Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2011-09-26/News and notes
Foundation overrules community consensus on autoconfirmation trial
In a heated altercation between English Wikipedia community members and MediaWiki sysadmins in the course of a bugzilla thread, a proposed trial for barring non-autoconfirmed editors from creating articles, which had garnered significant local consensus in a widely publicised Request for Comment, was thwarted by Wikimedia Foundation staffers and developers. The trial had been motivated by the perceived ineffectiveness of prevailing article creation mechanics, whereby a large portion of articles created by new editors were swiftly deleted and their authors reprimanded. By barring new editors from creating articles and funnelling them through the Articles for Creation and Article Creation Wizard processes, it was hoped to ease pressure on new page patrollers, alienate fewer new contributors and ensure a higher quality of new articles. After reticence to implement the trial from sysadmins and an intemperate reaction, Wikimedia Foundation Deputy Director Erik Möller after acknowledging the stated intentions of the initiative, put the boot down firmly on the petitioners' hopes:
However, we believe that creating a restriction of this type is a strong a statement of exclusion, not inclusion, and that it will confuse and deter good faith editors. Instead of trying to address many different issues by means of a simple but potentially highly problematic permission change, we believe that in order to create a friendly, welcoming and understandable experience for new editors, we need to apply an iterative, multi-prong approach, including but not limited to:
- simplifying the actual workflow of new article creation and reducing instruction creep
- experimenting with alternative models to provide new users with safe spaces for new article development
- connecting new users with experienced mentors faster.
Möller and the developers attempted to redirect efforts to the ArticleCreationWorkflow project at MediaWiki in the face of strong resistance from the English Wikipedia community members, with the initiator of the bug report Snottywong commenting "ArticleCreationWorkflow doesn't discuss any real solutions to the problem, so I will not be contributing there". Charges of unilateralism, incivility and a patronising tone were levelled at Foundation staff as it became evident the report would not result in implementation. Volunteer developer and long-standing English Wikipedian Happy-melon attempted to bridge the growing divide with an entreaty for perspective:
On the other hand, there *is* a separation of *cultures* here, and it's something that an awful lot of members of the wiki communities do not appreciate. The developers and (separately) the sysadmins/WMF form their own separate communities with their own goals and practices; and those goals and practices, while closely matching those of enwiki or whereverwiki, do not necessarily precisely align. There is nothing unrealistic, or wrong, with enwiki having goals which are very slightly different from those of the WMF as a whole, or for their requests to not be ones that the Foundation feels bests fits with their own strategies.
In response to the incident, English Wikipedian and developer MZMcBride assembled at Meta a list of instances of Wikimedia systems administrators rejection of configuration changes. The firm insistence of the Wikimedia Foundation to pursue its own vision of sustaining and developing the Wikimedia projects in defiance if necessary of the wishes of the core community of its flagship project – and the chief source of its funding – is an indicator of how far the organisation has grown in its brief history, and is sure to raise the hackles of those who conceived of it playing a primarily supportive role to the local communities.
Academic journals consider partnering with Wikipedia
This month, editors of two academic journals brought up the possibility of content partnerships between their respective journals and Wikipedia. Phil Bourne, Editor in Chief of PLoS Computational Biology, suggested that review articles on topics that are related to computational biology could be considered for publication in the journal in a way that would allow the article to be reused to start an entry on the topic in the English Wikipedia. In a similar move, Andrew Su – editor at the journal Gene and one of the driving forces behind the Gene Wiki – raised the possibility of gene stubs in the English Wikipedia being substantially expanded by way of review articles that could be published in the journal. In both cases, the details remain yet to be worked out.
The potential complementarity of open-access journals and Wikipedia has been noted repeatedly, but the Wikipedia policies WP:V, WP:MEDRS, WP:PSTS, WP:NPOV, WP:NOR, WP:NOT PAPERS, WP:TECHNICAL or WP:OWN as well as journal policies on prior publication or (for subscription-based journals) on reuse have all been put forward as possibly standing in the way of such a close association between Wikipedia and journal articles. PLoS Computational Biology publishes its articles under a CC-BY license, which does not allow the article drafting to take place under the more restrictive CC-BY-SA license employed on most Wikimedia projects, whereas Gene content is paywalled and fully copyrighted, such that any kind of reuse beyond mere citation requires written permission, which does not fit with CC-BY-SA either.
Nonetheless, the first journal with such a content partnership with Wikipedia is subscription-based: since late 2008, RNA Biology requires that manuscripts about new RNA families be accompanied by the draft for a corresponding Wikipedia article, and both documents will be subjected to the same peer review process. The first article arising from this collaboration was SmY RNA,[1] and a number of articles – e.g. YkkC-yxkD leader[2] – have been started in correspondence to papers published in journals other than RNA Biology. In a similar arrangement, identification keys of newly discovered species published in the open-access journal ZooKeys are routinely uploaded to a specialist wiki, thereby providing the basis for the corresponding entries at Wikispecies. The first such article was Neobidessodes darwiniensis.[3]
The related proposal for a peer-reviewed journal to be set up by Wikimedia specifically to facilitate expert contributions also surfaced again.
Brief notes
- Wiki Loves Monuments hits 100k: As reported by chapters such as Wikimedia España, the Wiki Loves Monuments project surpassed the 100,000 upload mark on the 26 September. The 100,000th upload was of a church in Portugal (pictured right).
- Age-appropriateness of adult content editing raised A user who self-identified as a 13-year-old administrator hopeful was brought to the administrators' incidents noticeboard over the quality and responsiveness of his speedy deletion tagging this week. A standard ANI thread was set to ensue when it was quickly noted that in addition to being a member of WikiProject Professional Wrestling the editor also showcased a userbox identifying himself as a "hard-core member of WikiProject Pornography". A discussion about age restrictions for adult-oriented WikiProjects followed, the equanimity of which was seized upon by founder-turned-critic Larry Sanger as further evidence of Wikipedia's moral decay.
- WMUK greets new CEO: Wikimedia UK have announced the end of their search for a Chief Executive with the appointment of Jon Davies, who has former leadership experience with as Chief Executive of parenting charity Families need Fathers, and with the London Cycling Network.
- Office hours on the image filter: In this week's IRC office hours with Sue Gardner and other WMF staffers (see log) discussion predominantly focused on the proposed image filter for potentially controversial content, with specific reference to the reception of the idea within the German Wikipedia community – a topic addressed head-on by this week's opinion essay.
- New administrators: The Signpost welcomes Wikipedia's newest administrator, Richwales, whose second attempt at adminship succeeded with minimal dissent after he took efforts to broaden his experience in content creation and traditional administrative tasks. A veteran of 6½ years editing, Rich envisages focusing his newly acquired powers on anti-vandalism efforts at least initially. One Request for Adminship, that of Anomie, a bot operator, is currently open.
- Project milestones: The Shona, Sundanese and Twi Wikipedias reached milestones this week, with 1,000 total pages, 15,000 articles, and 100 articles respectively.
- Notes
- ^ Jones, T. A.; Otto, W.; Marz, M.; Eddy, S. R.; Stadler, P. F. (2009). "A survey of nematode SmY RNAs". RNA Biology. 6 (1): 5–8. doi:10.4161/rna.6.1.7634. PMID 19106623. S2CID 32095624.
- ^ Weinberg, Z.; Barrick, J. E.; Yao, Z.; Roth, A.; Kim, J. N.; Gore, J.; Wang, J. X.; Lee, E. R.; Block, K. F.; Sudarsan, N.; Neph, S.; Tompa, M.; Ruzzo, W. L.; Breaker, R. R. (2007). "Identification of 22 candidate structured RNAs in bacteria using the CMfinder comparative genomics pipeline". Nucleic Acids Research. 35 (14): 4809–4819. doi:10.1093/nar/gkm487. PMC 1950547. PMID 17621584.
- ^ Hendrich, L.; Balke, M. (2011). "A simultaneous journal / wiki publication and dissemination of a new species description: Neobidessodes darwiniensis sp. n. From northern Australia (Coleoptera, Dytiscidae, Bidessini)". ZooKeys (79): 11–20. Bibcode:2011ZooK...79...11H. doi:10.3897/zookeys.79.803. PMC 3088048. PMID 21594142.
Discuss this story
In response to the refusal of the Foundation to implement the new article creation filter, I encourage all en.Wikipedia administrators to completely boycott new page patrolling. Don't touch it. Cla68 (talk) 00:54, 27 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Before taking claims of "community consensus" too seriously, I would like to see the results of asking a hundred or so randomly selected editors whether they ever heard of the discussion. I certainly didn't. --Guy Macon (talk) 01:14, 27 September 2011 (UTC)Apparently there was a watchlist notice about a proposed trial for barring non-autoconfirmed editors from creating articles that I somehow missed. Guy Macon (talk) 22:55, 28 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]I think the tone taken in this story with regard to WP:ACTRIAL is regrettable, especially as the conversation has recently shifted to the point where a more constructive conversation is taking place with regard to improvements to the new page patrolling interface. Specifically, we've created some initial suggestions for an improved patrolling UI, and a good conversation is taking place on the discussion page with regard to approaches that can be taken to reduce the backlog, while also finding ways to improve the experience for constructive good faith editors. We've invited new page patrollers to contribute screencasts, so we can help analyze where the current process and tools can be improved.
In other words, rather than looking at a set of problems (NPP backlog, bitey experience, learning curve for new patrollers) and considering a single solution (creating a restriction for page creation), we hope that over the coming months, we can experiment with alternative strategies. If you want to take our response to an RFC and proposed trial as "overruling community consensus" and "putting down the boot firmly [sic!] on petitioners' hopes", you can certainly do so, but I fail to see how that gets us to any useful place other than inflaming conflict. We're here to help -- but if you wish for a WMF that merely slavishly executes what is being requested of it, that entity has never existed.--Eloquence* 01:42, 27 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I really do not see how this sort of vandalism/poor editing is really any different than that we deal with on the rest of the none protected articles? We all tire of dealing with spam/poor quality edits. Pending changes was not passed even though it had majority support. I would support applying pending changes on all newly created articles meaning that they would need to be approved once before going live. A RFC is ongoing here. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 12:08, 27 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I !voted in favor of this trial, but it was a close decision for me and it doesn't really bother me all that much for it not to happen. Nonetheless, I am bothered by the means by which the Foundation has chosen to address it. By waiting until the discussion was complete and only then choosing to quash the proposal, citing the additional no-voters who have come out of the woodwork since implementation was attempted, they have treated the community effort much like refusing to allow a candidate to take office because of a groundswell of opposition from non-voters between the end of the election and the inauguration saying, in effect, "Hell, if we'd known he was going to win we would have voted." Granted that nothing is ever set in stone here at WP since consensus can change, even between adoption of a proposal and its implementation. But in this case WFM has just said that they, on their own volition, aren't going to do it and are going to accept totally-anecdotal evidence that the "real" majority of WP users oppose the trial. The Facetious Golden Rule, of course, applies. They have the gold, so they can make the rules, but what they have done in this case comes very close to disrupting WP to make a point: they want newcomers treated nicely, so they are going to ignore the consensus of the community to make that point. I realize that they had a dilemma while the proposal was pending: weigh in against it (or insist on a wider discussion) and be accused of interfering with the wiki or remain silent and be accused, as I'm doing here, of ignoring the will of the community. But if they're going to engage in power trips like this one then they need to not let the community waste its time on something that they're not going to be willing to do. (And, anticipating the response that they didn't know what they were going to do until the discussion had ended, I'd ask this question: If this issue is so important that they're willing to do what they've done here, then why didn't they resolve their uncertainty while the discussion was still going on or, at the very least, let it be known that there was a debate within WFM over whether or not it might be implemented.) They've not even chosen to send it back to the community with the comment that they feel that the discussion was not adequately announced and that they would like to see additional discussion and more editors involved before they're called upon to do it: they've just imperially announced that they're not going to do it. Someone in the bugzilla queue asked whether WMF is more concerned about bringing in newcomers than they are retaining established editors who quit over naked expressions of power such as this. That question is apropos, but I'd suggest that it needs to be taken further: Discussions over controversial such matters like this and often end up with very hard feelings and established editors coming to the conclusion that it's time to leave WP due to the battering they've taken. If WMF is going to do something like this, they're saying that it is okay for the community to waste in vain the talent and work potential that is inevitably going to be consumed in such a difficult discussion. WFM may say that this is for the long-term good and survival of the project, but they have been irresponsible towards the existing community. Regards, TransporterMan (TALK) 17:28, 27 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
(1) It is incredibly easy not to be aware of important discussions involving Wikipedia policy, & to participate usefully in any important discussion means sifting thru dozens of comments -- which can take hours most people would rather spend on something else far more interesting.
(2) Even if someone were to reach out to every active Wikipedian & ask them to weigh in on a discussion, a lot of Wikipedians won't participate. Some because they aren't convinced that participating will make a difference, some because their experience has convinced them that participating won't make a difference.
(3) Does anyone honestly question the fact that most of us reading this are convinced the Foundation is out of touch with the Wikipedian community?
(4) What's stopping someone at the Foundation from reaching out & engaging 100 randomly-selected active Wikipedians & asking for their input? At the very least, I believe this act would prevent a few from quitting Wikipedia out of the belief their contributions don't matter.
(5) All of the indenting above has made the comments in parts difficult to read. Is there a way to refactor or reorganize the threads to improve readability? -- llywrch (talk) 06:39, 28 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I have to say that there does seem to be a new era (maybe not so new) of "we know best". And to dispel this, lip service to discussion and compromise will not do. Wikimedia contributors are sometimes an ornery lot, but they are mostly intelligent, many of them hold or have held senior posts, are professionals in one sphere or another. Therefore they have, betwwen them, an extensive skillset, which should not be taken lightly when considering the WMF as "professionals" adn the community as "volunteers".
Rich Farmbrough, 18:56, 29 September 2011 (UTC).[reply]
Licenses
You state PLoS Computational Biology publishes its articles under a CC-BY license, which does not allow the article drafting to take place under the more restrictive CC-BY-SA license employed at Wikimedia. Given that they might also change their license in the future, if we want to use their material in our articles, we can certainly do this. --Elitre (talk) 07:47, 27 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]