Comments

The following is an automatically-generated compilation of all talk pages for the Signpost issue dated 2016-03-16. For general Signpost discussion, see Wikipedia talk:Signpost.

Blog: It “revolutionized the way German-speaking people inform themselves about the world”: Fifteen years of the German Wikipedia (1,135 bytes · 💬)

Most-edited articles

What's remarkable here is that the German Wikipedia's article on Alternative für Deutschland, in 13th place on the list of most-edited articles, was only created in November 2012. It indicates just how deep that controversy runs in Germany. --Andreas JN 466 21:35, 19 March 2016 (UTC)

Another interesting aspect of German is the number of German sublanguages, such as Low German, Low Saxon and so forth. I think the importance of meetups is even more pronounced in the Netherlands. Jane (talk) 12:05, 21 March 2016 (UTC)

New signpost tomorrow! --violet nese 19:03, 22 March 2016 (UTC)

Discussion report: Is an interim Executive Director inherently notable? (392 bytes · 💬)

I like the most popular pages. --violet nese 18:55, 22 March 2016 (UTC)

Featured content: This week's featured content (149 bytes · 💬)

In the media: Wales at SXSW; lawsuit over Wikipedia PR editing (567 bytes · 💬)

Kawasaki and Wales? Hm. No better than Kawasaki and Tretlikov, ie: WP:COI. Pointless. - Sitush (talk) 01:43, 20 March 2016 (UTC)
Page length is a serious issue and it's great that someone finally noticed and wrote about it. With the rise of mobile this will only get to be more and more annoying. Jane (talk) 08:09, 21 March 2016 (UTC)

News and notes: Wikipedia Zero: Orange mobile partnership in Africa ends; the evolution of privacy loss in Wikipedia (1,014 bytes · 💬)

Might the techniques used by researchers Marian-Andrei Rizoiu, Lexing Xie, Tiberio Caetano and Manuel Cebrian be used to detect COI editing? - kosboot (talk) 00:35, 20 March 2016 (UTC)
- Activities of new users help improve predictions about retired users... because the new users are sockpuppets of the retired editors? wbm1058 (talk) 18:17, 22 March 2016 (UTC)

Re "Orange paid the Wikimedia Foundation for the right to use Wikimedia brands and trademarks in showcasing the content. Users were able to access Wikimedia content from Orange's own portals, and targeted marketing was presented alongside the content", where would I go to view all such WMF agreements and/or contracts? --Guy Macon (talk) 23:07, 20 March 2016 (UTC)

Op-ed: Hard work needed to address Wikimedia’s leadership challenges (5,434 bytes · 💬)

This is a very thoughtful piece, Pete, and I really hope that the current Board of Trustees will engage seriously with your recommendations. I agree that some (but not all) of them should consider resigning to facilitate moving on. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 07:24, 20 March 2016 (UTC)

Wikipedia at 15 is not in such bad shape, and tech support has recently been very promising. So let's not allow "internalist" issues to cloud that picture. That said, Pete is correct to point out that governance has now come to the fore. One would have to have close knowledge of the actual content of debates to comment in detail; but let's say the issue is tension between "Silicon Valley" and "community" views of where we are heading. So those tensions should be addressed, by the WMF as non-profit. In terms of institutional relationships, a better understanding of what being taken seriously involves should come high on the list. Both Commons and Wikidata matter there (I can speak for Wikidata from my own outreach work) and deserve full support; but further work needs to be done on Wikisource in order to "have a library", which (to me) seems currently to be a limiting factor for attracting both the science and humanities wings of academia. My point here is that the educational/metadata function of WMF projects has not yet been seen clearly: we are not media in a naive sense, and I include in that caveat the handling of explicitly educational material. I'd be looking in new leadership for folk who get the distinctive merits of what we do and how we do it; and can give a reasoned explanations of both WP:VOTE in the broad context, and the difference between reference and instructional material. Charles Matthews (talk) 09:18, 20 March 2016 (UTC)

A particular requirement for the leader of the WMF is working with an exceptionally high percentage of volunteers. Many charities use some volunteers to staff shops, etc, but not many, perhaps, work with such a large corps of experienced volunteers, who contribute such a large percentage of the essential effort needed to keep the show on the road. Pete is absolutely right to emphasize the diversity of the stakeholders, and given the importance of volunteering, the unusually low importance of money in the WMF's case. It might be worth taking a look at the way stakeholders are analysed in systems engineering/requirements engineering, where multiple roles and implicit conflicts are the order of the day. A new ED, briefed in advance about the rare combination of job requirements, might be able to benefit from the outgoing ED's experience. Chiswick Chap (talk) 12:00, 20 March 2016 (UTC)

- Thanks all for sharing your thoughts. Cullen, without knowing the internal dynamics of the board, it's tough to know who's responsible for what; but there are so many clues. Of course the whole board shouldn't resign; two of the current trustees were not even on the board from August to January, and one of them voted against Doc James' removal, so I can't see a reason for any of them to consider leaving. It also seems very extreme for the rest to all leave; but I hope they are having some serious internal discussion of who played what role in the various big and costly mistakes. We should keep in mind that neither of the chapters-appointed trustees has sought reappointment, so presumably they will be departing in August -- and that includes the chair. Charles Matthews, I agree that this has not damaged Wikipedia itself, and that the site continues on a good track in spite of the problems. I would characterize the issues mainly as lost opportunity; an organization that is not distracted by secret/fancy visions for the future, or by abysmal internal politics, would be a better partner for the community, and better positioned to help address issues like systemic bias, obstacles to participation, etc. I do think that if the kinds of problems we have seen recently continue, that sooner or later, we will see an existential threat to Wikipedia, from the organization that is supposed to sustain it -- which is a big deal. But I don't think we're there yet, and there is much reason to believe things can turn around. The qualities you name are insightful. Chiswick Chap, yes, the major reliance on volunteers is an important factor -- and it's always worth remembering, this is an odd kind of "volunteering." With other organizations, one typically volunteers for the organization, and takes some direction from staff; but with Wikipedia, most volunteers simply use the platform, more or less at their own discretion, to work toward the mission as they understand it. I'm not sure how much value there would be in debriefing the outgoing ED's experience -- it probably couldn't hurt, but there are also a great many other people who might have stronger, better-informed insights into what worked and what didn't about her approach. -Pete (talk) 19:45, 21 March 2016 (UTC)

Technology report: Watchlists, watchlists, watchlists! (442 bytes · 💬)

I'm too young. I go on southeast Europe and ask them to make me white like them. --violet nese 19:00, 22 March 2016 (UTC)

Traffic report: Donald Trump, the 45th President of the United States (1,314 bytes · 💬)

It used to be when new episodes of The Walking Dead were broadcast, the related articles would always be on the Top 10. I wonder if viewership has peaked or perhaps this season isn't arousing the same level of interest. Or, it could be that it is primarily readers who don't know much about subjects like TV shows, movies or political candidates who go to read their articles and The Walking Dead has reached a level of saturation where most people are familiar with the series. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 21:29, 19 March 2016 (UTC)

Incredible FDR portraiture. Almost Brownesque. BobAmnertiopsis ∴_ChatMe! 21:45, 19 March 2016 (UTC)

Wikipedia Weekly: Podcast #119: The Foundation and the departure of Lila Tretikov (9,225 bytes · 💬)

There were so many insightful idea mentioned (including many to which I thought "Aha, so I wasn't the only one thinking this way"). In particular I want to commend you both on ideas of what the leadership role(s) should/could be. - kosboot (talk) 01:19, 20 March 2016 (UTC)

Thank you very much kosboot. If you've suggestions for topics to cover, improvements on how we should actually produce the show (shorter!, I know) please let us know. Witty lama 18:37, 20 March 2016 (UTC)

Yes, it's long but it also illustrated how several threads "in the news" are intimately interconnected - in a way, it couldn't have been much shorter. Glad to see you're not bound by a time constraint when the content calls for a more detailed explanation. - kosboot (talk) 19:57, 20 March 2016 (UTC)

@Kosboot and Wittylama: - Thanks for the feedback, and I'm glad you found it useful. We bit the bullet and decided to go long, believing that it was worth trying to summarize two years of history in two hours. It's not clear when someone will get to record what has happened into a comprehensive written narrative, so I felt it was useful to memorialize it right away. Even then, there are some significant things we didn't get to mention but I hope we get to discuss as the board decides how to move forward. -- Fuzheado | Talk 14:47, 21 March 2016 (UTC)

A good summary. The only new piece of history came from Liam, at 1:06:16: "... during that period [while the petition for the removal of Arnnon Gashuri was alive] I believe that Lila was telling Arnnon Gashuri to stay fast, just stick with it, that this controversy will blow over - even after the board had privately agreed that it actually would try and ... that it would remove him and acquiesce to community concerns."

What's your basis for those beliefs, Liam: the advice Lila was giving Arnnon and the board's prior private agreement?

I'm one of the few volunteers who actively challenged the narrative coming out of the staff (and the volunteers close to staff) prior to Lila's resignation, yet I was not allowed to comment on your Facebook page. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 03:12, 20 March 2016 (UTC)

It is something I believe to be the case, but for which I have no (or perhaps there doesn't even exist) specific "proof". Call it a hunch perhaps, or a supposition based on rumours I've heard from reliable people :-) Witty lama 18:37, 20 March 2016 (UTC)

I wanted to respond to a comment by Wittylama that I think was somewhere in the first half hour, where he was commenting about the Silicon Valley focus on quantitative metrics and the obsession with page views. I agree when he said that people who view Wikipedia content that has been scraped by other sites or devices (and thus not contributing to our page views) are still being reached as part of Wikipedia's mission, but that's not the whole picture. Maintaining Wikipedia (and thus fulfilling our mission) requires a critical mass of active editors, and we will struggle to replenish their ranks if fewer and fewer people view Wikipedia content without actually interacting with the encyclopedia. Gamaliel (talk) 01:13, 21 March 2016 (UTC)

Gamaliel: This is true, to a point. I would argue two counter points: a) gaining new editors has not been a particular problem - its the retaining that has been more of a challenge for us. and, b) that I do not think that equating pageviews with and active editors is correct. These two points are tied together... As we've seen over the last few years of stagnation in active-editorship there is a difficulty of new people becoming "active" all the while the people who were editing before a certain date have a statistically longer 'sticking' power - this has been during an ongoing increase (until this last year) in pageviews. In the first few years there was a reasonably linear correlation between pageviews and editors, but after a certain point those numbers became divorced - and this has been blamed on roughly three factors: competition for attention from other newer websites (e.g. facebook); difficulty of the MediaWiki technology; complexity of wikipedia's rules and unfriendly existing editors (biting newbies). It is also a truism that not all visitors to Wikipedia are equally desirable as potential editors. It's a nice thing to say that everyone can participate, but in reality not everyone should be a Wikipedian - we're not facebook where increasing the number of accounts is the raison-d'etre of the company. Rather, we should be focusing on the things that help us access potential good quality editors in a targeted fashion (e.g. through editathons, education/glam outreach) and improving the tools that help make the editing process less technical and the community more welcoming (teahouse, visual editor, flow...).. Consequently, I would suggest, that arguing that a 'drop in pageviews' is directly linked to a 'drop in editors' is just as incorrect - or should be just as incorrect - an argument as it is to equate pageviews with donations. Both imagine that all readers are created equal with an equally likely desire to donate and/or to edit. Witty lama 17:57, 21 March 2016 (UTC)

One way to consider this is as a licensing issue. The WMF has a tendency to approach everything as a technology problem. But having data and media from Wikimedia sites become ubiquitous is a great result for our mission and a big morale boost to our contributors; I'm proud to have had one of my photos in the Britannica. What we need is a team at the WMF who are encouraging mirrors to provide attribution, ideally by links back to Wikimedia sites. Ϣere SpielChequers 13:18, 24 March 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for posting! Interesting insights. I really think that we need US chapters and more decentral responsibilities. Forget Iceland - just make a Spanish chapter across the border in Tijuana. The Mexicans can try as hard or harder than the Icelanders at getting through to the Montgomery people. They at least share the same timezone. I would love to see more US-based chapter work and more multi-lingual support across the current communication channels, but I think that will be very tough to implement. Jane (talk) 10:49, 21 March 2016 (UTC)

Wittylama, it was great to hear your support (at around 1:26:30 to 1:29) for a "MediaWiki Foundation" that would take over the development of core MediaWiki, as suggested by various people, most recently Erik Möller. As you note, spinning off MediaWiki could potentially help both improve the software and allow the WMF to focus more on its true goals; it's good to hear this kind of view espoused by non-developers as well. Yaron K. (talk) 16:01, 22 March 2016 (UTC)

Wow, you listened that far in Yaron K.? :) It makes sense to me... MediaWiki is software that we use, but it is our primary tool, not our purpose. MediaWiki has a much bigger and more diverse usage base than Wikimedia project and allowing other users to get involved in the "core" (for want of a better word) more directly by having an organisation that is built for that purpose would unlock a lot of its potential I think... It would also open up a new revenue stream for donations specifically to that, and access developers from corporations that build on MediaWiki. Currently it seems to me that having MediaWiki as a sub-set of WMF engineering confuses the 'purpose' of the organisation. Witty lama 16:50, 22 March 2016 (UTC)

I've heard this podcast before. It should be the signpost's. I want to be on it. I went to two secondary schools. --violet nese 19:02, 22 March 2016 (UTC)

spoken word, English-language audio podcast I don't think it's a spoken word format, but the interpretation of that phrase is likely redundant to "English-language podcast" anyway (unless you really need to distinguish from music podcasts). czar 01:14, 25 March 2016 (UTC)