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Jimbo welcomes your comments and updates – he has an open door policy. He holds the founder's seat on the Wikimedia Foundation's Board of Trustees. The three trustees elected as community representatives until July 2015 are SJ, Phoebe, and Raystorm. The Wikimedia Foundation Senior Community Advocate is Maggie Dennis.

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Let's discuss Articles for Creation

For reference: Misplaced Pages talk:Articles for creation/Society of American Historians And another example, an entirely different case:

It is my sense that in both of these cases, if the article had been created, it would have survived an AfD quite easily. So why is AfC following what appear to be much higher standards for inclusion than AfD? The inconsistency strikes me as deeply problematic.

Note that in addition to the inconsistency between AfC and AfD there is the deeper inconsistency of coverage of what anyone would admit are quite obscure and unimportant bits of pop culture cruft (which I don't mind, on the premise that as long as it is well-referenced and is what people want to write about, that's fine) while simultaneously rejecting an article about an academic society which is clearly notable.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 17:36, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

Likely because recent pop-culture cruft tends to be documented with many easily-accessible web-based sources (which Misplaced Pages tends to bias toward), while the two articles you link would rely more heavily on either older print sources or items generated by the organization itself. If it can't be quickly verified, it's easier to reject as not notable. Intothatdarkness 19:47, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

I proposed an AfC review/AfD merge recently - the people there didn't go for it, but if someone wants to reopen the idea you have my vote. Wnt (talk) 19:55, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

Do we have any studies about AfC and whether or not it delivers on its promise of being a friendlier process than classic New Page Patrol? (To me as an almost outside observer, it seems that AfC is gentler in terms of not hitting new articles with lots of cleanup templates and speedy deletion requests, but quite strict in what is deemed acceptable for mainspace, but as I said, I would welcome any data). —Kusma (t·c) 21:02, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

Kusma: I am not aware of any (recent) studies into this subject, but i can give a limited account of my own experience in new page patrol / afc reviewing. Back when i still did new page patrol a page tagged for removal was virtually always deleted (Often quite soon after its creation) and the majority of the editors didn't make any edits after that occurred. The amount of questions regarding a tag or removal was also very low: Just a handful for every couple hundred tags i would say.

AFC Reviewing on the other hand tends to yield a boatload of questions by comparison. During the heights of the January backlog drive last year i received several questions a day on my talk page requesting another review \ advice \ explanations for a review i did, and another couple question of the same type by mail. Since the review template also points users to the IRC help channel I am quite certain even more users ended up there to ask assistance.

AFC is not perfect by any stretch of the word, but i do like to assume that it is preferable over new page patron in a majority of the cases - and at least in cases where editor feedback is required. Excirial 19:04, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

Kusma At the Wikimedia Foundation, we're on the verge of completing some in-depth research in to article creation trends across all the major Wikipedias. We'll be publishing it on Meta and doing a talk (which I expect will be webcast) about it soon. We looked at what impact AFC was having on article deletion rates for new editors and compared it more experienced editors, as well as to userspace drafts in English and other languages. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 22:59, 18 January 2014 (UTC)

Walling, WMF have been "on the verge" of fixing this for over 5 years. When are you gonna pull your finger out of your ass and actually do something?

A nursery for new articles written by new editors is a good idea in principle, but too often, AfC just doesn't want to cut them loose and let them grow up.

Articles for Creation has some intractable WP:OWNership issues. Outside editors who have attempted to intervene have encountered stiff opposition. Arbcom is poised to desysop an administrator who ignored AfC processes and would not kotow about it on WP:ANI afterward. It's a real shame. HiDrNick! 21:04, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

From my experience, I find myself getting in a negative, non-inclusionist mindset when I review AFC articles. Taking Misplaced Pages talk:Articles for creation/Society of American Historians by itself, it's pretty good, but a majority of AFC submissions are not suitable for inclusion, and a large portion of those probably never will be. After reviewing more than a couple AFCs in a row, I start to get discouraged and I find myself wanting to just decline the article and move on. Howicus (Did I mess up?) 22:29, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

Indeed, AfC reviewing can be mentally exhausting. I review from the back of the backlog (so possibly the easier articles have already been handled), but a typical period of reviewing for me might include ten to fifteen declines - of which at least three-quarters are articles obviously created to serve as advertisements or PR puff pieces, usually by editors obviously linkable to the article subjects - and maybe, if I'm lucky, one or two approvals. And I'm by far not the toughest reviewer out there, and I really enjoy when I am able to send an article live. AfC as I experience it is an ocean of crap punctuated by the occasional raft of good stuff; it can be very easy to slip into the mindset that everyone submitting an AfC is there to sneak in some puffery/advocacy and that it's your job to hold the line against such COI incursions. If someone's being paid for working on those articles, it's sure not me, and I've come to resent being asked to to such PR staff's work for them. Jimbo, I know you dislike paid advocacy; I would encourage you to try patrolling the AfC backlog or staffing the IRC #wikipedia-en-help channel for a few days to see just how much of the flow AfC deals with is exactly that and how exhausting it can be. If the advocacy spam wasn't gushing in at such an astounding rate, I suspect we'd be able to do a much, much better job with the articles that their creators actually, genuinely cared about and thought were encyclopedic. A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 22:43, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

And, after having ruminated on my own words for a while, let me add a few more things. First, that we're drinking from a firehose of crap does not excuse poor-quality reviews. Reviewer exhaustion might explain some of it, but it doesn't excuse it. It's absolutely true that sometimes articles that could fly on their own are declined at AfC because a reviewer is too conservative or doesn't know what they're doing, and that's not something that should be happening. However, that leads me into...

...the second point, which is that AfC, other than some basic, non-binding guidelines drafted by Wikiproject:AfC, is pretty much anarchy. Each reviewer does their own thing, according to their own standards. No one reviews reviews, except in unusual cases. No one judges whether reviewers are qualified to be doing reviews (yet. An RfC was just closed on this issue and brings us closer to having reviewing be a user right). No one really knows where the line is for "this article is good enough to move into mainspace", so everyone sort of rolls their own. New editors, for whatever reason, are drawn to AfC as "somewhere I can help", and sometimes make a mess of things. Old editors, for whatever reason, decide that AfC needs to be cleaned up right now, and also sometimes make a mess of things.

I've been brainstorming, very vaguely, some possible ways to ameliorate these problems lately. As far as the firehose, a trial balloon on the CSD talk indicated that there would be support for a CSD criterion that would apply to AfC submissions which could not ever meet our inclusion standards (submissions that would meet A7 or A11 in mainspace, for example). Support was lacking for making AfC an "X tries and done" system and for disallowing AfC submissions from editors who are clearly the article subject or their representative. As far as the anarchy...that's tougher. I suspect we need an RfC of some sort firming up the guidelines according to which AfC reviews should be done; the trouble is that there are so many possible threads to that that I'm having trouble visualising how such an RfC should work. A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 23:56, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

Fluffnutter AfC was created long before WPAFC ever came on scene to service the queue. Each volunteer has tge basic ruberic of things they should be checked, but beyond that it's typically left up to the volunteer's discretion when looking for specific things that need to be in a candidate mainspace article. AfC is the only place for editors who have a CoI to submit their proposed article, so a CSD to obliterate CoI submissions makes it imposslbe for a CoI editor to ever get a article in even if the article were appropriate. As to the "X tries and done" proposal, that was turned down because the consensus has been that as long as the editor is making forward progress to getting their submission to acceptability, we're happy to give them as many tries as they need. It's only when the submission gets re-submitted ~4 times without the issue being corrected to the level of the reviewer's satisfaction that we start looking at other tools in the box (MfD, page protection, deleting the active submission template, etc.) to deal with the submission. Hasteur (talk) 13:49, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

• A major problem with AFC reviewing is that a lot of the editors doing the reviewing aren't qualified to review. They frequently deny requests that would otherwise stand up under scrutiny and hold articles to a much higher standard than if the editor just creates them from scratch. I also agree that there are serious ownership issues with some of the admins who "run" the AFC process. If you don't agree with them you aren't welcome. AFC is a good place to see some very abusive admin conduct towards new users. Kumioko (talk) 22:52, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

  KumiokoCleanStart {{citation needed}} If you're going to throw those kinds of assertions out, you better have diffs to back it up. Hasteur (talk) 13:49, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

  The burdeon isn't on me to prove it anymore. I no longer care. I left the comment in case Jimbo or someone else cares enough to try and fix it. Believe what I am saying or not, it doesn't really matter. Its a fact that has been repeatedly stated in multiple venues (including this one) and all anyone needs to see it is to go and look. Yes there are some good reviewers and some good work is done there but there are also a lot of process ownership issues and new users are frequently insulted or ridiculed in the comments on the AFC's. That is also a major reason why backlogs are so long there, people don't want to help out with it because of a few jerks. That is also a contributing factor to why there are over 1000 articles pending review and about 17000 eligible for G13 speedy deletion. Because too few are allowed to participate and those who do are often the wrong ones and share a decline and delete mentality. Kumioko (talk) 14:22, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

  KumiokoCleanStart If there is such a grave problem then that problem should be fixed by all means. However, the comments above are akin to calling a plumber to repair a leak, while only providing the name of the city you reside in. Sure, you may not truly care anymore but you still minded the issue enough to spend time to write several posts about it. If the problem is as widespread as you mentioned, it should be relatively simple to provide a diff or two for people to have a start. If not for the sake of you caring anymore, then for the sake of giving people a handle to actually do something with your comment / observation.

As for the backlog on AFC i don't believe the rationale provided is entirely valid. Deletion criteria G13 is quite new, yet from its interception applied to several tens of thousands of declined AFC submissions made in earlier years. If it were not for the diligent efforts of several editors (Hat tip to DGG and Anne Delong among others) that backlog might still be be more extensive, or might have been cleaned out without verifying the declines themselves. The 1000 article backlog of current submissions is about three to four days worth of submissions, so while it is definitely bad i cannot see how that would be directly related to a couple of people being jerks or having a high bar on allowing people to participate. If i am missing something here please do correct me on that one. Excirial 19:37, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

Then feel free to ignore my comments, everyone else does, which is precisely why I have no intention of spending time mining through AFC submissions. I've seen the comments, others have seen the comments, anyone who's worked there for more than a day has seen them. Their not particularly hard to find if one simply spends a little time there. But I know without hesitation that anything I say will be summarily ignored as it has in the past, so there is little reason for me to spend my valuable time when no one will believe me anyway. That's why I invite you all to perform due diligence and look for yourselves. Do not take my word for it. But as your reading the comments think about how hard it is to learn the rules here and how those comments affect the submitter. Many don't come back because the first contact they have to the site is some burned out reviewer calling their article "nothing but crap" because they just spent the last 4 hours declining and deleting article submissions. Kumioko (talk) 19:51, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

Here are a few random things, but I am not going to waste much time on this issue:

1. is there a "requirement" for inline citations?. This isn't uncited, it just needs more and an inline cite. This is a stub, but is characteristic of thousands of articles already here.
2. Stubs never get approved in AFC, yet any editor can simply create the article without going through AFC. If the article wouldn't meet Speedy deletion criteria or would survive an ARC, then it should not be declined which is standard practice currently.
3. Angelo Frattini (Sculptor) - This version was declined and its currently being improved further but this is not a bad start for a work in progress. Should we require all AFC's to be B-class or better? Also the message says it might be 2-3 weeks for a review...sure seems like a backlog to me and doesn't really matchup with the 3 or 4 day assessment by Excirial. It took a month for it to be reviewed the first time.
4. The list goes on and on. Just look through some of the articles at Category:Declined AfC submissions and you'll find a lot more. Especially look through needing footnotes and non notable. Notability is so subjective that a lot get declined and meet criteria. Anyway, I have invested enough time in this considering I don't beleive anything wil come out of it anyway. Kumioko (talk) 20:21, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

Thank you for taking the time to search those, i appreciate the effort.

1. The Incite decline reason is likely one of the largest problems in past declined article's. That decline reason used to be a default decline reason in the AFCH script that the vast majority of the people use to review content. It was removed some months ago for obvious reasons, but it left quite a legacy from the time it was still in active use. Newer article's should no longer have to face this decline reason though.
2. True. I like stubbies because they are easy to check (and source, if so required) but they are declined way to often. Agree on the acceptance criteria as well; those criteria are sometimes set to unrealistically high levels for a new article. Sometimes it DOES seem as if the accepted article should be at least C class, instead of being a starter class article.
3. I should have explained that "4-5 day comment" to start with. If i recall correctly there are about 200-300 new AFC submissions each day, so the 1000 page backlog is about 4-5 days worth of new submissions. That said there are quite a few caveats: During December the backlog grew to some 2500 pages, likely due to the holiday period. As a result the average waiting time for a submission was quite a bit higher than the usual wait (Which isn't all that short either). What also factors in is that some editors such as myself tend to review from the front of the queue (Newest first). The rationale for that this is that it makes no sense to have someone wait two weeks for a review if the page is clearly a decline on first glance. Also, reviewing recent submissions first increases the chance that the original submitter might still see the review and stick around. There is a side effect to this though: Article's that already look decent on first glance might end up waiting somewhat longer on average for a review.
4. *Sighs* Can't argue on that matter. Notability has always been somewhat subjective, and the decline reason is often overused rather then underused. Your second comment ties in with this issue - if the page wouldn't be CSD'd or AFD'd it should be fine in most cases.

I suppose that if we can hammer the acceptance criteria back to normal standards things may improve. This might need change on a few fronts though. Excirial 21:55, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

Wasn't the Draft namespace in part intended to remove the bureaucratic hurdles of AfC? --SB_Johnny | ✌ 22:57, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

Partially, but this is also being done IMO to help eliminate the thousands of pages in userspace that just sit around for years taking up space. Kumioko (talk) 14:22, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

• Interesting discussion because Fluffernutter and I had a bit of a dust-up a few months ago over Misplaced Pages talk:Articles for creation/International Association of Geoanalysts. I had added some sources to it after it was turned down the second time and a request was put on a wiki-project page for more sources. Fluffernutter turned it down a third time. I still think it should go live. Alanscottwalker (talk) 23:08, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

• Let us go a further step back and ask just what it is that gives total newbies the idea that their very first act on Misplaced Pages should be to write a new article? When I joined the project back in 2007 I stuck around for many months and thousands of small edits before I worked up the nerve/cheek/arrogance to start writing a new article from scratch.

As a semi-regular AfC reviewer I can confirm that the "in-tray" is an ocean of raw sewage that we are forced to dive into to seek out the far too rare pearls. IMHO a fundamental flaw in AfC is that there is no "this is crap, go away!" decline option. We are far too polite to the vast majority of spammers and time-wasters that submit their rubbish - all the decline templates include an invitation to fix the abovementioned problem and submit it again. Spending an hour or two at the front end of the submissions list (the fresh stuff nobody else has taken a look at yet) is enough to burn up all the AGF of a saint.

I have just reviewed and approved Society of American Historians. At the time of the previous review none of the independent references that exist in the current version existed. You need to judge a decline by the state the article was in then, not how it looks now.

The notability problem that many such "worthy" subjects struggle with is that their adherents hardly ever publish anything outside of their own walled gardens, thus genuinely independent reliable sources are hard to find. Basically academics seriously suck at publicity - pop singers, wrestlers, etc. (or at least their managers) are masters of the art. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 23:29, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

Perhaps there needs to be an Academic Org Notability Guideline? Alanscottwalker (talk) 23:39, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

There is a SNG for academics/professors - WP:PROF, so maybe we can look at using some of its criteria to build one for academic orgs. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 08:09, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

I signed up because an article I was looking for was missing and decided to write it. In previous discussions about article creation rights the amount of people joing and getting stuck here has long been a consideration against restrictions to eG autoconfirmed. Agathoclea (talk) 13:17, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

I fully agree with your observation that a declination ought to be discussed in the context of the article as it appeared at the time. However, at the time User:Chris1834 first edited it with a comment Half of the sources are internal, you need independent sources to establish notability. it did have three independent sources. While I can view only one of them, I'm troubled by the notion of looking at the ratio of sources. The comment about "half" troubles me, as I suspect we have over a million articles with fewer independent sources, and I bet we have many with under half independent. I don't recall ever seeing such a concern used as an argument for declination. (I can imagine it being an editorial concern re wp:weight etc.). At the time of declination, it had 14 reference, eight of which I believe are independent. I wouldn't be surprised if this exceeds the median number of independent references.

I'm also surprised at how long this discussion has gone on without even notifying User:Chris1834 of its existence.--S Philbrick(Talk) 12:51, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

Actually at the time of decline it had eight references, five of which were primary, one of which noted the society in passing and two that couldn't be checked online but based on the titles didn't seem to be about the society. To me it didn't seem to have enough sources. The decline did not mean the society was not notable, it meant they didn't have what I was lead to believe is a requirement for a new article. AFC states "Articles require significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject." This article didn't have that. I would be happy to follow whatever guideline is put forth, as I have shown that I did in this case. Based on current policies, I would decline this article at that point every time.

• Yes, it was a fair decision to decline the draft article, based on the fact that possibly only one source was independent, reliable and about the Society.

Generally I think AfC does an excellent job, though there are many people that delight in bashing their efforts. It requires a good level of knowledge about Misplaced Pages's various notability guidelines, about page-naming, copyright, MOS (and good judgement) then from this subset of Misplaced Pages editors you have to find people with the time and the patience to be consistently involved. New articles continue to arrive in waves, day-in-day-out. I worked at AfC a lot last year and rapidly got burnt out - the older drafts can be very complex and, occasionally, the authors can be abusive and/or time consuming.

The problem comes down to a lack of experienced editors, in my view. And part of the process of encouraging new reviewers to take part would be forgive the occasional mistakes. We're all human and have to start somewhere! Sionk (talk) 03:21, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

The start of a solution to this interminable mess was the Proposal to require autoconfirmed status in order to create articles - a way to allow us to standardise treatment of new articles from new users, to give them all equal assistance, and to re-focus of positive encouragement for new editors rather than stark automated deletion messages. Two-thirds of the community supported it, and agreed to try it, but Wikmedia Foundation refused - WP:ACTRIAL. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.104.25.248 (talk) 05:29, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

We have a one-time-only opportunity to create a new system from scratch in the new Draft namespace, one that takes the best bits from AFC, NPP and even ACTRIAL. However the longer we take to get it designed and implemented the more the "old ways" will become established as "standard practice" in the new namespace so let's do this properly and not drop the ball. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 08:09, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

• And one of the first steps is ensuring that there are clear criteria which reviewers (accredited, not "whoever signs up") follow to the letter. No "Way too much content for the amount of references" for an article where each (list) section has a source (which covers everything in the list), or "List needs a lead explaining why it's important in addition to the parent article it depends on" (true for FLC, but there are still scores of lists with single-sentence ledes; this submission still hasn't been approved, despite there being precedent for standalone lists when the list is lengthy enough). — Crisco 1492 (talk) 10:04, 15 January 2014 (UTC)
  • "Accredited reviewers"? "Standards followed to the letter"? Misplaced Pages should work hard against bureaucracy like that, and shouldn't apply criteria at AfC that are contrary to the "anyone can edit" spirit that has made Misplaced Pages's article space as awesome as it is now. —Kusma (t·c) 10:56, 15 January 2014 (UTC)
    • "Anyone can edit" ≠ "Anyone can competently review drafts and properly help newbies" - try not to confuse the two concepts. It is precisely the absence of accreditation and standards that has landed AfC in the condition it is in. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 11:56, 15 January 2014 (UTC)
      • If AfC needs accreditation, maybe it should rather be scrapped as being unwiki and unwieldy. —Kusma (t·c) 12:02, 15 January 2014 (UTC)
        • Having our first line of defense-cum-introduction squad staffed by people who enforce their own rules as they like and refuse to discuss why they have rejected an article is just a recipe for disaster. Hence why a vetting process is very much necessary. Not necessarily as strict as RFA, but much better than allowing anyone to review. What if a vandal or sockpuppet chose to review (I can imagine the latter... "needs more tits")? Or would you rather potential new editors be driven away so that anyone can edit is understood in the widest possible way? — Crisco 1492 (talk) 12:49, 15 January 2014 (UTC)
          • Why can't we just revert, warn and block people who make bad edits at AfC just like we revert, warn and then block people who make bad edits in mainspace? We allow vandals to edit our featured articles, but we revert and block them afterwards. I don't see a reason why it has to be different just because edits happen in a different namespace (other than the MediaWiki: namespace). —Kusma (t·c) 12:59, 15 January 2014 (UTC)
            • Reviewers or writers? Yes, we can block vandals posing as reviewers, but the damage is done: the once-hopeful editor who submitted an article for review is probably not coming back. You're forgetting, our goal at AFC is not to provide information to readers, but to provide a venue for people to try and write articles without having to worry about arbitrary deletion or drive-by tagging (like in main space). We are trying to reduce bad experiences. If they have a bad experience there, they're gone. As for undoing or reverting an actual editor who made a bad close, that's usually when WP:OWN pops up. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 13:05, 15 January 2014 (UTC)
              • Crisco 1492 says "the damage is done." Yes, the damage is done this time, but if we block the person who did the damage, it will make one less person to do similar damage 100 more times in the future. However, I see other problems with Kusma's suggestion of "Why can't we just revert, warn and block people who make bad edits at AfC just like we revert, warn and then block people who make bad edits in mainspace?" For a start, an average AfC submissions is never seen by anywhere remotely near as many people as the average article, so that most often the bad decision will never be noticed. In fact, one of the biggest causes of problems at AfC is that the number of submissions is far too high for the number of people assessing them, which is bound to mean that many submissions don't get looked at by more than one person. Then there's the question of what counts as a bad enough "bad edit" to justify a block. If I start blocking editors just because their judgement as to how much sourcing a new article needs is different from mine, it's a good bet that I'll find myself being hauled before ANI pretty soon. Blocking for outright vandalism, spam, BLP violations, etc, is one thing, but blocking just because of poor judgement is much less straightforward. JamesBWatson (talk) 17:12, 15 January 2014 (UTC)
                • Of course it isn't quite as simple as I try to make it sound. However, if reviewers often make bad decisions at AfC, they should be told to make better decisions or stay away from AfC. Speedy deletions at least get looked at by nominator and deleting admin (and when doing CSD work one should always tell people about bad tagging); if AfC submissions are declined by just one editor and then never looked at again, the process needs to be improved, and more people need to get involved in double-checking each other's work and giving each other feedback on their reviewing. Unfortunately I have no good idea how to get more people into AfC work (I do have bad ideas like starting to use "no AfC reviews" as RfA oppose rationale). —Kusma (t·c) 21:50, 15 January 2014 (UTC)
                  • Kusma, there is nothing wrong with your suggestion, in theory. In practice, though, there are a bunch of intertwined problems. First of all, the AfC queue is 1000 submissions deep, and that's not even counting all the *declined* submissions which will promptly be resubmitted as soon as the marketing-rep with the WP:COI is back in the office tomorrow morning. The queue-size is the tip of the iceberg. Second, AfC is exhausting, and overwhelming (see first item :-)   which means it is understaffed. You are suggesting *firing* reviewers. Guess what that means? More work for folks who survive the layoffs, and even more overwhelming backlogs. Fluffernutter suggested the review-the-reviewers concept, which is absolutely positively the best idea in town, but requires MORE HELP and we already don't have enough help, as it is. (I have a way to automate the review-of-reviewers ... with no manual RfA-style 'interview' phase required ... but getting that implemented and getting consensus to deploy is a huge horrid ball of wax.) The real problem with your suggestion, that bad reviewers should be told to stop, if even finding the bad ones in the first place. Who has time to watch those self-same guardians, with hundreds of new articles coming in every day, and an iceberg of COI sitting in the queue, with the iron law that it cannot be deleted as long as the PR department at the company resubmits it with a new tweak at least every six months? AfC is having trouble, but the trouble is not easy to solve: it is a fundamental issue. There are tons of articles in mainspace that get slowly filled with WP:PEACOCK and ref-spam and such, over the years. Who is watching them? Misplaced Pages needs more editors, which means, we have to fix AfD and AfC, so we stop driving away beginners with wikithuisasm. Yea verily, thus ends the ranting, amen.  :-)   — 74.192.84.101 (talk) 11:09, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

• The editor who declined the submission is User:Chris1834. It is only polite to inform him of this discussion, as I have now done.--S Philbrick(Talk) 12:37, 15 January 2014 (UTC)
  • We are not discussing any one submission, this topic is about the AfC process as a whole. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 14:09, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

Hey Crisco 1492 if you're going to bash my assertions and judgement calls (Like the Misplaced Pages talk:Articles for creation/List of Rhode Island International Horror Film Festival award winners and List of Rhode Island International Horror Film Festival selections), mind doing it to my face? Being that other editors reviewed and agreed, how about you let this bone go? Are you going to tell me that the current state of the "selections" article is what we want to have in mainspace. Did you not get advice that we don't need a bulk copy of the content that is on the Rhode Island International Horror Film Festival site? Did you not understand that the DYK nomination that you were shepherding and trying to get past the reviewers does not have any bearing on the review of AfC articles? In short the submissions were declined appropriately, declined by an editor who knows what they're doing with respect to policy and therefore is "accredited", and your retreading the same argument over and over again only serves to prove that you have a personal vendeta for my having taken an action that displeases you. Hasteur (talk) 14:03, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

• Hasteur, you have just proved my point. Do you see how combative you are coming across? I deliberately did not name you (talk about the action/content, not the editor), and did not intend to single you out. I have no personal vendetta with you, but those two edit summaries were the freshest in my mind (and you did ask for diffs). If we were to, say, meet at an FAC or GAN, I would not consider you any better or worse for our past interactions.

As for the selections article: is it perfect? No. Is it better than half of the lists in main space? Likely. Does it fit the relevant policies (particularly WP:SALAT)? Yes. We're not expecting a first time user to produce something like List of films of the Dutch East Indies or Citra Award for Best Director on their first go. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 14:47, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

Thanks to Sphilbrick for notifying Wikiproject Articles for creation about this discussion. Yes, this discussion did start out with a specific Afc submission as an example. As an experienced Afc reviewer, I would like to say that I also would have declined the article which originally sparked this discussion, with a comment encouraging the submitter to improve the referencing and resubmit. At the time of the decline there were no independent sources. The Society's web site is cited extensively. The book sources were all to people who were not only members of the society, but had had their work sponsored by it. The book about American Heritage was written by the son of its managing editor. As another editor commented (sorry, I don't remember who), just because there are currently a lot of poorly cited articles in the encyclopedia is not a good reason to create more. It's true that the article may not have been nominated for Afd, but only if no one happened to take the time to examine the neutrality of the sources. Wikiproject Articles for creation, or any group of editors in the future who attempt to apply standards to the articles, will always be open to regular criticism by those who interpret the standards differently, and that's a good thing because discussion is how consensus develops. I have interacted with many new editors who have submitted initially unacceptable articles and who, after making improvements at the advice of Afc reviewers have gone on to be great editors. —Anne Delong (talk) 14:19, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

I do agree that AFC is trying to follow higher standards of inclusion than AFD. I tried to have an article about Michael Pollack created (draft at User:WhisperToMe/Michael Pollack) and I felt it would survive AFD, but some other editors denied it on grounds that it has a little too promotional sounding of content. I'd rather just post it on Misplaced Pages and let the AFD process take place if needed. If editors think it focuses on wrong aspects of him, they can cut it down at their leisure. Also, I found some film articles in AFC and I want to move them out of the AFC process and into the mainspace, to free up room for articles that are debatable. WhisperToMe (talk) 17:40, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

As I have just said in reply to you at Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Articles for creation/Help desk - which page is worth reading in connection with this topic - if you are confident that a particular subset of submissions all meet Misplaced Pages policy, you should go right ahead and approve all of those submissions. It does not seem to me that Articles for Creation imposes any bureaucracy or restrictions to prevent people from doing exactly that. Arthur goes shopping (talk) 17:54, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

Thank you. I've went ahead and started approving articles after working on them. WhisperToMe (talk) 04:50, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

Applying higher standards than AfD? I don't quite get that. AfD is a subjective process too, where questionable decisions are often made. And involves a number of participants over a long period. Unless Misplaced Pages is written entirely by robots there will continue to be a variety of interpretation, preferences and decision making. Including at AfC. I suppose a useful tool for AfC would be a method to overrule or change another reviewers decision, politely and without confusing the author of the article... Sionk (talk) 18:19, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

• The whole point of Afc is to have a place where new editors, COI editors and unregistered editors could make articles. Very often the reason new editors start editing is that there is a topic which they feel is missing from the encyclopedia. That's the way it was for me. (Here's my first article, an Afc graduate.) We'd lose large numbers of productive editors if we didn't let them create new articles right away. Afc is supposed to guide potential contributors in the way of NPOV and referencing, while weeding out attack pages and non-notable topics, getting copyvio material removed and rewritten, etc. Aside from the backlog (which has been bad lately because of the bounceback from the G13 notifications) it has been doing a reasonable job of this. However, some new editors just drop off a submission and never come back, or give up after one decline, and the articles are abandoned. For many this doesn't matter, as they will fade away under G13. However, perhaps 5 - 10% of these could be made into decent articles, and once the original editors have stopped working on them the only benefit to having them in Afc is that they aren't deleted right away. Since they need adoption by new editors anyway, why not move them into the new Draft space where they are more likely to be worked on? They are clearly categorized and easy to find. —Anne Delong (talk) 19:58, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

Oooh! Clever! Is there some link to these transclusions from the AfC project page? Could a holding category be created? I realise DGG and youself were looking at old drafts, I should probably pay more attention to conversations on the Project talk page! Sionk (talk) 21:15, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

• All these discussions need to bear in mind the sheer imbalance between the volume of the in-tray (about 200 articles per day) and the number of people reviewing them (the bulk of the work is done by about 20 people). It would be ideal to have a system whereby promising editors and articles could receive personalised and dedicated support, but there simply isn't the volunteer hours at the moment to do this. We barely manage to give each submission a boilerplate review within 3 weeks with the numbers we have. What AfC really needs is another two dozen or so people. --LukeSurl 00:39, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

• To me that imbalance seems like the same disease I commented about at WP:ACC - it's a problem of make-work. People come up with more and more elaborate processes that "have" to be done, and when there aren't volunteers to do them, that excuses doing them arbitrarily. Let's just focus on the basics: provide some reliable sources, be at least marginally comprehensible (in English), have the purpose of providing information about a topic. Wnt (talk) 06:33, 16 January 2014 (UTC)
• It should also really help to transition to the Draft: namespace and more normal ways of commentary. For example, consider an article like this - the poor guy obviously has no idea of how he's supposed to write an article. I just want to dash off a quick comment, but it seems like you're supposed to put it in a special review box or something - bu not now ... why the heck is the article in talk namespace anyway? To one uninitiated it seems inaccessible. Wnt (talk) 06:41, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

A few general remarks about this topic:

If User:Jimbo Wales really wanted to raise the issue of poor quality AfC reviews he should have tried to use actual poor quality reviews to link as examples in his first post. Instead he chose a perfectly "by the book" decline for lack of Independent and Reliable Sources - which was subsequently fixed and passed on the next review. His other example of "bad AfC reviews" is a blog by someone bellyaching that their fist ever attempt at writing something on en.WP didn't pass immediately. After the first (and only) decline the draft was edited to make an explicit claim of notability and the draft was passed into mainspace two days later. If these are really the best examples of "the horror of AfC" Jimbo could come up with then I'm afraid he might die of apoplexy if he really saw some of the utter sewage that flows into the AfC machinery. The "Anyone can edit" mantra, though an obviously noble sentiment, is cloud-cuckoo-land wishful thinking, the harsh reality is that the vast majority of draft submitters are neurologically indistinguishable from the content of a compost heap.

If only 1% of the people who constantly bitch and moan about AfC would just take a few minutes a day to actually help fix the problems then just maybe some of the real problems that do exist would actually be solved. The perennial "I hate AfC" rent-a-crowd of course have never even tried to do a single review.

IMHO as a fairly experienced AfC reviewer some of the real problems at AfC are:

1. . Brain-dead morons are allowed to submit utter crap. We need to look at implementing automated filters to reject most of the rubbish immediately without human intervention. If Gmail can identify spam at a thousand paces with better than 90% accuracy then our coders should be able to devise automagical detectors for blank submissions and submissions that consist entirely of nonsense such as "Joe is a poopypants".
2. . Not enough active competent reviewers. See WP:WikiProject Articles for creation/RfC for AfC reviewer permission criteria and Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Articles for creation/RfC for AfC reviewer permission implementation
3. . Draft writers don't actually read the advice they are given - just look at how the vast majority of questions posted to the AfC Help page are asking for information that had already been given to the draft submitter.
4. . Many subject area WikiProjects show no interest at all in helping to review articles within their field of expertise. I must however name a few exceptions; the Medicine, Military history, Feminism, Mathematics, Physics and Chemistry WikiProjects have always responded positively to requests for help from AfC. The new Drafts space might help to solve this as drafts there can be given WikiProject tags right from the start before entering mainspace, it isn't possible for drafts written in WT-space. (BTW The WikiProject "Class" rating system will need to be amended to add a "Draft" rating so that their article improvement systems will correctly handle such drafts.
5. . AfC reviewers rarely get any respect or recognition for the work they do - thus contributing to reviewer burnout and poor recruitment of new reviewers.

<rant>If the AfC process were to disappear (or reviewers never declined any submissions) mainspace would be drowning in crap very quickly and Misplaced Pages's reputation as the world's most popular go-to source of information would be severely damaged. Perhaps such a "demonstration" could be arranged to show the AfC-haters how well the AfC process actually does work in spite of all the real problems - like when the police go on strike the cop-haters get taught a lesson in what it really is like to live in a lawless city.</rant> Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 09:54, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

Another point I need to make - The phrase "AfC has WP:OWN problems" is a fairly popular refrain but AFAIK absolutely nobody has ever posted a single diff that positively proves the allegation - even Arbcom are bleating the same line without any solid evidence - in the case discussed below. It's time the people who make/support this allegation either put up or shut up. (Even our esteemed Leader's examples of "problems at AfC" have turned out to be mere mirages and illusions when properly examined.) Goodnight all, see you again at about 07:00UTC tomorrow. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 21:10, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

Suggestion for AFC criteria

As I mentioned above, I think having some explicit criteria against which AFC submissions are checked and passed/failed. Nothing fixed in stone, but a checklist which writers can check their work against and reviewers can cite when failing nominations. A very rough wording (as I'm heading out the door in a few minutes to catch a flight) could be like this:

1. Submission is written in grammatical English (the title is not 100% important, IMHO, as the person passing the AFC can change the title during promotion)
2. Submission explicitly shows the significance of the subject and has sufficient independent, reliable sources with in-depth coverage to establish notability (a suggestion for writers could be three or four)
3. Submission uses references to support all potentially contentious information and direct quotations (this is all that's required per Misplaced Pages:Citing sources; citing absolutely everything is not required by policies or guidelines, just recommended; also note that formatting is not included here, as WP:BURL is just an essay and running Citation Bot or a similar tool takes very little time)
4. Submission is written neutrally and does not contain promotional language
5. Submission does not contain violations of copyright

Basically, enough that an article would not fail the average AFD, while also filtering out copyvios and spam. Thoughts? — Crisco 1492 (talk) 21:09, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

Those criteria look very onerous, far more so than the existing AfC guidelines (or, at least, my understanding of them). Like you say, the drafts that are likely to fail at AfD need to be held back. As long as there is reasonable evidence of notability and the article is not a complete car crash, it will be likely to survive AfD. There's no need to reliably source everything, or remove all problematic grammar/language. In most people's books, "multiple" independent reliable sources means "two or more". Many things can be cleaned up and improved when the article is in main space. Sionk (talk) 21:26, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

• These are roughly the criteria I judge articles by, though "grammatical English" is a higher bar than I'd aim for (is it understandable? yes? then who cares at this point in the article's lifespan if there's a run-on sentence or two), and the number of sources that are adequate to demonstrate notability will vary based on the topic. At a minimum, to pass an AfC I expect to see an assertion of notability and enough reliable sourcing to back up the notability claim and any BLP content or contentious facts, no copyvios, and neutral language. However, notability is a very fiddly thing (cf: the crapshoot that is filing an AfD), and it may be that any "guideline" that says "article must demonstrate notability" is just passing the fight one step down the line, so we can argue about what constitutes notability instead of whether we need to consider notability. A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 21:40, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

Sionk, those criteria are basically the current reviewing criteria anyway.

Someone, I think it may have been Anne Delong had in fact created a rather elegant process flowchart for AfC reviewing, the chart contains "checkpoints" similar to Crisco 1492's suggestions. The chart was displayed and discussed at the AfC Project talk page where it was well recieved. Unfortunately it was not subsequently incorporated into an "AfC Reviewers guide", thus it is currently languishing somewhere in a Talk page archive. I would really love to see it resuscitated and adapted to the process flow we need to develop for the new Draft namespace. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 21:40, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

Sorry, it wasn't me that made the workflow chart - I just found it when it become lost in an archive at one point. However, this topic has been covered quite thoroughly at Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Articles for creation/Reviewing instructions, and it changes are to be made in the criteria it would make more sense to discuss them at the talk page there. —Anne Delong (talk) 22:20, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

It is on this archived discussion page: Misplaced Pages talk:WikiProject Articles for creation/2013 4 —Anne Delong (talk) 22:32, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

• @Fluffernutter: "grammatical" as in "not a broken Google translation", not "grammatical" as in "follows the whole MOS". As I said, very rough wording.

@Dodger67: Perhaps they are (I should hope so), but considering the discussion above it appears people are going above and beyond the current guidelines (and that's not a good thing). I could certainly get behind a flowchart like that, so long as we actually follow the flowchart.

@Anne Delong: Sure. I'll drop over there now. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 00:08, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

And opened here. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 00:17, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

• Comment: While Jimbos's original post is perfectly appropriate, some participants in this discussion may not be aware of the progress towards improving AfC over the past few months:

  Creation of the new Draft namespace (originally essentially an AfC initiative)

  Creation of a set of minimum 'qualifications' for reviewers.

Further discussion will take place on how such a 'permission' will be implemented. Due to issues of quality and timeliness of reviewing that are common to both AfC and NPP, perhaps it may be time after all (two years further down the line) to revisit just exactly what the community agreed by consensus at WP:ACTRIAL (emphasis on 'trial') which was rejected at the time by the Foundation as being contrary to Founding Principles. I have reviewed these principles, and while the Wikipedidia is undoubtedly the encyclopedia anyone can edit, I have been unable to find any mention that Misplaced Pages is the encyclopedia where any editor can immediately create an article in mainspace. I'm not sure that Jimbo actually followed the WP:ACTRIAL - at least i'm not aware of him having commented on it at that time or since. There is no question that a very large number of articles submitted through both AfC and NPP are unmitigated crap and nonsense (with a great many more pages created in good faith that would never stand the test of AfD), no substantial discussion has taken place however as to how the numbers of competent reviewers for both tasks can be increased. In deference to Crisco 1492's list of criteria (which I broadly support) and various suggestions by others, I feel that the scope of such detail would be better discussued at this juncture in a more appropriate venue. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 05:19, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

• Right Kudpung. Have been focusing at AFC talk page since Anne brought up the flowchart. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 12:34, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

• To be clear, the way I think things ought to be is as follows: AfC and the incubator both feed into Draft space. Their tags are taken solely as an appeal for help. Articles can be moved on an editor's own initiative from Draft: to mainspace or from mainspace to Draft: if he really believes it is uncontentious that they either have or don't have what it takes to meet GNG. This could be abused as moves can be abused, and it can be resolved at AfC review/AfD like contentious moves are resolved, but AfD/AfC review doesn't have to be a mandatory stop up or down. Articles should only be actually deleted if they fail speedy deletion criteria, which can be found for really bad articles in any space; this is more of a behavior issue while the Draft/mainspace question is more of a content issue. Nonetheless, a stub sentence with two reliable sources belongs in easily searchable mainspace, because something is a lot better than nothing. Wnt (talk) 19:08, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

the problem with demoting new articles that need work, is discriminating between (A) those that need more work, but will pass afd,; (B) those that need more work but with the work, might be acceptable; (C) those that regardless of work , are never likely to be usable WP content, generally because of WP:NOT or WP:N; and (D), those that qualify for speedy under the General criteria.

we should be able to deal with class D better, if the people screening AfCs actually do nominate them for deletion (tho we need to remember that many half of the articles deletable as copyvio can be rescued by stubbification , if it's thought there's an underlying topic worth thr trouble, and t=that the boundary between what is and isn't G11 promotional is rather fluid). We should be able to deal with class A better , by placing them into mainspace, which requires re-educating a certain number of the reviewers. The other two are problems. Examining thousands of one-year-old declined AfCs has shown me that only about 10% of the people asked to make changes & resubmit actually do so. Getting the backlog down to a day or so will help, because there's a chance they'll be around, but even so, the great majority get discouraged.. It will take careful individual work with each of them individually,and no technical fix will do that. An even smaller number of those asked to merge ever do so--I think the only practical possibility is for the reviewer to merge, or accept under a variant title and mark for merging. The ones who do not discouraged are often the COI editors, who often resubmit without changes indefinitely. I can think of nothing better here than to use MfD much more widely, but it would help to have distinct decline reasons, for "might be notable if you can find some more references," and "looks like it will never be notable."

I am not surprised that reviewers get confused, because it is a minority of articles that any of the prebuilt answers are really suitable--most of the time I give the contributor the real explanation and advice on their talk page. Some of this could be adjusted, but so far, essentially every request for improvement has been rejected, even that of not telling people to look at the article for reasons if it will already have been deleted, or letting reviewers edit what will be posted. . I've given up making suggestion to the developers, and just deal with individual articles however works best.

In any case, tinkering with the system will not solve the basic problems: we need to have a way to work with individual contributors, and if that fails, to work with the articles. This can not be reduced to an algorithm, and will be neither quick nor easy--but it will be effective. DGG ( talk ) 06:25, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

• Comment: for the Wikimedia Foundation's product/design/engineering staff, I can say this: my team has been budgeted to work on article creation improvements and testing this fiscal year, including work on the Draft namespace which was launched over the holidays. Others have said that we have a unique opportunity to rethink some of our process and tooling around article creation with this, and I think that's correct. Right now there is a lot of leeway to try new things -- a great example is the idea of instead of deleting new articles that need work, we simply demote the promising ones to draft status. This has happened a little bit already. There is a lot we can do with software as well, to enhance how drafts help new authors learn the ropes and experienced editors ensure quality. Some of our ideas are being listed on the Talk page for WP:DRAFTS (please check it out and comment) and on our technical documents. It seems pretty clear that many of AFC's problems can be solved through experimentation with proper drafts namespace, socially and technically. Hopefully in 2014 we will find that Drafts are a welcome replacement for AFC and similar systems that aren't serving us very well right now. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 23:09, 18 January 2014 (UTC)

See above for why I think your efforts will not solve the basic problem--but they can improve things at least marginally--at least they can if this time around you actually listen to and follow the suggestions from those with the experience of working on the submissions. DGG ( talk ) 06:25, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

'Drafts' will never be a replacement for AfC - replacing one system with another or even just another name will not address the core issues. Rather than starting all over again after Brandon's draft of an Article Creation Workflow start page two years ago in the aftermath of WP:ACTRIAL and attempting to reinvent the wheel, perhaps we should still be looking at those core issues: Quality of reviewing and quantity of reviewers. Software solutions are not a panacea when it comes to addressing human cognitive issues - it's been proven with the New Pages Feed and its Curation Toolbar that you can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink.

As I've suggested several times, I feel the community should be looking towards the possibility of cloning the albeit excellent NPP software and adapting it for use at AfC (with the feed being the 'AfC 'draft' pages coming from the Article Wizard and/or other places), and then finding solutions for educating the reviewers of both systems.

WMF staff appear to be polarised on the issue of Foundation involvement in local Misplaced Pages issues. While one member of the staff had repeatedly insisted that AfC is not within the Foundation's remit, there are others who feel it falls within the scope of providing a proper landing page for new creators and user retention.I'm still wary of allowing a top-down Foundation solution to be imposed on the community rather than listening to the voice of experience of the volunteer team who actually do the work at AfC. If budgets are being allocated, then there should also be some formal Community-Foundation coordination, which I don't see happening. What I do see are confusing discussions spread around several venues, including Jimbo's talk page. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 08:41, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

NPP's reviewing tools are nice in some ways... but these days it seems that they're little used. This is partially our (the WMF's) fault for not doing all the maintenance as quickly as we should. But as far as I can see there are some pretty deep problems with tools like the PageCuration toolbar, such as that it can't be internationalized and used on other wikis without an overhaul. To be honest it's not super likely we directly adapt that piece of software (at least at the Foundation, volunteer developers might if motivated). Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 05:55, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

@Steven (WMF): - Ok Steven, its time for to be a real asshole here because that seems to be what's needed to get this through your head. Not doing it as quickly as you should? The WMF development team has a bad habit and a long history of created half assed tools and then abandoning them and moving on when they start to get to a point of usefullness. You created NPP, which is a good tool, got it about to what I would call half way done, then moved on when people started using it. Visual Editor was and still is a joke and that can be said of many other things. The primary problem is the WMF's attitude that the community is expendable and we have no idea what we want. We offer suggestions and they are ignored. I grant you that there are many instances where the community has failed repeatedly at making changes, but the WMF doesn't even try. Even when you say you want our input over half the time you ignore it thinking you know better what we want when you guys aren't the ones doing the editing. So please, save the sarcasm and the attitude. If you want our help its here if not do your job and provide us with some useful tools so we can do ours. One of many reasons I don't edit here anymore outside discussions anymore is because of the Visual Editor application still destroying articles and I'm tired of fixing them because the WMF doesn't have any grasp of the concept of cleaning up the mess they made. Here's a suggestion, if you folks don't want to work with the community then go down the hall and talk to your counterparts at Wikia. They seem to have a better spirit of collaboration with their community. Maybe they can give you some advice. Kumioko (talk) 12:29, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

You weren't being an asshole at all, and I think your point about moving on too quickly before things are really working and polished is overall probably right. However, I have never worked on VisualEditor or NPP myself, and the "WMF development team" is actually 100+ people who fill a wide variety of roles and jobs, working on many different areas to keep our software going. Please don't lump all staff and all projects in to one bucket, even if we're just talking about new features development. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 20:12, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

That's fair to say and your right I don't know who does what in the office but collectively it does seem to be a general trend that the developers as a group tend to have Squirrel syndrome. You work hard on a good idea, get it to a 75 or 80% completion point, see something else that's more interesting, yell squirrel, then dump it and take off on a tangential new project. Certainly not everyone does this, but as a group this seems to be a trend. In my opinion NPP is a great tool that deserves more attention (its still missing functionality and has errors in it), Twinkle is another (though as I understand it, was developed and is maintained by a developer on their own time), AWB is another example of an excellent tool that already exists that could use more attention (although the current 3 developers do a great job already maintaining it on their free time, they don't have a lot of time to do "improvement"), of course continued development of Visual Editor and Flow (although I am not a fan of either), etc. Not even to mention all the other projects like Wikidata, commons, Wiktionary, etc. A plugin for Firefox or IE would be nice too (I made one for myself for Firefox with some handy links and functions). And those are just some of the current thinking items and nothing about the toxic editing environment and outdated policy that needs to be cleaned up. So I admit there are a pile of things that could and need to be done. But the WMF really needs to stop pushing things off when they get excited about new projects. My followup suggestion would be to have a way to solicite ideas from the field (the editors as it were), see what people want and need, then focus some attention on that. Additionally, if you were to ask for help with various projects and tell the community what you need and how you would like them to help, I suspect you would get it. Setting up some working groups at Wikimania for some of the critical problems might be a good idea since you will have a large and interested audience. Kumioko (talk) 20:53, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

I certainly thought that drafts were very much intended to replace Af, and that their basic purpose was to bring the AfC material into a more logical position, with the side benefit of giving us an opportunity to rethink the process free of the constraints of trying to modify a basically flawed procedures. I think you defended in on that basis, and it was certainly what I and most of the others there were voting for, so perhaps you could explain. Do you perhaps mean that they are intended to replace or include other things also, such as the incubator? That's OK, too, but if there is any suggestion that we are going to maintain the existing AfC process within drafts except as a very temporary measure, I think that's a lost opportunity. If you seriously intend to do that, I think the result will be a successful MfD on the AfC pages in whatever location, Indeed, that was the alternative I was considering,and supported drafts workspace only as a preliminary step to major changes, not as being itself a solution . And, since you and I have worked on this NPP and AfC reform for a very long time now, I thought you had a similar view to my own.

Of course the NPP software--which I think is software developed by the foundation-- is a good set of relatively simple well-integrated procedures, and cloning it would be a reasonable step also before developing it further. It was developed by people who knew how WP worked in practice, and who listened to suggestions. If that's what developers do, it doesn't matter where they are located. Nor do I think that the people at enWP in contrast to WMF have a monopoly of good ideas--sometimes an outsider or relative outsider can have the necessary insight.

this has been discussed here because Jimbo was pretty horrified as some of the things AfC was in practice doing, and calling such things to his attention has been another very useful way of solving problems. AfC has been a rather isolated activity, and it needs wider exposure. DGG ( talk ) 16:46, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

Walling, seriously, do you realise how much bullshit you're saying? "my team has been budgeted to work on article creation improvements ... we have a unique opportunity to rethink some of our process and tooling"

Your corporate-speak bullshit wouldn't bother me too much, except you draw ridiculous conclusions;

"Drafts are a welcome replacement for AFC and similar systems that aren't serving us very well right now"

... I can't even begin to explain how wrong you are. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.104.27.18 (talk) 02:49, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the friendly, constructive attitude. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 05:45, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

Hmmmm... WP:SARCASM applies methinks.... Hello Steven, yes, 88's attitude was not WP:NICE. But they have a point. WMF is funded by "our" donation-bucks ... meaning "the readership" of wikimedia sites, but also, the volunteer-effort (which is a form of sweat-equity-donation-bucks in my book). That value goes to keep the servers running. It goes towards keeping the lawyers protecting the virtual buttocks of the anthropomorphic wikipedia herself (note how I stuck to pillar four and did not say something rude like "cover our collective asses" there!). Plus, it pays for you and "your" team to design and build stuff. Meaning: the attitude-expectations go both directions.

  It's not your team. It's the team the *readership* paid for. It's not been 'budgeted' by some nebulous corporate overlord with fiat powers. It's hard-earned donation-bucks and hard-earned volunteer-effort that are being spent with expectations of a return to the encyclopedia on that investment. Every single day is an opportunity to rethink our process. That's called WP:IAR. Every single day is an opportunity to rething the wiki-tools. That's why you have (WMF) at the end of your username. There's nothing "unique" here, at all. Does this make sense?

  Finally, you say that AfC isn't serving "us" very well right now. (More on Dah Scarequotes in a minute.) The long thread here serves as some evidence of that. The ongoing arbcom case over Kafziel adds more, although really it's more of a problem with our wikiJustice procedures, methinks, than with our AfC processes and/or WP:IAR pillar. The complaints when you goog for (wikipedia (sucks OR cultist OR (always revert)) are the biggest evidence of that problem, of course. And if you want numbers, try http://reportcard.wmflabs.org (or the more detailed info at http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/SummaryEN.htm which has *all* the data with no redactions). We have 4 million articles now. That's a good portion of the notable things. People still want to write articles though: architecture of Puerto Rico is still a stub, for instance, created September 2013, even though there are literally *hundreds* of impeccably reliable sources on the topic. There aren't people here to fix it. Why? Well, see my ranting elsewhere, for that. But everybody who's been to AfC knows, most folks still want an article created: about their band, or their boss, or some other non-wikiNotable-as-yet topic.

  So that brings us to the heart of the matter. Is in fact, drafts a welcome replacement? And if so, for whom? That mostly depends on the meaning of "us" in your sentence above. Do you mean, "us" as in, you and 'your' team, or even "us" as in WMF folks? Then that's the wrong attitude. Do you mean us, as in, wikipedians from the anon with 1 edit and 1 minute, all the way through our founder the Great And Powerful Jimbo?  :-)   Well, that's much better. But if you *do* think like that, what's with all the my team, budgeted, unique opportunity, sprachen sie marketroid? (what some call corporate-B.S.) Ditch that razzle-dazzle, por favor, in other words.

  And if you want my real opinion, a proper moral attitude is to always consider the readership, the 500m uniques we get every month, as The Point of all this stuff. That's a pretty big "us" which will soon include most of the literate folks on the planet, and counting multimedia at Commons, most of the illiterate ones too. Is in fact, WP:Drafts welcome to them? Well, that all depends, right, on what we do with it. And by we, I mean, everybody who cares about the five pillars, and is here to improve wikipedia. In which I fully include you, Steven. You're welcome. ;-)   Just please, tone down the WP:PEACOCK stuff when you're here on-wiki, oh-bee-kay-bee?

  If absolutely mandatory for the long-term health of the foundation, I guess you can talk slick at the press conferences, when you're getting a medal from Jimbo, and wanna impress the teevee viewing audience. But this is a collaborative function-oriented environment here (howdya like them silver-dollar words? <grin> but notice the difference in underlying intent... putting the focus where it belongs on function over form and collaboration over my-team), and definitely ain't some kinda press conference. What you say reflects on all of us wikipedians, so try and have the correct 'tude. In the hope, that this explanation of how wrong you were (not *badly* wrong but still could use improvement), may be seen as constructive, I hereby click save. Feel free to WP:TEMPLAR my talkpage if you think I'm outta line, or just wanna gab about Drafts.  :-)   — 74.192.84.101 (talk) 12:09, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

74, thanks - I was too lazy to respond like that; you said it pretty well.

Also, Steven, renaming and re-factoring the problem (from 'AFC' to 'Drafts') will not solve anything. It does absolutely nothing to address the concern that articles submitted to AFC/drafts are handled completely differently to articles made live by new users. Similarly, someone like Kafziel deleting lots of submissions doesn't solve anything.

There's not enough people to offer appropriate help to new users creating articles. There's too many people who use automated tools to spam out standard messages, instead of offering true support. There's massive inconsistencies in the way new user/articles are treated.

We can't do much directly to create a massive number of helpers. But we can do something about the problems - by stopping new users from creating live articles, we can at least begin to deal with them more appropriately - and massively reduce the workload of NPP, which hopefully will free up resources to assist the newbs more meaningfully. That was the conclusion of the ACTRIAL discussions.

WMF told the community to fuck off. Yes, they used more fancy-words/corporate-BS/marketroid, but that was the essence of their response - 'we know better than the community'. No, you don't. As 74 pointed out, the community pay you (via donations), so we're justified in asking you to make a simple modification that we - the people who actually edit - think is best for the project.

In addition, Mr Walling should be admonished to responding to my admittedly-rude comment by being rude back to me. 88.104.27.18 (talk) 10:11, 23 January 2014 (UTC) (previously 88.104.27.18)

Academic organizations and notability

As a tangential offshoot of part of this discussion, this has been started Comments sought. Alanscottwalker (talk) 16:55, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

Why AFC?

I think we're missing the big picture.

Many years ago, Mr. Wales decreed that unregistered users would no longer be allowed to create new pages.

AFC is a way to circumvent that decree - OK, with checks... but it's still a hack, to let 'em make it in TALK namespace, and make it live on their behalf (on the whim of the elite who bother to register).

I guess <1% of new articles are submitted to AFC, and I estimate that 80% of them are COI - yet we give them so much care and attention. Whereas the poor saps who bother making an account to write their first article get royally shafted with spam warning/CSD notices.

It's grossly unfair that so much time is invested trying to help the mostly-spammy-AFC-submissions, but so very very little in helping the other new editors.

Everyone who rocks up to Misplaced Pages and wants to write an article that isn't utterly inappropriate should receive help, support, positive feedback, and encouragement.

That's the entire point of ACTRIAL, and - amazingly - the community agreed. But WMF vetoed it.

Thus, Mr. Wales - back at ya. Why won't you let us treat all new editors equally?

If even a fraction of the enormous effort that goes into dealing with new-page-patrol could be funnelled into actually helping new users instead of warning them, then the wiki would be a nicer place.

But it's so much easier to tick a box in Twinkle (or whatever) to 'WARN: UNREFERENCED" or "CSD: NOT NOTABLE" than it is to actually try to help. 88.104.19.169 (talk) 01:44, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

The way I read bugzilla, the WMF didn't veto ACTRIAL, and no-one seems to have asked Jimbo or anyone else at WMF in public. Did a volunteer developer (brionv?) close the ACTRIAL bugzilla entry? (I think the paid developers have to plan and allocate resources in the Foundation's annual plan.) If the community came up with a way to fund it, or wrote the code ourselves, or even redesigned ACTRIAL so as not to need technical creativity, then perhaps we could have ACTRIAL after all. Did any other Wikimedia projects try auto-confirmed article creation yet? --Hroðulf (or Hrothulf) (Talk) 14:26, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

WMF vetoed the trial. Erik Moeller (Deputy Director of the WMF) refused to permit the required change - instead saying we needed to develop other ways of resolving the problem (none of which have happened, except for the utter fiasco of the VE - in which the community eventually managed to disable the botched implementation). They flat-out refused to implement the change, despite an utterly overwhelming consensus on-wiki.

"Funding" is not relevent; as one of the developers explains in that bugzilla, it could be done with a 1-line change (Comment 26).

Jimbo was well aware of the discussions. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.104.19.169 (talk) 17:54, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

Thanks IP. Very useful links. It sounds like WMF staff left the door open to a trial on a smaller wiki. --Hroðulf (or Hrothulf) (Talk) 21:44, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

I interpret it as WMF saying that the consensus can fuck off, and they'll do whatever they like. But I appreciate that YMMV. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.104.27.18 (talk • contribs) 00:09, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

Quite. — Scott • talk 12:29, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

I had a private email exchange with Jimbo when the whole ACTRIAL debacle was happening. It was a long time ago, and I don't remember a lot of the details. I found the email and re-read it today, and from what I can tell, Jimbo actually agreed that ACTRIAL should be implemented and that it would be a good idea. However, he disagreed in principle that the WP community should be able to force developers to make software changes, even if there is a strong consensus of hundreds of experienced users in favor of that software change. As you can read from the bugzilla thread, the WMF's answer to our request for ACTRIAL was to make the landing pages for new article creation look nicer and explain the rules more clearly, and to make a new patrolling interface to make NPP more efficient. Obviously, it's clear to most informed Wikipedians that those improvements (and they are improvements) don't address the problem that ACTRIAL was intended to address, and those problems still exist to this day. I'm sure that if I generated the same new article statistics for a more current time period, they would be the same as they were a few years ago. However, I spent a lot of time fighting this battle, and I don't have the motivation to do it again. If someone else does, more power to you. ‑Scottywong| soliloquize _ 02:17, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

We could probably easily write a bot that would implement ACTrial without any dev or WMF action needed. Go through all new pages - Check creator number of edits - If less than 10, move page to AfC / Draft (add AfC review template if needed) - leave friendly note at editor's talk page. We can't force the devs to do anything (well, making VE opt-in is the exception to that rule), but we often don't need them anyway if we really want something done. Fram (talk) 09:12, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

That's a much less effective/efficient way of addressing the problem, and it is different enough from ACTRIAL that I'd guess that it would be difficult to get a consensus for it. ‑Scottywong| confess _ 17:23, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

Fram ...if the community wants, I am totally willing to A/B test sending all new editors through the Draft namespace first, instead of encouraging people to make mainspace articles. It does seem like at first there are other questions people want solved (like how to make it more prominent that they are drafts, not articles. There's more on WT:Drafts). But in the long run, part of the reason we enabled the new namespace isn't just to "fix" the hack of using Misplaced Pages talk subpages at AFC. We really think it's reasonable to hypothesize that it might be a better experience for new people to start a draft that gets published later. It's just a hypothesis we need to test objectively, rather than assume will work perfectly from the get-go. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 01:50, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

"We really think it's reasonable to hypothesize that it might be a better experience for new people to start a draft"

Who is "we"?

We - the community - think new users shouldn't make live articles immediately, but instead should get help - WP:ACTRIAL - but WMF (your 'we'?) refused to do what the community wanted. 94.8.76.17 (talk) 11:29, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

Sorry for the ambiguity. In this case, "we" meant "the Foundation, and very specifically the team of people working on Drafts namespace." I'm not interested in rehashing the ACTRIAL debate, I was simply offering to help if Fram and others are interested in suggesting to new editors to start with drafts. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 21:07, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

Let's dicuss the relevant ArbCom case

I'm reluctant to bring this up given that the case is still ongoing, but your thoughts? And what of the scope? Wikiproject AFC seems to be getting a slap on the wrist for this one, what with the only remedy against them getting snowballed. Also, what is your thoughts on the WP:OWNership that goes on in AFC? KonveyorBelt 18:30, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

• I do wish people, up to and including Arbcom, would stop talking about "Wikiproject AfC" and "AfC" as if they're monolithic bodies sharing a single leader, a single opinion, and a single approach. Right here on this page, you can see a number of people who participate in AfC weighing in with a wide - hugely wide! - variety of opinions regarding the process, the relevance of policies, and what AfC's future should/could look like. "AfC" isn't a person or a sentient entity; if people who participate in AfC have misbehaved, let's talk about them rather than using a broad brush to tar everyone who's ever tried to work in or improve the place. A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 18:47, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

The case is just another typical admin-throwing-their-weight around, and taking the easy option of deleting articles rather than trying to help people contribute. Arbcom won't do anything about it. Pretty normal everyday wikipedia stuff; not much more to say about it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.104.19.169 (talk) 18:51, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

The problem with AFC and admins in general is that when the system is abused, nothing is done. Its a minority of admins to be sure...but its still a major problem. That has been a major point of frustration for me and others within the project for a long time. That's why I don't edit articles anymore and why I am so critical of the existing system. Until admins are held accountable for abusing the tools or baiting others into a situation where they can use their tools against them, this is not going to get better. Its not admin bashing, its simply a matter of the admins not doing anything to maintain their own reputation and allowing a vocal minority of their peers to be naughty without interference or repercussions. An admin can do nearly anything they want because it requires Arbcom intervention (and that is long, complicated and usually pointless). AFC's biggest problem is that some admins want to delete everything or they want to build up their stats and AFC is a good place to build up their numbers quickly. Kumioko (talk) 19:08, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

Well said; that's pretty much why I gave up too. I don't blame the admins; it's just unfortunate that what they are mostly exposed to is the nasty side of Misplaced Pages, and they naturally forget that it's actually about trying to create great articles - because they spend all their time fighting idiotic vandals, trolls, and so on. They forget the bigger picture, and are too keen to click buttons. A new user can be blocked instantly for a minor digression, but an admin gets away with almost any type of behaviour - if they are ever actually admonished, they can just say sorry, and carry on as if nothing ever happened. It's all because adminship has become such a big deal - instead of being seen as janitors. The heart of Misplaced Pages is the people who create content, yet all the major decisions are made by the people who mostly delete it - and that includes the decisions about who becomes an admin, and which admins have done wrong. It's a very fundamental problem. (But it's slightly off-topic in the discussion about AFC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.104.19.169 (talk) 19:18, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

It bears noting that the majority of AfC reviewers aren't admins - certainly the majority of the ones I see participating in AfC-related discussions across the project aren't - and the bulk of AfC reviews/deletion taggings probably aren't done by admins either. A fair number of admins do participate there, and you're of course welcome to have your feelings about that, but AfC reviewing actually tends to attract a high proportion of new(ish) editors who just want to help out. A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 19:32, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

They're certainly not. I didn't mean to imply they were. I was only talking about admins in the context of the arbcom case, not in relation to work in AFC. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.104.19.169 (talk) 19:35, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

The difference is when non admins do the reviews they either submit them for deletion or ignore them and move on. They don't have the ability to delete them and many aren't really that experienced so they make mistakes in the review process. Particularly with regard to notability. So then when some admins want to build up credit as an admin they just run over to AFC and delete a bunch of submissions without checking to verify if they actually meet the criteria. They just assume the reviewers know. Or even worse they use their own flawed criteria (don't like stubs, doesn't have enough inline citations, doesn't bark like a dog, smell like a fish, etc.) and delete them. If they are wrong, then nothing happens other than the article occassionally being restored. They know they won't be held accountable even in cases of extreme problems. So there is nothing to lose. Worse case scenario someone just tells them they made a mistake...but they still keep the tools...because they are "trusted"....forever. Then the one who submitted the AFC sees how we do things here and leaves, likely telling all their friends about what a cesspool Misplaced Pages is. I will be the first to admit that a lot of crap, advertisements and spam are deleted and rightly so, but a lot of articles with potential are also deleted as well. Unfortunately the only ones who can see them to fix them are the admins...only a couple hundred of which are active and only a handful of those pay any attention to AFC. Kumioko (talk) 21:04, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

Yep. If those admins had common sense, they'd tag them instead of deleting them - thus being judge but not executioner. But common sense is so rare. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.104.24.157 (talk) 21:18, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

I would like to think it will be better with the Draft namespace but unfortunately I think it will just be the same since as far as I know all the rules are staying the same. Not that it really matters all that much too me. I'm retired from editing anyway, the only reason I am even bothering to comment is because I am bored. Kumioko (talk) 21:32, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

Same. I'd email you my ID, but it's disabled; no worries; same tho. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.104.24.157 (talk) 21:43, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

The problem with AFC (IMHO) is, we should decide if new users are allowed to create live articles or not. If they are, then AFC is pointless. If they aren't, then all of them should receive equal help developing an article. Currently, that's not the case, because people who register and create a live article are dealt with in a totally different way to those who go via AFC. There's also the problem of bureaucracy-creep within AFC - the discussions of what articles should be passed amazes me, because to me it is perfectly simple; if a submission is unlikely to be speedy-deleted, then it should be accepted and made live. If it is likely to be CSD'd, then the question is whether or not it is possible to make it a worthwhile article; if it is, they should be helped, and if it isn't, they should be told why not. But that's what should happen with *any* new article.

As stated earlier, the solution is ACTRIAL - which means any new article from new users gets treated the same way, and we do everything we can to offer help and support for anything worthwhile. That needs a paradigm change in Misplaced Pages - for 'possibly worthwhile articles', moving away from the spam-template warnings (CSD notices etc), and towards constructive feedback. I live in hope that that will happen eventually, but I fear it's going to take a virtual collapse of the current bureau-centric entrenched community before it happens. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.104.19.169 (talk) 19:28, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

Jimbo?

Mr. Wales, I know it is typical for arguments on your talk to fizzle out, but this is key to the future of Misplaced Pages.

So let's hear from you;

How should new users, creating new articles, be treated?

Years ago you decided that unregistered users couldn't.

That has had repercussions; AFC is one of them.

How do you think we should deal with new users making pages?

It's not realistic to expect them to create a 'valid' page (in the Wikipedian sense) without help. It's just too hard, given the bureau-creep. Unless someone knows about the complicated Wiki policies, they've got no chance.

Right now, if someone who has never edited creates a page, there's about an 80% chance it'll just be deleted - they'll get template warnings and notes about CSD.

If they go via AFC, that's slightly different; it depends who reviews it, but they might get help.

But it's wrong that AFC process is different from the norm.

Anyway - just... say something. Anything, really. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.104.27.18 (talk) 02:02, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

• Let me put it simply: AfC = AfD/CSD by one person, who is probably much less qualified than an admin. So the chances of things going wrong are much higher, both ways. The other issue that AfC encourages a bossy rather than collaborative mentality. At AfD one often sees experienced Wikipedians looking for sources and/or improving the article during the debate. The AfC process encourages a "back to work you little shit" approach from the all-mighty reviewer. Someone not using his real name (talk) 10:47, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

• Said like somebody who has never actually worked there. I am getting really tired of all the slander against people who do good work at AfC coming from people who haven't got a clue how AfC really works. Not a single one of the many such allegations I have seen has ever included a single shred of actual evidence (even Jimbo The Great's two examples in the post that started this topic have turned out to have been reviewed perfectly within the rules and standards). Yes AfC isn't perfect, everyone makes mistakes, that's why AfC has multiple reviewers and the submitter is welcome to resubmit at any time - unless of course the draft is blatantly in violation of one of the applicable CSD criteria, such as copyvio, attack page, vandalism, etc. Yes there are occasionally inexperienced and even bad faith/COI reviewers with agendas there is a process underway to try to filter out such reviewers. The overwhelming majority of reviews and reviewers are perfectly above-board and follow the rules and guidelines that have been formulated and confirmed by consensus and are constantly subject to improvement). BTW, just in case the distinction has escaped some readers here, an AfC reviewer can propose/nominate deletion (just like any other editor) but to actually do the deletion requires a separate process by an admin - using exactly the same criteria, rules and procedures as any other CSD, PROD or XFD. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 12:15, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

• Said somebody who submitted some stuff to AfC while editing as an IP, and vouched to never again waste his time with that. Someone not using his real name (talk) 11:57, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

IMO this is a place where the newly created Draft: space can shine, and make wonders towards editor retention. Good-faith but lacking efforts by new editors to create content could be stored as drafts for a long time, insted of being PRODed or AfD'd or speedily deleted, even if they are not very good; thus making a much better experience for the newcomer. If the editor thus stays around and learn the ropes, she could even return to the draft some months later and improve the draft with her newly ackquired skills, putting it in shape for the main space. This wouldn't happen if she gets bitten by an outright deletion of her effort and abandons the project, no matter how policy-compliant the removal was. Diego (talk) 12:51, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

Another huge advantage of Draft-space is that multiple editors can work on a draft together - the "single author" structure inherent to the AfC system basically prevents that from happening in the existing system. Because Draft-space pages will also have Talk pages, instead of being talk pages, multiple authors have a place to co-ordinate their editing, the same way as it is done in mainspace. It is also possible to add WikiProject templates to Draft Talk pages thus drawing the projects into the drafting process too. BTW Diego, you are mistaken in your assumption that "good faith but lacking" drafts at AfC are currently deleted, that is simply not true. Exactly the same deletion criteria as used elsewhere on WP are used at AfC, only copyvios, attack pages, nonsense, blatant spam, etc, are subject to immediate deletion while the G13 deletion criterion is based on the WP:NOTWEBHOST, WP:NOTINDISCRIMINATE and related policies, it is not gratuitous deletionism gone wild. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 14:15, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

I'm glad you agree to the idea of Draft space as a adding a collaborative spin to article creaton. But about deleting drafts, that's what I was referring to - I don't think they should be subject to the same criteria as Misplaced Pages articles, because they are not articles; I believe they should be treated as talk pages instead. Some policies for removal make sense (such as WP:NOTWEBHOST - people shouldn't assume that their personal stuff will remain here forever, and of course "dangerous" BLP or COPYVIO must go); but others like INDISCRIMINATE, not so much (drafts are not part of the encyclopedia, and verifiable facts should be kept there, just in case someone can find them and use them in some article).

The ideas behing WP:PRESERVE and WP:NOTDEADLINE have been largely abandoned in practice, and I believe the project has stalled because of that. We need an "unstable" space where the old "dirty" ways for content creation can still be put in practice without hurting the stable, public content; Draft space could be that, but the "delete everything imperfect" mentality should be held back in it (I've created a little essay compiling my thoughts, if you're interested).

See thread about #G13 speedy deletion criteria below - there is valid content that is being removed with little or no oversight, only because it's old, and their creators are being spammed by automated messages from bot. That is not a welcoming environment; and it's removing valuable assets from view, hurting the "anything can be improved upon by anybody" mentality that first distinguished Misplaced Pages from Nupedia. The consensus to hide drafts from view was created when a proper place to put them didn't exist - but I don't think it makes much sense for the new space, which has radically different properties than the old user and talk page drafts. Archiving viable but abandoned drafts should be preferred over hiding them, in most situations. Diego (talk) 14:47, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

Nope, I don't see any slowdown. Plenty of spammers submit their "drafts" straight to the mainspace, where it's somebody else's problem to NPOV them, in case the topic turns out notable. Or delete them if they're not. But that's the wiki way. You probably missed the periodic furore here about PR, paid editing, etc. If anything Misplaced Pages is a more desirable target now that it's well established. I've seen some admins harden their stance on such articles (cough, User:DGG in particular) as a result. Sure there's slowdown in articles about basic topics, but I think you'll agree that those topics will get depleted in time, with the news/sports/politics events, BLPs, and new company/product/book/film type of stuff dominating new article creations in the future. Someone not using his real name (talk) 12:08, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

Certainly I advocate being considerably stricter especially for people or companies of marginal notability, but that's for consensus to decide. I never use speedy for something I think someone might quarrel with, and I never use it for G11 single-handed without giving another person a chance to check it. When I want to argue that we've accepted something in the past, but should stop doing so, I suggest it at AfD. And I would never close on the basis that we ought to extend the rules on anything in any direction, so I'm hardly doing anything here as an admin.

Deleting drafts as we have been doing it in AfC or user space have never been subject to the same criteria as WP articles: We delete for vandalism and copyvio, certainly, and I don't think anyone would suggest otherwise. But although G11 does apply in userspace, we delete only for the most outrageous examples of pure advertising, not advertising which is conceivably fixable. Nor do we delete for lack of notability: A7 does not apply except in article space. The question of deleting material not being worked on is different problem, and I'll comment on it below--but there is in any case a firm principle that any such material will be restored on request. DGG ( talk ) 20:02, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

As for AfC, the most important thing about it is that nobody is forced to use it. I've been trying to personally look at every rejected article outside of sports and entertainment for the last 18 months. My standard in screening these is to postpone deletion at G13 for every article that shows a reasonable possibility of adding useful content either to as a separate article, or meged into an existing article--I find that's about 10 to 20%. The other 80% are on the face of them hopeless--unless of course someone subsequently becomes notable years later, which can always happen but cannot be predicted. Some of the people screening these deletions have used a more rigorous standard, of whether the individual editor will come back to work on them, or sometimes whether they themselves will want to fix them. Fortunately, it takes only one person to postpone deletion, and one simple way of doing that is to make a single constructive edit. So many of that 80% are so bad that we would need to remove them somehow, because even tho they don't show up in external search engines, they will in a search within WP, and they will be linkable to from outside, If we had not adopted G13, the alternative would have been to very extensively use MfD, which is much more cumbersome. It's unfortunately also the case that of the accepted ones, about 10 to 20% should never have been accepted (usually because of promotionalism, undetected copyvio, or often both). So at the quality level of reviewing over the last two years, about one-third of the decisions have been wrong, about equally in both directions. As for the quality of advice, I think the chance of getting appropriate advice there has been somewhat less than even. tThe principle that anybody can edit is very important for contributions, but has problems with the quality control functions normally thought of as editing. DGG ( talk ) 06:33, 26 January 2014 (UTC)

Proposal: Create a Misplaced Pages-only read-only Tor exit node

We already know one thing we can do to support people's right to read freely without fear that their reading Misplaced Pages will be used to harass them. We can set up a Tor exit node in Misplaced Pages's server room, set up so that it can only access Misplaced Pages and Wikimedia, and with the ability to edit Misplaced Pages blocked. That way, anyone can read Misplaced Pages in an untraceable way. --Guy Macon (talk) 05:48, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

Support for the implementation of Tor as part of Misplaced Pages's "fight back". petrarchan47tc 01:18, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

Except Misplaced Pages bans Tor because admins can't easily catch sockpuppets if they use Tor. You see, Misplaced Pages and the NSA do have something in common (the NSA usually has to DOS tor users; direct spying on Tor directly being more difficult). Someone not using his real name (talk) 15:50, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

Guy Macon's proposal specifically addresses this (read only). Guy, is that idea written up anywhere in more technical detail? – SJ + 19:13, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

I can write up detailed instructions or even provide an image of a virtual machine that is already set up, but I doubt that the WMF developers need either. I have found them to be extremely competent in the past.

To expand on what I wrote above, the Tor node I am describing would:

• Talk to a strictly limited set of domains (Misplaced Pages, Wikimedia, etc). It would not have access (read or write) to any other domain.

• Be blocked from editing Misplaced Pages or any associated project (Wiktionary, Wikinews) that we may decide to give access to.

• Be physically located in one of our server rooms, with a direct (not internet) connection to our servers.

• It should have bandwidth throttling. Just being a Tor relay node that is unlikely to be controlled by the NSA has value; every new node increases the security of the network. That being said, we don't want to give the Tor traffic unlimited resources.

• Just to be extra careful, we should block read access to any kind of executable file (.exe, Javascript etc.) to make it harder for a Misplaced Pages editor to compromise a Tor user's privacy. See Tor (anonymity network)#Firefox / JavaScript anonymity attack on Freedom Hosting users.

So, where would one propose such a thing where it has a chance of getting WMF funding? --Guy Macon (talk) 07:06, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

This is imminently wise. No one should have to be afraid to read Misplaced Pages-- but in many places in the world, such fears are legitimate. To the extent that we can help give people the ability to read without fear, it's not just our duty as wikipedians to provide that help, it's actually our duty has human beings. --HectorMoffet (talk) 07:30, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

Unless I have missed something in this thread, it is already possible to visit Misplaced Pages via Tor. All standard websites can be visited after downloading and running the software. However, clicking on the edit button should produce a message that the IP address is blocked on all wikis (screenshot). One additional possibility would be to offer Misplaced Pages as an .onion site, but this is not really necessary.--♦IanMacM♦ 07:57, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

That would allow the NSA to monitor the traffic between the Tor exit node and Misplaced Pages. Putting the exit node in our server room does not. See https://www.torproject.org/docs/faq#CanExitNodesEavesdrop --Guy Macon (talk) 08:17, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

True, although the identity of the people generating the traffic should be concealed by the various hops. An .onion site version of Misplaced Pages should solve this problem, but they are generally very slow to access.--♦IanMacM♦ 08:25, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

This sounds interesting to me but I'd like to understand better what is being proposed. I don't think there is any serious question of "funding" per se - this wouldn't cost any significant amount of money. What is the attack vector being contemplated, and against whom, and how would they avoid it by using this?

1. You can already use Tor to read Misplaced Pages. You generally can't edit using Tor, or anyway it is difficult, because when we have tried to unblock Tor exit nodes, we face high levels of abuse.
2. It is said up above that the NSA could monitor traffic between a normal Tor exit node and Misplaced Pages, but it is unclear to me to whom that would be dangerous. Traffic coming out of Tor exit nodes is already anonymized.
3. Using SSL means that (subject to some caveats) all the NSA can see is that a Tor exit node is talking to Misplaced Pages, not which pages are being looked at nor the content of them.
4. If I'm a Tor user, is it easy for me to specify that I want to use a particular exit node? This is a purely empirical question - I don't know the answer. It just strikes me as very likely that if we did set this up, no one would use it.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 08:35, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages is one of the world's most visited websites, so a dedicated Tor exit node would require considerable bandwidth. It is possible to specify which countries are used for an exit node, and to ban certain countries, but this is generally for the more advanced user. There is also a version of Tor which attempts to disguise the fact that you are using Tor , as some countries have learned how to block access.--♦IanMacM♦ 08:43, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

Regarding "no one would use it" and "it would would require considerable bandwidth" Ian, meet Jimbo. Jimbo, meet Ian. (smile). I will get to the other questions tomorrow - it's late. --Guy Macon (talk) 09:32, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

As promised, here are the answers to Jimbo's questions.

"You can already use Tor to read Misplaced Pages.

See below.

"You generally can't edit using Tor, or anyway it is difficult, because when we have tried to unblock Tor exit nodes, we face high levels of abuse."

I don't know why this keeps coming up. I clearly specified "read-only" in the title of this proposal, yet people keep telling me why we don't allow Tor write access.

"It is said up above that the NSA could monitor traffic between a normal Tor exit node and Misplaced Pages, but it is unclear to me to whom that would be dangerous. Traffic coming out of Tor exit nodes is already anonymized."

Assuming that the someone can monitor SSL traffic to Misplaced Pages from a Tor exit node (more on that below), what you look at on Misplaced Pages tells a lot about who you are. Imagine a Chinese user using Tor to look at Misplaced Pages, and assume that the authorities can see what he views but not who he is. He looks up Falun Gong, then Manzhouli (where he lives), then Mongolian Revolution of 1990, then he reads his talk page. From this whoever is doing the monitoring knows exactly who he is and has information that could cause him a lot of trouble.

"Using SSL means that (subject to some caveats) all the NSA can see is that a Tor exit node is talking to Misplaced Pages, not which pages are being looked at nor the content of them."

The NSA claims to be able to break SSL. See How does the NSA break SSL? for details on a plausible method that they can use to decrypt every past and future connection made from any existing Tor exit node to Misplaced Pages. If we have our own Tor exit node, they would have to ask us for access, and even if we were forbidden to reveal that fact, at least the WMF legal team would know.

"If I'm a Tor user, is it easy for me to specify that I want to use a particular exit node? This is a purely empirical question - I don't know the answer."

From the Tor FAQ:

Can I control which nodes are used for entry/exit?

Yes. You can set preferred entry and exit nodes as well as inform Tor which nodes you do not want to use.

Finally, answering Ian's concerns about bandwidth usage, I already specified bandwidth throttling in the proposal. We can give the Tor users as much or as little bandwidth as we choose. Also see my question at Misplaced Pages:Help desk#Can we measure Tor usage?. --Guy Macon (talk) 22:07, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

• In 2007, Swedish researcher Dan Egerstad set up a fake Tor exit node and used it to recover various passwords, including the e-mail passwords of embassies. This a known attack vector for Tor, and users are advised never to log in via Tor, as they could fall foul of a malicious exit node. Tor uses HTTPS Everywhere which forces HTTPS connections when they are available. This should provide good security when visiting Misplaced Pages via Tor, but nothing in life is perfect.--♦IanMacM♦ 09:43, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

This issue also raises the question of how persons being monitored and/ or oppressed might be able to not only access but edit here without their work being used against them. I understand the reasoning behind block Tor to read only capabilities, but it might be useful to provide access for those wanting to edit with true anonymity in this age of government spying. There is also the problem of persons blocked by Misplaced Pages improperly who might find the existence of additional accessability useful, but that is another issue. But I do hope the systemic abuses here will be addressed some time soon. Candleabracadabra (talk)

As far as China is concerned, reports from foreign visitors suggest that Tor does not work there because the government knows how to block it. This was one of the reasons for the development of obfsproxy, which is still experimental. --♦IanMacM♦ 06:18, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

Guy, what you are describing used to be a Tor feature. It was called an exit enclave, but no longer functions in current versions of Tor. Bandwidth limiting is built into Tor and is easy to set up. Blocking content based on the file extension or presence of Javascript isn't something Tor can do by itself.

Ian, people moving from accessing Misplaced Pages on the public Internet to accessing Misplaced Pages via Tor would not create more traffic. It would simply change its apparent source. However, I would hope that as more people feel safe that they can read Misplaced Pages without persecution, it would lead to more people around the world actually reading it, which would, in fact, create more traffic. That would be a good thing. 92.78.150.87 (talk) 19:05, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

You really have no idea how the NSA operates, do you?

Why would they bother intercepting traffic to this web site when:

1. most of what happens here is publicly logged anyway, so not a suitable venue for conspiratorial enterprises
2. if Misplaced Pages has any database mirrors around the globe (and I think it does), the NSA can obtain copies of the entire database in MUSCULAR style (check-user info and all)
3. if that's somehow not enough, they can QUANTUM their way to some poor WMF sysadmin's account
4. and if all that fails the can FISA for the entire database anyway, and won't be able to talk about it

Still think Tor is worth a damn for Misplaced Pages? Someone not using his real name (talk) 13:23, 24 January 2014 (UTC) Oh, and if you think the NSA can't mitm you because you're using SSL (even over Tor), that's also very naive. Someone not using his real name (talk) 13:42, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

Nice looking perfect solution fallacy you have there. Have you had it long? It looks really healthy and well-developed. --Guy Macon (talk) 23:06, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

Yes, apparently I did think about it more than you did (unless you are intentionally just looking to create sacrificial lambs from the average Misplaced Pages readers or you want to DDOS tor, but I AGF that you are not that smart & evil.) The average Misplaced Pages reader is likely to have their computer pwnd by (some TLA-made) malware as result of using tor so it's more likely to be a net negative for them. (Even for the more skilled operators (at a minimum, not using MS Windows and probably disabling JavaScript) tor isn't as peachy as previously thought ) Even WikiLeaks doesn't say that all their leakers should use Tor, and "Tor is usually VERY SLOW. Page load times of 5-60 seconds are normal. Please be patient." And if you think that will lead more of the average Misplaced Pages readers to run their own exit nodes, pause and think how many average Misplaced Pages readers would knowingly want to run the risk of having their home computers confiscated (even just temporarily) when the inevitable child porn gets routed through their home machines. Probably not many. Someone not using his real name (talk) 06:36, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

I have no idea what you are bloviating about, but it has nothing to do with my proposal. I never implied that the average Misplaced Pages reader should use TOR, much less set up an exit node. You apparently are so wrapped up in creating melodrama that you are not responding to what people actually write. I am not going to read or respond to your comments after this; your snide remarks are not helpful. --Guy Macon (talk) 12:50, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

• People should not run Tor exit nodes from their home IP address. The Tor Project does not recommend this following cases where people were raided. A relay can be run from a home IP address, as it does not show up as the source of the traffic.--♦IanMacM♦ 08:52, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

Somebody not using his real name, if you check your sources, you'll find that your conclusions are misleading and laced with your personal opinions. Guy, forums are full of well-informed people out to persuade people against using Tor. 92.78.150.87 (talk) 19:05, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

As a side note to this discussion, I'd like to point out that I'm less concerned about spies utilizing "man in the middle" attacks than I am about wholesale surveillance and data warehousing on the general public "just in case" some of them might do something in the future.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 15:26, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

Yeah, in a typical NSA codename shell game STELLARWIND was closed down... only to be replaced by the much more comprehensive EVILOLIVE, SHELLTRUMPET etc. . The fact that Special Source Operations (who does all this) is just a stub, should tell you how much the average person cares about his net traffic being warehoused in order to be Palantir'd later . The main problem with recommending Tor as fix for that is that most people have no idea what it actually does and even people who are supposed to know a thing or two about secure communication used in a way was that actually made them less secure (at least in 2007): : “Egerstad was able to read correspondence belonging to the Indian ambassador to China, various politicians in Hong Kong, workers in the Dalai Lama's liaison office and several human-rights groups in Hong Kong. Egerstad says it wasn't just e-mail that was exposed but instant messages passed internally between workers and any other web traffic that crossed the network. Among the data he initially collected was e-mail from an Australian embassy worker with the subject line referring to an "Australian military plan."” etc. Someone not using his real name (talk) 19:43, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

The NSA Internet metadata db is called MARINA, and of course it doesn't have Misplaced Pages article--nobody cares, like I said. From : “The Marina metadata application tracks a user’s browser experience, gathers contact information/content and develops summaries of target”. “Of the more distinguishing features, Marina has the ability to look back on the last 365 days’ worth of DNI metadata seen by the Sigint collection system, regardless whether or not it was tasked for collection.” And US citizens are exempt from Marina (or similar metadata collection): "Additionally, metadata about U.S. persons collected in the United States can be used once it is captured. The Supplemental Procedures Governing Communications Metadata Analysis “enables the analytic to chain ‘from,’ ‘through,’ or ‘to’ communications metadata fields without regard to the nationality or location of the communicants, and users may view those same communications metadata fields in an unmasked form.” In plain English: the rules allow the NSA to hold information collected “incidentally” about U.S. persons and use it for analytics." The NSA MARINA guys even came up with cringe-worthy name pattern-of-life analysis (You can even see it in various public resumes on LinkedIn usually abbreviated as POL.) The Palantir stuff the for CIA & FBI is basically the same thing , but they have the PR clue not to call it quite that, but rather call it link-and-pattern analysis . Someone not using his real name (talk)

Guy: this is worth posting to wikitech-l. It would certainly make the Tor network slightly stronger; and we do want to support anonymous access to the projects. You might also propose this for a grant on Meta. Request developer time instead of money, and see what happens ;-) – SJ + 19:12, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

I will do that after this conversation comes to an end. Thanks! --Guy Macon (talk) 23:06, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

Further thoughts

Nowadays it is very difficult to prevent the NSA and their pals at GCHQ from accessing anything that people do on the Internet, because they already have all the necessary legal powers to do this (just ask Ladar Levison at Lavabit). What is being proposed here - a dedicated Misplaced Pages Tor exit node - would not add greatly to what is already offered by the existing Tor Browser Bundle with HTTPS Everywhere. Even if the NSA and the intelligence agencies in other countries do operate some of the Tor exit nodes, which is considered to be likely, a dedicated Misplaced Pages Tor exit node would have to be hosted in a non-US friendly country to have much of an effect. In any case, the NSA presentation Tor Stinks suggests that the NSA has difficulty in de-anonymizing Tor users. This, combined with the Tor Project's recommendation to use end-to-end HTTPS as the default system, means that a separate Misplaced Pages Tor server is not really necessary. As an example, the search engine DuckDuckGo uses HTTPS by default, and is also available as an .onion site (http://3g2upl4pq6kufc4m dot onion). Provided that Tor and HTTPS are working correctly, the .onion version does not offer a large improvement in security. Instead of asking me for advice (or Jimbo for that matter), it might be better to ask the Tor Project if it believes that a separate Misplaced Pages Tor exit node is really necessary. People who want to help Tor are better advised to set up bridge relays.--♦IanMacM♦ 14:18, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

Let's not forget the symbolic value. Even if the added level of security can be defeated, it seems appropriate for us to at least try to make a Misplaced Pages anyone can read without fear. --HectorMoffet (talk) 14:40, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

For a United States citizen, the government is similar to Don Corleone, as it is capable of making offers that cannot be refused. Furthermore, the citizen would be unable to reveal publicly that such a request had been made. This is why a Misplaced Pages exit node needs to be taken with a grain of salt.--♦IanMacM♦ 14:52, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

The Corleone family is relevant to a discussion further up this page: you may wish to assist with Misplaced Pages talk:Articles for creation/Connie Corleone, which may well be headed for a G13 deletion in the future if it isn't helped along the way. Arthur goes shopping (talk) 15:41, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

Either way, I'm not hearing an objection to directing our staff to do anything and everything possible to help our readers, wherever they are, freely read WP without being tracked, to the extent that that's possible. --HectorMoffet (talk) 16:05, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

Some points:

1. Yes, you can configure tor to exit from a specific node (or even set of nodes, like a country)
2. Yes, some Tor exit nodes are mitming: : "The researchers built a scanning tool called exitmap that can identify exit relays behaving maliciously or abnormally and ran it on the Tor network. Over a four-month period they identified 25 bad relays that were subsequently reported to the Tor Project and blacklisted. Fourteen relays engaged in man-in-the-middle HTTPS traffic sniffing using fake certificates, four relays did both HTTPS and SSH sniffing and one attempted only SSH sniffing. Two other relays used the sslstrip tool to force HTTPS connections over plain HTTP, one relay injected HTML code in HTTP traffic and three relays engaged in Internet censorship by blocking access to certain websites at the DNS level, intentionally or because of misconfiguration."
3. If you're a US person, the chances of you being spied on by the NSA actually increase if you use Tor

Hope this helps. Someone not using his real name (talk) 17:58, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

• Note also that it has been reported that the encryption used by secure sockets and thus by https connections can be broken by the NSA. I have no idea how accurate this report is, but I wouldn't trust https to keep anything secure from NSA intercepts. Such a Misplaced Pages exit node might have some symbolic value, but I doubt that it would greatly increase anyone's actual security or freedom from eavesdropping by the NSA or any similar governmental organization. DES 18:27, 24 January 2014 (UTC)
  • Nobody with actual clearance to the details is talking; Snowden only had clearance to some overview and classification documents. See BULLRUN. Someone not using his real name (talk) 18:32, 24 January 2014 (UTC)
• There is a list of supposedly bad Tor relays here. However, a list of this kind is unlikely ever to be complete or up to date. You have been warned:)--♦IanMacM♦ 18:48, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

Fundamental issues, recommendations

1. Tor routing is based on ports, like port 80 (HTTP) and 443 (HTTPS). Tor Exit Routers have to explicitly allow specific ports to allow the passage of traffic over said port, which is done in a configuration policy on the Tor Exit Router (the TORRC file), which tells the rest of the Tor network which traffic you're willing to accept. If you accept only port 443 for example (presuming that only HTTPS traffic should pass), and then on Misplaced Pages's side block all other https-web traffic that is not a Wikimedia domain, you will literally censor the rest of the internet for any Tor client presuming that port 443 traffic will resolve through that Tor Exit Router. Nothing in the current Tor protocol would allow the Tor network to say-- "only this Tor Exit Router can pass traffic to these specific domains". This would not greatly affect the Tor network, as it would take a little bit of time for said Tor Exit Router to gain consensus, but more importantly, the Tor protocol would recognize said blocking and mark said router as a 'bad router', and it wouldn't pass any Tor Exit traffic at all.
2. The Tor network, nor the Tor Browser Bundle by itself, does not and cannot enforce "HTTPS-everywhere" or any other kind of protocol tampering, outside of wrapping said traffic in 3 layers of encryption. HTTPS needs to be enforced server-side using HSTS (https://en.wikipedia.org/HTTP_Strict_Transport_Security).
3. Some people's comments here are correct-- people can already access Misplaced Pages using Tor. Tor users are just blocked from editing. Yawnbox (talk) 19:09, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

Recommendations

1. PFS (https://en.wikipedia.org/Forward_secrecy) needs to be used server-side so that surveilled/recorded HTTPS sessions cannot be made into clear-text at a later date if the SSL private key becomes compromised.
2. What needs to be talked about is allowing Misplaced Pages to be writable to Tor users. Yawnbox (talk) 19:09, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

• Re #2: You're joking. Most Internet Relay Chat servers ban access to Tor exit nodes, because of the obvious problems with spam and abuse. Misplaced Pages's policy is similar.--♦IanMacM♦ 19:28, 24 January 2014 (UTC)
• Would it be technically feasible to allow editing only by logged-in users who access Wkipedia via Tor, but block IP (non-logged-in) users? DES 19:54, 24 January 2014 (UTC)
  • Yes. See Template:Anonblock for the message we typically use, and Mediawiki's help page for blocking IPs for details on what options are available. --Guy Macon (talk) 10:54, 25 January 2014 (UTC)
• I support the idea of a read-only Tor exit node for Misplaced Pages. Sam Beebe —Preceding undated comment added 06:51, 25 January 2014 (UTC)
• As long as it doesn't get advertized as some miracle solution for the average reader, who probably won't benefit from it, and might even get trojaned by some TLA soon after setting up tor, I see no reason why not set up such an exit node. There are some technically advanced people would be able to use it properly to their advantage. As Jimbo mentioned though, finding out which pages one reads is not possible without breaking (mitming) SSL if one uses HTTPS. (And you still need to use HTTPS, even over tor.) So the added benefit of tor is... that the attacker won't even know that you're reading Misplaced Pages. Unlike (say) being found out that one uploaded something (no matter what) to WikiLeaks, the consequences of being discovered reading Misplaced Pages are probably zilch almost everywhere. But hey, if it floats your boat to hide that and are willing to put up with the massive slowdown (and not being able to edit) then... why not? It would probably help out some people in Iran or China, but it's tricky because while you can configure tor for a specific exit node, I doubt the WMF would allow a general purpose exit node (i.e. not just one that only allows traffic to Misplaced Pages.) So would be users would have to juggle exits nodes manually and repeatedly in that case, unless the tor software gets some special new features (like per URL exit nodes or something similar). Someone not using his real name (talk) 17:13, 25 January 2014 (UTC)
• An adversary will always know if you are using Tor. What is much more difficult is knowing what the person did while using Tor. People in China cannot use Tor; it is generally agreed that it does not work there as the telcos have found how to block it. A Misplaced Pages Tor node would not be much safer than the existing Tor/HTTPS setup used correctly.--♦IanMacM♦ 04:03, 26 January 2014 (UTC)

• actually, it is not true that "An adversary will always know if you are using Tor", nor is it true that "People in China cannot use Tor". Please see https://www.novainfosec.com/2013/05/07/free-tor-bridges-available-in-amazon-ec2/ for details about Tor bridges (computers that act as hidden gateways to Tor). --Guy Macon (talk) 12:18, 26 January 2014 (UTC)

• Here is another reason to run our own TOR exit node: http://cryptome.org/2013/08/tor-users-routed.pdf says "Onion routing is vulnerable to an adversary who can monitor a user’s traffic as it enters and leaves the anonymity network; correlating that traffic using traffic analysis links the observed sender and receiver of the communication." Running our own TOR exit node prevents the adversary from monitor the user’s traffic as it leaves the anonymity network. --Guy Macon (talk) 13:46, 26 January 2014 (UTC)

The standard version of Tor may be detected by the Chinese authorities using deep packet inspection. Foreign visitors to China have reported difficulty in accessing Tor. Personally, I would steer clear of operating a Tor exit node from a home IP address, in line with the advice given by the Tor Project. A relay or bridge is safer. Bad exit nodes are a known problem for Tor, but the circuits switch every ten minutes or so to lessen this problem. An average visit, e.g. me looking up the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 on the English language Misplaced Pages, would be hard to detect. That is what Tor is for; revealing personal data via a Tor exit node is not recommended.--♦IanMacM♦ 14:08, 26 January 2014 (UTC)

It is a typical arms race; as soon as the Chinese authorities gain the ability to detect Tor, Tor starts working on getting better at imitating Skype, Bittorrent, etc. As soon as Tor gets better at hiding, the Chinese start working on better detection methods, and the next round starts.

That being said, it is unlikely that the Chinese authorities can monitor the output of an exit node in the US, The above scenario involves a US user with the NSA monitoring the entrance and exit nodes.

Of course if the Beijing Sigint Intelligence asked the NSA to share the results of their monitoring of US ISPs, the likely answer would be "what information do you have that you would be willing to trade?" Give the NSA the chance to stop a major terrorist attack on the US at the cost of outing a few Chinese dissidents, and they would no doubt jump at the chance. And it's hard to say that they would be wrong. --Guy Macon (talk) 18:47, 26 January 2014 (UTC)

What I don't get is, where did our faith go? What ever happened to "watering the tree of liberty"? Even in the month of September 2001, flying was still as safe as driving. We didn't have to surrender to a few shocking videos, abandon civil liberties, turn into aggressive imperialists, grope and fingerprint tourists, devastate populations, condone torture, and set up a monstrous surveillance state out of fear that it would happen again. All we really had to do was say a few prayers for the dead and go on with our lives, and we wouldn't have to be complicit in anything. Wnt (talk) 22:55, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

The day we fight back (update)

This earlier discussion could use an centrally-discussed RFC, to provide closure.

The separate page dedicated to this discussion has not worked out so far: the initial proponents have stopped working on it, and others have come and split the idea into a dozen suboptions: something guaranteed to prevent any consensus. There should be 2 options in the RFC, not 10. (Do we highlight these issues or not?) And someone should leave a note about it on the main page talk.

It's fine if there is an active decision not to do anything, but it would be a shame for the discussion to simply peter out, given the level of interest above. The explanation for the RFC should note how omnipresent surveillance has a chilling effect on readers and contributors. The same concerns that lead us to strongly support anonymous access and editing, and to protect the IP addresses of editors, apply here: people will avoid contributing to or even reading about topics that they fear might one day make them a target.

The argument that concerns about surveillance are a political issue triggering soapboxing is a red herring: free and anonymous access to our projects is one of our long-standing principles, and those concerned about this come from every part of the political spectrum. It is a societal question: do we want a global society that is encompassed by mass surveillance? It is not popular with any major political base, and I know of no politicians that have ever run on a 'more surveillance' platform.

I don't have time to run an RFC this week, but am happy to help. – SJ + 19:30, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

• Support for Sj's idea to move forward with a general RfC (asap). We owe it to the community to bring this issue before them, as Sj says, seeing the level of interest shown thus far. A small group of people have tried to hash things out and create a proposal, but given the contentious issue at hand, was easily fragmented. It seems we have concluded, however, that a surveillance-themed day would not break any Wiki rules.

Idea:

Initiate a very general RfC about whether we want to participate in any way, ie, Do we highlight these issues or not?

If "yes", a second RfC would follow with a very limited selection, for instance: banner & main page presence - or - banner and portal - or - banner only. petrarchan47tc 21:01, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

When and where was it concluded "that a surveillance-themed day would not break any Wiki rules"? This has been a matter of great contention. —David Levy 12:19, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

What I observed was that due to prior history and the existence of main-page-theme days, what we are proposing is not novel and not illegal - though I agree it is certainly contentious. That is why the community should be consulted asap - this weekend at the latest. petrarchan47tc 23:10, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

As noted in various discussions, we've never had a theme day for the purpose of supporting a protest or any other political advocacy. You're entitled to opine that this isn't a material distinction, but others believe that it is. Nothing remotely resembling agreement "that a surveillance-themed day would not break any Wiki rules" exists. On the contrary, multiple editors have asserted that it would violate the first two of the five pillars.

You acknowledge that the matter is contentious, but you advocate that a decision be reached via an expedited RfC. (the default duration is 30 days, with discussions regarding contentious matters often taking longer.) As I noted below, there isn't even enough time to properly gauge consensus, let alone act on it. —David Levy 00:44, 26 January 2014 (UTC)

Again, there are many options. You make good points, but they aren't definitive reasons that this idea, even if some aspects are novel to Wiki, is not legal and should not be considered. If 'many editors' have made assertions, I assume they were allowed the space to do that? This is what I am arguing for. I want to hear from others, and they want to be heard, from what I hear.

On the 7 day RfC, if the numbers are anything like what Spirit of Eagle describes, a week may be sufficient to have a clear idea. But again, when editors who are in favor are arguing, they will see the glass half full. There are options. We could have a 16 day RfC, and all the while be working on content. But I don't expect to convince you :) petrarchan47tc 03:35, 26 January 2014 (UTC)

Again, there are many options.

Again, there's insufficient time to even gauge consensus.

You make good points, but they aren't definitive reasons that this idea, even if some aspects are novel to Wiki, is not legal and should not be considered.

I haven't claimed that a "definitive" determination was made. You asserted that "it seems we have concluded, however, that a surveillance-themed day would not break any Wiki rules." I merely noted that no such conclusion has been reached.

If 'many editors' have made assertions, I assume they were allowed the space to do that?

You're aware that the matter has been discussed in multiple fora, including the surveillance awareness day talk page (on which you were active).

This is what I am arguing for. I want to hear from others, and they want to be heard, from what I hear.

It's been close to 13 days since Jimbo posted his note. Multiple editors urged the idea's proponents to initiate an RfC as soon as possible (and one could have run almost the default 30-day duration), but that didn't occur. Some preferred to express their support here. Others insisted that it was essential to devise concrete plans at Misplaced Pages talk:The Day We Fight Back (later renamed Misplaced Pages talk:Surveillance awareness day) before consulting the community at large. The efforts there have stalled/fizzled, and now that all of that time has ticked away, the attitude appears to be "let's just bring this thing to a vote" (not an actual quotation, obviously).

On the 7 day RfC, if the numbers are anything like what Spirit of Eagle describes, a week may be sufficient to have a clear idea.

A time crunch encourages drive-by voting and groupthink. I'm sure that plenty of "support"/"oppose" comments would be left, but there simply isn't enough time for a consensus-building discussion. Irrespective of the outcome, an expedited RfC is likely to be treated as a majority vote.

There are options. We could have a 16 day RfC, and all the while be working on content.

We were working on content. You were there.

Again, setting aside the potential difficulty of creating special content, 30 days is the low end of the normal RfC duration for contentious subjects. We could have had 28 days, but that ship has sailed. —David Levy 08:12, 26 January 2014 (UTC)

• Support for SJ's idea for a general RFC. I'm not the person to set it up, but someone should. We have Misplaced Pages:Surveillance awareness day/RFC set up, but someone who is not me should look it over and actually advertise it. Anyone? Anyone? --HectorMoffet (talk) 07:34, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

• Oppose. I'm baffled as to why people have been posting "support"/"oppose" comments on Jimbo's talk page, but given the fact that the above is a proposal to bring the question to an appropriate forum, I suppose that it serves to offset the original misplaced exchange. Anyway, I oppose the idea for the following reasons:
  Firstly, the implementation proposed above is blatantly slanted (and would effectively tell respondents which position to take). Secondly, while a more neutral implementation is possible, discussions on the "separate page" mentioned above have clearly shown that the endeavor simply isn't feasible. For an issue this contentious, there isn't even enough time to properly gauge consensus, let alone act on it (particularly without taking shortcuts). Already, I've seen talk of "expediting" a relevant article's FA candidacy, possibly by dumping much of its content into separate articles (specifically to enable the remaining material to be worked over at FAC more rapidly).
  The efforts at Misplaced Pages talk:Surveillance awareness day collapsed for a reason: even if this is a good idea in principle (which many editors doubt), there simply isn't enough time to pull it off. —David Levy 12:19, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

People have been weighing in at Jimbo's because this is where the idea first emerged, and there does seem to be greater support than opposition, at least here anyway. The main page group had a different attitude. I am very interested to see what editors besides the 10-15 who've weighed in thus far have to say. I am absolutely unconvinced that an acknowledgement of Nov 11 from Misplaced Pages is not possible and not wiki-legal. Slippery slope or not, our past proves that Wiki is more flexible when it comes to things the community finds important (SOPA). I am hearing that the community here is not so different from those around the globe - the majority doesn't dig what has been revealed about government intrusion into the device I'm using right now. As for arguing back and forth, we have exhausted ourselves. It truly is time to throw this to the many editors who will want to weigh in. If we decided on a simple banner, we would surely have enough time. I'm simply \not convinced this is impossible. petrarchan47tc 23:10, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

People have been weighing in at Jimbo's because this is where the idea first emerged,

I'm aware that the idea originated here. I just don't understand why users decided to debate it here.

and there does seem to be greater support than opposition, at least here anyway.

Indeed, a majority of editors posting on Jimbo's talk page support an idea inspired by a message from Jimbo.

The main page group had a different attitude.

Yes, there was a great deal of opposition among editors who maintain the main page's content and are familiar with the various formats and the underlying processes. What does that tell you?

Slippery slope or not, our past proves that Wiki is more flexible when it comes to things the community finds important (SOPA).

There was credible evidence (analysis by attorneys) that SOPA and PIPA directly threatened Misplaced Pages's very existence. What comparable evidence exists in this instance?

And even in 2012, we didn't modify encyclopedic content or tag it with advocacy banners. We suppressed the entire encyclopedia, thereby insulating it from the protest.

I am hearing that the community here is not so different from those around the globe - the majority doesn't dig what has been revealed about government intrusion into the device I'm using right now.

Majority disapproval (or approval) isn't a valid justification for using the encyclopedia as a soapbox. WP:NPOV is nonnegotiable, no matter how strongly Misplaced Pages's editors agree that mass surveillance is bad, Kim Jong-un is brutal tyrant, or any other viewpoint. In fact, that's a reason to work even harder to ensure that our personal opinions don't color the site's encyclopedic material.

It truly is time to throw this to the many editors who will want to weigh in. If we decided on a simple banner, we would surely have enough time.

An RfC's default duration is 30 days, with discussions regarding contentious matters often taking longer. Even the entire period between today and February 11 is insufficient. —David Levy 00:44, 26 January 2014 (UTC)

See below. petrarchan47tc 03:18, 26 January 2014 (UTC)

• Support. I remember back when there was a similar discussion for SOPA, many users posted objections to doing anything to mark the event. However, when an actual tally was held, well over 90% of respondents wanted to do something on the SOPA protest day. While I’m not advocating a tally per say (WP:DEM), it would be unwise to assume that there is no consensus without actually doing anything to test consensus. Spirit of Eagle (talk) 02:42, 26 January 2014 (UTC)
• Support, sound idea by Sj (talk · contribs), above. Cheers, — Cirt (talk) 04:53, 27 January 2014 (UTC)
• Support - A simple Rfc with two options is what we need now, and a one week duration fits the time window. Let's get it done asap. Jusdafax 22:22, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

  Now we're down to a week (less than a quarter of the usual duration for RfCs on uncontroversial matters)? Wow.
  FYI, an RfC was started, but one of the idea's primary advocates removed it (apparently due to some sort of problem regarding the wording). —David Levy 23:02, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

Alternative to RFCs and formal declarations

I think that this is not the time for an RFC about how Misplaced Pages can promote a political position; rather it is the time for us to explore the means by which all editors are legitimately entitled to work together to better document and outreach to a community with a certain political position. We all hold to NPOV; but we see things on the Main Page and elsewhere that have the effect of advocacy, even though they are permitted. Whatever our position, no matter the issue, so long as we have fair rules fairly applied, we can indulge our desire to ensure that people know about the issue, trusting that when they know the truth they will naturally become recruits to our own enlightened view. Faith in reason is essential to Misplaced Pages's existence.

At the original WP:Surveillance awareness day I proposed that those interested in action should do the following:

• Join the recently inactive WP:WikiProject Intelligence WikiProjects are the principal legitimate means by which editors try to drum up interest in a topic, such as FA and DYK drives.

• Create T:TDYKs and other good content. At the time I commented that the two bills mentioned on the The Day We Fight Back website weren't articles yet; Hector and Petrarchan wrote up one, and Hector has the other nearly ready to post. But for example there are many notable activist organizations still redlinked that I listed as authors of a critical letter at (currently) User:HectorMoffet/FISA Improvements Act, and many ProjectPM entries that may be notable in a list I left at WT:WikiProject IntelligenceWT:WikiProject Intelligence Agency. Just looking up one of the site's major references about chilling effects of surveillance turned up yet another possibility (The FDR Group) - it really is not hard to find things we ought to have an article on.

• A fun thing to do with these DYKs is to feature them on the 11th; during this time period (< 6 weeks) this is permitted under "special day" procedures for DYK. I have run into some people who declare opposition to the idea, but I should emphasize that WP:NOTADVOCATE mentions commerce, politics, and sport in the same breath. There's no difference between our DYKs and Olympics-related DYKs. We shouldn't need an RFC to claim our rights under policy. (Some people also mention the Gibraltar row, but I should emphasize that there is no paid editing going on, only individual choice; besides, even the Gibraltar DYKs were allowed to go on.)

• Update and expand Portal:Intelligence. If participants in the WikiProject are interested in mass surveillance, there's no reason not to make a portal with a lot of interesting content about it. I fooled around with it for a couple of hours, but much more can be done. We can make it an appealing way to draw in future Misplaced Pages contributors, and perhaps those running the site for the protest will find it to be an interesting link to send viewers to.

• Just generally... write content. Breaking news or obscure details, it all adds up. The more people know, the better either side on a political debate will be, and the more likely they are to have the debates that matter. After all, I first heard about ECHELON in 1985, but those of us who spoke about it were dismissed as "conspiracy nuts".

In addition to these things, there is one thing that requires sitewide action, but it may be best to do it at the WMF level. In particular, Barrett Brown is facing a 15-year charge for posting a link to a MediaWiki wiki ( http://www.echelon2.org/ ) that linked to a publicly known archive of leaked emails and data from Stratfor. It is true that somewhere in the archive there were some credit card numbers, but he did not actually post those to Project PM. Now I appreciate that his prosecution is politically motivated, and I would like to dream that at some point an honest judge should put an end to this, but it is possible we could see a precedent that is extremely damaging to Misplaced Pages, if people feel like they can be totally destroyed simply for citing a source! Now WMF runs the largest, best known wiki, wrote the Wiki software, is associated with the very idea of wiki collaboration - I feel that it is not just their right but their duty to file an amicus curiae brief at the appropriate time, telling the court how important it is that editors feel safe to cite their sources without such outrageous threats. Once such a decision is made, a sitewide notice or even a blackout (or, to be extra obnoxious, perhaps just a blackout of the cite templates or external link css?) may be an entirely natural way to follow up on it. Wnt (talk) 16:21, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

A general comment, as someone who is working on articles related to the NSA story every day here, my feeling is that all of the above should be happening regardless. But this does not exclude the potential for a neutral nod to the special awareness day. It's possible that besides a Nov 11 banner/whatever and a lively RfC, we would gain from this endeavor a slew of outstanding new & improved articles on one of the hottest topics of our time. Some have already manifested, and others are being worked on as we speak. petrarchan47tc 23:10, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

A "nod to the special awareness day" is inherently non-neutral. —David Levy 00:44, 26 January 2014 (UTC)

So was SOPA. And a banner isn't a blackout. This matters to Misplaced Pages's home, the Internet, and its readers and editors. From what I have seen, the majority are editors in favor of calling attention to surveillance on Nov 11. But we should find out in an RfC. petrarchan47tc

David, I have seen you alone take on every single editor who has supported this idea. You, alone. What does that tell you? We have the talk page where every argument you are attempting to make again (above) is recorded. Your opinion is one of potentially thousands. For those who would support this day, in whatever way the consensus allowed, there are many options for making that happen. You have many reasons it shouldn't. I am clear on that. But there is no basis in guidelines or precedent to convince me that this is impossible. Shorter RfCs can be considered. What is upsetting to me is that the consensus-building process (a general RfC) is being subdued.

It is possible. It is legal. We have 16 days until the 11th. If this went to a 7 day RfC tomorrow night, and there was a clear consensus for a (non-neutral) nod to The Day We Fight Back, we would have 9 days. If our goal was simply a banner, and maybe a portal, this is not above our ability. (The main page idea is probably a stretch, however.)

It would bother me very much if we (all who weighed in) dropped the ball... if we truly couldn't figure out one possible scenario that would allow for at least an initial community-wide discussion. It would bother me even more if this was stalled not by the majority opinion, but rather by the loudest. petrarchan47tc 03:17, 26 January 2014 (UTC)

Every RFC needs to start with an advocate. Someone has to go ahead and say what you want. The last time that happened, things fell apart because the plan wasn't appealing - the mock-up of the desired Main Page was a compelling demonstration of just how desirable the NPOV we normally cultivate really is. A simple banner might not be so bad, but we should know exactly what it's going to say. Key in this is going to be: is February 11 really important? I know we're against surveillance but is this particular event important? With SOPA, Misplaced Pages wasn't just saying it was on a side, it was calling for a specific political action. But is this banner a call to defeat the FISA Improvements Act, or to pass the USA Freedom Act? I should note that I'm not so convinced the latter is really all that great a thing, considering that it does allow for intercepted communications to be searched with a warrant. I mean, there was a time when I was a kid when people hated Communism and were ready to launch nuclear devastation to keep the country from being the kind of place where everything you say on the phone is being monitored and recorded. Then they said it didn't happen, or it didn't happen much. Then they said it was illegal. Then they said that at least you'd never have to worry about it, it was only about terrorists. And now I'm supposed to be happy that any phone call or e-mail I made in the past five years might be used in court against me, because -- if the libertarians get their way -- they'll graciously require some lawyer go in front of a court to argue there's some reasonable cause for them to search for it? (In a country where parallel construction is already being practiced, yet) Pardon me if I'm not all that gung-ho. If we can't find it in ourselves as a society to make a really radical affirmation of the freedom of speech, if we can't seriously talk about abolishing obscenity and copyright and libel and all the other ill-considered exceptions and ensuring that people are genuinely free to use truly secure means to keep their privacy, because, unlike every internet operator from the first BBS on, people and companies would feel free to keep servers that don't log and track everything going through them, then all this talk... what does it mean? Wnt (talk) 05:37, 26 January 2014 (UTC)

So was SOPA. And a banner isn't a blackout.

Agreed. In my view, appending a protest banner to the main page and/or articles would be worse than a second blackout. As I noted, at least the latter would insulate encyclopedic content from advocacy. (I supported the 2012 blackout, incidentally.)

This matters to Misplaced Pages's home, the Internet, and its readers and editors.

And if Misplaced Pages were a forum for activism regarding things that "matter" to us, I'd be the first person to support taking part in "The Day We Fight Back".

But I'm not here to debate that point. As I noted, even if this is a good idea in principle, there simply isn't sufficient time for a proper RfC.

David, I have seen you alone take on every single editor who has supported this idea.

Huh? Are you suggesting that I've argued with every supporter? That isn't close to true. And are you criticising me for engaging in actual discussion?

You, alone. What does that tell you?

It tells me that you're inventing falsehoods.

But there is no basis in guidelines or precedent to convince me that this is impossible. Shorter RfCs can be considered.

Possible ≠ advisable. There's plenty of precedent for running longer RfCs on contentious topic, not shorter ones. We don't do so for fun. We do it because rushing through such a matter is a bad idea that leads to bad outcomes.

What is upsetting to me is that the consensus-building process (a general RfC) is being subdued.

What's upsetting to me is that an RfC could have been initiated 12 days ago, and now that all of that time has ticked away (with the efforts purported to justify the delay stalling), we're supposed to rush to a decision via a "shorter RfC", wherein substantive discussion will be subdued in favor of expedience.

Also upsetting is your suggestion that I'm a "loud" obstructionist seeking to derail consensus-building. You participated in the project page's MfD discussion, which I closed as "speedy keep" (your preference), despite my personal opposition to the proposal. —David Levy 08:12, 26 January 2014 (UTC)

I understand that you do not want to do anything to mark the day. However, many of us feel that whether we do anything on the 11th should be decided by consensus, and that shooting down the idea because of the stringent enforcement of a single rule regarding RFC timing is not the way to make this decision. To quote WP:NOTBUREAUCRACY “Do not follow an overly strict interpretation of the letter of policy without consideration for the principles of policies. If the rules truly prevent you from improving the encyclopedia, ignore them. Disagreements are resolved through consensus-based discussion, not by tightly sticking to rules and procedures”.Spirit of Eagle (talk) 17:00, 26 January 2014 (UTC)

"You must understand, young Hobbit, it takes a long time to say anything in Old Entish. And we never say anything unless it is worth taking a long time to say." While this may be a comical analogy, it is a living one that has not yet run its course; because sooner or later we will find out what trees have been chopped down while we weren't looking. Wnt (talk) 17:52, 26 January 2014 (UTC)

If you're under the impression that I'm bureaucratically clinging to a rule and attempting to block an RfC on a technicality, you're mistaken. I'm as strong a supporter of WP:IAR as anyone (and if you doubt that, feel free to consult its talk page's archives, wherein you'll find that I've defended the policy for years).

My objection isn't that a rule would be broken. It's that the underlying principle — one intended to ensure that consensus is gauged properly — would be disregarded. That wouldn't improve the encyclopedia.

As noted above, an RfC could have begun 13 days ago. Various editors urged that one be initiated, and none of the proposal's advocates obliged. The efforts at Misplaced Pages:The Day We Fight Back / Misplaced Pages:Surveillance awareness day have crumbled, so now an RfC is being pitched as a plan B of sorts. I'm sorry, but that's unacceptable. The tight time frame was known from the beginning and frequently stressed. Again, 30 days is the low end of the normal RfC duration for contentious subjects, so even a 28-day RfC would have been a special exception (but a reasonable one, given the circumstances). The idea that it's okay to squander 13 days and force the community to rush through an RfC in 15 (half the default duration for relatively uncontroversial matters) is quite troubling. —David Levy 17:58, 26 January 2014 (UTC)

• I think a more interesting RFC I'd like to hear is: 1) Should Misplaced Pages join the American Library Association? 2) If so, should Misplaced Pages display the ALA logo and the words "Member ALA", with a link to http://www.ala.org/index.php , from the lower left or right corner of the page? Note that 1/3 of American libraries are ALA members, and the organization has represented them well on issues of free speech and privacy that are central to the functioning of any knowledge repository. See this section of their site for some relevant issues, many of which have not been discussed here. Wnt (talk) 14:09, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

  Wouldn't it make more sense for the Wikimedia Foundation to join the American Library Association? Surely, these issues are relevant to all WMF projects. —David Levy 14:33, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

I think a decision like this should be initiated and discussed at the community level. While the WMF joining seems like a great idea to me, I would want to ensure that we didn't have a situation in which those opposed to the ALA's enlightened principles (alas, yes, they do exist) could say that this was an undemocratic decision "imposed from above". (Inevitably joining the ALA is a decision with political implications, but like many publicly supported libraries, Misplaced Pages may reasonably decide that defending libraries, wikis, and other knowledge resources is not something we can be completely neutral about) I do suspect though that even though all the Wikipedias are based in the U.S., some of those in languages other than English may be more hesitant to feature an organization that operates in another language and in a country where few of their contributors live. For these reasons, I'd say "Misplaced Pages" for this one, i.e., each project making its own decision. Wnt (talk) 14:53, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

I see nothing inherently wrong with an RfC to gauge the community's opinions (or an equivalent discussion at any other WMF project), but I think that a formal determination would have to occur at the Foundation level. Individual WMF projects lack autonomous governance, so if it's even feasible for "each project its own decision", this would require a WMF-sanctioned arrangement. Also, because no Wikimedia Foundation project is US-specific on an editorial level, I regard the WMF's physical presence in that country as the only legitimate basis for an ALA affiliation.

For these reasons (and because the WMF's mission, unlike Misplaced Pages's, includes engaging in advocacy), I believe that a hypothetical scenario in which the WMF joins the ALA makes far more sense than one in which individual WMF projects join. —David Levy 15:33, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

Requests for unblock

http://en.wikipedia.org/Category:Requests_for_unblock only shows vague information and none of the actual conversation about unblock requests between the user and admin is available to the general user, unlike it is handled on other Wikipedias, where all communication about unblock requests is freely visible to anyone on one general page (and not hidden on talk pages or a ticket system noone ever will visit or get a glimpse on)

Consequently, it seems like the controlling function of the community is overridden and ignored.--37.230.12.44 (talk) 23:07, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

The unblock requests are made on the user's own talk page where they can be viewed by the community. The unblock template adds the user's talk page to Category:Requests_for_unblock. Anybody wishing to view the processing of requests need only click the links to the individual users requesting unblock. Jehochman 23:43, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

This is not apparent or evident to the general user. It actually rather seems like "The unblock requests are made on the user's own talk page where they are tried to be hidden from the community.". On other Wikipedias, there's a special page for unblock requests, where all talk is listed... Why is there unnecessary bypass or alternative routing and not just plain information available to anyone on one page, without unnecessary redirections?--37.230.3.50 (talk) 00:56, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

I don't think it was unclear, but I saw no harm in making it more so, which I have done with this edit--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 01:17, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

Your edit may be useful, but no matter if unclear or not, having to click every single link to a user's talk page is still loads of effort when it all could be visible on one single site. And this would be much more controllable for the community, too, in my opinion.--37.230.3.50 (talk) 01:21, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

Blocked users are only capable of editing their user talk page, so for them to be able to participate in the discussion it needs to be held there. WilyD 11:12, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

According to the original poster, though, our method is "unlike it is handled on other Wikipedias" which if true is interesting. It ought to be possible to have the material and edits in each use of {{unblock}} written to another page by transcluding the template there, which I suppose could be done automatically. This would allow a person to quickly scan through them. How hard this would be and whether this would be worthwhile I don't know. The original poster or anyone else could explore this at the village pump if they want. Herostratus (talk) 23:22, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

Admins not caring to prove or legitimate their "rulings"

Another critical factor concerning the downfall of Misplaced Pages in the eyes of the general public:

Why are admins allowed to ban users indefinitely without giving any proof of their allegations?--37.230.3.50 (talk) 01:04, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

Oh, we need to provide proof - WP:ADMINACCT ES&L 01:27, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

In another discussion, you were blatantly advocating that there should be no need for admins to prove anything, but ban people like they feel to, and now you post a link to a WP and try to imply the exact opposite???--37.230.3.50 (talk) 01:36, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

And how hypocritical is it of ES&L to point to a WP that most admins don't even care about but blatantly ignore? This is too much to take for a sensible human being.--37.230.3.50 (talk) 01:39, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

Actually admins are supposed to provide proof, but proof is frequently lacking when blocks are implemented. Don't believe me, just go look through the indef blocks and see what you find. It might surprise you. A lot have been there so long they are no longer of use. Kumioko (talk) 01:40, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

Supposed may be the wrong word, rather it is said "they better should", but "if they do not", then it will not be questioned by any authority. You may prove your allegations, but if not, who cares? Jimbo Wales? Anyone else? Probably not.--37.230.3.50 (talk) 01:50, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

A large majority of indef blocks are related to vandalism, or abuse, and the reasoning is almost always self-evident from the edit history. Also, don't be so arrogant as to think your personal opinions are reflective of "the eyes of the general public". Resolute 06:10, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

Yep your right. But there have been any documented cases where admins used their knowledge of the system to bait the others (much like your doing to me in the discussion above) to give the an excuse to use the admin tools to block them. Indef is rarely needed even in vandalism and abuse cases. The bigger problem is that no one reviews the admin cases so unless another admin fights for it, the editor always loses. Most of the time they just slip by unnoticed. Even when an admin is caught in the act of foolishness nothing is done about it and that is precisely how the admins want it. You don't see any of them clammering to change the system or working to figure out why people are leaving. Thats all being done by the editors because the majority of admins either don't use the tools at all or are busy trying to figure how to best keep their status on the site. Kumioko (talk) 13:35, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

• Admins are overworked by 150,000 monthly editors: People have been trying to get more users authorized as admins to talk with new users about the rules for editing of pages. Unfortunately, if a new article named "John Doe Widgets, Inc." is edited by a username User:John_Doe_Widgits_Inc, then the account is often quickly blocked, and more people are needed to talk in a wp:Civil manner to explain why the username is inappropriate and the article cannot be kept, but ask the user to consider having a different username and never try to edit such a page. I would suspect most users who name themselves for a corporation (perhaps considered "shameless self-promotion") will be troublesome in trying to edit other pages without resentment for having their company page deleted and might try to hack a rival company's page instead. It is a very tedious problem, involving thousands of people. Hence, it is amazing that Misplaced Pages's wp:VITAL articles are not in worse shape, while dodging all the promotional, tendentious editing for other topics. -Wikid77 01:41, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

Im sorry Wikid, I don't have any sympathy for the poor overworked admins. Much of the "work" is their own doing because they want to protect every page. There are also plenty of people including the 2 of us that want to help but have been told no because the admin tools have been placed on a lofty shelf that few are worthy to reach. Most of the admins couldn't edit a template or a Mediawiki page which is a big reason why the Template editor right was created (that and because there is no trust left in this community). So forgive me if I cannot muster an ounce of sympathy for a self inflicted wound. Kumioko (talk) 01:50, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

Kumioko, I hear you, and it was an admin who opposed my RfA as unfit because I "posted to Jimbo-talk" (as if it were some mental problem rather than discussing advice from the leader of 14+ years experience). Not all admins oppose RfAs, but a candidate needs sponsorship and momentum (and forgiveness for mistakes) to be approved. -Wikid77 14:08, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

Kumioko - there's dozens of people who would LOVE if you had the tools. However, your attitude and poor judgement have prevented it from happening. It's your fault you're not an admin - not the community's fault. ES&L 13:50, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

Thanks but I doubt that, I could probably count on one hand those who would "love" for me to have the tools and I'd still have a couple fingers left. And my attitude didn't manifest itself until I started to take on some of the insulting, absurd and hypocritical problems. Like Admins being trusted for life no matter how they act, like telling editors who have devoted years to the project they can't be trusted because one admin blocked them for trying to ensure another editor followed the rules. Like when I tried to restart WikiProject United States and everyday had to deal with other wikiprojects who owned their articles or editors who just wanted to ensure that Authors don't have infoboxes. Whats worse is that no one including you cares about article ownership anymore and the Arbcom even danced around the issue by saying that existing policies apply and took no action. You tell me I did it to myself and your right, I had the gall to stand up to this stupidity and alienated myself from the community because I started to take an interest in unscrewing the social mess that has tied itself around the Misplaced Pages culture. Its getting pretty obvious that there is little interest in fixing it though because the ones that are the biggest problems are so deeply rooted that the only way to stop it will be to end Misplaced Pages and relaunch as something else learning from our mistakes. It might be better at this point to split out Misplaced Pages into Wikia as individual projects. Whatever we do, I don't think Misplaced Pages has much left in it because there are too many people who want to keep the mess than to fix it and even those who say they want to fix it don't have the morale courage or desire to stand up to the problems. Its better to keep jerks who already abuse the system like Resolute, Sandstein, Fram and a slew of others than to trust users who are trying to make the system better. The RFA system in Misplaced Pages is a joke in every possible way. The FA process, Arbcom, ANI, etc. They are all broken. That's why editors and admins have been flooding from this site. So at this point I don't want to be an admin because for me to be an admin would be to bow to a broken system. I'm done editing here except for discussions like this. At some point not even then. Ironically, if I would have gotten the tools I would be part of the problem because I would still be happy editing 10, 000 plus edits a month. I feel lucky to have been exposed to the soft underbelly of the corruption within Misplaced Pages...Knowledge betrayed!Kumioko (talk) 18:24, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

For instance, on German Misplaced Pages, there's loads of cases where users are indef blocked for doing nothing but commenting on an article's page in a way that is judged to be "not directly connected with the article". No personal attacks, insults or anything. Just posting general thoughts that collide with the "trusted" editors views...--37.230.3.50 (talk) 01:48, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

We don't have much to do with the processes of the German Misplaced Pages, so that's an odd comparison ES&L 13:50, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

People frequently compare other-wiki admins to separate English-only aspects, as with the Swedish Misplaced Pages in 2006 changing to 1-year admin terms (annual voting) because some typical desysopping had left long-term resentments on all sides. -Wikid77 14:08, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

Do you think it would help if regular admins (not just ArbCom) had 'clerks'? Ordinary editors and admins could find each other on a noticeboard. The clerk would take over some patrol or receive cases from the admin to evaluate, going through all the editor blather and coming up with some sort of "policy source code" i.e. 3RR: . The admin could sometimes trust, sometimes audit this data and follow through on it almost mechanically. A future RfA could then evaluate the clerk based on actual admin decisions, not smoke signals. Wnt (talk) 16:37, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

In practice, something like this exists for some actions: e.g. Misplaced Pages:Administrators' noticeboard/Edit warring, Misplaced Pages:Usernames for administrator attention, or Misplaced Pages:Administrator intervention against vandalism. In practice, I'd imagine most admin actions are either where there are enough eyes that any oversight is automatic (e.g., XfDs), or too trivial to warrant assistance (e.g. C:CSD - where of course, new page patrollers are effectively assistants anyhow), but I might be totally wrong. I can't say I actually know where most admin actions happen. WilyD 13:57, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

A comparison wiki?

It seems quite a few Wikipedians enjoy writing pages like Comparison of Waterfall Chart Microsoft Office add-ins and some readers may even find them useful. Is there some WMF (or Wikia) wiki where such WP:OR is welcomed? Someone not using his real name (talk) 16:49, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

There is Category:Comparisons, but I assume that its contents are consistent with Misplaced Pages policy regarding original research.

—Wavelength (talk) 17:04, 25 January 2014 (UTC) and 03:17, 26 January 2014 (UTC)

Most probably aren't. Someone not using his real name (talk) 12:25, 26 January 2014 (UTC)

• Someone not using his real name, I'm slowly working on a similar "problem" with finding a proper place for DIY automotive data, like the part-codes of a dozen different ECU modules, and WP:HOWTO information on installation. Currently I'm expecting that wikiversity is the place for non-encyclopedic information that an automotive engineer at university would need, as well as for the non-encyclopedic documentation that an automotive mechanic at trade school would need. For stuff that is more mundane, like instructions on how to change your oil, or that is more esoteric, like how to build an exo-cage, the target would be wikibooks rather than wikiversity. Background out of the way, I suggest you (TLDR) send the office-add-in folks to wikibooks.

  p.s. And if I could get some commentary, on whether wikiversity and/or wikibooks are appropriate targets for "2013 LibreOfficev4 Addons For wikiSmarties" type of material, and my own "1985-88 Ford F-150 series Engine Service wikiManual" sort of stuff, that would be appreciated. Thanks for improving wikipedia, folks. p.p.s. And yes, I've never used wikibooks/wikiversity before, and have heard vague rumours that regulars there DON'T LIKE being seen as the place where non-encyclopedic content is sent... but of course, it seems very fitting in the case of software-guidebooks and automotive-reference-materials, at least to my naive eyeballs. Alternatively, I suppose "engine repair" could be shoehorned into the wikiVoyage "travel tips" category...nah.  :-)   — 74.192.84.101 (talk) 19:16, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

Meeting Rajeeb Dey

Jimbo, think back to your airline flight in 2013 to Davos. Do you and Kate remember bumping into Rajeeb Dey, giving him some advice on how to get the most out of the World Economic Forum? Were you seated right next to Dey for the whole flight, or was it more like you chatted in the aisle while waiting for the loo? Anyway, did young Mr. Dey happen to mention to you how he had created his own Misplaced Pages biography in the summer of 2010? Did he say anything about how another editor described the article as "simply being used as a self promotional tool and contains selective facts which misrepresent the subject author's true business achievements"? Thinking back, we also found that your Davos pal Richard Stromback was probably creating his own content on Misplaced Pages. And we also learned that your WEF Middle East co-chair Mohammed Alshaya was paying to have his company's Misplaced Pages article M.H. Alshaya Co. tended to by Daniela Gorini, a PR manager at ASDA'A Burson-Marsteller. When you think about all of the notable people you've rubbed shoulders with at Davos, what percentage would you guess have been doctoring content on Misplaced Pages with a conflict of interest? Have you ever scolded them as hard as you scolded Bell Pottinger or Wiki-PR? - 50.153.115.133 (talk) 21:43, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

Mr. 2001 again? Why bother with this campaign of nonsense? Smallbones_(smalltalk) 04:23, 26 January 2014 (UTC)

Indeed. And the answer is that I am always very consistent on this issue. I always tell people not to do this. And yes, I scold in a consistent fashion, as well. I have never spoken to Rajeeb Dey about his Misplaced Pages entry.

Mr. 2001 would like to make the case that I am a hypocrtite. He will continue to utterly fail as the facts of reality are against him.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 08:58, 26 January 2014 (UTC)

I think the point is more along the lines of people who have a financial or personal connection with you or the WMF tend to get quietly pulled aside, while those who don't make that connection ahead of time are treated to public shaming by the WMF itself.

It would be different if there was a global policy against paid/corporate editing, but there isn't (see de.wp for example), and there isn't even a policy on en.wp to date. Without such policies, this has essentially become a personal battle between you (Jimmy) and some fraction of the WMF's representatives versus the paid/corporate editors and those elements of the community who don't see the bright line as viable given the other policies it would conflict with and the technical and manpower shortcomings that would make it unenforceable. --SB_Johnny | ✌ 16:19, 26 January 2014 (UTC)

That "point" is completely false. I am contacted, as is the WMF (and volunteers on OTRS) by people all the time and we give them consistent recommendations. It makes zero difference if you happen to have met me or not - I answer my email just as well as I speak to people in person. The Wiki-PR case was a case with a massive army of sockpuppets editing in ways designed to conceal what they were doing, and the community banned them for it as soon as it was discovered. That's hardly the same thing as someone editing their own entry when they shouldn't have.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 20:06, 26 January 2014 (UTC)

According to the article linked above, the "massive army of sockpuppets" may have been mis-attributed. Making "recommendations" is an entirely different thing from taking legal action (particularly where it's very hard to show that the TOS was even violated given the lack of a policy on paid/corporate editing). So the point isn't false, because even if it isn't your intention to take a bias towards friends and allies, the contrast between that and the C&D and media blitz (Sue's mostly, not yours) is quite stark. There needs to either be a policy, or the WMF should avoid behaving as if there were one. --SB_Johnny | ✌ 23:27, 26 January 2014 (UTC)

And yet, while the spammers continue to cry falsely that there is no policy, the community banned them, and quite rightly.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 22:22, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

Sounds kind of like a good ol'-fashioned Alabama lynching, too! "We don't need no stinkin' formal policies, we're gonna have ourselves a little bannin' right here and now. Grab yer ropes, fellers!" Don't worry, Jimbo. We've got a WMF bombshell in store that the mainstream media is going to eat up like cheesy grits, and it'll have you scrambling faster than a mobile phone operator adding the Tories to a list of charities who need more money! - 50.144.3.131 (talk) 12:09, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

I'm not sure they were "spammers", but then I haven't looked into it because I really don't care to. However, "community bans" are one-off decisions (not policies), so if they were spammers, they weren't crying "falsely". Do you really believe there is a policy despite the evidence to the contrary? Looked at objectively, it's becoming pretty clear that your stated perspective is the patently false one.

If you're willing to take a step back, perhaps you might entertain the possibility that the Misplaced Pages community might be able to come up with a sensible solution to this if you would stop giving the "Jimbo says!!!" contingent less gasoline to throw on the fire. I think it's safe to say that everyone wants to make sure that paid/corporate/"COI" editors aren't able to push articles away from NPOV, but the path to reach that goal might not fit the sound-bite that you seem to be insisting upon. --SB_Johnny | ✌ 23:14, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

But you're misunderstanding how policy works here, SB_Johnny. If all entities who do X are community banned, then X is against policy. We know this because they were community banned for doing it. Anybody else who tries to pull a Wiki-PR is presumptively community banned. We get that you think that what Wiki-PR did was a fine thing. That has nothing to do with the fact that we don't allow that here. If "what we don't allow here" does not equal "against policy" in your mind, I guess I can't help you. But as a general rule, note that "But Your Honor, there was no sign saying 'Do Not Rob This Store', how was I to know it would be unwelcome?" is not usually a very successful defense. Herostratus (talk) 01:09, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

I don't believe I've said anything about my opinion about Wiki-PR, Mr. Herostratus, but please do feel free to give yourself a "muddying of the waters barnstar" when you find a moment to do so. Meanwhile, policy is not written on AN/I, for which we should all be thankful (I suspect I speak for Jimmy on that as well). --SB_Johnny | ✌ 01:51, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

Herostratus, I see no formal policy page or even a formal decision page on Wiki-PR or any other community ban. Community bans are tailored to the specific details of the situation in question. They do not determine policy, and they cannot be used as a blanket policy. What do we show a user behaving in the same way as Wiki-PR? A stale ANI discussion? KonveyorBelt 17:02, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

@Herostratus. Pretty shocking disregard for formal policy. I hope and presume that any administrators "going rogue" in the way you suggest wind up before ArbCom to be detooled. Carrite (talk) 17:31, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

Herostratus, Jimbo and others have repeatedly said that policy typically follows practice. Wiki-Experts (or at least I think it was them) was community blocked for non-disclosed paid editing, without anyone seeing any of the accounts or edits. The Wiki-Experts founder correctly interpreted the prior version of WP:COI, which only recommended disclosure. It seems to me that he was following the prior guideline, but was unaware of a currently un-documented policy that if you have a direct financial connection, you are required to disclose it (and may be blocked for not doing so). If such a policy already exists in practice as proven by the community block, then I see no reason not to go through the formality of documenting it. Note my words are chosen carefully - I am only saying there is apparent consensus that non-disclosure of a direct financial connection is a blockable offense.

Sincerely, a (sometimes) paid editor. CorporateM (Talk) 21:59, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

Or more generally, if you need to comb through the archives of AN/I to figure out whether you are allowed to correct your (or your company's, organization's, government's, employer's, etc.'s) Misplaced Pages entry, you're better off hiring a professional to do it for you. It's rather problematic to demand that anyone who is not in the loop would know what the "apparent consensus" is if it's not clearly indicated after you hit that edit button on the encyclopedia that "anyone" can edit. --SB_Johnny | ✌ 22:21, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

Pursuant to WP:NOTHERE. Alanscottwalker (talk) 22:58, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

• I really wish people would stop paying any attention to the idea that Wiki-PR was somehow misconstrued as evil. The journalist who wrote the BI piece that interviewed French wrote it because after she made a tangential mention of Wiki-PR in a previous story covering general blackhat practices French contacted her. She's declining to write any follow-up stories to the interview piece because it got such a low number of page views that it wasn't worth her time. I've saved a few example pieces of Wiki-PR's work in my userspace for anyone who missed seeing them the first time around. One of the best examples of how scummy they are that I've bothered remembering to restore (and noindex) was this terrific article about casino.org. Look at the claims that are made in the article. Look at what they are sourced to. Invester Underground is a website explicitly publicly operated by the owners of Wiki-PR. Jordan French has explicitly told me that vatalyst.com was a site they created to buffer their client's notability, and although they let the domain expire, historical whois records would back that up. Digital Journal accepts blog posts from anyone (and guess who posted that one.) Almost none of the claims in the article are true. The article is full of deliberately falsified shit undeniably written directly by Wiki-PR. By the way SB_Johnny: the piece of Wiki-PR's work I linked here explicitly violates section 4 of the ToU, specifically, "With the intent to deceive, posting content that is false or inaccurate." Kevin Gorman (talk) 04:28, 29 January 2014 (UTC)

Your message and email

Hello Jimmy,

I just saw your message at my talk page and sent you an email. Can you please, when you have a minute, reply at it. Just in case, if there are 2 emails and you are wondering which one, the first one was sent before seeing your message at my talk page and it's smaller than the second one. Thank you very much in advance. Miss Bono 20:43, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

Jimmy, thanks for the reply. I sent an email as response about five minutes ago or something. Best Miss Bono 23:53, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

A suggestion for Executive Director of the WMF: Mike Godwin

Jimmy, with great respect to departing Sue Gardner, seeing as the search for her replacement as the WMF's Executive Director has been ongoing for nearly a year please allow me to put forward a name familiar to many Wikipedians and internet users: Mike Godwin. Sue is going to be hard to follow, and his personable and congenial nature aside, I submit that his qualifications are overwhelming for the post, not the least of which include his efforts regarding SOPA, and his work before and after his fine three years here as General counsel. At a time when internet freedom and security is increasingly under attack, his extensive knowledge and experience is unquestioned, and I am sure I am not alone in the Misplaced Pages community in my certainty that he would do an outstanding job as we face the challenges ahead. In short: Mike Godwin is a perfect fit. Thanks in advance for your consideration. Jusdafax 22:02, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

As we do not have the personnel file on that person, it is not reasonable for us to suggest any specific choice for a sensitive position. Cheers. Collect (talk) 22:04, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

Meh. Draft User:Newyorkbrad. Lawyer, respected, dedicated. He might not take the pay cut but is by far the best person that should have a paid position. He understands every single issue and it should be his job to decline. I can understand a decline but not an offer. --DHeyward (talk) 08:47, 29 January 2014 (UTC)

I don't suggest an editor replace Sue. Seriously no...please.--Mark Miller (talk) 08:57, 29 January 2014 (UTC)

• Jimmy, it appears a few here could use a refresher on Mike Godwin's stands, in his own words. Timely material in light of related concerns here as well. Thanks again! Jusdafax 15:46, 29 January 2014 (UTC)
  • Didn't the Dolan fiasco happen on his watch? Also, was that Godwin who threatened ArbCom when they removed some admin privileges from some guy who was using them to get revenge on someone he didn't like? Cla68 (talk) 22:44, 29 January 2014 (UTC)
• I think Ilham Aliyev or Nursultan Nazarbayev would be good candidates since their governments have shown such effective governance over their respective language Wikipedias. The WMF apparently approves since they haven't done anything about it. Cla68 (talk) 23:04, 29 January 2014 (UTC)

Free access to the sum of all human knowledge

"Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That's what we're doing." -Jimmy Wales

We had that, have it and will always have: It is called THE INTERNET.

So why is there any need to have one central site trying to sum it up (and thereby severely distort it, going through ONE GIANT FILTER) , rather than have the respective citizens BUILD THEIR OWN OPINION???--37.230.25.112 (talk) 07:27, 29 January 2014 (UTC)

Because "knowledge" is not a video of a talking dog saying "I love you"...and opinion is not the sum of human knowledge but the digested bits that one understands and comments on, none of which is knowledge...just....fluff and text. Any other questions?--Mark Miller (talk) 08:19, 29 January 2014 (UTC)

And also because far from ALL human knowledge is currently on the internet. DES 22:49, 29 January 2014 (UTC)

That was my point with the talking dog, but you put it much clearer.--Mark Miller (talk) 09:33, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

Because you can have both? Diego (talk) 10:23, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

• I think I saw a thesis once that compared the effect of freely-available health information on the internet to the effect of a written English Bible on Christianity; yes, it made for more educated people, but it also opened up worse dangers of tremendously improbable or impossible interpretations being held up as fact, and then acted upon by others. Misplaced Pages is at least a lightly-filtered, slightly peer-reviewed compendium ES&L 09:54, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

• And you can start new wikipedias, each with a different filter. Or mini-wikipedias, to cover specialized areas of knowledge. Nobody is forced to use only wikipedia! --Enric Naval (talk) 12:37, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

I think www.ippedia.org (the 'pedia only editable anonymously) is available  :-) ES&L 13:01, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

How to solve the Explicit Content Problem

So I saw this and well, I have stumbled upon one or two of these pages and I have come up with a slight solution. We just put a template at the top of each page saying "This page contains explicit content, user discretion is advised, etc." and it will alert people of what certain photos their eyes may see. It's a simple and easy solution that we are quite capable of accomplishing. ☞ Яǐɱ —Preceding undated comment added 19:00, 29 January 2014 (UTC)

See Misplaced Pages:Perennial proposals - the very first one. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2.123.67.6 (talk) 19:30, 29 January 2014 (UTC)

See also WP:NOTCENSORED. Debates on which pages or images should get such a warning might well be toxic, and the mere presence of such a template will act as a form of censorship, whether we intend that or not. DES 22:48, 29 January 2014 (UTC)

Okay then, um, it's just a warning template, is it really that shunned? I mean really, I've stumbled on explicit content about 6 times on WIkipedia and scarred every time, I think I and others should be warned before reading more into the article, just sayin. It doesn't really remove the photo, does it? ☞ Яǐɱ —Preceding undated comment added 03:04, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

You know what, forget I even asked, it looks like it's never going to change at this point. ☞ Яǐɱ

Well OK then, we'll forget that you asked, however since so many other keep bringing this up, it is unlikely anyone will forget that it is thorn in the side of this encyclopedia. One answer could be code that allows a pop up that is not actually on the page itself but appears as a disclaimer OVER articles and then allows you to decide to continue or direct you to a Disney article. I have seen his before..it is more than a possibility, but do we as a community agree it is even needed. Many here feel that such images should not be censored. While I agree on the face of that, it does this site little good to allow unfortunates who disapprove to fall onto these pages without warning.--Mark Miller (talk) 09:43, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

The problem seems to be one of public perception. We do have disclaimers, and one link to them appears in every page, but they're as good as invisible - people are still surprised when they find about the lack of guarantees and objectionable content. The link is buried at the footer section, with no indication that it contains information relevant to the general reader; and the "not censored" warning is double buried under a second link to the Content disclaimer.

Our readers would be much better informed of the nature of the site and could make informed choices if we had a link to the disclaimers in a more visible place. I'd put it in the main page, above the fold, so that readers at least have a chance to know that the Disclaimers exist. The Welcome to Misplaced Pages box with the motto seems the perfect place - it could say "4,436,549 articles in English - see our Disclaimers", with a link to a summary version of the disclaimers (written in "five pillars" style). Diego (talk) 10:15, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

It's worth noting that there is a general principle that article should follow that possibly objectionable content should only occur where you expect to find it. Thus, Penis is going to have nudity, since a reasonable person should expect as much, while Daisies shouldn't, because you wouldn't expected (e.g., a photo of a nude person holding a daisy would be inappropriate for daisies, although daisies in a vase would be appropriate, even though the only difference is the possibly objectionable extraneous material.). WilyD 11:40, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

• A few things: oddly, I don't seem to stumble upon the types of articles that are subject to any form of "shocking" images. If I go to an article about Ford, I expect a picture of a Ford - or at least its logo. If I go to an article about Disneyland, I expect to find a picture of Disneyland - or at least its logo. If I was visit an article about penises, I would expect to find a picture of a penis (maybe that's why I don't go to that article?) Yes, I would be "shocked" to go to an article about Ford and find an image of an anus - and rightly so. What we really don't need, however, is a new slogan like "Misplaced Pages: come for the information, stay for the free porn" ES&L 12:05, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

  Pretty much. I do recall an incident involving a vandal that I won't explain in detail so as not to give others ideas. But my experience is that if you are complaining about the existence of explicit content, it is almost always because you went looking for it. Resolute 14:57, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

Yes, I remember vandals putting up an image of a big black butt and vagina so it would appear, I think it was on every page? (if so there are some folks at WP:Draft who would like to learn that trick for more mundane reasons) And another one where the front page was replaced by an immense HTML table graphic of goatse. I understand we have to combat such vandalism in order to function at all, and yet... they helped to remind us that Misplaced Pages was an open site where anything should be possible. (This thread inspired me to look up and add a William-Adolphe Bouguereau painting to Daisy, but as luck would have it, it wasn't one of those wonderful paintings he made, just an adorable little girl) Wnt (talk) 18:10, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

• @The Rim of the Sky: Can you actually give some examples of places you've "stumbled across explicit content which scarred you" in a place where you wouldn't expect to find explicit content, as I'm not aware of this being a problem? It's certainly a problem on Commons - see the innocuously named commons:Category:Deep knee bends for instance - but I've never come across it on Misplaced Pages itself. Mogism (talk) 12:43, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

@Mogism Well, it's usually redirect links. For example, like this: rose. The text says something but the link turns out to be different. One time I searched up old school to see if Misplaced Pages had an article (I forget why). It led me to a disambiguation page where one link was Old-Fasioned which led me to another disambiguation page. There then was the Old-Fashioned (Slang). I clicked it, not reading the sentence after it (Yes, my fault) and it led me to the page for handjob. I only saw it for 1 second but wow did it scare the life out of me. I don't even know why there is a page for handjob and I don't want to know, but we all know the defenition of explicit content. I even went to the human page and when scrolling down I found the completely nude anatomy which I was not expecting.

Some people find explicit content disturbing, but to defend that Misplaced Pages had said that there is always something disturbing that people find and it applies to few. Explicit content on the other hand is I find different. If a movie has explicit content, it is 18+, correct? It's basically nudity. Should we not give a warning towards Nudity? Nudity IS nudity, no matter what people think about it. I'm not saying to censor nudity, but to warn before continuing down the page. ☞ Яǐɱ —Preceding undated comment added 18:58, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

Is there any place where this can be debated other then a talk page? It's sort of taking up space. ☞ Яǐɱ —Preceding undated comment added 19:01, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

You could try a village pump, which is a centralized discussion area. I can tell you ahead of time that you won't get anywhere by proposing we start throwing up explicit content banners. A more nuanced approach of opening a discussion about where the current disclaimers are located and whether there is a better for them might prove viable. Overall though, I doubt you will be satisfied with the response. Resolute 19:05, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

"If a movie has explicit content, it is 18+, correct? It's basically nudity." A movie containing nudity certainly doesn't entail it being rated 18+ in the jurisdiction I'm in. And probably not in quite a few others either.

"Nudity IS nudity" - on this point you are correct. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 19:22, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages Illicit IRC logging

Hi Jimbo, earlier I found this site which logs Wikimedia IRC channels, an act against rules, which they acknowledge. My question is: can we do anything about this? Thanks, Matty.007 18:36, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

There should be no protection from IRC logging. If you abuse IRC, assume and expect to be called on it. If you want privacy, use email. Carrite (talk) 19:39, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

Pretty much. I'm not sure if WMF could assert copyright, but other than that, there is no real recourse except to block access to those found to be violating the TOS for those IRC channels. But as Tarc notes below: IRC (the entire internet, really) is not a private medium. Resolute 21:32, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

I've posted logs off-wiki when something particularly interesting/juicy has taken place there, and have no qualms about doing so again if the situation warrants it. You do not have an expectation of privacy in IRC; the "rule" you cite is unenforceable. Tarc (talk) 21:28, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

I have long made it a personal policy that I will not discuss Misplaced Pages business over IRC. But given that the "no-log" rule is not enforceable, and that it is counter to the normal expectations for IRC channels, and the general practice of transparency on Misplaced Pages, why is this rule promulgated at all? DES 22:26, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

My general feeling has been that the "no logging" rule is simply to prevent people from using, on-wiki, what someone says on IRC against them wantonly or as justification for performing on-wiki actions. They're simply separate mediums. There might be copyright issues on the nit-grit somewhere—I'm not a lawyer—but I think it's more "let's draw the line here: we won't record the gossip people talk about while they're powdering their nose in the bathroom." One example is people asking for advice on how to proceed so that they Do The Right Thing™ without their first-draft response being indelibly on-record. Another's if an editor was chilling in one of those channels and makes some unpopular-but-honest remark; the expectation's that they shouldn't be held to it as being an on-wiki action (e.g., it's not going to be the subject of a diff opposing someone for wanting to be on the Mediation Committee or something). On a related note, this also prevents admins from taking on-wiki actions "per IRC" and helps ensure official discussions stay on-wiki. Anyway, long story short, this allows IRC to be a place where people can practice, vent frustrations, bitch, take a break, or even fight in hopes that they're less prone to doing those same things on-wiki to more disastrous effect. Obviously there's no way to fool-proof-edly prevent some random dude logging or reposting of logs to 3rd party sites, but that's neither the primary intent nor predominant application of the rule anyway. :P --slakr 01:10, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

They really do want to know everything

Squeaky Dolphin. It was pretty much a give that would snoop social media writes such as Tweets, but they seem to care about reads too, at least on Blogspot/Blogger. I'm pretty sure they keep track of who (real persons) write what on Misplaced Pages too, possibly reads too. Someone not using his real name (talk) 19:48, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

Could someone please stop the manic attempts by the user Ruhrfisch to defame British Anarctic Explorer Robert Falcon Scott?

Has about 27 sock puppets all over the world's Misplaced Pages and his sole purpose in life seems to be to damage this person posthumely over Misplaced Pages... ...and while he's on his "crusade" against Scott, he fills all articles about him with praises for his idol and "messiah" - Ernest Shackleton... Poor. Even simple.wikipedia isn't safe of his misdoings, proof and reference to be seen in its/his overall defaming tone, omitting important general information and only pointing out highly controversial and debunked material,right here: https://simple.wikipedia.org/Robert_Falcon_Scott and here: http://en.wikipedia.org/Controversies_surrounding_Robert_Falcon_Scott, to point out 2 of some dozen cases--37.230.12.174 (talk) 05:14, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

Category:Slave owner is being reverted

This category is needed to provide a single page view of various historical slave owners. My edits to U.S. presidents having been slave owners are being reverted; in Germany denying certain parts of history is a crime, in other countries it's just inaccurate and offensive. That murderers is a category but not slave owners is not seems a like a very bad sign to me. I'm probably going to be blocked again, I would very deeply appreciate your assistance and that of anyone else. Thank you either way; I thought I could help wikipedia the way wikipedia helped me. CensoredScribe (talk) 05:17, 31 January 2014 (UTC)