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Article-edit counts make long-term editors seem less active

Related thread: Revised stats confirm high-edit editors stronger

As I had suspected, the focus on "highly active editors" (as editing 100+ articles edits per month) has made the long-term editors seem less active in the monthly statistics, as dropping from the core 3,500 busy editors. Without naming any particular users, the pattern can be seen where people still edit several pages per day, perhaps 140 edits per month, but 30 of those edits will be "Talk:" pages, another 6 edits will be "Template:", plus 4 edits to "Misplaced Pages:" guidelines, and another 3 edits to "File:" image descriptions. The adjusted total edits becomes: 140-30-6-4-3 = 97 edits to article pages, when making 140 edits per month. So, since 97 is less than 100, then that editor is counted in the group of 5 edits per month (or 25+ edits in the full tables), not among the core 3,500 highly active.

I have seen many examples where a person makes daily edits totalling only "73" (or such) edits per month, but that counts in the 5-per-month group. Those people with 73 edits are there to revert vandalism, or correct mistakes every day, but they do not count among the 3,500 editors with 100+ edits. The more experienced the editors become, then the more likely they will edit a wider variety of namespaces, and split monthly edits into 30 to edit "Talk:" pages, or 14 edits to WP:Village_pump, noticeboards or guidelines (etc.), leaving fewer than 100 edits to articles. Similarly, editors who learn that edit-conflict almost never occurs for rare articles will likely make fewer, but longer, edits, where formerly they made 100+ smaller edits to update articles before they learned which articles can be updated with 1-edit fixes.

The more experienced editors will accomplish more each day with fewer edits, while also talking with more users, but will then have fewer monthly article edits, as below 100. While many occasional users will drop away completely, below 5 edits, other busy editors will combine or split 100+ edits to have only "73" article edits per month, and give the impression that a core of 3,500 editors (@100+) has fallen from 3,800 several months earlier. Meanwhile, the broader reality is that expert editors have learned to accomplish more, every day, with fewer article edits per month. One editor had 346 edits for June 2012, but many in other namespaces (talk: 125, Template: 53, WP: 40, User: 32, Help: 13, File: 4), so 346-125-53-40-32-13-4 = 79 article edits. That counts among 5-edits-per-month, but not in the 3,500 core with 100+ edits. I am not hunting to find these examples, they are common. Instead, we need to count edits to all namespaces combined, and then consider levels such as 30+ or 60+ edits per month, as showing high amounts of activity, even if a person logs 50 edits per month at Village-pump questions. Those are still very-active editors for a core of "10,000" daily editors. -Wikid77 (talk) 07:22, 29 June, revised 30 June, 05:14, 1 July 2012 (UTC)

Incarceration

In a random email conversation about politics, someone pointed me to Incarceration in the United States from which I also found the similar article United States incarceration rate. I believe that both these articles are plagued by a very serious editorial deficiency and I hope by posting here I will call the problem to the attention of some good editors.

My dictionary (Oxford American) defines "Incarceration" as "the state of being confined in prison". Our article Incarceration defines it as "the detention of a person in prison". As such, there seems to be quite universal agreement that we should contrast as being different things "incarceration" versus "probation" or "parole".

But the two articles conflate these two quite carelessly. We talk actually of "incarceration rates" when the numbers cited are for people who are in prison PLUS those on probation or parole.

Speaking as a reader rather than editor, I'm quite alarmed by the rapid increase in the incarceration rates in the United States, but when I went to learn more, Misplaced Pages seems to have failed me. We need to break out the numbers so that the reader can understand whether all these people are actually in prison, i.e. is there a genuine explosion in prison population? Or is there (an also disturbing, but different) explosion of people on probation or parole?--Jimbo Wales (talk) 10:07, 29 June 2012 (UTC)

I used the latest DoJ report I found - the incarceration rate is way lower than the earlier figures, and the Federal incarceration rate is very low (about 200K prisoners out of the total US population) - even compared to other countries, which do not necessarily include some of the categories the US figures do include. Collect (talk) 11:15, 29 June 2012 (UTC) Now someone needs to fix the other articles (I only did Incarceration). Collect (talk) 11:17, 29 June 2012 (UTC)

2010 figures (2 less) EDIT: interestingly, in that report, it notes that incaceration rates fell again, but that 2010 was the first year that the total # of prisoners fell since 1972. --Errant 11:44, 29 June 2012 (UTC)

The issue appears to be that in recent years States are less inclined to re-jail parole violators. Probably a cost cutting budgetary thing. John lilburne (talk) 12:11, 29 June 2012 (UTC)

A small note regarding the usage of the word "rate": The rates discussed in United States incarceration rate and other "incarceration rate" articles actually refer to prevalence/proportions rather than true (incidence) rates. In other words the total number of people 'incarcerated' at a particular time divided by the total population at the time (n/N), rather than, say, the number of new cases of incarceration per the total population during one given year (though a true incidence rate would actually be measured in person-years). I wouldn't want to argue that this common usage of "incarceration rate" isn't justly sanctioned by WP:COMMONNAME, but I feel the articles themselves should make it immediately clear what they're talking about, rather than merely wikilinking to a list, as in the lede of the US article. —MistyMorn (talk) 14:54, 29 June 2012 (UTC)

• Trend was 90% perhaps 60% on probation will go to jail: The effect of combining actual inmate counts with people on probation is probably fairly accurate because the rate of probation violation has been very high in the U.S., and almost all (over 90%) will fail the terms of probation and go to jail, often with the conviction for something they did not do, which was the alleged crime covered by the probation, but never decided on actual evidence with "due process". The situation with Lindsey Lohan was very rare: to complete almost all of 4 years probation, and then go to jail anyway; however, she was given multiple 2nd, 3rd, 8th chances whereas most people would fail probation sooner, and not get reinstated on probation so many times. I have lived in many cities across the U.S. and the "local jail" has the same problems of overcrowding and worries about if a fire/hurricane would be fatal to so many confined people, or when gang rivalry arises, how to protect the majority of inmates from "collateral damage" when shanks start flying. I would like to think that the probation-violation rate is now below 90% but I doubt it. There is also talk, in multiple cities, that the drug-war culture is a racket to pay lawyers ($5,000?) to put people on probation, then the system collects their fee money for months/years, only to later jail them and give them non-due-process convictions (which only makes them angrier), perhaps leading to more legal work and convictions in the future. It seems to be a revolving door of police busy-work arrests and legal fees to defend charges of petty "victimless crimes". -Wikid77 (talk) 14:56, 29 June 2012 (UTC)

  Your numbers are way off the mark. The county in Texas with the highest rate of probation revocation revokes about 15% (source),as of 2005. I haven't looked up numbers for other states, but one can generally count on Texas to be among the toughest for things like this. Looie496 (talk) 16:04, 29 June 2012 (UTC)

Contrast per-year versus per-person: Thanks for noting that group, but I am thinking the "15%" is "per-year", so after 4 years it adds to 60% (4x15%). The figures show ~160,000 people on probation in Texas each year, for 10 years, where nearly "22,000" are revoked and sent to jail/prison each year. It is like a bucket that leaks 15% per hour, where after 5 hours, 75% (5x15%) of the water would be gone (revoked), but a hose keeps adding more water (people) into the bucket, so the effect is "only 15%" leaks out per hour (only 15% of probationers get revoked each year, but it totals higher over 5 years). The concept is like trying to hit a "moving target" so that the original target population is hidden by the new people on probation each year, where the target has moved behind others and is obscured. Among juveniles, 66% of those on probation got rearrested within 3 years (see report for whole State of Texas: TX-Recidivism-Report-2011, pages 10/53). However, I added "perhaps 60%" to my note title above, in case 90% is too high now. -Wikid77 (talk) 11:23, 30 June 2012 (UTC)

• I've given the article one run through the grinder, but it'll need a few more passes. It would also help for some people to scout out new sources - there are too few sources being used over and over in this version for me to feel fully confident in it. Wnt (talk) 14:57, 29 June 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for your work! The intro of Race in the United States criminal justice system has a problem, too, confusing cause and effect in ethnic subpopulations. It and its talk page will probably help with the incarceration rate articles. 75.166.192.187 (talk) 22:31, 29 June 2012 (UTC)

Indeed! But Race and crime in the United States suggests possible causal explanations in terms of dumbing down, sexing up, or whatever.... Ugh! —MistyMorn (talk) 23:35, 29 June 2012 (UTC)

There is now an RfC on the Incarceration in the United States page - though one person has opined that is "almost exclusively" about incarceration, and the rest is in the general context of "correctional population." Cheers. Collect (talk) 11:33, 30 June 2012 (UTC)

• Also need to describe trends and restrictions over the years: We have the data from 1980, 1990, 2000, 2007-2010 to note the higher U.S. incarceration rates for multiple recent years, and I think that should be noted, as a long-term trend, and mentioned in the lede of the article(s). Also, many readers would not know that probation has strong restrictions, such as limited travel, impromptu visits from probation officers, and no alcohol (no wine/beer ever for 4-5 years), which many people would consider "imprisonment". Likewise, the restrictions for parole could be summarized, to note the contrast against freedoms of the general public, for the readers to consider the differences. -Wikid77 (talk) 19:35, 30 June 2012 (UTC)

Improving the useability of wikipedia:Graphics

Some thoughts are needed here.♦ Dr. Blofeld 12:44, 29 June 2012 (UTC)

• Perhaps need essay WP:Gourmet for customization: In any vast society, there will be an exclusive group of enthusiasts, so I think we should prepare an essay, WP:Gourmet, to cater to groups of people who really enjoy Misplaced Pages and would be willing to select special, customized settings, depending on exotic preferences. Already, someone noted how to change the wikilink colors:

• WP:Link color#Making links appear a different color just for you

Perhaps some people might want wikilinks to appear "green" to indicate new growth in knowledge or such. I have advocated for editors to create more barcharts to show data in upright histogram-like format (hence, we have Help:Barchart). Readers should not be driven into thinking that all articles are "extruded" from a text machine which forces data into sets of cookie cutters, even though that is somewhat the case. I think Dr. Blofeld has noted a great idea, and we just need more documentation to cater to the exclusive views of such users. Excellent. -Wikid77 (talk) 13:02, 30 June 2012 (UTC)

I know there are quite a few people are very sensitive to fonts and styling and find any misuse very unpleasant indeed. It isn't something that bothers me at all but I try to cater for it when I'm doing things. A special help so people can adjust things like colours weights and fonts probably is a good idea, there have been quite a few complaints even about the use of serifs in maths though that is fairly standard, but it may be possible to provide a non-serif version in future for such people or for the moment they could have the body text in serif font, perhaps they just might not worry over the difference between Computer Modern and Times New Roman. Dmcq (talk)

Côte d'Ivoire v. Ivory Coast

Hi Jimbo, there's yet another request to move Côte d'Ivoire to Ivory Coast going on. I'm surprised no one seems to have asked for your opinion on this. It's a perennial issue, and one in which both sides are able to point to several policies supporting their position. I know you don't rule by fiat or anything, but I suspect your weighing in could go a long way toward settling the issue, at least somewhat. If your position differs from mine, I'd be inclined to back off, and others probably feel the same. I hope you'll consider sharing your opinion with the community. Best, BDD (talk) 00:01, 30 June 2012 (UTC)

From that discussion: "As for the Google insights numbers, they have relevance to WP:COMMONNAME which is dictated by "its prevalence in reliable English-language sources". Obviously random people who entered text into a search engine box aren't reliable".

I think this is one of the instances where the insistence on reliable sources is killing us. Why in the world do we want to use a name from "reliable sources" in preference to what people actually use?

It's like how notability is limited to appearance in reliable sources. I see no reason why we should have to have reliable sources for something to be notable--we are not using the sources for information about the subject that might be true or false and therefore for which reliability is relevant, we just are using the sources to know that the subject is mentioned a lot.

(The naive reply would be "if we don't have reliable sources we have nothing to use to write an article anyway", but if that reasoning was true, then large parts of the policy wouldn't make any sense. For instance, we shouldn't have topics that are presumed to meet the standards without needing a source, since it would not be possible to write an article about such topics.) Ken Arromdee (talk) 16:26, 30 June 2012 (UTC)

The name of Deutschland in English is Germany. The name of 日本 (Nihon or Nippon) in English is Japan. The name of Côte d'Ivoire in English is Ivory Coast. The evidence from reliable sources (BBC, New York Times, etc.) is overwhelming that this is the correct term. That some more formal sources - which we do not and need not defer to absolutely - have something different is not persuasive to me. Note that I am just giving a personal opinion on my talk page.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 09:11, 1 July 2012 (UTC)

AllAfrica: Côte d'Ivoire to Get More Than $4 Billion of Its Debt Cancelled By the IMF and World Bank

Jerusalem Post: Cote D'Ivoire endorses repatriation of migrants

Mail & Guardian Online: Cote d'Ivoire recruits child soldiers from Liberia

Global Times: UN concerned over detention conditions in Cote d'Ivoire's prisons

United States Central Intelligence Agency: COTE D'IVOIRE

United States Department of State: Cote d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast takes you to Cote d'Ivoire)

Those are just a few examples. And isn't it rather offensive to be implying that only the US and UK count as English sources? Silverseren 02:35, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

A somewhat analogous situation is Myanmar/Burma; Myanmar is the name foisted upon us by a bloodthirsty lunatic and his cronies, while Burma is the transliteration of what people actually call the country. The government in the Ivory Coast isn't any better, but they don't have an Aung San Suu Kyi figure who everyone recognizes so no English sources care. That's why the Republic of the Upper Volta is now known as Burkina Faso. I'm someone who's all for diversity in names, but we don't and shouldn't use names according to some despot's personal preference. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 03:47, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages in news again for porn. Shouldn't libraries and schools have a censor?

store in karachi

C310 in pakistan — Preceding unsigned comment added by 119.154.182.198 (talk) 00:32, 1 July 2012 (UTC)

User addressed on his talk page. Herostratus (talk) 01:11, 1 July 2012 (UTC)

Mail

Please check it soon :) Diego Grez (talk) 14:05, 1 July 2012 (UTC)

Username penalty: IP users see articles 5x-50x faster

We need to remind users to logout to view mainstream articles 20x faster. Avoid the username penalty which reformats major articles so much slower than for IP users. In running tests of template speed, I noticed that registered users (logged-in) now view articles which are formatted 5x to 50x times slower than what the IP-address users see (due to IPs seeing the common, quick, cached copies of formatted articles). Some of us were recently trying to optimize template speed, and were able to make a core template run about twice as fast, rather than having hundreds of "sub-optimized" one-line templates. In running those tests, then I noticed that hundreds of major articles can be displayed for IP users in about 1/8 second, whereas the username-specific reformatting of those articles runs several times slower, typically 20x slower for mainstream articles, such as classic encyclopedia topics with formatted references. As you probably know, the complex citation templates use vast amounts of time to slow a large text article from a half-second formatting into several seconds during an edit-preview or view by a logged-in user. Of course that's fine, when people expect to hit "Show-preview" and wait several seconds for citations and navboxes to be formatted into a half-second text article. However, more users should know to log out and view the major articles 20x times faster, and edit them when needed, but after edit-preview log-in before saving the changes with an unwanted IP-address user ID. I would hate for most registered users to think that big Misplaced Pages articles are really displayed as excrutiatingly slow as when users are logged in. Logout and view the major articles 20x faster. Stubs display at the same quick speed either way, due to few {cite..} or navbox templates piled on those stub pages. Long term, I am wondering how to change major articles into simple large text pages that still format within one second, perhaps using dozens of quick templates. Reduce the current username penalty. -Wikid77 (talk) 17:49, 1 July 2012 (UTC)

Assuming one is not a computer, then I don't see why this matters. I very rarely have to wait more than a second or two for an article to appear. I don't know what my reading rate is but I would say 30 words a second is a decent upper bound. So at the very worst this costs me the time to read a couple of sentences.

This will matter for bots of course. But then they shouldn't be running off cached pages most of the time... Egg Centric 21:40, 1 July 2012 (UTC)

A twist on paid editing

There has been discussion of late regarding "paid editing" on Misplaced Pages. I would be interested to know if WMF would use its legal resources to ensure that hours spent volunteering would be recognized as tax deductible. That would help the lot of us to recuperate some of what we give already. 76Strat  da _Broke da (talk) 21:24, 1 July 2012 (UTC)

From the United States Internal Revenue Service:

"you cannot deduct the value of your services given to a qualified organization" http://www.irs.gov/publications/p526/ar02.html#en_US_2011_publink1000229674

"You cannot deduct the value of your time or services" http://www.irs.gov/publications/p526/ar02.html#en_US_2011_publink1000229698

Hope that answers your question. In short, No. -- Avanu (talk) 21:27, 1 July 2012 (UTC)

It does answer the question. It doesn't make me immediately glad, and lord knows it doesn't surprise me. I thank you, nevertheless. 76Strat  da _Broke da (talk) 21:35, 1 July 2012 (UTC)

Very sad, could've saved me a lot of money. Ryan Vesey Review me! 21:37, 1 July 2012 (UTC)

Is there a bias against calling people who were born Jewish as such?

Dear sir-

I am curious if there is a reason that many of those that are born as Jews are not mentioned as such regardless of current religious affiliation or lack thereof? Teller is an examples. Regardless of being an athiest or any other belief in a different religion, being a Jew is not about religious affiliation and can not be given up, much as one can not change whether one is African-American, Hispanic, Chinese, or Arab. Would someone who is Korean by birth and adopted in America not have anything mentioned on their Misplaced Pages biography regarding their Korean birth? If so then I understand, if not then there is a bias against Jews. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 97.85.211.124 (talk) 21:49, 1 July 2012 (UTC)

The only folk who categorise people as belonging to judaism cause of how they were born are various flavours of racists (in which I include ultra-orthodox jews). Therefore including such in an article fails all sorts of things. Egg Centric 21:54, 1 July 2012 (UTC)

Wiki does not attempt to define Who is a Jew? The general practice on these issues is to reflect how sources describe the individual in the article. Ankh.Morpork 22:05, 1 July 2012 (UTC)

being a Jew is not about religious affiliation and can not be given up Would you like to explain that, because usually we find that the label being a Jew is often applied based on religious criteria. The last discussion I saw on the BLP/N was from a journalist that objected to being labelled as Jewish on WP. John lilburne (talk) 22:51, 1 July 2012 (UTC)

Many discussions at WP:BLP/N have resulted in a general feeling that labelling people where they do not self-identify with the label is not good. Collect (talk) 22:16, 1 July 2012 (UTC)

Removal of adminship

Hi. Being a believer in the idea of Institutional memory, I wanted to ask you about "how things used to be". My recollection is that: once upon a time, the community would decide to hold a discussion concerning an admin, and then at some point you would come in and assess/discern the community discussion, and subsequently take action (or not) based upon that.

First, am I remembering incorrectly? Second, anything you could expand upon that?

As a semi-related question, of late you have mentioned deferring/sharing various responsibilities to/with arbcom.

I'm presuming that the process to desysop is one of those.

With that in mind, what would you think of that past community discussion process being brought back, but having the arbitrators assess/discern, and then asking a bureaucrat to "push the button" for them, as it were?

We're discussing similar things at WT:RFA, but I thought I'd like to ask what your thoughts were on this.

(As I know that your talk page also doubles as a community forum, I'll place two sub-sections, to allow you and the community to both respond, should anyone so desire : ) - jc37 23:44, 1 July 2012 (UTC)

JW thoughts

Anyone else? : )

Your comments indicate that you are not familiar with WP:Desysopping, which really ought to be the starting point for any discussion. Looie496 (talk) 00:17, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the link! I don't think I've looked at that page since the around the time of the zscout situation. Though I recall quite a few of those listed on the page. A definite blast from the past. - jc37 00:33, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

I think there is a fundamental problem with only a black or white option in this. I know Jimbo has said in the past that he believes in eternal adminship unless there is a clear problem, in general society, we haven't adopted that same philosophy. Generally, people have terms that expire, or other limiting measures. In Misplaced Pages, the limiting measure is a general adherence to consensus. On a more limited level, this measure helps to prevent pervasive problems in some ways, but ignores other problems because they don't individually rise to the level of 'pervasive'. I will say that generally I find the admins on Misplaced Pages to be exemplary, and their conduct is usually very honorable. At times, there seems to be a Contempt of cop sort of reflex, which is incompatible with good adminship, but again, generally the conduct seems professional and commendable. -- Avanu (talk) 00:27, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

This isn't a reflection on any particular admin. It's about whether having such a process in place would help alleviate concerns of commenters at RfA, and thus hopefully improve the climate. - jc37 00:36, 2 July 2012 (UTC)