Gibraltar DYK hooks were resumed a few days ago, after a "consensus" of about a dozen people arrived at this ruling, which says that Gibraltar hooks are limited to one a day, but are otherwise fine. Even that ruling has not been kept to, since according to Wikipedia:Recent_additions we have had

• two Gibraltar hooks yesterday, i.e. on 17 October,
• two on 15 October,
• one on 13 October,
• one on 12 October

The hooks were resumed after this discussion. User:Prioryman apparently began the discussion the day after he returned from a meeting in Gibraltar. Another discussion begun at WT:DYK a couple of days ago, Wikipedia_talk:Did_you_know#How_do_we_stop_the_Gibraltar_DYKs?, has so far not yielded a result.

So we have had 6 DYK hooks in the last six days, and at the time of writing we have another 14 lined up here. At this rate, we will have had 20 Gibraltar DYK hooks in October; this after the Telegraph reported you as saying you thought 17 Gibraltar hooks in August were "absurd".

In fact, after all the media hubbub, we are now having more Gibraltar DYK hooks than ever, all in line with the marketing philosophy outlined in the Wikimedia UK presentation about "Improving a city's Google position on the web", complete with its explanation of the use of the Wikipedia main page at time code 12.22.

It seems to be remarkably easy for a small number of individuals to hijack the Wikipedia main page for their own purposes. AndreasKolbe JN466 09:31, 18 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Let's recap. After the Gibraltarpedia controversy broke last month, existing Gibraltar-related DYK nominations were put on hold while a discussion took place on options for dealing with them and with future nominations. Andreas did not participate in that discussion. Its outcome is summarised in the box at Wikipedia talk:Did you know/GibraltarPediA Options. There was nearly unanimous agreement that DYKs should go forward, as long as they met the DYK requirements and that any COI/promotional aspects were explicitly addressed by reviewers. A temporary requirement for a second reviewer was also added to ensure improved scrutiny of the nominations. As a result of the brief moratorium, a backlog built up of articles that had temporarily been held back from the Main Page. This backlog has now almost entirely been cleared. There has been no suggestion that any specific article should not have run because of being "promotional". Andreas is wrong to claim that there was an agreement to run "one a day". In fact there was no consensus on this suggestion. There are further articles now in the nomination queue, awaiting review, but there is no reason to suppose that they will appear at the same frequency. I anticipate that they will appear over the course of several weeks.

Let's be clear: Andreas is taking an extreme position that any article on any topic relating to Gibraltar is "promotional" and should not be allowed, even if it passes every DYK criterion and even if there is no conceivable promotional aspect. (Cases in point: Gibraltar Cross of Sacrifice, a war memorial; Trafalgar Cemetery, a disused historic graveyard; Moorish Gibraltar, a history of Gibraltar from 711 to 1462). This position has been rejected by the vast majority of people who have commented on this issue. He cites out-of-context quotes from a YouTube video while ignoring the fact that nobody is directing the development of these articles - people are simply writing about things that interest them, whether or not they have any "promotional" value. He ignores the fact that specific topics have often been the subject of frequent coverage on DYK. Recent examples have included the Olympics and Paralympics, racehorses (120 DYKs), Indonesia (300 DYKs in the last year), mushrooms, Bach cantatas and so on. In absolute terms these have had a far greater amount of coverage and higher frequencies. In short, Andreas is singling out one topic area and numerous good-faith contributors who have written articles of undisputed high quality, on the basis of what a couple of people, who are not writing or directing articles, have said about it. This is wrong. Prioryman (talk) 12:21, 18 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The difference in the case of Gibraltar is that it has recently been widely reported in the press that the Gibraltar Ministry of Tourism has paid to get Wikipedia exposure. I know all the no-one-has-been-paid-to-edit arguments, but the world does not care about the subtleties of the relationships between Wikipedia, WM-UK, Victuallers Ltd, WMF, Gibraltarpedia etc: what they see is that Gibraltar paid someone, and got a lot of main-page exposure. The unfortunate message that went out was: "You can buy exposure in Wikipedia". This continuing stream of Gib DYKs is just reinforcing that: "You sure can - look! It works!" JohnCD (talk) 13:20, 18 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

There is nothing wrong with stream from somewhere. Who prevents others write new, good articles about their city and nominate them for DYK? Do new aricle patrollers nominlate decent new articles for DYK, in addition to wikifying? Staszek Lem (talk) 15:07, 18 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Prioryman, the reason I did not participate in the discussion on what to do with Gibraltar DYKs going forward was the same reason that nobody else apart from you and about a dozen people participated: it was not well advertised. Whom of those who expressed concerns about Gibraltarpedia did you notify? Do you think Jimbo would have agreed to "limit" Gibraltarpedia to one DYK a day, when he expressed quite clearly that he considered one every two days an "absurd" amount? Why did you not notify him here on this talk page, which so many people with an interest in this discussion follow? And, frankly, it never occurred to me that you would simply and brazenly continue to run those DYKs as soon as no one was looking, given all the comments from Jimbo and the general media scandal about it.

Product placement is just that: companies and other organisations with a commercial interest pay simply for mentions. If a movie shows a Coca Cola can, or the hero drives a Mercedes, the relevant company will have paid for it. There is no need for anyone in the movie to say that Coca Cola tastes great, or that the Mercedes drives well. The very placement is enough, and worth real money today. AndreasKolbe JN466 16:59, 18 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

You also say that "no one is directing the development of these articles". Then why did this WMUK press release say that Gibraltarpedia "is co-ordinated by two Wikipedians, Roger Bamkin and John Cummings, who are working with Gibraltar residents to train them in how to use Wikipedia and add appropriate photos, etc to Wikimedia Commons; as well as adding QRpedia codes which link places and buildings in Gibraltar with their Wikipedia articles. Roger and John are being paid as consultants by the Government of Gibraltar to help deliver this project." I look forward to some abstruse argument from you explaining how "directing" and "coordinating" are different things. The fact is, someone got paid to "encourage" people to write these articles, there are lists of suggested articles, and there is also a competition going on, which was started by the Gibraltar government's paid consultants, where an appearance on the main page gets an editor an extra two points ... and a better chance to win that trip to Gibraltar, or one of the other prizes. I note that editors do log their articles and DYK appearances religiously, so it seems to me they are quite sincerely hoping for payment, in the sense of winning those prizes put up for them to strive for.

So here is a suggestion: if editors are so keen on their extra two points for their chance to win that trip to Gibraltar, let them submit their article for DYK, and if it passes the review, they get their 7 points, but the article never enters the DYK queue. This way, both the users and Wikipedia get the best of both worlds: the users get their chance to win that trip to Gibraltar, and Wikipedia is left with a shred of its integrity intact.

By the way, if you have any indication that the horseracing/betting industry pays for those dozens of racehorse DYKs, or that a music publisher pays for the Bach DYKs, then do let us know. Of course those DYKs should stop too. People can always be given the DYK credit without running the article on the main page, if collecting credits is so important to them. AndreasKolbe JN466 16:59, 18 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

If there was an abuse, there should be ban. If there is a road for abuse, there should be policy. Staszek Lem (talk) 15:03, 18 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The key question remains "What is abuse?" Is writing good encyclopaedic articles abuse, if you do it for a reason other than to improve the encyclopaedia? Should we delete good articles because the writer had other motives? Ban the writer? There doesn't seem to be a consensus to do any of these things, but a vocal minority of editors are quite unhappy about that. WilyD 15:22, 18 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

"Should we delete good articles because the writer had other motives than to improve the encyclopaedia?" Yes, probably, from a system dynamics point of view. We do delete good articles if written by a banned user, for instance. It's a bit of a Hobson's choice of course, but life is not neat, and we have to. Similarly, rather than focusing on the (true) point than a given individual article written by an author with another motive may be OK, focus instead on the (also true) point that taken as a whole the corpus of articles written by writers who have had other motives than to improve the encyclopaedia are likely to be a net negative (on the negative side here is, in addition to "biased articles" (which is bad enough), "bad publicity", "effect on editor morale", "waste of time on AfDs and elsewhere", and other things.) Picking the wheat from the chaff is tedious and, as a practical matter, won't be done; so better to avoid the whole corpus. Herostratus (talk) 16:24, 18 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Let us not widen the scope of this thread. I think most people would agree that a good article is a useful addition to the encyclopedia regardless of the author's motives, though we do make the WP:CSD#G5 exception for banned users. This thread is not about that: it is about the choice of articles for DYK, and the suggestion is that, at a time when Wikipedia's reputation for independence has been damaged by widespread press reports that DYK has been manipulated to please a "client", it would be prudent to hold back on Gibraltar DYKs, so as not to give further fuel to that fire. We may be entirely satisfied that everything is being done from the most irreproachable motives, but we should also consider appearances. JohnCD (talk) 16:30, 18 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Appearances like this? The issue of officially endorsed COI editing through GLAM goes further than just Gibraltar. I have reviewed some of the articles contributed by the British Museum and they are generally of excellent quality. Clearly we can't just throw away everything that was created by people with a conflict of interest, it's some of our best work. I think what we need to do is make sure our COI policy differentiates between editing with a conflict of interest, and editing to further an outside interest. Conflicts of interest are not necessarily bad, but furthering interests outside Wikipedia is. Our current COI policy is so muddled on this point that it's really contributing to the problem. Gigs (talk) 17:03, 18 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

All this loose talk! Names of the "the articles contributed by the British Museum" please! I think you mean articles by volunteers (unpaid of course), as part of WP:GLAM/BM activities, or not. The BM had an unpaid paid Wikipedian-in-residence briefly in 2010, who never wrote articles on any BM-related topic, though organizing others to do so. From your last points I also think the meanings of "interest" and "conflict of interest" you are using are unconventional, shall we say, but I'm not going to go there. Johnbod (talk) 20:08, 18 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

It is my understanding that the main point of the project was to encourage contributions by museum curators. Are the curators at the British Museum unpaid volunteers, or are they paid to be curators? Gigs (talk) 20:36, 18 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Your understanding is wrong; articles are written by normal volunteers (like myself), sometimes helped or reviewed by curators, but as often not. Generally GLAM experience has been that curators are much too busy to write articles, and often to review them. The typical GLAM pattern, pioneered at the BM, is that the museum hosts events to attract Wikipedians to write articles related to the collections, and offers advice & help on sourcing, reviewing etc. One BM-related article was partly written by a retired BM curator, and it turns out that some curators already edit WP, not usually on BM-related topics, independently of the project, and presumably in their own time. We gave two editing training sessions to some of the BM's own (unpaid) volunteers, plus BM interns & curators, but very little BM-related editing has resulted, AFAIK. One BM curator may be writing articles soon on his subject area, including some BM objects. We shall see. Equally the web/marketing etc people at the BM have not edited WP (unlike some museums). Johnbod (talk) 20:51, 18 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

One of the stated goals of the project that I have read in many places is to encourage editing by curators directly. Now that I look around based on your comment, I do see that the project has largely failed in that goal so far. I don't think there's much of a COI involved if the museum and its employees are only acting as a resource for interested editors. If and when curators edit articles related to their employer, then that is the conflict of interest I'm referring to. I'm in favor of rewriting our COI guideline to differentiate between the mostly benign existence of a COI vs letting those interest corrupt our mission. I think that should be a priority for those involved with GLAM as well. Gigs (talk) 21:08, 18 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

As I say, there's a lot of very loose talk around on these issues; getting curators to write articles themselves, as opposed to helping others do so, was never a main objective of the BM project. That is obvious from the start of the project with a big "Behind the Scenes" event in 2010, fully booked at 40 people. There are some conflict of interest issues with museum staff writing, but I think GLAM is good at managing these. A few flagrant examples I have seen over the years were nothing to do with actual GLAM collaborations, just "off the street", and pretty easily dealt with. Johnbod (talk) 23:12, 18 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Geez, I just noticed the link at the bottom of that page, "MonmouthpediA, winner of excellence in Marketing award". Gigs (talk) 17:07, 18 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Good find. Well, that's what it is – just like Gibraltarpedia is there to "energize a city", to use the words of the WMUK presentation, and to "market Gibraltar as a tourist product through Wikipedia." AndreasKolbe JN466 17:19, 18 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Dan Murphy has just noted that Monmouthpedia's marketing award was sponsored by Severn Quay, "a luxury development of riverside properties in Chepstow", who were very excited about the upcoming Chepstowpedia project. I am not making this shit up. So we have a property developer who stands to profit directly from Chepstow being the next Wikipedia town sponsoring the Excellence in Marketing award Monmouthpedia won, and lo and behold, Wikimedia UK talks about plans for "Chepstowpedia". This is getting more and more bizarre. AndreasKolbe JN466 18:19, 18 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Why shouldn't they be excited? Aside from some finger wagging and empty rhetoric (yes, even from Jimbo), the Gibraltar-tourism-peddling continues full steam and the people involved are fully delivering on whatever promises they made to the Gibraltar tourism board (promises, which weren't theirs to make). The failure to properly deal with the Gibraltar COI/pay-for-DYK scandal is sending a pretty clear message to others out there that "Wikipedia is open for business!". Volunteer Marek  18:30, 18 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not going to comment on anything involving Chepstow since I have no knowledge whatsoever about that, but on the Gibraltar side of things, let's just look for a moment at who is writing the articles. Roger, who Andreas likes to quote, has no involvement in creating, writing, reviewing or directing the production of articles. The largest number of English-language articles in this topic area has been written by Anne, User:ACP2011. She's a physician and mom from Chicago, who joined Wikipedia back in February. Within weeks she was being praised for the exceptional quality of her contributions and was being awarded barnstars, including an "Exceptional Newcomer Barnstar". She has made numerous contributions to DYK prior to Gibraltarpedia. Her articles are of the highest quality and there has never been any suggestion that she has any profit-making motives. She has no involvement in the organisational side of Gibraltarpedia. She's just an enthusiastic contributor, motivated by the fun of competition. [1] The campaign being waged by Andreas and his Wikipediocracy cronies, some of whom claimed falsely that she was someone's sockpuppet, has disproportionately affected her DYKs. She's spoken of her upset at being blacklisted [2] and of feeling "sent to the back of the bus".[3] Why should an enthusiastic newcomer be attacked in this way? Why should she be accused with no basis whatsoever of "profit-seeking" and of being a sockpuppet? Why should her DYKs, the quality of which everyone has praised, be blacklisted? Wikipedia is having problems retaining editors as it is. How does the project benefit in any way from rejecting the work of able and talented contributors who are contributing for no reason other than personal interest and fun? This is a point on which the community really needs to take a stand and resist the malicious and twisted agenda of the Wikipediocracy brigade. There needs to be an end to the bullying and harassment. Prioryman (talk) 19:02, 18 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know who ACP2011 is or what her role is here, but if somebody convinced this user to contribute in good faith to an otherwise bad-faithed paid-for-promotion endeavor that's on them - NOT on anyone who points out the shenanigans that are going on with the Gibraltar DYKs. Yes, it sucks for her - but the reason it does is because of the people who thought it was a good idea to make money off of Wikipedia and snookered her into playing along.

And let's drop the bullshitting here - at this point ANY article about Gibraltar, whether it is explicitly related to tourism or not, is promotional. It's like product placement in movies. You don't have to have the character in the movie go "Ahhh, Coke is awesome", you just put the coke in the frame somewhere so that viewers will see it and become more aware of Gibral..., er, Coke. That's what is being done with all the Gibraltar DYKs.

Finally, even if all them Gibraltar DYKs are of top notch quality, featuring them on the main page, still hurts Wikipedia, not helps it. How? Simple, by further eroding the social capital of the website which is based on a perception of non-commercialism and neutrality. As the writer from Slate put it:

You can see why Wales would put his foot down so firmly: Once Wikipedia becomes a pay-to-play platform in any sense, it’s no longer a balanced, universal wellspring of information. It’s just another commercial website, with a particularly insidious brand of camouflaged advertising. Any company with a sly enough PR person could promote ostensibly fascinating facts about its products. If the “Did You Know?” page was suddenly dominated by trivia about Gap or Mars Bars, many readers would quickly smell a rat, but there are numerous PR professionals who represent subtler brands and causes. [4]

Let's emphasize that: a balanced, universal wellspring of information. That's what you are destroying, even if those articles are of decent quality. Or are you gonna start hyperbollin' about the "Slate brigade"?  Volunteer Marek  19:21, 18 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think anyone "convinced" Anne to participate. She wrote numerous DYKs for Monmouthpedia. Nobody complained about that, obviously. She evidently enjoyed it and signed up for Gibraltarpedia when she heard about that project. The "social capital" argument is bunkum, as it's based on a false proposition, that articles are being paid for. There is no "pay for play" as the Salon article claims. For instance: I recently wrote Moorish Gibraltar. Did anyone pay me for it? No, it's a spin-off from History of Gibraltar, which I wrote several years ago, long before Gibraltarpedia was ever thought of. Nobody is paying Anne for contributing her articles. The fact is that a handful of media outlets have published inaccurate reports, no doubt drawing on claims being made by anti-Wikipedia activists on Wikipediocracy. It would be completely counter-productive to abandon long-standing approaches and policies here on Wikipedia in response to media misreporting. Prioryman (talk) 20:39, 18 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, yes, yes, the people who are actually creating the articles are not paid, they are not seeing a dime (except for that Gibraltrar trip). They are probably victims here (or at least patsies), not the perpetrators. There is no payment for the articles themselves. But it is pretty clear that there was a payment for the promotion of these articles. And that is the problem here. By all means, create all the articles about Gibraltar you want. But don't abuse Wikipedia to promote them, or the country. You're setting up a false, misleading strawman argument - because the articles themselves are not paid for, then everything is supposedly hunky dory. But that's not the issue is and you know that very well.

I got to say though, there is a certain genius to the whole shtick - particularly in taking care to put in a layer of insulation - in the form of these unpaid article creators - between the people getting the payment and the Wikipedia's policies. Dishonest and sneaky, yes, but smart. Sure. Volunteer Marek  20:47, 18 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict)Prioryman, you are trying to deflect attention from the real issue. I have no connection with Wikipediocracy, and my only agenda here is that Wikipedia should be and should be seen to be independent of outside commercial pressures. Nobody is rejecting or bullying Anne, or suggesting the deletion of her excellent contributions, which are getting the recognition they deserve. Knowing the background, she will surely understand why, in order not to reinforce the already widespread outside impression that exposure on Wikipedia's main page has been bought, it is only sensible to lay off Gibraltar-related DYKs for a time. As suggested above, dummy DYK points can be awarded which would count towards any competition that Gibraltarpedia are running. JohnCD (talk) 19:40, 18 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

We've never really been independent of external influences. Nancy Grace humps a story relentlessly on the news, so we cover it. We're trying to copy (erm, summarize...) the reliable sources of the world, so we'll never be any better than they are. Whether a company pays a reporter to publish a news story that reads like a press release, or pays an Unknown Blogger to go on Wikipedia and tell their story their way, we get hit with the bias. The best way to correct it is not to make some knee-jerk reaction, but to find contrasting, critical reliable sources and make sure they stay in. Which is contrary to some people's notions about how to interpret BLP or "biography of a living corporation", but in accordance with the idea that an encyclopedia should strive to be all inclusive.

That said, when it comes to the main page, a "too many of X" argument for DYKs might not be unreasonable, especially if we likewise recognize when we don't have knowledge of paid editing, but notice we have too many featured ads (erm, articles) for newly released video games, music, and cinema. At least, it would be less offensive to me than the people who say we shouldn't lead with a photo from the liberation of a concentration camp or a child with smallpox because it's too horrible, when people's knowledge of such things is what keeps back horrors. Wnt (talk) 20:23, 18 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

We don't really have a "too many of X" argument for any Main Page content. The only semi-similar thing is the way that TFA nominations are penalised if a similar article has run within a particular period, but that approach doesn't map over onto DYK, which has no points system and a vastly higher throughput of articles daily. DYK's approach is and always has been that if content meets the requirements, it gets accepted. Also, it's not as if a surplus of articles in a particular topic area are holding up other articles appearing in DYK. As I said, it has a fairly high throughput in any case and even a large number of articles on a single topic - I mentioned 300 Indonesia articles in the course of a year - gets lost in the total number of articles that appear in the slot. Prioryman (talk) 20:39, 18 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

So you think it's fine for people to pay for content generation about their business, and then be featured on Wikipedia's main page seven days a week, at least as long as nobody notices. I can't say I share your opinion. Also, just a little geography: Indonesia has about 8,000 times the population of Gibraltar, and 280,000 times the area. If am being kind to you here, and go by population, then the equivalent of the 44 DYKs Gibraltar has had since July would be something like 350,000 DYKs for Indonesia. If we go by area, then it would take over 12 million DYKs for Indonesia, over the same time period of a little under four months, to be as overrepresented as Gibraltar currently is. AndreasKolbe JN466 22:04, 18 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Welcome to Wikipedia, Jayen466. We don't "go by area", we require what are called reliable sources. For articles' notability, we require significant coverage in multiple independent reliable sources. Yes, if there's a lot more topics that meet that definition in Gibraltar (or Philadelphia or Cape Town or anywhere else) than in any given stretch of sparsely inhabited jungle that's nominally part of Indonesia, then more articles can be supported. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 06:52, 21 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

• Prioryman claims above that I am citing "out-of-context quotes" from the TEDx Bristol presentation. The Bristol presentation is anything but out of context: here Roger Bamkin tweeted, on 15 August 2012, "about a year since @tedxbristol:- that gave birth to @MonmouthpediA and now @GibraltarpediA - not bad for a talk aimed at Bristol :-)" This is confirmation from Roger himself that that presentation describes the marketing idea and business model underlying both Monmouthpedia and Gibraltarpedia. By all means write articles, but keep them off the main page. Enough is enough. AndreasKolbe JN466 17:39, 18 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

And while we speak, there is another Gibraltar DYK on the main page

It's "Did you know ... that North Front Cemetery in Gibraltar is the burial site of Victoria Cross recipient Thomas Henry Kavanagh? AndreasKolbe JN466 21:06, 18 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

And earlier today, there were 3 sealife hooks by the same author in one update. Instead you're here lobbying that "one a day" is too many. - hahnchen 21:37, 18 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I doubt anyone from Wikimedia promised the sea urchins that this would help promote tourism, and I similarly doubt the sea urchins paid anyone money for Wikipedia services. <shrug> --AndreasKolbe JN466 21:46, 18 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The sea urchin cabal is nothing if not sneaky. Jonathunder (talk) 21:54, 18 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Because you value motives over content, rhetoric over substance. - hahnchen 22:01, 18 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I value the content, but you seem to value the main page appearance more. After all, the articles that have been written do not disappear if they do not feature on the main page. The touted benefit to Wikipedia is not their suitability as main page material (most of the hooks are dire anyway); it is supposed to be the improved coverage of the topic area. Well, the coverage is improved. How does Wikipedia benefit from having them on the main page? Wikipedia doesn't benefit: quite the contrary. The only one on whom the value of the main page appearance has been impressed is the paying customer, and they are not Wikipedia's concern. AndreasKolbe JN466 22:09, 18 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Every edit I make to Wikipedia is licensed under CC-BY-SA, I'm OK with commercial reuse, I don't care if someone makes money off the edits I make. You've explicitly said that you value the content, so why should it have to jump through any more hoops then other content that you value? I mean, if the Gibraltar volume were drowning out better articles from DYK, that would be an issue - but that's not the case. DYKs motivate editors to create new content, editors like front page views, its a reward for our editors. How much more would Wikipedia benefit from having not-Gibraltar DYKs? - hahnchen 22:26, 18 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia would benefit because it wouldn't be seen as quite so easily and deeply infiltrated and manipulated by marketing guys. One of Wikipedia's core values is neutrality. To be seen to have that corrupted so readily, and to be so defenceless against it, reflects badly on Wikipedia, and the community for that matter. AndreasKolbe JN466 22:39, 18 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Here we go again. Nobody has "infiltrated" Wikipedia. Victuallers is a veteran contributor, who has certainly contributed a hell of a lot more than you. Wikipedia has not been "corrupted". Gibraltarpedia contributors have produced numerous very high-quality articles on a range of topics, from history to geography to biographies, entirely voluntarily and without any remuneration whatsoever. It says a lot about your own distorted perspective that you regard good faith contributors producing well-written, well-sourced, neutral and non-promotional encyclopedic content on an underrepresented topic area as "corrupt". We're all here, supposedly, to contribute to Wikipedia. Let people get on with that and stop harassing them. Seriously, harassing an entire WikiProject and trying to blacklist an entire geographical territory? This is Wikipediocracy extremism at its very worst. Prioryman (talk) 22:45, 18 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

You are attacking straw men. Nobody is saying that the article writers are corrupt, or trying to "harass an entire WikiProject" or "blacklist an entire geographical territory". What is being said is: Gibraltar signed a contract to pay money. They have stated quite frankly that their aim is "Marketing Gibraltar as a tourist product through Wikipedia". Soon, large numbers of Gibraltar-related items began to appear on the main page in DYK. The combination of those facts has caused widespread unfavourable comment in the international press. Explain as much as you like the subtleties of exactly what Victuallers Ltd is and is not being paid for and their relation to WM-UK, the public perception is that Wikipedia has been corrupted and that money is determining main page coverage. That is damaging to our reputation but at least (some of the comment remarked) the problem was discovered and is being addressed internally. If the flow of Gib DYK entries continues, the conclusion drawn will be that main page coverage is indeed for sale and that we are unable or unwilling to do anything about it. That is why we should stop putting Gib articles there. As Andreas says, none of this good content would be lost, but some of our reputation for independence would be saved. JohnCD (talk) 00:15, 19 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

You are confusing the impression caused by inaccurate media coverage (in a handful of mainstream outlets, let's not exaggerate the scale of it) with the reality of the situation as it actually exists. Main Page coverage is not and never has been for sale. Nobody involved with writing or nominating articles for DYK has received a penny for doing so. There is no ongoing external controversy. We did "address internally" this issue, and it was agreed, virtually unanimously, that Gibraltar-related DYK nominations would continue to appear but with special handling to address any COI/promotional issues. That has been done, followed to the letter. The answer to inaccurate media coverage, as anyone with any experience of the media would tell you, is not to go into a foetal crouch and hide until the bad people go away, but to stand up and say, "this is what we've done to address these concerns, we've put these measures in place and we are satisfied that the concerns have been resolved." Prioryman (talk) 00:24, 19 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Exhibit 1. JohnCD says You are attacking straw men. Nobody is saying that the article writers are corrupt.

Exhibit 2. Prioryman replies Nobody involved with writing or nominating articles for DYK has received a penny for doing so..

Of course not, but that is not the issue here. The issue is with promoting articles.

This is becoming a classic case of WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT. Volunteer Marek  00:32, 19 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

• This is being discussed at Wikipedia talk:Did you know#Time-sensitive DYK nomination so I don't see the need to continue this discussion here. Let's assume that Jimbo is aware of the issue and centralise discussion there. --John (talk) 22:55, 18 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

• Fully agree. In any case, I definitely subscribe to the view that "Jimbo's talk page is the last refuge of a scoundrel". Prioryman (talk) 23:00, 18 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

• ^likes.--Wehwalt (talk) 23:02, 18 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

• Greater participation is needed at the DYK discussion. Anyway, I think it's fine for editors to be paid to produce quality articles. Was your recent trip to Gibraltar comped in any way, by the way? The problem here is gaming the DYK forum to produce disproportionate publicity for a minor subject on WP's front page when a commercial enterprise has a stake in it. And Prioryman, resorting to name calling may hinder your attempts to assert a higher moral ground with this issue. Cla68 (talk) 23:03, 18 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

• What "minor subject" is promoted on WP's front page when a DYK is submitted (by someone who had nothing to do with any of the COI wrongness) about a water tank that was historically significant, but no longer exists since decades ago, and whose former site cannot be practically visited? If you're genuinely enough of a marketing expert to reveal these insights to us, I don't think "Gibraltarpedia" even need to bother themselves. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 23:22, 18 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

• You really don't understand the significance of placing an article on an old water tank in Gibraltar, in conjunction with 40-50 other articles on Gibraltar, on WP's front page, at the same time that a (former) UMUK trustee promised the tourist board of Gibraltar to publicize their community on WP's front page? Cla68 (talk) 23:47, 18 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

• If you can show me "an article on an old water tank in Gibraltar, in conjunction with 40-50 other articles on Gibraltar, on WP's front page, at the same time", then I will, in all honesty, bow down before you as a genius of our age. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 00:18, 19 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

You're kidding, right, Demiurge? Or you just enjoy salaaming? It takes no genius to count 41 DYKs (including the Rosia water tanks) on Gibraltar from August to the present while Roger Bamkin was under contract to Gibraltar. This is so obvious I seriously wonder if I have somehow managed to misunderstand. If so, my sincerest apologies. Yopienso (talk) 01:14, 19 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I rarely kid, so don't tempt me. "At the same time" means, "at the same time". Despite the Moorish influence on the English spoken in Gibraltar, "at the same time" still means "at the same time". We can chat about while all manner of people were involved with all manner of organisations (you know, like Jimbo and WMUK and WMF and WMDE and who knows) but I hope you will not risk yourself any further. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 01:21, 19 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

"at the same time" still means "at the same time" - I believe this is what the kids call "wikilawyering", and while this term is sometimes misused and over used, in this case it seems to apply perfectly. And it's in English, more or less. Volunteer Marek  01:26, 19 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Cla68 didn't say all the DYKs appeared at the same time; he said they all appeared "at the same time that a (former) UMUK trustee promised the tourist board of Gibraltar to publicize their community on WP's front page." Yopienso (talk) 01:32, 19 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Are you kids still here? I'm not asking where some trustee is right now, or what he said ten minutes ago, or whether what he said ten minutes ago was said in the same timeframe as said trustee said something at some previous time... wait, I can't even parse that. Are you for real? Don't you have something better to do? --Demiurge1000 (talk) 01:43, 19 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

• So who is gonna start the RfC to shut down the Gibraltar spamming of the mainpage that is damaging Wikipedia? The Wikimedia UK clique needs to have their plug pulled... This whole thing is dirty. Carrite (talk) 02:24, 19 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

• So who is going to start the RFC to shut down the spamming of U.S. college sports material onto the front page of Wikipedia? We all know the recent controversy over Sandusky and the like. But despite this, how many hundreds of articles about the same sports, over and over again, and the same nation, over and over again, have we seen on the main page of Wikipedia in the last two years? It's sick, it's horrible, it should be shut down. And I propose that User:Carrite is the man to do it! --Demiurge1000 (talk) 02:29, 19 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

• Non sequitur (logic). Volunteer Marek  02:42, 19 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

• Nice to see someone refer to logic, in all this. I congratulate you. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 02:47, 19 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

• If someone had paid a Wikipedia chapter board member to get dozens of articles about their team on the main page, I'd like something done about it. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 08:50, 19 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

• Probably nobody, since previous discussions have shown that such an RfC wouldn't go anywhere. WilyD 09:16, 19 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Product placement: I see the Gibraltar-related DYKs are still flushing through, one a day. The plumber needs to be called to the bathroom. Tony (talk) 09:31, 19 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Are they of poor quality, that is, worse than one would expect from a DYK?--Wehwalt (talk) 13:31, 19 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Well, look at Rosia Water Tanks. The article looks like a bloated mess to me that happily wanders off-topic. Flat Bastion Road was a very controversial article; you'd have to ask User:Fram to describe his concerns. AndreasKolbe JN466 13:55, 19 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

(e/c) That is the important question, isn't it? Are the articles (and hooks) promotional and otherwise subpar or are we getting content of reasonable quality out of the ordeal? Unless someone can point at poor quality fluff that was "bought", the only thing I get from this teapot-sized tempest is an onrush of new content about a geographical location over which we had poor coverage. It certainly can't be any worse than much of the trivia added by obsessive fans over the latest Glee, or the most recent trivial statistics update from some minor college handball team. — Coren ^(talk) 13:58, 19 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

No it isn't. Volunteer resources are finite (like all resources). Wikimedia "charities" exist to marshal volunteer resources and theoretically direct them towards producing high quality encyclopedia content. When Wikimedia charities are marshaling volunteer resources to bloat the main page of Wikipedia with articles on 100 meter long roads and old cisterns, as part of a PR and marketing project that trustees of the charity are being paid for, it calls into question the competence and ethics of the charity. The ethical questions have been gone over again and again. The competence question far less so. Of all the things that Wikimedia UK could have done to "improve" Wikipedia, why did they decide that flooding Wikipedia's main page with obscure Gibraltar articles (many of them poorly written and relying on poor sources, but whatever) was the way to go rather than, say, engaging historians to buff up history or culture articles based on a hierarchy of interest and need? Some of Wikimedia UK's members did so out of a desire for compensation. Others simply don't seem to understand the difference between PR and academic work.Dan Murphy (talk) 14:06, 19 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

(e/c) You're just begging the question. The articles are not valuable because of the contest that stimulated their creation; the contest is detrimental because the articles it created are not valuable? All you're doing here is stating your point by fiat, then using it to prove itself. What I see from the point of view of someone who's only read up on this mess today, is a contest that provided incentives/motivation to write about a poorly covered topic, and a pile of articles (of variable, but certainly not subpar) quality created in response to that contest. Explain to me how that is different from Wikipedia Loves Monuments, or from other event-driven article rush? — Coren ^(talk) 14:17, 19 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The argument has not been that the articles are not valuable (some may not be, but that is a different argument). The argument is that Wikipedia, and appearances on the main page of Wikipedia, have been sold as a cheap, cost-efficient SEO method to the highest bidder. Have you viewed the TEDx Bristol presentation by Wikimedia UK? This is, according to Roger's own statement, the concept that underlies Gibraltarpedia. Main page appearances are mentioned at time 12:22. If you are fine with that, then we simply have fundamentally different opinions on what Wikipedia should be. AndreasKolbe JN466 14:36, 19 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Coren, you really don't get it. Wikipedia is getting the articles anyway, because of the Gibraltarpedia competition and the prizes offered. We don't have to run them on the front page for that. What you need to ask is: What is Wikipedia getting out of running one Gibraltar hook after another on the main page, when the public is aware that someone paid money to "market Gibraltar as a tourist product through Wikipedia"? AndreasKolbe JN466 14:11, 19 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Do they otherwise qualify for DYK? Absent the controversy over the contest, would there have been any problem? — Coren ^(talk) 14:17, 19 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Sure they do (although it must be said that there has been a lot of canvassing about getting them written, accepted and reviewed in preference over other material). The question is: do you want a Wikipedia where we allow any company or interest group to offer Wikipedians cash prizes or other prizes to write DYK-compliant articles about their products, to the extent that these product placements become the most frequent type of item on Wikipedia's main page? How do you think the public's view of what they read in Wikipedia might change if we allowed that to happen? AndreasKolbe JN466 14:41, 19 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think there is a problem there. The crucial difference, as far as I'm concerned, is that no money has changed hands to bypass normal editing process; the output from that contest is no different than any other externally-driven editing spur, and through the normal course of our normal main page management that bubbles up visibly.

There may be an argument made regarding the general value of DYK as a means to get to the main page in the first place – that has always been a concern expressed by many people – but I think that altering DYK because of why the articles ended up qualifying is not a reasonable response. — Coren ^(talk) 14:50, 19 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

So you think public perception of Wikipedia would remain unaffected? That's flatly contradicted by the press reports there have already been of this. By continuing to run Gibraltar DYKs we are confirming to everyone who has paid attention that our main page is indeed for sale. AndreasKolbe JN466 14:58, 19 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I think that perception is manageable. First off, it seems clear to me that the press is much more attracted in the blood over the controversy around the main page visibility rather than the visibility of Gibraltar itself. "Oh, that contest generated a lot of new content which our usual process make visible on the front page as a side effect" would have been deemed boring even for silly season by the press, unlike "OMG someone bought the main page!!!1!".

Secondly, I agree that the disproportionate main page visibility is an arguably undesirable side effect; but as I argue below, that's a problem with what DYK is rather than the contest itself or wild accusations of "selling out". — Coren ^(talk) 15:10, 19 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

(Just so I'm clear, I'm not arguing with "perception is manageable" that we should spin this positively – I'm arguing that it has already been subjected to no small amount of negative spin.) — Coren ^(talk) 15:20, 19 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Well, at least we seem to agree that "the disproportionate main page visibility is an arguably undesirable side effect". ;) I also consider it particularly undesirable for that main page visibility to be actively marketed, and sold as part of a business model. Wikipedia is in quite the same position here as politicians editing their own articles. The fact that it's happened is more important to perceptions than the substance of what was edited. Even so, I agree with Jimbo's original comments that the amount of Gibraltar hooks on the main page in August was "absurd", and it isn't a good idea to go back to that as if nothing happened. You may want to frame that as a problem with DYK rather than a problem with Gibraltarpedia, but to me it makes no difference. Regards. AndreasKolbe JN466 16:09, 19 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Unfortunately, this comes down to a difference of opinions. You and Jimbo and a few other people think it's "absurd", and a rather larger number of people don't. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 20:15, 20 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Be that as it may, in a few hours, the world will learn on the Wikipedia main page "... that the Battle of Trafalgar is commemorated today in Gibraltar's Trafalgar Cemetery, where some of the casualties are buried." Whoop-dee-doo. :) Look, it's got an article in TripAdvisor too: http://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/ShowUserReviews-g187510-d312126-r141060622-Trafalgar_Cemetery-Gibraltar.html AndreasKolbe JN466 00:46, 21 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

How awful? Are we to be banned from noting the anniversary of that battle? It's hugely popular in British culture. (Would you object to a DYK that referenced an important location related to Abraham Lincoln, or somesuch?) Remember whose talk page you're on; I'm sure Jimbo too will someday be invited to mark that occasion, in one way or another, or already has been. How you feel about it is... up to you. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 01:57, 21 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

• Look, here's the deal. In his ad pitch to drum up clients, a Wikimedia UK insider has touted his ability to make it happen on the main page and has valued that placement in seven figures. I shit you not. Of course he is wildly overvaluing the actual value of the placement, because he is a PR professional (or a semi-pro at least) and that is what they do. But the point is, DYK has very great value in advertising terms. Whether the articles are good or bad is irrelevant. Whether the motives of those creating them are pure or pecuniary is irrelevant. What is relevant is that the paid advertising is continuing. We must shut it down. Carrite (talk) 02:22, 21 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

• @Chris. Who paid for your trip to Gibraltar? Inquiring minds want to know. Got transparency? Carrite (talk) 02:27, 21 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

It's nice in Gibraltar this time of year, isn't it? Carrite (talk) 02:28, 21 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

You and I are missing each other's points' here, in some deep and fundamental way. Did Bamkin write articles about Gibraltar that are currently in the DYK review list or queue somewhere? I'm not sure, maybe there are some such; can you list them? If so, then yes, those articles should not go on the Main Page without further, proper, review. By contrast, did other people who as far as we know have nothing to do with Bamkin or Bomis or WMUK or WMF or similar initiatives, and have no stated interest in (or hope of) gaining any "prize", write articles about Gibraltar that are currently in the DYK review list or queue somewhere? Are you really objecting to those articles being treated fairly and equally? --Demiurge1000 (talk) 02:30, 21 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Since you're posting such juvenile comments here, I'll ask again - do you really object to the anniversary of Trafalgar (or any other very major event in European history) being marked in this way on DYK, or anywhere else on WP's main page? --Demiurge1000 (talk) 02:32, 21 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

José_Cruz_Herrera helpfully informs the reader that the museum devoted to him, which is just round the corner from Gibraltar, is on the Plaza de Fariñas and open from Monday to Saturday ... Given that the article was started today, I daresay we'll have that on the main page too in a few days. AndreasKolbe JN466 02:42, 21 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Well let's see... I've not talked to José today, but I do spend a great deal of time (including several hours today) helping to deal, in various ways, with the influx of nonsense articles and promotional articles - or just poor articles - that are submitted to Wikipedia every day. Do you help too? Come to think of it, are you dragging out that article for any purpose, or are you just being facetious? Do you want to expand the proposed Gibraltar-ban into being an Andalucia-ban? Some other territories were mentioned in Bamkin's various marketing blurbs, do you want to target those too? Did I already say this is ridiculous, or is it just taking time to get through? --Demiurge1000 (talk) 02:56, 21 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

What do you hope to accomplish with your buffoonery? This is a tourism project. Visitors to Gibraltar visit the surrounding area; this is why Gibraltarpedia's scope is well defined to encompass Gibraltar and the surrounding area, including a part of Morocco and one or two Spanish enclaves on the Moroccan coast. I imagine this is quite the same scope of information you would find in a Gibraltar hotel. AndreasKolbe JN466 03:06, 21 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

No, this is an encyclopedia, and you can either get on with improving it with the rest of us, or not. You're actually seriously suggesting that it isn't just Gibraltar you want to ban now, but various parts of various adjoining countries? --Demiurge1000 (talk) 06:44, 21 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Just to be clear, José Cruz Herrera didn't live or work in Gibraltar, wasn't born there and didn't paint it as far as I know. His only connection with the place is that his grandparents worked there for a while in the 19th century, like hundreds of thousands of other Spanish people over the years. Is Jayen466 proposing to treat him as some kind of mischling? Prioryman (talk) 10:48, 21 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

That is not all though, is it? Your article ends, The Museo Cruz Herrera was planned some years before he died, when in 1970 the council of La Línea agreed to open a municipal museum of painting dedicated to Cruz Herrera. It was opened on 6 April 1975, located on the central Plaza de Fariñas. It is open from Mondays to Saturdays. The museum presents 201 of Cruz Herrera's works, organised in four rooms under the headings "First epoch", "Andalusian", "Arab" and "Anthology".[7] This is cited to the museum's own website. The museum is located in La Línea de la Concepción, which "lies on the eastern isthmus of the Bay of Gibraltar on the border with the British overseas territory of Gibraltar". It is well within the scope of the geographical area that the government of Gibraltar has paid to promote because they think it will increase their tourist income. AndreasKolbe JN466 10:59, 21 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

In fact, most of that article is sourced to the museum's website. This reminds me again of the celebrated passage at 12:22 of the presentation given by "WikiMedia UK, the Media arm of Wikipedia.org" here, about how they got Derby Museum onto the main page, and this led to "click-throughs" and "more hits" to the museum's webpage. AndreasKolbe JN466 11:09, 21 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Spamming the front page with Gibraltarpedia articles does not improve Wikipedia. But fine – you and your mates have now proved to the world that Wikipedia coverage can be bought. Congratulations. AndreasKolbe JN466 10:59, 21 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I'm glad you finally realise that your complaining is futile. But as for Cruz Herrera, Spanish Wikipedians have been producing good quality articles about the Algeciras area for a while, dating to well before anyone thought of Gibraltarpedia. I'm simply translating them (Cala Arenas is another example) or creating English-language equivalents. There'll be more to come. Even you shouldn't have grounds to complain, since the articles already exist, there's no suggestion that anyone was "paid" to produce them, and you will only make yourself look even more ridiculous if you start arguing for blacklisting articles about Spain and Morocco as well. Prioryman (talk) 11:37, 21 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

What you have produced on Cruz Herrera is no translation of the Spanish article, and the Spanish article on him is not just a plug for the museum on him that happens to be located at Gibraltar's doorstep. And even though the Spanish article is about ten times longer than yours, it does not tell us the address of that museum, nor its opening hours. As for Gibraltarpedia's geographical scope, that is described in the graphic attached, and your museum is well within the area shaded green. This is what Gibraltar is paying for. Cheers, AndreasKolbe JN466 16:10, 21 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Actually the Spanish article is a copyvio from start to finish - the text is ripped off from the museum's website, and the images have been uploaded to Commons under a false declaration. I don't edit the Spanish Wikipedia but that article needs to be speedily deleted, as do the images from Commons. The museum has its own separate article on the Spanish Wikipedia, at es:Museo José Cruz Herrera, which has the opening hours. I didn't think there was enough information in English to justify two separate articles so I created a single one covering both the painter and the museum. Personally, I think I deserve a pat on the head for contributing a useful article on an important Spanish artist who's covered in both the Spanish and German Wikipedias. That's a good outcome. Prioryman (talk) 16:22, 21 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Opening hours and the price of coffee are something that people should look up on an establishment's website, not in Wikipedia. I don't have a problem with you writing articles at all; you know I generally have the highest regard for your article work. My problem is with the main page placement of Gibraltarpedia articles in the context of a paid marketing project for Gibraltar and its surrounding region. Your writing articles is not, or should not be, dependent on that. Or are you saying you are only willing to write articles for Gibraltarpedia if you can have them on the front page? AndreasKolbe JN466 17:32, 21 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Is that deliberate vagueness, or is it accidental? How does one assess whether a given article is "a Gibraltarpedia article" or not? --Demiurge1000 (talk) 17:38, 21 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I'd say if it's listed on the Gibraltarpedia project pages, it is clearly a Gibraltarpedia article. And if it's written by someone with a major investment in Gibraltarpedia like Prioryman – who travelled to Gibraltar a couple of weeks ago, apparently met with Bamkin and Cummings, and then energetically campaigned to start the Gibraltar hooks up again the day after his return – and falls into Gibraltarpedia's defined scope, as agreed with the paying customer, then surely it is a Gibraltarpedia article. I think any uninvolved outside observer would see it that way. Cheers, AndreasKolbe JN466 17:44, 21 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

A short while ago (maybe its still festering) there was a call for a logo for wikitravel or whatever its called. Perhaps a stylized image of a Barbary Macaque or something similar. John lilburne (talk) 14:02, 21 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

What is DYK for?

DYK is supposed to encourage the creation of new articles. It is quite apparent that the Gibraltarpedia competition in itself, offering the winner a free trip to Gibraltar and other prizes, along with Prioryman (talk · contribs)'s energetic hectoring, already does a pretty good job at encouraging the creation of new articles about Gibraltar. Why do these articles then also have to run on the main page, essentially telling the world, "If you want to have 100 articles on XYZ products on the front page, just start a DYK competition and offer the winner a Mercedes?" What the fuck is this project coming to? Has everybody suddenly sold out? It might be worth installing as a more general principle that when there is a competition offering a significant prize for new material, then these articles should not also qualify for DYK.

We should ask ourselves whether Wikipedia should even entertain such competitions. (My personal answer would be a resounding No.) But at any rate, given that we have such a competition, an editor who registers his articles with a competition like that seems sufficiently incentivised to create new articles for the sponsors already, and does not need the DYK incentive on top of that. And Wikipedia does not need its front page tainted by sponsors' agendas. AndreasKolbe JN466 13:55, 19 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I am inclined to agree with your concerns. This whole episode leaves a bad taste in the mouth and I believe it has brought the project into disrepute. Is it time to close down DYK altogether? --John (talk) 14:28, 19 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

You start the RFC, I'll support it. Carrite (talk) 15:31, 20 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

John did start a discussion at Wikipedia_talk:Did_you_know#Time_to_close_it_down?. It's not a vote or RfC, though, just a discussion. AndreasKolbe JN466 17:27, 20 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I think that the problem you raise is a symptom of a flaw in DYK, not in the principle of the contests. Disqualifying some content from normal processes because of why the editor was motivated to write it is profoundly unfair, so long as it otherwise meets every requirement. Hell, if a contest managed to spur editors to create FA-level articles, I'd applaud it without reservations and would be incensed if the result was somehow disqualified from being featured!

That said, is DYK a proportionate incentive? Isn't the bar much too low for the main page? I think that "a contest can exploit DYK to get arguably undeserved main page visibility" speaks against DYK, not the contest. — Coren ^(talk) 15:03, 19 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I've said before, I don't see any reason why we couldn't feature GAs or something instead. But DYK has some unique problems because the rules are specifically written to reward gaming. If Joe Bloggs logs in and starts a new article, and works on it off and on over two weeks, he can't get a DYK, just because he didn't start it in user space and/or didn't nominate himself quickly afterward. Also, by and large, DYKs are evaluated by people who make a habit of submitting DYKs, under the "quid pro quo" system. I mean, I submitted one almost a month ago that got a drive-by "might vote for it" comment by someone who never looked back, and many others who might be commenting on DYKs have, well, more specialized interests. Wnt (talk) 21:10, 19 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Wnt, that's one of the things about DYK that one has to get used to; sometimes they get reviewed fast, sometimes they don't. (Although I don't think the reviewing is much slower than GA, if slower at all.) And the rules are pretty clear; the hook fact has to be in the cited source, not linked from it. It's puzzling that you seem to be agreeing that the bar for DYK material is too low, but at the same time you're annoyed that your submission hasn't met that bar!

I don't see anything in the rules saying that a statement can't be based on two sources, provided both are cited and you're not making any un-obvious original synthesis. But if I had feedback, even if it turned out to be negative, I could try an alternate hook. Wnt (talk) 19:34, 21 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Coren, I would add that one of the problems here is not just that we're "Disqualifying some content from normal processes because of why the editor was motivated to write it", in fact we're disqualifying all content in a particular topic area, regardless of who the editor was or what their motivation was. If I, who have never written an article about Gibraltar before, write an article tomorrow about a notable subject related to Gibraltar, it will be hit by this same topic ban that's being proposed. Regardless of whether my motivation is that I find the particular subject interesting and think there should be an article about it, or because I've seen all the publicity about Bamkin's marketing agreements (I have), or because I want a prize (I don't), the article will be disqualified anyway.

That's wrong. It's like saying I object to something or other about what Bomis Inc did or how it was run, and Wikipedia was originally conceived at Bomis Inc, so I'm going to object to Wikipedia on moral grounds for as long as it takes for my annoyance to wear off. It's ridiculous. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 20:12, 20 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

It's a pity this discussion is running both here and at WT:DYK#Time-sensitive DYK nomination. Not to repeat at length what I have just posted there: yes, it's unfair on you if you are suddenly moved to write about Gib, and unfair to all the innocent contributors who have been motivated by competitions and prizes; but it is perfectly clear that the flood of Gib DYKs is connected to the fact that Roger Bamkin "picked Gibraltar... as his next project after being flooded with invitations from places around the world". That is clear also to the world, see Gibraltarpedia#Allegations of conflicts of interest and is damaging to our reputation for being independent of commercial pressure. Forbes remarked that the number of Gib DYKs was picked up internally and that "the incident reinforces the power of Wikipedia’s community to monitor itself and self-discipline violations of its norms", but if the flood is allowed to continue, it will be apparent that though monitoring works, self-discipline does not. JohnCD (talk) 20:44, 20 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

[5] AndreasKolbe JN466 23:56, 20 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

"Flood" is an emotive word, although somehow I assume you knew that when you used it? While the trickle of Gibraltar-related articles on DYK is still much smaller than the flood of USA-related articles, or the flood of USA-related articles about specific individual sports teams, then I will mention this point every time someone says something so silly. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 02:02, 21 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Gibraltar is a territory of less than 7 sq km, and less than 30,000 inhabitants. You're honestly going to compare it to the US in terms of deserved prominence on the main page? AndreasKolbe JN466 02:39, 21 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Not per column inch, no. But we're not arguing about that, are we? (Well... are we? Maybe you are...)

As for its history, it has been around a great deal longer than the USA. Think in four dimensions, not three. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 02:42, 21 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Facepalm AndreasKolbe JN466 02:49, 21 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, and if you're asking if I would compare the portrayal of the whole of Gibraltar on the front page, as against a single individual sports team from the USA, where Gibraltar has received much less coverage, so is still catching up... then yes, clearly Gibraltar needs more coverage, if we're going to be fair. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 02:44, 21 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Which team would that be? --Malerooster (talk) 02:11, 22 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

From memory, the Michigan Wolverine's men's basketball team. (Funnily enough, Did You Know that, during the 1990s they endured an NCAA violations scandal, "described as involving one of the largest amounts of illicit money in NCAA history", but that was never proposed as a hook, although hundreds of others were...) --Demiurge1000 (talk) 18:08, 22 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

This is a typical WP:OTHERCRAPEXISTS argument. If we had as many hooks on the Michigan Wolverines (and we do seem to have had a lot) as we're having on Gibraltarpedia, then I'm complaining about that too: and it seems you don't like'em either. So why the double standard? Both are crap. Both shouldn't exist. If we had a ridiculous amount of main page DYK hooks on the Michigan Wolverines, finding balance does not consist in having ridiculously many DYKs on another niche topic. If the front page of a general purpose encyclopedia is unduly dominated by the Michigan Wolverines and Gibraltar, then something is rotten in the state of Denmark. AndreasKolbe JN466 22:54, 22 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

For what it's worth, I've done a little investigation into the number of DYK hooks for the Michigan Wolverines over the past five years. The Wolverines had:

• 24 DYK main page appearances in 2007 (maximum per month was 16 in December)
• 11 DYK main page appearances in 2008 (maximum per month was 4 in January)
• 25 DYK main page appearances in 2009 (maximum per month was 4 in February)
• 47 DYK main page appearances in 2010 (maximum per month was 15 in September)
• 24 DYK main page appearances in 2011 (maximum per month was 8 in March)
• 8 DYK main page appearances in 2012 (maximum per month was 2)

Gibraltar has been featured 44 times in the past four months, something the Michigan Wolverines have never been close to achieving, with:

• 7 DYK main page appearances in July
• 17 DYK main page appearances in August
• 12 DYK main page appearances in September
• 8 DYK main page appearances in October to date (all in the period 12–23 October; there are still 8 days to go in the month at the time of writing).

That is more than the Wolverines had in any year, except 2010, where they had 47 main page appearances spread out over the whole year. AndreasKolbe JN466 15:48, 23 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

That phrase about picking a city also bothers me. If there really were invitations from all around the world, did any of them contact Wikipedia rather than e-mailing Bamkin personally or something, so that we could make their dreams reality? I mean, what else is Wikipedia about but putting private enterprise out of business by doing what they do, for free, faster, and better? Wnt (talk) 19:38, 21 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

A Modest Proposal

Well someone is finally getting closer to hitting the nail the head (see post above by Wnt.) Assuming that this sort of thing is going to continue and grow -- a fair assumption, I would say, given that there's no mechanism to stop it -- then it makes no sense for the Foundation to allow the profits to go to third parties. Right? This money should be going to the Foundation. Why should I -- or anyone -- give up pizza night to donate to the Foundation while third parties are jetting around the world and eating steak dinners on their Wikipedia profits?

What I suggest is simply that the Foundation itself directly offer DYK space to the highest bidders. Article creation, article column inches, GA and FA status could also be offered on a bidding basis. The big seller though, I think, would be for the Foundation itself to offer to ensure that a given entity's articles remain NPOV, with the definition of NPOV being provided by the entity buying the rights.

As to who would do the actual work, no problem -- there are plenty of folks here willing to help out the Foundation for free, or the Foundation could scatter 10% of its fees to some poor but willing editors.

Thinking even further outside the box -- we could raise funds by doing no work at all, with a simple article protection service, e.g. messages could out far and wide to this effect:

"Your article is stable, but only 10% of it is devoted to the incident where your product fatally poisoned 10,000 people. We were thinking that maybe 50% of it should be about that incident, and featured in the lede, and the article then featured on the main page. What do you think of that? By the way, we accept donations in any currency."

I'm sure I'm not the only one who has thought of that business model. Why should we wait for the Mob to steal our bacon? We need to be proactive, here. He not busy being born is busy dying. Herostratus (talk) 16:25, 22 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

To be clear, I was not suggesting a DYK sale. (though if worst came to worst...) What I'm suggesting, I suppose on thinking about it, is that we get custom-printed QR plaques up on WP:Merchandise, provided by the lowest bidder from around the world at any given time. We provide Wikipedians with pre-written MOUs, including a disclaimer permitting the WP volunteer artistic freedom provided the articles meet neutral quality standards evaluated by an impartial arbiter, and general advice for approaching local government to try to get grant money for articles placed on Wikipedia, and we let them do it, not as corporations or chapters, but as individuals or unincorporated groups. We get ourselves a deluge of DYKs, which we try to sample from fairly, representing a deluge of articles, from places all over the world. The towns that participate, get enduring coverage of their points of interest, maybe a tiny bit of DYK coverage. The editors get a few dollars in their pocket. Wikipedia gets money for sale of its standard, recognizable, trademarked plaques all over the world. Wnt (talk) 17:03, 22 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Why don't I just write the articles for free (which is how I write DYKs at the moment) and then arrange to print my own plaques at cost, without the trademarked WP logo? Who will notice the difference? --Demiurge1000 (talk) 18:00, 22 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Tourists go lots of places. Sure, you can print your own plaque. But if any town makes a serious effort to label multiple places with Wikipedia plaques, do they want to brand themselves with a mark of shame that they couldn't spare Wikipedia, say, a $10 donation per plaque, when they're using the resource? I think you could easily morally persuade towns to spring for the extra money for an official plaque.

As for your free DYK-writing - by all means do so. But if we allow towns to pay Wikipedians for coverage, we get more coverage; and if we encourage and empower Wikipedians to do so as free agents, then they don't have to do so as underpaid employees of some company that makes that their business model. Wnt (talk) 21:26, 22 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The thing does not work if everyone is doing it. The whole idea is for one town at a time to do it, so that town then gets lots of flattering media coverage like this from the BBC: "Gibraltar targets tourists with Wikipedia QR codes". This is where the value is. This publicity is worth money. This is why they are paying a consultant. (And because they want to have someone they can call, who is reliable, who will turn up at their place for a meeting when required, not some volunteer who runs off when he no longer feels like it. And because they want someone with proven media clout. Remember: the PR professionals who did the publicity for Monmouthpedia did so as a quid pro quo: they offered the project free publicity, in return for consideration, and clarification of their role in Wikipedia. See Monmouthpedia - a small step for the PR industry on a longer road to deeper understanding of Wikipedia, on the website of the UK Public Relations Consultants Association. You wouldn't have those contacts to call on.) AndreasKolbe JN466 23:07, 22 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Well, if a lot of different towns did it, the newspapers would write different stories, about a "Wikipedia movement". In any case, no one would have the option to present themselves as unique after that. Wnt (talk) 02:42, 23 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

If a town spends taxpayers' money, they will prefer to give it to someone with a track record, like Roger, John and the other WMUK people involved, rather than gambling on the anonymous entity "Wnt" being able to do the same for them. That's just not how business works. And we are talking about business.

Wikipedia would need to find a way to regulate paid editing projects, but its governance structure is incapable of that. Any discussion is dominated by whoever turns up; it's like management by radio chat-show phone-in. What you get is people establishing a status quo, as with the Gibraltar hooks running now, and being sufficiently numerous to prevent a consensus for change. Everyone else just doesn't care enough. No consensus defaults to "carry on as before" in Wikipedia.

In some ways this is very similar to the situation in Reddit with Violentacrez: there was never a consensus of Redditors to delete r/jailbait. The subreddit was deleted by the management, after there was a public scandal damaging Reddit's image, courtesy of Anderson Cooper. The difference between Reddit and Wikipedia is that Reddit still has a management. AndreasKolbe JN466 12:55, 23 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe they wouldn't trust "Wnt", but the point is, they'd trust a different known concern. Or, given that it's local government, their brother-in-law or cousin. Capitalism can't abide a free market - if there are 20, 30 firms all doing the same thing, nobody wants to invest in any of them, because they're not going to make the same kind of profit as stock in one of the only two defense contractors that can make a warplane. As long as we don't continue to have only this one group to keep picking and choosing cities to highlight without competition until they become a household word, we can keep them from ever really getting much momentum. Wnt (talk) 19:34, 23 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

As for this Reddit#Controversial subreddits article, this sounds like the kind of thing you would be in favor of - taking some editor who didn't violate the law or Reddit policy, and getting him disgraced by making an end run to get him fired and the policy changed. [6] It's more or less simple cyberbullying, with a side order of class warfare. Yeah, since the beginning of the Internet people have wondered when it will be exploited to track down and crush every odd voice from the first few decades of "letting a thousand flowers bloom". Maybe the wealthy class will use its money to see that at every moment people have to make sure their their recorded trail contains nothing but bowing and scraping and safe, stiff attempts at permissible humor in the name of being marked as good-natured for a future report. And maybe the poor class will launch Bolshevik rebellions, build guillotines, and/or hack into and utterly destroy the international banking system. You start a fire, who knows how far it will burn? The alternative to the fire is to stand together, rich and poor, orc and troll alike, in universal enjoyment of freedom expression. Wnt (talk) 19:52, 23 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

If that is cyberbullying, then what is posting upskirt shots taken of non-consenting women, or posting sexualised shots of teenagers at r/jailbait without their consent? The CNN interview with Brutsch is recommended, especially the part from 2:50 onwards. AndreasKolbe JN466 21:08, 23 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

"Cyberbullying"? "Class warfare"? Wnt, you cannot possibly be as much of an idiot as you pretend to be - please stop trolling on Jimbo's talk page. Delicious carbuncle (talk) 21:19, 23 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I watched that interview, and remain unimpressed. He did nothing illegal or he would have been prosecuted. He violated no one's personality rights, contributed to no illegal harassment/contacts with minors, or by that time (a year later) he would have been sued. I never saw this forum, and I don't really know Reddit as a site well enough to understand entirely what he was doing, but it sounds like he was sorting through a big feed and putting it in folders with, perhaps, infuriating names. You can pick one thing out of there and give it a creepy description, "underage", "underwear", and leave it to the audience to imagine it was worse than it was, and it was all like that, but I don't believe it, or he'd be facing charges. Just because a Vanderbilt gives it a disapproving frown doesn't mean I should follow along. If he'd said what he should have said, he'd say, "look, all you people on the Internet hiding behind anonymity to spout off about being Libertarians, repealing drug laws, anarchist philosophy, defending the poor, or being a Democrat, for that matter, well, someday you'll be here apologizing wondering if there's some way you can keep your kids off the street." Wnt (talk) 21:42, 23 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Wow. Invoking the maiden name of the mother of a notable person to make your point. Bottom of the barrel, much? At least Anderson Cooper is out there with his real name, and I for one think he's achieved more than enough to prove he's not feeding off his mother's "fame". Can you say the same about yourself, "Wnt"? Draco^E 22:42, 23 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Anybody can be a talking head. But connections help some people. For others, showing ID at the door only makes it easier for you people to attack them - which is the reason why almost no one on Wikipedia gives them out any more, except some people who one way or another are getting paid out of these activities. Like you, Cooper claims in that report that a person has the right to free speech as long as they use their name, but that's just stupid - we know full well that they would have gone back and tried to get the "troll" fired anyway, only faster. Anonymity is a line of defense for many people, but we also need to recognize that it is a poor line of defense, and people can't be content merely to cower behind it, but must demand that they have both the right to work and the right to speak and believe as they wish, and if that requires a social revolution, then so be it. Wnt (talk) 23:54, 23 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds like narcissism and entitlement to me. "I would like to be able to post nigger and rape jokes, and upskirt photos, and generally offend people as much as I can: but those same people should still have to like me, and employ me." That's a childish attitude. Note that it is quite possible to believe in the social benefits of Internet anonymity, and applaud Chen and Gawker. AndreasKolbe JN466 00:24, 24 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Reddit still has the former category; I suppose you also want those people named and shamed and fired and blacklisted and out with Anderson Cooper begging for forgiveness (which too will only be held against them). I don't, even though I rather emphatically disagree with the politics of racism. For such material to transition from the realm of serious belief to humor is part of a natural progression of development. Wnt (talk) 00:59, 24 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I should add that there are many ways you can decide on employment criteria. One is to go based on skill, education, performance, teamwork and so forth. The other is to go based on pseudonymous internet postings, dress code, whether they're pretty, who they know... The former path is a recipe for economic growth and development. The latter is the recipe for a series of private ideological purges in a declining society. Wnt (talk) 01:16, 24 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Up above you argued for putting "private enterprise out of business", now you're arguing for "economic growth and development". You need to keep your shit together, mate. The seams are beginning to show. :) AndreasKolbe JN466 02:11, 24 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

No contradiction at all. Do we, or do we not, have a bigger encyclopedia, a better encyclopedia, available to more people, with Wikipedia, than we did with several different little private copyrighted encyclopedias on out-of-date disks or paper, run by private enterprise? Wnt (talk) 06:20, 24 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Did any of those reckon that Richard II was king of England in the 1340s in one of their gala articles? John lilburne (talk) 19:56, 24 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Salon article

• Is Wikipedia going commercial?

"Having commissioned articles on Wikipedia dilutes one of the last respites from commercialization on the Internet. Perhaps worse, these commissioned endorsements are hidden by the guise of pure encyclopedic information."

Good article, well worth reading. It doesn't mention Gibraltarpedia, but it does spell out what has been lost here. AndreasKolbe JN466 23:19, 23 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

• There should be a clear-cut article identification and creation tax placed on paid editors and funded content. See User:Lexein/Paid content tax --Lexein (talk) 01:25, 24 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Good ideas, Lexein; I look forward to seeing how the essay develops. Seriously, if Wikipedia wants to retain some of its reputation as a non-commercial space, it needs to adopt some measures like that, and do so fast. AndreasKolbe JN466 03:39, 24 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]