Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/Single/2014-08-06

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The following is an automatically-generated compilation of all talk pages for the Signpost issue dated 2014-08-06. For general Signpost discussion, see Wikipedia talk:Signpost.

Featured content: Bottoms, asses, and the fairies that love them (6,839 bytes · 💬)

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• Interesting stuff. And the article title is golden.--Milowent • ^hasspoken 13:51, 9 August 2014 (UTC)

I'm still a little shocked I got away with that one. =) Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 15:52, 9 August 2014 (UTC)

• Same reason Shrek did: there's a donkey in the picture. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 15:55, 9 August 2014 (UTC)

• Logically, it makes sense. If Titania has wings, she has to be on top. :) Viriditas (talk) 03:14, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

• The headline is a pun relying on an anti-gay slur. Wikipedia's civility policy doesn't allow that, however humorous it might be. G. C. Hood (talk) 16:18, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

• The title makes me uneasy; the pun relies on a homophobic slur that many people use to demean gay men. I'm also aware that some gay men use it fondly and jokingly among themselves, but I'm still uneasy about how it will make other QUILTBAG readers feel. Sumana Harihareswara 17:49, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

• I'm under the impression the word has pretty much been reclaimed, but America and Britain are often poles apart on that kind of thing. It can always be shortened to "Bottoms and asses" if it really is particularly offensive. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 23:22, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

• Seconding Adam here, with the addition that I approved the title because I thought it was pretty obvious that "fairies" refers to ... the fairy in the painting. As a fairy is a fairy, we can't obliterate entire words in the English language simply because some people misuse them! EDIT: after rereading my comments, I've realized that they could conceivably come across as rather offensive. Someone should read them and let me know if this is the case? Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 23:03 and 23:51, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

• Hello, I participate in meta:Wikimedia LGBT and I wanted to share some thoughts as an LGBT activist in the United States. For context, the title of this piece currently is "Bottoms, asses, and the fairies that love them". All of these terms come from the Shakespearean play shown, in which the character named Bottom is transformed into an ass (donkey) by a magical fairy. There is also a gay sex joke here, because a bottom is a gay male who is penetrated during anal sex, an ass is the focus of the intercourse, and a fairy is a slang word for gay male. Somehow the headline is a gay anal sex joke. In previous times and still so in some cultures, the term "fairy" was used as an insult, but now it is used just as an old-fashioned curiosity or as a reclaimed-term to be a point of pride.

While I do not think anything about this title is harmful to gay males, and indeed, a big part of the gay rights movement included initiatives to encourage the broader public to talk about gay sex in media channels in which it would not be expected, it is probably right to say that readers of The Signpost do not expect gay sex jokes in headlines. As an advocate for gay rights I appreciate the attention and good will, and I like the encouragement of a sexualized environment on Wikipedia because such environments make for healthy places to address sexual problems including health issues, discrimination, harassment, and many other taboo topics which could not be raised outside of sexualized environments. This headline is not the kind of attention the organized gay community would seek for itself, but in my opinion, it seems like crude humor, not anything offensive, and any friendly mention of gay sex benefits the gay community by normalizing minority practices. The joke is only out of place if The Signpost's image is not one of crude humor.

Please sign on as a supporter of the Wikimedia User Group supporting LGBT empowerment on Wikipedia. Signatures are a useful show of support from all kinds of people who support LGBT issues and anyone can put theirs at meta:Wikimedia LGBT/Participants. Sorry, there are no LGBT jokes on this project page. Blue Rasberry (talk) 08:13, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

I should probably just make this clear: I don't want to attack or degrade anyone, but I also don't want to give reclaimed words back their power to hurt by deleting them as offensive too readily. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 13:10, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

• I have to admit, I am not easily offended but I thought "Bottoms, asses, and the fairies that love them" was totally unnecessary. I rolled my eyes when I read it, wondered what others would think, but I did not feel offended enough to comment until now. To me, it's more unnecessary than offensive... ----Another Believer _(Talk) 19:16, 14 August 2014 (UTC)
• I'm with Another Believer. I'm not really offended and I don't have a strong opinion on this, but I'm sure a headline could have been chosen which couldn't have been construed as a slur against gay individuals. CT Cooper · talk 20:03, 14 August 2014 (UTC)
• While I'm not offended, it seems like the sort of joke you'd expect from an adolescent rather than The Signpost. And it has the potential for unnecessary offence. Orderinchaos 21:23, 14 August 2014 (UTC)
• I agree, the headline may not be the end of the world, and I am certainly not suggesting the author had any bad intent, but considering the work that WP has been doing to try to be inclusive of and inviting to all groups, this is a headline that was unnecessary. KConWiki (talk) 03:20, 17 August 2014 (UTC)

News and notes: "History is a human right"—first-ever transparency report released as Europe begins hiding Wikipedia in search results (4,038 bytes · 💬)

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• The heading of this page says 'news and notes', but the story is really an editorial. News items should reflect both sides. To give the article more balance I'd like to add that the European Union's Data Protection Directive, which is the basis for the European court's decision, is considered a important law that protects the individual's right to privacy. It's up to the individual to decide which information about them they want publicly accessible. Censorship is one side of the problem, but privacy is also important. The Wikipedia policy Biographies of living people (if in doubt act in favor of privacy) reflects some of that. --Melody Lavender (talk) 14:34, 9 August 2014 (UTC)
• Where would Wikimedia officials draw the line between the fidelity of history and removing home addresses of stalking victims or social security numbers of identity theft victims? EllenCT (talk) 20:12, 9 August 2014 (UTC)
  • Your argument is asinine. When did Wikipedia start publishing "home addresses of stalking victims" and "social security numbers of identity theft victims?" Please read WP:NOT to learn something about what constitutes encyclopedic content. Edison (talk) 20:41, 9 August 2014 (UTC)

Are you assuming that the right to be forgotten only applies to Wikipedia articles? Is there some reason you think that the officials speaking out on the law have asked for exceptions to be exclusive to encyclopedia content? EllenCT (talk) 00:05, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

• Thanks for mentioning the relaunch of the Wikimedia blog! Just a small correction: The blog's new design is actually not by Automattic, but by our own Heather Walls, and was implemented on the technical side (i.e. coded as a WordPress theme) by Exygy, a small software company based in San Francisco. Automattic is our partner for hosting the new blog. Regards, Tbayer (WMF) (talk) 01:34, 10 August 2014 (UTC)
  • Thank you for the information; I've corrected this in the article. Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 01:43, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

• I have followed the link to the “report”. There is one mini-page. Oh, there are figures, and diagrams with colours representing these figures. But all of this is meaningless. What about the nature of the requests ? What info was requested ? In what cases did Wikimedia obey the request ? Why ? In what cases did Wikimedia deny the request ? Why ? We have no info at all. And you talk of transparency ? It is a joke. --Nnemo (talk) 18:34, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

• I am afraid that the luminaries above misrepresent the European directive in question. There are circumstances where it is unethical to link to information about people, and the directive is specifically limited to these three:
  1. Outdated
  2. Inaccurate
  3. Irrelevant
• I see no appetite in the MediaWiki projects to link to or host any of these three types of content. Nor should we be announcing in a forum such as Signpost any specific examples of such linking. Instead we, the community, should be working with Google and the legal team so that the community can ensure that BLP is being met in our pages, then the legal team can issue the appropriate takedown notices to our contacts at the search engine providers.

All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 20:02, 11 August 2014 (UTC).

Technology report: A technologist's Wikimania preview (494 bytes · 💬)

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Perhaps the lack of comments is due to everyone busy at Wikimania. Hopefully the video from these sessions is put online. I'd like to watch a few of them. II | (t - c) 20:05, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

Traffic report: Ebola drives reader interest (2,031 bytes · 💬)

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• Re Ebola, it looks like ZMapp drove some interest in monoclonal antibody therapies. I'm a huge fan of using current events to steer people towards understanding of general solutions, and I think encyclopedias should try to leverage that effect when possible. During the 2001 anthrax scare, general public interest in Cipro got government agencies to focus on supporting some antibiotics which had been phased out because they were no longer profitable compared to newer in-patent medicines. One of them turned out to be effective against a previously drug-resistant form of streptococcal infection that was an issue in several hospitals. On the other hand, after China beat Novartis to the H5N9 bird flu vaccine by a few weeks last year, Novartis sold their entire vaccine unit, believing that there would never be any money in it since it was no longer a market they could corner. Pharmaceutical companies' market abuses kill more people than Ebola ever will, and mostly in developed countries. (See Pharmaceutical industry#Controversies, [1], [2], [3], etc.) EllenCT (talk) 20:43, 9 August 2014 (UTC)
• Personally I think the ebola article is an excellent article - far better summary that any of the single event-driven news stories out there from traditional news providers. I understood what is going on through this article much more than any news website coverage. Wikipedia at our best! AndrewRT(Talk) 22:39, 10 August 2014 (UTC)