Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 18:47, 24 November 2020

Jimbo welcomes your comments and updates – he has an open door policy. He holds the founder's seat on the Wikimedia Foundation's Board of Trustees. The current trustees occupying "community-selected" seats are Doc James, Pundit and Raystorm. The Wikimedia Foundation's Lead Manager of Trust and Safety is Jan Eissfeldt.

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Related Articles

@CaptainEek, "Misplaced Pages doesn't use algorithms" is untrue; regular editors often aren't aware of it because we tend to work in the desktop view. When using the mobile version of the site—as more than half our users now do and the proportion is steadily rising—readers are served with algorithmically-generated "you might be interested in…" links whenever they visit an article. (They're not very apparent when viewing the mobile view on a desktop computer, as the links are tucked away below the references, but they're very in-your-face when reading Misplaced Pages on a phone where the body text is mostly collapsed by default so the lead paragraph, a bunch of collapsed sections, and the algorithmically-generated links are all a reader sees when visiting a page.) The algorithm generates some fairly goofy results—e.g. at the time of writing the suggestions on Jimmy Wales are Bomis, Larry Sanger and Nupedia but not Misplaced Pages, on Coronavirus it suggests three strains of coronavirus none of which are the strain 99.9% of visitors are going to be searching for, on Black people it serves up a couple of antiquated racial slurs—but the algorithms are definitely there. ‑ Iridescent 10:36, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

I wasn't aware of that, I will look into it.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 12:32, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

If it's any help, the documentation for this particular extension is here. As far as I know, it was imposed by the WMF rather than anyone asking for it; what discussion there was was at Meta:Talk:Requests for comment/Related Pages. ‑ Iridescent 13:58, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

Iridescent, Oh wow, I didn't know that either, thanks for mentioning it... CaptainEek ⚓ 18:53, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

For what it's worth as a data-point, two of the three "related articles" to my BLP are about people I'd never heard of. They're American lawyers, as am I, but I'm hard-pressed to see what else relates the three of us. (To be fair, the third related article is more sensible, as I'm cited in it a couple of times.) Regards, Newyorkbrad (talk) 21:03, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

Brain dump:

• Foundation project page: MW:Reading/Web/Projects/Related_pages and Flowtalk MW:Talk:Reading/Web/Projects/Related_pages
• Software/Technical page: MW:Extension:RelatedArticles
• I helped the team draft a "feedback only" Enwiki RFC WP:Related_Pages_extension/RfC with responses on the the Talk. The language and style of the RFC is a bit wonky and not very effective. I was trying to get staff comfortable the idea of collaborating with us on an RFC, and I bent over backwards to draft for them whatever they wanted.
• The team's summary of feedback they received from multiple wikis.
• The project initially displayed non-free images. Resolved after objections from various editors, and after I cited the Board Of Trustees resolution on non-free materials. The resolution has a banner explicitly prohibiting staff from circumventing, eroding, or ignoring our limitations on non-free content usage. The PageImage feature can now be configured to include or exclude non-free images, depending on how the images are to be used.
• The project initially had a problem of displaying grossly inappropriate images. If the first image on the page was in a subsection it was often grossly unrepresentative of the article (wrong person or a random place or thing). Largely resolved by restricting PagesImages to only pull from the lead section.
• The project is both redundant-to and inferior-to our human managed related links. This was said by many community members, from multiple wikis. I don't think the team ever meaningfully addressed this.
• The software can select grossly inappropriate "related" pages. Our article for Hard disk drive was given a grossly promotional link to the Seagate Technology brand article. Video card currently displays a grossly promotional link to a specific Nvidia brand chipset. This can seriously undermine public perception of our neutrality. I also know of gross BLP violations and appalling political bias, such as giving a living politician a "related" link to a racist party or racist ideology - even when that person is not remotely aligned with the suggested article. Our NOTCENSORED articles can also pop up anywhere, I recall one of our language articles was given profane Related links. The team responded by creating a {{#related:articlename}} keyword we can use to override the software selections, but I rate this as utterly unresolved. The keyword theoretically allows us to fix any given page, but the software generates these links dynamically. Grossly inappropriate RelatedArticles can appear and change on any page at any moment. The problem is intractable, almost no one knows that it's possible to override it, and basically no one even tries to fix these cases. Noteworthy trivia: The #related keyword was used in the Wikimedia Foundation article, to setting related articles to iron law of oligarchy and Tragedy of the commons. There are over a hundred active page-watchers, and those Related Pages remained on the page 9 months before I found and reverted it. Either the Foundation is even more universally despised than I realized, or no one understands the #related keyword enough to revert vandalism that uses it.

Staff have good intentions but I'd say this is yet another case where they built something we never wanted, where they rolled forwards with deployment after ignoring significant feedback that it's not really wanted. Nobody has opened or suggested an RFC to try and get this shut off, but that might be because it's not visible on desktop. The fact that it's mobile-only means the product (and problems with the product) are pretty much invisible to most editors. I'd say that staff frivolously forking features as mobile-only is itself a problem, but that subject leads pretty far off the current topic. Alsee (talk) 03:23, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

 Comment: I don't want to be pedantic but Misplaced Pages uses algorithms all over the place to do things like convert inches to centimeters. What we are really discussing here is recommendation systems. Mo Billings (talk) 03:44, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

Mo Billings, it may help explain how the discussion became muddled to know that my original topic ( which led to the discussion above, was split off from "related articles, and then subsequently archived ) was Jack Dorsey's referencing algorithms at last week's Senate hearings, as shown below:

:Hi Jimbo Wales, I've been watching a USA Senate testimony of Jack Dorsey and he has said several times that "algorithms" make most of the content and content monitoring and tagging decisions, thus the conversation should focus on algorithms !! What do you think? Justthinking2021 (talk) 17:47, 17 November 2020 (UTC) Also, the senators are not following up on Dorsey's suggestion in this hearing so I'm wondering whether they feel capable of discussing algorithms. And this algorithms tangent that Dorsey suggests strikes me as possibly being a recognition or concern that, as per sci-fi, the "machines are taking over", of course algorithms are not technically "machines". Of course, some would say the person/people who design the algorithms are the "controllers" over what Dorsey is suggesting should be the topic. The whole thing seems unimportant at first glance, but since Dorsey says he thinks it's important, maybe it is? I mean, do algorithms "think"? Do some/they have A.I.? Justthinking2021 (talk) 18:23, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

There definitely appears to be some confusion as to what algorithms are being used in Misplaced Pages and how useful or confusingly unhelpful they are, not to mention the way in which they came to be in the case Iridescent describes. Justthinking2021.1 (talk) 21:37, 21 November 2020 (UTC)

• I've wondered about this feature before; it has very much flown under the radar, so I'm glad to see it being discussed here. Reading Alsee's comment above, the situation comes into focus. I'm not actually too concerned about the quality of the links (there will always be exceptions, but I've actually found them pretty relevant most of the time, and I think readers are very used to seeing algorithm-generated suggestions elsewhere so they aren't too thrown off by them here), but the concern that this duplicates the functionality of see also sections very much deserves a larger hearing, and the lack of coordination with the community is troubling.

One thing I'll add: The second sentence of the MediaWiki page is rather concerning: It aims to drive page views by engaging users by directing them to related content. "Driving engagement" is the sort of goal I'd expect to see at somewhere like Facebook, where the whole point is occupying your attention for as long as possible to serve you as many ads as possible. It doesn't fit for a nonprofit, where the end goal always needs to be actually serving readers. Now, I do think the intended purpose is actually tied to that goal—helping people find content they're interested in fits with our mission—but it's still very disappointing to see the rationale expressed in for-profit corporate-speak rather than in terms of our mission, and it makes me concerned about what other decisions that attitude may be driving. {{u|Sdkb}}  18:28, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

Most concerning to me is the WMF (yet again) implementing a reader-facing change without community consensus. There's a list of things the community wants and a list of things the community doesn't want, and the WMF seems to regularly work on the latter. Why are resources put towards things like "Related Changes" and not towards clearing Phab tickets, for example? Levivich /_hound 20:03, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

Yeah, seeing how many fantastic suggestions are being made for the Community Wishlist, and knowing that only a fraction of them will be implemented, while meanwhile resources get dumped on things like this, is fairly depressing.

It'd be one thing if the technical architecture of Misplaced Pages was in a fairly good place, in which case branching out to try some creative experimental new features would be justifiable, but there are really urgent unmet needs just around the basics. For one example out a gazillion, Jimbo, take a look at T217914, which asks for a simple confirmation dialogue to be shown when you click the logout button. It got overwhelming community support at the village pump but has been open for more than a year. I presume that all it needs is a little developer attention to make it happen, but there doesn't seem to be any since everyone at the WMF seems to be occupied with big flashy initiatives of highly variable merit. {{u|Sdkb}}  23:22, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

I'm also surprised at this. As it is, Misplaced Pages by it's structure as an encyclopedia already drives engagement even for passive users: it is a dynamic click bait. Are the folks at the Foundation so mistrusting how addictive the links we editors create that they need to prime the pump with computer-generated ones? -- llywrch (talk) 20:42, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

Anarchy on simple wikipedia, please explain yourself

Do you ever check what's going on there? There are mistakes everywhere! Those who get blocked here go over there. Did you have any role in creating that wiki? Why you never edit there? Why are you the cofounder of wikipedia afraid to be blocked there? Why do you allow things just to happen/click on their own over time across wmf? Majority being right does not mean they are right! I await your honest and detailed reply. --LjupcoSteriev — Preceding unsigned comment added by 103.250.232.42 (talk) 19:04, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

Expecting a "detailed reply" to a jumbled rant with false implied premises/statements in most of the "questions" is a bit much. North8000 (talk) 22:48, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

Putting aside the articulateness of the IP, the main question raised by the continued existence of Simple Misplaced Pages is whether our bar for shutting down projects is too high.

meta:Proposals for closing projects/Closure of Simple English Misplaced Pages (3) in 2018 failed, but the close didn't really address the quite compelling point made by supporters that editor effort spent on it (a lot of which is wasted on duplicating general functions) would be much more productive if redirected here.

I'm sure Jimbo is aware of the quality issues that have plagued SEW for years, and I'm curious if he has thoughts on how we should best move forward. {{u|Sdkb}}  18:38, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

Why is anyone bothering to reply to this globally WMF banned LTA? Praxidicae (talk) 18:39, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

Your email

Hi Jimbo

Thanks for the email you sent me this week with an update on the fundraiser. Always good to hear from you! Obviously my main contribution here is through writing content and adminning, but you've convinced me to pop a little donation over anyway. All the best to you and yours, and I hope you have a pleasant holiday season.  — Amakuru (talk) 10:53, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

Frederick Douglass Memorial Park

Greetings Jimbo. I stumbled on this subject and was able to get an entry on it started. I think it's an interesting subject for various reasons and would like to see it developed and brought to greater attention, but I wasn't sure where to post it. I thought maybe User:DGG's page is watched by many and I believe he's a New Yorker? But I had trouble getting that page to load.. I hope he and his family are all well. If anyone is interested please do help with it or point me in the right direction. Of course photos would be most welcome. Thanks. Draft:Thurgood Marshall Academy for Learning and Social Change is another interesting one and also in NYC (Harlem, the cemetery is on Staten Island). Hopefully my fellow Wikipedians im that metropolis can help out. Stay safe. Enjoy lofe. God bless. FloridaArmy (talk) 17:55, 22 November 2020 (UTC)

I'll fix my page today. It is indeed long enough to cause problems, at this point, even for me. But I do not see why my user page is a place to put material about your project. You might do better with the talk page for NYC, which I imagine most people working on NYC articles watch. Or approach the chapter directly--we're running our usual monthly meetings, now online of course, and people frequently come to talk about their projects. Next is Dec. 16, 2020. see m:Wikimedia_New_York_City. DGG ( talk ) 20:16, 22 November 2020 (UTC)

Epicgenius is a powerhouse when it comes to NYC-related pages, so they might be someone to reach out to. But we're all volunteers and no one is obligated to create anything. I agree that this post isn't really topical for Jimbo's page and would be better shared/moved to a NYC-related page. {{u|Sdkb}}  18:43, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

Sdkb, thanks for the kind words. I can look over the articles to see if there's something else that needs doing, though I agree this is more relevant for WT:NYC, where there are a few of us who specialize in NYC topics. Epicgenius (talk) 15:20, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

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1. Request for help with an abusive blocking by an admin at Misplaced Pages-Germany; 2. Request for help in stopping a checkuser request that is unnecessary and abusive.

Hello Mr Wales, or should I better say Jimbo?

I am writing to you because I am a newcomer, a data protection lawyer and like working at Misplaced Pages.

Unfortunately, I got into unnecessary trouble with admins who locked me up indefinitely during an unlock check for no reason. Therefore I made a request to our arbitration court, but was further mobbed by the admins who blocked me.

I was banned because I resisted against the checkuser request but which is made against me for unjustified reasons. Allegedly I would have insulted someone that the admins could not assign further to me. Since I am a data protection lawyer, I want to defend myself against this.

Unfortunately I am still new in Misplaced Pages, so it is made very difficult for me, even if many non-Admins and other Misplaced Pages members help me.

But unfortunately it did not help, so I ask for your help! I have also informed the commission, but would be very happy about your help.

Thanks a lot for your help! I am very desperate.

Best regards

From Savigny

(User from German-Misplaced Pages)

Links: 1. https://de.wikipedia.org/Wikipedia_Diskussion:Schiedsgericht/Anfragen/%C3%9Cberpr%C3%BCfung_Sperre_Benutzer_Von_Savigny

      2. https://de.wikipedia.org/Wikipedia:Checkuser/Anfragen/Benutzer_Von_Savigny,_IP_2A01:C22:BC80:F00:C4F:51C2:292F:C250