Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 21:06, 5 June 2013

Jimbo welcomes your comments and updates – he has an open door policy.

I will be taking a major wikibreak from July 1 to July 21. During that time I intend to essentially close this page, and I intend to avoid all Misplaced Pages work other than anything urgent or important that Arbcom members ask me to do.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 10:57, 26 May 2013 (UTC)

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Misplaced Pages Renaissance of improvements

I think we always suspected, some day, there would be a WP Renaissance, or Awakening, where prior ideas would resurface with renewed enthusiasm, as if it were the Golden Age of Misplaced Pages to be re-guilded. I suspect the time has arrived. Previously, I had been lamenting the dwindling interest, when I noticed all pages from the Catholic Encyclopedia had been verified as complete WP articles in 2012, as 100% done. However, during the past few weeks, I have noticed a fascinating trend: several new people are requesting fixes to problems abandoned 2-4 years ago. It's not just me re-thinking what could have been fixed, in prior years (such as 2-reply edit-conflicts fixed by auto-merging as FIFO order). Instead, people (some as IP editors) are "re-inventing the wheel" to fix many separate problems from past years. For example:

• One in New York noted kg-to-lb conversions are sloppy, so 62 kg (137 lb) should be "(137 lb)" as planned 4 years ago (but forgotten).
• One in Bratislava noted Swiss flag icon oversized everywhere: should be smaller 17px: , as asked 2 years ago.
• A regular user noted the wp:FRS list of RfC reviewers was halting at 60-second timeout, as during the past 2 years, so I fixed it to run in 4 seconds.

When the new users requested the improvements, they seem totally unaware how the same (or similar) suggestions were made to the problems in 2009-2011, but dropped/lost or ignored in the confusion. Now, I am wondering if some of those new people will want to restart many of the 2,000 dormant wp:WikiProjects, which have faded since 2009. Possible explanations: (1) the Lua-based cite templates, running 13x faster, have allowed people to update major articles in 7 seconds (formerly "28 sec" per edit), and now they think this place is easy to improve; or (2) people have finished most simple fixes so the major issues are what remains to fix; or (3) the remaining people are not as negative and so new people offer more suggestions, or (4) what do you think is making so many people suggest major improvements, again? -Wikid77 (talk) 05:24, 1 June 2013 (UTC)

Or perhaps the negative responses to suggestions just take longer to arrive these days? -Wikid77 13:04, 2 June 2013 (UTC)

Of course, none of the three examples you give count as "major" improvements, just small fixes. I hadn't noticed a drop or rise in these, such things have always happened, so perhaps the right answer is 5) selection bias? Fram (talk) 07:41, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

Considering the non-controversial fixes: It's easy to say you will fix something, a lot harder to actually do it. It does make me wonder if an issue tracking style system might be better suited for these sorts of discussions. A wiki is a poor format for making sure things don't get forgotten. Gigs (talk) 16:48, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

• Issue-tracking system would help prioritize major issues: That is a great idea, and I think if each problem had been tracked, from the outset, within an issue-tracking system, then they would have been fixed much sooner, years sooner, as in each case:

• Swiss flag icon needing 17px height: Even the related Template:CHE had the Swiss flag icon (now in over 27,300 pages) resized as 17px over 5 years ago, and I noticed 20px was too large, and other editors discussed it, but the fix affects multiple templates and was dropped.
• The kg-to-lb fix was logged/forgotten 4 years ago: Among the top, most-used measurement conversions, kg/lb, are in the top 5, where Template:Convert/kg is used in over 60,100 pages, inside many of the Whose-Who of major articles, compared to Convert/cm in 26,825 pages.
• Common WP:FRS was slow for 2 years: I remember the wp:FRS list (wp:Feedback request service) has been popular, as viewed ~30x times per day (as compared to wp:Admin with 35 pageviews per day). The prior slow speed was a known issue, but not on a tracking list of problems to improve.

In all three cases, each issue would have remained near the very top of priorities, but they were in minor or busy talk-pages, where other newer issues were getting the attention, and people were coping, such as using {{CHE}} with 17px height when the {{flag|Switzerland}} icon was too large in the 27,300 pages, or using Convert/kg to override the poor default precision of 3-pound swings among 60,100 pages. So, yes, an issue-tracking system would have fixed each issue much sooner. The distractions which eclipsed each of the 3 complex issues occurred weekly, not daily, and all 3 could have been fixed by techniques known 3-4 years ago if reconsidered each day. -Wikid77 (talk) 19:11, 3 June, 04:05, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

• A list of major issues for each template/report would work: Although it would be great to have an issues-tracking system, I think that even if there had been a written list of the major issues, expanded for each template set or report page, then that could have helped remind people to keep reassessing the unresolved problems. Perhaps there could be a subpage name, such as "Template_talk:Xxx/Issues_list" which could contain a simple sortable table of each issue noted, with link to each talk-page/archive thread, plus date, status, suggested importance level, and extra note. Even such a simple list could be periodically reviewed, at least every 3 months, so that the above problems would not be left unresolved for 2-4 years. In each table, the "status" column would indicate completion, and the "importance level" could be increased if a problem was noted as still causing much grief months later. In the case of multiple similar templates, then a common template-talk page could be used to keep the central issues list. -Wikid77 02:35, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

Jaron Lanier

Some of the critics here might be interested in the work of Jaron Lanier, who is just now giving a talk on BookTV (CSPAN2;booktv.org ) in which he made a few small remarks continuing his criticism of Misplaced Pages, but in a broader context that makes us clearly a villain. As it happens, I feel that like so many social critics he identifies some problems correctly but gives entirely the wrong solutions, but his notion is that open source and projects like Misplaced Pages have contributed to a system in which the middle class is disappearing in favor of the concentration of wealth in the hands of "the people who own the biggest computers", and the way to fix this is with a system of universal micro-payments, in which anyone reading your Facebook page pays you a tiny fee, but you pay a fee likewise whenever you read. I feel that this would worsen, not improve the problem. In any case, whatever our side, Misplaced Pages needs to take on such criticisms of its social role. We need people to instead be bolder about proposing the end of the copyright/patent system and the lottery of wealth it creates. We need to find consistency between Misplaced Pages and the broader world, but I think they should follow the best of our principles (free information) not the other way around! Wnt (talk) 01:42, 2 June 2013 (UTC)

• Perhaps make Misplaced Pages more factual in tone such as Concise WP: I am thinking that creating the concise "Xxx (micro)" pages for each article "Xxx" might shift the focus back to simple, fact-based writing, with less room for the POV-pushing which has given Misplaced Pages a slant on issues. As readers view the combined entries of numerous small micro-pages, then the diversity of information would be likely to dispell notions of bias in Misplaced Pages operations. I wonder if people think Misplaced Pages "dictates" the acceptable truth about whatever topics, as somehow silencing the opposing voices. -Wikid77 13:04, 2 June 2013 (UTC)

Nay, that wasn't Lanier's point. With the free culture movement, people do work for free, and then companies come along with huge amounts of capital and figure out a way to leverage the information thus provided to get even more capital. The question is, do we follow Lanier's advice and dive back into that rigged game, trying to extract our $0.00002 for writing a blog post while paying real dollars for the well-marketed media creations, or do we recognize that just as we have presently a very harsh, very arbitrary, very government-dependent mechanism by which people are forcibly taxed for royalties to pay to the wealthy who can control content distribution mechanisms, so we could, if we mobilized the power, simply demand higher taxes on this wealth and the redistribution of wealth to the masses in recognition for their uncredited contributions, and/or abolish the mechanisms that formally create business monopolies. When everyone is free to copy anything, to use any business model or sequence any gene without being told that is the sole privilege of whoever had the biggest business operation to get the first one done the fastest, there should be more equality than when most ways to make money are the legal property of a few. Wnt (talk) 13:55, 2 June 2013 (UTC)

Lanier's suggestion of payment sounds like it would be of great benefit of those who control how that money is collected and distributed and perhaps secondly to those whose works are very widely read. I didnt see the video but I read his WP page. He forgets that the function of an encyclopedia is to remix and disseminate well-established information, not create something new.Thelmadatter (talk) 18:50, 2 June 2013 (UTC)

We have a phrase for that. And many ways of fighting back. John lilburne (talk) 20:50, 2 June 2013 (UTC)

Hmmm... after we finish deciding who owns "Masai" we'll have to figure out who owns "America". Why do I have a feeling I'm not on the list? Wnt (talk) 23:36, 2 June 2013 (UTC)

Well I'm pretty sure that it isn't some clothing company. Culture has been enclosed by capitalist interests, just as they enclosed the land in the 17th and 18th century. The means by which they have done this is to get tools to believe that 'freedom to copy' is anti-business. It is not. It simply destroys the value to the creator, the individuals, and places that value in the hands of corporate interests. In the digital age those are the ones that control the adnetworks, and the owners of sites with millions of pages of links to content. No individual creator can compete with that. John lilburne (talk) 06:50, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

• WP articles about those business-model concepts and freedom: I am curious what articles have been written about the social controls and freedoms, as WP has page "free culture movement" as with "Drug liberalization" and "Latin American drug legalization" to inform our readers. I think one article noted early legalization efforts in Colombia showed, when partially legalized, cocaine addiction rates rose to only 5% from prior 2% but not sure medical impacts were covered. The WP "Cocaine" article had noted some medical effects, as some long-term cocaine users suffered brain deterioration similar to Alzheimer's, but not sure coverage remains long because formerly the medical articles were gutted back to popular talk about those topics, perhaps as reaction to excessive "med-speak" in texts. Anyway, I guess we could connect Internet use to redistribution of wealth, but some websites provide information, at home, that formerly required purchase of expensive printed encyclopedias, and that ties to "knowledge is power" etc. Not sure which articles cover those topics. -Wikid77 (talk) 00:32, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

I guess one related article is "Redistribution of wealth" as obvious, plus we have "Crowd sourcing" to leverage work by others. -Wikid77 19:11, 3 June, 04:05, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

We'd have to be careful not to pollute article space with our biases against the current patent and copyright system, though. Gigs (talk) 18:05, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

• Well, I think people have been mentioning major topics, so the WP articles would be reporting the views as noted in the "preponderance of wp:RS reliable sources" such as for the "Occupy Wall Street" article (1,650 pageviews/day), with text kept within wp:NPOV limits. -Wikid77 02:35, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

• Our coverage of OWS is terrible last I checked, with dozens of articles for local chapters that are little more than a monthly meeting in some cheap meeting space these days, and were barely notable during the peak of OWS. Gigs (talk) 20:23, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

Article's creation

Have you ever created an article since you found Misplaced Pages?--Grizoulas (talk) 09:21, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

Yes. This gives an indication. Note well, though, that most of these are either redirects or article re-creations after I deleted them for some serious (sometimes legal) problem.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 12:26, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

Frank Scalice

I noticed that you deleted and recreated Frank Scalice a few years ago. The deletion reason was "sourcing problem". Could you elaborate a bit to indicate what kind of sourcing problem justified such a drastic measure? Fram (talk) 12:37, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

For those just coming to this conversation, note that this is ongoing harassment by Fram continuing from a thread that I deleted in which he made insults about low quality article creations by me. This is not, therefore, an unmotivated inquiry, but trolling. If anyone wonders what kind of editor I think is most responsible for declining participation in Misplaced Pages, it is this: the kind who goes around digging up old stuff, with no factual basis, to insult and harass people. Fram, you should be ashamed and disappointed in yourself as a human being.

To answer the question: There was a legal complaint that the entry was plagiarized from Jay Robert Nash's Encyclopedia of World Crime. Upon investigation, we found that a number of entries related to organized crime figures either were directly plagiarized from that source or were closely paraphrased enough to suggest plagiarism. Additionally, I was informed by the author of that source that he had deliberately placed erroneous information into his encyclopedia to catch plagiarists, which to my mind destroys the credibility of the work as a legitimate source of any kind. There was a cleanup effort involving several editors, including me, and this is one of the ones that I handled. This was the right thing to do, of course.

I won't hold my breath waiting for your apology, but know that you should be making one pronto.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 16:08, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

Perhaps you could have used the correct deletion rationale then, so that other editors don't have to guess what the problem is? A significant portion of your admin actions (here and on Commons) were incorrect, so it's only natural that other ones are questioned as well and not taken at face value (certainly when there is not enough information there to guess what the actual reason may have been). Perhaps this time it was justified (from what I can see from Google Books, I can detect no plagiarism though). That doesn't mean that you are above criticism or that your actions can't be questioned, even though you are the Founder. It is obvious you don't like this, but it's a situation you have brought upon yourself. I do like how your higher civility standards, which you promised for this talk page, only seem to apply when it suits you though. Nothing new, but still amusing. It's probably for the best that you don't hold your breath for that apology, it wouldn't be healthy. Just like we don't hold our breath waiting for all the things you promised to deliver the past few months. Fram (talk) 20:00, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

I did use the correct deletion rationale. This action was not problematic in any way and was the part of a concerted effort to resolve a real problem. Go away now from my talk page and never come back.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 20:07, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

DYK for Sale — Cheap!

Begging your pardon for the intrusion during vacation time, but here's one for the in-basket when you get back... A link of an article brought to attention on the Utterly Without Redeeming Value Troll Site by a Wikipedian unfortunately banned from this page:

Tony Ahn & Co. Puts Daphne Osena-Paez on the Misplaced Pages Main Page

. . . “I reached a market I never thought I could,” wrote Ms. Oseña-Paez in an entry on her blog entitled My Misplaced Pages. “You could only imagine what kind of readership you’ll get once you appear on the Misplaced Pages main page. It was overwhelming.” In six hours, Daphne’s entry racked up over 17,000 views, giving her a new kind of international exposure she has never had before. Her entry was the 4th most viewed “Did You Know?” section article in the month of June, viewed more than 955 other articles that also were featured in the same section.

To date, Tony Ahn has been successful at every attempt to place a client on the Misplaced Pages main page. “We don’t charge extra for this, nor do we guarantee placement. I write high-quality articles that naturally lend themselves to main page placement. Getting my clients on the Misplaced Pages main page is just an added bonus both for me and my clients.” . . .

It is time to get serious about shutting down the abuse of DYK, which has been brewing for a long time. See you in a few weeks... Carrite (talk) 15:46, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

If it is a proper article passing GNG and worth of DYK, what's the problem with that? I know paid editing is discouraged, to use an euphemism, but as long as it just produces articles compliant with policies and guidelines, I see no problem. Perhaps it's her that should read WP:PROUD. --Cyclopia 15:52, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

Cyclopedia, that's a very naive and mistaken view of the world. Tony Ahn's actions are a disgrace.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 16:10, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

Jimbo, I wish that for once you would not pass judgement until it's absolutely clear what all the facts are. You've done this before and it's not been helpful. If I was in your position, I'd say "let's get to the bottom of this, work out if any wrongdoing has happened and work out how to fix it", rather than metaphorically lighting burning torches and handing them out to a would-be mob. Can we approach this calmly rather than getting shouty about it from the outset? Prioryman (talk) 16:22, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Jimbo, I don't know in detail who Tony Ahn is or what he did honestly, he may be the worst enemy of WP as far as I know. I am talking about this article: Does it need to be deleted? Is the topic non-notable? Then let's bring it at AFD. Is it biased because of paid editing? Then let's discuss this on the appropriate venues to seek NPOV. Is it none of these two things? Then what are we discussing about? If this is naive, I accept it, but then please explain. --Cyclopia 16:26, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

Tony Ahn has actually been one of the most straightforward PR people writing Misplaced Pages content for clients. He's invited scrutiny, he hasn't hidden behind throwaway user-names, so far as I'm aware. I don't blame him personally, this is a structural problem here... The point is this: no matter what one thinks about paid writing of WP content (honest people may differ here), there needs to be a proverbial chinese wall segregating that content from DYK — absolutely incorruptible hardcore anti-PR types putting the kibosh upon attempts to use the main page to promote products, be they vacation destinations or record albums or celebrities seeking exposure to further their careers. That does not exist now and we have seen the results. Whether this happened two years ago or two days a go (per Prioryman below) is irrelevant... The fact is that Misplaced Pages's mainpage's multi-millions of page views per year are being turned into a commodity by the PR industry. That must stop. Carrite (talk) 16:36, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

Why does it need to stop? If it leads to more well-sourced articles, I'd say it needs to be encouraged. Or does it make the encyclopedia worse? Really, what's wrong in having that article featuring in DYK? --Cyclopia 16:54, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

Well, on one level I must admit that I'm not keen to see DYK being used for overt PR purposes, but on the other hand, as others have said, if articles meet all the requirements then I can't really see a justification for excluding them. Misplaced Pages is non-commercial, true, but that doesn't mean to say that commercial interests shouldn't contribute to Misplaced Pages as long as content requirements are met. Jimbo has after all been doing a lot of work with the PR industry to make exactly that scenario possible. Prioryman (talk) 16:56, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

There needs to be both a quality review for DYK pieces (which exists now, at least nominally) and a Conflict of Interest/Promotion review, which does not. My opinion, of course... Carrite (talk) 17:19, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

What I do not understand is the advantage that the second review would add to DYK and to the encyclopedia. --Cyclopia 17:33, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

It's not quite so simple because it involves delving into editors' motives. I don't think an article that was a blatant advertisement would get through DYK anyway because it would fail the NPOV requirements. That leaves articles which may have intentionally been written for a promotional purpose, or may simply have an unintended promotional side-effect. For instance, List of songs recorded by Dido ran not long ago. I don't think it had any promotional intent, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if it prompted someone to buy some of her songs from iTunes or whatever. I'm not keen on the idea of judging the quality of DYKs on the basis of someone else's speculations about an editor's motives. It fundamentally violates the principle of assuming good faith and there is far too much danger of getting it wrong, as we've seen with the Wikipediocracy-driven harassment of anyone contributing content about Gibraltar. I would however think it a good idea if people writing articles for PR purposes would disclose that at the start of a DYK (or GA or FA) review so that extra attention can be paid to NPOV issues (which, to answer Cyclopedia's question, would be the main advantage of such a disclosure). Prioryman (talk) 17:37, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

why is everyone calling me Cyclopedia? :) --Cyclopia 18:27, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

not sure, but you need to sack that PR agent of yours at once.Martinevans123 (talk) 18:56, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

My question is, isn't *everything* promotional at some level? Unless DYK is to be a stream of articles about bad things and bad people, one could argue that just about any article about anything is promotional. Article about an artist who's been dead for 100 years? Driving up his work's auction prices! Article about an obscure historic building in a small American town? Promoting tourism for that community! Article about an endangered fish? Shilling for the environmental group trying to save its habitat! What would be the guidelines for a "this is too promotional/this isn't" review?

I'm interested to know because I had a perfectly-innocent hook about a wilderness area turned down because it described the place as a "peaceful" place for kayakers. If describing a wilderness area as "peaceful" is too promotional, where in heck is the line going to be drawn for anything else?

The DYK rules already require that the article be neutral - if that's not being enforced enough, the solution isn't to add another layer of bureaucratic review, it's to make sure DYK reviewers are doing serious NPOV checks of the article. I would also support a prohibition on paid-edited articles being nominated for DYK. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 20:16, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

The weird thing is that I've lambasted about this issue more than once in regard to Square Enix software topics, which have been entitled to a Featured Ad every six months for the past seven years or so. But nobody cares about that - all they care about are DYKs that last a quarter of the time and take a tenth of the space. (They don't care about those awful feature ad-images either, pictures of phones and nobodies that have nothing for them except they're the best image of that product) Wnt (talk) 16:50, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

The weirder thing is that you never reply to the replies about your inaccurate complaints. Or, at least, I've seen you complain about this twice and fail to reply twice. Third time's the charm, perhaps. Bencherlite 19:40, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

I've had a look at this, and it seems to be pretty old - it appeared on DYK on 17 June 2011, two years ago. This is stale and then some. But there's something that puzzles me about it - looking at the "what links here" page, I can't see any link to a DYK review which one would normally expect. Who reviewed this and when? Prioryman (talk) 16:13, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

By the way, Tony Ahn is User:Noraft (no outing; he discloses it on his user page). He seems to be pretty up front about being a PR. I'll notify him of this discussion. Prioryman (talk) 16:24, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

A PR agency might be able do more than one kind of sleazy thing. One possibility would be to push through an article for a nobody and get paid for it. Another would be to slip in ahead of a crowd of people and claim credit for what would have happened anyway. Given that Daphne was the first Filipino UNICEF Special Advocate for Children and a "celebrity" in 2010, I would find the second possibility more plausible than the first - and that one is not something we have to do anything about; that's between them and their clients. In any case, I suspect the number of clicks had something to do with her picture (as we have an unfortunate scarcity of more explicit Main Page images...) but I'm not sure how to look up the statistics on that. Because of her involvement with UNICEF I would urge people to show mercy! Wnt (talk) 16:23, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

I would agree that the subject absolutely appears to pass the notability test, by a fair way. This disposes of the question of whether the subject is worth an article, but not whether the article itself is up to scratch. Prioryman (talk) 16:26, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

The DYK review is here, to answer your insinuation that this was somehow an abuse of process. You might also want to see the discussion here. 78.149.172.10 (talk) 16:35, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

I agree with Prioryman (or at least what I think he is suggesting) that DYK editors can (or should be able to) deal with articles on the basis of existing policies--if an article doesn't pass the GNG or some other criterion, then it should be failed anyway, regardless of whether someone was being paid to edit it. The potential problem that comes up is that an editor who's being paid to put an article on DYK might of course fight back more vehemently than another editor if his/her article gets challenged. But I don't see how that's any worse or different than a Randy in Boise who fights back vehemently because he believes really hard in whatever thing he's trying to post, or for some other personal reason. Paid editors, just like nut-job editors, might have undesirable personal reasons for trying to push edits through, but in the end if they learn how to play by the rules and not let those personal reasons cause them to create content that goes against policy, it shouldn't make a difference. rʨanaɢ (talk) 16:59, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

That is pretty much what I'm suggesting. If it meets GNG and all the other content guidelines then I don't really see how we can be justified in rejecting it because the contributor may have a commercial motive for writing it. Consider the following scenarios:

• I'm a fan of Daphne Oseña-Paez and I write an article because I think she's the best person ever.
• I'm someone who's interested in Filipino culture and I write an article on Daphne Oseña-Paez to document someone who's a celebrity there.
• I'm a PR who writes an article on Daphne Oseña-Paez because she's my client.
• I can't stand Daphne Oseña-Paez and I write an article because I want to tell the world about what she's doing.

Now suppose the article I write under any of those scenarios meets all the necessary GNG and DYK requirements. How do my motives invalidate the article meeting those requirements? (Thinking back to the old maxim of focusing on the content rather than the contributor.) Prioryman (talk) 17:12, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

One fairly recent front page DYK appearance was for Ingrid Chua-Go. Ahn stated on the talk page, "This article was created by me I'm Tony Ahn (talk) for the subject without monetary or other consideration...", although on the subject's blog, she has returned the favour by posting what can only be described as an ad for his services. Delicious carbuncle (talk) 19:44, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

Wikimedia Philipines

Jimbo, as you will see here, Tony Ahn is standing for election as a trustee of Wikimedia Philippines. His statement says in part "I was asked by a couple members of that Board to run". Is this another WMUK crisis waiting to happen? Is the WMF doing anything to reduce the number of marketers and self-promoters getting into positions of power in these groups? Delicious carbuncle (talk) 19:34, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

I think you should bring it to the attention of the WMF. And to potential voters.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 20:08, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

Sorry, Jimbo, I sometimes forget that you don't represent the WMF here. What is the best way to bring this to their attention? Delicious carbuncle (talk) 20:54, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

Criticism as "vandalism"

Does anyone find it a bit embarrassing how critical commentary on this page is removed and called "vandalism", and the user is blocked? But, if you're a "registered" malcontent, you can say things like "Jimbo, please shut up for once", and that will be accepted without consequences? - 70.194.133.72 (talk) 19:16, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

It was not called "vandalism", it was called "trolling". Asking Jimbo to shut up may be "rude" and "obnoxious", but it is not "trolling". Looie496 (talk) 19:41, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

Except that it was called vandalism. - 70.194.133.72 (talk) 19:53, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

It was appropriate to remove the comment. You might call it trolling, you might call in vandalism, but in any event it was unhelpful and not welcome.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 20:09, 5 June 2013 (UTC)