Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2010-08-09/News and notes

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FBI article

When did the FBI start making disclaimers inspired by Major League Baseball? --Moni3 (talk) 18:06, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

I agree with Godwin's letter to the FBI, which you call "politely feisty", but he used a couple of snarky words that were unnecessary ("entertainingly", "estimable", "ironic", etc.). It would be stronger by just making the argument without trying to be funny or coy. -- Ssilvers (talk) 19:00, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

This signpost hails from the future.. 66.236.8.30 (talk) 00:01, 4 August 2010 (UTC) Lee

That note about the bot is very strange. [1] shows TXiKiBoT to be ahead of SieBot by almost 800,000 edits. Also, the Wiktionary interwiki bot Interwicket has about 2 million edits more than Thijs!bot, contradictory to what is said in this article. --Yair rand (talk) 03:43, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

The note clearly stated that this is "According to Wikimedia's Bot activity statistics ...", which currently read as follows in the overall ("Σ") column:

• SieBot 9.0 M
• TXiKiBoT 7.2 M
• Thijs!bot 5.3 M
• ...

I have clarified in the article that the Wikimedia statistics refer to Wikipedias. The difference between the official Wikimedia statistics and the VVV SULutil that you are citing could also be partly due to the fact that the former counts "Only bot edits for articles" (i.e. apparently not other namespaces). But bots that feel they have been unfairly treated in Wikimedia's ranking should complain to Erik Zachte, not to the Signpost ;)

Regards, HaeB (talk) 04:23, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

After wikipedia, the FBI will still hvae to talk to all these people: [2]. 128.59.179.241 (talk) 07:01, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

• The Streisand effect may be happening with the FBI thing. I started to create a FPC but got worried that I might be arrested (or Jimboed)...  ℳono 

• Larry Sanger talking about hubris is a pretty good laugh. I wonder, is he the pot or the kettle? Resolute 13:44, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

• My first reaction to reading the news about Cary Bass is "Nooooo!" ... But on reflection I have to take a deep breath and wish Cary all the best, always. Jusdafax 06:55, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

• Indeed, all the best to Cary and many thanks for being a great volunteer coordinator. -- œ^™ 13:09, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

Left: Kayau Voting IS evil 14:58, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

"Their attitude does seem rather illogical, Captain."

Isn't better that the true FBI image should be well known so that a false imitation would be more easily distinguished ?

"As a work of the U.S. federal government, the image is in the public domain."

As this image on WP was (as I understand from the license data) "extracted" from an FBI document, isn't is just as easy for anyone intending fraud or crime to extract such an image in exactly the same way ? Hasn't this publicity given them a whole lot of ideas for new scams ?

By now, after the publicity & fuss, doesn't the image exist in a million more computers than it ever did before ?

The FBI have actually shot themselves in the foot !

Darkman101 (talk) 11:50, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

clarifcation - plus quesiton about correction / rectraction :-)

Hello all, JWS pointed out to me here the recent post concerning research on wmf - and referring to the previously controversial wikiversity project 'In March, a page on the English Wikiversity about researching Wikipedia by "Ethical Breaching experiments", which contained some suggestions to vandalize it on purpose, generated controversy (see Signpost coverage.)' - I wanted to ask if the author had had the chance to review the content of the project page, or on what basis otherwise it was reported that it 'contained some suggestions to vandalize it on purpose' - here's the page in question for review, and perhaps others might agree with me that the description isn't really apt or appropriate - it's more in line with repeating some misunderstandings and misreadings which spread somewhat like wildfire after the page was deleted, and hence unavailable for review.

As somewhat of a permanent record, does the signpost have any policy on correction or retraction for the sake of accuracy? And if so, could I please ask that someone take a look at applying it here, and perhaps amending the article. I'd happily do so (properly attributed to an involved party, of course!), but don't think that's wise before dropping this note in first :-) cheers, Privatemusings (talk) 01:26, 20 August 2010 (UTC)

The Wikiversity page contained the following passage:

Suggestions from Gomi (link)

1) Add citations to plausible-sounding but fictitious references to BLPs and/or health/medical articles. Inserting no actual defamation or misinformation, but supporting statements with fake references will show how open to abuse the Wiki model is;

2) Create articles on non-existent people and companies. This will be difficult, but if carefully checked to be non-existent, the harm done here is minimal;

3) Create fake articles on (non-existent) latin-named plants and animals, similar to #2, above;

The guideline Wikipedia:Do not create hoaxes unambiguously states "Hoaxes in Wikipedia are considered vandalism" (and the statement appears to have been there since 2006). It also addresses and dismisses the argument that hoaxes are needed to prove that Wikipedia is freely editable.

Apparently you overlooked that I had alredy answered JWSchmidt's concerns about the same statement here. There was some remaining disagreement because JWSchmidt appears to argue that fake articles on non-existent things (Gomi's words) must not be considered hoaxes, but I fail to see how this argument could be taken seriously.

Thus, the wording in the Signpost article is factually correct, based on the current policies/guidelines/conventions of Wikipedia. If you don't agree with these, you are certainly free to advocate that they should be changed (e.g. that certain kinds of edits which are currently considered vandalism should be allowed). However, the way to do that is not to press the Signpost to adhere to your personal views and definitions instead of referring to the commonly held ones.

The Signpost certainly strives for accuracy and although normally the content of articles should not be changed significantly after publication, in the case of serious mistakes we do sometimes make corrections or post a notice afterwards. This, however, is not such a case.

Considering that you are aware that sometimes "misunderstandings and misreadings" can sometimes "spread somewhat like wildfire", I am rather surprised to see you spreading the baseless insinuation that I "didn't have the chance to review the original material, so sort of went by a bit of word of mouth / chinese whispers".

Regards, HaeB (talk) 04:08, 20 August 2010 (UTC)

thanks for your prompt and detailed response / reiteration, HaeB - and my apologies if you felt slighted by my uninformed guess that you hadn't had the chance to read the material in question - to my mind that seemed the most simple explanation, and I assumed it could've been the case (and yeah, made a boob of myself).

Please consider 'real world' definitions as well as wiki specific ones (ie. 'vandalism' in this case) when writing, and please be aware of the balance between editorialising and reporting which I feel you may have slipped across here.

fwiw, I asked an independent chap(ess) I was working briefly with today to take a quick look at the page, and your comment, and she was either being nice to me (I did make her tea) or was being honest in saying that she felt it didn't fairly report the content of the page. I'd hope you'd agree with me that the signpost should seek to represent and report truth, not perspective. This is obviously a teeny tiny footnote in the whole grand scheme of things though, I just felt it was worth recording my mild concerns. Good luck with the fantastic work of the Signpost for the future :-) cheers, Privatemusings (talk) 06:44, 20 August 2010 (UTC)