Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/Single/2016-11-04

Comments

The following is an automatically-generated compilation of all talk pages for the Signpost issue dated 2016-11-04. For general Signpost discussion, see Wikipedia talk:Signpost.

Discussion report: What's on your tech wishlist for the coming year? (3,430 bytes · 💬)

• The Pending Changes report doesn't make clear an important feature of the current RfC: it proposes to lower the auto-accept level for PC2 from the pending changes reviewer usergroup to the recently introduced extended-confirmed usergroup: so about 29,000 editors (extended-confirmed) would be able to edit PC2-protected articles without review compared to about 6,000 (PC-reviewers) under the previous PC2 framework: Noyster (talk), 21:11, 4 November 2016 (UTC)

• The community tech team rocks :-) Keep up the excellent work. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 17:28, 5 November 2016 (UTC)
• I commented after an editor made a statement on one of the help pages, and I got the response that the Internet Archive actually does a better job of archiving web sites than I thought. I still believe the story should say "links to the relevant pages, if any".— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 20:07, 10 November 2016 (UTC)

More important to make sure that the features that already exist are in working order?

@Danny Horn: It”s good to ask the community about what new features are needed, but it is much more important to make sure that the features that already exist are in working order. Take for example page view statistics (there are more examples) which breaks fairly regularly (example). I realize this is probably someone else’s department, but since no one has provided me with an org chart, I am relying on you to pass this concern on to the right person. Also pinging @Kudpung: who IIRC made a similar comment years ago. Ottawahitech (talk) 21:08, 15 November 2016 (UTC)please ping me

@Ottawahitech: You understand that your example is an independently maintained application and is not directly supported or maintained by the developers? 69.159.64.100 (talk) 18:41, 20 November 2016 (UTC)

Hi 69.159.64.100, according to the Signpost article: Wish #7: Pageview stats tool. The new Pageviews Analysis tool is live for all wikis now. BTW I did not get your notification -- I believe this feature is only available to registered users, but there is a proposal about it in Misc. section of the 2016 survey. Ottawahitech (talk) 23:44, 23 November 2016 (UTC)please ping me

In the media: Washington Post leads the pack in this edition's roundup of media stories (2,120 bytes · 💬)

• On the subject of finding an appropriate photo, I don't think much of the one of Trump on this page.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 22:33, 9 November 2016 (UTC)
  • The photos of both candidates were chosen for the Clinton and Trump biographies; the Washington Post reprinted them (among others) in order to highlight why these ones were chosen. We republished the same ones, not to make our own independent editorial judgment, but to represent what has been chosen (thus far) by Wikipedians. As of now, the same lead photos remain on both bios, suggesting some stability. -Pete Forsyth (talk) 03:01, 10 November 2016 (UTC)
    • I would hope Trump gets a better photo when he takes office. Of course the intention will be to give him a dignified portrait, but I can't picture how that will look at this point.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 20:03, 10 November 2016 (UTC)

• The article on Hillary Clinton was also vandalized earlier although I have seen no comment on it in the previous Signpost or anywhere else. I saw it on my cell phone right after midnight (US-EST), after the VP debate, which was Oct. 4. The article was obscured by a slick image (I could see the list of languages faintly underneath it.) It showed a pornographic image of a woman having a device applied to her. There was some text attacking gay and transgender people, referred to in offensive terms. Then an exhortation to aid the Trump campaign. SeoMac (talk) 05:48, 13 November 2016 (UTC)

News and notes: Finally, a new CTO; trustee joins Quora; copyright upgrade impending (2,347 bytes · 💬)

In the "prompted an extended response from Maher". I can't seem to find any actual answer to the question asked, so I will ask it again here (paraphrased from the mailing list question):

It is well documented that Coleman's former government employers worked to introduce and/or keep open security vulnerabilities in a wide range of systems and software. Can we please have a clear statement that if she knows about or finds out about any vulnerabilities and vectors that can be used to attack MediaWiki she will share them with our developers so that they can be fixed? --Guy Macon (talk) 13:04, 4 November 2016 (UTC)

Hi @Guy Macon:, I thought I was clear: "We will work closely together in defending and strengthening the privacy and security of our platforms for our users." But I'll get more explicit: Failing to disclose and address a vulnerability/vector in any part of our platform would be unacceptable, whether it was for the purpose of facilitating exploitation or otherwise. The WMF security team addresses critical vulnerabilities as soon as they are identified, regardless of who identifies them. It is at the discretion of the security team to determine whether the exploit is critical and should be addressed before disclosure, or whether it can be safely disclosed and addressed. The security and integrity of our systems, and the security and privacy of Wikimedia's users, are paramount. Katherine (WMF) (talk) 00:19, 5 November 2016 (UTC)

That's good enough for me. Thanks for the clarification. --Guy Macon (talk) 06:21, 5 November 2016 (UTC)

Andreas

Will be missed. Peter Damian (talk) 10:16, 5 November 2016 (UTC)

We need a strong an critical press. Andreas provided a great service to the movement during his time here. Sad to see him moving on. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 17:12, 5 November 2016 (UTC)

Recent research: Why women edit less, and where they are overrepresented; article importance and quality; predicting elections from Wikipedia (6,963 bytes · 💬)

Why women edit less

Study after study by researchers, sitting in ivory towers, about the causes of the gender gap on Wikipedia, yet none have studied what is obvious to many of the foot-soldiers edting here.

For example: How about the use of derogatory language when it comes to depicting women on Wikipedia referring to them females. This has been brought up time and again, but is still dismissed as silliness by many, including editors who themselves belong to a marginalized real-life group such as Gay (for example).

And how about marginalizing those who support more inclusiveness of women. It is not unheard of to characterize such editors who are perceived to be men as ‘’creepy’’. It creates an environment where any editor who is the target of attacks (many/most editors here) must think twice before showing support for these issues. Ottawahitech (talk) 18:43, 5 November 2016 (UTC)please ping me

Sure thing, colleague. And other male pigs derogate innocent maidens referring to them women. Staszek Lem (talk) 00:45, 8 November 2016 (UTC)

@Staszek Lem: Could you please elaborate: I don't understand the point you are trying to make. Thanks in advance, Ottawahitech (talk) 01:12, 9 November 2016 (UTC)please ping me

@Ottawahitech: I find it weird that some find the word "wikt:female" derogatory, which is no less weird that the same some find the word "woman" derogatory as well, since it is etymologically inferior to "man". Staszek Lem (talk) 01:51, 9 November 2016 (UTC)

@Staszek Lem: hmmmm…As far as using the word female to describe female humans there are plenty of RSes (just google it) that find it to be derogatory. This is what I found on the top of the google search for "woman vs female" today. It is news to me that some people find the word "woman" derogaroy, but I am learning new things every day on Wikipedia. Ottawahitech (talk) 16:08, 9 November 2016 (UTC)please ping me

@Ottawahitech: Yep, it is amazing to what height of idiotism political correctness may be elevated. Last thing I learned some Chinese people find it insulting when being referred to as "that Chinese guy" At first "Oriental" became derogatory, next "Asian" became an insult. And now "Chinese". It comes both from inferiority complex and social stigma/stereotyping. I know it firsthand: when an American calls me "a Pole" I bet my ancestor's szabla he is thinking "Polack joke". Do you remember a scandal in the media about wikipedia when some militant feminist noticed the category:Women writers? To label someone a "woman writer" was fussed as an extremely gross insult. Staszek Lem (talk) 03:25, 10 November 2016 (UTC)

@Staszek Lem: Yes I remember more than one scandal in the media that involved the depiction of women on Wikipedia. I believe the one you are referring to is the Amanda Filipacchi controversy, which was not about labeling "someone a woman writer”" but about the fact that articles about women were being deliberately "orphaned" by placing them in categories that contained only women and removing articles about them from mainstream categories. It became a Wikipedia scandal when it was revealed by Filipacchi that experienced editors were behind this massive dislocation of articles about women. It was a scandal because the editors responsible were knowingly doing this in contravention of Wikipedia guidelines. Ottawahitech (talk) 17:17, 11 November 2016 (UTC)please ping me

@Ottawahitech:the text says "perceived minimization of female novelists", i.e., labeling women as women is "minimalization", right? Pray tell me which guideline was violated. We routinely create subcategory by defining characteristics. Now, what shall you do with the ""racist"" Category:American women novelists of Indian descent? Some curry-muncher hater barred Indu Sundaresan from Category:American women novelists. Must be Donald Trump's hand. Staszek Lem (talk) 18:18, 11 November 2016 (UTC)

@Staszek Lem: the guideline which was deliberately violated by experienced editor(s) who removed hundreds of articles about women writers from sub/categories of Category: Writers is Wikipedia:GHETTO. This all happened around April 1, 2013. Ottawahitech (talk) 16:19, 14 November 2016 (UTC)please ping me

@Ottawahitech:I admit I have never seen this guideline. Unfortunately our rulebook grew to become extremely unwieldy, so I am pretty much sure that it was not violated "deliberately". After seeing the guideline, I disagree with many of its guidance. In particular, the advice "do not create a subcategory for "African-American poets" is highly dubious, because there are tons of books of literary criticism specifically about AA poets. It is a well-defined and extremely useful category. Of course, some may argue that its function may be served by List of African-American poets, but it is long established that lists and categories are different, complementary search tools. Still, I agree with its core, but for a different reason: "ghettoisation" into minuscule subcategories makes search in categories extremely inconvenient. But this is not restricted to race and gender. For example, try to find an American city I forgot its name, ony remember it starts with "Ap". But this is the problem of WMF, which wastes its money on various weird projects instead of improving the wikimedia engine. Staszek Lem (talk) 18:00, 14 November 2016 (UTC)

I never thought of molluscs as having some kind of female connotations. Or asteroids as male - they're just big rocks in space, what could be less gendered? Maybe there is something I am missing.--Bellerophon5685 (talk) 06:40, 11 November 2016 (UTC)

@Bellerophon5685: are you saying that the gender of wikipedia editors is not important?Ottawahitech (talk) 19:50, 24 November 2016 (UTC)please ping me

Technology report: New guideline for technical collaboration (1,928 bytes · 💬)

Great to see captions fixed. We have more than 140 medical videos we have been translating into other languages so this was much needed. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 17:41, 5 November 2016 (UTC)

OSTI template

It seems to me that Template:OSTI's deletion was confirmed and the discussion about that decision is archived, so I see little hope that it will be restored when this article will be published. (But I agree it would be useful to have it.) − Pintoch (talk) 10:07, 27 September 2016 (UTC)

It's currently at Wikipedia:Deletion review/Active#Template:OSTI and from what I can surmise, it seems fairly likely to be overturned. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 10:18, 27 September 2016 (UTC)

Excellent, thanks for the link, dunno why I ignored the banner… − Pintoch (talk) 10:41, 27 September 2016 (UTC)

Bad idea

Sorry for the lolspeak, but I think that DIS IS SRSLY STOOPID. IT WIL PROBLY END WIF A HYOOG INTARWEBZ FITE INVOLVIN TEH ITTEH BITTEH KITTEH DISPOOT REZLOOSHUN COMMITTEH. IM PRETTEH SHUR TEH ADMINZ WIL SAY "O RLY? YA RLY! NO WAI!" WEN DEY SEE DAT SUMKITTEH WAZ IN DERE ARTIKLEZ ADDIN DISTRACTIN IKONZ TO DERE SAUCEZ. KATMAKROFAN (talk) 02:39, 2 November 2016 (UTC)

Traffic report: Un-presidential politics (1,893 bytes · 💬)

• David Bowie was not old enough to die of old age.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 22:59, 9 November 2016 (UTC)
  • David Bowie died of liver cancer, not old age. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.205.251.227 (talk) 18:48, 10 November 2016 (UTC)

No idea what "keyed off of" means. What does "keyed" mean in this context? Presumably it's USEng. Is the "off of" jarring in USEng, as it is in BrEng? --Dweller (talk) Become old fashioned! 14:16, 15 November 2016 (UTC)

• Ah, Dweller, I'm to blame for that. It derives from music, i.e., to play "in the key of A". So I meant that the debate set the tone and content of the list that week ("keyed off of it"). It is not meant to be jarring, but I should have realized it was slang.--Milowent • ^hasspoken 05:15, 22 November 2016 (UTC)
  • OK. Sweet of you to reply. --Dweller (talk) Become old fashioned! 12:12, 22 November 2016 (UTC)

Wikicup: WikiCup report (301 bytes · 💬)

• Wow, excellent work. A huge thank you to all participants from the rest of us. Mz7 (talk) 19:57, 19 November 2016 (UTC)