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Latest revision as of 17:03, 11 January 2025

Jimbo welcomes your comments and updates – he has an open door policy. He holds the founder's seat on the Wikimedia Foundation's Board of Trustees. The current trustees occupying "community-selected" seats are Rosiestep, Laurentius, Victoria and Pundit. The Wikimedia Foundation's Lead Manager of Trust and Safety is Jan Eissfeldt.

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Albert Percy Godber

Happy New Year Jimbo!!! I hope all is well with you and your team.

Could you or your page watchers help me with Draft:Albert Percy Godber? The draft has been declined and tagged up. It was then deleted years ago. I had it restored today after I came across one of his photos. I think he and his photography are fascinating for capturing aspects of New Zealand's transportation and industrial history. His work is in museum and library collections. At least one of his photographs has been used in a book. He photographed Maori sites.

I'm sorry I haven't been able to work the draft up enough to get it admitted to mainspace. It does make me wonder about what we do and don't include, our notability criteria, Articles for Creation (AfC) process, and collaborative ethos. Thanks so much for any help or guidance you can offer! Have a great 2025 and beyond. Thanks again. FloridaArmy (talk) 17:57, 4 January 2025 (UTC)

If Godber is not WP:NOTABLE, which is what the draft reviewers say, then Wikipedians can't fix that. Polygnotus (talk) 09:37, 6 January 2025 (UTC)

user:Polygnotus is he "notable" and should we have an entry on him? FloridaArmy (talk) 17:26, 7 January 2025 (UTC)

I dunno, but User:Sulfurboy wrote that the draft did not show significant coverage about the subject in published, reliable, secondary sources that are independent of the subject at that point. Polygnotus (talk) 19:37, 7 January 2025 (UTC)

And this a request to revisit his finding. We have a photographer from more than 100 years ago who documented areas of New Zealand's North Island. We have his work in a National Library collection. We have his work discussed as iconic for one of his Maori related photographs. We have his work revisited in a 2018 exhibition. We have descriptions of him related to his photographs, his career, and we have the photos themselves documenting the areas industries, sites, infrastructure from more than 100 years ago. If I was satisfied with the previous conclusions I would not be here. So I ask again, should we have an entry on this subject? Should we just attribute his photos where we use them to an unlinked name with no explanation or discussion of who he was? I think the answer is clear, and I wanted to hear Jimbo's opinion. I am aware of what was previously stated. Years have passed and I believe it's time to reevaluate and consider. I also think it's worth reflecting on our article creations processes more generally and how we apply our conception of "notability". FloridaArmy (talk) 23:33, 8 January 2025 (UTC)

• Godber's photographs include "views of the Hutt Valley including large numbers of cars traveling to Trentham Racecourse, and the Hutt River. Another group of images relate to a holiday at the Mendip Hills Homestead in Canterbury, New Zealand with scenes of farm life, including haymaking, merino sheep, and farm buildings. During their stay in the South Island Godber also took photographs of Dunedin (including the Ross Reservoir, Otago Boys' High School, Seacliff Mental Hospital, the 1926 Dunedin Exhibition, and the Hillside Railway Workshops); Invercargill (including the Invercargill Railway Workshops); Stewart Island, Moeraki, Tuatapere, Waiau River, Oamaru and Port Chalmers. Various railway stations in Canterbury and Otago, the Burnside Iron Mills, and the Rosslyn Mills. Godber was a volunteer fireman with the Petone Fire Brigade with the album including views of the building, groups of firemen, fire engines and other fire fighting equipment, and a building in Petone damaged by fire. In his work with New Zealand Railways, mainly at the Petone Railway Workshops, he took interior photographs of various buildings, including the Machine Shop and finishing benches, the engine room, lathes, boilers, and fitting shops. He also took photographs of many of the steam engines that were built and worked on at the workshops. One scene shows a group of men watching a fight. Many images show his interest in logging railways, particularly in the Piha, Karekare, Anawhata area. Scenes of logging camps, various methods of transporting logs including bullock teams, logging trains, and dams created and then tripped to send logs down by river, and timber mills. Other topics covered in Godber's photographs are scenes at Maori marae and meeting houses, with some of the people identified; Maori carving and rafter designs; beekeeping, and gold mining." FloridaArmy (talk) 23:52, 8 January 2025 (UTC)
• It's hard to choose which photos to share. Historic views areas, industries, bridges, natural features, railways and bridges, crafts. Here's a link to his photos on Misplaced Pages Commons. Many already illustrate our entries on various subjects. FloridaArmy (talk) 00:01, 9 January 2025 (UTC)

If you really want to help him, get a couple stories published about him in newspapers. Notability here will follow. Carrite (talk) 01:23, 11 January 2025 (UTC)

Just wanted to say

You have created something valuable to everyone on the Internet. I'm sure you get this a lot, but thank you.
It may sound weird, but Misplaced Pages has helped me through some tough times. We can never thank you enough for this sometimes infighting, sometimes peaceful, sometimes divided, but always united community You are the backbone of the cabal of editors thriving community that is Misplaced Pages. I wish I could give you a BarnMilkyWay but no one's come up with that, apparently. (3OpenEyes's talk page. Say hi!) | (PS: Have a good day) 00:49, 6 January 2025 (UTC)

Requests for comment/Severe Problems in hewiki

For the interested. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 10:58, 6 January 2025 (UTC)

Summary: This document intends to show the problematic situation in Hebrew Misplaced Pages (hewiki), and provide evidence that it has been overtaken by a group of mostly religious and nationalist editors, who prevent others from achieving higher permissions while promoting their own allies. –Novem Linguae (talk) 22:38, 6 January 2025 (UTC)

Happy new year

Good days, Jimbo. I'd like to say that Chinese Misplaced Pages is introducing ARBCOM System currently, since Arbcom on this project, and in fact all the project is originated from the idea of yours, do you have any opinion for that? Any hints, advice or suggestions? -Lemonaka 15:43, 7 January 2025 (UTC)

Scoop: Heritage Foundation plans to ‘identify and target’ Misplaced Pages editors

That doesn't sound good. From The Forward. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 09:37, 8 January 2025 (UTC)

Being discussed at Misplaced Pages:Village pump (miscellaneous)#Heritage Foundation intending to "identify and target" editors. CMD (talk) 10:08, 8 January 2025 (UTC)

Thanks! Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 11:11, 8 January 2025 (UTC)

Also discussed at Wikipedia_talk:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Palestine-Israel_articles_5/Evidence#Edit_request and Misplaced Pages:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard#Heritage_Foundation_planning_to_dox_Wikipedia_editors. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 19:07, 8 January 2025 (UTC)

Jimbo, could I ask you please to respond to these concerns from Tryptofish?

... it's not just if you've edited about Israel-Palestine. It could be if you've edited anything about climate and fossil fuels, gender, immigration, vaccines, and of course, American politics. I doubt that they have the bandwidth to actually identify and harass every editor who could possibly be seen as editing information that goes against a MAGA POV, but they will likely find some easily identified targets, whom they will use to "set an example", as a way of instilling fear in our editing community. I fully expect that, in the coming months, Jimbo Wales will be hauled before a hostile and performative Congressional hearing, much in the manner of university presidents. I hope very much that he will be better prepared than Claudine Gay was.

Yeah, I know this is grim. But I believe the first step in dealing with this is to go into it with our eyes open, to know what we are dealing with, what motivates it. And, more than harming individual editors, the real objective of Heritage et al. is to instill fear in the rest of us. If we become too fearful to revert POV edits, they win. In a very real sense, we have to keep doing what we have been doing, and continue to be a reliable resource for NPOV information. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:54, 9 January 2025 (UTC)

Sita Bose (talk) 05:33, 10 January 2025 (UTC)

Well, I fully agree that developments in terms of arguments and actions aimed at destroying trust in knowledge (and of course our specific interest, trust in Misplaced Pages) are extremely worrisome, particularly as I agree that for many who are doing it, the motive does appears to be the undermining of civic norms and democracy. I also agree with Tryptofish in a part that you didn't quote: "In a narrow sense, it's technically true that if you "out" yourself, there's no point in anyone else doing it. But once your identity is known, you become vulnerable to all of the kinds of real-life harassment that doxed people find themselves subjected to. It doesn't matter, in that regard, how they found out your identity." That's a sad balancing act that no Wikipedian should have to face.

As a side note, I don't think that the reliability of the Heritage Foundation as a source is particularly related to these despicable actions. Whether they should be considered a reliable source in some matters is really unrelated to whether they hate us or not.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 14:14, 10 January 2025 (UTC)

Suddenly ANI going to court to get user-data seems like the model of gentlemanly behavior. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 11:51, 11 January 2025 (UTC)

That's a sad balancing act that no Wikipedian should have to face. Unfortunately, the scales have been inexorably slipping out from beneath the foundation's abilities or willingness to protect its volunteers for my entire wiki-career. There's no balancing force at work. The private equity community has made gadflies out of what we used to label reliable local news media; Alphabet and Meta are actively coopting precision, privacy, and the public domain, while attempting to minimize the effectiveness of good faith actors like Internet Archive. Now suddenly en.wikipedians are facing the sort of personal threats long experienced by volunteers at ru.wiki and zh.wiki. The forces now arrayed against free information don't need to be actively coordinating in order to rapidly bring us to 2+2=5 territory. Any established editor could reasonably see Western culture has been under relentless attack for a long time. Here comes the Heritage Foundation's leaks, hot off Heritage's bangup release of Project 2025, leaking articles through partisan outlets apparently intended to make it appear (in one case) the ADL's recent reliability downgrade at RSNP was anyone else's fault but the ADL's own writings and actions. The news of such activity appears to threaten the community members directly and personally. BusterD (talk) 13:26, 11 January 2025 (UTC)

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