User talk:Jimbo Wales/Archive 45

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Giano, Jimbo, Giles Hattersley and BLP-Hysteria

There are bigger issues at stake than Jimbo and Giano and personality conflicts. I think we collectively handled this very badly, and I include myself. What we have seen in action, is what many of us have long suspected: our BLP-culture is hysterical. Its fine to take BLP seriously - and its fine to take BLP a little less seriously than others - there is room for legitimate disagreement. (I do not include no concern at all for BLPs as a legitimate position) We need to stop pretending there is a magical bright line that everyone will immediately recognize, and anyone who crosses it does so in malice or total incompetence. Even if there was a bright line it remains the the responsibility of every Wikipedian to be calm, rational, charitable in conflict. In other words, to explain their reasoning, rather than simply state their positions. This latest incident was notably free of peace makers and consensus building. On a project where we all feel so strongly about Neutrality and consensus, little was found, built, or sought. I myself, jumped into to thick of it - and my conduct was civil - yet still seriously lacking. It is not enough to be civil and polite, we must actively work towards peace and consensus in times of heated conflict.

Giano's intent in writing the article as a defense or a rebuttal was flawed in conception. Yet we should not to harshly judge him just yet. He thought he was doing right. He stands by his work. He told me, and has repeated on wiki that the article was "factual referenced and true" Which in fact it was. It was also, in my opinion and the opinion of many others, An article that was nominally Giles Hattersley, but really about his Wikipedia error. Lets reconcile these two ideas for a moment. What if Giano's intended rebuttal was to create a factual referenced and true neutral) article - and what if he failed, but did so genuinely.

Thus, I return to the subject of BLP-hysteria. In the midst of our entrenched positions on BLPs, we forgot to actually talk to eachother, instead of at eachother. Our collective response to this article was to edit war over it, then protect it, then delete it, all the while bickering with eachother. Giano did not write a properly balanced article (so says me anyway), but after a night's sleep, I can hardly blame him for it. Current event related BLPs have bizarre arcane rules, their own special jargon, and a culture of BLP specialists and their WP:BLP-is-a-stupid-anti-Wikipedia-policy opponents. Even a Wikipedian who has broken through the cultural barrier to get into the general Wikipedia culture will find themselves quickly lost in BLP Wikipedia culture. Our urge to "do no harm" with BLPs is laudable: our tendency to treat people who make purported BLP mistakes is not, and our inability to accept legitimate disagreement is worst of all.

Returning to the latest incident, I think apologies (in the order listed) should be made. First, I apologize for my failure to really do anything particularly useful in this mess, despite being involved in it. I'd like to think I didn't make it worse, but I very much may have - I certainly did not help in the ways that I should have, as I described above. Second, I ask Jimbo to apologize to Giano. No one man can be held responsible for an entire culture gone wrong, but Jimbo, you are our Founder, and you must serve as a leader. You must be the better man, always. Calling Giano's work a hatchet-job was, to put it mildly, insulting (especially to anyone who considers themselves a serious writer) and unhelpful, even if you felt it was true. Third, I ask that Giano apologize (though, as he has left, it scarcely seems necessary for him to do so.) to Jimbo and others at whom he has directed abuse. There are those who will disagree with you, because they share your devotion to making Wikipedia a better place - and by now you should know that you have a special talent for making even innocuous words deeply aggravating and even hurtful. Finally, I think the entire section of the community who was involved and pissed off should apologize and forgive eachother. It may not happen, but it would help the next step.

That next step, in my opinion, is a reexamination of BLPs. Not of our need to get them right - that ship has sailed - but of how we handle the discourse, how we protect Wikipedia, Living persons, and the contributors from harm. --Tznkai (talk) 18:44, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

I disagree with the picture you paint of a mass of collectively wrongheaded but well meaning people. There were a relatively small number of concretely poor decisions, among them creating the article in the first place. The best decision would have been to protect the title against creation once it became a news item, but no one had the foresight to take that step. I don't know about "hatchet job" - and opinions on what that means presumably vary - but as you note, the article was not well balanced and only barely better than a stub. The edit warring was as predictable as it was regrettable - all articles mentioned in the news are subject to that sort of thing.

The way the "Hattersley incident" has been twisted by various people to justify expanded criticism of Jimmy, Giano or anyone else is simply wrong. A few people made a few poor decisions in the short period of time before the article was rightfully deleted; that isn't the basis for an indictment of "How Wikipedia reacts to BLPs" in my mind. More important than an exchange of apologies is a committment from some people to take it easy a little bit and not take themselves and everything else so seriously. Giano shouldn't have created the article, and he probably should not have been blocked (I haven't seen the edit summary referenced in the block), but done is done and let's not turn it into more than it is. Avruch ^T 19:05, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Libelous comments concerning Professor Carl Hewitt

There is another one brewing at Libelous comments concerning Professor Hewitt.--67.169.144.164 (talk) 22:05, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, that link doesn't help. Article? --Rodhullandemu 22:13, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

The bit in question is pretty obviously Reliability_of_Wikipedia#Scientific_disputes. WilyD 22:33, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for that. It's not, to my mind, the incisive, yet neutral and reliably sourced writing for which we should be noted. In short, it's a shed of a section which should be put out of its misery one way or another, and arguably falls foul of WP:BLP; in fact so poorly-written is it, that whereas I would normally be tempted to move it to the talk page, it is apparently beyond rescue as it stands. Therefore, I will remove it and invite any interested author to reconstruct it in their userspace, with proper sourcing, before restoring it to mainspace. Thanks for pointing this out. --Rodhullandemu 22:44, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

We do need to take extra care to make sure articles about us are written with flawless observation of policy - there is an obvious conflict of interest, the only way to with which is to be painstakingly precise and leave no room for mis-interpretation. It seems this article has not achieved that, so removing the offending sections seems like a good idea. --Tango (talk) 00:03, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

re the action of blocking Giano - and not the situation

Jimbo, did you - in blocking Giano for incivility - request and receive permission of the ArbCom, as required by the WP:AE conditions relating to Giano? LessHeard vanU (talk) 22:58, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

That would not be necessary in this situation, but as others have noted, the point is moot now.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 23:14, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

What? One needs permission to block editors? GoodDay (talk) 23:02, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

That only applies to enforcement of the civility parole, not all blocks for incivility. Also, must we have drama just because Giano was involved? --Apoc2400 (talk) 23:05, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

The block has already been undone, what can possibly be gained by arguing about procedure? --Tango (talk) 23:09, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

(To Apoc2400) Blocks for incivility are de facto enforcement of the Giano civility parole, what else would it be? (To Tango) Well, basically I am hoping to find out if Jimbo is acting like "a regular sysop" or is in his "Constitutional Monarch" mode - because if I made as many pratfalls as a admin I would have been asked to hand in my flags some time ago. LessHeard vanU (talk) 23:23, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

There was no error here. It was a good block. Giano really screwed up here, and of course he is unlikely to apologize for it and accept that WP:NPA is hard policy. That I decided to be generous to him is an entirely different question.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 23:26, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

Can we stop handwringing about the block for a while? Deciding to write an article like this is rather silly at best, but if you are going to do something that monumentally dangerous/ridiculous, you should behave perfectly. Giano did not handle it well, and I'm sure most of us are scratching our heads wondering how Giano's WP-persona managed to leak into mainspace. Surely it will not happen again, so lets just move on. Struck most of the previous comment, as it seems silly in hindsight, and I'll take my own advice.--Tznkai (talk) 23:51, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

Jimbo, would it be possible for you to inform us of exactly what the "misunderstanding" was eventually? I'm awful confused, I spent a couple hours rummaging around the site trying to find out where the false claims could've been made, and when.--Tznkai (talk) 23:42, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

The latest informaton that I have is at Talk:Giles Hattersley. As it turns out, writing a hatchet job article about a man based on an alleged "lie" he told in a newspaper, was a really bad idea. The paper made an error, as it turns out. Even if the claim were to have been true, Wikipedia is not a tabloid, Wikipedia is not a newspaper, and writing an article like that which was almost completely about this one article, is just not even remotely acceptable. In my view, Giano has crossed a very big line here.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 23:55, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

Did the article say "lie"? I only saw it say "error". --Tango (talk) 23:58, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

The article wasn't a "hatchet job". DuncanHill (talk) 23:58, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

• Just a second here - why have you put "lie" in speech marks - I never used that word - I used the word "error" get your facts straight Wales - if you can. Now I'm out of here, you keep that page deleted because if people see it, they may just wonder what you are talking about. Giano (talk) 00:00, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

I think I'm the only one to have said that Mr Hattersley lied - which seems to have been wrong of me, a combination of an unclear reference to something he was told ages ago and some over-eager sub-editing seem much more likely. I certainly didn't see Giano saying it anywhere. DuncanHill (talk) 00:06, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Yes, you are the one who said it. Here is a rewrite to omit the scare quotes: "As it turns out, writing a hatchet job article about a man, based on a suggestion that he lied in the newspaper, was a really bad idea." Don't let Giano distract you with my use of scare quotes there. The point is: he did a very bad thing and he is entirely unapologetic about it. I wish that he would do what you have done: apologize for the error. I consider that extremely unlikely.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 01:14, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Another newspaper article with mistakes, like most newspaper articles... holding forth about mistakes on Wikipedia. Gwen Gale (talk) 00:01, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

How about " based on a suggestion that he lied in the newspaper" be replaced with "based on an article under his name containing a demonstrable error"? DuncanHill (talk) 01:37, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

If anyone really wanted to write a hatchet job on Mr Hattersley, 5 minutes' googling would give them more than enough for a much longer and more detailed article than Giano's innocuous stub. DuncanHill (talk) 00:17, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Innocuous? I recommend that you reconsider. A biography of a journalist at a high quality newspaper which has nothing other than a claim of this sort is exactly the kind of BLP violation that I am working so hard for us to rise above. If you don't agree with me that it is NOT ok to sum up a man's career with the suggestion that he did something as bad as that, then I don't even know where to begin. We have a serious moral obligation to get things right. Anyone who doesn't agree, should leave the project.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 01:17, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Skomorokh has below said it more clearly than I could. DuncanHill (talk) 01:36, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

The article stated that Hattersley claimed there were falsehoods in his Wikipedia entry (true as far as we knew), and that another journalist had questioned whether he had one (true). That was the extent of the "hatchet job" "BLP violation". Skomorokh 01:20, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

When you consider that reporter's careers are heavily dependent on their perceived veracity, it's not good. much like calling the fellow a liar somewhere on this talk page isn't good. --Versageek 01:26, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

I'm going to attempt a graceful withdrawal from this discussion, since after catching up on all the backstory, the BLP issue is more about WP:UNDUE than anything specifically included in the deleted article. --Versageek 16:22, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

What's "not good"? Mr. Richmond's professional observation published in a reliable source? Skomorokh 01:34, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

It's highly questionable if the blog is a reliable source for such a contentious claim in a BLP particularly when we don't know what level of editorial control is exercised over the blog and more to the point, the primary purpose of biographies is to describe someone's life (taken from our very own article). It is unclear if Giles Hattersley's life is notable enough for a biography, but what is clear that if it is, it is entirely inappropriate for more then say ~1/20 of it to be about some article he wrote, which may or may not have contained errors (bear in mind that at the time, we didn't have the clarification from Hattersley and we hadn't even confirmed that it wasn't oversighted and we still don't have a reliable source discussing the fact the article never existed) and which barely made a splash (especially at the time, although even now there is still no relible source discussing the article unless you include the blog). Wikipedia biographies are not places to correct 'errors' someone made about wikipedia (or anything else) nor are they the place to 'defend wikipedia against falsehoods'. They are definitely not the place to engage in OR (e.g. using the logs to 'prove' your point). If you create a biography article for any other reason then to talk about the life of a person, you are creating it for the wrong reason. If you create an article and start to write about a potentially non-notable controversy and don't even go into a great amount of detail about the persons life, then you are doing the wrong thing. Any of these are highly inappropriate per BLP and do wikipedia and its editors a great disservice. I for one am grateful that Jimbo Wales had been proactive in protecting wikipedia from editors engaging in this conduct. If anyone feels offended by any of this, I say tough, I for one have always felt it best to be straight up with other editors when I see their conduct as bad or wrong (this is not a personal attack, I am referring solely to poor conduct) and when they don't even apologise for that behaviour, I see no reason to feel sorry for them Nil Einne (talk) 09:55, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

I wish that we enforced WP:NPA as rigorously as we seek to enforce WP:BLP. In the past I have been slandered in projectspace, and there is no effective recourse. Editors who participate under their real world identities should be protected. It is a shame that people feel the need to use pseudonyms. (And if somebody uses a pseudonym, they also should be protected from personal attacks!) Jehochman ^Talk 10:44, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Assuming G's report of what he wrote is correct (a couple of arbs have implicitly affirmed this as has Jimbo), given history of past conflict etc. this is the type of misuse of a block, for simply giving undue emphasis to a statement otherwise compliant with BLP, that would have us seriously questioning an admin's access to the tools. Then there's the above misrepresentation of the edits in question ("hatchet job" etc) and patronising and frankly clueless comments which accompanied the unblock (complete with wondering aloud about about trolling, how extraordinarily amusing). Given that Jimbo recently couldn't be bothered to use what remains of his 'executive power' to start a trial of flagged revisions (arguably significantly more useful than any number of dubious "BLP blocks") what exactly is the point of his continuing to be anything other than a figure-head?--Misarxist (talk) 12:44, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Jimbo, this is complete and utter... well, the word I'd like to use is one I don't prefer to be on the record as having said, so I'll just stick with "bovine manure". I've checked that article. I've read the sources. The text and the sources agree. We don't block people for using a bad source without a hell of a good reason to be sure they're deliberately misrepresenting them. "Hatchet job"? Apparently "assume good faith" doesn't apply to some people's contributions anymore. If you'd blocked him for edit warring, that could maybe pass, but blocking him for harassment over this is absurd, and pretty ironic that someone who loves "no personal attacks" so much would be fine putting an accusation like that permanently in Giano's block log. I'm highly committed to getting our biographies of living persons articles correct, but that doesn't require us to alienate committed contributors without a bloody better reason than this to think they were deliberately smearing someone. Heimstern Läufer (talk) 12:51, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

FlaggedRevs Homework

Did you get it done? :) Fritzpoll (talk) 13:56, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

I did my readings, and I wrote up a proposal. Now I'm sleeping on it for a couple of nights to revisit it to make sure it seems like something that people will like.

Yesterday I had a very full day of meetings here in the Dominican Republic, and today I am going to visit a school and community center. They are showing me how IT is impacting the poorest segments of D.R. society, and I am learning a lot. :-) --Jimbo Wales (talk) 11:04, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

That's fine - just wanted to make sure you weren't overly distracted by other things! Fritzpoll (talk) 11:31, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

Question about privacy in Wikipedia

Hello, mr. Wales!

Is it acceptable do discuss user`s private life on Wikipedia pages and to give personal evaluations and comments on it?--SkyDrinker (talk) 14:58, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Discussing other user's lives outside of the wiki in the wiki is foribidden without said person's consent, and warrants an instant block. See WP:OUTING. Inferno, Lord of Penguins 02:00, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, but what say Jimbo about whis? User was said some fact of his biography, and other users react negatively to discuss details--SkyDrinker (talk) 04:47, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

Jimbo has his hands full with other issues, and he (supposedly) does not override policy anyway. Your question has been answered; if you wish to interview Mr. Wales for his opinions and thoughts I suggest you contact him and present your credentials and request an appointment. Also, please do not refer to Wikipedia as "wiki" - there is such a thing as a wiki, and such a word, but this is only one wiki among thousands. KillerChihuahua^?!? 14:26, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

It`s very important for me - Jimbo`s opinion. At some Wikipedia has problem with discuss about privat life of one user. And Jimbo can will help me. --81.94.22.20 (talk) 16:20, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

User:Ryan Postlethwaite/GH

Hi Jimbo. I've created a short bio for Giles Hattersley. It's well referenced and I think it shows how he's notable - he was shortlisted for young journalist of the year at the British Press Awards and was also the youngest ever chief interviewer at the Sunday Times. I've left the Wikipedia controversy out because I don't believe it's notable enough to include - we don't have any reliable sources that say exactly what happened, and I think from a BLP perspective it's wrong to include even a mention of it when it wasn't even Hattersley's fault. If there's some significant coverage of it in the news, then we can take another look, but at the minute there only seems to be one blog entry from another journalist. Would you mind if I moved it into mainspace? Ryan Postlethwaite^{See the mess I've created or let's have banter} 00:00, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

• No Ryan, that is not a good idea at all, considering the present climate and unfinished business. Giano (yes, it is he, with a new password) (talk) 20:54, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

The accusations and explanation seem to have been covered by the Telegraph's communities editor in his blog [1]. I think that's a pretty legitimate source. ChildofMidnight (talk) 18:35, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

No, a blog is not notable in this instance. The blog also gives that writers personal impression and doesn't rely purely on facts. It most certainly shouldn't be used to source information in the article. Ryan Postlethwaite^{See the mess I've created or let's have banter} 18:57, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

It might be a good enough source for the facts, it certainly isn't a good enough source (on its own, anyway) to show notability. --Tango (talk) 19:22, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

rights

Hello,

Recently there was a discussion on the nl.wiki about your administrator rights, currently you still have local admin rights but your not active on the Wikipedia. (But as special moderator you don't have to be confirmed every year).

The question is now if you don't mind if we remove your rights voluntary, because you will not even notice the are gone. You are also a developer so you have the admin rights on all wikimedia projects. And a desysop will also make it possible to remove your right but it should be a waste of our and maybe your time.

I hope you will respond quickly, Abigor (talk) 17:23, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

Thnks for your message, I was just placing the message I will not vote if it comes to a de-sysop. I complete understand how you feel about it. Abigor (talk) 18:43, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

Sorry for interrupting. @Abigor: even though I am in an election for our local (wiki-nl) arbitrary committee at the moment, I would like to make a few remarks here that can make me unpopular. When this whole thing started last week I did not understand what the fuzz was all about. Two gentlemen were rather busy with getting our "special" admins removed. I thought it an example of what you often see on Wikimedia projects: users taking action where there is no problem in the first place. Perhaps it gives one a sense of importance when responsible for removing the great Jimbo Wales' special rights? Certainly it was important enough for you to tell the rest of us about your heroism at our local village pump. Yesterday you were successful in removing Brion Vibber's rights. Then Jimbo posted his message on your TP. That has been an eye-opener for me, and I am quite sure I'm not the only one. Jimbo made an important point, although I get from your reply above that you didn't understand it. So let me at least make this clear: if you and Romaine go on with this useless and senseless campaign, be sure a vote will not go in your favour. I advise you to stop now. As ever, my best regards, Woodwalker (talk) 11:54, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

Sign book

Jimbo it would be good if you could sign in my sign book.→RatónBat→ 17:42, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

LETTER FROM CHINA

Dear Jimmy Wales,

Thanks for reading my letter, I am a user and editor of Chinese Wikipedia and I want to share some ideas about the development of Chinese Wikipedia.

The Chinese Wikipedia finally got the Turning Point, after the long-term banning by the PRC government, Wikipedia could be visited in a certain degree of free, from our experience, this free would be keep if there is no big change. The most frequently used language Wikipedia can be used by a number of 400,000,000 netizens partly free, but what can we see is that the Chinese Wikipedia is a superficial encyclopedia, Original article with high Quality is so little, most of the featured articles are the translate version of English or other Wikipedia. Facing the competitors such as baidu encyclopedia(baidu baike in pinyin, a product by a Chinese company) Wikipedia is losing its advantage gradually.

In my point of view, Wikipedia is a encyclopedia for all of the world for free and NPOV, it could be and should be written by people who have different view, whether you are left-wing,right-wing,communist,or even you are a nazist, you have the right to edit the area you are good at, so, why Chinese Wikipedia should be the translate version of English Wikipedia?

What I want to do is beginning a program of inventing Chinese experts to edit the Chinese Wikipedia, some of Chinese experts are not unlike the idea of Wikipedia, just because they do not know the program and our idea, so why do we tell them the idea. NPO also need marketing, if no one know us, we would be forgotten.

I think the following things could be done:

1. Begin a program officially .

2. Sending Inventing E-mails to professors in each university.

3. Set a group to help these experts getting used to the use of Wikipedia.

4. Contact the administrator of BBS in some Universities to begin the topic of Wikipedia.

These are just a start of the program, more and more things should be done to improve the quality of Chinese Wikipedia.

Best Wishes to Wikipedia

Raintwoto

[email protected] —Preceding unsigned comment added by Raintwoto (talk • contribs) 01:22, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

Your Conference @ FUNGLODE

Hello Mr. Jimbo. I was in the speech you gave at FUNGLODE in Dominican Republic yesterday, which was very interesting. I just want to congratulate you for your work and thank you for visiting us, I hope you liked your stay here and I'd like to attend if you give another one here. Have a good day. Alex2610 (talk) 11:37, 11 February 2009 (UTC)
P.S.: I almost ask you to let me take a picture with you at the end of the conference when you were leaving the conference room, but I felt too embarrassed to ask :S

Oh, you should have! Anyway, thanks for your kind words. I plan to be back in the Dominican Republic sometime soon, so we should meet then... I had a very interesting time today visiting a community center, a high school, and a university.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 02:12, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

Oh, very good to know that you will be here again and that you are having a good time. I guess that if I see you again I'll have the courage to ask for the picture. Thanks. Alex2610 (talk) 02:31, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

Bad statistics

Hello Mr. Jimbo. I'm kiri Simeonovski, administrator on Wikipedia on macedonian language. The parameter Depth which is calculated to show the quality of the articles, for me and for us on mk.Wiki is not a good statistic shower about it. The formula (Eits/Articles)·(Non-Articles/Artciles)·(1- stub-ratio) is weak, because of its manipulation from the users. Expanding edits by talkpage edits or user edits has positive impact on the Depth value, so you can get higher Depth without editing encyclopedic pages. So, I want to propose to change the formula of this parameter and to install values in it, such as kilobytes merge of the articles and to eliminate the impact of the talkpage and user edits. Regards.--Kiril Simeonovski (talk) 16:05, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

Does anyone actually use the Depth statistics for anything? They were an attempt at finding a numerical measure of quality, but such a measure doesn't really exist so it's useless. Just ignore it. --Tango (talk) 18:44, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

I think they are used for determining which versions of Wikipedia are linked to from the main page. Hut 8.5 19:08, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

The top ten links on www.wikipedia.org are determined by the number of visitors each Wikipedia gets. Everything else is ranked by number of articles. "Depth" isn't used anywhere. --Carnildo (talk) 22:42, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

I meant the English main page. Hut 8.5 07:33, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

I use those numbers personally just to judge... not 'quality'... but rather 'depth' (as the name indicates). It is a rough but usable metric to determine whether a large language wikipedia is "real" or just hundreds of thousands of stubs or bot-generated articles. I am unsure what difference removing talk page edits and user space edits from the count would make (I suspect, in general, not very much of a difference) but it would be interesting to see. It does seem to me that mainspace edits are what the statistic should be interested in though!--Jimbo Wales (talk) 02:14, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

Question

Will Mr Hattersley himself be publicly stating that at no time did he accuse either Wikipedia or its editors of libel? 'Cos in the article as it is on the Sunday Times website he appears to be doing exactly that. DuncanHill (talk) 02:12, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

I have no idea what he will say. But I am pretty sure that relaxing about it for a couple of days will do no one any harm.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 03:44, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

You've spoken to or emailed the chap, I just thought that a false allegation of libel & what he intended to do about it might have been part of the conversation. DuncanHill (talk) 03:49, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps this will come as a surprise to you, but is usually inappropriate to reveal what was talked about in private conversations and it is definitely none of our business. Jimbo is handling this in appropriate way, dealing with it constructively and keeping a level head rather then getting angry and yelling at people to fix it, something which usually just makes the situation worse and which is liable to do wikipedia and its editors a great disservice and cause far more harm to us then the article by Giles Hattersley ever did. Nil Einne (talk) 09:39, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

A private conversation would be "how's your family" or "what are you doing for Easter" or "has that nasty infection cleared up". The founder of Wikipedia talking to a journalist about an article about Wikipedia isn't a private conversation. It is Jumbo doing something on behalf of Wikipedia and it's a great shame that once again Jimbo has shewn that he doesn't trust, or as far as I can see, support the community. DuncanHill (talk)

You seem to be confused between "personal" and "private". The conversation isn't personal, it is private. --Tango (talk) 17:14, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

No I don't think it is. I don't think it is appropriate for Jimbo to have such conversations and refuse to tell the community whatever it is he has said, done, or been told on our behalf. As it is we get this "you can't discuss this or make your own decisions because I am dealing with it but I won't tell you what I am doing" rubbish which serves no constructive purpose whatsoever and simply alienates editors. Patronising the community, as Jimbo seems to do more and more lately, is not leadership. DuncanHill (talk) 17:21, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

I bet the other end of his conversation considers it private. And I think relaxing about it for a couple days is good advice...I think it'd be a good idea if you could step away from this for a bit and come back when you can be a little more even tempered. That would make this dicussion a lot more effective...RxS (talk) 17:54, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

He's a journalist for Pete's sake - I'm sure he's familiar with the idea that when you tell someone something it may be repeated elsewhere. I am well aware thank you of the standard response to criticism of Mr Wales, that the ones doing the criticising should go away for a while. DuncanHill (talk) 18:01, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Well, I doubt even a journalist would agree that his private communications must be published whenever someone on the internet anonymously requests it. I'm sure he understands that things he says may get around (as we all do) but that's a long way off from expecting or accepting that his private communications will be published necessarily. And I’m not suggesting you go away, just that you step away from this topic until you can discuss it more even temperedly. RxS (talk) 18:11, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Nothing anonymous about me. DuncanHill (talk) 18:15, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Duncan, you're way off base here. You are arguing with someone else, not me, about your view about what I might say, although I haven't. You accuse me of not trusting the community, of refusing to tell the community something important, etc. I think it is extremely important to note that you simply made all that up out of thin air to advance your own agenda. You should be ashamed of yourself, you are behaving like a spoiled brat.

I am talking to Mr. Hattersley and (through him) his editors. Inquiries are being made. It takes them time to get back to me. He has to talk to his people, and they have to... I don't know... but there's no hurry and there's nothing new for me to tell you. Now please stop attacking me over infractions that you simply made up. Remember, this is a weekly newspaper. Everyone was off work on Monday. Tuesday he talked to them. He got back to me with an update, I responded, he responded. We're having a conversation. When there is anything useful to tell you, I will tell you. Not before. The world does not revolve around your demands for instant gratification.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 10:58, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

I do not see any evidence in your behaviour over this article to suggest that you trust the community. You did not trust the community to improve the article - you deleted it. You did not trust the community to cope with a mild expression of exasperation from Giano - you blocked him. I am not ashamed of myself, and I do not see any reason why I should believe you of all people when you say I should. If anyone is behaving like a spoiled brat it is you. DuncanHill (talk) 16:17, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

I wouldn't trust the community either: mild expressions of exasperation from Giano tend to turn into weeks-long flamewars. --Carnildo (talk) 03:07, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

Does Duncan want every word of every conversation JW has about Wikipedia with anyone typed up here verbatim? This would not show an intent to 'trust' the community, merely an intent to bore the pants off us. Seems reasonable to me to allow people with executive function to be able to exercise reasonable diplomacy and negotiation with all kinds of people without having to make every single detail of those discussions public. JW has made public that he is engaged in ongoing discussions and is hoping to let a few good nights sleep allow everyone involved to get things back into proportion. Riversider (talk) 13:28, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

Per my message from a few days ago

Per my message from a few days ago, I have been doing my homework. What I am trying to do is craft a proposal for FlaggedRevs which is not controversial, that addresses as many competing concerns as possible, and gives us a clear track forward at the end of the trial. I had hoped to have something ready by Monday (today), and I still may, but due to having diverted a few hours of my time yesterday to dealing with the Giles Hattersley hatchet-job biography situation, I'm running somewhat behind. --Jimbo Wales (talk) 18:22, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Good luck with that! I suggest you go for "as uncontroversial as possible" rather than "not controversial", otherwise you will fail. There are people that have a seemingly religious objection to FlaggedRevs and will not be persuaded by any proposal. --Tango (talk) 18:50, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

I think "not listen to any proposal" would be a more accurate description of some of them. --Deskana (talk) 18:52, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Indeed, you both give good advice. I don't expect to get unanimity, but the idea being put forward in the press, that there is some kind of deep split in the community about this, and that this is a huge controversial step for Wikipedia, is one that I find a bit foolish. (Particularly in the cases where they call to ask me about it, and I explain it to them, and then they go write something inflammatory and the opposite of what I have said!) I think that there is a pretty solid middle ground, there are some legitimate concerns that need to be dealt with, and that not everyone will get everything they want, but that there is a position which almost everyone will agree is better than the current situation, and which will provide us with real learnings for moving forward in a productive way. Some people will - quite legitimately - vote no, and who will vote no will depend a lot on what I end up proposing. Other people will - quite illegitimately - declare the end of the world and that I'm a tyrant, more or less no matter what happens. So, yeah, well get "as uncontroversial as possible" and leave the press to claim the world is falling. :) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jimbo Wales (talk • contribs)

I am sure there are many opinions to consider, but here is what I think is important to gain consensus:

1. Focus on underwatched BLPs.
2. Make it clear that flagged revisions will not be used on all articles. As long as that possibility is looming, many will vote against any kind of implementation.
3. Put in safeguards that makes sure this will not lead to Wikipedia editing grinding down to a halt, or giving too much power over article content to a small wiki-elite.

--Apoc2400 (talk) 18:55, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

I'd rather not rule out flagged revs on all articles at this stage, I see no reason to. If we get up and running on just BLPs and it's only taking a couple of minutes to flag new edits, then why not expand it? Let's make one decision at a time. If people object to flagged revs on all articles then they need to speak up when someone actually proposes that, if they speak up now they need to be slapped with a wet fish. --Tango (talk) 18:58, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

I disagree - Wikipedia-en is huge. Plenty of our low profile articles have redlink and IP editors as their major or sole contributors, flag revs will probably work very poorly on the fringes of Wikipedia space, definitely a place where we'll need compelling data before we consider turning it on wiki-wide.--Tznkai (talk) 19:03, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

What are you disagreeing with? I was saying it's something to consider after we have some data... --Tango (talk) 19:06, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Not everyone has the time to stay around and evaluate every new proposal. When would we have time to write articles if we did that? I prefer to know exactly what I vote for, not some kind of open-ended let's-see-where-it-leads. --Apoc2400 (talk) 19:07, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

You do know what you vote for. You vote for the proposal at the top of the voting page. You would rather make a decision now, without any facts to go on, than wait until there are facts and make the decision then? Just to save a little time? --Tango (talk) 19:09, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

If I vote yes to a "let's turn on flagged revisions and see what we do with it" proposal, then I risk that it is applied to all articles sometime when I'm not looking. I'd better be safe and vote no. If I know that it will be BLPs and some other articles that need it, then I would be willing to support. Starting with a smaller trial to see how it works is fine, but I want to know where we are going before I support the first step. --Apoc2400 (talk) 19:21, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Maybe, it was discussed already somewhere, but we (Russian Wikipedia) have some experience with finding some not-so-controversial rules for using FlaggedRevs to fight vandalism/BLP/copyright issues, etc. (Actually, we also had strong opposition to FlaggedRevs, but now everybody see that there's nothing bad in FlaggedRevs.) See ru:ВП:ПАТ. Russian Wikipedia will be happy to share its experience. Ilya Voyager (talk) 17:42, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure the community is ready for another debate on Flaggedrevs yet, the poll just finished in late January and the survey is still not closed. Some time to let the media frenzy die down wouldn't hurt too. Various proposals and trials are discussed, as usual the ones most supported will be presented to the community for consideration in time. Cenarium (talk) 18:59, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

Another debate? This is all part of one big debate. This debate won't stop until we reach a conclusion, so we might as well just get on with it. --Tango (talk) 18:04, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

If you prefer, I'm not sure it's time for another poll massively involving the community. Cenarium (talk) 22:30, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

Giles Hattersley

Jimbo, could I ask you to review the new article at Giles Hattersley? This is not a restoration of an old version but a completely new article, written from scratch, without any of the elements that made the last one a problem. Page protection is still in place until March 14th to prevent any short-term mischief and to enable you to review the article in the meantime. Hopefully this will resolve any lingering issues with this article. -- ChrisO (talk) 09:09, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

Thank you. The article looks fine.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 10:51, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

Here (finally) [2], is the edit I made with attendant summary for which Jimbo Wales blocked me. It was a bad block. It was wrong and he needs to be admonished and told firmly that that is not how Admins behave.Giano (talk) 12:52, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

Jesus, you blocked him for that? That's not even worth a warning. That isn't incivil by anyone's standards. Actually, for Giano, it's a rather restrained response. Honestly, you're way behind the times, Jimbo. Sceptre ^(talk) 12:58, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

The truth is, what Giles Hattersley wrote on 8 February 2009 was not even close to be significant enought to worth being represented in that stub (WP:NPoV). Maybe, _{I said maybe}, in a "trivia" section of a 15 pages long article, but not in that stub. Another fact is, from Giles Hattersley point of vue and mine, Jimbo seem really concerned that "his beloved Wikipedia got it wrong. " [3]. So, how Jimbo's concerns made him "fire blindly" at Giano ? Quite a bit _{or two} indeed.

Finaly, how's the fact that we must go on altogether as changed ? Not at all. Wikilove. Iluvalar (talk) 14:59, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

Oh, wow. The edit in question actually improved the article by taking out who wrote the article and you blocked him for that? Seriously, Jimbo, if that had of been anyone other than Giano, would you have blocked them? It seems your comments and actions toward Giano have been getting harsher and harsher. Perhaps it's time to let others deal with him? Tex (talk) 15:50, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

Please note that Tango originally removed the Wikipedia self-reference twice, and he and Giano talked about it on User talk:Tango. Later, MickMacNee added Giano's name and user page to the article, Conti reverted, and Tango re-reverted. At best, Tango was editing to make a WP:POINT; at worst he was baiting Giano. It was in that context that Giano said "You are making us look like idiots." Thatcher 16:29, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

As I've said before, Giano has a special talent for angering people above and beyond the plain text of his words, or perhaps we collectively have a special talent for being angered by Giano?--Tznkai (talk) 17:00, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

Can you find anything in Giano's discussions with Tango that would justify Tango baiting him? 'Cause I can't. Thatcher 18:20, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

Nope, although I settle for calling it an "edit war" --Tznkai (talk) 18:29, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

It's not just an edit war when you change arguments in the middle and start doing the very thing you opposed before. Thatcher 18:45, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

Would you please read my edit summaries? I think you will find them enlightening. --Tango (talk) 18:47, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

Giano & Jimbo clashed in the past, I'm guessing. GoodDay (talk) 17:06, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

I prefer The Clash. Most of the editors here are too young to remember. Jehochman ^Talk 18:36, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

(to Tznkai)That's a good question. Why are people (Jimbo in particular) so angered by Giano? He sometimes does things that I cringe about, but wouldn't it make more sense to just let it go? Seriously, if anyone but Giano had acted in the same way as he did, would any of this have happened? I don't think so. I'm not sure why anyone would think to put Giano's name in the article and I don't know why Tango was warring over it, but I don't think anyone would have put my name in the article if I were the one who wrote it. This whole situation happened because Giano wrote the article. And I honestly can't figure out why people are angry at him for writting it. Tex (talk) 18:41, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

I wrote a lengthy postmoterm on the incident above where I laid out a very brief case (mostly assertions really) that the problem was less Giano and more of our collective tendancy to freak out during BLP issues. It didn't help that Giano specificly said that he created the article as a "rebuttal" which throws up a red flag no matter who the editor is. Try out these for fun: I created Accuracy of Wikipedia as a rebuttal. I created Science as a rebuttal. I created Essjay as rebuttal. I think this particular mess could've happened to anyone. Perhaps only with it involving Giano or another high profile user would've gotten this much internal press.--Tznkai (talk) 19:11, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

Well said. I too have written to rebut. And as for UNDUE stress in a BLP, I knowingly created Jonathan Routh as a massively skewed stub years ago (I wrote about the one, rather minor aspect of JR that I happened to know about), and it remains heavily skewed now, even after JR's demise. The only complaints I got about that were for my insistence on templating the thing as a stub. -- Hoary (talk) 02:18, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

You don't need to guess the reasons for my edits - it's all in the edit summaries. --Tango (talk) 18:41, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

This episode seems to have been started by a good faith intention to protect WP's reputation. WP's reputation is that it is an unreliable source. There is no reason for us to wish to change this reputation, as WP is proud to be an openly unreliable source attempting to become more reliable, rather than a source which claims reliability and then always fails to live up to this promise.Riversider (talk) 13:36, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

I'm afraid whatever my intentions were, Jimbo Wales prefers to assume bad faith and slander me and then does not even have the good manners to back down on finding he was completely in the wrong. Giano (talk) 13:44, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

I was completely in the right. The original biography was a disgrace - a hatchet job, and you created it for a bad reason. You were barking at other editors in an inappropriate manner. And, as you are completely unapologetic about it even today, I think that you have proven me correct yet again.

Hoary gives an example of an imbalanced biography that he wrote a while back (see above), and I think that's a very nice example to illustrate the difference. Hoary wrote about a series of guidebooks that someone participated in the creation of, and although that is apparently a minor part of the career of that person, the biography remains (he says) skewed to that, to this day. That's unfortunate, but notice what it is not: it is not a vicious smear on an otherwise respectable person. Your biography took, out of the entire career of the man, a single error in a single column and elevated it to the whole of his life. That's WP:UNDUE, WP:COATRACK, WP:NPOV violations all around. Furthermore, you wrote it specifically as a response to his negative column about Wikipedia. This is wildly inappropriate - we do not respond to critics by writing hatchet job articles about an error they made.

I stand fully behind the block, and fully behind my criticism of your actions, which were severely unbecoming.

I understand and acknowledge that you do not understand why what you did is wrong. I think there is no hope of reform here, for that very reason.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 14:33, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

Sadly, for you, there are not many in authority who agree with you. You made a bad block and you wrongfully deleted an article (now re-instated). Quite simple really. Giano (talk) 14:48, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

No. Giano wasn't barking, if that implies a lasting state. He barked once. The person he was primarily barking at was Tango, who seems unfazed. Giano's bio took one event and elevated (?) it to one paragraph out of a total of three. That may have been wrong, but there was no hatchet job, no vicious smear, and no disgrace. Really. Some time when you have five minutes, take another look at what he wrote. -- Hoary (talk) 15:07, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

I assume, you have read it? You were not acting on advice/emails from another party, I trust. Giano (talk) 16:31, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

Hello

Hello Jimmy, I am a fairly new wiki member. I am wondering what you think of the state of affairs in the world. Do you think we are in the endtimes. Also, have you ever listened to raul midon?

Thanks and God Bless Lulu262 (talk) 12:47, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

I don't believe in the concept of "the endtimes". I think the world has a lot of problems, but I am nevertheless optimistic. I don't think I've ever heard Raul Midon, but I just glanced at his entry in Wikipedia, and it sounds like something I might like. Thanks for bringing it to my attention!--Jimbo Wales (talk) 14:50, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia thinks that assumeing the universe follows the most likely senario then you've only got about 50 billion years to wait. See Big Rip.Geni 17:51, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

No Geni. Wikipedia follows scientific rules which indicate that the universe may end in 50 billion years or indeed may, in fact, have ended at 4.15pm on Thursday January 29th 2009 (UTC naturally).--Scott Mac (Doc) 13:56, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. Wikipedia does not 'think' or 'believe' anything, at least until the day that sentient encyclopedias are invented.Riversider (talk) 16:18, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

Hm, your first statement is certainly an article of faith.--Scott Mac (Doc) 17:57, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

Dear Jimbo.

A friend of mine thinks that User: Jimbo Wales is not actually you but a sort of "Agent who works for him" that runs you're Wikipedia page on your behalf. I don't think this is true so can you confirm it isn’t? Misortie (talk) 16:06, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

Who do you expect to reply Misortie? And how will you know it is really them? Riversider (talk) 16:17, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

I would love to make a reply to this, but will manage to restrain myself. :-) Giano (talk) 17:48, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

Dunno Tbh. Misortie (talk) 18:10, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

I am really me.  :)--Jimbo Wales (talk) 23:02, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

Undeletion request

I noticed that the DisabilityInfo.gov article was speedied recently. Please move it to the most appropriate user page. Ottre 00:49, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

• That page doesn't exist, nor has it ever done so. You must be mistaken about the page name. WilyD 00:54, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

Navigation help please

Jimbo,

First, some news about {{val}}, which is a template that is used to create expressions like this: 6.0223427534(32)×10⁻²³ kg. It had a annoying bug where it was occasionally generating rounding errors, where the final “4” might render as “39”. That is all fixed now. For a full paragraph’s worth of update, you can see this MOSNUM update. As we had earlier left things here on your talk page, I was proposing some character-counting parser functions. That would still be the best way to handle this sort of thing but StringFunctions is buggy and there just wasn’t any enthusiasm for making small, bullet-proof string function parser functions to tackle the issue. The work-around proved to be more productive in the end.

In a nutshell, I did as you proposed and got active on Wikitech-l. After a month of my “not going away”, a developer, Dragons flight, hopped up in a saddle and completely revised the behind-the-scenes number-handling of {val} and made it so it has an order of magnitude less processor overhead when doing its magic. I had created some testing sandboxes like User:Greg_L/Val_sandbox, where we found that usually, {val} worked to 14 digits, but only to 12 digits 20% of the time. Dragons flight theorized that it was because some of the servers had a different precision setting than the rest. It turned out that the random limitation to 12 digits was due to the user request being served by older, Fedora-based servers which have different software settings. It developed that there was no point correcting the settings since those older servers are currently being phased out and replaced with newer ones running Ubuntu. When this is all done (a mater of weeks), all the servers will be identical and {val} will work consistently to 14 digits.

The exercise got everyone at Wikitech thinking about the PHP settings and other math-related low-level services. As I understand it, Wikitech developers are busy improving some math-related software. All good stuff. It didn’t take long with me whining about this problem for developers’ natural inquisitiveness to kick in and say “hey, this software can be way improved.”

Now, to the “navigation help”: I don’t understand the organization of Wikipedia well enough to know who to appeal up to in the arbitration world. There is an arbitration workshop on delinking dates going on here, Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Date delinking/Workshop for a month. Stepping stone pages have been going on before this, so this arbitration process has gone on for well over a month. The trouble is, we’ve now got a very specific Proposal to end it all for the arbitrators to consider. But, though they volunteered to arbitrate and are officially “assigned” as arbitrators on the issue, they aren’t *arbitrating*. The most charitable way to describe it is “they are very hands off.”

Why should anyone care about this? Principally, WP:MOSNUM is completely locked down while this dispute rages. So the arbitration really should be arbitrated, MOSNUM updated with community consensus on date linking, and editors can move on to other, more productive things. I’ve had my hands full juggling real life, {{val}}/Wikitech‑l, Kilogram, and the Date delinking workshop arbitration. I enjoy the first three. The last one, not so much. For the good of WP:MOSNUM and Wikipedia, we need to break the logjam. So…

Where is the very best place to appeal for arbitration to get moving and arbitrate?

Greg L (talk) 04:22, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

P.S. We posted a request at here at WT:ArbCommittee. If that is the best place there is, then we’ve done what we can. Please advise if there is something further/else we ought to do. Greg L (talk) 05:33, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

Dynamic IP of a banned user

This situation is out of hand. We're basically saying if you're a banned user, just get a dynamic IP, and we'll do absolutely nopthing to stop you harassing anyone even tangentally involved with your ban.

Please put an end to this, whatever the collateral damage. Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 08:30, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

Whatever the collateral damage? You think blocking potentially millions of IP addresses is worth it to stop some harassment? --Tango (talk) 12:59, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

Smile!

Hello Jimbo Wales, Filper01 has smiled at you! Smiles promote WikiLove and hopefully this one has made your day better. Spread the WikiLove by smiling at someone else, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past or a good friend. Go on, smile! Cheers, and happy editing!
Smile at others by adding {{subst:Smile}} to their talk page with a friendly message.

(archive this undated template message Fram (talk) 09:36, 16 February 2009 (UTC))

Theist or Atheist?

Hi Jimbo, I read your bio on Wikipedia but I could not find much info on your religious beliefs or lack there of. Do you consider yourself an atheist, or perhaps an agnostic, or are you religious and if so what religion? Just curious... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.125.160.18 (talk) 07:04, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

• Since the information is not there, one might reasonably conclude that Jimbo is circumspect. Greg L (talk) 18:26, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

• • Many people might be confused between my personal views, and the views of Wikipedia. The two are of course not the same thing, as Wikipedia is Neutral and I am not. However, because of the potential confusion, I try to keep most of my more controversial opinions to myself, especially insofar as they don't relate directly to the cultural context and mission of Wikipedia. So, I can say this much: I strongly support the fundamental human right of freedom of religion.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 15:29, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia: WikiProject Ireland Collaboration

Hiya Jimbo. How'd ya like to be (one-of-three) a moderator, in the attempts to reach an agreement on the naming of the articles Ireland, Republic of Ireland and Ireland (disambiguation)? -- GoodDay (talk) 19:28, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

It sounds fun, but I'd best not. I think it's better if I stay out of such issues.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 15:00, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

Okie Dokie. GoodDay (talk) 17:19, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

Italic titles for names

Example

Hello all. Just recently I've noticed that species are now using italics in the title see Gryllus veletis etc. It seems to be programmed into their infoboxes to produce an italicized title. What would anybody think about this for film, book, song, opera etc titles? As a name which is italized in the article intro below and according to MOS is put in Italics in the article links, would this seem more consistent to also have the title of the page italicized in coordination? Please respond at the village pump. Thanks. Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 18:02, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez BLP issues turn into good press for Wikipedia

Jimmy, I have some good BLP news. I recently blogged about the "bisexuality" bizarreness and shenanigans going on with Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez. In short, Valdes-Rodriguez has a history of making stunning declarations she later recants, and she has taken this war to her Wikipedia biography. The blog post has led to some very good press for us about our diligence with BLPs. I don't know Valdes-Rodriguez, but only acted as an editor trying to sort out the controversy to ensure an accurate biography. I think the column on one of the premiere LGBT websites shows we take the accurateness of our biographies seriously. Now if we can only get Flagged Revs turned on...? --David Shankbone 05:44, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

how to spend your money, part 2

• Here ya go, $89 per year for individuals. Choose five people to use it:
• American National Biography Online. Ling.Nut ^{(talk—WP:3IAR)} 07:50, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

The Commons Observer, Vol. 2: Commons user Diti (Preview)

Hi Jimbo, today I present one more of your stunning kiddy admins on commons

3 1 Diti still unblocked

More than that. If you look at his talk page, you'll see that he already started to apply his threat to me (actually, he did so as soon as he noticed that I won't reply to his email). I've seen worse, but keep i mind that I'm not the only person to have been threatened in the past months. Well, all I know is that, if he's not indefinitely blocked, we will still have future issues with him in the future (people are still waiting for his promises not to start threatening people again). I abstained myself from voting because I was involved in the conflict, but with my vote and without this written promise, half of the people is for an indefinite block. Just for your information. ?Diti the penguin — 02:00, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

• Source (one word bolded by ME, see also Admiral Rickover)
• In Germany he would be blocked since at least one week for distributing a private email to Herby and Kanonkas (and probably more) or even longer because of his 3 1 chat consense. Instead of this the chat buddies are honoring themselves with barnstars, the commons version of hush money/Schweigegeld. LOL.
• one for Diti from abf :-),
• one from Diti to abf :-)
• Mattbuck gets one too
• and one for Lar
• to be continued Mutter Erde (talk) 10:31, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

Somewhat ironic as I was someone who initially was prepared to unblock you however you appear to continually show a disinterest in behaving in a reasonable manner & co-operatively so I have now amended your block per this. I will not take offence if others deem me wrong however your behaviour is aggressive & unpleasant and there is no sign you plan to change that. --Herby ^{talk thyme} 10:49, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

retrieved from http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Mutter_Erde&action=edit&oldid=17242085

• Vol 1: The Commons Observer, Vol. 1: Today: Kanonkas, commons admin within 5 weeks

What happened?

Moved to User:Tango/GH discussion (discussion finished, can be archived. Fram (talk) 10:09, 17 February 2009 (UTC))

Applause

I know you receive thanks and applause for Wikkipedia on a more-or-less continuous basis, Jimbo, and probably have no desire for more. Too bad, I can't help myself. Here it is.

I thought you had a super idea years ago, when Nupedia began. That, of course, was nothing. The real Wikkipedia and your Wikkipedia philosophy are not only wonderful in their own right, but they are clearly changing the world in wonderful ways.

So, thank you, Jimbo, thank you. Tim Ross (talk) 16:08, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Guestbook

Hi! Sorry to make such petty requests, but would you sign my guestbook? Thanks! (If you're too busy, you don't have to) MathCool10 ^{Sign here!} 01:25, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

Good Article Reassessment

Some readers of this page may wish to contribute to the Wikipedia:Good article reassessment/Jimmy Wales/1 Reassessment being conducted on the article Jimmy Wales. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Riversider2008 (talk • contribs) 02:43, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

Highlighting the BLP problem / need for FlaggedRevs on BLPs

Tonight's Google cache of our page on Barack Obama - just the search results: Look at the second search result: m:File:Google search -- Barack Obama.png. Admiteedly, this will eventually die away, the vandalism was reverted and Google will eventually re-cache the page. But what if the vandalism on a BLP was not caught? Then a vandalised version reaches the top of Google's rankings, is cached, copied all over the web by mirrors. Some food for thought, anyway Fritzpoll (talk) 17:34, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

Or see for yourself at http://www.google.com/search?q=barack obama - my, this is embarrassing. Did Google abandon their practice of having the little summaries that they wrote themselves? Calliopejen1 (talk) 20:05, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

See also relevant discussion on Talk:Barack Obama#Fully lock this article, please. J.delanoy^gabs_adds 20:09, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

Flagged revisions wouldn't work in Obama's case; the Obama article is semi-protected because that's what semi-protection was implemented for (i.e., semi-protection of incumbent presidents). The account in question, Dyingdreams, is two and a half years old. Sceptre ^(talk) 22:16, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

You're thinking of Flagged protection - try WP:Flagged protection and BLPs Fritzpoll (talk) 23:01, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

• Well, a lot of us were under the impression a trial period was going to be implemented for Flagged Revs, and a lot of us are disappointed that the ball has been dropped. --David Shankbone 22:48, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

  The arguments in favour of flagged revisions assume that all articles are blp perfect when the process would start, clearly an erroneous conclusion, and I suggest folk try some less disputed proposals to clean up blp articles, and that everyone does there bit to ensure that current blp vios are removed. The problems tend to be the not so well known people, Obama is on the watchlist of many editors of long standing. Thanks, SqueakBox 23:03, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

  But why would that preclude flagged revs? It seems to make more sense to institute flagged revs and clean-up BLPs. Flagged Revs would at least stop the onslaught of published problems while we clean up the ones that are out there. --David Shankbone 23:06, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

  It takes effort to clean up the ones that are out there, and effort requires time, both in terms of individual editors' time, and collective time in the sense of having more individual editors focused on an area. Obama's case isn't so bad, but several areas have a low number of watchers (and some of those are implacably opposed and unlikely to collaborate). The incentive to clean up is fairly low. For example, nearly all the major Australian politicians' articles are a dog's breakfast, but actually researching them and fixing them requires resources not available to the average editor. In the meantime, with this proposal, we're simply protecting bad articles from being improved. Orderinchaos 01:05, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

  The argument goes both ways, since we are also protecting articles from being degraded further, or anew. Additionally, if an article is cleaned up, someone could come along and degrade it afterward. Thus, the argument is pretty weak for not turning on Flagged Revs. And let's not forget that any changes from unregistered users will still be logged in with Flagged Revs - it's not like they won't be there to be approved at some point, and if someone is really hot to have the improvement made, they will find ways to contact us (they always do). --David Shankbone 02:07, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

  We could always implement FR (technically), and only set up a FR manually on articles after we have cleaned and approved them ("we" being any individual belonging to a group of trusted or confirmed or whatever editors). This way, no crappy article would be automatically reviewed, but we can slowly implement the flagged revisions anyway. And while I'm throwing around some ideas, I do believe that we should use it for BLPs and articles on existing companies. The negative unsourced allegations made against some companies are nearly as bad as the ones made about persons. Fram (talk) 08:08, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Getting back to the edit in question, the contention is presumably that applying FR is the only way we could have stopped that edit from getting onto the page (for two minutes). Seriously? There is no other way we can pre-emptively stop the virtual blanking of large long standing BLP articles? There is no other way we can pre-emptively stop the addition of the words NIGGA NIGGA NIGGA into an article? The only way to deal with this edit would have been to apply FR and crudely introduce a pre-emptive assumption of bad faith across a number of articles, just because of stuff like this? Quit yanking me, as the Americans like to say. I won't comment on the whole oddness of the incident or the malicioususer in question, although at least this time they were blocked for a first offence of blatant vandalism. MickMacNee (talk) 02:15, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Maybe the abuse filter could do something. Hut 8.5 15:13, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Maybe this has been answered elsewhere, but why didn't a bot catch that? I thought we had bots that could detect words like that. I'll also note that Chris Dudley was a "punk ass bitch" and "giant faggot" for over two hours today. [4]. Zagalejo^^^ 19:57, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Those are good examples, Zagalejo.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 20:58, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

The bot isn't perfect. In the case of Barack Obama the edit in question was reverted in about two minutes by a human, which is about the response time would be expected of a bot. Hut 8.5 21:02, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

The current bot is reactive, not pre-emptive. And the Dudley example looks to me to be as detectable and preventable as the example given for Obama, without the need to use FR in the forms it has been proposed. MickMacNee (talk) 23:48, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Thank you

Thank you very much for your supportive comments here [5] Hullaballoo Wolfowitz (talk) 23:24, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

Dates of Birth & Height templates used in infoboxes

At 5:20 am (GMT), the date of birth template Template:birth date and age changed from displaying the age purely as an integer, and started showing decimal points in the figure, eg 23 became 23.0000000000000000. An example of this is in the aticle Mark Harmon.

The same thing happened to the height formula Template:Height, it now shows the phrase "Expression error: Missing operand for" when using feet and inches in the case of the Template:Infobox Football biography. An example of where this has occured is in the article Chris Maguire.

Have these infoboxes been changed as of today (18 February 2009) or is wikipedia having some problems with these templates?

Please can you respond to my usertalk page, thanks Dreamweaverjack (talk) 05:34, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Software was updated. See WP:VP/T §hep^Talk 05:40, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

All fixed now. Should be noted that problems like this should be reported to the Technical section of Village Pump (see link in Shep's post above), as Jimbo, sympathetic as he may be, really can't help on these sorts of issues :) Orderinchaos 05:55, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, I'm pretty much useless on stuff like this. :-)--Jimbo Wales (talk) 23:47, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Jimmy - another major BLP explosion, and a measure response proposal

As the Flagged Revs thing is still cooking, please take a look at, and weigh in at Wikipedia:Search Engine NOCACHE by default proposal or WP:NOCACHE if you could? Not open for "polling" yet, and it's just a rough form, but the gist is pretty obvious. Thanks. You'll want to read the referenced article as well. rootology (C)(T) 07:46, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Regarding King Kong defence

King Kong defence has gotten some media attentions, and the currently ongoing AFD (Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/King Kong defence) is pretty much a mess at the moment; perhaps you are intrested to make your voice heard in this matter. _→AzaToth 14:54, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

I have no very strong opinion, as I am not sufficiently familiar with the underlying facts. I will note, and I think this is something that nearly everyone can agree upon, that Wikipedia tends to track "geek" news like this much more intensely than other news, due to our demographics. This might be perfectly fine, or it might be problematic. Sometimes I wonder if we shouldn't give the "in the news" block on the front page of en.wikipedia to wikinews, to encourage people to do news stories like this on wikinews rather than wikipedia. (I am not making any suggestion one way or the other as to the current deletion debate.)--Jimbo Wales (talk) 17:23, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

I've thought similar things about news articles. I considered proposing a policy that nothing is allowed on Wikipedia until at least a week (or whatever - the full idea was a little more complicated that this) after it happens. That gives Wikinews a chance to do what they do best, means that there are actually some reliable secondary sources by the time we start writing and avoids that terrible style of article in which every paragraph starts "As of ...". I never actually proposed it because I don't think there's any chance of it getting implemented - people like our current events articles, even though they really belong on Wikinews. --Tango (talk) 17:42, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

I also tend to agree with this, both the general point Tango makes and also that there is slim to no chance that anything will ever be codified by the community to implement it. Baccyak4H (Yak!) 17:48, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

It wasn't the fact that the article is somewhat "geek" newsy, but the problem in the particular issue is the creation of the article, the creator, and the references references; On 2009-02-18T12:03:35 Mkikta (talk · contribs) registers, and creates the article at 2009-02-18T12:21:55. The first blog (blog as reference?) was made not long before 2009-02-18T13:39:00, and it contains reference to this article in question, which most later references contains. So we have a question here which came first, and what points to what, and if the article creation was a stunt from a blogger. :/ _→AzaToth 18:01, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Wikinews is quite slow atm and I think shoving things over to it would really help it develop. Go for it! Computerjoe's talk 21:54, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

Indeed that sounds like a problematic beginning, and the sort of thing we ought to discourage, but for me this doesn't definitely answer the question of whether or not the article should exist. I think it very likely that this is a short-lived "meme" that won't go anywhere and 2 years from now someone will 'prod' the article and it will go away. Or... perhaps this will become a common expression, and the article will survive. Hard to say just yet, which is a pretty good argument that it is not encyclopedic in the first place. (Note: I have thought about this some more since my comments up above, so I'm clearly coming to an opinion: merge. But this is just the opinion of one editor, not something I'd like to push very hard. Such decisions are not up to me. :) )--Jimbo Wales (talk) 18:11, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Son-Rise: A Miracle of Love

Hi User:Jimbo Wales,
Thank you for your help on the talk page for the Son-Rise: A Miracle of Love.
I was wondering if you could help me expand on the article.
Son-Rise, an Early childhood intervention therapy program that was created by two parents in the '70s that got their son to completely recover from Autism and the Autsim spectrum.
Son-Rise: A Miracle of Love is a docudrama about the recovery and was adapted by the book, Son-Rise (now known as Son-Rise: The Miracle Continues).
Their is not to many references supporting the movie, the most reliable references for the film is not informative enough or 100% accurate (e.g. New York Times Film Synopsis said that (from All Media Guide) Raun Kaufman was high-functioning (a lot of other sources about the movie says that to), but it is wrong, he was severe and Mentally retarded, even in the movie.
Their is more info from the book, which adapted into the film.
Could I reference a lot from the book, and use it as a reliable source since it has the majority of the information from the movie and is more accurate.
Could you also help me with the book, Son-Rise: The Miracle Continues that I haven't created yet.
Thanx!
ATC ^{. Talk} 21:16, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

I don't think I helped you on the talk page of that article, by the way. I don't remember it, at least. I'm afraid I don't have any knowledge that I could use to help with those articles.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 00:57, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

Do you know who I am?

I'm scared if you do. --62.240.86.108 (talk) 22:40, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, I think I know who your are - I've got a reasonable bet that you're the person who hides under the bridge, scaring small children and eating goats. Meantime I've blocked your IP for a week based on your harrasment here and this pointless thread. Please use the time to rethink why you might want to edit Wikipedia productively. Pedro :  Chat  22:47, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

New Idea For Featured Articles

One idea for featured articles is to have a full protected policy on all featured articles. Since featured articles are already *perfect*, any more edits after featured status would just make the articles worse. TeH nOmInAtOr (talk) 14:23, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

Featured articles are not "already perfect". SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:38, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

Except mine – iridescent 16:51, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

• watchlisting to see how long this list gets ;) — Ched (talk) 17:18, 21 February 2009 (UTC)
• articles are always in a state of "to be edited" and should remain so. At one point the horse and buggy was the 'perfect" mode of transportation. FA's are excellent. They will never be perfect.--Buster7 (talk) 19:32, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

• FAs, particularly those in medicine and science, require regular updating to retain their status. Graham Colm ^Talk 20:00, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

• There is no such thing as a perfect article... Dabomb87 (talk) 13:54, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Discussion about you

Hello mr. Wales, I have found an interessting discussion about you http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:AU#Wie_reich_ist_Jimmy_Wales.2C_Mitbegr.C3.BCnder_von_Wikipedia.3F in the german Wikipedia. Perhaps you want to know it. I had see, that you want to learn german...is it not a good idea? But than I musst warning you, that is germanhumor --84.62.185.134 (talk) 13:33, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Commemorative Coins Controversy

Jimbo. Your expertise is drastically needed at the above WP:ANI/Commemorative Coins Controversy. Policy issues need to be clearly defined, free of incumberment and in a way that is clear to all. Not all editors are being candid as to purpose and the truthfulness of interpretations as presented has to be called into question. This is an important issue and needs you guidance.--Buster7 (talk) 23:00, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

Jimbo...I hope some reply of some kind is close at hand. This altercation has effected hundreds of articles.--Buster7 (talk) 11:43, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Effected? That's a lot of new articles. :D - Hordaland (talk) 13:25, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Effect as used here means "result". The effect of this controversy is to harm Wikipedia. Affect means to influence, to concern. Effect means to cause, produce, result in, bring about. The articles are not new. They are established. My count comes from the conversation of the editors involved. But...yeah....seems like alot. That's why I think Jimbo should get involved...(or is it envolved?????)--Buster7 (talk) 14:08, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

They're non-free images of coins. By our existing policy you may use them in articles about the coins. The problem, Buster7, is you are defending an editor who has been putting them in dozens of other articles, in clear violation of existing policy -- you do not need these images to illustrate the subject, be it Joseph Haydn or Maria Callas. (A secondary problem is that you are resorting to hyperbole and ad hominems, as in this now-archived rant, in which you attribute the consensus of multiple editors to remove those images to the inherent snootiness of opera article editors. You are actively harming your own campaign by such rhetoric.) If you wish to change the non-free image use policy, you may of course attempt to do so, but that's not so easy. Hope this helps, Antandrus (talk) 15:24, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Antandrus is right - but since at least one editor in this controversy seem to be unable to read the advice they have been given, I'll post it again here - this is nothing to do with copyright, it's nothing to do with spamming, and it's nothing to do with some imagined vendetta about the user involved. This is about Wikipedia's non-free image use policy. Every single one of the uses of coin images in articles that are not about the coins - unless that image is significantly or historically notable - fail our non-free image policies, which clearly state that such images should significantly increase the reader's understanding of the subject of that article. Those involved have been politely and patiently informed of this issue, and some have chosen not to take notice of it, whether that be deliberately or not. Where such images are found in articles that are not about the coins (or a subject directly linked with the coins such as, say, an article on a mint, and even then there may be issues) they will be removed. Thanks, Black Kite 16:38, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Black Kite, Antandrus, where in the policy says, and quoting, "... clearly state that such images should significantly increase the reader's understanding of the subject of that article ...", I am specifically questioning "... of the article ..." part. And I have said it several times already, if you are correct I will make the bot to remove every single instance of a coin image outside of articles that are not coins article. But it is not only me, there are several samples of editors adding those coins to their article and they do change the fair-use rationale. I had a very recent conversation with ElCobolla about this topic, and for I could see, he mentioned "... such images should significantly increase the reader's understanding of the subject, in this case the coins. And once again, in this ANI case I am not talking about the content dispute, I am not talking about the "ilegal use" of the images, I am talkign about the way that three experienced editors teamed up to go against all my contributions, not only the image, but also the prose. then they later say that I should have asked for consensus to add that information ... what sort of free encyclopedia is this from their angle then? Miguel.mateo (talk) 00:56, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

To quote exactly from the policy - WP:NFCC#8 - "Non-free content is used only if its presence would significantly increase readers' understanding of the topic". Of the topic of the article - not of the coins. As for the prose, as I said before, that's a content issue, and should be dealt with elsewhere (WP:3O or WP:DR might be a good place to start). Black Kite 00:59, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Black Kite, do you mind if we take this conversation to my talk page? Thanks, Miguel.mateo (talk) 01:13, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

COMPLAINT

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

Investigation shows this to be a simple and standard case of block evasion and website self-promotion. WP:AGF is not a suicide pact, IP blocked by Gwen Gale. Guy (Help!) 09:18, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

---

Dear Mr Wales

Forgive us if we break Wikipedia protocol and ask for a COMPLAINT to be dealt with by this medium. I am new to Wikipedia, and at 60 basically new to computers in general, because I have severe Aspergers Syndrome My son (who is also on the autistic spectrum) and I have worked very hard together to produce a website called THEDUCHYOFEFFENHAUER.COM and invite contribution for its enhancement, by having our own website and by putting it on Wikipedia in good faith. Within minutes it was disregared and we politely appealed gaving our reasons, BUT by receiving comments from your administrator of 'Yeah whatever you say...show me sources" and "if you be nice I might consider it" is a little too unreasonable. I should be grateful if you pass on this message to Orangemike and suggest a review of mind-set in properly representing Wikipedia. We can all make mistakes and I am willing to learn by them but being greeted by childishness is beyond acceptable conduct - even by your own standards.

Thank you

79.74.103.205 (talk) 14:42, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

It's not clear what you mean by putting a website on Wikipedia. Did you create an article about it, and if so, under what title? Did you link to it, and if so, from where? Where did/do those comments that you don't like appear? Hoary (talk) 15:02, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Yes, some links would be helpful. I do agree that it is not nice to say things like "Yeah whatever you say...show me sources," regardless of the circumstances.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 15:04, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

See User_talk:The_Duchy_of_Effenhauer and that account's deleted contribs. Gwen Gale (talk) 15:06, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Here's a direct link to the deleted article: The Duchy of Effenhauer. I don't see anything in User_talk:Accounting4Taste#The_Duchy_of_Effenhauer that suggests that Accounting4Taste said the "yeah whatever" and the "if you be nice" statements. either way (talk) 15:12, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Hmm, actually the "yeah whatever you say" line was said in this edit summary now that I look at it further. And I have to say, a speedy deletion based on "a possible hoax" and no reliable sources to confirm "startling assertions" does seem a little out of process to me. We don't speedy hoaxes or articles that lack sources. Those "startling assertions" would demonstrate notability, so we shouldn't be speedying based on that. either way (talk) 15:16, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

We speedy hoaxes as vandalism every day. Assertions must be believable, the more startling, lacking sources, the less believable. Gwen Gale (talk) 15:18, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

I've told Accounting4Taste about this thread. Gwen Gale (talk) 15:20, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

I haven't looked at it at all so I'm speaking only on general principles. I agree with Gwen Gale here that of course there are many cases where something is a possible hoax (or even a likely hoax) and assertions are startling and speedy is a sensible thing to do: "John Smith is the founder of the Moon, and the grandchild of Martin Luther and Martin Luther King.". An assertion of considerably notability, but also clearly a hoax. At the same time, it seems preferable to me to be as kind as we can under all circumstances (and we will all fail at this sometimes, being human), and avoid snark as a general rule. For trolls, it just thrills them in a way that mundane operations won't. And for people acting in good faith (though perhaps in error) it just is mean for no purpose. I am not criticizing anything in this current case, I should add, since I haven't really looked at it.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 15:24, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Actually, having looked further, this revision looks, on the whole, perfectly lovely to me. Yes, the remark in the summary "whatever you say" was a bit snarky, which is unfortunate, but it isn't so bad, and the actual text of the revision is very friendly and polite. And having reviewed the deleted article, well, yes, of course it should have been speedied.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 15:26, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

That's what I was thinking. Thanks for taking the time to look. Gwen Gale (talk) 15:49, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

I have definitely learned from this to be considerably more restrained in anything I say in an edit summary; I know my emotions shouldn't come into it, and everything I do should be based on policy and assume good faith, but "we will all fail at this sometimes, being human". I'm human, and work almost entirely serving Wikipedia at new page patrol, where people's emotions are frequently engaged; I'd like to think that my record will show that I meet my own high standards most of the time. I also like to learn from my mistakes, so thanks to everyone who helped me do so. Accounting4Taste:talk 16:02, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Thank you ALL for reviewing my complaint and the time you have given -much appreciated. To be honest its still as clear as mud to me but thats down to my total lack of 'know how'. I would still like to put my site onto your pages and would politely request anyone that has the time to email me and put me in the right direction I would be most thankful. A few knowledgable suggestion would be very useful. Just for the record H.M Department of Science & Technology has, as its central filing store a superb building complex in Earlsfield. South London and it is incombant for the department and others, to allow certain document out for public scutiny after a certain amount of years (50 in terms of secret WWII stuff - Operation Foxley, for example). The arrangemnt also allows for archive copies to be forwardwed to overseas governments where in most cases thay are published BEFORE those in the UK. In the case of the Duchy of Effenhauer that was probably the case. Only part of those files was sent to me because of my late Fathers persistance, position and registered inquiries over the years. My request was basically to enhance my website(THEDUCHYOFEFFENHAUER.COM) not to offend anyone, but to complete, if possible, the work done by him As I say if someone would like to share the journey. I would really appreciate it - even if only for my sons sake For the meantime thank you ALL again and rest assured its not too late to start learning at 60 Kind regards 79.74.103.205 (talk) 19:03, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

79.74 can I suggest you register an account as a first step? Kittybrewster ☎ 19:42, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Thank you Ms Kittybrewster for a most speedy reply - much appreciated. Not quite sure what you mean though, perhaps you might like to explain the benefits, if you have time. For the moment I wish you well and perhap you might like to look in yourself, to the work already done by Tom, my son. and I on our website and possibly tell us how to improve. Please note however that it is still being built - Kind regards 79.74.103.205 (talk) 20:18, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Until your website can meet the criteria outlined at Wikipedia:Notability (web), I'm afraid it won't likely have an article survive on Wikipedia. –xeno (talk) 20:20, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

IP, I'd strongly recommend listening to anything Kittybrewster says. As one of our leading experts on the nobility, and on sourcing articles on minor noble families – and someone who will generally always defend nobility-related articles on Wikipedia – if you're unable to convince him that this is a legitimate topic for us to be covering, you're unlikely to convince others. – iridescent 20:37, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

79.74, there are different issues here. So far as wikipedia is concerned you will get more encouragement and support or even mentoring if you build up a track record which includes having a registered account. I am conscious that you registered an account name that was blocked and you have been told why it was. Your posting here will not go down as well as building up a conversation on your registered talk page. I have also read your website and searched for independent reliable third party sources which might establish verifiability and notability. As yet I am far from persuaded any wiki page on it would survive. Kittybrewster ☎ 20:57, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Thank you - most kind- excellent idea! I'll check with H.M. College of Arms here in London who are the font of all heraldic knowledge, pedigrees and knowledgable contacts. They were extraordinarily helpful when I petitioned for Arms, Crest and badge and banner for my late Mother and Father, and intail my own, and Tom, my sons, Arms. Henry Paston=Bedingfeld York Herald, is phenominal when it comes to that sort of thing. His good lady, who assist him, in chambers, is most charming and will probably oblige. Also, on thinking about it the archives of the City of London- I was granted Freedom of the City when I attained my Guild of Air Pilots and Air navigators Freedom. Copies of those those certificates are indeed available, but that is beside the point, why have the watery gravy when a giood size steak is on offer, so to speak. My contacts at Central Store will be first port of call, both can get into files and reference numbers without even a word. Many, many thanks and good pointers - well done! 79.74.103.205 (talk) 21:09, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Just a note of possible passing interest: I took a look at the Duchy's website on which certain unusual names appear ("Zaneklandrzymala Experazzard Verde family" and "Tom Sale") which, by way of Google, brought me back to Wikipedia and to the indef blocked users User:Andy Bjornovich and User:Tom Sayle and thus to the page [6]. // BL \\ (talk) 21:32, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Yes. [7] and www.theduchyofeffenhauerjunior.com . Kittybrewster ☎ 22:50, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Another link, see also www.michaelsales.com and User:Mike Sales, who's listed in the same CU cited by Kb. Gwen Gale (talk) 23:01, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Thank you and I note your information and can assure you it will be addressed first thing tomorrow morning. The names you bring to my notice and Tom Sayle are indeed my autistic son, a9atom SALES) and in my absense has been entering information I have expressly told him not to. Should you or any of your colleagues find unacceptable info elsewhere please let me know and I'll have words and get TOM off air. Oh dear - again I have been remiss not only to Wikipedia but to my own son. In the spirit of open co-operation I can let you know that a couple of months ago I spoke to Henry Paston-Bedingfeld (York Herald) on another matter and the subject of THE ORDER OF ST JOACHIM came up. (see the Wikipedia page) and as I understand it, it may have been recognised by the College of Arms and Burkes Peerage in Lord Nelsons day, but certainly does not exist today in that form. By name and historic fact yes, but a total nonsence blindfold, nevertheless, with no verifiable content whatsoever except their own spin. Apparently even its founder Helmut von Br (whatever)-Falkensee has again no verifiable background and therefore is questionable throuigfh uncertainty. Moreover, their charitable precepts appear to contain a gap in their returns to the Charity Commission. I will, as I say, make amends tomorrow morning, on Tom, but I seem to have opened a negative can of worms for him in trying to do the right thing for my Father. What a world!! Just a last though -the files I mention in THE DUCHY OF EFFENHAUER website that apprently come from Russian intelligence bear the name of the same department - I think, therefore, someone is having a mighty laugh at my expence - can I come back to you tomorrow, and thank you so much for being very much on the ball! Salute and kind regards 79.74.103.205 (talk) 23:08, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Blocked. Gwen Gale (talk) 23:20, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Nasdijj semi-protection

The Nasdijj article has been protected for 2 1/2 years, do you think we can try unprotection? (Cyde's comment indicated it was protected at your request). best, –xeno (talk) 17:39, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Yes, but please keep a close eye on it. It's only semi-protected, by the way, not protected.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 23:40, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, and I shall. If BLP issues re-arise, I will re-apply semi (but with an expiry, and increase the expiry should they re-occur upon expiry). cheers, –xeno (talk) 23:46, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Request civility block

[8] is unacceptable piling on surely. Kittybrewster ☎ 14:37, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

Oh, dear Sir KB, if you've got issues with my civility in a thread which isn't about you, why not come and talk to me instead of running to teacher? However, you appear to have missed the irony of my post, which was directed at Bishonen, who can certainly take it.--Scott Mac (Doc) 10:11, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

It seemed to be directed at wikiuser100. Kittybrewster ☎ 10:21, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Then probably best if you'd asked me first, since you evidently didn't understand the exchange.--Scott Mac (Doc) 11:29, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

I read your assertion. I think I understood it very well. You don't always reply to enquiries. Kittybrewster ☎ 15:25, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Press Release requested.

We're about to hit 100 featured sounds on English Wikipedia. Is there any chance of getting a press release to announce this milestone, and to encourage participation in finding more? Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 22:42, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

100 'featured sounds' doesn't really sound all that great. Prodego ^talk 23:15, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Well, if we want sounds on Wikipedia - somethinng Wikipedia could do well, but traditional encyclopedias cannot - we need to encourage people to contribute sounds. A press release would go a long way towards making it clear that Wikipedia wants more of these, and potentially result in the release of parts of commercial recordings or the like under a free licence to encourage people to seek out the rest. Given that there has, as yet, been no foundation support for sounds - they aren't even mentioned, as I recall, in the press releases about the increase in upload size, or any other commentary on that line, which have concentrated solely on pictures and video - hell, there's not even been a site message, I think 100 sounds shows excellent initiative from all involved. Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 23:39, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Block request

Dear Mr Wales

I respectfully request that you permanently block my IP address.

Thank you in advance for your assistance.

Yours sincerely

Ingvar Heter Esq. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ingvar Heter (talk • contribs) 20:26, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

By general rule, we don't indefinitely block IP addresses from editing, or block accounts for no reason. Perhaps you'd like to take a Wikibreak or exercise your right to vanish?. ←Signed:→Mr. E. Sánchez ^{Get to know me!} / _{Talk to me!}←at≈:→ 20:40, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

IRC block

Per consensus established on the admin's IRC channel, I've blocked the user. Details here. Tom Harrison ^Talk 20:34, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

No chance of admins with no access to the ""I'm Really Clever" channel having a go at contributing to the "consensus" over this block then? The block may, or may not, be good. I couldn't care less. Claiming "consensus" for a Wikipedia action based on an IRC discussion is a disgrace, and goes fundamentally against the openness of this project. Pedro :  Chat  21:16, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

It is, in fact, what comes out of the south end of a north facing bull. If Tom wants to block a user, he needs to take responsibility for making the choice to do so. WilyD 21:17, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, it was all a ridiculous lie. No blocks, no IRC. Tom Harrison ^Talk 21:21, 24 February 2009 (UTC)
[9] Indeed. Can I block you for disruption now.Pedro :  Chat  21:23, 24 February 2009 (UTC)(comment edited from original by Jimbo)

I've archived this and warned the user. Pedro :  Chat  21:26, 24 February 2009 (UTC) (comment edited from original by Jimbo)

Noted, that I apologise for some poor language choice here[10] Pedro :  Chat  21:56, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

How odd - is IRC still alive? No, I thought not. Giano (talk) 21:59, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Your opinion about Fair use

Hello, Jimmy Wales. You can't know me, I'm just an wikipedian that discovered your userpage. Well, the english wikipedia adopted the fair use, a law in the United States that anyone can show an image without comercial uses, or distributing it (I think, obviously, you knew that). The Portuguese Wikipedia didn't adopted this. There was a voting and, for a difference of 8 persons, the fair use was not adopted. I know you cannot do anything, but I just wanna your opinion about that, because there's persons who don't want to adopt the fair use that say: "The fair use would remove the concept of 'free' in the Wikipedia." What do you think? Is this correct?

Please, message me back in my talk page in the Portuguese Wikipedia (clicking here).

Raafael (talk) 22:15, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Since Jimbo hasn't posted lately, I'll post an earlier reply from him about fair use (I assume his position hasn't changed) – "Yes, I think most of those should be deleted. Take a look at Elvis for some great examples. Iconic album covers? I would grudgingly say OK. Concert pictures? No way. That's ridiculous. There must be millions of these out there in people's photo albums. We should be asking the public for help in finding them." – iridescent 22:30, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Yes, the same, although I'm not sure that answers his question. Some languages don't allow fair use at all because legislation in countries particularly relevant to that language don't have a concept of fair use. (German Wikipedia and Germany, for example.) I agree with that. I do not know the situation in Brazil and Portugal, the two most likely relevant countries for Portuguese Wikipedia, and so I have no strong opinion. The opinion I expressed about Elvis was primarily regarding the English Wikipedia, although I think it has likely relevance worldwide. --Jimbo Wales (talk) 05:33, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Why different wikipedias for different languages? There should be one Wikipedia!

Why are there different wikipedias for different languages? It makes more sense to have a single Wikipedia translated/translateable into multiple languages, that way there is not a large English-language wikipedia and smaller Spanish-language wikipedia for example, and new articles and changes to existing articles in one language could then translate to all other languages. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.124.176.176 (talk) 06:51, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

Um, well, the other Wikipedias are free to translate articles, bt there are only a certain number of multi-lingual people. Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 07:05, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

I just wanted to point out that not only the other Wikipedias are free to translate articles, but we are also free to (and even encouraged to) translate articles from other Wikipedias, since they often have much better and more articles on local subjects. In the end, all Wikipedias could become nearly identical, but we currently lack the manpower to do so. Fram (talk) 07:28, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

No doubt Wikipedias in other languages have fine articles. However, the great majority of other-language articles on subjects I'm contemplating writing up here are obviously very poor, if they exist at all. As for the minority that are not obviously very poor, the great majority have little or no sourcing: for all I know, they could be recycled press releases, "OR", or mere invention. Also, among what I happen to see of what are announced here as translations from other-language WP articles, most have little or no sourcing. On occasion I've pointed this out in the talk page, and a typical response is a huffy one from the translator, who (perhaps reasonably) thinks I should show appreciation for the translation work. All in all most translation work seems garbage-in, garbage-out. Am I too harsh? -- Hoary (talk) 01:27, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

The problem with such a multilingual Wikipedia would be all the stuff that happens outside of the main namespace. Discussion about articles, discussion about policies, deletion debates, user conduct complaints, etc., etc., all need to take place in one language in order to be practical (we can't have people doing real-time translations everywhere, there wouldn't be enough volunteers for that, by far). If you have a multilingual Wikipedia with monolingual discussions, then people that don't speak the discussion language (presumably English) would be second-class members of the community, able only to serve as translators of non-English articles into other non-English languages (and only then if they speak more than one language well enough). --Tango (talk) 20:22, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

Question

This has just got removed by being a personal attack, when actually there is no evidence to support this and was actually just questioning your policy that everybody has the right to edit this website, when surely it would be better if the editors were contained to a strict few. So this is not a personal attack, so i've put it back, as i see no reason for it to get taken down in the first place and i want User: Jimbo Wales to answer, not one of his minions

In Great Britain, GCSE coursework has been stopped, because the government was worried students were getting the incorrect information, because it usually came from this website. Several students have used it as a reference point and got a poorer grade then they were expected to This has led to the government stopping coursework, which could have a dreadful effect on many students who struggle under exam conditions. Are you pleased that your website has ruined their future. Kind regards and please respond soon. (Beinghuman900 (talk) 16:06, 23 February 2009 (UTC))

Firstly, whilst your original message may not have been a personal attack, refering to every other editor on this website as one of Jimbo's "minions" is hardly the best way of starting a conversation in the hope of getting a respectful reply. In terms of your concern, Wikipedia is no different in this regard to Encyclopedia Brittanica or any other traditional paper enyclopedia; if a student from a previous generation simply copied an entry from an encyclopedia they would be marked down and rightly so. An encyclopedia is a starting point to find detail on a subject - students should use it as a tool and seek information from the references the encyclopedia has relied on - the primary or secondary sources. If children are not being educated on how to correctly use information tools that is not, in the nicest possible way, a failing of Wikipedia. Pedro :  Chat  16:26, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Coursework is being stopped FYI. Just it is being reformed :) Computerjoe's talk 16:45, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

But why is saying 'minion' a bad way to start a conversation with Jimbo Wales, seeing as he can't be one of the 'minion' i was talking about. Also my concern is that student aren't directly copying this, but rather using it as a source and getting incorrect information and don't have the time to check all the sources,as they have short time limit. (Beinghuman900 (talk) 16:35, 23 February 2009 (UTC))

Then they use the sources directly. If they have time to read through WP they have time to read through the sources. Just because they don't know the difference between an encyclopedia and primary sources doesn't mean this is worse than any other resource. -- Mentifisto 16:40, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Every single Wikipedia article contains a prominent link to this page. You might want to read it. We try to be accurate, but with 6,928,449 articles, we're not going to be perfect. For what it's worth, our accuracy figures are roughly on a par with Encyclopedia Britannica's. – iridescent 16:42, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

First of all, can i get an answer from user:jimbo wales only please. Secondly all the information is on Wikipedia, false or otherwise and not all of it is on the sources. And i do appreciate that this website makes some mistakes, but that is surely why there should be only a small and trusted number of editors. (Beinghuman900 (talk) 16:47, 23 February 2009 (UTC))

If there was a small and 'trusted' number of editors WP wouldn't have 1/4 of the articles it has, and wouldn't be as well-known, thus invalidating the idea in the first place. -- Mentifisto 16:53, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Yes, but it would be more trusted and probably a lot more accurate. i think we can all agree though that Wikipedia is too easy to edit. You don't even need to log in. (Beinghuman900 (talk) 16:57, 23 February 2009 (UTC))

That's the main idea behind it y'know. Personally I honestly don't think it would be more accurate because I'd more likely not trust a small cabal of users just editing an encyclopedia (like Brittanica, which is also commercial and may have such ambitions not necessarily for the sake of knowledge) who may have personal motivations than a load of users each taking care of their articles like in a round table. -- Mentifisto 17:06, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Wow, my first post has certainly inflamed a lot of comment, but not from the person i want. I'm starting to wonder if he still logs on to this site. You may not trust a small number of editors, but with everybody allowed to edit, Wikipedia has gained such a terrible reputation that i believe it is one of the main reasons why coursework has been stopped in the UK. Surely its time for a policy change and only Jimbo Wales can answer that properly, so that is why i want a response from him.

If Wikipedia had such a terrible reputation, we wouldn't be one of the most highly-viewed websites on the Internet. –Juliancolton ^{Tropical Cyclone} 17:17, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Firstly, you said that "not all of it is on the sources", if you see information that's not from the sources cited please remove it or flag is as un-sourced per WP:V and WP:CITE. Wikipedia is not a place for original research (including Synthesis) and should contain no non-obvious un-sourced information. Secondly, yes Jimbo still logs in, give him a chance, I'm sure he doesn't spend his entire day refreshing his talk page ;). Thirdly, the community usually dictates policy, not Jimbo. -- M2Ys4U ^(talk) 17:19, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

What i mean by that comment is that the information is in the sources, it is just stretched out over many different ones, and it is extremely difficult to search through all of them, because as you know, sometimes there can be over a hundred sources in just one article. Also, if the community dictates policy, does Jimbo actually have any power anymore. (Beinghuman900 (talk) 17:26, 23 February 2009 (UTC))

Please don't sidetrack this into a conversation about "Jimbo's Power" - I assume you are here at this talk page with a concern about children's education and not Jimbo Wales and his involvement on Wikipedia. Pedro :  Chat  17:42, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

You're right and i'm just patiently waiting for a response. (17:45, 23 February 2009 (UTC))

Jimbo shouldn't have to reply to people who have got both their facts and reasoning wrong. That's what his 'minions' are for. So...the newspaper article you provided as evidence on your talk page does not mention Wikipedia anywhere, and anyway the point made in it was that the internet was making it too easy to cheat, not that the information was wrong. Hadrian89 (talk) 18:00, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

I have given my reasons as to why examiners think students are cheating, in one of my earlier message's. Please read through them more carefully. I also think that we'll let Jimbo be the judge of wherever he responds to a question or not. (Beinghuman900 (talk) 18:30, 23 February 2009 (UTC))

This discussion is continued at BH900's talk page. Hadrian89 (talk) 18:42, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

I'm still waiting for a response though from jimmy wales. (Beinghuman900 (talk) 18:52, 23 February 2009 (UTC))

It seems Jimbo Wales is logged on, or has been so in the past, but its clear he's too scared to answer me. (Beinghuman900 (talk) 19:19, 25 February 2009 (UTC))

Or perhaps, on the other hand, he feels no need to discuss the issue you raise; it's his talk page, and his prerogative to discuss issues or ignore trolls, and your comment is unworthy. --Rodhullandemu 19:24, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Seconded. Hadrian89 (talk) 19:26, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Why has everybody on Wikipedia got so scared of a simple question. You no longer even giving reasons, as you know that I have outsmarted you. I'm sorry for the arrogance, but I have. If Jimbo Wales, unlike you lot, has an intelligent response to my original question, then I invite him to reply, but it seems to anybody who just stumbled across the talk page, he's too afraid. One of the Top Hundred People of the Year? Don't make me laugh. (Beinghuman900 (talk) 19:45, 25 February 2009 (UTC))

I am sorry, sir, but I did not see a coherent question in anything that you wrote. Perhaps you could try again, possibly with some links. You seem to be claiming something factual about education in the UK, and some causal connection to Wikipedia, and that I have somehow singlehandedly ruined the future of children. I haven't the least clue what you mean, and would be most satisfied if you could englighten me.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 22:31, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

It would appear to be in regards to this: [11], with Wikipedia, though not even named, being one of any number of outside resources (including parents!) used to cheat on some coursework.... Arakunem^Talk 15:42, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Whilst the quality of an argument is technically unaffected by the personality of the proponent, you might nonetheless be interested to know, Jimbo, that Beinghuman900 has been given a short block for disruptive edits. I also hope that, now BH900 has the reply he was so keen to get, we might all get on with some constructive editing. Hadrian89 (talk) 22:47, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I've given this editor 31 hours respite from the apparent struggle of trying to make sense here, WP:AGF notwithstanding, and on his talk page, to try and assimilate our principal values here. Optimistically, he will understand the mission we have, and become part of it. But thus far, his only contributions seem to have been pointed polemic, despite cogent advice from experienced editors. Pessimistically, he won't see this, and will go away feeling wounded; but personally, I wouldn't have a problem with that if he had actually made an effort to understand our goals, and it's all too easy to get the impression that he feels victimised by some poorly-sourced, and simplistically-reported decision regarding education in the United Kingdom. Tough. --Rodhullandemu 22:51, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Political censorship

I haven't posted at this talk page before, but....it would mean a lot to me, Mr. Wales, if you would comment (pro or con) at this RFC. IMO, the RFC touches on a core issue at Wikipedia, namely censorship. I hope you can drop by. Thanks.Ferrylodge (talk) 16:15, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for dropping by. I've responded there.Ferrylodge (talk) 17:41, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps I'm missing something, but I see neither a contrib by Jimmy on the talk page you linked to, nor do I see a contrib by Jimmy at all today. Are you perhaps confusing contributions, Ferrylodge? KillerChihuahua^?!? 18:11, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

I was addressing "Shoemaker's Holiday." If "Jimbo Wales" would please comment at the RFC too, that would be much appreciated. My apologies if I got the two mixed up.Ferrylodge (talk) 18:19, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for inviting me, but I prefer not to comment directly on that discussion. In general, I will simply restate the obvious: imagery in articles is often one of the most attractive points for POV-pushing of all kinds, for a couple of reasons. (1) Images can have a strong emotional impact, thus making implicitly a point that would not be possible to make in the text. (2) Images are often "either/or" with no easy way to work for consensus. My own perspective is that many of our articles have needlessly graphic photos inserted either by POV-pushers or by people who are borderline trolling... seeing what they can get away with.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 19:52, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

Jimbo, you've just used the term "graphic photos", but the image under consideration is not a photo, and it is not vivid; in fact it has been toned down as much as humanly possible, right?

I really wish you would reconsider participating in the RFC. If you go there, and conclude that I am a troll and POV-pusher, then so be it. Political censorship is an important issue, and it's happening now, IMO.

In that article, only the very slightest information has been allowed describing what is aborted in a typical abortion. No significant text, no image, no nothing. All that is allowed is information about how harmless it is (no fetal pain, no breast cancer, no mental health problems, et cetera). Wikipedia is not the place for propaganda, right?Ferrylodge (talk) 20:13, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

I am sympathetic to the possibilites of propaganda in either direction here. Yet, I still decline to get directly involved in this one. There seem to be no particularly urgent "constitutional" or "foundational" issues. It's a matter of finding out (while assuming good faith) why people object, and seeing if there is a way forward with compromise.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 22:07, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

Okay, thanks for thinking it over. It's a very impressive project that you've started, but what a gargantuan potential for abuse. Cheers.Ferrylodge (talk) 22:15, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps an uninvolved adminstrator should consider if User:Ferrylodge editing any page (including talk pages) in any way related to Abortion or Pregnancy is in any way helpful to an encyclopedia. Admins should note that the ArbCom has stated that "Ferrylodge is subject to an editing restriction indefinitely. Any uninvolved administrator may ban Ferrylodge from any article which relates to pregnancy or abortion, interpreted broadly, which they disrupt by inappropriate editing." Just a thought - is this "appropriate editing" of a talk page? Hipocrite (talk) 22:14, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

There was a request to restrict me in talk space, eleven months ago, but ArbCom rejected that request. Perhaps you would kindly click on that link, Hipocrite? And isn't it odd that one so often finds political blacklisting and censorship hand in hand?Ferrylodge (talk) 22:21, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

I have never seen censorship on Wikipedia. I have often seen POV pushers complain that there is, however. When I see the word "censorship" I look to who is complaining of it, and always find a POV pusher who has not been able to get his/her way. KillerChihuahua^?!? 13:48, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Generally speaking, Wikipedia would be far better off if more editors would try to preserve controversial information, rather than try to remove it. I will agree with you to this extent, KC: I do not often see censorship at Wikipedia either, at least not successful censorship.Ferrylodge (talk) 20:03, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Compressed Wikipedia Images

I have compressed several images in Wikipedia and have contact several developers about replacing the current ones, but have yet to receive a reply. Below are several of the images I have compressed:

Optimized and Compressed Images
Additional optimization (file type and pallet/colors). title bookshelf discussion doc powered by video favicon file file link link secure secure enlarge mail news user wiki logo These icons were further compressed and total 16kb v the 20kb before.

I would like to request that the current images be replaced with the ones above. The savings are moderate, but amount to several kilobytes. The title "Wikipedia" at [www.wikipedia.org wikipedia] has been crushed by about 5kb. I don't know how much the savings(in terms of bandwidth) will be, for I haven't found the appropriate statistics, but I do believe they should be noticeable(and if not, at least the page will load faster ^.^). For the current discussion, please see Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)#Smaller Wikipedia Logo files. I would greatly appreciate any thoughts or comments you have on this. Thank you in advance.Smallman12q (talk) 00:03, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Edit 1: I would also like to request to know how many times the front page is cached a day?Smallman12q (talk) 23:29, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Probably better to talk to Brion Vibber, rather than me.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 01:06, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Well I left a note to brion vibber and Tim Starling several days ago but haven't gotten a reply. Might I ask how long should I expect to wait before a reply. Nonetheless, thank you for replying!Smallman12q (talk) 20:21, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Rihanna google cache

[12] It says "WWW.MEATSPIN.COM BITCH GOT OWNED" over and over. Look for it in the news soon, like that Obama one. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 07:59, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

It actually looks fine now. I doubt if things like this will hit the media much, although I suppose lazy journalists might think that "wikipedia was vandalized and google cached it for a little while" is somehow interesting.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 14:40, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

For Rihanna, although she is well-known, I doubt it will make headlines (or even small articles). The Obama case was much more newsworthy, since it meant that everyone looking for one of the most notable people on earth was confronted with blatant racism for several hours on the largest search engine in the world, highlighting how small coincidences can have big consequences, and how flagged revisions may also be beneficial on high profile (heavily watched) BLPs. Fram (talk) 14:53, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

It was gone after about 15 minutes from when I first saw it, so I guess google updates pretty often. Someone over at ANI estimated it happens pretty often, so I guess it's nothing to get worked up about. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 18:39, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

I would argue that if it happens pretty often, it is something to get worked up about. We should care, even if the press quite rightly doesn't.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 21:30, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

This is Googles' problem, IMHO. It just goes to show that if the "largest search engine in the world" gives out such poor results, perhaps its design isn't suited for doing research. --Nezek (talk) 14:32, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

We might want to look into autounconfirming accounts. This is the second instance in a week this has happened... Sceptre ^(talk) 19:56, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Can you explain the term 'autounconfirming'? Do you mean 'un-autoconfirming'?  :) Why do that to someone who vandalizes, rather than simply block them and be done with it?--Jimbo Wales (talk) 21:30, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Using the new WP:Abuse filter exception, the software can de-autoconfirm an account that performs a specific action instantly. This is much faster than the response time of any administrator and I believe there were some objections to abuse filter being used to block/desysop rouge/vandal accounts. MBisanz ^talk 21:39, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Un-autoconfirming may perhaps be a good thing, but I don't see how it would prevent such vandalism, or it being cached (or does the antiabusefilter prevent the saving of articles in such blatant cases? I'm not really sure what the filter actually does and doesn't.). Fram (talk) 08:20, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Re Jimbo: like the current system, whereby a four-day old account can do stuff like edit semi-protected pages, a user not meaning the threshold of editing (like, ten edits per month) would be suspect to losing that right. Technically, it would be probably hard to do. I didn't know the abuse filter could do that, though, and it seems like a much better alternative. Sceptre ^(talk) 00:08, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

I thought FRs were supposed to be turned on a while ago? §hep^Talk 00:19, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, either we can do it out of our moral character, or we can wait until we're forced to by the negative publicity of a lot more of these. Frankly, I'd rather the former. WilyD 00:23, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Flagged revisions is like RfA reform: a lot of people think that it's needed, but the specifics vary so wildly that it'd be impossible to find a clear set that a majority would be amenable to (including those fundamentally opposed, some will oppose because the proposed trial is too strict/lenient). Sceptre ^(talk) 01:03, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Calton

Mr. Wales: The situation regarding Calton seems to have flared up again. Please see [[13]] as it is believed his user page entry still violates WP:NPA. Also, an ANI [[14]] has been posted regarding Calton's recent attacks on the user pages of Cla68 [[15]] and user Dtobias [[16]]. 78.102.139.114 (talk) 10:12, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

The talk page attacks on Cla68 and Dtobias actually aren't as big a deal. Talk pages are for conversation and, regretably, sometimes emotions will flare and comments will be overly harsh. Unfortunate but it's going to happen. The user page issue is a much bigger deal. User pages simply aren't there as a place to display lasting attacks on people, whether Wikipedians or others. This isn't a matter of saying something in the heat of the moment. It's deliberately placing (and restoring) a lasting attack for no other reason than to make the attack. Carefully avoiding a real name (which can be found in the history anyway) doesn't change that - this behavior is completely inappropriate. 87.254.80.49 (talk) 21:46, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Dear Mr. Wales (Can I call you Jimmy)

First of all I would like to establish that this is not a personal attack or a vandalism secondly I doubt that Mr. Wales will answer me so any of the good editors who patrol this page are free to answer and last of all I respect the right to express oneself as being one of the most fundamental rights. Dear Mr. Wales I know myself and many others would appreciate if you changed the "founded" to "co-founded with Larry Sanger" because this is the right thing to do and because another human beings deseveres appreciation for this great project and you have so nicley mentioned Angela Beesley Starling as the other co-founder of wikia. This is your change to make to be civil one of the pillars of wikipedia. (I would appreciate if this wasn't deleted) by some editor who believes it constitutes as vandalism.211.30.14.161 (talk) 11:06, 25 February 2009 (UTC) Interesting —Preceding unsigned comment added by 211.30.14.161 (talk) 11:20, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for your comment. I do not agree, and decline to falsify history. For the record, I think that in general, Larry is given insufficient credit for his competent work as the editor-in-chief of the Wikipedia project.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 17:39, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

I see, well that is your opinion. By the way I'm little starstruck I can't believe the Jimmy Wales answered my querry211.30.14.161 (talk) 04:19, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Eh, I'm just some guy on the internet, typing in my pajamas like everybody else.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 05:28, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

TMI. Jehochman ^Talk 05:33, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

TMI = Too much information (I dislike unexplained abbreviations). Johan Lont (talk) 14:16, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

WP:OMGWTFBBQ –Juliancolton ^{Tropical Cyclone} 18:53, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

You are NOT an ordinary guy typing in pajama. You are a libertarian activist managing a political project on Internet. You should assume what you are. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.102.229.130 (talk) 05:12, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

cs.wikipedia account

Hello, I want to inform you, that yours account on cs.wiki is now free (per this requestú, if you want to use it. JAn Dudík (talk) 20:11, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Ping re GNU/Linux

Hi,

I'd appreciate a response to the thread you started at my usertalk; I've left a reply there, but haven't received a response. If this wasn't actually an edict regarding OS nomenclature on the encyclopedia, then I don't see why the normal dispute resolution process which has been used thus far in the debate can't be followed. As noted on Gronky's user talk, a considerable number of his mass-reverts were either baseless or counterproductive, but I'd rather wait for a response before re-engaging. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 16:44, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Marketers being clever (again)

Hey, Jimbo. Remember Modernista!? You might want to pop over to the the Skittles talk page - seems that Mars has done exactly the same thing, but is linking to specific sections in our page in lieu of its own product descriptions, with its logo and menu not removable. This would seem to need your input. Tony Fox (arf!) 17:11, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Eh, it's stupid, but whatever. Not sure what I can do about it.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 17:34, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Same issue as any site that hotlinks Wikipedia pages - the branded overlay is pretty common, too. If they were hosting their own version, with links to the history, presumably there wouldn't be any issue? Avruch ^T 18:07, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Is a branded overlay common?--Jimbo Wales (talk) 18:51, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

I think so - I don't have specific examples to give you, but the few times that I've seen hotlinking (and the many of the other times I've seen Wikipedia text reproduced without change) there have often been branded overlays or other prominent display of logos/host names. Avruch ^T 19:26, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

I'm not a lawyer, but you might want to talk to Wikimedia's lawyer about this. Because they're hotlinking all of Wikipedia, including the name and logo, this might be a trademark issue. Putting a branded logo on top of a working version of Wikipedia which includes the whole content of the encyclopedia, is an attempt to make it seem as if Wikipedia endorses skittles. Even if we don't really care about the hotlinking, Wikipedia has to defend its trademark in order to keep it. Huadpe (talk) 13:14, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

After reading the Modernista talk page, I have to wonder, why do you consider this to be wrong? this what a free encyclopedia is about, you can use its content. They clearly state on their website that they don't own the content, and you can still view Wikipedia's licenses at the bottom of the page.

On a side note, you can definitely do something about it, "break frame" codes are fairly common. wikibits.js already has the code for it in place, but its not enabled (wgBreakFrames is set to false). I guess there has been some discussion about it in the past. --Nezek (talk) 20:49, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

I've added COI and advertising tags to the article and commented on the talk page. The text is very cleanly done and seems neutral, but it's neither neutral nor encyclopedic. Gwen Gale (talk) 19:02, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Just stopping by to say hello

As per title just stopping by to say hi and how are you ? Thanks for founding wikipedia you are awesome,Take care Regards,

Staffwaterboy ^{Critique Me Guestbook Hate Comments} 18:03, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

ps have a cookie

staffwaterboy has given you a cookie! Cookies promote WikiLove and hopefully this one has made your day better. You can spread the WikiLove by giving someone else a cookie, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past or a good friend. {{subst:if||| {{{message}}} ||subst=subst:}} To spread the goodness of cookies, you can add {{subst:Cookie}} to someone's talk page with a friendly message, or eat this cookie on the giver's talk page with {{subst:munch}}!

Yay, another cookie for Jimbo's nearly endless collection of cookies, barnstars, and smiles! :D--Res2216firestar 18:19, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

TV episode notability

Does each episode of a popular TV show have to achieve notability via these guidelines to merit its own article? I mean, I remember reading somewhere Jimmy Wales saying that if people wanted to, they could start an article on their high school, or something. But right now there's a discussion as to whether certain first season episodes of South Park, like "Pinkeye" and "Mr. Hankey, the Christmas Poo"that already have their own article really merit them. I mean, it's South Park. Isn't the show itself noteworthy enough for each episode to merit an article if someone wants to write one? I've read the General guidelines, but shouldn't TV episodes have their own guidelines, much as Films do? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Nightscream (talk • contribs)

It isn't up to me, but in general, I think that individual episodes should only have an article when there is enough independent third-party reliable coverage to write a proper article. But, as I say, it isn't up to me, so it's not a good thing to say "Jimmy Wales once said..." Regarding high schools, I think most high schools should not have an article. Again, though, not up to me. :-) --Jimbo Wales (talk) 20:03, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Note for Dcastor of sv.wikipedia.org

Yes, I would like to have my account unified. Thanks!--Jimbo Wales (talk) 16:31, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Hi. The account is now available. Regards, Dcastor (talk) 20:49, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

The Aviator

Please see the following page, The Aviator. I have been observing some vandalism of a section of the article, but now it's advanced instead of through other means to a legal threat. FWiW Bzuk (talk) 21:34, 5 March 2009 (UTC).

...for which I have indef-blocked the editor. --Rodhullandemu 21:03, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Non commercial image license discussion

G'day, You have been invited for input at Wikipedia_talk:Featured_picture_candidates#Non_commercial_image_license. --Noodle snacks (talk) 11:00, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Arbitration page for Iberian-Guanche inscriptions

Dear friend,

We have read the Arbitration Commitee History and see that we could address to you. We can see that one of the arbitrators (FayssalF) has sent the request out of focus, and some others are quickly following him advising "decline".
I have sent to a clerk (Ryan_Postlethwaite)a statement to stress this to be put up, if suitable.
Could you please help me on posting the following statement?

Dear RP,

I would need urgently if you could help at clarifying a case.

"Iberian-Guanche inscriptions" page is under arbitration. Somebody has put the case out of focus by stating that there is no problem with the page content, but with the material included in the page. Obviously, if reading, even superficially, the discussions, the matter is strictly a controversy about page content itself.

I would like if you could put in my name the following statement in the Arbitration Page:

I have no other account in Wikipedia. I would like to look carefully into why the page was deleted. This was not due to peripheral reasons, but to the actual page content itself.

Material in page was permitted.

[17].

I expect your news. Thank you. Regards,

--Iberomesornix (talk) 16:47, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

My impression is that they are just following FayssalF's misunderstanding.

I expect your news. Thank you. Regards.

--Iberomesornix (talk) 16:47, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Auf deutsch reden

Hallo Jimmy, ich las deine Nachricht auf der Benutzerseite, dass du es magst deutsche Kommentare zu bekommen! Nun biete ich dir an, dein Deutsch zu verbessern!

Kannst dazu vielleicht mal im ICR.Chat der Wikipedia vorbeischauen! http://platon.ext.baur4.info/wpchat/deWP.html</nowik> Ich bin immer abends dort. Vielleicht könntest du mir dann mit meinem Englisch weiterhelfen?

Ich würde mich, (ach, auch alle anderen) freuen, wenn du mal wieder in der deutschen Wikipedia vorbeischaust

-) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.62.154.105 (talk) 21:42, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Loose translation:

Hi Jimmy, I read your message on your user page that you like to receive comments in German. Now I offer you to improve your German. Could you take a look at http://platon.ext.baur4.info/wpchat/deWP.html. I'm always there at night. Perhaps you could help me with my English? I, and others, would be happy when you shown up in the German Wikipedia once again. --Rodhullandemu 00:11, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

Jasonr

Wikipedia:Requests_for_adminship/Jasonr_(reconfirmation). Someone has posted this, without much forethought it seems like. Perhaps you can head it off - if this person, who reportedly worked for you and got his admin bit as a result, is no longer associated with Wikipedia... Would you remove the bit then yourself? Avruch ^T 15:45, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

Hopefully my removal of his bit will put this to rest.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 20:36, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

Jimbo, apologies for the headache that caused, I was trying to start a discussion similar to m:Wikimedia_Forum#Tidying_developers.27_user_rights. I didn't expect people to turn it into a vote for actions while I was away. MBisanz ^talk 22:18, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

question

what happens when there are multiple reliable 3rd party sources that conflict, but multiple 1st party sources that say one thing. do the editors go with the 1st party source..Example: Johnny A releases a book stating he is a homosexual. "News weekly" denies the book saying Johnny A. isn't a homosexual. "News Report hour' states that Johnny is infact a homosexual. Who does wikipedia beleive? reply on my talk page. 70.242.179.192 (talk) 04:24, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Hello, you are probably not too familiar with Wikipedia. This is something that should be asked at the article's talk page or the help desk:) ZooFari 04:31, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Agree with ZooFari here. The question is a bit too vague as stated. In general, a book published by a person stating something about their personal life should be considered a reliable source - but there can of course be exceptions and complications. Judgment is always necessary.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 02:17, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Onscene language by WebHampster in Skull and Bones discussion

Resolved

 – user counselled, but ultimately blocked for trolling

Jimbo,

I am having trouble with a user named WebHampster in the Skull and Bones discussion pages. He is hiding my text in a collapse box and told me to F-off. I thought that wikipedia users were required to respect each other and act like gentlemen. Could you please talk to this user.

Thank you, M

I'll take a look at this, Jimbo might have other things to do right now. --Rodhullandemu 18:47, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

JimmyWales.Org and JimmyWales.Net

I edit conflicted with User:Coren who was removing a note which let you know that silliness is occurring at the domains above as trolling - I thought you might like to know, so have popped this bit back - the full post is in the history, but basically someone is squatting on your domain. (ew....) Privatemusings (talk) 02:25, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

It's not his domains if he doesn't own them, and the whois shows someone in Austrailia owning them both. Nothing to see here, move along. - ✰ALLST☆R✰ ^echo 02:34, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Jimmy Wales owns JimmyWales.Com but not those two extensions. They are now directing to Jimmy's Uncyclopedia page. How mortifying! Coren ^(talk) 03:06, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

I think we should simply ban those domains. But lets ask Jimbo first. He might be in negotiations with this silly site squatter as we speak. Wikiwarriorwayne (talk) 23:30, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

wiki warrior wayne, eh? - silly site squatter indeed! Privatemusings (talk) 03:31, 10 March 2009 (UTC)so yeah, I reckon wiki warrior might well be the mischievous soul behind these merry japes ;-)

How come the HTML link doesn't change when you go to another page?

It's quite interesting that Jimmy doesn't own these extensions. He should. MathCool10 ^{Sign here!} 04:08, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

flagged revisions trial?

Hi Jimbo - having been dead busy away from wikipedia for the last few weeks, I thought I'd come straight to the horse's mouth and ask what the current status of the flagged revisions trial is? If anyone could point me in the direction of current discussion, or try and sum up the status quo in a few words, it'd be appreciated. My reading of the various places I've dug around is that nothing happened, and no specific action is yet scheduled? cheers, Privatemusings (talk) 23:25, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

I believe there's a summary posted here. Delicious carbuncle (talk) 23:32, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Sorry to be dense, Carbuncle, but I can't make sense of why you linked to that page. It's about someone being alleged to have reverted a template more than three times. Nothing about flagging. Is there a page where it's being discussed? Here's my view on it:

1. "Flagged revisions" seems a non-desctiptive term. What is being flagged up about the revision? Perhaps they should be called "postponed edits" or similar.
2. This feature should only be activated for specific articles that have been subject to repeated, persistent vandalism or that are subject to large numbers of edits or views, e.g. the top 0.01%
3. It should be possible for any user of a few weeks to authenticate changes, and to request to receive notifications, e.g. by email, that edit attempts have been made, optionally with the diff.

Mr. Jones (talk) 11:15, 1 March 2009 (UTC) The relevant pages seem to be

1. Wikipedia:Flagged revisions

(fixing threads which may have been a bit split up?) - thanks Mr. Jones - just fwiw, I think Delicious was pointing out a recently departed user's views that nothing really seems to be happening on this (it's the 'BLP' bit mentioned in the banner at the top, not the specific warnings or anything, I think). IIRC, Jimbo asked the dev.s to turn the feature on - have they done so, or maybe it's time to ask nicely again, Jimbo? :-) Privatemusings (talk) 02:25, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

g'day again :-) - I think I read on the foundation mailing list (in a comment from David Gerard) that you're working on a further proposal which you hope will gain stronger support? - any pointers as to where this might be happening, or any updates as to how it's going? :-) Privatemusings (talk) 22:16, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

It's dormant. Jimbo hasn't said any thing about it for a while. The discussion of proposed trials has had just a few edits the past month. Same with other relevant pages. Wikipedia Review is complaining about it, but they're putting more actual effort into deleting some British quiz show contestant. If want to do something about it, I suggest going through the proposed trials and make something out of it that could get wide acceptance. Shameless plug: Trial 18: Shadow flagging --Apoc2400 (talk) 10:53, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

I'm shopping a very premature proposal around to a few people, looking for broad consensus. News to come soon.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 12:52, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Hi, may I ask you to include me into "a few people"? I actually was one of the authors of the proposal that was the subject of a large poll sometime ago. I am still very interested in Flagged Revisions and their implementation here, and I think my advice will be usefull. Thanks in advance, Ruslik (talk) 20:10, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Likely he is just asking a few trusted users about a very loose outline of a proposal, and the rest of us will hear about it very soon. I'm anxiously awaiting a proposal, along with many others I'm sure, all we can do is wait.--Res2216firestar 19:12, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Hi, Jimbo. I've been working on assessing consensus w.r.t. flagged revisions for some time now, and I finally drafted Wikipedia:Flag protection and patrolled revisions. I think there's a need and support for a system to monitor and better control blps, but in the same time, a strict Flaggedrevs for all of them has no consensus. So, I think we could have consensus for a passive flag, patrolled revisions. And we also need to be able to fully 'activate' flagged revs on some pages, as a protection measure, that's what I proposed as a variant of flagged protection. Comments are welcome. Cenarium (talk) 00:40, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

< - seems like quite a few people are pulling in kinda the same direction, kinda like a cat sleigh perhaps.... Is the 'soon' of your timeframe roughly 'this week', or maybe 'March sometime', Jimbo? Privatemusings (talk) 22:26, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

this thread has pretty much be usurped by a new one lower down - just FYI :-) Privatemusings (talk) 23:17, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

"Live near SF and have an hour to help Wikipedia?"

There sometimes appears at the top of the page "Live near SF and have an hour to help Wikipedia?" but the only link it gives is a javascript link, which is a dead link. I asked on one of the forums and nobody knew what it was, only confirming he javascript link "ethnio.show" was dead for them, too. Perhaps you know? Are you ready for IPv6? (talk) 01:41, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

It could be a geonotice. I have no idea how to check though. Graham87 07:40, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

It worked for me, but only when opening it in the same tab rather than a new one. It's seeking participants for a usability study for Wikipedia. the wub "?!" 10:59, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

I've never seen it before, myself, and I don't know about it. But probably the Foundation does. :) --Jimbo Wales (talk) 20:37, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

Wub, what URL did it end up at? Are you ready for IPv6? (talk) 21:50, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

I'll assume it's this? §hep^Talk 21:52, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

I saw it once. I clicked it and read it, but it hasn't shown up since. It was asking for people to come to downtown San Francisco on a weekend in March to spend an hour being interviewed about Wikipedia usage and such. I think it said they'd pay you like $15 or something. You had to sign up and they'd call you to let you know if you were picked to be interviewed. Killiondude (talk) 22:42, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Hmmm, costs me more than $15 in gas to drive there and back. I thought it was some kind of social event people were doing. Are you ready for IPv6? (talk) 00:25, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Anyone have a screenshot? §hep^Talk 02:23, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Better late than never, here's the e-mail where I heard about it on the foundation-l mailing list: [18] the wub "?!" 11:05, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

Blinky Jimmy

Um, Jimbo is blinking at me. Does anyone else find this to be, oh I don't know... weird? I figured I was just tired when I first thought I saw his picture blink, but then I definitely saw Jimbo blink at me! I then realized his picture is a .gif image. Maybe a still frame would be more, uh, not off-putting? Am I alone in my opinion? -Sesu Prime (talk) 10:27, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, I kind of don't like it myself. It was sweet of someone to make it, and when I first heard about it, I looked at it, and I thought, hmmm, that's cute but creepy. But it was so nice for someone to spend the time to make it that I just let it go. But maybe it's tired now.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 21:50, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

I dunno, I didn't even notice until I read this. On looking at it it didn't creep me out. Seems to make the page a little bit more dynamic. Gives the impression of presence. In fact, I think it'd be really cool if someone decided to go all Harry Potter on it and made it do many different actions.Khono (talk) 21:56, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

What do you think of replacing it with File:Jimmy Wales Fundraiser Appeal.JPG? More up-to-date and non-blinky. §hep^Talk 21:58, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Definitely in the "Uncanny valley". William Avery (talk) 08:33, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

I like the picture Stepshep suggested.

By the way, sorry Jimmy, uh, I mean Mr. Wales, for talking about you like you weren't here. I just wasn't expecting the Wikipedia founder himself to respond to little ol' me. ;-) -Sesu Prime (talk) 10:24, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Mr. Wales is my father. :) --Jimbo Wales (talk) 15:48, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Why shouldn't he respond to you? After all, he blinked at you!--Wehwalt (talk) 12:35, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

Japanese Wikipedia

Hello,Jimbo. I'm worry that I have to report that Japanese Wikipdians are POV about Christianity articles. They say trinity is the main doctrine of Christianity and the religion that doesn't support that is non-Christianity or heresy without no explainations. But I think 'heresy' is word to avoid, and I deleted this words. Then Japanese administrators decided it trolls without no explainations, and they blocked my ID. What do you think of this? 118.111.5.64 (talk) 01:10, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

I am unable to read Japanese, despite a year of study, and so I'm unable to help directly. I think that, in my experience, admins in Japanese wikipedia do not really care about such ideological matters - the block was likely for behavioral reasons. I have no opinion about the content dispute, but recommend the use of reliable sources.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 02:40, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

If you have a grievance such as this, then wherever you bring it up (and this probably isn't the best place), it would be a help if you could provide "diffs". Look in 歴史 for the edits, click 選択した版同士を比較, and save the URL of what you see. -- Hoary (talk) 04:15, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

You were blocked for making legal threats on your talk page, not for the edit war at the article on Christianity. Please see ja:Wikipedia:法的な脅迫をしない and Wikipedia:No legal threats. Dekimasuよ! 06:16, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

But it came from what a administrator made block threat at first, I had no way except legal threat, because I didn't have administrator power. 118.111.5.64 (talk) 10:17, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

Obama issues & flagged revisions

You might (or might not) be interested in this and this. Just a thought: Right now we have 2 options, either keep reverting the edits or place full protection on the article — either one will attract even more notice from the media (Now Wikipedia reverts all edits or Now Wikipedia has prohibited all editing). Either way, it's lose-lose. Now, if flagged revisions were in place.... Just thinking out loud. --64.85.217.74 (talk) 02:48, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Or we could fix the article so that mention of notable controversies and criticisms are included. That seems to me to be the appropriate way to improve the encyclopedia based on our policies and guidelines, not to mention common sense. The articles dealing with these issues should also be linked to from that article. ChildofMidnight (talk) 20:24, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Oh, please. Are you going to post this in every AN/ANI thread and talk page that you can to garner sympathy? You were adding in uncited original research, indicated here, here (bottom), here (bottom), and here (bottom). The addition of this equates to edit warring. I was nice enough to notify you of the article probation instead of outright blocking for 3RR; you should take that as advice, that perhaps you should add citations in regards to one of the highest profile BLP's at Wikipedia, instead of trying to disregard every administrator or editor that comes along the way to comment. seicer | talk | contribs 23:06, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Maybe next time you'll consider adding a citation needed tag to the wild assertion that Republicans criticized Obama's opposition to the surge and that Obama's associations with Rev. Wright, Tony Rezko, and Bill Ayers are controversial. You're not "nice", you're an administrator who uses his tools and position in content disputes against wikipedia guidelines. Clean up your act. ChildofMidnight (talk) 00:12, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Aaron Klein

Wondering what we should do about Aaron Klein. Editing (it appears) as Jerusalem21 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) he first creates his own vanity article[19] and, despite getting caught sockpuppeting (see his talk page), squats on the article for two years to prevent anyone from cleaning it up. Then he engineers a fake scandal to bring disrepute on Wikipedia. On February 24, after never editing (from that account) any other article he suddenly makes three rapid-fire edits to the Obama article - two on the crackpot theory that Obama was born in Kenya[20][21] and one to promote the election year smear involving Bill Ayers[22] that was by consensus too trivial for Obama's main bio page. He publishes an expose about Wikipedia in his right wing site,World Net Daily[23] without admitting that he is actually reporting on the breaching experiment he perpetrated to get himself blocked. The story gets mainstream coverage for a while[24][25] until the hoax is discovered[26][27] but by that time the story has hit the conservative blogosphere and editors are rushing from all over to as ChildofMidnight puts it above "fix the article" (i.e. edit war and badmouth the supposed "libtards" and censors who rule Wikipedia). That results in full indefinite protection for the article[28] and a state of siege on its talk page.

Whatever Klein is doing here, it is clearly not to build an encyclopedia. He has sabotaged the project to create a fake scandal so he can cover it to further a political agenda. Now his article is nominated for deletion (see [[29]]). I'm thinking we should root out his accounts and not let him edit here unless he shows he wants to use accounts to write articles. Wikidemon (talk) 18:58, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

The inability of new and experienced editors to balance the Barack Obama article with mention of notable criticism and controversy is troubling and embarassing for Wikipedia. I would have thought that we'd work to address the problem. To find that instead we've locked the page down and now the same editors guarding that page have launched a retaliatory nomination of this journalist's article seems ill-considered at best. Even if a case can be made that he isn't notable and doesn't meet the inclusion criteria, the timing stinks. The factual story that the Obama article is being aggresively censored and doesn't meet our own guidelines and standards for balance, and that the article is in stark contrast to the articles on other politicians who hold similar offices, certainly seems legitimate to me. I'm not surprised that other more mainstream media have picked up on it. It's certainly true that efforts to add content according to guidelines for notability are immediately reverted and the editors in question harassed. If only the same attention was paid to reigning in POV warriors and bias that was paid to Science Apologist's spelling corrections, Wikipedia would be a lot better off. ChildofMidnight (talk) 19:36, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Creating fake accounts to sabotage a website, then write about it as if it happened to someone else, is not considered "legitimate" or a "factual story" in most journalistic circles. The Obama article, a FA, is just fine, and represents long-term consensus by many dozens of hardworking editors. ChildofMidnight, it should be pointed out, seems to have drunk the kool-aid about liberal censors controlling Wikipedia, and as the diffs show is one of those who jumped in and began edit warring the Obama article just before it got protected. Perhaps it is not "POV warriors" who are "guarding that page" but hardworking volunteers who have created and maintained a featured article. Wikidemon (talk) 19:45, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Conflicts of interest and account creation is an administrative issue. Reporting on how Wikipedia operates hardly amounts to sabotage. I'm interested in your explanation of why a biography on Wikipedia since March of 2006 with numerous edits by various editors is now suddenly up for deletion by the editors "defending" the Barack Obama article? And if you're embarassed by the bias and censoring that goes on, by all means let's help fix it. Or perhaps you'd care to explain why notable criticisms and controversies are omitted from the article? Alternatively we can block the editor who demonstrated these problems and will no doubt expose our failure to respond appropriately. This will only serve to add to the abundant evidence of bias and censorship. But it won't be him sabotaging Wikipedia, it will be the poor decision making of those handling the situation and controlling the Obama article. ChildofMidnight (talk) 19:55, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Not to comment on the deletion attempt, which I hadn't heard of before now, but the issue here is quite simple: the POV warriors are the ones who are trying to insert blatant misrepresentations into one of our most viewed articles, not those who are trying to maintain neutrality. Klein, likely editing as Jerusalem21 or at least acquainted with that editor, didn't get his way, so went off and (against what most would consider to be journalistic ethics) wrote an article about it, ignoring the fact that the stuff he wanted inserted is covered in its own rather lengthy and well sourced article, and without mentioning the conflict of interest involved. Okay, that's kind of how WND operates, but the fact remains that it's now gone wild as an opportunity for the right to jump up and down on Wikipedia as proxy for being unable to win the election - because one person was unhappy abuot being reverted. The Obama articles are edited by a wide range of editors, they've been meticulously developed, and the main article is a featured article as determined by independent editors. Are there issues? Sure. I agree that Wright, at least, should have a mention in the main article, and there should be links to the child articles on the controversies. Is this a case of the vast left-wing conspiracy controlling the articles and not allowing the virtuous right to ensure that The Truth is told? Hardly. Tony Fox (arf!) 20:06, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

(ec - response to ChildofMidnight) The Obama article is fine, as I said. The reasons for its present state start at WP:5P and work their way down through all the policies and guidelines to the WP:FA process, as expressed by long-term consensus among many dozens of serious editors. If you think we should disparage the President to your liking, perhaps Wikipedia is not the best place to that. It's sad and pathetic for an anti-Obama partisan to sabotage the article to create a fake scandal so he can write about how censorious Wikipedia is. The editor has conducted long-term abuse over a period of years without making any effort to contribute constructively, and is here on false pretenses, so yes, the appropriate response is to ban him. Incidentally, I did weigh in not to delete the biography but what I think and do is not the issue here. Incidentally, could we please not carry on a debate on Jimbo's talk page? I brought to his attention a very serious breach that I believe strikes at the core of Wikipedia in a major, public way. I'm not here for chatter.Wikidemon (talk) 20:13, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

The breach involved here is the rejection of our NPOV and balance guidelines. You mention the FA status, but fail to mention the numerous established, veteran editors who having had other efforts rebuffed also tried to have an unbalanced tag or disputed tag added or to have the FA status revoked. But every effort in this regard gets slapped down. I understand that you think all criticism and controversy should be excluded from Obama's article. But that's the problem, and that's why Klein's story sticks. These news outlets simply link to the article and their readers can see for themselves that our account of Obama reads like a press release. Their readers can even attempt to add notable content about controversy and criticisms or try to discuss the issues on the article's talk page (now that it's locked down), but they are quickly met with wholesale reversions, personal attacks, slapped with warnings, sanctions, and banning. The Obama article is seriously out of line with other articles on similar subjects and doesn't comply with our standards. Journalists frequently do investigative reporting to expose corruption. The Obama article and our response to the news coverage is a good example of why this type of reporting is so effective at exposing flaws and impropriety. In this case our processes have become corrupted, as the AfD of this reporter demonstrates. Why don't you ask the nominator to withdraw this ill-considered action and start working with the veteran editors to include balance in the article? ChildofMidnight (talk) 20:52, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Please do not insult other editors with what you "understand" they think, and please do not use Jimbo's talk page here to stand on a soapbox. If an article is not as negative about a BLP subject as you wish, you may have to accept that your version of content did not gain consensus. We have policies and guidelines for dealing with disagreement. Edit warring, POV tagging featured articles, and Wiki hoaxes are not among them. Klein has not yet tried to explain his way out sockpuppeting, COI editing, and edit warring as a piece of undercover "investigative journalism" but even if he did we have consistently rejected the notion that journalists, professors, or anyone else can mess up articles so they can publish offwiki about how Wikipedia responds to their mess. Again, please, this is not the place to debate. Wikidemon (talk) 21:51, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

• Update - Klein has apparently admitted to it, but tried to call the subterfuge a legitimate undercover investigation of Wikipedia.[30] This may well be a routine AN/I matter that does not need Jimbo's attention, and I will take it there, but I do think the journalist's crusade against Wikipedia from the inside could have some significant implications that Jimbo and team may be interested to consider. Thanks, Wikidemon (talk) 23:47, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

• Blocked indefinitely.[31] That probably works actually, better a routine admin action than to make a fuss of it.Wikidemon (talk) 03:02, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

A few observations on the deeper problems here

1. Set up a Wikipedia system that relies on consensus, with few rules, and people who like to play political (in the sense of inter-personal) games will often take over. That might not be so bad if these games players didn't sometimes slow down the process of encyclopedia building with their fights or if they put an ethic of fairly presenting information over pushing their own agenda. Hardly anything in Wikipedia's governing structures effectively leads editors away from emotional wikipolitics and toward calm consideration of differences of opinion.
2. Perhaps the most effective moves to solve these problems have been at ArbCom, and it seems to have happened because it's one of the few areas of Wikipedia where authority is top-down rather than bottom-up.
3. "Consensus" is simultaneously what's supposed to determine almost all decisionmaking and yet what level of support constitutes consensus is undefined. This makes it difficult to get any decision made on Wikipedia and nearly impossible if the decision is controversial.
4. Politics (in the "political science" sense) is inherently controversial, at least at times, and in many cases it's extremely controversial. Articles on certain political subjects, such as Barack Obama, are going to be very prominent aspects of Wikipedia. This is the nature of politics, and while certain subjects and articles will be more or less important over time, there will always be prominent articles on political topics. That's also the nature of Wikipedia, and that won't ever change. Wikipedia will always be open to being embarassed by shenanigans on prominent political articles, and Wikipedia doesn't have very effective ways to handle embarassing circumstances, especially if the culprits are good wikipoliticians. The results are that good editors, often the most dedicated ones, get burnt-out and leave and other good editors spend a lot of unnecessary time cleaning up the mess, often at Arbcom.
5. Content disputes at controversial articles often depend on brute numbers (having more people on your side of the issue show up to be counted), they're often accompanied by rudeness and accusations of incivility or other violations of behavioral rules. Those accusations, often true and often false, then go to various behavior-related authorities. If one side can convince the authorities to remove enough of the editors from the other side, that often results in a consensus brought about not by a meeting of the minds but a meeting of the prejudices or of the politickers or of the ideologues, or of the conspirators. What results is that the fighting gets kicked down the road a bit, only to come up again.
6. Enforcement of nearly any Wikipedia policy tends to be ad hoc, done by volunteers with more or less experience, with enforcement unpredictable and dependent on chance. If the dispute is longstanding enough, and if the admins who can block editors and set up restrictions are not attentive enough (or are themselves wikipoliticians and schemers), then schemers can often get an edge in disputes, and often a lot more than an edge. This is an inevitable result of the governing structure we've set up for dispute resolution -- it sometimes encourages bad behavior and makes good behavior more difficult.
7. Does anyone doubt that the difficulty of coming to a conclusion on contentious pages discourages many reasonable editors from paricipating there, leaving those pages to the most pugnacious editors? Does anyone doubt that?

I think hardly anyone would disagree with the important parts of all these observations, and most people who think at all about them agree that they're important problems. They're such big problems that few of us know just what to do about them and, given the difficulty of getting a consensus to implement any big Wikipedia policy change, few people bother to try.

Broad, possible solutions:

1. We shouldn't require people who edit important articles to have skin so thick it's like armor, or to have the patience of a stone. We need methods of decisionmaking that are more structured so that discussions can focus on differences of opinion rather than insults, where the process is seen as fair rather than open to so much manipulation (for instance, objecting to a large majority's preference by saying that consensus requires even more support -- easy to do when consensus isn't pre-defined).
2. For larger disputes, especially with many editors involved, resolution would be easier if we had RfCs with rules on what constitutes consensus and assigned moderators to resolve disputes within the RfC process. Some process of helping editors devise RfCs also would help. Essentially, we have editors involved in disputes also regulating those disputes, either on article talk pages or in RfCs. That's a recipe for failure, especially on big, contentious issues.
3. Leaving ongoing content disputes on the talk pages of particular articles while ArbCom and A/N refuse to deal with content questions is inadequate. Maybe the solution would involve setting up some kind of forum where major content disputes could be worked out, involving respected members of the community with authority to either make a final decision or at least to closely monitor and regulate the discussion, then declare when consensus is reached. WP:CANVASS even discourages bringing in editors who are more disinterested and less angry, a kind of recruitment that would actually help resolve content questions in more reasonable ways. We should encourage broader participation in a structured environment for the most contentious disputes.
4. Some kind of elected body might take over certain content questions. That might work, but I think it's probably impossible to implement any time soon because it's too radical a change to get consensus.

I don't really know what specific reforms would be best, but I think workable reforms would move in the direction of hierarchy and rules for discussions that keep them on track, with predictable ways of making decisions. Nothing will stop people from acting badly or making bad decisions, but these types of reforms would help. I'm posting this here because I want more people, including you, Jimbo, thinking about this, and because the Obama article provides so many good examples of the problems here. I spent months at the Obama article talk page trying to come to rational conclusions and avoid abuse, only to lose my own temper finally, after Wikidemon wouldn't accept a 2:1 majority as a consensus on whether or not any of dozens of reliable sources could be used to call a terrorist a "terrorist" (difs available on request). After arguing for months whether or not Bill Ayers or Jeremiah Wright or Tony Rezko either could be mentioned in the Obama article, or how, I washed my hands of it. And the same disputes are back again, even at AN/I. I never want to touch another article with a big political controversy again. The discussions have too little to do with what's best for Wikipedia and too much to do with what's best for particular editors' personal preferences. And they're full of sleazy games playing, insults, immature accusations, skulduggery and sophistry. But it's just ludicrous to think that if we only identify the bad guys and block or ban them everything will be all right. Yet it's about the only solution that ever comes up at AN/I, because it's just about all a body like that can do.

I think it might help if you acknowledged that there are some systemic problems here, particularly with contentious articles and the way we make decisions on them. Your voice might get more people thinking about these problems (and maybe you've done this; if so, my apologies for lengthy blather). That's your bailiwick, God King, more so than whether some guy should get blocked or banned, which AN/I can deal with. -- Noroton (talk) 21:23, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

WP is definitely ridden with all the problems that you describe Noroton. It's also likely that none of the solutions you describe will be anywhere near adequate to deal with them. The strange thing is though, that despite the randomness, imperfection and the misery a wiki creates, the damn thing works better than anything else. Bizarre. Riversider (talk) 14:33, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

In covering controversial topics, I don't think Wikipedia works well at all. WP works much better on topics where emotions are low, where we often have the best coverage on the Web, as well as the least stress for editors. As I said, I think something like these changes would help, although the problems won't ever disappear. I think a lot of editors would feel they'd been treated fairly, the articles would be better, and it would take less time to settle some big debates. It's hard to know how any of this (or other big reforms) could be implemented though, because it's next to impossible to get a consensus. -- Noroton (talk) 18:51, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

Action needed on flagged revisions

I know you are trying hard to craft a flagged revs proposal that will make everyone happy, but I think some stop-gap measure is needed. Six admins, including 2 checkusers have resigned in March, many citing what can be summed up on User:Kevin. Until the management (you) actively changes the status quo (make BLP1E a CSD, put flagged revs on all BLPs, semi-protect all BLPs), people will believe your words are just words without action. And we will continue to lose more admins and more active editors. It is no surprise that in the last year, despite promoting 201 people to adminship, the number of active admins has declined by about 80 as more and more people tire of the endless debate on life changing issues like proper BLP enforcement and decide their time is better spent on more responsible hobbies (or at least less destructive ones). Regards. MBisanz ^talk 22:32, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

The sky isn't falling, but I agree that fast-tracking is in order here, before the NEXT incident happens.--Tznkai (talk) 22:46, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Not that I want to discourage Jimbo from Doing The Right Thing, but only one of those six admins listed in that diff cited BLP problems as a reason for the resignation. 1 of 6 isn't exactly "many". --Conti|✉ 22:53, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

just for the interest of anyone lurking / following this - A dev (tim starling) offered to turn flagged revisions on on March 2 - Eric (the WMF Deputy Director) replied in what seems to be an official capacity almost immediately saying that this won't happen immediately ("I will note that even when we have a clear request, we might not immediately implement the feature...") - and that Jimbo has committed to formalising a revised process which may gain greater support here on en. Eric also says "A WMF intervention is possible, but it does not currently appear to be necessary." - maybe the above speaks to the argument that WMF leadership would be a good thing :-) Privatemusings (talk) 23:16, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

I believe Alison, SirFozzie, and Kevin all cited the BLP problem as their reason for resignation. MBisanz ^talk 23:31, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

I think there are other reasons why admins resign. I'll leave it to you to decide what reasons they are, but most people should get what I'm saying. Majorly talk 23:36, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Agree with MBisanz and Tznkai, fast tracking is needed. Regardless of who resigned or didn't or why. Lar: t/c 03:13, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

Agree with MBisanz. It is an important issue that should be addressed soon. Griffinofwales (talk) 04:49, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

Matt can also confirm that I have considered resignation over this very issue - nice to see that I'm not alone. Action is what is needed - but you may have to do it without matching the extraordinary levels of consensus that you seem so desperate for. Fritzpoll (talk) 08:15, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

Some discussions have happened here and there. I intend to propose Wikipedia:Flag protection and patrolled revisions to the community very soon as I believe we can have consensus for that. Preliminary discussion is welcome. Cenarium (talk) 18:56, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

While Jimbo is working on a proposal, but I don't think he wants us to sit by idly and wait. I made a suggestion at Wikipedia_talk:Flagged_revisions#Let.27s_see_what_we_can_get. Some of you will see it as watered down, but the alternative is to continue like now. I like Cenarium's proposal too, but I want something as simple as possible that can be understood in five minutes. --Apoc2400 (talk) 19:17, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

Jimbo, the community will discuss this to pieces, over and over again. Maybe it is time that everybody who thinks that flagged revisions should be implemented NOW go on strike, and let those that who doesn't want them ydo the dirty work. -- Kim van der Linde ^{at venus} 19:32, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

But who is supposed to actually work out the details of flagged revisions? Jimbo alone? I don't think the community is unable to agree on FR. I think all the proposals so far have been bad. --Apoc2400 (talk) 19:55, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

I have had a look at it, and my impression is that there are to many ideas, from flagged revisions for all to no flagged revision at all. if the vandalism goes through the roof, and the BLP issues pile out to the press, I am sure it won't take more than a day to implement it. Implement it, make a rough start (all those with roll-back can do it), and start rolling and iron it out when it is going. NOBODY knows what is ideal, and everybody has an opinion, so nothing is going to happen. I am sure once it has been implemented wiki-wide that a workable policy page is developed within one week. Really, once it is implementd, it won't take much time. And yes, there might be a backlog for a while, but there is a much longer backlog of unfound vandalism in many many pages. Really, when ideas are killed because they are not 100% good, we forget that a 90% good system is always better than a 50% good system. Let take the 40% improvement NOW, and work out the 10% later! -- Kim van der Linde ^{at venus} 20:03, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

• Remember Jimmy that to exercise power with a moral imperative is no crime, it is rather a necessity. Do something to help put right the wrongs that have been done. Short term pain for long term gain. 88.108.207.21 (talk) 01:55, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

I think we can get long term gain without short term pain, if we move forward carefully and thoughtfully. Patience.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 02:22, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

I think so too, but do you mind if we stop vandal whacking in the mean time? -- Kim van der Linde ^{at venus} 02:30, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but I don't understand the question. I'm pretty sure that it's not possible at all that you are suggesting that it would be a thoughtful thing to do to try to convince admins to go on strike. That'd be a sensible thing to do if for some reason the Wikimedia Foundation (or me) and a coalition of anonymous ip numbers or inexperienced users were blocking a reform demanded by admins, or something like that. But as it is, I see no reason to get dramatic. Don't forget WP:SPIDER - we're all on the same side here, after all. :) --Jimbo Wales (talk) 04:20, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

It is actually exactly what I am proposing. Or better, I propose that every editor does that what he likes best to do, in my case, adding sensible content and forgets about the tasks that he dislikes, like Vandal Whacking in my case. When a dam is broken, there are roughly two things you can do. One is to keep mopping the water, the second is to repair the dam. I choose the second, but when some officials (you and those opposing flagged revisions) stand by and tell me that I cannot use the tools to repair the dam, I refuse to keep mopping with is the most senseless task you can imagine. What I propose is to leave the mopping to those who think that mopping is the best way to resolve this issue, instead of helping them while they prevent me to do it more effective. Let see how long that lasts if they cannot recruit those that are tired of their objection to the repair of the problem. -- Kim van der Linde ^{at venus} 13:19, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

Oh, come on, that is Nero fiddling while Rome burns. It would be one of those self destructive strikes where the pickets continue while the physical plant deteriorates and the customers assume new loyalties elsewhere. It would help nothing, nothing. Flagged revisions will come, and they will be accepted in time, and we will wonder how we ever did without them. However, the gestation process will be difficult, alas, but destructive acts like an admin strike won't help anything.--Wehwalt (talk) 13:23, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

I think you are missing the point. Nero not doing anything is like the editors and Jimbo sitting on their ass while WP is burning. And it will help, because the more vandalism needs to be dealt with by fewer and fewer editors opposing flagged revisions, the faster they will get convinced that flagged revisions are actually a smart idea. Ever seen a strike of law-enforcement in real life? Those are the fastest resolved, exactly because of their crucial position. Lets do that here, and see how WP can handle an increased vandalism load. By the time we have flagged revisions, each and every article needs to be manually checked anyway before the first flag, so nothing lost by waiting with removal of the vandalism. -- Kim van der Linde ^{at venus} 13:34, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

BTW, you have easy talking as you leave the vandal whacking already to others as far as I can see from your contribution list. -- Kim van der Linde ^{at venus} 13:38, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

I'm still a relatively new Admin (three months) and am still feeling my way into the job. Besides, I said during my RfA that my principal focus would remain on article building, and I didn't lie.--Wehwalt (talk) 13:43, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

Exactly, easy talking. I have an issue with those who oppose flagged revisions while at the same time not doing much about the vandalism issue to start with. To me, I would do a weighted voting, proportional (%) to the degree of vandalism fighting one is doing, and I think flagged revisions would be implemented instantaneously. -- Kim van der Linde ^{at venus} 13:55, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

Without the contributions of editors like me (six FA, five TFA, two GA, 17 DYK), you wouldn't have much to protect from vandals. I'm comfortable with what I've contributed to WP and believe I have been a net positive as an admin. I do not oppose flagged revisions, and am inclined to defer to people like you who are on the front lines of that battle.--Wehwalt (talk) 14:00, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

• I've been doodling on some graphs ([32]), although they are quite crude. Still working with the Google Chart API. But it clearly indicates that there is an increase in administrator resignations, a decrease in new administrators and a sharp rise in total inactive administrators in compared to the base. seicer | talk | contribs 03:34, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

• I have recently resigned as admin / checkuser / oversighter and have clearly stated the reasons on my userpage. BLP issues, and the intransigence over Flagged Revisions are the two main reasons. I'm one of the few people who gets to see BLP issues at their worst, having worked Oversight for some time and I'm tired and worn out from pushing ineffectually against the rising tide. We need to fix this, and we need to fix it now. Many of us simply have nothing more to give any more. We're worn out - Alison ^❤ 04:31, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

• Jimbo, sounds like us members of the mob would like to see some management decision making and action on a few issues. Cla68 (talk) 05:15, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

Beware those who would come in the name of the people without the consent of the people. There is an observable "career arc" of the experienced editor, ending in jadedness and burnout; the fact that several such editors have chosen BLP issues as their sword to fall on is in no way indicative of a broader problem. The interpretation of a very small number of data points in administrator retirement as a colossal turning of the tide illustrates the absence of perspective of a certain faction here. Skomorokh 05:44, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

The burnout is readily visible in the sharp rise in administrator resignations and the very high total administrator inactivity. seicer | talk | contribs 11:34, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

Jimbo, I so understand what happened with Alison. I've never seen as much hatred on en.Wikipedia as in the last few months. It has indeed become a "slander machine" for some who understand how careless some readers and editors can be in reading articles, talk/project pages and policy. Keen encyclopedia building, reading and writing are great fun for me (I quietly look up stuff on Wikipedia every day), but dealing with hidden agendas, craftily run socks, smears and wanton PoV twiddling and slaughter is not fun. I'm wary of saying this, but I think some of the articles I watch have backslid lately. Others I don't bother watching at all anymore. I know myself, I'll very likely bounce back, I'm only saying. Gwen Gale (talk) 11:52, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

The community is still capable of finding a solution. I personally have works literally hundreds of hours on finding a compromise proposal for FlaggedRevs, and I know other people, including some above, who have done the same. Get involved in the discussions, try to help in finding a compromise, accept reasonable compromise, etc. The foundation knows that if they impose a certain implementation of FlaggedRevs, it'll certainly result in a massive wave of retirements, their hands are tied. We still have opportunities to find a consensual proposal, let's no waste them. Cenarium (talk) 14:03, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

Admins threatening to strike, content providers threatening to retire. All very dramatic. I wonder if things are this much fun at Britannica?Riversider (talk) 15:20, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

Keep in mind, en.Wikipedia is run by volunteers. I don't see these comments as "strike threats" at all, but as meaningful input. It's ok to acknowledge worries without going all kerfuffle over how to deal with them, or not yet knowing how to deal with them. Gwen Gale (talk) 15:50, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

And of the people on this thread, all of them are die-hard fans of Wikipedia, who want to see it succeed. We've all put in immense work into the project over the years and most of us just want it to go from strength to strength whilst doing the right thing!. This is constructive criticism - Alison ^❤ 18:24, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

Indeed, it's worth noting how bad it is for moral around here that the solution to many of our problems is known, easily available and being delayed for no good reason. WilyD 18:32, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

That's not fair. FlaggedRevs never will be the panacea some people make it out to be. Flagged or not, the content (unsourced negative material) still sucks. There are lists all around the site of specific problem articles (examples here and here). Instead of bemoaning slow development here, it would be nice if people actively worked on fixing some of these articles. Because no MediaWiki extension can do that. --MZMcBride (talk) 18:47, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

Amazing it may sound, I agree with MZMcBride. FlaggedRevs is not the solution our problems. There's thousands of unreferenced BLPs out there, that could be actively being worked on, but people appear to prefer to spend their time lobbying on here. Flagged revs will be a lot of work for everyone, and will only (potentially) stop new bad stuff being displayed. The old stuff is still there. There's no doubt in my mind there are plenty of libellous articles or statements on Wikipedia still, we just haven't found them. FlaggedRevs won't fix any of that. Majorly talk 18:54, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

It shouldn't surprise you (thought it may) that I do this sort of thing from time to time. Building sandcastles when you see the tide coming in, however, remains bad for moral. I suppose I ought to expect floggings to continue until moral improves, however. WilyD 19:00, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

I would agree that it isn't a panacea, but a part of a solution. Another part would be making WP:BLP1E a CSD criteria. Or letting admins indef semi-protect BLPs for any reason. All of these are different part of a complex solution. MBisanz ^talk 20:07, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

I roasted a picnic ham a few days ago. When I went to cut the meat, I didn't worry about how to get every bit from around the bone, I started by making the nice, easy cuts which cut away maybe 80% of the meat. With the remaining problem now much better exposed, I could do a few more of the trickier cuts, and looking at the trickiest cuts, I came to the conclusion that the answer for the last bits was soup. By cutting away most of the problem, I could see what was left, and tackle that. And most of it had already been eaten (and was quite tasty). WilyD 20:19, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

It's not with this kind of rhetorics that we'll agree on something... Please, we need to find a compromise proposal. What do you think of Wikipedia:Flag protection and patrolled revisions ? Initially, I was a strong supporter of a FlaggedRevs implementation similar to the German Wikipedia, for blps. But I shifted towards the above, because I know now we won't have consensus for a strict FlaggedRevs implementation on BLPs or even an arbitrary portion of them, and now I happen to prefer this solution. It's clear, from all discussions on this (blp survey, trial discussions, etc). That's my proposal: use a 'passive' flag for all articles (especially blps), and allow administrators to enable an 'active' flag on a page when it meets the specific protection requirements. You won't have much of the classic opposition to FlaggedRevs, and it'll allow to monitor all blps, and enforce the blp policy on specific ones, in accordance with a specific 'protection' policy. See also this essay. Cenarium (talk) 18:56, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

We have several good and quite similar proposals now. All we need to do is agree an a final proposal and present it to the general editorship. With a well-defined proposal and the threat of full-scale flagged revisions on all articles gone, getting consensus should not be that hard.

I think the next nut to crack is getting the hardliners to accept low requirements to for reviewers. The most common objection to FR is that it would allow a cabal to control content. There is fairly widespread distrust of administrators, arbcom and the other upper echelons at Wikipedia. We need to get rid of the idea that reviewers are highly trusted editors (i.e. cabalists). As long as we keep vandals and suckpuppets from reviewing, it will be a vast improvement to the quality standards of BLPs. However, those who repeatedly flag bad revisions should lose the right easily.

The original version of FR would turn Wikipedia from "the encyclopedia that anyone can edit" to "anyone can suggest changes, and we might approve them", which could describe any traditional encyclopedia. If the reviewer right is easy to get and well spread we remove the fear of a cabal and can keep the backlog shorter. --Apoc2400 (talk) 19:56, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

Jimbo

Dearest Jimbo, as you can see by the important contributions I've made at Glorified rice, Dutch oven (practical joke) and Exopolitics, it's very important that I attend Wikimania 2009 in Buenos Aires. Thank you for your kind consideration of providing me with an all expense paid trip to make this possible. I'm very appreciative. ChildofMidnight (talk) 23:04, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

I wrote a six-line stub about Buenos Aires, I think this qualifies me to go too. – iridescent 23:12, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

And I just made Wikimania 2009 blue! Aren't I awesome or what? Thank you Jimbo in advance, I look forward to seeing you :) Majorly talk 23:16, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

I actually looked up dutch oven (joke) two weeks ago. I'm glad it's there. Switzpaw (talk) 00:47, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

Jimbo, let me reassure you, I cannot make Wikimania 2009 (a little thing called work, mortgage, etc.), so you can save my plane and hotel fare for someone else -- Avi (talk) 00:55, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

Barnstar

For (Just being the most awesome person and for founding wikipedia.), I hereby award Jimbo Wales with the “Cool Award.” Staffwaterboy ^{Critique Me Guestbook Hate Comments} 00:12, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

Enjoy and have fun at Wikimania i can't make it unfortunately i have no way of getting there. Take care

Staffwaterboy ^{Critique Me Guestbook Hate Comments} 00:12, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

Ravi Belagere

This disgrace of a BLP requires immediate attention. For five months the libellous content has sat there for anyone to read. I'm sure one of your many TPS can oblige. 88.108.143.156 (talk) 02:48, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

Here I am again

Since I can't get an admin to listen to me (I've posted several unblock requests over the past few months and have failed to be unblocked or even listened to,) I thought I'd come to the main man, you. At this point I do not see that there is one chance of me being able to appeal anytime soon and I think that the only reason I was "indef" blocked is because someone using a proxy server posted some uncreative insults on the page of the guy I insulted the night before while I was in school. I plead that you take a look at this and PLEASE get to the bottom of this once and for all. If they weren't planning on unblocking me they should've made it a Perm block instead of an indef block. Thank you. HPJoker

The last message you posted on your talk page says, "I know that I can't lash out at someone else whether they be a douchebag or not". Unfortunately this statement indicates that you don't yet grasp the problem or understand what constitutes appropriate behavior. ChildofMidnight (talk) 22:58, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

So wikipedia is now just filled with easily offended moral nazis? This is why I wanted to hear from the man himself, because everyone that is offended by the slightest thing will come out but everyone else that I consider normal (like not looking for something to be offended by) wouldn't, because to us, it's well. normal. PS: Last time I checked it isn't a crime to say douchebag on wikipedia. HPJoker —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.120.0.210 (talk) 03:07, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

Steven Joseph Christopher

A classic BLP1E article about someone who seems to have mental health issues and craves attention. The references section is largely laughable. 88.108.193.221 (talk) 20:25, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

Dear 88.108,

Because I'm sympathetic to your concerns, I'd like to suggest a couple of points to you:

• Log in to a user account and join the good people who are interested in fixing BLP issues.
• Figure out a better place to post than my userpage. This is a fine place, and I am interested in these issues, but there are better places which are more widely monitored by people who are interested in these sorts of issues.

In regard to the biography you have pointed out here, I agree with you completely. BLP1E. Should be speedied, in my opinion.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 20:53, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

• As Im User:RMHED I'm already evading my block by editing as an IP. So I'll be moving along now, good deletion decision though. 88.108.193.221 (talk) 21:15, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

• I am sure you can be forgiven for that. BLP Noticeboard is a good place to post issues like this. --Apoc2400 (talk) 21:57, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

• But I do not ask for forgiveness, and as regards the BLP Noticeboard, well Robert Robinson expressed it exactly; Ah, would that it were, would that it were. 88.108.236.163 (talk) 22:10, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

Userbox problem

Dear Jimbo, I would like your input at this userbox's deletion nomination. Thank you in advance. —Jchthys 01:45, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

I think it should clearly be deleted. I don't even know why we have to have a vote about such things. It looks like the sort of thing that should be speedied - it isn't even close to borderline.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 17:22, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

Speedied under what criterion, or was that merely a wish? I think determining what is divisive requires more than just one nominator and one deleter. — neuro^(talk) 23:51, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

Just a wish. Not a recommendation. And, spoken in a bit too much haste, for which I apologize. (It still is a clear case for deletion.) --Jimbo Wales (talk) 19:24, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

EB and Wikipedia

When I was in Grade IV (1963), I had the first glimpse Edgar Allan Poe's pages in Encyclopedia Britannica, at my aunt's house, due to our class assignment. In 1973, I had used EB 2 times at the Loyola House of Studies Library. In 2006, it was the first time I opened Wikipedia researching on witches. Today, our Encyclopedia online has devastated EB, but the latter still sways - proudly displayed in almost all top libraries of this weird planet. I am fascinasted with witches[33] Six suspected witches lynched in Pokot. They were burned at stakes by the Inquisition during the Middle Ages.

Last night, I was watching EWTN, and I learned that anything that twinkles or had sparkled do possess the time of death. Many of us administrators, here, and tons of our users/editors had made this project with its sister projects, phenomenal. Soon, all of us will retire or be tired, as new sysops will bloom amid the fall of this project IN TIME. Nothing is permanent said the wise man from the West. Wikipedia and Mr. Jimbo Wales will fade in time, but we admins will leave traces or marks, footprints so to speak, in online history. I had viewed featured articles written by best Wiki-adm and I found that 70% of these powerful button-holders created one of the best biographies compared to EB's which were authored by professionals/eggs-perths. Deep thought reveals to me that the flaw is abuse: any administrator can push button any nemesis, detractor, tons of enemies, and even personal enemies of those friends who voted in his or her or a sysops LGBT's RFA. Blocking is a "quickie." When I earned my Ph.D. in psychiatry, I had written a beautiful thesis on cancer, stroke, nerve disorders vis-a-vis hatred, anger, vendetta and pure failure to accept LGBT as disease. Vandalism and sockpuppets abound here, amid patrol-lers, coz of those who were blocked due to godfather-button-chicanery things.

To illustrate this point: my cousin lived in LA as immigrant for 10 years. She never talked to Mexicans since they would have her deported to Mexico. She explained to me crab mentality - "When my neighbor had outage or fights with his boyfriend, the former brings the anger in the e-forum, blogs, office and in Wikipedia," said Pong. As administrator, you cannot fight alone, arguing against a blank wall when at your back an adm (either lesbian or gay, trans, or bi-sex, but not a witch) had already decided and even planned a blocking. I myself was asked by a friend admin to block his nemesis, but I refused politely. There is no way that as co-founder, of this book, Mr. Jimbo Wales, thou can cure this disease, do it, since you are even plagued by the IP address posting issues spammed by EB. EB posters abound in Wikipedia to destroy Wikipedia since November 2008 amid blocks of Wikipedia in some countries like China. I am dropping to you my 2.1 cents. Best of Luck.--58.69.139.52 (talk) 07:19, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

JimmyWales.Org and JimmyWales.Net

I edit conflicted with User:Coren who was removing a note which let you know that silliness is occurring at the domains above as trolling - I thought you might like to know, so have popped this bit back - the full post is in the history, but basically someone is squatting on your domain. (ew....) Privatemusings (talk) 02:25, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

It's not his domains if he doesn't own them, and the whois shows someone in Austrailia owning them both. Nothing to see here, move along. - ✰ALLST☆R✰ ^echo 02:34, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Jimmy Wales owns JimmyWales.Com but not those twoCoren ^(talk) 03:06, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Looks like its jimmywales.info too. This is starting to spread around the net. Acerpatch (talk) 01:09, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

chicken!

DougsTech (talk) has given you a fresh piece of fried chicken! Chickens promote WikiLove and hopefully this one has made your day a little better. Spread the WikiLove by giving someone else a piping hot chicken, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past or a good friend. Bon appetit!

Spread the tastiness of chickens by adding {{subst:GiveChicken}} to their talk page with a friendly message.

--DougsTech (talk) 17:46, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Allegations of false information being given to smh by wikipedia

Hello Mr Wales. I am a reporter following up on reported allegations of character assasination at wikipedia. Do you have a wikipedian named Yale Simkin? I would very much like to speak to him as well. In regards to false information he passed on to smh back in 2006. Could you please contact me as soon as possible. This is a very serious matter. Deliberately misleading a major newspaper is a criminal offense. Ledzeppelinwaagh (talk) 05:15, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

Criminal offense, really? Is this a federal or state law? Can you give me a statute? KnightLago (talk) 15:46, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

According to a federal ruling in a Florida case, it is not a crime for newspapers to print false information. 63.3.15.129 (talk) 18:09, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

Not too sure what "smh" is, but the Sydney Morning Herald (www.smh.com.au) seem likely. That's not in Florida. AKAF (talk) 18:57, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

Sounds like complete bollocks nonsense to me... – ukexpat (talk) 20:47, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

Need your view here

Please review actions of Admin User:Avi on Carlos Latuff, Talk:Carlos Latuff, antisemitism, and User_talk:65.246.126.130#March_2009 and render an opinion. -74.242.252.249 (talk) 05:21, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

Jimbo does not typically involve himself in things like this. May I suggest dispute resolution? J.delanoy^gabs_adds 14:43, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Flagged_protection_and_patrolled_revisions

Another roll of the dice - Flagged protection to open up pages currently forced to reside under our existing draconian protection schemes with a non-intrusive passive flag for BLPs to make it easier to monitor them. A poll has also opened up on a subpage, but no need to link there directly. Fritzpoll (talk) 18:27, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

Is this appropriate for a user page?

This text: It's clean-up duty, mopping up after the dishonest, incompetent, and fanatical. Can't imagine why you'd have a problem with that.

The above obviously includes various trolls, spammers, quacks, greedheads, and crackpots -- and their enablers -- who hang out at ED and WR. I also seem to have attracted the unwanted attention of a crackpot spamming "psychologist", an indefinitely banned (for good reason) spammer, and an indefinitely banned anger-management poster child socking from the Czech Republic. If you're one of the those various trolls, spammers, quacks, greedheads, crackpots, and/or their enablers, welcome! Now get lost.

Link is here: [34]

This is a bit uncivil, rude, and promotes a negative view of the project. This is from user Calton's front page. 67.232.62.114 (talk) 01:23, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

Trolls and crackpots on Encyclopedia Dramatica? Say it ain't so! 92.8.228.252 (talk) 01:47, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

Those who shine the light of truth on the Wikipedia system are no more "trolls and crackpots" than those who work within it. Rod Dreher (talk) 04:02, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

St. Patrick's Day

Enjoy yours. ChildofMidnight (talk) 02:07, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

Request clarification

Hi there. Might I request you look into this edit, where MBisanz (talk · contribs) cited you as a reason to reject Wikipedia:Bureaucrat removal. Do you feel that your words should be implied to mean that you reject the idea of removal of unused rights, like they currently do at Commons or other Wikipedias? Thank you for your time. NuclearWarfare _(Talk) 02:21, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

I may be putting words in Jimbo's mouth, but [35] seems very clear on his feeling on what you describe. MBisanz ^talk 04:22, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

Sounds about right. I consider such actions to be in very poor taste and generally pointless. I might agree with (temporarily) removing rights from admin accounts when the person appears to be no longer around at all, but to be regranted without much quibble if the user shows up again - for security reasons. My general observation about rights removals in other wikipedias is that they have too often been used as a part of silly power games. No one has ever put forward what I think amounts to a persuasive reason for rights removals, and a lot of reasons are clearly just an effort to remove an "old guard" for power reasons.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 05:57, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

Rather unsuccessful power reasons, I would imagine, if they are trying to remove the rights from someone that isn't around. The main reason I've seen given is that as policies and standard practices change someone might not be sufficiently familiar with them after a long absence to do the job - the answer is, of course, not to promote people that aren't sensible enough to catch up before starting to use the tools again. --Tango (talk) 12:21, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

Indeed, and another part of the answer is: don't solve a problem before you actually have it.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 15:53, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

Well, prevention is generally better than cure, you just have to make sure the prevention doesn't do more harm than it avoids. --Tango (talk) 17:12, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

Just a quick note regarding account security. Having a password being transferred constantly over unencrypted connections, esp. in public places like cybercafes or libraries, is much more of a security risk than having an account (with a strong password) sitting dormant. --MZMcBride (talk) 17:54, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

Although, strictly speaking, the difficulty with inactive accounts is that it is much less likely for the legitimate owner to notice if it has been compromised; an idle account could be used indefinitely to grab deleted revisions, for instance, and nobody could know. But I also agree that forcibly removing the bits is on the rude side; the solution is probably to encourage admins to release their bit during breaks (and get it back on return). — Coren ^(talk) 14:43, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

I don't see how an active admin would know their account had been compromised if it was just being used to grab deleted revisions. Such actions aren't logged anywhere that I know of and there's no "you last logged on at X time" message (like there is for my online banking, for just this reason). I think the only argument for desysopping inactive accounts is that any admin account is a security risk and there is no gain from inactive ones to justify that risk. I'm not sure the risk justifies the bureaucracy that such desysoppings (either forced or voluntary) would require, though. --Tango (talk) 17:14, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

Japanese Wiki administrators try to hide what JWs are registered as a Christianity group in Japan

I contribute Jehovah's Witnesses article that Jehovah's Witnesses are registered as a Christianity group, but Japanese administrators try to hide it because of their belief that JWs don't believe trinity. I think this is extremely POV because JW are formally registered as Christianity in Japan. Then what do you think of this? 118.111.5.64 (talk) 04:40, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

I don't think Jimmy speaks Japanese, so he's not likely to get involved (not speaking the language makes it difficult to be in full possession of the facts). Doesn't the Japanese Wikipedia have procedures for dealing with content disputes? --Tango (talk) 14:23, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

Japanese Wikipedia have no procedure for it. Thank you.118.111.5.64 (talk) 22:54, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

Hello

I am doing a school project about you and I need a few questions.

1. What are some things that you did that involves leadership?

2. Have you had any struggles with Wikipedia?

Please answer on my talk page.

Thank you. AgentSpy101 (talk) 16:21, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

It'll be better to email me.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 17:59, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

I dont have an email. AgentSpy101 (talk) 21:17, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

Get yourself a free email account via Hotmail, Gmail or some other service (just type "free email account" into Google or Yahoo! or some other search engine), then follow the instructions on WP:EMAIL to learn how to email Jimbo. --64.85.220.189 (talk) 16:35, 18 March 2009 (UTC)