Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 15:05, 14 October 2014

Jimbo welcomes your comments and updates. 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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It didn't make any difference...

As a follow-up to this discussion, here it is two-and-one-half months later and I am quitting Misplaced Pages. I announced it at WikiProject:Editor Retention, Jimbo Wales, if you care. (Though Eric Corbett is involved, so you might want to stay away.) Lightbreather (talk) 01:47, 13 October 2014 (UTC)

I'm not really involved in this discussion other than my single comment, but I was lurking in it. I believe that you should read the near end of Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Editor_Retention#Been_thinking_of_quitting, then Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Editor_Retention#What_it_boils_down_to, and then read Lightbreather's last section at the bottom, for context. Tutelary (talk) 01:51, 13 October 2014 (UTC)

For the record, Lightbreather's implication that a particular editor is responsible for their retirement is false. Everyone following the noticeboards has seen LB's frequent comments over the last few months—comments that have falsely accused certain editors of personal attacks, and comments which have not gathered more than a tiny support at any of the forums tried. Johnuniq (talk) 03:09, 13 October 2014 (UTC)

Johnuniq, I have been harassed and attacked but response at the notice boards has been divided (not "tiny.") More importantly, there is small but powerful group that believes the civility policy is ridiculous, and they defend their “valued contributors" from blocks. For the record, yes: Eric Corbett is one of the primary reasons that I am leaving. Lightbreather (talk) 13:54, 14 October 2014 (UTC)

The same Eric Corbett has been a primary reason why I am staying. I decided that I - not other people - decide about leaving or staying. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 14:09, 14 October 2014 (UTC)

• Lightbreather, so far (and without looking) I have found your "announcements" that you are quitting on the Talkpage on the GGTK ArbCom Evidence page (Section header "I am quitting"), on the Editor Retention Talk page , here on Jimbo's talk page, and yes on your own talk page. Anyone would think you were trying to make maximum "political" capital out of your "quitting".DeCausa (talk) 14:34, 14 October 2014 (UTC)

For the record, I am a woman and a feminist and after several years of editing and missing the sort of friendly discussions that I have with my friends (all feminists, of course, including the men), I found Eric's talk page and have watched it ever since. I have found Eric and his friends to be the most intelligent, hardest working, least bigoted, and very important to me, the most fun-loving group I've seen on Misplaced Pages. Gandydancer (talk) 14:36, 14 October 2014 (UTC)

DeCausa, one could think that, yes. In my case, here's how it happened: I was involved in discussions at Editor Retention when I decided to quit, so I announced it there. Then Eric Corbett decided to leave this message as a parting gift. That made me decide that I would take time to add evidence about him at the GGTF arbcom, but after doing that, I thought I ought to let participants there know that I am leaving. My own page? I think that's pretty typical - besides, somone at Editor Retention suggested it. Here? Of all it's the most likely to be "political" (as you put it), but since I took the time to tell Jimbo, at the end of July, how harassed and attacked I felt by the rampant incivility at Misplaced Pages, it seemed only fitting to tell him now that despite the lengthy discussions here and elsewhere, nothing had really changed. Think what you will, but that's how the announcements transpired. Lightbreather (talk) 14:48, 14 October 2014 (UTC)

That Eric Corbett is still allowed to edit Misplaced Pages is a clear governance failure.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 15:05, 14 October 2014 (UTC)

Comment on Announcement

On the one hand, I think that Lightbreather is drama-mongering. On the other hand, I think that Lightbreather is correct that there is a small cadre that believes that the civility policy is ridiculous and restrictive, and protects those who have reputations as excellent content creators from blocks. I have said here in the recent past that, if the WMF actually wants to enhance civility, it needs to take some sort of action, because the enforcement of civility by the English Misplaced Pages "community" is not consistent with the objectives of the WMF. As Carrite notes below, the WMF has resources. Robert McClenon (talk) 15:02, 14 October 2014 (UTC)

I need some help

I would like to discuss you with my current situation with things. And it has gotten to the point that i do not trust the administration system itself. If you could hear me out, i would like some help in the matter. the highest i would possibly go is the arbitration committee. Over time, more and more of these occurrences have occurred with these members, however as the same situation occurred, more and more members have noticed the punitive bias certain members have grouped.

With what has happened and very limited both in knowledge and time to get back into Misplaced Pages, my options are limited (no matter how many people claim i have options, they are simply not in my situation). i would really like to return to Misplaced Pages, but only if there is an investigation behind the history behind certain recurring members throughout my history in Misplaced Pages, and perhaps some additional comments from members who also noticed this form of bias. If i'm right about this, this could be a major hole in how the administrative action system works.

If you are free and interested to know more, i would be willing to give further details. If you're too busy to take a look at this, it would be good to at least know you are and perhaps point me to someone with arbitration (that i can trust). But i wuld really appreciate it if i can also mention other editors who have noticed similar action. Lucia Black (talk) 08:47, 14 October 2014 (UTC)

Jennifer Lawrence naked on Misplaced Pages again

Jimbo, exactly as I predicted, someone has made stolen naked images appear on Misplaced Pages's biography of Jennifer Lawrence again. I don't credit myself with any special powers of prognostication, it was just obvious that this would happen again if we didn't find a way to prevent it. Dozens of female celebrities have recently had stolen private images leaked to the public. Unless we find a way to stop this, we can look forward to it happening over and over. And the remarks on Talk:Jennifer Lawrence show that readers do notice and aren't happy. What are we doing to fix this? Legit Alternate Account (talk) 14:30, 14 October 2014 (UTC)

I highly recommend that we move the image that we want in the article onto English Misplaced Pages and link to it locally rather than at Commons. In this way, we can make sure that at least English Misplaced Pages lives up to our ethical standards. This should be the case unless and until Commons does the right thing and protects the image on their end. It is a terrible loophole that something critical on Misplaced Pages is left vulnerable to shenanigans on commons.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 14:38, 14 October 2014 (UTC)

The infobox image has been fully protected on Commons for several days. The other images were fully protected about 12 hours ago, and are set to stay so until April. You know, if someone had just asked a Commons admin to do that.... -mattbuck (Talk) 14:44, 14 October 2014 (UTC)

Why weren't the other images protected after the first time this happened? Legit Alternate Account (talk) 14:50, 14 October 2014 (UTC)

JImbo, that's fine for Jennifer Lawrence, but what about the literally dozens of other celebrities involved in the recent leaks? And what stops naked Jennifer Lawrence pictures showing up on unrelated articles? Legit Alternate Account (talk) 14:50, 14 October 2014 (UTC)

Apparently you can just ask Mattbuck to protect them and... problem solved. If that turns out not to be true (I won't prejudge the question) then I recommend moving them to English Misplaced Pages and protecting them here.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 14:53, 14 October 2014 (UTC)

Post a list of articles whose pictures you want protected at commons:COM:AN and we'll take care of it. -mattbuck (Talk) 14:59, 14 October 2014 (UTC)

I avoid participating at commons due to the blatant harassment of me that is tolerated there.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 15:01, 14 October 2014 (UTC)

What is your suggestion to stop this? --NeilN 14:51, 14 October 2014 (UTC)

Beyond not allowing uploads, there's not really any way to avoid it. -mattbuck (Talk) 14:59, 14 October 2014 (UTC)

That's obviously untrue.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 15:00, 14 October 2014 (UTC)

I have to ask why we (or commons) allow images to be replaced in this way, without any checks. It is an obvious vulnerability, and we appear to have no mechanism whatsoever available to detect it. Why not? There must be software available that can compare old and new images to see whether they are similar (reverse image searches clearly work that way) and the occasional false positive would be no more problematic than those from our existing anti-text-vandalism bots. And if we can't do that, perhaps we should consider some kind of mechanism for allerting those watching articles using images that the image has been changed - an automated post to the article talk page would be better than nothing. AndyTheGrump (talk) 15:04, 14 October 2014 (UTC)

Wikimedia Foundation's FY2013-14 financial report

WMF released their audited financial report for Fiscal Year 2013-2014 (ending June 30, 2014) yesterday. The pdf for the 14-page report may be found HERE. I was extremely surprised to see on page 9 what appears to be a new line item among the foundation's investments — "mortgage-based securities" — consisting of just over $6 million in value, or about a quarter of the foundation's total investments. Investment in corporate bonds has also nearly doubled over the previous fiscal year, to about $7 million. At the same time, investment in low-risk/low-return treasury securities and municipal bonds has fallen from over $9.6 million to about $7.9 million. I am not a financial analyst, but it appears to me that WMF's asset manager has made a decision to become more aggressive in investment strategy. My question is this: is this an appropriate strategy for a public charity — absorbing additional investment risk in an effort to achieve greater investment returns?

My second question, closely related and from the same page of the report, is this: even with the more aggressive investment strategy, WMF's net income on investments for FY2013-14 is stated as $243,000 on $23.26M invested — barely over 1%. What is the story here? Carrite (talk) 14:32, 14 October 2014 (UTC)

I think Garfield at the Foundation is better placed to answer specific questions about investment strategy. I will only comment on the high level philosophical question.

I think it can be a mistake to be either too conservative or too aggressive with investment strategy. We certainly do not want the Foundation to take wild risks (speculating on currency or investing the entire reserve in growth stocks or something like that). Nor should we want the Foundation to invest only in extremely low-paying assets.

Here is a typical discussion by nonprofit governance experts: "Good risk management with regard to an investment strategy requires the organization to balance three, sometimes-competing goals: 1) minimizing investment risk, 2) obtaining access to the funds when needed, and 3) earning a reasonable rate of return." Read more here

One important risk management principle is diversification. So having debt instruments of different classes (mortgage-backed, corporate, and government bonds) can reduce overall risk. As we put it: "If the asset values do not move up and down in perfect synchrony, a diversified portfolio will have less risk than the weighted average risk of its constituent assets, and often less risk than the least risky of its constituent." See Diversification (finance) for more details, including (if you have the stamina) some of the mathematics behind it.

Finally, another important principle in longterm asset management involves matching the timing of income to the timing of expenses. In our context, that can mean looking to a diversity of maturities. The risk on a zero coupon 30 year government bond can look substantial in the short run, but does guarantee (nearly so) a particular payoff at a particular time in 30 years. This last is only one example to highlight the principle - not a specific goal for our investment strategy. The principle is that we should have securities which mature in the short term, as well as securities which have longer maturities.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 14:49, 14 October 2014 (UTC)