for scientific research on the effects of barnstars and recognition, we are sorry to see that some of the comments above contained accusation of us lying either to the Wikipedia community or to Facebook, which we consider ad hominem attacks. The most recent discussions were taking too much time, exacting too high an emotional toll and not going anywhere. Taking into account everyone’s opinions and the time we have available for this research, Diyiy and I have decided that we’ll withdraw our research proposal and discontinue this proposed project. We thank all of you for your active participation and discussion about this research proposal. Robertekraut (talk) 18:45, 2 January 2019 (UTC)

I'm sorry that you were subjected to this, Diyiy and Robertekraut. And I share GreenMeansGo's expressed concern that being too verbose/prescriptive/bureaucratic about research review will simply drive more research underground. This discussion is something of a case in point. Two researchers have followed best practices for performing ethical research on Wikipedia: they created a research proposal, they secured approval from Carnegie Mellon's Institutional Review board, they brought the proposal up for discussion at the Village Pump, and they actively engaged in conversation around community concerns and attempted to resolve those concerns. In response, they were subjected to accusations of bad faith, public shaming, and conspiracy-mongering. On top of that, some folks here have claimed—without evidence—that this study a) is not research (I don't even know what to do with a statement like that) and b) that the researchers clearly did not understand anything about Wikipedia because either "barnstars don't work" (they do, sometimes; social motivation is complex, more research is needed) AND/OR "500 edits doesn't make you an experienced Wikipedian" (it does, in fact, make you an experienced Wikipedian, or at least it is as good a threshold as any we've developed). Also, the notion that Robert Kraut doesn't know anything about Wikipedia is naive at best. He is one of the most cited scholars on online collaboration and Wikipedia in particular. He literally wrote the book on how open collaborations work, including a whole chapter on motivation that might be illuminating to some of the participants in this discussion.

Many people have engaged in this discussion in good faith. But—putting aside the question about whether or not this particular study was a good idea, or well-designed, or of scientific or practical value—the vigorous dogpiling that these researchers have received here will certainly cause other, less ethical, researchers to think twice before informing any Wikimedia volunteer community that they plan to conduct research that involves interacting with editors. A great deal of research, much of it substantially more risky and problematic than this study, has been conducted and published without any suggestion that the community as a whole was notified or involved. I've run into this pretty frequently when I'm reviewing recently-published literature on Wikipedia. Some of it is happening right now. It's unsettling, but ultimately it probably cannot be prevented in any systematic way. The best we, as a community, can do is to work with people who are operating openly and in good faith, as Diyiy and Robertkraut are.

So, by all means write more policies and set up committees. But if this discussion is any indication, you shouldn't expect those efforts to have any appreciable effect on the behavior of the people who are putting individual editors, or the community as a whole, at risk. And you should expect that those policies will have a chilling effect on the kind of research that has both scientific value and value to Wikipedia.

Also, to clear up any confusion, the Wikimedia Foundation does not and has never had the authority to regulate research on Wikipedia unless that research is conducted by or in collaboration with Wikimedia Foundation Staff and/or involves access to non-public data. J-Mo 20:38, 2 January 2019 (UTC)

I don't know what the solution is, but if this is how these discussion are going to be conducted, it ain't this, this faithless mess half full of nothing but vacillation between accusation and inanity. The only thing we're going to buy for ourselves in this direction is a bunch of researchers that don't seek input from the community, and then proceed with designs that are both more disruptive and probably of lower quality if successful. GMG^talk 21:09, 2 January 2019 (UTC)

The discussion is reflective of the climate we are in. After Cambridge Analytica etc, people are more concerned than ever about being manipulated. Without the WMF or an en-wiki review board of experts checking these proposals, it has been left to editors at the Village Pump to ask the questions and be the one-and-only barrier. So is it really any surprise that the response to this proposal has been so 'verbose' and pointy?

You want quality discussion? Help form a panel of experts to analyse these proposals. Otherwise next time there will just be a repeat of the above. Not everyone is content with putting their head under the sand. Cesdeva ^(talk) 21:36, 2 January 2019 (UTC)

Cesdeva I already analyze these proposals, and work with researchers to refine them, and notify the community about them—as I have pointed out in my posts above. And EpochFail has probably logged more hours than any other individual helping to vet and shepherd research proposals. And GreenMeansGo has put forward a straightforward proposal to independently verify whether IRB approval has been secured, which sounds like a promising first step. So I'm not sure who, by implication, is content to have their "head in the sand" in your statement above. But you can rest assured that neither I, nor any "panel of experts" I formed, would be among their number. However, if this is the way the current coalition of the willing on EnWiki wants to talk about research ethics, I'm not in any hurry to recruit more researchers to either vet proposals or submit them. It doesn't sound like it would be a good use of any of our time. J-Mo 21:53, 2 January 2019 (UTC)

Jtmorgan I guess what confused me is why this research proposal (which has been torn apart) even made it to the VP. Why was the Facebook fellowship (which is clearly relevant) not immediately highlighted and disclosed to the community? It seems the WMF has dropped a bollock in regards to due diligence. Luckily editors at the VP are thorough. Cesdeva ^(talk) 22:20, 2 January 2019 (UTC)

As was said above, the Foundation does not have the authority to officially determine whether research is allowed on a local project. Also, the discussion is here because of the local policy we adopted last year requiring community notification for potentially controversial research that involves interacting with the community. This isn't the Foundation's problem; it's our problem. No one is sticking their head in the sand. We've been having this discussion in various forms for months now. GMG^talk 22:30, 2 January 2019 (UTC)

Just wanted to join in and say thanks to the researchers for the way they went about this. While I think some of the resistance encountered was off-base, for lack of a better term, some of it I understand on a gut level. Either way, I hope Wikipedia will be a continued field of fruitful study and that they're willing to come back and discuss new proposals in the future. Cheers, all. Dumuzid (talk) 21:21, 2 January 2019 (UTC)

@Jtmorgan, I am surprised to see your comment that Diyiy and Robertekraut and followed best practices for performing ethical research on Wikipedia. As I acknowledged elsewhere, they got some things very right, but some things badly wrong:

• They did not disclose upfront their source of funding
  • When it was uncovered, their initial responses were somewhere between misleading and false
  • Robert's statement on withdrawal made no apology for the shortage of transparency and candour, and instead dismissed it as ad hominem
• They seemed ethically untroubled by framing supportive communication between volunteer people as a goal-driven management tool
• They were also unconcerned by the deceptions which they were going to ask editors to perform

Sorry, Jt, but I think that Wikipedians are entitled to ask for better. And I would hope that since you are also a WMF employee, you will be conveying back to other WMF personnel that that many aspects of this proposal were controversial. My post above #Yes_to_most_research._But_no_thanks_to_this got more way thanks notifications than I have received for any single edit I have ever made, so while I know that plenty have disagreed with me, I'm fairly confident that I am not taking some marginal and extremist view. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 10:26, 4 January 2019 (UTC)

• I am disappointed that the researchers did not address the concern about "diluting the value of the barnstar" as expressed by Noyster. This was also my primary concern. Bus stop (talk) 21:59, 2 January 2019 (UTC)

• Thanks for listening to the community and withdrawing this research proposal. As someone who has both given and received quite a few barnstars in my time here, and who has also been involved in many discussions about research, I for one would be happy to see some research done on Wikipedia's barnstars. But rather than research based on an experiment I would like to see research done noninvasively, by measurement. Barnstars have bern around for more than a decade, it would be interesting to know what if any effect they have had on retention, civility and encouraging particular types of behaviour. It is no secret that various WikiProjects have created barnstars in order to promote either their project or the behaviour that their project endorses. So as well as looking at barnstars and their effect on editor retention, it should be possible to be more specific and measure things like the effect of getting the article rescue barnstar at encouraging recipients to rescue further articles. There may also be a halo effect, with other visitors to a particular person's talkpage seeing that they have received a barnstar for a particular action. This sort of digital archaeology requires a slightly different mindset than the experimental research ethos of collecting data through experiment. But as both archaeologists and astronomers can affirm, research by looking at actual data is every bit as much research as research by creating your own data, and without the pitfalls of devaluing the thing you measure or missing such a key datum as who the donor is. ϢereSpielChequers 06:07, 4 January 2019 (UTC)
• Thanks to @Robertekraut & @Diyiy for withdrawing this proposal. It was clear that it would have been divisive. I appreciate your efforts to modify the proposal based on feedback, but I am unpersuaded that any of them addressed my core concern: recruitment of meatpuppets to act without undisclosed COI in their interactions with other editors. I remained disappointed both that such a proposal was cleared by an IRB and that WMF did not raise concerns about that core issue.

And I am also disappointed to see Robertekraut's defensiveness about the Facebook connection.

First, as a general principle the funding of any research project should be disclosed upfront to other stakeholders, who have a right to know who is paying for the piper. That is basic transparency, and the lack of it when approaching Wikipedia editors was a foolish omission, because this is a large group of people whose common purpose is research. Wikipedians are likely to find out, so better to disclose at the outset.

Secondly, it is a particularly serious omission when the funder is Facebook. The ethics of Facebook have been a major issue of public controversy in both the US and the UK for over two years, and recent discoveries by a select committee of the House of Commons have shown major ethical failings at the very top of Facebook. So it is unsurprising that a connection to Facebook would be controversial and scrutinised.

Thirdly, the initial statements which both Robertekraut and Diyiy gave in response to the discovery were at best incomplete. Robertekraut's subsequent clarification confirmed some of what I had inferred from the public info, and added the crucial context that this is part of a workstream begun before Diyiy revived the Facebook Fellowship. That reduces my concerns about the direct influence of Facebook, but reaffirms my concern that this is part the broader intellectual collusion of academia and business in the science of manipulation. There is plenty of scholarly work on that, but George Monbiot's article a few days ago is a handy layperson's introduction to the extent of the problem.

So I am left feeling disappointed that Robertekraut describes the questioning of him about this as ad hominem attacks. The questioning was solely a consequence of the researchers' choice to leave this info to be dragged out of them in multiple rounds. I stand by comment above that I have concerns about the candour and transparency of these researchers. I hope that in future, WMF will advise researchers to be much more candid in their initial approach, and to respond to any questions or suspicions with enthusisastic transparency rather than the defensiveness displayed here. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 07:54, 4 January 2019 (UTC)

Link to Special:RandomInCategory for a specific category

Is there a way to encode a wikilink so that it calls Special:RandomInCategory with a specific category? The Help:Special page entry for that call doesn't say, and the form at the link looks like it is using the Post method. Praemonitus (talk) 22:58, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

Praemonitus, put the category name (no namespace) as a "subpage": Special:RandomInCategory/Category theory will give you random articles in Category:Category theory, for example. This works with most special pages with arguments: Special:Random/Talk, Special:ListUsers/foo (but Special:ListUsers/sysop), and so on. Enterprisey (talk!) 00:16, 16 January 2019 (UTC)

Enterprisey: Thanks! Unfortunately it doesn't appear to descend the category tree, so it's not that useful. Praemonitus (talk) 02:09, 16 January 2019 (UTC)