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Reliable sources controversy

Wikipedians might be interested in knowing about a popular article released yesterday about admin @David Gerard, the alleged systematic misuse of Reliable sources and numerous instances of editing under clear COIs across several years. The article has received substantial attention on Twitter (600k views in less than a day). I'm skeptical of some specific claims made in the article, but overall, I think that it makes important well-sourced accusations of misbehavior, and that the community (and admins) might want to have a broader discussion about it.

I'm not sure what would be appropriate venues for discussion on this. agucova (talk) 14:57, 11 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Appropriate venues would not include someone's blog or Twitter. I don't know whether David Gerard is right or wrong on the subject of reliable sources, but I do know that tracingwoodgrains.com and Twitter are not. Phil Bridger (talk) 15:22, 11 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

They're words, written in the English language, which you can read and decide whether they're true or not.

I mean, if there's a "wet paint" sign on the bench, would you just ignore it and plop straight down because it doesn't have a green entry at RSP? jp×g 🗯️ 19:13, 12 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, they're English words, but they will only all be read be Wikipedia-obsessives (or, even worse, people who are obsessed with one Wikipedia editor) with too much time on their hands. "Wet paint" can be read in a split second. Phil Bridger (talk) 19:36, 12 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

On a first read through, this is clearly a thoroughly researched piece by a writer who is familiar with how Wikipedia operates and diligently provides his diffs. It's not a random Twitter complaint to dismiss out of hand. It deserves careful consideration. – Teratix ₵ 15:59, 11 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

no one is a villain in their own mind is very much my feeling from reading it. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 17:09, 11 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Sophocles worded it so much more eloquently. Traumnovelle (talk) 07:10, 13 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I did a spot check of several of the sources and conversations and did not particularly think it was fair in its analysis. It felt very deliberately set up to make the standard "Wikipedia hates conservatives" critique, especially in how it framed the result of the PinkNews discussion. ThadeusOfNazereth(he/him)^{Talk to Me!} 18:01, 11 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yep. It's angry logorrhea from a Quillette fan. Nothing of consequence. XOR'easter (talk) 19:16, 11 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I hate when people think they can decide "what is of consequence" for other people. 2603:7000:92F0:1100:51CB:6D03:8226:ABA1 (talk) 06:45, 12 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Well, it could have been worse -- it could have been an angry driveby troll comment at the Village Pump. jp×g 🗯️ 19:29, 12 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

"Nothing of consequence" including BLP CoI violations? I don't intend to relitigate anything but that did seem pretty consequential to me. iczero (talk) 05:35, 14 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Most of the article did not focus on this at all, but rather on Gerard's behavior. This does not seem like a crucial consideration to the discussion. agucova (talk) 20:13, 11 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

We're so blessed to have DG. I stopped reading when they damningly referenced his views on the Huffington Post, which apparently changed between 2010 and 2020. Shocking stuff. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 18:15, 11 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

To add a summary for onlookers not looking to spend 2 hours diving into the article.

The article is a pretty in-depth investigation from someone familiar with Wikipedia policies, where they allege that David Gerard has, over the span of almost a decade, engaged in systematic and strategic editing in a personal crusade against several people, violating not only a number of enwiki policies, but also largely going unnoticed, despite a number of disparate ArbCom cases and reported incidents, all which failed to see a bigger pattern in his edits.

The author explains that a key way he managed to do this was by feeding negative information about some of these people to journalists, which would then publish articles with the information, which he would then use as references in their articles to portray them in a negative light. He would also use the Reliable sources system differentially, in numerous instances using it to justify his edits under COI.

The article contains many serious allegations, and my impression after digging into them is that at least some of them have substantial and straightforward merit, directly verifiable from the provided evidence.

I urge editors to not get bogged down on specific claims made in the introduction about the Reliable sources system, since this is not actually the main focus of the article. The accusations made are far more serious and far-reaching. agucova (talk) 18:17, 11 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Again, this is how I feel about it. The big claims are BlPs Ask me about air Cryogenic air (talk) 18:37, 11 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah other editors are capable of reading, and having read it all I can't say I'm very jnoressed. "largely going unnoticed, despite a number of disparate ArbCom cases" I've yet to hear of an ArbCom case that goes 'largely unnoticed'. feeding negative information about some of these people to journalists I'm absolutely sure, beyond any reasonable doubt, that the journalist and editors of the Guardian didn't take one single persons word for granted without making certain of what they published. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 19:33, 11 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Note that the policy violation is not the feeding information to the journalists, but then using that reference to edit under a clear COI (not only being in a crusade against the person, but also having been a source). Also, with "largely going unnoticed" I meant that the crusades/COIs were what went mostly unnoticed. agucova (talk) 20:12, 11 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

If they've been taken to ANI or ArbCom they haven't gone unnoticed, the results just weren't to some editors liking. And if a reliable source substantiates the claims then it's a very weak COI. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 20:31, 11 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, maybe I didn't express myself clearly. I meant that the ANI and ArbCom cases just didn't cover the accusations in the article, but instead focus on specific things that on their own don't look like flagrant violations. The Scott Alexander ANI did establish the COI, but didn't notice the other articles where Gerard had also done the same thing. The article threads them together to make a broader case. agucova (talk) 20:41, 11 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Well if there is really anything there, and I still don't believe there is, then someone will need to make a case at ANI or ArbCom with diffs to show the behaviour. But I would note that anything on rationalwiki has nothing to do with Wikipedia, same with Reddit, Twitter, Facebook, etc. I agreed elsewhere recently that editors making nasty remarks on external sites should be covered by Wikipedia policies (it isn't currently), but that would also apply to linking to tweats that do the same. Also anyone wanting to discuss the reliability of Pinknews should take it to WP:RSN, same with Quillette or Unz, Gerard did not decide anything about this sources, and any personal biases they may have (which I'm sure they do, as all people have biases) were only one voice in a community decision. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 21:13, 11 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I agreed elsewhere recently that editors making nasty remarks on external sites should be covered by Wikipedia policies - though it's worth pointing out that what people post here is still covered; linking to an offsite screed doesn't protect people from WP:ASPERSIONs. Agucova has posted repeated aspersions about DG in this thread, outright alleging a cloud of vague sinister activities with no specific policy-based accusations or evidence attached to them at all. If that keeps happening I would suggest a WP:BOOMERANG; it is not acceptable for editors to try and drag off-wiki harassment like this here. --Aquillion (talk) 21:48, 11 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I was noting the linking to a tweet, now linked by multiple editors, that describes DG as 'the Forest Gump of the internet' and that doing so is probably against policy. I was just trying to not point it out directly. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 22:26, 11 July 2024 (UTC

That's something I actually called myself, 'cos I keep being on the sidelines of interesting things. (Though I never played college football and don't run, like, at all.) The blog post now attributes it - David Gerard (talk) 22:30, 11 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Fair enough, I've struck my comment. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 22:34, 11 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Note my careful use of the word 'alleged'. I haven't made any accusations. I'm in the course of preparing a proper ANI case, but it's not simple or fast when there's two decades of context to go through. agucova (talk) 21:52, 11 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

"Alleged" does not free someone from the constraints of WP:ASPERSIONs; the entire point of the policy is to prevent people from making vague handwavy aspersions of the sort that you are introducing here. --Aquillion (talk) 22:20, 11 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

'Diffs or no allegations' is the normal standard, and those allegations should be at the appropriate venue. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 22:23, 11 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

> journalist and editors of the Guardian didn't take one single persons word for granted without making certain of what they published

A Guardian article about LessWrong contained a number of inaccuracies (some were corrected after the LessWrong team pointed them out): https://x.com/ohabryka/status/1802563541633024280?s=46. I wouldn’t think they make certain of what they publish. Saminmihail (talk) 16:37, 16 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Relaible sources sometimes make mistakes. What is important is whether they aknowledge and correct those mistakes. Donald Albury 16:43, 16 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This article was also linked here. It seems to be today's Twitterstorm. If the people posting this want to get something done, rather than just whinge about how awful Wikipedia is, they need to make their point succinctly on Wikipedia, rather than expect people to read a very long blog post whose provenance we do not know. Phil Bridger (talk) 18:40, 11 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I've provided a summary above, but the article covers so many accusations that it's not easy to compress it all. It's just an inherently very complex case. agucova (talk) 20:13, 11 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

After reading it myself, it mostly looks like nonsense written by an angry culture-warrior type who detests David and who is upset that WP:RSes don't cover their pet topics the way they like, but who doesn't have any actual arguments or diffs to back up policy-based complaints. It also looks like most of the other people who have read it seem to agree, so I'd suggest you either WP:DROPTHESTICK or make any actual arguments for specific policies you feel were violated and things you believe should happen on WP:ANI or WP:AE, with actual diffs that relate to policy-based arguments and not just links to random blogs. If you insist on doing so, I'd strongly suggest doing it without linking the screed in question - it's clearly not helpful and fails to make a coherent policy-based argument itself. Either way I'd expect a WP:BOOMERANG if you keep pushing it too hard; we have no control over what people post off-wiki, but on-wiki, editors are protected from WP:HOUNDing and WP:ASPERSIONS, which you're already pretty deep into. Pointing at a largely nonsensical blogpost from an axe-grindy culture-warrior and asking people to not get bogged down on specific claims while making vague handwavy aspersions against a well-established editor in good standing with stuff like the accusations made are far more serious and far-reaching is not acceptable. If you want to continue without becoming the focus yourself, then every single thing you say about DG needs to be extremely specific about what policies you feel have been violated, with specific diffs for each accusation; if you're unwilling to do that, you need to WP:DROPTHESTICK, accept that you got hoodwinked by a blog post, and move on, preferably with an apology to DG for bringing this nonsense here in the first place. --Aquillion (talk) 21:40, 11 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

From a quick read, this seems to just be someone who has multi-decade beef with David writing a rambling and often nonsensical screed. Best course of action is to just ignore it, it'll blow over. Curbon7 (talk) 20:27, 11 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I read the article, and it doesn't make a bit of sense. What does the price of Bitcoin have to do with Gerard's influence over the definition of reliable sources? It piles up detail on detail with no clear explanation of what the actual bannable behavior is. Agucova's insistence that we "not get bogged down on specific claims" basically means "Gerard is bad, don't worry about understanding why". Toughpigs (talk) 21:15, 11 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I said to, "not get bogged down on specific claims made in the introduction about the Reliable sources system". I'm saying that the relevant claims are the ones after the introduction. agucova (talk) 21:56, 11 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

STOP - or at least pause. If we are going to talk about a specific editor, at least have the courtesy to notify them of the discussion. Blueboar (talk) 22:08, 11 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I apologize for not giving a notice to DG; I seem to have forgotten some of my Wikipedia etiquette with time.

Because I worry about further hurting the case for what, I believe, are serious accusations, I'll follow Aquillion's suggestion and WP:DROPTHESTICK. I'm ceasing discussion on this thread until I can write down a proper ANI case with a good restatement of the evidence in the article. Admins should feel free to lock down this discussion.

I don't feel like I'm the best person to write down an ANI case, so if anyone wants to take this over from me, feel free to let me know through my talk page. agucova (talk) 22:12, 11 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for covering this important controversy. There is a balance to be found between protecting whistleblowers and safeguarding the accused from potential defamation. But the mentality in this thread is too much about discarding the accusation without having taken the time to read them.

I don't know how representative the article is of David Gerard's edits in general, since it focuses on the problems. But the article is an in-depth investigation, well-written and well-sourced. The fact that it's self-published should not be a reason to simply ignore any piece of information from it, especially in the context of a discussion, and considering that it links to many Wikipedia diffs. As suggested here, there should be some nuance: "Self-published works are sometimes acceptable as sources, so self-publication is not, and should not be, a bit of jargon used by Wikipedians to automatically dismiss a source as 'bad' or 'unreliable' or 'unusable'.".

I do not know David Gerard personally, but regrettably, the article resonates with my experiences over the past few months. You can occasionally see high-profile editors that show a recurring pattern of strawman arguments, edit wars, sarcasms, and pedantry about Wikipedia's rules that justifies opinionated edits. I have much respect for the people who spend significant time trying to improve the encyclopedia. But it's tragic how aggressive activism and bad epistemics sometimes bring out the worst in very smart and morally dedicated people. Alenoach (talk) 21:17, 12 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

TracingWoodgrains (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) is an editor here. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 23:26, 11 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the tag. I have edited only very rarely, and I do not believe it would be appropriate for me to step in for the first time as a participant in an ongoing controversy spurred by one of my articles. This is obviously a subject I have strong feelings about, but I do not believe I should bring those feelings onto Wikipedia given the conflict of interest created by my article. I believe my writing speaks for itself on this matter. TracingWoodgrains (talk) 23:46, 11 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Then you are admittedly not here to build the encyclopedia. Since you haven't broken any rules, I don't see any reason ~~to block you~~ for you to be blocked on that basis. Maybe you'll decide to become active. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 01:07, 12 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hm, I guess you could put it that way? I don't believe that policy fits; it's not that I'm not here to build an encyclopedia, it's that I'm not here at all. I've never been an active Wikipedia user and am only responding to people now because they're tagging me in. I researched details about your site as a journalistic exercise from the standpoint of a curious outsider. Were I to edit in the future, I suspect having my first serious activity in the site be engaging in a detailed dispute over an article I wrote would be a poor way to begin. TracingWoodgrains (talk) 01:47, 12 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Valjean: It's good that you "don't see any reason to block you [TracingWoodgrains] on that basis", because you can't block anyone on this website for any reason. -- Guerillero ^{Parlez Moi} 18:24, 12 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

LOL! As well I know. I'm not an admin, but my comment was intended to prevent such a thing from happening. I had just witnessed an account related to this debacle blocked for that reason (NOTHERE), and it was justified. In this case, I don't see any justifiable reason for a block. My comment was purely preventive. After I wrote it, I realized that my comment might trigger such a reaction, so I finished off with that comment in order to prevent it. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 18:31, 12 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I have now stricken that wording, since it led to this misunderstanding. I hope the works. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 18:33, 12 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

When somebody writes an article on an external website critical of Wikipedia, I am not aware of any standard practice to ping their account with vaguely-worded threats(?) of administrative action, and I would be opposed to starting such a practice, as it does not seem smart or useful. jp×g 🗯️ 19:33, 12 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It would be nice if you read what I have written before commenting. There was no threat to this editor. I hoped they would begin editing more. I just wanted to prevent what happened to another editor from happening here. It was just written clumsily, so AGF. BTW, that other editor has been unblocked. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 01:36, 13 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

What the post actually says

It is very strange to me how many people are in this section giving confident opinions about the merits of the claims in the post, while admitting to not having read it, or saying something about how its "provenance" is unknown -- it's not a cuneiform tablet, it's a blog post on the Internet, you can just go read it, and then use your brain to tell whether or not the things it says are true. If you aren't going to read it, then your opinion on whether it's true is almost by definition incapable of being useful. At any rate, it is fairly long, so I will reproduce here the summary I posted elsewhere.

If you read the article, it's not really a screed, nor is it "nonsensical", nor is it any of the other weird stuff people are saying who have not read it. For those without a lot of time on their hands, it's about an even split between:

Statements of fact that every drama-sniffer around here is already quite familiar with (people fling shit about politics all the time at RSN, Gerard was topic-banned a few years ago for aggressively pursuing COI edits in re Dr. Scotty Codex, etc)
Opinions that well-respected Wikipedians express all the time (it is a gigantic pain in the arse when people queue up AWB jobs to indiscriminately mass-remove deprecated sources; RSN is often a sewer).
Catalog of various based deeds David has done over time (represent WMUK for years, be the first CheckUser of all time, lead the charge against the crystal-woo morons, be the sysadmin of a really funny shock site, be right about the Chelsea Manning fiasco), various cringe deeds (get topic-banned after an aggressive COI campaign to defame aforementioned Dr. Scotty Codex, ongoing sloppy mass-removals of deprecated sources), and various neutral deeds (he hates cryptocurrency, and I guess he was a big LessWrong guy back in the day, which in retrospect makes the thing with Dr. Codex even more silly).

The main bombshell accusation being made in this piece against Gerard is something that basically everyone here knows: there is a big gaggle of libs who are always trying to use WP:RSP as a septic tank into which to flush newspapers they don't like. Now, before some bumberchute at Wikipediocracy gets their hemorrhoids up reading me type this dangerous harmful right-wing propaganda: it is not just libs who do this. Wikipedia, in its majestic equality, also lets Republicans act like chimpanzees about whether the Wetumpka Argus-Picayune or whatever is destroying our country and must be removed from all citations. But broadly, I think we are all pretty well aware of this. By volume, about 10% of RSN is discussion attempting to find consensus on what sources are reliable for use on Wikipedia, and 90% is rancid political mudflinging. Does anybody seriously disagree with this? It's a zoo! Clearly, we are ashamed enough about it being a zoo to insta-gib n00bs who show up and tell us so. But are we proud enough of our encyclopedia to actually fix it? jp×g 🗯️ 19:09, 12 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I think you have you numbers back to front, the vast majority of RSN is banal questions about uncontroversial sources. The contentious discussions get lots of attention, but editors then miss all the minor discussions that go past unnoticed.

If anyone has any disagreement with consensus on Pinknews, Unz, or Quillette can open a discussion. If editors don't agree with them they might look to the quality of their arguments rather than posts that claim one individual is some master influencer. Yes the culture war generates lots of crap, but RSN isn't the cause of that.

Also again yes I read the whole post before even my first reply. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 19:38, 12 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Well, that's what I mean: there really are discussions assessing the reliability of random unfamiliar sources in the boring straightforward way the noticeboard is well-suited for. The problem is that there's been a separate system grafted onto that, in which people write thousands of words of barely-readable walltext trying to give incredibly detailed assessments of decades' worth of output by major national newspapers... and then the only possible outcomes are "green", "yellow", "red" and "gray". The noticeboard/source list format does not work very well for doing this. This separate system is operated almost entirely by political animus, and unlike most onwiki politics arguments, it has wide-ranging destructive effects on the entire project.

For example, if there is some big nasty 600-comment-long RfC about gun control at Talk:Gun control, the worst-case scenario is that the article gun control says something dumb, temporarily (there can be another RfC later, and it's pretty simple to go back to an old revision). But if there is some big nasty RfC about gun control at Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard, the worst-case scenario -- it doesn't actually matter which side wins, because both sides call it "victory" when one of the the other guys' sources is shitlisted -- is that some hapless website/newspaper gets painted red or gray, and somebody will go on a cackling AWB spree and completely hose up ten thousand articles by ripping out half the references, including articles about other political stuff that had nothing to do with the original argument.

This will also tear up articles about random stuff that isn't even remotely political. Many of them will then run the risk of being deleted because there "have no sources" (read: they have perfectly usable sources that happened to employ a guy who wrote something really stupid about politics ten years later). The loss of this content and these articles is, in practice, typically permanent. Source deprecation/GUNREL is basically a cluster munition that causes collateral damage all over the project every time it's fired, and I think we would probably be better off if we tried to be cognizant about this and resist the urge to give everything a reductive color-coded label. jp×g 🗯️ 20:11, 12 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

But the flip side is that political bias can also lead people to place excessive weight on trivial things or the opinions of non-experts who don't really belong in the article; or, worst of all, to take things that have actually dubious sourcing and state it as fact. If we don't draw a line as to the quality of required sources, what happens in political articles is that angry partisans on all sides of a dispute cram in everything they can dredge up, either to push the article in one direction or in a genuine good-faith effort to "balance out" what they see as bias by others. This results in articles that are bloated, unreadable, full of dubiously-sourced points or counterpoints, and which generally fail to reflect the tone, focus, and accuracy we would find from higher-quality sources. I think that if you look over how high-traffic articles have progressed over the last decade (as RSN and RSP achieved their current state), they have mostly improved in every respect - more accurate, better sourcing, more neutral, and so on. See eg. this paper discussing it. Saying "we're losing content" isn't meaningful because high-traffic, well-established articles aren't supposed to grow endlessly; they constantly both gain and lose content. The question is whether we're maintaining a balance that reflects the best sources - ie. removing poorly-supported, marginal or undue things and adding high-quality well-sourced things in a more balanced manner - and overall I think we've been getting better at that over time. For the most part, the only egregiously unbalanced articles are ones that have few editors, and that's not something that can be solved with policy or practice, since those things still require editors to implement them. --Aquillion (talk) 02:52, 13 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I think perhaps the biggest issue is the "cackling AWB spree". Sure, we shouldn't rely on unreliable news articles, but winning an "argument" on RSP shouldn't be a good reason to rip sources out of a huge pile of wiki articles. It's a gross overreaction if anything and a huge pain to fix if/when yet another argument breaks out on RSP and reverses that "decision". iczero (talk) 05:27, 14 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I mean, that's an extremely hostile way to characterize it. The fact is that when there's a clear-cut RSP decision, it needs to be implemented eventually; when a source comes up at RSP, that usually means there are constant disputes over it, which in turn means that people are using (or trying to use it) all over Wikipedia. And usually, people only implement it on scale for extremely clear-cut results (generally just deprecation; mere unreliable and other-concerns-exists results get implemented much more slowly and with more focus on controversial, exceptional, or BLP-sensitive things.) Before people stepped up to start implementing them, sources like the Daily Mail remained used all over the wiki, despite a clear consensus that they were unreliable and should generally be avoided; cleaning that up is a necessary service. And, as I've said, I feel that on the whole this work has improved our articles - most of the complaints seem to essentially amount to people disagreeing with the RFC's outcomes, which is certainly not a reason to obstruct implementation. We don't have to WP:SATISFY everyone before implementing an RFC. --Aquillion (talk) 22:02, 19 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I believe there's a pretty big difference between "we ought to recheck articles using this source" and "indiscriminately remove absolutely every reference citing the source". The former is (generally) done by humans; the latter is done by pure automation with little to no regard to actual article content, whether it be good or bad.

I would argue the best way to implement RSP verdicts involves generating a list of all affected articles and attempting to replace the source (or, if not possible, removing the content). Otherwise, even simply tagging the source as unreliable (i.e. by ^{[unreliable source?]}) is a better idea than an AWB spree.

Yes, perhaps some cases (like The Daily Mail) are clear-cut. Others may not be. In either case, automated removal is usually not a good idea. iczero (talk) 22:48, 19 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

In a perfect world where all Wikipedia editors were paid full-time employees (or well-off retirees, or universal basic income recipients, or whatever) things would be different. But the world we live in is one where everybody is a volunteer, and there are far more tasks to be done than editor-hours to do them in. It's true that articles should not have stuff in them cited to bad sources, and that they should not have uncited material -- but I hope everyone can agree that simply going through Category:Articles with unsourced statements (currently 521,561) with a blindfold and a chainsaw removing thousands of kilobytes of text from each page would be so unhelpful as to arguably constitute vandalism.

Regardless of what we may claim for rhetorical or political reasons, it seems like elementary logic and common sense that something cited to a shite rag like the Daily Mail would still have a higher probability of being accurate than something cited to nothing at all -- so I don't think the situation is all that different, and I'm similarly opposed to chainsawing them. jp×g 🗯️ 02:46, 20 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Statements tagged {{cn}} fall into a few broad categories:

previously adequate source deleted (usurped by globally blacklisted host, unarchived deadlink, removed erroneously during rewrite, etc.)
unreliable, deprecated, or verification failing source deleted
source already present in article but not cited for tagged statement
source exists in parent, related, or sister language article but never imported during split or translation
source never provided.

Where no source was ever provided for a tagged statement, in the target article or any related article, some of these will have been confected, misremembered, or learnt in error from an unreliable source. I'm not sure what percentage of the time that's the case rather than someone just not bothering to write down where they read something where if they had recorded their source we'd accept it no problem.

I also have no strong insight into what percentage of claims tagged {{cn}} have never had a source versus have had a source that the tagging editor did not look for hard enough. But I would say that the probability of something cited to nothing at all being accurate is actually pretty good. Folly Mox (talk) 10:32, 20 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, in my experience the likelihood of an unsourced claim being true is somewhere above 90%, and the likelihood of something (e.g. celeb gossip) being sourced to the Daily Mail is like 99% -- it just really doesn't seem like a thing which needs to be aggressively fixed by removing the reference. jp×g 🗯️ 12:29, 20 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Honestly my main take-away from the article is that anyone who edits a lot and has opinions is going to inevitably end up pushing those opinions one way or another. This is probably a bad thing but cannot really be fixed: the most we can do is take care of the more egregious episodes. —Ashley Y 19:55, 12 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Usual disclaimer that David Gerard is a huge asset to the site and is usually right... but... without relitigating old disputes, let's not say that "[DG] was right about the Chelsea Manning fiasco". That was undoubtedly his lowest moment. What could have been a boring, standard WP:Requested Move turned into months of drama because DG insisted on doing the move out of process. If he had just dropped off a !vote like any other editor, or hell, done nothing, the article was going to move anyway, as indeed it eventually did after the dust settled. Just rather than having it be a community decision, just like 99.9% of other potentially controversial moves, he just tried to cowboy the move through on grounds of personal authority? It was a mistake. It made the result weaker, not stronger, as it opens up tales like this about admin abuse as the reason why, rather than "no this is what the community decided." The lesson is to just wait for the discussion to close. SnowFire (talk) 03:48, 14 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Recommitting to Wikipedian greatness

I was inspired by the article to form and write up some convictions about what makes Wikipedia great, and how we can recommit to its sustained improvement. Thanks for taking a look if you do. Pizpa (talk) 14:02, 18 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Advice on a merger misstep

Re the merger I asked about here yesterday, when I created the {{merge to}} and {{merge from}}, I had not seen Wikipedia:Merging. Because of that and a lack of forethought on my part, I created the discussion in the talk page of the source article rather than that of the destination.

I now see that the destination article is a more sensible location, if only because, should the merger take place, then the now-stump (okay, redirect) source article would be a too-out-of-the-way (if not impossible) place for the historical record of the merger discussion. Darn!

A complicating factor is that the discussion has since been joined by another editor.

How—if at all—should I proceed to remedy my misstep? PaulTanenbaum (talk) 15:47, 16 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@PaulTanenbaum, the first thing to do is not worry, because Wikipedia:Wikipedia is not a game of Mother, May I? If you make a misstep, it's okay.

The two usual things to do (yes, this happens often enough that there are usual things to do!) are:

Put a note on the 'other' talk page that links to the existing discussion, and proceed as if everything is 100% normal, or
Cut/paste the entire existing discussion to the 'correct' talk page, and set things up as if you had done everything perfectly from the first moment.

If you choose the first approach, please make sure that the "(discuss)" links in the mergeto/from templates are working (on both 'to' and 'from' pages).

If you choose the second approach, I suggest that you tell the first commenter (e.g., on their User_talk: page) why you moved the discussion and give them a link to its new location. Also leave a note on the 'incorrect' talk page that points to the discussion's new location.

Finally, if you'd like to avoid this problem in the future, go to Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-gadgets-gadget-section-browsing and enable Twinkle. Then, in the future, you can use the TW menu > Tag > merge dialog box to make sure that everything automatically goes in the ordinary place. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:46, 17 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yizhi Jane Tao

Yizhi Jane Tao (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

There's someone who have been vandalising this entry for more than a year, ranging from unjustifiably deleting important information to sharing irrelevant rumours about the biographee. Rewed (talk) 21:55, 17 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Rewed, please see Wikipedia:Requests for page protection.

The easiest way to submit a report is to go to Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-gadgets-gadget-section-browsing and enable Twinkle. Then, go back to the page and find the new 'TW' menu (near the watchlist ☆ button). Choose "RPP" from the Twinkle menu. Fill the in the form with a brief explanation of the problem and your request (e.g., for WP:SEMI to stop editing by the unregistered editor) . WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:49, 17 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I have protected the page. Please keep an eye on the talk page, to see if someone requests changes. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 22:52, 17 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Wikimedia Movement Charter ratification voting results

You can find this message translated into additional languages on Meta-wiki. Please help translate to other languages.

Hello everyone,

After carefully tallying both individual and affiliate votes, the Charter Electoral Commission is pleased to announce the final results of the Wikimedia Movement Charter voting.

As communicated by the Charter Electoral Commission, we reached the quorum for both Affiliate and individual votes by the time the vote closed on July 9, 23:59 UTC. We thank all 2,451 individuals and 129 Affiliate representatives who voted in the ratification process. Your votes and comments are invaluable for the future steps in Movement Strategy.

The final results of the Wikimedia Movement Charter ratification voting held between 25 June and 9 July 2024 are as follows:

Individual vote:

Out of 2,451 individuals who voted as of July 9 23:59 (UTC), 2,446 have been accepted as valid votes. Among these, 1,710 voted “yes”; 623 voted “no”; and 113 selected “–” (neutral). Because the neutral votes don’t count towards the total number of votes cast, 73.30% voted to approve the Charter (1710/2333), while 26.70% voted to reject the Charter (623/2333).

Affiliates vote:

Out of 129 Affiliates designated voters who voted as of July 9 23:59 (UTC), 129 votes are confirmed as valid votes. Among these, 93 voted “yes”; 18 voted “no”; and 18 selected “–” (neutral). Because the neutral votes don’t count towards the total number of votes cast, 83.78% voted to approve the Charter (93/111), while 16.22% voted to reject the Charter (18/111).

Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation:

The Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees voted not to ratify the proposed Charter during their special Board meeting on July 8, 2024. The Chair of the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees, Nataliia Tymkiv, shared the result of the vote, the resolution, meeting minutes and proposed next steps.

With this, the Wikimedia Movement Charter in its current revision is not ratified.

We thank you for your participation in this important moment in our movement’s governance.

The Charter Electoral Commission,

Abhinav619, Borschts, Iwuala Lucy, Tochiprecious, Der-Wir-Ing

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:52, 18 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

If the Board of Trustees had veto power, maybe they should've voted first before wasting the time of the 2,500 other people who voted. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 20:39, 18 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I understand that "the 2,500 other people who voted" had an opportunity to provide anonymous comments along with their votes, so I can't see that as a complete waste of time. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:13, 19 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

About article Harbin

@Discospinster: Hi! If you translate this website this website with Google Translation, You will find a sentence that says: "Harbin" comes from the Jurchen language "Harwen", which means "swan". Because that website is the city government website, it should be a reliable source. This is different from the "Place of Drying Fishing Nets" statement introduced by English Wikipedia. I wonder if I can add it to the article? Suspected source, but not sure if it counts as original research. See also: Google Books (in Chinese). In addition, [1] [2] I found that some websites said that the literal meaning of "Harbin" comes from "Alejin", which means "honor". BUT THEY AREN'T ENGLISH SOURCES, ALSO I WAS NOT FIND ENGLISH SOURCES. And the harbin article Japanese Wikipedia have aparted these theories.-邻家的王子 (talk) 19:17, 18 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

If the source is reliable it doesn't matter that it's not in English. You can add that information if it would be considered reliable. ... discospinster _talk 19:19, 18 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@邻家的王子, it is our policy that you can use Wikipedia:NONENGLISH sources. Editors should only use good sources, but there are many good sources that are written in other languages.

Finding a source that says "swan" does not prove that "place of drying fishing nets" is wrong. Sometimes it is best to say something like "Different meanings have been ascribed to the name. For example, the city government says the name means swan in the Jurchen language, and the Hong Kong Trade Development Council says that it means 'place of the drying fishing nets'."

When something needs a longer explanation, it should not usually be included in the Wikipedia:Infobox. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:28, 18 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Talk:Evangelos Marinakis has an RfC

Talk:Evangelos Marinakis has an RfC for possible consensus. A discussion is taking place. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments on the discussion page. Thank you. D.S. Lioness (talk) 18:01, 22 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This appears to be a question about whether to include the word oligarch. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:24, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

That's right! D.S. Lioness (talk) 18:25, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Performing a random pages test on business articles

I've been focusing a bit on Wikipedia's articles on businesses recently. I think anyone who spends even a little time in the topic area knows we have problems with promotion, COI/paid editing, and dependence on non-independent sourcing. However, it's difficult to find hard numbers on just how big the problems are. To remedy this, I'm trying to obtain a random sample of a few hundred Wikipedia articles on companies to assess the extent to which they comply with our content policies. However, I'm having a bit of trouble working out how to get a good sample:

Idea 1: Hit Special:Random. If article is about a company, add to list. Otherwise discard. Repeat until satisfied with number of articles on the list. Problem: Time-consuming and impractical for single editor.
Idea 2: Use query service (Petscan or Quarry) to generate a list of company articles based on Wikipedia category system. Problem: Wikipedia category system not suited to this task. Structure of Category:Companies tree includes too many non-company articles (e.g. biographies in Category:People by company). Difficult to reliably filter.
Idea 3: Query Wikidata for items about companies with an enwiki article. Problem: Potential for systematic bias in results if Wikidata editors focus on creating items for highly notable companies.
Idea 4: Query DBpedia for company entities with enwiki articles. Problem: Classification as "company" apparently somewhat unreliable. Too many non-company articles in query results. Results seem to only appear if enwiki page was created before or up to ~2022.

I'm a bit stumped on what to do. Is there a way to adapt one of my ideas to produce good results? Or is there another idea I'm missing? – Teratix ₵ 16:05, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

For sure, trying to navigate the category tree from Category:Companies will just end up in a world of pain. You'll do much better using wikidata, say starting from company (Q783794). There's a dedicated query language for this sort of thing, see wikidata:Wikidata:SPARQL tutorial. RoySmith (talk) 16:15, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yep, I've written a SPARQL query that pulls a random sample of Wikidata items on companies with enwiki articles. My concern is that this sample may not necessarily be representative of a random sample of companies with enwiki articles, depending on how Wikidata editors select which enwiki businesses to create items for.

If, for example, Wikidata is more likely to have an item on a prominent rather than an obscure business (given both have enwiki articles), then a random sample of Wikidata items will feature more prominent businesses than a random sample of Wikipedia articles, which could lead to biased results.

But I don't really know much about how Wikidata editing works, so this could be wrong. – Teratix ₵ 16:33, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict)

Modify {{infobox company}} (used in ~85,000 articles) so that it emits a tracking category listing all articles that use that template? Allow the category to populate (could take a month or more). Add {{random in category}} to the category (or use Special:RandomInCategory) to fetch your random samples?

If there are other infoboxen that are commonly used in business articles, do the same with those templates; populate only the one common category.

When done, revert your template edits and delete the category.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 16:23, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

RandomInCatagory isn't very random (see T230700 and T200703). The strategy it uses is fine for an end user who wants to idly article hop, but I wouldn't use it for anything that requires statistical rigor. Keying off {{infobox company}} seems like a reasonable approach, but it suffers from a lot of the same problems the category ~~tree~~ ~~DAG~~ ~~graph~~ blob does. There's many similar templates, all related in a quasi-tree structure, but not easy to navigate. You might start from {{Organization infoboxes}}. It also suffers from the wikidata problem of people who write company articles being hit-or-miss about whether they add infoboxes of any kind.

You might want to go with multiple approaches to discover company articles and combine/deduplicate the results. Asking ChatGPT was amusingly useless. RoySmith (talk) 16:54, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

No need to mangle mainspace even temporarily with a tracking category; you can do something like this if you accept that transcluding {{Infobox company}} is good enough. —Cryptic 17:06, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

More than that, please don't "mangle mainspace". I know this idea was well-intended, but historically such things have been frowned upon. RoySmith (talk) 17:12, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Please explain how tracking categories mangle mainspace. Link to the consensus discussion that states that such things have been frowned upon.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 18:04, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I can't find it now, but there was a thread (perhaps on WP:VPT? a few months ago about one of the mobile apps adding tags for its own tracking purposes. The general consensus was that it was a bad idea. There's a related phab ticket at T360164. RoySmith (talk) 18:19, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

That was about edit summaries, not actual article content. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:26, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

My wording was perhaps facetious, but - at least on my part - the intent wasn't so much as "this would be harmful" as "this would be impractical". It's going to take a while - perhaps a long while - for the category to get fully populated after you add it to the template (unless you null edit all its transcluders, which has its own problems). And you might have to go through several iterations of adding and removing templates to/from your dataset. —Cryptic 18:28, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

You can use toolforge:randomincategory for a more truly random selection from a category. It will be a bit slow the first time you run it on an 85,000 member category, but it should work (and it caches data for 10 minutes so subsequent runs should be fine). --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 18:02, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Great idea. How about going the Petscan route but using one of the more systematised subcategories of Category:Companies, like Category:Companies by country? I imagine that almost all company articles are in that tree. – Joe (talk) 16:55, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

We've actually already tried that, specifically with cat:Companies by country. It gets way too many non-company articles way too quickly, even after pruning categories starting with "People by company". —Cryptic 17:13, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, that's typical for category traversals. Honestly, having accumulated a few scars from trying things like this in the past, I think the wikidata route is your best bet. Or at least your least bad bet. RoySmith (talk) 17:19, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

You might be able to leverage Category:WikiProject Companies articles and the advice given to me at Wikipedia talk:PetScan#Help creating query. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:28, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the input, everyone. I've reflected a bit and come up with a hybrid/kludge solution that might work: deliberately getting a larger than optimal sample from Category:Companies by country with Petscan/Quarry, filtering out non-company articles from the sample by checking with Petscan whether they match a Wikidata query for whatever unwanted types (e.g. biographies) tend to show up, then just manually discarding anything unwanted that sneaks through the filter. – Teratix ₵ 15:18, 25 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Porandla

-- GreenC 01:03, 25 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

An impressive journey, originally located quite far inland, the village moved to the coast, then moved again back inland but more to the northeast. (The first and last both seem to be clear villages on google maps, and there is at the very least a street with that name in the location of the second one.) CMD (talk) 02:06, 25 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It also had a different name from 2011 before losing all its text in 2022, but seems never to have had any source. PamD 05:40, 25 July 2024 (UTC) expanded 08:49, 25 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This source supports the statement in the original version of the article, so perhaps we should revert to that and add the source - and choose whichever of the later-added coordinates seems appropriate. PamD 09:01, 25 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]