User talk:Jimbo Wales

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Jimbo Wales, you are quoted out of context in an AFD.

[1] Since you were mentioned and quoted there, by someone trying to convince people to deleted an article, I thought you might like to know. Seems to be a topic that offends some people, who let emotions get in the way of seeing that it adequately covered in the news media. Dream Focus 14:20, 28 June 2012 (UTC)

Hmm, yeah. I'd be fine with someone quoting me on some principle if I've expressed it well and people find it persuasive, but it seems a bit odd to quote me saying "I would vote to delete" when i was talking about something else entirely!--Jimbo Wales (talk) 14:33, 28 June 2012 (UTC)

I wasn't saying you would vote delete. I was saying it's a valid argument to make in an AfD [2]. was stating that grouping a disparate collection of topics into a single article when not covered by reliable sources as a collection is a reason for deletion. The comment before stated that it was not a valid argument [3]. I was not saying that you had any opinion on this AfD. IRWolfie- (talk) 14:36, 28 June 2012 (UTC)

Yes, I understand. Might have been better to cut out the parts where I was talking about a specific other article and just quote me on the principles?--Jimbo Wales (talk) 14:42, 28 June 2012 (UTC)

[4] I'm thinking to quote you at all would be to try to sway people one way or the other in the debate. There is surely a guideline page to link to instead. Dream Focus 14:46, 28 June 2012 (UTC)

I think it's perfectly fine to quote other people to try to sway people one way or the other in debates.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 15:17, 28 June 2012 (UTC)

It's not covered in guidelines but WP:IAR applies. It's also obvious that we don't want articles that are novel combinations of topics to make a new topic not covered in reliable sources (WP:COMMONSENSE). IRWolfie- (talk) 14:54, 28 June 2012 (UTC)

I've removed the part about strong delete and added a disclaimer that it's not about the current article in question. IRWolfie- (talk) 14:56, 28 June 2012 (UTC)

In point of reference, the Jimbo quote dealt with the ethereal being article, now deleted, and it can be read in talk:Jimbo archive 108. The delete voters made a strong case that the article was in fact too SYNTHetic to stand, that "ethereal being" though possibly a valid topic for an article, became an unnecessary catch-all for various types of immaterial being concepts, without sourcing which would actually tie them all together. In a certain way they were right, that we need sources to deal with the subject itself objectively and not create catch-all articles. In another way though, the delete voters seemed to overstate their point to invalidate the very concept of having such an article about such a subject, unless it was constrained to using just sources which explicitly used the term "ethereal being." But they left open the possibility of re-creating the article provided it remained constrained.

What I want to point out here though is that Wikipedia historically has not been known as a traditional encyclopedia, and thus we can create list articles for example, or articles on topics which no traditional encyclopedia would touch, like topics in perverse sexual acts for example. Hence we do and have created articles on topics which deal with concepts - they are started with some idea which editors deemed valid and encyclopedic, and then cobbled together in some educational or otherwise interesting way to explain the subject, or simply list the things which qualify. I made the point at the above mentioned discussion that we might create an article about something encyclopedically silly like Stan Lee film cameos, and list the various cameos he's been in, and explain a little detail about them. Would we need a source which discussed the concept of Stan Lee's film cameos as a whole, or could we base the article on various news sources? I think the answer comes down to specific cases, and depends on the quality of the topic, the writing, and the sources. In any case I think its clear that the argument one editor made in the context of the ethereal being debate, that we would need some other encyclopedia to first write an article on the same concept, is not accurate. We indeed have a great many articles which other encyclopedias do not have, or would even touch, and that's not entirely a bad thing, although I think that articles like cum shot need to go. The point is that its possible to be too prejudicial in the negative about these types of articles. -Stevertigo (t | c) 22:39, 28 June 2012 (UTC)

I agree that articles of the nature "NOTCENSORED so I can write any silly nonsense" should be deleted, but "cum shot" is a real-life phenomenon and it's conceivable that an article could be written on that topic (I haven't looked at that one, but I suspect "delete" would be my recommendation). However, opening the floodgates to made-up topics would be most undesirable—Wikipedia only works because there is, at least in principle, some objective method to determine whether a topic is notable, and whether text is verifiable and suitable. If editors were welcome to create topics like "Stan Lee film cameos" (assuming no solid secondary sources), we would be flooded with OR warriors who would love to blog here on their favorite topic and soak up Wikipedia's reputation and search rankings. That would be bad enough, but dealing with them would distract a lot of time and energy from the encyclopedia, and if such made-up topics became entrenched, their authors would start working their opinions into mainstream articles. Johnuniq (talk) 00:52, 30 June 2012 (UTC)

I think we should be fully open to such "made up topics", when done as a rational means of organization. For example, if you have a huge article Stan Lee and you're looking for things to split out of it to reduce the size. Sometimes also a wide variety of related notable topics can be combined under a more general topic where it is convenient, though this is perhaps more problematic. As for cumshot, the article certainly should stand, and really, needs to be expanded - it doesn't address the central question of why there is a market for purely genital pornography. Do some people really find this prettier/sexier than whole body pornography? Wnt (talk) 02:38, 30 June 2012 (UTC)

Revised stats confirm high-edit editors stronger

As noted earlier, the revised statistics for May 2012 have confirmed that the highly active editors have been working at even higher levels (for 3 months), despite the pessimist perception that "most" formerly busy editors have dropped to low activity (just not true). See editor counts for 25+, 100+, 250+ edits per month:

• Adjusted editor counts: http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesWikipediaEN.htm

The adjusted editor-count data simply refutes any concept that "most people" have slowed to a mere token effort, and instead, another 56 busy editors have moved to editing even more articles each day (>250 article edits per month). That is probably a key reason why hitting "Special:Random article" typically displays a high-quality page. Thousands of editors are still continually improving articles. For daily editing (25+ edits per month), the data table shows "9723" editors (~10,000 editors) update Wikipedia articles 25 or more times per month (more than 6 times per week, excluding 1 day of rest). There is no "mass exodus" of busy editors, nor are they "sitting idle" in frustration. The data shows that Wikipedia has more than 10,000 daily editors, active each month. One of the reasons that some people believe editors are slowing, or idle, is because many (most?) editors do not discuss plans in "Talk:" and instead just edit hundreds of articles with no discussions. More about this later: I think most registered editors rarely edit talk-pages. -Wikid77 (talk) 07:22, 29 June, revised 13:14, 30 June 2012 (UTC)

Article-edit counts make long-term editors seem less active

Related thread: Revised stats confirm high-edit editors stronger

As I had suspected, the focus on "highly active editors" (as editing 100+ articles edits per month) has made the long-term editors seem less active in the monthly statistics, as dropping from the core 3,500 busy editors. Without naming any particular users, the pattern can be seen where people still edit several pages per day, perhaps 140 edits per month, but 30 of those edits will be "Talk:" pages, another 6 edits will be "Template:", plus 4 edits to "Wikipedia:" guidelines, and another 3 edits to "File:" image descriptions. The adjusted total edits becomes: 140-30-6-4-3 = 97 edits to article pages, when making 140 edits per month. So, since 97 is less than 100, then that editor is counted in the group of 5 edits per month (or 25+ edits in the full tables), not among the core 3,500 highly active.

I have seen many examples where a person makes daily edits totalling only "73" (or such) edits per month, but that counts in the 5-per-month group. Those people with 73 edits are there to revert vandalism, or correct mistakes every day, but they do not count among the 3,500 editors with 100+ edits. The more experienced the editors become, then the more likely they will edit a wider variety of namespaces, and split monthly edits into 30 to edit "Talk:" pages, or 14 edits to WP:Village_pump, noticeboards or guidelines (etc.), leaving fewer than 100 edits to articles. Similarly, editors who learn that edit-conflict almost never occurs for rare articles will likely make fewer, but longer, edits, where formerly they made 100+ smaller edits to update articles before they learned which articles can be updated with 1-edit fixes.

The more experienced editors will accomplish more each day with fewer edits, while also talking with more users, but will then have fewer monthly article edits, as below 100. While many occasional users will drop away completely, below 5 edits, other busy editors will combine or split 100+ edits to have only "73" article edits per month, and give the impression that a core of 3,500 editors (@100+) has fallen from 3,800 several months earlier. Meanwhile, the broader reality is that expert editors have learned to accomplish more, every day, with fewer article edits per month. One editor had 346 edits for June 2012, but many in other namespaces (talk: 125, Template: 53, WP: 40, User: 32, Help: 13, File: 4), so 346-125-53-40-32-13-4 = 79 article edits. That counts among 5-edits-per-month, but not in the 3,500 core with 100+ edits. I am not hunting to find these examples, they are common. Instead, we need to count edits to all namespaces combined, and then consider levels such as 30+ or 60+ edits per month, as showing high amounts of activity, even if a person logs 50 edits per month at Village-pump questions. Those are still very-active editors for a core of "10,000" daily editors. -Wikid77 (talk) 07:22, 29 June, revised 30 June, 05:14, 1 July 2012 (UTC)

Incarceration

In a random email conversation about politics, someone pointed me to Incarceration in the United States from which I also found the similar article United States incarceration rate. I believe that both these articles are plagued by a very serious editorial deficiency and I hope by posting here I will call the problem to the attention of some good editors.

My dictionary (Oxford American) defines "Incarceration" as "the state of being confined in prison". Our article Incarceration defines it as "the detention of a person in prison". As such, there seems to be quite universal agreement that we should contrast as being different things "incarceration" versus "probation" or "parole".

But the two articles conflate these two quite carelessly. We talk actually of "incarceration rates" when the numbers cited are for people who are in prison PLUS those on probation or parole.

Speaking as a reader rather than editor, I'm quite alarmed by the rapid increase in the incarceration rates in the United States, but when I went to learn more, Wikipedia seems to have failed me. We need to break out the numbers so that the reader can understand whether all these people are actually in prison, i.e. is there a genuine explosion in prison population? Or is there (an also disturbing, but different) explosion of people on probation or parole?--Jimbo Wales (talk) 10:07, 29 June 2012 (UTC)

I used the latest DoJ report I found - the incarceration rate is way lower than the earlier figures, and the Federal incarceration rate is very low (about 200K prisoners out of the total US population) - even compared to other countries, which do not necessarily include some of the categories the US figures do include. Collect (talk) 11:15, 29 June 2012 (UTC) Now someone needs to fix the other articles (I only did Incarceration). Collect (talk) 11:17, 29 June 2012 (UTC)

2010 figures (2 less) EDIT: interestingly, in that report, it notes that incaceration rates fell again, but that 2010 was the first year that the total # of prisoners fell since 1972. --Errant ^(chat!) 11:44, 29 June 2012 (UTC)

The issue appears to be that in recent years States are less inclined to re-jail parole violators. Probably a cost cutting budgetary thing. John lilburne (talk) 12:11, 29 June 2012 (UTC)

A small note regarding the usage of the word "rate": The rates discussed in United States incarceration rate and other "incarceration rate" articles actually refer to prevalence/proportions rather than true (incidence) rates. In other words the total number of people 'incarcerated' at a particular time divided by the total population at the time (n/N), rather than, say, the number of new cases of incarceration per the total population during one given year (though a true incidence rate would actually be measured in person-years). I wouldn't want to argue that this common usage of "incarceration rate" isn't justly sanctioned by WP:COMMONNAME, but I feel the articles themselves should make it immediately clear what they're talking about, rather than merely wikilinking to a list, as in the lede of the US article. —MistyMorn (talk) 14:54, 29 June 2012 (UTC)

• Trend was 90% perhaps 60% on probation will go to jail: The effect of combining actual inmate counts with people on probation is probably fairly accurate because the rate of probation violation has been very high in the U.S., and almost all (over 90%) will fail the terms of probation and go to jail, often with the conviction for something they did not do, which was the alleged crime covered by the probation, but never decided on actual evidence with "due process". The situation with Lindsey Lohan was very rare: to complete almost all of 4 years probation, and then go to jail anyway; however, she was given multiple 2nd, 3rd, 8th chances whereas most people would fail probation sooner, and not get reinstated on probation so many times. I have lived in many cities across the U.S. and the "local jail" has the same problems of overcrowding and worries about if a fire/hurricane would be fatal to so many confined people, or when gang rivalry arises, how to protect the majority of inmates from "collateral damage" when shanks start flying. I would like to think that the probation-violation rate is now below 90% but I doubt it. There is also talk, in multiple cities, that the drug-war culture is a racket to pay lawyers ($5,000?) to put people on probation, then the system collects their fee money for months/years, only to later jail them and give them non-due-process convictions (which only makes them angrier), perhaps leading to more legal work and convictions in the future. It seems to be a revolving door of police busy-work arrests and legal fees to defend charges of petty "victimless crimes". -Wikid77 (talk) 14:56, 29 June 2012 (UTC)

  Your numbers are way off the mark. The county in Texas with the highest rate of probation revocation revokes about 15% (source),as of 2005. I haven't looked up numbers for other states, but one can generally count on Texas to be among the toughest for things like this. Looie496 (talk) 16:04, 29 June 2012 (UTC)

Contrast per-year versus per-person: Thanks for noting that group, but I am thinking the "15%" is "per-year", so after 4 years it adds to 60% (4x15%). The figures show ~160,000 people on probation in Texas each year, for 10 years, where nearly "22,000" are revoked and sent to jail/prison each year. It is like a bucket that leaks 15% per hour, where after 5 hours, 75% (5x15%) of the water would be gone (revoked), but a hose keeps adding more water (people) into the bucket, so the effect is "only 15%" leaks out per hour (only 15% of probationers get revoked each year, but it totals higher over 5 years). The concept is like trying to hit a "moving target" so that the original target population is hidden by the new people on probation each year, where the target has moved behind others and is obscured. Among juveniles, 66% of those on probation got rearrested within 3 years (see report for whole State of Texas: TX-Recidivism-Report-2011, pages 10/53). However, I added "perhaps 60%" to my note title above, in case 90% is too high now. -Wikid77 (talk) 11:23, 30 June 2012 (UTC)

• I've given the article one run through the grinder, but it'll need a few more passes. It would also help for some people to scout out new sources - there are too few sources being used over and over in this version for me to feel fully confident in it. Wnt (talk) 14:57, 29 June 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for your work! The intro of Race in the United States criminal justice system has a problem, too, confusing cause and effect in ethnic subpopulations. It and its talk page will probably help with the incarceration rate articles. 75.166.192.187 (talk) 22:31, 29 June 2012 (UTC)

Indeed! But Race and crime in the United States suggests possible causal explanations in terms of dumbing down, sexing up, or whatever.... Ugh! —MistyMorn (talk) 23:35, 29 June 2012 (UTC)

There is now an RfC on the Incarceration in the United States page - though one person has opined that is "almost exclusively" about incarceration, and the rest is in the general context of "correctional population." Cheers. Collect (talk) 11:33, 30 June 2012 (UTC)

• Also need to describe trends and restrictions over the years: We have the data from 1980, 1990, 2000, 2007-2010 to note the higher U.S. incarceration rates for multiple recent years, and I think that should be noted, as a long-term trend, and mentioned in the lede of the article(s). Also, many readers would not know that probation has strong restrictions, such as limited travel, impromptu visits from probation officers, and no alcohol (no wine/beer ever for 4-5 years), which many people would consider "imprisonment". Likewise, the restrictions for parole could be summarized, to note the contrast against freedoms of the general public, for the readers to consider the differences. -Wikid77 (talk) 19:35, 30 June 2012 (UTC)

Improving the useability of wikipedia:Graphics

Some thoughts are needed here.♦ Dr. Blofeld 12:44, 29 June 2012 (UTC)

• Perhaps need essay WP:Gourmet for customization: In any vast society, there will be an exclusive group of enthusiasts, so I think we should prepare an essay, WP:Gourmet, to cater to groups of people who really enjoy Wikipedia and would be willing to select special, customized settings, depending on exotic preferences. Already, someone noted how to change the wikilink colors:

• WP:Link color#Making links appear a different color just for you

Perhaps some people might want wikilinks to appear "green" to indicate new growth in knowledge or such. I have advocated for editors to create more barcharts to show data in upright histogram-like format (hence, we have Help:Barchart). Readers should not be driven into thinking that all articles are "extruded" from a text machine which forces data into sets of cookie cutters, even though that is somewhat the case. I think Dr. Blofeld has noted a great idea, and we just need more documentation to cater to the exclusive views of such users. Excellent. -Wikid77 (talk) 13:02, 30 June 2012 (UTC)

Côte d'Ivoire v. Ivory Coast

Hi Jimbo, there's yet another request to move Côte d'Ivoire to Ivory Coast going on. I'm surprised no one seems to have asked for your opinion on this. It's a perennial issue, and one in which both sides are able to point to several policies supporting their position. I know you don't rule by fiat or anything, but I suspect your weighing in could go a long way toward settling the issue, at least somewhat. If your position differs from mine, I'd be inclined to back off, and others probably feel the same. I hope you'll consider sharing your opinion with the community. Best, BDD (talk) 00:01, 30 June 2012 (UTC)

From that discussion: "As for the Google insights numbers, they have relevance to WP:COMMONNAME which is dictated by "its prevalence in reliable English-language sources". Obviously random people who entered text into a search engine box aren't reliable".

I think this is one of the instances where the insistence on reliable sources is killing us. Why in the world do we want to use a name from "reliable sources" in preference to what people actually use?

It's like how notability is limited to appearance in reliable sources. I see no reason why we should have to have reliable sources for something to be notable--we are not using the sources for information about the subject that might be true or false and therefore for which reliability is relevant, we just are using the sources to know that the subject is mentioned a lot.

(The naive reply would be "if we don't have reliable sources we have nothing to use to write an article anyway", but if that reasoning was true, then large parts of the policy wouldn't make any sense. For instance, we shouldn't have topics that are presumed to meet the standards without needing a source, since it would not be possible to write an article about such topics.) Ken Arromdee (talk) 16:26, 30 June 2012 (UTC)

The name of Deutschland in English is Germany. The name of 日本 (Nihon or Nippon) in English is Japan. The name of Côte d'Ivoire in English is Ivory Coast. The evidence from reliable sources (BBC, New York Times, etc.) is overwhelming that this is the correct term. That some more formal sources - which we do not and need not defer to absolutely - have something different is not persuasive to me. Note that I am just giving a personal opinion on my talk page.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 09:11, 1 July 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia in news again for porn. Shouldn't libraries and schools have a censor?

I strongly support the creation of an industry-standard, unremarkable, low-community-impact (possibly even staff-managed if necessary) setting so that end users can easily toggle on and off NSFW images. I continue to push this matter with the board and would appreciate community help in making sure that it is implemented as soon as possible.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 09:14, 1 July 2012 (UTC)
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/06/05/co-founder-larry-sanger-wikipedia-is-virtual-porn-hub/?intcmp=obinsite First off, how is Larry Sanger a "co-founder" if he was a paid employee, and the idea was originally given by someone else? Seems to enjoy getting in the news whenever he can. Anyway, a lot of the most popular sites on Wikipedia are sexual related. http://stats.grok.se/commons.m/top Shouldn't schools and libraries be able to activate a filter to keep any kids from seeing those sites? Dream Focus 17:54, 30 June 2012 (UTC) Perhaps Wikisuggestia: Well, a lot of people keep calling Larry a "co-founder" but after reading hours of history sources about WP, he really tried to "found" something different which required a lot of pre-approval status, what I would call trying to found "Wikisuggestia" (or "Wikibacklogia"), rather than a wiki-encyclopedia where the contents were updated in a live, wiki-edited, good-faith manner. Perhaps if people ask what the "co-founder" bit is about then say, "Wikisuggestia" to allow random users to suggest articles which would take eons to proofread and approve for display to readers. It is almost the antithesis of Wikipedia, like saying Edison was the co-founder of Tesla's AC generators (Willamette Falls, 1890) because he strongly opposed the idea, or Satan is the co-founder of God's Love because he does everything to foment hate. That's the "co-founder" ya right. But I doubt Jimbo wants to discuss this topic much more. -Wikid77 (talk) 07:57, 1 July 2012 (UTC) Note CIPA covers the schools and libraries already. They have professional censor filters available to them; they don't need to rely on the grudging efforts of unpaid amateurs. Wnt (talk) 00:52, 1 July 2012 (UTC) You're almost a month behind the times. Tarc (talk) 18:16, 30 June 2012 (UTC) Yeah agree we should do something an I can't see where the difficulty is. What really gets me about all this is how so many people seem to be so desperate that children grow up believing the stork brings babies and they are probably completely ignoring what they learnt as children and how they learn it. I am very keen to have filtering implemented as it would enable Wikipedia to be made available to many more people, but actually what really incenses me at the moment is how they are planning to blare music out during the Olympics, so filtering isn't something that occupies my waking hours. Dmcq (talk) 23:09, 30 June 2012 (UTC) Its not that children grow up believing the stork brings basbies, rather it is about children growing up believing that fisting is an activity practised by everyone's parents, or at least in the same proportion to those that do it doggy style. John lilburne (talk) 23:25, 30 June 2012 (UTC) Are you saying we should only censor content about "deviant" sex acts? Or what are you saying? Wnt (talk) 00:52, 1 July 2012 (UTC) The statistics do appear a bit remarkable - I know that in the old days of books on paper, boys would always look for good sex-ed content at the school library, and nothing has changed, but still, I'm surprised to see the trend become this pronounced. Is there any way that we can tell whether these hits are mostly personal lookups, people going into commons and typing "vagina" in the search box, as opposed to traffic coming in from sites like [5] that display a lot of Wikimedia Commons pictures in their frame? Because if it's the latter, that's a commercial phenomenon we might have to look into. The image traffic for sites like these can be expensive, and if they have a commercial model for serving our traffic in less-than-educational settings for the sake of their own ad revenue, maybe we should think about whether we should be less friendly for hotlinking, at least when sites use it on a massive scale. Wnt (talk) 00:52, 1 July 2012 (UTC) To follow up on that, let's look at the non-sexual content that is most popular. There's File:Mortdale trackplan.png, hit #23 right after "Vagina" and "Penis", used in our ever-popular Mortdale railway station article and two entries on zh.wikipedia. Is it this site bringing the traffic? I doubt it... but the hits must be coming from somewhere... Is #35, File:Pierogi frying.jpg, really due to the popularity of Pierogi, or because it's linked from cornishpasties.org and WebMD's forum? Wnt (talk) 01:10, 1 July 2012 (UTC) http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Videos_of_sexuality shows one of the things people object to. Dream Focus 01:44, 1 July 2012 (UTC)

store in karachi

Nothing more to be done here

C310 in pakistan — Preceding unsigned comment added by 119.154.182.198 (talk) 00:32, 1 July 2012 (UTC)

User addressed on his talk page. Herostratus (talk) 01:11, 1 July 2012 (UTC)