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I find that Wikipedia pages on mathematics and science are often too hard for me as what I'd consider a fairly intelligent non-specialist. I find that Simple English Wikipedia helps, but hasn't got nearly as many pages and doesn't have nearly as much detail.

What if each page on Wikipedia had a difficulty level displayed on it, from 1 to 5, and a suggested reading list for people to know what kinds of thing they need to know in order to understand the content? This could be done either by having readers rate pages' difficulty to them, or with a logarithm assigning a score to the page weighted on the ratio of Simple English to technical vocabulary.

More importantly and usefully, a suggested reading list could help people get to know fundamental concepts before reading material incomprehensible to laypeople. Obviously, any site-wide feature is going to be difficult to implement, but it would open up a large part of the site to readers who would otherwise not be able to understand it and not even know where to start. 'See also' sections can be useful but often just point to more pages of interest to people who can already understand and are interested in the present page.

This way, if I'm a person who knows mathematics up to college level and I see a level 5 (specialist-level) math page, I know that there's a lot of work ahead of me because the suggested reading pages will probably also have a lot of suggested reading pages I'd need to read before moving on. On the other hand, if I see a level 3 math page, I can quickly catch up on what little I need to look up, whether on Wikipedia or elsewhere, and then get on with what I want to read.

I find that one of Wikipedia's main benefits is as a repository of useful links and sources relevant to learning more about the topics on the pages themselves. These might be a couple of ways of improving that function which are worth the difficulty of implementing. — Preceding unsigned comment added by RAWdance (talk • contribs) 22:07, 2 September 2014 (UTC)

The idea is that Wikipedia articles should be written at a level that is accessible to the majority of people who are likely to be interested in reading them. Because the articles are written by volunteers, that doesn't always happen. But when it doesn't, it's an indication that the article could be improved. As for suggested reading lists, many articles already include them. We've found it necessary to keep a pretty tight control on their length, because they have a tendency to grow out of control. (For whatever reason, there are lots more people in the world who like to add to lists than people who like to write prose. If we don't keep a lid on the number of links, we will end up with a large number of articles that are virtually nothing but a collection of links. That's not what Wikipedia is about.) Looie496 (talk) 01:51, 3 September 2014 (UTC)

You may also want to check out this FAQ for some frequent objections to maths articles on Wikipedia. As to your "difficulty level" suggestion: the ambitious aim (that most articles fall well short of) is to have both an accessible introduction and a rigorous treatment in the same article. —Kusma (t·c) 10:14, 3 September 2014 (UTC)

One possible solution is that general articles should be kept general and specific ideas made specific. Maybe this is easier for history than it is for math, but I know that the audience in one's mind really should change based on the topic. Really broad topics need to be "written down" a little, really esoteric topics can be written for the specialist readers who are apt to be reading... I find just about every single treatment of statistics and math that I've blundered across on WP to be written by math people for math people. I believe that the math people hold the WP treatments in high regard (speaking of the readers, not the writers) — but there is a real failure in treatments of basic topics of math, it seems to me. I know that the idea of forking on topics is strongly frowned upon, but perhaps parallel articles Introduction to CONCEPT and [[CONCEPT]] might be the solution, with the former written "lower" and the latter written "higher"... Carrite (talk) 17:41, 3 September 2014 (UTC)

• Isn't this why we have the Simple English Wikipedia already? the panda ɛˢˡ” 11:17, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

Hello, Jimmy!

Based on what you said here, I wrote you on your personal email. The subject line is "The Prince and the Pauper". Thank you! BigSteve (talk) 15:44, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

Super. It might take me until early next week to respond!--Jimbo Wales (talk) 15:56, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

Cool. No rush. BigSteve (talk) 16:48, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

Situation seems to have nothing to do with me.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 10:09, 5 September 2014 (UTC)
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
Dear Sir, my apologies for the delay in posting, I have been very busy working on a new book on Siduri and other Siduri related projects. It has been brought to my attention that Siduri's advice has been completely removed from the Wikipedia page for Siduri. Could someone please explain why? I would very much appreciate your help, support and/or advice moving forwards on this issue. Sincerely, Professor Peter Dyr (Email: Professor.Peter.Dyr@gmail.com) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Prof-Pete-Dyr (talk • contribs) 18:41, 4 September 2014 (UTC) Please note I may be significantly delayed in replying to posts as I will need to speak to my associates regarding this matter.Prof-Pete-Dyr (talk) 19:29, 4 September 2014 (UTC) Dear Professor Dyr, I am a HUGE fan of yours and your work, you inspired me, and you can count on my loyalty Sir. I would politely recommend you (or your associates) consider following up (when you have time) regarding this "Siduri Deletion" matter with the following influential (vis-à-vis Wikipedia) people listed below: Jimmy Wales @Jimmy Wales:, Lila Tretikov @LilaTretikov (WMF):, Lightbreather @LightBreather:, Maggie Dennis @Moonriddengirl:, Doug Weller @Dougweller:, And "Brutus" @Woodroar: ARCHIVE 1 - Empirical information regarding: "Siduri advice deletion issue/lawsuit/war" 1. What is the text and academic source for Siduri’s advice? Gilgamesh, whither are you wandering? Life, which you look for, you will never find. For when the gods created man, they let death be his share, and life withheld in their own hands. Gilgamesh, fill your belly. Day and night make merry. Let days be full of joy, dance and make music day and night. And wear fresh clothes. And wash your head and bathe. Look at the child that is holding your hand, and let your wife delight in your embrace. These things alone are the concern of men.[1] 2. Where was it removed from? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siduri 3. Why is this important. This quote is the first advice for our civilization, for mankind, recorded in 1,800 BC, deleted without justification circa 900BC, re-inserted into public record (Wikipedia) in 21st century, deleted again without justification on July 3th 2014. 4. Who deleted it? 900 BC Deletion => Sin-Leqi-Unninni 2014 AD Deletion => Woodroar (Et tu, Woodroar?) 5. What is the empirical evidence that "Woodroar" removed the advice? The evidence can be found here and is referred, in Wikipedia (WP) jargon as a "Diff" http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Siduri&diff=615488063&oldid=615464042 6. Why was it removed? The publicly stated "reason" is the following edit summary "removing extended quotation and image, see Talk". Unfortunately on the relevant talk page, as far as I can tell, NO explanation is actually given (oh dear...) 7. What can #Anonymous, #anonymous and #AnonSiduri do about it? We have many options... < Please put the advice back on the page ASAP, but no later than: noon PST November 5th 2014. Personal Statement by AnonSiduri: We are Anonymous. We are Legion. We do not Forgive. We do not Forget. Expect us. < — Preceding unsigned comment added by AnonSiduri (talk • contribs) 21:36, 4 September 2014 (UTC) Apparent block-evading post left standing but taken to WP:SPI. Robert McClenon (talk) 21:53, 4 September 2014 (UTC) References ^ Jacobsen, T. (1949) Before Philosophy; The Intellectual Adventure of Ancient Man" by Frankfort, Wilson and Jacobsen, Penguin Books, Baltimore, Maryland, Chapter VII, Page 226. It seems to me that this is bizarre ongoing obsessive POV pushing, by someone trying to reform Wikipedia and the world. Our article about Siduri should summarize what the highest quality reliable academic sources say about Siduri. The notion that Wikipedia should promote some ancient text as the solution to 2014 problems is soapboxing and unacceptable. Cullen328 Let's discuss it 03:45, 5 September 2014 (UTC) I don't think that's the case here. Putting aside the shenanigans from the above account(s), on the face of it, there seems to be a misunderstanding about the quote under discussion. The quote removed by Woodroar seems relevant to the article and its removal had to do with other factors per the talk page. In that case, the quote should be added back as it illustrates the relevant text. Just as a broken clock can be right twice a day, so can Siduri. Viriditas (talk) 03:59, 5 September 2014 (UTC) It should be noted that there is no 'Professor Peter Dyr', except in the imagination of User:Jim-Siduri, who isn't anonymous, and neither is he legion. He is however a monumental time-waster, evidently still under the delusion that Wikipedia is going to assist him in his quest to create a new religion around a minor character in a 4000-year-old epic. In the interests of avoiding any further drain on our time and our sanity, I suggest that in future he be reverted on sight. AndyTheGrump (talk) 03:57, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

Jimbo, why do you think Smart Communications is only going to offer Wikipedia Zero for free until February 3, 2015? Why put an end date on such a noble program? - 2001:558:1400:10:34E1:5EEA:6922:D2AC (talk) 21:01, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

Perhaps it is intended to be run on a trial basis, and would be renewed annually if interest remains steady? Tarc (talk) 21:23, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

I am not privy to the exact details of every single Wikipedia Zero deal, so I'm not the right person to ask. I think Tarc's speculation sounds perfectly reasonable.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 10:09, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

Yesterday the WMF Board passed a resolution recognising Wikimedia Belgium as a chapter. There were 3 opposes; one coming from you.

Can you please explain why you opposed the recognition of Wikimedia Belgium. Thank you 91.183.115.184 (talk) 00:46, 3 September 2014 (UTC)

I second this question. I would also like to hear from Ana Toni and Stu West — the other two opposing votes — why they decided to vote against the recognition of Wikimedia Belgium. odder (talk) 09:47, 3 September 2014 (UTC)

In November 2013 the board took the decision to not recognize new chapter or thematic organizations unless they have been operating as user groups for two years. Variation from this for organizations with pending applications would be considered on a case-by-case basis. Various board members took different but reasonable views on how strict we should be about that. I took the view that the new requirement is a good one, that no harm comes from requiring it (Wikimedia Belgium could be a user group, could incorporate, etc.), and that there was no compelling reason to make an exception. There was nothing in the discussion that involved any negative views on the Belgium chapter - it was more a matter of (in my view) being consistent in our policy.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 12:26, 3 September 2014 (UTC)

A "policy" which community-elected trustees would have stopped had you not lied. --Nemo 11:37, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

Excuse me, who is lying? The vote was 7-3. It didn't matter how I voted. If I had switched my vote, it would have been 6-4. I expect an apology for this insult.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 13:39, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

Point 2, 6-4. All Most community-elected trustees voted against that point, and you did not side with them. If you had, the vote would've ended 5-5. Please stop lying. odder (talk) 19:55, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

@Jimbo Wales:, it would appear @Nemo bis: and @Odder: have found some discrepancies in your prior comments and in your comments from now. Odder is a bureaucrat on Commons, and if it weren't for the link he supplied, I would dismiss his comments as being just another attack on yourself from those fine Commons folk. But the links don't lie. Can you explain why you, as a member of the WMF board, would allow yourself to get caught out in such an obvious lie, and how do you even begin to explain yourself here? 83.101.30.106 (talk) 13:55, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

Jimbo, I'm curious. If your intention on split votes is to always side with the majority of the "community elected" board members, how do you actually effect that? Do you always cast your vote last at board meetings? Do all the trustees cast a straw ballot before actually voting? I thought that in most board meetings, the chair asks "all in favor?" and those who wish to approve say "Aye", and then the chair asks "any opposed?". How would you know how to vote, if you can't expressly determine how the rest of the field is aligning prior to the vote? - 2001:558:1400:10:34E1:5EEA:6922:D2AC (talk) 15:54, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

Why so serious? We all know Belguim doesn't exist anyways- [1] Which I hope is a website meant in humor, though probably not.Camelbinky (talk) 20:23, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

I would appreciate if Jimmy Wales would answer the questions above, regarding the voting process. - 2001:558:1400:10:3182:DB3:5D8E:D2A5 (talk) 15:48, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

Many of us in Belgium are interested in these answers to questions you asked and to questions raised above. Especially seeing as Jimmy's vote could have been a deciding vote in the right circumstances and could have denied us Belgians a Wikimedia-recognised chapter. 83.101.30.106 (talk) 16:46, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

An action that is inconsistent with a statement does not necessarily mean that the statement was a lie. Because lying implies bad faith, it is wrong to make that assumption when asking a question. Count Iblis (talk) 17:59, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

@Jimbo Wales: Thank you for the explanation, good to know what was the case. The Belgian Wikimedians form informal a user group for about 4 years now. During these years we noticed that not having an official organisation according to Belgian law, created for us a lot of difficulty as cultural institutions and governments take us less seriously or very hard to work together with, as they want to work with an existing organisation. That is for me personally the main reason to request to become a chapter. But thanks again for the explanation. Romaine (talk) 23:07, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

Take a step back Come on guys... you can't possibly expect Jimbo to be consistent with absolutely everything he writes. (Would you expect someone to hold you accountable for every single thing you ever said? Would there be zero contradictions in there?) He could be in different frames of mind. Or have new information at his disposal. Or be tired/ not thinking straight when replying. Or a number of other reasons. For goodness sake give the guy a break. He has been under considerable personal attack from a number of editors on his talk page and I am actually rather worried about the toll it is having on his personally. If i were in his shoes, I don't know how I would cope with this cyber bullying...--Coin945 (talk) 18:32, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

"...you can't possibly expect Jimbo to be consistent with absolutely everything he writes..." I think it's rather that there is an expectation that when an inconsistency is pointed out, that there not be an automatic denial that there is any inconsistency at all, every time. Meanwhile, I am still interested in how Jimmy actually engages his votes on the board, so that in close votes he aligns with the majority of the community-elected seats. Does he cast the final vote? Does he ascertain prior to the vote how each member intends to vote? I think it would be funny if one day in the future the board held a vote on something silly, like whether the red, blue, or green is the most influential color on the Wikimedia Foundation logo, and have all the non-community board members indicate that they're rallying around red, while the community-appointed seats act like they are vigorously in favor of blue -- so it looks like a split vote is eminent. Then, when the votes are cast, the trustees ALL SWITCH, leaving Jimbo sitting there with his hand raised for blue, and all the community trustees voting for red, and then this Talk page would combust with outrage over Jimbo betraying his promise to side with community seats in narrow board votes. I would definitely give the Wikimedia Foundation a $5 donation, if they did that. Oh, wait... - 2001:558:1400:10:AC98:F4CF:7337:D1BF (talk) 19:22, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

In two threads today (4 September 2014), Jimbo Wales has said: "In the old days some people would have been banned by now for that kind of behavior. It is a shame that we tolerate disruption - it costs us a lot of good editors." and "I'm hoping we can move to an understanding that we don't have to put up with people who have nothing useful to offer other than rancor." Does Jimbo have any suggestions as to what individual editors, the English Wikipedia community, or the WMF can or should do about his concerns? Robert McClenon (talk) 18:08, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

See terms of use linked at the bottom of the page. Section 12 says: In certain (hopefully unlikely) circumstances it may be necessary for either ourselves or the Wikimedia community or its members (as described in Section 10) to terminate part or all of our services, terminate these Terms of Use, block your account or access, or ban you as a user. I didn't realize the Foundation itself could do so, and I assume even if "community" objected. I guess at some point they have to do a profit and loss calculations - dropping how many proudly and chronically uncivil editors who do a lot of editing will loose what, as opposed to enforcing civility for actively and hopefully keeping and bringing in how many editors who may potentially will do how much editing? Carolmooredc (Talkie-Talkie) 21:50, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

As I have said elsewhere, disruption is in the eye of the beholder. One should be careful about what they wish for, because they might get it... Carrite (talk) 16:29, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

1. I think the WMF can do little directly. It would be pretty difficult for them to get directly involved in banning uncivil users, and hard for them to do a good job of it. One reason for this is that extreme cases are quite easy and the community does a good job of bans. The difficult cases are people who go around causing disruption and abusing people but who have some kind of support network and produce good content. In these cases, community opinion often ends up divided. It would be hard for the Foundation to know what to do.

2. The Foundation could help us by doing more studies on what causes people to leave the community. I think what is often lacking is the empirical evidence needed to convince some fence-sitters how much damage some people are doing. If you write 3 featured articles but chase away through your incivility 10 potentially great editors who would have written 30 featured articles, then you are a net loss to the project. I think that's often the case with some of these characters, but we have no way at the moment to empirically demonstrate it.

3. The English Wikipedia community can beef up policies in various ways to make it clearer that "producing good content" does not give one a free pass to abuse, insult, or harass others through uncivil behavior.

4. I recommend that people who care about this issue work hard to think about how we might improve our ArbCom processes so that more cases can be handled and in a quicker fashion. Barring that, I would say being careful to elect "civility hawks" to the ArbCom would be useful. When a user who has a long history of uncivil interactions with others comes before ArbCom, it should often be a simple open and shut case. For a variety of reasons (including that policy isn't strong enough in some areas so ArbCom can feel constrained) that sometimes doesn't happen, and this has follow-on repercussions with behavior across the site as uncivil people feel safe to carry on.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 10:19, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

Do you believe that editors who engage in dishonesty are inherently engaging in uncivil behavior, or is that a different problem? - 2001:558:1400:10:3182:DB3:5D8E:D2A5 (talk) 15:47, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

Your continued ban evasion and trolling is dishonest. It is uncivil and disruptive. When will you stop? JoeSperrazza (talk) 16:53, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

To whom are you speaking? I don't know if 2001:558:1400:10:3182:DB3:5D8E:D2A5 is Greg Kohs, and you don't know if 2001:558:1400:10:3182:DB3:5D8E:D2A5 is Greg Kohs. But here is a little quote from WPO that was written by the dreaded Greg Kohs that might provide food for thought: "I believe the first 4 digits do identify the service provider, so if you see 2601, you know it's someone on a Comcast router. That narrows the sockpuppet investigation to perhaps 20 million households and businesses. Oh, wait... public Xfinity WiFi hotspots will also use that 2601 address, and those are open to non-customers of Comcast for two 1-hour sessions per month, so you're probably looking at more like 50 million possible households and businesses who could be "guilty" of editing from a 2601 IPv6. Good luck, Wikipedia!" We have an unworkable system of banning at Wikipedia and it is a product of the decision to allow IP editing and instant establishment of accounts without provision of a verified email address. It's a choice of either rationalizing the registration process and kicking out IP editing or living with unidentifiable socks. It seems a simple call, but I'm in the minority... Carrite (talk) 22:18, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

Here is an ANI posting regarding problems at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Countering systemic bias/Gender gap task force. (Obviouisly of interest given last couple month's disussions on the general topic. Carolmooredc (Talkie-Talkie) 04:51, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

Indeed. In the old days some people would have been banned by now for that kind of behavior. It is a shame that we tolerate disruption - it costs us a lot of good editors.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 14:05, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

I agree with Jimbo that it is a shame that disruptive behavior on the English Wikipedia is not dealt with quickly and effectively. I would like to ask the founder of Wikipedia whether he has any specific ideas on how to address disruption on the English Wikipedia. I understand that he isn't planning to use the reserved power that he still has to ban users. Does he have any ideas as to how to minimize disruption? Robert McClenon (talk) 15:41, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

I don't expect this to be dealt with anytime soon. There's too many implications for entrenched informal power blocks in en.wiki for action to be dealt with 'quickly and effectively'. As it is, the ANI incident has been handballed into the wiki-ether as someone else's problem... AnonNep (talk) 17:55, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

It is disgraceful that millions of people get their information from a male dominated (85% or more) editing community that regularly dismisses women's complaints about and attempts to address incivility toward individuals and toward projects like the Gender gap task force. Lightbreather (talk) 19:22, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

• It's the kind of dispute that ARBCOM should take on. JMP EAX (talk) 00:07, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

I would welcome that.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 09:58, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

So would I, Jimbo. CMDC has been in the ArbCom spotlight before and this might be a way to resolve the issue of the "troublesome priest" once and for all, if not "disruptive behaviour" generally. She, in particular, almost never comes up with a decent set of diffs to support her complaints and then she and her colleagues wonder why those complaints are rejected. It isn't as if CMDC is stupid or inexperienced at ANI filings etc, it's just that she generally goes there for the wrong reason, ie: in a whingeing attempt to stifle discussion elsewhere, most of which usually consists of her own TLDR stuff. That's who you appear to be supporting and, I suspect, you are doing so because of the name of one of the people whom she cited rather than because you have had time to review all of the goings-on. Shutting off on-topic discussion is the antithesis of Wikipedia's supposed collaborative ethos but I'm not entirely surprised that you support those who do it: censorship of others and self-blinkering is the last resort of those without answers. - Sitush (talk) 18:33, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

• @Robert McClenon - "Disruption" and battleground behavior is in the eye of the beholder. Carrite (talk) 12:30, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

Carrite appears to be missing the point of my question, which was how Jimbo would deal with behavior that he characterized as disruptive. Also, the statement that disruption and battleground behavior are in the eye of the beholder, if taken literally, appears to mean that "anything goes", and that Wikipedia should be an anarchy. I don't think Carrite, who is a civil editor who does not engage in disruption or battleground behavior, really means what it appears that he means. In some cases, including the case in point, reasonable editors can disagree as to whether particular behavior is disruptive or is battleground behavior. I don't think Carrite really means what he wrote. It is true that reasonable editors can sometimes, including in this particular case, disagree. Robert McClenon (talk) 22:04, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

Wars against purported disruption can themselves be taken to be forms of disruption, that's my point. The theme of the keynote speaker at WikiCon NYC2014 — that there is a dichotomy between civil, friendly editors on the one hand and cold-hearted bullies hiding behind the slogan of "free speech" on the other — seems to me a false one. Everyone is a mixture of the kindly and the crabby at some level and the question of who is the provocateur and who is the victim can indeed be a matter of perspective. Free Speech is important, it protects us all. This isn't to say there isn't a problem with periodic instances of bullying behavior, only that solving the matter is not so simple as having a politically righteous self-appointed Civility Police or paid staff at WMF painting red As on the foreheads of ummmm, Adverse people, and banning them from the community. Such a scenario would itself be disruptive, creating more turmoil than it would resolve. There are people who simply enjoy confrontation and thrive on it and they would be the very first volunteers to "police" the so-called "uncivil people"... There is no easy solution. There has always been that sort of tension among volunteers at WP and always will be. Some of the best content people (and some of the best academics) are prickly personalities, putting it politely, and people will differ — sometimes heatedly — over what is important to them. Carrite (talk) 22:54, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

• Yet the clear personal attacks, incivility, and disruption are somehow invisible to the admins and users at ANI. EvergreenFir (talk) Please {{re}} 15:28, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

• Obviously, it was not clear from the evidence given, then. - Sitush (talk) 18:33, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

@Sitush: Saying a user is "talking bullocks", that a user is spouting "ravings", is "[not] in full possession of your faculties", and calling someone "sneaky" are pretty fickin clear. EvergreenFir (talk) Please {{re}} 19:08, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

What was also clear was that no admin felt it necessary to take action. It seems that no action taken by an admin short of indeffing everyone will resolve the situation, which makes it ripe for ArbCom. KonveyorBelt 19:16, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

There's been no specific discussion on proposals for topic bans, interaction bans, or blocks and only a couple of admins are even participating. Honestly I know little about ARBCOM and when it should be involved. EvergreenFir (talk) Please {{re}} 19:55, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

Oh, it was just closed by an admin. EvergreenFir (talk) Please {{re}} 19:57, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

Re: The close: It would be nice if Wikihounding and constant criticism and demands for answers were noted for being what they are. But I liked this part: "The editors who have been accused of disruption need to realize that while it is ok to disagree with someone’s point of view, doing it in a brusque or rude manner will only make it less likely that the other side will actually consider your point of view, rather than simply focus on your attitude and ultimately end up in an entirely unproductive discussion like the one you see below here. In summary, no action will come of this discussion, and all of the involved parties here need to work this out amongst themselves like mature adults." Probably the only solution is individuals constantly speaking out against bad behavior til they stop it. If "act like mature adults" does the job, that's good enough for me. We shall see. Carolmooredc (Talkie-Talkie) 00:51, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

Yes, it's lovely to see you cherrypicking again. Of course you liked one part, but the other part you choose to ignore. Only an involved idiot does that. - Sitush (talk) 01:01, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

@Sitush: Is there some virus going around making people incapable of being polite and refraining from personal attacks? EvergreenFir (talk) Please {{re}} 05:05, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

[Insert: Note that this is the same Sitush who wrote here on July 30: “The sooner the misconceived "Task Force" (why not "Project", instead of a military-inspired term that implies official status?) is disbanded, the sooner harmony will be restored.” Note that Countering systemic bias wikiproject itself calls the seven sub-projects "task forces". Carolmooredc (Talkie-Talkie) 11:02, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

The editors who followed the links Carolmooredc cited as "evidence" for her complaints remarked that she linked only to other occasions on which she'd made the same undocumented claims and accusations. She repeatedly declined to respond both in the links and on this ANI to straightforward requests for clarification and documentation of her assertions. That's why the thread went nowhere, despite Carolmooredc's having canvassed for support on various sympathetic Project pages. SPECIFICO talk 03:04, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

[Insert]: Usually a link of my complaint includes what I was complaining about. I think the ANI allowed people to air their views - or publicize their prejudices, as the case may be. All part of the messy consensus on policy process, I would say. Carolmooredc (Talkie-Talkie) 18:23, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

[insert]: No editor stated that they didn't understand your complaints. It was that your links, which you claimed to be documentary evidence, were instead merely additional instances of the same unsupported complaints. SPECIFICO talk 18:41, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

[Insert: I often let SPECIFICO have the last word, for obvious reasons. Carolmooredc (Talkie-Talkie) 19:45, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

It has now been 24 hours, so I have posted the page ban request, as discussed. —Neotarf (talk) 06:12, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

Talk pages and policy pages should always be open to everyone who is not a banned user to participate unless there has been a formal process (normally ArbCom but escalating warnings followed by admin actions can work) to tell them they must stop. The current status quo, while not perfect of course, cannot be easily improved upon.

But for user talk pages I think there is an improvement that could be made quite easily to the software and which makes a lot of sense based on what we (the people of the Internet) have learned over the years. I think it should be possible for anyone to block particular other users from their own user talk pages. Much like a block at Facebook, it needn't be accompanied by any public shaming or big fight, just a quiet "I don't want to hear from this person on my talk page anymore."

Some people just don't get along. And some people really do make a nuisance of themselves by repeatedly posting nasty remarks without content. And it makes it stressful and not very fun to work in Wikipedia if someone is doing that to you. Right now your only real hope is to warn them (i.e. yell back) or ask an admin to intervene or, in some cases, file an ArbCom case - all of those are high-cost ways of dealing with harassment and all of those also lead to drama (accusations, counter-accusations, etc.)

Just a simple click to prevent someone from coming to your user page strikes me as useful.

What are the downsides? Well, one might argue that it would reduce useful dialog about articles, but I don't really see how. Dialog about articles should mostly be handled on the article talk pages. This is about personal user pages.

One might also argue that it would be a first step toward people thinking that they "own" their talk page and can do whatever they want with it - but that isn't really the case.

I don't know for sure how difficult this would be technically but I think I know: pretty trivial.

Opinions?--Jimbo Wales (talk) 14:16, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

We already have the ability to ask people to stop posting on our personal talk pages, which the "opponent" is expected to do except for posting required notifications. I don't like the idea of a forced option to do the same, which would be logged, stop notifications and so on. Worm^TT(talk) 14:24, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

Actually, I'd go so far as to say you're not familiar with current workings on Wikipedia here, Jimmy. In almost all situations I've come across, people respect a request to keep off a talk page and administrators (such as myself) are even willing to enforce it. Why? Because a request to stay off a talk page is an attempt to disengage from a dispute or at least reduce the personalisation of a dispute. I've told a few people about the hypocrisy of asking someone to leave their page and then turning up on theirs, but even that is uncommon. The idea that Arbcom intervenes in a talk page upset is far divorced from reality. Were we to go down this route, would you include, say administrators giving warnings? If not, would you not be creating a new class divide - people who can be banned from a talk page and people who cannot. Worm^TT(talk) 14:34, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

Telling someone not to post on your talk page can be work and not readily accepted I'd be happy with a click and go away feature. Saffron Blaze (talk) 01:44, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

It seems odd that you would think that I'm not familiar with current workings on Wikipedia, since I'm here nearly every day. And perhaps you are unaware that there is an arbcom case underway right now about a dispute on this very talk page. The problem with telling someone to stay away is that it has to be a public action, an argument. A quiet approach allows the banned person to walk away with dignity and actually not mention it to anyone if they don't want to do so. Reduction of drama (like public requests "Stay off my talk page!") is a good thing. What's the downside?--Jimbo Wales (talk) 15:05, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

I can certainly see how the proposal would create less drama in certain situations. I've had numerous editors hound me and to block them from my user page would have been very much needed without having to get an admin involved. The problem I see is that sometimes editors need to be warned or spoken to about content if they continue to edit inappropriately or whatever. Say for instance an editor keeps reverting or is adding content which goes against consensus. If they had such a right then they could simply opt to refuse to discuss it and ignore the concerns and I don't think that that would be such a positive thing. If you introduced the right, I'd say the privilege should have to be earned and given to trusted editors, much like rollback and autopatrolled.♦ Dr. Blofeld 16:16, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

In addition to the potential for ratcheting up drama, requests to stay off a talk page can be a kind of public acknowledgment that the offending user has been successful in irritating the talk page owner. The current system of requiring open acknowledgment in order to forbid them from one's talk page is not ideal and may be psychologically counterproductive (See WP:DENY) --Noren (talk) 15:38, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

Jimmy, I'm sorry if I caused you offence by saying you're not familiar with the current workings here - here being the operative word. Wikipedia is massive and I don't believe any editor has an all encompassing view of the encyclopedia. On this topic, I don't believe we need to change anything, it works as it is. Throughout my time on Wikipedia, I've spoken in a non-confrontational manner, it's not always easy, but almost always possible - just because something is public doesn't mean it's an argument. By the way, I am aware of the Arbcom case in question - I'm one of the drafting arbitrators... perhaps you're not aware who I am! Worm^TT(talk) 07:10, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

@JW. The problem with your idea is that most of the disruption you experience is caused by socks, which are a direct and inevitable byproduct of the (I believe misplaced) desire to allow IP editing and instantaneous registration at WP. A talk page "silent block" would be no more effective than a real block currently is in eliminating a committed harasser. And, as Dave/Worm says (although phrased impolitely), the number of people who don't "follow" a request to keep off a page is very small — because failure to do so is actionable as harassment... Carrite (talk) 15:51, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

@Worm, that class divide could be somewhat balanced out by making admins unable to use the feature on their own talk pages. An administrator should never block other users anyway, as they're accountable for their actions and have to give explanations when those are requested. Diego (talk) 20:30, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

I'm concerned about the other way round to be honest, on the one hand we have admins who can be quite pushy and perhaps should stay away from certain editors, but on the other, we have disruptive editors who would quite happily ban all admins from their page. Do we give non-admins the ability to remove admins from their page? I don't think we can - because the majority of admin actions outweigh the small incidents of abusiveness - thereby leaving the class divide. There are more downsides, I'd expect these to be logged somewhere, so we'd be creating enemy lists - something that the community used to be strongly against. How would you enforce it against non-logged in editors - IP addresses change regularly. Indeed, the banned user case Jimmy is talking about just above would be completely unaffected by this change (unless Jimmy were to remove the edit warring parties). What about notifications, required by some areas of Wikipedia? Would you allow person A to block person B on their talk page and then go to person B's talk page and carry on the discussion? That would have the effect of sanitising user talk pages - making editors appear to be better editors than they perhaps are. Worm^TT(talk) 07:18, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

I would oppose this as proposed. It has too much potential to fragment discussions; you said dialog "should" be handled on article talk pages, which I agree with, but in practice there's plenty of communication on user talk pages. Let's say I have a minor argument with user A, and user A blocks me from his talk page. A year later, user A and user B are discussing something and I want to join in (and let's say user A would be perfectly happy with me doing so), but user A has forgotten about the block. I might support it if the blocks expired after a week or a month by default, but that's potentially confusing for users. IRW0 (talk) 14:26, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

Ok it sounds like you are proposing a good refinement of the original idea. One possibility is to enable private communication of a request to be unblocked. Just brainstorming here but suppose when I click to post on your talk page, forgetting that we had a spat a year ago, it says "Sorry, but IRW0 doesn't allow you to post to their talk page. If you'd like to request an unblock, here's a text form to send a message. Probably best to be sweet and nice to them and if there's anything you'd like to apologize for, now is probably a good time." The tools we use should facilitate reconciliation and drama reduction.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 15:10, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

Hmm...where would the message go? I have email disabled, as I'm sure many editors do, so that doesn't work. I guess you could get an unblock request notification, but then we have to worry about people spamming notifications after being blocked; how often can you ask someone to unblock you? (Not to mention it's far harder to police notifications than public talk page messages. Also, I'm not sure I like the idea of a user-entered message in a notification.) There'd also have to be a blocklist for people to edit, like the watchlist, but that's more work and more maintenance for the user (and still no guarantee people won't end up with a ton of old entries.) There could be some indication that you have a user blocked (perhaps a tag in revision histories?), but that might be an unwanted reminder to the person doing the blocking. I think the combination of an editable blocklist plus a default expiry timer (which users could maybe increment after creating the block) could work, but is too complicated. I can see other problems cropping up, too: for example, if I was a vandal, I might take a look at who's actively reverting stuff and preemptively block those users so they can't warn me. (Do we restrict blocking to autoconfirmed users, then...?) IRW0 (talk) 15:38, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

The message could show up in your notifications. Or could be a dismissable box the next time you're online. I would say that a monthly request to be unblocked would be enough. So if your first request is ignored, you can't send another one for a month. As for the vandal example, I think a vandal who is going to block people from notifying them isn't going to listen to them anyway so what's the difference?--Jimbo Wales (talk) 15:45, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

Why? If you want someone to stay off your page, they'll usually stay off. Plus, some edit warrior would block everyone who disagrees with him, leading to IDHT. KonveyorBelt 14:51, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

Even having read the above posts, this seems to me like an obviously good idea. Some of the most infantile edit-wars you see around the place are users fighting over posts made to user talk pages. And short of that, there is a steady undercurrent of flaming going on as "unwelcome" posts are made sporadically on users' talk pages. They don't necessarily add up to much in an individual basis, but they are one of the contributors to the atmosphere here. But knowing how conservative the community is, I doubt this will get off the ground. DeCausa (talk) 15:00, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

If someone is edit warring and is the sort of person who would block everyone who disagrees with him from his talk page, then the solution is to ban the user. People like that aren't here to build an encyclopedia. I'm hoping we can move to an understanding that we don't have to put up with people who have nothing useful to offer other than rancor.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 15:13, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

I have asked Jimbo above whether he has any ideas on how to deal with "people who have nothing useful to offer other than rancor". Robert McClenon (talk) 16:04, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

If the idea is to permit an editor to block specific other editors from posting to the subject editor's talk page, I see no harm and some benefit to the feature. It is true that a few editors would misuse the feature by blocking anyone who tries to reason with them, but such editors wind up being indeffed as not her to build the encyclopedia. There is one special case that does come up that needs to be addressed, and that is required notices. If editor A has blocked editor B from posting to editor A's talk page, and then editor B reports editor A at WP:ANI as a troll, how is editor A notified? Should editor B include a comment at WP:ANI requesting that someone else provide the required notice? (Email notice would be satisfactory if editor A has enabled it.) Allowing a block of talk page posts is a good idea, in my opinion, but how should required notices be dealt with? Robert McClenon (talk) 15:31, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

I'm sure some sort of noticeboard-specific ping system could easily be created. In fact, even with the current ping, the formal notices are now somewhat redundant anyway. DeCausa (talk) 15:40, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

This is a good but presumably relatively minor point. B could ask others to request it of A. My longterm view is that many of the processes that we use are arcane and hard to follow and should be significantly more automated. If we had that, then the notification would come from the system.

Imagine a new "newsfeed" type of feature. If someone files a formal request, then you get notified of it in your newsfeed, which would also contain notifications of various kinds relating to people you edit with frequently or articles on your watchlist, etc. Nice friendly things like "You are a member of Wikiproject Bridges. There's a new editor who has edited 3 bridge articles in the past two weeks, would you like to go say hi?" I think we should all be excited about boldly reinventing the way things work around here.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 15:41, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

I have nothing against welcoming newbies, but that feature is much too like facebook, which actively encourages you to friend "people you may know". As for the blocking requests, that could be built into Echo quite easily (in a conceptual sense anyway). BethNaught (talk) 15:49, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

I have another comment about the proposed idea. It should only be available to registered editors, not to IP addresses, because IP addresses change, and an unregistered editor could inherit a previous opt-out from notifications. Robert McClenon (talk) 16:04, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

So, in short, we're talking about the "ignore poster" feature that's been available on most message boards for at least a decade now? And notifications are also nothing new on PHBB-style boards. It's really nothing new or bold, but rather catching up with other collaborative platforms. Intothatdarkness 16:13, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

What if an editor preemptively blocked messages from all admins, what would happen to Discretionary Sanctions warnings, block notices, etc? What happens if a person posts content to their talk page that needs to be reverted, and then blocks anyone who tries to revert it, requiring a new editor for each revert until the offender is blocked and talk page revoked? What about socks who know the right people to block, as there are only a few people particularly active in tracking LTA socks? Monty₈₄₅ 16:32, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

The "ignore feature" Intothatdarkness mentions above gives moderatorsimmunity from being ignored. Count Iblis (talk) 19:12, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

I think this would be very detrimental to the user talk pages. As a person reading the page, you would never know how many people were blocked from responding, so you'd never know if what people agree on there has any real consensus. Worse, it would tend to stifle conversation since anyone posting would always be at risk of being tossed out without explanation. You'd really have to say to yourself and others over and over, "That's just a user talk page. It's only for XXXX, you can't count on it to mean anything." Wnt (talk) 17:08, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

That's the position right now. Any so-called "consensus" on a user talk page counts for nothing, except perhaps in rdlation to that talk page. DeCausa (talk) 17:21, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

This looks like a very good idea. This may prevent the need to formally impose and police interaction bans which have proved to cause problems. Also, this sort of a block from posting on talk page is far more likely to induce behavioral changes, allowing the block to be lifted (the offending editor will likely behave better in other venues too). E.g. suppose that I have problems with an editor and cannot restrain myself from engaging in personal attacks. That editor then blocks me from his talk page. But I am obviously highly motivated to communicate with that editor privately. Then the only option available will be to modify my behavior so that the editor would be willing to lift the block.

In contrast, the way we would handle this now would involve a discussion at AN/I where a finding against me would have to be accepted, which is likely not going to be accepted by me. While I'm then likely to stick to any restrictions, I would likely not see my own behavior as being at fault. So, the restriction would likely be in place for a long time and my motivation to get through to the editor may lead me to stalk the editor which may lead to additional sanctions. Meanwhile, my general behavior would not improve at all because I never accepted that this was a relevant problem. Count Iblis (talk) 19:04, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

On the contrary, it's a childish idea that's got nothing to do interaction bans. Eric Corbett 19:10, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

Eric, please stay off my user talk page.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 10:04, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

I'll be only to happy to stay off your page. You of course are reciprocally obliged to stay off mine. Eric Corbett 11:35, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Jimmy, I've pointed this out to Eric - but I would like to object to your request. Simply, I think it's unfair that you are almost certainly discussing him below - even if you are not doing it specifically - and asking him not to comment on those discussions. Worm^TT(talk) 11:38, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

Well, just my opinion here on that angle, but y'know, "tough cookies". Corbett has been burning bridges here for years, that's the price of being who he is. Tarc (talk) 12:32, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

Pot — Kettle. (Is that a n-dash, a dash, or a m-dash in the MOS and may I optionally use spaces?) Carrite (talk) 16:00, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

Interaction bans are often imposed after long term personal fights between editors. Thing is that the sort of behavior is itself childish, and then the sort of measures that may be considered childish may be more effective. Jimbo's point about "high-cost ways of dealing with harassment" is fundamentally due to the fact that the processes we're using now assume that these people behave like grown ups, while in fact they behave like small children. Count Iblis (talk) 19:20, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

My first impulse was that this is a good idea, and it may have some merit, but it doesn't address the underlying problem of incivility, which underlies a lot of talk-page rancor, IMO. Also, imagine this real world scenario. You manage an office with 100 people, 5 of whom are known for entering others' personal spaces on a regular basis to confront them aggressively about any manner of things, some business related and some not. How would you handle that? Lightbreather (talk) 20:31, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

In an office setting? As a manager, you let the 5 people know that their behavior is not acceptable and that if it continues they will be let go.

I think this idea does actually address a great deal of the underlying problem with incivility, albeit imperfectly. It would certainly eliminate most incivility from user talk pages immediately, as people would have an easy and non-confrontational tool to nip it in the bud.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 10:04, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

I have asked a few people to stay off my talk page, and find that it only works about 25% of the time. Reverting without an edit summary seems to be more effective. —Neotarf (talk) 22:59, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

• Alas Wikipedia has no support for kill files nor for hellbanning. JMP EAX (talk) 00:11, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

I'm all for it as a start. I have started reverting them with note that it's a wikihounder for future reference. (I just had a user whose been banned from my page for over a year, been taken to ani and higher about it, do it again twice anyway because he always gets away with it!) Of course, then there has to be a way to make sure if the banned person needs to notify the individual an official notice, it can be done. That might be the harder part.

Of course, reading Count Iblis post above gave me an original (for me anyway) thought: we may have to start a "political party". We'll put up our own candidates for admins, arbitration, etc... Ouch... I'm getting a headache already thinking about it Carolmooredc (Talkie-Talkie) 00:18, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

If you can wait a year or so, they'll probably annoy a few more people and get indeffed, but by that time, chances are you will have picked up another one or three. —Neotarf (talk) 01:16, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

If you're planning that can I suggest starting a new project. Women/feminism is a broad church. Using a WP project to run such a project may be seen as more reflective of individual member politics. AnonNep (talk) 01:22, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

Neotarf: The good news is that Eric Corbett and I have officially banned each other from our talk pages, so that's one less to worry about. (Knock wood.) The long term one must be a stubborn taurus like me to keep it up so long...oi!!

AnonNep: Not quite sure of your point. There is a feminism wikiproject which focuses on articles but would be interested in more women joining. Gender studies actually had a gender gap subproject which I just found today, but went dormant. Gender gap task force is about rationally looking at why women don't join and then dealing with the issues we can deal with as a project.

Unfortunately, a few people seem too hung up on their ideologies and are against any organized effort to recruit women. But more it's about the fear that women will start to effectively organize against the grossest incivility, something the least feminist women probably would have as big a problem with that as the most feminist ones. And I think there fear is warranted.

Now I personally can give incivility better than I get it and am constantly in self-control mode. But I know that given the double standard I am not be allowed to be very uncivil, so that's why I'm all for civility! Carolmooredc (Talkie-Talkie) 01:34, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

A forum to discuss ideas and policy, that will ultimately need to be agreed by the broader community, as with everything. But you wrote we may have to start a "political party". We'll put up our own candidates for admins, arbitration, etc... Ouch... I'm getting a headache already thinking about it . I suggested keeping politics out of it. AnonNep (talk) 23:33, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

Adding my belated two cents' worth, I think it's an excellent idea, simply because it gives editors another option when talk page problems arise. It's not one to be taken lightly, but I don't buy the doom-and-gloom predictions opposing its use above. Having been hounded by two editors for really minor things (my user page is still semi-protected), both of whom refused to honor my request that they stay off my talk page, I would have appreciated the option to block an editor from my talk page. Like anything else we can do, it's a choice. Those editors who don't care for it don't have to use such a function, but I resent the "I don't like it" argument as a basis for denying it to me. Recent days and recent ANI discussions make it clear we have a subset of editors whose behavior is sufficiently aggressive, belittling or infantile that more draconian action may be needed when it arrives on an editor's talk page. And as a woman attempting to edit in a sexist, hostile environment all too often, blocking an editor from my talk page an option I'd like to have. --Drmargi (talk) 20:26, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

Part two

We now have a collection of of opinions about this kind of feature - mostly positive I would say but some negative and some interesting thoughts about how it might be implemented and how to mitigate any possible negatives. So now I want us to brainstorm about what kind of rollout process would make sense both to the community and to the Foundation if something like this were to be developed. To be 100% clear - I have not talked to the Foundation about this at all, and this is not (to my knowledge) a currently planned feature. This is a purely hypothetical discussion about how to improve the process of software rollouts to minimize drama and maximize effective improvements on the software.

First, there are empirical questions. Would this really help with civility and harmonious editing? There's no way to know without testing it. Would this really lead to any significant number of people using it for bad effect? There's no way to know without testing it.

Second, there's a self-selection problem if it were simply enabled as an opt-in "gadget". There would likely be two kinds of people who would specifically opt-in to it - people who have an existing problem with one or more specific harassers, and people who would like to use it to stop good people (admins) from issuing warnings. Neither of those use cases is exactly "usual".

So my thought is that something like this (and, indeed, most new features) should be rolled out incrementally to randomly selected users. First to 1% of all users. Then 2%. Then 5%. Then 20%. At each stage specific feedback would be gathered and anything going wrong would give rise to a recalibration of the feature or perhaps complete abandonment of the idea as unworkable.

What are some other considerations that might come into play here? I'd like to hear from people who *like* the idea of this particular feature but also from people who *do not* like the idea. Because the purpose of this thought process is to work on what really makes sense to us as a community in terms of a rollout procedure.

Here's what we know doesn't work (and if you're a regular reader of this talk page you have heard me say this a lot lately): the Foundation develops the feature without deeply consulting the community first, then rolls it out to everyone all at once, and people are shocked and alarmed and an RfC/vote process is started to demand it be turned off. The problem is not really the community's final say on what features the website has - the problem is that this *process* has led us to a sorry state in which real problems are eternally unsovled with no experimentation possible to try new kinds of solutions.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 13:53, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

Focussing on the general case, since my point would not apply to this specific one. Your phrasing implies that participation would be forced, without warning, and could not be opted out of. How pissed that would make people.

The chosen users should be warned say 10 days before rollout and given the option not to take part. Those who opt out (an interesting metric in itself) would be replaced by a new tranche chosen with say 5 days warning (again, opt out offered).

One problem with such partial rollout is that people who could help diagnose faults could not help to do so. An opt in would also be necessary so they could do so. BethNaught (talk) 14:03, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

With relation to your suggestion above, a 100% rollout would effectively equal an opt in only trial, since the way to opt out is to not use it. The real conversation we should be having is about the big elephant in the room... BethNaught (talk) 14:05, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

As requested, some quick thoughts. I'd say at the outset that I'm not convinced of the proposal; one of the major problems I think we have on the wiki is the lack of communication between people who fundamentally disagree about the issues on the encyclopaedia, and my initial reaction to the proposal of a feature which makes it easier for such groups to ignore one another, or to limit dialogue, is that this would have bad consequences (I'm a fan of Cass Sunstein's book Republic.com 2.0 in this regard). But that's just an initial opinion, and your question was what a decent process would look like for taking the discussion/implementation forward.

I'd recommend... firstly, to take a lot of time and effort front up to make the argument for change utterly irresistible:

• Construct a really strong, well-backed analytic argument that explains why grouchy posting on user talk pages causes editor loss, and in turn reduces the strength of the encyclopaedia (is this argument actually correct - is there any hard evidence? Is this the real problem, or are there other reasons why some highly productive content editors become increasingly grouchy over the course of their career on the wiki? Are we treating the symptom rather than the cause? etc.)
• Have a powerful argument about how this appeals to the core history of the wiki, and is an extension of our existing traditions, rather than overturning them. (Would an automated "revert" edit function that generated a normal part of the page history be easier to sell than a special "can't edit" effect that was never recorded on the page, for example?)
• Build up a good explanation for all the little, sensible details as to how this will really work in practice (e.g. how do non-admins leave discretionary or non-discretionary warning notices on a user's page who is blocking us? how do we easily know if a user is blocking another editor? Why can't we just carry on manually reverting users we don't want on our pages using the existing "undo" button? Won't this just push the problem onto article talk pages?)
• And lastly, be able to appeal to a wide range of values in the editorial community (e.g. if someone like me thinks that communication is fundamentally a good thing, why should I want to water down that value through such a change?)

Spend ages over this, because ideally you only want to roll out a change when almost everyone - particularly the people you don't naturally like talking to or working with! - are thinking "what a good idea, please, please just let's do it".

In terms of implementation, my advice would then be the usual one to "fail early, fail often"; design the development to discover the mistakes and issues really early on in the project in small bits, when it is easy to cancel them and change course, rather than later when the project and the sponsoring organisation is politically committed to them, and it is difficult to give up and try something completely different. Group-sourcing code and testing works really well in this regard, particularly if you've done the "case for change" well, and you've got a community who are right behind getting the change delivered and pulled through.

Lastly, be brutally honest. If a change is going to make a particular part of the community's life harder (e.g. if this required more work by admins, say) be really straight about it early on. They may still be irritated, but less so than if it wasn't mentioned along the way. Hchc2009 (talk) 15:53, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

• @JW. Well, first you clearly need to brainstorm on how to identify an editor software need. One person coming up with what they think is a good idea and vetting it for 24 hours on their user talk page without a publicly-notified commentary process is absolutely not different than the current situation. Maybe I'm too cynical, but it probably goes like this: managers attend a retreat and visualize what they would like to see in the software and write down their ideas on white boards and have discussions about this concept and that before setting the wheels of the development machine in motion.

In reality things should start with scientific surveys of the reader/casual editor/active volunteer bases (or simultaneous surveys of all three of these definable and identifiable categories) to identify actual needs. THEN there needs to be a robust community discussion process of not less than one week with a public notice made. Only then should the engineering peeps be brought into it. ONLY THEN maybe we can start to talk about how a specific feature should be rolled out... In this hypothetical case, there is no actual need for the hypothetical software idea you favor, so it is quite difficult to theorize how it should be rolled out... Every software tweak probably implies a slightly different roll out strategy, depending on which group of users is affected and how much. Carrite (talk) 16:17, 5 September 2014 (UTC)Last edit: Carrite (talk) 17:10, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

Lest I be thought to be dodging your question, I think that it might be profitable to approach software roll outs like Wikipedia originally approached the question of Notability — by detailing what it is NOT, with the implication that things not so excluded were probably in. I'll start: (1) Software rollout is NOT part of the debugging process. Beta testing needs to happen in isolation, unlike what we saw with VE. (2) Software rollout is NOT a silent surprise attack — it must be made in accord with actual community needs and with community consent. (3) Software rollout should NOT be an English-first process. There are more than 100 Wikipedias and dozens with active volunteer communities. It makes no sense to use En-WP as a proving ground merely for the convenience of the English-speaking developers when there are less risky places to do A/B testing and so forth. I'm sure there are half a dozen more NOTs... Carrite (talk) 17:20, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

I think I'm going to start a thread on the above at Wikipediocracy. There are a couple — how shall I say this? — insightful but abrasive personalities there that might take this idea and run with it, with potentially fruitful results... Carrite (talk) 17:32, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

If this is to be a serious discussion in needs to be held in the proper place. Village pump proposals to be specific. True community input is needed at the brainstorming stage, and although more watched than most, this is still one users talk page. 66.87.124.89 (talk) 16:32, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

Removing annoying messages from one's own talk page might not even be an option with WP:FLOW, unless you are an admin: Wikipedia_talk:Flow#Wiki_misconceptions. JMP EAX (talk) 03:21, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

Regarding "people who would like to use it to stop good people (admins) from issuing warnings", IMHO if this feature gets rolled out, admins should be exempt from it. If admins can't stay civil the door is over there. — xaosflux ^Talk 03:28, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

FWIW, we don't need admins. We can automate virtually every admin action. The only reason there is this obsession with administration is because it creates an artificial hierarchy in an ecosystem where a flat organizational structure emerges naturally from the software architecture. The only reason so much of our time is wasted talking about and discussing administration is because it enforces social roles and encourages authoritarianism. In other words, administration is a purposeful distraction from researching, creating, writing, and collaborating. It exists solely to inhibit innovation and to perpetuate interpersonal conflict. Viriditas (talk) 03:39, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

No, it wouldn't work. What would it feel like to stand in the road and get run over by a truck? No real way of knowing without testing it -- but I'll pass. The reasons it won't work are twofold:

• It's attempting a technical fix to a sociological problem. The way to get folks to stop acting like a-holes is to get people to stop acting like a-holes.
• On a pragmatic level, it would just shift discussion to other forums (e.g. an article talk page). "Once again editor X yada-yada..." "you should address that on their talk page" ... "I can't, they've blocked me..." Or we'd get more ANI threads. Similar to when the community decided WQA "didn't work" and shut it down and now civility complaints show up an ANI (Of course WQA worked, it helped keep ANI for things actually requiring admins). NE Ent 19:04, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

Again, we do need a way for actual official notices for ANI etc. official notices. Perhaps creating a Wikiquette or a (minor) "Complaints" board where people can leave official notices, general complaints, etc. which they then merely link to on the talk page in question is the answer. Then the other person who has banned them can see it and decide whether to join in. Maybe call it "Alternative Posting page" or something...

And if there complaints are the kind of stupid repeated harassment I've had to ban a few people from my talk page for, everyone will see it for what it is. Carolmooredc (Talkie-Talkie) 19:51, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

• One important thing before rolling something out is to get more than 24 hours worth of feedback on a user talk page before diving into it, but it's an interesting thought experiment ;-).

  One problem with this (as others have pointed out) is that it's aimed at regulating the "social media" aspect of how user talk pages are used, as opposed to keeping in mind what they're actually for, which in theory should be discussions about how to improve an encyclopedia-like website. Another problem is that it's entirely likely that AN/I (or a new noticeboard, which would probably become very much like AN/I in short order) would quickly fill with complaints by people being "blocked for no good reason", and a crowd of regulars would gather at that board to come to verdicts about it.

  As for rolling it out, I think it would be very difficult to gradually with this particular tool. Would users of the tool only be able to "block" other users who also have the tool? Would users be notified every time someone blocks them from their page (imagine the fun someone would have a herd of sockpuppets and a script to block thousands of people and thus send them email notices!)? Would the blocks be logged? If logged, who would see the logs? If not, that would be something of an outlier.

  Really though, the best way to improve the rollouts would be to make sure the tool works before "deploying" it, and taking a "no big deal" posture and just shutting it off if and when a community asks the WMF to do so. --SB_Johnny | ^talk✌ 00:19, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

As far as I can remember I have only ever asked one user to step away from my talk page. I now view that as a mistake. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 01:19, 7 September 2014 (UTC).

• Yeah..uh...I support the proposal. I think it is about time we are given a bit more control of who we allow to troll our own pages. Now...this has never been an issue for me, only because everyone I have ever asked to stop posting on my page has...but I have seen it where some editors have refused to get the point. Just having the option does not mean you are forced to use it.--Mark Miller (talk) 03:18, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

Hi James,

Thank you for considering the idea to change the font for the headings for Wikipedia; it really helped. Also maybe in the future we should consider the second-level headings as well, but it is not necessary. I have an idea. Why don't you source all of your editors from the nation west of Australia with 1.3 billion editors, which may be your new market?

I think, however, a powerful incentive for editors to leave is articles such as this one, where the editors are working for the organisation themselves and reference to self-published sources. There is your market research done in a second. Cheers.

Dark Liberty (talk) 09:16, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

@Dark Liberty: Just so you know, his name is actually Jimmy, not James. G S Palmer (talk • contribs) 15:09, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

If Jimmy can be used as a nickname for James....the reverse is also acceptable. What....you don't like the name James?--Mark James Miller (talk) 23:10, 6 September 2014 (UTC) ;-)

Dark - the font for the headings changed? Is that why it looks so rubbish when I don't sign in! All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 00:25, 7 September 2014 (UTC).

I've just removed the section that was in this spot, due to privacy issues; see my comment to someone else. I think this is the best course of action (not 100% sure, but close to it), and I'm willing to self-revert if you and/or other experienced people think that I've gone too far. Nyttend (talk) 03:52, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

I support this move out of an abundance of caution and a strong desire that we behave responsibly. I think it would be fine to have a general philosophical discussion here about how we ought to deal with links to extremist videos of horrific killings, as well as how we should deal with emerging stories that may have a high probability of risk to someone. (Part of the answer, though, is that if reputable press are running hyped up stories that make it more valuable for terrorists to kill a certain individual, it is difficult for us to not treat that as encyclopedic, even if we think that if we were newspaper or news website editors we would not run those stories.)--Jimbo Wales (talk) 10:14, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

This is a tough call. The man's name and photograph are on the front page of the Daily Mail and The Sun today, something which I believe to be unwise. However, The Guardian has also named the man (which I won't link to here). It looks as though the BBC has decided not to name the man. According to the Mail story, "UK media outlets did not name him, in line with a request from the Foreign Office."--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 10:29, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

Indeed. I think we should be cautious as there is very little reason to hurry. The incentives of the newspapers, particularly the tabloids, push them in the direction of lurid screaming headlines and immediacy no matter what the human cost. We are a nonprofit, community-written encyclopedia project.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 10:47, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

Yes. We should be careful (as regrettably the press generally are not) about giving hostage-takers and beheaders "the oxygen of publicity on which they depend". JohnCD (talk) 21:54, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

Removal to reference to ISIL's next hostage execution

User:Nyttend took it upon himself to redact all references to the name of ISIL's next hostage execution sitewide. The reason stated is WP:Ignore All Rules (IAR). I'm not sure this situation has happened before. It is not like WP is breaking this news, the name is put forth in the execution video the original announcement by SITE Intelligence Group and was repeated by worldwide press. Not putting his name forth in article space is one thing, but scrubbing consensus discussion behind the scenes (AN/I, Afd, Deletion Review) is another. Shouldn't WP:NOTCENSORED override the WP:BLP concerns in this case? See The Media Blackout on Hostages Helps ISIS.~Technophant (talk) 13:03, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

Moved your comment because it's discussed two sections higher. Besides what I already told you regarding the issue of not causing any harm, remember that we are an encyclopedia, relying on secondary sources, and without very good reason we should not use primary sources such as newspapers from the time of the event. Wait until secondary sources are published and see what they have to say. Nyttend (talk) 13:07, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

By the way, please note that the edits in question have been oversighted, so I cannot restore them. You can engage in discussion about whether this kind of thing is good at all (e.g. what you're doing here), or you can ask the oversighters to reverse their decision, but just don't try to persuade me to reverse myself now, since I can't undo an oversight action. Nyttend (talk) 13:10, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

@Nyttend: if you're worried about revdeling this person's name out of the various articles that mention them, you might want to scratch all the edits between this one and this one on Jihadi John. G S Palmer (talk • contribs) 13:12, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

I fully support Nyttend's comments here, as does Jimmy in the section above. WP:NOTCENSORED is about not causing offence, WP:BLP is about not causing harm. I know which is more important here. Worm^TT(talk) 13:14, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

(edit conflict) User:Nyttend The video itself is the primary source. Most all newspaper articles published about it would be secondary sources.~Technophant (talk) 13:18, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

[edit conflict] I can't, GSPalmer; while I was looking at the diffs (just making sure that you'd picked the right ones), someone came along and oversighted them. Thank you for bringing it up! Nyttend (talk) 13:19, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

Technophant, please read secondary source. Publications from the time of the event are primary, because they are connected to the event and part of the context in which the event occurred. Encyclopedias summarise what's written in secondary sources because those sources examine the event from afar, without the inherent limitations of primary sources. For example, primary sources in the media, as Jimbo notes, are heavily biased toward things that will be good headlines, and all primary sources necessarily lack an overview of the historical context. When we heavily use primary sources to say "this ought to be included", we're engaging in original research to determine that the "this" will be deemed important in the secondary sources. Nyttend (talk) 13:25, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

Secondary source and WP:Secondary source both say "A secondary source is a record or statement of an event or circumstance made by a non-eyewitness or by someone not closely connected with the event or circumstances, recorded or stated verbally either at or sometime after the event, or by an eyewitness at a time after the event when the fallibility of memory is an important factor." None of the newspaper accounts are eyewitness accounts, all are written from after the event about the event with newer information and analysis available.~Technophant (talk) 13:34, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

• Technophant, please read WP:NOTCENSORED again. It specifically exempts removal for BLP reasons. Risker (talk) 13:22, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

(edit conflict) The executioner in the video says "I'm back, Obama, and I'm back because of your arrogant foreign policy towards the Islamic State..." The next video isn't going to say "I'm back, Wikipedia, and I'm back because of your refusal to remove references of [hostage] in deletion discussions". I'm rather sure we will soon have another execution and the reason will be America's continual involvement in the conflict. See 2014 American operations in Syria and 2014 American intervention in Iraq.~Technophant (talk) 13:28, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

I'm also pretty sure that it's inappropriate to predict the death of another identifiable person when posting on this page. Please don't do that anymore. Wikipedia is not a crystal ball, and personal beliefs aren't why we create and edit articles, or at least they shouldn't be. Risker (talk) 13:37, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

• I am concerned that ISIL is now probably aware that Wikipedia is censoring this information site-wide. That's a very different thing from the material being removed through normal processes, and has the potential to cause harm rather than preventing it. (Not that it can be undone.) We have to assume they're reading article talk pages relating to them, and possibly high-profile user talk pages like this one. It would have been better to limit the information by regular editing means, because then it doesn't make it seem like an "official decision" to the average user. IRW0 (talk) 13:47, 4 September 2014 (UTC)
  • IRW0 I'm pretty sure this discussion will be in a news article regarding media censorship pretty soon.~Technophant (talk) 14:00, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

I'd like to re-iterate my point that there is no hurry. This is a developing situation and in a few hours time it may be clearer what we should do. I'd like everyone to take a deep breath and stay calm and realize that it isn't useful to have acrimony and a huge fight over this. We should be careful here to follow high ethical principles.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 13:47, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

Followup: this story appears to have significantly moved forward since my comment a few hours ago, with a significant number of news stories appear in the last hour or two. I think it fair to say that it isn't just tabloids and one or two mainstream papers reporting on the name and situation, but basically all of them. Therefore, I personally think that at this time: (1) it should be fine to include the name in articles and (2) significant consideration should be given to whether a biography of the man is really possible at this time, per WP:BLP1E - I am not prejudging that, just saying that it is worth thinking about. This is my opinion as one editor, of course, and not a ruling from on high or anything like that.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 13:53, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

With James Foley the big bugaboo was the video. This time it's the name of who they are threatening to kill. What will it be next time? The common thread is that some people in Britain think that it's time for them to control the whole Internet and put whatever spin they want on things. For Wikipedia to go along with them in censoring material that is prominently featured on USA Today NBC is utterly contemptible. This has nothing to do with protecting people - the information is out there. This looks like Wikipedia kowtowing to David Cameron's sinister agenda of calling people terrorists for seeing what an undeclared enemy had to say, of banning whatever he calls "extremist", of mandating a censorship system over British internet access. Wnt (talk) 13:52, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I agree with User:Wnt however I'm not against withholding his name until either his death or recovery is confirmed.~Technophant (talk) 13:50, 4 September 2014 (UTC).

I don't see how you agree with him at all. He says it is "utterly contemptible" to withhold the name nw, and you are not against withholding the name until future events unfold. In any event, I strongly disagree with Wnt in the sense that his over the top rhetoric is inappropriate and misreads the debate. The debate started when the sourcing of the name was thin. Now the name is everywhere. Things are developing fast and people who would have properly supported withholding it at one point will be properly supporting putting it in at another point. To pull out a totally silly accusation that "This looks like Wikipedia kowtowing to David Cameron's sinister agenda" is absurd - who is he talking about? Wikipedians obviously don't really care what David Cameron thinks and that is not what this debate was ever about. I invite everyone to relax a notch or two.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 14:08, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

@Jimbo Wales I think Wnt's rhetoric was spurred by David Cameron's rhetoric (“a country like ours will not be cowed by barbaric killers”) in Analysis: Fate of ISIS Hostage Intensifies Pressure on Britain, an article by NBC News that does NOT mention the victim by name.~Technophant (talk) 14:29, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

I think you are right about what spurred it. But that's between Wnt and Mr. Cameron, I think. :-) Still has nothing to do with this discussion and was over the top.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 15:27, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

No, I don't see anything obviously wrong with that speech, and I agree with him that paying off kidnappers like ISIS is a terrible thing that has funded a much larger number of deaths. But the things I mentioned -- when you add up a sinister government-mandated "filter" that can spot extremist content, claims that anyone who watches a video is a terrorist, and files new 'anti-terrorist' legislation, what does that add up to? Wnt (talk) 16:24, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

If you add those things up, you get a very bad public policy which I very strongly oppose. However, again, this has nothing at all to do with this discussion.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 09:56, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

The underlying issue remains. How far does our responsibility go to ensure that this is an encyclopedia containing the sum of only all human knowledge found to be wholesome by the Foreign Office? Is it just banning names, or just banning links to the primary sources, or banning any links to discussions of these sources? Is it just banning what is disgusting, or what is politically extremist, or what might allow a person to understand where people in Iraq are coming from? Or is it to ban every possible unplanned angle of coverage but that specifically pushed on a compliant media, to join in a national PR campaign? IRW0 is dead right: if Wikipedia shows off that it will censor all mention of a name to avoid saying something that might lead to negative consequences somewhere, how can we possibly present Images of Muhammad as an exercise of freedom of speech rather than as a deliberate provocation to Muslims? Wikipedia needs to cling to a sense of uncarved simplicity, genuine neutrality, the willingness to explore knowledge wherever it leads, rooted in a simple faith that allowing people to know what they wish to know is the best long term strate:gy. Leaving ourselves the "flexibility" to give in to demands will only mean we do not have the freedom to reject them. Wnt (talk) 14:55, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

Why are you banging on about the Foreign Office? I don't know of anyone here who has said anything remotely resembling that Wikipedia should ensure that the UK Foreign Office should find all our content wholesome. No one has suggested that we give into demands from anyone, so you're really off base and not hearing what this discussion is about.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 15:29, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

Well, the Foreign Office was credited above for having the UK media withhold this information. I suppose my response was heated a bit after certain people at Talk:James Foley were insisting that to link the video was a criminal act of supporting terrorism, and suggested we join in a "blackout" campaign to block anything they say as "propaganda". I mean, these events are nothing new; we've been seeing the same thing since Al Qaeda in Iraq/ISI made the Nick Berg video in 2004. We're not even at war there any more, not officially, and as sick as these videos are, they're not the September 11th attacks. So why should we stray from our past policy of making things like s:Osama bin Laden freely available? Wikipedia is supposed to guide the serious researcher to the major sources, including the primary sources, not to insulate the reader from harsh reality. I should note that, as per the classic precedent of the banning of Nazi speakers in 1923-1927 Weimar Germany, I don't think that banning jihadist points of view will have the stated effect of weakening their recruitment; much to the contrary, it frees them of the burden of needing to prove their facts. Wnt (talk) 16:36, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

What the Foreign Office does or says has no authority over Wikipedia. If you were responding to things people said elsewhere, that's fine, except that you didn't tell us that. So it struck me as quite strange. There is no real support for the things you are opposed to, so I'd recommend relaxing about it. And going on and on ranting against something that virtually no one supports is distracting from THIS conversation, which is about something different. There are times when a story is emerging, and human life is at risk, when it is ethical for us to proceed slowly and carefully. This was one of those times.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 09:56, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

We've kept names off Wikipedia in the past, Star Wars Kid jumps to mind. At the moment, the argument that we should publish the name appears to be because we can, yet we have policies that suggest that we shouldn't - WP:BLP1E jumping to mind. I'd advocate withholding the name here on Wikipedia for the time being. Worm^TT(talk) 15:06, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

Actually it looks like we have that name now. Also note that even when it was taken out [2] this was done by normal editing, not by someone coming from on high with "oversight" powers that "can't be undone". You can't treat this case with special wiki-wide censorship and still convince me it's a normal editorial decision. Wnt (talk) 16:24, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

Incorrect. The victim had his own article, and the page was completely scrubbed. Not just edited. It was submitted to AFD, but then within hours and without consensus it speedy deleted and super obliterated, along with obliterating the undelete request from one user and censoring my second request for undeletion. Somebody then went on to super scrub out all reference anywhere in related articles, in at least one case removing another user's editing work for the day. When you view the history of a related article, you can see in the history, it looks different, things are missing completely, and other lines are crossed out, which I had never seen before.MeropeRiddle (talk) 22:06, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

@MeropeRiddle: sorry for being confusing - that's actually what I meant. The diff I cited was one from 2008 where Star Wars Kid's name was removed, and my point was that it has been available in the history the whole time. I agree there is a difference between concealing the name from a casual reading of the article per BLP and banning any discussion of it. Wnt (talk) 22:55, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

His name is still being embargoed at BBC and The Telegraph (others?). The Guardian released it last night. I don't think there has been any change in the families request for privacy. -- GreenC 14:45, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

Sticking just to traditional print media plus a handful of mainstream brands, and ignoring even reputable Internet-only outlets, I see the name at: Sydney Morning Herald, NBCNews.com, The Guardian (UK), New York Daily News, USA Today, The Globe and Mail (Canada), Times of India. If we throw in some reputable Internet-only outlets, we get IBT and HuffPo and a few others I'm less familiar with but think are generally considered non-tabloid. If it were only the Guardian, I could be persuaded either way to wait a bit longer. I don't recommend edit warring, but I think that very soon it will not make sense for us to not carry the name.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 15:35, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

Agree with Jimbo, however we will need to start over because all of the article pages and deletion discussions have been Oversighted. Can somebody please email me the deleted article article text and deletion discussion?~Technophant (talk) 15:47, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

Is that really necessary? It shouldn't be too hard to just rewrite it. G S Palmer (talk • contribs) 17:20, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

Apparently it was created by MeropeRiddle (at least, he received the AfD notice and started [3]). But after the way his content has been treated nobody here is in much of a position to ask favors. Wnt (talk) 17:27, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

It looks like the BBC has had a change of heart on this issue during the last hour [4] so there is no longer much point in pretending that the name is not widely available. Normal BLP rules apply, so there should be no rush to create a WP:BLP1E about him on the basis of the current sourcing.--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 17:56, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

I agree with the others above, per WP:BLP1E - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 18:01, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

It might sound like a BLP1E, but a few people guessing about this on a user talk page is no substitute for the actual AfD that was obliterated. If someone decided to start an article, maybe that was after some separate reason for notability turned up. Wnt (talk) 18:51, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

This has been an interesting discussion to read, but I am not able to determine what the consensus is on any of it. Not only was the AFD scrubbed, but the first request to undelete the article by some other person was completely scrubbed. I submitted the second one, because I initially thought maybe it was somehow accidentally deleted. At least my request to undelete was left with an indication that it existed, but it was completely redacted/censored/ignored/not acknowledged further. I also want to stress that I started the article in good faith, and was never even aware of a news embargo of any kind, because it was all over the news here with no indication that it was inappropriate to name the person. I really think current guidelines should better reflect how to handle notable crime victims and so I have been having discussion here. As I wrote in the other location, https://twitter.com/WikipediaTrends tweeted that the article was referenced as having a significant amount of traffic +3,852,700%. There is world wide interest. Lastly, I'm not arguing that my article be re-permitted, as much as I was confused in the way it and all traces of discussion of it were censored/obliterated with no guideline to reference other than Ignore All Rules. If Wikipedia thinks it is important to not reveal the name out of respect to a family's request, and/or national security of another country, there should be a guideline to reflect so.MeropeRiddle (talk) 20:07, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

• Standard editorial expectations continue to apply to article creation: in this case WP:BLP1E and WP:CRIME would both apply. As I have noted elsewhere, we're talking mostly about an organization that's taken hundreds of people hostage, so being a hostage under death threat from this organization is, at this point, barely grazing the notability bar. I can see the point of adding the name and some references to the main article on hostage-taking by this group; the cat is well and truly out of the bag here. On the other hand, we need to think about at what point we would stop adding names to the list of hostages killed or threatened or (possibly) released. I would hate to think that the only criterion for getting a wikipedia article about a hostage is for ISIL or whatever it's calling itself this week to identify someone by name and threaten to kill them; we run the risk of turning into one of their publicity organs by playing that game. If they released a full list of all of their hostages tomorrow, would we wind up with individual articles for each one - or only the ones for whom we can find English-language information? Isn't that a bit culturally anglocentric? Risker (talk) 20:22, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

Per how I interpret [[WP:CRIME}} the victim of a crime may be considered notable, but may not warrant their own article. It does not say, being the victim to a crime is non-notable to the point where any reference will be not just edited out, but obliterated from the site. Jaycee Dugard is the victim of a crime and has her own article. Ariel Castro's victims are referenced on his article. Per the way CRIME is written, victims may be considered notable and either are deserving of their own article, or may be referenced in an article regarding the event. If a situation involves 3 victims, and two have their own article, it is inconsistent and against any guideline I can find to censor the site from referencing the name of the third victim and related articles from referencing the fact that there is an incident that exists that involves this person. It was scrubbed from reference on related articles. Not just edited out, totally removed. Wikipedia should stay consistent with existing/related content or a guideline/policy should be created or edited to address Wikipedia responding to family requests despite notability being established.MeropeRiddle (talk) 22:00, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

If it is a BLP1E --- a decision that I am not going to make without seeing the day's work worth of text that was deleted; you don't get to delete in concept without letting people have a chance to show what they can get --- then the proper disposition is to merge it into an article about the wider event, e.g. ISIS kidnappings, ISIS beheadings or something. (Is there a proper place to park those redirects?) Erasing the text, and especially, deleting the list of the best reliable sources the editors could find, is not an acceptable outcome. Wnt (talk) 22:48, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

It's easy enough to recreate a short article with a few references. I think it would be fine for the article to be resurrected as it was and a normal AfD to take place, but I don't see any particular big deal about it happening that way. Personally, I advise against recreating (whether through resurrection or writing a new one) because it's obviously subject to WP:BLP1E and WP:CRIME and is therefore very likely to just be deleted or merged anyway. Again, we are not a news outlet - there is no hurry.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 09:56, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

@jimbowales I rewrote the article this morning and the article was again scrubbed by oversight and now my MeropeRiddle account is banned for doing so. This is not inline with your permission to reestablish the article and have a normal afd process.166.181.80.185 (talk) 16:57, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

Not sure if it matters for this case since it's widely known. But there are some western countries that have paid the ransom sums quietly for release. This becomes much more difficult to do if the named person is widely known/published and then suddenly survives. The official account will be "rescued." This all sounds like NEWS and not very encyclopedic at this point. I don't see the reason to participate in the news cycle or the spectacle. In time it will be history and encyclopedic. But now, we are simply being manipulated. --DHeyward (talk) 18:58, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

There's a major effort to revdelete and shutdown this discussion, and even a block of the new user and original article creator User:MeropeRiddle. If find this whole effort to be misguided and against the pillars in which this project founded. If this isn't the right place to discuss this then where is the right place? Which list serve email(s) are appropriate?~Technophant (talk) 00:28, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

I posted this comment previously. It was revdeleted. I hope I've redacted it to the point that it is acceptable: "I'm very concerned about the current trend. There seems to be not only reversions, revdeletes, and even a block regarding this matter. It's one thing to have an open disagreement as to what should or shouldn't be in article space but it's a whole different game when the normal consensus building processes is subverted. The given reason that there's been a media blackout is that the family requested it so that hostage negotiations aren't affected. The subject's wife however isn't playing along with this however. She broke here silence and did a news interview on http://thewire.com "Wife Speaks for First Time Since ISIL Video Released". She does NOT mention a request for this to be kept out of the media. I think this current trend is toxic to consensus building and article writing and is eroding the pillars that this project was founded on."~Technophant (talk) 00:42, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

And why wouldn't there be? There are many players all trying to control the message. Which view or message should WP cover? Like the movie 'Wargames', the only rational choice is not to play. There is no neutral coverage or reliable secondary source for any of it as there is a great deal of manipulation. There is no value to the project to pursue this real time and be manipulated the way the press is. Let it settle first. That's always been the primary objective and is impossible in the current environment with the news cycle so short. --DHeyward (talk) 04:21, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

There's an open discussion about this at Wikipedia:Village_pump_(policy)#Guideline_for_crime_victims_of_world_wide_significance. I'm hoping that when this is all over all suppressed articles are quickly restored by Oversight and apologizes are issued to all affected editors.~Technophant (talk) 09:20, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

It would have been more helpful to reference that this exact same kidnapping/hostage related suppression has happened before: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kidnapping_of_David_Rohde. There is even a section citing Wikipedia involvement in the suppression/gag order and Wales comments. The situation in this case is somewhat different than the current circumstance due to the information being widely available in the upblic domain and by reliable news sources world wide.MeropeRiddle (talk) 07:20, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

Are there any such examples? JMP EAX (talk) 00:02, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

Or put it another way, is there a culture of "sacrificial accountability"? DeCausa (talk) 08:15, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

So, Apple, a commercial, for profit venture, fired one guy nearly two years ago. And you think that heads should roll at WMF because you don't like some recent software initiatives? Should people be fired for not knowing what "non sequitur" means? Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 08:32, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

If you've been following the recent discussions, you'll know many more people than him don't like it. KonveyorBelt 15:28, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

And your alternative is a culture of no accountability? See how I can paint you in the bad corner of a non-sequitur dichotomy too, Cullen328? JMP EAX (talk) 17:10, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

Another example [5]. JMP EAX (talk) 22:14, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

It is one thing to complain about a new roll out one doesn't like. It is an entirely different thing to then think anyone should be fired at the Foundation over it. The Foundation does not control the content editors contribute and in turn...we don't control the hiring or firing of Foundation members.--Mark Miller (talk) 23:09, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

Quite so, the ED is responsible for the staff. I think the original question was whether anyone at WMF has ever been fired for failing to do their job properly. Deltahedron (talk) 06:54, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

Clearly the WMF thinks MV is awesome, so I'm not asking if anyone is going to be fired over that. I'm simply asking if anyone was ever fired from the WMF for rolling out anything that the WMF themselves perceived as software unsuitable for production. It's not a trick question. For all its foibles, the MV is actually a lot less buggy (unless you count design issues) than other software that was rolled out, from what I can tell. JMP EAX (talk) 08:01, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

The reason why I linked to the BBC story on "sacrificial accountability" is that an organisation that fires someone over something like a single-event roll-out is not a good thing. It usually indicates an organisation where the management are not just overly concerned with "blame" but concerned with making sure they're the ones not seen as being responsible I.e. someone else is. If the answer to that specific question wasto be X number have been fired, I would take that as an indicator of weak management. If the aim is to understand whether WMF appropriately manages competence in its software developers, a more diverse set of questions around employment/HR structures and policies would be better: how are they incentivised, how are their objectives set and how is achievement measured monitored, how are performance issues managed etc etc Not as sexy, but more relevant. DeCausa (talk) 08:34, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

It should certainly never be the case that the organisation corporately should be in the position of discovering that a product is unfit for purpose only after it has been rolled out. If that is the case, then not only have the people who rolled it out been incompetent in producing it, but they have been concealing their incompetence from their own management, or were incompetent as to have been unaware of their own incompetence. Either of those would be likely to lead to dismissal. The head of the organisation, or the part of it responsible for the product, should probably resign as a matter of principle since they have failed to manage the work unit correctly, even if they were the victims of outright deception by their own staff: they are paid to allocate competent staff to their projects, and they are paid not to be deceived even by dishonest staff. Of course it is a sign of failure at every level for an organisation to find itself in that sort of position. Deltahedron (talk) 08:53, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

We have more articles on Sub-Saharan Africa than of The Lord of the Rings by a factor of over 100, contrary to what certain journalists may think.

See the same page for other similar claims.

All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 00:52, 7 September 2014 (UTC).

Thank you, this is very helpful! There's a similar sort of claim for things like "The article about Darth Vader is longer than the article on China" (I just made that one up and it is false) which are sometimes technically true but ignore the fact that we prefer to split long articles into sub-articles.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 09:54, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

Check out the purported "earliest example of abstract art". After stuffing votes for In The News, note that the "possibly" from the Guardian article was omitted from the Main Page blurb: misleading, shameful and pathetic on a monumental scale by paid editor serial abusers who just won't give up their cash cow at the expense of the project's reputation. 72.234.179.246 (talk) 06:55, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

Cash cow? Are you sure they weren't actually cereal abusers? I note that Dairy cattle in Gibraltar is still a redlink, but could be eligible for DYK if it were created. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 07:03, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

I've just removed the section that was in this spot, due to privacy issues; see my comment to someone else. I think this is the best course of action (not 100% sure, but close to it), and I'm willing to self-revert if you and/or other experienced people think that I've gone too far. Nyttend (talk) 03:52, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

I support this move out of an abundance of caution and a strong desire that we behave responsibly. I think it would be fine to have a general philosophical discussion here about how we ought to deal with links to extremist videos of horrific killings, as well as how we should deal with emerging stories that may have a high probability of risk to someone. (Part of the answer, though, is that if reputable press are running hyped up stories that make it more valuable for terrorists to kill a certain individual, it is difficult for us to not treat that as encyclopedic, even if we think that if we were newspaper or news website editors we would not run those stories.)--Jimbo Wales (talk) 10:14, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

This is a tough call. The man's name and photograph are on the front page of the Daily Mail and The Sun today, something which I believe to be unwise. However, The Guardian has also named the man (which I won't link to here). It looks as though the BBC has decided not to name the man. According to the Mail story, "UK media outlets did not name him, in line with a request from the Foreign Office."--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 10:29, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

Indeed. I think we should be cautious as there is very little reason to hurry. The incentives of the newspapers, particularly the tabloids, push them in the direction of lurid screaming headlines and immediacy no matter what the human cost. We are a nonprofit, community-written encyclopedia project.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 10:47, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

Yes. We should be careful (as regrettably the press generally are not) about giving hostage-takers and beheaders "the oxygen of publicity on which they depend". JohnCD (talk) 21:54, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

Removal to reference to ISIL's next hostage execution

User:Nyttend took it upon himself to redact all references to the name of ISIL's next hostage execution sitewide. The reason stated is WP:Ignore All Rules (IAR). I'm not sure this situation has happened before. It is not like WP is breaking this news, the name is put forth in the execution video the original announcement by SITE Intelligence Group and was repeated by worldwide press. Not putting his name forth in article space is one thing, but scrubbing consensus discussion behind the scenes (AN/I, Afd, Deletion Review) is another. Shouldn't WP:NOTCENSORED override the WP:BLP concerns in this case? See The Media Blackout on Hostages Helps ISIS.~Technophant (talk) 13:03, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

Moved your comment because it's discussed two sections higher. Besides what I already told you regarding the issue of not causing any harm, remember that we are an encyclopedia, relying on secondary sources, and without very good reason we should not use primary sources such as newspapers from the time of the event. Wait until secondary sources are published and see what they have to say. Nyttend (talk) 13:07, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

By the way, please note that the edits in question have been oversighted, so I cannot restore them. You can engage in discussion about whether this kind of thing is good at all (e.g. what you're doing here), or you can ask the oversighters to reverse their decision, but just don't try to persuade me to reverse myself now, since I can't undo an oversight action. Nyttend (talk) 13:10, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

@Nyttend: if you're worried about revdeling this person's name out of the various articles that mention them, you might want to scratch all the edits between this one and this one on Jihadi John. G S Palmer (talk • contribs) 13:12, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

I fully support Nyttend's comments here, as does Jimmy in the section above. WP:NOTCENSORED is about not causing offence, WP:BLP is about not causing harm. I know which is more important here. Worm^TT(talk) 13:14, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

(edit conflict) User:Nyttend The video itself is the primary source. Most all newspaper articles published about it would be secondary sources.~Technophant (talk) 13:18, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

[edit conflict] I can't, GSPalmer; while I was looking at the diffs (just making sure that you'd picked the right ones), someone came along and oversighted them. Thank you for bringing it up! Nyttend (talk) 13:19, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

Technophant, please read secondary source. Publications from the time of the event are primary, because they are connected to the event and part of the context in which the event occurred. Encyclopedias summarise what's written in secondary sources because those sources examine the event from afar, without the inherent limitations of primary sources. For example, primary sources in the media, as Jimbo notes, are heavily biased toward things that will be good headlines, and all primary sources necessarily lack an overview of the historical context. When we heavily use primary sources to say "this ought to be included", we're engaging in original research to determine that the "this" will be deemed important in the secondary sources. Nyttend (talk) 13:25, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

Secondary source and WP:Secondary source both say "A secondary source is a record or statement of an event or circumstance made by a non-eyewitness or by someone not closely connected with the event or circumstances, recorded or stated verbally either at or sometime after the event, or by an eyewitness at a time after the event when the fallibility of memory is an important factor." None of the newspaper accounts are eyewitness accounts, all are written from after the event about the event with newer information and analysis available.~Technophant (talk) 13:34, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

• Technophant, please read WP:NOTCENSORED again. It specifically exempts removal for BLP reasons. Risker (talk) 13:22, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

(edit conflict) The executioner in the video says "I'm back, Obama, and I'm back because of your arrogant foreign policy towards the Islamic State..." The next video isn't going to say "I'm back, Wikipedia, and I'm back because of your refusal to remove references of [hostage] in deletion discussions". I'm rather sure we will soon have another execution and the reason will be America's continual involvement in the conflict. See 2014 American operations in Syria and 2014 American intervention in Iraq.~Technophant (talk) 13:28, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

I'm also pretty sure that it's inappropriate to predict the death of another identifiable person when posting on this page. Please don't do that anymore. Wikipedia is not a crystal ball, and personal beliefs aren't why we create and edit articles, or at least they shouldn't be. Risker (talk) 13:37, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

• I am concerned that ISIL is now probably aware that Wikipedia is censoring this information site-wide. That's a very different thing from the material being removed through normal processes, and has the potential to cause harm rather than preventing it. (Not that it can be undone.) We have to assume they're reading article talk pages relating to them, and possibly high-profile user talk pages like this one. It would have been better to limit the information by regular editing means, because then it doesn't make it seem like an "official decision" to the average user. IRW0 (talk) 13:47, 4 September 2014 (UTC)
  • IRW0 I'm pretty sure this discussion will be in a news article regarding media censorship pretty soon.~Technophant (talk) 14:00, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

I'd like to re-iterate my point that there is no hurry. This is a developing situation and in a few hours time it may be clearer what we should do. I'd like everyone to take a deep breath and stay calm and realize that it isn't useful to have acrimony and a huge fight over this. We should be careful here to follow high ethical principles.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 13:47, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

Followup: this story appears to have significantly moved forward since my comment a few hours ago, with a significant number of news stories appear in the last hour or two. I think it fair to say that it isn't just tabloids and one or two mainstream papers reporting on the name and situation, but basically all of them. Therefore, I personally think that at this time: (1) it should be fine to include the name in articles and (2) significant consideration should be given to whether a biography of the man is really possible at this time, per WP:BLP1E - I am not prejudging that, just saying that it is worth thinking about. This is my opinion as one editor, of course, and not a ruling from on high or anything like that.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 13:53, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

With James Foley the big bugaboo was the video. This time it's the name of who they are threatening to kill. What will it be next time? The common thread is that some people in Britain think that it's time for them to control the whole Internet and put whatever spin they want on things. For Wikipedia to go along with them in censoring material that is prominently featured on USA Today NBC is utterly contemptible. This has nothing to do with protecting people - the information is out there. This looks like Wikipedia kowtowing to David Cameron's sinister agenda of calling people terrorists for seeing what an undeclared enemy had to say, of banning whatever he calls "extremist", of mandating a censorship system over British internet access. Wnt (talk) 13:52, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I agree with User:Wnt however I'm not against withholding his name until either his death or recovery is confirmed.~Technophant (talk) 13:50, 4 September 2014 (UTC).

I don't see how you agree with him at all. He says it is "utterly contemptible" to withhold the name nw, and you are not against withholding the name until future events unfold. In any event, I strongly disagree with Wnt in the sense that his over the top rhetoric is inappropriate and misreads the debate. The debate started when the sourcing of the name was thin. Now the name is everywhere. Things are developing fast and people who would have properly supported withholding it at one point will be properly supporting putting it in at another point. To pull out a totally silly accusation that "This looks like Wikipedia kowtowing to David Cameron's sinister agenda" is absurd - who is he talking about? Wikipedians obviously don't really care what David Cameron thinks and that is not what this debate was ever about. I invite everyone to relax a notch or two.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 14:08, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

@Jimbo Wales I think Wnt's rhetoric was spurred by David Cameron's rhetoric (“a country like ours will not be cowed by barbaric killers”) in Analysis: Fate of ISIS Hostage Intensifies Pressure on Britain, an article by NBC News that does NOT mention the victim by name.~Technophant (talk) 14:29, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

I think you are right about what spurred it. But that's between Wnt and Mr. Cameron, I think. :-) Still has nothing to do with this discussion and was over the top.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 15:27, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

No, I don't see anything obviously wrong with that speech, and I agree with him that paying off kidnappers like ISIS is a terrible thing that has funded a much larger number of deaths. But the things I mentioned -- when you add up a sinister government-mandated "filter" that can spot extremist content, claims that anyone who watches a video is a terrorist, and files new 'anti-terrorist' legislation, what does that add up to? Wnt (talk) 16:24, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

If you add those things up, you get a very bad public policy which I very strongly oppose. However, again, this has nothing at all to do with this discussion.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 09:56, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

The underlying issue remains. How far does our responsibility go to ensure that this is an encyclopedia containing the sum of only all human knowledge found to be wholesome by the Foreign Office? Is it just banning names, or just banning links to the primary sources, or banning any links to discussions of these sources? Is it just banning what is disgusting, or what is politically extremist, or what might allow a person to understand where people in Iraq are coming from? Or is it to ban every possible unplanned angle of coverage but that specifically pushed on a compliant media, to join in a national PR campaign? IRW0 is dead right: if Wikipedia shows off that it will censor all mention of a name to avoid saying something that might lead to negative consequences somewhere, how can we possibly present Images of Muhammad as an exercise of freedom of speech rather than as a deliberate provocation to Muslims? Wikipedia needs to cling to a sense of uncarved simplicity, genuine neutrality, the willingness to explore knowledge wherever it leads, rooted in a simple faith that allowing people to know what they wish to know is the best long term strate:gy. Leaving ourselves the "flexibility" to give in to demands will only mean we do not have the freedom to reject them. Wnt (talk) 14:55, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

Why are you banging on about the Foreign Office? I don't know of anyone here who has said anything remotely resembling that Wikipedia should ensure that the UK Foreign Office should find all our content wholesome. No one has suggested that we give into demands from anyone, so you're really off base and not hearing what this discussion is about.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 15:29, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

Well, the Foreign Office was credited above for having the UK media withhold this information. I suppose my response was heated a bit after certain people at Talk:James Foley were insisting that to link the video was a criminal act of supporting terrorism, and suggested we join in a "blackout" campaign to block anything they say as "propaganda". I mean, these events are nothing new; we've been seeing the same thing since Al Qaeda in Iraq/ISI made the Nick Berg video in 2004. We're not even at war there any more, not officially, and as sick as these videos are, they're not the September 11th attacks. So why should we stray from our past policy of making things like s:Osama bin Laden freely available? Wikipedia is supposed to guide the serious researcher to the major sources, including the primary sources, not to insulate the reader from harsh reality. I should note that, as per the classic precedent of the banning of Nazi speakers in 1923-1927 Weimar Germany, I don't think that banning jihadist points of view will have the stated effect of weakening their recruitment; much to the contrary, it frees them of the burden of needing to prove their facts. Wnt (talk) 16:36, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

What the Foreign Office does or says has no authority over Wikipedia. If you were responding to things people said elsewhere, that's fine, except that you didn't tell us that. So it struck me as quite strange. There is no real support for the things you are opposed to, so I'd recommend relaxing about it. And going on and on ranting against something that virtually no one supports is distracting from THIS conversation, which is about something different. There are times when a story is emerging, and human life is at risk, when it is ethical for us to proceed slowly and carefully. This was one of those times.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 09:56, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

We've kept names off Wikipedia in the past, Star Wars Kid jumps to mind. At the moment, the argument that we should publish the name appears to be because we can, yet we have policies that suggest that we shouldn't - WP:BLP1E jumping to mind. I'd advocate withholding the name here on Wikipedia for the time being. Worm^TT(talk) 15:06, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

Actually it looks like we have that name now. Also note that even when it was taken out [6] this was done by normal editing, not by someone coming from on high with "oversight" powers that "can't be undone". You can't treat this case with special wiki-wide censorship and still convince me it's a normal editorial decision. Wnt (talk) 16:24, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

Incorrect. The victim had his own article, and the page was completely scrubbed. Not just edited. It was submitted to AFD, but then within hours and without consensus it speedy deleted and super obliterated, along with obliterating the undelete request from one user and censoring my second request for undeletion. Somebody then went on to super scrub out all reference anywhere in related articles, in at least one case removing another user's editing work for the day. When you view the history of a related article, you can see in the history, it looks different, things are missing completely, and other lines are crossed out, which I had never seen before.MeropeRiddle (talk) 22:06, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

@MeropeRiddle: sorry for being confusing - that's actually what I meant. The diff I cited was one from 2008 where Star Wars Kid's name was removed, and my point was that it has been available in the history the whole time. I agree there is a difference between concealing the name from a casual reading of the article per BLP and banning any discussion of it. Wnt (talk) 22:55, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

His name is still being embargoed at BBC and The Telegraph (others?). The Guardian released it last night. I don't think there has been any change in the families request for privacy. -- GreenC 14:45, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

Sticking just to traditional print media plus a handful of mainstream brands, and ignoring even reputable Internet-only outlets, I see the name at: Sydney Morning Herald, NBCNews.com, The Guardian (UK), New York Daily News, USA Today, The Globe and Mail (Canada), Times of India. If we throw in some reputable Internet-only outlets, we get IBT and HuffPo and a few others I'm less familiar with but think are generally considered non-tabloid. If it were only the Guardian, I could be persuaded either way to wait a bit longer. I don't recommend edit warring, but I think that very soon it will not make sense for us to not carry the name.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 15:35, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

Agree with Jimbo, however we will need to start over because all of the article pages and deletion discussions have been Oversighted. Can somebody please email me the deleted article article text and deletion discussion?~Technophant (talk) 15:47, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

Is that really necessary? It shouldn't be too hard to just rewrite it. G S Palmer (talk • contribs) 17:20, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

Apparently it was created by MeropeRiddle (at least, he received the AfD notice and started [7]). But after the way his content has been treated nobody here is in much of a position to ask favors. Wnt (talk) 17:27, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

It looks like the BBC has had a change of heart on this issue during the last hour [8] so there is no longer much point in pretending that the name is not widely available. Normal BLP rules apply, so there should be no rush to create a WP:BLP1E about him on the basis of the current sourcing.--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 17:56, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

I agree with the others above, per WP:BLP1E - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 18:01, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

It might sound like a BLP1E, but a few people guessing about this on a user talk page is no substitute for the actual AfD that was obliterated. If someone decided to start an article, maybe that was after some separate reason for notability turned up. Wnt (talk) 18:51, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

This has been an interesting discussion to read, but I am not able to determine what the consensus is on any of it. Not only was the AFD scrubbed, but the first request to undelete the article by some other person was completely scrubbed. I submitted the second one, because I initially thought maybe it was somehow accidentally deleted. At least my request to undelete was left with an indication that it existed, but it was completely redacted/censored/ignored/not acknowledged further. I also want to stress that I started the article in good faith, and was never even aware of a news embargo of any kind, because it was all over the news here with no indication that it was inappropriate to name the person. I really think current guidelines should better reflect how to handle notable crime victims and so I have been having discussion here. As I wrote in the other location, https://twitter.com/WikipediaTrends tweeted that the article was referenced as having a significant amount of traffic +3,852,700%. There is world wide interest. Lastly, I'm not arguing that my article be re-permitted, as much as I was confused in the way it and all traces of discussion of it were censored/obliterated with no guideline to reference other than Ignore All Rules. If Wikipedia thinks it is important to not reveal the name out of respect to a family's request, and/or national security of another country, there should be a guideline to reflect so.MeropeRiddle (talk) 20:07, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

• Standard editorial expectations continue to apply to article creation: in this case WP:BLP1E and WP:CRIME would both apply. As I have noted elsewhere, we're talking mostly about an organization that's taken hundreds of people hostage, so being a hostage under death threat from this organization is, at this point, barely grazing the notability bar. I can see the point of adding the name and some references to the main article on hostage-taking by this group; the cat is well and truly out of the bag here. On the other hand, we need to think about at what point we would stop adding names to the list of hostages killed or threatened or (possibly) released. I would hate to think that the only criterion for getting a wikipedia article about a hostage is for ISIL or whatever it's calling itself this week to identify someone by name and threaten to kill them; we run the risk of turning into one of their publicity organs by playing that game. If they released a full list of all of their hostages tomorrow, would we wind up with individual articles for each one - or only the ones for whom we can find English-language information? Isn't that a bit culturally anglocentric? Risker (talk) 20:22, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

Per how I interpret [[WP:CRIME}} the victim of a crime may be considered notable, but may not warrant their own article. It does not say, being the victim to a crime is non-notable to the point where any reference will be not just edited out, but obliterated from the site. Jaycee Dugard is the victim of a crime and has her own article. Ariel Castro's victims are referenced on his article. Per the way CRIME is written, victims may be considered notable and either are deserving of their own article, or may be referenced in an article regarding the event. If a situation involves 3 victims, and two have their own article, it is inconsistent and against any guideline I can find to censor the site from referencing the name of the third victim and related articles from referencing the fact that there is an incident that exists that involves this person. It was scrubbed from reference on related articles. Not just edited out, totally removed. Wikipedia should stay consistent with existing/related content or a guideline/policy should be created or edited to address Wikipedia responding to family requests despite notability being established.MeropeRiddle (talk) 22:00, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

If it is a BLP1E --- a decision that I am not going to make without seeing the day's work worth of text that was deleted; you don't get to delete in concept without letting people have a chance to show what they can get --- then the proper disposition is to merge it into an article about the wider event, e.g. ISIS kidnappings, ISIS beheadings or something. (Is there a proper place to park those redirects?) Erasing the text, and especially, deleting the list of the best reliable sources the editors could find, is not an acceptable outcome. Wnt (talk) 22:48, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

It's easy enough to recreate a short article with a few references. I think it would be fine for the article to be resurrected as it was and a normal AfD to take place, but I don't see any particular big deal about it happening that way. Personally, I advise against recreating (whether through resurrection or writing a new one) because it's obviously subject to WP:BLP1E and WP:CRIME and is therefore very likely to just be deleted or merged anyway. Again, we are not a news outlet - there is no hurry.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 09:56, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

@jimbowales I rewrote the article this morning and the article was again scrubbed by oversight and now my MeropeRiddle account is banned for doing so. This is not inline with your permission to reestablish the article and have a normal afd process.166.181.80.185 (talk) 16:57, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

Not sure if it matters for this case since it's widely known. But there are some western countries that have paid the ransom sums quietly for release. This becomes much more difficult to do if the named person is widely known/published and then suddenly survives. The official account will be "rescued." This all sounds like NEWS and not very encyclopedic at this point. I don't see the reason to participate in the news cycle or the spectacle. In time it will be history and encyclopedic. But now, we are simply being manipulated. --DHeyward (talk) 18:58, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

There's a major effort to revdelete and shutdown this discussion, and even a block of the new user and original article creator User:MeropeRiddle. If find this whole effort to be misguided and against the pillars in which this project founded. If this isn't the right place to discuss this then where is the right place? Which list serve email(s) are appropriate?~Technophant (talk) 00:28, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

I posted this comment previously. It was revdeleted. I hope I've redacted it to the point that it is acceptable: "I'm very concerned about the current trend. There seems to be not only reversions, revdeletes, and even a block regarding this matter. It's one thing to have an open disagreement as to what should or shouldn't be in article space but it's a whole different game when the normal consensus building processes is subverted. The given reason that there's been a media blackout is that the family requested it so that hostage negotiations aren't affected. The subject's wife however isn't playing along with this however. She broke here silence and did a news interview on http://thewire.com "Wife Speaks for First Time Since ISIL Video Released". She does NOT mention a request for this to be kept out of the media. I think this current trend is toxic to consensus building and article writing and is eroding the pillars that this project was founded on."~Technophant (talk) 00:42, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

And why wouldn't there be? There are many players all trying to control the message. Which view or message should WP cover? Like the movie 'Wargames', the only rational choice is not to play. There is no neutral coverage or reliable secondary source for any of it as there is a great deal of manipulation. There is no value to the project to pursue this real time and be manipulated the way the press is. Let it settle first. That's always been the primary objective and is impossible in the current environment with the news cycle so short. --DHeyward (talk) 04:21, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

There's an open discussion about this at Wikipedia:Village_pump_(policy)#Guideline_for_crime_victims_of_world_wide_significance. I'm hoping that when this is all over all suppressed articles are quickly restored by Oversight and apologizes are issued to all affected editors.~Technophant (talk) 09:20, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

It would have been more helpful to reference that this exact same kidnapping/hostage related suppression has happened before: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kidnapping_of_David_Rohde. There is even a section citing Wikipedia involvement in the suppression/gag order and Wales comments. The situation in this case is somewhat different than the current circumstance due to the information being widely available in the upblic domain and by reliable news sources world wide.MeropeRiddle (talk) 07:20, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

Are there any such examples? JMP EAX (talk) 00:02, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

Or put it another way, is there a culture of "sacrificial accountability"? DeCausa (talk) 08:15, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

So, Apple, a commercial, for profit venture, fired one guy nearly two years ago. And you think that heads should roll at WMF because you don't like some recent software initiatives? Should people be fired for not knowing what "non sequitur" means? Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 08:32, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

If you've been following the recent discussions, you'll know many more people than him don't like it. KonveyorBelt 15:28, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

And your alternative is a culture of no accountability? See how I can paint you in the bad corner of a non-sequitur dichotomy too, Cullen328? JMP EAX (talk) 17:10, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

Another example [9]. JMP EAX (talk) 22:14, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

It is one thing to complain about a new roll out one doesn't like. It is an entirely different thing to then think anyone should be fired at the Foundation over it. The Foundation does not control the content editors contribute and in turn...we don't control the hiring or firing of Foundation members.--Mark Miller (talk) 23:09, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

Quite so, the ED is responsible for the staff. I think the original question was whether anyone at WMF has ever been fired for failing to do their job properly. Deltahedron (talk) 06:54, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

Clearly the WMF thinks MV is awesome, so I'm not asking if anyone is going to be fired over that. I'm simply asking if anyone was ever fired from the WMF for rolling out anything that the WMF themselves perceived as software unsuitable for production. It's not a trick question. For all its foibles, the MV is actually a lot less buggy (unless you count design issues) than other software that was rolled out, from what I can tell. JMP EAX (talk) 08:01, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

The reason why I linked to the BBC story on "sacrificial accountability" is that an organisation that fires someone over something like a single-event roll-out is not a good thing. It usually indicates an organisation where the management are not just overly concerned with "blame" but concerned with making sure they're the ones not seen as being responsible I.e. someone else is. If the answer to that specific question wasto be X number have been fired, I would take that as an indicator of weak management. If the aim is to understand whether WMF appropriately manages competence in its software developers, a more diverse set of questions around employment/HR structures and policies would be better: how are they incentivised, how are their objectives set and how is achievement measured monitored, how are performance issues managed etc etc Not as sexy, but more relevant. DeCausa (talk) 08:34, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

It should certainly never be the case that the organisation corporately should be in the position of discovering that a product is unfit for purpose only after it has been rolled out. If that is the case, then not only have the people who rolled it out been incompetent in producing it, but they have been concealing their incompetence from their own management, or were incompetent as to have been unaware of their own incompetence. Either of those would be likely to lead to dismissal. The head of the organisation, or the part of it responsible for the product, should probably resign as a matter of principle since they have failed to manage the work unit correctly, even if they were the victims of outright deception by their own staff: they are paid to allocate competent staff to their projects, and they are paid not to be deceived even by dishonest staff. Of course it is a sign of failure at every level for an organisation to find itself in that sort of position. Deltahedron (talk) 08:53, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

We have more articles on Sub-Saharan Africa than of The Lord of the Rings by a factor of over 100, contrary to what certain journalists may think.

See the same page for other similar claims.

All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 00:52, 7 September 2014 (UTC).

Thank you, this is very helpful! There's a similar sort of claim for things like "The article about Darth Vader is longer than the article on China" (I just made that one up and it is false) which are sometimes technically true but ignore the fact that we prefer to split long articles into sub-articles.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 09:54, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

Check out the purported "earliest example of abstract art". After stuffing votes for In The News, note that the "possibly" from the Guardian article was omitted from the Main Page blurb: misleading, shameful and pathetic on a monumental scale by paid editor serial abusers who just won't give up their cash cow at the expense of the project's reputation. 72.234.179.246 (talk) 06:55, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

Cash cow? Are you sure they weren't actually cereal abusers? I note that Dairy cattle in Gibraltar is still a redlink, but could be eligible for DYK if it were created. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 07:03, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

I'm going to be traveling quite a bit this coming week and so will be somewhat less responsive here.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 20:22, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

I have started a discussion on the "No personal attacks" policy page. Since this is an issue of civility, the subject of much debate here and elsewhere on the project, watchers of this page are invited to weigh in. Proposed addition to "Avoiding personal attacks". Lightbreather (talk) 00:15, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

I ran into an article by Michael Schrage "When Annoying Your Customers is Best Practice" which is mostly about SOPA/PIPA, but surely has some more general insights: "The web organizations inflicted their unhappiness upon their public because they thought their misery would successfully get company. They appear to be right. [...] Workers can strike; consumers can boycott; and firms traditionally lobby and/or advertise around causes and principles that matter. The digital agility of web technologies, however, offer particular powers to companies seeking to provocatively make a point. With apologies to the Occupy Wall Street crowd (that’s meant ironically), the SOPA/PIPA protests are how the 1% take over a seemingly public place to rebel against a seeming injustice." Beware Jimbo that your editors don't actually learn from this precedent in their relationship with the WMF. JMP EAX (talk) 01:44, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

Did they learn to annoy their customers from Comcast, or was it the other way around? Smallbones_(smalltalk) 02:39, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

One of the key statements that has been made is that the Wikimedia Foundation is in violation of #4 of my well-known Statement of Principles (User:Jimbo Wales/Statement of principles) so I want to spend a little bit of time specifically discussing that issue.

Here is my original: "4. Any changes to the software must be gradual and reversible. We need to make sure that any changes contribute positively to the community, as ultimately determined by me, in full consultation with the community consensus."

And here is how it is stated today: "4. Any changes to the software must be gradual and reversible. We need to make sure that any changes contribute positively to the community, as ultimately determined by the Wikimedia Foundation, in full consultation with the community consensus."

I must say that I am surprised and pleased to see how well the principle has held up over time and how clearly it still expresses some important ideas.

It is worth noting first and foremost what it does not say. It does not say that software changes must be approved by community vote. It does not say that community consensus is the primary principle for deciding whether some feature should be implemented or not, but rather that changes contribute positively to the community, as decided by the Wikimedia Foundation. And finally it says that the Wikimedia Foundation should make that decision in full consultation with the community consensus.

What should that consultation look like? It should look a fair amount like what we have seen in the past few weeks but without the wheel-warring and drama. Remember that this feature, which can be changed easily, has already been improved to overcome sensible objections and resolve the sorts of issues that are normally caught by live deployments. I look forward to the Foundation's plan to have an incremental rollout process to reduce drama around this sort of improvement.

Here's a view of the future that I think is a disaster for the community: suppose we adopt as a new policy, which has never existed in any formal way, that every community votes (looking for majority levels of support) on every new feature and whether they want to turn it on or off by default. The result is that the software development gets even slower and we fall further behind than where we are today because it becomes impossible for the developers to have a clear view of how it works in all the different environments. The amount of effort that would need to go into addressing every feature variation on each of hundreds of wikis would be exponentially higher as each of them will needed to be identified, monitored, tested and coded.

And here is a view of the future that I think is fantastic for the community: the WMF invests a lot more resources in engineering and product including building a proper consultative process with the community, and introducing incremental roll-outs (to 1% of the editors, then 2%, then 5%, or similar) so that problems can be identified and fixed before we have a huge drama. In this vision we don't have a set of features that are voted on to be turned on and off, we have a dynamic and ongoing healthy conversation about how to improve things.

I have personally been frustrated in the past many times with the disastrous product roll-outs that we've seen (I am not talking about MV, but I'm sure we all remember Flagged Revisions and the Visual Editor). And I want that to change. By hiring Lila, we have committed to making that change and she's investing in building up capacity to get things done in a better way. And we in the community need to support that and call people out on some particularly unhelpful and false attitudes (boiled down to the essence: the WMF is against editors - there are many variants of this claim, all false).

Has the Foundation screwed up? Yeah, sure, lots of times. Has the community screwed up? Yeah, sure, lots of times. Is there a better way? Yes.

What I'm asking people to do is, as I used to say, "relax a notch or two." Let's calm things down for a couple of months. It seems that the Foundation is about to remove (or has just removed) the superprotection of a javascript file in German Wikipedia, and I beg the German Wikipedians to work to reduce tension by not implementing the controversial javascript hack again. And then let's have a real conversation about what improvements need to be made to the MediaViewer and expect that the Foundation will indeed make those improvements.

And then the more important task - let's talk about and help the Foundation design a sane process for community consultation on developing software. And let's not do this in the sense of a political battle or power struggle but rather "Assume Good Faith," and understand that software decisions made by committee or community vote is not a functional process (and indeed, has gotten us to the sorry state we are in today) but that equally, software created by developers who have a poor understanding of our real needs doesn't work either. Let's work on a better way that is both efficient in terms of getting software that works produced and effective in terms of meeting our real needs as editors.

Peace is the first step, so let's chill.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 19:32, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

Peace is the last step, not the first. Let's not forget that there is no singular community, but there is a singular WMF. Eric Corbett 20:42, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

I hope that this is not the WMF view because, having seemingly got their "preferred version" and removing the superprotect at de-WP pretty much with the proviso that no-one upsets it, it is easy to imagine the organisation being keen to promote platitudes about peace and chilling. If it is the WMF view then we're in a bigger hole than I thought. And, no, I don't think MV can be separated from the prior "botched" rollouts because it, too, was botched. - Sitush (talk) 20:51, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

@Jimbo Wales: -1! Sorry for bad english: you simple miss the point. If you want us to relax, give use a reason. all what i see is...candy. we don't want to block new software. we do not say, "no, MV never!". We just say, at the moment, MV only for those, who want him. (funny fact: MV is betasoftware (oh yeah, it is!), but it is not listet under beta software in your preferences) If MV gets fixed and gets better functionality, the opinion of the german community can change. but this opinion depends at most of the fact that you (WMF) respect us. (as long as you (WMF) offend us, the don't like you (WMF) and your (WMF) new gadgets)

So. If you want peace with us, respect us. We are not children. We have a will. We are wikipedia. We can decide. Every "chapter" can decide which is best for the "chapter", because you (WMF) guys in SF can decide what ist maybe beste for WMF, but you don't have the view for us locals. And I'm sorry for that. If you had this missing view, many things would be easier.

So, repect us. Don't try to overrule us. If you overrule the people, it may work for a while. But sooner or later (histroy will tell you that) the people will rise up. and if you (WMF) would know german histroy well, you could understand why the germans are so much...pissed about you try to establish a dictatorship. The last dictatorship in Germany fell 1989, because "we are the people" (not sure if the translation of "Wir sind das Volk!" is correct).

So please, come down. PLEASE stop offend us. Please, don't try to fight us. "War never changes. It only becomes more bloody and brutal." —Rep. James E. Van Zandt

If you move on with this aggression, wikipedia will lose. Maybe not in the short, but in the long run. War never has winners, only one side wins in war, this is death. And death never picks a side.

So long... Shadak (talk) 09:54, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

This is all very nice and logical, and I'm sure it looks like reality to the WMF, because it perfectly encapsulates the fundamental problem in the relationship between WMF and the Wikipedia community. This attitude takes as a pre-determined assumption that the Wikipedia community is an impediment to software development instead of a partner in developing top-notch mediawiki software. When a community RfC rejects a rollout of a piece of software, why does WMF choose to react by instituting authoritarian user permissions to impose bad software on the community instead of see the RfC as a nicely enumerated bug report on the software? A fundamental precept of the Wikipedia community is that WP:Consensus can change, yet WMF expends absolutely no effort to engage the community - RfCs are not voodoo magic, and WMF developers can start them just as easily as any other editor, and need to start doing this when they think they've managed to meet the concerns of a previous RfC that rejected a piece of software. But this incredibly basic precept of working in Wikipedia is completely ignored by WMF developers, so we have to ask if this is because WMF developers just don't spend any time on Wikipedia, so they don't know how dispute resolution works here, or do they just not care about the community. Either way, it speaks volumes about how WMF views this community, and neither is good. VanIsaac_WS^cont 19:09, 30 August 2014 (UTC)

Appreciate and support statement

• I want to thank you Mr. Wales for giving us the above statement, and say that I fully support all of the points it clarified.—John Cline (talk) 20:05, 28 August 2014 (UTC)
• no more power struggle? to be clear: no new superpowers for the staff? really? I can't believe it! thanks =) --Sargoth (talk) 20:39, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

I don't actually have a strong view on the fundamental concept of "superprotect" particularly for site-wide javascript. I do have a view that rolling it out in the midst of an emergency was unfortunate and gave rise to conflict that should better have been avoided. But in general I think that admins who edit site-wide javascript in that way are disrupting Wikipedia to make a point and if that's going to happen, then a natural consequence will be to alter the rights of admins to prevent it. (A good idea might be to spread the ability to edit a superprotected page to admins who have pledged not to use it disruptively.)--Jimbo Wales (talk) 20:58, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

• And neither should you believe it. Eric Corbett 20:44, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

  Why not, Eric? This is precisely the kind of toxic and unhelpful comment that I am asking the community to call out. The Foundation is keenly interested in improving processes, and Lila in particular has been hired to beef up the engineering and product capabilities of the Foundation. If you want to just piss all over everything with the view that people (me?) are lying, then I have a good idea for you: find another hobby and leave the community to work for positive change.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 20:55, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

I think the word "toxic" is one that you would do well to expunge from your vocabulary, or at least only use when you're referring to actual poisons. I have several good ideas for you as it happens, but I'll do you a favour and spare you the details. Eric Corbett 21:08, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

It is an apt word and I will not shy away from using it. What it means in this context is "killing a conversation". It is inappropriate to immediately reach for suggestions that I am lying or that the WMF is lying. It's toxic and you should stop it. If you have good ideas, then by all means, don't spare me, put down your poison pen and share them.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 21:23, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

It's an apt word for mushrooms, for me non-native speaker, with a killing flavour. I would not have guessed that another meaning might be "killing a conversation", and I had no idea that kind, generous, forgiving and compassionate people would apply it to "personalities". There must be better words. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:39, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

What's killing the conversation in this context is the situation at de.wp where Superprotect has been lifted but the WMF has made it implicitly clear that any more changes to disable MV, consensus or not, will have consequences. BethNaught (talk) 22:14, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

Dear Jimbo, above you wrote: "I think that admins who edit site-wide javascript in that way are disrupting Wikipedia". Wouldn't it have been much easier to warn and - in consequence - de-admin said German admin? For what good has this Superprotect been invented - either as a concept as well as a script? There would have been many more ways to stop a wheel-war, but inventing a new role was the least effective of them, as we have seen for the past few weeks. In my opinion it was neither wise nor effective to invent such a user role. I may be complaining, but facts do stand, and a broad gap has broken into our communities. This is not something the German (and Austrian and Swiss, as we stand as one) section should be blamed for, but it takes two to begin a war, and a wheel-war as well. These are only thoughts of an ordinary German user, but I hope you will consider them. --Altkatholik62 (talk) 23:12, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

@BethNaught: exactly! As I said here. At present the message seems to be that everyone is supposed to chill provided that the developers get their preferred version. The WMF has to realise that it cannot exist without the community. Sure, it will retain its umpteen million articles but unless it locks them down then it will be complete mayhem (as it already is on some of the smaller language-specific versions). And if it does lock them down then it will also be complete mayhem because all the faults/errors/BLP & copyright violations etc will remain and nothing will improve. Stop thinking like Ayn Rand or whoever on LSD and begin living in the real world. A first step would be to make all significant software change opt-outable from Day One and to make them so not merely for the editors but for the viewers. That gives freedom of the individual and limitation of "big government" which, I rather thought, was one of Jimbo's personal philosophical preferences. But maybe I've got that wrong. - Sitush (talk) 00:48, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

• Thanks for taking the time to write this out, Jimbo. I am reassured to hear things about more incremental rollouts to address bugs early on and investing in better engineering support for building and debugging new software. So far, it seems like a lot of the substantive conversations on Flow over at Mediawiki have been constructive in part because the rollout has been deliberately limited. I think the community generally ought to critically scrutinize new software (and it seems to me that dev teams should value such scrutiny), but I also hope that the scrutiny will be motivated by a desire to help develop a better system rather than a desire to reject it outright and perpetuate an "us vs them" mentality. I, JethroBT ^{drop me a line} 00:24, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

A candid question

• I have a single question, the same I've been asking from the very beginning without getting an answer. Knowing that giving up (while the product is being developed) implementing MV as the default viewer for everyone would considerably deflate the present tension between WMF and the community, why that step was not taken already? Considering the present situation of conflict it would certainly be more important to deflate the tension than to stick to some obscure operational agenda. If you want to chill, that is certainly a good step to begin with. Alvesgaspar (talk) 20:36, 28 August 2014 (UTC)
  • I am not the decision maker on that, but I can tell you why I think it would be a bad idea: because most of the concerns that people had at the beginning have already been addressed, and the rest are on track, then I don't see how that would do anything other than reinforce the perception that the right way forward is for people to engage in wheel-warring and protests about software features. There is no question (none) that the future involves MV enabled universally and by default, and so the right question is what needs to be fixed about it? I don't think having a religious war about it is the right way forward for the community. As I said in my letter, the real way forward is for the Foundation to invest in processes to make sure that (a) software is developed that we need and (b) it is rolled out in a professional incremental way so that major problems aren't suddenly thrust upon the community without warning. We have to move away from the idea that voting is the right way to decide software issues - voting doesn't lead to good software and it doesn't give rise to consensus - it gives rise to bad and unusable software such as what we put up with every day around here.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 20:53, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

    (edit conflict) You're setting up a straw man, as the issue has never been about voting for software features. What it's always been about, and is still about, is the the WMF's forced imposition of software that frankly isn't fit for purpose, or even nearly ready to be deployed site wide. Hence the current lack of trust in the WMF developers. With new initiatives such as Flow waiting in the wings, what guarantee do we have that this pattern has changed? That was of course a rhetorical question, to which the answer is "none". Eric Corbett — Preceding undated comment added 21:03, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

The issue is in very large part about voting for software features, which is something that has been happening for years to ill effect. As to "what guarantee" I don't know what you are asking for or what you would like to see? We've changed CEOs and specifically brought someone in with a strong remit to invest more in engineering and product and there are rapid transitions taking place in those processes. A modern and sane incremental rollout process is being developed so that we can avoid the sudden release of "not fit for purpose" software. What I am asking everyone - even you - to do is to put down your swords and join a dialog about how to improve things. Nasty comments that imply people are lying are just absolutely not helpful. And if you aren't here to help, then you shouldn't be here at all.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 21:13, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

If I'm not here to help what? You seem to have lost track of what this project is nominally about, so let me give you a clue. It's not about software or creating an ever-increasing bureaucracy at the WMF. Or is it? Eric Corbett 21:23, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

Again, poison without content. If you aren't here to help build an encyclopedia, then you shouldn't be here at all. And helping to build the encyclopedia includes helping to have a proper and constructive dialog about software development. Simply pissing on everything all the time is not helpful at all. And if you are going to keep doing it, then do it somewhere else.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 21:26, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

You're simply making yourself look like an idiot. Why don't you do that somewhere else? Eric Corbett 22:00, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

I rest my case.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 22:08, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

What case is that? You've yet to make one. Eric Corbett 22:22, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

You rest your case, mate? Perhaps you do, but not in the way you think. Eric is talking a lot of sense there, and personally I am offended by that bunch of amateurs and failed nobodies that you call the WMF having now taken to justifying themselves in the name of the "users" (who, of course, being merely consumers of content, by definition do not participate nor make themselves heard. The WMF must have a pretty fucking good crystal ball). Let me tell you what though, I AM ONE SUCH USER AND I THINK YOUR MEDIAVIEWER IS AN UTTER LOAD OF WANK AND YOU CAN SHOVE IT RIGHT UP YOUR ARSE. I hope I have made my opinion abundantly clear. Now you're welcome to stop digging.

Content vs ...well, you said it. It is always sad to see someone unable to live up to the principles (or dogma, as it were) they claim to espouse. Hopefully everyone can get more involved in the work of building an encyclopedia of good (not just allegedly good) content. Nikkimaria (talk) 00:43, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

Eric, of all people, is here to write an encyclopedia. You are not, @Jimbo Wales:. WMF is not. Many people and organisations are not, which is fine for as long as you let us write. The 'poison' in this episode has been brewed entirely by the WMF, isn't it time to admit that? --Pgallert (talk) 20:52, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

• • • Sorry Jimbo, but the only religious dogma I see here is your conviction that the future involves MV enabled universally and by default. From my own experience and the comments I have read from many others, MV is presently a nuisance for the editors, most especially those dealing with images. Unfortunately your own words suggest that the real reason for WMF to keep MV enabled by default is to keep its face. Not a very good start. Alvesgaspar (talk) 21:10, 28 August 2014 (UTC)
      • That's not a religious dogma, it's just a fact. MV is not going away. If it is "presently" a nuisance for editors, then the solution is to fix it, not to have some religious opposition to it for no reason. "Keeping face" is not a factor here at all - what is a factor is that modernizing what happens when you click on an image to provide a better experience for both readers and editors is going to happen. Is. That's, again, not religious dogma but a fact.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 21:13, 28 August 2014 (UTC)
        • Thus it is not a religious dogma that the future involves MV enabled universally and by default but an exercise of authority. It will be that way because you and WMF say so. That is the only rational conclusion that can be drawn from your words. Sorry to suggest that WMF just wants to save the face. It is much more than that: they want to say in very clear terms who is in charge. Sorry Jimbo, you have failed to convince me that MV cannot be disabled as the deafult viewer while it is not ready, despite the positive effect it would have on the present conflict. Alvesgaspar (talk) 22:58, 28 August 2014 (UTC)
        • I think there is a "problem" here in that the MediaWiki software is really quite usable as it is. I really don't think MediaViewer adds much to the experience (and it seriously gets into my way when I need the meta-information, but that's an aside). So people come up with projects like VE or MV that look good and have a superficially convincing user story, and hence get approved and funded. Then the people involved become invested in the projects, and the projects take on a life of their own. An argument like "we have worked for two years on the feature" or "we have invested a million Euros into the feature" are not really good reasons to deploy a feature in the face of stiff user resistance. In fact, they should be entirely irrelevant. But that's very hard on a project manager tasked with delivering a project, or developers which have done their best to deliver a feature as specified. I don't know a good solution, but smaller, more incremental steps and much better communication between foundation and users would be a step in the right direction. I think your phrasing above is wrong. "Modernizing what happens when you click on an image" is absolutely not a value in itself. "Provid[ing] a better experience for both readers and editors" is. But that judgement is up to the readers and editors. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 22:08, 28 August 2014 (UTC)
          • MedaiWiki software is not "quite usable as it is". It is a usability nightmare in many ways. I am not aware of anyone at the Foundation or anywhere else who has made an argument like "we have worked for two years" or "we have invested a million Euros". If they have please point it out to me so I can go and explain to them the fallacy of Sunk costs. Modernizing what happens when you click on an image *is* a value for the same reason that following universal standards is a value. Readers and editors (particularly new editors but all editors) have a right to expect that Wikipedia will follow good web design principles and not do weird things for no reason.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 22:14, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

The German Community is well aware of Erik's Statement:... If you want a WMF that slavishly implements RFCs or votes to disable features upon request, you'll need to petition to replace more than just one person. In fact, you should petition to reduce the staff dramatically, find an administrative ED who has no opinion on what to do, and exclusively focus on platform-level improvements and requests that clearly have community backing. This is not the org we want to be. ... Erik Möller,VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation --Niki.L (talk) 06:13, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

• I strongly disagree on the usability issue. Of course, the MediaWiki front-end is not particularly sexy, and it's easy to find individual aspects that could be improved. But it is fit for purpose, as can be seen by the fact that Wikipedia is among the top 10 websites of the world. I've seen the statement that "other websites are passing us left and right", but if they do, where are they? Technical snazziness may be sexy, but it does not necessarily contribute to usability. Indeed, many organisations who have set up MediaWiki for internal purposes have not updated it in the last 5 years or so - because it works as it is. Hurdles to Wikipedia participation are not technical, they are social, both within the community (where processes and expectations have risen) and in society at large (where for large groups, participating in an encyclopedia or any collaborative knowledge project is simply outside their scope of experience). Learning Wiki markup is trivial compared to substantially researching any given topic and writing a sourced article. Edit conflicts are annoying, yes, but they nearly exclusively occur in talk pages and, wiki space debate forums, and maybe the reference desk. I can't remember when I last had an edit conflict when working on an article. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 08:38, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

That you, Jimbo, call flagged revisions a desastrous rollout shows that you are completly blind to the facts. For the Foundation who is obsessed with quantity and has no idea how to keep quality of the content high it may appear so. From the communities point of view it is a different image: on the German wikipedia there was first a consultation (Umfrage), then a test and then the feature got accepted in two polls (Meinungsbild). That is how the process of rolling out software features has to look like. Then the Foundation finally will just present features that actually work and make a step foward. Did you hear any complaints on Echo? Why not? Because it works and helps! Dis the readers feedback tool get accepted in the German Wikipedia? No, because a limited test didn't convice (or better to say it convinced me personally that my initial pro position to the feature was wrong). Your autocratic vision will destroy Wikipedia, not that the software isn't any near facebook-like experiences. --Julius1990 (talk) 22:21, 28 August 2014 (UTC) PS: How many big, long, important articles have you written in comparison to those who tell you that the software is very usabale actually for this task? I really can't take you serious anymore with such kind of statement.

Julius1990, I feel you haven't actually read my statement. So before I address your particular points, I want to ask you to go back and read what I said. I am not calling for an "autocratic vision" but precisely the opposite. I am calling for the Foundation to move away from autocratic software development and rollouts and instead invest real resources in a formal process to engage the community throughout the entire software development process. So my position is exactly the opposite of what you seem to think.

As to the specifics. The rollout of Flagged Revisions in English Wikipedia was a disaster. That it went well in German Wikipedia is not due to the Foundation having a good rollout strategy but because the process put into place in the German Wikipedia by the German Wikipedians was a good one. Here in English, we had a massive fight over a confused poll that different people interpreted in different ways and it ended in Flagged Revisions not being used at all, and ended (unfortunately) in the Foundation throwing up their hands and refusing to invest more resources in improving the feature. I support FR and wish that English Wikipedia would copy what the Germans are doing with it, but that isn't going to happen because the rollout left so much sadness in its wake that I don't see any appetite from the community to seriously revisit the issue.

That the software is usable for technically sophisticated users to write long and important articles is not in question and should not be disturbed. But many aspects of the software could be improved both for experienced and technically sophisticated users AND for new editors and readers. Setting up a false dichotomy that leads you to the conclusion that any change is bad is an error. What we should be asking of the Foundation and what the Foundation is promising are the same thing: serious and deep consultation with the community so that software efforts are properly prioritized to solve the problems that we actually have. We need to move away from the autocratic approach of the past, in which features were developed with insufficient community input, then rolled out to us en masse, followed by riots and votes. That process is wrong. Instead of autocratic top-down approaches, we need serious collaboration.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 09:26, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

Oh, i have read your text very well. And your denial of democratic ways to decide about software features for the projects is nothing but an autocratic vision. That this is not just a vision but was actually exactly what happend with the use of "superprotect" just underlines it. It happens right now. We have a binding poll result that the Foundation doesn't like. So the Foundation ignores it. Is there anything that could be showing less respect to the editors? The WMF can think matters are now solved. But still it should follow the result of the poll or ask for a new one, where the Foundation can argument for its position, but would have to respect the result.

Beside that i have developed a deep mistrust in the Foundation and in you personally. Just a sidenote here: Who was such a big fan of the image filter (basically a censorship tool) and then makes big speeches against the "right to forget" what is simply deeply related to the european central right of privacy, appears to me schizophrenic but not trustworthy. That you on Wikimania than apparently even referred to the power of the movement, but now on your own matters you don't want to accept those parts of the movement who make the power at all, also doesn't make you appear more trustworthy.

Your argument about how much work it would be and how mcuh it would cost to allow custumarization on the single projects. That just makes me laugh. The WMF has much more money than it actually needs. The Foundation has wasted much money by inability and wrong managing decisions. If good developers are hired, if the communication gets better, if the management sticks to the visions of the movement and doesn't think they are actually the leaders then sure it is possible to custamize in certain ways. Critical points can be shown by arguments, and good arguments convince the majority. But you have the power that's why you don't try to convince. Instead of selling the products to us, you prefer to force them on us. That is not the empowerment for the contributers, it's their discouragement. When you write "serious collebaration" and stuff, i simply can't believe it, because there is a year long history where it always just got worse not better, even now the Foundation is not adressing the problem at its core and doesn't show the respect the people who build up all the content deserve. Have you read anywhere that Erik Möller is sorry that he misused a "Community Advocate" in this whole affair or anything like that. No. And that is the core of the problem. And you put just the usual marketing bla bla. So that it is for me with your statement ... i have a little hope in Lila, because she is the only one who deserves good faith since she didn't screw up big time a lot of times so far. But i have no faith in you personally, in the Board (with the aweful statements of Jan-Bart on Lila's meta disk) and a whole bucnh of the Foundation staff especially in Möller or in Forrester (the way he hanlded the Norwegian call for flagged revisions is a hit with the fist in the contributer's face). --Julius1990 (talk) 12:56, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

Well I hope that that wrong decision will be reviewed and fixed. But let's take another look into the reasons why, for some years now, communities and programmers disagree regularly. I don't remember about the who and when of the decision, but it was decided that Wikipedia should have a Facebook-look-alike atmosphere I which each and everyone can contribute. (And that is the source where all this usability shit originates.) That goal is wrong, even with a big WRONG. Wikipedia is not a forum. Wikipedia is not a social media. Wikipedia is the attempt to create an encyclopedia. We don't need contributors which by default are not able anymore to contribute in whole sentences (and I am not talking about people like me, whose English is rather jolty but we're talking about people writing Pidgin in their mother language, whose intellectual capacity is limited to 160 characters including spaces). We talk about users for whom the demandment for the neutral POV and the prohibition of original research are not all Greek. We don't need users, who would comment 'what a lovely place' right through their mobile device into the Capri article right now they're standing on the piazette and even not recognizing wether they are editing the talk page or the article itself. And in my opinion we don't need Flow which introduces just more Facebook feeling and includes whitespace to an extent never seen before. (As a side notice: are there already studys how much more scrolling is needed comparing identical discussions between wikitext and Flow discussions?) The primary purpose of blowing up discussions (in a spatial sense) on news websites is the possibility to show yet more advertising, a function totally unneeded in Wikipedia, so there is no need to create whitespace.

What the communities miss and making them anger is that the developpers concentrate on such for the aim of creating an encyclopedia absolutely unnecessary features instead of fixing old and important bugs (like the ten years old {{bugzilla:367}} on accessibility or the annoying need of inserting &nbsp; between numbers and (SI) units in six year old {{bugzilla:13610}}, mileage of other users certainly varies) or finally creating a practicable and usable referencing system. As I said elsewhere that should IMO be based on Wikidata so that linkfixes would be done there and not in each language version on their own however that should be discussed in the big Wikipediae, perhaps other users have better ideas than me. But so far we are stitched to the extension whose <ref></ref>/<ref name="" />…<references /> syntax seems to originate from DOS 3.21, with the last improvement, when grouping o the references at the end of normal article text was enabled (between <references> … </references>. --Matthiasb (talk) 13:54, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

There were some complaints about Echo but the issue got resolved fairly fast. I think a javascript hack was deployed until the developers conceded the point. It related to the disappearance of the orange box that notified you when you got new talk page messages. The developers, frankly, need to spend more time listening: they may be ace coders but they're often on their own path and it really does not relate to the basics of why Wikipedia exists etc. A good start might be to ditch Möller, who may be one of the greatest coders who has ever lived but clearly has no clue when it comes to liaison. I'm not convinced about the "we've brought Lila in to address the software issues" (paraphrase) argument, either. Sue Gardner seemed to spend an inordinate amount of time attempting to address systemic bias issues and that failed, so if Lila's appointment is really about software then I'm not hopeful. Chief Execs are supposed to drive, encourage etc, yes, but if they are so specific in their interests then they are not well-rounded leaders. - Sitush (talk) 00:01, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

I think the best solution is to fix the error from the past, our software development worked well as long as it was under community control, its messy since we started with 5 payed programmers under the WMF flag and indeed the cost benefit ratio is hopeless, we are still messing with a visual editor a system that was mass introduced in 2004 on the web. A community volunteer supervisor board on top of mediawiki and all software development from the 10 main Wikipedia's and Commons, they are our main drivers to generate visibility on the web and generate income. The community itself was very well able to do it before and if they get a say in development and funding they will fix it again. Mion (talk) 14:18, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

• Re: "...voting doesn't lead to good software..." - Perhaps true, but voting has been effective in leading to the withdrawal of really bad software; see: VisualEditor. MediaViewer is a mere skirmish over trivialities compared to the potential impact and possibility of massive conflict represented by Flow. Carrite (talk) 16:43, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

The alternative view of this is that voting often leads to nowhere, because ideas cannot get off the ground, the kinds of discussions we have stifle any kind of meaningful innovation (from anybody, WMF or otherwise), and it effectively teaches a lesson to those who care about trying to make more structural improvements to Wikipedia. And that lesson is: Don't even try to change anything. The default reaction to software changes always seems to overdramatic and framed in terms of a looming catastrophe based on tenuous speculation. I'm frankly kind of tired of hearing this broken record in the community; the attitude needs to be more on making software that works well rather than trying create a battleground where everyone loses. In fairness, I also was unhappy with the rollout of VE and said as much during one of many of RfCs and discussions, but VE is more or less fine now for some kinds editing and it hasn't ruined the project. I, JethroBT ^{drop me a line} 19:13, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

You appear to be suggesting that as VE is "more or less fine now for some kinds of edits" as a triumph for the WMF, more than a year after a version that was good for practically nothing was made the default. And we all know that Flow will be just as bad. That's the kind of arrogance that has to change. Eric Corbett 19:22, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

FYI - Although it "works," I doubt even the WMF would call VE a triumph in any sense of the term. That also doesn't mean we're doomed based on everything that follows. I, JethroBT ^{drop me a line} 19:32, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

@I JethroBT - Let's emphasize Eric's words... "...more than a year after a version that was good for practically nothing was made the default." Tell me in what way having the ability to short-circuit that inept bureaucratically-generated first generation piece of content-mangling garbageware which was made the default by WMF is in some way an impediment to change. If WMF does their job (1) analyzing actual editing needs; (2) building software to meet these actual needs; (3) debugging their software before launching it; (4) launching it in limited way before making it the default on English Wikipedia — then we will have no problems. Excuse me for having zero confidence in San Francisco at this point... Carrite (talk) 16:40, 30 August 2014 (UTC)

@Carrite: They (like Jimbo above) have repeatedly said that rollouts are going to be limited and gradual, and if they've learned their lesson from VE, they shouldn't default it before it's ready. I'd recommend engaging with the dev team over at mw:Talk:Flow to make sure our needs our met (I have been doing so) and that you call attention to bugs that are most relevant to you. I'm just as disappointed with how things went with VE, but I'd rather try to engage with them to make sure this works than completely write them off. The latter will pretty much guarantee further disappointment. I, JethroBT ^{drop me a line} 21:39, 30 August 2014 (UTC)

Response to your request on my talk page

Jimmy, re: this message --

Suggesting that I relax is one thing, but requesting that I stop doing something is entirely another. Could you clarify which you are doing here?

Since your request is about the open letter I wrote requesting that WMF reverse a couple of bad decisions, I think it's relevant that numerous people have praised its clarity and its measured nature. It may not be perfect, but I have good reason to disagree with the notion that it isn't "relaxed." I can't know for sure, but I suspect your bias/COI may be influencing how you read it. -Pete (talk) 21:01, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

What I'm saying is that the fight is over. You won. Superprotect has been lifted (or is about to be, I'm not 100% sure) in German Wikipedia. The other question is a deep and fundamental question that needs to be answered with dialogue and discussion. It makes no sense in the long run for us to have a situation where hundreds of wikis each have a completely different configuration based on local voting. That is not a viable process and we already have huge problems to the extent that it has happened. Look at Flagged Revisions as a great example. It's a feature that I love but that English Wikipedia has mostly chosen not to use, and other communities are using it in a variety of configuations some good, some bad. This makes long term support virtually impossible for the Foundation. We need to be pushing hard for reunification of software features across the projects.

So you've wrapped together two very different issues. One of them is now moot. The other is in need of a complex and thoughtful discussion, not a petition.

So yes, I'm asking you to relax but I'm also asking you to declare victory and be done with it. There is no need to continue the petition.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 21:06, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

I invite you to read this update on the talk page of the petition, which I wrote after the announcement from Lila and Erik. In summary, a "superprotect" that is enforced by the lingering question of whether or not the WMF will overreact if an elected administrator should choose not to honor its "request" is in no way preferable to a "superprotect" that is a fully technical feature. This is a point which I thought had gotten through, when @Eloquence: acknowledged the problematic lack of clarity in the original announcement of the decision to overrule the English Wikipedia's RFC -- but perhaps not. -Pete (talk) 21:15, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

I have read that and I think it confirms what I'm saying. The first point is moot. The second point, in contrast to your own words, is "about long-term decision-making processes". MV is not going away and an important principle is being established here. As I understand it (and again, I'm not the decision maker) the Foundation's answer to the second demand is "no". And the reason for that is precisely "long-term decision-making processes". What I'm asking you to do is join a conversation and to be a positive influence (as you always are) on that, in the knowledge that the Foundation is massively ramping up investment in the relationship between what the developers are doing and what the community wants and needs. We have to move away from this model of panicky rights battles and mass petitions in a tone of adversary, and move to a position of remembering that we are all there for the same reason: to build something amazing.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 21:20, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

Since you see that the answer to the second request is "no," surely you can see how counterproductive it would be for me to declare victory. Even if I believed we had achieved a victory (which I do not), it would be a betrayal to the 700+ people who have signed the letter with both bullet #1 and bullet #2. I have no authority to overrule them. There is no victory as long as the WMF continues to prioritize its own goals over the reasoned objections of huge numbers and an overwhelming ratio of volunteers -- whether that prioritization is expressed through technical means (superprotect) or social means (creating ambiguity around what is a "request" vs. a "demand").

Speaking for myself, I would very much like to see something very similar to the Media Viewer deployed as the default option; and I know this to be true of many (but not all) of the other people who signed the letter. But it must be a mature product first. At present, I have misgivings about the processes the WMF has created and maintains for evaluating the maturity of the product. Permitting local communities to roll back the default state, at present, would be a practical and clear acknowledgment that the present state of the software may not be sufficient, even if WMF is not (yet) capable of fully grasping what is needed. -Pete (talk) 21:37, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

If you would "very much like to see something very similar to the Media Viewer deployed as the default option" then the best way to get there is to understand now that the Foundation is not going to disable it but is investing huge resources in fixing it. (Which, by the way, is not hard because it's pretty damned good already and just needs some tweaks.) The petition has had all the impact it is going to have.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 21:43, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

Edit conflicts (discussed below) are among of the most frustrating things my students have encountered (in addition to experienced editors). I would not be surprised at all if it accounts for a major portion of the people who would like to contribute to Wikipedia, but throw their hands up in frustration after trying for a while.

But if the WMF goes about trying to address edit conflicts in the same way it has approached other recent software improvements, do you feel confident it would avoid drama and discord? That it wouldn't create new problems that are bigger than the one it aims to fix? (Some seem to feel that Flow will do that, though I am not familiar enough with it to have an opinion.) If you're not confident -- what can be done to address that?

I assure you, it's not just a few tweaks to how WMF advertises upcoming changes, and it's not inviting more volunteers to give up their time without pay to do work that others are paid to do. It is vital that the WMF start hiring people whose (deep) expertise lies in operating within complex social systems, to supplement the engineering talent it has pursued. It really should have that capability at or near the top of the organizational chart -- some of the things WMF's executives and board members say are truly astonishing for an organization of WMF's size and importance. And the WMF must be able to predict at least sometimes what actions will lead to massive unrest, and not continue to be taken by surprise.

One thing that would help a great deal is if WMF organizational leaders (several or all of them) could improve their ability to accurately repeat back the arguments made by those opposing their decisions. Understanding a problem is absolutely vital to being able to find a solution to it. It may be that something like nonviolent communication training for execs would be an effective and low-cost first step.

I do look forward to participating in the effort to get Media Viewer ready for release, even though it will involve significant uncompensated time. At this point I think it would be the right thing to do, if and when the conditions are right, and I appreciate your invitation. However, I am not willing to participate while the MV remains enabled by default on sites where a clear decision has been made to disable it. -Pete (talk) 22:08, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

The Foundation under Lila's direction is committed to radically ramping up investment in engineering and product. So yes, I am confident that things in the future will be different from things in the past. If you are not willing to participate in constructive dialog to move that forward because you are climbing the Reichstag dressed like Spiderman over MV, then you will be sorely missed. We are no longer in an era where voting to disable key software features is accepted. We are moving into an era of constructive dialog and debate. I hope you will change your mind and be a part of that future. --Jimbo Wales (talk) 22:18, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

I appreciate your call for relaxation, but I am not sure how you square that with talk about religious wars, or caricatures of climbing the Reichstag. -Pete (talk) 22:24, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

If the products enabled by default would have a minimum quality, for readers and contributors, this debate would be superfluous. Treating everyone with semi-working features because it looks bad from the engineering perspective if a deployment gets significantly delayed due to needs for improvement is somewhat disruptive. Have you ever tried the mobile version of MV with an iPhone 4? Zero information. Not zoom-able. Closing does not work while loading. I think I am going to file 3 bugs right now; which will take me about 30 minutes. So if you claim that the majority likes MV on mobile, which numbers are you referring to?

While I appreciate the engineers' efforts to reach out an look how pages like Flickr, Google+ and Facebook present their images, I miss considerations on whether we want to become Flickr/Facebook/Google+ or on how we are different and how this should be reflected in software. I am aware that there are eye-candy versions of Wikipedia developed by third parties, so we must catch up to not loose readers to them. But some features are simply not ready for production. This has been recently proven for mobile uploading. I consider the amount of time volunteer Lupo spent proving this situation and cleaning up unhelpful mobile uploads to 3 hours per day. Not only did the development team didn't take copyright violations serious (perhaps they should talk to your legal department), their statistics were also wrong and are still inferior to those Lupo provides. bugzilla:62598 for the full story. But again too many words I think, let's just improve! -- Rillke (talk) 02:08, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

Dear Rillke: Thanks for bringing up your mobile viewing issues. For the record, I would like to clarify a misunderstanding: the Media Viewer tool is not implemented on mobile platforms at all. Our mobile team has built a much simpler mobile viewing feature, but it doesn’t have any of the code or functionality of the desktop Media Viewer. All it does now is show a license below the image and a ‘Details’ button that links to the file page. This gives users the option to simply preview the image, before going to the more cumbersome file page -- which was never designed for mobile use and is hard to parse on small screens. In any case, these are two completely different projects right now: in coming months, the mobile and multimedia teams plan to integrate these features more closely, based on user feedback. I hope this clarification is helpful. Be well. Fabrice Florin (WMF) (talk) 22:45, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

Indeed, m:Community_Engagement_(Product)/Process_ideas might be a good place for those interested to join that conversation. Deltahedron (talk) 21:27, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

Thank you. And don't forget - the Foundation is committed to correcting what, in my view, has been a serious underinvestment in engineering and product over the past few years. So don't shy away from process ideas that actually require the Foundation to hire people.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 21:30, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

The Superprotect is still there. This one superprotected page is un-superprotected now, yes, but members of the "staff" user group still have the right. A user right that wasn't needed in 13 years and a user right that tells the community "you are silly children" and "you can't take care of your things". --Drahreg01 (talk) 21:29, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

While I don't support Superprotect as it is currently implemented (particularly not as a "staff-only" right - that kind of thing just introduces unnecessary divisiveness) I think that the general principle of it is valid: that there is no reason to allow admins to disrupt Wikipedia to make a point by editing the sitewide javascript. I think there can be reasons for technically proficient admins to edit sitewide javascript but it is a major security risk and potential point of conflict and so in general I don't think there is any valid objection to shrinking the group who has that right.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 21:33, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

Admins who don't know a thing about JavaScript (like me) will never edit the sitewide javascript. Admins who do know but don't act resposibly with their right to do so will soon loose their admin-flag. The community will make them loose it. We don't need people with "super power" to manage things that can be managed within the local community. --Drahreg01 (talk) 21:51, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

Drahreg01, the drama on English Wikipedia came when an admin who did not understand JavaScript edited the sitewide JavaScript. Even he admits that the code someone produced didn't do what he thought it would do, and that adding that code was an error in judgment. And it's almost impossible to lose the admin-flag on this project, unlike on most other projects. So I quite disagree with your reading of the situation. Risker (talk) 22:39, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

@Risker: and You say, the English Wikipedia would not be able to solve this drama without the Foundation stepping in? Of course people will always make mistakes, and then the mistakes will be solved. Trusting the communities means, it will not be solved everything immediately. Maybe some things have to be talked over, maybe there are different positions, and a compromise must be found. Of course, if the Foundation doesn't have this trust anymore, they can always reign like dictators, force their position without discussion and threaten opposing voices. I accept, that some office actions must be enforced immediately and without discussion. These are legal matters or maybe software changes, that are a direct threat to the future of the Foundation/the projects. And of course the question, if a Mediaviewer is in opt-in- or opt-out-mode is of that kind - or is it not? --Magiers (talk) 08:58, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

Magiers, English Wikipedia is notorious for not removing admin bits from people who have shown competency issues; it's one of the most frequently cited issues in the upwardly-spiralling expectations that admin candidates face on enwiki. Right now the only method of removing admin bits is through the Arbitration Comittee, and barring certain very specific admin actions (which normally involves inappropriate use of the block or delete buttons, wheel-warring) it will take them weeks to months to do anything. They did indeed accept a case here, and nothing in their drafts and contemplations indicates that they're even considering "don't make edits to the JavaScript unless you understand JavaScript". In fact, they would have been much more likely to have desysopped an admin who wheel-warred changes to the common.js than those admins who reverted him (which pretty much highlights the difference between Dewiki and Enwiki). At least the enwiki situation didn't escalate to a wheel-war, though. I personally think that is a net positive. Risker (talk) 17:00, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

Magiers, I'm responding here to what Risker said above. I am one of the drafting arbitrators on the case she mentions. She is incorrect to say that "nothing in their drafts and contemplations indicates that they're even considering "don't make edits to the JavaScript unless you understand JavaScript".". If Risker had provided a link to the drafts, you would have been able to see for yourself that what she has said is misleading. The draft can be seen here. The draft includes the following:

• MediaWiki namespace and CSS and JS files:

  The editing of the sitewide CSS and JavaScript files (limited to administrators) has been carried out primarily by MediaWiki developers and administrators familiar with the coding language, or following an edit request and discussion on the talk pages

• Administrators (care and judgement):

  Administrators are expected to use care and judgement in the use of their tools. This includes the ability of administrators to edit protected pages and pages of a technical nature that can affect the entire site. In such cases, administrators are expected to act with caution, to respect warnings and edit notices, to recognize their personal limitations, and to consult and obtain specialist assistance as needed.

The related findings highlight the admission by the administrator in question that he did not understand the code he inserted, and the conclusions emphasise the fact that he should have initiated a discussion on the common.js talk page instead of hastily implementing the code that he was provided with. I hope this makes clear that we were indeed considering closely the question of technical competence to edit the MediaWiki namespace. Risker, could you please strike that part of what you said? It was only by chance that I read the above (while reading through the rest of this discussion), and it is distressing to see you misrepresent the case to others. Magiers, if you or anyone else wants to know more about the case, please feel free to ask me. Carcharoth (talk) 00:06, 31 August 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the informations, but I do not want to dig too deep in this arbcom case. But indeed in dewp, we have much more easy procedures for removal of admin-rights. There is a a quick temporarily removal, which can be enforced in 12 hours. Also an admin can be forced to a reelection through the community within 30 days (what happened to the admin, who first enforced the Superprotection in dewp as an employee of the Foundation). To be honest, I see it not as a good situation, when the en-community cannot handle sysop problems by itself and so the stepping in of the Foundation is even embraced. For me the intrusion of the WMF is the highest escalation level, that should be reserved for really important cases. And I don't see a bad hack on a js-page as such a case, because it can easily be repaired by every other sysop. --Magiers (talk) 18:08, 31 August 2014 (UTC)

Per your request, I have struck, Carcharoth. The quotes you give above are draft principles, not draft findings; none of your colleagues commented significantly except for one who said the issue did not rise to contemplation of desysopping, and there are no proposed remedies. Instead, the case is now suspended, with the suspension motion not even contemplating any sanction related to the manner in which code was added, but I am willing to put this to bed now. I only wish the same could be said of the Arbitration Committee, who insisted on suspending rather than closing the case, despite the only two other issues it considered important enough to mention in its suspension motion being commentary about WMF actions, when the WMF wasn't even a party. Erik is many things, but he does not personify the WMF. Risker (talk) 04:47, 3 September 2014 (UTC)

That is understandable (that you do not want to dig too deep into this arbcom case). I've made my point, which is that to fully understand certain aspects of the case, it is best to go read the case pages or talk to the arbitrators themselves, rather than get information through secondhand accounts that may not be entirely accurate. (I should also mention here that the case is actually in the process of being suspended with the likelihood of closure in 60 days, so while the case was clearly heading towards certain conclusions, a full decision may not in the end be published).

On de-adminning on en-Wikipedia, there are also processes here for quick temporary removal of admin tools (again, this was made clear in the drafts at the arbitration case pages). One of the points being made in the drafts at the en-WP arbcom pages was the same as the one that you made here, that local processes would likely have sufficed to prevent any lasting damage (though some have argued otherwise at the case pages).

The interesting thing here is the differences between the approach the en-WP and de-WP communities took. The ArbComs on the two projects have differences, but to me the really interesting thing was the way that the German Wikipedia was very quick to self-organise and vote in large numbers at a poll once superprotect was created and used. Whether the en-WP community would have done the same if superprotect had been used here, I'm not sure (one argument is that the initial incident here got the message across here to the en-WP community that it was best to wait and discuss, rather than wheel-war as occurred on de-WP).

My rudimentary speculations on other reasons for the differences in the type of response is that en-WP is in some ways too large and diverse to react quickly to things like this (someone made the astute observations that you sometimes need to go through several RfCs on some issues here before enough people become aware of the RfCs to result in widespread participation at the later RfCs). I also suspect that en-WP, compared to other languages, has a relatively larger number of editors for whom English is a second language, who are less confident in participating in discussions and votes here.

The point I'm trying to make here is that there are distinct cultural differences between the various language Wikipedias, and the Community Engagement people have the rather difficult task of enabling people to come together at a Wikimedia-wide level to discuss certain things, while still being aware of and sensitive to those differences. Carcharoth (talk) 22:48, 31 August 2014 (UTC)

To understand that Jimbo and the Foundation staff would need to have actually any insight how the projects work. But they don't have it and they don't even care to get it. --Julius1990 (talk) 22:08, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

I'm afraid that's true. The only solution on the table now is to spend more money and employ more people, rather than fewer and better people. Eric Corbett 22:14, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

That's the thing that gets me: there has been absolutely zero accountability as far as I can tell related to the ongoing series of software debacles. And somehow swelling an already-too-large bureaucracy from 191 to 240 is going to fix things... WMF's first paid employee was Jan. 1, 2005, correct me if I'm wrong. I just don't see any correlation between number of employees and quality of software... Rather than additions of engineers, WMF needs to start doing some replacements, not sparing the very highest levels from scrutiny. Carrite (talk) 17:04, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

I'd like to mention three facts that people at the Foundation have overlooked:

1. A 1994 article in the IEEE's Computer magazine stated that more than 3 of 4 major system upgrades failed & were abandoned. (If anyone is interested, I could go thru my pile of back issues & provide a proper citation.)

2. There are a number of experienced professionals in software development amongst the Wikipedia volunteers who might be happy to donate a few hours to provide a detailed plan to improve the user interface that would have a good chance of success. Maybe the Foundation should ask their input.

3. When I mentioned this controversy about Wikipedia's appearance at work, a co-worker mentioned a very successful website that has an even more dated interface than Wikipedia, but which is doing very well: Craigslist. AFAIK, Craigslist has no difficulty in attracting new users -- & makes a profit. -- llywrch (talk) 17:43, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

For the record: If you prefer such war metaphors, „the fight“ is not „over“ unless superprotect is abolished altogether from all Wikimedia projects. The Foundation has lost its face and the trust it once had and should therefore think about how to rebuild its reputation.--Aschmidt (talk) 22:18, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

I don't understand the statement that "It makes no sense in the long run for us to have a situation where hundreds of wikis each have a completely different configuration based on local voting." Isn't MediaWiki supposed to be highly customizable, with many features that en.wikipedia doesn't even use? Isn't it supposed to be useful even for sites that have no affiliation with WMF? By having different configuration options WMF simply tests this diversity and customizability. Wnt (talk) 00:48, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

It is this approach which has stalled software progress for many years. It is unwieldy to manage and test hundreds of configurations and for most sites who use MediaWiki, there is no interest in these kinds of customizations. MediaWiki will of course remain highly customizable but there are limits.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 09:17, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

• Hundreds of configurations? I'm afraid this is another strawman. To my knowledge we were just talking about configuring MV as opt-in or opt-out... How can this affect the management and progress of software? More and more I become convinced that this staging serves one single purpose: to demonstrate to the communities who is in charge. I am surprised and shocked that Jimbo is on the wrong side. Alvesgaspar (talk) 10:02, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

Javascript on Wikipedia

Conceptually, this is a more radical position, yet would actually a more acceptable one, if it is consistently pursued. There is no dispute that MediaWiki changes the software now and then, and while such a large cosmetic change is disturbing, it is within their realm. Our problems start when the developers put in the effort to design the software with a huge range of options for configuration, then come to en.wikipedia and de.wikipedia and say nonetheless we have to use it a particular way, because then they're crossing the line into controlling how we edit the site rather than doing their job of development. This also allows a more gentle way for them to impose their will, because they could say that support for the non-MV version would end at a certain date, giving projects a window of time over which they would still have control whether to adopt it or not.

However, there is one problem with all that theory, which is that the non-MV version is still in use for those of us who routinely keep javascripts disabled. I find that in my web browsing, as a rule, on sites using Javascript any non-interactive content can be accessed fully without Javascript 95% of the time, and they ought to be be done without it 100% of the time. Wikipedia is no exception - the Javascript seems like an Old Man of the Sea that slows and complicates browsing with no visible payoff. The only exception I can think of is the code editor/script errors for Lua and I can't even get those to work on Firefox any more (though they work on IE). I don't see why it should cause any great harm to leave projects the power to shut Javascript features off when the users can and should do so anyway most of the time. Wnt (talk) 14:36, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

Example of bad software

In this short discussion, I have had multiple "edit conflicts". This requires me to know how to scroll to the bottom, find my text, dig through that and find the words that I wrote, copy them to my buffer, then scroll up, find the place where I wanted to put them, and paste. And save again. In the hopes that no one has edited in the meantime to generate yet another edit conflict. The number of times I have had this experience on any other website? Zero.

This is the kind of thing that needs to be fixed, even though we've lived with it for 13 years. A lot of interesting things have happened with web development and AJAX and all that, and we're creaky and ancient by comparison. If we do not give the Foundation space to develop new concepts then we will cause ourselves infinite grief.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 21:39, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

Has that problem even been looked at by WMF developers? Perhaps they should focus on those types of problems (i.e. what we all agree are problems) than what they deem problems. Go Phightins! 21:45, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

Yes, this is one of the many problems that the "Flow" design concept is about. See here for more. One of the things that I'm hopeful about is that significantly increased investment in product and engineering will mean that ideas like this will be made stronger and built sooner and rolled out incrementally so that we don't have too much "shock" due to "not fit for purpose" software being sprung on us.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 21:49, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

What about in articles? Go Phightins! 21:51, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Very few developers, or even Jimbo himself, ever edit articles, so what happens when editing them is of very little interest. Eric Corbett 21:57, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

A different use case and I think a more difficult problem. Talk pages have a different editing dynamic - people mostly don't edit other people's comments (and the rules for doing so are quite strict). Article pages are intended to allow people to edit other people's words. So improving detection of automatically resolvable edit conflicts in article space is worthwhile but a different problem. I'm not personally sure of the state of the art in this area.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 21:55, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

There's an extension called Liquid threads already, no need for flow. --Sargoth (talk) 21:54, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

LiquidThreads, while interesting and cool, doesn't solve all the problems that Flow is designed to solve. But in essence I think both are the same thing, and Flow is the more recent and modern approach to the problem.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 21:57, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

Anybody who recently witnessed the impulsive Wil Sinclair blow up his "OffWiki" project by unilaterally imposing LiquidThreads and creating the mother of all messes knows that Liquid threads is neither "interesting" nor "cool." Flow is LiquidThreads in new clothes... Carrite (talk) 17:15, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

There's talk at WT:Flow of rolling it out as a test case to help areas. The community really needs to put a policy together to control the use of Flow (when and where it is used, flow →text conversion and vice versa, personal choice for user talk pages) before the WMF gets too keen and messes something up. For example, archiving needs to be sorted before deploying to any high volume discussion page. BethNaught (talk) 22:10, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

I don't believe neither in LT nor in Flow. Aside the fact that a lot of discussions take place outside the talk page names room, mainly RfCs and such discussions an implementation of flow will break the English Wikipedias quality mangement system entirely. Just in case the developpers are not aware of it, they should take a look on the bunch of categories Talk:Hurricane Sandy is sorted in and on the bunch of templates the talk page is plastered with, one for every wikiproject the article is affecting. De facto almost every EN Wikipedia article has a talk page with at least one of those templates. Frankly spoken I fear that Flow is just another feature with which Wikipedians will be unhappy with. If I had to decide it I would abandon it and start with working on a Wikidata based referencing system. Footnote management of Word for DOS 5.0 was more user-friendly than the fumbling with <ref>…</ref> and <references/> --Matthiasb (talk) 22:13, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

Well I agree, but since the WMF is clearly going to impose Flow on us whether we like it or not, we need to agree on a common policy position. BethNaught (talk) 22:16, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

This is what I'm trying to call people's attention to - this meme is outdated and dead. The Foundation is not going to impose Flow on you whether you like it or not, the Foundation is going to invest hard resources in working with the community to understand the problems with our discussion system in order to fix them the way we like them. "Flow" is the overall name for that effort, but nothing about Flow is finalized and it will become what the community wants it to become. This false concept that it is the WMF versus the community needs to end.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 09:12, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

And what if the community decided that in the end it didn't want Flow (or its successor)? Is that statement an undertaking that Flow will not be enabled if there is community consensus against it? Given the situation you can't expect me to believe that. BethNaught (talk) 09:18, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

That position can only be bend over and pucker up. Eric Corbett 22:46, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

Eric, I have asked you repeatedly to stop posting content-free nasty remarks. If you do it again, I'm going to ask you to stop posting to my talk page completely, and ask everyone to remove your comments the moment they are posted. You are not being helpful, you are simply causing conflict for no reason.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 09:10, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

At mw:Flow, we read Flow will eventually replace the current Wikipedia talk page system, and at 22:18, 28 August you wrote We are no longer in an era where voting to disable key software features is accepted. So in what sense is it the case the The Foundation is not going to impose Flow on you whether you like it or not? These do not appear to be consistent. Deltahedron (talk) 17:18, 30 August 2014 (UTC)

Actually the problem with editconflicts improved much within the last eight years. Nowadays edit conflicts now only occur in one of the following cases: 1) you're beginning to edit after the last existing edit of the page and another user is adding a new section before yo're saving your edit. 2) Yo're editing at two or more different places within one section and another editor is saving his edit while his edit is somehow between the two places you edited. 3) More than one other editor edited while you were typing your edit.

Eight years ago you already got an EC when two editors edited elsewhere on the same page. A Tip: ever copy your edit in the buffer before hitting the "save" button. (That also ensures that your edit is not lost in the case of a hamster hickup.) --Matthiasb (talk) 21:59, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

textarea, -jkb- (talk) 22:02, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

I think Jimbo is absolutely right that we need developers to focus on this sort of uncontroversial core development - things to make the site work better, not differently. I think that eliminating edit conflicts is closely associated with getting a better "diff" comparison --- it's inexcusable that whole paragraphs can be misaligned due to trivial edits, making it impossible to tell if reference data has been removed or numbers changed. (If you can recognize that two edits are separated within a paragraph, it should often be possible to merge them easily, and color coding the changes would work much better) This kind of comparison has been the object of intense development in the genome analysis community, with programs like ClustalW and BLAST: this is pretty much the same task, to create "the right" alignment. Wnt (talk) 00:39, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

", the Foundation is going to invest hard resources in working with the community to understand the problems with our discussion system in order to fix them the way we like them."

Who decided that there are problems with our existing discussion system? Most if all users I am in contact with are happy with the discussing system as it is, since it is flexible, discussions can easily reorganized, archived, dearchived, deleted, re-edited, formatted, deformatted, reformatted, put in tables, sometimes with images, most of this is going lost with Flow. And, Flow brings so much unneeded whitspace that scrolling that all down will kill most discussions on the way. This is just another project to create disruption between communities and the foundation, and it might be the reason when the relation breaks up. --Matthiasb (talk) 14:08, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

Oh, those decisions were made years ago — mw:Flow/Community engagement may be relevant here, as indeed may Wikipedia:Flow/Community engagement. Deltahedron (talk) 17:21, 30 August 2014 (UTC)

A question for Jimbo

@Jimbo Wales: Through this thread, you have remained insistent that mediaviewer should remain default for all users. Why? It is still being developed and refined. This is exactly what WP:Beta features is for. "If it is "presently" a nuisance for editors, then the solution is to fix it, not to have some religious opposition to it for no reason." So it is being refined, I'll give you that. But no matter what you add to the program in terms of stability, a house with no foundation will fall. Even if it gets better 3 times over, 3 times 0 is still 0. In fact, I'm not even sure the premise of MV is sound. Consider this. You have to click two times at least just to access the file description page. This may sound like something good, but it is not. Looking at the inner workings of Wikipeda helps people understand and learn the processes, and for me personally it encouraged me to join once I discovered it was not anarchy nor someone's personal blog as so many professors insist. Also, who needs the social media links? Do you think anyone would really use it?

So let me pose this question to you. Is your long term goal for Wikipedia better content or better aesthetics? KonveyorBelt 01:22, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

I am not insistent that it "should" remain default. I am simply communicating the message from the Foundation that it will remain default. That's not a question that is open to debate at this time.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 09:07, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

@ Jimbo Wales - but will it be open to debate when we elect a new Board, a Board that will be mindful of who elects them? We have 700 people signing Pete's letter, 600+ on the German RfC... you are kidding yourself if you think that is not enough to influence Board elections. Soon we will have a Board that will cut down these engineering projects and leave decision-making to the Communities. 2601:7:1980:BF6:88BC:4C30:81F4:1B11 (talk) 23:24, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

so, the WMF does not show any willingness to compromise with the opinion of a substancial part of their user community. They still want only to enforce their will. They duck and cover and hope the storm will be over soon and they will proceed as usual. After some 9 years of quite massive contribution I am now at the verge to leave wikimedia, because this is absolutely inacceptable for me. Wikimedia until now does not even seek to mediate or compromise but simply to enforce their own opinion because they (at least technical) can. I know you are quite neutral or even positive about the idea some editors want to leave, surely there will others (but this time maybee not). Wikimedia has put the axe at the root which nurishes them, the large number of longtime contributors. If the roots are cut, even a large three will fall, even if it shows some nice collored flowers. - Tx for considering. Andy king50 (talk) 15:09, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

@Jimbo Wales: I'll pose the question again. A simple answer will do. Is your long term goal for Wikipedia better content or better aesthetics? KonveyorBelt 16:24, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

Your question presumes that you can only fall into one of these camps. Doesn't that seem somewhat unrealistic? I, JethroBT ^{drop me a line} 19:17, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

To be frank Jethro, it can't be anything else, or else the WMF would be doing very different things. KonveyorBelt 02:16, 30 August 2014 (UTC)

Translations

Jimbo, on request by an author at German-language Wikipedia, I have translated some of your posts in this section to German and will maybe add some more. The translations are here: de:Wikipedia Diskussion:Diskussionen mit WMF#Statements von Jimbo Wales (deutsche Übersetzung). I see that some of our activists already found your talk page, more are to come. --PM3 (talk) 02:26, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

Extremism breeds extremism

Re: Jimbo's [fairly extremist statement, IMHO]: There is no question (none) that the future involves MV enabled universally and by default, and so the right question is what needs to be fixed about it?. I had my reservations about signing meta:Letter_to_Wikimedia_Foundation:_Superprotect_and_Media_Viewer (which I regard[ed] as rather extremist), but after reading Jimbo's statement it is clear to me that the current situation would not have happened without his behind the scenes approval and support. It is basically a case of the [sole remaining/active, co-]Founder pushing his pet interface over the will the community. So now I signed the petition without reservation (I'm signature number 661!), and I encourage everyone else who cares about avoiding the repetition of such events to sign the petition too. All this other Jimbo talk about peace is really just throwing dust in the eyes of the fools. Jimbo's peace is just pax imperia. JMP EAX (talk) 05:08, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

You are mistaken on every point. I am not behind the MV. I had no role in designing it, promoting it, advocating for it internally. I didn't even know about it until it rolled out. When I tell you that the future involves MV, I am not advocating for it, I am explaining a fact. An uncontroversial one, actually, since I don't think anyone seriously argues that we should not improve the way media is displayed on Wikipedia.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 09:05, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

Yes, I and many others are suggesting that no software changes should ever be implemented without the express consent of the individual communities that are most in touch with their own needs. 2601:7:1980:BF6:88BC:4C30:81F4:1B11 (talk) 23:27, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

Are you seriously suggesting that MV is uncontroversial, even in the light of the RfCs at enwiki, dewiki and commons? I don't know how you got that impression. BethNaught (talk) 09:09, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

The patent absurdity of this whole circus is that it would stop immediately if the WMF would adopt the following simple rule for new extensions: Every local community is entitled to holding a binding vote under their existing rules to decide on whether the new feature will be opt-in or opt-out by default for logged-in editors. This respects the needs and wishes of the contributors, and doesn't affect the readers either way. Heck, if the vote goes for opt-in, the WMF can even chose to implement opt-in default for the existing editors, and switch to opt-out of new accounts (as they will be used to having the feature active while being anonymous). Problem solved. MLauba ^(Talk) 08:14, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

This is a really core point: the path you are describing is hell. It will not work. It is not possible to improve the software over time if hundreds of wikis have hundreds of different software configurations and requirements. We in the community are always - and quite properly - pressing the Foundation to improve the software we use. We need to press for unification across all languages so that new features can be developed in a coherent and logical fashion. What you propose would be outlandishly expensive to the detriment of achieving anything actually useful for the encyclopedia. The idea that we should be designing software by RfC and then voting on configurations needs to stop now. That process is braindead and broken and will not work.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 09:05, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

I think one of the key issues we face is that unlike other extremely popular websites such as eBay, Amazon, Facebook and Twitter, the community has sufficient strength to be able to successfully challenge software changes. A few years back, when Facebook added banner images on all pages and made other unilateral usability changes, some people went "waaah this sucks!" as any sufficient proportion of a mature userbase naturally would - but their rants were suppressed as they had no effect. You will get to this stage when a site is sufficiently popular that saying "I don't like this - screw you lot" and voting with your feet to go elsewhere for your encyclopaedia writing isn't effective.

I have no opinion on MediaViewer directly but I know that it will not be to some users' tastes, and a smaller subset of those users have time and motivation to protest vocally, as they believe it will have effect. Perhaps WikiWand is the answer - a third party skin that you can use that has no connection with the WMF or the community. If you don't like it, you are free to ignore it and old school Wikipedia is still available for you. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 09:15, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

Jimbo, I don't know if I should call you too simple too naive (很傻很天真). Since the image filter referendum drama, it's disappointingly clear that each Wikimedia project is dominated by one kind of mindset so different to the other. Still the problem of MV is its superficiality. Wikipedia (or Wikimedia) is not Facebook, we don't need something that consume extra processing power to achieve something already feasible with the current design (albeit less friendly in WMF's opinion). It's that old "if it's not broken, don't fix it" mantra. Wikia has forced MV for years without opt-out whatsoever (unless you switch back to monobook skin), that still doesn't change my habit of opening the media file in another browser tag just for avoiding MV. -- Sameboat - 同舟 (talk) 09:34, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

MV doesn't take any materially higher amount of processing power. And yes, Wikipedia/Wikimedia is not facebook - no one wants it to be. What we do want it to be is better. I am calling for a complete move away from practices of the past, and major investment (as promised by the Foundation) into collaboration with the community rather than willy-nilly release of features that aren't ready for prime time.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 09:41, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

Actually, the animated upscrolling details tab (the [mobile] web 2.0 term for that appears to be a slide panel or slide-out navigation) does spike up the CPU usage in Goolge Chrome. There's also a spike when a new image is loaded, something that doesn't happen with the old viewer. So MV might not use anymore processing power on your servers, but that's not the whole story. JMP EAX (talk) 10:33, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

And where do you think the hip new thing comes from? The answer is not Wikipedia, but see [10][11] JMP EAX (talk) 11:05, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

Jimbo Wales "the path you are describing is hell. It will not work. It is not possible to improve the software over time if hundreds of wikis have hundreds of different software configurations and requirements." Considering we're talking about a feature that already has an opt-in / opt-out mechanism, this comment of yours strikes me as either a particularly dishonest strawman, or profoundly tech illiterate. To toggle a setting on or off by default for a particular subset of users has absolutely no impact on overall software configurations or requirements, it only diminishes your pool of potential feedback from a group of users - in this specific case, those who voted to opt out by default and don't like the feature in the first place. It really is no big deal on the technical side, poses no additional cost on maintenance since the opt-out feature is already present. It would however do wonders for the WMF's engagement with community. MLauba ^(Talk) 10:32, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

Correct general argument here. Every new feature should have an ON/OFF switch. Every language encyclopedia should have the right to determine whether that switch is ON or OFF by default. If WMF software represents actual improvements, everyone will be toggling on. If the new software represents disimprovements, everyone will be toggling off. If WMF invests multimillions of dollars on software toggled OFF there should be accountability for those effectively wasting donor funds, not those communities making judgment decisions about "better" or "worse." The solution starts with WMF actually doing research about who it's dedicated volunteer core is and what they actually need to make their jobs easier and better. If things just need to be made prettier for readers, do it in the form of skins and help readers to install those. Unfortunately, WMF still doesn't appreciate that on a fundamental level WP has changed: we don't need 100,000 new editors a year making 3 or 6 dubious, unsourced edits each. We need a few hundred new expert content people, and we need more cadres and better tools to ease the burden our quality control people. We need translation software that works to get content ported over from En-WP and De-WP to some of the smaller language projects more effectively. And we need WMF to stop with their "Top 5 Website and We Must Preserve Our Market Share" attitude, which is................ toxic. Carrite (talk) 17:34, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

Another journalist who is dead wrong (according to Jimbo/WMF) [12] I'm sure. And another: "The Foundation has a miserable cost/benefit ratio and for years now has spent millions on software development without producing anything that actually works. The feeling is that the whole operation is held together with the goodwill of its volunteers and the more stupid Foundation managers are seriously hacking them off." JMP EAX (talk) 09:26, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

Other than the extreme nature of the comment ("without producing ANYTHING" is too strong) why do you think I would disagree with that? This is precisely the point of the new CEO and new direction - to radically improve the software development process. That statement, while too strong, is indeed an accurate depiction of what has gone wrong. I've been frustrated as well about the endless controversies about the rollout of inadequate software not developed with sufficient community consultation and without proper incremental rollout to catch showstopping bugs.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 09:43, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

Unfortunately, that's not all there is to this (i.e. just a series of gaffes). The first journalist elaborates in another piece: [13]: “Wikipedia is described as a "community", but this is a strange sort of community, in which the devoted contributors are ‘taxed’ without being represented. Needless to say, writing and maintaining Wikipedia entries is laborious unpaid work. To devote oneself to contributing to Wikipedia thus requires a huge sacrifice – a significant personal opportunity cost. Yet as with the examples above, everyone profits from your work, except you. If you’ve contributed for years to Wikipedia you must now accept a new political economy: you have permanent lower-caste status, and have simply been working hard for other people to get rich. The list of profiteers from Wikipedia is a long one: from little scrapers to massive search engines to the Foundation’s lucky elite. (Now you can begin to see why Jimmy Wales espouses his medieval views on copyright – weakening property rights means everyone profits from the work except the person who creates it).” Did you get any good press over this Jimbo? Cause I can't find it Google News... Must be "the right to be forgotten" at work or something like that. JMP EAX (talk) 09:47, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

I'm afraid I don't understand what you are asking me. But virtually all of what you quote is simply factually incorrect. There exists no other website where the community's control is greater. The users of Facebook do not elect the majority of the board. The users of Google don't get to collaboratively work with developers with all software open source and publicly distributed to improve Google. "...you must now accept a new political economy: you have permanent lower-caste status" - that's just sheer unmitigated bullshit. And the idea that I express "medieval views on copyright" is just intellectually dishonest of that author. I express no such views and my views on copyright are quite dully mainstream.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 12:29, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

@Jimbo Wales: Sheer unmitigated bullshit is your claim that the Wikimedia community elects the majority of the Board. You might not have noticed, but we only elect three out of ten (3/10, 30%) members of the Board of Trustees — the rest are either appointed by the chapters or by the Board themselves. Your lack of knowledge of the composition of the Board is worrying. odder (talk) 13:27, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

So why don't you step back and ask yourself a question about what you've said? Do you think it is really possible that I don't know how the board is composed? I'm focussed right now on the last sentence: "Your lack of knowledge of the composition of the Board is worrying." I'm pretty sure that even when you wrote that, you knew full well that I know completely and exactly how the board is composed. So rather than say "Jimbo, I don't think the chapter representatives count as representing the community" - a mistaken but respectable position to take - you instead made an insinuation that is insulting and ridiculous. Don't do that, is my advice, because it is not a productive way to have a serious conversation.

It is my view that the chapters represent the community as well as the directly elected editors. Certainly all of the chapter representatives to the board have been active Wikimedians. If you want to have a serious discussion about whether they do it well, and what the problems there are with our current setup, then let's have that conversation.

I have also made a commitment that in case it ever came up that my vote would need to side with either the expertise-appointed seats or the community-elected seats to make a decision, I will vote with the community-elected seats.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 13:56, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

Sure, you did. Too bad it was a lie. --Nemo 14:36, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

@Jimbo Wales: My advice is, in order to have a serious conversation, just don't write stuff that's blatantly false. Even if you count chapter-appointed Board members as representing the community, that's five out of ten — not a majority. You wrote: "The users of Facebook do not elect the majority of the board." — the Wikimedia community doesn't elect the majority of the Board of Trustees, either. And if you know that, why did you mention it at all? odder (talk) 14:45, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

I've done a lot of work in software development, including developing and rolling out software for web sites. 1 - Allowing multiple configurations of software features exponentially increases the number of combinations that need to be tested and which can go wrong, and you can easily reach a critical mass of variations that the software becomes unsupportable. 2 - Holding a vote on web site software development will put the decision in the hands of a very small subset of the users of a site; typically, the number of people active on a site is very small compared to the ones who just read and use the site's facilities without speaking, and a vote amongst a self-selected few will not represent the views of the majority of users. 3 - The people who do choose to speak on such things typically contain a much higher proportion of naysayers than a site's users in general; just about every web site that makes a change suffers a backlash storm from a minority of its loudest users, while the great majority just get on with it and don't offer any opinion at all, so you need to use other ways to find out what the majority really think (times spent on specific pages, click-throughs via different routes, and all sorts of other metrics). What should you do at Wikipedia? I don't know, that's up to you - but I think the decisions need to be made by those people who actually understand and have experience of developing and rolling out web site software. And that's all I really want to say. Neatsfoot (talk) 10:05, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

Critcally, those people also need to have an understanding of the specialist needs of a wiki community building an encyclopaedia, which is not like other websites really at all. I have to say that such experience sadly appears to be lacking in too many of the WMF staff, including Lila (though she still has time to learn). BethNaught (talk) 10:10, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

Every site has its own specific and unique characteristics and needs, but the core concepts I describe are pretty much universal Neatsfoot (talk) 10:15, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

You appear to have missed some details. JMP EAX (talk) 10:46, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

I wasn't attempting to examine or provide any details at all, just to highlight some pretty much universal characteristics of web site software development and rollout. Neatsfoot (talk) 10:56, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the generic lecture, but with usability the devil's in the details. I guess those 3 gals just had to "work" more on their Facebook iPhone app and they would have figured out by analogy how the new Wikipedia is supposed to work. The same surely applies to many old curmudgeons calling themselves editors. After all, you can see how obsolete Wikipedia's editors are by the fact that they haven't even't heard of slide-out navigation etc. (As the time of this writing.) JMP EAX (talk) 11:21, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

Well yes, of course the details are critical for good usability; I don't think anyone is disputing that (certainly not me). Of course you need good community consultation, proper testing, incremental rollout, usability studies, general user feedback etc. All of those things are good software practice; but they do not in anyway contradict anything I said in my opening paragraph and I really don't understand what it is you're arguing against. Neatsfoot (talk) 11:37, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

The decisions should be made by the software developers - not an unexpected advice from a software developer. :o) In the real world, the decisions would be of course made by the customers of the software developers, that cannot afford to loose clients because of unaccepted software and that have not an hostile view on the clients, that raise their voices ("only the lound and the few"). The problem with the WMF is: They have no real customers, so they work in a sort of cloud-cuckoo-land. The money is earned mainly with the work of the refugees in the projects, so there is no direct feedback for bad developments in the WMF, only the feedback of the communities, which can be forced to use the software anyway. So of course, as shown with the superprotect, this is the easy way to make the software development and it would take much good will, to accept and even embrace the complaints instead of talking them away. --Magiers (talk) 12:27, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

No, the decisions should be made by the software development managers (and I also speak as a software developer). Neatsfoot (talk) 12:31, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

As for the "neat" idea of hiding all the details under an icon that is by no means standard (it's not even the "hamburger" one), especially on a non-mobile site; see [14] (referenced from) [15] (itself referenced from) [16]). JMP EAX (talk) 11:55, 29 August 2014 (UTC) @Jimmy Wales just an aside.. interesting that you bring up the idea that chapters might not represent the community. I would definitely think they do not when chapters can marginalize active Wikipedians in their "territories."Thelmadatter (talk) 22:49, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

Case in point, the latest developments on this WMF vs. editors: Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#Inappropriate_threats_by_User:Fram. JMP EAX (talk) 23:45, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

Jimbo's fault

Just remember, whatever happens, it's your fault: Wikiwand Gives Us The Wikipedia Redesign Jimmy Wales Won't :) Alanscottwalker (talk) 11:47, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

Indeed. :-) --Jimbo Wales (talk) 12:09, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

A big HELL NO. Even more intrusive than MV. -- Sameboat - 同舟 (talk) 12:23, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

Well, it's better than Vector at least. -mattbuck (Talk) 12:34, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

I think it's pointless and unhelpful, but you may be interested in mw:Winter. BethNaught (talk) 12:43, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

I just downloaded and installed Wikiwand. The spacing between headers is a bit large, but it looks great. Even if WMF just acquired them and instantly upgraded the UI to the WikiWand interface, it would be a huge improvement. CorporateM (Talk) 15:03, 31 August 2014 (UTC)

I recall when I first saw Mosaic some 20 years ago. It didn't take that much brilliance to realize that ASCII text-based interfaces were dead. I've seen the future for readers and it looks something like Wikiwand. If the WMF doesn't do it someone else will. Readers will avoid all the clutter that is in Wikipedia's editors' interface. The media viewer is right up that alley. The question is, how to keep editors who aren't into self-promotion coming when the editors' links aren't so obvious. Maybe set up tip jars on their user pages? Wbm1058 (talk) 17:55, 3 September 2014 (UTC)

one shoe must fit all?

Dear Jimbo,

leaving several current and still pertinent issues aside – most of which lots of colleages and myself too already commented on at Lila’s talk page – just a note regarding a core perception, or, in my view, misperception underlying WMF’s apparent strategy and possibly also your perception and evaluation of it against the actual situation and development we have to face.

I would call WMF's current and still rather aggressively imposed strategy the „one shoe must fit all“ approach. WMF employees evidently prefer terms like „consistency“. This approach will simply, and not only in the long term, not work for critical WMF projects. To see this, however, you would need a much more involved perception of how different projects scale and evolve in different contexts. You will definitely not get such a perception by office talks and conferences among yourselves (Wikimania and other meetings included, as long as their organisational layout effectively results in corroborating only perceptions you already hold instead of including different and especially local viewpoints).

A central problems here is the relation between

a) people who are capable and willing to i) contribute and ii) maintain intended quality content, against

b) people who would much rather pseudo-contribute other stuff (that people from group a would have to filter and throw out again)

Both groups scale, in several contexts, differently, and projects will always need a large enough group (a), a "critical mass", so to say, in order to keep pseudo-contributions from group (b) in check! In contexts like, e.g., the german or the norwegian wikipedias, this has devolved into a misproportion (too many among (b), too less among (a)). This is why we would not be able to anymore maintain quality control without flagged revisions. Thus, by denying communities which evolve into comparable calamities critical functions to cope with the situation (like FR), WMF will simply cripple them. This problem will, naturally, spread and increase. It is getting even worse with overall tendencies to enable everyone to publish every crap no-one needs everywhere. Most WMF projects, especially Wikipedia, are definitely not to be included in those tendencies, which obviously several WMF-employees did not yet even start to realize.

The same holds contrariwise for software developments which put more pressure on what people among (a) do on a daily basis but which facilitate it for people among (b) to pseudo-contribute crap without sufficient means of filtering. A typical example was [17]. This is getting even worse where software developments makes it harder and harder to successfully recruit people for group (a). People have several times explained why they take MV to still fall into this category of problematic software development. However, nothing at the horizon would be as desastrous as implementing Flow among high-volume Wikipedia talk pages. On this, e.g. see these remarks by Martijn and me.

We have now been, in relation to WMF, quite oftentimes in the situation where wo could only in retrospect comment that "we told you so", and we did so often and more, and we did so loud and clear. Given the current outlook, it is to be expected that we will soon be in the same position again and again. This is, of course, only to be expected in the light of WMF hardly, on their own, being capable of realizing needs, demands and respective developments down to the decisive levels of individual communities. At the same time, however, WMF evidently chose to mainly ignore community input - we could name several instances especially since 2010. Given the current situation for MV in en.WP and de.WP and FR in no.WP, we have little hope to see WMF adopt a less misguided outlook. Your reinterpretation of principle 4 also hardly invites a hopeful perspective in this regard.

Nevertheless, many would still take you, and also Lila and a few others of possible influence on these matters, as capable to get a larger and better picture of where we and WMF stand and, more important, should move towards. I hope this view is not also mistaken.

Best regards, Ca$e (talk) 12:03, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

Hi Case, and thank you for your comments. "One size fits all" would be a terrible approach to take. We all know, as you have identified, that smaller communities have different "critical mass" situations and different issues from larger communities. And there is room to accommodate a reasonable degree of local customization based on local circumstances. And I also agree very very strongly with you that simply increasing small ways to contribute (I would not be so harsh as to say 'pseudocontribute') without appropriate tools for the community to maintain quality would be disastrous.

My main point, as is my custom, is to say that all of this has to change and we need to step back and think philosophically about how to do it. We know one way that very much doesn't work: developers working in relative isolation with too little input from the community about needs (and just as often, input that doesn't get to the developers or which they don't listen to because they don't understand the nuances) followed by mass-scale rollout of things that aren't good, followed by cyber-rioting and anger and conflict. We have to move away from that model - any of us can, as you say, "name several instances" in the past.

Instead we need to move towards a collaborative, iterative, incremental rollout process for features designed with real community engagement. One of the issues we have had in the past is that the Foundation has underinvested in that. Yes, there have been developers - many of them quite good. Yes, there have been great community members with an interest in software development and valuable insight into what is needed. And in between? There has been much too little engagement. The two groups do not talk enough but more importantly do not collaborate enough.

Fixing that is going to require more than one approach. One thing it requires is investment by the foundation in a much more comprehensive process of product management and development, designed to seriously engage with people in the community who understand our needs and who can also help build consensus for change. And it requires us in the community to relax a bit and approach the issue with a new look, based on a new CEO and a new philosophy of product development and rollout.

What we can't do is continue down the old path of broken software development followed by votes about what to implement or not on a case by case basis and an expectation that any community can vote to block new features. That's been the only possible hope for the community during a period when software development wasn't working so well. It's the worst thing for the long run though and we need to move away from it.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 12:22, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

<quetsch> Fine analysis, this is exactly what happened with VE and MV: broken software was pushed down the throat of the community, they voted against it, and because of the hard-handedness of the ivory tower in SF, that only reluctantly started to listen to it's customers and bosses (both the community/ies), as they retracted the damage was already done. Of course with such dumb procedure, even projects with probably good chances to become liked by the communities, like a really working VE, or a bugless MV, became tainted by the aggressive implementation. So now a new VE has to be perfect to get accepted by the community, as nobody would expect anything useful coming from "those mindless idiots in SF", who botched it once quite hard. And I hope, the WMF leaves it's ivory tower regarding it's new fetish Flow and listens to the users beforehand, not as usual only "nachdem das Kind in den Brunnen gefallen ist" (after the horse left the stable). --Sänger S.G (talk) 14:05, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

Jimbo, do you have any people (or do you plan to get any) who have much experience in software development management? Neatsfoot (talk) 12:35, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

Yes, we already do, and yes there will be more. To be clear, though, I do not work at the Wikimedia Foundation and I am not directly involved in hiring. But Lila has extensive product and engineering experience and has made a commitment with support from the board to drastically upgrade our capacities - a move that I think is long since overdue.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 13:18, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

That's good to hear, thanks Neatsfoot (talk) 13:40, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

Can you detail (or has someone detailed) what that commitment and what those capabilities are in detail? I suspect we are very interested to hear this. Wnt (talk) 14:41, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

The problem with Case's view is that of course there is crap on the projects, it being a wiki, but the answer to that is not arcane ancient software - AI could address some of that -- the thing that reduces crap is down to two things 1) most people don't want to introduce crap; and 2) most people do not like to see crap so they fix it. Arcane ancient software does not figure into those motivations. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 12:37, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

Wrong! Most people never should see any of this crap because of 1) they believe WP and even take it for a possibility that crap is present, so they won't fix it, and 2) the group of "new users" the WMF has in mind won't react like described in your 2). Indeed, how many people lift a piece of paper others left on the earth to put it in the litter box? What happens is 3) If there is too much litter on the boardwalk, people take a detour. And, if we're talking of NO:WP, then 4) The people interested in improving WP are already there or have been there and left, whysoever. Very likely they won't come back.

[[Ping|Jimbo Wales}}: Did the foundation ever study why contributors left the community, and to which extent it was a) because of some conflict in the community or b) of some "software improvement" those useres were frustrated of? For example, is there a study, how many new users WP gained just because of the introduction of Vector and how many finished their involvement because of it? How many initally tried it but returned to Monobook? --Matthiasb (talk) 14:45, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

So, your first premise is that most people are idiots or insane (not that that is an entirely unsupportable premise but it's just not conducive to a product that is done by a wiki); and your second premise is you view new users as your enemy (given your first premise, have you considered what you are saying about you?) Alanscottwalker (talk) 15:01, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

Given the disaster we saw with mobile image uploads to Commons – nearly 100 percent of mobile uploaded images have been copy vios and/or out of scope (e.g.: selfies in front of monuments) – yes! Most people are idiots or insane. According to what I read some years ago (I am citing from memory, so the original words perhaps differed): If people are too much of a idiot we need to keep them away from Wikipedia. So the premise to make it more easy to edit in Wikipedia might be the wrong way to keep this project running. --Matthiasb (talk) 16:09, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

Entitlement and Inertia

A huge aspect of this whole thing involves editors who have been essentially unpaid workers feeling like they have the same amount of ownership over the site - or more - than others. That, and the fear of change - any sort of change. Speaking from personal experience with the latter, when the Notifications were first announced, I was really dubious but now I love them. Change isn't always something to be feared, but rather embraced. And multiple people trying to choose the best option will fail (Anarchy). You need an authority body to decide what change will happen when. (P.S. Can somebody please create Wikipedia:Getridofit which explains you can simply disable any feature you don't like through Preferences?)

So I just want to point out that Jimbo + co. must be under an unbelievable amount of pressure right now having to discuss some very intense topics with all of us here on his talk page, a boss-employee dynamic that is unprecedented, due to the fact that Jimbo considers himself simply another editor, and some editors have deemed themselves worthy of knowing what's best Wikipedia due to their many years of loyal service. And these are some of the psychological issues occurring in the background. It's worth taking these into account.--Coin945 (talk) 14:33, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

Many words of wisdom in what you have said. First, I think there is a very good reason why community members not only DO feel a sense of ownership over the site, but SHOULD feel it. That's well deserved and well earned. Ownership might not even be the best word - parenthood might be closer for many of us. Wikipedia is our baby, our creation, and we want to defend it passionately. So it's natural that change is going to be hard.

The old way, which is now being rejected, involved insufficient consultation to learn what editors and readers need, followed by premature rollout of buggy software *all at once*, causing widespread alarm. This, coupled with the emotional charge that we all fear, and a fair amount (sad to say) of fear-mongering, has led to an awful situation of mistrust. I don't think anyone is seriously arguing that we ought to keep the status quo. Almost everyone gets that we don't want the Foundation to stop developing software, and we do want them to do it in a better way, and that rollouts of software need to be incremental so that testing and feedback - real feedback - is possible.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 17:31, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

I also agree with Coin945. Fact of the matter is, as organizations mature, there needs to be major changes in power structure. The "communities" idea was great in the beginning, but is seriously outmoded. Fact of the matter is that the Foundation will have to take a stronger central role in the decision-making of the projects because they have simply become too large and unweildy for "direct democracy" for lack of a better term. We dont really have that either; what we have are a bunch of petty fiefdoms and chiefdoms who are far too interested in thier little turfs, rather than the big picture. That is human nature. It is the Foundation's responsibility to see the big picture and yes, step on toes when need be because when all is said and done, if Wikipedia/Wikimedia fails/is replaced by something better run and easier to use, all these so called "rights" and feelings of ownership won't mean squat. While Ive certainly have my beefs with the Foundation, I trust them more than any community group Ive dealt with in the past seven years.Thelmadatter (talk) 23:02, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

An the WMF is made of humans or borgs? Aren't they mainly interested in their own turf [of funds, projects etc.] rather than something "bigger" by your logic? Based on WMF's past performance, some have drawn quite different conclusions than yours. JMP EAX (talk) 14:04, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

Upcoming revision of MV looks much better

See mw:Multimedia/Media_Viewer/Improvements.

There are still some things to get right, which the MM team are on, but the big thing (as trailed at Wikimania) looks right -- namely getting the role clear: that this is an alternative way to view content of the WP page, not an alternative to the Commons filepage, so if people want more information give them a very big button to the filepage -- from a Commons perspective, that should help a lot. Jheald (talk) 22:33, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

I think the more visible "more details" button certainly is an improvement. It uses text for starters, has high contrast and its sidekick icon is more like the "hamburger" one. What I still don't understand is the obsession with making the interface like that for a mobile phone, i.e. use slide-out navigation. Even Flickr on a desktop uses plain old school scrolling for image details. But this isn't that much of a concern as to what gets (or doesn't get) displayed in the "more details". Insofar we don't have the details on that, so I can't comment any further just based on that mock-up. The slide-out navigation concept generally limits the amount of info that can go into the slide-out panel; old-school vertical scrolling doesn't have that limitation. JMP EAX (talk) 08:05, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

"More Details" will just go straight to the Commons filepage.

The slide-out navigation is in question, with one view being that it should no longer be needed. Jheald (talk) 22:29, 2 September 2014 (UTC)

Good to hear that. By the way, if Jimbo gave the MV dev(s) a free pair of headphones for finding 3-4 issues in the MV design that were predictably problematic according to this talk, I'm sure things would have been a lot smoother... JMP EAX (talk) 08:14, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

Jimbo, I don't think the chapter representatives count as representing the community

Quoting direct from Jimbo a few sections above. As a UK wikipedian the UK chapter has zero impact on me, it seems to be an organisation pretty independent of what happens on en.wikipedia. It appears to be an organisation with its own agenda (possibly something to do with GLAM, and maybe organising events I don't go to). I speak from complete ignorance as its made no effort to engage me even though I watch the obvious places like the WP:UKWNB. It seems to be a private fiefdom with its own scandals and a pot of money to burn. Like many UK wikipedians I don't particularly want to engage with it and its politics, I would rather edit the encyclopaedia.

It worries me somewhat that chapters have power on the board especially as chapters are funded by the WMF. This creates a rather cosy relationship chapters influencing policy which keeps chapters in funds. Again its something I know very little about as its all things which happen elsewhere.

The one chapter which has done anything to help me was the German chapter which ran the toolserver. Well it did until the WMF cut their funding, effectively killing a bunch of useful tools. (I wonder it this helped to darken the relationship with de.wikipedia).

I'm not saying the UK chapter or other chapters are a bad thing, I really don't known, its just that it does not speak for me. --Salix alba (talk): 08:18, 30 August 2014 (UTC)

I agree with that completely. BethNaught (talk) 08:32, 30 August 2014 (UTC)

Not speaking on behalf of the UK chapter as my only involvement with it has been as a volunteer helping to run Wikimania 2014, but, how would or could the UK chapter make efforts to engage with you? It seems you prefer not to attend events, but a great many people do attend them, and I would argue this does have an impact on the encyclopedic project even if you are not there in person yourself. Many of the the UK chapter's initiatives seem to be concerned with finding (and sometimes training) new editors; I think it's widely acknowledged that this is important for the project. Dismissing it as "something to do with GLAM" doesn't seem appropriate. Arthur goes shopping (talk) 08:35, 30 August 2014 (UTC)

I suppose the UK chapter is somewhat unlucky that unlike the German one it cannot be clearly associated as running a Wikipedia. But besides the "something to do with GLAM" and the kumbayah called Wikimania that a great[er] many other people prefer not to attend, is there anything else? JMP EAX (talk) 22:20, 30 August 2014 (UTC)

My perception, as an editor who has been to a couple of WM get-togethers but hasn't wanted to go to any more than that, is that essentially WM comprises full time Wikipedians, for whom it's either their job or their sole, or at least overriding, interest. A lot of editors (like me) do editing as an occasional interesting hobby. It's voluntary, and it's not a commitment. It can seem like it takes over sometimes, but (I hope) we have other interests as well. The Wikimedia (and other) people sometimes don't seem to recognise the fact that most editors - even established and experienced ones - don't want to commit too much of their time and energies to "the project", but are happy to dip in and out of it as and when we want to. Ghmyrtle (talk) 09:14, 30 August 2014 (UTC)

Agree with @Salix alba: and @Ghmyrtle:. Especially the toolserver thing. Bloody daft idea killing that was. Profoundly unhelpful. DuncanHill (talk) 11:45, 30 August 2014 (UTC)

I must say, as a UK Wikipedian of 6+ years, and former WMUK trustee, I'd never heard of WP:UKWNB (aka the talk page of WikiProject UK), and wouldn't think it the "obvious" place for anything. It has had precisely 265 views in the last 60 days, and the actual "noticeboard" page has had 13 edits, mostly administrative, since 2012. But now I look I see the most recent post on the more active talk page is by the Chairman of WMUK, publicizing the return of the hugely successful "Wiki Loves Monuments" next month, with others on the page by people I recognise as WMUK regulars, and one by a staff member. I think this shows that the "effort to engage me" has indeed been made, and repeatedly so. Of course not everyone wants to participate IRL, and that's fine. Johnbod (talk) 14:37, 30 August 2014 (UTC)

I think Salix's point was that the WMUK doesn't represent the majority of UK editors, whether or not they participate "IRL". --SB_Johnny | ^talk✌ 23:34, 30 August 2014 (UTC)

It was that it doesn't represent him, though as he boasts "complete ignorance" of what it does and says, that presumably doesn't mean he necessarily disagrees with any WMUK stances. He doesn't address how editors in his position could get any views they have across. But you are right, IRL activity is by no means necessary for participation in WMUK or any chapter. Johnbod (talk) 00:34, 31 August 2014 (UTC)

@JMP EAX: You wrote "I suppose the UK chapter is somewhat unlucky that unlike the German one it cannot be clearly associated as running a Wikipedia" - well, the German chapter (WMDE) certainly isn't "running a Wikipedia", either. The community of the German-language Wikipedia has always welcomed technical help by the German chapter, or things like the agreement with the German Federal Archives resulting in the donation of many useful images to Commons. As long as the German chapter offers things to the community and doesn't try to make decisions for them, they're welcome. But as soon as the community feels they're being appropriated by WMDE for some project that didn't stem from the community, a very stiff wind indeed may blow into WMDE's face, and there has been an instructional example: Probably you never heard of a project called "ZDFcheck"? Well, in 2013, WMDE proudly announced a cooperation with the German public-service television broadcaster ZDF where Wikipedians were supposed to "fact check" statements of politicians in connection with the German federal election. Problem is, they didn't ask the Wikipedians first. And after ZDF announced ""ZDFheute.de, Phoenix, Wikipedia und Sie checken Aussagen im Wahlkampf" (ZDFheute.de, Phoenix, Wikipedia and you are checking statements in the election campaign), many, including me, were rather mystified: I beg your pardon, "Wikipedia" is going to check statements for ZDF? Who is "Wikipedia"? Where has ZDF (and their cooperation partner WMDE) got the power to assign their "fact check" work to Wikipedia community members? It was then a widespread sentiment that WMDE was trying to use the community in order to boast about a cooperation with the well-known ZDF, and there was a lot of disaffection - for those reading German: one of the discussions and a survey (not by WMDE - started after the project was announced) where the project was predominantly disapproved of. Well, ZDF continued their "ZDFcheck" in 2014 for the European Parliament election, but this time without Wikimedia Deutschland - who apparently have learned the lesson that it doesn't make the community very happy when you make such announcements of what they're supposedly are going to do. People prefer to decide for themselves what they like to do in Wikipedia, not to speak of external projects. - As a side note, the project was also heralded as pioneering the release of freely licensed content by public-service TV, but the actual amount of free media created in the project is negligible, see the Commons category with its 38 entries... - I don't mean to bash Wikimedia Deutschland. On the contrary, I think they're doing good work most of the time. Many projects are successful. But I think ZDFcheck is a fitting example of how to botch a project and of the results of not involving the community at an early stage. Gestumblindi (talk) 23:58, 30 August 2014 (UTC)

Ok, I guess you've proved that the other chapters (besides the UK one) are mostly useless as well. JMP EAX (talk) 00:04, 31 August 2014 (UTC)

Well, that's certainly not what I was trying to say. As mentioned above, there are good projects by WMDE with very tangible results (Toolserver, image donations) and the same can be said of other chapters I'm familiar with (Switzerland's WMCH, Austria's WMAT). What I meant is that they're not "running a Wikipedia" and that the wider community of Wikipedians wouldn't welcome an attempt by chapters at doing so. Gestumblindi (talk) 00:20, 31 August 2014 (UTC)

Hello everyone. While I don’t want to dive in to the conversation about Media Viewer or other software development, I would like to touch on the comment about chapters. Firstly, apologies for not commenting here sooner.

As a chapter Wikimedia UK works to do several things. Our mission is “to help people and organisations create and preserve open knowledge and to provide easy access to all”. In practice this means lending our support to Wikimedia editors who would like help with their projects. It means working with cultural and educational institutions to encourage greater participation on Wikimedia projects. We also encourage these institutions to release content and archives under open licences. We do plenty more besides. You can find lots more information about the kinds of work we do on our wiki.

We absolutely want to help editors. You don’t have to attend our events to get involved. We have a grants programme which supports the Core Contest, the Stub Contest, producing high quality photographs, purchasing books or gaining access to resources which they might not otherwise have to name a few things. If you have an idea about how to make Wikipedia better and would like some support, your local chapter is a great place to start. Please do feel free to contact me directly on my talk page if you'd like. Stevie Benton (WMUK) (talk) 07:52, 2 September 2014 (UTC)

Another question to Jimbo (or to the WMF, not sure)

As a user of your software, a reader of Wikipedia, and a user of the information that it provides (actually: we provide), I think that the software is a great piece of work. The overall product is functional and looks good.

However, as a user, editor, gnome, bot operator, and administrator, I do run into small (obnoxious) problems every now and then. That results in me hopping over to bugzilla and filing a bug-report. Maybe it is my grandeur that is thinking that solving those problems and inconsistencies I report, or the upgrades I suggest, would make the software better, but your development team (and the volunteers there) do not feel that: those 'requests' get categorically ignored, regularly recategorised with importance low, etc. (and I know that that happens with many of the other requests as well .. so maybe it is not my grandeur). I agree, most are not real bugs, just upgrades and features (nonetheless, treatment for real bugs is the same as for upgrades), but if those requested upgrades (and bugs) are categorically ignored for months, nay, years, then that does not really help with the/my Wikipedia experience.

Instead, we get WikiLove, Visual Editor, Media Viewer and whatever great terms you have for the (non-essential) 'upgrades'. Your development team spends countless hours writing upgrades that, although maybe an improvement to the system, no one of the community asked for. It is just marketing strategy. The resulting upgrades are buggy, incomplete, do not help with the editing experience, are not essential, etc. etc. (I already mentioned the community reported bugs and community suggested upgrades on Bugzilla: even your base software contains bugs, and is not optimal). Nonetheless, WikiLove, Visual Editor and Media Viewer (and many hidden updates to the inner workings) get, excuse my French, shoved down our throats without communication, and without advance notice.

I can see that for Media Viewer that that 'shoving' is particularly important to the WMF. After all, over there, on Commons, you have the biggest repository of free media in the world. That content needs to be seen! And even they (the local Commons community) are reluctant, they are not happy with it. So what do you have to do now? You can not let all those hours of market planning and all those hours of programming by your team go to waste, your only possible response is 'Media Viewer is not going away'. It will be deployed, not giving any choice, ignoring the community.

WMF even goes so far as to put a site-wide banner now, requesting for input on the improvement of the MediaViewer. It is obvious that WMF doesn't care: that MediaViewer is going to be deployed, on their terms, meeting the deadlines that were set for deployment.

As long as that is the state of affairs, I stand by what Pete Forsyth wrote: "We look forward to exploring the best way to improve our software to better reach our strategic goals and better attain our vision. But that exploration is hindered by the current state of affairs, and we need the Wikimedia Foundation to act decisively before it is possible to move forward effectively.".

Can we please shove this thing back into Beta, turned off by default, develop it further in the background, and have interested users turn it on at their own request (I am sure that you can see how many people have it turned on - if that number becomes substantial WMF can initiate RFCs to see whether the default should be taken out of Beta, and/or turned on by default in the preferences). Take out the deadlines that WMF has set on the deployment of the MediaViewer or any other ideas that may be in the pipeline. And have your development team, next to getting the MediaViewer and other similar upgrades that are in the pipeline up to par (as to be determined by the community), work on old requests and bugs that are actually requested by the people who are using your software? Thank you. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 06:09, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for putting this to words, Dirk. One small quibble -- I believe WikiLove was actually a community-initiated feature. But your broader point stands. -Pete (talk) 15:26, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

How to turn off Media Viewer

You can disable Media Viewer for yourself. At the top of the page when you are logged in, go to Preferences > Appearance > Files. Uncheck the "enable Media Viewer" box. —Neotarf (talk) 16:21, 2 September 2014 (UTC)

Can you change your prefs globally, or do you have to change them on each wiki? Viriditas (talk) 03:34, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

@Viriditas: not yet, no. However, global js/CSS has been rolled out, so hopefully global preferences will be next. --Mdann52talk to me! 06:33, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

I haven't had time to read this entire monstrously long discussion above, but since Media Viewer (which I do not like) can be easily turned off, what is the problem? WMF owns Wikipedia, and if they want to roll out some change in the software that is their business. Coretheapple (talk) 01:00, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

WMF doesn't own it, it's just the trustee of the communities. --♫ Sänger - Talk - superputsch must go 09:08, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

What's the point in claiming Media Viewer "can be easily turned off" if the developers are the only ones who know the secret of how to do it. The only choice for garden variety editors like myself when suddenly confronted with broken technology is to stop editing -- because, by definition, if it's broken, you *can't* edit. —Neotarf (talk) 15:45, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

I would like to offer my opinion that being able to turn off the viewer does not solve the complaints with it. In fact if it was only presented to editors then I would not be concerned. The fact that it is being presented by default to our readers is my primary point of contention. Anything to do with editing the Wiki is one thing, but when it comes to how the content is provided to the readers then that is an editorial decision that needs the support of consensus.

Everywhere else on Wikipedia we have consensus deciding how the content is displayed and this is a significant departure from this. That is what in my opinion makes this different than the visual editor issue, the fact that it effects how our readers see the community created content. An off button in the preferences does nothing to obviate these concerns. Chillum 16:52, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

A little note

I have pointed out over at Meta how MV is breaking the law. (I have not followed the ongoing conversation since then, because these things do not really interest me, important though they are. I will try to do better in future.) Quite possibly, or even probably, once all the skittles are lined up, the communities will be behind MV, and even those who stil don't like it will accept it. However failing to turn it off once the major failings had been pointed out, once the communities rejection has been pointed out, and once the illegality of it has been pointed out, is more of an Enron (or maybe Putin?) like approach than a Wiki like approach.

Wiki means "quick" - the system should have been disabled quickly, fixed quickly, tested quickly and brought back quickly.

Similarly the apologies for bad behaviour by developers should have made quickly and accepted quickly.

I can't see why this is so hard to do.

All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 01:16, 7 September 2014 (UTC).

The WMF general counsel's office disagrees that it breaks the law (as you know those people are non-anonymous lawyers). (There were posts by them on the Executive Directors MW page explaining that). So, this 'line' of illegal has nowhere to go on wiki.(See, Wikipedia:No legal threats) Regardless, no one with any responsibility is going to put illegal to a wikivote anyway. Alanscottwalker (talk) 12:25, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

In the discussion I had it was opined by legal that "the vast majority" were "OK", and by Lila that about 1% were not. I have not searched but the example page given for evaluating the newest release breaks copyright (CC-BY-SA-3.0), on more than one image out of maybe 10.

This has nothing to do with Wikipedia:No legal threats. Part of the community's self-appointed task is to avoid and revert copy-vios. Good luck trying to stop that process under NLT.

All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 22:01, 7 September 2014 (UTC).

I believe the legal team's position is that it never breaks the law but in 1% of the cases it doesn't meet our view of best practices. So, per Alanscottwalker, I think the 'illegal' argument has got no traction. If you think the legal team is mistaken, perhaps you could elaborate more clearly what legal argument they should be considering. I do agree with you that a robust discussion of legality does not really have anything to do with "No Legal Threats".--Jimbo Wales (talk) 16:38, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

This 1% figure is very hard to believe -- could you please point to the analysis that leads to that number? I'd note, for instance, that one small edge case (many of the non-free files on English Wikipedia) accounts for 60,000 problematic files, according to Erik Moeller (WMF) (see here.) That's a substantial portion of the 1% (which would, I think, be something on the order of 300,000 files). Many other kinds of problems have been brought up in various discussions. Could you point us toward the math that concluded that only 1% don't comport with "best practices" -- and perhaps also a summary of what you and/or the legal department consider those best practices to be? -Pete (talk) 22:51, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

This discussion has outlived its usefulness. Please do not re-open it. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 20:43, 8 September 2014 (UTC)
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
The Independent recently reported that Britons trusted Wikipedia over BBC: http://i100.independent.co.uk/article/guess-who-britons-trust-more-wikipedia-authors-or-journalists--xyofsQ2nMx Continued suppression means trust in the site will be eroded. The site needs full disclosure of Oversight Team procedures that are exercised outside the disclosed policy/parameters in regards to consideration of the rejected principle of WP:HARM, or end the suppression of the informationMeropeRiddle (talk) 17:52, 8 September 2014 (UTC) It's fine to talk about suppression and censorship all you want, but at some point, Wikipedia guidelines must give way to basic human decency. You persist in pushing this issue when there is a human life at stake. That's been made clear to you over and over, and all the forum-shopping Wikipedia makes possible will not alter that. No abstract principle should ever take priority over a human life. Move on, and find something new to work on. --Drmargi (talk) 19:00, 8 September 2014 (UTC) @Drmargi Wikipedia rejected WP:HARM. You say that at some point you believe it needs to "give way." Then in the interest of full disclosure WP:HARM should be embraced and integrated into policy. How else can readers trust what else Wikipedia suppresses?MeropeRiddle (talk) 19:17, 8 September 2014 (UTC) I very much doubt that were Wikipedia to endanger human life in the way you have been endlessly proposing that it would increase our readers' trust. AndyTheGrump (talk) 19:25, 8 September 2014 (UTC) At this point, it may be safe to say that you're close to wearing out your welcome. Actions were taken to protect a living person, the person's name being removed from this project for the time being. Not every single thing done at this project needs to or will be written out in excruciating, fine-point detail for you; sometimes things just need to be done without argument. The Wikipedia is not a bureaucracy. You have been given advice on several occasions to find something else to work on in this project, as a continued refusal to step beating this dead horse, over and over, in forum after forum, will most certainly lead to you being blocked from further editing. Tarc (talk) 19:27, 8 September 2014 (UTC) Having interacted with many folks who do that work, editors who do oversighting work do not use that action spuriously. They are also keenly aware of the difference between WP:NOTCENSORED and our BLP policy and knowing which one is more important. All of the disclosure needed is at Wikipedia:Oversight#Policy. This doesn't seem like a special case nor is there any indication that the level of trust people put into Wikipedia is eroding (though one could argue folks ought to trust the BBC more than some of our articles). I, JethroBT drop me a line 19:27, 8 September 2014 (UTC) You do realize that the BBC site has this particular Wikipedia-censored information in at least 11 news articles, but it is being censored here? I'd link you to them, but, suppression.MeropeRiddle (talk) 19:50, 8 September 2014 (UTC) (edit conflict) "One could argue folks ought to trust the BBC more than some of our articles" - I'm fascinated by the idea that "more trusted than the BBC" is some kind of achievement. I would think that in any "which public institutions do you trust?" poll, the BBC would only be held off bottom place by the Liberal Democrats and GCHQ. These are the people who gave us the Savile coverup, the MacAlpine accusations and Stadiums of Hate, and who seem to have a new high-ranking sex case unmasked every week. Mogism (talk) 19:53, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

In case you haven't noticed, Russian guy, Jimbo isn't going to help you further your agenda. Choess (talk) 01:20, 9 September 2014 (UTC)
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
Hello Jimbo Wales. Vandals again in the action. This page has the owner (he watches the own page). Stop them Jimbo Wales! Any vandal here is representative of Jimbo Wales (if Jimbo Wales not will make rollback vs vandal). http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Barack_Obama&diff=prev&oldid=624726198#Wikipedia_is_independent_resource (they mixes with dirt this thing - including): "This is very important part in the biography of the US president Barack Obama: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2014/06/10/obama-america-should-be-ashamed-of-gun-violence/ (Obama: America should be ‘ashamed’ of gun violence)." - 95.29.140.103 (talk) 22:21, 8 September 2014 (UTC).