User talk:Jimbo Wales

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A new translation project

Jimmy, I was wondering if the idea of forming an agreement with google and setting up a new sister project dedicated to translating articles between wikipedias would appeal to you. I think translation is one of the most important assets in getting information to spread and to reduce systematic bias. I want all of the other wikipedias to have assistance like the Indian and Arabic wikipedias in translating articles from English and also us translating articles from other wikipedias. I'd like to scale Wp:Intertranswiki which I started a while back into a shared big sister project which would file all of the articles on each of the wikipedias and give wikipedians access to the translated versions in many languages or something and increase the level of interwiki collaboration over translating. Any thoughts anybody?♦ Dr. ☠ Blofeld 20:45, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

Interesting concept, but article content is so dynamic that maintaining a stockpile 100 or whatever constantly changing translations of the millions of articles would be nearly impossible, one would think. Maintaining links to the various language versions with some sort of easy auto-translate function would seem a better approach, in my opinion. Carrite (talk) 22:49, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

Yes, I'm very interested. It's important to take note of existing work in this area (including by Google). Carrite, while I agree that it's interesting to think about how to make articles in different languages more similar through enhanced translation, but I think that's very far down the line, and like you, I'm a bit skeptical. However, that doesn't negate the fact that it would be very nice if users who wish to translate from English to Arabic had some enhanced tools to help them do it. It seems likely to me that if we could accelerate the growth of articles in Arabic, then natural SEO would bring in more users to help maintain and further improve those articles.

Here's an example of what I would like to see, and I think this is pretty lightweight. Here is a sample redlink in Hungarian Wikipedia. It would be nice if that page automatically loaded a machine translation from Google but in a visual edit window with a simple message at the top saying "Hungarian Wikipedia does not have this topic. Here's a translation from English, which is probably pretty bad. Please read over it, fix any grammar errors, and hit save at the bottom. Then other editors can help to begin improving it. Hungarian Wikipedia thanks you for your help!"

That translation would look something like this: Google translate.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 10:54, 27 January 2013 (UTC)

Jimbo, you wrote It would be nice if that page automatically loaded a machine translation from Google--with all due respect, it would not be nice but disastrous and it would be the fastest way to bring down the quality and the credibility of Wikipedia in all of the languages GT would set foot in. On behalf of Translators without Borders (TWB) I oversee the translation efforts into 19 languages (so far) and I can assure you this is a wonderful, efficient system, with qualified and dedicated human translators. I agree with Doc James that the process needs improvement at the integration stage; one of the solutions we've been trying to implement is to recruit Wikipedians in each target language. If you take a look at our progress over the past few months, you will see the number of translated articles awaiting integration (orange). I envision Wikipedia initiating a worldwide recruitment program to raise awareness of this need for integrators. We of TWB have been doing our part, promoting this worthy project; the same would bring results on the Wikipedia side if concerted efforts were made. Again, I strongly advise against using GT. Ildiko Santana (talk) 21:56, 27 January 2013 (UTC)

However if it is clearly marked that this is a machine translation and thus is not going to be very good this might encourage more of our readers to translated or write articles. A pilot would be a good idea to see if this does increase editor numbers and if people like it. I would not see us adding these translation directly to Wikipedia themselves. They would need to go to a different area or simply be loaded on an as you need basis. If someone hits the edit button on one of these pages up would pop an explanation on how to translate the article from English / another language or write from the ground up. These two projects (this one and the human translation one) could potentially mesh together. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 13:39, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

Google's so-called "translations" are at least 50% gibberish, especially if the target language is something other than English. Usually it is harder (and less fun) to produce a good text starting from the Google nonsense than to just translate from scratch. If you haven't done any translations yourself, please do not recommend something as nonsensical as using Google's services instead of translations. —Kusma (t·c) 11:34, 27 January 2013 (UTC)

It depends on the language pairs. Of course I agree with you. Each language should be able to use the feature or not as they wish, and also to choose the most useful language to use in their context.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 11:39, 27 January 2013 (UTC)

Yes, agreed, the visual window feature to be able to access a missing article in any language I think would be tremendously productive if translation could be perfected. I think that would be the first priority is to introduce the technology that anybody searching for an article on any of the wikipedias, like the Lily Cole article on Hungarian wikipedia example, that they can access automated translated versions of missing articles from other wikipedias which supplement that wikipedia until they can start the article themselves. OK, google translation is far from perfect, but the google guys are steadily improving it and I think having a translated version which is instantly accessible, even if rather poor, would be more beneficial than no access to the information. The average visitor to many of the language wikipedias might not think to visit english wikipedia and then use google translation, so I think the feature should be instantly available to any wikipedia in any language including ourselves. For instance if a German actor is missing on here that the red link mentions the German wikipedia article. "Click here" to view in English. The biggest problem of course might be translation dumps from imperfect translation, but a warning could be given to ensure that it is proof read and copyedited.

Carrite, I didn't mean a permanent stockpile, I meant some sort of technology which feeds off the live articles which allows anybody to view a google translated version and a team of editors in each language to assist with proofing them. Sort of like the toolkit but in an organized project which is geared to helping editors translate articles and have automated translations checked. Google could use it too to gradually improve their automated translations by working together as a team across the many languages. Actually google translate for a lot of languages, like French and Spanish, is considerably improved and is often 90% fine now. German is still pretty bad but it's getting better Portuguese was diabolical previously but has improved much of late. Some of the lesser languages are still pretty awful though but anybody who remembers the old Babel fish. Systran soft days it has come on leaps and bounds. The worst I think as you say Kusma are the non English language conversions, like Japanese to Belarusian or something. I just think a large-scale translation "house" so the speak would be a great thing for freeing up information and increasing collaboration between wikipedias and that we're all working together to provide knowledge. Of course we can all think of possible flaws and problems as with any project, but I'd be interested to know what the google guys would think of such a proposal. I believe that anybody in any language, whether it is Zulu, Mandarin or Breton, has a right to a perfect translation of information in any language and to be able to access any article across all of the wikipedias in their own language and to be able to have the facility in which they can do so with translation support.♦ Dr. ☠ Blofeld 12:08, 27 January 2013 (UTC)

I think for such a project to truly reach its potential we'd need more than to work together with google. I think we'd need to involve language schools and institutions, and to involve pupils in various languages to assist in translation for practice. I know one of our editors Thelma Datter who is an English teacher in Mexico has given her pupils articles to translate into English from Spanish and it has been a win-win situation I think.♦ Dr. ☠ Blofeld 12:45, 27 January 2013 (UTC)

Certificate for translation completed in 2012

Back in 2011 we at WP:MED began formally collaborating with an NGO called Translators Without Borders. So far more than a million words of text has been translated (a total of more than 150 translations in one of more than 30 languages). How we do it is each article is broken into parts and each of these parts is translated within the ProZ plateform followed by them being put back together and the whole article checked again by a lead translator. All the translators involved are verified as competent by a professional in the field. We are only translating article that are of top importance in medicine and that have been brought to GA/FA. A table of the efforts can be seen here [1]

What problems have we run into: In Swedish some want content built from the ground up not translated [2] In Polish they have specifically used different templates for references to make translation more difficult. The infoboxes do not work in most other languages. There are a few others which I can elaborate on for those interested.

What we need help with: I am also a little behind on getting the translated articles integrated. I really need to hire someone, I think, as I have been unable to find a volunteer to take on adding them once completed. Have just received a small grant from the Indigo foundation to support developing translation capacity in East Africa. Also need help within specific languages once the article is their for localization. And we also need people to integrate old content with new content if their is some old content already present. People get upset if someone outside their community overwrites content already present even if of poor quality. Sign up is here with language ability [3]. Finally we need some tech support. To raise funds we need to be able to give results (ie how many people are using these translations). We have the results in English (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Medicine/Translation_task_force/Popular_pages) about 10 million for the 80 articles. But MrZs tool does not work in any other language. Have asked him if he or we could improve it a few times [4] He has stated that he will get to it for about a year now. Even have a volunteer programmer ready to jump in. We got a nice write up in the WHO bulletin following going their to promote these efforts [5]. Hopefully we will see this grow.

With respect to Google they tried a pilot project to sort of do the same back in 2010 [6] but it did not pan out. Have tried to pitch what we are doing both to Microsoft and Google but they are really hard to contact. I was thinking that our translation could be useful for them to build better "translation software" and if they provided some funding we could generate content faster. Regardless we will continue on slowly slowly. Drop me a note if you wish to become involved or simply jump in :-) Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 14:53, 27 January 2013 (UTC)

It's really easy for me to contact people at Google (or, since Marissa Mayer is now CEO, Yahoo) so if you have a specific polished proposal for them, let me know (preferably by email) and I can try to help.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 21:48, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

Highly interesting I think. But I think that like with writing wikipedia we'd need to rely on the masses who are competent amateurs in language translation, although having a team of professionals as well to overlook things would be great. I definitely think there would be high demand for a translation "house" as I put it where editors wanting to translate articles can go to have articles proof read and to assist with people in easing transferring content between wikipedias. If google understands the important of translating in languages like Arabic and Hindi and had attempted to launch something to this effect in 2010, I think they might show an interest in assisting with setting up a project which unites our resources and tries to organize a translation site to spread knowledge. I think with our people resources and google's technical resources, and other lingual experts overlooking it we could produce a successful project which would grow over time. Not sure if you are in contact with any of the google guys Jimmy, but it would be good I think if the foundation could try to contact google in light of the current work google has been doing with translation and consider scaling it to all languages, and both to and from each wikipedia. I'd like such a project to unite all wikipedias and attempt to "break down language barriers". Doc James, Jimmy and anybody else here, I'm willing to make a proposal at some point if google are interested in proposing a new WikiTranslation project or something. I think it would be worth asking around for a bit to see what the sort of response would be. The way I see it, translation is arguably the most important component to building a broad, comprehensive encyclopedia across all of the languages and the key to achieving our goals by breaking down the language barriers and trying to promote content derived from any language in different languages.♦ Dr. ☠ Blofeld 16:58, 27 January 2013 (UTC)

Given the large number of sometimes very underdeveloped wikipedias we have, I definitely think it would be a great idea to have some sort of human-reviewed translation service available, particularly for articles which might be of specific importance in those language groups, like medical concerns, and some of the really "main" articles, like, for instance, pretty much every article in Encyclopedia Britannica, particularly those in the "Macropedia" section. I think it would be a wonderful feather in the Foundation's cap if the foundation could boast that it has made at least some fairly comprehensive basic information regarding major current healthcare topics, for instance, available to anyone with access to the net in all the languages it has wikipedias in. The biggest problem will probably unfortunately be finding people to do the human-reviewed translations, particularly for some "linguistic" groupings, like maybe Simple English, which may not have the vocabularly we think of an generally required to convey some of the more complicated and sometimes abstruse information. John Carter (talk) 17:29, 27 January 2013 (UTC)

If someone wishes to put together a proposal of exactly how this would work we can continue discussion. This of course will require buy in from each language version and from the Wikimedia movement as a whole. This may be hard to achieve. Even in the project I am working on which deals with only 80 articles pertaining to medicine overcoming resistance was a bit difficult. This sort of project is especially difficult as discussion would occurring in languages we do not speak.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 18:14, 27 January 2013 (UTC)

Automatic text translation has two major problems: (1) Texts often contain unidentifiable (or easily misunderstood) elements such as proper names, mathematical formulas, or quotations in a third language. (2) Computers often parse the structure of a complicated sentence the wrong way. Each of these two problems exacerbates the other.

I think these problems can be solved for Wikipedia's purposes. For (1), it is enough to have compulsory markup for problematic text elements. For (2), there exist various controlled natural languages such as Basic English. (Unlike Basic English, one would probably not want to reduce the vocabulary but only the range of permissible grammatical constructions.)

The most natural approach would be to extend the functionality of the Simple English Wikipedia so that the required markup can be added, the grammar of every sentence can be checked automatically to conform with the restrictions, and every conforming article will automatically be available in all translation target languages.

In practice, an editor who has entered a new sentence would get immediate feedback if there is a parsing problem. The software's hypotheses about word forms would be made explicit, and the editor would get a convenient method for correcting them, tagging what a pronoun refers to (in cases of doubt), tagging words with the shades of meaning required for proper translation, replacing words by simpler synonyms, adding new technical terms to the dictionary, or marking the fact that something that looks like a common idiom is meant literally. Once the sentence parses successfully, the software would present one or two rephrased versions of the sentence, either in English or in the user's target language of choice, to facilitate checking that it's parsed correctly.

Editors speaking various target languages would be in charge of checking the tags for shifted or split meanings. E.g. native Spanish speakers would add or correct markup for distinguishing between the ser and estar meanings of be.

This could be implemented step by step. The first step would be the development of an appropriate version of simplified English (probably by proper linguists) and its implementation on Simple English – first informally, then through automatic checking. Then various target languages could gradually be introduced. This is probably the hard part. It could be addressed by providing the dictionaries and offering an API for linguistic researchers who want to experiment with translation engines.

Such a plan could cause some resistance from the Simple English Wikipedia, which would have to change a lot. But it would make the project much more useful and give it a lot of exposure. Writing for a fork of the English Wikipedia is one thing, writing in dozens of languages simultaneously is a completely different thing. Hans Adler 12:31, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

I doubt anyone would welcome this sort of idea into any of the current project which is why I think the proposal is for a separate project. I am not yet convinced that this would work and thus not yet convinced it would be a good idea. I have seen issues with machine translation for anything complicated. But would be happy to see a proposal for a pilot put together. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 13:08, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

• As a Wikipedia editor who has been involved in machine translation since the early 1970s, I am pleasantly surprised at the amount of common sense which has been expressed in the above comments. While Google has indeed made enormous progress in the field thanks to their "statistical" approach, success is still mainly based on two factors: 1) the level of similarity between the two languages involved; and 2) the syntax of the text to be translated. In other words, languages with common origins such as the romance languages (French, Italian, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Catalan, Romanian) will normally provide a relatively high level of translation while those of different origins (say French into German or Japanese into Russian) will provide far less satisfactory results. But the second criterion, syntax, is equally important. Well-structured sentences (preferably not more than 20 to 25 words) produce far better results in machine translation than long rambling sentences with lots of dependent clauses. With English as a source language, it is interesting to note that plain English is ideally suited to machine translation. In the 1980s, the Xerox Corporation developed what they called "Multilingual Customized English" as a basis for translating their user manuals and technical documentation into a wide variety of target languages using machine translation. Their approach was highly successful. Dr. B's proposal is therefore likely to be most successful, whatever the language combinations, if the article to be translated is written clearly and unambiguously in straightforward prose, free of academic frills. Finally, as someone who frequently translates articles from most of the European languages into English, I must say I usually prefer to work straight from the original rather than from a machine translation which needs to be revised. (PS: Though have failed to follow my own recommendation in writing these comments, I am nevertheless happy to see Google has translated them into an understandable level of French. Here is the raw output:

"Comme un éditeur de Wikipedia qui a été impliqué dans la traduction automatique depuis le début des années 1970, je suis agréablement surpris de la quantité de bon sens qui a été exprimé dans les commentaires ci-dessus. Alors que Google a en effet réalisé d'énormes progrès sur le terrain grâce à leur approche «statistique», le succès est encore principalement basée sur deux facteurs: 1) le niveau de similitude entre les deux langues concernées, et 2) la syntaxe du texte à traduire . En d'autres termes, les langues ayant des origines communes telles que les langues romanes (français, italien, espagnol, italien, portugais, catalan, roumain) fournira normalement un niveau relativement élevé de la traduction, tandis que ceux d'origines différentes (disons français vers l'allemand ou le japonais en ) Russe donnera des résultats beaucoup moins satisfaisants. Mais le second critère, la syntaxe, est tout aussi important. Des phrases bien structurées (de préférence pas plus de 20 à 25 mots) produisent des résultats bien meilleurs que la traduction automatique de longues phrases décousues, avec beaucoup de phrases subordonnées. Avec l'anglais comme langue source, il est intéressant de noter que bon français est idéalement adapté à la traduction automatique. Dans les années 1980, Xerox Corporation a développé ce qu'ils ont appelé «Français multilingue sur mesure" en tant que base pour la traduction de leurs manuels de l'utilisateur et la documentation technique dans une grande variété de langues cibles en utilisant la traduction automatique. Leur approche a été très réussie. La proposition de M. B est donc susceptible d'être plus efficace, quelles que soient les combinaisons de langues, si l'article à traduire est rédigé de manière claire et sans ambiguïté en prose simple, sans fioritures des universitaires. Enfin, comme quelqu'un qui se traduit fréquemment des articles de la plupart des langues européennes en anglais, je dois dire que je préfère travailler directement à partir de l'original plutôt que d'une traduction automatique qui doit être révisée."

I am therefore certainly ready to do what I can to forward the proposal. --Ipigott (talk) 21:55, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

I can forsee the following problem- I (or anyone) uses this function to take an article from say Arabic Wikipedia for instance and translates into English. Some editors or admins here on En Wikipedia decide despite its existence in Arabic it is not notable... huge debate with arguments and insults abound; two groups coalesce, not exactly in complete opposition but at the same time they are not mutually compatible in the same arguement- one with the dogmatic stance of "if it exists in another Wikipedia it is notable" and the other with "if it is not notable in the ENGLISH-speaking-world, then it is not notable for ENGLISH Wikipedia" (a sentiment that has been expressed before on AfD. This leads to unneeded drama, AfDs, and even edit wars at guidelines, policies, and the 5P by editors in the various dogmatic groups to push their views into !law. Of course those balanced, look at each article on its own merits case-by-case editors... well, they are admirable, but often get yelled down by fanatics on both sides depending on how the winds blow.97.88.87.68 (talk) 22:09, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

I don't think there would be any automatic translating from Arabic to English, only the other way round. One should think of this simplified English as a programming language. There would be a bias towards the Anglosphere, but I don't think it would be half as bad as you seem to imagine, and the entire thing is only meant as a crutch to create minor articles for the languages that would normally not have them.

As I see it, this is about the long tail. It's about making an article such as 1980 Turkish coup d'état accessible to a reader who can only read Urdu. Hans Adler 11:17, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

There should be an obvious issue with Google Translate that its results are copyrighted, and displaying them in a Wikipedia frame, especially if reworked to remove Google stock text and logos, might be subject to some challenge. Developing an in-house automatic translation for Wiki would be highly desirable, not only for its use on-wiki, but as an open source software application in general. Resources such as the curated set of other language wikilinks at the bottom of each article seem like they could be helpful. Maybe people running a GPL project from Comparison of machine translation applications could be recruited? I just hope that for any two given languages there aren't a thousand patents on the very idea of translating one from the other... but it is what one expects, nowadays. Wnt (talk) 13:42, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

If the source material is CC BY-SA, then running it through Google Translate results in text that is CC BY-SA. Maybe. It's not obvious. But it's also not a real problem. In any formal partnership, obviously Google would agree to license the results under CC BY-SA.

I do agree that open-source machine translation is extremely valuable, and that concern about relying on proprietary solutions is a valid concern.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 21:48, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

Is there some kind of table/graph we can put together so we can compare which language-to-language translations are the best? Points can be given by how closely related the languages are etc. The result of this will be that if (for example) we find that when translating from French to English we get a more accurate translation than from any other language, we may be able to start mass-translating articles, while ending up with an almost correct article. Who knows, we may even find out that if you translate from Hebrew to Russian, and then from Russian to German, you end up with a much more accurate translation than from Hebrew straight to German. Whatever the actual outcome of such an endevour, I think this sort of analysis would be extremely handy.--Coin945 (talk) 11:28, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

• Yes, a 3-language translation does work better in some cases, but that is a kludge, and good direct translations should be possible, with the help of more volunteer software developers here. -Wikid77 (talk) 14:45, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

Jimmy, thanks for the offer of contacting google. Give me a few days and I'll have something drafted for you to forward to them. I definitely think this is worth pursuing and am willing to put in the time to try to get something moving on this,♦ Dr. ☠ Blofeld 16:38, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

Find other websites like Google Translate in 2004

We should keep looking for better translation software, such as the old Google Translate of 2004. Before the numerous re-workings of Google Translate, it was possible to use it to dynamically translate text, so as a webmaster, I extended one customer's website in 2004/2005 to have other-language buttons to invoke Google Translate on 25 pages into 7 other major languages, and the results were basically flawless in every language, after careful phrasing and bypassing of proper names, but no longer. Instead, the dozens (hundreds?) of modifications to Google Translate have produced "50% gibberish" results (most obvious in German output texts which have omitted the main verb of many sentences for years, but not in 2004). Long story short, it has become almost impossible to write a simple paragraph and get it to auto-translate correctly, now, into just a few other languages. We need to find better translation systems, perhaps depending on language-pair proficiency, and use whichever software works best for a particular sets of languages. -Wikid77 (talk) 14:45, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

Bypassing translation of names

With automatic translation of text, it is often necessary to bypass (or "escape") translation of names which have meanings in other languages, such as "Smith" being a toolsmith or blacksmith and "Einstein" being "one-stone" or such. In some cases it can be as easy as adding non-breaking spaces such as "Smith " or some other minor, subtle trick. The basic concept is to invisibly alter the spelling of the name so that it is no longer a common word in an English lexicon which would translate, and typically, the word will be repeated as untranslated, appearing letter-for-letter identical, as same mixed-case format, in the output language text. This whole concept, of escaping names to enable dynamic translation, should perhaps be discussed, especially for lede sections, as similar to avoiding use of templates in lede paragraphs to allow for clean mouse-over preview of intro sentences. Of course, complete machine translation would be impossible, as proven in Conceptual Dependency Theory (scripts, plans and goals) which noted the vocabulary depends on topic context for idioms, where "run home" can indicate a house but a "homerun" in baseball. However, if Wikipedians developed a core machine-translation system, then articles could be tagged with topic-context categories such as "baseball" to alter the default definitions of words during translation. As Wikipedia's interlingua capabilities grew, then all languages would have "footballer" terms in related auto-translations. -Wikid77 (talk) 14:45, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

Information Extraction

Another option is I think information extraction. Wikipedia text already includes semi-structured data like X was born in [[Y]], studied in [[Z]], played basketball in [[Team D]]. By doing an n-gram analysis, such phrases (born in, studied in, lived in, is endemic to etc.) may be derived. Once this is done, a lot of verifiable data will be gathered and then it will be a lot easier to translate this content into another language by simply translating the phrases and defining their order and relation with objects. Regular expression may be employed for this purpose. This is very similar to what DBpedia did with our data. However we could do a lot better with community effort.--Alperen (talk) 17:15, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia Is Getting Worse As It Gets Better

"Wikipedia has changed from the encyclopedia that anyone can edit to the encyclopedia that anyone who understands the norms, socializes himself or herself, dodges the impersonal wall of semi-automated rejection, and still wants to voluntarily contribute his or her time and energy can edit." How true that is! And there's an easy way to fix it.71.198.249.0 (talk) 16:42, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

The full paper is available here (free). Mohamed CJ (talk) 17:27, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

This reminds me of comments I made in April 2010. I may not have gotten much traction at the time, but I haven't changed my mind since. Now that we have this publication to cite that argues these automatic template warnings are indeed harmful to Wikipedia, I think we should seriously consider a mass TfD of every template linked from Wikipedia:Template_messages/User_talk_namespace. If you want to yell at people, yell at them - don't send out a damn robot to do it for you. However, I will admit that reading the paper [7], I don't actually see proof of something beyond correlation, and this is also only a small portion of the territory the paper covers. Wnt (talk) 21:03, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

To follow up, I've started Wikipedia:Templates_for_discussion#Template:Uw-npov3, which I intend as a sort of trial balloon to see if people are willing to consider ditching at least the harsher levels of the user templating system. Wnt (talk) 21:01, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

It looks to me that is still the encyclopedia that anyone can edit. Suggesting that it is not is wrong. Experienced editors do not want to spend time talking to and explaining to new editors the troubles with their edits. Maybe they shouldn't. A "Golden Editor" as mentioned in the paper, should be resourceful and persistent to find out how to create an improvement that will stick. The suggestion that we remove automated reverts and messages so we can spend volunteer time to buy more volunteers can end up counter-productive. That said, The warning messages could include links to discussion boards or notice boards where people who really want to contribute can find a real person to talk to. Also better policing of warning message use could be productive in ensuring new contributor do not get bitten. I myself am guilty of biting, but I got called on it and I am more careful about it. Another thing to attract more editors is a better interface. That is in the works. Also keep in mind that any volunteer organization believes it doesn't have enough volunteers. Richard-of-Earth (talk) 23:02, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

You do realize that any successful non-profit organization does everything it can to attract and retain volunteers? Walking around with an attitude that <we have the best thing so people should adapt to us> doesn't work, and being so arrogant is not a good idea if we want Wikipedia to continue to grow. You are certainly right about the need for a better interface, and less biting of newcomers, but we ultimately need a welcoming atmosphere as well. Quite honestly, I stopped contributing to the English Wikipedia because I wouldn't even want to work here, never mind volunteer... and quite a few people leave all the time for the same reason. Ajraddatz (Talk) 18:26, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

You are quite wrong you know. Open Source has managed quite well for years on the expectation that all users will have read every article in Linux World, and the collected thoughts of Richard Stallman and Eric Raymond, and the result has been the creation of a 40 year old operating system, and a new mp3 and ogv player. So it is hardly unreasonable that before a new user presses the "Save Page" button they have familiarized themselves with the collected decisions and judgements of ArbCom and the 1001 essays that are acronym'd. After all we are intent on recreating something not from 40 years ago but from 250 years ago. John lilburne (talk) 21:22, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

The difference with Open Source and Wikipedia is that the former appeals to programmers and those already knowledgeable of the kind of work that needs to be done. Wikipedia needs a wide range of volunteers, many of whom would not be able or willing to deal with many of the intricacies that the wiki world has developed. This is one reason why we have started outreach programs such as GLAM and Wikipedia in Education, to get people with lacking skills and knowledge past the initial barriers to participation. Sorry, but for most casual users, the biggest barrier is have no idea how to start the transition to editing. Most dont even see the edit button! How about some kind of eye catching banner on main page that says "Interested in editing? Go Here!" and send them to the Tea Room.Thelmadatter (talk) 21:50, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

• It has some interesting points, but it also makes some fairly basic mistakes. For starters there is little point blaming bots for rapid deletion of new articles, OK we have a bot to find copyvio, but newpage patrolling is more of a semi automated affair than an automated one. Of course they are right that we have problems there and we lose potential new contributors, but their diagnosis is at least partially wrong. ϢereSpielChequers 16:13, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

Some more points are made here: "“Wikipedia is free, and often you get what you pay for,” he said. “Consumer beware.”" 76.126.174.99 (talk) 15:52, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

Hello

Hello Jimbo,

Thought you should look at this comic here, if you have not already. Now that I look into it, it seems that Wikipedia has got a really bad reputation at making the Himalayas out of a molehill. And we see that kind of criticism and mocking everywhere around the Internet. Not that we did not earn it (Also, see Apteva's blocking situation if you haven't already. It all happened over a single hyphen)

Which led me to think why it could be even remotely possible that something of this sort. And I realised its because of our no-consensus rules. For some reason, there is an interpretation of the rules according to which no issue can be solved by going either side if there are strong arguments from both the sides. If its one-sided enough, then the issue can get solved. But once there are editors fierce enough to keep fighting tooth and nail for it, no issue ever gets resolved. Not here on Wikipedia. [I consider Danzig to be an exception].

Whats more, we can easily have just a minority of the readers hijacking the entire system by making the first move, and fighting to defend it. Most of these issues could have been solved by plain simple common sense. But then someone made the first move, and it went unnoticed. Now anyone who ever tries to revert that first move will be considered to be edit warring. Which will ultimately ensure that a small minority of the editors, if dedicated enough to defend their reverts, and blindly attack any opposing arguments, can make sure the entire issue gets boiled off as a "no consensus" and nobody does anything anywhere.

Ultimately, we all lose our precious time bickering over whats not important than doing something actually important. Not to forget the fact that everyone who tries to come into the argument is forced to read through pages and pages of circular and repetitive "discussions already there".

I suggest that with such highly controversial issues, we have you or the Arbitration Committee stepping into to solve the situation. Someone neutral appointed by either of you creates a concise summary of the main arguments that are present for either side, which never is more than a single page, in my experience, after which it is put to a community-wide vote. Any discussion will be in a separate page, while all votes need to be either "Support", "Oppose" or "Neutral". No further words or comments shall be allowed in the voting area. After a given period of 30 days have passed, we simply tally the votes, and choose whatever consensus determines.

How does this sound? I believe there will be quite a bit of opposition to this proposal, but IMHO this is what is the true meaning of consensus - To be able to take a decision even when we have two equally correct arguments on both sides of the fence.

Do tell what you think of this.... We really need to solve all those issues now. Regards and cheers, TheOriginalSoni (talk) 08:31, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

See also [8], [9] and, inevitably, [10]... Wnt (talk) 14:14, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

I don't regard the fact that we have a reputation for intense discussion and debate of the most minute details to be negative at all. We should be proud of it. Ok, well maybe less proud when the issue is trivial, but the point is: we work really hard to get things right. That's a strength, not a weakness, and having a process whereby I, or ArbCom, step in to mandate editorial matters would be a step backwards, not forwards.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 16:19, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

xkcd has its funny moments. This isn't one of them. --Onorem♠Dil 16:32, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

I think this was less a joke and more critical commentary on our edit warring habits. WP:LAME shows that we do this a lot. That being said, the fact that people will battle over what most people consider a trivial stylistic change is not inherently a sign of us having a poor reputation or a problem. Resolute 16:35, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

It's not so much that there are editors who will fight tooth and nail over these minor issues, it's the lack of an effective way to make bring the disputes to a finite conclusion...in a reasonably timely manner...that gives a bad impression. (IMHO). DeCausa (talk) 17:07, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

Having been the closer of the poll on whether we should write "the Beatles" or "The Beatles," and having done my best in writing about the closing to alternate between the two forms to avoid anyone's inferring that I was expressing a personal preference, I thought the comic struck home. Newyorkbrad (talk) 17:09, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

Indeed. :-) --Jimbo Wales (talk) 18:45, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

I thought it was hilarious.--Amadscientist (talk) 20:34, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

My point here is that whenever we talk of contentious issues of widespread participation, we often seem to be dragging debates round in circles into a No-consensus every time. Could we not have a simple widespread !vote, summarizing all the important points for everyone to read, and letting them choose either of the two sides? Keeping the discussion separate from the voting in most cases will end up in giving us a clear cut consensus in the end. TheOriginalSoni (talk) 07:33, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

Hello Jimbo

Hello, mr. Wales. I am a Greek wikipedian who looks up you but he has many many questions for you. 1) Why did you make wikipedia? 2) Why Wikipedia's rules are too strict? 3) And finally, what do you think that say bad thinks (ok, my english aren't so good) about Wikipedia??--Γκριζούλα(ς) (talk) 16:53, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

I will leave it for others to answer 1, 2 and 4, but to be blunt, 3 is no one's business but Jimbo's--ukexpat (talk) 17:12, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

OK, sorry i didn't want be rude...--Γκριζούλα(ς) (talk) 17:29, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

There is a cultural taboo in US about asking how much money you have. In Italy (where I come from) it's considered much less impolite (even if not really normal to ask), and I guess in Greece it's the same. Yeah, it doesn't make sense to me either, but that's US culture, let's deal with it --Cyclopia^talk 17:40, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

Not just the US, we Brits are the same.--ukexpat (talk) 17:50, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

Most counties will find this an odd question - would love to see someone ask the Sicilian Mafia members what they make (not sure the assumption its not impolite anywhere or to all is right).Moxy (talk) 18:53, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

Do not bite the newcomers. WP:BITE. This could be a young person, so cultural background would be irrelevent.Irondome (talk) 19:01, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

It is not a problem that Wikipedia rules are strict. A problem is that often Wikipedia rules are enforced by idiots. 76.126.174.99 (talk) 03:19, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

I'll hazard my guesses as to Jimbo's answers

1. Wikipedia was made as a feeder to Nupedia. The idea being that allowing anyone to edit in an informal way might create something useful for a bunch of people who were writing an encyclopaedia. So far it looks like it may have worked out better than expected.
2. That depends on your perspective and the rules in question. Some of them like our rules on notability and verifiability are because though we'd like to trust everyone there are a bunch of people out there who will try and add spam, copyvio and hoaxes to the pedia. Strict rules about reliable sourcing are a reaction to that and they wouldn't be so necessary if those problems were hypothetical rather than real.
3. There are 7000 million people in the world, I'm sure somewhere among them are people who say Jimbo is as rich (or otherwise) as he is.
4. Sometimes bad things happen involving Wikipedia, if the press find out then they usually want a comment from Jimbo. Sadly the press are less interested in good news and consequently relying on them can give you a warped sense of reality.

Good questions. Hope that helps! If you have a specific example of a bad thing you consider that Jimbo has said about the pedia or of a rule that you consider too strict then maybe we can give more specific responses. ϢereSpielChequers 12:48, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

Here are my answers:

1. I wanted to live in a world where everyone in the world could have free access to the sum of all human knowledge.
2. I think some of the rules are too strict, yes. And some are too lax.
3. I answered this question recently on another site, you may find my answer there interesting Is Jimmy Wales rich?
4. I think some criticisms of Wikipedia are valid; we should take those seriously. Others are not, and we should take those in good spirits, but ignore them.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 15:50, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

• Could you please provide an example or two of Wikipedia criticisms that aren't valid in your opinion? 76.126.174.99 (talk) 15:54, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

OK, i understood but, i want to inform you that there, at the Greek Wikipedia many users have

an illnes called... deletmania. We delete and delete articles that's why we have only a frew articles written. Also, there are users called...hmmm... policemen who check articles and suggest them for delete. If you don't believe me, there are many things to mention for example: Imagine that you wrote an article about an athlete and after three minutes you see a notice on it which says that it should be delete. But, here, in your wikipedia things aren't the same that's why you have over 1.000.000 articles.

Thanks for reading...

Γκριζούλα(ς) Grizoula(s)

...I Cannot sign up... — Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.49.84.206 (talk) 20:32, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

Consensus and off-wiki canvassing

Jimbo, It seems that a weakness of the consensus system on Wikipedia is the possibility of off-wiki canvassing, which is difficult to detect or prove. Did you consider this potential problem when starting Wikipedia? Have you had any significant discussion on the matter? Regards, --Bob K31416 (talk) 13:47, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

I don't think it's a serious issue. I don't like the term 'canvassing', even on-wiki. I think it's more often used by people who want to shut down an open dialogue than people who have a righteous cause for concern. Another word for 'canvassing' is "engaging more people in the discussion" - it's open to all sides. The idea that it's bad to go out and recruit editors when you see a problem in Wikipedia is problematic. That isn't to say that some kinds of approaches to that aren't annoying - they are - but in general, this paranoia about it is not justified.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 15:44, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

Interesting answer. It looks like you don't consider it a serious issue, and that there is more of a problem of some editors making related accusations to suppress dialogue in a discussion, or of being suspicious for no good reason. Let me ask another. What are your thoughts on the following excerpt from the lead of the behavioral guideline WP:Canvassing?

"However, canvassing — which is done with the intention of influencing the outcome of a discussion towards one side of a debate — is considered inappropriate. This is because it compromises the normal consensus decision-making process, and therefore is generally considered disruptive behavior."

--Bob K31416 (talk) 17:17, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

I don't disagree with it (much) as written, but I think people tend to overstate the likelihood or importance of it, and tend to underestimate how often the real problem is people screaming 'canvassing' to prevent people from seeking outside voices. Many things on Wikipedia would benefit from more participation, more eyeballs, and the bias against recruitment means that decisions are made in obscure corners without relevant people being properly notified. This may suit the interests of a group that has a majority in that little corner, but knows that they are in the extreme minority in the broader community or world. But it doesn't suit the interests of Wikipedia.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 20:19, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. --Bob K31416 (talk) 22:36, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

• Topic-ban due to 1 vote canvassing: Just in case people think the screams about "improper canvassing" are not over-the-top, I would remind people that I was topic-banned for 3 months ("92" days) about "Amanda Knox" (currently on trial with parents for slander against Perugia police) and the "Murder of Meredith Kercher" because I had notified 2 supportive editors about re-creating article "Amanda Knox" but only notified 1 neutral editor, and 1 offline opposing editor, because "15" opposing editors had already been notified in the MoMK talk-page, and if I had notified more opposing editors, then they could have claimed more opposing editors were "double-notified" as already replying on the talk-page about the AfD for article "Amanda Knox" (afterward deleted, but re-created upon wp:DRV deletion review after she was acquitted of murder). That case of being sanctioned for "wp:Votestacking" of the Support/Oppose/Neutral notifications, as counting 2/1/1, was badgered by the majority of Oppose editors showing a "consensus" to topic-ban another editor as a means to silence an opponent in POV disputes. I think a good solution to such over-the-top badgering of editors is to restrict wp:ANI to follow pre-scripted "decision scripts" for how to judge a claimed violation, with proportional punishment, if found liable for sanctions.
  A related issue is that editors are supposedly not "punished" but rather "Wikipedia is protected" by blocking or topic-ban of editors, and the loophole is that admins (or friends) could be exempted as often having no intention to truly harm "Wikipedia protection" and so some people would receive no sanctions, unless issues are backed by so-named "punishment" sanctions with equal punishment for all, not capricious ideas of pre-crime suspicions to "protect Wikipedia" from imagined thoughtcrimes of future, crystal-ball harm. Instead, block anyone for 1 day, 1 week, or 1 month, depending on violations, and if they return, then treat the first violation as a probation period (3 months?), where future violations would receive longer blocks during the period, but after the probation period expired, then short blocks (or level-1/2/3 warnings) would again accompany similar violations. Currently, WP is "gunnysacking" all minor infractions to indef-block editors much faster than needed, with no return to first-time warning levels. I think that clarifies the issues. -Wikid77 (talk) 14:58, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

Ref. Child protection rule

Hello, Mr. Wales,

I am an editor from the Russian Wikipedia. I was thinking to propose the Wikipedia:Child protection rule as a rule for ruWiki as well. I am unclear in a few points. The text have been promoted into rules by your (diff), which could be considered as a "blessing" :-) But the current version differs rather significantly from the one "blessed into a rule". Can be the current version seen as still corresponding to your interest and/or the interest of the Foundation? If so, could you or someone else "re-bless" the current version by a minimum edit? Otherwise I am not sure (actually I will remain unsure in any case) what would be the most proper procedure of introducing a rule that says "should not be the subject of community discussion, comment or consensus". I guess a standard discussion in search of a consensus would be a rather contradictory doing...

Best Regards,
Vsevolod (Seva) --NeoLexx (talk) 15:53, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

Mr. Wales, please, for the love of God, make sure that this rule is not perverted to become a means of running interference for the villainous policies that Russia has recently been enacting against providing any kind of gay-positive information on the Internet. From [11]: "The legislation being pushed by the Kremlin and the Russian Orthodox Church would make it illegal nationwide to provide minors with information that is defined as 'propaganda of sodomy, lesbianism, bisexuality and transgenderism.' It includes a ban on holding public events that promote gay rights. St. Petersburg and a number of other Russian cities already have similar laws on their books." Wikipedia obviously has the potential to be a major hole, perhaps the most important one, in Putin's campaign of censorship and hatred. Wnt (talk) 19:10, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

Eh... In what way a policy about pedophilia is connected with "providing any kind of gay-positive information on the Internet"? In what way at all do you connect pedophilia, child protection and gay activism? Also, the policy has been accepted in enWiki back in 2010 and I would strongly believe w/o any interference of "the long hands of KGB" :-) --NeoLexx (talk) 19:28, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

The timing of this suggestion, immediately after the passage of the first reading of the bill, bothers me. The Russian laws are primarily aimed at minors, i.e. at preventing "gay propaganda" to minors, such as by holding a gay pride parade. See LGBT rights in Russia, Moscow Pride for example. I don't know the situation on the ground in ru.wikipedia, but I am worried about how "advocating improper adult-child relationships" might end up being translated into Russian, for example; or whether the wording will be further altered before the policy is enacted; or whether it will simply be deliberately enforced beyond its nominal scope. I am not saying that you can't have a rule about pedophilia, but I am very suspicious that isn't its purpose. Wnt (talk) 19:37, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

I would agree with your concerns if it would be a "Russian interpretation" of the policy and not a word-by-word community verified translation. Or if the English original would have proven samples of misuse or a hot community disagreement. I don't know the whole history, but obviously there were some reasons that enWiki existed till 2010 w/o such particular policy, and then took it and in two years made it much more strict than the first policy version. I will not argue that Russia may have some democracy problems in comparison to the US, but it is not a reason to make it a potential "pedophilia oasis". A person proudly declaring "I am a pedophile!" is not welcome to enWiki (link), is not welcome to Wikiversity (link). "So let them go to ruWiki, because there they speak Russian, Russian means Russia, Russia means Putin and democracy problems..." I have some doubts about such approach to be fully fair. --NeoLexx (talk) 19:55, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

If you provide assurances that the policy will not be used to infringe on coverage of gay issues or to harass gay editors, then I should withdraw my objection with apologies. Wnt (talk) 20:08, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

Do you see any potential to misuse Wikipedia:Child protection or are you aware of real life samples of such misuse? Do you see the word "gay" at all there? Obviously for the declaration "I am a gay and my beloved boy is 12 years old, I see nothing wrong with it" the policy still applies, as being a gay is not an indulgence for any desired action or declaration. It seems that it never was a topic of doubts in the US or EU. Here is the Russian translation I have made:

---

Википедия принимает всерьёз вопросы использования своих ресурсов детьми. Будут бессрочно заблокированы те участники, которые пытаются использовать Википедию для доступа или для облегчения доступа к неприемлемым отношениям между взрослым и ребёнком, которые выступают в защиту неприемлемых отношений между взрослым и ребёнком (например, высказывая мнение, что такие неприемлемые отношения не наносят ребёнку вреда), те, которые сами себя объявляют {{wikt:ru:педофилия|педофилами}}.

О таких участниках следует сообщать в Арбитражный комитет для принятия адекватных действий. Неприемлемость перечисленного выше поведения не является предметом дискуссий, комментариев или текущего консенсуса. Если участник заблокирован за перечисленное выше поведение, то заблокировавший его администратор должен прокомментировать причины блокировки в нейтральных выражениях, заблокировать также страницу обсуждения бывшего участника и его доступ к википочте. Блокирующий администратор должен известить заблокированного участника о том, что любые просьбы и комментарии должны напрямую направляться по эл.почте членам АК, а затем немедленно известить АК.

Комментарии в Википедии, указывающие на то, что их автор является педофилом, будут быстро удалены из истории правок, во избежание нарушений приватности и возможного использования для диффамации. О своих личных подозрениях вы должны сообщать только по эл.почте. Подобные вопросы и обвинения конкретному участнику на самих страницах проекта могут привести к блокировке того, кто спрашивает или обвиняет.

Если вы сами юный участник или участница, и вы чувствуете, что другой участник Википедии действует в менере, заставляющей чувствовать угрозу личной безопасности или беспокойство, пожалуйста, сообщите несущему за вас отвественность взрослому и попросите его просмотреть страницу, на которой ведётся общение. Не продолжайте общение с тем человеком, полностью его игнорируйте. Никогда никому не сообщайте личной информации о себе, даже тем, кто якобы стремится вам помочь.

Если вы озабочены поведением другого участника проекта, пожалуйста, обратитесь в АК по эл.почте, но сначала, пожалуйста, внимательно прочитайте правила подачи заявок.

---

The style can be adjusted, but you can conduct any language expertise to see that I didn't change any meanings (or, out of evilness of my Russian nature :-) stock "gay" somewhere between the lines). --NeoLexx (talk) 20:36, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

I'm not qualified to evaluate this. I admit I don't see any obvious way to confuse the intent of most of this. However, the sentence "несущему за вас отвественность взрослому и попросите его просмотреть страницу, на которой ведётся общение", originally "please tell a responsible adult, and ask them to look at this page", comes out on Google as "inform carrier for you LIABILITY adult and ask them to view the page that is communication." Just to check: is this a suggestion to contact authorities, and could it be interpreted as urging children to report adults adding what they view as "gay propaganda" in Russia? Wnt (talk) 21:03, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

"a responsible adult" in the English policy puzzled me a bit. I eventually understood it not as "anyone who is looking adult and being able to act responsibly" but "the adult who is currently primarily responsible for your", so a parent, a foster-parent, a teacher (at the school time) etc. So I wrote "несущему за вас отвественность взрослому" — "to the adult who is carrying responsibility for you". As the text is intended for children as well, it could be actually further explained in both versions: "to your parents, your foster-parents, your teacher (at the school time) or to the other adult who is currently responsible for you". Is that what English text wanted to say? --NeoLexx (talk) 21:19, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

...and I wrote it with a typo which I just noticed: "несущему за вас ответственность взрослому". I assure you it didn't change the meaning but simply made the word mistyped. --NeoLexx (talk) 21:25, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

Child protection should be "global policy" for all Wikimedia projects. I think the best location for this policy is Meta wiki, where it could be translated into as many languages ​​as possible. The policy should come from Wikimedia and should not be put to a vote.

That would be the best IMO.

As for Russian Wikipedia, you must follow local procedure that is required to adopt a policy there, I don't see any other way.

In my original post I explained that I didn't see an obvious way to apply a standard local procedure for a text that contains "should not be the subject of community discussion, comment or consensus" There is the General disclaimer, Five pillars and office actions. As much as I understand, anything else is a subject of community discussion, comment or consensus, and consensus may change with time.

I have great respect for the Russian Wikipedia and there is no danger that the policy will be abused in a way that Wnt suggests. Their coverage of LGBT topics is fair, IMO. They have a number of good and featured articles from that topic area (see ru:Милк, Харви, ru:Стоунволлские бунты, ru:Гей-прайд, ru:Шепард, Мэттью etc.) --В и к и T 21:55, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

Thanks! (though I personally didn't participate in writing these particular articles). Just a side note — Russian Wikipedia is not Wikipedia of Russia ;-) Among active editors there are Russian speaking people from all across the world, US residents inclusive. But yes, I am from Saint Petersburg and I am a 4 years project participant — not to boast, but to note that I am not some new Russian initiatives' excited newcomer :-) --NeoLexx (talk) 22:41, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

Thanks - I'm very glad to hear that! Wnt (talk) 22:31, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

NeoLexx, Sue Gardner provided the following statement to Fox News in June 2010 in response to a m:controversial content flare-up in 2010:

Wikipedia has a long-held, zero-tolerance policy towards pedophilia or pedophilia advocacy and child pornography. The Wikimedia community is vigilant about identifying and deleting any such material. Any allegations to the contrary are outrageous and false.

The WMF globally banned a user (as an "office action") when the Commons community seemed unwilling to do so. There is a draft policy on meta, but since there is no process for approving a policy, it will never be approved (yes, I am serious about that). Also, please ignore Wnt - sometimes they get confused. Good luck. Delicious carbuncle (talk) 04:19, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

• Delicious carbuncle, why you write "Too bad the WMF have no balls"? It looks like the WMF has plenty of balls, probably too many to enforce the policy. 76.126.174.99 (talk) 14:26, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

I placed a policy proposal to the ruWiki policies forum: Новое правило ВП:ДЕТИ

I also forgot to mention that I placed a question to Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#Child protection policy. Please correct there if I'm wrong or misleaded.

P.S. I feel a bit bad by using a personal talk page as a forum where the page owner himself is neither the initiator nor a participant. It makes me feel a bit a better as I see this rule violation is rather common at this particular talk page and accepted by the owner. Still sorry. --NeoLexx (talk) 12:07, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

Jimbo's talk page is still his own, but it has also become an informal sounding board of sorts for a variety of issues and concerns. Some of our hottest hot-button issues and debates have spilled to or from this page over the years. If there's a conversation Jimbo has no interest in or one that goes too far, he will step in and close it. No worries. Tarc (talk) 13:35, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

The final result of the discussion: "A practical need in this separate policy is not demonstrated. It can be proposed for a public discussion again if the nominator is able to demonstrate an existing problem of the kind in the Russian Wikipedia which is hard or impossible to solve by existing policies" (Russian: "Практической необходимости в отдельном правиле не продемонстрировано. Оно может быть вынесено на обсуждение заново, если номинатор сумеет показать существующую в русской википедии проблему такого рода, которую сложно или невозможно решить действующими правилами.") No protests declared or planned from my humble side, thanks to all for comments and the overall participation here. --NeoLexx (talk) 21:04, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia misconceptions

As part of the wiki article List of common misconceptions, I strated a discussion about the inclusion of a section on Wikipedia misconceptions, based ont he fact that my research had revealed quite a few and I deemed it worthy of inclusion int he article. Negotiations fell through, but perhaps some good may still come of this idea. I'm not sure if it's been done, or at least as extensively as I am proposing, but essentially I think that in order to know about ourselves, we have to know about how others perceive us. Many of us have been in this community for so long that we have lost sight of how the general public (our readers) view this site and its articles. Therefore, I propose that we scout Google and beyond, and compile a comprehensive list of every single misconception related to Wikipedia that our audiences have (perhaps some that we never even realised existed before, or ignored due to the belief that they were widespread enough). We could use this information to help shape the way we work here, and how we design the website. We could also use it to correct the public's perception by directly addressing their concerns and unspoken turn-offs, thereby aiding the move of Wikipedia from an unreliable joke to an important and significant contribution to free knowledge and crowdsourcing.--Coin945 (talk) 17:18, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

Here are some sites to start us off: [12], [13], here, [14], [15], [16], [17], [18], [19], [20], [21], [22], [23], [24], [25].--Coin945 (talk) 17:18, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

This sounds like a very good idea - it's a pity that it's not getting more attention. (I'm not sure where such attention would manifest itself, other than here, though.) --Demiurge1000 (talk) 11:03, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

I looked at that discussion, and I wonder if you should instead try to create "Misconceptions about Wikipedia", basing it on RS:s on that subject. It might be easier to get agreement on which sources to use that way. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 12:43, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

Nahh... I'm staying away from misconception article in mainspace. That List of common misconceptions article has been in serious shit over the past month or so. Theres a huge discussion on the talk page for pretty much every entry. It's controversial and nasty. I'd rather keep this as a behind the scenes type thing. After all, who would need this information more than us? Usually the most "true" info isn't in reliable sources at all, but in some duscission forum somewhere. I wouldn't want to restrict this information from being included.--Coin945 (talk) 14:20, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

Ah, I misread you. I thought you wanted it in mainspace, but that´s not what you wrote. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 14:31, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

Sorry. Vagueness on my part. No harm done. :)--Coin945 (talk) 14:38, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

Turkish Wikipedia

Turkish Wikipedia users are now questioning everything. --This unsigned article written by: User:Aguzer 21:14, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

• Now please take concrete steps. --This unsigned article written by: User:Aguzer 21:15, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

• Update + --This unsigned article written by: User:Aguzer 12:10, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

tr:Türkçe Vikipedi topluluğu sağlıklı bir topluluk değil artık. Doğru çözümler üretecek oylama yapamazlar. Çünkü bu konu hakkında bilgileri olmayıpta oylamaya katılanlar çok var. Zaten diğerlerinin de çoğu bu diktatörlerin yalakası olmuş. --This unsigned article written by: User:Aguzer 16:07, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

tr: Jimbo, artık bir şeyler yapmazsanız Türkçe Vikipedi iyice bozulur. Sonraları da gazetelere, internet sitelerine olumsuz olumsuz haberler düşünce de iyi kullanılmaz olur. --This unsigned article written by: User:Aguzer 16:23, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

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Kittens

Aotearoa (talk) 21:46, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for taking a stand against homeopathy

While this is an interesting conversation, I'm going to close it off as it's a bit too political for Wikipedia. My view is that Wikipedia should neutrally and fairly describe "homeopathy" in the same way that we should neutrally and fairly describe "astrology" and "confidence trick". That I wrote a blog post taking what I take to be a (properly) popular view amongst many of my colleagues here shouldn't be used to justify our starting a campaign on Wikipedia, of course. The facts alone are incredibly powerful. A few years ago, I did not know that homeopathy involved extreme dilution - like many people who had never looked into the matter, I thought that 'homeopathy' was just something like 'natural' or 'herbal' - so I might have (skeptically, but what the hell) taken a homeopathic remedy marketed as (say) "Arnica 30C". What I would not have known is how complete the fraud was - products marketed as "Arnica 30C" should have a label saying: "Through a rigorous laboratory process, we have ensured that this product contains absolutely nothing more than water and sugar." That Wikipedia explains what '30C' means is incredibly powerful.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 16:24, 1 February 2013 (UTC)
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
I just read the article you wrote on Quora and appreciate that you took the time to address the subject. Our articles on Homeopathy and other psuedoscience subjects often attract people with a psuedoscientific POV and due to the slowness of WP process it can sometimes take a long while to topic ban/block them. While you may not have official power over content, your words carry a bit of extra weight that allows us to summarize WP's position on things like homeopathy nicely, thereby lessening unnecessarily protracted debate. Sædontalk 03:06, 1 February 2013 (UTC) Wikipedia has an article "Oscillococcinum". —Wavelength (talk) 03:32, 1 February 2013 (UTC) Medical ethics seems to be defined, in its entirety, as the set of practices that maximizes the revenue received by doctors. Thus measures to protect the reputation of medicine by prohibiting dangerous practices are balanced evenly against initiatives to preserve the appearance of a respectable industry and restrict competition. The application of this to homeopathy is that the FDA recognizes one organization, HPUS, to disseminate a pharmacopoeia and various addenda which describe legitimate homeopathic practice, and indeed, defines prescription "strengths" (dilutions) of these drugs. [26] If I am not mistaken, what this means is that Americans have the opportunity, if someone could mobilize them, to conduct civil disobedience in the form of a virtual Salt March of increasing homeopathic dilutions. People around the country could receive tap water in the mail, conduct ten serial dilutions to increase the "strength", and then mail it off to additional protestors and to the FDA and Congress, being careful to note that the contents of their envelopes are indistinguishable (a) from prescription-only homeopathic medicine, and (b) from tap water. Needless to say, health claims should not be encouraged. Wnt (talk) 03:54, 1 February 2013 (UTC) Unfortunately, not only is homeopathy legal in the UK - it is actually funded by the National Health Service! -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 06:44, 1 February 2013 (UTC) Not entirely true. Some local health authorities refer to homeopaths as part of CAM. Most do not. Likewise NICE's recommendations to the NHS are that Complimentary and Alternative Medicine should only be offered in a limited number of situations, based on evidence of their effectiveness. As far as I am aware none of those recommendations include homeopathic practices, they are more physical-therapy orientated. Only in death does duty end (talk) 14:40, 1 February 2013 (UTC) The NHS says here, "There are several NHS homeopathic hospitals regulated by the Care Quality Commission", and this shows that homeopathy is funded by the NHS in Scotland (or at least it was in October). (My local NHS "drop-in" centre also has a homeopathy clinic, but I don't know about its funding). -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 14:56, 1 February 2013 (UTC) Dont worry, they wont last ;) Per NICE's recommendations they are all being phased out. The funding is being withdrawn by most local authorities. Sadly the setup in the UK is such that if a local one decides to use their NHS money to fund homeopathy, there is not much that can be done about it short of public outcry or direct intervention from the government. And if that hospital is situated in an area where a large portion of people believe in that twaddle, then it will cater to its customers. 'Customers' being how hospital operate these days, not 'patients'. Only in death does duty end (talk) 15:20, 1 February 2013 (UTC) I thought the point about homeopathy was that it involved drinking water, and that a significant proportion of people were either mildly dehydrated or had such excess salt in their diets that drinking more water was beneficial. Then I met a couple of drunken homeopaths at a party and heard their speculations as to what they could cure if only they had a sample of Plutonium. ϢereSpielChequers 09:22, 1 February 2013 (UTC) [Not sure how commenting on Quora works, so I am leaving this here instead.] I think the main problem is the low ethical standards of English pharmacies. I had a similarly bad experience once that had nothing to do with homeopathy. I just wanted a fungicide for athletes' foot, and the person tried to sell me a cream that also contained hydrocortisone. I actually had to insist that I just wanted a plain fungicide. Given that I had not even mentioned itching or anything, I find this completely unconscionable. (The only other time I entered an English pharmacy was with a doctor's prescription, so they didn't really get a chance to behave like that.) Hans Adler 09:53, 1 February 2013 (UTC) Perhaps more articles noting ineffective medical: To offset the various articles containing fringe medical advice, we could expand the opposite viewpoint, such as "List of ineffective medical practices" or similar, where each entry in the list(s) might be expanded to full articles, such as "Overprescribing medicines" or "Advocating commercial medicines" or similar, to cover cases where the local pharmacy seems too zealous is selling more medicines than needed. -Wikid77 (talk) 14:06, 1 February 2013 (UTC)