Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 19:20, 14 October 2014

Jimbo welcomes your comments and updates. He holds the founder's seat on the Wikimedia Foundation's Board of Trustees. The three trustees elected as community representatives until July 2015 are SJ, Phoebe, and Raystorm. The Wikimedia Foundation Senior Community Advocate is Maggie Dennis.

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It didn't make any difference...

As a follow-up to this discussion, here it is two-and-one-half months later and I am quitting Misplaced Pages. I announced it at WikiProject:Editor Retention, Jimbo Wales, if you care. (Though Eric Corbett is involved, so you might want to stay away.) Lightbreather (talk) 01:47, 13 October 2014 (UTC)

I'm not really involved in this discussion other than my single comment, but I was lurking in it. I believe that you should read the near end of Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Editor_Retention#Been_thinking_of_quitting, then Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Editor_Retention#What_it_boils_down_to, and then read Lightbreather's last section at the bottom, for context. Tutelary (talk) 01:51, 13 October 2014 (UTC)

For the record, Lightbreather's implication that a particular editor is responsible for their retirement is false. Everyone following the noticeboards has seen LB's frequent comments over the last few months—comments that have falsely accused certain editors of personal attacks, and comments which have not gathered more than a tiny support at any of the forums tried. Johnuniq (talk) 03:09, 13 October 2014 (UTC)

Johnuniq, I have been harassed and attacked but response at the notice boards has been divided (not "tiny.") More importantly, there is small but powerful group that believes the civility policy is ridiculous, and they defend their “valued contributors" from blocks. For the record, yes: Eric Corbett is one of the primary reasons that I am leaving. Lightbreather (talk) 13:54, 14 October 2014 (UTC)

The same Eric Corbett has been a primary reason why I am staying. I decided that I - not other people - decide about leaving or staying. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 14:09, 14 October 2014 (UTC)

• Lightbreather, so far (and without looking) I have found your "announcements" that you are quitting on the Talkpage on the GGTK ArbCom Evidence page (Section header "I am quitting"), on the Editor Retention Talk page , here on Jimbo's talk page, and yes on your own talk page. Anyone would think you were trying to make maximum "political" capital out of your "quitting".DeCausa (talk) 14:34, 14 October 2014 (UTC)

For the record, I am a woman and a feminist and after several years of editing and missing the sort of friendly discussions that I have with my friends (all feminists, of course, including the men), I found Eric's talk page and have watched it ever since. I have found Eric and his friends to be the most intelligent, hardest working, least bigoted, and very important to me, the most fun-loving group I've seen on Misplaced Pages. Gandydancer (talk) 14:36, 14 October 2014 (UTC)

DeCausa, one could think that, yes. In my case, here's how it happened: I was involved in discussions at Editor Retention when I decided to quit, so I announced it there. Then Eric Corbett decided to leave this message as a parting gift. That made me decide that I would take time to add evidence about him at the GGTF arbcom, but after doing that, I thought I ought to let participants there know that I am leaving. My own page? I think that's pretty typical - besides, somone at Editor Retention suggested it. Here? Of all it's the most likely to be "political" (as you put it), but since I took the time to tell Jimbo, at the end of July, how harassed and attacked I felt by the rampant incivility at Misplaced Pages, it seemed only fitting to tell him now that despite the lengthy discussions here and elsewhere, nothing had really changed. Think what you will, but that's how the announcements transpired. Lightbreather (talk) 14:48, 14 October 2014 (UTC)

That Eric Corbett is still allowed to edit Misplaced Pages is a clear governance failure.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 15:05, 14 October 2014 (UTC)

Actually, it is a reflection of community consensus, with which you do not happen to agree. Carrite (talk) 17:34, 14 October 2014 (UTC)

I heard "governance", I heard "toxic personalities" before. My English is limited but both terms don't belong in my concept of a 💕, --Gerda Arendt (talk) 18:53, 14 October 2014 (UTC)

I do speak English as a first language and my concept of 'content creators' doesn't meet that of lauded editors who summarise non-academic popular histories (or slim academic journal articles) through to so-called 'Featured Articles' then patrol them as if they're made of gold but, hey, yeah, this is a '💕'. AnonNep (talk) 19:02, 14 October 2014 (UTC)

Is there actually any chance that you could stop pontificating about civility on Misplaced Pages, and in the next sentence being incivil to a Misplaced Pages editor who you have banned from your talk page and thus can't reply? The word "hypocrisy" looms very large here. Black Kite (talk) 19:20, 14 October 2014 (UTC)

Comment on Announcement

On the one hand, I think that Lightbreather is drama-mongering. On the other hand, I think that Lightbreather is correct that there is a small cadre that believes that the civility policy is ridiculous and restrictive, and protects those who have reputations as excellent content creators from blocks. I have said here in the recent past that, if the WMF actually wants to enhance civility, it needs to take some sort of action, because the enforcement of civility by the English Misplaced Pages "community" is not consistent with the objectives of the WMF. As Carrite notes below, the WMF has resources. Robert McClenon (talk) 15:02, 14 October 2014 (UTC)

But what I don't say below is that WMF resources should be invested in a professional Police of Civility (let's call them "the PC" for short). This entire issue is overblown. You are correct that Lightbreather is drama-mongering. It is the drama-mongers that are driving this entire issue, not the genuinely solid Wikipedians who can be jackasses from time to time when they get poked with a sharp stick... Carrite (talk) 17:38, 14 October 2014 (UTC)

I need some help

I would like to discuss you with my current situation with things. And it has gotten to the point that i do not trust the administration system itself. If you could hear me out, i would like some help in the matter. the highest i would possibly go is the arbitration committee. Over time, more and more of these occurrences have occurred with these members, however as the same situation occurred, more and more members have noticed the punitive bias certain members have grouped.

With what has happened and very limited both in knowledge and time to get back into Misplaced Pages, my options are limited (no matter how many people claim i have options, they are simply not in my situation). i would really like to return to Misplaced Pages, but only if there is an investigation behind the history behind certain recurring members throughout my history in Misplaced Pages, and perhaps some additional comments from members who also noticed this form of bias. If i'm right about this, this could be a major hole in how the administrative action system works.

If you are free and interested to know more, i would be willing to give further details. If you're too busy to take a look at this, it would be good to at least know you are and perhaps point me to someone with arbitration (that i can trust). But i wuld really appreciate it if i can also mention other editors who have noticed similar action. Lucia Black (talk) 08:47, 14 October 2014 (UTC)

Jennifer Lawrence naked on Misplaced Pages again

Jimbo, exactly as I predicted, someone has made stolen naked images appear on Misplaced Pages's biography of Jennifer Lawrence again. I don't credit myself with any special powers of prognostication, it was just obvious that this would happen again if we didn't find a way to prevent it. Dozens of female celebrities have recently had stolen private images leaked to the public. Unless we find a way to stop this, we can look forward to it happening over and over. And the remarks on Talk:Jennifer Lawrence show that readers do notice and aren't happy. What are we doing to fix this? Legit Alternate Account (talk) 14:30, 14 October 2014 (UTC)

I highly recommend that we move the image that we want in the article onto English Misplaced Pages and link to it locally rather than at Commons. In this way, we can make sure that at least English Misplaced Pages lives up to our ethical standards. This should be the case unless and until Commons does the right thing and protects the image on their end. It is a terrible loophole that something critical on Misplaced Pages is left vulnerable to shenanigans on commons.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 14:38, 14 October 2014 (UTC)

The infobox image has been fully protected on Commons for several days. The other images were fully protected about 12 hours ago, and are set to stay so until April. You know, if someone had just asked a Commons admin to do that.... -mattbuck (Talk) 14:44, 14 October 2014 (UTC)

Why weren't the other images protected after the first time this happened? Legit Alternate Account (talk) 14:50, 14 October 2014 (UTC)

JImbo, that's fine for Jennifer Lawrence, but what about the literally dozens of other celebrities involved in the recent leaks? And what stops naked Jennifer Lawrence pictures showing up on unrelated articles? Legit Alternate Account (talk) 14:50, 14 October 2014 (UTC)

Apparently you can just ask Mattbuck to protect them and... problem solved. If that turns out not to be true (I won't prejudge the question) then I recommend moving them to English Misplaced Pages and protecting them here.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 14:53, 14 October 2014 (UTC)

Post a list of articles whose pictures you want protected at commons:COM:AN and we'll take care of it. -mattbuck (Talk) 14:59, 14 October 2014 (UTC)

I avoid participating at commons due to the blatant harassment of me that is tolerated there.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 15:01, 14 October 2014 (UTC)

I wasn't stating that you in particular had to do it, but if someone could come up with a list of what articles/images need protecting, that would be helpful. -mattbuck (Talk) 15:45, 14 October 2014 (UTC)

What is your suggestion to stop this? --NeilN 14:51, 14 October 2014 (UTC)

Beyond not allowing uploads, there's not really any way to avoid it. -mattbuck (Talk) 14:59, 14 October 2014 (UTC)

That's obviously untrue.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 15:00, 14 October 2014 (UTC)

???. What's to stop editors from uploading pictures and adding them to wherever they like? There's no magic solution, just like there's no magic wand to wave away vandalism. --NeilN 15:04, 14 October 2014 (UTC)

I have to ask why we (or commons) allow images to be replaced in this way, without any checks. It is an obvious vulnerability, and we appear to have no mechanism whatsoever available to detect it. Why not? There must be software available that can compare old and new images to see whether they are similar (reverse image searches clearly work that way) and the occasional false positive would be no more problematic than those from our existing anti-text-vandalism bots. And if we can't do that, perhaps we should consider some kind of mechanism for allerting those watching articles using images that the image has been changed - an automated post to the article talk page would be better than nothing. AndyTheGrump (talk) 15:04, 14 October 2014 (UTC)

Is there anyway I can help out?Mirror Freak My Guestbook 15:06, 14 October 2014 (UTC)

It seems that if someone can get a list of images in 'Fappening' affected articles to Mattbuck, he'll protect them at commons.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 15:09, 14 October 2014 (UTC)

Have we tried to compare the names of the photos that the vandals are uploading? There may be some kind of similarity between them.Mirror Freak My Guestbook 15:12, 14 October 2014 (UTC)

Changing file names is trivial. --NeilN 15:14, 14 October 2014 (UTC)

Such a mechanism would be very helpful, Andy. Some easy way to detect that stuff certainly. I mean, I have some 82k pages on my Commons watchlist, which is enough that I can't actually edit the raw watchlist anymore, but even if all those were images it's not even close to 1% of Commons. Most images likely are watched by their dead account uploader and no one else. -mattbuck (Talk) 15:50, 14 October 2014 (UTC)

The situation on Commons

The situation at Commons and the situation with civility in English Misplaced Pages are similar in the sense that a Wikimedia community has gotten out of line with WMF guidance. In the case of Commons, it is apparently simply out of control, and maybe WMF needs to intervene. In the case of civility in the English Misplaced Pages, reasonable editors can disagree, but the community is ignoring or disregarding the (nominally overarching) WMF policy. It appears that the WMF can't or won't enforce its own policies. Robert McClenon (talk) 15:13, 14 October 2014 (UTC)

How does this have anything to do with the Lawrence situation? --NeilN 15:16, 14 October 2014 (UTC)

Robert, could you please explain quite what you're referring to regarding civility and Commons? -mattbuck (Talk) 15:51, 14 October 2014 (UTC)

I am referring to two different situations that are related only in that two Wikimedia communities behave in ways that are out of line with WMF intent and the intent of Jimbo Wales. The civility issue doesn't have to do with Commons, but with the English Misplaced Pages. WMF and Jimbo Wales favor high standards of civility. The English Misplaced Pages has low standards of civility. Some editors essentially get a pass on civility. Very little can be done about it, because if one of them is blocked, the block is reversed by another admin, and the restoration of a block would be punitive rather than preventive. Jimbo Wales expresses concern about the deteriorating civility situation. There has been discussion of the use of WMF resources to address the issue. I know less about the Commons situation, but it is my understanding in the specific case that a legitimate image of the actress was replaced (vandalism) with a stolen nude image of the actress. Has the Commons editor who replaced the image been blocked or banned from Commons? The two situations are not related, except that they appear to illustrate disconnects between WMF policy or intent and the actual environment in the Wikimedia community. Robert McClenon (talk) 16:02, 14 October 2014 (UTC)

If you know less about the Commons situation, why comment it was out of control? A quick check would have shown you the editors were blocked with no fuss. --NeilN 16:12, 14 October 2014 (UTC)

Thank you for blocking the vandals. I will add that part of my comparison of the two situations is that in both cases Jimbo Wales complains, but either doesn't do anything or doesn't do anything obvious, although he has reserved powers in English Misplaced Pages that he doesn't use. (Does he have reserved powers on Commons?) Robert McClenon (talk) 16:43, 14 October 2014 (UTC)

Clarification: I had nothing to do with blocking the vandals. That was the admins on Commons. Jimbo has the founder flag on all Wikimedia projects. --NeilN 16:49, 14 October 2014 (UTC)

Thanks to whoever blocked the vandals. Robert McClenon (talk) 17:38, 14 October 2014 (UTC)

Wikimedia Foundation's FY2013-14 financial report

WMF released their audited financial report for Fiscal Year 2013-2014 (ending June 30, 2014) yesterday. The pdf for the 14-page report may be found HERE. I was extremely surprised to see on page 9 what appears to be a new line item among the foundation's investments — "mortgage-based securities" — consisting of just over $6 million in value, or about a quarter of the foundation's total investments. Investment in corporate bonds has also nearly doubled over the previous fiscal year, to about $7 million. At the same time, investment in low-risk/low-return treasury securities and municipal bonds has fallen from over $9.6 million to about $7.9 million. I am not a financial analyst, but it appears to me that WMF's asset manager has made a decision to become more aggressive in investment strategy. My question is this: is this an appropriate strategy for a public charity — absorbing additional investment risk in an effort to achieve greater investment returns?

My second question, closely related and from the same page of the report, is this: even with the more aggressive investment strategy, WMF's net income on investments for FY2013-14 is stated as $243,000 on $23.26M invested — barely over 1%. What is the story here? Carrite (talk) 14:32, 14 October 2014 (UTC)

I think Garfield at the Foundation is better placed to answer specific questions about investment strategy. I will only comment on the high level philosophical question.

I think it can be a mistake to be either too conservative or too aggressive with investment strategy. We certainly do not want the Foundation to take wild risks (speculating on currency or investing the entire reserve in growth stocks or something like that). Nor should we want the Foundation to invest only in extremely low-paying assets.

Here is a typical discussion by nonprofit governance experts: "Good risk management with regard to an investment strategy requires the organization to balance three, sometimes-competing goals: 1) minimizing investment risk, 2) obtaining access to the funds when needed, and 3) earning a reasonable rate of return." Read more here

One important risk management principle is diversification. So having debt instruments of different classes (mortgage-backed, corporate, and government bonds) can reduce overall risk. As we put it: "If the asset values do not move up and down in perfect synchrony, a diversified portfolio will have less risk than the weighted average risk of its constituent assets, and often less risk than the least risky of its constituent." See Diversification (finance) for more details, including (if you have the stamina) some of the mathematics behind it.

Finally, another important principle in longterm asset management involves matching the timing of income to the timing of expenses. In our context, that can mean looking to a diversity of maturities. The risk on a zero coupon 30 year government bond can look substantial in the short run, but does guarantee (nearly so) a particular payoff at a particular time in 30 years. This last is only one example to highlight the principle - not a specific goal for our investment strategy. The principle is that we should have securities which mature in the short term, as well as securities which have longer maturities.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 14:49, 14 October 2014 (UTC)

I spent a few years working for an asset management firm. We specialized in asset management for insurance companies which are decidedly not charities, but many of the same principles apply. I'll echo what Jimbo said while differing on literally one word.

One important aspect of asset strategy involves monitoring the timing of income and expenses. The technical term used is "duration" which loosely speaking can be viewed as a timing metric. However, we emphasized duration management as opposed to duration matching. Duration matching (which is what Jimbo described) isn't necessarily the optimum strategy. Some departures from the matching strategy are acceptable. However, the larger context that analyzing the relative timing of income and expenses is exactly the right approach.--S Philbrick(Talk) 15:53, 14 October 2014 (UTC)

• I'm still not getting two things: (1) Why all of the sudden is WMF putting about a quarter of its chips into Mortgage-backed securities (regarded as the economic snake oil that caused the 2008 crisis)?; and (2) Why is net investment income on $23+M invested so paltry, particularly if a move has been made to more higher-risk/greater-reward investments? Who exactly at WMF could explain these things? Carrite (talk) 18:07, 14 October 2014 (UTC)

The investment policy - decided by the board - does bear some looking at. It looks like the results are consistent with blindly following that investment policy, but I would have hoped that the asset managers wouldn't have done something as stupid as investing in municipal bonds.

First you have to understand that there are $28M in cash equivalents (something over 6 months spending) that are not included under "investments." But this amount of cash yells out "super-conservative" right from the start. The table on p.9 shows

Fair Value of Investments

• Fair value measurements at June 30, 2014 using significant other observable Description inputs (Level 2)
• Certificates of deposit $ 2,157,598
• Municipal bonds 4,039,187
• Mortgage backed securities 6,032,385
• U.S. Treasury securities 3,875,028
• U.S. Corporate bonds 7,019,079
• Other 137,369
• Total $ 23,260,646

The $4M in municipal bonds is a huge red-flag. People invest in munis, despite the low returns, because the proceeds are exempt from Federal and (usually) state taxes. As a non-profit the WMF doesn't pay federal and state taxes. Somebody is asleep at the wheel on this one.

The $6 M in mortgage backed securities seems a bit high, but since mortgages are a huge part of the fixed income (debt) markets, it would seem reasonable to have some of this debt. Note that I'm not saying "mortgage backed derivative securities" There's no reason for those.

More later. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 18:36, 14 October 2014 (UTC)

Insurance companies report investment income including and excluding realized capitals gains. This statement did not say. If we assume that realized cap gains are either not in here, or not large, the question is whether the rate of return is reasonable. The next point to make is that one should not relate the investment income to ending assets. The better measure is average invested assets. Without access to that number, a rough surrogate is the average of the latest and prior years assets. The yield is still low, but that make it 1.2% rather than 1.0%

Now examine yields available (Vanguard is a good source):

1. Mortgage backed securities 1.43%
2. Intermediate term treasuries 1.62%
3. Cal Munies 1.52%
4. GNMA 0.21%
5. CD (not from Vanguard) 1.00%
6. Intermediate Corporates 3.13%

Not knowing the exact mix or securities makes the comparison iffy - I picked intermediate term, it may be that there is a mixture of short and intermediate term. Based on the available yields I would have expected more like 1.4%-1.6% so the 1.2% raises questions, but not the "what the hell are you doing" questions. I also see that they used to own a bunch of TIPS which they sold. TIPS have a very low yield, so depending on when they were sold may affect the yield quite a bit.

However, as already noted, this isn't the right venue for such a discussion, and you aren't really interested in my take, you want to hear from WMF, but having spent years doing this, I couldn't resist.--S Philbrick(Talk) 18:59, 14 October 2014 (UTC)

I share Smallbones' query re Munis. Why?--S Philbrick(Talk) 19:02, 14 October 2014 (UTC)