Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/Single/2010-03-22

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The following is an automatically-generated compilation of all talk pages for the Signpost issue dated 2010-03-22. For general Signpost discussion, see Wikipedia talk:Signpost.

In the news: Campaign for video, costs of crowdsourcing, iPhone app, brief headlines (9,096 bytes · 💬)

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Video campaign

• I'm unenthusiastic about the video campaign. I expect we'll mostly get videos of very little use added to articles with the way the campaign is going. I also think that there is really a limit to the number of videos that can sensibly go in one article (but there certainly is no limit to the number of videos that can go on Wikimedia Commons). —innotata 20:55, 24 March 2010 (UTC)

This article on the Chronicle of Higher Education's blog was unfortunately published too late to be included in the Signpost story, but it contains some interesting comments by the general director of the Open Video Alliance (about ongoing talks with universities). Regards, HaeB (talk) 16:13, 25 March 2010 (UTC)

Seems even more dubious. Watermarked low-resolution videos of lectures? I hope not. —innotata 15:11, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

Citizendium and Shirky

This week I somehow ended up as the main Signpost reporter for the "News and notes"and "In the news" sections, including the coverage of O'Neil's article. In that capacity, I'll refrain from adding my own observations to that summary, or turning it into a full-fledged review (last year Ragesoss wrote one of O'Neil's book, but as he is acknowledged in this paper for comments, I assume he won't do so now).

But having given a talk on Citizendium at last year's Wikimania which touched many of the same topics (including an interpretation of CZ's disappointing statistics as vindication of Shirky's 2006 criticism), I can't resist adding some remarks here on the talk page:

• Perhaps surprisingly, several independent commentators (Connolley among them) have voiced concern that Citizendium might actually be more hostile to scientific experts in some cases, in favor of what critics would call pseudoscience or fringe science. The folks at Rationalwiki offer a scathing criticism of Citizendium as a "crank magnet". Topics where Citizendium's coverage has been subjected to such criticism include homeopathy, memory of water, Intelligent Design, Young Earth Creationism, global warming and chiropractic. Conversely, Citizendium has been praised by opponents of mainstream science views, such as homeopathy lobbyist Dana Ullman (who got banned for a year on Wikipedia, but managed to get his Citizendium article on homeopathy approved status), or the climate change sceptics at the right-wing Heartland Institute, which recommend the Citizendium article on Global Warming on their home page [1]. I believe that this seemingly counter-intuitive development merits further research. To me, one reason appears to be that some of Sanger's assumptions about experts (to exaggerate: debates among academics are always civil, only dumb laypersons ever disagree with an expert, anybody with a PhD has to be regarded an authority in his area) are too simplistic. The problem is exacerbated by the lack of participation and by civility policies encouraging "ownership" issues of the kind that O'Neil mentioned (in the case of Wikipedia) on p.4.

• Besides the stagnating or shrinking participation numbers, another telling metric which is not obvious from the diagrams at citizendium:CZ:Statistics is the shrinking median article size (that diagram ends July 2009, but the downward trend has since continued).

• "Inconsistency" (of article quality) can - and should - also be regarded as a cost of Citizendium's approach (after all, it is still wiki-based and open to everyone). The project readily admits that most of its articles are in an unfinished ("live") state. But one of its central tenets is that the small number of its "approved articles" do provide the kind of certainty that the reader is missing at Wikipedia:

"Our 121 expert-approved articles are reliable and of world-class quality, rivaling the best printed encyclopedias."

This is a dubious claim, as is evident from the list I compiled here: User:HaeB/Citizendium approved errors (many of them basic proofreading oversights which would certainly not be expected at Britannica, WP:EBE notwithstanding).

Independently, the OnWikipedia blog recently examined one Approved CZ article and found numerous grammatical errors and factual inaccuracies, too. (Their analysis of the reasons for the "failure of Citizendium" is worth reading, it agrees with some of O'Neil's conclusions and adds others.)

It seems quite clear that an important reason for such quality problems is the complicated bureaucratic process required to make changes to an already approved article, and the inability of outsiders to correct errors in any article (or even just notify CZ of them). And despite of its failure to catch the errors in these examples, the approval process itself seems cumbersome and time-consuming; the number of approved articles has stagnated at 121 since mid-December.

• O'Neil's article also does not describe the costs of CZ's real name policy, which in my observation are considerable. Not only the cost of enforcing it (after self-registration brought in fake identities and vandalism, CZ tightened the process and made it quite cumbersome), but especially the privacy concerns which are associated with having one's actions (even minuscule ones like a typo correction) publicly recorded, with precise time stamps, forever . For example, Wikiweise (a fork of the German Wikipedia bearing many similarities to CZ), disabled contribution lists for users, to balance their own real name disclosure requirement [2].

• The link in footnote 9 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Climate_change_dispute_-_Final_decision) is not working, Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Climate_change_dispute#Final_decision seems to be the intended location.

• The Seigenthaler case is perhaps not the best example for the "Irresponsibility" point, as the perpetrator in that case was actually identified and temporarily lost his job because of his actions on Wikipedia.

• But overall, O'Neil's article is certainly very well informed and factually accurate (even in comparison with other academic writing about Wikipedia). One thing I really liked was the insightful comparisons of mass online collaboration as exemplified by Wikipedia (to avoid the controversial "crowdsourcing" term) to hacker culture, including a careful look at the differences and the problems they create on Wikipedia. I don't know if these ideas have been formulated elsewhere, but the paper certainly deserves to be cited for them alone.

Regards, HaeB (talk) 21:47, 24 March 2010 (UTC)

I found both the article proper, and your commentary here, to be well-written and informative. The article proper appears well balanced and fair, and even your commentary makes it clear what your opinions are and why you hold them. I say good job! —DragonHawk (talk|hist) 00:55, 25 March 2010 (UTC)

Agreed. Thanks HaeB. Rd232 ^talk 12:19, 25 March 2010 (UTC)

The more I read of Citizendium, the more it seems like Nupedia. It also seems to be running into the same difficulties that project did so I am surprised to see no mention of Nupedia in this article. Rmhermen (talk) 19:19, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

How to earn $30,000 within one week by making Wikipedia content just a little more accessible

An interesting fact about the reviewed iPhone app: According to the company, "Within a short week, Articles [for iPhone] sold over 10,000 copies."

Regards, HaeB (talk) 05:43, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

News and notes: Explicit image featured on Wikipedia's main page (8,001 bytes · 💬)

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The link to the "teaser" either is broken or has been removed. The link to the discussion includes a number of pictures of, well, vulvas, so I assume one of them was the contentious image, but my German is almost non-existent. Matt Deres (talk) 20:40, 24 March 2010 (UTC)

"teaser", "teaser" via gtranslate. –Whitehorse1 21:23, 24 March 2010 (UTC)

Thank you. Very... attention-getting. Matt Deres (talk) 22:02, 24 March 2010 (UTC)

The link [3] is still working for me. Because it happens to be on the HTTPS server, some browsers might ask you if you want to display insecure content, if one says no, images are not displayed. Or the problem might be related to today's DNS outage.

The contentious image is File:Vagina,Anus,Pereneum-Detail.jpg. (Actually, I'm discovering the real scandal only now: There is a typo in the file name - it's spelled perineum!)

Regards, HaeB (talk) 22:05, 24 March 2010 (UTC)

I must say, while the image itself doesn't bother me at all, I think calling it a "teaser image" is somewhat unfortunate. :-) --Danger (talk) 03:57, 25 March 2010 (UTC)

Teaser? Teaser? This is a SCANDAL! Kayau Voting IS evil 14:03, 25 March 2010 (UTC)

Glad to see the German community stood up to Jimbo on this. While we respect him, his views on such an issue should not govern.--Wehwalt (talk) 14:20, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

Though, it has to be said, Jimbo acted with a very level head - if he had wanted to govern the issue, he could have just removed the 'teaser' himself. Instead, he went through the correct process, putting his personal opinion forward without threat, pomp or circumstance, for people to take into consideration on its own merits. Of course, being who he is, his opinion will have more sway than others', but it is not a diktat. iPatrickQuinn ^(Talk) 11:12, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

As a photographer, I'd say that the picture is very well done. If it weren't for it's contentiousness, I'd consider nominating it as a 'best of' image. Darkonc (talk) 14:25, 27 March 2010 (UTC)

Ow, you know, I find that I seem to be standing on Jimbo's side whenever I read the signpost. I mean, last time with wikinews I agreed with him, and this time too. You know, the pic really shouldn't be displayed, even on de pedia, since it can stir up a bit too much of controversy. Kayau Voting IS evil 03:07, 28 March 2010 (UTC)

Censor ship is only bad if you disagree with the content being censored it would seem. "Jimmy Wales praised Google's recent decision to stop censoring search results in China" vs "Jimbo Wales commented "I'm astonished [the image] is there, and not in a good way" and shortly afterwards asked German Wikipedians to remove it:". Just an observation Jeepday (talk) 14:36, 28 March 2010 (UTC)

Um... this is absolutely nothing like Google's censorship of search results in China. That was about whether people should be prevented from accessing information; this is an editorial decision whether or not to use a picture of a sexual organ on the main page of a widely used encyclopaedia. They have nothing in common, and I for one agree with Jimbo's position on both counts. Robofish (talk) 23:45, 28 March 2010 (UTC)

Maybe. The PRC censorship, at least according to the article here, blocks & bans for 'sexually suggestive' material plus censors content they hold is 'obscenity' or 'pornography' – with removal last summer of all images on Wikimedia pages by certain providers, not just material critical of the government. –Whitehorse1 16:53, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

A comment from Germany: The sparse media coverage should give a good impression on how the things are seen here. In the US and the UK the connection between nudity and sex is close. In Germany this connection is not always given. The Freikörperkultur movement is well established and by seeing a nude person at a beach most people will not think that this person will only be there to be involved in some morally questionable action. I remember seeing topless girls in soap commercials in the 1980s repeating every now and than for several years, and there was no media reaction at all. The famous Nipple-gate was mostly viewed as a strange expression of double moral standard of a nation with the largest pornography industry in the world. I talked to a few people about it and most of them did not care, but were amused that Jimbo Wales tried to step in. I liked best the comment of a women writing that 50% have what the article is written others have already seen something similar and the rest is discussing it at that talk page.--Stone (talk) 18:54, 28 March 2010 (UTC)

I have to say that the decision to put that image on the main page of an encyclopaedia was extremely bad taste. Yes we have a responsibility to provide neutral, uncensored information and I agree that. However, we should not go out of our way to display graphic images like that in places where people would not expect it nor want it. I’m sure there are many people thinking to themselves "Think of the children or the people at work" and I have to agree with that, how many kids would have opened Wikipedia to do their work just to be repulsed by that? If this kind of stupidity becomes commonplace, I foresee the WMF projects being blacklisted by the very educational institutions that use it on a day to day basis. Yes, we are an encyclopaedia, but we are also a top 10 website. If Goatse.cx became featured would you put an image of it on the main page in the name of "anti-censorship"? I doubt it, hence, on the same principal moral restraint must be exercised when choosing main page images. Good on Jimbo for pointing out the obvious problems with that image and to all those complaining about Jimbo voicing his opinion, he is well entitled to it, If you dont want him getting involved in anything, start acting mature and he wont have to.   «l| Promethean ™|l»  (talk) 02:26, 30 March 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia-Books: Wikipedia-Books: Proposed deletion process extended, cleanup efforts (2,772 bytes · 💬)

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I don't think that the Wikipedia books must be deleted, because they are useful to some users. Thank you, --Patriot8790 (talk) 06:50, 28 March 2010 (UTC)

Being an employee of PediaPress, I'm sure Headbomb likes Wikipedia-Books too. But like other pages, some of them aren't appropriate for Wikipedia and should be deleted. Some of them aren't even proper Wikipedia-Books, so there should be some deletion process for books. Previously they would go Miscellany for deletion; now there's PROD-like process that can take care of the non-controversial stuff. Reach Out to the Truth 01:29, 30 March 2010 (UTC)

I totally agree with Patriot8790 (talk): users that have already made a habit of deleting tons of books are not serving the Wikipedia users or the community at large, because they have mostly a destructive, rather than any constructive role. There should be a strict upper limit, like 6 to 8, of the number of books proposed for deletion by any user so that no Wikipedia user "makes a career" out of erasing book creators' efforts that are useful to the community at large; this is totally counter-productive to the entire Wikipedia books projects. Bci2 10:13, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

I think you misunderstand what this is about. BPROD is for the non-controversial deletion of books. 99%+ of the time, this means books which were created as tests (such as books containing no articles, books which makes no sense, etc...). These books are in theory deletable under WP:CSD#G2, but BPRODs give a one week buffer period so people have the possibility to object, and it also allows users to request undeletion if they weren't around when the book was proposed for deletion.

Likewise restricting users to a certain limit of BPROD is process creep. There's no actual problem with letting people tag 100+ books at a time. I've proposed over 600 books for deletion in the last two weeks (and I'll proposed hundreds more in the next one), and everything went just fine. This is simple cleanup, not "erasing the efforts of book-creators". If there's one guy on Wikipedia who's got the interests of book creators at heart, I certainly hope it's me. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 22:02, 8 April 2010 (UTC)