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Wikipedia's 20 anniversary

Wikipedia will turn 20 in just 4 months! How should we celebrate? Goose(Talk!) 01:05, 3 September 2020 (UTC)

It looks like it's still in the planning stage. Liz Read! Talk! 01:43, 3 September 2020 (UTC)
I have previously suggested adding one puzzle piece to the logo in a just barely visible spot to show the progress since the last logo update just a bit over ten years ago. So much information has been added, catalogued and systematized on Wikipedia in those ten years that we should show it. VanIsaacWScont 02:07, 3 September 2020 (UTC)
It should be the pi piece, as in Wikipedia:About they are putting the pi piece on. Arsonxists (talk) 00:20, 17 September 2020 (UTC)

Russian Wikinews is down

Last night the developers of the Wikimedia Foundation notified Russian Wikinews about the complete shutdown of news feeds. As you understand, a news agency cannot exist without a news feed because that is the only way to read them. Thus Russian Wikinews actually died. The problem has not been resolved yet. It's been almost a day. See news: n:ru:Фонд Викимедиа сломал Русские Викиновости and ticket phab:T262391. --sasha (krassotkin) 21:23, 9 September 2020 (UTC)

If the Russian Wikinews is a viable project, then I am all in favor of the WMF doing everything practical to keep it afloat. I don't know. English Wikinews, on the other hand, has published five mediocre articles in September. The most recent has a headline reading "Three children seriously injured as bus hits bridge in Winchester, England", and that was eight days ago. Very sorry for those kids and I hope they fully recover, but English Wikinews is a failed project with no credibility as a news site and negligible readership. Shutting it down would be a kindness to all concerned. Cullen328 Let's discuss it 05:38, 18 September 2020 (UTC)

  • You may be also interested in reading this Facebook thread (@"Wikipedia Weekly" talk group; the whole thread, not just 1 comment) and links like m:Proposals for closing projects/Closure of English Wikinews (there are some more AFAIR). --ssr (talk) 06:40, 18 September 2020 (UTC)
    In the Facebook discussion last year, highly respected Wikimedians such as Asaf Bartov agreed that not only was Wikinews a failure, but also that it had zero hope for success. The decision to keep the project that you link to was made eight years ago. I have checked in there from time to time over the years, always hoping that the project might be getting better. No such luck. It still sucks so badly that it ought to be an embarassment to the WMF, but I guess not. Cullen328 Let's discuss it 06:50, 18 September 2020 (UTC)
    • We have about 600 projects in much worse condition. But we must support project as long as there are community. We must not demotivate a community in any way. English Wikinews has set itself a very high standard for journalism. While this may be a problem I wish them all the best. --sasha (krassotkin) 07:55, 18 September 2020 (UTC)
    • As I said above, please read the thread *completely* where Asaf Bartov *amends* his evaluations that you quote now. --ssr (talk) 09:11, 18 September 2020 (UTC)
        • Ssr, yes, I read Asaf Bartov's idea about a "Wiki Magazine". That has no effect on my assessment. The bottom line is that English Wikinews is a complete, total and utter failure. Sometimes people on English Wikipedia encourage editors interested in news to go to English Wikinews. This is terrible advice comparable to recommending that someone take a long hike in the desert on a very hot day without bringing along some water bottles. Cullen328 Let's discuss it 03:58, 21 September 2020 (UTC)
          • 1) That was not Asaf's idea, it was his term 2) There are also my own comments by the link, did you read, particularly: "We all see how much failure English Wikinews became and how they discredited "wiki-journalism" idea in general". 3) You may read some my comments on English Wikinews here (in English and little) 4) You may read more here — a lot of text just locate my comments (ssr) there. By the latter link, see my recipe: English Wikinews "czars" should be stopped from their practices because they are discrediting the idea of Wiki collaboration, and it's their "personal" fault that they do it, and it's WMF's "personal" fault that it fails to stop them from being "czars". But Wikinews as a "magazine" is still a credible idea and is successfully implemented in Russian Wikinews and other Wikinews should actually follow their example to become a credible "WMF sister project" serving Wikimedia informational crowdsourcing processes. --ssr (talk) 06:56, 21 September 2020 (UTC)
English Wikinews - I shouldn't like to comment on ones I haven't looked at - is an anomaly that mainly serves to get photographers press passes so Wikipedia can gain photos. Or it used to. Don't even know if it does THAT anymore. It's largely delinked from here, and I doubt it has much chance of recovery. Adam Cuerden (talk)Has about 7.5% of all FPs 03:48, 21 September 2020 (UTC)
Wikinews turned out to be the most complicated "sister project" in terms of handling, but it's still a credible idea with "amendments", like Asaf Bartov amended. Like other sister projects, it's an "extension plugin" for main Wikipedia to place content unsiutable for Wikipedia according to WP:NOTNEWS (where Wikinews is clearly mentioned). Just correct positioning and implementation, no "czars", and voilà. --ssr (talk) 08:40, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Draft:Alexander_Rozhko&oldid=979549401

Hi Jimbo

I would like to ask you how to delete this article, because I made the mistake in name of person or how can I edit it from Alexander Rozhko to Aleksander Rozhko?

As it is a draft, you don't need to do anything yet. When you have finished drafting and it is ready to become a real article, it can be moved to a new name, correcting the spelling mistake. Alternatively you can add {{db-g7}} to the top of the page, and an admin will delete it for you. QuiteUnusual (talk) 11:41, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

The Admin's Barnstar
Hi Jimmy Wales!!!!!:) Sbp50208 (talk) 00:56, 22 September 2020 (UTC)
@Sbp50208: Interesting reason to give a barn-star, I have to admit. Go-Tsumaroki 00:38, 25 September 2020 (UTC)

Sign my User-Page?

Hey Jimbo,

Ever since starting Wikipedia I've always wanted something to have your name on it forever, and I thought: Why don't I just make a auto-graph book on my user-page? It would do me a great honor for your name to be on it (and your talk page editors if they want) so I can always remember the great part of the community. Thanks, Go-Tsumaroki 17:25, 25 September 2020 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Miscellany_for_deletion/User:UBX/onemanonewoman_4th_nomination

What do you think of the argument being made here that "According to Legal status of same-sex marriage, same-sex marriage is recognized in only 28 countries. [...] What one country sees as bigotry another country sees as accepted practice. We are a global English encyclopedia and as such should reflect users not confined to countries with non accepted viewpoints. It would actually be propaganda, advocacy, or recruitment for us.... an encyclopedia which is worldwide (WP:WORLDVIEW) to have info-boxes promoting same-sex marriage while deleting info-boxes that oppose it."

Adam Cuerden (talk)Has about 7.5% of all FPs 03:23, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

I would love to hear from Jimbo on this subject. I didn’t realize all these years people who have Christian, Muslim, Jewish, etc. backgrounds aren’t welcome on the project due to their faith and beliefs. This should be good. JungleCat Shiny!/Oohhh! 13:52, 21 September 2020 (UTC)
@Adam Cuerden and Junglecat: Jimbo has actually commented extensively on the topic of political userboxes, quotes of which have been collected at Wikipedia:Jimbo on Userboxes. One quote: "Userboxes of a political or, more broadly, polemical, nature are bad for the project. They are attractive to the wrong kinds of people, and they give visitors the wrong idea of what it means to be a Wikipedian." --Yair rand (talk) 22:42, 21 September 2020 (UTC)
Junglecat, I know exactly no Christians who reject equal marriage. I know several marrie3d gay Christians. Note that Southern Baptists argued for maintaining a ban on interracial marriage, that doesn't make racism a religious view, it makes it a pretextually religious view. Guy (help! - typo?) 22:03, 22 September 2020 (UTC)
I don't like any userboxes with advocacy, really. I don't think they are right for us, and tend to generate division and a focus on something other than building a high quality and neutral encyclopedia. To answer a specific question implicit in the original question, I think that it's bad to allow userboxes on one side of a live political issue, while not allowing them on the other side. I also think that people should not disrupt Wikipedia to make a point, and that this is worthy of a thoughtful dialog and discussion.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 08:26, 25 September 2020 (UTC)
Jimbo, if one side of a "live political issue" advocates denying people's rights on the basis of their inherent characteristics, I don't think that staking out a middle ground is the way to go. This project ostensibly has values—it is not "neutral" on the question of whether it's OK to discriminate against people based on gender, race, ethnicity, or sexual orientation—so please have the courage not to hide behind both-sides-ism here. MastCell Talk 17:08, 25 September 2020 (UTC)
Seconded. This is a disappointing response in what could have been an opportunity to reinforce that Wikipedia does not tolerate discrimination based on one's sexuality or gender. GorillaWarfare (talk) 18:12, 25 September 2020 (UTC)
The project can certainly show support for not tolerating discrimination against gender, race, sexual orientation. Separately, editors who feel differently should be able express those views as long as it is limited to their user page; they should not push that view onto others on discussions, and if their editing patterns in mainspace clearly show their are editing within that view's bias in a disruptive manner, that's a problem that we deal with behavioral. But we have to be able to tolerate those users with views that may be counter to be the project that otherwise are not disrupting the project because of their different views. That's the issue that's happening here, since userboxes do not push that at other users unless they actually go to the user's page and read them; they are not disruptive, unless those that take offensive make them an issue (short of patently offensive Miller-test style material). --Masem (t) 18:27, 25 September 2020 (UTC)
Maybe I misunderstood you, Masem, but I don't think it's fair to ask users, specially those that are part of a minority, to tolerate intolerance. Using the deleted userboxes as an example, just because being against same-sex marriage is not offensive to you, it doesn't mean it isn't offensive to a queer person, who might not feel welcome anymore after visiting a userpage (something we do whenever we interact with each other) and seeing that userbox. Isabelle 🔔 18:45, 25 September 2020 (UTC)
This is why this discussion in the context of NOTCENSORED (as it applies to non-main space) is important. It has always been the case that you will likely run into people with views against your own. Its impossible not to have this happen in an open wiki. What is important is that when this happens, no disruption happens. And that generally has been fine. And my take with userboxes is that we have included those for the same reason, that as long as they do not outright speak to a message of hostility or violence that would considered close to hate speech ("I believe we should kill all (X)" type comments), that the messaging is fine, even if a group may be offended. Now if we start down this road - and again, I can understand "1 man, 1 woman" messaging being offensive to one that supports gay marriage - that sets a slippery slope for all userboxes. Atheists would be offended by ones promoting religion, for example. Again, this all used to fall under the implication of NOTCENSORED, that you as an editor should expect to find views that you might find troubling. Now, if we want to go down the road and get rid of all userboxes or any that speak to something like this, that's a solution, but it also feels like a cheap way out of avoiding what will happen as a result: editors will just transition those messages into their user pages by hand outside of a user box, and we'll be back here again in a year or so. I understand some editors will be offended to find other editors have this language on their user page, but this has been a warning to all that this will happen, and we shouldn't be trying to retroactively change that. Or at least, not unless we have a larger discussion on the nature of user boxes and do a large-scale audit across the board. --Masem (t) 19:01, 25 September 2020 (UTC)
I would disagree that people only see userboxes if they go out of their way to do so. I regularly view other users' userpages as a part of my day-to-day editing, not because I'm curious about what their userboxes have to say. I agree with Isabelle Belato that we should not expect Wikipedians to tolerate intolerance. There is a difference between views I disagree with, and views that are discriminatory or hateful against me. The former is fine, the latter is not.
I have no particular love for userboxes myself–I use a few that I think most would agree are uncontroversial, because I think they help quickly convey important information on my userpage. I don't use them as widely as some folks do. But I would like to think we are a mature enough community that we can draw a reasonable line between which userboxes are acceptable and which are not without resorting to wholesale deletion of userboxes. If someone wants to use a userbox to give other users information about themselves, I have no issue with it unless that userbox is also discriminatory or hateful towards other users.
I also disagree with your religion comparison. In my experience most atheists are not offended by other people stating their religion. Furthermore, someone adding a userbox to convey that they're of some religion is much different from adding a userbox to convey they don't believe an entire group of people deserve equal rights. The 1 man/1 woman userbox is not a problem because I personally disagree with the political issue of same-sex marriage, it's a problem because it says to our LGBTQ editors that the user does not believe they deserve equal rights, and some of the userboxes went as far to say they consider the existing marriages of LGBTQ people to be invalid. GorillaWarfare (talk) 19:12, 25 September 2020 (UTC)
(ec) Surely there is a line to be found between "allow everything" and "allow nothing", since, as you've mentioned, even without userboxes people will find ways to advertise their believes on their user pages, and so the discussion would go from "should these userboxes be allowed" to "should these messages be allowed". I think that, as long as due process is followed, we, as community, should be able to define that line while respecting people's differences. GorillaWarfare also said it better than I could. Isabelle 🔔 19:27, 25 September 2020 (UTC)
To both GW and Isabelle: there may be a line, but that line is extremely grey/fuzzy and far from objective, at least if we're talking "well, the religion userboxes sit on this side, but opinions about marriage rights sit on that side", particularly as religion and marriage rights can often go hand in hand. And I think it was here, its also when you have the problem that if you can have an infobox to stand for gay rights but disallow for the opposite, that's an issue. (To be clear, WP does not have to follow free speech rules, equal time for views, etc. We can discriminate views if we desire, but this is more thinking just in general on what type of platform we are presenting here if we do so). And religion is only one example. What about, say, pro Hong Kong? pro-life vs pro-choice? Pro- vs anti-Trump? Heck, back to religion, what about Christianity vs Muslim (with possible infobox texts "I believe the one true Prophet is Jesus/Muhammad.") The list goes on. If we start here, we are going to force editors either to conform to WP's platform of what is tolerated or drive editors away for failing to meet a common denominator, and that's not a good thing for an open wiki in the long run; we need the wisdom of the crowds and that means diverse voices even if they are messages that may briefly be offensive.
I recognize that the gay marriage is a larger-held view that those that support it do take more offense against "1 man, 1 woman" stances, but again, its just a statement. As long as the editor behaves in a manner that does not disrupt WP with their view, it's just words. I hate saying advice that could be taken as "get a backbone" (I know that's an insult nowadays) and I am trying to not say this in a derogatory manner, but editors routinely have to deal with "abuse" from a number of other areas in active discussions unrelated to userboxes like this, and these passive userboxes are very easy to go "Oh, I get this user, I may absolutely not agree and feel they are very wrong, but okay" and move on; they do no harm. If they were using those words direct at you in talk page discussions, that's where the disruption happens.
There are reasonably good harder line tests in US case law like the Miller test to judge when passive language like this can become obscene or inappropriate, but this sets the line at a far different place, primarily disallowing things that are pornographic or excessively violent/hate speech, and that's not where it sounds like people want the line to be. But moving that line to be more inclusive (restricting more possible boxes) moves into this big fuzzy area I just don't think we can easily work in without endless arguments like this, with the only obvious solution to be eliminating user boxes altogether. Or we have editors keep in mind of the diverse body of editors and consider all such views reasonable to share. There is perhaps language aspects we should make sure are clear so that messaging in these userboxes is not using possibly offensive terms. I don't know, for example, if "pro heterosexual marriage" is a better term than "believe marriage is between one man and one woman." or "anti-gay message". --Masem (t) 19:50, 25 September 2020 (UTC)
I don't see a problem with any of the examples you mentioned, because they are not negative towards other people. Equivalent userboxes to someone saying they are "anti-same sex marriage" would be saying they are "anti-Muslim", or perhaps more accurately that they oppose giving equal rights to Muslims, and I think we would readily disallow that also. Certainly same sex marriage views can go hand-in-hand with religion, but if I see a Christian userbox (or Catholic, or whatever else) I don't assume the person is anti-SSM. You're quite right that users deal with "abuse" from many areas, but they should not have to, and if removing userboxes that contribute towards making a person seems unwelcome even minorly improves that experience, I am all in favor. People should not be forced to "move on" from seeing userboxes that express negative views towards them as people, and I disagree with your statement that "they do no harm". I think we agree that the Miller test is too broad a line to draw, but I disagree that we can't find a reasonable way to draw a line that is more restrictive. GorillaWarfare (talk) 20:28, 25 September 2020 (UTC)
I can appreciate the logic of statement that are negative towards a group of people, but again, fuzzy line. I can argue someone may take offensive at a userbox declaring the person using a proud GOP member, as it is generally accepted that GOP as a party demeans women, minorities and other groups. We definitely want to eliminate language that attacks or is directly offensive to editors as a specific group on WP because that is easy to delinate. (eg the old "inclusionist/deletionist" battle language) Language like "I don't trust LGBT editors" in a userbox would be a prime target for removal under what we're talking about here, but "I don't trust LGBT people" would be different and not specific to WP. Also, we have to recognize that sometimes these statements are not meant as offensive. Someone may be against gay marriage only because they don't believe that govt benefits associated with it should be conferred to them but otherwise has the utmost respect for such couples and the like. Having an "anti-gay marriage" userbox is thus not in their view meant to offend people in so much as part of the larger debate around the topic. So again, the removal here seems inappropriate. To extend an example even further, what if in the discussion on a topic like "Gay rights in the U.S." that an editor comes along on the talk page and says "I'm anti-gay rights and feel this is balanced a bit against opposing views so here are some valid academic sources that should be included." and for all purposes, the suggestion fits our content policies. Should we remove that suggestion because it may be offensive to some editors even though the editor clearly wasn't directing it any editor?
This is the problem when we try to take these messages that for all purposes are aimed broadly and not to any specific WP function, and find a way to say they're specifically offensive to WP editors. WP editors may be part of the group that such messages offend but they are not being purposely singled out by the userbox, that's the key here. Otherwise we are definitely on a slippery slope here that we're requiring conformance to specific ideals. --Masem (t) 21:26, 25 September 2020 (UTC)
I disagree with your distinction between "I don't trust LGBT people" and "I don't trust LGBT editors". LGBT editors are a subset of LGBT people and so the statement applies no less to them. While I see your point around the hypothetical talk page scenario, I think acknowledging a POV in an editing dispute on a relevant article talk page is a pretty different scenario than advertising one's opinions about the rights of LGBT people on a userpage, and so can be handled differently (and case-by-case, if needed). GorillaWarfare (talk) 21:55, 25 September 2020 (UTC)
But that's my point here: taking a message that (on the assumption of it made in good faith) was not intended or directed specifically at a group of WP editors but broadly at a world view, and saying it is now specifically offensive to those editors (which would be something we do act on were that actually the case) is the slippery slope here. Again, this goes back to the long-standing caution that editors likely will encounter viewpoints that are controversial (per NOTCENSORED and the content disclaimer) and they need to accept that as long as the content is non-disruptive. --Masem (t) 22:08, 25 September 2020 (UTC)
Who decides what a "live political issue" is, such that deletion of one userbox must be balanced with deletion of another? Is what is or is not considered discrimination based on a quantitative evaluation of how many people actively support a position around the world? Do we just need to wait until it falls outside of the Overton Window in every part of the world to consider it discrimination? There are a whole range of human rights that are "live political issues" in certain parts of the world, and which were political issues in the recent past, yet there does not seem to be much interest in defending a hypothetical userbox against interracial marriage or against women's right to drive. It seems to me that we can say that regardless of whether userpages should be used to take political positions and regardless of whether this or that issue has been taken up in politics, that using one's user page to support discrimination is not acceptable, and to decide whether or not a userbox is discriminatory on a case-by-case basis without being beholden to "both sides" or objections to discriminating against discrimination because "politics." $0.02. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 17:35, 25 September 2020 (UTC)

Yes, they're not a good look for us, they make our editors look like school kids with stickers on their rucksacks. A few of them stating languages spoken or nationality is OK, but it's the ones with dozens of "This editor likes Cheese", "thinks the truth is out there" etc which I find irritating.† Encyclopædius 12:25, 25 September 2020 (UTC)

  • Userboxes are fun and many people like them. They are good for socializing. The problem is when userboxes are used for fight (WP:NOTBATTLE), not with userboxes themselves. --ssr (talk) 12:45, 25 September 2020 (UTC)
  • I find funny that all these "keep" ¡votes come from users that label themselves as "Christians" (Love Thy Neighbor? Anyone? No?). One admin even left the project for this "censorship". Being realistic, if any user creates a "This user believes Christianism is not a true religion, but respects it" they would be the firsts to feel the box is an attack. If anyone thinks same-sex marriage is not real, it is their opinion and that's it. Editing here requieres editors to have neutral points of view toward topics and toward fellow editors. (CC) Tbhotch™ 17:45, 25 September 2020 (UTC)
  • Out of 20, around 7 are parody-like templates (pastafarism), a few are about US politics. The rest (like 10) are about "[I] don't believe in God" "There's no God" or "We would be better without religions". None is about denying the human right on believing in deities nor denying any religion (using the same text/style of these deleted templates). (CC) Tbhotch™ 18:11, 25 September 2020 (UTC)
  • To be clear, I am addressing your assertion that '[t]his user believes Christianism is not a true religion, but respects it' would be treated as an attack page, which is plainly not true when there are userboxes like User:Soumya-8974/NoChristanity lying around uncontested (oddly it's in the 'Christianity' category instead of 'Anti-religion' one *shrug*). That should also explain to you Ad Orientem's resignation over double-standards. Personally, I think all but a few userboxes could be deleted, but Wikipedia is becoming more of a half-assed social media site than it is an encyclopedia (and yes, I have a few of those useless baubles on my UP). Mr rnddude (talk) 18:47, 25 September 2020 (UTC)
  • There's a similar thread at ANI on a different userbox, but I'm going to argue that this is the start of a slippery slope of targetting editors with specific ideologies. I fully support LGBT elements and of course would not touch this userbox on my user page but it still remains a valid opinion, and the rationale that it was "offensive" to a body of editors is the same issues that anyone watching the fight over Section 230 (in the sense of lack of action from tech companies to restrain content) from both sides can see as the same issue. While WP is not required to be as open as the US Federal gov't related to free speech, we should be considered these same facets, and targetting specific userbox content that may go against some sensibilities but otherwise do not generally offend per a typical Miller test approach (the way I would review it) should not be touched; our NOTCENSORED policy warns editors that they will be seeing this type of content on non-mainspace pages and they should learn to deal with it. This is a very bad XFD and needs to be reviewed in the overall state of what WP wants to be in terms of an open editing environment that does not immediately judge on personal ideology. --Masem (t) 17:53, 25 September 2020 (UTC)
    I have said it above but I will repeat it here: there is a major difference between views I disagree with and views which are actively discriminatory and/or hateful towards a protected class. GorillaWarfare (talk) 19:14, 25 September 2020 (UTC)

The Signpost: 27 September 2020

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 22:53, 27 September 2020 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

The Original Barnstar
good luck bro Thepesar (talk) 02:14, 28 September 2020 (UTC)

Draft:That Man of Mine

Apparently this film featuring African American actors and musical stars isn't notable. FloridaArmy (talk) 01:03, 6 September 2020 (UTC)

there are more practical ways to deal with it than to put a notice here. DGG ( talk ) 06:21, 7 September 2020 (UTC)
What would you recommend User:DGG? FloridaArmy (talk) 12:26, 7 September 2020 (UTC)
you could for example ask some admin who works in the area to revisit it. Even better, since I see from the references you add that you are becoming familiar with the sources that do exist for Black film in the US, you could do some further work to find the additional publications that do exist in that area. (There is of course a problem with library access these days, especially for print material. Now, I am not prevented from using the word, so I will explain that the relative obscurity of the necessary materials in the literature is indeed a result of racism, relegating Black artists and filmmakers to their own segregated area of the film industry, and being slow to treat it in academic publications thereafter. But we are trying to deal with racism here, and we are not such bigots that we will not extend some degree of flexility when necessary to cover the affected topics.. DGG ( talk ) 04:16, 8 September 2020 (UTC)
  • Also, administrator Fram came to my talk page to chew me out for crying racism in this discussion, but I haven't mentioned racism at all. In fact I was instructed by a VERY high ranking admin that if I discuss the racism problem on Wikipedia I will be banned immediately. So I can't discuss racism here at all. I haven't even mentioned racism in this discussion. I'm not allowed to. So I won't bring up another editor referring to people in articles as as mullato or an admin and former arb writing about Republicans during the Reconstruction era as carpetbaggers. If I discuss the bigotry problem on Wikipedia I will be blocked and banned for noting it. FloridaArmy (talk) 14:50, 7 September 2020 (UTC)
There was a very long discussion about this back in May and June 2020, and it was agreed that it is unhelpful to imply that other editors are racist if they turn down an articles for creation request. Most of the time they are trying to ensure that an article meets WP:GNG.--♦IanMacM♦ (talk to me) 15:49, 7 September 2020 (UTC)
There's no such thing as a "VERY high ranking admin" - they all have the same "rank" - and no single person can get you banned immediately from Wikipedia. If someone is telling you they're more important than everyone else, you can safely ignore that. QuiteUnusual (talk) 11:00, 8 September 2020 (UTC)
Yes, as I noted above, we're not allowed to discuss or point out bigotry and racism no matter how pervasive on Wikipedia. That is why I didn't mention it until Fram accused my of "crying" racism, even though I didn't even say the word. I will continue to pretend that racism and bigotry don't exist here as I've been instructed and warned. As you note, it's been decided that pointing out examples of bigotry and racism is "unhelpful". See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. Perfectly okay to identify people as mulatto and carpetbaggers though. I noticed the article on Joe Biden's long history of racist comments and actions was also censored. Sad. Wikipedia really has its knee on the neck of this problem. FloridaArmy (talk) 16:41, 7 September 2020 (UTC)
FloridaArmy, you've been told before that accusations of bigotry based solely on the colour of an article subject are unacceptable. Do not do this. It is absolutely unacceptable.
You should by now be well aware of the fact that many of the articles you create are marginal. That's why you have to go through the AfC process. Your continual accusations of bad faith against those who do not agree 100% with your own personal judgment of the notability of a subject, are a serious problem. You need to start allowing for the possibility that when large numbers of people tell you that you are wrong, the most likely explanation is not that they are racists, but that you are, in fact, wrong. Guy (help! - typo?) 08:30, 17 September 2020 (UTC)

The same editor prodded these entries today:

Just taking the last one, a very short article which gives no indication that this is a notable film. It might have been the biggest hit of 1945, or a complete flop which never made general release, we just don't know. If you want your articles to survive at least try to show why they might be notable.--Salix alba (talk): 19:14, 7 September 2020 (UTC)
I didn't create It Happened in Harlem. It was created in March 2016 by User:Encyclopædius. The director, star, and site of the movie all having articles gives a good indication of notability. Anyone can add sources but prodding and keeping notable subject out of mainsapce isn't constructive. FloridaArmy (talk) 22:33, 7 September 2020 (UTC)
FloridaArmy, there is only one indication of notability: coverage in reliable independent sources. Guy (help! - typo?) 08:31, 17 September 2020 (UTC)

There is only one indication of notability: coverage in reliable independent sources when its convenient.

For starters, most -- as in, over fifty percent -- of our six million articles do not meet the WP:GNG nor can me made to. If you want to put together a project to get rid of those 4 million articles, let me know. (But I will oppose you, since almost all of these articles are fine.) Til then, picking on a tiny subset of these articles that share a particular characteristic isn't really called for/

And then, there are always some articles that do have coverage in reliable independent sources that do get deleted or have to fight for their lives. A lot of times this is fine, those articles suck (after all, I could write an article about last night's Mets game and meet the GNG), but sometimes they're just about unpopular subjects.

And I mean... we have articles on basically every film, as a matter of fact we have hundreds and hundreds of articles on films that nobody even bothered to save a single copy and sometimes we don't even know what the plot was (in Category:Lost films; we also have Category:Unfinished films ("films that never completed principal photography") and a couple similar categories (Category:Cancelled films).)

So them, why would we not have room for That Man of Mine but we do have room for film articles like Terry Gilliam's unrealized projects. "Gilliam’s next film project was going to be Theseus and the Minotaur, based on Greek mythology. The film was shelved when Gilliam chose to make Time Bandits (1981) instead. Gilliam turned down the offer to direct Enemy Mine (1985). Gilliam also turned down the offer to direct Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988). According to Gilliam, "I passed on that one, but that didn’t matter because it was just at a stage when it was still just the book and I didn’t want to get into animation. I just read the book and said, 'This is too much work.' Pure laziness on my part".

Well pip-pip. See, it's not that Wikipedia editors and mods are racist -- not exactly. It's not that simple. It's just that they are so white that they know who the Knights Who Go Ni are. So of course they're going to assume that everyone else also wants to come here and read Terry Gilliam rambling on about things he thought about doing but then said nah. Conversely, these people don't know anything about what dances were developed at the Harlem Opera House or care. They're not against the Harlem Opera House. They just don't know what it is, is all. They're not interested, and they kinda-sorta can't really envision that anyone really could be unless they're virtue signalling or something. So then naturally the GNG turns into Tablets Of Stone in these instances.

Imagine that.

So anyway, it's not really racism so much as just bourgeois snobbery. You don't see it just here; it's all about the Wikipedia. You have to remember that the bulk of the editors and mods here -- that is, the power structure, since all human groups have power structures -- is dominated by American, white, middle class, college educated rahs in mid-market sports jackets. It's not the skin color that matters. It's the whole package. You can't tell the bourgeoisie that they are trapped in mirror cube of bourgeois values, for the same reason you can't tell a fish that it's wet. It won't understand. It can't. It doesn't know what "dry" is.

So don't argue to the fish, argue to the audience. Bring the question to larger audiences, as you have done here. Get people to read read Wikipedia:One hundred words or Wikipedia:The one question or the Wikipedian's Meditation or so forth. The WP:GNG is good reading too. It's all useful. None of it is scripture. And Godspeed. Herostratus (talk) 23:10, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

What you've described is textbook bigotry. The idea that racists parade around in pointy white hats and are all White supremacists is quaint. The racism rampant here and the attacks on those combating it are far more widespread and entrenched. FloridaArmy (talk) 21:56, 22 September 2020 (UTC)
FloridaArmy, your continued accusations of racism and bigotry are offensive and unacceptable. Please stop. Guy (help! - typo?) 08:16, 23 September 2020 (UTC)
Herostratus, I am well aware that some Wikiprojects have decided that Wikipedia is indeed a directory. But the argument that we should abandon the requirement for reliable independent sourcing when we really want an article on something has never been persuasive to me. Guy (help! - typo?) 08:16, 23 September 2020 (UTC)
Terry Gilliam is notorious for being an overly ambitious filmmaker and not getting many of his projects completed. So much so that people have written about it in reliable sources. Hence why we have an article on it. P-K3 (talk) 22:43, 23 September 2020 (UTC)
Yeah I get it all. All articles matter.
But it's good of you to make your point. After all, as I said, I'm not arguing with you to change your mind. I'm arguing with you to let the audience see how bereft you are of compelling points.
Nobody is advocating abandoning the requirement for reliable independent sources (the question is how much is required, and how to approach the raw fact that the community has voted with its feel that different circumstances require different rubrics in the context, specifically, of African American history). Your patently false assertion that people are advocating that obviously cuts no ice with me, but the important thing is it's not going to cut any ice with anyone reading this. So please continue, governor. Herostratus (talk) 16:07, 28 September 2020 (UTC)

Deleting entries

Hello Jimbo I have been a regular user of Wikipedia over the years but was very perturbed to read that a fringe doctor by the name of Malcolm Kendrick has had his entry removed. He has unconventional views on statins and this appears to have been sufficient for him to become an unperson. I don't happen to agree with him but in my view it reflects very badly on Wikipedia that the editorial structure allows him to be "cancelled". Clearly Pol Pot, Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin's crimes were not sufficient for them to be disappeared from Wikipedia, but Dr Kendrick's opinions were. Science proceeds by claim and counter-claim, by debate and falsification. If editors find Dr Kendrick's views unscientific they can say so and provide links and references demonstrating that he is wrong. But to eliminate him altogether is deeply sinister. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A00:23C4:E383:7401:FC15:7272:ABE1:71B3 (talk) 18:39, 28 September 2020 (UTC)

The article about Kendrick was deleted for one reason and one reason only: He has not been the subject of significant coverage in reliable, independent sources. In other words, he is not notable. Please read Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Malcolm Kendrick. Cullen328 Let's discuss it 18:54, 28 September 2020 (UTC)
Yes, this is really important to understand. Wikipedia doesn't delete biographies about people for having "unconventional views", nor for being "unscientific" but rather for not being notable in the very specific sense that Cullen has outlined. This is frequently the source of confusion because it is often the case that people who have had their articles deleted go on campaigns claiming some deep injustice.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 20:29, 28 September 2020 (UTC)
Jimbo Wales, huh, I see I closed that one. The application of GNG is particularly important for fringe figures, because they will typically garner significant uncritical coverage in sources like What Doctors Don't Tell You and mercola.com.
It is vital for WP:NPOV that we provide balanced and factually accurate articles, and this is a long-standing problem with figures like Gary Null, who are so obviously not credible that reputable sources spend pretty much no time rebutting the nonsense they write.
In the case of Kendrick, the consensus was very clear - and the solution equally so: bring more and better sources. Maybe it would be good if the sockpuppet notices contained instructions on how to take new and better sources to the article's talk page, because banging on about how Wikipedia is suppressing The Truth™ is uniformly ineffective in my experience.
As an aside, Margaret McCartney also has very unconventional views on statins, and screening, and several other things, but she is covered widely in reliable sources so we have an article. Guy (help! - typo?) 16:22, 30 September 2020 (UTC)

BLP and Wikidata

Hi Jimmy, I hope the plague is staying clear of you and yours.

I'm starting to get questions offline about Wikidata and the possible WP:BLP impact of the data we store there. It seems to be the wild west right now. As I understand it, the intent of WP:BLP is that its foundational principles are mandatory across all projects. Is that correct? I ask because, e.g. Q93579649 links to Bill Gates, so data mining for Bill Gates in Wikidata introduces exactly the kind of asymmetric link we avoid - the mention of Gates-related conspiracist bullshit by Plandemic is significant to Plandemic, but not to Bill Gates. Right now there doesn't seem to be any bar to addition of living people to Wikidata items I am sure you have given this some thought in the past, what's your view please? Guy (help! - typo?) 16:11, 30 September 2020 (UTC)

I share a broad concern about possible BLP problems and WikiData, but I'll just note that I'm not sure that this example is compelling. Our article Plandemic mentions Bill Gates and the Gates Foundation, as you note. But so does Special:WhatLinksHere/Bill_Gates mention Plandemic which is more or less the same thing as the symmetric link that you are concerned about. But when I go to wikidata:Q5284 which is the entry over there on Bill Gates, it doesn't seem to reference Plandemic. But perhaps I'm overlooking something, because I would have thought that it would. I'd be very happy to explore this example further.
My broader concerns have to do with issues of data quality. And by the way, I'm not saying that data quality is bad there. I'm just saying that I worry about whether the processes of adding and editing and vetting data are scalable in the same way that the encyclopedia has proven to be. I don't know of any major problems, it's just something that I think about and am interested in.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 11:53, 1 October 2020 (UTC)
Addendum: I'll give an example. wikidata:Q181 is about me and lists a youtube channel without any reference. How did that get there? What if I didn't control the channel and someone put offensive content there, and someone else used the wikidata connection as evidence that it's really my channel? (In this case it is under my control, and it has no content and probably never will.) Right now, fake information placed there is pretty harmless but it is the ambition of wikidata (and rightly so) to power all kinds of interesting knowledge projects and so just as a random weird small error in Wikipedia can have important consequences in terms of making people unhappy, the same will be true of wikidata.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 11:57, 1 October 2020 (UTC)
Why aren't you a vlogger? 96.90.213.161 (talk) 22:24, 1 October 2020 (UTC)
Jimbo Wales, I guess tighter integration into Wikipedia might fix that (e.g. via the infobox), so that errors are more obvious, but then we'd have infobox wars and endless genre wars because something of the class long-thing-on-youtube must be a movie, and being a movie it must be of class documentary because it pretends to be factual. Guy (help! - typo?) 22:51, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

Question about WP's exposure

Jimmy, does WMF and/or involved editors have any liability exposure for including material in a BLP that is cited to a news source the BLP has sued for defamation (and we unknowingly used related material cited to that news source), and the BLP ends up winning the defamation suit? Example: - material cited to Yahoo News about Carter Page. Atsme Talk 📧 12:35, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

I frequently work as an expert consultant in that kind of legal case. Theoretical legal exposure is very different from practical legal exposure. If you want to know whether a legal claim is theoretically possible, consult a lawyer. What you really need to know is the probability of a claim being filed. If somebody here cites published material and isn't conspiring to harm the biography subject, the chance of being sued is virtually nil, based on everything I've seen. If there were to be a legal claim, it would most likely be made against the original source of publication, not those who republished the content in good faith. Finally, if you have homeowners or renters insurance it probably covers you for liability related to volunteer activities, such as editing Wikipedia. Ask your insurance agent to be sure. Jehochman Talk 13:33, 2 October 2020 (UTC)
Thanks, Jehochman - I do keep a liability policy despite being a retired media professional because my work is still in circulation. I'm not too concerned about my activity on WP being that I'm aware of potential consequences and adhere strictly to BLP policy and US Laws. I was more concerned about those editors who are not familiar with the potential RW consequences of adding defamatory material in a BLP - worse yet, when it's removed as a BLP vio, they revert. It certainly doesn't hurt to know there are potential repurcussions that may arise over the repeating of defamation without privilege and without permission, especially when there is legal precedent. Hopefully this little discussion will prove helpful to some - simply for the sake of caution with no great cause for concern. Atsme Talk 📧 14:53, 2 October 2020 (UTC)
Jehochman is correct. Barrett v. Rosenthal also covers republication of libelous allegations made on the internet, even if the republisher knows the allegations are false. Only the original publisher can be sued. That was a radical and new ruling, as the republishers in that case knew the allegations were false, yet they got protection. -- Valjean (talk) 15:16, 2 October 2020 (UTC)
My personal experiences (and having to keep an entertainment atty on retainer throughout my career - cha-ching!) coupled with the experiences of other editors and the WMF's serve as a stark reminder that stuff happens. I thought this was a decent article about this topic. Regardless, it's always better to err on the side of caution. Atsme Talk 📧 16:35, 2 October 2020 (UTC)
Atsme, can you provide a source confirming that Page won a defamation suit? The source you cited merely indicates that he filed a suit, which anyone can do, and which has no inherent bearing on the accuracy of the source or our content. A brief search suggests that Page has filed a number of meritless and unsuccessful defamation lawsuits. It also seems that Page's specific suit against Yahoo! and HuffPost, which you reference above, was unsuccessful ("Another suit accusing Yahoo, HuffPost and Radio Free Europe of libel for their reports related to Page was dismissed by a federal judge in New York"). Can you clarify which defamation suit Page won, or were you simply proposing a hypothetical? MastCell Talk 17:32, 2 October 2020 (UTC)
Where did I say he won it? Adding...It was hypothetical, and the case I was referencing is this one in Superior Court of Delaware. Atsme Talk 📧 17:35, 2 October 2020 (UTC) Addition 17:47, 2 October 2020 (UTC)
Your initial post strongly implied that Page had won a defamation suit. (Otherwise there would be no risk, theoretical or otherwise, to Wikipedia, and the question wouldn't make much sense). Thank you for clarifying that your example was hypothetical and counterfactual.

We obviously can't suppress well-sourced coverage simply because a suit has been filed, since a) the mere existence of a suit has no bearing on the source's accuracy; b) these suits are largely unsuccessful; and c) frivolous defamation suits may even be used as a tool to manipulate and suppress unflattering realities. I'm more concerned that invoking litigation, as you've done above, has a chilling effect on our editors' appropriate coverage of topics. MastCell Talk 18:10, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

Thank you for your feedback, MastCell. I will keep it in mind. BTW, I was under the impression the Delaware case was still open, which is why I presented my question hypothetically and used that particular case as an example because if things appeared to be going south, we still had time to make corrections, if any were needed. Regardless, you answered my question and appear rather confident that Jimmy & WMF agree with you - that works for me. Atsme Talk 📧 22:45, 2 October 2020 (UTC)
The smart thing to do is to avoid biased sources for controversial information about BLPs in general. If it is important more neutral sources will cover it, if they aren't then it is a BLP violation. PackMecEng (talk) 19:19, 2 October 2020 (UTC)
PackMecEng, always excellent advice. Stick int he Ad Fontes "green box of joy" as a basis. Guy (help! - typo?) 22:09, 2 October 2020 (UTC)
I would even do one better. For controversial statements about BLP I also skip the green boxes that need to be attributed, are noted as biased, or are outside their core reporting. PackMecEng (talk) 22:41, 2 October 2020 (UTC)
PackMecEng, again, sound advice. Better sources, more neutral sources, and more sources. Guy (help! - typo?) 22:43, 2 October 2020 (UTC)
Atsme, Norwich Pharmacal Orders are not enforceable in the US. Libel tourism is also not permitted. Fun fact: I applied for and obtained a Norwich Pharmacal Order against a harasser, as a litigant-in-person. The German case is also not relevant, as German law does not rule in the USA, you have to have a tangible connection to Germany (cf. Britt Marie Hermes). Guy (help! - typo?) 22:09, 2 October 2020 (UTC)
Atsme, no. The test for Oath is New York Times v. Sullivan, it would be necessary to show "actual malice", which means a wilful disregard for the truth rather than personal animus. The same test would apply to any Wikipedia editor, and any lawsuit would need to demonstrate that the editor(s) knew that the stories were false or acted in wilful disregard of their truth. This lawsuit by Page is performative - he will not win. Almost certainly he's hoping for an out of court settlement, which is common in order to avoid legal expenses. Page already filed suit in New York in 2017 on the same claims against the same defendants; the case was tossed. This time he's suing in Delaware presumably because Delaware's anti-SLAPP provisions are very narrow. It's not an obviously batshit claim (unlike Nunes, he's using a real law firm with actual lawyers, not some rube with an Earthlink address) but unless Delaware public law overrides Sullivan, he's still unlikely to prevail. As I say, I think this is designed to gain a settlement and PR victory, to save legal costs, or posibly to try a fishing expedition through discovery. WMF is protected under the CDA. Guy (help! - typo?) 21:46, 2 October 2020 (UTC)
checkY Atsme Talk 📧 22:47, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

Thoughts on renaming the WMF

Serious question: What are your thoughts on the Wikimedia Foundation's plans to rename themselves to something that includes "Wikipedia"? Goose(Talk!) 00:48, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

I don't think it is right to say that the WMF has a plan to rename themselves to something that includes "Wikipedia". That idea has been put forward but no decision has been made to do it, and indeed the entire rebranding project has been put on hold until March 2021. This RfC showed significant community opposition to the proposal.
If you are asking for my personal opinion on what should be done, I don't think that is particularly important.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 13:17, 6 October 2020 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

The Special Barnstar
here you go Ljcool2006 (talk) 03:57, 8 October 2020 (UTC)

WP:VER

Just a concern i wanted to share here since this page is watched by numerous editors. Many articles contain sources that are not available for verification because there is no link to access them. What about making the inclusion of (blue)links mandatory when a source is cited ? Stay safe everybody.---Wikaviani (talk) (contribs) 20:37, 28 September 2020 (UTC)

There is no requirement that a reliable source used as a reference be available online. When high quality sources about a topic are ample, then online sources are preferred. But paper sources that have never been digitized are fine for more obscure topics. I sometimes write articles about mountaineering and biographies of climbers, and sometimes cite old climbing books I own, and some do not even have ISBN numbers. But they are still reliable sources, if issued by a reputable publisher. Cullen328 Let's discuss it 20:46, 28 September 2020 (UTC)
Firstly, thanks for your answer. I got you and i understand better now, i did not realize that some reliable sources can still be unpublished. Cheers.---Wikaviani (talk) (contribs) 20:52, 28 September 2020 (UTC)
No, Wikaviani, that is not what I said. Reliable sources must be published, whether on paper, online or both. Cullen328 Let's discuss it 20:58, 28 September 2020 (UTC)
Sorry, when i said "unpublished", i meant unpublished online. My bad.---Wikaviani (talk) (contribs) 21:01, 28 September 2020 (UTC)
There is nothing wrong with using page 239 of a book as a cite. However, when it is a very obscure book that an average person would have difficulty obtaining, it is a bit of a problem. I've come across some articles that had extensive citations like this, and wasn't really happy about it, because there was no way of knowing whether WP:HIJACK or WP:OR were occurring.--♦IanMacM♦ (talk to me) 07:05, 29 September 2020 (UTC)
I understand the point you are making, but there is a way of verifying the detail which is to acquire a copy of the book, or look for other reliable sources that cite the original source. It may be difficult, but it isn't impossible. Scientific publishing has been going on for decades long before the advent of the Internet and people managed then. QuiteUnusual (talk) 15:54, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

This situation is very much worse now that almost all university research libraries have closed to the public due to the pandemic. Obscure offline sources have become orders of magnitude more difficult to verify. 2601:647:5E00:C5A0:78A7:1605:3AA4:164F (talk) 05:27, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

The WP:V policy includes adding pertinent quotations to offline and/or book ref's for controversial articles. I would suggest the quotation policy be applied more liberally, so as to aid editors reviewing text for accuracy. Pasdecomplot (talk) 12:21, 9 October 2020 (UTC)

Tamil

Hi, Jimbo. Can you correct the months in the Tamil version please?--89.80.238.24 (talk) 16:11, 4 October 2020 (UTC)

Comment: I don’t think he has time to edit that article. It’s best you do it yourself. He is probably too busy being the founder of WT Social to do it. Zoe1013 (talk) 11:18, 6 October 2020 (UTC)
Because it is not January but tai in Tamil--89.80.238.24 (talk) 15:10, 7 October 2020 (UTC)
I am talking of the months you can see in the history section of Wikipedia--89.80.238.24 (talk) 08:40, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
The dates are given in your user interface language. Look at https://ta.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=%E0%AE%9A%E0%AE%A9%E0%AE%B5%E0%AE%B0%E0%AE%BF&action=history&uselang=ta to see everything in Tamil. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:14, 14 October 2020 (UTC)
That’s good but how do I change the months in the historic in the Tamil version of Wikipedia? I just cannot.--Etremai (talk) 18:34, 15 October 2020 (UTC)

Wikipedia club

Hi Jimbo, I was thinking of making a wikipedia club at my high school where me and other aspiring wikipedians collaborate and help each other out. Would you allow me to make the club and do you have any suggestions? Best regards, Dan the Animator 22:52, 7 October 2020 (UTC)

Hi that sounds great! It isn't up to me personally to grant permission for anything, though. I recommend this route for you: [1].--Jimbo Wales (talk) 04:16, 8 October 2020 (UTC)
This discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
Comment: Wikipedia club in high school? I rather spend two years in high school than spend four years in high school. Wikipedia is beyond cooler than high school. I wouldn’t want to mix Wikipedia with high school. Wikipedia is knowledge for everyone. School doesn’t do that. They treat kids like they are in a factory. Everyone has to learn in a specific way. If you learn too much, they aren’t happy. Zoe1013 (talk) 18:27, 15 October 2020 (UTC)
Zoe1013—you say "Everyone has to learn in a specific way." But how does a young person know what that "specific way" is? Wikipedia is unlike a high school. Wikipedia does not recommend a course of study, as a high school might. And you say "If you learn too much, they aren’t happy." I'm not sure what you mean. Are high school teachers unhappy if their students "learn too much"? Bus stop (talk) 19:42, 15 October 2020 (UTC)
Comment: If you were in a separate classroom, you wouldn’t have opportunities to learn more. Knowledge isn’t available for everyone. Wikipedia is knowledge for everyone. They don’t discriminate if you have a disability. At school the student is stuck in that separate classroom with no means of ever getting out of the class. If you think being in a separate classroom year after year would provide more opportunities to learn more, I would think again. The fact that it is a separate classroom means separate is never truly equal. Teachers are not going to hold students with disabilities the same standards as other students. If you are a gifted student and would like to skip grades, teachers don’t really like that. They rather you be with your age cohort and take the time to develop into a human being instead of skipping all the grades and graduating high school at 11 years old. Zoe1013 (talk) 08:06, 16 October 2020 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

The Teamwork Barnstar
Thek22900 (talk) 13:44, 16 October 2020 (UTC)

Wikimedian of the Year, Honorable Mentions

Good 2020 pick choice for the "top spot". In addition, and you may have this in mind already, but if not, please consider awarding one or two 2020 honorable mentions to the Wikimedian of the Year list. The opportunity to fill that slot every year seems like a valuable way to honor additional deserving individuals. For instance, and this may be the way to go, may I call your attention to the Covid-19 project work of Moxy and Another Believer. Yet whomever you pick, please choose one of two a year and not leave such an important slot empty. Thanks. Randy Kryn (talk) 09:45, 16 October 2020 (UTC)

I hear you. The way the process works these days is that the WMF gather nominations and information from the community and make a recommendation to me of a few candidates and I select one. I have also done honorable mentions in the past. I take your point and I agree with you. I don't think we should do it this year - it's already happened and part of the fun is the announcement. But I think that next year, I should do two runner ups and we should formalize it. Alternatively, I think there's very likely room for categories. In the early days, this was "Wikipedian of the Year" and then it was expanded to a broader scope "Wikimedian of the Year". I like the idea of recognizing people in different categories: editors, community organizers, GLAM work, etc.
I would also welcome some kind of constructive process that's even further improving on what we do now. In the early days, I just looked around for great people, but that became harder and harder to do as the community has grown, and also didn't include a really rigorous vetting process. I'd like to see more community involvement in the whole thing, although I'm not sure how to do that. (Not a movement-wide popularity contest, please!)
In terms of my role in this, as ever what I like is to retain a small amount of "ceremonial" decision making. It makes it more personal for me (and for the recipient, I hope).--Jimbo Wales (talk) 17:04, 16 October 2020 (UTC)
@Randy Kryn: Oh, wow, I'm flattered you mentioned me above. Much appreciated! --Another Believer (Talk) 17:44, 16 October 2020 (UTC)
Thanks Jimbo Wales, it sounds like you've got everything well in hand. Many good ideas contained in your reply, and nice to read about the background and inner-workings of the award. Expanding it into more categories makes much sense. But probably not going as far as giving out as many awards as the Grammy's, which would then have to include, for example, things like Best Five-Word Shakespearean-level Romantic Tragedy, Composed Of and By a One-Edit Wikipedia Vandal, per user name, page topic, text, and chosen media (although a good screen shot which ends right after the side-template, in Monobook format where the globe and slogan remain well intact, should probably be sculpted in marble someplace).
Another Believer, what you and the rest of the team at the Covid-19 articles and project have accomplished in informing the English speaking world in real time about the worst viral epidemic since 1918 (in the process creating the go-to template for how to function as Wikipedians during an ongoing worldwide level crisis) will bring its own awards and honors to Wikipedia when this thing runs its course. The eventual take of history on the events of 2020 will likely include Wikipedia's journalistically encyclopedic coverage. Well done. Randy Kryn (talk) 02:45, 17 October 2020 (UTC)

inappropriate donation emails

It is known that WMF has large stockpiles of cash. Despite this, extremely aggressive donation messages are pushed out by the WMF that often cause confusion regarding Wikipedia's financial situation. Every year, around the donation season, rumours spread that Wikipedia is financially troubled and may shut down soon. WMF does nothing to correct, and perhaps even encourages these rumours through it's aggressive and, in my opinion, unethical donation drive strategies. Recently, a email sent out by WMF had the subject line "we've had enough". Many other WMF emails have similar quasi-threating tone too. Seriously? Don't you think this is going a bit too far? Is Wikipedia really that troubled that it needs to resort to these tactics? I was going to post it at Wikipedia:Village pump/WMF, but I wanted to know your views on this issue, so I'm posting here. Regards, TryKid [dubious – discuss] 16:59, 23 October 2020 (UTC)

Can you provide some examples of articles about these "rumors"? I'm genuinely curious because I've never read anywhere the proposition that Wikipedia was closing down and I wonder who'd be issuing this false report. Liz Read! Talk! 23:57, 23 October 2020 (UTC)
Guy Macon's WP:CANCER? 107.242.121.34 (talk) 09:31, 24 October 2020 (UTC)
You know you can unsubscribe from e-mails from the WMF, right? --JBL (talk) 01:18, 24 October 2020 (UTC)
I looked at WP:CANCER, then a link from there to the WMF 2019 financial statements[2], scrolled down to p.3 and it looks like there is a lot of money on hand. For example, the first item "Cash and cash equivalents" alone is $101,932,698. Maybe someone from WMF could clarify what's going on. Bob K31416 (talk) 18:00, 24 October 2020 (UTC)

new items for contemporary history

hi! I invented a new type of article, and a new type of navbox, to help with documenting contemporary history. open to any feedback. thanks!

here they are:

--Sm8900 (talk) 14:24, 22 October 2020 (UTC)

Those look cool! jp×g 03:35, 24 October 2020 (UTC)
@Sm8900: Yeah, I have to hand it to you, that really is a nice conceptual structure and layout. It's compact, while differentiating into a wide variety of topics and fields quickly. Many navboxes end up with huge amounts of negative space as a consequence of lopsided hierarchies but yours is information-dense. --‿Ꞅtruthious 𝔹andersnatch ͡ |℡| 15:19, 24 October 2020 (UTC)
@JPxG:, appreciate that. thanks!! --Sm8900 (talk) 15:05, 25 October 2020 (UTC)
@Struthious Bandersnatch: thanks so much. I appreciate your positive feedback on that. you are welcome to send me any comments you may have. thanks!! --Sm8900 (talk) 15:05, 25 October 2020 (UTC)

Your thoughts on this please

Wikipedia is supposed to be (and usually is) a welcoming place, a broad church. Is it actually OK to carve out an exception for racists? In the current political climate there is a widespread misconception that because most racists are right-wing, so suppression of racism is anti-right (or pro-left) bias. What's your view on this, as we find ourselves right now? Guy (help! - typo?) 11:59, 6 October 2020 (UTC)

  • Comment: Racists also hate black children skipping a grade because they are scared of black kids getting an advantage in life. They love inequality so they make sure black kids are labeled as “learning disabled” and segregated in separate classrooms for the rest of their school career. Why do you think African American children are more likely to be educated in a more restrictive environments? It’s not just a coincidence. It’s a social construct to make sure black people are always on the bottom. Everything was all set up. We definitely should make an exception for racists. Their views should be public knowledge so we can keep track of their racists opinions. Zoe1013 (talk) 13:15, 6 October 2020 (UTC)
  • User:Zoe1013—you are misusing the term "social construct". Webster's defines a "social construct" as "an idea that has been created and accepted by the people in a society".[3] You aren't referring to an "idea". You are referring to a situation. Your reference is to an arrangement, not an idea. Bus stop (talk) 18:59, 23 October 2020 (UTC)
I personally think a great many people should be shown the door. I find that essay very well balanced in terms of warning against unfounded claims of racism or using it as a stick to beat people up, while at the same time pointing out that certain behaviors are - and should be - very much unwelcome here.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 13:33, 6 October 2020 (UTC)
Jimbo Wales, thank you. I had a feeling you might agree with it, I just needed to be sure. Of course I do too :-) Guy (help! - typo?) 14:34, 6 October 2020 (UTC)
I literally have no idea what you're rambling on about, but I'm sure you'll be welcome on twitter, where such "discussion" is widely accepted. We are here to build an encyclopedia, not to engage in mindless battlegrounding. UPDATE: Having reviewed your edit history, I can only thank you for stepping in to give a real-world example of the sort of thing that I'm talking about. You've been wasting good people's time for years and my view is that your indefinite ban should have been made permanent - years ago.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 15:55, 6 October 2020 (UTC)
That is rather harsh and unbecoming. PackMecEng (talk) 16:06, 6 October 2020 (UTC)
I don't think so. Review the edit history.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 16:12, 6 October 2020 (UTC)
Please be more specific, I took a quick look and do not see anything requiring that kind of behavior. I am not terribly impressed by an unsupported "well they deserve it" kind of defense. PackMecEng (talk) 16:15, 6 October 2020 (UTC)
Well here we go again, PackMecEng? Now you want Jimbo to waste his time on this editor as well? We all have better things that we can be doing if we want to improve our encyclopedia. Gandydancer (talk) 16:27, 6 October 2020 (UTC)
And yet, here you are. I don't know Grandydancer, I just hate seeing unsupported attacks on editors in good standing. You should too. PackMecEng (talk) 16:33, 6 October 2020 (UTC)
Indeed, unsupported attacks on editors in good standing is not a good thing. However, pointing out that a longterm troublemaker continues to make trouble long term certainly is important. [4] is a fine example, and there are many more, of this user wasting people's time and not being here to build an encyclopedia.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 18:12, 6 October 2020 (UTC)
They're displaying (with prominence) an anti-semitic cartoon on their user page under the heading "A few favorite photos & graphs" so take that for what you will, and most people will probably take it to mean exactly what they are dogwhistling.--Jorm (talk) 18:22, 6 October 2020 (UTC)
Jorm—I'm looking under "A few favorite photos & graphs" but I am not finding any "anti-semitic cartoon". What are you referring to? Bus stop (talk) 21:43, 6 October 2020 (UTC)
Bus stop, I find it interesting that an editor who knows how to find Jimbo's talk page doesn't know how to view a page history before coming with a snipe. Jorm (talk) 21:47, 6 October 2020 (UTC)
I can assure you that no "snipe" was intended and I haven't the foggiest idea what you're talking about. Bus stop (talk) 21:56, 6 October 2020 (UTC)
I'm less worried about outright Nazis, and more concerned—and disappointed—by the enablers who can be counted on to reflexively defend long-term disruptive bigots as "editors in good standing", and who instead focus their effort on tone-policing people who try to deal with them. There's a good illustration of that phenomenon in this thread. MastCell Talk 19:48, 6 October 2020 (UTC)
So you would take Nazis over people that disagree with the way you conduct yourself? Odd choice but there you go. PackMecEng (talk) 19:53, 6 October 2020 (UTC)
Um, no. But that's essentially the choice you've made. In this case, you reflexively sided with an editor with a long history of disruption and thinly-veiled bigotry—whom you described as "an editor in good standing"—over the people who disagreed with her conduct. MastCell Talk 20:07, 6 October 2020 (UTC)
Ha if you say so. Always a laugh with you. I get the feeling my original assessment was closer to the mark. PackMecEng (talk) 20:10, 6 October 2020 (UTC)
Jimbo Wales, yikes, a few clicks gets you to her website, which is full-on antisemitic. Guy (help! - typo?) 19:51, 6 October 2020 (UTC)
Thank you, Cullen328--I didn't know she was still around. I appreciate you doing what should have been done a while ago. Drmies (talk) 20:02, 6 October 2020 (UTC)

This is sad. Bob K31416 (talk) 03:42, 7 October 2020 (UTC)

Apropos this discussion, if I could loosely paraphrase Alan Dershowitz, the key to defending free speech is defending the free speech of those with whom you disagree—defending free speech universally, across the board. Bus stop (talk) 07:18, 9 October 2020 (UTC)
Except you know, that the Wikipedia is not the Government and thus not concerned with your bogus pleas to free speech. Valeince (talk) 19:49, 9 October 2020 (UTC)
Correct Wikipedia is not the Government, it is a platform to build an encyclopedia. To do that effectively an open and honest debate must be possible. PackMecEng (talk) 19:59, 9 October 2020 (UTC)
If you find you time is spent well having an "open and honest debate" with racists and bigots, then fine with me. But it does not help with building this Wikipedia. Maybe on Conservopedia or something will be better served by that conversation. But here, there is no opinion worth considering from someone the subscribes to such hateful thinking.Valeince (talk) 23:37, 9 October 2020 (UTC)
I think you should read over and consider Masem's point just below. He puts it better than I probably could. PackMecEng (talk) 23:55, 9 October 2020 (UTC)
I have read it and disregarded as much as the last time Masen tried the "slippery slope" argument when it came to deleting userboxes that spouted bigoted ideals about same sex marriage. I don't need to listen to someone who likes to waste other's time defending white supremacists at length of every debate about it. Their opinions are widely known and are thankfully not in consensus with most other wikipedians. Valeince (talk) 00:01, 10 October 2020 (UTC)
Ha. PackMecEng (talk) 00:02, 10 October 2020 (UTC)
Bus stop, Wikipedia is not an experiment in free speech. People have a right to hold opinions, but there is no right to express any specific opinion here, and policy has long favoured the exclusion of those who come here specifically to promote repugnant views. Guy (help! - typo?) 15:28, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
This has potential to be misused, though obviously it hasn't to the best of my knowledge. Clearly, someone comes on and openly admits association with the KKK, we're probably going to remove that person quickly, even if that person appears to be editing in good faith. But what organizations or ideologies/political beliefs can be considers racist or discriminatory is very much a sliding scale and particularly in the current climate, that scale can slip more and more. For example, Qanon, which while not directly involved with racist is oft-connected to that. Would we immediately block someone that asserts they are a Qanon member but otherwise acting in good faith? One could read this to say yes. And then if Qanon is such a case, how about a 4chan/Anonymous member? I could go on, and its a slippery slope argument but the point I hope is there. There should be a line here: we're talking about expressing one's involvement with organizations or ideologies directly founded on racist behaviors, not those that may be somewhat associated with them. I said it in regards to the userbox thing but it is better that editors are reminded that we really don't care about your political or ideological beliefs and that we judge you more on your editing behavior and this should be the ideal, but this type of essay/approach can make it potentially an issue if you express those. --Masem (t) 20:30, 9 October 2020 (UTC)

I'm all for banning nazis, but focusing on the contributors instead of the content is likely to cause people to lie about whether they are nazis while they try to edit in as much of their POV as they can. We need a review system to address all the different kinds of bias. We can train new statistical models to locate diffs which may introduce such bias (call them "OBES"), and use systems like DoubleCheck to review them the same way we review vandalism. 107.77.165.47 (talk) 21:48, 9 October 2020 (UTC)

How could OBES ("objective bias" is an oxymoron, by the way, if that is what it is supposed to mean) scores do any better than meta:Research:Detox sentiment or any other kind of sentiment analysis? Do you propose asking Google to train bias sentiment models with GPT-3 amounts of parallel cycles? 107.77.165.30 (talk) 19:10, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
If the Foundation or a FANNG partner doesn't, will the encyclopedia resist the nazi and other biased onslaughts? 107.209.157.145 (talk) 23:40, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
I'm not sure. Google has already shown a firm commitment in very closely related areas. Microsoft, where one of the original ORES architects now works (and experienced with the Tay problem) and IBM, for example, might be better choices than Netflix, lacking NLP expertise, or Facebook, who are struggling with their own bias issues. 107.77.165.14 (talk) 03:45, 12 October 2020 (UTC)

I suggest reading the policy WP:NPA, not just the title but the whole page. I think it's well written and has worthwhile advice. Bob K31416 (talk) 22:41, 9 October 2020 (UTC)

I have significant concerns about this "No Nazis" essay, most importantly who is going to be the arbiter of who is racist. If someone puts a swastika on their userpage, they should of course be banned immediately, but I suspect this essay will be applied more often to editors accused of bias, and then you really have to be careful. Wikipedia's five pillars and its conduct and content policies can already be applied to racists, but they are more in line with the Wikipedia spirit of having a minimal number of principles and guidelines. To me, this "No Nazis" essays reads too much like a manifesto and it could lead to some kind of reverse racism or some kind of reverse inquisition. I don't like the idea of collaborating with racist editors either, but with an anonymous online project you have to be more practical and less idealistic than you would with a real-world company. Efcharisto (talk) 19:38, 10 October 2020 (UTC)

What do you mean when you say "reverse racism"? MastCell Talk 22:39, 10 October 2020 (UTC)
Sorry, that is maybe not the best term. But I mean if you get too excited about applying the label racist, if you go after people who have said something that is somehow related to race and you just don't like it, it can become like a witch-hunt, and can become like the reverse of what racists have done to other groups of people in the past. Efcharisto (talk) 23:26, 10 October 2020 (UTC)
So you are afraid that you may be treated like minorities are treated?--Jorm (talk) 23:33, 10 October 2020 (UTC)
Um, no. I am afraid that people who have done nothing wrong will be classified as racist and treated as if they have done something wrong. In analogy to people who have done nothing wrong being classified as minorities and treated as if they have done something wrong. Yes, I know it is not a perfect analogy. Efcharisto (talk) 23:59, 10 October 2020 (UTC)
" I am afraid that people who have done nothing wrong....[will be] treated as if they have done something wrong" really sounds like you're afraid of being treated like a minority. I find this position curious. Jorm (talk) 00:03, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
Is being a minority bad? PackMecEng (talk) 02:08, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
Surely you jest. In many places of the world, being part of a minority demographic can lead to one's marginalization from society, either due to laws or due to hate from other people. Sometimes, being a minority means fearing for your safety when you are just minding your own business. So, in that sense, yes, being a minority is bad.
Concerning Efcharisto, you should probably drop the dog whistle. It's quite loud and annoying. Isabelle 🔔 02:49, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
You misunderstand my comment. What Jorm said make it sound like a negative to be a minority. PackMecEng (talk) 02:52, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
I see Jorm's comment as calling out Efcharisto's usage of the "reverse racism" card, ie. being marginalized by the community for being who they are. But I'll drop this part of the discussion for now and just let Jorm explain what they meant, if they desire to do so. Isabelle 🔔 03:05, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
Pretty much what Isabelle Belato said. Whenever I see "reverse racism," I hear "I am afraid that a minority will treat me like minorities are treated." Jorm (talk) 03:10, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
I don't know man, seems like a stretch. PackMecEng (talk) 03:17, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
Isabelle Belato—Hi, nice to meet you. "Reverse racism", used by Efcharisto, might not have been the best term. I think a better term would be "misapplied racism". I would not presume to know why the terms "racism" and "racist" are tossed about so casually in 2020. But I think their definitions were much more clear at the time of the Civil rights movement and earlier. Therefore I would posit that the modern use of these terms may be slightly problematic. Bus stop (talk) 03:11, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
I endorse Efcharisto's comment that "it can become like a witch-hunt". Whereas in the past the term "racist" had a sharp definition, in the present it is casually used and in my opinion often misapplied. Bus stop (talk) 02:52, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
Yeah so just for the record and for context here, and since this appeal to JW may have bearing on my own conduct despite this not being a noticeboard or anything like that (where I'd have been proactively notified...)—after a two-week-long, 90k-in-volume discussion about wording and details related to race on a particular article I observed, one time only, that User:Bus stop's edits and rhetorical behavior in that particular conversation formed a pattern of overt racism, in a very qualified comment explaining my basis for saying so.
After which, as if to prove my point, they went and voiced their disagreement with the "No Nazis" essay and then went through and in a series of edits changed every single race-related detail in the lede of the article in contravention of the talk page discussion and of the status quo ante of the lede (as they'd already done repeatedly with individual details in the course of the discussion).
So maybe there are places around here where this editor sees accusations of racism fired off promiscuously, but this is at least one bit of context for the former comment about such accusations being tossed about so casually in 2020 and the latter one endorsing fear of "witch-hunts" if there's too much opposition to racism: that their behavior was called racist once in a two-week-long 90k talk page discussion. (In which, by the way, they incessantly attempted to claim that Wikipedia merely identifying someone as white would be to accuse them of racism, but when presented repeatedly with a Fox News quote identifying subjects of the article as white would simply ignore it and refuse to comment on whether this meant that Fox News was declaring these persons to be racist—they weren't.)
Sorry this has spilled over here, JW, and I hope I'm not abusing the open-door policy to provide this contextual note. --▸₷truthious Ⓑandersnatch◂ 17:09, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
Struthious Bandersnatch—when you say "extreme disparity of concern is itself overt and conscious racism" aren't you suggesting I'm a racist? Do I display "overt and conscious racism"? You are providing an example of how ridiculous language usage is in 2020. Had you made a similar statement at the time of the Civil rights movement such a statement would have real significance. But now its "meaning" is virtually nonexistent. The reason is obvious—I am not by any stretch of the imagination a "racist". This is emblematic of the current misuse of the term. Bus stop (talk) 17:32, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
​Yes. I unequivocally said that your behavior and speech in the course of trying to exert control over the mention of race in that article were overtly and consciously racist, for a host of reasons I will not reproduce here; people can follow your diff link and read the lengthy discussion and look at your edits in the article revision history.
As to whether that means as a person you are viscerally or irredeemably racist in essence, I refer you to Jay Smooth's classic essay on the subject on YouTube which is mentioned in the article about him. (The answer being no, it doesn't make you essentially or irredeemably racist, but that does not make it okay to do or say racist things either. Important tip: derailing a discussion of whether racism is bad into being all about yourself is also racist.)
Though I anticipate you will likely say that video is evidence that the blood of Númenor has thinned and the discourse about racism is at a nadir in the twenty-first century. In some measure I would agree with you in respect to the US, given that federal judicial nominees are not even expected to agree with Brown v. Board of Education; but for the most part I would say that discussion of race and racism in society at large is dramatically more descriptive and insightful than during the Civil Rights Era, which was only just beginning to deal with the crudest and most malicious manifestations of racism in society like the Alabama Democratic Party removing the phrase "White Supremacy" from its logo and a local government murdering civil rights activists and the respective state government refusing to prosecute the murders, and many crude and malicious manifestations of racism weren't even dealt with at all: real estate covenants attached to deeds which forbid Jews or non-whites from owning a home or living in a building are common across the country despite being ruled unenforceable in a 1948 SCOTUS decision, (meaning btw that many racial steering practices around real estate gained steam in the late twentieth century, after simply contractually excluding the wrong sorts of American citizens from real estate was no longer possible) but their prevalence still isn't even particularly well documented in 2020. It's not just unarmed black people being shot to death by police at a greatly disparate rate nor a president whose "racial views" article currently tops out at 250k, there's a whole lotta racism hidden in plain sight.
It is vital that societies and institutions all over the world combat the worldwide resurgence of racism and ultranationalism. Jewish emancipation on many axes in parts of Germany came a few short decades before the rise of Nazism, so the Civil Rights Era and other movements towards equal justice internationally being in our rear-view mirror is by no means any sort of guarantee that we can regard issues of racial and ethnic bigotry resolved. Hence, speaking to the topic of this talk page section, I whole-heartedly agree with editors saying that WP:NONAZIS should be a staunchly-held principle of Wikipedia and more broadly of all Wikimedia Foundation communities.
p.s. I like the name "Wikimedia Foundation" as it is.
p.p.s. It's awfully refreshing to participate in a discussion on the internet that is pre-Godwinned so that you can simply mention Nazis because it's relevant. --▸₷truthious Ⓑandersnatch◂ 19:58, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
Struthious Bandersnatch—please don't even raise questions here as to whether or not I am "viscerally or irredeemably racist in essence". Report me at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents. Please don't follow me around with farfetched and unsubstantiated accusations of racism. Bus stop (talk) 21:09, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
I can certainly see why you would want to declare a blanket rule that whether you are racist cannot be questioned. However, what we're discussing right now on Mr. Wales's talk page—a subject you decided to dive into after I observed that your behavior was racist, not me—is whether racism ought to actually be proscribed by Wikipedia or Wikimedia policy.
To my knowledge the word does not even appear in any Wikipedia or Wikimedia policy or guideline at this point; until it does there does not seem to me a point in opening a report at ANI. Until then, your outrage at having your behavior accurately described and flamboyant adjectives deployed to assure readers that it's impossible for you to behave in a racist fashion are not a reason for me to refrain from doing so in an appropriate context: once, after weeks of repetition established a pattern, in an article talk page; and a few times here, in a policy discussion of racism, though only because you keep making comments that directly bear on your own behavior. --▸₷truthious Ⓑandersnatch◂ 22:02, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
Unsupported personal accusations against an editor would be considered casting WP:ASPERSIONS and covered under WP:NPA. Best to comment on content, not on the contributor. PackMecEng (talk) 22:08, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
Struthious Bandersnatch—you can't say things like "User:Bus stop's edits and rhetorical behavior in that particular conversation formed a pattern of overt racism". I'm not subject to your opinions. I didn't even respond to you when you first implied I was a racist on the Shooting of Breonna Taylor article's Talk page. You are entitled to your opinion. But I don't have to take your opinion seriously. You obviously feel I am a racist or I have said something racist—fine—enjoy your own opinion. I do not accept it. I do not even take it seriously. Maybe you, Struthious Bandersnatch, have a heightened sense of the value of your opinions. But from what I see of your finger pointing at me as an origin of racist positions on the "Shooting of Breonna Taylor" I can only assume you have reached some incorrect conclusions on the nature of race relations in America and on the way police operate. Do I think most police are racist? Far from it. Do I think police show up with the aim of harming black people? The statistics do not seem to support that. Bus stop (talk) 22:16, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
@PackMecEng: Yes, unsupported accusations would violate NPA. But I have put in my due diligence and by now have quite extensively supported what I am saying. If no one comments on racist behavior exhibited by the editors writing Wikipedia the racist behavior will persist and the thoroughly-documented racial bias on Wikipedia will continue to proliferate. This user is hardly the only origin of it.
What Mr. Wales has created is magnificent and epic and a legacy for the ages, but shot through with flaws. They are flaws that pervade all our societies, though, and if we choose to we can mend them.
@Bus stop: Having bypassed actually addressing any of the reasons why I have characterized your behavior as racist (great job answering your own rhetorical questions though) you appear to have progressed to the point where you're claiming that even if an accurate description can be made of your behavior as overtly racist, it cannot be said out loud. This is not so. --▸₷truthious Ⓑandersnatch◂ 22:51, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
Struthious Bandersnatch—you have informed us that "all our societies" are "shot through with flaws". In what way? How are our societies flawed? And thank you for pinging me. Bus stop (talk) 22:57, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
​Dude. We are in the middle of a discussion about Nazism. In case you can't see all the things about American society I just linked to. These are some more rhetorical questions you might have done better to answer yourself—you are not really diverting attention from racist behavior by posing them here and now. --▸₷truthious Ⓑandersnatch◂ 23:14, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
I am "not really diverting attention from racist behavior" because I have exhibited no "racist behavior", Struthious Bandersnatch. Please stop pretending that I have engaged in "racist behavior". And thank you again for pinging me. Bus stop (talk) 23:37, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
​So you were asking rhetorical questions you've now lost all interest in the answers to, but you were totally doing it for reasons other than diverting attention from racist behavior? Right, sorry, my mistake. It's amazing how much one of those things can look like the other. --▸₷truthious Ⓑandersnatch◂ 01:00, 12 October 2020 (UTC)
Thank you for pinging me, Struthious Bandersnatch. You are showing us this essay's potential for abuse. What "racist behavior" are you referring to? You can't seem to understand that I've engaged in no "racist behavior". Bus stop (talk) 01:20, 12 October 2020 (UTC)
  • Comment - I condemn racism, not unlike most have in this discussion, but I certainly don't endorse identity politics and the improper labeling of racism under the pretense that, per JzG, "most racists are right-wing". That is just plain misinformation, and it wrongfully implies that the left has clean hands, which couldn't be further from the truth. Jimbo are you agreeing with JzG that "most racists are right-wing"?
  1. Half of All Racists Are Left Wing, Political Psychology, Vol. 5, No. 2 (Jun., 1984), pp. 227-235 (9 pages), Published By: International Society of Political Psychology
  2. Slate
  3. IPS, Racists can be left-wing too: Like to think of yourself as liberal? Don’t congratulate yourself too quickly – your attitude might actually be hampering Muslims.
Jimbo your response to JzG needs clarity regarding his comment that "most racists are right-wing". It appears to me that he believes you agree with that statement. Again, is that true? Atsme Talk 📧 00:08, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
Atsme, there is no need to be defensive. "Most racists are right-wingers" does not equal "most right-wingers are racists," just as "most racists are Trump supporters" does not equal "most Trump supporters are racists." They just tolerate it in ways that Trump opposers do not. Whether that makes them racists or supporters of racists can be discussed, but it's either one or the other. It would naturally follow that most of those Trump supporters who refuse to support racists tend to stop supporting Trump.
BTW, I'm a liberal and confess to being a racist who is actively seeking to divorce myself from my racist upbringings in America, a basically racist nation, and am becoming more anti-racist all the time. I am suspicious of people who claim they are not racist. I suspect they don't understand how deepseated racism can be. -- Valjean (talk) 20:25, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
Valjean—you refer to "America ... a basically racist nation". The reference is not accurate. America is not a particularly racist nation. The Civil rights movement was exceptionally effective. You say "I am suspicious of people who claim they are not racist. I suspect they don't understand how deepseated racism can be.". You need not be "suspicious". The vast majority of Americans couldn't care less what race anyone is. Ditto for sexual orientation, gender, religion, etc. Bus stop (talk) 20:54, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
Either you are being sarcastic or you've made my point. -- Valjean (talk) 05:07, 12 October 2020 (UTC)
Let me guess, you did a search for "liberal racism" and came up with these three articles? We can discount your first link because it's from 1984, which is hardly the current political climate. With respect to the other two, you're conflating the way Guy and Jimbo use "racism" in the posts above and the way those two articles are framing "racism".
Guy and Jimbo are defining racism as centered on individual acts, whereas the articles and anti-racists define it as our culture and a part of the way everyone in it is socialized. This latter way of thinking posits that everyone is racist because they've been socialized to be that way. Some of those racists will engage in overtly racist acts.
In this current political climate, in America, it's the far-right groups and members of the Republican party who are exhibiting the most racist acts. When Republicans and right-wing people elect a racist-in-chief (one who has historically engaged in racist acts, especially with respect to housing, and whose first instinct is to praise people who engage in racist acts), it's fair to say that they're A-OK with his racism.
Note that the only way Black lives will really matter is through identity politics. It's not a stretch to suggest that if you don't like identity politics, you're A-OK with the current state of white culture. You may denounce racist acts, but you're not denouncing our racist white culture. 2605:8D80:620:7BE9:E3E9:845:B5E3:5F84 (talk) 03:23, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
Did you forget to login? PackMecEng (talk) 03:25, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
2605:8D80:620:7BE9:E3E9:845:B5E3:5F84—you say "Note that the only way Black lives will really matter is through identity politics." Why do you feel that "identity politics" is exceptionally important? Bus stop (talk) 03:39, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
"Yet this advisory body of well-meaning people is plagued by polarizing disagreements about the nature of anti-racism that undermine its ability to effect change." - Anti-racist Arguments Are Tearing People Apart, The Atlantic, highly recommended read. Atsme Talk 📧 10:12, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
I did not forget to log in. The Atlantic article doesn't have anything to do with the fact that the word "racist" was being used in two different ways above. Why do you highly recommend reading the Atlantic article?
Identity politics put the problems and issues related to historical and ongoing oppression of, in this case, Black people at the forefront. It names those problems and seeks to bring attention to them as a prelude to fixing them. I don't see how a problem can be fixed without identifying it first, which is why I say that identity politics are important. 2605:8D80:620:7BE9:3628:F101:4803:208C (talk) 15:19, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
Atsme, feel free to point out any left-wing users who are advancing racist content, I will cheerfully wield the banhammer.
You should also be careful of using terms like "identity politics" - this term is generally used as a way to minimise the validity of actions to protect people against discrimination. The most successful example of identity politics in US history was probably the Civil Rights movement - most people agree that was a good thing, and the ones who don't have a tendency to turn out to be racists.
The problem in current US politics is very simple: any policy that bans racist, Islamophobic or any other form of hateful invective, tends to catch prominent right-wing figures. The fact that most of the rabble-rousing bigots are conservative is a problem of modern day conservatism, not some kind of sinister plot to silence "conservative voices". Can you imagine Reagan supporting Alex Jones, Patriot Prayer or the Proud Boys? Guy (help! - typo?) 15:40, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
The problem with that is the identity politics today is not the same as the civil rights movement, you seem to be conflating them as if they were the same. It would be like that old like "well the KKK was a democrat organization" maybe at one time but things change. No one is arguing the civil rights movement wasn't a good thing, that is a straw man argument. What people are saying is terms like racist, bigot, homophobe, and nazi are thrown around so much as to start losing their meaning. Which is a huge disservice to actual marginalized people. The people over using and misusing those terms are just as bad as the people that those terms fit from what I can tell. Honestly I get tired of old white guys feeling the need to protect people like me, like I cannot take care of my god damn self. PackMecEng (talk) 16:25, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
PackMecEng, it depends who you ask. The people who I encounter using the term tend to be trying to frame someone else's edits as advancing a non-neutral POV, as if there is no difference between, say, racial equality and black supremacy. I don't often see anyone use the term identity politics when discussing the actual issues, it tends to come more from the peanut gallery. Guy (help! - typo?) 16:35, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
Guy, you write: "terms like "identity politics"... is generally used as a way to minimise the validity of actions to protect people against discrimination." Very true. The same can be said about Trump's anti-PC campaign, which has become a defining characteristic of Trump supporters. For them it is now okay to be openly racist again. Ridiculing opposition to racism as "political correctness" is used as a method to undermine all the progress against racism made over the last 70 or so years. It trivializes the importance of not using racist terms, practices, and thinking as mere "political correctness." No, those are seriously important changes that are necessary for a society to move away from racism and toward a more just society. Trump has succeeded in reviving open racism and violence, and he encourages it. His dog whistle politics is dangerous.
Racism is a defining factor of the extreme right-wing/fascists/Nazis. Is it possible to be left-wing and harbor racist views? To a limited degree, that is certainly possible, but not openly or blatantly. Becoming an active anti-racist is a process, one which is a defining aspect of left-wing ideology, not even remotely part of right-wing ideology. -- Valjean (talk) 16:29, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
Valjean, it's certainly possible to be on the political left and be comfortable with racism when it advantages you (e.g. through redlining). But I have never seen a leftist use phrases like "go back where you came from". Doesn't mean it doesn't happen, but I think that this kind of overt racism, rather than Peterson-style fondness for maintenance of historical privilege, is much more associated with the far right, as you say. Guy (help! - typo?) 16:38, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
It isn't really relevant to anything, but I just wanted to chime in here to say that left-wing racism is not only possible, it is an actual thing. Here in the UK, there is a serious problem on the far-left with anti-semitism.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 16:49, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
Adding to that and I touched on it above, was people feeling the need to try and protect me because of my background. Like without their help I could not make it because you know I'm just a woman or just an immigrant or Korean or in a STEM field. BS like that taints my accomplishments. Heck I have run huge engineering departments for giant defense contractors with close to a hundred degreed engineers under me and I would still get the you know she only got there because of such and such. It is infuriating. PackMecEng (talk) 16:59, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
PackMecEng, I can only imagine. One thing that changed in my son between university and passing out at Sandhurst: male engineering students are very prone to exactly that kind of complaint about efforts to support and promote women in STEM, and the lad was disappointingly taken in by it, but having been through Sandhurst he is now much more supportive of efforts to remove prejudice against women. Guy (help! - typo?) 19:31, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
It's gotten a lot better since I was in the thick of it. Stuff like you describe is part of the reason why. PackMecEng (talk) 19:38, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
Any use of a one dimensional "left-right" political spectrum, even if only in analogy from which inferences are drawn, is only marginally better than deducing from a full-blown contradiction, because race and class are at least partially orthogonal. Many people are familiar with the libertarian "political compass," but its authoritarianism axis doesn't really correspond to race, while its economic axis does correspond at least partially to class. That means that there are at least three dimensions of political opinion. The total number of dimensions is probably less, but perhaps not as much less as almost everyone thinks, than the total number of issues upon which people disagree. There is a way out: anchor theory. 107.77.165.30 (talk) 19:10, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
Why not emmantle minority working class and impoverished females on equal footing with white males instead of dismantling the white male hegemony? 107.209.157.145 (talk) 23:40, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
Of gender, race, and class, I believe removing bias is difficult in about that order, but all and more are easily within reach with careful stewardship of future projects. 107.77.165.14 (talk) 03:45, 12 October 2020 (UTC)
Jimbo Wales, you say that, and there may be at some level, but every time I ask any of my Jewish friends to explain what Labour has done that is antisemitic, they just point and say "it's obvious!" I'm not a Labour member (I'm a Lib-Dem, so my arse is permanently printed with the mark of a fence) but as far as I can see a good deal of that controversy was ginned up either by people on the centrist side of Labour, or by malicious external actors who deliberately interpret any support for Palestine as antisemitic. Corbyn, of course, has been a supporter of Palestinian autonomy for decades, he doesn't change his mind about things very often.
Left-wing racism as far as my reading goes is much more likely to be passive than active. The left are more likely to be marching against Nazis than calling for Blacks or Muslims to "go back home", but centrist and centre-left people are perfectly capable of NIMBYing with the best of them, especially when travellers set up next door. Guy (help! - typo?) 19:27, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
Guy—my objection to the essay is solely based on the Left's misuse of language. The Left sees racists everywhere. And by the way, I am not troubled by the hypothetical presence of Nazis editing Wikipedia. We confer with reliable sources as concerns all content. I don't know the identity characteristics of an editor unless they tell me. I would not have the foggiest idea if an editor was black, white, gay, straight, Jewish, Catholic, male, female etc. Should someone be penalized for saying "I am a Nazi"? I don't think so. If they used a Talk page in violation of WP:FORUM they are vulnerable to being sanctioned. Bus stop (talk) 19:49, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
Guy—we've come a long way from the language usage applicable at for instance the time of the Civil rights movement. This essay has the potential to be used like the Salem Witch Trials—point a finger of accusation and get your fellow editor blocked or banned. It is the slippery slope nature of the current broad application of the term "racism" to situations where it would not have been applied in the past that should concern us. Bus stop (talk) 16:36, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
Bus stop, on the other hand, when was the last time we cited “no Nazis” and a genuinely productive editor said “stop attacking me personally”? Nazis are bad. That’s just a fact. Guy (help! - typo?) 16:47, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
To be fair, when has that essay every been brought up and a thoughtful and productive conversation ensued? I cannot think of any. PackMecEng (talk) 17:00, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
PackMecEng, no, it's more likely to be part of a discussion of a block or ban. Which is fine. Block all Nazis, nothing of value is lost. Guy (help! - typo?) 19:32, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
To be fair, if someone is an out and out nazi or the like by all means ban them. The problem I see is when it is not a confirmed nazi or whatever kind of bigot. When it is accusations of someone's belief that they deny or take offense too then that is an issue. PackMecEng (talk) 19:36, 11 October 2020 (UTC)

We're here to build a credible unbiased encyclopedia according to the policies and guidelines, not to hunt Nazis, racists, etc. If an editor is to be blocked, it's because the editor is impeding the project. If an editor is a Nazi and makes useful contributions, that's a good thing. But if he harms the encyclopedia with disruption and edits contrary to policy, then block him. I can't imagine a banner on a Wikipedia user's page that says, "This user has been indefinitely blocked for being a Nazi." Bob K31416 (talk) 17:16, 11 October 2020 (UTC)

I've lost the capacity to be shocked by anything said on this page, but congrats on coming close. Look, no reputable, credible project would ever accept neo-Nazis as employees or volunteers, no matter their skill set. So the idea that we should welcome and appreciate neo-Nazi editors and bigots, as long as they "make useful contributions", is bizarre. We don't expect editors to have "civil" collaborations with people who don't accept their right to exist, or their basic humanity—that would make a mockery of any adult definition of "civility". It might be time to take your moral compass in for a checkup. MastCell Talk 17:37, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
PackMecEng (talk) 17:51, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
If Wikipedia existed in 1933 and there were Nazis writing Wikipedia articles about their racist beliefs, then maybe the rest of the world would have been wiser to their sinister plans and history would have been different. Efcharisto (talk) 17:55, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
MastCell, Unfortunately, your message seems to be almost entirely a personal attack. However, I did see one point worth considering re, "...'civil' collaborations with people who don't accept their right to exist...". This brings to mind the Israeli and Palestinian editors of articles about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Bob K31416 (talk) 18:27, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
Editors on Israeli-Palestinian articles may hold opinions about the governance of a specific disputed territory, but I disagree with your equation of those viewpoints with Naziism. (There have historically been a small number of extremist editors in the topic area, many of whom have been banned specifically for their extremism). More to the point, you won't tolerate even the mild discomfort of having your viewpoint questioned, without invoking "personal attacks"—yet you expect Jewish and non-White editors to tolerate and accept KKK members and neo-Nazis as colleagues here. That seems problematic to me. MastCell Talk 19:12, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
That really comes off as a pot meet kettle kind of argument. I don't know if you realize that. PackMecEng (talk) 19:24, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
MastCell, I think your message is too much of a misrepresentation, and getting it straight would be an unending project. I hope things go well for you, but I'm disengaging from our discussion Bob K31416 (talk) 20:14, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
Sure, ok. I mean, you did say that the project should accept and welcome neo-Nazis, as long as they make "useful contributions". In doing so, you implicitly attach little or no value to the discomfort that editors who are Jewish, non-white, LGBTQ—or who belong to any of the categories of humanity that neo-Nazis aim to erase from the face of the Earth—might feel at the prospect. And when your viewpoint was criticized as extremist, you complained of being personally attacked rather than responding substantively. None of that seems like a misrepresentation, but I'll listen if you choose to elaborate. MastCell Talk 20:48, 12 October 2020 (UTC)
This is a key point I raised in the MFD question those infoboxes. WP is not a "safe space" - for lack of a better term - nor has any policy for this (even attempts at the past have fallen through), though we will make sure editors are not the direct or specific target of discrimination or harassment from other editors. That is, if a Neo-Nazi comes on, edits in mainspace as expected, but clearly wears their Neo-Nazi status on their arm and treats those that have identified as minorities and other groups with clear hostility, which would include thrusting their Neo-Nazi status around like a badge of honor even if they aren't actively discriminating, that's a problem and we should deal with that, because that's harassment. But if that same editor mentions they are a Neo-Nazi on their userpage once, and then never again ever alludes to it, and otherwise editors within all expected behavior, there is no reason to remove that just because other editors feel uncomfortable or unwelcomed around them, as that creates a bad logical argument to start to remove other groups that have views that other users feel threatened by. In a completely unrelated area, this comment from a AE request highlights the potential we're talking about - telling editors that have views that may threaten other editors that they are not welcome here. This has never been the standard for WP, as we have always judged on contributions and not the editors themselves, but essays like this change that. We do want editors that may be coming with extreme views compared to the norm to be aware they shouldn't poke the situation, but as long as they don't do that (and one way is not to announce you have such views) then you'd be happily accepted.
By all means: let's have a policy against the use of hate speech and imagery in userspace - that's 100% valid. Let's have an explicit policy that users pushing strong amorla discriminatory views as a constant theme in their editing, particularly towards specific other editors, will likely see themselves banned (that's "contributions" we can judge.) But we absolutely should not be creating policy that bans editors because of pigeonholing them on what they are as an editor because it will make other editors feel uncomfortable. --Masem (t) 23:04, 12 October 2020 (UTC)
Masem, Regarding user pages, here's an excerpt from the guideline section WP:UPNOT, "In addition, there is broad agreement that you may not include in your user space material that is likely to bring the project into disrepute, or which is likely to give widespread offense (e.g. pro-pedophilia advocacy). Bob K31416 (talk) 00:03, 13 October 2020 (UTC)
I'd personnally would like to see explicitly lists on that, as subjective calls on grey-lines can be highly divisive. Or at least list out the cases that no one would question, of which I'd think Nazi-related imagery would easily meet that (for user pages). --Masem (t) 01:53, 13 October 2020 (UTC)
Anything from Tekashi 6ix9ine. Not even the child porn stuff, just like if someone has a scan of the back of one of the tags from his clothing line with a bar code on their user page. Or maybe even just the numbers 6 and 9 or roman numerals ⅵ and ⅸ anywhere, gotta watch how you style those ordered lists. Disrepute-ometer goes so far off the charts from the slightest whiff of that guy it explodes and it's, "Release the Wiki-hounds!" Curtains for that user.
Can you imagine what his signature would look like if he was a Wikipedia user? Blecch. And come to think of it, given how he speaks and hence probably writes, maybe all anonymous IP vandals on every Wiki project are actually Tekashi 6ix9ine. [very tasteful elegant sig much better than any rainbow-haired monstrosity 6ix9ine would make→]--‿Ꞅtruthious 𝔹andersnatch ͡ |℡| 03:12, 13 October 2020 (UTC)
MastCell—I fail to see it as Wikipedia's role to weed out so-called neo-nazis, racists, homophobes, those who are religiously intolerant, etc. There are no personal attacks permitted. (WP:NPA) We are not permitted to use article Talk pages to discuss matters not pertinent to improving the article. (WP:FORUM) We would not be able to cast aspersions on other editors. (WP:ASPERSIONS) The WP:NONAZIS essay can be misused. And it is unnecessary because existing policies can be deployed to address the issues you raise. Wikipedia does not need separate essays for various sorts of problems emanating from various points on the political spectrum. Bus stop (talk) 23:13, 12 October 2020 (UTC)
OK, I get it. Neo-Nazis are to be welcomed as valued members of our community, as long as they mention their Nazi affiliations only once and don't, like, Nazi it up all the time. Because if neo-Nazis and KKK members are unwelcome here, then we'd be creating a "safe space"—which we absolutely must not do! Jimbo, you must be very proud of the culture you've created here. MastCell Talk 23:33, 12 October 2020 (UTC)
I can't think of any way to respond that won't be considered value signalling, and pre-2016 I would have felt silly for thinking I should say it out loud, but... I definitely consider weeding out neo-Nazis as part of my role as an administrator on WP. Whether they actually use the words "I believe in the murder or forced removal from my Homeland of other editors if they are Jews or Blacks or some other kind of undesirables", or they just say "I am a neo-Nazi", which is shorthand for the exact same thing, they get shown the door. If I have to choose between making this a safe space for Nazis and KKKers, or a safe space for their targets, I choose their targets. Second rule of holes: when you find yourself defending neo-Nazis because they might make good edits in the future, stop digging. --Floquenbeam (talk) 23:38, 12 October 2020 (UTC)
Then you must be doing a good job, Floquenbeam, because neo-nazis are extremely rare on Wikipedia. Let's be realistic about the presence of neo-nazis on Wikipedia—where are they? In the many years I've been here I've detected the presence of neo-nazis very rarely. This essay is a solution in search of a problem. Bus stop (talk) 23:45, 12 October 2020 (UTC)
I don't keep track, but I've probably blocked somewhere between 2-4 dozen editors for being neo-nazi or racist or similar. The fact that you, personally, don't notice many neo-Nazis doesn't mean anything, just as your opinion (somewhere way up above, so I'm paraphrasing) that most Americans since the Civil Rights movement don't see color anymore doesn't mean anything. In a useful coincidence, I just this week watched my 5-person board of selectmen (4 old white men and 1 old white women) patiently explain to a bunch of people of color that they didn't need to pass any statement denouncing institutional racism, because there is no racism in this town (silly people of color, here's a pat on the head to calm you down so you stop imagining things). I say "useful" coincidence because I can call my board of selectmen a bunch of privileged airbags who unconsciously, instinctively side with racists over minorities every single fucking time, all the while pretending to be defending principle, and I can say that it would probably be better if they just left, because they are too close-minded to ever change. Whereas if I said that about fellow editors, I might get in trouble. --Floquenbeam (talk) 00:27, 13 October 2020 (UTC)
"most Americans since the Civil Rights movement don't see color anymore" If I said that I stand corrected, Floquenbeam. Rephrased it would read: "Social norms have changed in America since the Civil rights movement." Bus stop (talk) 00:35, 13 October 2020 (UTC)
It was actually "The vast majority of Americans couldn't care less what race anyone is. Ditto for sexual orientation, gender, religion, etc." I assume that sounds familiar and I don't need to dig thru the history to find a diff. --Floquenbeam (talk) 00:39, 13 October 2020 (UTC)
Floquenbeam—most Americans want healing. Most Americans are prepared to give up differences. Most Americans want to go the extra distance to bridge gaps. Do white Americans literally see black Americans? Yes. And vice-versa. Therefore I didn't imply, even paraphrased, that "most Americans since the Civil Rights movement don't see color anymore". Bus stop (talk) 00:47, 13 October 2020 (UTC)
Bus stop: It's time to stop talking. It's very clear that you are only digging an even deeper hole. Jorm (talk) 00:55, 13 October 2020 (UTC)
No, Jorm, credit where credit is due. He caught me. I was trying to trick people into believing that he literally thought people of color were invisible. But he didn't fall for my clever trick. And he did it so slyly that others probably won't even notice that he didn't actually address anything of substance that I said. --Floquenbeam (talk) 01:05, 13 October 2020 (UTC)
Floquenbeam—I think we can have a civil discussion. I think white Americans and black Americans are keenly aware of one another's existence. But it is intentions that matter and intentions I'm referring to. I think the intention, or the inclination, of Americans in 2020 is to heal the racial divide. Someone said above that America is a racist nation. I don't know if that is true. Since the time of the Civil rights movement, social norms have changed and we should be aware of those changes—not only to race relations but to other areas. Bus stop (talk) 01:14, 13 October 2020 (UTC)
Racism exists in every country or locale. Were I braver, I would have written "Racism in Ethiopia" (an actual article, not a redirect to an article that doesn't even mention Ethiopia) with reliable sources to back up every statement. And I would have spent all my Wikipedia time defending the article from people who knew nothing about the subject but thought they did & that I was being racist. So maybe I was smarter not to have written it, so I had the time to make more helpful contributions. -- llywrch (talk) 19:32, 13 October 2020 (UTC)
Floquenbeam, re "I don't keep track, but I've probably blocked somewhere between 2-4 dozen editors for being neo-nazi or racist or similar." — Could you give an example from the 2–4 dozen? Bob K31416 (talk) 01:22, 13 October 2020 (UTC)
You can go to my block log and ctrl-F for "Nazi" or "racism" or "racist" or "KKK" or "anti-semite" or "anti-semitic" or "islamophobia" or "bigotry" as well as I could, and that's how I'd identify them. If you go to the trouble of counting them, please let me know, I'm curious. I purposely chose a wide range because I didn't want to give anyone any gotcha material. --Floquenbeam (talk) 01:31, 13 October 2020 (UTC)
I looked at your block log [5] and did an edit-find for Nazi. I found the keyword in 5 edit summaries. Although you referred to each editor as a Nazi, it looks like you blocked them for violating Wikipedia policies or guidelines, not for being Nazis. I presume that if those editors didn't violate Wikipedia policies or guidelines you would not have blocked them. Bob K31416 (talk) 04:01, 13 October 2020 (UTC)
Bob K31416: If you search for "racism" or "racist", you will also see many blocks that were based solely on the user being a bigot. So when Floquenbeam says they blocked someone for being a bigot, then that's the main reason they were blocked. And I appreciate them for trying to keep this community rid of those kinds of people. Isabelle 🔔 13:33, 13 October 2020 (UTC)
Isabelle Belato—Wikipedia in general and administrators in general exhibit no reluctancy in blocking for edits like this. (Block seeable here.) That was in 2017. I expended no effort searching for the earliest possible example. Even in the absence of the WP:NONAZIS essay, which was initiated in 2018, I think there is no reluctance to block for Nazism or racism. A social setting can have characteristics that are virtually intrinsic to it. This social setting does not tolerate Nazism or racism. That intolerance of Nazism or racism is an integral aspect of Wikipedia. That is why I question the "no nazis" essay. What is it trying to accomplish? What is its purpose? Bus stop (talk) 14:29, 13 October 2020 (UTC)
Bus stop: As you say so yourself, it serves to show that at least a section of the community won't stand for bigotry. Even though it might not be an official policy, or even a guideline, it serves to tell a certain subset of people that they are not welcome here, and will be shown the door if they ever make their beliefs known. Isabelle 🔔 15:14, 13 October 2020 (UTC)
You say "a section of the community won't stand for bigotry". No, not "a section", but rather the whole community "won't stand for bigotry". This is a characteristic of Wikipedia. The refusal to tolerate bigotry permeates this community. For at least a dozen years and no doubt for Wikipedia's entire existence, there has been an unwritten rule that bigotry, racism, nazism—were not tolerated. This is part and parcel of who we are. Bus stop (talk) 15:26, 13 October 2020 (UTC)
Bus stop: Although I've had a much better experience in here than on ptwiki related to pushing back bigotry, I avoid speaking in absolutes (insert Star Wars joke here). Also, some of the comments I've seen in here show me how privileged some people are, to the point they care more about following the policies to the letter instead of creating a welcoming environment: If an editor is a Nazi and makes useful contributions, that's a good thing.
So, no, I don't think the entire community is against bigotry, racism or Nazism, but I'm glad they are in the minority. Isabelle 🔔 02:38, 14 October 2020 (UTC)
Isabelle, Re "many blocks that were based solely on the user being a bigot" — If you are only looking at the edit summary to conclude that, I think you need to look at the discussion/edits that led up to the block to make that statement. However, it may help if you gave a specific example of such a block so we can see if it didn't involve the blocked editor's violation of Wikipedia guidelines and policies. Possibly, Floquenbeam's response to my previous message may clear this up. Bob K31416 (talk) 15:00, 13 October 2020 (UTC)
Perhaps one example of what you're looking for is here; I blocked Zaostao for what they said on their user page (now deleted, but this ANI thread describes it). Nothing beyond the content of their user page was needed. Any further examples will have to be dug up by someone besides me. I seem to recall a spate of them around that time, but I have no recollection of how many of them I blocked, and how many were blocked by others. --Floquenbeam (talk) 15:37, 13 October 2020 (UTC)
If I understand what you are saying, your block was not based on Wikipedia policies or guidelines. Is that correct? Bob K31416 (talk) 00:23, 14 October 2020 (UTC)
Careful Floquenbeam! He has set a cunning rhetorical trap for you to step into! Jorm (talk) 00:58, 14 October 2020 (UTC)
I could probably interpret either WP:DISRUPT or WP:HARASS to fit the bill if I was trying to hide behind them, but I wasn't too terribly worried about doing so at the time, because, you know, he was a Nazi and all. I thought of it more as clearly making Wikipedia better. Sorry, I can see how this does seem like puffing my chest to Florida Army below. It started out as just expressing amazement that this was in any way controversial, but it has kind of morphed into semi-bragging. Which is dumb, because bragging about blocking Nazis is kind of like bragging about not punching random strangers. It's kind of just something humans expect of one another. --Floquenbeam (talk) 01:44, 14 October 2020 (UTC)
User:Floquenbeam, Did the blocked user violate WP:DISRUPT and WP:HARASS to the extent that an indefinite block was justified? Bob K31416 (talk) 06:05, 14 October 2020 (UTC)
OMG if I had as much free time as you I would spend it finding less stupid ways to troll. --JBL (talk) 14:14, 14 October 2020 (UTC)
All of this sophistry about the wording involved in blocks is meaningless. If the words "racist" and "racism" do not appear in any Wikipedia or Wikimedia policy then of course they're also going to appear in a proportionally small percentage of discussions of conduct or blocking rationales, much less "Nazi" or "Nazism".
I was going to follow the above sentence with something like "Only extreme outlier conduct issues that tread into the territory of the more anodyne policy that says, "We welcome editors of every race, religion, ethnic background, gender, sexual orientation, cis and trans and non-binary editors..." would tend to result in the mention of race at all" but I actually can't find a policy or other Wikipedia: namespace page that even says that. Maybe I saw something of that sort over at the WMF? But here we are in this discussion worrying that Nazis might not feel welcome enough. Damn. [Edit: !quote from !policy added to] --‿Ꞅtruthious 𝔹andersnatch ͡ |℡| 02:20, 14 October 2020 (UTC)
Struthious Bandersnatch: I'm getting in trouble because I might hurt the feelings of bad-faith transphobes and/or refuse to get in fights with everyone who comes to my talk page looking for one. Everything is pointless and everything is going to be argued over. Jorm (talk) 02:00, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

Is this a useful discussion? Newyorkbrad (talk) 01:43, 13 October 2020 (UTC)

In the sense that I'm learning a lot about some of my fellow editors, yes. In the sense that I'm a good enough debater to get someone to see the light? No, probably not (although I do note that just yesterday Bus Stop said this was not a racist country, and now he's saying he doesn't know if that's true, so maybe we're making incremental progress?). In the sense that I am using it as a procrastination tool to avoid serious work that has to be done tomorrow? Yes, definitely. --Floquenbeam (talk) 01:50, 13 October 2020 (UTC)
I'm not going to read all of this discussion above, I just think that it is worth pointing out that Wikipedia:No Nazis is an essay, not a Wikipedia policy or guideline. I don't think anyone needs to worry about editors and admins, running amok, applying it to other editors in ideological battles. Essays are advisory, not mandates.
The times when I've seen NoNazis cited at ANI, the editor has been disruptive and grossly offensive and there are a number of actual, relevant policies that were applied to justify their block. Liz Read! Talk! 02:50, 13 October 2020 (UTC)
Liz, I think you made good points. Regarding the last one, in the discussion above I became aware of a discussion at ANI [6] that resulted in an indefinite block for a user who put subtle antisemitic references on their user page. In discussing it in the above part of this talk section with the admin that blocked, it looked like the NoNazis principle rather than policy, was essentially used to justify the block. Bob K31416 (talk) 07:00, 15 October 2020 (UTC)
I participated in that discussion. My feeling is that we should give editors the benefit of the doubt if they deny articulately that they are not for instance being antisemitic by the sort of User page content that was under discussion in the thread to which you link. Bus stop (talk) 17:12, 15 October 2020 (UTC)

I would say that the most appropriate response to Nazis was written by the Dead Kennedys with their song Nazi Punks F Off, which was an expression of the Punk music scene as they learned that letting even one nazi in the door was one too many. https://www.lamag.com/culturefiles/l-punks-80s-90s-kept-neo-nazis-scene/ 2601:2C0:C300:B7:46B:2511:8AAE:C97B (talk) 03:50, 13 October 2020 (UTC)

Correct link to song is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_Punks_Fuck_Off but apparently it can't actually be linked due to a malfunctioning swear filter. 2601:2C0:C300:B7:46B:2511:8AAE:C97B (talk) 03:52, 13 October 2020 (UTC)

Blocking

Re a blocking case discussed in several places here, in 2016 an editor Zaostao was blocked indefinitely after their user page was brought to the attention of ANI by Mathmensch. From beginning to block took 4 hours without Zaostao's input. [7] [8] Two years later in 2018, Mathmensch was blocked indefinitely. [9] [10] Bob K31416 (talk) 13:39, 16 October 2020 (UTC)


Bigotry on Wikipedia

Excuse me if I intrude on this absurd and Orwellian discussion of bias and bigotry on Wikipedia initiated by a highly partisan editor who insists racism is a phenomenon of the right, while fellow Wikipedians puff their chests at helping to root out the Nazis (National Socialists). Meanwhile our coverage omits most African American politicians, many of their films, has glaringly distorted coverage of Catholic Conquistador history, and won't bear to include subjects like the leader of New Zealand militias that helped wipe out Maori protestors. I dare not mention that some of the commentors in this very discussion have threatened me with Wikiextermination if I ever again point out examples of Wikidiscrimination. In the meantime, here's a tiny sampling of the subjects omitted from Wikipedia:

FloridaArmy (talk) 17:44, 13 October 2020 (UTC)

I am tempted to say "Change the gramophone record, it's got stuck." You have been asked on numerous occasions not to accuse other editors of racism or bigotry if they turn down an articles for creation request.--♦IanMacM♦ (talk to me) 18:30, 13 October 2020 (UTC)
I agree with FloridaArmy that racism is not primarily a "phenomenon of the right" and I disagree with the assertion by JzG that "most racists are right-wing". Bus stop (talk) 18:38, 13 October 2020 (UTC)
Bus stop, I think that casual racism and racial bias is found everywhere, but in the West overt racism, of the "go back where you came from" variety is a phenomenon of the right, which is why social media bans on violent racist and Islamophobic rhetoric have notably hit prominent right-wing figures.
In India and South Africa, it's very different, in my experience, so you're right I should be clear that I do mean in the West.
I'm amused that FA goes with the "National Socialists" meme. The Nazis were socialist in the same way the Democratic People's Republic of Korea is democratic. Guy (help! - typo?) 19:49, 13 October 2020 (UTC)
JzG, why don't you ask residents of the Upper East Side how that worked out when the city was going to merge schools? Sir Joseph (talk) 13:56, 14 October 2020 (UTC)
Sir Joseph, like I said, casual racism and racial bias is found everywhere, but in the West overt racism, of the "go back where you came from" variety is a phenomenon of the right. It's also noticeable that efforts to combat institutional racism mainly come from progressives. But things have been different at different times.
Of course left and right are relative; the Democratic Party in the US is centre-right or centre-left according to how you define it, so the fact that the current Congress is the most diverse ever despite there being only two Black Republicans (one of whom is retiring) could be attributed to the tolerance of the progressive centre. Political extremes are where extreme views lie, and yes, there are those on the extreme left who are racist, just as the extreme right is generally racist. Guy (help! - typo?) 15:20, 14 October 2020 (UTC)
JzG, no, my point is that as our prior conversation showed you are ignorant of US politics and US customs. Your comments here just reinforces it. Sir Joseph (talk) 15:58, 14 October 2020 (UTC)
Sir Joseph, well, it showed that you believe me to be ignorant, but whatever. Guy (help! - typo?) 16:01, 14 October 2020 (UTC)
Maybe go back and read your comments about Pennsylvania you repeatedly made. Your claim that your ancestor fought here hundreds of years ago, and that you once worked here for a bit, doesn't make you an expert in US affairs. Sir Joseph (talk) 17:49, 14 October 2020 (UTC)
Sir Joseph, feel free to point out where I said I was. Guy (help! - typo?) 18:24, 14 October 2020 (UTC)
JzG—you say "It's also noticeable that efforts to combat institutional racism mainly come from progressives." Are you talking about the year 2020? Or are you talking about the time of the Civil rights movement? Bus stop (talk) 18:26, 14 October 2020 (UTC)
Bus stop, present tense. Guy (help! - typo?) 19:01, 14 October 2020 (UTC)
JzG—there is little evidence that any "institutional racism" remains in the United States in 2020 but you are welcome to provide such evidence if you think it exists. Bus stop (talk) 19:12, 14 October 2020 (UTC)
wow. just... wow. Jorm (talk) 19:14, 14 October 2020 (UTC)
Bus stop, are you serious? There are entire books about it. Guy (help! - typo?) 19:14, 14 October 2020 (UTC)
JzG—the problem with the WP:NONAZIS essay is its sanctimoniousness. It amounts to virtue signalling. There is a related but bigger problem. It is alluded to by FloridaArmy when they say that racism is not primarily a phenomenon of the right. And it is alluded to by Atsme when they say I condemn racism, not unlike most have in this discussion, but I certainly don't endorse identity politics and the improper labeling of racism under the pretense that, per JzG, "most racists are right-wing". That is just plain misinformation, and it wrongfully implies that the left has clean hands, which couldn't be further from the truth. We've got to stop playing a linguistic version of sleight of hand. Nobody is defending Nazis. But the related but bigger problem, in my opinion, emanates from the Left. In 2020 in the United States the Left is in my opinion the number one vector of race baiting. In my opinion neo-nazis are a problem of secondary importance. Bus stop (talk) 19:20, 14 October 2020 (UTC)
Bus stop, maybe you can point me to articles on the active left-wing equivalents of Stormfront, Patriot Prayer and the KKK?
I have no idea at all what you mean by blaming the left for race-baiting, unless you're referring to BLM and Kaepernick? You're aware of the long tradition of the white-dominated establishment blaming racial tension on Black people for not protesting right, I take it? Guy (help! - typo?) 19:28, 14 October 2020 (UTC)
@Bus stop: You claim that for Wikipedia's entire existence, there has been an unwritten rule that bigotry, racism, nazism—were not tolerated which WP:NONAZIS would obviously be the written version of even though you also say it's unnecessary, and you further say that your objection to the essay is solely based on the Left's misuse of language. So why don't you just go write the right version of an essay which condemns Nazism in the proper way conservative politics supposedly would, without supposedly playing a linguistic version of sleight of hand?
After all you've detailed here in this talk page section about how it is part and parcel of who we are and intolerance of Nazism or racism is an integral aspect of Wikipedia and nobody is defending Nazis it seems like it should be a snap for you, you could probably just cut and paste some of that stuff.
Compared to other commenters here I think I am less blithe about the twenty-first-century left being sufficiently opposed to all forms of anti-Semitism and I'd be quite happy to have a proper conservative condemnation of Nazism to cite alongside WP:NONAZIS. And being the Right written version of the unwritten rule you say is at the heart of Wikipedia, it surely would quickly become the more-cited version. --‿Ꞅtruthious 𝔹andersnatch ͡ |℡| 20:20, 14 October 2020 (UTC)
I think Bus stop is dead-on when he says that the No Nazis essay "amounts to virtue signalling". People are repeatedly being bombarded these days by news organizations, universities, and large corporations with propaganda about how big a problem racism is, and then unconsciously doing things to promote the agenda of these news organizations, universities, and large corporations. The reality is that, regardless of how big a problem racism is, there is absolutely no reason to have this "No Nazis" essay, since Wikipedia's other policies related to harassment, bigotry, and neutrality can be applied to racists and Nazis without any special considerations. The "No Nazis" essay provides no useful information about Wikipedia's policies or guidelines and is really just a manifesto of allegience to the news organizations, universities, and large corporations calling on people to do things to address racism. Efcharisto (talk) 21:48, 14 October 2020 (UTC)
So your position is "racism is an invention of the mainstream media" and that it's all a conspiracy of some kind to get people to to do the bidding of a university or something? Interesting. Please tell me more. Jorm (talk) 21:51, 14 October 2020 (UTC)
Yeah, Efcharisto—like Jorm I am curious given what I was saying in the comment you are responding to, are you asserting something like "racism is bad, but no prohibition of it should be documented anywhere, even by people I agree with like Bus stop" or are you not even saying the "racism is bad" part?
Edit: Also, what are Wikipedia's policies on bigotry? I see one essay and one "humorous essay" in the Wikipedia: namespace which contain the word "bigotry" but no policy nor guideline which do. --‿Ꞅtruthious 𝔹andersnatch ͡ |℡| 22:11, 14 October 2020 (UTC)
Racism is not a conspiracy of the mainstream media, but the mainstream media chooses to significantly amplify racism. Simple or simplistic statements like "racism is bad" or "racism is evil" are part of the propaganda that you get from news organizations, universites, and large corporations, so I am not going to endorse them. Racism is, like many things, is complicated and may be evil or bad or less bad depending on the context and the definition. If I am Greek, and I want to marry another Greek person, am I racist against non-Greeks? What is relevant for Wikipedia is harassment and neutrality, which may be motivated by racism or by many things. Here is the bigot essay: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Don%27t_be_a_WikiBigot. I guess it is an essay an not a policy or guideline. Efcharisto (talk) 22:34, 14 October 2020 (UTC)
"Simple or simplistic statements like "racism is bad" or "racism is evil" are part of the propaganda that you get from news organizations". Huh. So is it your position that racism is not bad? I jut want to be sure I understand your position and am not getting caught in translation issues. Jorm (talk) 22:43, 14 October 2020 (UTC)
Uh—we're editing an encyclopedia here Efcharisto and on top of that, again, we are in the middle of a discussion of Nazism. Racism has turned out to be a conspiracy (being racist was the conspiracy, not that the racism was false... I'm not sure I can think of an actual documented conspiracy of the latter case offhand, come to think about it) and conspiracies have very often been provably racist throughout history.
So yes, racism is complicated, but that is no rational justification to say that racism is not bad or that Wikipedia policies should not proscribe racism and other forms of bigotry explicitly—much less Nazism—particularly not upon the actually rather questionable and debatable premise of an edge case of the theoretical offense it might cause to a Wikipedian who expressed a personal preference for endogamy about themselves, when pressuring someone else like a relative or community member into endogamy is definitely bad and definitely racist and definitely bad racism.
Saying that racism is not bad or that "racism is evil" is merely propaganda is—and I hesitate to apply this to a talk page discussion, but it fits—WP:UNDUE. When people throw that around about the content of an article I often end up pointing out that they probably mean something like WP:BALASP because UNDUE refers to things like fringe theories... but saying that racism isn't even bad, that it's an alternative lifestyle or something, is some swivel-eyed loon bullshit that belongs on the pile with "the Earth is flat" and believers in phlogiston theory. Except that I can envision Flat Earthers and phlogiston theorists being welcomed as Wikipedians as long as they follow the rules and don't edit disruptively; but unrepentant racists and other unrepentant bigots should be pitched out on their asses because the content of their fringe beliefs is intent of harm for other Wikipedians.
To be honest, Efcharisto, you are writing like someone who has just never thought very much about racism. But it's nice to know, I guess, that it's not the Nazis or racists you're worried about endorsing here, but the organizations you're talking about who I assume are primarily made up of your fellow non-racist countrymen who might passively hurt the feelings of a hypothetical Greek person with an unalterable and inflexible preference for endogamy which that person feels compelled to advertise publicly. --‿Ꞅtruthious 𝔹andersnatch ͡ |℡| 00:26, 15 October 2020 (UTC)
We are in a discussion about an essay which is titled "No Nazis", but which if you read it makes no distinction between Nazis and "others with somewhat-less-than-complimentary views on other races and ethnicities". If Wikipedia wants to ban the handful of 110 year olds who were actually members of the Nazi party and are still living, fine, but Wikipedia can do that without also banning random people that some administrator suspects have "somewhat-less-than-complimentary views on other races and ethnicities". Nazism and racism are not the same thing. Just like Stalinism and communism are not the same thing. How many editors would even be left if you banned all editors with "somewhat-less-than-complimentary views on other races and ethnicities"? Everyone has biases and preferences, the relevant question for Wikipedia is can they collaborate in a respectful manner and write articles from a neutral point of view. And do you seriously believe it is an "edge case" to express a personal preference for marriage within a particular culture or ethnicity? I think your edge needs to be moved a little bit. Efcharisto (talk) 01:57, 15 October 2020 (UTC)
You quite obviously already know this but are being disingenuous (though I'd maintain that, despite concealing some awareness for rhetorical purposes, you still write as someone who has not thought about racism much) but in our time torch-carrying Nazis march in the street openly, wearing swastikas and shouting "Jews will not replace us!" and "blood and soil!", a man who pretended to not know what the KKK was to avoid disavowing them on national television was still elected POTUS by (an electoral minority of) tens of millions of people, who do not even ask him to, say, not retweet things from people who make lists of Jews who work for CNN, and of course, recently the same President who loves to talk about television ratings was asked by a Fox News anchor if he would disavow white supremacy at the third most watched presidential debate in American history and again just couldn't think of any white supremacist groups. And that's pretty much just the highlights of the highlights of the highlights about only the United States.
Yet here you are arguing that any opposition to Nazism that could maybe be interpreted as being implied by Wikipedia policy definitely must not be written down anywhere, and that racism in general just really isn't so bad. You are very clearly placing yourself on the side of Nazism and racism: there are no fig leaves left at this point. If you haven't had one so far this should be your "Are we the baddies?" moment but I'm not holding out much hope. That clip was so much funnier twelve years ago.
No, I do not think that the danger of hurting the feelings of a hypothetical Greek person, with an unalterable and inflexible preference for endogamy which that person feels compelled to advertise publicly, is a catastrophic or dastardly thing which means that we have to be nice to racists and Nazis and not write down policies abhoring them and their pathetic, cowardly, and viciously infantile views.
The language in WP:NONAZIS is in fact not strong enough. The calm and neutral language it uses is what should actually be used in Wikipedia policy pages and essays—including any essay written with a politically-conservative bent, whatever that looks like, which might show up one fine day, after this ignominy and shame is extirpated by the good people left in conservative circles the world over—essays should be free to speak more realistically about how abhorrent and contemptible the people, behaviors, and views in question are. --‿Ꞅtruthious 𝔹andersnatch ͡ |℡| 04:18, 15 October 2020 (UTC)
I don't think any of these articles are ready for mainspace yet. El Millo (talk) 19:35, 13 October 2020 (UTC)
  • The fact that FloridaArmy continues to make subpar drafts is not a sign of systemic bias. Yes, we have systemic bias. Yes we need to improve our coverage in many areas. No, we can't do that by decreasing the standards of the encyclopedia. Some of Florida's drafts should get approved, yes. I think the bar at AfC has been too high, and that reviewers should be more willing to accept mediocore stuff. But many of Florida's drafts remain just bad: poorly sourced, hardly notable, mostly stubs. That is Florida's problem, not a systemic problem. CaptainEek Edits Ho Cap'n!⚓ 21:01, 13 October 2020 (UTC)

I think FloridaArmy is impressive. I had the good fortune to do extensive work on one of FA's articles and it was one of the best experiences I had on Wikipedia. Bob K31416 (talk) 02:46, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

Bob K31416, yes, FA is fine as long as you never disagree with them. Guy (help! - typo?) 07:13, 14 October 2020 (UTC)
Guy, Actually I did disagree with FloridaArmy, and it was on a thread that you were on in an archived section of this talk page. Bob K31416 (talk) 13:50, 14 October 2020 (UTC)
  • Gregory Mixon - I would approve the one on Gregory Mixon. If he can provide one more source for the last statement then great, if not it gets a template asking for citations. There is no doubt the extensive work that goes into getting a PhD in anything much less history. He is the author of at least two or three books, some have been independently reviewed, in a specific genre or subject that is relevant to the time we are living in now and have been for decades.
Leonard Anderson - This is a must approve. Leonard was so influential in the early years of television/cinema broadcasting, especially for people of color at that time. Probably would remove that he was white, only because it shouldn't matter, and clean up the article a little but the short films he did on African-American musicals alone are worthy to make him notable. We have to use common sense here people.
Alfred Sack - Same as Leonard. The articles are stubs. I think we can all agree they aren't going to get nominated for GA. That shouldn't be a reason to include or preclude. I have seen articles here that weren't much more than a sentence or two but the subject is notable.
Charles Stapp - Are you kidding me? Not notable? The article is not perfectly written. I get that but anyone doing independent searches can see that this individual is a notable figure in history, especially in regards to British military presence in New Zealand in the mid to late 1800's and as they relate to the indigenous peoples there.
That's just four I picked out randomly. There are some I would dismiss outright, especially those without any sources.--Tsistunagiska (talk) 13:11, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

Anchor theory

Jimbo, do you have an opinion on the anchor theory referenced above? Is owning the libs ever the be-all, end-all? 107.242.121.54 (talk) 06:23, 18 October 2020 (UTC)

I'd not seen that diagram before. Now I have. I don't think anything about my life is any better or worse than it was before. It's nonsense.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 19:21, 18 October 2020 (UTC)
It seems to me that your Wikipedian of the Year selection this year was in line with the recommended patch to that diagram, that instead of dismantling the white male upper class, we should elevate women of color. 107.242.121.45 (talk) 19:27, 27 October 2020 (UTC)

Questions about Esquire interview

Hi, Mr Wales.

Just read your interview in this fascinating Esquire piece, What We Know And Can Agree On: Wikipedia At 20, and have a few questions for you.

You compare yourself to the Queen: "No real power, but the right to be consulted, the right to encourage, and the right to warn". Of course, Her Majesty does in fact hold considerable power - for example, she can start wars and gets first dibs on any beached whales - only she doesn't usually wield it. I understand that you used to make use of your omnipotence, but these days tend to hold back. Approaching two decades on the throne, what do you consider Wikipedia's greatest failing(s), and given Wikipedia's prominent role in the knowledge ecosystem, why do feel you are unable to flex your constitutional rights to remedy it/them?

You say: "In 500 years, Wikipedia will be remembered and (if we do our job well in setting things up with a long-term perspective for safety) still be informing the public". What exactly do you mean by 'perspective for safety'? I hope you don't mean we can expect to see Wikipedia-brand computer chips controlling one's brain! What form do you envisage Wikipedia taking in the far flung future? Half a millennium is long way off, we may not even take a recognisably human form by then. Will there even be a need for an encyclopedia, much less volunteer editors, in a world of incorporeal light-beings and hyper-advanced artificial intelligence?

Finally, on a lighter note, I see someone already added your passion for food to your wiki-biography. What could we expect at a Jimmy dinner party, and what would you say is your speciality, your signature dish?

Sincerely, Dark Clouds of Joy (talk) 01:11, 27 October 2020 (UTC)

I think it would be unwise for me to attempt to wield power. My best tools are rational persuasion and being calm. In many cases the exact outcome of any specific decision is less important than preserving the power of the best people in the community to make decisions in defense of NPOV.
I definitely don't foresee Wikipedia-brand computer chips controlling anyone's brain. What I meant about safety is making thoughtful decisions around governance to maintain community control, to make radical change away from our most important founding principles hard to do, and making sure (through things like the endowment fund) that we have the financial resources needed to be safe for the long run.
I like to cook a wide variety of things, and I like to joke that signature dishes are for people who learned to cook one thing well, rather than for people who know how to cook. That isn't really fair, but it is a good light hearted joke.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 11:04, 27 October 2020 (UTC)
How do you feel about Weev? 107.242.121.45 (talk) 19:34, 27 October 2020 (UTC)
At some point holographic and full-sensory emersion Wikipedia will have the capability of taking the reader on virtual tours (with reader-choice from multiple index-choices text or voice guides) as well as keeping "old time" Wikipedia - which we are creating now - as a constantly edited and updated format. That should happen long before 500 years, but will be polished with tech-and-edit updates for a few centuries (just wanted to do a one-time pop in to keep an interesting question and topic going, the sci-fi takes on Wikipedia have yet to be fully explored and presented in media, so fun to see these kind of concepts flying around). Randy Kryn (talk) 01:29, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

On politicians...

Jimmy, we have WP:NPOL as a decent guide on notability of politicians, but it confers a definite incumbent advantage. It seems reasonable that unsuccessful past candidates be rolled up into an article about the race, but do you have a view on what we should do differently, if anything, in the next election cycle, about new major party candidates for statewide and national office? Do you think we should try to write less blow-by-blow commentary of elections, or have an article on each major party candidate but merge the losers afterwards, or something else? There's a definite tension here between neutrality (in the political sense) and well-supported consensus designed to stop the abuse of Wikipedia for electioneering purposes, and indeed the reverse: popular outrage over candidates who espouse QAnon, for example. I am genuinely torn on this and I'd like to know your view. Guy (help! - typo?) 20:03, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

I think these are thoughtful questions.
First, we can acknowledge that some people will want to use Wikipedia for self-promotion. That's a problem in many fields, not just politics. What I think is that we should not respond to that by trying to *prevent* articles about people newly in the public eye, out of an excessive paranoia or sense of the need to punish people. Rather, questions about notability should be very firmly rooted only in whether there are sufficient third party high quality reliable sources to write a biography. Let's not forget: another good way for people who are motivated more by politics than by encyclopedic values to negatively impact Wikipedia is by working to prevent coverage of new challengers in politics! That knife definitely can cut both ways.
Second, I very strongly doubt that in most cases, notability is ever reversible. If someone is notable before an election, they will remain notable after an election.
There are definitely cases of candidates for public office who are not notable - let me go into that for a moment. Here in the UK, there is the Official Monster Raving Loony Party which runs satirical candidates in every election, see a count here: Official Monster Raving Loony Party#General elections. While the party is clearly notable and a fixture of the UK political scene (they wear wild costumes to the announcement of electoral results), most of the candidates are not. They have no chance of winning, frankly don't expect to win, and it's all just a bit of fun poking fun at politicians.
But major party (which can be determined in an NPOV fashion) candidates and people who have a real shot at winning (like for example the front runner in polls, which can be determined in an NPOV fashion) for major offices (say, MPs in the UK, House of Representatives and Senators in the US, and so on in other countries) are notable and furthermore are a part of history that will remain just as notable after the election is done. The idea "oh well, you ran for Senate and came in second place, you aren't notable anymore" is a bit silly.
There appears to be some tension or confusion around this relatively uncontroversial observation and the very good longstanding principles of WP:BLP1E. I don't think this represents a major issue, because as written, BLP1E requires 3 conditions to be met before not having a biography, and the 3rd one: "If the event is not significant or the individual's role was either not substantial or not well documented" is clearly not true of a major party candidate for a major office. The event is always significant, and the person's role in it is both substantial and well-documented.
BLP1E is designed primarily as a protection (for the encyclopedia and for the person) against having a dubious article about someone who is generally an innocent bystander in some major news event. I don't see this, therefore, as a major obstacle to coverage.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 11:18, 27 October 2020 (UTC)
I've been doing some thinking too. What JzG calls the incumbent advantage is something we'd call (in the part of the world where I live) the "chancellor's bonus", I suppose, meaning, a chancellor in office will, when running for re-election, always get a "bonus" of a few percent of the total number of votes, apparently just for the coincidence of being the seating chancellor, no matter how good or bad they did, and equally no matter the credentials of an upcoming counter-candidate. I think, indeed, Wikipedia should take no sides, neither by refusing to say anything about the counter-candidate, nor by giving them extra bandwidth based on election publicity alone.
Without becoming too bureaucratic, I'd like to propose something along those lines, meaning, all of the following has to be met for a challenger to pass this proposal for a notability criterion:
  1. The incumbent is running for re-election;
  2. The incumbent has a Wikipedia article;
  3. The notability (in Wikipedia sense) of the incumbent is either supported by NPOL, or, at least, primarily based in the incumbent's political activity.
  4. The main challenger is doing well in pre-election polls: they consistently have a result within a few percent (or better) of the incumbent's position in those polls:
    • the "few percent" may be 5%, or less, e.g. 3%, 2.5% or 2% (if I remember correctly that's around the estimate of the minimal value of a "chancellor's bonus" in most electoral systems);
    • "consistently" meaning, for instance, all electoral polls in a period of three weeks, or, if polls are wider apart from each other than three polls in a period of three weeks, then at least in three consecutive polls. This part of the criterion also meaning that if less than three polls are held in the period leading up to the election, then the position is likely not notable enough that someone holding that position is notable by that fact. But of course the "three" (three weeks/three polls), or any alternative numbers, would have to be decided in consensus.
  5. The challenger's article can be written with more content from independent reliable sources than merely their election program. (whether that would need to be "substantially" more, e.g. at least 50% of the article content, or just "somewhat more" would also be a matter to be decided in consensus)
Also, if the office holder decides not to run for re-election, the principle might be more general: any office which makes an office holder pass NPOL, also makes the consistent front runner ("consistent" per the same approach as above) in pre-election polls eligible for a Wikipedia article (if they also pass the 5th criterion above). If there are two such new candidates "consistently" within a "few percent" of one another in pre-election polls, they'd both be eligible (within condition #5), etc.
Ideas? Probably still too early stages to propose this formally, but gathering some ideas whether a more formal proposal at some later point in time would be a good idea. --Francis Schonken (talk) 13:16, 27 October 2020 (UTC)

WP:NPOL is merely a way to bypass WP:GNG, to me WP:GNG is a pretty good way to sort these out. One thing wiki-unique about candidates is that their wp:notability status often changes rapidly. One idea would be to simply recognize that a candidate that fails wp:GNG today and fails it again 3 weeks from now could very well meet GNG 3 weeks after that and so articles on current candidates should not be salted or prejudiced based based n previous deletions. North8000 (talk) 15:43, 27 October 2020 (UTC)

NPOL, as a part of NBIO, is a presumption of notability, or more specifically a rebuttable presumption. If after the article is created, and the election is over and that candidate failed to win and has nothing else to show for notability, that presumption perhaps failed, and as outlined at WP:BEFORE there are steps you can take to verify no other sourcing likely exists and nomination for deletion. You do want to say what you've tried to check and failed to find to make a convincing argument for deletion to show that NPOL was a failed presumption but that is a route, and assured that articles don't stay around forever, but does give the open wiki a chance to work when there is a possibility for expansion. --Masem (t) 20:33, 27 October 2020 (UTC)
North8000, actually NPOL is designed to be more exclusive than GNG, because in any election there will be a metric fuckton of coverage of any candidate, but these are living people and will often have no substantive coverage before or after the election itself. Guy (help! - typo?) 20:48, 27 October 2020 (UTC)
JzG The guidelines explicitly say otherwise, twice over. WP:Notability says that if it passes either it passes either (e.g. GNG) it passes. NPOL (merely) says that candidacy alone does not satisfy notability, but that passing GNG does. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 21:41, 27 October 2020 (UTC)
The GNG itself is also a presumption of notability. If you only have 2 or 3 sources that barely cover the source - enough for a GNG check but never enough to expand after a thorough search of sources per BEFORE, deletion is still possible. --Masem (t) 21:50, 27 October 2020 (UTC)
North8000, I see you are right. Le sigh. Yet another case where WP:LOCALCONSENSUS asserts that we can simply ignore the bare minimum requirement for sourcing of a reliable biography. Guy (help! - typo?) 12:11, 28 October 2020 (UTC)
However, see WP:BIO1E. If there is a lot of coverage, but it is all related to their candidacy in an election, then they might be better discussed in the election article. Otherwise we would end up with a shedload of articles about people who are famous only for losing an election. Black Kite (talk) 12:44, 28 October 2020 (UTC)
Which is also similar to the fact that the GNG required enduring coverage: a candidate that only is coverage for the few months of the election cycle is not sufficiently notable for that purpose (duplicating the BIO1E logic). --Masem (t) 13:24, 28 October 2020 (UTC)
Black Kite But in the big structural picture technically anything at an SNG (e.g. WP:BIO1E) is criteria for bypassing GNG, not requirements for having a separate article. But I think that in the fuzzy Wikipedia system SNG's in practice can and do influence discussions also toward the more stringent side.North8000 (talk) 14:31, 28 October 2020 (UTC)
Rather, the 'stand-alone' argument both overplays the advantages and underplays the risk. History is not served by a whole article that basically says 'Susan is a failed candidate', nor are the "conservative" values of BLP, well served. What serves both history and BLP better is having the short bio info in the context of the election article, leaving the meter for stand-alone articles to people that have settled impact going beyond an election, like perhaps actual lawmakers. And that way, everyone today and throughout history is still able to find all about Susan that is of encyclopedic purpose, and better avoid the downsides of selling the candidate and continuing over-active invasiveness; and, yes, some failed candidates will still get stand-alone-articles, because there are other ways to have substantive notice in this world besides being a candidate (often as a successful, something else, see, eg Mike Espy). -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 21:32, 27 October 2020 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 30 October 2020

Please change {{User:Audacity/centijimbo|3840}} to {{User:Audacity/centijimbo|{{Wikipedia:Centijimbos/counter}}}} so editors won't have to update the count manually in both places. 83.9.213.61 (talk) 16:36, 30 October 2020 (UTC)

Done in Special:Diff/986242353. —⁠andrybak (talk) 17:19, 30 October 2020 (UTC)
Andrybak, given the definition of the centijimbo, surely this is redundant anyway? Guy (help! - typo?) 00:01, 31 October 2020 (UTC)

Interviews with the British Prime Minister

Note: Mark F Anderton blocked as a sockpuppet of Brian K Horton; ChinaDaniel, BDM189 and Jacob Warburton checkuser-blocked.

Is it true that Wikipedia will not publish the opinions of the British Prime Minister if the source is an interview with the Daily Mail?-- User:Mark F Anderton

No, that is not true. It is true that the Daily Mail is not preferred as a source, but there is no absolute ban on using it. There are currently 16,730 links to the main Daily Mail website in Wikipedia (including talk pages, portals, articles, everything).--Jimbo Wales (talk) 16:46, 15 October 2020 (UTC)
Well, without wishing to offend you, how sure are you that it is not true? Might you be mistaken? The quotation below doesn't seem to suggest it would be allowed. -- User:Mark F Anderton
From WP:RSP#Daily Mail The Daily Mail was deprecated in the 2017 RfC, and the decision was reaffirmed in the 2019 RfC. There is consensus that the Daily Mail (including its online version, MailOnline) is generally unreliable, and its use as a reference is generally prohibited, especially when other more reliable sources exist. As a result, the Daily Mail should not be used for determining notability, nor should it be used as a source in articles. PackMecEng (talk) 16:48, 15 October 2020 (UTC)
That seems to be unambiguous. Do not use it as a source in articles. -- User:Mark F Anderton
No, it's generally prohibited and should not be used as a source—on a project with a potentially-superseding rule WP:IAR. If the Daily Mail really ended up as the sole available source for a particular opinion of the Prime Minister, and it did not appear to be fabricating anything on that particular occasion, I guess it could be used as a source. But the editor proposing it would obviously need to present quite alot of justification and context and some editorial consensus might need to develop agreeing with that justification and context. --‿Ꞅtruthious 𝔹andersnatch ͡ |℡| 00:16, 16 October 2020 (UTC)
That wording is stronger than I had remembered, but Mark, I still don't think your blunt summary is quite accurate. The wording 'generally prohibited, especially when other more reliable sources exist' suggests that if the Prime Minister's opinion can only be sourced to the Daily Mail, there is room for a citation in some cases. I would add to that by saying that if the Prime Minister publishes a piece in the Daily Mail that is of encyclopedic significance, which is not at all unlikely, then it would certainly make sense to link to it there. Struthious's characterization of this as being about IAR is something that I do agree with.
The point of Wikipedia policy is not, and should never be, about dislike or politics or anything like that, but about quality. The Mail is a low quality source. This classic example of fake news has been online for 7 years. (Debunked: [11], [12], [13], [14].
Going back to the original inquiry, I do stand by my statement but would need to strengthen it. "No, that is not true. It is true that the Daily Mail is not preferred as a source, but there is no absolute ban on using it" is what I said. In light of the quoted statement, I would now say: "No, that is not true. It is true that the Daily Mail is generally prohibited as a source, but in Wikipedia terminology that does not mean an absolute ban. Exceptions to the general rule can and do exist, per WP:IAR as well as general common sense in specific circumstances."--Jimbo Wales (talk) 07:17, 16 October 2020 (UTC)
I can only say then that I remain unconvinced by your strenghtened statement. My sources seem to be in agreement with what has been said by others here. There would be no exception even in this scenario. And existing links are being removed on that basis.-- User:Mark F Anderton
Still, Jimbo, I'd be cautious to get an editor's hope up on something that all in all is a quite unlikely scenario. In the case an editor thinks a WP:IAR is warranted on a WP:DAILYMAIL issue, matters would often be initially (or would end up being ultimately) discussed at WP:RSN. In the dozens of such discussions I've followed there, I can't remember a single one where the IAR could be upheld. A currently open one can be found here. That's the kind of discussion one would be looking up to, to defend the IAR stance in a particular case going against the Daily Mail RfCs outcome. Zilch chance at success may, theoretically, be a too strong expression, but afaics that's a good approximation of reality. Anyhow, Boris Johnson may be so important, yet may have no other interviews in more reliable sources where he says the same as he does in the Daily Mail (really? ... and would that make the Daily Mail appear trustworthy?), that an exception may be warranted, but an editor wanting to make that case should be prepared to face some fierce (maybe rather: overwhelming) opposition. --Francis Schonken (talk) 08:01, 16 October 2020 (UTC)
Exclusive interviews are the mainstay of British newspaper publishing, especially the more in depth Sunday pieces. For obvious reasons, Johnson chooses the Mail on a regular basis.-- User:Mark F Anderton
Re. "For obvious reasons" – no, I'm not aware of any obvious reasons for that. Re. "Johnson chooses the Mail on a regular basis" – does he? I couldn't tell whether he does. Hence, I know even less whether he'd choose the Mail more regularly than other outlets, or even newspapers in general more often than other media outlets. Re. "Sunday pieces" – perhaps you'd be rather referring to The Mail on Sunday, which, currently, does not fall under WP:DAILYMAIL (there's a RSN discussion about that at WP:RSN#Can we please adapt the Daily Mail consensus to reflect a position on Mail on Sunday?, which has not yet come to a conclusion). So, currently, there does not seem to be a problem to use Boris Johnson's Sunday interviews (subject to what has been said below: Wikipedia is not in the habit of using content of primary sources, such as interviews, on a broad scale, unless when that content has already appeared in other reliable sources, in which case the primary source often becomes redundant too), at least not those published in The Mail on Sunday.
Is there any particular content, from a Boris Johnson interview, which you'd like to see included in Wikipedia, and for which an IAR on Wikipedia's sources-related guidance would be necessary? I mean, theoretical discussions aside, is there an actual issue which you'd like other editors to look at? --Francis Schonken (talk) 15:35, 16 October 2020 (UTC)
No specific examples. The idea it could be true is worrying enough though, no? As below, a metrification example exists, if a practical example is needed for discussion purposes. The obvious reasons are that the Mail is to Johnson what Fox is to Trump. Johnson feels confident enough in his majority that he can and indeed has declined to be interviewed by even the BBC. I do not see any indication there that the Sunday Mail is going to be treated any differently to the Daily Mail. Comments like "the same trash from the same sewer" seem pretty unambiguous, and in clear majority. If this is how Wikipedia is defining a primary source, and I was always taught that a journalist putting pen to paper makes it a secondary source, then the point is moot. I suspect it is not the case, unless the purpose of the ban is to say that person is not a journalist because they work for the Mail, which is not a newspaper. Which is basically the reasoning given in rejecting the metrification example. In which case, the interview is unusable no matter who repeats its contents. In other words, a ban, no exceptions.-- User:Mark F Anderton
Jimbo Wales, this is probably yet another sockpuppet of Brian K Horton (itself a possible sock of MickMacNee).
There are documented instances where the Mail has fabricated interviews. In the case where the Mail interviewed Boris, that would be a primary source anyway, so in order to demonstrate the significance of any particular statement we'd want a secondary source - exactly as we would if the article had been in the FT. Guy (help! - typo?) 11:21, 16 October 2020 (UTC)
This is seemingly regarding this although I can't find the actual diffs. Jimmy's answer is incorrect because the RFC is being used to justify the wholesale removal of the Daily Mail i.e. a de facto ban, not just a "not preferred". Frankly, this seems to be more of a moral crusade against the Mail than anything to do with improving the encyclopedia, since completely uncontroversial content is either being removed [15] [16] or replaced with {{cn}} [17] (all from my watchlist today). SmartSE (talk) 11:04, 16 October 2020 (UTC)
@SmartSE: it's also being used to remove some international newspapers en masse as references from this site. -Darouet (talk) 21:56, 16 October 2020 (UTC)
Jimbo, you need to see the rating table at WP:RS/Perennial, if you haven't already. It has been managed primarily by the same few editors. In real life, it has been taken far more seriously than policy itself, despite it being an unvetted supplement to a guideline. Fox News and The Guardian published the downgrading of The Daily Mail. Fox News was also downgraded - the overseers of the perennial table added 3 sections to Fox News, but look at CNN, MSNBC, etc. which are handled entirely differently. It certainly gives the appearance of bias which is not a good look for Wikipedia. The Fox News "politics & science" downgrade attracted the attention of online media (of course it would). If an editor attempts to correct it for the sake of neutrality, the correction is reverted. Also keep in mind that these sources are being downgraded by editors who don't even watch/read the source. Imagine a New York Times book review by someone who never read the book, and didn't like the title. Does Twitter come to mind? Has that same style of social media mentality come to WP? If so, it's a new trend and it's not a good one for an academic source of "all knowledge". Fox News competitors had a field day with the downgrading of the most watched cable TV news network: CNN, Insider, Wired, this source quoted a WMF spokesperson: A spokesperson for the WikiMedia Foundation, the charitable organization that hosts Wikipedia, explained in part, "The outcome is a guideline for editors to use caution when citing Fox News on two subjects; for other subjects Fox News is generally considered reliable." That is not what happens. Right now, Fox News is providing information about Biden that none of the other networks are providing - after all NYTimes announced their support for Joe Biden, and well, I'm sure the obvious is obvious to you as well. It has hurt the neutrality of our project because this table is being used to skew our articles in favor of a particular POV. I was in the process of preparing something for VPP because it appears to me that WP:RS/P conflicts with WP:RS, WP:V, and WP:NPOV. It would be nice to have your insight. Atsme 💬 📧 13:12, 16 October 2020 (UTC)
Atsme, you keep banging this drum, but you consistently refuse to ac knowledge the fact, documented in multiple academic studies, that there is asymmetric polarisation in the media, due to asymmetric motivation among its consumers. Fox lost ad share when Breitbart was more loyal to Trump, so Fox became more loyal to Trump, and less accurate, and got back its share - and this can be traced very precisely using network analysis.
RSP is not "unvetted", it's a collection of internal notes about past discussions of individual sources in relation to a foundational policy, WP:RS. We have several areas where we record perennial subjects, it saves time and effort and helps with consistent outcomes.
The fact that Fox News is widely watched has exactly nothing to say about its reliability. At no point did a readership in the millions make the National Inquirer anything other than dross. Popular and reliable are two different things, and the Fox decision was based on multiple credibly documented instances of distortion and fabrication - exactly like the Daily Mail. I understand that you don't like this and you dispute the consensus that these fabrications are either fabrications or material, but that's Wikipedia: sometimes consensus goes against you. Guy (help! - typo?) 17:29, 16 October 2020 (UTC)
JzG—do you mean the National Enquirer? When was it influential? In 2020? Bus stop (talk) 17:22, 17 October 2020 (UTC)
Bus stop, I am content with the current consensus re. Fox: it is unreliable for politics and science. We can't magically make climate change denial and conspiracy theories valid by deciding that a source that promotes them is reliable. I am equally opposed to use of Huffington Post, Daily Kos, Truthout, Alternet and the like. I wholeheartedly agree with Masem's comment elsewhere on this page: 90% of our problems would go away if we stopped trying to cover everything according to the current breaking news. We should favour analytical sources over commentary. Guy (help! - typo?) 17:40, 17 October 2020 (UTC)
Fox News in 2020 is a better quality source than CNN, in my opinion. Bus stop (talk) 19:38, 17 October 2020 (UTC)
Here we have The Guardian: "Goodbye civil rights: Amy Coney Barrett's America is a terrifying place".[18] Give me a break. They write: "You’ve got to hand it to the Republicans really; they get things done. They don’t care about being called hypocrites. They don’t care about ignoring Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s dying wish that she not be replaced until after the election." This is silly gibberish. But The Guardian writes it. Bus stop (talk) 19:47, 17 October 2020 (UTC)
To my comment elsewhere, nearly every single major newsource has thinned the line between its news and opinion desk, adopting the concept of opinionated reported that the AP started using "accountability journalism" [19] where they do not feel the need to cover all sides of a conflict equally, and thus insert opinion and bias into their coverage. For them, this helps them to connect to their readers closer and keeps them in business against New Media (web-based and citizen journalism). From an RS stance, that's ok, that bias doesn't weaken the sources for us to pull out objective facts about a current event story, but it does mean that we should not be heavily relying on these sources to be the analysts and commentary for current stories because we know they are creating their own bias in contract to pre-2000 journalism. It's why we should wait for more academic/long-term review coverage to try to provide the more detailed commentary, at in terms of political and ideological bents. Of course, op-ed pages, like the Guardian article above, should still be considered very much different materials from typical news stories and we shouldn't use op-eds to judge the quality of these works. --Masem (t) 23:02, 17 October 2020 (UTC)
Exactly, Masem. They all do it, and just because one network's news bureau televises or publishes all significant views regarding a hot topic does not make them wrong - it makes their coverage thorough, which is what WP is supposed to be doing, not simply mirroring only those sources that agree with a particular POV. No news source is a high quality, peer reviewed scientific journal or equivalent, and all news sources should be used with caution regarding science and medicine. Reporting about political ideologies is opinion journalism, and that is how we should treat all sources across the board, and not single out Fox News because some of their political pundits happen to be conservatives. If that's what we're doing, then it needs to be done the same way across the board for all news sources - liberal and conservative. Don't forget, the only media that was spinning unverifiable speculation about Trump-Russia collusion for the past 4 years were sources that lean left - MSNBC, CNN, CBS & NBC, NYTimes, WaPo whereas the WSJ and Fox News were among the few that actually got the story right. That is why we should not shrink our pool of resources based on political biases, errors that were corrected which is what we expect of all reliable sources, or because they also reported opposing scientific views from scientists. We shouldn't trust any news source for inclusion of scientific material in our articles without corroborating the information while looking for higher quality sources to cite. We certainly don't have to agree with any political pundit, but facts are facts. There will be more facts surfacing in the political arena in the coming weeks. Surely we're not surprised that we're hearing nothing but crickets about the Hunter-Biden scandal from the same left leaning media that couldn't publish enough clickbait about Trump-Russia collusion. What else can we expect when RS like The NYTimes announce their endorsement of Biden for President? Atsme 💬 📧 01:42, 18 October 2020 (UTC)
And all leading scientific journals have also either denounced Trump in the 2020 presidential election and asked voters to not return him to office, or actually endorsed Biden—in some cases, the first political endorsement in the entire history of the journal. As Guy notes, reality has a well-known liberal bias. --‿Ꞅtruthious 𝔹andersnatch ͡ |℡| 12:48, 18 October 2020 (UTC)
@Bus stop:Not only is that Guardian opinion piece not silly gibberish, it's the kind of mild editorial criticism you'd expect to find among the Enemies of the People rather than a European publication like The Guardian: far more than "hypocrites", the combined installations of Gorsuch and Barrett mark senate Republicans as ignoring the part of the constitution which says the President appoints the members of the Supreme Court. It's an unconstitutional seizure of power of one branch of government by a faction of another. Article two specifies the Advice and Consent of the Senate on Presidential appointments, not that "the Senate gets to choose which Presidents appoint Supreme Court Justices and which ones don't."
I hardly expect them to suffer any consequences for an unconstitutional seizure of power, much less any real criticism for it in the supposedly-left mainstream press (hint:the mainstream press is not on the left) but that doesn't change the fact that it's unconstitutional. --‿Ꞅtruthious 𝔹andersnatch ͡ |℡| 12:48, 18 October 2020 (UTC)

The metrification example linked above is timely. Until I saw it with my own eyes, I would never have believed that Johnson telling the Mail in 2019 that post-Brexit, people "should not be prosecuted" for trading in Imperial units, it being their "ancient right" apparently, was somehow irrelevant to Wikipedia. Johnson's choice to put views like this only in the Mail, is political. A deliberate tactic. Whether he means to do it or not, he said it, on the record, to millions of people. He may have even succeeded in his political aims at that time, "getting Brexit done", simply because one half of the electorate were aware these were his views, and the other half may never have even known they were his views, much less had an opportunity to debunk them at a later date when the likely post-Brexit legal framework was clearer. All because someone at Wikipedia decided to ban them as either possible fake news (laughable) or irrelevant (indefensible). The motive of such things is clearly political, even if the people doing it probably don't really understand how politics works. Faithfully documenting the Prime Minister's on the record views is an apolitical act. To not do so, is highly questionable. Wikipedia should probably be carving out a specific exemption out of any future press bans it chooses to implement, for the sole purpose of where it prevents the documenting of on the record views of major political figures. If not, can it credibly explain why it does not?-- User:Mark F Anderton

What ever happened to being the sum of all human knowledge? Should we not be providing all significant views from a NPOV, including our choice of sources, and letting our readers decide for themselves? By censoring, we are being noncompliant with our own PAGs. Did WP adopt some of the views expressed by the social media giants who are controlling information, and "the way billions of us think, act, and live our lives"? I have not had an opportunity to fully investigate the claims about Biden that was recently published in the New York Post (considered generally unreliable at RS/P), but then, so was Buzz Feed (Pew Research Center found BuzzFeed to be the least trusted news source in America per RS/P) when the Trump-Russia dossier was published on WP, despite opposition over the fabricated claims/Russian disinformation, and the spin in our article that gave the dossier & Steele far more credibility than even RS were giving it in the beginning. At least the name was changed to Steele dossier but, depending on one's standards of what constitutes encyclopedic, it has since became a POV, unwieldy article that leaves much to be desired. Now we have Hunter-Biden bombshell that is being handled much differently. It would be nice to think editors have learned an important lesson about RECENTISM as a result of the Russian collusion theories, and all the speculation and fabricated claims that went with it - but that hasn't happened. Very little, if anything, is being handled neutrally across the board. This situation may require some serious thought from the WMF, provided such issues are within their scope. Having said that, let me be clear about my position in that I follow PAGs; therefore, if/when our PAGs are modified to accommodate a left leaning POV in lieu of NPOV, including the processes that determine "reliability of a source", then I will act accordingly, provided the goal continues to be getting the article right. My concern is over the conflicts that are created by trying to achieve accuracy and the sum of all knowledge without strict adherence to NPOV. And the latter is what creates all the dramah at AN/ANI/ArbCom. Just my few coins worth. Atsme 💬 📧 16:39, 16 October 2020 (UTC)
Atsme, 90% of the needless drama is caused by people trying to keep Wikipedia up to the bleeding edge of the news cycle. If we placed an absolute moratorium on primary sources and sources less than one moth old, I think most of the other controls would be unnecessary.
As to the rest, well, reality has a well-known liberal bias. I know that's a joke, but it's funny because it has truthiness. Consider some signature questions that have become "left/right" issues:
  • Did life on earth evolve over billions of years by natural selection?
  • Is the Earth's climate changing due to human activity?
  • Does free access to semi-automatic weapons increase the likelihood of mass shootings?
  • Do tax cuts for the wealthy benefit all via "trickle down"?
The left also has problems with denial of reality (GMOs and vaccines, for example) but not to this extent and not to the point that denial of reality becomes a qualifying criterion and not as a causal factor. COVID has flushed out a whole lot of right wing antivaxers, but I have yet to see any left-wing climate change deniers. Guy (help! - typo?) 20:29, 17 October 2020 (UTC)
Piers Corbyn -- Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 20:32, 17 October 2020 (UTC)
Emir of Wikipedia, you are aware of the fallacy of misleading vividness, I take it? It's worth reading Merchants of Doubt if you're not up to speed on the denial machine. Guy (help! - typo?) 20:31, 18 October 2020 (UTC)
I wouldn't necessary restrict sources from being used for any period of time after publishing, but I certainly would restrict any commentary/etc. from said sources from being included in that period. But I think there's a wholly separate discussion that we need to help tame the "hyperreporting" that has become too common with many big news topics where we are literally reporting day-by-day events in a PROSELINE timeline (like many COVID pages) rather than focusing on the long-term narrative and story that will be actually .. educational? Dealing with commentary in that scheme is part of the problem and not isolated from it. --Masem (t) 23:05, 17 October 2020 (UTC)
+1. Atsme 💬 📧 01:56, 18 October 2020 (UTC)
Masem, one thing that would really improve matters is to reinforce the idea that sources should be reliable, independent and secondary. "X said Y, source, X saying Y" has always been a terrible idea, but is depressingly common if X is well known. Opinions are, after all, like arse holes, in that everybody has one, and merely being famous does not render them any more valid. Ins cience, you look for peer review and replication. That is how it should always be here. Guy (help! - typo?) 20:34, 18 October 2020 (UTC)
Sadly, we tend to lack sourcing that generally summarizes responses and reactions to events and other matters. So we tend to want to construct our own. Which can be good in some cases: like we do this for films based on critics' reviews all the time, but that's because films are one-and-done and aren't ongoing things, making that summary just after the film's out easy to do. And I don't see this being a problem for current events if there's no such source that comes out to summarize --- but that should be done well after the event has calmed down and no longer in the news, after editors can do a fair survey of the sources, including being aware of what exists beyond the RSes to know what may not quite be covered by the limited body of RSes to make sure that we're not just painting a very limited picture, that we're not being overly selective on what subjective elements we pull, etc. Waiting for the event to be calmed down may reveal the event was a bunch of nothing in the larger picture and maybe we don't even need reactions to it. But editors tend to just race in with what they think is important as the event is going on and that's just where we get a lot of problems. There's a clear needed balance. --Masem (t) 21:29, 18 October 2020 (UTC)
I don't think we are censoring. It's really important to understand the distinction between "censorship" and "sound editorial judgment". Refusing a source because we don't like it's political slant would be very bad, and I don't think we do that, and I don't think we should ever do that. Refusing a source because it's notoriously inflammatory and low quality, though. Bang on, we should do that quite vigorously.
Having said that, the proposal that "Wikipedia should probably be carving out a specific exemption out of any future press bans it chooses to implement, for the sole purpose of where it prevents the documenting of on the record views of major political figures" is one that I *almost* agree with. (I think terming refusing to use a notoriously low quality source as a 'press ban' is not really correct.) I think existing policy already handles that - if you really can't find any other source for a clearly encyclopedic claim, then IAR among other things would permit inclusion. As I noted at the outset of this thread, there are over 16,000 links to the Mail here already.
Your specific example, though, is not as compelling as I think you hope. Since no one serious ever suggested that people would be arrested for trading in Imperial units (particularly the beloved pint) the Prime Minister's claim wasn't particularly noteworthy either then or now. It just isn't a very important historical detail. (If I'm mistaken, then surely it will have been widely discussed in numerous sources?)--Jimbo Wales (talk) 17:13, 16 October 2020 (UTC)
Welp, I guess I'm replying to a blocked sockpuppet, but: Johnson's choice to put views like this only in the Mail, is political. A deliberate tactic. Whether he means to do it or not, he said it, on the record, to millions of people.—a rather glaringly important addendum here is that the practical half of the "political" deliberate tactic, which I think we can confidently say he means to do, is plausible deniability: by solely publicizing things through a conduit with a proven record of fabricating articles and interviews, if Johnson gets something gravely wrong or makes a miscalculation, he can ultimately claim "I didn't say that!" if he needs to.
It's like Donald Trump pretending that, although he's got access to more resources than anyone else in the world that could verify every tiny aspect of his every communication—hey, it's just Twitter and it's just his direct-to-the-masses style—so that he can "accidentally" retweet Neo-Nazis and a video with someone shouting "White Power!" in it. (To tie this back to an above discussion in this talk page...) --‿Ꞅtruthious 𝔹andersnatch ͡ |℡| 07:13, 17 October 2020 (UTC)
Does the Mail have a proven record of fabricating the words of a British Prime Minister? That sounds like an extraordinary allegation. At a certain point, people here ought to realise just how ridiculous they sound. If Johnson was ever forced to explain why, for example, his government's post-Brexit policy on Imperial units seems to contradict his 2019 interview, the only response to an answer of the form "Well, I didn't say that, they must have made it up" would frankly be laughter. And all the negative political consequences you would expect from even thinking he could get away with such idiocy. Not to mention that unlike Trump, Johnson has every incentive not to get on the bad side of the Mail, by for example, publicly calling their integrity into question. Johnson would actually appreciate the value in keeping the Mail on side, in the hopes that the government's apparent U-turn doesn't become either their front page headline or the subject of their editorial. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jacob Warburton (talk • contribs) 15:20, 17 October 2020 (UTC)
The indignant and clumsy protests that the Daily Mail must be taken seriously inspire a great deal of laughter here, but y'all just keep showing up anyways; I haven't gotten the impression that Johnson is really dissuaded by laughter very much, either. --‿Ꞅtruthious 𝔹andersnatch ͡ |℡| 17:09, 17 October 2020 (UTC)

Johnson will have likely mentioned it because he undoubtedly remembers the fuss that erupted when people were indeed arrested and taken to court for daring to trade in certain Imperial units after the EU had banned them. The great British pint having always been excepted of course, probably after another huge fuss. This will all be covered in some dusty book somewhere. I wouldn't worry about it, probably not important now. — Preceding unsigned comment added by BDM189 (talk • contribs) 19:35, 16 October 2020 (UTC)

Jimbo Wales, exactly. I initiated the discussion to deprecate Occupy Democrats for exactly that reason: it's dross. Low quality rabble-rousing sources are used mainly because people are trying to cover breaking news and current events, and our policies have always been in tension with that - the whole thing about RS and NPOV mitigates against being a newspaper, not least because that is something we explicitly are not.
Example: there fas fevered speculation in the right-wing media about Google "censoring" the "Great Barrington Declaration". It was already at the top of the Google results by the time I saw the comments ont he talk page, and Google said it just took a while for the brand new website to percolate up the results - because of course it did, the whole point of a clever search algorithm is precisely not to allow some SEO to drop a result in at the top of the list. There's no Google graph yet, either, because it's a new thing invented by some libertarian kooks just last week. By the time RS discussed it at all, the storm was over, but we still had great walls of text about censorship.
Same with the Biden "email scandal". New York Post, Breitbart and the like were so quick off the mark you'd almost think they had been given a couple of weeks of advanced warning to gett heir copy ready, but reliable sources rapidly caught up and pointed out that the entire thing stinks of month-old fish, and the underlying claims were well known to be false by the end of the impeachment hearings.
Doubtless if Joe Biden is elected, there will be breathless bullshit from HuffPo and the like about whoever the GOP run against him next time. And we'll dutifully ignore that as well. Guy (help! - typo?) 17:41, 16 October 2020 (UTC)
I hate pulling out my NOTNEWS soapbox again, but nearly all the issues that I'm seeing in this discussion are related to the fact that our articles on current events include far too much political and media commentary (compared to facts and objective details) of current events for what an encyclopedia should be with articles written for long-term purposes. The complaints about source bias would go away if we weren't so focused on including media commentary on articles as early as we are in these events. (Bad sources, though, like DM, are still necessary to block from any sources). Current news sources are good to documents but as long as we continue to use their commentary as well, we will continue to find editors and outside groups butting heads on RS/P and other things, and rightfully so, because we should not be documenting their commentary unless it is actually part of the story. --Masem (t) 13:34, 17 October 2020 (UTC)
Masem, it may theoretically be possible for me to agree more strongly with this, but only by violating the laws of physics as we know them. Guy (help! - typo?) 17:33, 17 October 2020 (UTC)
Guy, you violate Boyle's Law all the time. [stretch] Atsme 💬 📧 01:56, 18 October 2020 (UTC)
Atsme, you may not be aware that Boyle's Law was based on experiments done by Robert Hooke, who was an "operator" for Boyle at Oxford and well known as the most diligent and precise experimental scientist of his time. Boyle's Law is an under-appreciated piece of the history of science since it's the first known example where expected results were tabulated alongside achieved results.
The fledgling Royal Society had to persuade Boyle to release Hooke to become its curator of experiments. And of course the motto that John Aubrey coined for the Royal Society would not be out of place on Wikipedia: nullius in verba.
All this is very much on point. The scientific revolution saw a complete change in the way the world was viewed. Aristotelians viewed quality of rhetoric as being the arbiter of truth, but the natural philosophers built a thing they called science (from the Latin scientia, knowledge), based on the idea that empirical verifiability was the last word. But the religious have never let go of the idea of belief as Truth™, and when fact (a loan word from law, first applied in its modern meaning by natural philosophers) conflicts with Truth™ they consider fact to be wrong. Hence the wars over creationism in schools, and the exceptionally successful suborning of that by big business to place facts like the link between smoking and cancer, CO2 and climate change, and guns and death, in the context of religious / ideological Truth™, because the facts are financially inconvenient to them - and the left has exactly the same problem with GMO denialists, alt-meddlers and antivaxers.
That's why we should never cite think-tanks as sources, we should never cite tabloids, we should not cite popular media (Fox or MSNBC), and we should stick to analytical sources and in-depth investigative reporting that cites its sources. But in the mean time we have to push back the appalling tendency to try to document every event as the first chyron rolls, because that is a sure-fire way to be wrong a lot of the time. Guy (help! - typo?) 12:23, 18 October 2020 (UTC)
My reference to Boyle's Law was a little Irish humor in that, "You're a gas!" But since you're being somewhat philosophical, I'll indulge...
Archibald Hill ran on the track before breakfast every morning. It was fast and effortless some days but on other days he suffered "stiffness and fatigue”, and that aroused his curiosity. He started exploring his own desire to exercise. Eventually, it made him one of the world's best biophysicists.
He spent months sprinting around a track with colleagues, assessing their intake of oxygen and muscle exhaustion and its relation to stamina. He was looking for the ceiling - the point at which his oxygen consumption had no effect on his running ability. In forecasting his best run times around the track, his predictions were correct. Quoting him, “Our bodies are machines, whose energy expenditures may be closely measured.” His discovery earned him the Nobel Prize for Medicine.
There was just one problem - his calculations were accurate in the lab, but they were useless in forecasting real life competitions. You could take all the laboratory calculations and in theory decide who was best. In a controlled environment, there were times when predictions matched expectations. But the predictions weren’t consistent in actual races, particularly long, stressful, high-profile races. In some ways, that didn't make sense because subpar athletes could actually beat the top athletes. Uhm...think of it as high profile career politicians getting beat by a developer despite what the experts predicted.
When Hill was questioned about the usefulness of his calculations, he said, “To tell you the truth, we don't do it because it's helpful, but because it's amusing.”[stretch]. Humans have limits, and Hill noticed them before anyone else. He discovered athletic success isn't about what you're capable of physically. In the context of risk & reward, it’s what one is capable of at any given moment, and what one’s brain is willing to endure. Human hearts and souls are what influence success in the real world in ways you can never imagine in the classroom or by reading books. Hill referred to it as 'moral considerations'.
My point being, that even when it all looks perfect on paper, be it the result of human trials or analysis, it doesn’t always work that way in real life. That’s what experience and the human condition teaches us. Your textbook knowledge is amazing, Guy - in fact it's brilliant - but predictions and one's beliefs don't always align with real life...and that is reality. I ran the media race for 35+ years, and I know the reality of what goes on behind the scenes, not what you read about - I know it like the back of my hand, and I see things that the average person doesn't see in a televised program. I tried to teach my kids, but they'd tell me to hush because I ruined the movie or program. That's why, as a media skeptic, (not unlike you being a science skeptic), I choose to corroborate and validate material and do not readily accept whatever the news media produces/publishes, especially in today's clickbait environment. Back in the day, it was rather difficult to get a story past the bureau chief/station manager/director of programming when we were doing analogue broadcasting via public airways, and/or printing our rags using ink & 4-color processing. The story better be right - the recording better be what they expected, or you lost your job. I know it well because I was an executive producer, and I was also a publisher, and I fired people. It is not like that today - our news is even more instantaneous than when I was doing field production for CNN Headline News. I saw it coming. Journalists today are opinion journalists. In the US, the laws changed to accommodate propaganda, and so did the process of recording, editing and televising/streaming. The rules have all but disappeared - unless you're under the thumb of the tech giants like FB, Twitter and YouTube or you have to protect a broadcast license, etc. Only the broadcast networks have to exercise far more caution because of FCC regulations - they could lose their broadcast license if they break the rules - but cable and pay-for programming are not subjected to those same rules. It's complicated. Atsme 💬 📧 21:09, 18 October 2020 (UTC)
Atsme, real life and objective reality are very often not the same thing. Ask any creationist. Guy (help! - typo?) 23:04, 18 October 2020 (UTC)
And the emperor paraded proudly down the street wearing his new clothes. Atsme 💬 📧 15:00, 19 October 2020 (UTC)
Atsme, rude. Guy (help! - typo?) 20:51, 21 October 2020 (UTC)
OMG, why is that rude, Guy? Atsme 💬 📧 21:20, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

@JzG: re: "RSP is not "unvetted", it's a collection of internal notes about past discussions of individual sources in relation to a foundational policy, WP:RS." Wikipedia:Reliable sources is not a "foundational policy", it is a content guideline. Compare and contrast with WP:Civility, which as a policy which is one of the "five pillars" is a "foundational policy". Yet in spite of that editors can shout F*CK without consequences, because, "not censored", while the guideline forces an editor to get a consensus before they can cite the Mail and allows anyone expressing views supporting the Mail to have their microphone cut off on this page. – wbm1058 (talk) 20:35, 16 October 2020 (UTC)

Wbm1058, it descends from V and NPOV though and clarifies what V means in context. It's existed since 2005, so longer than I have been on Wikipedia [20]. I'm not aware it has ever been seirously challenged, and I am not aware of many other pages that have a similar history of consensus.
And no, not anyone expressing views supporting the Mail, just sockpuppets of a cuirrently active WP:LTA who is globally banned and globally blocked under multiple accounts. Guy (help! - typo?) 21:30, 16 October 2020 (UTC)
@Wbm1058: it is indeed incredible that content guidelines have created very strong obstacles to citing major papers, while core policies enforcing civility (and suggesting professionalism, I might add) are usually not enforced. -Darouet (talk) 21:53, 16 October 2020 (UTC)
@Darouet: Not really very incredible because citing "major" sources that fabricate articles and interviews has an effect—and a significant effect at that—on the end product, the freely-distributable encyclopedia, whereas civility, while I think it's inarguably a virtue, is at best an instrumental good in the pursuit of the other goals and the overall enterprise; even in WP:5P4 it's expressed as a "should" whereas the other pillars are stated descriptively rather than normatively. So it makes sense to me that—particularly since it's a fairly plastic and subjective concept—our systemic quality control on civility would have higher tolerance for variation.
But of course, the place we happen to be discussing this is JW's user talk page, so I'd defer to him as slightly more authoritative than myself. --‿Ꞅtruthious 𝔹andersnatch ͡ |℡| 07:13, 17 October 2020 (UTC)

You editors who are all raging at the plight of the Daily Mail—do you guys ever ask the Mail to not publish fake news, or issue retractions if they accidentally do so, or at least silently take down things like the seven-year fib JW pointed out? Because that might be more effective than simply begging at Wikipedia for there to be no consequences, citation-wise. Or not, I guess. --‿Ꞅtruthious 𝔹andersnatch ͡ |℡| 17:09, 17 October 2020 (UTC)

Struthious Bandersnatch, the fixation on the Daily Mail in any case misses a fundamental point: we should not be using any tabloids. I know the general public bases their opinions on what they read in the tabloid press but you only have to look at the world around you to realise how that's working out. Guy (help! - typo?) 20:01, 17 October 2020 (UTC)
@Struthious Bandersnatch and JzG: I hate tabloids, both IRL and as sources on Wikipedia. I used a tabloid source here once, because they had a journalist embedded with a military unit and so provided the only coverage of some of that unit's engagements. If the usage of the source had been or were to be questioned by another editor, I'd defend the usage in that instance for the reason already stated above, but I would also understand the objection: tabloids are terrible sources. Most experienced editors and news consumers understand that if you were to ever make a case for deprecation, the best place to start would be The Daily Mail. But in the words of Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., "Hard cases make bad law." Because we no longer merely hold The Daily Mail repugnant from an editorial point of view but have gone further to administratively prohibit its use via deprecation, we are now deprecating many non-tabloid newspapers in highly politicized discussions. The old system of editorial discussion and judgement worked well: the new system of deprecating newspapers does not. -Darouet (talk) 15:43, 20 October 2020 (UTC)
Darouet, thirty years ago that might have made sense. Not now. Academic research shows that the right wing media bubble has become more partisan, more isolated, more homogeneous and less accurate, sharply so, due to an asymmetric polarising effect brought about by feedback loops. While mainstream media has a feedback loop that self-corrects, losing reputation and thus share if they are inaccurate and fail to self-correct, partisan media has a positive feedback effect where they lose share by being insufficiently loyal to the tribe. The rise of Breitbart, Daily Caller and the rest has effectively isolated the right-wing media from disconfirming fact, with opinion taken as Truth™. If you don't believe me, go and watch Shep Smith's show on Fox tomorrow.
We had a perfect example this week. The New York Post published a story so suspicious that their reporter refused to put his name to it; this was then picked up by the right-wing media, with Fox, the Washington Examiner and numerous other outlets repeating it as if it were true. Mainstream media, meanwhile, points out that the core claim (that Biden had Shokin fired to protect Burisma) has been known to be false since the impeachment hearings, and actually its falsity is evident from contemporaneous reports, most of which don't credit Biden at all but note a broad coalition for his removal including the EU, IMF, World Bank, and bipartisan support in the US (including Ron Johnson who seems right now to be trying to Benghazi it).
Now you could write this down as "us and them", but there's contemporaneous reporting that shows the claims to be false in the Financial Times from 2016, for example. And that's without the additional context that the FBI have been warning for a year that Giuliani is being used as a conduit by Russian intelligence, who tried a similar trick with Macron in 2016. But the conservative media is treating it as the triumhant return tour of Ben Ghazi and the Buttery Males.
As of this moment the Daily Mail is repeating Glann Greenwald, Rudy Giuliani, Donald Trump, John Ratcliffe and other conservative pundits, but searching for Shokin over the last week on dailymail.co.uk finds only one story that challenges the conservative narrative (out of dozens), and even that frames it as Biden's DENIAL, in all-caps, and contetualises it very heavily as "well, some other folks thought the same thing, but all the same, BURISMA!!! eleventy.
That's not responsible journalism. It's propaganda. Responsible journalism looks like the New York Times piece which tracked down the reporter on the Post and found out why he would not put his name on it. Guy (help! - typo?) 20:05, 20 October 2020 (UTC)
​Small media-personality-musical-chairs note: Shepard Smith's show is now on CNBC, if I'm not mistaken. --‿Ꞅtruthious 𝔹andersnatch ͡ |℡| 17:49, 21 October 2020 (UTC)
Struthious Bandersnatch, very much my point. He was eminently watchable. Chris Wallace is pretty much the last significant respectable journalist at Fox. Guy (help! - typo?) 20:53, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

An international or Anglo-American encyclopedia in the context of conflict?

@Jimbo Wales: I'm not sure you're aware of the extent to which "deprecation" at WP:RSPSOURCES has dramatically transformed the manner in which we're now handling major international newspapers. Just a few years ago, sourcing issues were discussed at WP:RSN effectively and on a case-by-case basis: for instance RT's reliability was repeatedly judged conditional on the article and topic in question 2013, 2014, 2014, 2015. Now, in the context of what some international observers describe as a "new Cold War" between the US, the UK and both China [21][22] and Russia [23], specific context no longer matters, and attribution has been replaced by exclusion: an extraordinary policy for a scholarly enterprise. Two official news sources of Russia, one of the world's three nuclear superpowers, are deprecated on the English-language Wikipedia [24][25], and a third contains a warning [26]. Official news sources for China, the world's most populous country and the second of the three nuclear superpowers, are now either deprecated [27] or contain a warning [28]. China's nationalistic and hawkish Global Times was recently deprecated [29] even though the main objection to it by editors was the political speech contained in its op-eds, which are carefully detailed in this excellent review [30] by Foreign Policy magazine. FP summarizes: Since 2009, there has also been an English edition that shares editorial content with the Chinese flagship. It has earned attention — and notoriety — in China and abroad for its hawkish editorials and has been labeled by Western observers as “China’s Fox News.” Whereas we might previously have urged attribution of views (always a positive when describing the political positions of state newspapers, world leaders, or intelligence agencies), now the official print and broadcast voices of strategic rivals of the Anglo-American orbit are being shut out altogether. This is a sharp departure from previous practice on this site, and from the idea that Wikipedia is an international encyclopedia.

It's worthwhile to note that it's easy to remedy this problem while keeping WP:RSPSOURCES, by including categories for international papers that have partial or full state control, or nationalistic editorial lines, and should therefore be used with attribution. Furthermore, editors should be encouraged to think in beyond the binary categories of 1 (reliable) or 4 (deprecated): it should come as no surprise that this is difficult for our species in the context of political conflict. -Darouet (talk) 21:49, 16 October 2020 (UTC)

I apologize @Jimbo Wales: I know you're a busy guy, but I do think the trend to deprecate the official newspapers of two of the world's three nuclear-armed superpowers will have a lasting and detrimental impact both inside and outside of our international encyclopedia. -Darouet (talk) 15:49, 20 October 2020 (UTC)
@Darouet: Do you seriously mourn the deprecation, earlier this year, of RT as something that will have a lasting and detrimental impact on our noble endeavor? Took long enough, I'd say: its editor-in-chief literally has an encrypted direct hard line to the Kremlin on her desk:

...on her desk sits an old yellow telephone, a government landline, the sort with no dial pad, the sort usually seen in the offices of senior Russian officials. It is her secure connection, she admits, directly to the Kremlin.

As the RfC discussion you link to points out, the problem is hardly just with their op-eds. Have you seen the crap they try to pull on social media with their Ruptly brand? I've seen people passing Ruptly feeds around without even realizing they're mainlining pure Russian government propaganda. --‿Ꞅtruthious 𝔹andersnatch ͡ |℡| 17:49, 21 October 2020 (UTC)
@Struthious Bandersnatch: with no prejudice against you as an editor here, I don't think your comment even begins to answer my concern, and I'd rather hear Jimbo Wales' view. -Darouet (talk) 19:33, 21 October 2020 (UTC)
@Struthious Bandersnatch: As far as I can tell, Ruptly just posts raw videos of generally newsworthy events. -Thucydides411 (talk) 20:24, 27 October 2020 (UTC)
@Thucydides411: They post what are presented as raw videos (hopefully that's true—I mean, it is a subsidiary of RT we're talking about here) and livestreams, to accumulate and obtain control of eyeballs during an ongoing news event, of what their crews walk around and point their cameras at. As we've seen with, for example, the videos disseminated through U.S. media and used by elected officials to justify dissolving the ACORN voter registration organization a decade ago, or in the “Cassette Scandal” in which audio recordings brought down the government of Leonid Kuchma, the second post-Soviet president of Ukraine, simply because a recording is genuine does not mean that it isn't propaganda, that it's journalistic, or that it's free from editorial influence (reality television, anyone?)
I would say offhand that Ruptly should not be assumed to inherently have the same issues as RT, just because it's a subsidiary brand, but that if it's used as a source for Wikipedia the nature of the cited material and the alleged support in the source video should be the subject of very close scrutiny. --‿Ꞅtruthious 𝔹andersnatch ͡ |℡| 02:01, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

@Wbm1058, Darouet, and Atsme: The genius of Wikipedia is that they get to mark their own homework, up to and including reviewing internal decisions for the presence of bias. In their own words, "if the Daily Mail was going to sue Wikipedia, they would have done so long ago". in response to a fairly convincing internal complaint that printing "The Daily Mail has been noted for copyright violations" is a gross distortion of the facts, and a blatant misuse of sources. Nothing will be done, the complaint will be ignored, much like all previous complaints on that page. What more needs to be said? The potential for bias is clear and obvious. There is nothing Jimmy Wales or anyone else here can realistically say to deny it. I don't know why anyone who sees these things as clear and obvious breaches of basic ethics, even bother to engage in good faith. Do they like being made fools of?— Preceding unsigned comment added by ChinaDaniel (talk • contribs) 12:49, October 17, 2020 (UTC)

That's only correct if you consider "they" to include the entirety of Wikipedia, and that's a lot of people with a lot of different political opinions. Guy (help! - typo?) 20:03, 17 October 2020 (UTC)
@Struthious Bandersnatch: leaving room for a possible Jimbo comment above, I'd be happy to discuss this issue with you here. I don't know how many governments on earth have close connections with their national presses, but I'm surprised that you think this is anomalous. I'm guessing you haven't read Hugh Wilford's excellent book "The Mighty Wurlitzer," published by Harvard University Press and documenting this very same phenomenon with some care in the US. In fact the very RT detail that you reference has its perfect analogue, as CBS had the same arrangement with the director of the CIA:

Many of the United States’s best-known newspapers cooperated with the CIA as a matter of policy. Arthur Hays Sulzberger, publisher of the New York Times, was a good friend of Allen Dulles and signed a secrecy agreement with the Agency, although he delegated liaison duties to subordinates so as to give himself plausible deniability. Under the terms of this arrangement, the Times provided at least ten CIA officers with cover as reporters or clerical staff in its foreign bureauss... Another eminent news executive on friendly terms with Dulless was William S. Paley of the Columbia Broadcasting System, whose news president, Sig Mickelson (later chief of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty), was in such constant telephone contact with CIA headquarters that, tired of leaving his offices to use a payphone, he installed a private line that bypassed the CBS switchboard... A third mechanism for disseminating CIA-approved stories was the syndicated news service, with the Agency using existing organizations such as Associated Press and United Press International for this purpose...

My point is that we should anticipate that such relationships exist, and while that should influence our editorial policy, we are no longer acting as academics if we do more than describe geopolitical rivalries, and actually work to make Wikipedia a participant in them. Again, according to the metric you're proposing, all the official news services of Russia and China, two of the world's nuclear superpowers and between them accounting for over 1.5 billion people, cannot be used as sources on Wikipedia. Is that appropriate? What will be the long term consequences of that policy? -Darouet (talk) 20:04, 21 October 2020 (UTC)
@Darouet: You're talking about the McCarthyist-era U.S. press—a few years following when, for example, they simply didn't ever depict as in poor health the U.S. president who shortly thereafter died in office in the middle of WWII? Yeah, sure, deprecate them to varying degrees as well, as befits the source.
Some sources, like Fox News, at least put in the leg work to maintain some level of plausible journalistic integrity despite their ideological stance. Others like the Daily Mail and RT do not.
Yes, it's appropriate to prefer secondary reporting from reliable sources that read the press releases and government white papers of Russia, China, and other states which can't get their shit together to front minimally non-mendacious puppet journalism outfits, rather than have lax standards and accept inaccuracy and deception for the sake of more direct inclusion of freshly steaming state propaganda which in reality ought to be contraindicated for encyclopedia sourcing, or whatever you're arguing for. The long term consequences will be a better encyclopedia, whose readers if we are lucky will be able to anticipate it before their head of state drops dead in office. No guarantees, sadly. --‿Ꞅtruthious 𝔹andersnatch ͡ |℡| 23:14, 21 October 2020 (UTC)
@Struthious Bandersnatch: Major American news outlets cultivate contacts in government, and often run important stories by the government. When the New York Times was considering revealing George W. Bush's warrantless wiretapping program, they first discussed their story with the administration. On the Bush administration's request, they then indefinitely withheld the story. They only published a year later, when the reporter who had uncovered the story (James Risen) told the NY Times that he planned to publish it in his own book. But before publishing the story, the NY Times again negotiated with the Bush administration about how the story would be presented. Of course, in 2002-2003, we all remember how the newspaper of record covered itself in glory with its reporting on Iraqi WMD. The NY Times, and many other major American news outlets, have strong connections with the US government, and both what they decide to cover and the accuracy of their coverage has been influenced by that relationship in some very high-impact stories. This does not mean that we should deprecate the NY Times, but it does mean that we should not narrow down the list of allowable sources to those that reside in states allied with the United States - which is what we appear to be moving towards. Some of the recent decisions are very concerning, such as the downgrading of TASS and Xinhua, which contain much more detailed reporting on their respective regions than Western media, and which are generally reliable. -Thucydides411 (talk) 20:45, 27 October 2020 (UTC)
@Thucydides411: Certainly, I do not object to sources if they really actually are generally reliable. But we're talking about organizations operating in media environments descended from circumstances such as, for example, in Russia during the Soviet Union and briefly afterwards, one of the main news sources of the nation was literally actually published by the Communist Party, some individuals and organizations were even required to subscribe to it by law, in its title it was billed as Russian: Правда, romanized: Pravda, lit. 'Truth', it had no interest whatsoever in what we would regard as reliability, verifiability, or even pretending to have a neutral point of view, direct pervasive and invasive state censorship touched everything down to erasing individual people by doctoring images for political purposes, and this was all perfectly conventional and run-of-the-mill journalism and news reporting.
Unfortunately, that kind of thing has had real and lasting effects on practices, expectations, and the role of the press in society in many parts of the world. In twenty-first-century Russia journalist are constantly assassinated by the government and the same government simply takes over newspaper and television stations whenever it feels like it, undoubtedly leading to self-censorship on the part of the remaining nominally-independent sources (on top of the regular explicit government censorship, the non-explicit government censorship, and the fact that the whole situation is so tense and threatening that diktats explicitly accompanied by claims that there's no banning or censorship can't really be taken seriously as authorizing anything—“please leave the children in peace!”).
No, Western media outlets are hardly beyond criticism, but there is a real and substantial difference here which breathlessly talking about nuclear weapons does not do away with. --‿Ꞅtruthious 𝔹andersnatch ͡ |℡| 02:01, 28 October 2020 (UTC)
I recall the Australian federal police raiding ABC recently, because ABC had run articles about the Australian government's actions in Afghanistan: [31]. I also recall the British government threatening to close down the Guardian over its publications about spying, and then sending in intelligence agents to oversee the Guardian's (semi-forced) destruction of hard drives containing leaked documents detailing spying by GCHQ and the NSA: [32]. There are matters of degree, of course, but the governments of "approved" countries can and do exert heavy influence on media outlets under their jurisdiction. The Australian government's raid on ABC will make any Australian journalist think twice before publishing Australian government secrets in the future. The answer to these problems is not to impose blanket bans on media from entire countries. The trend to deprecate media specifically from a certain set of countries viewed as antagonistic to the US will cause systemic bias in Wikipedia.
If we were to have this same discussion in 2002-2003, I'm certain that much of the community would be arguing that we should disregard outlets that went against the general view of major media in the US (including most of the outlets we consider highly reliable) - namely, that Iraq almost certainly possessed WMD and was hindering inspections. Foreign media from "adversarial" states that questioned this narrative would be pooh-poohed.
We need a world-wide perspective. If we're at the point where usage of South China Morning Post has to be justified, and in which many editors are arguing for downgrading its reporting, then something is seriously wrong. Frankly, I would trust SCMP's reporting on China any day of the week above reporting from leading American newspapers. SCMP has a very good track record, and is much more connected to China, and covers a much wider range of stories than, say, the NY Times. Yet, because SCMP is in Hong Kong, it's under suspicion now. I gave TASS and Xinhua as examples, above, because they are sources that in most circumstances are highly reliable (they're wire services that contain mostly straight factual reporting, similar to Reuters/AP/AFP). The move to restrict their usage is mostly based on political arguments about which countries are good or bad, rather than whether or not these particular news outlets have a history of fabrication. -Thucydides411 (talk) 10:49, 28 October 2020 (UTC)
@Thucydides411: Yes, jingoism is bad and detracts from the credibility of a source on war reporting—and moreover is an even more salient moral issue than your average journalistic/editorial decision because a news organization's war correspondents are risking their lives to obtain the coverage, but the organization is diluting the value of that coverage with their half-assed and sycophantic editorial stances.
I was never particularly thrilled by the idea of government secrecy laws and I am even less impressed with them in 2020, where the default assumption is that a government can spy on its own citizens as much as it wants—perhaps with the extremely inadequate fig leaf of a “private” company acting as a cutout—and foreign adversaries are pretty much expected to know everything already, and the secrecy laws seem primarily designed for keeping the nation's own citizens in the dark. Still, though, just not the same thing as government assassination of journalists and the rest.
Hey, if the SCMP is trustworthy, I'm content to take your word on it; I haven't done an in-depth evaluation myself but the handful of articles I've cited or verified have certainly appeared much more journalistic, objective, and credible than something like the Global Times or Ta Kung Pao, despite the latter's venerable status as an HK and Chinese institution.
Xinhua I similarly am not aware of any specific complaints about, and I like the fact that they and their subsidiaries don't seem to screw around with too many complicated technological schemes to try to prevent you from downloading streamed video to file as most Western news outfits, and many ones in places such as India or Singapore or Japan, try to do. TASS I'm a bit more skeptical of—not because of anything having to do with Russia, actually, but because I've seen them serve as a not-particularly-inquisitive conduit for American officials visiting Russia to make announcements through. That's not their wheelhouse, though, and you're right that they're on the wire service end of the spectrum anyway, so they really shouldn't be faulted for it; and while they had some problems in the twentieth century, I haven't taken a thorough look in this century yet.
Our interaction in this talk page section, though, did not begin with SCMP, Xinhua, and TASS, nor is the rest of the discussion all about them; it began with Ruptly, as a social-media-focused subsidiary of RT. Stuff like the constant government assassination of journalists in some places, direct government censorship and editorial influence, and other pressures that even result in self-censorship, are a real and material difference. And while a source should not be deprecated by national association with those things alone, nor should indirect influence elsewhere from less repressive, more ostensibly freedom-of-the-press-oriented governments be ignored, these genuine differences should be taken into account, especially when there's documented evidence of failures in reliability, verifiability, or other aspects of journalistic integrity. --‿Ꞅtruthious 𝔹andersnatch ͡ |℡| 01:37, 29 October 2020 (UTC)
Ruptly just posts raw videos, as I said before. I can't think of any circumstances in which a raw video with zero commentary would be used as a reference on Wikipedia, so there's no point in discussing Ruptly. Russia has a large number of very good journalistic outlets, and it would be a real problem if Wikipedia policy were to deprecate them on purely theoretical grounds. However, I think that this is the direction we are headed in. I have argued with editors who think we should deprecate virtually every Chinese source, simply because they're in China. I know of at least a few high quality Chinese sources that would be ruled out in this way (such as Caixin and Sixth Tone). Even sources that appear to be mistrusted because of their editorials, such as Global Times, still do reliable reporting on all sorts of mundane subjects. A lot of information about China is simply not covered in Western media - one recent example I was involved in was the Changxing railway station, which was nominated for deletion after the Global Times article that covers it was removed. This trend does not just affect sources from countries like China and Russia. Several months ago, I inserted information into the article Julian Assange about a public letter written on his behalf by a large number of highly prominent politicians, journalists and cultural figures in Germany, including a former Vice-Chancellor (and head of one of the two major parties), the most famous investigative reporter in Germany, and several members of the Bundestag. Some editors were extremely dismissive of this story, because it came from Germany. One admin, who shall go unnamed here, even referred to "Assange cultists" and "useful idiots" in the RfC on including mention of the letter. Another editor compared the prominent Germans to Eddie the Eagle. We're really at risk of entering an Anglo-American bubble here. The condescending attitude towards sources from outside the Anglo-American sphere and the undifferentiated deprecation of sources from "adversarial" (from the point of view of the US, of course) countries like Russia and China is a problem. -Thucydides411 (talk) 22:20, 29 October 2020 (UTC)
@Thucydides411: Well, I would unquestionably oppose blocking all Chinese or all Russian sources—that's one thing we can certainly agree on.
Is the problem with the Global Times really just with their editorials, though? Just to pick this story off the the front page they're showing me right now, the proof it offers of Guo Wengui being a criminal isn't links to other coverage of their own on him or details of any domestic Chinese prosecution of him, but simply the mention that he's got Interpol red notices out against him, without also mentioning the many problems with the use of Interpol red notices documented in our article on them.
Guo seems like quite the shady guy to me based on other stuff I know, though I'm unaware of the basis for the kidnapping and rape charges our article on him mentions (cited to this Metro article and a paywalled WSJ article; the Global Times article does not mention kidnapping or rape and seems to imply it's all about corruption), and he's being held up in that article as an example of the US becoming a the haven of criminals as a Chinese official puts it, but this seems like a rather weak and non-journalistic indictment. My impression has very much been that the Global Times's problems run deeper than their editorials. --‿Ꞅtruthious 𝔹andersnatch ͡ |℡| 02:36, 30 October 2020 (UTC)
The article doesn't call Guo Wengui a "criminal", but rather a "fugitive". The "haven of criminals" quote is from a Chinese official, and it is attributed in the article. The tone of this article is a bit aggressive and nationalistic, and I would say that at some points it borders on editorial, but it also doesn't fabricate any information (as far as I can see). If there were a Wikipedia article on this subject, it would be important to include references that present the views of Chinese officials, which we could include with proper attribution. If we stick to major American outlets, there is a significant risk that we will not hear those views, but rather that the article will be slanted in the other direction, towards the views of American officials. American media has its own problems with bias when it comes to "adversaries" of the United States, and I would not automatically assume that outlets like the NY Times or Washington Post are presenting all aspects of a story, or even something approaching a complete picture. -Thucydides411 (talk) 16:00, 30 October 2020 (UTC)
Ah... but the obvious meaning is that he's a criminal fugitive, or some other form of lawbreaker so extreme he has sought to physically escape the reach of the law, right? We know from our own article that he's been charged with criminal offenses; we don't have to take some kind of tabula rasa attitude here. Like they're not trying to imply he's a fashion fugitive. (Though actually, that guy was a criminal anyways.) The Global Times not even committing to identifying him as a criminal doesn't move them higher on the journalistic integrity scale here, it moves them lower.
They're indicting Guo entirely with vague handwavy characterizations and the Interpol red notice, not through any information on any domestic Chinese legal process, and not with links to their own coverage in English or Chinese. And doing a site-scoped Google search about Guo I can see why they don't link to other coverage, because none of it sounds very journalistic either.
Up above Darouet characterizes the Global Times with a Foreign Policy magazine quote as being like the “Fox News” of China... but that doesn't clear them of anything; in fact even if accurate it puts them within one standard deviation of being an unreliable source. As I point out above, Fox's non-opinion news coverage does stuff like propose Obama did a “terrorist fist jab” and constantly mis-labels elected Republicans they don't like as Democrats, and their opinion shows do stuff like fake video. (clip on YouTube; I shudder to think what they've probably already done by now with deepfakes.)
I mean, an incomplete picture is one thing, but this is pretty stark. I've agreed that we shouldn't have only American sources—that doesn't really resemble anything I'm saying. I am confounded that you find the Global Times article unremarkable, and it makes me wonder if we're somehow talking about different things. You seem to be making very non-specific arguments about what type of information Wikipedia should seek out in sources, and expecting those arguments to overcome all specific concerns with individual sources. I don't think Wikipedia needs to be directly plugged into that sort of thing though: stepping one level back, where another Western or Chinese source or any international RS reads it and vets it and reports on it with context, seems just fine to me. --‿Ꞅtruthious 𝔹andersnatch ͡ |℡| 13:45, 31 October 2020 (UTC)

Is Wikipedia at risk of becoming a part of Orwell's "Outer Party" as being suggested on MSM?

Hi, Jimbo,

There has been a couple of censorship assertions on Fox about Wikipedia's Hunter Biden bio being Hunter Biden "locked". What I think is more thought proviking is a short segment on a Fox interview, beginning at 39:05, with a reference to media now becoming something resembling Orwell's Outer Party. What do you think about that? Specifically in terms of Wikipedia content. Willingtohandlethelikelytruth (talk) 15:35, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

I think it's complete nonsense, of course.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 16:09, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

Jimbo - Hunter Biden is clearly not written from a WP:NPOV. To summarize the situation with Hunter Biden at this point by saying "He and his father have been the subjects of debunked right-wing conspiracy theories pushed by Donald Trump and his allies concerning Biden business dealings and anti-corruption efforts in Ukraine." is just ludicrous. Tvaughan1 (talk) 06:44, 23 October 2020 (UTC)

I'm interested to hear more. Could you be more specific? (And I want to caution everyone that a detailed debate about Hunter Biden's article should take place on the talk page of the article.) I'm just curious to hear from Tvaughan1 a proposal for a more neutral summary of the situation.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 07:01, 23 October 2020 (UTC)
Thanks for your response. A group of Wikipedia editors (including a number of administrators) has been using every trick in the WP book to keep any negative information out of Hunter Biden, or spin it in positive way for many months. This has all played out on the talk page, which has been archived many times. It's also been the subject of a number of news articles on bias at Wikipedia. That has been amplified in recent days by a news blackout on the laptop by Twitter, Facebook, Google, and most "main stream" news organizations. So the Barbara Streisand effect has kicked into overdrive. Wikipedia shouldn't be a party to that kind of censorship. Months ago I proposed replacing "debunked right-wing conspiracy theories pushed by Donald Trump and his allies" with (if I remember correctly) "concerns of a possible conflict-of-interest", but that was shot down numerous times. The reference to "right-wing conspiracy theories" is a fallacious strawman argument, designed to sweep everything under the rug. Of course these conspiracy theories aren't enumerated in the summary - we're just told... don't worry about it - it's been debunked. At this point I would settle for my original proposal, but obviously with the laptop and all of the incriminating emails and texts, stronger language describing the concerns of his business dealings with foreign oligarchs in adversarial nations could certainly be warranted. Also notice that nowhere in the article is the laptop, any of the evidence that it contains, or any of the controversy surrounding it (Senate investigation, etc.) mentioned.Tvaughan1 (talk) 08:08, 23 October 2020 (UTC)
Tvaughan1: For the record, yesterday on the Hunter Biden talk page, you asserted “Kim Strassel is perhaps the best investigative journalist in the world” and “The Wall St. Journal is publishing relevant, notable facts which are corroborated by multiple sources,” but that was before the WSJ news division caught up to the story:

On Thursday evening Kimberly Strassel, a Trump-booster for the Wall Street Journal opinion pages, published a column claiming that text messages from a business partner of Hunter Biden “raise questions” about Joe Biden’s involvement in a deal with a Chinese company. Hours later, the news side of the Wall Street Journal shot down some of those questions. [33]

Also note this from WSJ:

In July 2020, more than 280 WSJ journalists and Dow Jones staff members wrote a letter to new publisher Almar Latour to criticize the opinion pages' "lack of fact-checking and transparency, and its apparent disregard for evidence," adding, "opinion articles often make assertions that are contradicted by WSJ reporting." The editorial board responded that its opinion pages “won’t wilt under cancel-culture pressure” and that the objective of the editorial content is to be independent of the Journal's news content and offer alternative views to "the uniform progressive views that dominate nearly all of today’s media." The board’s response did not address issues regarding fact-checking that had been raised in the letter.

soibangla (talk) 18:20, 23 October 2020 (UTC)
Jimbo Wales, actually the debate is at Biden–Ukraine conspiracy theory (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) (which I think is possibly mistitled).
We're pretty clear here: the debunked part is the claim that Joe Biden had Viktor Shokin fired to protect Burisma. That was definitively refuted during the impeachment inquiry. The bipartisan US policy of pushing for reform of the prosecutor's office was backed by the IMF, World Bank and the EU, Biden's influence was not accorded any significance by contemporaneous sources, and it's generally agreed that because Shokin wasn't investigating Burisma - or anyone else - his firing would if anything have increased the risk.
I've been arguing for much more clarity about this because there are actually several elements including:
  • The known false claim that Biden intervened in Ukraine to protect Burisma
  • The known fact that the FBI warned of Russian disinformation via Giuliani last year ([34])
  • The known fact that Ukraine asked the FBI to help them investigate a hack of Burisma ([35])
  • The lack of evidence supporting the claim that Joe Biden profited from China,([36]) but Trump probably did ([37])
  • The highly questionable narrative of the laptop n([38])
  • The lack of credibility of those promoting the claim (Giuliani, a known conduit for Russian disinformation and associate of Russian agent Andrii Derkach, and Bannon, currently under indictment for fraud)
The laptop business is, as I am sure you understand, as fishy as hell. The FBI informed the White House last year that Rudy Giuliani is being used as a conduit by Russian intelligence, and there were reports in January that the GRU had hacked Burisma. The entire operation reminds everyone of the "Fancy Bear" operation against Macron in 2017, and the provenance of the release, trailed in advance by Giuliani, makes it very plain that it's a political operation deliberately timed as an "October surprise" - the laptop was apparently in the hands of the FBI late last year, and the only recent indictments that look even vaguely relevant are the Russian hackers from the Macron case and others. Fox turned down the story, and multiple journalists at the New York Post refused to put their names to it. So reliable sources are all treating it as deeply suspicious.
The right-wing media bubble is hyping it relentlessly in opinion shows but, notably, not really in hard news segments. And that's where we struggle: how to represent the right-wing narrative without giving undue weight to something that is very clearly a politically motivated story designed to resurrect a disproven claim and make some kind of assertion of corruption within the Biden family that comes across as stunningly hypocritical given what is not being said about Trump's family and financial dealings.
People bring sources for the purported factual basis of the claims, but in every case these are opinion sources by conservatives (e.g. authors for National Review). It's very clear that there is a deliberate disinformation operation underway, and the right is incensed that we're not buying it at any level. Are we pushing back too hard? Maybe. But the stakes are high, and reliable sources are very careful not to give any appearance of legitimacy, e.g. characterizing statements by the DNI as "carefully worded". We're struggling with what to do about Ratcliffe's statement, since the FBI have refused to confirm it (again in a "carefully worded" statement) and mainstream sources note that Ratcliffe is a Trump loyalist and has been part of a deliberate effort to withhold security information from Congressional Democrats.
The section title is telling: "MSM". There is a widespread and false perception that mainstream is the opposite of conservative. It's not. The opposite of conservative is liberal, the opposite of mainstream is fringe. `
Hunter Biden (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) is a WP:BLP, obviously. There's been a campaign to Pizzagate Hunter Biden, which we have resisted for good and obvious reasons, but if there was credible evidence to back any of the claims I am pretty sure we'd include them. We include the drug abuse and alcoholism, after all, and Burisma, and China. And Joe Biden discussed these in the first debate. The distinction is between provable, neutrally sourced negative information, deliberate politically motivated smears, and how to represent smears without imbuing them with spurious legitimacy. We should also remember that Hunter Biden is not really a public figure. Don Jr. and Eric are out on the campaign trail, and have been since the outset. Hunter Biden is not a surrogate, he is not part of the Biden campaign team. Guy (help! - typo?) 08:37, 23 October 2020 (UTC)
Wow, thank you for the mind-meld level of detail summarizing the article situation, JzG!
This has undoubtedly been pointed out a million times on Wikipedia talk pages but it's a pet peeve of mine, Tvaughan1: a straw man, in rhetoric, is a caricatured artificially-weak version of your opponent's argument that you make yourself and then easily knock down.
But for critics to propose that any right-wing “coverage” of these things are baseless conspiracy theories is not a simulacrum of right-wing sources' own arguments those critics are trying to knock down, it's an actual characterization meant sincerely. For example as The Volokh Conspiracy blog at the libertarian magazine Reason pointed out when this all started last week that any outlet which claims to have access to a trove of Hunter Biden's personal emails should, along with allegedly incriminating and embarrassing emails, have access to a great many innocuous emails which could be confirmed via copies in the possession of senders and recipients. But to my knowledge no such confirmation has yet been produced by the many right-wing venues claiming to have such access and peddling this story. --‿Ꞅtruthious 𝔹andersnatch ͡ |℡| 16:25, 23 October 2020 (UTC)
To me, this is where part of the problem of where we've let the coverage of right-leaning topics "degrade" (dismissing the neutral, impartial approach that we're supposed to use in favor of simply following the critical tone taken by the media) is what lends to problems with articles like the Hunter Biden non-story. JzG's summary of what we should be covering and all the policy concerns is on-the-nose: we need to document to a level of what the right has claimed (document the controversy) without judgement. But we've created such a dichotomy of editors here , those that stand perhaps too strongly behind RSes as to not hear anything else, and those that have felt the right's voices have been ignored by WP and thus demand certain right-leaning sources be included, that we get into all these editing conflicts. WP is not good at covering these as they are breaking, but unfortunately, this being a key story of the election cycle, its a topic we need to cover, and we need better practices about how to write towards these with the right balance of coverage and tone to identify the facts but nothing more than that. --Masem (t) 16:48, 23 October 2020 (UTC)
Masem, in fact there are now secondary sources on the right-wing reporting that we can use, the problem mainly is in the vacuum between the lie starting it's world tour and the truth completing the tying of its boots - though as with many conspiracy theories, the narrative morphs constantly to work around refutation. Guy (help! - typo?) 16:58, 23 October 2020 (UTC)
Now we have them, but again, in the midst while this was headline news two weeks ago, we didn't. Goes back to how badly we do when it comes to covering these type of controversial stories when they are breaking news. --Masem (t) 17:52, 23 October 2020 (UTC)
Masem, $DEITY yes. We should have a policy on that or something. Guy (help! - typo?) 17:57, 23 October 2020 (UTC)
I'm surprised a search for the term "Tony Bobulinski" turns up nothing on Wikipedia. The name is certainly in the news.[39] Bus stop (talk) 18:13, 23 October 2020 (UTC)
[40]--MONGO (talk) 18:27, 23 October 2020 (UTC)--MONGO (talk) 18:27, 23 October 2020 (UTC)
OMG this is hilarious! I mean not really because of the Nazism and white supremacy and international authoritarian attempts to undermine democracy with the cooperation of elected officials of the United States of America and sundry other nations of the free world, but I hadn't been following this—the whole Biden-got-money-from-China red herring Trump was trying to spin at the debate last night is based on the word of this Bobulinski clown and a guy who is in prison in China?
Even if there was the faintest trace of validity to it, although Bus stop's own link explicitly says Bobulinski's presence in the audience was the latest episode in a multiyear effort by Trump and his allies to use Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings as a cudgel against his father's campaign, notes that Trump referenced Bobulinski's news conference during the debate, in between lobbing false accusations that Joe Biden took money from various foreign countries, that this wasn't even when Biden was in the White House and that Trump's foreign business activities in the White House are the ones actually under a lawsuit for violating the constitution, and MONGO's link goes even further to show it's pure bullshit—even were there any tiny smidgeon of substance to it Trump of course pissed in the swimming pool by publicly asking China for help in the election so no one can take seriously an accusation from the CEO of a state-run company of China who is in the custody of the Chinese government.
That Bobulinski news conference video, though... worth a watch if you have eight minutes of your life you don't need. “The hawk is Hunter Biden's favorite animal! Ergo GUILTY CRIMINAL CHINA GUILTY GUILTY! I'm not taking any questions!” Perhaps MONGO is offering it for addition to the America's Funniest Home Videos article. --‿Ꞅtruthious 𝔹andersnatch ͡ |℡| 19:44, 23 October 2020 (UTC)
I have to say that, in my experience, the frequency with which people who come to Wikipedia and try to make nutty claims are undone by the sources they themselves present just goes to show the validity and value of our sourcing policies and guidelines—even extending to their secondary effects influencing talk page behavior. --‿Ꞅtruthious 𝔹andersnatch ͡ |℡| 20:17, 23 October 2020 (UTC)
Eh, Mongo seems a lot more on point than what every this wall of text is supposed to be. Not to be rude but I really do not know what you are trying to say here. PackMecEng (talk) 20:31, 23 October 2020 (UTC)
All I did was provide a link to the C-Span video of the claimant's remarks. I have no idea why this Struthious Bandersnatch editor is attacking me for that.--MONGO (talk) 20:40, 23 October 2020 (UTC)
@MONGO: My apologies, you put a bare link in there to C-SPAN without providing any context—I actually thought you also found it funny and were posting it as a refutation to Bus stop's apparent insinuation that Wikipedia should have encyclopedic content covering a person because he gave one eight-minute press conference twenty-four hours ago and was a guest at a presidential debate. Sorry you felt attacked, I thought I was agreeing with you. --‿Ꞅtruthious 𝔹andersnatch ͡ |℡| 21:15, 23 October 2020 (UTC)
I didn't think an article should be devoted to "Tony Bobulinski". I was just surprised the name did not appear in any article. I determined this by using Wikipedia's own search function. Bus stop (talk) 21:32, 23 October 2020 (UTC)
I posted the C-Span link only so anyone could see the statement. I have no idea if the claims have any veracity or not. Supposedly Bobulinski is to interview with the FBI today and then subsequently with Senator(s). Thats all I know and am indifferent as to whether the statement given by Bobulinski, who you refer to as a "clown", be incorporated into article space.--MONGO (talk) 21:35, 23 October 2020 (UTC)
I wasn't surprised that we didn't have an article on Tony Bobulinski. It looks like he's only become notable due to the events of the last 24 hours and nothing else. I'm sure as an adult man involved in business, Hunter Biden has many people who could call themselves his business partner. So far, we only have Bobulinski's claims to go on. The Vanity Fair article on this is entitled Trump's Presidential Debate Surprise: Inviting a Hunter Biden Associate No One's Ever Heard Of Or Cares About. Liz Read! Talk! 23:53, 23 October 2020 (UTC)
No one is suggesting he should have his own article? PackMecEng (talk) 23:56, 23 October 2020 (UTC)
Well, there are lingering doubts. And...questions remain. https://i.imgur.com/FEJj3te.png soibangla (talk) 23:59, 23 October 2020 (UTC)
@MONGO: In the absence of any context to your and Bus stop's links, which readers such as myself would consequently have to click on to figure out what you were talking about, I saw fit to provide my own; which I related to this discussion and other recent ones here on JW's talk page. I definitely appreciate you linking to that C-SPAN video as I think it provides vital illumination when combined with the Washington Post quotes I brought in, despite your indifference to your own fine work.
I too hope that the claims made by this very serious person can be examined for veracity one day, like whether the hawk is really Hunter Biden's favorite animal and whether Joe Biden really has billions of dollars to invest in a Chinese joint venture.
I'm especially curious about the latter point given that I leafed through several of Biden's tax returns during the primaries by following links from his Wikipedia article and they did not show anything like billionaire-level wealth; but curiously those links don't seem to be in the current version of the article and there's less content about his wealth in general than I seem to recall.
Also notably, the tax returns I looked at did not indicate ownership of “many houses” as President Trump claimed during the debate last night, but just two.
I do not think that WP:5P2 and Wikipedia's elaborating policies and guidelines about neutrality mean that we have to be blind to manipulation—particularly WP:NOTNEWS-related manipulation insisting urgent encyclopedic coverage is necessary right before an election of a guy whose notability, again, seems to be that he gave one eight-minute press conference slightly more than twenty-four hours ago and was a guest at a presidential debate, and who would also appear to explicitly be trying to garner headlines for a specific Senate Republican “report” of last month.
As far as I can tell that, er, publication is also not mentioned on Wikipedia, not even in the Biden–Ukraine conspiracy theory article (though it's difficult to search for); it was debunked by Snopes in a lengthy article. To pick just one highlight, the “report” alleges involvement of Hunter Biden in human trafficking based on a single New York Post piece which they (the Senate Republicans) represent as extensive public reporting.
PackMecEng evidently prefers bare links to quotes and context; but I would say that it takes a lot of truth to respond to a lot of bullshit. (In the C-SPAN video's case, the bullshit being from this Bobulinski guy and not from my dear colleague MONGO, of course.) Cheers, ‿Ꞅtruthious 𝔹andersnatch ͡ |℡| 01:18, 24 October 2020 (UTC)
I do not know, I am only seeing bullshit from you. But perhaps I am just not understanding you well. At this point, I am just seeing you randomly call people all kinds of nasty things with no support for any of it. It gets tiring. PackMecEng (talk) 03:06, 24 October 2020 (UTC)
Right, no support, you award me no points. And you just do not know what [I am] trying to say, no matter how hard you work your thinker on it. Poor you, you must be so tired. --‿Ꞅtruthious 𝔹andersnatch ͡ |℡| 04:32, 24 October 2020 (UTC)
See what I mean? Gibberish. Nonsensical gibberish. PackMecEng (talk) 15:50, 24 October 2020 (UTC)
Aphasia and sudden confusion of consciousness, speech or ability to understand problems may be signs of a stroke. I worry for your well-being, PackMecEng. Please take care of yourself. --‿Ꞅtruthious 𝔹andersnatch ͡ |℡| 16:42, 24 October 2020 (UTC)

Not so sure you have that right. From what I can tell you are suggesting I have had a stroke or some such nonsense and that is why no one can make sense of the rants you keep posting. Given that I am not a lone is having a hard time making sense of the points you are trying to make and I see everyone else just fine I am left to conclude you have it backwards my friend. Please work on that. Thanks! PackMecEng (talk) 19:22, 24 October 2020 (UTC)

I'm afraid I don't have the clinical rehabilitative experience to help someone in your situation; indeed no one may, no matter how much they “work on that”. You're displaying what's called a “semantic access deficit.” Though it is an encouraging sign that you were suddenly able to grasp your predicament on some level in this most recent comment. But given that
  1. once I take material from a reliable source and quote it, you become unable to understand it, and
  2. in addition to the disturbed linguistic comprehension capacity, you demonstrate an inability to organize facts into articulate responses of your own, but instead experience short outbursts of featureless and contextless coprolalia, helpless to express your own opinions or make your own arguments on any issue
—I think we may be looking at a complex etiology, possibly with involvement of multiple brain regions. There's the fatigue to account for as well, of course.
Don't worry, though, there are still many options open in life, even to someone with such severe limitations and functional deficits as yourself. You could pursue a career as a mechanical engineer, for example. --‿Ꞅtruthious 𝔹andersnatch ͡ |℡| 20:58, 24 October 2020 (UTC)
Struthious Bandersnatch—in such references as "a complex etiology, possibly with involvement of multiple brain regions" you are straying far from our recommended focus on content. Bus stop (talk) 21:14, 24 October 2020 (UTC)
This seems like a clear IAR exception, though—I mean, this isn't about focusing on an editor's conduct. Our beloved colleague PackMecEng has had the courage to openly discuss her devastating, life-altering cognitive problems and we must take her at her word and tend to her needs. PackMecEng's well-being is paramount. --‿Ꞅtruthious 𝔹andersnatch ͡ |℡| 21:33, 24 October 2020 (UTC)
@Bus stop: You have to remember, when you have no argument all you can do it make personal attacks like they do. Now I asked them to improve themselves and overcome this deficiency, rather than continuing to post nonsensical rants, but they just cannot help themselves it seems. I would just ignore them per WP:DFTT. PackMecEng (talk) 21:45, 24 October 2020 (UTC)
I'm getting serious User:RTG vibes from User:Struthious Bandersnatch. Coincidentally, Bandersnatch returned to being active the same month that RTG was SBANned by the community. Mr rnddude (talk) 16:11, 29 October 2020 (UTC)
@Mr rnddude: Glancing at search hits relating to that account, this timing claim doesn't even appear to be true, and I don't think I have a “vegan agenda” since I've been known to put bacon on a veggie burger... but by all means, if you feel a disturbance in the force around me, feel free to open a sock investigation. --‿Ꞅtruthious 𝔹andersnatch ͡ |℡| 21:51, 29 October 2020 (UTC)
Yeah, that's my recollection of RTG: writes gibberish. I didn't mention a 'vegan agenda', and 'search hits' are not what I looked at. RTG's block log states he was banned indefinitely on 8 August 2020, and your xtools! logs[41] indicate you became an active editor again from August 2020. August 2020 = August 2020 so 'the same month' checks out. The only reason I checked either of those things is because I read your comments and thought hmm... you remind me of RTG. Though, to be fair to RTG, I don't recall him going around suggesting editors have mental health problems. Mr rnddude (talk) 22:48, 29 October 2020 (UTC)
​Oh my, we're blocking people for gibberish now? I certainly hope that this self-identified affliction does not continue to spread, then. Particularly not, considering the title of this talk page section, in this new doublethink version where a message is construed as gibberish—meant in the most non-NPA way, I'm sure—but every single part of it still simultaneously makes enough sense to respond to. It's starting to remind me of Langford's basilisks too.
Like I said—if your concerns are genuine, instead of just more chaff that saves the effort of having to write anything of substance, put a little elbow grease into it and go ahead and open a sock investigation. Unless you have also suddenly forgotten how to do things like that, I guess. An alleged sock puppet that's been around nearly three times as many years as your own account would be quite the big game, no? Then you could bring me up at WP:COCKTAIL parties and on the next occasion you want to casually make discrediting implications that someone is a sockpuppet in a discussion they're participating in.
(OMG, I had no idea the “Mixed Drinks Task Force” existed at one point... wish I'd joined before it was shut down. Normally I have no truck with user boxes or accumulating little badges and gold stars but I'd proudly display something related to that if I'd earned it.) --‿Ꞅtruthious 𝔹andersnatch ͡ |℡| 02:36, 30 October 2020 (UTC)
I'll address paragraph 2, since it's meaningful. I don't care to discredit you. So, 'hear-ye, hear-ye, let Struthious' words stand or fall on their own merit'. As to the rest, I've never opened an SPI myself. 99% of the socks I've dealt with were ducks and the other 1% I'd dealt with by e-mailing a check-user with evidence or posting it to an already active SPI. I commented for others to provide input. Either, 'no, you're imagining things' or 'mmm... yeah, I can see how they appear similar'. If I'm the only person who sees your comments and thinks of RTG, then you're probably not RTG. Clear?
As to double think, to quote Noam Chomsky: colourless green ideas sleep furiously. The words have meaning, but the phrase does not. Same for ... and I don't think I have a "vegan agenda" since I've been known to put bacon on a veggie burger .... Mr rnddude (talk) 15:26, 30 October 2020 (UTC)
Hmm. Unless you're making a joke about the concept of veggie burgers being incoherent (in which case, bravissimo) I don't think you're quite using “colorless green ideas sleep furiously” as Chomsky intended. Either way, though, ㊙️. --‿Ꞅtruthious 𝔹andersnatch ͡ |℡| 13:45, 31 October 2020 (UTC)
We ignore all rules when a clear path forward can be seen to improve an article, though the meaning of "improve" is certainly debatable, but I don't think we ignore all rules in interpersonal relations, as doing so would degrade what is supposed to be an intellectual environment. Bus stop (talk) 21:45, 24 October 2020 (UTC)

Wikipedia has certainly acquired a bias on US political topics which has led to / is leading to Wikipedia having a reputation for such and being considered to be a poor source on such articles. A bunch of factors have led to this. A part of it is succumbing to simple "head count" in the various discussions, or failure of policies / guidelines to prevent that from happening. A few are historical weaknesses, for example, a definition of "reliable source" which does not mean actually reliable with respect to expertise and objectivity on the topic at hand. Also policies have become outdated in this arena and have not adapted to major media having transitioned from "reporting" to "advocacy" in this area, and not recognizing that the most common form of bias is what gets / does not get covered. North8000 (talk) 13:44, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

  • Wikipedia itself cannot by definition be biased, and if its content has any bias, that is because it has acquired the biases of those that edit it. However, I disagree that there is an inbuilt bias here as regards to American politics; what I generally see is those that have gained their information from external sources that are themselves biased complaining that Wikipedia does not agree with their worldview. You can see this quite clearly when people who are quite convinced that whichever currently-popular wacky conspiracy theory is true try to insert them as facts into our articles. Black Kite (talk) 14:00, 26 October 2020 (UTC)
    • I think we have a systemic bias that US political stories get far too much detailed WP coverage compared to nearly any other topic in the news today, and that's a combination of external media being overly focused on that, WP editors being overly focused on that, a result of the culture war that editors feel this is one of the few ways they can fight against misinformation (which is important, no question), and a lack of enforcing/promoting NOT#NEWS and other relevant policies so that editors are less focused on writing in every detail and more on the overall stories for these articles (not my term but "hyperreporting" describes the situation perfectly). In terms of the "spin" bias on these articles there is something to say that editors have tended to adapt Wikivoice to sound close to the press voice in many current articles, which affects tone, and I've argued before we shouldn't be rushing to include as much commentary as we tend to do. But broadly and in general, our articles on these current events do appropriately give the right WEIGHT to viewpoints as per major RSes on the topic and summarizing but otherwise dismissing the minor views (particularly those that are trying to push misinformation) so that part is actually generally working as intended (but its not perfect and can be improved). --Masem (t) 14:11, 26 October 2020 (UTC)
      Masem, once again, it might theoretically be possible for me to agree more with this, but probably not without violating the laws of physics. Guy (help! - typo?) 19:15, 26 October 2020 (UTC)
North8000, {{citation needed}} - and remember that Breitbart is not a reliable source.
Here's what the Financial Times has to say about the Biden laptop: Nothing. It's not a credible story, so they aren't covering it. Do not mistake quantity of noise for quality of coverage. It's notable that the WSJ's news team have flatly contradicted the editorial commentary talking up "laptopgate". Why should we be the ones to draw a false equivalence that credible sources do not? Guy (help! - typo?) 14:06, 26 October 2020 (UTC)
I was talking overall; I wasn't commenting on the laptop issue.....since there is a news blackout on covering it, I honestly know very little about it. :-) Either way, good factual coverage of it would bring out the reality of it, whatever that may be. Which is a part of my point.North8000 (talk) 14:24, 26 October 2020 (UTC)
North8000, there is no news blackout. There is plenty of commentary in mainstream sources to the effect that it's as sketchy as hell. And we reflect that good, factual coverage, and we are under relentless assault from people who use terms like "Russia hoax", so clearly get their "information" exclusively from wihtin the right-wing media bubble. Guy (help! - typo?) 14:35, 26 October 2020 (UTC)
So you are saying that the media did not cover the specifics of it but instead gave their opinion on it. :-) Would be somewhat off topic, but we need to realize that characterizations and opinions by political opponents is not information on the topic, it is info on what political opponents said, and we need to cover the topic as well. North8000 (talk) 17:05, 26 October 2020 (UTC)
Well, this is actually where the high-quality RS did as much as they could to do journalistic investigation to evaluate the basis of the claim to find nothing that could corroborate with it, and even found more information that the story was planted from questionable agents. That's very comparable to how Watergate broke, and the example of how the media doing its job as the fourth branch of gov't to speak. It would be one thing if they just said "nah, that can't be true" and didn't do any digging, but they did the legwork here. --Masem (t) 17:14, 26 October 2020 (UTC)
I'm not knowledgeable on it because the media I read & listen to gave it zero coverage. But are there not simple matters of fact that need to be covered? North8000 (talk) 18:18, 26 October 2020 (UTC)
North8000, I congratulate you on your excellent choice of media. No coverage at all is almost certainly exactly the correct amount, according to its objective merit. This is what the French media did with Fancy Bear's 2017 Macron hack-and-leak attack, and it worked perfectly. Guy (help! - typo?) 19:07, 26 October 2020 (UTC)
Unfortunately, with the laptop story, that itself wasn't a story, but the fact that the media opted not to covered in the depth that certain people wanted it triggered actual newsworthy stories (eg more attention to modifying Section 230 for example), so we have to have minimal coverage of what the laptop story was and how it was readily disproven, before moving on to its impacts elsewhere. It is similar to Pizzagate - the story itself is nothing to document to any depth but what happened after the fact was newsworthy (to the point of encyclopedic topic). it's just as soon as we have that brief discussion to establish the disproven story, we have outside editors wanting to have the full blown accounts rattled off, that makes the problem. --Masem (t) 19:31, 26 October 2020 (UTC)
Masem, as the FT pointed out, this is largely the point of a hack-and-leak operation: to make as much noise as possible before the facts can be established. In this case the failure to break out of the conservative media bubble at all has created an unusual disconnect which is itself noteworthy (though maybe not notable). It will be interesting to see how historical sources view this period. Guy (help! - typo?) 20:46, 26 October 2020 (UTC)
As much as it was all hogwash, the "Biden laptop" story is unfortunately as relevant to this election as ibogaine was to the 1972 election. People will hear something about each incident (e.g. "What is this about Senator Muskie abusing illegal drugs?" -- "What is this about a laptop the Biden campaign lost?") & want to know the complete story. While both stories proved to be nothing more than a bizarre interlude, nonetheless each sheds light on an aspect of the respective campaign: in the earlier incident, it was a warning of just how much credibility any random journalist has on the story, while the latter case is an example of the dirty tricks pulled in American elections. (Although an incredibly poorly executed one.) -- llywrch (talk) 21:02, 26 October 2020 (UTC)
And those the laptop story is mostly all myth, it is of DUE to at least document the facts of the controversy around it. And this becomes a practical study of the art - knowing where to document from an encyclopedia standpoint, enough to explain the fake story to be understood to its importance without going into the unnecessary details (some which tread on BLP), and at the same time providing enough of the reponse that says why the story was considered fake but avoiding too much excessive commentary against those trying to push the story. There is a careful balancing act here not to incorpoate too much off the BS but also not to be overly critical in WP's voice in covering it. --Masem (t) 21:35, 26 October 2020 (UTC)
Masem, absolutely. And that's why I have pushed to be really clear what is known to be false, and what is merely known to be dubious. We have excellent sources for both now. Guy (help! - typo?) 08:30, 27 October 2020 (UTC)
And of course the alleged Biden stuff is no where near as important to the election as this during-election Wikipedia coverage of Mitt Romney's dog getting a ride on the roof of his car in 1983 Mitt Romney dog incident.  :-) North8000 (talk) 21:49, 26 October 2020 (UTC)
Since you say you don't know anything about the alleged Biden stuff under discussion (and I guess haven't read all of the above comments?): I'd agree with your apparent point about the questionable notability of the incident you link to.
But the most salient objection to the alleged Biden stuff does not concern its notability, rather that it's disinformation being promoted by an individual identified by the US Intelligence Community as a conduit for Russian intelligence operations (Giuliani) similar to those carried out against France during their 2017 presidential election, as Guy mentions. --‿Ꞅtruthious 𝔹andersnatch ͡ |℡| 05:28, 27 October 2020 (UTC)
I subsequently read up on this notable story elsewhere. The connection of the laptop to Biden so far sounds pretty weak. Too bad I couldn't learn about this notable topic in Wikipedia. North8000 (talk) 12:24, 27 October 2020 (UTC)
North8000, but you can. It's documented in great detail at Biden–Ukraine conspiracy theory‎. Guy (help! - typo?) 15:24, 27 October 2020 (UTC)
@North8000: Notwithstanding the link Guy provides, in which the word “laptop” appears fifteen times currently, you must be able to see that there's at least a little bit of incongruousness in bemoaning something along the lines of, “I wish I could read more disinformation about this immediately upcoming election on Wikipedia, instead of just established encyclopedic facts about insufficiently notable incidents!”
You seem to be tip-toeing around the fact that it's disinformation. Again—the topic is actually covered here, but doesn't it actually seem better practice, anyways, to err on the side of not covering something that is not only WP:NOTNEWS, but is active disinformation, in the moment? The first thing you said in this talk page section was to express concern about Wikipedia's reputation. --‿Ꞅtruthious 𝔹andersnatch ͡ |℡| 03:43, 28 October 2020 (UTC)
Struthious Bandersnatch, I think that's unfair. North8000 is obviously not focused on this content area and the amount of noise on the talk page is such that I can understand anyone walking away without finding the "conspiracy" article. Guy (help! - typo?) 18:31, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

I don't want to focus too much on just this one incident, especially one where when I first mentioned it I immediately noted that I was not knowledgeable on it. In general, if something is factual, a hoax, mis-information, theory (supported or unsupported), an assertion, etc. there are ways to cover it as such. In this case, as was pointed out, it was covered in a place that I would not have thought to look and which didn't come up under a wiki-search. I haven't read the whole article which was pointed out, but as a sidebar, another common POV issue is to mis-label something as a "conspiracy theory". Most of the time when this label is used, there is little or no "conspiracy" allegation, it is more of a straightforward allegation (un-proven or proven) or set of such allegations with little or no allegation of there being a conspiracy. Wrong-doing or disdained behavior is common, having a conspiracy behind it is not. So seeing a "conspiracy" behind too many things is a common flaky behavior, and a common way to deprecate a whistler blower or accuser is to mislabel mere allegations of wrong-doing / disdained behavior as being allegations of a (straw man)conspiracy. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 16:39, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

Aye, as a chaotic neutral editor, this new world order has drained my stamina, willpower and intelligence substantially this year. Even worse than trying to plainly state a conspiracy theory simply needs a theory about a conspiracy to meet its objective definition, I've learned, is calling the theory about Trump's crooks and Putin's goons meeting in secret to plot nonstop alleged electoral crime a "conspiracy theory". Even though I'm pro-nature, pro-abortion, pro-minority, pro-weed and pro-Carter, guys like Guy think I get "information" from the same wifebeating, crossburning, Budswilling, squirrelshooting, windowlicking bubble my actual enemies do. So yeah. I don't need to tell you things are bad. InedibleHulk (talk) 00:08, 29 October 2020 (UTC)
@North8000:​ I agree that seeing too many conspiracies is a thing we should be on guard against, even though we document countless actual conspiracies throughout the ages here at Wikipedia. Sorry if I got a bit prickly. --‿Ꞅtruthious 𝔹andersnatch ͡ |℡| 01:37, 29 October 2020 (UTC)
InedibleHulk, me? I don't know what you're talking about, but drop a link on my talk page if you like. Guy (help! - typo?) 08:53, 29 October 2020 (UTC)
My main point is that if an allegation has little or no component of alleging a conspiracy, it should not be mis-labelled as allegation of a conspiracy, and that mis-labelling it such is pejorative and POV. North8000 (talk) 13:35, 29 October 2020 (UTC)
North8000, the core allegation is a conspiracy theory: a fake conspiracy to protect Burisma, that is assessed by independent sources to be flatly false. The article title has not developed to incorporate the subsequent disinformation operation that has been coatracked onto this - but only because nobody has yet suggested a new title that doesn't risk implying validity where none exists. Guy (help! - typo?) 15:31, 29 October 2020 (UTC)
Guy, Just a few questions that I'm not sure about. Was Shokin soliciting and getting bribes from Burisma to not prosecute before Hunter Biden joined Burisma? Did eliminating Shokin after HB joined Burisma solve this problem for Burisma? Were there any prosecutions of Burisma while HB was with them? After HB left Burisma, did prosecutions start up again? (For the last one I think there was a $6 million sting in the news.) Bob K31416 (talk) 19:00, 29 October 2020 (UTC)
I'm sure you can find those answers on your own, but we are lucky to have editors who are brave enough to ask the hard questions. MastCell Talk 19:54, 29 October 2020 (UTC)
Was Shokin soliciting and getting bribes from Burisma to not prosecute before Hunter Biden joined Burisma: I'm not aware of any evidence of this. For the most part the grift doesn't seem to have intersected with the oligarchs, who were friendly with Poroshenko. But I don't read Ukrainian, so there might be local reporting that deals with this, just nothing I've seen in English. Did eliminating Shokin after HB joined Burisma solve this problem for Burisma?: No. Poroshenko held it off - he hired another buddy - and a year after Zelensky's election they are still having trouble getting to Mykola Zlochevsky ([42]), but it absolutely hasn't gone away. Were there any prosecutions of Burisma while HB was with them? Not relevant since the issue with Shokin was that he wasn't investigating multiple oligarchs - the link was not Hunter Biden, it was oligarchs cosy with Poroshenko. After HB left Burisma, did prosecutions start up again No. But there is pressure now to look into Zlochevsky [43]. There are money laundering and fraud allegations against him dating back to early 2014 which failed due to failure of the Ukrainian prosecutors' office to turn over documents, something about which US ambassador Pyatt complained at the time. Don't be seduced by the post hoc fallacy. Guy (help! - typo?) 23:54, 29 October 2020 (UTC)
Thanks. Bob K31416 (talk) 14:34, 31 October 2020 (UTC)
@JzG: Guy, that may be a good example. The putative alleged conspiracy (according to the article) was an explicit quid-pro-quo on Biden influence peddling. But there's nothing sourced in that article that someone specifically alleged that. And, the contents of the article pretty covered everything about the Biden's and Ukraine (including all of the factual material) under the "conspiracy theory" title. North8000 (talk) 19:45, 29 October 2020 (UTC)
North8000, that's largely an artifact of a Bannonite "flood the zone with shit" approach. They have nothing on Joe so are going for guilt-by-association, because there is no way Donald Trump would engage in nepotism, self-dealing, dodgy foreign business deals, concealed profits or cosy deals with corrupt foreigners. Unless there's a Y in the day. Guy (help! - typo?) 13:37, 30 October 2020 (UTC)
I don't understand. My point was mostly structural related to the title. Perhaps the analogy that I just posted at the article that you referred to would clarify my point. North8000 (talk) 13:42, 30 October 2020 (UTC)

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