User talk:Jimbo Wales: Difference between revisions

The Atlantic magazine on paid editing at WP

A well-done long read on the paid editing situation is HERE. Carrite (talk) 15:12, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

It is long, and it is good. Special kudos to James Heilman.--S Philbrick(Talk) 02:47, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

Indeed. This is the kind of thing we should be concerned about, not fake controversies ginned up by trolls and griefers to agitate the gullible and easily panicked. Prioryman (talk) 11:40, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

Well perhaps if you had not been shamelessly shilling on behalf of your cronies at WMUK with clear COI-issues the Gibraltarpedia issue would not have been such a thing. But your above comment still shows you fail to understand why people had a problem with it, so I dont know why your brought it up except to troll yourself. Only in death does duty end (talk) 13:32, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

It is indeed a good article. Skip the 1st set of bullet points if you’re read it. I’d love to hear @Doc James:’s reaction. I only have one quibble with the article.

• A specific well-documented example is given where undisclosed paid editors (UPEs) inserted misleading info about their employer’s product and a related medical procedure. This apparently ineffective procedure costs Medicare $1 billion each year. Doc James kept the article on track despite the paid editing and a high pressure campaign against him.

• UPE editing has been discouraged since at least 2006. The ToU were changed at the request of volunteer editors and the results have been good, but undisclosed paid editing is lucrative and continues with UPEs stating that they refuse to follow our rules.

• UPEs distract editors from more important work, make the community less friendly, and make Wikipedia less credible.

• There is some disagreement on how widespread it is, but one UPE says it is rampant.

So far the article looks like it is saying something like “UPEs are an unmitigated disaster for Wikipedia” but in a couple of paragraphs near the end it looks like the author tries to add a false balance. It’s the tired, old argument that everybody has a bias, so why are UPEs any different?

I’d like to address this question.

• Business use of UPEs is a systematic bias that always goes in one direction: Products are always safe, good quality, revolutionary, or even better. Scandals never happen. Businesses keep the environment clean, pay their taxes, and support the community.
  • While most of this might apply to most businesses most of the time, having a constant drumbeat of UPEs putting in this material fundamentally distorts our coverage of business, including the business of medicine.
  • Business people have many means to get out their messages, that most other people don’t have. They can pay for advertisements in media that accept paid advertisements; they can issue press releases and talk with journalists; they can talk with their representatives in government and to regulators and work with industry associations. All they really need to do to get into Wikipedia is to convince a reliable source to print their claims in such a way that 1 or 2 volunteers consider it important enough to put it into an article.
  • UPEs just don’t quit - they try to take ownership of an article, they will argue forever. You just can’t have a good faith discussion with somebody who is paid to have a particular point of view.

• Government use of UPEs is an even worse systematic bias: All governments, no matter where they are, try their absolute best to serve the people - and succeed! Their political opponents are misguided at best.

So UPEs change Wikipedia from a trusted source of information with some random biases, to being a corporate shill and a political propagandist favoring those in power.

That’s why we need to strictly enforce our rules on paid and COI editing.

Smallbones_(smalltalk) 14:41, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

I think the piece did a really good job. With respect to the specific case in question, having "representatives" from an 28 billion USD company email 300 of your collegues to enform them how misguided you are is disconcerting.

• How big is the issue of undisclosed paid editing? We do not know.
• Is it a risk to the reputation of Wikipedia? Yes definitely.
• Can we do more to try to address it? Once again I would say yes and I believe we should.

Some see the issue of unpaid advocacy as just as bad. However just because other problems exist does not mean we should ignore all problems. The issue of unpaid advocacy is harder to deal with I agree. However, it may occur in both directions well paid advocacy typically only occurs in one.

Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 15:02, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

I oppose all paid editing. It creates a disparity of motive between the paid editor and the volunteers who make up most of the Wikipedia community, and it creates a burden on volunteers to check content for neutrality and subtle bias when somebody else is receiving compensation for putting the bias in. Everything about paid editing is anthema to the principles of Wikipedia. Guy (Help!) 19:08, 14 August 2015 (UTC)

Excellent article. Peter Damian (talk) 18:35, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

• It was a very good article and I agree with Doc James and Smallbones. Figureofnine (talk • contribs) 19:52, 14 August 2015 (UTC)

• I also agree with Doc James and Smallbones. --Rubbish computer 23:49, 15 August 2015 (UTC)

Circular or rectangular photographs of U.S. presidential candidates?

At United States presidential election, 2016 a user altered the conventional appearance of the page by introducing circular head shots of the candidates, large political party logos, and tabulated information, etc. There was push-back. Now an RfC is under way at the article’s talk page. Additional views and opinions there, from peeps who know the relevant policies and guidelines, might be valuable. Given that Wales’s talk page is heavily watched, it seems as good a place as any for the notification. If there’s a better one, feel free to move it. Writegeist (talk) 17:20, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

(non-political comment and I can not comment at the RfC) Someone really wants to have Wikipages produce poker chips? Collect (talk) 18:35, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

Great. Thanks for bringing it to wider attention. These pages get a lot of attention and should look nice. I hope we'll also make some special efforts to ensure on the neutrality of the articles.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 18:49, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

That is basically the discussion. Changing to the new aesthetic look, of circle-pics, makes it just a bit harder to swap out an NPOV problem (grimace/crosseye/badhairday) alternative pic, because the generally available options are square-pics, and the generally-available-skillset doesn't include the capability of applying-a-circular-crop-with-a-transparent-background (for most editors at least). Even though they look cooler, and could conceivably make the WMF a lot of money if we begin minting our own coinage (or poker chips), there are some anybody-can-edit concerns, and not-so-hypothetically some NPOV concerns where the only viable libre-licensed headshot does not show the candidate at their best, to put it mildly. The issue for 2016 presidential candidates is not as crucial as the longer-term impact; if we switch to circle-pics, what will the state legislator races of 2018 look like, in terms of NPOV/accuracy/etc? 75.108.94.227 (talk) 16:44, 14 August 2015 (UTC)

"Cooler" is a matter of opinion. Some of us tend to resist the Facebookification of WP (not that Facebook is regarded as cool any more). And something that's cool today can soon seem desperately uncool, so IMO it's not a useful criterion for changing the look of encyclopedia entries. Writegeist (talk) 17:11, 14 August 2015 (UTC)

".music applicant caught using bogus Wikipedia page"

• http://domainincite.com/19069-music-applicant-caught-using-bogus-wikipedia-page

No need to respond. I am just sharing for you and/or any page watchers who may be interested. I've added a "POV" tag to the Music community article until editors can assess its integrity and tone. ---Another Believer _(Talk) 18:48, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

It makes some naughty allegations against the good Dr. Blofeld, effectively implying paid editing, which, to be honest, I don't think likely. He's a very prolific creator of articles on all topics. Valenciano (talk) 19:02, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

Yes, and my intention is merely to make sure the Music community article is compliant with Wikipedia's rules, not to make allegations against Dr. Blofeld. ---Another Believer _(Talk) 19:08, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

It looks like legal gobbledy gook that article about it, I have never heard of the name DotMusic Limited or a "new gTLD application", scouts honour, and it genuinely baffles me how a wikipedia article could make any difference to something.♦ Dr. Blofeld 22:01, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

Obviously judging by my featured and good articles on my user page I get paid all the time to write articles on wikipedia ;-). In fact Osama Bin Laden's a good friend of mine and threw some dimes in the kitty for creating articles on his compounds Osama bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad and Osama bin Laden's house in Khartoum. Oh yeah, I never, edit music articles. Music theory and background is one of my main interests actually, but I don't do as much work towards it as I like. The fact is I've contributed to a massive range of subjects and I'm sure once in a while somebody is going to complain about something or think something's suspicious. It's laughable that they would think I'd be in a such a position to have carried that off! Now, I must get back to Stanley Kubrick, Kubrick's wife sent a cheque in the post for £15000 to get it up to FA status by the end of the year!♦ Dr. Blofeld 21:16, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

Don't worry, "Blowers", you still look lovely in that sexy off-the-shoulder $15,000 number that Donatella sent you back in 2011. Martinevans123 (talk) 21:29, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

Haha ;-) BTW I think Commercialism of music is a valid encyclopedic subject and it might be best to refactor it and write a more encyclopedic, broader article on that instead. I think it's one of those cases where it has some relevance but needs to be refactored to a different page name with better (and more coherent) content to avoid seeming a bit OR or essay-like.♦ Dr. Blofeld 21:42, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

Yes the lads over at Warner Bros are having a bit of a whip-round to try and persuade you to move it to something more fitting. Martinevans123 (talk) 22:00, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

• Discussion continued at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Music community --Francis Schonken (talk) 05:44, 14 August 2015 (UTC)

We ought to have a series of articles on Template:Sociomusicology IMO, there'd be plenty of valid articles on the subject which explore the issues identified in this article at least.♦ Dr. Blofeld 06:43, 14 August 2015 (UTC)

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WP traffic from Google declining

From Business Insider: "The amount of traffic that Google sends to Wikipedia has declined by more than 250 million visits per month, according to SimilarWeb, the traffic measurement company." Apparently Google is adding links to its own content to search results pages, rather than links to WP articles. [1] Everymorning (talk) 14:12, 14 August 2015 (UTC)

Google is specifically using a "micro-Wikipedia" <g> for searches - many folks just want date of birth, death, and a celebrity overview - rather than the generally hard-to-read (see articles on "readability of Wikipedia"), massive articles (the vast majority of future users will use mobiles or tablets) which all-too-often dominate Wikipedia. I commented a long time ago about this inevitable phenomenon, but no one noticed <+g>. Expect Google-driven traffic to go down substantially more in future. Collect (talk) 14:52, 14 August 2015 (UTC) (the article you cite: The problem is that a few months ago that click might have gone to Wikipedia. And in fact the info in the Google box is drawn from Wikipedia. So on the one hand, this is good for Wikipedia (its info is featured prominently and the box does give Wikipedia a link). But on the other, Wikipedia thrives on clicks and this box is designed to save you from actually clicking through if you only need the bare bones info." which is basically what I said above as well <g>. Collect (talk) 14:54, 14 August 2015 (UTC)

My understanding is that the Foundation is looking into this report with preliminary indications that it is wrong. The headline in particular is almost certainly wrong: "Wikipedia suddenly lost a massive amount of traffic from Google". We know there is a longterm issue with decreasing traffic from Google but this article makes it seem like something new and "sudden" and "massive" has happened. It is also false that "Wikipedia thrives on clicks", as least as compared to ad-revenue driven sites. The relationship between "clicks" and the things we care about: community health and encyclopedia quality is not nothing, but it's not as direct as some think.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 14:58, 14 August 2015 (UTC)

There is a direct correlation between people that read the actual wikipedia article, and click our actual edit-button for the first time. Wikipedia does thrive on clicks, in that sense. There is also a significant risk that google might just decide to fork wikipedia content, into their own project, a la Google Knol (2008-2012) v2.0 to be specific, and stop linking to wikipedia entirely (when they can). In this sort of scenario, the difficult-to-read state of many wikipedia articles is an advantage of sorts... it encourages people to click edit, and fix the problems. They cannot do so, if they never leave the GOOG. Please note, I'm not advocating we make our articles even messier, as a means of making it even *more* tempting for the readership to pitch in and help edit. I am advocating we see the siphoning of our click-traffic as a direct and potentially fatal threat. We are still a long way from the google-backed fork, as far as I know, but we are experiencing a bad long-term trend in new-editor-retention, and simultaneously a bad long-term trend in click-through from the #1 search engine, a one-time-and-potential-future competitor for serving up encyclopedic content. Wikipedia doesn't need the money-revenues from clicks, that is true, but we do need the editor-influx, I submit. 75.108.94.227 (talk) 16:37, 14 August 2015 (UTC)

• This is probably an excellent time for me to point out that there is no provable connection between the growth of the Google "Knowledge Box" and the related decline of direct hits on the WP site on the one hand and the size of the core editing community on the other. The numbers for June are UP IN THE USUAL PLACE and they show the count of Very Active Editors (100+ edits in June) to be up once again over the weak figures of 2014. Indeed, the count of Very Active Editors at WP in June 2015 (3,241) not only erased the June 2014 decline, but also topped June 2013 (3,202), June 2012 (3,217), and very nearly met June 2011 (3,278). So: no panicking, this is no demonstrable connection between overall site traffic and size of the core volunteer community. Carrite (talk) 17:08, 14 August 2015 (UTC)

Theorizing why this is so: very casual users of WP are not the source of long-term volunteers; the latter come to the encyclopedia on their own, not via proximity generated by random Google hits. I've heard it said that "Wikipedians are born, not made." Given the terrible track record of edit-a-thons and university class projects in creating lasting Wikipedians, this ironic line may well be somewhat true. Carrite (talk) 17:20, 14 August 2015 (UTC)

Further theorizing, I note there is a JimboTalk section just above, about the rise of paid editing, disclosed and undisclosed. (The Atlantic also says that wikipedia is no longer merely a place that regular people get information, but the place regular people get information. Which is good news as far as it goes.) I agree with you that most true wikipedians are "born not made" aka have to be genetically predisposed to liking it here... but I would suggest that, per my own anecdotal experience and stuff like the Atlantic article, that there are some faux wikipedians that are "paid not made" aka they are able to successfully make a lot of edits not because they have the mental predisposition of a born-not-made editor, but because they have financial incentive to learn the wiki-ropes. If we get into a dualing-encyclopedia match with Google, guess which of those offerings is going to be a more profitable environment for paid editors, disclosed or undisclosed? To be clear, I think that "faux" editors with COI have a useful place here on wikipedia, but I strongly suspect that the recent reversal of years of steady decline in editorship is not because there are magically more genetically-predisposed-wikipedians being born into the world (and certainly not because the wiki-rules have been recently simplified nor the wiki-culture recently nice-ified!), but rather, the new uptick is merely a symptom of the not-very-magical fairly-recent-but-growing appearance of a large number of financially-incentivized-wikipedians. Do we have any data on that distinction, i.e. what percentage of the recent uptick is due to cold hard cash? 75.108.94.227 (talk) 18:12, 14 August 2015 (UTC)

Clicks are useful, because they allow us to measure stuff. That's pretty much it. If people were hitting local caches of Wikipedia, then we would get many fewer clicks (and need less hardware/bandwidth). But the goal of providing them the information would be met, and probably faster.

All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 20:39, 15 August 2015 (UTC).

It's important to remember that Google has started using Wikipedia both to identify news stories and trends by locale, and improve the accuracy of Page Rank search result ordering. And anyone who uses Google Search can't help but notice that for most of the search terms which are directly associated with an article, snippets from the first sentences appear twice and have for about a year. That alone could explain the drop in click-throughs. However Wikipedia is included as a search term less often than it used to be, but still much more often than popular news sources. EllenCT (talk) 01:55, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

Seeking your and wider input on Community portal RFC

Hi Jimbo, would you and your talk page stalkers please express opinions at Wikipedia talk:Community portal#RFC on call to action for missing heavily cited female scientists? Thanks in advance. EllenCT (talk) 15:28, 14 August 2015 (UTC)

Cracked.com article on Wikipedia

From cracked.com: Wikipedia Hates Women: 4 Dark Sides of The Site We All Use. (Article author self-identifies as User:Morwen)[2] --Guy Macon (talk) 18:47, 15 August 2015 (UTC)

Regarding the "deployed member of the military" mentioned in the article, see Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Husnock. --Guy Macon (talk) 19:11, 15 August 2015 (UTC)

Makes a fair point about agenda editors, including the "traditional counties" loons. The issue of trans people is a festering sore. I don't know when the queer-bashers started getting any traciton here, they used to get short shrift back in the day and should still. Guy (Help!) 21:55, 15 August 2015 (UTC)

An impressive and moving account of what Wikipedia has become. I've yet to see any plausible solution to this mess, or any will to find one; without it, I expect swift and firm measures from both the US government and the EU. MarkBernstein (talk) 23:06, 15 August 2015 (UTC)

What can the US government and EU do? There are plausible solutions, and the Foundation have been championing a few of them, but there are a lot of active measures which could be taken but aren't. EllenCT (talk) 00:39, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

This harassment is terrible to hear about. --Rubbish computer 23:45, 15 August 2015 (UTC)

I do think that anyone leading off an article with the 9% women editors figure, which is not only years out of date, but was demonstrated to be wrong shortly after it was published, seriously damages their credibility as a retailer of fact. Regardless of how many Star Trek reference works they own. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 00:03, 16 August 2015 (UTC).

What is the current correct figure? 13%? I'm not sure it's a substantial difference in the context. EllenCT (talk) 00:39, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

I think that Wikipedia has some serious problems related to women, but while it may have been to make a point, I find the title Wikipedia hates women to be an exaggeration, and quite insulting. Some people genuinely hate women, unfortunately, but this cannot be applied to Wikipedia as a whole. --Rubbish computer 00:22, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

I suggest the people who genuinely hate women stopped getting "short shrift" as User:JzG put it above, about the same time as the queer-bashers. EllenCT (talk) 00:39, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

@EllenCT: I hope this hasn't occurred: this is terrible if it has. I can't say either way about how editors who harass others are treated, as I don't really know. Rubbish computer 01:22, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

Wouldn't it be great if Jimbo started taking a stand for reform? One can hope. EllenCT (talk) 01:25, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

@EllenCT: I hope he does after reading this, in some way at least. --Rubbish computer 01:30, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

"started"? I have a longstanding view that we need to get serious about this and that a fair number of toxic personalities need to be shown the door immediately. If anyone wants my personal list, I can give it. The thing to understand is that I do not have, and do not want, the direct Henry the Eighth power to declare "off with their heads". But I will fight all the way to the top (and can guarantee success at that level, if there is community backing) at the Foundation to enforce strong community demand for positive change. If I were confident that I had the backing of the community and the Foundation, I'd personally get rid of a fair number of misogynists. In the meantime, I strongly support efforts to build consensus.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 02:38, 16 August 2015 (UTC)