Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 16:51, 28 November 2011

I can't wait to see how this ends

So hey. I'm really glad to see this coming along what with it supposed to be a story about TCO's dumb presentation and say hey TCO is going to write the story about it and also thoughtfully reply to all the criticisms. That exceeds the highest standard of integrity and intellectual honesty.

Misplaced Pages's all done now. We can go home. Yay. --Moni3 (talk) 22:45, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

Since TCO went off and named specific editors based a poor range of data and hasty assumptions; that ye are going to inclide the phrase "Dabblers (low importance, low production)", is just fucking unbelievable. Is there any crediabity here, at all. I know smorch has it all rationalised in his head, that he's just reporting, but mary christ, this is dissapointing and tabloid crap, and way beyond personal attack and civility and into the realms of character assination. Lovely stuff ye are cooking here. TCO, you've lost me now, you and smooch can go fuck yerselves and delight in yer spite. The sheer arrogance, describing fellow volunteers as "low importance"!. What right do ye have to name people (including me) like that and then widely publish it. Pair of pricks. Ceoil (talk) 23:43, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

If you would to climb off your high horses for half a second and appreciate the fact that the section added by TCO is a submission for inclusion, to be reviewed and edited by Signpost staff to make sure it meets standards, that is intended as one half of a debate (assuming a critic of the view propounded will be willing to step up to the task) on the treatment of core topics (not – as I have made blindingly clear on the FAC talkpage – about personalities or contributors). The debate has not been "widely published", it hasn't been published at all, because it isn't even written yet, never mind reviewed and approved. Spare the vitriol for where it's called for and show some self-respect; both of you are better than doling out this toxicity. Skomorokh 00:20, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

More self justification, attack and excuses. The page is visible at the moment no, and what you are basically saying your going to take toxic shit, and soften it enough so that it flys within whats deemed acceptable to the community, but still retains, at an acceptably low enough level, its essential, ill informed stench. Nice one. Go you. My impression, Skomorokh, for whats it worth is a preson rubbing thier hands with glee at 'finding' drama and dirth, not a detached observing 'journalist' attempting to canvass openion so as to provide a balanced view. Eg all your post on the matter have been defensive and accusative towards the other view. That may be unfair, I'm sure you are kind to cats etc. Ceoil (talk) 00:58, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Those sympathetic to the analysis have yet to attack my character for the mere suggestion that a public debate on the actual issues might be a good idea; don't worry, once they do I will defend fiercely that principle too. As for your accusation of my attitude, I have my record of five years as a Misplaced Pages contributor minimising drama and repairing relations to stand on there, and proudly do I stand on it. If I had wanted to rile up drama I would have stoked the fires at WT:FAC instead of trying to focus people on the issues and not the personalities involved here. I'd like to repeat my invitation to you or any other critic of the analysis to step up and show some fibre in representing the critical view here; the community will benefit from the best arguments on the substance, not the personal politics, of the matter at hand. If you're not so inclined, I don't hope to change your opinion on myself (can't abide cats) but you could at least do me the courtesy of judging the newspaper based on its actual published content rather than drawing rash conclusions from works in progress. In all sincerity, Skomorokh 01:19, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Skomorokh, dont flatter yourself that I knew who the hell you were 5 days ago, I'm only voicing on your behaviour since, and there has been plenty of rebutial in the meantime, I notice few are included in your draft. That lack of balance is for you to worry about not me as I am not the one pretending to have journalistc integrity, and anyway I remember you mentioning all most from the first you were not so much intetested in the substance so much as the reaction, which is just the definition of ill informed (or willingly uninformed) sensationalist fleet street hiding in the bush, bollicks. Ceoil (talk) 01:33, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

. Ceoil (talk) 01:42, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Further, I dont one fuck how long you've been here. A blinkered prick is still a blinkered prick, regardless of tenure. Ceoil (talk) 01:40, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

I don't think I've made myself understood here and I doubt you have the slightest interest in being receptive at this point so I will leave it at this. Skomorokh 01:48, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Your compleatly and utterly missing the point saying that we should leave it. I'm trying to ask to hold your horses and think and listen. See the difference. Ceoil (talk) 02:47, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

It's rather hard to listen when the other fella is roaring about what an almighty prick with the lowest of intentions you are; tell me this, would you think and listen politely if someone was treating you like that? Skomorokh 02:50, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Would you prefered if I turned off the all caps or used smaller words. If thats the best argument you have. I obviously have better self awarness and less easily offended internal dialog. Ceoil (talk) 03:18, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

I'm not offended in the slightest; I'd quite like to hear i) what about the version overleaf that has turned you from offering TCO thoughtful critique to spitting rage and ii) what you meant about about " I'm trying to ask to hold your horses and think and listen". Seriously, Skomorokh 03:31, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Your out of your dept. Ceoil (talk) 03:43, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Do you have anything of substance to say about the opinion overleaf? If so, please, let's hear it. If not, please, stop wasting both our time. Skomorokh 03:48, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Actually yes, and I'll say it again for the hard or hearing. . Jesus christ man your pretending to be a journalist, this was linked two cmts above. Ceoil (talk) 04:58, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Sk, considering TCO's acknowledgment that he formulated hypotheses without ever reading or understanding the methodology employed in the first cited study (how it accounted for the fact that most articles are typically not assessed at all on Misplaced Pages), and that lack of rigour typifies the work in his "analysis", I'm afraid it's becoming more and more clear whose time is being wasted here. Is it really fair to ask anyone to take their time to rebut what TCO calls "gotcha bullshit", which is what he did to the Hurricane Project, Ucucha, and Iridescent? There's no foundation here worthy of the time invested in it; we've got more important issues to work on. He who knows why ALoan is no longer around knows what ails the Misplaced Pages, and that problem can't be solved by FAC. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:59, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Is the whole thrust of the response to the analysis not that people should be free to invest their time in writing on whatever topic they want?

There are always going to be methodological issues with an informal study like this; sample size, poor assessment scheme to work with, and so on. I don't mean to trivialise them. But what's in mind with the debate is not a judgement on the scientific merits of TCO's piece, but addressing the more abstract question of whether article writers have an obligation to the readers to redirect their efforts.

Getting the piece into a readable and well-argued presentation is the first step; kicking the tyres on the supporting citations will only come in once that's achieved and in the meantime I ask no effort of anyone but the author and myself as editor. It remains to be seen whether a viable piece will emerge from the process, but if not, it's only our own time that is being wasted. Skomorokh 04:10, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Is the whole thrust of the response to the analysis not that people should be free to invest their time in writing on whatever topic they want? Yes, partly (I think there's much more to this whole business than that, including the "gotcha" that led to a faulty analysis, but that's a big piece), but this isn't the way to deliver the message. Unless we're just after drahmaz, which is all this will do. If we want to do down this path, we'd have to take on the question of why there isn't more outreach from FAC, and what role The Signpost played in that. We wrote quality outreach from WP:FCDW-- who killed it? This simplistic analysis (which really was nothing but "gotcha") isn't the way to motivate anyone, or achieve the goals stated by any serious parties who desire the best for Misplaced Pages and its writers. Those would be the people who behave responsibly, for example, wrt RTV. We can't get there from here-- insulting a whole lot of people who do a whole lot of work to get a point across is not the way to go. The piece as it stands is simply not even close to a good starting piece, and when we put out pieces from the Dispatches, we typically polished them for weeks, and those weren't controversial or loaded topics, started by someone with an axe to grind. We can't get this one right from here. I repeat-- if you want to do this right, I'll be on board, but after the holidays is the way to do it right. Best, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 04:43, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

I would be a delighted to aid FAC recruitment with a return of the dispatches in that form, so long as it was managed by responsible FAC regular, and not rushed out under deadline.

You might very well be right about this story, but that remains to be seen, and speaking personally, the process thus far has been sufficiently enlightening to easily compensate for the effort expended. I look forward to hearing from you soon. Skomorokh 04:48, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Re FCDW, that would be grand-- those who tried to take it over before killing it wanted to put things out in a hurry that were exceedingly poorly written and weren't adequately reviewed.

Re this article, a bit more feedback (just taking on one thing wrong as taking on all of them will simply take too much time !!) It will only get worse if this sloppy piece of work has to be analyzed in public in detail. Since TCO started this out by personalizing and singling out individual editors and articles, how does one defend without discussing the specific problems with his examples? I haven't even started on how wrong TCO's many examples are, but let's look at the Garrondo Parkinson's example. OK, I happen to know that Garrondo himself has acknowledged that English is his second language, his prose is very rough, which is why he needs collaborators and values them, so he won't be insulted by my discussing his prose, but it is utterly totally 100% false for TCO to be putting Garrondo's work forward as the top example of "solo work" (TCO's entire premise is flawed)-- Garrondo himself acknowledges he can't do it himself, which is why that article's edit history shows almost every medical editor on the project in there, and they ALL helped significantly. Must I really go into this level of detail to Tell You That TCO Has Trolled FAC and this discussion can't go anywhere but downhill? Every example TCO gives is wrong on every level-- you can put together numbers to pretend to show anything, which is what he's done, but scientific rigour is lacking. Yes, there is a real article somewhere in this mess, but this isn't it-- unless it's just to build drama for the real Sue Gardner issue, which is bad enough. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 04:57, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Not good journalism

This isn't good journalism. If Signpost is going to be featuring pro/con discussions, Signpost editors should determine the discussion topic and then solicit writers to present opposing opinions independently of each other and at the same time. The formulation of question itself is biased and vague: "Are core articles being neglected at the top?" presupposes 1. there are "core" articles and 2. it is agreed upon what those core articles are. And my reaction to the latter portion is "top of what?" This is like letting one candidate in a (USA) presidential debate pick the questions. Additionally, since TCO has already presented their viewpoint and others have reacted, he can change his rhetoric to better promote his viewpoint.Gerardw (talk) 03:06, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Gerard, well spotted; debates and journalism are two distinct things. Do you think it is unusual for respected publications to run debates on issues of the day involving the participants? Because that would be remarkably at odds with reality. The core articles discussed here are agreed upon, and are individually listed; this is the exact opposite of vague. The quality rating assessment scheme is similarly objectively demarcated, with GA, A and FA at the top.

As to one of the debaters changing their argument in response to criticism, god forbid! This might even improve the quality of the debate, and that surely would be good err journalism. Skomorokh 03:13, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

I think it is quite usual; I think it is quite unusual for one of the two parties formulates the question. As far as WP:VITAL --1) if that is to be the topic, the topic should say "vital" or ("so-called vital") , not "core" 2) I've been here awhile and never heard of it -- no link that I can find from Misplaced Pages:About, so apparently is only "agreed upon" by policy wonks, and 3) if it was actually the consensus of the Misplaced Pages community that those are vital, why aren't they already dominating the FA/GA best article lists? The empirical evidence strongly suggests the community doesn't particularly care about this obscure list. Gerardw (talk) 12:42, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

We do give bonus points for VA at WP:TFA/R. Doesn't happen too often, I know we had one in October.--Wehwalt (talk) 12:55, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Thanks Wehwalt, I'll add that in the background. Skomorokh 13:56, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Premise: There exists a community accepted set of vital articles, and they are being neglected.
Rebuttal: If the community considered the articles vital, they wouldn't be neglected. Therefore, if the articles are being neglected, the community doesn't actually consider them vital. Quod erat demonstrandum. While other postulates could be made, by Occam's Razor this is the explanation we should accept.
If Signpost wished to post a NPOV debate, I'd suggest something like: 'Does Misplaced Pages consider a set of articles vital?' (We could then use TCO's data to illustrate that it doesn't, or the ones on "the list" aren't them). Gerardw (talk) 13:50, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Are you really contesting the idea that articles like Jesus and China and History of art somehow aren't core topics for an encyclopaedia, that there exists some major disagreement on this point, or that these topics aren't generally the focus of featured article writing? That is not the question; the question is whether this relative lack of focus on core topics suggests there is something seriously wrong with we as a article writing community have gone awry or done our readers a disservice thereby. Skomorokh 13:56, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

I think the question (sans agenda) would be "Are Vital articles ignored on Misplaced Pages": the agenda here results from the desire to scapegoat FAC for All That Ails Misplaced Pages ... and hurricane plus a few other editors apparently. Hurricane editors aren't going to suddenly start writing The History of the World if they are denied their Featured articles. We see this every few years ... someone gets on a hobby horse because we have a lot of hurricane and ship articles, and pushes through changes at FAC, which paradoxically end up making it harder for everyone else to write FAs, but don't change the hurricanes. Look at the entire debate that led to the changes in early 2009-- fed by hurrican hysteria, just like this. Demoralizing the hurricane folks isn't going to result in Jesus or China being written. Anyway, yes, allowing TCO to set the agenda in this article-- particularly when there are so many so very obvious flaws in his analysis-- isn't the best way to get a reasoned discussion on the matters of significance. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:18, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

That's all well and good, but it isn't the topic we have been discussing in the wake of the analysis' publication. The discussion has very clearly surrounded the quality article production processes (the "top" end of article writing): GA, A-class and FA. We could talk about whether vital articles ignored on Misplaced Pages at large, but that would be a distinct and likely less interesting question.

As for your arguments regarding hurricanes, I personally agree, but I can acknowledge that my perspective isn't the only one. As for demoralisation, I think you can see from the (still early) development of the piece that that is not the intent here. Skomorokh 14:25, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Please check the source before publishing

This paper studying Misplaced Pages written by Harvard graduate student has this line on page 8: "there are a number of theoretical reasons to believe that there is significant misalignment between what is needed and what is provided." In my view the TCO analysis is flying very close to the source but I don't know copyright law when it comes to rehashing ideas without attribution. Might be worth looking at. I haven't had time to read beyond page 8 of an almost 70 page paper that was published in September. Truthkeeper (talk) 03:21, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

The only paper I've read from Gorbatai was the 2 page Wikisym proceedings which is cited. (And I only saw her work after all my page view charts and such were done...the footnote about finding it late is correct.) I know the bullet you are talking about and will add some single quotes. (I saw those bullets as reporting her views, not my voice, but I know the one you are talking about. I think it might be close to some Wikisym paper wording as well.)TCO (talk) 03:28, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Interesting, but hardly surprising that faulty mehod is founded on plagrism. Ceoil (talk) 03:30, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

There is no plagiarism. This is gotcha bullshit. I haven't even read the paper mentioned. And I have a source and a quoted sentence below. (BTW, I sent her a copy of the slide (but it is my work, citing her)). TCO (talk) 03:43, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

So, you mean with all the inherent problems with article assessment on Misplaced Pages (that is, most aren't, because most WikiProjects don't), you passed judgment, drew conclusions, formulated hypotheses without ever even reading the original report and understanding its methodology and weaknesses? Why am I not surprised at this lack of rigour. I can't remember the last time any WikiProject assessed any article I worked on, no one pays attention to article assessment, no one cares, assessment below GA is meaningless. Everyone knows that, but that you would accept one author's premise without looking at her methodology and understanding how she accounted for lack of article assessment as the norm on Misplaced Pages is not surprising at this juncture. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:49, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

I read THE study that I cited. Wikisym proceedings. Duh. The data is from there. Go read it!TCO (talk) 03:52, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Is that the way you usually work? Citing abstracts? Now I'm concerned that someone needs to review your FAs. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 04:01, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

It is a published Proceedings paper, Sandy. Not an abstract. The data and comments come out of there. That paper is sufficient to support tht slide. That is all it is. If you want to have some critisism of my research practices, fine. But it is silly gotcha stuff and I am not dancing to your tune. The work stands.TCO (talk) 04:04, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

You're evading the question: how did she and hence do you account for the fact that most WikiProjects don't even bother to assess their articles, and article assessment on Misplaced Pages is wildy inaccurate, even at the GA/FA level (in the case of FAs that need to be sent to FAR)? I can't think of any article that I work on below the FA-level that I have ever seen assessed unless I went and asked for it, which I don't do because no one cares, and I believe tht typifies most articles and most Projects. How did she account for that and how do you? When I write an FA, I don't stop at who cited what-- if I haven't seen and understood the methodological limitations in the full study, I make sure I have before I add text to an FA. You want to throw darts at FA writers by name: apply the same rigour to yourself. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 04:08, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

In terms of method thats only scratching the surface. TCO's presentation is a polemic of the worst kind, and the pity is his thesis is sound. But for whatever reason he choose to (1) Not be bother to tighten the logic (I suppose this is tied to a lazy desire to be attached and credited with claims backed into) (2) Retract defamatory hits fellow editors. Ceoil (talk) 04:19, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

I have not "evaded" anything. Where are you seeing that question asked before? (Sandy, that is great. If you want to criticize the methodology behind one particular science report...great...I guess. If you end up finding it bad...all the better. Or maybe, you find it good. As far as "my methods". That one slide is based off of that paper. As is. No further citations. And I am hunky dory with it. And not here for your approval. But, by all means criticie the study if you can do so...thoughfully! BTW, how do you think your concerns changes the answer? Up or down in quality? TCO (talk) 04:16, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads-up Truthkeeper. Skomorokh 03:32, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

And for doing my job for me, you mean. Diligence often. Ceoil (talk) 03:38, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

I suggest this story be pulled. I've read one of her papers and from what I can tell her work is being misrepresented. I'd like to look at the rest of her work before commenting further but would hate to have this hit the press. Unfortunately am very tied up at work next week but will do what I can during the nights. Truthkeeper (talk) 04:10, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Appreciate the comment; could you specify which paper, if you have the time? There is no rush, and nothing will be published without independent review and source-checking. Skomorokh 04:12, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

And considering the amount of basic factual inaccuracy remaining on the page even after Sk cleaned it up substantially, I can't see any reason for me to take time on this during the holiday season when I've got a vacation planned also. There's just no beef in this mess of opinion-- it was just someone playing pseudoscientific "gotcha" with the hurricane folks, Ucucha, and Iridescent, and no one is buying it throughout the Wiki as far as I can see. Yes, Sk, there are many and legitimate questions to be asked, plenty of criticism of FA that could be leveled (most of which TCO misses because he's got an agenda and isn't that involved), but this isn't the way to advance better writing on core topics-- if you want to do it the right way, with serious writers, respected participants, starting with the right questions, I'll be on board. I've also seen the paper TK mentions, and article assessment on Misplaced Pages is meaningless-- whether and how that affects the conclusions will take more time to analyze. We all know that most of Misplaced Pages is crap-- we don't need a study to tell us that-- the question of the role of FA/GA is not that simply understood, and insulting so many fine writers is not the way to advance mutual goals. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 04:17, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Paper linked at the top of the thread. But that's only one of 3 or 4 she's had published and she's working on her dissertation. Her work needs to be checked first in my view. Furthermore she also uses "types" but she only categorizes into "novice" and "expert"; she consistently strips user names from survey statements and examples. Truthkeeper (talk) 04:18, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

There is only that slide (and the later one with an analysis) that pertain to her. And the acknowlegements say that all other work and opinions are mine. I am not "representing her work". I have a cited slide (and the one later analysis). And she has seen it and had no issues. I stand 100% behind it. I DID NOT do a lit review of all her work. But I am also NOT reporting all her work either. (If someone else wants to do that, fine.) I report what is in one slide (and 98% of the deck is all from me clicking stats.grok.se.)TCO (talk) 04:23, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

I stand behind the presentation. It is good work. Ethical work. If someone wants to criticize the study that is great too. But it is very solid analysis. (Gorbatai was even impressed by the primary research.) Publish and let's have the debate. Nighttime in Virginia.TCO (talk) 04:26, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

I just sent Andreea an email asking if she has any concerns about the two slides that I made that pertain to her. (I really doubt it.) TCO (talk) 04:48, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

TCO to be honest the issue is more complex than that. We're publishing something that may be someone else's idea. I don't know intellectual property law, but I'm assuming Moonriddengirl does. I think we need to be careful here. Furthermore there's a difference between Gorbotai's abstract and what her paper actually says. From reading the abstract I see a correlation between your work and hers; but the paper seems to reach a different conclusion. I need to read it again and want to read the others as well. Although the paper does begin with the idea that the product (page views) isn't being satisfied by the producers (editors) that's not really the conclusion I get after reading it. Also I'd like to look at the slide you used and compare it to her work. There's no reason not to shelf this until we know that there's no crossover. I have a very early morning, so this is it from me tonight. Truthkeeper (talk) 05:13, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

I did not go off of an "abstract". I went off of a 2 page Proceedings. HERE: http://www.wikisym.org/ws2011/_media/proceedings:p205-gorbatai.pdf (the abstract is the first section. Keep reading. There are more sections! The rest of it is a conference proccedings paper. It is the same thing that was in a SignPost research report a few weeks ago.) That paper supports that slide. The numbers come out of the tables, transformed into bars. And the comments come out of that PAPER. The slide has a footnote about independent work. Me clicking stats.grok.se is independent work, TK. I am not required to do some lit survey. I am not doing a Ph.D. or an FA. That is a strategy deck. And the other 98 slides are primary research. And that single slide fairly represents the cited source. And if we have a similar slant...it is because we are right about Wiki.TCO (talk) 05:41, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Feedback from Buburuza

I am writing this in response to TCO's request (noted by him, above). I am the graduate student / author in question. In my academic work I study various aspects of collective production - and I have used Misplaced Pages as a research setting- e.g., for the paper that Truthkeeper refers to. That paper has not been published. It is currently under review in a sociology journal and it has been presented numerous times in front of academic audiences with that purpose in mind (part of the reason why, as noted, it is a 70-page paper). That paper is NOT what TCO cites in first slide where he mentions my name - he cites a shorter paper that was peer-reviewed and published as part of the 2011 WikiSym conference proceedings. TCO emailed me after finding that paper and shared his slides with me. I did not fact-checked any of his work - I browsed the presentation and had a brief email exchange with him. He seems to have put a lot of thought and effort in the presentation, and I commended these efforts. As (a small) part of my research I had merged page view data and article quality data from early 2009, so when TCO he emailed asking if I knew where Misplaced Pages readers' "eyeballs" go - so it was simple for me to take the article quality and views data and compute the answer. I asked him to note that I have used 2009 data, and a 1% random sample of articles for this analysis. This analysis was made by me in response to TCO's question - it has not been published or peer-reviewed. You may take it or leave it. We all know Misplaced Pages is very complex and that there may be many ways to look at the metrics that TCO has estimated in his work. Some may disagree with the premise of his work, with the labels he used for different categories and/or with the users/articles that he singled out, and/ or with his data and analyses. I don't know exactly what are the level(s) of this disagreement, I must confess I have not carefully read the whole discussion thread. But it seems that understanding where the main disagreement is may be a good way to deal with this issue. For my part I can tell you that TCO referenced my work correctly in his slides, twice - once, citing a paper published in peer-reviewed and published conference proceedings; the second time, citing email correspondence with me (not published, not peer-reviewed, just my answer trying to be helpful and address his question). Cheers, Buburuza (talk) 08:12, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Those aren't the questions being asked: the question is (and with a 1% sample size), how did you account for the fact that most WikiProjects don't assess their articles regularly or even semi-regularly, editors working on them shouldn't assess them, and that article asessment on Misplaced Pages is wildly inaccurate? I don't know how or if the answer to that will affect TCO's work, but it's apparent that at least he didn't factor the problem of varying or absent article assessment into his work at all (comparing WikiProject Hurricane or MilHist-- who do more assessments-- for example to others, is apples and oranges ... but we've seen many unnecessary changes foisted upon FAC simply because a few editors get upset that some editors choose to work on hurricanes or ships-- this "analysis" is no different). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:20, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Moving to discussion of methodology of individual analyses. I think asking questions or debating methodology is great. But not the right thing for this forum, which is about publishing the newspaper, not debating the op-ed piece ahead of time. Should be done after the news report. The work is serious enough so that it deserves a forum, Sandy. Do not try to control debates by preventing expression of a viewpoint. I disagree with where Kudpung is heading on RFA reform, but I welcome him having his chance to express them.

Most of your methodology questions are answered on the slide that is in the "Pulling it all together" section. It is good, additive analysis. The methodology and limits of it are spelled out so it is pretty easy to weigh the level of learning. That said...it's real progress. Don't be a perfect is the enemy of better exponent. We are learning things...TCO (talk) 14:43, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

I will be offline for next several hours. Andreea will not be checking the thread for weeks, so will not be able to respond to your questions. I will do my best to do so, when I get back. And in the sense of equals having a dialog, Sandy. Not of you grading my work. ; TCO (talk) 14:43, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Irony in double standard

"Publish and let's have the debate." Is this statement seriously from the same editor who says that FAC needs to operate more like a peer review for a journal? Do they (peer reviewed journals) publish inaccurate data first, and then debate it later?

But the best irony of all is that, while on the one hand taking issue with the most supported (and some high membership) WikiProjects that produce lots of FAs, TCO simultaneosly calls for elections of FAC delegates. Gee, considering the number of members of the WikiProjects that produce the most FAs (like MilHist), who do you think would prevail if FAC stopped operating as "FAC is not a vote" and was run by election? You're shooting your stated goals in the foot there: you seem to want more vital FAs, and object to hurricane, battle, and ship FAs, but those are most likely exactly the folks who would be named in an election. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:59, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

I'm not sure I've gotten your point. Are you saying that we should elect delegates based on the number and variety of FA's they've written? If so, that seems rather like Benjamin Franklin's proposal to have the lawyers elect judges; they would inevitably vote in their most successful competitors! Who, of course, would decline election.--Wehwalt (talk) 16:10, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Who is your query addressed to, because you lost me there. I can't see either TCO or me suggesting that we should elect delegates based on the FAs they've written, but if we go to elections by numbers, the WikiProjects with most members (which not coincidentally include the very WikiProjects TCO seems to take issue with in terms of FA production) will be the most likely elected. "FAC is not a vote", out the door; high number of premature supports, in. I can see it now: SandyGeorgia, Karanacs and Ucucha won't promote my ship article until it gets independent review-- out with them, in with ship FAC delegate. TCO shoots his stated aim in the foot. This kind of failure to think it through is evident throughout his "analysis", which is why it reads like a "Manic Manifesto" of personalized bullet points thrown out for drama. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:23, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

To you, I think, and you have answered it. Thank you Sandy, that is a good point and one I will give some thought to. I was minded to support elections, if only to give Raul a fresh mandate, but I had not considered it from that angle.--Wehwalt (talk) 16:23, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Some of us do spend a great deal of time thinking these things through, and some of us even have backgrounds in strategic planning and statistical analysis, and some of us even ran record-breaking statistical programs in our planning days. FAC works better than the rest of Misplaced Pages precisely because Raul had the foresight and wisdom to set it up as "not a vote", where supermajorities couldn't affect FA production. As soon as that goes, FAs go the way of the rest of the Misplaced Pages. Of course, considering what TCO has done here, I will initiate an RFC on FAC leadership (including myself) once this kerfuffle is settled, and after the holidays-- dealing with a pseudoanalysis and all its ramifications during the busy holiday season isn't optimal, so I think we should visit this in the New Year, when folks have more time to devote to it. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:34, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

I would not want you to think, Sandy, that the great amount of work that you do goes unappreciated, and I think this is a good time to stress that. I would be saddened if you thought it was.--Wehwalt (talk) 16:38, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

I don't think that at all, Wehwalt; one of the most rewarding things about working at FAC is that I know I'm appreciated and supported, and I also know that whether I'm a reviewer or a delegate, I can still do the same good work on great articles with a great bunch of editors. But anyone can reach a point where they can see that detractors-- because of personal differences looking to scapegoat-- have caused harm to FAC and FA writers. As long as I'm here, I'm not going to stand by and let individual editors and WikiProjects be unfairly singled out based on faulty data driven from a personalized agenda-- I'm the one who reads the FACs, I'm the one who knows how many ways TCO is wrong, I'm one who can speak up on some of this (eg, the faulty analyses of Tourette syndrome page views, Parkinson's disease "solo work", issues on hurricanes and ships, etc)-- and if me speaking out to defend the folks means I step down, so what? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:48, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

I think it would take considerably more than TCO to silence you, Sandy!--Wehwalt (talk) 16:51, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Post-cleanup, still factually inaccurate, dubious, unfounded, incomplete, biased, redundant, or needing clarification

1. Question: are vital articles being neglected at the top? (Biased premise, see discussion above)
2. "I have wondered for years about this question." Who cares? Article already too long.
3. "Recently, Looie496 conducted an analysis of how many important FAs are made each year." Wrong. Looie496 completely randomly selected his own idea of what are important FAs-- no relation to anything established anywhere on Misplaced Pages (for example, he considered Tourette syndrome important-- it's not). Since that analysis has even more problems than this one, why is it even mentioned? Article is already too long, we don't need more inaccurate background.
4. "He concluded that we have produced very few since 2008". Anyone miss something very important there? Hint: Awadewit championed a change in WP:WIAFA, and most of that fell out of the desire to curb ... hurricane FACs. We see that often, and the change was put through even though I didn't support it and said repeatedly it would not affect anything about how FACs are opposed or supported. The question now is, has it nonetheless affected which articles are brought to FAC, because editors may fear the bar is too high? I doubt it, but the wrong questions are being asked by TCO, who hasn't done his homework.
5. Please fix the prose, for gosh sakes: "but readers do not look at articles equally often."
6. "Answering Wehwalt’s question is not an easy task that one can accomplish by manual methods." Neither can you answer it by incorrectly assuming that the nominator of the FAC (listed at WP:WBFAN), or editcountitis, indicates anything about who actually brought the article to FA standard (see aforementioned gross error in the assumptions about Parkinson's disease-- this problem prevades TCO's "analysis"). But that's what TCO did. (While you're there, you might fix the curly quote on Wehwalt.)
7. "... are hitting the respective categories of article ranked by quality on the assessment scale." See discussion above, we know that TCO didn't account for varying assessment by WikiProject, and we don't know what Buburuza did, but anything that relies on article assessment across WikiProjects is going to have big problems, including apples and oranges. The only articles whose listed assessments are known to be accurate are FAs, since a bot checks them, and that's only quality, not importance, and even the quality assessment may not be accurate if a FAR is needed. Yet TCO draws conclusions about hurricane FAs, without examining their assessment practices relative to other WikiProjects.
8. "She found that only 3% of views are on “high quality” ... " Please clean up curly quotes-- we don't use them on Misplaced Pages, but they are a great way to detect cut-and-paste editing. Yes, we all know that 98% of Misplaced Pages is crap-- what else is new, and why is TCO laying the blame for that at the feet of a select sample of FA writers (scapegoating), when the problem is much bigger and beyond FAC?
9. "Manual examination of 10 unassessed articles showed they were of Starts or Stub quality, ... " Oh, my. I think I've already explained the problem here. Most of the articles I've worked on below the FA level have never been assessed. Most Projects don't assess unless you go ask them to. And assessments shouldn't vary by WikiProject, but they do.
10. "Gorbatai had drawn attention to major concerns with Misplaced Pages’s ability to produce high quality important articles." That's fair and accurate, but TCO then extended a pseudoanalysis of that to scapegoat editors who work on topics that interest them. He started with a premise and concocted numbers that support his premise.
11. " ... and there were 10-50 times as many low quality articles as high quality articles." May be true, may not, because of faulty assumptions about assessment level and varying assessment levels by different WikiProjects, but in my experience, many articles are never assessed. While you're here, please fix the endash (Signpost articles should reflect Wiki writing standards).
12. "Even worse, the number of VAs of GA standard or above is slowly dropping over the last 4 years." Gah, POV writing (even worse?). Anyway, the number of *everything* on Misplaced Pages has dropped over the last four years: again, are the right questions being asked? (Please fix the four while you're here: The Signpost should reflect Misplaced Pages writing standards.)
13. "Ten years into the otherwise successful Wiki enterprise, we still have not produced high quality articles on our most important topics." POV. While it is true that we have not produced a lot of "vital" FAs, the statement that the rest of Misplaced Pages (in relation) is "otherwise successful" is utter POV nonsense. It's not. How about a complementary analysis of the various tags (eg POV, OR, etc) on all articles by assessment? It is fine if The Signpost wants to run editorials, but for gosh sakes, at least take out the POV-- that's supposed to be a pillar of the Project. Most Wiki articles below the GA level are crap: what is this "successful" business?
14. "Moving to objective page view analysis, ... " The problems with this page-view analysis have been well outlined all over the Misplaced Pages, no need to repeat them here, but interestingly, TCO hasn't taken on board the constructive feedback or adjusted his stance accordingly. He did put up a "defensive" "defense" of his work. See scientific method. Iterate.
15. "FAs and GAs are becoming more obscure lately." TCO, I sure hope you don't write articles like this. What is "lately"? What is your definition of "obscure"? And {{cn}} by the way.
16. "Could these topics be pushed because they are easier to mechanically write award winners on?" Oh, my-- agenda much? Have you ever seen how hard it is for the road folks to get a FAC through?
17. "Hurricanes in particular show a strange pattern ... " Agenda, subject to faulty assessment analysis discussed above.
18. "WikiProject Hurricane appears to be a factory for making GA plus signs, not a project to serve encyclopedic readers." Here we see the damage in TCO's personalization of this analysis. Frequently, we see editors upset that some hurricane editors choose to work on hurricanes, but TCO singles out hurricanes and doesn't perform (as far as we can tell) a comparable analysis on other WikiProjects. Glad those folks may now be shamed into writing the big ones, but that wasn't the best way to get that to happen, and that still won't get History of the World written, and it ignores the broader issues.
19. "There are only 6 automobile FAs, 4 fashion FAs, and 6 aircraft FAs (2 added recently). Consider at the same time that there are 67 FAs on battleships." Agenda again-- why did TCO happen to focus on these particular groups? Nothing scientific here-- just going after the fact that some editors like to write about ships, and those editors aren't going to suddenly stop writing about ships and start writing The History of the World. Also a complete miss on the superiority of the MilHist Project, their history, their organization, their assessment methods, how and why their work is so highly represented at FA. Another big problem in TCO's analysis is the lack of accounting for WP:FFAs and what goes on in Projects that let their FAs deteriorate or acrimony among Project members that prohibits the kind of collaboration seen in the Medicine Project (eg Parkinsons')-- yes, I'm thinking of the Aircraft problem. TCO seems to assume all assessments and all WikiProjects operate alike: apples and oranges is a big problem here. There are any number of good reasons why we see many ship FAs and few aircraft FAs-- this superficial analysis doesn't begin to look at those issues that affect Misplaced Pages articles across the board, not only "at the top".
20. "Why have we piled up so many obscure FAs and still not achieved the goal that ALoan ... " Why is ALoan no longer around? Maybe you (you, TCO) are focusing on the wrong problems on Misplaced Pages, if not adding to them. Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it. Scapegoating groups of editors to promote an anti-FAC agenda isn't the way to get vital FAs written.

Stopping there for now, since I know the problematic writing and faulty assumptions get much worse from this point on. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:22, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

I'm going fact-hunting to correct the numbers for WPTC. HurricaneFan25 15:27, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

I've asked someone to verify one of the claims here. HurricaneFan25 15:37, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Some of the coverage of hurricane FAs are, IMO, the most comprehensive compilation ever for some specific storms, like the 1910 Cuba hurricane and Hurricane Gert in 1993. HurricaneFan25 15:37, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

I would cautiously agree with Sandy's point that assessment is a lagging indicator of quality until you hit GA or A. But if we're all agreed that most articles below GA (except where improvement is afoot) are crap anyway, what difference does it make? Crap is crap.--Wehwalt (talk) 15:54, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

The difference is that TCO is singling out FA for not producing that which the entire Project doesn't produce-- his analysis is faulty because he started with a biased premise and never examined his hypotheses rigorously. Does FAC do any better or worse than the Proejct overall? TCO hasn't addressed that question, because he's not even asking the right questions, he makes faulty assumptions about who wrote what article, about varying assessment levels, about page views, and about any number of matters. We have an opinion piece, with no scientific rigor, being promoted in another opinion piece where the original opinion is setting the agenda. Bad science and bad journalism combined. But the sadness is that the real questions aren't being examined. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:03, 28 November 2011 (UTC)