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WP has solutions for all business needs

Misplaced Pages has 72,000 "solutions" (without water) for all your business needs, but not the famous "EOQ equation" taught in business classes. There are far more articles about what businesses sell rather than what businesses are. Although it can be good to know "Motorola Solutions" (company), WP needs more about business concepts, such as the EOQ equation (for "economic order quantity"). Anyway, for all your business needs, search solutions (without water), search: solutions -water. -Wikid77 (talk) 17:50, 31 July 2016 (UTC)

• I've absolutely no idea what you're going on about, but Misplaced Pages actually has 72,000 articles that contain the word "solutions" and not the word "water", rather than 72,000 with titles that fit that criteria. Many of these are mathematical articles. Though that accuracy does depend on the competence of the Misplaced Pages search engine, which is frankly very poor. Black Kite (talk) 18:40, 31 July 2016 (UTC)

^You say "many" of the articles are about mathematics. Where is your evidence? How many? I ran the search Wikid77 suggested (search: solutions -water) and it was exactly as he said--the first 10 articles that came up were business "solutions". --David Tornheim (talk) 19:37, 31 July 2016 (UTC)

If you only look at the first few pages of that search then yes, most of the articles are about businesses, because the search engine lists those with "solutions" in the title first (most of which will indeed be businesses) but if you look further down the list, most of the articles are ones with the word "solutions" in the text only, and as such quite a few are mathematics and science based (Here's 2000-2500 in the list). I was pointing out to Wikid that he was claiming that there were 72,000 articles about business solutions, which is plainly nonsense. Black Kite (talk) 19:46, 31 July 2016 (UTC)

That list wasn't much better. Note: It does change slightly every time I run it. Every time I ran it, >=50% were promotional. Of the 4 times I tried it, one was 50% and the others were about 70-90% promotional. I think it is safe to say that although not 100% of the 72,000 are promotional, the overwhelming majority (~2/3) are. --David Tornheim (talk) 20:09, 31 July 2016 (UTC)

Oh, there are certainly a large number of promotional articles. Misplaced Pages is not good at weeding them out. But one mustn't confuse the simple existence of the word "solutions" in a business article with it being promotional; it is a pan-industrial buzzword that is used in many different contexts and thus tends to appear in even otherwise good articles. I have a catalogue on my desk for a company providing "traditional education solutions". They print school textbooks. Black Kite (talk) 20:22, 31 July 2016 (UTC)

I agree, especially with sentence #1. I think this is what Wikid77 successfully showed. --David Tornheim (talk) 20:51, 31 July 2016 (UTC)

And let's be clear, the text book industry is big business (Tamim Ansary author of the ref. is an excellent author by the way). That they would even consider putting creation theory in science text books says quite a lot about their priorities . (See also about problems with textbooks.). I have been a teacher in secondary school. --David Tornheim (talk) 20:55, 31 July 2016 (UTC)

I await Wikid77's and my punishment for "casting aspersions" for his providing evidence of pro-industry bias and my agreeing with him/her. As has been made clear--talking about such POV problems on Misplaced Pages is not acceptable, *especially* if you provide strong evidence. --David Tornheim (talk) 19:37, 31 July 2016 (UTC)

You may well agree with Wikid77 (whatever his point is), but I'm pretty sure he doesn't need you hijacking his thread to show how bitter and disgruntled you are about something completely irrelevant to this topic.--Atlan (talk) 01:02, 1 August 2016 (UTC)

Oh please. I am not "hijacking" his thread. What happened to assume good faith? He supported my comment above and directed me here, and I am supporting his comment here. I am sorry you are unable to see what the point of this thread is. It makes perfect sense to me and I agree it is problem similar to what I pointed out. --David Tornheim (talk) 03:13, 1 August 2016 (UTC)

• Wow! Very interesting and sad. --David Tornheim (talk) 19:37, 31 July 2016 (UTC)

Wikid77, please see All pages with titles containing solutions.—Wavelength (talk) 22:21, 31 July 2016 (UTC)

Hmmm, well if the EOQ Equation is that notable and has multiple secondary sources attest to its notability, then why don't you create the article about it? That is, if you're actually talking about that equation and not trying to make some other kind of point. LaughingVulcan 23:11, 31 July 2016 (UTC)

What could a new article about the equation say that Economic order quantity doesn't? I redirected the redlink. EllenCT (talk) 01:08, 1 August 2016 (UTC)

Given that you have a topic ban from all Economics related material broadly construed, next time leave it for someone else to do. Only in death does duty end (talk) 07:41, 1 August 2016 (UTC)

I'm very unclear as to what this section is about. I don't find it problematic that we have a fair number of articles about businesses with "solutions" in the title. Nor do I think it shows any general pro-business bias to have those entries. So I don't think the search shows anything particularly interesting. Now, if the individual entries themselves tend to be promotional in nature, that's obviously a bad thing, but in many cases products or companies aren't particularly controversial (nor, frankly, particularly interesting) so the fact that such articles don't report on critical commentary is that often there really isn't likely to be much that's particularly relevant.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 13:45, 1 August 2016 (UTC)

Indeed - we have had Economic order quantity since 2004. I'm sure it's true that "WP needs more about business concepts" but much stronger coverage of specific things (people, places, events, objects, companies) than of concepts and high-level topics is one of the leading characteristics of our encyclopedic coverage. Our coverage of business/industrial sectors is generally very weak indeed, and almost entirely US-centric. Johnbod (talk) 14:27, 1 August 2016 (UTC)

I agree. Even in the US, our coverage is very weak. Here's a random example: AEP Industries makes plastic packaging film. 2,600 employees and over $1 billion in revenue. But there's also a challenge here to being encyclopedic - this company appears in a search of Google News to be pretty invisible. I mean, it's not a consumer product, so they probably don't do a lot of PR, and it doesn't seem to have much in the way of controversy. 5 pages into a Google News search even removing irrelevant terms shows only dividend announcements and the like. Still, it strikes me as unfortunate that we have so little on such organizations.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 15:00, 1 August 2016 (UTC)

A side effect of WP:NOTDIR is that when readers and editors can't find the information that they most frequently are looking for, they (often rightly, but as something of a self-fulfilling prophecy) assume that it is less likely the encyclopedia will have more detailed information on the same topics. There is an analogous side effect from WP:NOTHOW which causes readers and editors to assume semantic and episodic information pertaining to processes is less likely to be included or appropriate, respectively, even when it clearly should be. EllenCT (talk) 16:37, 1 August 2016 (UTC)

Duckduckgo has search results for business to business directory, and such companies might be visible within such a directory.—Wavelength (talk) 23:20, 2 August 2016 (UTC)

Also, Masterseek is a business-to-business search engine.—Wavelength (talk) 23:47, 2 August 2016 (UTC)

I agree with Jimmy to the extent that we don't have *good* coverage of companies. About 5% of our articles are about "business" in general, or about 250,000 articles. See File:Size of English Misplaced Pages (1000 vol).svg. But articles about "companies" would be less than that, I'd guess no more than 3% or 150,000 articles. Even given that usually 50% of our articles are stubs or worse, 75,000 articles about major companies would go a long way toward explaining where, say, GDP or sales, comes from, for the world as a whole. Just 5,000 articles on major companies would go a long way for that in the US.

The problem is that we've got lots of articles on really minor companies, quite often written by PR people, that don't add much to an overall understanding of how economics works in the real world. Instead we get the menu of a single-store 15 seat coffee shop in Pasadena. I'm very tempted to do another random selection of articles , this time on companies, to see what our companies articles actually accomplish - but that would take lots of time. Pure guess - we've only got a few thousand articles on companies throughout the entire world that actually accomplish anything besides marketing the company. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 20:06, 1 August 2016 (UTC)

That's interesting that only the small companies (such as a 15-seat coffee house) have enough money to do PR on Misplaced Pages. --David Tornheim (talk) 21:28, 2 August 2016 (UTC)

I'm not saying that large companies don't have PR people operating on Misplaced Pages. But putting PR on Misplaced Pages is not expensive. Probably the coffee shop owner just did it all by her/himself. It would be a lot easier to police PR if there wasn't so much of it. For large firms, where there are usually independent sources, it's a lot easier than for small companies, where almost every piece of information can be traced back to the company itself. Of course WP:NOADS, WP:GNG, WP:Organizations prohibit this type of article, or make it clear that this type of company is not notable, but we have to apply these rules consistently. We could use a revamping of WP:Organizations, but it won't help unless admins and arbs enforce the rules.

One of the things I most dislike about PR on Misplaced Pages is when it is *not* in company articles. For example I've seen a finance company PR guy change a math article to suit his company's rather strange interpretation of a mathematical concept. It's even more serious when company PR folks edit on their products, e.g. those covered by WP:Medicine and, of course, in the recent GMO controversy. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 15:19, 3 August 2016 (UTC)

Small companies like that are the ones that get occasional coverage in news sources--often instigated by PR, but sometimes by fashion. As long as we keep using the GNG, we're stuck with the results. I've suggested elsewhere an alternative criterion for size. somewhere in the range of $100-$500 million for US companies, lower depending on the country. that would deal with the worst failures to include. As for getting rid of the oddities the GNG produces, I guess we'll always be stuck with them. But they are not as much a problem as the omissions. DGG ( talk ) 18:40, 2 August 2016 (UTC)

Revamping WP:Organizations would help, but Arbs and admins have to enforce it. The biggest problem, IMHO, with PR editors is that they will argue forever no matter how ridiculous their case, e.g. I remember an article at AfD about a book publishing company that actually had never published a book, but planned to publish 4 or 5 reprints in the next year. The main source was a very PRish couple of paragraphs in Playbill (not your usual publishing industry source). Folks argued about deletion (and the deletion of an end-run article) for 3 weeks before I just got disgusted and left the discussion. We've got to get rid of that type of nonsense quickly and easily. How else are we going to have time for the really nasty stuff? Smallbones_(smalltalk) 15:19, 3 August 2016 (UTC)

It's important to remember that the biggest paid editing scandal Misplaced Pages actually had was focused on companies paying shakedowns to keep their articles. While glowing articles written by owners or hired hands are an easily visible problem, the deletion of good content is more disruptive, and apparently more lucrative also. I think Misplaced Pages is better off even with bad, biased pro-company articles than with these deliberate omissions. Wnt (talk) 23:58, 2 August 2016 (UTC)

Having an easily understood size cutoff would prevent the type of protection racket you are describing. If we had a cutoff of $750 million in sales, it would eliminate all but approx. 6,000 companies in the US, those companies that account for more than half of production and non-goverment employment in the US. A company approached by a racketeer (who may have created the article originally) would easily understand that his/her company with only $5 million in sales just doesn't belong here in the first place. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 15:19, 3 August 2016 (UTC)

So lemme get this straight — throwing out our notability guidelines and deleting tens of thousands of articles on small companies, most of which can not afford full-time paid PR people to manicure WP articles, is somehow going to solve the problem of the manipulation of content by the 6,000 enormous firms that can afford to treat articles in this way? And this massive deletion of content serves our readers, how exactly? Carrite (talk) 00:53, 4 August 2016 (UTC)

Actually the problem, as described by Jimmy, is that the articles on the important companies ("the 6,000") don't get written. We've got lots of policies against promotion, e.g. WP:NOADS, sections in GNG and WP:Organizations. Stopping the proliferation of small-time companies trying to put in PR gives us time to write or otherwise deal with important articles. BTW, I don't advocate mass deletion of the current nickel-and-dime company articles. This will take at least 5 years to wade thru it all. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 02:14, 4 August 2016 (UTC)

Well, we probably need an edit-list to continually review or expand the "6,000" major, $750M revenue companies for each nation, and remember the 50,000 wp:AfDs to delete 50,000 small companies would distract from expanding each 6,000 major businesses. Also, note below, B2B versus B2C likelihood to use WP pages for PR promotion or adverts. -Wikid77 (talk) 09:47, 4 August 2016 (UTC)

Compare B2B vs B2C corporations

We should compare B2B versus B2C text, in corporate write-ups, for the likelihood to use WP pages for PR promotion or adverts where individual consumers, not major wholesaler buyers, are the primary markets. The companies like Boeing or Airbus or Lockheed Martin, with major airlines or national governments as buyers, would seem less prone to promotion on WP, or not? -Wikid77 (talk) 09:47, 4 August 2016 (UTC)

Book creator

This is getting embarrassing:

You can create and edit a Misplaced Pages book design using the Book Creator and upload it to an external rendering service: MediaWiki2LaTeX provides a softcopy conversion service to pdf and other formats. It remains under active support and may be used online or installed locally. Pedia Press offer final tidying and ordering of print-on-demand bound copies in (approximately) A5 format. For help with downloading a single Misplaced Pages page as a PDF, see Help:Download as PDF.

— Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 05:57, 1 August 2016 (UTC)

I wonder if we shouldn't just remove those pages. Or are you arguing that the Wikimedia Foundation should invest resources in fixing the problem? I'm not opposed to that in principle, but I don't believe the tool was ever used much. I might be wrong about that, though, so if I am, then let me know!--Jimbo Wales (talk) 13:49, 1 August 2016 (UTC)

I'd really, really appreciate if Misplaced Pages's standard PDF export function (the clickable link in the left margin on each page – is that the same software as Book Creator?) would render tables. Only today I added this to the WP:CONTENTFORK guidance, partially based on the fact that tables are not exported. I'd rather not need a bypass for that guidance for such reason (a kind of guidance that is prone to inadvertent shadyness). Also it's quite frustrating, e.g. I've been putting some energy in List of repertoire pieces by Ferruccio Busoni lately: click on the PDF export function and *poof* almost nothing remains apart from four pages of references referencing something that isn't there. Yeah, imho, would be money well spent to get that sorted. --Francis Schonken (talk) 16:59, 1 August 2016 (UTC)

I hope someone has some usage statistics. I know I field a number of questions at OTRS about the tool (mostly bug reports, but they do substantiate some level of usage), so I know there is interest, but I don't have a clue about whether the usage is high enough to justify expense.--S Philbrick(Talk) 17:10, 1 August 2016 (UTC)

Usage statistics OK, but that cuts both ways (talking about the PDF export function, still not sure whether that's the same as Book Creator): I don't use it any more while it doesn't do what it should do, i.e. not maim an article when converting it to PDF. How can one extract insightful usage statistics from something that is avoided for its cumbersome MO? Use PDFcreator or some similar tool on the weblayout is what everyone says when I bring up the issue of the discarded tables, so I assume that's what most people do when they want to create PDFs – but the result is considerably different from what one gets with the built-in PDF export function (which has a better readability afaics). Current usage as such doesn't learn much... how many Misplaced Pages pages are sent to local software PDF generators? Wouldn't people prefer prints in "PDF export function" layout over "weblayout" generated by local software? --Francis Schonken (talk) 17:27, 1 August 2016 (UTC)

Meaningful usage statistics would have to predate the 2014 "update", I wouldn't know where or how to look. All I can say is that there is still a fair trickle of complaints at Help:Books/Feedback and it pretty much borks most new submissions to pediapress. For any one editor making their presence felt there, a standard rule of thumb is that there are 100 to 1,000 silent editors who just walked, and ten times as many visitors left with the impression that the whole business sucks. If nobody's gonna fix it, then I think it needs to be killed. OTOH if the copyrighting battle against rip-off artists is worth the fight, then book creation needs fixing up properly so pediapress and the rest of us can leverage it again. Either way, doing nothing is bad. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 19:00, 1 August 2016 (UTC)

How much does http://pediapress.com donate for the premium service of ? This press release from 2007 explains what happened. The reason is when people started selling PDFs on Amazon. EllenCT (talk) 18:41, 1 August 2016 (UTC)

It seems to me that this is a nice conclusion you've jumped to. From what I see, and I could be wrong, there are the following problems with your theory: 1) PediaPress seems to be focused on creation of physical paper books, not just files of Misplaced Pages content as anyone (should) be able to generate. 2) PediaPress seems to depend upon the same book creator that creation of files do. I don't know, but I wonder if that service now suffers from the same rendering problems that Book Creator does. And I wonder if you know by experience, or are you just speculating? But I actually am writing to say that I'm one of the silent masses who would really like the book creator to be fixed; it would be nice to have the ability to port collections of astronomy articles to a document file and be able to read them offline at our observatory. LaughingVulcan 17:27, 2 August 2016 (UTC)

I'm completely sure I remember when Misplaced Pages articles and collections started showing up on Amazon. I recommend simply asking PediaPress if they can make the nice PDFs you want, but don't be suprised if they charge you a token amount and add certain strings. @CAnanian (WMF): do you know the answers? You seem to be the only staff assigned to . EllenCT (talk) 19:14, 2 August 2016 (UTC)

OK, but my question to you was if you actually have knowledge and/or proof that the reason for Book Creator not working properly is that people started selling PDFs on Amazon (and implying PediaPress in the process)? It appears to me that you do not, and are merely speculating / fishing in the dark. Especially since the PediaPress thing apparently began in 2007 and apparently the breaking of Book Creator occurred after that. As mentioned above by Steelpillow and as I speculated, the breaking of Book Creator ALSO breaks PediaPress as well, as Book Creator is HOW one submits files to PediaPress in addition to creating PDF files for download. But you didn't know that, did you? Anyway, it's clear to me that you do not seem to know what you're talking about, as fixing it so PediaPress would work would also fix it so I can just download a PDF. But you don't seem to get that. Anyway, as I said, mark me down as one who sees Book Creator as important and would like it to be fixed so that tables, etc. render properly. Whether for personal use, or to submit to PediaPress. LaughingVulcan 19:31, 2 August 2016 (UTC)

Hold on there chaps, I get a sense of talking at cross-purposes. The reason for *what* is because books started appearing on Amazon? We are effectively trying to create Print on demand books and Amazon is a popular sales outlet for the printed volumes, whether published by PediaPress or anybody else. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 14:05, 4 August 2016 (UTC)

All I remember from the time is that the works were poor quality (tables would render, but type would break across page breaks) and there was a substantial outcry that they would tend to bring the project into disrepute. The problem became substantially worse in the years following 2007. See e.g. OmniScriptum#Misplaced Pages content duplication, and . EllenCT (talk) 20:16, 4 August 2016 (UTC)

There are two obvious questions here. First, why did WMF make a bad update that broke features, then refuse to fix it? And how did we go from "This technology is of key strategic importance to the cause of free education world-wide," said Sue Gardner, Executive Director of the Wikimedia Foundation. (2007) to saying that it was not worth having a management process and intentionally breaking the feature seven years later? I mean, if strategic means "totally unwanted in seven years" then there is no strategy at all and donors shouldn't be paying for overpaid Brahmins to work it out. Wnt (talk) 00:07, 3 August 2016 (UTC)

As a relative outsider I looked into this a little. It seems that the old, relatively functional code was Misplaced Pages-specific, in an unfashionable programming language and (ironically) not easily maintainable. A more maintainable core engine was pulled in from somewhere and what I can only describe as alpha software wrapped around it and gifted to us in place of the "unmaintainable" that had basically worked. The idea was to iron out the bugs and add the missing features from here on in. But that never happened because at that point the developer walked. Maybe it had all been done for free up until then, I don't know, but the folks at WMF apparently decided to spend their money and effort elsewhere and just leave the mess hanging. Quite why they trashed Sue's strategic vision is unclear to me. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 04:06, 3 August 2016 (UTC)

I think you've got it right as to what happened. I'm willing to advocate for investing in fixing it but only if we have some indication that it was actually being used by many people. It is entirely possible that upon release Sue thought it was going to be "of key strategic importance" but within a few months time it may have become apparent that it wasn't important at all. These things happen, and no one can really be blamed for it. But if a decision was made to deprioritize it to the point that broken software has been left in place for years, well, that's not good - better to just remove it completely I would imagine.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 13:52, 3 August 2016 (UTC)

The Misplaced Pages:Books page was created at the tail end of 2008 and Help:Books in 2009 around the time of Sue's vision statement. Browsing Category:Misplaced Pages books gives some idea of how much Book Creator had been used up until 2014. Another way is to browse the PediaPress website, although I don't know if any download/purchase stats exist. I can't imagine the usage stats could have been all that bad after say 2012, or a long-term maintainable rewrite would never have been kicked off in 2014. To me, the key question is whether WMF should care about the likes and ambitions of PediaPress any more, and if the answer is "yes" then the management process needs resurrecting if nothing else. Let that process decide whether to share or to shaft. Or, if "no", then can the whole thing. For my part, some of the moans on the feedback page give me the feeling that that the 'press momentum was beginning to create a self-perpetuating marketplace in which academics were improving articles to publishable quality so they could provide better books in class. Is there a critical mass there to be sought for? As I say, does the WMF care? — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 16:02, 3 August 2016 (UTC)

I almost agree with that, except that I'd make the case the likes and ambitions of companies that monetize the use of it should take a distant second place behind those of us who would use it without commercial ambitions but rather for continuing learning for when we don't have internet connections. But the other thing I'd note is that I was frightened away from the warning above, only to find that while parts of it are broken, parts aren't as well. It still put a decent book together for me of Messier Objects, even as it borked the "List of Messier Objects" article/chapter because it is one big table. I think the creators of that announcement went a tiny amount Chicken Little - then again maybe it does just accurately describe the problem. The other question is, if the Foundation doesn't have the resources to create and maintain it, is it possible to crowdsource development of it? (Just whistling in the dark there.) LaughingVulcan 01:49, 4 August 2016 (UTC)

Hi everyone, the WMDE's software development team is also currently looking into that issue, since adding tables to pdfs was one of the wishes of the German Community Wishlist. So far, our investigations have shown that it would take an enormous engineering effort (comparable to software companies that produce layout software) to add tables to the current latex layout in a way that 80%-90% of the tables display correctly. 10%-20% would always be off due to the different capabilities of the two media (printed, layouted page versus HTML). Therefore we will probably add another option to the page that appears when you click on "download as pdf", which allows you to download a pdf that looks more or less like the web page you see. On the plus side, it will contain all tables, images etc. that are present in the article, on the down side, it will not be as concise and nicely layouted as the latex version. Therefore we would add this as a new option that you can choose depending on what you want. Wikibooks however would probably need a "print page" which includes all chapters for the new rendering service to work, which is not included in our initial plans. In general, the hope is that by moving towards a browser based rendering service (which takes the web page as its basis) we will get more people to join in in improving the layout that comes out of there, making it a more maintainable solution to the pdf creation problem. --Lea Voget (WMDE) (talk) 17:00, 4 August 2016 (UTC)

As the current default maintainer of the Collection extension, PDF export, plaintext export, and (soon) ePub and ZIM export, let me give a (short version of a) longish history. The Book Creator/Collection extension was originally created by Pediapress in 2008. The part of the service was hosted on WMF servers in our data center in Tampa, but if you actually ordered a printed book the request got bundled up and passed over to Pediapress' servers, which ran a similar version of the code but interfaced with their print-on-demand service. Pediapress made enough money from the print-on-demand service (apparently) to fund continued development of the service, which benefited all those who generated PDFs but did the printing themselves, and this mutually-beneficial arrangement persisted for a number of pleasant years.

However, the buglist grew over time. Pediapress did not invest much effort in internationalization, and support for non-roman-script languages was poor-to-nonexistent. Pediapress maintained their own bug tracking system, which grew to contain thousands of bugs. It *appears* that Pediapress was no longer making enough money from print-on-demand to fund their continued development and maintenance of the code base, and development stalled. No effort was made on the code base for a number of years, but the system "worked enough" (for European languages, at least) that things muddled on.

Unfortunately, the day came when WMF had to move out of its Tampa datacenter. The Pediapress code was literally the last thing running in Tampa, and it was costing the Foundation $10,000/day to keep that one server running. Worse, no one had written down how that server had been installed and there was no one who could recreate its configuration in our new datacenter. It looked like we were going to have to turn off Book Creator.

Mark Holmquist (marktraceur) was passionate about Book Creator, however, and pulled in a skunkworks group of WMF folks to save the service, rewriting it in what was a state-of-the-art architecture at the time. We rebuild it from scratch, documenting the process and installing it on modern server infrastructure, and were able to keep things going. The project had the support of Erik Moeller, and I was pulled in to provide support from the Parsoid side, eventually writing the PDF backend and a plaintext backend. As these things go, however, the new project had a different feature set -- it was much better at Indic and non-latin languages (thanks to XeLaTeX), had clickable hyperlinks, included enough license information to actually comply with our Creative Commons attribution requirements, etc -- but was missing some features. Tables and infoboxes are particularly hard, and those aren't particularly strong points for LaTeX either.

I don't need to recap the organizational struggles at the foundation in the following years. Suffice it to say that all the original participants in the skunkworks project, including Erik who had provided C-level support, have since left the foundation, leaving me holding the bag. Further, the engineering reorganization which occurred toward the end of the Lila era left OCG homeless. OCG should rightly be part of the "reading" team, but it's only remaining developer (me) is on the "editing" team. La la la. We don't generally let these sorts of things get in the way of actually doing good work, but they are relevant when deciding who to petition for additional resources...

We actually had a great Wikimania this year, with a lot of focus on the "Offline Content Generator" (as the architecture behind Book Creator, PDF export, the Collection extension, etc, is formally named). In fact, we had ZIM export and ePub export capabilities developed during the hackathon. Unfortunately, the code hasn't actually been submitted to me/the WMF, so we can't deploy it. :( But it exists, and for the first time we had more-than-just-me working on OCG.

In addition, as the team above explained, the German Wikimedia chapter has adopted "tables in PDFs" as one of their feature development goals. The first part of this is https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/290417 . And I wrotebasic support for tables a few years ago; see https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/107587 -- the problem is that my patch doesn't *always* work, and can in some cases cause the entire page to fail to render. At this level of support I judged it best to keep suppressing tables and get *some* output, rather than risk getting *no* output for many pages. (This is really a fault of LaTeX's limited table support, which prefers to fail when it sees something unexpected or unexpectedly wide, and requires semi-heroic measures to work around.) There are ways around the problem we can discuss.

One final wrinkle is that the architecture which was state-of-the-art in 2014 is already looking a little dated in 2016. The "services" team here at WMF has standardized on a services architecture and the use of cassandra for storage, and in general we would like to use browser technologies to render the page more directly from the HTML DOM rather than use a LaTeX intermediary. We could really use some help (a) modernizing the backend, and (b) working with modern CSS technologies to make browser output on par with the LaTeX output, so we can eventually remove the LaTeX backend. Sometimes discussions of OCG spiral off into tangents along these lines; some even suggesting that further investment in features on the LaTeX backend is a waste of time.

So. Yes, OCG is starved for resources. It is also sitting at an awkward place both in the org chart and in the overall services architecture of the foundation. As long as I am the only one working on OCG, it will continue to make slow progress, but there are in fact several useful improvements on the immediate horizon. The usage statistics are also available; the short version is that we generate about 10 PDFs a second currently. That's an order of magnitude less than the number of pageviews/second of our article web pages, but still quite a large number of users. C. Scott Ananian (talk) 21:55, 4 August 2016 (UTC)

Links to related tasks @Cscott: mentioned: Table support in PDFs, Options for browser-based PDF rendering. To gauge quality of browser-based rendering, we have set up an instance of a Chrome based third party render service (Electron) in labs. Example URL: https://pdf-electron.wmflabs.org/pdf?accessKey=secret&url=https://en.wikipedia.org/Barack_Obama

Wikimedia Germany is considering to use this for improving table & other complex content support for the "This page as PDF" feature. -- GWicke (talk) 22:07, 4 August 2016 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages, we have a problem

The bias that i see within Misplaced Pages, in arbitration cases, in article talk pages, and in the banter of admins and arbitrators, is astounding and so blatant.

There is a continuing polarization that is causing content to be more and more polarized. It's akin to a takeover, and it is in part intentional. There is indeed a "Skeptic" movement to cause Misplaced Pages to move more in line with the ideology of the "Skeptic" movement, and they engage in meat-puppeting, in the form of recruiting people of their ideology to take up Misplaced Pages editing in order to change and maintain the changed content to move it more in line with their ideological beliefs.

It is insidious in that they pretend to be one with science -- they claim that what they believe is "science" and that it's neutral and unbiased. But that is a huge misrepresentation, because they actually take a single approach to science on certain topics and exclude other science that is not in line with their beliefs. They generally have a simplistic and reductionist view of science, not seeing the ecological and sociological dimensions of many subjects.

They also have a heavy-handed way of bullying and speaking with condescension and dripping with a nasty slimy toxicity that is holographic with the fact that they generally defend the products of the chemical industry, including chemicals which are toxic to living things. They move in groups and support one another, and having the numbers, they can knock others out, one by one, in topic bans and various other mechanisms, as well as just making editing so unpleasant that people who have other points of view simply drop out in frustration and futility. People who really want to improve articles and restore some balance and NPOV.

They pretend to be "neutral" and they pretend that they are defending "science" and that they are NPOV but they are astoundingly blind of self-deluding or lying about this, because they push a particularly biased interpretation of science and exclude other good solid science that is not in line with their general agenda.

Others have written about them in blogs like "The Ethical Skeptic" and "Misplaced Pages We Have A Problem" much more lucidly and in more detail than i have. It's seriously affecting Misplaced Pages very badly, and therefore it's affecting the world badly, as our default knowledge base is biased and getting worse daily. SageRad (talk) 12:34, 3 August 2016 (UTC)

Yes, yes, all the arbs, admins and editors are in on the grand conspiracy to sing the praises of big industry, toxic chemicals and the general destruction of the earth while suppressing the world-saving bloggers and authors out there that know the "true" science and impact of these things. We get it. It's probably not necessary to keep posting similar polemics all over WP. Capeo (talk) 13:00, 3 August 2016 (UTC)

WP:POLEMIC is technically a guideline that explains what happens when you post polemical material, however WP:NPA is policy. Accusing editors/admins/arbitors of bias without evidence is a personal attack and subject to removal. So, either present evidence, retract statement, or comment removal Sagerad, what would you prefer? Only in death does duty end (talk) 13:04, 3 August 2016 (UTC)

What a load of stuff and nonsense. Please justify your statement "Accusing editors/admins/arbitors of bias without evidence is a personal attack and subject to removal" by pointing to relevant PAGs. How many times have I seen accusations on ANI made with no evidence whatsoever. There is an atmosphere over there of being able to accuse good editors of being "Anti-industry X", "Pro-fringe Y, "Pro-alternative Z" without any evidence or apparent fear of action being taken against them. This leads to accused editors becoming extremely frustrated and simply turning their back on the project. SageRad is making a valid and truthful comment. We should listen. I for one am very glad to see that Jimbo does appear to be listening here. For those who do not believe this, I have evidence of an extremely well known editor administrator (you will all know them) deliberately changing an edit of mine to lie about me and portray me in a very bad light. When I complained, the thread was closed by a non-admin. Of course, I would not be saying this without being able to provide the evidence. DrChrissy 17:03, 3 August 2016 (UTC)

I don't see any personal attacks here, just a discussion about a potential form of bias in Misplaced Pages. Better if we engage and chew on the topic thoughtfully than be too quick to push for removal. Even if the Sagerad is wrong (and I think he largely, although not completely, is wrong) it is important to reflect on how answers like this will not tend to resolve the issue but rather serve sadly as a potential example of the kind of behavior he's complaining about.

We the Misplaced Pages community tend to be geeky folks who are into technology and hard science. That may make it difficult to write neutrally about ideas that are different. If I believe (and I do) that much of what "world-saving bloggers and authors out there" write about science is badly mistaken and not always written in good faith, then I might tend to be too harsh in evaluating their perspective to the point that I find it hard to write about it appropriately. This is always worth reflection.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 13:48, 3 August 2016 (UTC)

Normally I'd agree but there's history and context behind the messenger here. Sage is another of the GMO topic banned editors. They went on a hiatus but returned recently after David got TBed as well to post similar style rants all over WP claiming McCarthyism and all sorts of similar aspersions. It gets tiring. Good luck trying to have an honest conversation with them that doesn't quickly devolve to the same being claimed of you. Capeo (talk) 14:10, 3 August 2016 (UTC)

I do agree that many editors are far too rude and caustic for Misplaced Pages's good, and some Admins and even higher are nearly as bad. WP:CIVIL is a laughing-stock and the constant disregard for it (except of course for when your opponent holds up a mirror) is so very counter-productive. "Let's all be nice and politically correct and avoid swear words but join in the bitch fight with relish" is all too common. I am less sure about the conspiracy theories, I think it's just a reflection of today's Internet culture. But with all the poison constantly flying around, it's hard to tell and even harder to fix. WP:CIVIL should be either respected or abandoned. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 16:30, 3 August 2016 (UTC)

DrChrissy, let me assure you that administrators don't have the ability to change an edit. They can, of course, change the text you edited (it's a wiki, after all), but the diffs would always show who made what changes, so all you'd have to do is present the diffs showing the tampering (and deliberately doing that to try to frame another editor would be taken very seriously, I assure you). Admins (and functionaries, and anyone) cannot alter those diffs. Seraphimblade 17:38, 3 August 2016 (UTC)

Apologies that my language might have been a bit casual. The admin edited my edit to change the meaning. This is not permitted as I think we all know. Certainly admins should know this, which is why this particular case was so appalling. I indicated the edit they made to my text and the thread was shut down, as I said, by a non-admin. I have simply not dared to raise this case again because a boomerang (almost certainly successful because of the identity of this admin) would certainly be coming my way, and in the midst of that the perpetrator would get away scot-free again. DrChrissy 18:18, 3 August 2016 (UTC)

In an attempt to actually have this conversation I'll note that a big point of contention arises from the fact that, by its very nature, WP is generally not on the bleeding edge of scientific topics. We reflect the established consensus. We may mention the outliers if they get sufficient attention within the scientific community, or even simply the media depending on the circumstances, but we report what the preproderance of the scientific community concludes. That means WP, like the sciences in general, is going to be slow to overturn consensus. We don't give undue weight to every anomalous paper that comes out. That's why we prefer reviews. Despite what many seem to think I'd say almost all the regulars in scientific topics acknowledge there's industry influences in scientific fields. The essential issue is that's not our battle to fight. We go with what's published and accepted or else we're injecting speculation and our own bias into articles. Capeo (talk) 16:37, 3 August 2016 (UTC)

Our editing model tends to struggle on topics where there is a significant divide between popular belief and scientific understanding. GMOs are one such area; other examples include vaccine safety (less of an issue recently, as the literature and people backing the anti-vaccine movement have increasingly been exposed as frauds), climate change, various forms of alternative medicine, evolution, and abortion (where the medical literature is clear about its safety, but there is a political motivation to exaggerate the procedure's risks). It doesn't help that we have never developed a mechanism to resolve content disputes expeditiously, and in fact our existing mechanisms favor pathological obsessives over sane, reasonable, policy-literate editors. Our system basically provides veto power in a content discussion to anyone with an Internet connection and a personality disorder. When one has dealt with this landscape for awhile, one tends to become a bit jaded; I've probably encountered hundreds of SageRads over my years here, and it's hard to be as patient with the 100th as you were with the first. MastCell  17:44, 3 August 2016 (UTC)

^^^ This. According to homeopaths, reiki practitioners, climate change deniers, creationists, anti-vaccinationists and many others, Misplaced Pages is irreperably broken because it gives more weight to the scientific mainstream than to their beliefs. According to Misplaced Pages consensus, the exact opposite is true. Misplaced Pages is trusted precisely bevause it is unafraid to identify bullshit for what it is. Guy (Help!) 00:32, 4 August 2016 (UTC)

• You say "That's why we prefer reviews". But when the review of a high caliber expert (with extensive publication history) doesn't agree with the reviews that share the opinion you favor, then all of a sudden it can't be used. . It becomes "fringe" , as if it was a "flat earth theory". I'd like to see any review article in any major journal from an expert in physics proving a "flat earth theory". The comparison is ludicruous. Other editors argued that review was somehow trumped by a writer of far lesser stature who had not even commented on the review. . Double-standards. --David Tornheim (talk) 18:35, 3 August 2016 (UTC)

Not sure which "high caliber expert" you refer to? Certainly not Krimsky, so I assume you mean Domingo. As I said above when a paper disagrees with the current scientific consensus it's generally not give much, if any, weight. When that same review is also criticized by later reviews it's given even less weight. I don't know why you still harp on this as Domingo's latest review has actually come around to the scientific consensus. So there's literally nobody of note at this point who disagrees in any substantial way as to the current safety consensus. This horse has been tenderized beyond recognition. Capeo (talk) 20:02, 3 August 2016 (UTC)

I'm striking the above. Just realized that was all a violation of his topic ban and I shouldn't have replied asking further questions. Capeo (talk) 20:07, 3 August 2016 (UTC)

Is this considered to be a topic ban violation because of the diffs that DH provided, not the actual content of the post? DrChrissy 20:20, 3 August 2016 (UTC)

Both. It references the GMO topic area directly plus links to GMO pages. Capeo (talk) 20:37, 3 August 2016 (UTC)

To Capeo: Domingo's latest review states again: there is no scientific consensus, "substantial equivalence" concept is non-scientific and long-term studies are few and uncertain. As I cited early here many other scientist are not convinced in safety Cathry (talk) 21:12, 3 August 2016 (UTC)

"With only a few exceptions, the reported studies during the last six years show rather similar conclusions; that is to say, the assessed GM soybeans, rice, corn/maize and wheat would be as safe as the parental species of these plants. Therefore, based on the conclusions of the authors of these recent investigations, the use of the assessed GM plants for feed or human food should be as safe as that of their parental species. All the studies here reviewed were published in international peer-reviewed journals. Therefore, I do not question at all the results and conclusions of these investigations. However, in the same line that the authors of various recent reviews above commented, I feel that long-term studies are still clearly necessary in order to guarantee that the consumption of GM plants does not mean any health risk for the consumers. It must be noted that most recent investigations, for which no adverse/toxic effects were observed, were subchronic (90 days) studies. Notwithstanding, when long-term studies were conducted (i.e., Séralini et al., 2014b), the results were tremendously controversial. (Domingo 2016)"

That is exactly in line with results of the RFC: current consensus is that GMOs are safe to eat according to the existing science. A recommendation for further study has no bearing on the current state of the science and is typical of most reviews anyway. We don't crystal ball here. We go with the preponderance of current scientific evidence. If something new and substantial comes down the pipeline that effects the current scientific view then it will be changed but it requires a lot, multiple studies showing consistent results, to get the majority of scientists to change their minds.

Domingo's (or anyone's for that matter) views on substantial equivalence are neither here nor there though that straw man was brought up repeatedly during the RFC. It's a regulatory concept. The RFC wasn't about how governmental regulatory bodies assess safety. It varies widely from country to country. It was about if the current body of published scientific research supported that GMOs were safe to eat and if that could be characterized as a scientific consensus. Capeo (talk) 22:42, 3 August 2016 (UTC)

You show that you don't understand (or pretend you don't) this. Some studies mentioned by Domingo used substantial equivalence concept, not all crop varieties were assesed. So Domingo writes "based on the conclusions of the authors of these recent investigations, the use of the assessed GM plants should be". But Domingo'opinion is "I feel that long-term studies are still clearly necessary in order to guarantee that the consumption of GM plants does not mean any health risk for the consumers" and "I disagree with the use of the “substantial equivalence” concept as a guarantee of the safety of GM plants." And it is only one from many other non-convinced in safety reviews. Cathry (talk) 08:33, 4 August 2016 (UTC)

Jimbo, please, please can you keep paying attention to this thread. Two very productive editors have been blocked in the last 24hrs as a result of their posts in this thread. Your own post above indicated (I think) that such action should not happen and that open discussion should be encouraged. It is really feeling now that free-speech is not welcome on this project - I am sure you never intended that. DrChrissy 23:13, 3 August 2016 (UTC)

• I think you'll find that the claims of anti-science activists that Misplaced Pages is "biased" towards the scientific mainstream is considered a feature, not a bug.— Preceding unsigned comment added by JzG (talk • contribs) 00:29, 4 August 2016 (UTC)
• They were topic banned. They blatantly disregarded that topic ban. They were blocked. Seems like a completely logical end to that line of actions. Jimbo's talk page is not a place where TBANs suddenly stop existing. --Majora (talk) 02:32, 4 August 2016 (UTC)
• I'm pretty sure topic bans apply everywhere, even here. Dbrodbeck (talk) 02:35, 4 August 2016 (UTC)
• Jimbo's homepage is supposed to be a safe area where anyone can raise any issue regardless of any bans, provided they behave themselves (i.e. they don't cause a problem here, and they have not been declared to be persona non grata by Jimbo for crimes against Misplaced Pages or for personal disputes with Jimbo). This way a problem that cannot be addressed due to a ban can still be discussed by the wider community and acted on, take e.g. the Chelsea Manning ArbCom case, which was kicked of when a topic banned transgender editor came here to complain about the way the Chelsea Manning page was edited. Such cases are the exception, most complaints don't have merit but that doesn't mean should assume that no cases have merit and stop listening to any complaints by (topic) banned editors. Count Iblis (talk) 05:44, 4 August 2016 (UTC)

• Jimbo talk is not a "rule free zone", and you do a disservice to topic banned editors by muddying that issue, since they most certainly can be sanctioned for behavior here. There is an exception to topic bans when one is appealing them, and there is at least the historical practice of an "appeal to Jimbo" (though I don't think he's acted on one in many years), but that would mean saying "I'm appealing my ban, and here's why", not just engaging in general grumbling about the subject you're banned from discussing. A topic ban is a prohibition against discussing the subject anywhere on Misplaced Pages, not "anywhere but Jimbo's talk page." Seraphimblade 16:23, 4 August 2016 (UTC)

• I would like to clarify I was not claiming Jimbo's Talk page to be TB free-zone. I am a rare(ish) visitor to this page so I am a little surprised to see the interpretation of Count Iblis above. I had it explained to me once that TB's apply to every page in which the url contains "en.wikipedia" and that includes your own sandbox. Jimbo may wish to clarify if his talk page is an exemption to this, but I rather doubt it is. DrChrissy 16:44, 4 August 2016 (UTC)

• Thing is that Jimbo is in principle open to the possibility, however remote, that doing things by the book here, which includes imposing bans and the entire appeals process, leads to a result that isn't good and which the community including ArbCom cannot resolve. We're then typically talking about problems that do not have a good visibility to the larger community, e.g. the problems on the Chelsea Manning case or the fact that IPs were getting unfairly blocked by Admins patrolling the Amanda Knox page. In principle, it's possible to have a problem somewhere that is fixed in a wrong way by Admin action and then remains invisible to the wider community precisely due to such Admin actions. You then need a whistle blower to come here to notify the community of a problem, but that very act may be a violation of a (topic) ban or a block evasion. It's similar to Edward Snowden violating a lot of US laws to make clear that there are problems with the way the NSA goes about collecting data. Count Iblis (talk) 18:58, 4 August 2016 (UTC)

• Policy needs to be clarified. See Misplaced Pages talk:Banning policy#Violation of topic ban. QuackGuru (talk) 16:51, 4 August 2016 (UTC)
• Yes, clarification is needed. Misplaced Pages:Arbitration/Policy states Remedies may be appealed to, and amended by, Jimbo Wales, unless the case involves Jimbo Wales' own actions. DrChrissy 17:03, 4 August 2016 (UTC)
  • "may be appealed to" is not an invitation to continue the same type of editing that got you sanctioned in the first place. Appeals should be clearly marked, and the sanction linked to, along with a short, clear explanation of why it is being appealed. --NeilN 18:33, 4 August 2016 (UTC)
    • Could you please clarify whether your use of "you" means your edit is aimed at me directly. Perhaps you meant to use use the word "editors"? DrChrissy 18:39, 4 August 2016 (UTC)
      • I was always under the impression, and I could have sworn it was told to me by an admin, that Jimbo's page is out of bounds of any topic bans and you can feel free to post "in violation" of the ban on this page. Sir Joseph 18:42, 4 August 2016 (UTC)
        • I don't see anything in WP:BANEX or any other policy about topic bans not applying here (outside of appeals, which didn't happen) and I can recall no divine edict creating such an exception. The Arbitration Committee has certainly long held the view that topic bans apply everywhere in Misplaced Pages, outside of the examples specifically listed in WP:BANEX and any exceptions listed in the sanction itself. The Wordsmith 19:17, 4 August 2016 (UTC)
          • It hasnt, it never has been, and even in the unlikely event Jimbo would like to fill up his talk page with posting by topic-banned editors with agendas to push, he has no authority to exclude any page (including his own talkpage) from community, administrator or Arbcom sanctions. So this is a dead end. Only in death does duty end (talk) 19:22, 4 August 2016 (UTC)
      • "you" = "editors". --NeilN 18:57, 4 August 2016 (UTC)

To The Wordsmith You gave link WP:BANEX where expetions include "Engaging in legitimate and necessary dispute resolution, that is, addressing a legitimate concern about the ban itself in an appropriate forum". So if there is "Remedies may be appealed to, and amended by, Jimbo Wales" in the rules, this page is one of appropriate forums. Also it is interesting, why do you choose one month, not shorter period? Cathry (talk) 06:25, 5 August 2016 (UTC)

You've missed the posts right above this one. I'll repeat mine. "may be appealed to" is not an invitation to continue the same type of editing that got an editor sanctioned in the first place. Appeals should be clearly marked and the sanction linked to, along with a short, clear explanation of why it is being appealed. --NeilN 08:11, 5 August 2016 (UTC)

Too many demands for those who edit for free. Cathry (talk) 08:34, 5 August 2016 (UTC)

Spammers, POV-pushers, COI editors, etc., are all definitely willing to "edit for free". --NeilN 08:53, 5 August 2016 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:Fringe theories/Noticeboard being used to canvass

This concern is related to some of SageRad's comments, so I am raising it as a sub-thread here. There is an increasing trend for editors not to discuss, or discuss very superficially, concerns at an article talk page, but rather, raise the issue at Misplaced Pages:Fringe theories/Noticeboard. It is transparent that this is being done by editors to contact other like-minded editors to pay attention to edits/articles they disagree with (search for the term "eyes" on the page). The proper approach is to discuss this at the Talk page of the article concerned where ALL those with an interest in the page would be watching and consensus can be achieved. This appears to be a form of "under the radar" canvassing. DrChrissy 18:21, 4 August 2016 (UTC)

See WP:SEEKHELP and WP:APPNOTE. Noticeboard postings are a great early step in dispute resolution (in this case for fringe topics). But I'm curious about these "like-minded editors" you're complaining about. FT/N has over 700 watching editors, of which over 200 are currently actively watching (including you it seems). What is it that makes these editors (including you?) "like-minded" exactly? If the like-mindedness is in correctly applying our policy and guidance on fringe and pseudoscience topics then that's a very good thing surely? Alexbrn (talk) 18:36, 4 August 2016 (UTC)

The fringe noticeboards goal is neutrality, and posts there don't meet WP:CANVAS. This is just another WP:PROFRINGE editor complaining about neutrality on WP:FRINGE articles. ThePlatypusofDoom (talk) 18:39, 4 August 2016 (UTC)

@ThePlatypusofDoom: And here we go again...please provide evidence that I am a WP:PROFRINGE editor. This is exactly what SageRad was talking about. Please provide the evidence that I am pro-fringe or you are guilty of casting aspersions. Please look at this diff - we can't have it both ways! DrChrissy 19:16, 4 August 2016 (UTC)

Well you did receive a community topic ban on human medical topics for your fringe rampage on our acupuncture article (exacerbated by some off-colour behaviour - see here for the details). Alexbrn (talk) 19:33, 4 August 2016 (UTC)

Your topic ban was extended due (in part) to your use of fringe material and 3 arbitors commented on your lack of ability to edit in a neutral fashion. Put it this way, SR and Tornheim are reaching the end of a process and you are following in their tracks. Only in death does duty end (talk) 19:41, 4 August 2016 (UTC)

Just because I, and other editors, edit on a page, does not mean we necessarily support it. For example, I edit the foie gras article but that does not mean I support production of this. Again, please povide evidence to support your casting aspersions that I am WP:PROFRINGE - you have not done this yet. DrChrissy 19:55, 4 August 2016 (UTC)

Your topic ban was extended due (in part) to your use of fringe material and 3 arbitors commented on your lack of ability to edit in a neutral fashion. Put it this way, SR and Tornheim are reaching the end of a process and you are following in their tracks. I have said this twice now, since you failed to listen the first time. Only in death does duty end (talk) 20:48, 4 August 2016 (UTC)

Rather than trying to scare me into not making posts, please will you address my direct question. What evidence do you have to support you accusation that I am WP:PROFRINGE. I have asked this twice now and you still have not provided this evidence. This is casting aspersions which I believe is covered by discretionary sanctions. DrChrissy 21:20, 4 August 2016 (UTC)

Your (lack of) competence and ability to understand was why you were banned from medical articles. I have answered you twice now. I suggest you go read your own banning discussions and learn from them. Only in death does duty end (talk) 21:22, 4 August 2016 (UTC)

Stating an author lacks competence is a personal attack. Please retract this. DrChrissy 21:25, 4 August 2016 (UTC)

You know I am just linking sanctions you have received for the exact issues you claim are personal attacks right? When you get topic-banned for competence issues after numerous people have provided evidence of you not being competent in an area, asking for evidence just makes you look..well..even less competent. Only in death does duty end (talk) 22:34, 4 August 2016 (UTC)

DrChrissy: Please provide proof that I'm pro-fringe.

Only in death: Well, you were sanctioned for being pro-fringe.

DrChrissy: That's an insult! Stop avoiding the question!

I think it's telling that you've continued to argue with Only well after I posted something that should have been of great interest to you, were your concerns really legitimate. But you'd rather argue with someone who's directly disagreeing with you than notice the attempt I made to bridge the gap a bit. I'll admit I didn't go all that far, but if you'd tried to do the same, we might have met in the middle. After reading this exchange though, I get the feeling you're just complaining and venting, which lets me know I'm wasting my time by trying to be considerate of your views. MjolnirPants Tell me all about it. 21:30, 4 August 2016 (UTC)

MjolnirPants, I was grateful to see your measured and neutral post which was directly related to the subject of the thread. What is happening now from Only is going beyond the subject of this thread. They have decided to cast aspersions without providing any evidence whatsoever. I think my fault here is that I should take it to a noticeboard or ARBCOM rather than here on Jimbo's Talk Page. DrChrissy 21:37, 4 August 2016 (UTC)

Quick follow up, could you please provide a diff that says I was sanctioned for being "Pro-fringe". DrChrissy 21:40, 4 August 2016 (UTC)

this link right here shows that you were placed under a topic ban for adding bad content. That content was pro-fringe as can be seen in that link and in links contained therein. If you don't consider that evidence, then I can only point out that you are (as would be anyone in your position) extremely biased about what counts as evidence of your past wrongdoings and might want to stop arguing about it and take the word of other editors that yes, you have been sanctioned for pro-fringe edits. I also noticed that while you have now (after being directly prodded) acknowledged my post, you haven't engaged me on the contents of it. This is what I was saying: You seem much more interested in venting than in solving a problem. A genuine interest in solving a problem should have left you minimizing the issue of whether or not you're pro-fringe, as it detracts from what you would have been truly trying to accomplish, here. Hell, had our positions been reversed, I'd have responded with "Well, that may be, but my own biases don't mean my complaints are invalid. Now, regarding what that oh-so-handsome-and-intelligent scandinavian fellow said..." MjolnirPants Tell me all about it. 21:50, 4 August 2016 (UTC)

You have said it yourself. The topic ban was for adding "bad content" - whatever the hell that means - but there has been no finding against me of being "pro-fringe". DrChrissy 22:07, 4 August 2016 (UTC)

Well, I guess that makes it clear that you're here to talk about yourself, and not to fix a problem. MjolnirPants Tell me all about it. 22:14, 4 August 2016 (UTC)

Some of the bad content was decidedly fringe. An article from Dean Radin's "journal"? Mercola? That's the fringiest of the fringe. To be fair though I'd say your sanctions mostly arose from garden variety POV pushing. A POV I respect, by the way, in that it's clear a huge focus of your editing is on the topic of animal rights. At times, such as the AE that arose from your editing of GM fish, it seems your POV overrides neutrality. Understandable when you're editing something you care deeply about but you must understand how other people see that as problematic. On that particular article you added nothing but negative material. Some from decidedly fringe sources and some that cherry picked quotes from half decent sources that cast the subject in a bad light when the ultimate conclusion of the papers were contrary to the selected quote. Then if we look at your editing in the animal intelligence topic area everything you add or expand on is extremely positive in its view. You don't pick quotes from the studies that show certain animals incapable of certain cognitive tasks but only those aspects that cast animal intelligence in the best possible light. Hell, we share that POV but you've got to be cognizant of it and temper it or else you fall into the realm of POV pushing and end up running into trouble. Capeo (talk) 22:54, 4 August 2016 (UTC)

And then there are the concerns at CCI. I do worry that when this editor is eventually banned, the legacy is going to be a big dumpster fire of copyvios for the community to deal with. Alexbrn (talk) 07:14, 5 August 2016 (UTC)

• I agree in principle and in detail with Alex and Platypus. They have correctly described the purpose of the FT/N and, given that purpose, I find it ridiculous the way people whose edits have been brought up there react to this. That being said, I'm going to play devil's advocate here.

is the FT/N really a neutral place, intentions aside? Its nature as a forum for discussion of a variety issues surrounding fringe topics all but guarantees that the most frequent visitors to it will be those who are by default, skeptical. That is as it should be, but the problem arises in that there is no mechanism to separate pseudo-skepticism from legitimate skepticism. I have personally more than once seen well-meaning but over-zealous skeptical editors responding to FT/N discussions by going to a fringe article and removing well-sourced, accurate information, inserting poorly-sourced or undue information, or re-wording neutral statements to make them sound more skeptical. It's worth pointing out that these cases are in the extreme minority; most of the responses from FT/N discussions are quite good, IMHO. However, they do still happen, and in every case I've seen, the only solution has been for me to 'switch sides' and support those with a pro-fringe POV far enough to balance things. I'm sure I'm not the only one who's done this, either.

So I would agree that there is a problem, if a relatively minor one. At this point, I must digress from my luciferian consulting role and speak wholly from my own instincts. The real question is not what we should do about it, but if we can do anything about it that won't make everything worse. Sure, there's a bias against fringe subjects there. But is there anything we can do that won't undermine the very purpose of the FT/N, and the principles of WP it directly supports? Sorry for the long post. MjolnirPants Tell me all about it. 19:27, 4 August 2016 (UTC)

There are occasions when editors raise things at WP:FT/N and the noticeboard consensus is that that issue-at-hand is out of scope - which tends to suggest FT/N has some good sense. But as anywhere in WP there can be no guarantee of perfection: we all need to be vigilant in application of the appropriate policies. From my perpective, WP:FT/N and WT:MED (both noticeboards disliked by the WP:Lunatic charlatans) are two of the great engines of Misplaced Pages and have given us some of our best content. Alexbrn (talk) 19:40, 4 August 2016 (UTC)

Yes, exactly. I understand the basis of the complaints because occasionally things go wrong. But I cannot for the life of me think of a way to fix that minor problem that won't create a much bigger one. It's an imperfect system, but such is life. And for the record, I'm not waxing philosophical just because I'm okay with this particular issue. The page Argument from authority is one which is broken (it disagrees in the opening with literally every single reliable source on the subject), but as I can't think of a way of fixing it, I've given up on trying. MjolnirPants Tell me all about it. 19:56, 4 August 2016 (UTC)

• User:MjolnirPants, you might be interested to know that RationalWiki does a somewhat better job with this. Shock Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 00:24, 5 August 2016 (UTC)

There is absolutely no reason to stop FT/N. Jimbo, please archive this, as it is clear that FT/N is here to stay, and helps the encyclopedia. ThePlatypusofDoom (talk) 23:04, 4 August 2016 (UTC)

• Can I just clarify here, DrChrissy, are you looking to be martyred, or are you genuinely unable to accept that your agenda is not in line with policy? Guy (Help!) 23:40, 4 August 2016 (UTC)

If there is a systemic problem then that means that there should be articles that do not represent the facts according to reliable sources well, and there should be cases among them where this problem is worse than average where even people with a "sceptical bias" would agree that there is a problem. So, why not post some examples of such articles? Count Iblis (talk) 00:16, 5 August 2016 (UTC)

Fringe scapegoats

I wrote the fringe scapegoats essay after witnessing similar instances of Misplaced Pages policies being misunderstood in the way that is it has been misunderstood by some in this thread. In short, when an article discusses a fringe theory, we are required to include its reception by experts in the relevant field -- that's the NPOV policy (specifically WP:PSCI). Unfortunately, the editors adding this information are often maligned by proponents of fringe theories. By labeling editors "biased" or whatnot, proponents effectively create scapegoats to cover for the hard reality that their favorite hypothesis has not made an impression upon mainstream thought, or worse, considered pseudoscience. The more drama that can be drummed up about biased and conniving "skeptic" editors, the less one has to address the reasons for the fringe theory being poorly received, such as lack of evidence.

The top-level title of this thread is the name of an off-wiki harassment site that falsely defames many Misplaced Pages admins and editors using claims that are provably untrue. For instance the blocked editor running the site claims that these are not his socks, but any competent reader can see that they clearly are. For example he claims 23.241.74.200 is not his sock, but that is the IP of a sock that the banned editor himself admits to. The narrative being propagated by the blocked editor is that innocent users who happened to share a POV were accused of being socks as a means of removing that POV from Misplaced Pages. The evidence proves that to be a false narrative.

Another contributor to that off-wiki harassment site had also been socking in an astonishing case of that I would call "extreme trolling": he had harassed editors using a sock, then cited the evidence of his own socking as a pretext for submitting an arbcom request about harassment. And that was just the first deception he concocted (AE request).

In summary, don't believe everything you read on the Internet. Manul ~ talk 02:47, 5 August 2016 (UTC)

Racist title or not?

Hi, I have 2 questions bold here :
There is an article with this title "Invasion to Iran by Arabs" (title1) I can explain that title more accurately as "Invasion to Iran by Arab people". Do you assume this as a racist title? This title is for the Farsi version of the article "Muslim conquest of Persia" (title2) which we had to recommend a similar title "Conquest of Persia by Muslims" because the title2 is not so clear when it is translated to Farsi however finally we could find a clear exactly equal title for it same as English (Even Iranicaonline sources are English). I was saying that Arab Conquest means Arabic Conquest such as Islamic Conquest which is Muslim Conquest not Arab invasion.

But the problem is when I compared the :

• "Invasion to Iran by Arabs" to "Invasion to Iran by Iraqis"
• and "Arab Invasion of Iran" to "Iraq Invasion of Iran" similar to "Arabic Invasion of Iran"
• and "Rashidun Invasion of Iran" to "Ba'ath Invasion of Iran"

I just said "Muslim conquest of Persia" is a better and impartial title. Then on the opposite side the user Kouhi accused me to WP:NPA (I never accused him to be a racist but he claims this) and noted me in the WikiFa admin noticeboard and complained there AND I'M BANNED NOW by an inactive admin User:Sahehco immediately without any warning. It is wonderful.

Other users were agree with me even Sa.Vakilian (previously he had contrary viewpoint to me about the Criticism of Quran but this time he is agree with me). Previously you know me about the criticism of the Quran (in that subject after many discussions finally I could be successful).

When I pinged other active admin in my discussion to take a third opinion and no answer presented and next I pinged one another active admin then Sahehco accused me to WP:CANVASS and warned me to avoid pinging other admins. (HURRAY he can warn not only ban)

Do you have similar situation in Wiki En and in Wikimedia?

If a translator is needed this is @Darafsh: an admin.

Recently I'm not so active in Wiki and no reaction I ask about this account but I just want to make you aware of the hard situation we have in other language Wikis. From one side I see Muslim users attach partiality template to the articles like the Criticism of Quran having many different impartial sources and you can't remove the template but many articles like the Quran or Muhammad articles themselves with a lot of religious partial claims and sources(sometimes they have no historical source) are Featured and Good articles and from the other side we have articles like the Invasion to Iran by Arabs and the are partial supernationalists like this who only needs to make his lips wet to make other wiki users banned (previously I hadn't use words like this supernationalist but now that I see this situation I use it). Sometimes impartiality itself is a fault and you will be partial because you said this title is a racist title.

HAND --IranianNationalist (talk) 14:15, 3 August 2016 (UTC)

I highly doubt Mr. Jimmy Wales is interested in this sort of discussion. Just put it in the talk page of the article and let the editors hash it out in the talk page. Also read Mr.Wales user page which states "If you have a complaint, it's best to start with the help desk. Ask a short, friendly question, and fellow Wikipedians will be happy to help. Contacting me directly with a complaint should be reserved for after you have exhausted all other possible remedies.". Alexis Ivanov (talk) 06:50, 4 August 2016 (UTC)

Assault on the very principle of US Government works being in the public domain

With no legitimate evidence presented that the file was not in the public domain just like every other US Federal Government work - just a lot of base speculation about how in unlikely circumstances it might not be, despite being offered as public domain on the site - Misplaced Pages:Files for discussion/2016 July 27 deleted File:20091104 Alisa Weilerstein - Kodály's Sonata for Solo Cello, Op. 8 - 3. Allegro molto vivace.ogg.

The underlying musical work is definitely in the public domain int he US - {{PD-US-1923-abroad}}. We cannot, cannot have a policy of deleting files based on speculation as to how it might not really be public domain despite reliable sources stating it is, and no actual evidence to show otherwise

This is a travesty, and goes against the basic principles of Misplaced Pages. Adam Cuerden 09:20, 4 August 2016 (UTC)

I didn't read the whole discussion, but some valid points were being made. Just because some Federal employee had some role in the production does not automatically mean the work is PD. A number of legitimate questions were asked. Despite your insistence, the default assumption is not that any work is pd, and those disagreeing must prove otherwise, the default assumption is that the work is copyrighted, and someone must provide evidence that the work does qualify as pd.

In any event, this is the wrong forum. Jimbo is free to add his two cents to a discussion, but doesn't have the authority to overturn a valid consensus. If you can demonstrate that editors are blithely ignoring the law and/or Misplaced Pages policy, you are likely to get Jimbos attention, but doesn't appear the be the case here - reasonable editors have reached a different conclusion than you would like.--S Philbrick(Talk) 17:47, 4 August 2016 (UTC)

Strategy recommendations

The long-awaited critical question synthesis for the Strategy process was just released, and I excerpted the recommendations at meta:2016 Strategy/Recommendations. Discussion is probably more appropriate on the talk page there, but this seems like a reasonable place to share the news. EllenCT (talk) 20:34, 4 August 2016 (UTC)

The Signpost: 04 August 2016

• Editorial: Misplaced Pages policy suppresses sharing of information

• News and notes: Foundation presents results of harassment research, plans for automated identification; Wikiconference submissions open

• In the media: Paid editing service announced; Commercial exploitation of free images; Misplaced Pages as a crystal ball; Librarians to counter systemic bias

• Obituary: Kevin Gorman, who took on Misplaced Pages's gender gap and undisclosed paid advocacy, dies at 24

• Traffic report: Summer of Pokémon, Trump, and Hillary

• Featured content: Women and Hawaii

• Recent research: Easier navigation via better wikilinks

• Blog: All-new notifications page helps Wikimedians focus on what matters most

• Technology report: User script report (January to July 2016, part 1)