Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/Single/2013-04-29

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The following is an automatically-generated compilation of all talk pages for the Signpost issue dated 2013-04-29. For general Signpost discussion, see Wikipedia talk:Signpost.

Arbitration report: Sexology closed; two open cases (2,252 bytes · 💬)

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It was User:MastCell that brought forwards the TM discussion. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 10:48, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

Fixed, thank you. Neotarf (talk) 13:05, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

Well, yes. And I didn't bring the request to "clarify the relationship between privacy and conflict of interest in a situation where employees of a transcendental meditation institute may be editing an article related to that institute." (I think we should clarify that issue, but I'm not under any illusions that ArbCom is going to do so, least of all in a clarification request). I simply requested a tally of how the Arbs voted on Will Beback's ban appeal. That's all. (I wouldn't have even bothered to do that much, except that an Arb actually encouraged me to.) I didn't ask for Will to be un-banned. I didn't ask for any action to be taken against accounts with a COI. I didn't ask for anything except a simple show of hands. Obviously, it was a mistake - either I didn't clearly express what I was asking for, or people simply filled in the blanks with a lot of mistaken assumptions (not just the Signpost, but also many of the Arbs themselves). Whatever. MastCell ^Talk 15:44, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

Okay, I see what happened. There are actually two requests with the same name, the first one filed on April 5 by IRWolfie-, closed April 25, and now archived here, and the second brought on April 29 by MastCell, which is the current request. The report has been updated to reflect both requests. —Neotarf (talk) 03:27, 3 May 2013 (UTC)

Featured content: Wiki loves video games (657 bytes · 💬)

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Kind of a misleading title if there was only one thing related to Video Games was promoted to Featured List. GamerPro64 14:49, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

Quirky and engaging titles are common for Featured content reports. --Pine^✉ 18:11, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

In the media: Wikipedia's sexism; Yuri Gadyukin hoax (26,735 bytes · 💬)

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Categorisation of women novelists

• Interesting article on the NY Times stories (which seems to have lifted the lid on something of a train wreck of well-intentioned-but-badly handled editing and some outright awfulness, all of which is ultimately attributable to the relatively small number of people who work on articles on literary topics). Calling the situation a "crisis" seems incredibly strong though, as it wasn't. Nick-D (talk) 07:18, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

• What unfeeling monster added a {{refimprove}} tag to the Amanda Filipacchi article? Uh, it was me—with this edit on April 25. But a quick look at the edit history shows that the only sources at that time were a dead link, a WordPress blog, and a bare url pointing to Google Books. And contrary to the unchecked assertions above, this had been the case since that bare url was added on October 20, 2010. No deletions, no removals, and no "revenge editing", just a completely justified tag on an article that later got a lot of attention. - Dravecky (talk) 07:22, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

• The real story that nobody covered is that category diffusion efforts have always been controversial and disputed. Diffusion does not make a category easy to navigate for information, it actually makes it more difficult to find what you are looking for as the reader has to navigate multiple levels, never knowing where they are or if they will ever reach their target. On the other hand, keeping articles in large, sorted categories allows the reader to find the information quite quickly. I've argued for years that category diffusion has made navigation impossible and these efforts at "refining" category membership have made them unusable. Filipacchi's criticism couldn't have come at a better time. We need to redesign the categories for our readers, not for our editors. Viriditas (talk) 09:15, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

• I'm happy to see some of Wikipedia's welcome-to-the-19th-century atmospheres exposed to well-earned critical commentary. As for the guys who have been treating categories as too overly technical for our poor brains to understand, Viriditas' observations above might clarify their own thinking. – Athaenara ✉ 10:44, 2 May 2013 (UTC)
  • Disputes on categorization, however ≠ desire to marginalize women. The op-eds are a series of sensationalist pieces rather than any attempts at research or journalism, and that reflects poorly on everyone involved. There is also the unfortunate tendency that Wikipedia editors' discussions and processes get highly disrupted by sudden media attention. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs^(talk) 13:56, 2 May 2013 (UTC)
    • Please don't shoot the messenger. Wikipedia has a long history of sexism with regard to female BLPs. I can't even create a redirect for author Melanie Joy because she was deemed to be unimportant by teenage boys with acne. Women's rights activists like Sandra Fluke were notoriously denied their own article and defined by their male critics because a few boys on Wikipedia had never seen a real woman before. The list is endless. I've worked on female BLPs for years while my co-editors are busy working on the latest video game. That's our demographic and we've come to live with it, but ignoring the problem isn't a solution. Historically, media attention forces Wikipedia to do the right thing even when its community of little men refuse. Viriditas (talk) 21:03, 2 May 2013 (UTC)
      • I have not heard of Melanie Joy before, but this is not how Wikipedia judges who gets an article. In Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Melanie Joy there was talk of the lack of references which makes this author not "notable" – are you saying that even though you can provide proper refs you are not allowed to create this article? Ottawahitech (talk) 14:14, 4 May 2013 (UTC)
        • Yes, that is exactly what I am saying. The article is protected from creation. My preference, however, is to redirect the protected BLP title to her book, which can best handle the content at this time. Viriditas (talk) 06:50, 5 May 2013 (UTC)
          • • My people have a saying: "Ask and ye shall receive." - Dravecky (talk) 16:17, 6 May 2013 (UTC)
          • I still have not figured out how one can find out who protected a page, but I notice that the one of the admins who deleted Melanie Joy has joined wiki less than four years ago and became an admin one year later, and the other admin is now involved in a blocking controversy regarding user:Blackcountrygirl xOttawahitech (talk) 14:12, 6 May 2013 (UTC)
            • User:Ottawahitech: See [1] for protection and deletion logs. Cheers. Jujutacular (talk) 04:04, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

• I honestly think that most readers of Wikipedia have never noticed that a category system exists, let alone used it. Categories seem to inhabit a "grey area" which is mostly accessed by editors rather than readers. If the category system was more prominently in the public eye, and thus was used by our readership more often, I think it would have been more carefully scrutinized and completely re-designed a long time ago. It is the design of the system we are using that tends to support or even suggest some of these rather unfortunate decisions. Invertzoo (talk) 14:21, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

• categories do need a rethink. we should incorporate practices of the librarians, such as Library of Congress [2]; instead we reinvent the wheel, and thrash under the klieg lights. outsiders are left to wonder what could motivate someone to make lots of category changes? communication of internal processes is abysmal. are we now in a permanent scandal mode of communicating from readers? (instead of article feedback?) Slowking4^{Farmbrough's revenge}⇔ †@1₭ 15:03, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

• There is a Black History Month but there is no White History Month. Clearly this implies that history defaults to white people and thus BHM is a racist concept. Targaryen^{speak or forever remain silent} 15:16, 2 May 2013 (UTC)
  • There is Irish-American Heritage Month, Jewish American Heritage Month, National Hispanic Heritage Month, etc. Andreas JN466 16:05, 3 May 2013 (UTC)
    • black history month is problematic, for similar reasons that of women novelists: the problem with black history month. Slowking4^{Farmbrough's revenge}⇔ †@1₭ 01:52, 4 May 2013 (UTC)

• I've been writing on "categorygate" here and here. I've been very disappointed in the level of the journalism, which has mostly replicated the original piece and done little investigative work to check it out or figure out how Wikipedia works. It would be nice if we could use this incident, however, as a way to recruit more editors. Fix problems you see, is what I always say! Wadewitz (talk) 16:01, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

• • Hi Wadewitz, I was about to mention you then I had an edit clash with you. See below. Yaris678 (talk) 16:07, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

• I notice that Signpost does not mention this excellent blog post by Adrianne Wadewitz. In fact, it pretty much repeats the error highlighted by the Wadewitz. i.e. Like most media coverage, there is not much on what female Wikipedians think of the whole thing, still less on female Wikipedians with an interest in literature. This could arguably be excused by saying that this is an "in the media" article but one way around that would be to report on what Wadewitz said. Yaris678 (talk) 16:07, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

• As with many commenters here, I think we need to have a think about how categories work. We often split categories unnecesarily. For example, it would be better to treat American women authors as the intersection of Americans, women and authors, rather than as a sub-category of all three. Apparently that's how the German Wikipedia does it. Yaris678 (talk) 16:07, 2 May 2013 (UTC)
  • It's not at all apparent that the German Wikipedia makes the intersection of categories available to readers (which would require a software feature not built into MediaWiki software). Here's what the page you linked to says about the German categorization system: "Categories are singular and are not differentiated for gender. Categories are usually introduced only for a minimum of ten entries and are not always subdivided even for larger numbers of items, so that current categories often describe only one property (e.g., nationality). Other categories are subdivided, but differently than in the English Wikipedia. For example, 'chemists' are subdivided by century, not by nationality." I do agree that an easy way for a reader to combine categories would be a far superior alternative to the current system (though it would require adding the categories "Men" and "Women", and would raise issues such as how to handle categories such as "Child actors"). -- John Broughton (♫♫) 17:07, 2 May 2013 (UTC)
  • Along this line, see here: "Could we instead have tags (instead of categories and taxonomy) which are queryable (e.g., 'show me all novelists who are also female')? This is the "Web 2.0" way of things, and can be done, but its not how Wikipedia is presently built." -- John Broughton (♫♫) 17:15, 2 May 2013 (UTC)
    • Agree that tags simply make more sense from a workload and searching standpoint. Hopefully wikidata is a path forward to deprecating cats. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs^(talk) 17:31, 2 May 2013 (UTC)
  • Don’t know if this is the same on the German wiki, but the German people categories on the en-wiki contain VERY few women entries. Check for example Category:German women novelists with only 5 entries compared to 327 in Category:German novelists. Ottawahitech (talk) 13:51, 4 May 2013 (UTC)
• Mediawiki categorization is a pathetic way to organise anything. I've had conversations about this at previous meetups, so I know my feelings aren't unique. Our categories are full of redundancies and overlaps, it's probably even worse on Commons, it's one of the reasons I never do any real category work - the whole system needs to be replaced. I hope that Wikidata will eventually supersede our categories altogether. Amanda Filipacchi - (Gender:F, Nationality:American, Occupation:Novelist), users should just be able to query the individual fields to come up with the "category" of their choice. - hahnchen 18:22, 2 May 2013 (UTC)
• I don't think anyone intended to make the novelists category male-only by creating Category:Women novelists (I don't know why the category was created but maybe they wanted to make the women more visible). But that's what our category system does. I don't think there's anything invalid about doing intersections like this, but it's stupid that it has the effect of segregating "marked" groups from the main category. 169.231.22.205 (talk) 05:01, 3 May 2013 (UTC)

• The initial story is interesting and provoked thoughts about how we categorize. Then the s**t hit the fan. No one would argue with efforts to improve the referencing and NPOV language in Amanda Filipacchi. But the language on the talk pages of that article, Jimbo's talk page, involved editor's talk pages, the talk page about the article about Filipacchi's mother, and father, and the company that her father was involved with went bonkers. Some really insulting, scatalogical, offensive, defensive, and off-topic comments were flung about with wild abandon, not by newbies but by experienced editors. The vitriol directed against the New York Times was astounding. And then Salon quoted some of it, word for word. How mean Salon is to us! Editors here need to learn to act like thoughtful, calm adults, instead of petulant and yes, sexist adolescents.Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 05:16, 3 May 2013 (UTC)

• While we're at it, I've been wondering why all the men's national sports teams are titled "Country national sport team" and all the women's national sports teams are titled "Country women's national sport team". Doesn't that imply that the default sport team is a men's team? And that, by extension, sports are for men and not women? If so, then the problem here isn't our confusion over categorization, it is sexism. Dkreisst (talk) 06:04, 3 May 2013 (UTC)
  • That's a fair point, and probably a holdover from a time when the sports themselves were more segregated by gender. For example, in college sports we have Category:Alabama Crimson Tide men's basketball players and Category:Alabama Crimson Tide women's basketball players because there are gender segregated teams playing the same basic sport but merely Category:Alabama Crimson Tide baseball players and Category:Alabama Crimson Tide softball players since the sports themselves are gender segregated. - Dravecky (talk) 05:43, 4 May 2013 (UTC)
    • I see what you mean. I see now that my writing didn't convey my idea, though. What I meant to say was that the article titles themselves, not just the category titles, are not consistently gendered. Thus we have France national football team and France women's national football team. However, I just checked the US national soccer teams, and they are titled with both genders.Dkreisst (talk) 23:02, 4 May 2013 (UTC)

• Here's how I see this situation, as a woman in Wikipedia. This isn't a case of sexism at all. Rather, it appears to be a giant misunderstanding, both on the part of some of our editors and on the part of Filipacchi and the media. The editors who removed Category:American novelists from various articles and replaced it with Category:American women novelists either didn't read Wikipedia:Categorization/Ethnicity, gender, religion and sexuality#Gender or misinterpreted it. A quote from that section: "[A] female heads of government category is valid, ... though it does not need to be balanced directly against a "Male heads of government" category, as historically the vast majority of political leaders have been male. Both male and female heads of government should continue to be filed in the appropriate gender-neutral role category" [emphasis added]. Wikipedia's guidelines and policies are clearly not based in sexism, as some of the media have claimed. It boils down to a few editors who, likely in all good faith, did something they shouldn't have done without obtaining consensus and possibly a change to guidelines. But hey, that's how Wikipedia works, and we seem to be doing a good job of discussing this situation.

I understand that it's not the easiest for non-editors to figure out how to climb over into the "behind-the-scenes" area on here to discuss things they find inappropriate and to raise concerns. However, Ms. Filipacchi has demonstrated cluefulness in that she figured out how to find out if articles have been removed from categories. I don't see any attempt from her to contact anyone on here, via the article's talk page or any other page (including the talk pages of the two categories in question). I understand that Ms. Filipachhi feels like an outsider, but it really would have been more appropriate (and less dramatic for all of us) is she had attempted to engage with the community first. Likely someone would have hopped on over to WP:GENDERCAT and gone "Oh hey, removing those people from that category was against guidelines!" Maybe consensus would have gone the way of re-adding the category to the pages, or maybe we would have had an RfC that changed our guidelines.

Now to address Ms. Filipacchi's accusation of "revenge editing". Here's the diff between the article before Ms. Filipacchi wrote her op-ed and how it stands as I write this comment. It's gone from 7,007 bytes to 10,903 bytes. It now has good formatting, the prose is more encyclopedic and it has good references and the inappropriate external links are gone. It's a given that her article would receive attention after what's been going on. Prose has been removed and rewritten, but none of it has been to get revenge on Ms. Filipachhi. I see edits that have been to improve the quality and tone of an article that has had a sudden uptick in attention. It would be really nice if we could just all sit down and talk it out without the angry emotions getting in the way.

TL;DR: Nobody gets off scot-free here (but nobody gets huge amounts of the blame either); I have two X chromosomes and a vested interest in gender equality and I don't view this as sexism; and as a very wise and very funny woman once wrote, "I wish I could bake a cake filled with rainbows and smiles and everyone would eat and be happy." Cheers, — Preceding signed comment added by Cymru.lass (talk • contribs) 14:18, 4 May 2013 (UTC)

• I agree with Ms. Filipacchi that women authors (or scientists or politicians) should not be segregated. But her ire should probably be directed, not at Wikipedia, but to those persons responsible for creating "Women's Studies" departments without creating "Mens Studies" departments. HuskyHuskie (talk) 18:49, 4 May 2013 (UTC)
  • I don't think people who have degrees in "Men's Studies" would be very apt to recognize that women novelists are/were being made invisible on Wikipedia. So, no, I don't think her ire should probably be directed towards those people. In fact, it was partly the work of people in women's studies departments that allowed for society to recognize that making women invisible was a problem, so we at Wikipedia should probably be thinking them instead of blaming them for our mistakes. Dkreisst (talk) 07:36, 5 May 2013 (UTC)

Dkreisst, I apologize for forgetting that irony is poorly conveyed in this medium. I didn't actually mean to give the impression that I would want to have "Men's Studies" departments in universities. I do indeed recognize that women were not given their due prior to the 1960s (or 70s or 80s, depending on the region and school). My point would be that, rather than creating women's studies as a separate entity in the university, that this problem would have been better addressed by forcing inclusion within the canon of women's literature and historical and scientific (and other) contributions. Essentially, the creation of Women's Studies sends the message that separate is equal, i.e, it creates a modern-day gender based Plessy v. Ferguson situation. Had women been given the right to sit anywhere on the bus, they would not today find themselves relegated to the back, in silly matters such as these categories. If equality is desired, then segregation is probably not the best idea. HuskyHuskie (talk) 07:31, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

Hi HuskyHuskie, Thank you for the response. I would be better persuaded argument if the segregation that you mention were enforced and if women had not, themselves, worked so hard to create women's studies departments. Since the creation of women's studies does not mean that non-women's studies departments are forced to omit women's literature and history and other contributions from their curriculum, I see little separation and little correlation to Plessy v. Ferguson. Also, it seems that there has been little resistance to, and perhaps quite a bit of work done on, "forcing inclusion" of women's contributions into non-women's studies departments from those that created women's studies departments. If that had worked as well as they hoped it would, perhaps they wouldn't have felt they needed their own department. Clearly, though, that was not the case. Finally, I think I agree with your statement that, had women been "allowed to sit anywhere" in the past, that they would be today also be "allowed to sit anywhere". The question is, since they were not allowed to sit anywhere they wanted to in the past, what is the best way to ensure they will be able to someday in the future? Dkreisst (talk) 01:09, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

Well, your last point is the most important question to answer. I strongly believe that the path taken in the past, in creating segregated disciplines, while appearing expedient, have yielded a poor outcome, a ghettoized area of study. But it is here to stay, because you can hardly change it without being accused of "taking away from women" something peceived as important. So what should we do? Damned if I know. I think we're just cementing more and more divisions among people. Academia, which is where the greatest integration should exist, is becoming the most Balkanized part of American life. HuskyHuskie (talk) 04:54, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

• • HuskyHuskie, men's studies would have been the default curriculum (in other words, you didn't learn anything about women in school) prior to the 1960s and the 1970s. In fact, women who attended college prior to the 1960s did so because they were expected to find husbands in college, and they were discouraged to use their education in a professional capacity or work outside the home after marriage. Those that did before the advent of feminism had very tough lives. Please try to learn a little bit about history before commenting. You may want to start with Makers: Women Who Make America, a three-hour introductory documentary about the struggle for women's rights in the U.S. that is available free to watch online. Viriditas (talk) 08:05, 5 May 2013 (UTC)

I recognize, Viriditas, that you had no way to know that you were not addressing a twelve-year old, so I suppose your patronizing comments should be chalked up to a good faith effort to enlighten a child. Suffice it to say that I walked the halls of academia before Women's Studies existed (at least at my university), so I'm well-versed in the rationale and development of women's studies. And while I respect the motives of those who created such courses and departments, you can see my comments above to User: Dkreisst to see why I feel such well-intended persons were nonetheless misguided. HuskyHuskie (talk) 07:31, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

• The entire category system should be scrapped and replaced by a meta-data search system. I should be able to find "all american women writers born between 1900 and 1950". Praemonitus (talk) 15:21, 5 May 2013 (UTC)
  • And what if you are looking for‎ a candidate in a British Columbia election whose name starts with D, institutions involved in housing in Alberta (Canada), an Australian corporate director ‎ who was born in Lebanon, information about the use of temporary workers (outsourcing, etc), someone who works at MBNA, a list of Canadian women engineers, list of people who died with Alzheimer disease, info on elections in Sarawak, someone who graduated from the University of the Balearic Islands, the list goes on… xOttawahitech (talk) 14:50, 6 May 2013 (UTC)

Commons App

• The mention of the Commons app doesn't make clear the app's name: "Wikimedia Commons". Stevage 12:12, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

News and notes: Chapter furore over FDC knockbacks; First DC GLAM boot-camp (19,841 bytes · 💬)

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• Regarding the reduced amount allocated to Wikimedia Norway I believe that we have shown that we indeed are doing a lot with volunteers, we have run dozens of courses and last year we had Wikipedia Academy that was well attended, with the crown prince of Norway and one government minister as guests. We also have two quite successful language versions of Wikipedia in Norway, Nynorsk that just passed 100 thousand articles and Bokmål/Riksmål that is close to 400 thousand. We do not need any money or paid positions to go forward, but I believe we could do more, with two full-time positions. However the FDC seems to believe that we can manage with just one. I believe that is a waste, one person will not simply be half of two - it is too hard to start this alone. So if this is the final word on this years request, I would just say forget it, let WMF keep the money. Spending them on one person is just a waste. Ulflarsen (talk) 06:26, 2 May 2013 (UTC)
  • A reply is given on meta:Talk:FDC portal/FDC recommendations/2012-2013 round2#Comments regarding WM NO.Anders Wennersten (talk) 17:23, 2 May 2013 (UTC)
• Minor correction: Christophe Henner doesn't seem to be Wikimedia France's head, but its vice-chair. effeietsanders 09:26, 2 May 2013 (UTC)
  • Fixed; thanks for pointing this out. I've used "vice-president" because it's closer to the original French. Graham87 09:39, 2 May 2013 (UTC)
    • Sorry, Christophe—that was my laziness in not looking it up at the end of a very long session preparing this. Tony (talk) 11:17, 2 May 2013 (UTC)
• Would be great if there was programmers / tech support that long term Wikipedians could apply for. While outreach efforts are important we need to support those who are currently editing more. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 10:21, 2 May 2013 (UTC)
  • For example if someone could make the cite template work consistently (right now it deletes the sentence that occurs right after).Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 14:31, 2 May 2013 (UTC)
    • hey, us developers are around. We can't help if people don't ask. Generally local templates are handled fine by the local community (especially when the community is enwikipedia), and the local template wizards almost certianly know more about the cite template than your average dev does. However if issues do occur that cannot be solved locally people should bug the developers. Bawolff (talk) 18:35, 2 May 2013 (UTC)
    • James, is that {{Citation}}? I don't see any description of this problem on the talk page; is it written up somewhere? Klortho (talk) 17:56, 5 May 2013 (UTC)
• Two comments:
  1. The third paragraph from the end under "Controversy" needs revision, there doesn't seem to be a connection between the sentence about eligibility and the sentence about mismanagement of funds; it seems like the first sentence of the next paragraph should somehow go inbetween them. But I'm not sure how to fix it myself.
  2. WikiLove was re-enabled on Monday, at around 23:04 UTC. Anomie⚔ 11:33, 2 May 2013 (UTC)
  • Thanks. I hope this is clearer now. Tony (talk) 15:03, 2 May 2013 (UTC)
• The article says that France "received nothing in the FDC's first round last October". That's not accurate - it received bridge funding of $94k. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 11:49, 2 May 2013 (UTC)
  • Thanks for spotting this, Mike. Fixed. Tony (talk) 15:03, 2 May 2013 (UTC)
• Those grant and FDC are nightmares. I don't know what HK problems are about "misusing and not returning funds" but even if the funds are not misused, returned, and even REPLACED - it doesn't solves any problem. Should I use my time asking for other funding to other entities in Indonesia for six months Q&A, WMID already got some funding. But instead WMID got ZERO, lost lots of time while the funding "expert" flying around the world giving their funds to the first world chapters and drinking wine - unbelievable. Quitting is not a matter of drama or non drama, it is a matter of time. My suggestion is stop stating that WMF support chapters - it only support *some chapters* not all. Stop saying that one is WMF Global South Expert, if one is giving substantial amount of grants to non countries that lies in suggested title. Because in Indonesia, I'm having problem explaining to my constituent that we didn't receive money, and yes, we asks. Absolutely a waste of time. Siska.Doviana (talk) 09:16, 3 May 2013 (UTC)

  Hi Siska, thank you for your feedback. Just to let you know: out of 7 FDC members, one is from Bangladesh, and one from India. Another two are from former Soviet block - definitely not Global South anymore, but with a good understanding of scarcity, censorship, etc. All of the FDC members are Wikimedia volunteers, like you, and we don't get paid for the work we do. We are particularly concerned about funding projects within Global South outreach (as it is an explicit pillar of WMF strategy, which we are bound to). WMID has not applied for the FDC funding yet, so you can't blame the FDC that it "got ZERO". Pundit|utter 10:31, 3 May 2013 (UTC)

  • Hi Pundit, I meant about grant, but good point - or FDC we just look at the spreadsheet request and laughs. It so complicated we just don't bother. Same people still behind it with additional volunteer face. We're betting that it will took more of our time filling in and more Q&A (in addition to grant that already took six months of our time) so we let other people do it. After seeing the result, we laugh some more. At least we are right. ZERO. Siska.Doviana (talk) 10:45, 3 May 2013 (UTC)
    • additional commet by trying not to sound bitter: 1) at least you got to travel 2) don't worry on loosing chapters, trust me, it's not that important, loosing trust is. Siska.Doviana (talk) 10:50, 3 May 2013 (UTC)
    • Well, it is a fact that the FDC application is the most complicated of all within WMF schemes (although still much easier than other applications in normal foundations giving grants of comparable scale). But we are determined to try to simplify this, whenever possible. Writing an application is definitely not just several hours of work (and neither is evaluating it, we spend 80-100 hours prior to deliberations f2f). All in all, I would like to encourage you to consider applying, when you feel ready - and the FDC staff, as well as the FDC is definitely open to support you in getting there. Our purpose is to distribute the money where it is needed and effectively spent, Global South is our priority, and I honestly believe we act in good faith and impartially from WMF itself, so hopefully it is an improvement. Regarding traveling - yes, that is definitely nice. However, I'm pretty sure that for most of us it would be economically more feasible to spend the same amount of time we do on the FDC to work and travel as tourists :) What I saw of Milan at Round 2 meeting was thanks to two 1-hour runs before breakfast, lol. Not that I'm complaining about traveling - of course it is nice to do that, meet Wikimedia enthusiasts from all over the world, put faces to names, etc. I'm just doubtful if it should be perceived as a major perk. I agree with you that loosing trust is a serious threat, I do hope we will be able to earn this trust and prove that the FDC may sometimes give unpopular recommendations (funds cutting), but that it does so in good faith, after a thorough professional review, and that it honestly strives to improve Wikimedia governance as a whole, as well as to help chapters, rather than make them jump the loops. Pundit|utter 11:19, 3 May 2013 (UTC)
• sigh. I think you should be more professional and make it more complicated, because other suggestion seem to be slamming against the wall of your "professional" term. Siska.Doviana (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 11:48, 3 May 2013 (UTC)

  Mm, I sincerely hope we can try to be professional and still simplify the process, whenever possible. Learning from feedback from the community, and taking suggestions from chapters such as yours, reluctant to participate in the process because of its complexity, help us do better and I appreciate that you spend your time and share your concerns. Pundit|utter 12:44, 3 May 2013 (UTC)

• The "chicken and egg" analogy is instructive. I have learned from this page that when a chapter first gets funding, its top priority will be to hire people who can make more and better applications for further funding. Imagine how this affects my plans to make more donations. Maproom (talk) 21:20, 3 May 2013 (UTC)

  The fact someone thinks it is impossible to get funding for an employee without having an employee does not mean it is in fact the case. There are several examples of chapters that have gotten funding for their first employee without an employee, and certainly without an employee helping draft the application. Our movement is blessed with relatively ample resources, and the last thing we would want to promote is paid busywork to secure additional funds.

  Some of the discussion here and on the mailing list threads around this has been repeatedly conflating non-compliance (i.e. violation of grant terms, mostly during execution and reporting phases), with the burden of applying for funds (i.e. before funding is granted). Both Wikimedia Hong Kong and Wikimedia Indonesia have had significant non-compliance in their past grants; while this reflects on their track record and factors into funding decisions, it has absolutely no bearing on the burden of application. Ijon (talk) 23:08, 3 May 2013 (UTC)

• I am curious about the Wikisource discussion. Was there any discussion, when transcribing The Yellow Wall Paper, of the purpose of doing that? A free electronic text has been available for more than a decade thanks to the efforts of Project Gutenberg. Was any Wikisource value-add statement articulated at the event, perhaps? Ijon (talk) 23:17, 3 May 2013 (UTC)

  English Wikisource has its inclusion criteria s:Wikisource:What Wikisource includes and as Wikisource is a complete volunteer effort we do not judge what volunteers bring to the site against what is at other sites (note that judge is different from encourage or seek out). In fact we welcome different versions of the same work, and there are some interesting differences between versions. Works being inside the WMF wiki framework allows interwikis and interchange between works and sites, and that is the added value of works at Wikisource, the scanned work is at Commons, and thus every image is available to all the sister sites, it enables translations, interlanguage comparisons, etc. ... There are many thousands of images that have been reproduced and cleaned up from works and now reside in Commons due to WS efforts. Was any of that communicated at the event, I have no idea. — billinghurst sDrewth 02:05, 5 May 2013 (UTC)

  Thanks, Billinghurst. I am aware of these advantages; I was curious if a statement was made at the GLAM Bootcamp, in particular as they were engaging, among other things, in this type of mostly-redundant work. I shall wait for a response from one of the participants. Ijon (talk) 03:00, 5 May 2013 (UTC)

  Big statement about redundant work, has elements of PoV. Duplication of some effort? Sure. Redundant? Hardly. The works at Gutenberg are less than perfect, and we have imported them before, found errors, and have had no way to check against a source, which we find as the ongoing value of WS … available source. G. may have changed their process but we regularly found their works didn't have edition data, so whose imprint, which year of publication, etc. We were doing text match and splits against some works and it was problematic due to edition variances, let alone errors. We definitely checked. Note this is neither a comparison nor a criticism, just a comment. — billinghurst sDrewth 15:18, 5 May 2013 (UTC)

  Theornamentalist suggested this work for the session that he and I were leading because it was short and had simple formatting, scans were available and it had a good OCR, and it was of some historical significance. The main thing to keep in mind is that out of a three day Boot Camp, we had a 1–hour session to introduce about 15 experienced Wikipedians to Wikisource with a goal of making it hands-on. We wanted a work that we could dive into and possibly finish (we didn't finish it that evening but several members of the group worked on it for the next several days to complete it — the work is now in Wikisource mainspace here: The Yellow Wall Paper). We did explain our reasons briefly for using this book. In addition to Gutenberg, the work already had unsupported text at Wikisource (almost certainly imported from Gutenberg as it originally had the same errors, or at least differences from the scans, that still exist today in the Gutenberg version you linked). We pre-uploaded the scans to commons as we decided it was too time consuming to set up the book template and experienced wikipedians could handle that part. We discussed the value of scans and how that has the ability to make us more reliable than Gutenberg yet more usable than the scans alone. An added bonus to showing the value of the work was that this work already had a (actually two) audio recording on commons and an article on Wikipedia about both the book and the author, creating several linking opportunities. The existence of the work elsewhere was not a consideration, at least not for me, nor would it be in the future — we have a different goal and supporting scans are almost mandatory for new works here since the implementation of the ProofreadPage Extension (c. 2007). I did mention that for particularly large works where text is available elsewhere, there are tools to bot in the text such as match & split; however, I wouldn't consider such a work suitable for a introductory session of 1 hour.

  Although we didn't discuss in detail the value of one work versus another to the project, we did briefly discuss works that exist elsewhere on the web supported by scans versus those that don't — but that usually applies to works on university websites and not Gutenberg — and the lack of any particular value in works where the original form is web based; such as modern government documents. We also mentioned the application to GLAM and needing to address the expectations of a donor, in particular that the 12th C. manuscript that the museum wants to donate scans of isn't going to get transcribed tomorrow, nor likely next year, unless the donor wants to help us find people to do it. If we had a lot more time, say a day or a whole weekend, for a workshop dedicated to Wikisource, we could get into these things a lot more; possibly taking the time to find a suitable work that nobody else has. If the focus was again GLAM we could spend considerable time discussing value to both the project and the GLAM partner and I agree that discussion would be beneficial and given sufficient time, I would have the group select the work.--Doug.^{(talk • contribs)} 14:29, 5 May 2013 (UTC)

  If I'm allowed to summarise: an event like this has as first purpose putting seeds in the ground, not harvesting, i.e. explaining and engaging in the projects rather than producing content, so the value of the content produced is a bad question to start with; however, the important concepts were addressed and work performed is also valuable in that it takes advantage of Wikisource to improve the defects of the PG transcription. --Nemo 14:52, 5 May 2013 (UTC)

• I hope the Signpost would consider covering the AffCom annual report in at least a little more detail (perhaps in next week's edition), for the benefit of its readers. I say this as someone who has read the entire thing. :) Ijon (talk) 23:38, 3 May 2013 (UTC)
• WMF needs to stop disbursing funds to chapters all together. Building dozens of decentralized bureaucracies around the world, each with a perceived divine right to gobble funds for paid staffers, does not advance in any way the core mission which Wikimedia Foundation is supposed to be supporting: improvement of the site and servers, improvement of the software, and expansion of volunteer participation. The fact that they are actually starting to take a look on how the money is being spent is a promising first step. Once the extreme wastefulness of the current system becomes clear, hopefully all these little fledgling national bureaucracies will be cut down at the knees. Carrite (talk) 15:39, 5 May 2013 (UTC)

WOTY prize

I'd like to point out that Demmy got his money, and looks like the problem wasn't actually Jimbo's fault. en:User_talk:Jimbo_Wales#2012_Wikipedian_of_the_Year_prize_money. Elitre (talk) 10:23, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

Recent research: Sentiment monitoring; Wikipedians and academics favor the same papers; UNESCO and systemic bias; How ideas flow on Wikiversity (3,201 bytes · 💬)

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Font size

According to the above, four researchers from Barcelona "recommend using 18-point font size when designing web text for readers with dyslexia". Can't dyslexics "zoom" their displays, like the rest of us do? --Orlady (talk) 15:08, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

Better yet, they should be able to use a font that is specifically designed for those with dyslexia. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 19:38, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

Opinionated

As usual, good work summarizing briefly a number of interesting activities. However, a minor grammar error brought me to a hightened state of alert, which made me notice the poorer quality of the next "Mining content removed" item. It's too long for an "in brief" bullet point, because the reviewer spends too many words pointing out what's wrong with the reviewed work. Other than that, it's a well written page, rewarding the usual wait for our overdue Signpost. Jim.henderson (talk) 12:25, 3 May 2013 (UTC)

I was the reviewer. Thanks for the feedback; this is my first research review for Signpost and I'm still getting the hang of the genre conventions. - J-Mo ^{Talk to Me} _{Email Me} 19:07, 3 May 2013 (UTC)

Usability study

To increase redability, I recommend a line width of 120 characters. You can do that with this code, copy it on your userspace. Have fun! --NaBUru38 (talk) 17:32, 3 May 2013 (UTC)

Provenance

The provenance of Wikipedia articles is per-character, but the W3C PROV descriptor is per-document, isn't it? 116.233.70.143 (talk) 01:00, 5 May 2013 (UTC)

As said in the brief summary, this tools appears to be based on "metadata from Wikipedia revision history and user contribution pages (e.g. the author of a particular revision, or articles edited by an editor)" - this metadata provided by MediaWiki is per-revision, it does not include information tracking the authorship of particular parts of text. Some external tools like WikiBlame or WikiTrust do this, and there is currently a proposed Google Summer of Code project to integrate an optimized and streamlined version of the WikiTrust algorithm (only the authorship tracking part) into Wikipedia - we'll probably cover the accompanying WWW'2013 conference paper in the next issue. Regards, Tbayer (WMF) (talk) 18:38, 5 May 2013 (UTC)

Technology report: New notifications system deployed across Wikipedia (1,603 bytes · 💬)

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Notifications. No integrated watchlist?

I thought the WP:Echo project would also include an integrated watchlist from multiple watchlists. See: WP:Integrated watchlist. Lack of an integrated, global watchlist is a reason cited by many people as to why they don't edit much on other Wikimedia projects, and in Wikipedias outside their native language. --Timeshifter (talk) 20:51, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

I believe its in the future roadmap, see mw:Echo/Feature_requirements#Watchlist_features. Legoktm (talk) 21:30, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

There are no current plans for watchlist integration in Echo, but see Flow#Watchlist Module. Kaldari (talk) 02:58, 3 May 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. I linked to this discussion from WP:Integrated watchlist. --Timeshifter (talk) 04:10, 3 May 2013 (UTC)

• Graduate students are also eligible for GSoC. Sumana Harihareswara, Wikimedia Foundation Engineering Community Manager (talk) 21:58, 2 May 2013 (UTC)
  • Thanks, I missed that. I changed it to "students" but that seems awkward. If you have better phrasing please fix it :) Legoktm (talk) 03:52, 3 May 2013 (UTC)

Traffic report: Most popular Wikipedia articles of the last week (3,399 bytes · 💬)

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• I wonder if perhaps the Munich Massacre thing could be related to the events in this article? Perhaps during the event someone called it Munich Massacre and a bunch of people Googled the term. I could be completely off though. Zell Faze (talk) 13:00, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

Interesting thought! Since we started the WP:TOP25 in January we've learned that article popularity can come from many places on the internet--and it can be difficult to figure it out. One thing that suggests it wasn't the football game is the lack of any spike in tweets for the term. Tw1itter doesn't always provide evidence of spikes driven by other sources, but it often does. Another suggestion is that it was tied somehow to the Boston Bombings, but they occurred 10 days prior to the spike. There was a very small spike after the Boston event (hitting 9200 views on April 16), but the jump to 488,000 views on April 25 is odd. If anyone solves this mystery, I promise we'll mention you in the next WP:TOP25 report.--Milowent • ^hasspoken 14:36, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

Have you considered developing a tool to correlate pageviews with other data(i.e. Google Trends)? Even better, it could be built to expose an input api so anyone would be able to develop a script to parse any arbitrary dataset (i.e. Google Correlate, Wolfram Curated Data, Twitter trends, weather patterns, etc). It has some cool potential!--Test35965 (talk) 06:39, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

• I'm glad to see this added to the Signpost. I hope it becomes a weekly feature. I'd like it even better if the full 25 were listed, but it's easy to click over to it from here. Thanks for doing the work to make this happen. SchreiberBike (talk) 15:42, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

I would love to see this be a weekly feature as well. Zell Faze (talk) 20:25, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

Me too. This is fun. -- Taku (talk) 04:51, 3 May 2013 (UTC)

• It's interesting to see that tons of views by Redditors for the #9, Socotra, might not have translated into any edits at all (there were only a dozen in April). —innotata 17:26, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

• This is a nice feature, thanks for the work and I hope it becomes a regular feature. But, not to quibble, but isn't "schlockmeister" a tad pejorative? Herostratus (talk) 02:56, 3 May 2013 (UTC)

It probably is a tad, though I checked and other sources have actually used the same term!--Milowent • ^hasspoken 16:08, 6 May 2013 (UTC)