Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/Single/2017-07-15

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The following is an automatically-generated compilation of all talk pages for the Signpost issue dated 2017-07-15. For general Signpost discussion, see Wikipedia talk:Signpost.

Humour: The infobox game (2,399 bytes · 💬)

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I think you misspelled "wherever." ~TPW 03:00, 16 July 2017 (UTC)

Of course I did. I wanted to see if you were paying attention. I can't believe you expect me to knot make misteaks.

Best Regards,

Barbara (WVS) ✐ ✉ 03:03, 16 July 2017 (UTC)

I would collect infobox trading cards. I can already imagine a game based on the different infobox templates. Are soccer biographies strong against comic strips? "You got a Hill of Rome? Damn, those are rare. I'll trade this artificial fly card for it." ~Mable (chat) 10:20, 16 July 2017 (UTC)

ooo! ooo! Each infobox card could be ranked by the daily average pageviews. So if one infobox card was for an article with 1000 views per day, it would be worth two infobox cards with 500 page views per day. You are a genius. AND there are no copyrights! Good job Maplestrip. We are going to be millionaires. Wouldn't it great to have this set up for Wikimania in 2018?

Barbara (WVS) ✐ ✉ 22:33, 17 July 2017 (UTC)

Well, the images would often be copyrighted (though not always). I would love to see something like this happen, but it sounds like a lot of work :p ~Mable (chat) 07:53, 18 July 2017 (UTC)

Way too much work. Barbara (WVS) ✐ ✉ 11:47, 19 July 2017 (UTC)

This is fun. I just now read it (cleaning out my talk page). Thanks! Softlavender (talk) 23:01, 27 November 2017 (UTC)

In the media: Concern about access and fairness, Foundation expenditures, and relationship to real-world politics and commerce (972 bytes · 💬)

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The Latina story appears to relate to User:Steve Bannon/sandbox and User:MarcusBrody/sandbox. I'm not really sure what the whole story is here, but there appears to be some sockpuppetry involved. I'm not sure those lists would make good Wikipedia articles, but I'm having a hard time seeing the G5 speedy deletion. Calliopejen1 (talk) 17:13, 15 July 2017 (UTC)

• This is a good run down and I thank Andreas Kolbe for his continuing effort to objectively cover the WMF's misadventures. I really wish people would stop donating. Chris Troutman (talk) 22:25, 21 July 2017 (UTC)

News and notes: French chapter woes, new affiliates and more WMF team changes (3,871 bytes · 💬)

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Why no mention of the other new administrator, User:Anarchyte? Optimist on the run (talk) 05:28, 15 July 2017 (UTC)

. Anarchyte (work | talk) 06:34, 15 July 2017 (UTC)

Fortunately this is a wiki so it is easy to fix such errors and omissions. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 31.75.37.119 (talk) 07:27, 15 July 2017 (UTC)

If anyone wants to read the full WMFR letter (rather than my 4-line summary), Sj has translated it into English. The Land (talk) 07:51, 15 July 2017 (UTC)

• Is it correct that to some extent the discussions about WMFR reflect the participation by some of the members of their board in paid editing? (if inapropriate, I will remove the qy, but it is important to report the actual basis of a dispute.) DGG ( talk ) 18:21, 16 July 2017 (UTC)
  • Hi @DGG: - I am not aware of that as a criticism. Of course a huge amount is being said by both sides so I might be in there somewhere. I believe there are serious concerns from community members about (among many other rhings) whether there is appropriate separation between WMFR's lobbying programme and the political career of one of its board members, and also about whether WMFR staff have been fundraising for an endowment without apparent consultation with the community or WMF, but I haven't see paid editing raised as a significant issue per se. The Land (talk) 18:44, 16 July 2017 (UTC)
  • @DGG: You may have been thinking of the Swiss Chapter. 1, 2. --Andreas JN466 10:37, 20 July 2017 (UTC)

so I was. My apologies. DGG ( talk ) 17:26, 20 July 2017 (UTC)

• I so wish that I was surprised at this development. Not from what I know of WMFR prior to the statements that have been published, including the WMFR letter, but because the hubris shown in said letter by those who have power in that organization is not unique to that affiliate. IMHO, the WMF has been extremely naive about setting up systems that afford individuals power over others, thinking that just because we are all Wikipedians with the best of intentions, that only the best of human nature will always assert itself. Sorry but power corrupts, even the best of people, and not everyone takes on roles for purely altruistic reasons despite wrapping themselves in all the jingoistic terms of the movement. More situations like this current exist in other affiliates, and problems with admins in Wikimedia projects and more situations of this type will occur. Question is, will the Foundation learn from this particular embarrassment enough to make the necessary changes in the future?Thelmadatter (talk) 13:07, 17 July 2017 (UTC)

Op-ed: Why task forces and subgroups are dying in 2017 (9,036 bytes · 💬)

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See Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2017-07-15/Op-ed/Earlier for discussion that occured prior to publication.

• Honestly Task Forces have been dying for many years. See how many Tasks Forces are inactive at the WikiProject. GamerPro64 03:31, 15 July 2017 (UTC)

• To my opinion, task Forces are temporary by nature. When the main job is done, there is not much left to do. Keeping them artificially alive might be a waste of time. I fact, I have far more worries about WikiProjects that set the tone for the entire project, for example by setting their own notability guidelines without consent of the wider community. And often in breach of the standard notability guidelines. The Banner talk 07:49, 15 July 2017 (UTC)

• Personally, I think whether or not a task force dies depends both on how long the task Force's topic is relevant for and how much old pages need to be updated and new ones created. For example, for pages about books by a certain author, you rarely need to go back and add or change anything once the page has been written and tweaked a bit. On the other hand, the Nintendo task force likely has a lot of stuff going on right now and will for a while because Nintendo-related pages are being updated and new video games are constantly being released (both by Nintendo and third-party developers, including some larger video game companies) for the Nintendo Switch. We've even seen a few new faces editing those pages. — Gestrid (talk) 15:42, 15 July 2017 (UTC)
• IMO task forces die because they tend to be very niche and the brainchild of only one or two editors, and are sometimes created as a result of a tantrum if they're not getting their way in a wider WikiProject. As a result, when they drift away from Wikipedia or the topic, the taskforce dies with them. WikiProjects are a much more stable way of improving material so I'm not too worried about the death of task forces. Number 57 20:45, 15 July 2017 (UTC)
• I get confused by editorials purportedly written by two people, but with frequent use of "I" and "me." Do these editors share a brain? Isn't that against policy?03:09, 16 July 2017 (UTC)~TPW

• I tried to clarify this by adding the author to the top of each section in pre-publication copyedit. Suggestions for how to do it better are welcome... ☆ Bri (talk) 03:14, 16 July 2017 (UTC)

• Just task force and subgroups are dying? Many WikiProjects are also semi-dead ever since we keep losing editors. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 05:28, 16 July 2017 (UTC)
  • Editors come and go, task forces have active and inactive phases - and an inactive taskgroup is a steady accumulation of tasks resources and queries for the next person who wants to revive that task group or wikiproject. In an editing community that is broadly stable we should expect this. OK yes I know that there is a steady increase in the number of very active editors, those who save over a hundred edits a month in mainspace, but overall edits are pretty stable at 5 million a month and have been for a while (up from barely 4 million at the 2014 low point) - so we need to get used to the idea that the overall community is broadly stable even if within that there are many other trends, positive and negative. ϢereSpielChequers 11:27, 16 July 2017 (UTC)

• The Banner makes the interesting argument that a task force is temporary by nature...Indeed, the name would suggest that they were created to complete some sort of "task" and nothing more. This is perhaps easier for tasks where the scope is, even if large, is finite. Operation Majestic Titan and Operation Bora both cover all things battleships and all things Yugoslavia in World War II, respectively. That's expansive, to be sure, but, even if this encyclopedia is never finished, they will probably hit a wall on relevant content. This is in comparison to the African military history task force (of which I am a member) which has, not only a much broader area to cover, but a scope that is expanding every day. So in that case, it really is a never-ending task. It could very well be its own WikiProject, as could many other Military history task forces. Of course, OhanaUnited points out that there are plenty ailing WikiProjects to go around. So, we can conclude that narrow scope isn't the only thing that kills working groups. It would be nice to see an op-ed on the problems WikiProjects face and how to fix those (if one already hasn't been written). That quote taken from the Military history project contributor seems geared towards that end. I would argue that that project is the most successful on Wikipedia, and seems to be the only one to have found out what to do with the A-classification. Ideally, some of these task forces/WikiProjects will become more active as Wikipedia expands. For example, I'm currently a member of WikiProject Democratic Republic of the Congo which, not too long ago, was tagged as "semi-active". I've undertaken some of the recommended steps for reviving the project, but there's only so much I can do with only a handful of interested editors. I sincerely doubt that there are any Congolese users on en.wikipedia. I wish that weren't so, but in a country with such sparse internet access and with a population that speaks mostly French, Lingala, and Swahili, I'm not surprised that any haven't turned up. Now, question the legitimacy of a task force devoted to an author or a project centered around religion in a single country all you want, but you would think that a country with over 80,000,000 people (also the 11th largest by land in the world, the location of Belgium's sole colonial adventure, the site of the "African World War", and the birthplace of the most stereotypical dictator of all time) would have its place among the other WikiProjects. I pray that this project (and its WikiProject Africa brethren) will in time garner more African users as internet begins to proliferate the continent. -Indy beetle (talk) 20:40, 17 July 2017 (UTC)

• In some ways, I find that Wikipedia's extreme permanence can make completed/dead taskforces confusing for new users because nothing really marks that they are finished. WP:Molecular and Cell Biology had a WikiProject_Cell_Signaling taskforce that finished up before 2008, but it was only in 2014 that any notice was added to the the page directing people back to the parent project. The deserted discussion page can be pretty confusing for new users just getting the hand of Wikipedia's workings. T.Shafee(Evo&Evo)^talk 00:13, 26 July 2017 (UTC)

• Some task forces are active periodically, they might appear dead for long periods but spring into life for specific reasons. An example I'm familiar with, WikiProject South Africa, has task forces for Municipalities and Politics. They may have very little or no activity for years at a time but when a census or election comes around the pages spring into life with a frenzy of activity for a couple of months or even just a few weeks before going back to sleep again. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 20:11, 31 July 2017 (UTC)

Technology report: New features in development; more breaking changes for scripts (767 bytes · 💬)

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In "Recent changes", bullet-point #2 is "Previously, this was disabled for everyone." What is the antecedent for "this"? Is it bullet-point #1? If so, these two items should probably be merged. DMacks (talk) 13:57, 17 July 2017 (UTC)

It looks like it was about Wikidata edits now appearing in enhanced RC, and that the first sentence was dropped when copying that bullet point from m:Tech/News/2017/26. This seemed like an obvious mistake so I went ahead and fixed it. --Catrope (talk) 21:02, 17 July 2017 (UTC)

Traffic report: Film, television and Internet phenomena reign with some room left over for America's birthday (920 bytes · 💬)

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Hustler

So is "I tend to watch interviews of models online" the new way to say "I read it for the articles"? Chris Troutman (talk) 12:05, 29 July 2017 (UTC)

I don't know. That comment was written by an author with the WP:25. Eddie891 ^Talk _Work 18:50, 29 July 2017 (UTC)

@Chris troutman: Belated response, but you got that joke right. igordebraga ≠ 14:42, 8 December 2017 (UTC)