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The following is an automatically-generated compilation of all talk pages for the Signpost issue dated 2011-02-28. For general Signpost discussion, see Wikipedia talk:Signpost.

Arbitration report: AUSC applications open; interim desysopping; two pending cases (2,849 bytes · 💬)

Desysop of Rodhullandemu This has generated much concern within the community, not least as to privacy issues; on the one hand, the Arbitration Committee claims that this should be dealt with "privately", but is not prepared to discuss with the editor involved why this should be so, since the online reasons for their decision are claimed to be available to any Wikipedia editor. Offline, as regards Wikipedia, there is a disjunction between private reasons for desysopping, and the public reasons given for that. The Arbitration Committee should decide whether it is prepared to depart from the principles of natural justice, and plough it's own, unaccountable, furrow, or realise that it is ultimately accountable to the community that elects it. On the latter point, it's irrelevant that an elected body can be thrown out when the next election occurs; this is not a parliamentary democracy. What matters more is that the ArbCom should be respectable as "fit for purpose", and this case shows that they are not. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rodhullandemu (talk • contribs)

I'll just add this: my desysop is NOT temporary when it is predicated upon conditions that may not be met, or even achievable. That's a deception that should be quashed from the start, and love me or hate me, I am at least entitled to due process. Rodhullandemu 01:45, 1 March 2011 (UTC)
Wikipedia isn't "fair" and doesn't do "due process" (1) since it's a project, not a system of government. People feel like they get shafted all the time. Usually it's for the good of the project. Or so one hopes. ++Lar: t/c 04:29, 1 March 2011 (UTC)
1 - per se... sure, being fair and impartial and following norms and procedures is helpful to the project, since it helps keep volunteers involved, but it's not a hard and fast requirement.
Rod, are you now saying that you would prefer this to be dealt with by a public case? The problems are not going to go away, and either the committee deals with you privately or it does it publically. So far, you have been unwilling to accept what was presented privately, but unwilling to have a case in public either.--Elen of the Roads (talk) 10:36, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

Arbitration statistics: Arbitration Committee hearing fewer cases; longer decision times (1,248 bytes · 💬)

Features and admins: The best of the week (1,425 bytes · 💬)

  • Why is this feature called "Best of the Week" when it includes new admins? Passing an RFA does not mean the admin is necessarily a great editor, or even the "best". The subheadline needs to be changed to something a little more appropriate. AD 22:30, 1 March 2011 (UTC)
    • Best of the week refers to the practice, not seen this week but usually seen in this section, of asking an outside editor to pick their favorite of the newly promoted articles or pictures as the 'best of the week'. I don't think it has anything to do with the admins. Sven Manguard Wha? 08:20, 2 March 2011 (UTC)
  • What an awesome variety of featured content this week! Reading this always makes me feel proud of Wikipedia. -- œ™ 06:25, 2 March 2011 (UTC)
    • Agreed. Also kudos for discovering and utilizing the ability to put images into the featured sounds. I had no idea that was possible, (I really need to look at template documentation pages more often.) Sven Manguard Wha? 08:20, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

In the news: Egypt and Jordan likely candidates for Wikimedia office; Sanger interview; brief news (668 bytes · 💬)

That interview was one of the oddest things I've read of late (and huge!) but I think it reflects the best of Sanger's thought.

Sanger sounded great in the interview. I know he has not succeeded like Jimbo, but you can't fail to think the fellow is brighter and more honest, albiet not as lucky or horse-sense smart. The fellow asking questions was bizarre, but Sanger tuned most of it every well and really came across as analytical and helpful.TCO (talk) 22:56, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

News and notes: Newbies and patrollers: "Every now and then a nun or a tourist wanders in front of the rifle sights" (15,952 bytes · 💬)

Untitle

Some media articles related to the Bhagat Singh/Valentine's day hoax can be found here : The Hindu  : Bhagat Singh page ‘vandalised' on Wikipedia ; CNN-IBN "Twitter blooper: Bhagat Singh hanged on V-Day" ; MiD DAY  : "An online Valentine's Day blooper" ; Bangalore Mirror  : "Bhagat Singh gets new death anniversary on Twitter" -- Tinu Cherian - 05:53, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

In response to Sue Gardner's comment about "avoiding extrinsic rewards", I find her words familiar. Maybe it's because, many years ago, I was trying to negotiate a raise from a boss who said very much the same thing -- but believed he needed more extrinsic rewards of a monetary type. Nevertheless, writing as someone who has hung on Wikipedia for eight years fueled almost solely by intrinsic motivation, I would not find extrinsic monetary rewards demotivating. Or to put it another way, anyone who has a family & bills to pay can attest that getting a little money is a big help in explaining to one's spouse the value of contributing to Wikipedia. -- llywrch (talk) 05:52, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

Direct payment for writing articles is bad and can easily kill the golden goose. But there are other ways, competitions with prizes are not poisonous and we have used that with success. In a competition between Wikipedians in Estonia and Norway around one thousand articles were created and the prizes were extended weekends, sponsored by the two countries embassies. Quite successful and a win-win for all parties involved. Ulflarsen (talk) 11:13, 1 March 2011 (UTC)
I'd be interested in your views in, say, 20 years, when you have a family, a full-time job, & bills to pay. You may be more sympathetic to my argument. When your life priorities include those three items, it is hard to be anything more than an infrequent & marginal contributor not only due to the pressures of research, but finding the time to write, to submit content -- & to deal with the slippery slope of policy issues, encouraging other contributors & all of the other joys of the Wikipedia community. I wish that wasn't the case, but the grim reality is every hour I spend on Wikipedia is an hour I find I must take away from either my employer or my family. Neither understands why I deny them the time & attention they expect. And this might be why there are few contributors who match my profile -- over 50, married, & with children. -- llywrch (talk) 20:34, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

As I have noted in other forums, the project has spent the last four or five years building tools to make it easier to delete things. In that same time we've spent just about zero time building tools to make it easier to write new articles. As a result, deletion takes one button press and creation takes longer than ever. It should not be surprising to anyone that we have a problem. Maury Markowitz (talk) 11:46, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

I think if we remove the icons in messages (except important ones such as vand-4), and add in a couple of typos on purpose, it will be a lot more friendlier. Kayau Voting IS evil 12:53, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

I have three suggestions for making Wikipedia more newbie friendly:

  1. Make it easier for newbies to contribute in small ways. For example, come up with an API for the Wikipedia equivalent of facebook features such as the like button and Open Graph. I wouldn't facilitate (or even allow) just any website to use the API, but for the ones that do, over the long term such a feature would engender goodwill by giving people a way to suggest that a particular web page has content the reader considers worthy of inclusion in an encyclopedia. Such a feature is non-trivial: it would require a lot of back-end work so that the text and the reference candidate a newbie suggests would find the right home in a particular section of a particular article.
  2. Semi-automated tools like Twinkle and Huggle need work when it comes to tool users with itchy trigger fingers. I don't use the tools so I can't be specific about what new features are needed but I have been the unwarranted victim of their use. As a past victim, what's needed is as better assessment of the target editor's intentions, a kind of two-phase commit preceding the reversion, during which the tool user is forced to pause and consider what they are about to do. Perhaps the tools can generate a report based on assessments by Wikipedia:Edit filters and other automated anti-vandalism features, if that would put the attempted edit in context. The tools should also make it easier to compliment a target editor's contribution than it is to revert their work. For reversions that are clearly not intentional vandalism, a talk page post should be generated that identifies why the reversion happened and welcomes their interest and suggest relevant alternatives, such as the use of the WP:WIZ.
  3. Attempt to categorize a newbie's attempt at contributions, and bend over backwards to encourage users interested in topics currently under-represented. Certain topics (I won't get specific) get incredibly fine-grained attention from editors, while others seem almost grudgingly covered. Approach Google or another search engine provider about getting an api from them that wikipedia could use to categorize the apparent topic that a newbie is attempted interested in. Experienced editors could them volunteer to sponsor such a newbie.

68.165.77.64 (talk) 13:57, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

NPP and Newbies

Those who think New Page Patrollers are too mean to Newbies should spend more than 2 minutes patrolling New Pages. Spend at least 2-3 weeks doing it, experience wading through the attack pages, hoaxes, vandalism and other garbage, only to find a few articles that are potentially NOT one of the aforementioned three and then be attacked by someone for being too hard on Newbies. And 50% of the non-malicious new articles are just non-notable memes or something someome nade up one day. Wikipedia is a volunteer effort and the Wikimedia Foundation gets what it pays for. Anyone suggesting that Twinkle and Huggle should be killed ought to have their head examined. - Burpelson AFB ✈ 15:45, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for reminding me that some editors are still grounded in reality. It is really annoying when people seem to think that Wikipedia is supposed to be a Utopia where everybody trades cupcakes and eats gumdrops from Happyland while writing articles. Any discussion about recent changes and if automated tools are hurting the feelings of newbies is worthless without mentioning that those bots are preventing massive amounts of stupidity and garbage from entering the encyclopedia. A real discussion would at least need to talk about the "good faith newbie" to "clearly a vandal" ratio. There's a lot of talk going on about how to change Wikipedia to encourage editing. It's not clear to me that any change merits the risk involved. Wikipedia isn't perfect. It will never be perfect. Yet, surprise!, it's still getting better! So barring any major problem, I say maintain course. Jason Quinn (talk) 16:22, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

I think an important point is that NPP often are effectively also newbies (<1 year). This isn't necessarily a bad thing, it's a menial job, and it's good that new people are coming in to replace the ones that give it up. It is something to keep in mind though. Gigs (talk) 18:13, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

Writing good articles is hard. As we raise the bar of what is considered appropriate, contributing to Wikipedia becomes harder. This is NOT a bad thing. Maintaining what we have is becoming more of an issue. I would prefer to spend time writing content but there is so much vandalism in need of reverting. If the time required for me to revert vandalism doubles as seems to be suggested above I will be seriously temped to walk away. We need more tools to maintain quality not less. The fact that we allow users more than one opportunity to add vulgarity to articles IMO is already too generous.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 18:39, 1 March 2011 (UTC)
Writing anything good is hard. Period. I spent three hours last week writing one new article, & it's not even complete. I spent another three hours finishing a second article, which has sat half-finished for about three years because I didn't have the time & materials in one place to finish the job until now. In terms of writing & research, both represent the equivalent of writing an undergraduate-level term paper. Wikipedia, as is often said, has passed the point of harvesting low-hanging fruit. This means any new articles that are more than a stub require doing research -- something I suspect schools don't teach any more, if they truly ever did. Doing research for articles Wikipedia doesn't yet have requires more than a couple of Google searches to find information: one needs to go to libraries & consult things called "books" and "periodicals" which, if one is lucky, will lead you to the books & periodicals which actually contain the material one is looking for. Doing research requires learning how to find things, which includes using bibliographies & book lists. And sometimes research is nothing more than trudging thru piles of tediously boring reports to find the one item that you need. -- llywrch (talk) 21:28, 1 March 2011 (UTC)
My thoughts exactly. Writing good content is based on a degree of mastery of English writing skills as well as good research skills – skills that are not really picked up from editing Wikipedia but rather from places like school. Given the wide array of demographics we have here, it is clear that a few people lack both of those skills. –MuZemike 21:37, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

I think the discussion above might miss the point. I don't doubt that there's a terrible good to bad ratio involved in NPP. However, that means we need to make it very close to perfect. Decades of anti-spam work have demonstrated this is both a requirement, possible, and able to be completely automated. And let's not forget, the automated anti-vandal tools are pretty cool. Perhaps more effort here is the path to a better solution? Maury Markowitz (talk) 00:07, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

I recently spent a little while trying to make uw-3rr a little less bitey. The trouble is everything has been put in for a reason, so taking it out is uphill. But as Colin Chapman said "loose weight and simplicate". I totally agree with Kayau that dumping icons (wonderful art though they are) and even bullet points and other "template like" features will help warning templates look more like a genuine message from a genuine editor, instead of a rubber stamp or parking ticket. We could even use the template system to vary the wording "Hi! Welcome to Wikipedia, I noticed your edit to.." "Hey! I would like to welcome you to Wikipedia. I saw your edit of the article..."

I'm pretty certain some variant of "test1" is the most widely used warning template and {{Welcome}} must be high too. Rich Farmbrough, 00:33, 2 March 2011 (UTC).

I did propose to change the icons on page-deletion templates to be just a little bit less bite-y, the discussion is here: Template talk:AfD-notice#CENTRALIZED DISCUSSION - Replacing icon (File:Ambox warning pn.svg). It wasn't accepted. Also some discussion on disabling Twinkle for page-deletion, here: Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/Archive 80##A deliberate "governor" on nominating articles for deletion, also did not gain traction. I guess part of the issue here is that the people deciding these things are regular users who use these tools and templates, and the "customer" (the person on the receiving end) are new and less-regular users who don't have a voice in these discussions. Don't know what do that about that. Herostratus (talk) 16:14, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

This may be a bit of a non-sequiter from a something-even-less-than-newbie commenter (considering starting, up by the way), but would adding a permanent article titled, "Why You Want to Start Editing Wikipedia" to the home page be an effective attractant for interested parties? You could include anectdotes from long time editors etc. I think you can figure out where I am going with this. I suggest it because that is the sort of thing that I would be interested in reading before joining. Just a thought. 208.125.237.242 (talk) 19:29, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

"Become a regular contributor to Wikipedia, where you can enjoy spending long periods of time characterized by frustration & discouragement, punctuated by all-too-brief & fleeting moments of sheer overwhelming satisfaction"? Well, I'm sure whoever compiles that page will filter through all of the submissions from old-timers like me, & may discard that one. ;) -- llywrch (talk) 00:45, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

You are mean to newbies. There are accusations made that are uncalled for and both the patrollers and admins get away with it.You proclaim someone guilty and do not gather the facts and then come to a conclusion,but make your facts fit the conclusion you already had.You pretend the best you can to assume good faith. You are as phony here. Don't insinuate something,just come out and say it. If you have an accusation at least be specific so there is a chance of coming to an understanding. Also do some fact checking first. If someone removes information ,check the source and see what it says before you call it vandalism or disruptive editing. Stop acting like you are God. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.114.128.23 (talk) 02:15, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

Now, Wikipedia is going to the new stage of improving the quality via control the articles. Patroller and admin are getting old in term of experiences and we look newbies who don't now any rules of Wikipedia and delete. Is there any research on "steady state"?--Tranletuhan (talk) 04:48, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

Technology report: HTML5 adopted but soon reverted; brief news (11,325 bytes · 💬)

  • Will this change make it so that videos run properly on Wiki? It is pathetic how crappy our video support is and how unfeeling we are for the READERS who come by and can't see videos properly here. TCO (talk) 03:38, 1 March 2011 (UTC)
    The switch to HTML5 does not add support for the video or audio tags. It's on the to-do list though. The multimedia beta provides an HTML video player, you may want to check it out. Reach Out to the Truth 04:07, 1 March 2011 (UTC)
    This is Wikipedia, not Wiki. Stifle (talk) 09:50, 1 March 2011 (UTC)
    "On-wiki" is a good word though. Rich Farmbrough, 16:30, 1 March 2011 (UTC).
    Stifle, DAW is a humor page, not policy. Let's not harass people for using abbreviations, thank you. Sven Manguard Wha?
I'm a newbie. Stop biting me. TCO (talk) 02:36, 3 March 2011 (UTC)
You're not a newbie. Your account dated all the way back to April 2007. OhanaUnitedTalk page 08:29, 5 March 2011 (UTC)
Note, the switch to HTML5 is not neccesary to use the HTML5 <video> tag. In fact I think we already do use it on browsers that support it like firefox. Bawolff (talk) 04:54, 7 March 2011 (UTC)
when are we going to get things fixed so that the vast majority of NORMAL readers surfing on over here with IE can see videos? We are trapped in 2003. BTW, I have tried some of those workarounds and they don't even all work. Oh...and expecting people to change browsers or get extra plugins is so non-customer friendly. (this is not about me watching videos, it's about being able to display content readily to the masses. I sense a total techie versus user disconnect.) P.s. I am a newbie (only been editing for three months, before that I was mostly banned).TCO (talk) 05:11, 7 March 2011 (UTC)
Mostly banned? As opposed to completely banned? Anyway, I have a hard time thinking of anyone with a couple featured articles as a "newbie" persay. Wiki-prodigy maybe, but not so much newbie. Qrsdogg (talk) 05:19, 7 March 2011 (UTC)
(edit conflict)When Internet explorer starts supporting it. Based on this table, maybe never. The current version of IE doesn't support HTML 5 video at all, and the upcoming version only supports the format that other browsers refuse to support. But MediaWiki provides the option of using the Java-based Cortado player, which should work in Internet Explorer. Reach Out to the Truth 05:24, 7 March 2011 (UTC)
I have tried downloading the Java plugin and it didn't work. But besides, what percentage of users (not people with accounts, but READERS of our content) do you think are going to download those plugins, even if they did work? A random reader trial would show the level of inability to see our videos. Heck for that matter, the very sparing use that we have of them, is probably a sign of how poor they are supported in terms of actual info delivery to "civilians" (non IT jocks).TCO (talk) 05:28, 7 March 2011 (UTC)
And what's the solution to that problem? Encode every video in every format? Reach Out to the Truth 05:35, 7 March 2011 (UTC)
I guess the answer is encode it in some common format. Have you seen the percentage of WP readers on Firefox? It's like 1%. Seriously, the whole rest of the web works for everyone. But video on WP only works for some tiny proportion of specialist type computer users. You could have the uncommon format as a fallback or whatever. TCO (talk) 05:40, 7 March 2011 (UTC)
(n.b. around 28% of visitors to Wikimedia worldwide use Firefox; full stats. No comment on the central debate. Note that 24.64% of all users - over 50% of IE users - are on IE8, so presumably can be expected to update regularly. IE6 controls just 3.65%. Of course, statistics for different countries will rank differently. - Jarry1250 [Who? Discuss.] 18:23, 7 March 2011 (UTC))
I highly doubt IE8 users will be updating anytime soon, most of them can't upgrade to IE9 and tend to be very slow at upgrading anyway. Stats here. Regards, SunCreator (talk) 19:44, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

I'd like to know how youtube and other video sites get around the problem because they do, so there is some technical solution to the issue. Regards, SunCreator (talk) 19:44, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

Sorry, why can't most IE8 users upgrade to IE9/10/11/n? That chart shows IE8 took ~1 year to reach saturation after mainstream release, which isn't quick, but isn't slow. YouTube and other sites use Flash video, which plays well across browsers - 99.99% of users have the requisite player - but is proprietary. - Jarry1250 [Who? Discuss.] 19:54, 7 March 2011 (UTC)
Microsoft have decided that IE9 only runs on Windows 7 and Vista with patches. Support for Windows XP the worlds most common OS by far has been dropped, so none of those users can upgrade to IE9. Regards, SunCreator (talk) 13:46, 8 March 2011 (UTC)
(edit conflict)YouTube uses Flash. There certainly are technical solutions, in fact MediaWiki provides three different ways of getting videos to play in a browser. That's more solutions than YouTube has. Reach Out to the Truth 19:56, 7 March 2011 (UTC)
Why can't the users change? That is such a techie answer. The average civilian has no problem with youtube and facebook. We should serve the masses. The more we stick our heads in the sand, the more we lose audience. If we lose audience, what is the point of the Project?
The YouTube way is out of the question, it's unacceptable. YouTube uses Flash, and the Foundation will not do that. Flash is also a separate application that needs to be installed, so in that way it is no different from Java. If a user can't install Flash, they can't watch YouTube videos in their browser. Yes, that's a problem that exists on YouTube too. Reach Out to the Truth 05:01, 8 March 2011 (UTC)
Oh and one of those "three ways" is to view it as a still image only! That's not a third way. We are NOT serving the viewers.TCO (talk) 04:12, 8 March 2011 (UTC)
No, the image is a fourth way. I did not count that one because I knew it's unacceptable for those who want to watch the video. There are three ways of watching the video in-browser, but Internet Explorer doesn't support all of them. That's why there are only two options available to you. Yet another option is to download the video, which may well work. Reach Out to the Truth 05:01, 8 March 2011 (UTC)
I was wrong about the 1%. Still my recent IN ARTICLE experience (Painted turtle) was that only Firefox viewers could watch a video that was a relatively simple one (youtube sized, not talking full screen Harry Potter, even had lots of stills). So a quarter of the viewers have ready access. And then look at the typical content we show in articles. Seriously, any random gymnastics blogger does better at integrating video into articles than we do. And we are some badass Google juggernaut. But we are so behind the times. This is the path to irrelevancy. We need to get on top of this problem and stop expecting the world to revolve around us.TCO (talk) 04:22, 8 March 2011 (UTC)
It's not clear what you want done here. Yeah, we don't use a lot of video, but if we did we'd be alienating a small portion of readers who are unable to view those videos at all. Reach Out to the Truth 05:01, 8 March 2011 (UTC)
Why not put the stuff in flash and have an OGG version as the backup. For that matter, the video, I got someone stripped it off youtube, so having the content itself in flash is NOT preventing others from converting it.TCO (talk) 05:04, 8 March 2011 (UTC)
Preventing others from converting it? Huh? Reach Out to the Truth 05:08, 8 March 2011 (UTC)
Bottom line is we ARE NOT sharing content well in a video format. AND there is a lack of perspective in acknowledging it and a lot of very obtuse comments about users should be on Firefox or "wait until IE evolves". This is techie-speak and not user-friendly. And I don't know exactly HOW to fix it. but I don't buy for a SECOND that it's not fixable. I've lived this in the work world before. It's a social dynamic with programmers versus users.TCO (talk) 23:10, 8 March 2011 (UTC)
Bottom line, the Foundation will not support Flash. Reach Out to the Truth 02:05, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

Well then find some other way to provide the content in a SEAMLESS fashion. And why not? Does it cost money (just shell out for a licence, get Jimbo to flash his mug on the pages a bit more.) And why does HAVING the content in flash hold us back in any way? Like I said, you can still have OGG in addition. You're not LOSING by having it that way. And we have JPEG images.

Seamless? HTML5 video that plays in the browser without any need for plug-ins is seamless. And we have that. If you really want more options that badly though, by all means ask the developers. Reach Out to the Truth 02:31, 9 March 2011 (UTC)
I personally was unable to get my video to play in IE (even after downloading the java plugin, twice). Two other, reasonably astute editors had the same issue. Only in Firefox could we get the thing to play. And I shudder to think of what "civilican granny" who just wants to read articles has to content with on trying to watch a video here. Other than that, I give you major props (I mean it) for putting up with my comments.TCO (talk) 02:58, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

WikiProject report: In Tune with WikiProject Classical Music (1,408 bytes · 💬)

Shameless recruiting!

I was always a fan of instrumental pieces, but getting involved in Featured Sounds and then being educated/enlightened/indoctrinated by La Pianista over the IRC got me into classical music. All I have to say is more please! It's fascinating to learn about classical music (and somewhat depressing to see how many composers died horrible and/or very young deaths) but it's even more fascinating to listen to the music. If you perform, and the composition's copyright has exipired, please upload your work and insert it into relevant articles. If you perform well, consider nominating the performance at Wikipedia:Featured sound candidates. Whether you perform or are a music fan, we're also always looking for people to help assess featured sound candidates. The people that work at this project (and the people who are interested in reading about the project) would seem like ideal people for me to shamelessly recruit. Visit Portal:Featured sounds and Wikipedia:Featured sound candidates today! Sven Manguard Wha? 21:13, 2 March 2011 (UTC)


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