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Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/Single/2019-09-30

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The following is an automatically-generated compilation of all talk pages for the Signpost issue dated 2019-09-30. For general Signpost discussion, see Wikipedia talk:Signpost.

From the editors: Where do we go from here? (26,729 bytes · 💬)

  • This is a vexed question. We should all treat one another well, and by and large we do. Most of the time that we don't it is resolved by the community, or by normal social means - you don't collaborate on a project with someone who you find obnoxious. Sometimes, though, well-meaning people (and of course bad actors too) get into a mind-set where they consider someone an enemy, whether of themselves, some ideal, or the encyclopedia. At this point normal conventions break down, and "opposition research" starts. There are other issues, "pile on" used to be endemic on AN/I, it is not so much now, but it still happens, and not just there. Confirmation bias is another, once we make bad faith assumptions, or assumptions of bad faith it is hard to see the good work an editor does. There are many other human failings, we are all subject to that can make our behaviour, to us reasonable, slip dangerously close to or across the dividing line into unreasonable. Partly as a guard against this in myself, I changed my sig a number of years ago to include the phrase "All the best" - I try to ensure that I mean it before I sign any comment. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 11:38, 30 September 2019 (UTC).
  • In the past eight years, I would say, the community here has made substantial if still patchy progress towards creating a collegial editing environment. The episode under discussion struck me, as someone who has been on Wikipedia since 2003, as based on a concept of adminship that was obsolescent a decade ago. Meanwhile Wikipedia has become even more important as an online information source, the institutional strength of the WMF has been transformed, and Wikimedia as a whole is starting to look more like an integrated solution to a very serious problem. The traditional navel-gazing is quite understandable but, look, I see some backlogs that need clearing. The real work is there to do. Charles Matthews (talk) 13:02, 30 September 2019 (UTC)
  • The process was agonizingly slow, confused, and just ugly. The community did not come up with a method to minimize harassment in everyday practice. The difficulty of giving an accused harasser enough information to defend themselves while protecting their accusers against potential further harassment was underlined.
This is not an issue that’s going to be solved overnight, and to suggest that it should have been solved with the ArbCom case carte blanche is, frankly, ludicrous. Civility issues and harassment on-wiki have been issues that have plagued this community for many years, and while I would say that the environment is much more collegial now than it was 10 years ago, it’s clear that there’s much more work that needs to be done by the community. OhKayeSierra (talk) 13:17, 30 September 2019 (UTC)
OK, @OhKayeSierra: I didn't mean to say that I expected a complete resolution of this problem overnight. And "looking back" at it (we can do that already!) there were some positives - e.g. we actually confronted the problem in a few ways. And I'm not blaming ArbCom for this - they had a hard job - but all in all, the process struck me as slow, confused, and at times ugly. BTW, I'm very pleased to see the comments in this section so far are quite positive about the general problem of harassment. I get disheartened at times, so perhaps I'm not seeing the forest for the trees. Smallbones(smalltalk) 13:36, 30 September 2019 (UTC)
Becoming disheartened on occasion is normal and natural; however, that is not so hard to fight as long as we remember that this brilliant idea of an encyclopedia of all present and growing knowledge is a community effort of staggering proportions. It is those times when we are misunderstood that give us opportunities to make ourselves understood that lead to community wisdom. While that is not always easy to do, it is well worth the effort. Smallbones, you have taken on no small task, and I hope that overall, the community agrees with me that you do it admirably! P. I. Ellsworth, ed. put'r there 14:37, 30 September 2019 (UTC)
  • I am a long-term, occasional editor. I don't know anything about the disputes discussed in the Signpost article. From my perspective, our biggest problem is attracting and retaining good editors. I loved what MontanaBW wrote. This is the first sentence: "Wikipedia needs to improve the sometimes hostile and toxic environment for article creators and editors, both new and old." Amen. We routinely drive away potential good editors with unrestrained criticism, which often comes across as an arrogant attack. I frequently encourage friends and colleagues to contribute to Wikipedia. The few that do usually tell me later something like, "Why should I spend time writing on a topic I know in-depth, only to have some jerk delete it all and throw a bunch of rules with colons at me and treat me like I'm an ignoramus?" I try my best to encourage them to "hang tough" and "don't let the rule-bound editors suffering from a superiority complex get in your way." But most have made up their mind and moved on to "volunteer work where my contributions are appreciated."   - Mark D Worthen PsyD (talk) (I am a man. The traditional male pronouns are fine.) 15:13, 30 September 2019 (UTC)
  • "There might be volunteer mentors who would act as intermediaries." Now there is an idea which may have some legs. Gog the Mild (talk) 15:33, 30 September 2019 (UTC)
  • Indeed, where do we go from here? We need to be better at policing our own, and it will happen (has happened) in baby steps. Arbcom has limitations. Over the years, I have seen many stalked by the recently defrocked admin. Fram has gone after me. Responses only go so far. After a few back-and-forths, I realized that Fram in a defensive position had no intention of retreating. In such a case, you dust yourself off and get on with more important things. Fram is not the only such one who employs heavy-handed tactics, admin or otherwise. So ... in other words ... Fram and those of his mindset rule the roost, free to delete anything they don't like, free to continually hound others, free to use the tools unhindered. We need to find a way to honor's Jimbo's ideal of "anybody can edit" without someone in power turning that into, "only people I personally deem competent can edit". We need to be able to get past WP:FANCLUB, those in power protecting their own. When the summer brouhaha happened on Jimbo's talk page, I wondered if some of the anger was also fear of , "...there but for the grace of God, go I ..." by some I had seen demonstrate the very behavior that got Fram banned. We need to recognize that Fram may (or may not) have been the extreme of power over-reach among some admins. But he certainly was not the only one; Fram was either the one who didn't know when to back off, or the one who didn't see when he crossed the line of no return on one or more editors. Whatever the case, we need to do better at stopping the subculture of bullying on Wikipedia. — Maile (talk) 15:55, 30 September 2019 (UTC)
    • @Maile66:. Care to provide some links to cases where I have "gone after you"? "Stalked" even? "Bullying" as well, apparently? We have been in the same discussions at WT:DYK from time to time, which is normal for DYK regulars. But I don't recall any situation that could even remotely be called "stalking" or something similar. Please refresh my memory. Fram (talk) 08:42, 1 October 2019 (UTC)
Please see WP:HOUNDING and reflect on how you lost your tools, over a case of one individual you've repeatedly "gone after" for years. Please see Rich's testimony in your recent RFA. Hounding is, to the victim, stalking. If an editor feels you have followed them around year after year, to them it's stalking/hounding. I didn't say you stalked me personally. But most dialogues with you have been pretty much my-way-or-the-highway. Yeah, you have. And, again, read and take to heart the diffs that were provided on the RFA from others. I know there are others, but they don't want to deal with what you are doing here. The fact that you don't recognize your effect on other editors is a problem in itself. And we are not going to re-visit the case here. It's in the RFA. — Maile (talk) 11:08, 1 October 2019 (UTC)
"Over the years, I have seen many stalked by the recently defrocked admin. Fram has gone after me." (emphasis mine). "I didn't say you stalked me personally." (again emphasis mine). I don't ask you to "revisit the case", but you were making claims about my behaviour towards you, and can not or will not support them with evidence. That's a textbook case of WP:NPA, and it is not because I have been desysoped and that many editors have problems with my behaviour over the years that you (or others) are suddenly free to make whatever claim you like about me. I thought that people who opposed my adminship were people who cared about bullying, personal attacks, incivility, hounding, ... I guess I was wrong. Fram (talk) 11:56, 1 October 2019 (UTC)
  • Maile66 You had a chance during the Arb case to post any evidence of alleged wrongdoing. At this point it appears you are engaged in harassment against Fram, and you need to stop. Mr Ernie (talk) 15:46, 1 October 2019 (UTC)
  • "Nobody praised the WMF's approach to the problem." I politely disagree. What next? You can have a look at the recommendations of the Community Health Working Group. They do have some proposals to deal with the issues risen. The Working Group has a diverse and movement wide composition, is more volunteer, community based, than WMF driven. Ad Huikeshoven (talk) 18:47, 30 September 2019 (UTC)
    • @Ad Huikeshoven: I should have said that nobody out of the group who answered my request to comment on my draft introduction praised the WMF approach. I suspect that the WMF approach has more supporters than indicated here. After all the reaction to the RfA was swift and powerful, essentially a 50-50 result (not that all "opposes" were "pro WMF"). I really can never understand why editors on en:Wiki act as if the WMF is the enemy. They have helped us do a lot. They have powerful tools that can help us do a lot more. We just need a way to figure out the best way to work with them. Smallbones(smalltalk) 20:16, 30 September 2019 (UTC)
      • The 4 years I was on arbcom (2015-2018), we worked coordinately in some matters with WMF Trust and Safety--the main difficulty was getting them to act at all, but there was nonetheless a sense of mutual understanding. In an attempt to be more effective, they apparently forgot that people have the right to defend themselves reasonably against accusations, for there is otherwise no protection against error or even malice, and totally secret proceedings where the nature of the accusations is not disclosed to people who need to defend themselves, inevitable lead to the suspicion--or the reality--of action based upon favoritism or prejudice, and creates an environment in which those in power can freely harass the others. It's difficult for people--especially those in hierarchical organizations like the WMF-- to admit error, but those who never do cannot avoid the suspicion that they intend to repeat it. DGG ( talk ) 00:56, 1 October 2019 (UTC)
  • As we think of what changes we should make to process, we need to keep in mind that there is a fairly large group of undisclosed paid editors operating armies of socks that will try to bend the rules to allow them to promote their clients. Dealing with these folks is an incredibly difficult job. And another problem to which we do not have an easy solution. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 20:45, 30 September 2019 (UTC)
  • In my first scan of this piece, I mis-read "multilevel" as "medieval" and it was making sense, too. – Athaenara ✉ 21:44, 30 September 2019 (UTC)
  • I see several problems. First, ArbCom is supposed to deal with cases when other types of dispute resolution have failed. Few people who have been harassed, especially from well-established editors or admins, would want to subject themselves to an ANI complaint because they would be under as much scrutiny as the accuser and they are bound to suffer backlash from the more established editor or admin's supporters (and the sometimes obnoxious, knee jerk cries of "Boomerang!!!"). I have occasionally seen ANI work but only in cases the harassment or personal attacks was beyond the pale, that is abuse using racist, sexist, ableist (or about mental health) or anti-Semitic language. More subtle incidents of persistent hounding are much less clear to more noticeboard regulars.
Secondly, and this is even more difficult, it was impossible to ignore the effect of other websites or social media in some of these cases. Wikipediocracy ran an ongoing investigation and commentary during the entire Fram incident and subsequent case and it was clear that some more outlandish allegations made on Wikipedia had their origin on that discussion forum. That site doesn't have the same policies against outing or requiring substantiated allegations and some editors seem to have no qualms about taking dirt that's been dished there and bringing it over to Wikipedia. That can be a toxic influence that is difficult if not impossible to control. Liz Read! Talk! 21:49, 30 September 2019 (UTC)
I absolutely agree with this, and ended up designing a process that would solve for this, but it would require two very important changes in the standard way things are handled:
  1. All harassment cases would be handled privately (because no one wants to endure the scrutiny of uninvolved assholes trying to be "helpful" in the way they rules lawyer and
  2. They would be able to consider off-wiki behavior as well. Harassment almost never happens on-wiki. It happens on reddit or twitter or facebook, and thus cannot be submitted as "evidence".
I think about these things a lot.--Jorm (talk) 22:13, 30 September 2019 (UTC)
I also agree with Liz's assessment. Whatever the solution is, it probably isn't ArbCom. Not only does ArbCom take months to enact a remedy, but sometimes they completely ignore the harassment aspects of a case and just focus on the other policy violations, no doubt due to the community's ambivalence about the civility policy. Kaldari (talk) 23:01, 30 September 2019 (UTC)
  • ArbCom isn't doing its job properly: to defrock admins who misbehave. All we get is tokenism, or an action thankfully forced on it by the WMF. Either that or have admins go for renewal every three years, as happens in the German WP. And those admins who walked out: I hope they're not returning. They're the very types who should have failed RfA. Tony (talk) 23:53, 30 September 2019 (UTC)
  • So you talk to half a dozen Wikipedians from the rank-and-file and start with a WMF Trustee?!?! Yeesh, journalism fail. Carrite (talk) 00:36, 1 October 2019 (UTC)
    • Actually I was aiming for "thought leaders", the people whose ideas I respect and believe that others respect, not rank-and-file. As I wrote in in the article "well-respected editors". Since other editors know these folks, they are better at starting an orderly conversation. There was a time constraint, and this is a controversial topic, but I was surprised how many didn't respond. (3 got their contributions in too late to make my deadline, which was tight this month). Doc James does fit my definition of "well-respected" and is seldom boring.
Personally, I like the responses in this section better. Don't worry @Carrite: I'll try to remember to consider asking you next time I'm looking for "thought leaders". Smallbones(smalltalk) 01:12, 1 October 2019 (UTC)
Well, there's a systemic fallacy at the outset: there is no such thing as a "thought leader" on Wikipedia. One person's "thought leader" is another person's idiot. You're using Signpost to promote your POV again, Smallbones. And, broadly speaking, it is the WMF/WMDC POV (hence, perhaps, early approving comments here from several people with past/present associations with such). If you believe some of those, I harass here every day and will continue to do so due to my belief that the content is what counts, not the people. I'm not here to be nice. - Sitush (talk) 06:01, 1 October 2019 (UTC)
Sitush - I don't want to read too much into your statement, "I'm not here to be nice", thus this question: Along the lines of my response above ("I am a long-term, occasional editor ..."), do you modulate your response to new editors who make mistakes? Thanks!   - Mark D Worthen PsyD (talk) (I am a man. The traditional male pronouns are fine.) 12:06, 1 October 2019 (UTC)
  • You are wrong that nobody praised the WMF for finally taking action. It was long overdue but very welcome. It is great that the ArbCom finally picked up this bone of contention that is the real misery in all this; that it took an office action in the first place. Thanks, GerardM (talk) 03:47, 2 October 2019 (UTC)
  • Here's a possible mechanistic solution: Let any editor flag any commit as uncivil, and have some way for uninvolved editors to notice when a specific editor or conversation is generating a lot of incivility. I've encountered a few editors whose vitriolic debate style makes it difficult and emotionally draining to reach consensus over changes to articles or policies. I think once or twice I've nearly filed a complaint, but in the end didn't and just pushed through to consensus or abandoned the session. No doubt many ill-behaved editors are getting feedback only after a specific discussion goes very badly, but not after adding small amounts of pain to many minor discussions. Maybe some sort of civility patrol that provides friendly feedback to editors who have been flagged as uncivil in a certain number of discussions or by a certain number of other editors could deliver feedback a lot earlier and reduce the overall problem. Don't the more responsible giant social media companies do something like this? -- Beland (talk) 22:05, 2 October 2019 (UTC)
^ Upvote! ^ A capital idea! I strongly support Beland's idea (proposal) based on my (very similar) experience and Beland's cogent rationale for such a feature.   - Mark D Worthen PsyD (talk) (I am a man. The traditional male pronouns are fine.) 02:06, 3 October 2019 (UTC)
Created ticket T234520, thanks @Beland and Markworthen:, Ad Huikeshoven (talk) 11:26, 3 October 2019 (UTC)
Awesome! Thanks so much.   - Mark D Worthen PsyD (talk) (I am a man. The traditional male pronouns are fine.) 15:18, 3 October 2019 (UTC)
Agree User:Beland excellent idea. Would allow people to anonymously raise concerns about incivility (but the concerns in question would be viewable and thus discussable by the community). Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 17:05, 4 October 2019 (UTC)
How far should administrators go to protect Fram, now that he is not an administrator?

How far should administrators go to protect Fram, now that he is not an administrator?

Administrator Sitush said, above, "I harass here every day and will continue to do so due to my belief that the content is what counts, not the people. I'm not here to be nice." I left a comment on User talk:Fram shortly before he moved the draft of his RFA from userspace. Sitush left me the warning "I think you should stop pestering Fram."

KillerChihuahua also left me a series of warnings; and I see other administrators are leaving similar warnings for other people.

We should all be civil. We should all not only start with civility, but do our best to remain as civil as possible, even if we think we are dealing with a very difficult person, or with a very clueless person, or a very rude person, or someone who is difficult, rude and clueless.

Would it be okay for an informal cabal of administrators to decide that Fram needs extraordinary protection, to make sure he is treated with kid gloves, until he has a chance to open RFA 3.0?

I suggest this would be a very bad idea.

What if you are an administrator who is a friend of Fram, or even just an administrator who remains angry with the WMF for banning him? Should you take extraordinary steps, independent from a cabal, to see that he is treated with kid gloves?

I don't think that is a good idea.

Fram made comments, when he withdrew his RFA, that implied he was going to try to learn from the opinions of those who opposed restoring his administrator bits. Now that he is not an administrator, I suggest it would be best if Fram enjoyed no more protection against uncivil or unfair comments than anyone else. If he is really going to learn what people were talking about, when they described him as uncivil, it would be best if Fram experienced what is our current normal level of civility, without extraordinary protection.

To return to the comment where Sitush said he or she is "not here to be nice", because "the content is what counts, not the people." Sitush, please remember, just as I am subject to normal human fallibility, and everyone else in this discussion is subject to normal human fallibility, you, Sitush, are similarly subject to normal human fallibility. You will make mistakes. Like everyone here, you will make mistakes.

Here is a thought experiment. Suppose you and I come across an edit to an article, or a comment, that strikes us as so terrible that go after the perpetrator, without restraint - only to realize we had completely misread the situation? I suggest that the attacking people without restraint is very damaging to the project. Every question, every disagreement, is a teachable moment.

So, please abandon the approach you described. I think administrators have an obligation to do their best to set an example of civility and collegiality -- "being nice" to use your term. I think it is essential because less experienced contributors look to administrators for an example of what is acceptable.

In addition, doing one's best to always be civil, and collegial, can turn out to be a huge relief, when one realizes the other guy was right, all along. Geo Swan (talk) 02:36, 6 October 2019 (UTC)

I don't know about anyone else, but I'm not a friend of Fram and I'm not defending him. I am defending the process, and in your case, defending the policy. Don't confuse this with defending any particular editor. KillerChihuahua 11:52, 7 October 2019 (UTC)

Facebook tracker on this page?

My Facebook container plugin found and warned me about an element on this page. Sure enough when I inspect the element, there is a div containing a CSS class called "fbc-badge" containing other facebook-related div's. What's odd though is Viewing the source doesn't find any of that. Anybody else's facebook container triggering on this page? First time I've seen this on Wikipedia. Jason Quinn (talk) 07:17, 6 October 2019 (UTC)

I don't know what that plugin is or does, but Ghostery reports zero trackers. It could be your container object is just triggering on the class name.--Jorm (talk) 15:44, 6 October 2019 (UTC)
SNIPPED MY COMMENT BECAUSE SEARCH TERMS WERE MAKING IT HARD TO TRACK ISSUE DOWN. Jason Quinn (talk) 14:17, 8 October 2019 (UTC)

Gallery: Finding freely licensed photo collections (1,538 bytes · 💬)

If you'd like to try to get together a gallery page of photos of *world-wide* examples of the strikes, it could be quite interesting. This page can be many different things and I'll thank @Bluerasberry: for coming up with a good, different take on it. The page can't be classic "news photos" in the sense that people now want their news within 2 days at most. That's just not our schedule. But I'd like to play around with some "newsy" things here. We can often come up with world-wide coverage and Wikipedians do have their own POVs (plural) so it might be interesting. Smallbones(smalltalk) 13:11, 30 September 2019 (UTC)

In focus: Wikidata & Wikibase for national libraries: the inaugural meeting (0 bytes · 💬)

Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2019-09-30/In focus

In the media: A net loss: Wikipedia attacked, closing off Russia? welcoming back Turkey? (4,016 bytes · 💬)

Was UkDrillas and/or the suspect also accused of going after explainxkcd? Because that seemed more like the Chinese launching their Hong Kong-fueled Streisand Effect Cannon. The Russian Conservapedia should be great. Good thing Intel is so heavily invested in Cloudfare, the endowment should pick up some of that. 73.222.1.26 (talk) 19:42, 30 September 2019 (UTC)

I'm very glad @HaeB: wrote the section on the DDoS. It's the best write-up I've seen anywhere. Of course many techies might know many more sources on this than I do. During the attack (I only had minor problems, but they were noticeable) I mainly wondered "what would anybody have to gain by attacking Wikipedia?" Haeb mostly answered this.
As far as the Russian Conservapedia, if you mean the Great Russian Encyclopedia, it reminds me of the "Nedostroy" that I saw during the 1990s when I lived in Moscow. Nedostroy are buildings that were left over from the Soviet period that were "not completely built" or "not yet finished" and were probably going to stay that way. Most were poorly designed, poorly built, dinosaurs waiting to collapse from neglect. The GRE will likely be declared to be finished sometime, after copying large parts from the last Great Soviet Encyclopedia but nobody will ever say that it is the backbone of the internet. Smallbones(smalltalk) 20:38, 30 September 2019 (UTC)
I was surprised that we don't have an article on Nedostroy, but I did look up an example on Google maps dated 2017 [1]. This building was probably in the same condition in 1993. Smallbones(smalltalk) 20:56, 30 September 2019 (UTC)
Yekaterinburg TV Tower is a good example of a Nedostroy. Smallbones(smalltalk) 22:09, 30 September 2019 (UTC)
"недострой" (nedostroy) is a regular informal term for incomplete construction, not necessarily due to neglect or abandonement. Therefore there is no such article even in Russian wikipedia. Not only Russia suffers from abandoned construction projects. Heck, we even have a worldwide catalog of notable these, see "Unfinished building", and Russia is of minimal representation there. This neologism is based on the Soviet-era term "wikt:долгострой" (dolgostroy) - a construction project sluggishly dragging for long time.Staszek Lem (talk) 23:18, 30 September 2019 (UTC)

BTW: Great Russian Encyclopedia has nothing to do with the internets. Staszek Lem (talk) 21:03, 4 October 2019 (UTC)

Cleaning up, or enforcing a preferred POV?

I'm confused by the triumphal tone used in describing XOR'easter's editing. I have heard many cases where our biased editors come to consensus against alleged right-wing outlets. I wonder if XOR'easter does much to clean up the left-wing rags being used as sources here? Chris Troutman (talk) 19:30, 2 October 2019 (UTC)

What 'left-wing rags' in the Hunter Biden article did you have in mind? Richard Nevell (talk) 21:11, 2 October 2019 (UTC)

News from the WMF: How the Wikimedia Foundation is making efforts to go green (10,990 bytes · 💬)

This reads as recycled promotional spin and a puff piece for the WMF rather than a real Signpost article. The WMF CEO is literally famous for being an international travel consumer. "The executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation was on the road 200 days last year." Nat Geographic

When asked about this recently on Twitter, Katherine failed to make any commitment to reducing her (or her executive team's) international flight consumption. It is noticeable that there is no indication in this report as to whether air travel consumption by the WMF management team went up or down as an annual trend, instead just counting an estimated total percentage of energy consumption based on (presumably) self reporting by survey. Telecommuting may be mentioned, but it is weird and contradictory to have a CEO actively promoted and lauded as a hero for spending 200 days on the road rather than making any actual measurable commitment to picking up a telephone, holding a video conference, or holding a VR conference session, and thus making a few more aircraft flights unnecessary, slightly more often this year than last year.

With regard to getting volunteers to ask questions on Meta, did that 10 days ago, but the WMF's well known established routine is to avoid answering any tricky questions and respond with radio silence (as evidenced by the fact that not a single one of the many questions raised by volunteers on the discussion page linked in the article have been replied to by any WMF employee).

This is virtue signaling, as was piggy backing on the Climate Change Strike on the WMF website last week. It's a jolly good idea to deliver something meaningful and measurable before waving flags about how great we are. Thanks! --Fæ (talk) 11:20, 30 September 2019 (UTC)

This ++ Maury Markowitz (talk) 11:27, 30 September 2019 (UTC)
I have not seen any calculation of how much net CO2 consumption is produced, or prevented, by the WMF's distributed staff model. Somewhere else (last issue?) I read that over 50% of the staff telecommutes, including the chief of staff. If the consequence is that one executive travels a lot, maybe that actually saves on emissions? Without more information I wouldn't leap to condemning the air travel – at least not because of emissions alone. - Bri.public (talk) 17:47, 30 September 2019 (UTC)
+1, Bri.public. We are carbon based life forms, designed to communicate in real life. When on-wiki communication becomes problematic, meeting in person becomes even more important. Optimizing for both carbon impact and an effective organization will require ongoing adjustments. Granting sufficient time off for long-distance train travel might be part of the process. Oliveleaf4 (talk) 14:43, 6 October 2019 (UTC)

Highlighted on the Meta discussion page is the fact that the 2017 WMF:Resolution:Environmental Impact made an official board level commitment to publish an environmental impact statement from the 2018 annual plan onwards. Volunteers have yet to find any evidence that this happened. --Fæ (talk) 12:48, 30 September 2019 (UTC)

I was surprised to learn that Wikimania Sweden 2019 still didn't offer remote presentations, as I had something very valuable to share but was not really willing to emit so much CO2 just to get there (nor to Wikimania Thailand on 2020). The Wikimedia Movement has usually been quite visionary and ahead of its time, but so far in sustainability matters, we're still behind. On the bright side, I was thrilled to learn about the Sustainability Initiative! Sophivorus (talk) 19:11, 30 September 2019 (UTC)

Are there any 100% remote companies larger than GitLab? 73.222.1.26 (talk) 19:31, 30 September 2019 (UTC)

  • I'm glad to see Fæ alluding to what was being reported in The Signpost almost exactly a year ago but for which the articles were met with some warped criticism for misogyny. It doesn't matter what gender a Wikipedia executive director is, their traditional failure to meet serious issues and constitutional crises head on is well known. It's the stuff of heads of state and prime ministers: empty promises or blatant evasion, and their carbon footprint and apparent working altitude remain high - on taxpayers' and/or donors' money. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 19:57, 30 September 2019 (UTC)


Hello! We've posted answers to many of these questions on the Sustainability talk page; please continue the conversation there. Thanks! DTankersley (WMF) (talk) 16:11, 1 October 2019 (UTC)

  • This is ridiculous propaganda. Contrast with the recent action of WMF flying about 35 people halfway around the world to have a group discussion that could have been handled via internet tools. This included a self-righteous "protest" against climate change by the participants (clenched fists aloft!) in what appears from the photograph taken to be the lobby of a resort hotel in Tunis. Fix this sort of crap, then talk. And don't ever brag. Carrite (talk) 16:43, 2 October 2019 (UTC)

Wikipedia's positive impact on environmental issues far out weighs its carbon footprint. To begin with, one might quantify its impact on the market for paper encyclopedias and other reference works: fewer trees cut down, less paper making, printing and distribution impacts. But far more important is Wikipedia impact in providing a source of fact based information on climate and other environmental issues, where public debate (at least in the U.S.) has been poisoned by highly politicized positions on both sides (it's a socialist plot on the right, we're all gonna die on the left). Rather than spending WikiMedia's limited resources on projects that will have at best an infinitesimal impact on the world's environment, I suggest the foundation redouble its effort on Wikipedia's core mission which can have a significant net effect.

Specifically, there are a huge number of articles in Category:Renewable energy by country, and its subcategories, along with their non-English counterparts. Many of these articles were written with great enthusiasm years ago and filled with data on the then current situation in their locale (down to individual states in the U.S.), but may no longer reflect what is happening now. Finding ways to encourage regular updates of these articles would be far more useful than micro-analyzing Wikimedia's utility bills. Wikimedia might, for example, develop grants to encourage university programs in environmental science to adopt articles dealing with their geographic area, and update them whenever new statistics are published. Another possibility would be to work with Wikidata to develop standard templates for environmental data that could be transcluded in articles in different languages. I'm sure there are lots of other possibilities. The potential impact of better coverage of environmental issues on Wikipedia would exceed the impact of marginal changes in Wikipedia's office practices by orders of magnitude.--agr (talk) 21:31, 3 October 2019 (UTC)

This is a weird way of using whataboutism. The Wikimedia executive team is literally famous for being large consumers of air travel, as the sources demonstrate. Being committed to reducing that number of flights (whatever it is) rather than increasing them from one year to the next, is a perfectly fine operational choice that the WMF management team or the WMF board of trustees could make today to meaningfully back up its political choice to join the Climate Strike, without any impact on updating articles. --Fæ (talk) 11:30, 4 October 2019 (UTC)
Wikimedia activities should be evaluated on their effectiveness in advancing the goal of free knowledge, not on how many air miles they generate. Of course electronic communications should be encouraged wherever suitable, but if it takes air travel to get better coverage of environmental issues, say, then I'd rather staff fly than shift their focus to less useful activities just because those activities don't require travel..--agr (talk)
I heartily agree with agr that the most effective action our movement can take is to improve our article content. Our articles on climate change mitigation issues are woefully outdated. Personally I'd emphasize trying to improve our articles that cover issues from a global perspective. E.g. one thing we badly need is for editors to read the IPCC's Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5 °C and use it as a source for articles, essentially taking that tome and transforming its messages into the basis of understandable encyclopedia articles. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 17:03, 4 October 2019 (UTC)
Eh paper encyclopedias are technically carbon sequestration. The other problem is that by the time you go down to the reader level you need to factor in the carbon footprint of their viewing devices. While yes there will be some low powered solar stuff somewhere there is someone using an overlocked FX series CPU and a couple of vega 64s to view the thing.©Geni (talk) 16:35, 5 October 2019 (UTC)

Uncited, uncalculated, and very, very unlikely. Greenwashing feelgoodism at its lowest.Qwirkle (talk) 18:28, 6 October 2019 (UTC)

On the bright side: What's making you happy this month? (1,844 bytes · 💬)

Hi Pine! Thanks for writing about the Teahouse archives, I appreciate it. What's making me happy this month? Well... I found out that WP:BS is a shortcut to Wikipedia:Barnstars. I'm not sure how interesting that information is to others, but that discovery of mine did result in a smile. Also, I noticed that a project I'm involved in and happen to think is amazing - WP:Typo Team/moss? I can't believe I didn't notice that my username and the project both include 'moss' and it's just one of those amusing coincidences that I hadn't noticed before this week. Also... there's this amazing drive this month to reduce the GA review backlog at Wikipedia:WikiProject Good articles/GAN Backlog Drives/September 2019 and I appreciate the hard work of all the reviewers that are contributing. Clovermoss (talk) 01:37, 1 October 2019 (UTC)

Thanks very much for the comment, Clovermoss. ↠Pine (✉) 00:13, 3 October 2019 (UTC)

from an unexpected place [2], but the quote of the month, for me has to be from Monroe Work, "In the end facts will help eradicate prejudice and misunderstanding, for facts are the truth and the truth shall set us free." Smallbones(smalltalk) 15:20, 4 October 2019 (UTC)

Recent research: Wikipedia's role in assessing credibility of news sources; using wikis against procrastination; OpenSym 2019 report (3,771 bytes · 💬)

  • I find the first study a bit concerning. If students feel like they're being tracked every hour of every day by their tutor, that's not going to do wonders for already enormous levels of stress and anxiety in the student population. Personally, I always begin my assignments as soon as possible, but I still work on them until the last minute to get them as good as possible and I don't really want my tutor to know that sometimes I finished it at 3 a.m. on the morning of the deadline, or be able to see the initial poor-quality drafts. One of the points of university is to get used to independence: tutors aren't high school teachers that have to make sure you work on their assignments during specific times and regularly check on your progress. — Bilorv (talk) 12:12, 30 September 2019 (UTC)
  • I agree that creating more pressure can be a bad thing! But I also think it can be edifying for instructors to be able to see how students are spending their time, to help them structure assignments or understand how much time their assignments take. I wonder if it comes down to how grades are assessed and how instructors communicate about how the data will be used. Groceryheist (talk) 22:23, 30 September 2019 (UTC)
  • @Isaac (WMF): why is "usefulness" outside of the Wikipedia box in Figure 7 of Lewoniewski et al.? WikiRank is amazing; added! EllenCT (talk) 19:15, 30 September 2019 (UTC)
    It depends on how we define the usefulness and how we can measure it ;) If we're talking about popularity measures, such as number of readers or authors, they are more suitable for relevance dimension. --Lewoniewski (talk) 20:31, 19 November 2019 (UTC)
  • Bilorv As a high school student, I can confidently say that even thinking about that amount of stress makes me feel stressed. Also, I'm confused about how exactly procastination is "ethically questionable"? That description is something I'd expect to see for other serious academic problems (like plagiarism, which is definitely ethically questionable 'cuz it's intellectual theft). Clovermoss (talk) 01:23, 1 October 2019 (UTC)
  • The abstract quoted in the "Shocks make both newcomers and experienced editors contribute more" item is all well and good, but where's a definition of what the authors meant by "shocks"? I frankly wasn't even tempted to click on the link in the citation in hopes of finding out: an abstract should include that basic detail: whether they meant literal electric shocks, upsetting experiences, or something else. – Athaenara ✉ 07:50, 1 October 2019 (UTC)
    It's not the clearest thing in the world, but it's there in the abstract: [We study] participation following shocks that draw attention to an article. They give as an example in the citation the death of a celebrity—they're investigating how that celebrity's article changes shortly after that news breaks. — Bilorv (talk) 08:39, 1 October 2019 (UTC)

Special report: Post-Framgate wrap-up (6,875 bytes · 💬)

  • I'm having some trouble understanding what is meant in the part stated "Private evidence" requires a commensurate private hearing. It seems like some words are missing, but what words precisely I don't know. If the quoted text is indeed correctly written, then I would appreciate some further explanation by another person, thanks. —The Editor's Apprentice (talk) 14:30, 30 September 2019 (UTC)
  • That was my attempt to convey the gist of the case's principles section titled Private evidence, which reads "When the Arbitration Committee admits privately-submitted evidence, existing policy requires a private hearing..." ☆ Bri (talk) 14:52, 30 September 2019 (UTC)
  • A related discussion about WMF involvement in community affairs has begun at here. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 08:35, 1 October 2019 (UTC)
  • it is entirely inappropriate to use the term “voters” in the context of a consensus-driven process. I know that !voters is sometimes used, but that punctuation mark doesn’t in any way change the meaning of the word and I would have objected to its use as well. It’s not as if writers need to be concerned about how much space will be taken up to be accurate. As we tell small children, “use your words.” All of them, if clarity is the goal.~TPW 21:08, 3 October 2019 (UTC)
    • I agree, as does a recent RFC so I have edited the article to avoid use of the word "vote". Wug·a·po·des​ 04:44, 5 October 2019 (UTC)
  • It's interesting that in all the words written about this matter, not once have I seen a writer for Signpost state succinctly why this editor was banned. Hints, yes; shorthand references, maybe, but a clear statement, no. Now I expect a rash of comments, some of them rude, about this posting, pointing me to examples of where I was wrong. Thanks in advance, because not only have I been wrong many times in my life, but I have also BeenAroundAWhile (talk) 17:15, 6 October 2019 (UTC)
  • Funny you should mention that. The full report on why they were banned is in the Special Report of the June 2019 edition of The Signpost. Oh, if you aren't an administrator, you won't be able to follow the link. A can of worms is the question of whether the deletion has been properly applied. - Bri.public (talk) 18:33, 7 October 2019 (UTC)
  • It was properly deleted because it contained demonstrably false information + seriously unfounded attacks. It seems as if most people not associated with the Signpost agreed with the deletion and don't consider this a "can of worms" at all, but you are free to take it to WP:DRV, the admin's noticeboard, or ArbCom of course. If people really want to know why I was banned, they can of course read the ArbCom case, which makes it clear that the ban was not warranted, and the RfA, which makes it clear that despite this, my style of adminning / editing was not appreciated by many people and was too heavy-handed, uncivil at times, confrontational, ... Basically, there is plenty of material out there you can point to, instead of directing people to a properly deleted BLP violating attack piece. Fram (talk) 06:51, 8 October 2019 (UTC)
  • Smallbones is the author of the BLP-violating deleted Signpost page. My "non-responses" are because I don't want to have anything to do with Smallbones and his repeated misleading and inflamatory statements about the whole situation. I doubt that his question is really the best place to get an answer about this situtation, it certainly isn't a neutral, unbiased place to start. Fram (talk) 04:35, 10 October 2019 (UTC)
  • Thanks for all postings. Best wishes. BeenAroundAWhile (talk) 05:47, 11 October 2019 (UTC)
  • So ... the WMF shook en.WP's sick power structure mightily and got a result. We're about to enter Chapter II. Tony (talk) 07:07, 11 October 2019 (UTC)
No we're not. Actually the en.Wiki shook the WMF's sick power structure mightily, but "Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose". Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:48, 16 October 2019 (UTC)
An odd thing to write, when en.WP's power structure is as sick as a lake of vomit. Tony (talk) 23:17, 17 October 2019 (UTC)
Which's one of the main reasons behind the tolerance of your antics and abuse for such a long span of time. ∯WBGconverse 02:43, 18 October 2019 (UTC)
If you're referring to me, that's an excellent example of the sickness. Tony (talk) 07:00, 18 October 2019 (UTC)
Oh, dear, wrong again: Its the cabal of the anti-admin brigade and their uncalled for acrimonious comments that are ' as sick as a lake of vomit'. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 10:25, 18 October 2019 (UTC)
  • Both of you are well-known as abusers. I did not change this into a personal attack: you two did. The kind of behaviour that indicates total unsuitability for adminship. Tony (talk) 23:36, 18 October 2019 (UTC)

Traffic report: Varied and intriguing entries, less Luck, and some retreads (808 bytes · 💬)

  • Hmm? Dorian was the strongest landfalling hurricane since 1935, not the strongest hurricane period since 1935. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 14:13, 30 September 2019 (UTC)
  • Also of note here might be that we dropped from the nr 5 position in the Alexa rankings to nr 9. Most likely this can be attributed to the rise in popularity of Chinese websites. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 15:27, 1 October 2019 (UTC)


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