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User talk:Jimbo Wales

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    Is this a political issue that we want to take a stand on?

    I am generally opposed to Misplaced Pages taking a stand on political issues, but I make an exception when something has an effect on us as an encyclopedia. Is the following such a case?

    --Guy Macon (talk) 01:47, 12 April 2018 (UTC)

    • I don't think deliberately abetting copyright infringement is the place for Misplaced Pages to make a political point, no. I don't think an attempt to change copyright law here would be useful, either. power~enwiki (π, ν) 02:30, 12 April 2018 (UTC)

    Related: The EU's latest copyright proposal is so bad, it even outlaws Creative Commons licenses.

    "...rightsholders will not be able to waive the right to be compensated under the Link Tax. That means that European creators -- who've released hundreds of millions of works under Creative Commons licenses that allow for free sharing without fee or permission -- will no longer be able to choose the terms of a Creative Commons license; the inalienable, unwaivable right to collect rent any time someone links to your creations will invalidate the core clause in these licenses."

    --Guy Macon (talk) 00:22, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

    China to rival Misplaced Pages with own version of online encyclopedia

    "Unlike Misplaced Pages, the new encyclopedia project, which was approved in 2011, will be entirely written and edited by professionals. Misplaced Pages can be written and edited by laymen. Over 20,000 scholars and academics have been enlisted by China to roll out the project, which aims to have more than 3,00,000 entries, when it launches in 2018, according to AFP."

    That "3,00,000 entries" look like a typo to me... --Guy Macon (talk) 20:46, 12 April 2018 (UTC)

    It's standard usage of commas in India. power~enwiki (π, ν) 20:59, 12 April 2018 (UTC)
    Well it certainly wont be "free" by any means, those "professionals" are either written as they are told or they get imprisoned for life. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 03:07, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

    Should the Trump–Russia dossier article allow any space for the POV that Trump might not have conspired with the Russians?

    Apologies if I'm being presumptuous by posting a content dispute on your talk page.

    The article on the Christopher Steele dossier predictably gives a lot of space to people opining on the various claims made. Since there are plenty of published viewpoints in reputable outlets disputing the claim that Trump colluded with the Russians, shouldn't some of them be mentioned? In my opinion, allowing a lot of material that presumes or implies Trump guilt, without anything in response except some odd statements from Trump's lawyer, tends to present a picture of guilt that I don't think is warranted under NPOV.

    Separately, this same article includes extremely lengthy quotations of numerous accusations from the dossier, slathered with citations to (1) low-quality partisan blogs; (2) an inexperienced "political writer" for Business Insider, a business-focused website founded in 2009; and (3) unusually sensationalist news coverage by a couple Guardian writers that doesn't seem to be buttressed by any serious discussion in American sources.

    Should the dossier allegations be laundy-listed in great detail simply because they exist, or is this a gray area wherein WP:EXCEPTIONAL counsels us to limit our discussion to claims that have been discussed or at least repeated in multiple high-quality sources? If some of the more serious accusations—Trump paid the Russians to hack the DNC, it was Carter Page's idea to dump the documents to Wikileaks, the "golden showers" tape was motivated by Trump's hate of Obama, etc.—are not discussed anywhere but partisan blogs, are they really encyclopedic material?

    Cheers. Factchecker_atyourservice 03:43, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

    (talk page stalker) That article is a shit-kabob that I avoid as much as possible, but I'll comment here. I don't think there's a need to go into great detail about this on the dossier article (and I remind people that "dossier" is simply the French word for folder, and doesn't imply secret government knowledge). The general topic that many of the claims of the dossier are disputed must be mentioned, but it's not an article about "all the Trump-Russia noise". The piss-tape in particular, despite the limited credibility of the claim, has enough coverage that it must be discussed in some form. power~enwiki (π, ν) 03:49, 13 April 2018 (UTC)
    Yes, I should not have included that reference. The pee tape was indeed widely mentioned. The claim that Trump arranged and paid for the DNC hacks himself... not so much. Factchecker_atyourservice 04:32, 13 April 2018 (UTC)
    • Editors are welcome to find and suggest RS and content based on those RS. That obviously includes views by those who doubt the allegations against the Trump campaign. We already include some strong statements of doubt.

      Complaints won't get us anywhere. Actual content suggestions, with the RS which back them up, that's what we'd all like to see. Some suggestions have been made, and some rejected, but that's a matter for the article's talk page. Better suggestions might succeed, but so far suggestions seem to be rooted in conspiracy theories found in unreliable sources. If content suggestions can be based on RS, then we can all make progress. We can even document these conspiracy theories, if they have received attention in RS.

      Forum shopping this content dispute to Jimbo's page is not helpful.

      Misplaced Pages does not cater to what Jimmy Wales calls "lunatic charlatans", nor does it allow advocacy of fringe points of view, so the fact that fringe believers don't like these Trump-Russia-investigation articles shows that we must be doing something right. While his words were directed at quackery and pseudoscience, they apply just as much to fringe political POV and conspiracy theories. Instead of allowing your thinking to be influenced by the Daily Caller, InfoWars, and Breitbart, get your information from RS. If the information they present becomes the subject of RS coverage, then, and only then, will we present it as sensible content, and not as fringe content with little mention. -- BullRangifer (talk) PingMe 05:41, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

    • Let's be clear about what's happening here. Those who object the most are editors who refuse to accept the RS-based conclusions that the Russians did interfere in the election. They think that the Mueller investigation is a corrupt deep state plot to unseat Trump. To them it's all a nothingburger without evidence. To them, Breitbart, Daily Caller, InfoWars, Fox News, RT, Sputnik, Trump, and Putin are the only arbiters of "truth", and they use Misplaced Pages as their battlefield to fight for their "truth". Their efforts are literally an extension of Trump's real world battle against all forms of information and honest journalism which dares report anything negative against him. Misplaced Pages is not free from such efforts to promote his agenda against accurate information.

      They also believe that accusations against Russia and Trump are all a conspiracy theory concocted and sold by the mainstream media, which they consider fake news. They believe it's all a witch hunt against Trump and his campaign, not serious journalists doing their job, which includes documenting Trump's myriad self-inflicted wounds. They believe that the FBI, CIA, James Comey, and Robert Mueller are totally evil, corrupt, and engaged in a coup against Trump. This is the extreme right-wing view.

      These are the types of editors who object and obstruct the most on all our Trump-related articles. They are fringe political editors, many of whom should be topic banned. They operate with an ad hoc, policy-violating, "Trump Exemption" mentality, which means that anything negative about Trump, no matter how reliably sourced and notable, is fake news and must pass a much higher bar for inclusion than for any other public figure, politician, or president. This is the reality on these articles, and much of their argumentation is actually IDONTLIKEIT wikilawyering.

      It's rare that they actually make substantive attempts to present actual edit suggestions. They just complain....endlessly, and now it's spilled over to here. Mind you, there are a few Trump supporters who make serious attempts to edit collaboratively, but they are few, and they actually succeed in getting change because, rather than just complain, they use RS and follow policy. -- BullRangifer (talk) PingMe 14:20, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

    • I think you're unlikely to get any consensus to balance the article, due in part simply to how Misplaced Pages works. Misplaced Pages articles about current events (especially related to Trump) are simply collations of news articles. There is no scholarly analysis present in such articles. Since there was a lot of reliable source coverage (a lot of them just said things like "Buzzfeed is reporting about a Dossier"), then naturally that's what the article will say. Mr Ernie (talk) 13:38, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

    References

    1. Misplaced Pages:Lunatic charlatans:

      Quote: "No, you have to be kidding me. Every single person who signed this petition needs to go back to check their premises and think harder about what it means to be honest, factual, truthful. Misplaced Pages's policies around this kind of thing are exactly spot-on and correct. If you can get your work published in respectable scientific journals - that is to say, if you can produce evidence through replicable scientific experiments, then Misplaced Pages will cover it appropriately. What we won't do is pretend that the work of lunatic charlatans is the equivalent of 'true scientific discourse'. It isn't." — Jimbo Wales, March 23, 2014

    Net neutrality

    I'd like to brainstorm a bit and talk to people about net neutrality by email. Let me know if you're interested.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 13:36, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

    Google again - now using "mentioned in Misplaced Pages" in google ads

    User:Smallbones posted a note at COIN about Google ads now saying "mentioned in Misplaced Pages" and linking to us. Smallbones posted a link to this post at Search Engine Marketing News.

    This is really blatant abuse of WP for advertising which is just ick, and on top of that is likely to draw yet more SEO/spammers to abuse WP for promotion.

    I wonder if a) the WMF can ask Google to stop doing this; b) if there is any sort of legal recourse to make them stop if they won't do it nicely. Pinging User:Slaporte (WMF) just to make them aware; am not looking for a response. Jytdog (talk) 14:32, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

    Wow! I share your concern. As proud as we are of the great work done here, and at how accurate many of our articles really are, we all know that Misplaced Pages is not a RS in the technical sense. We document what RS say. That's it, and it's not good that confusion on this becomes a marketing tool. -- BullRangifer (talk) PingMe 15:15, 13 April 2018 (UTC)
    I don't see the problem. Sure it's another reason brands will want to be included here, but all they are doing is serving users with a list of articles that they might be looking for so that they don't have to look in "list of X" etc. themselves. Isn't this the intended use of us being free? We can't control how others use our content. Oh and they're not ads - it's equivalent to Knowledge Graph. SmartSE (talk) 15:20, 13 April 2018 (UTC)
    hm. perhaps I don't understand this well enough. Jytdog (talk) 15:44, 13 April 2018 (UTC)
    I just saw this so I've just begun to think about it. I don't think "advertising" is the right word to use here, so let's avoid that for a moment, as it may cloud our thinking. I actually think it would be less problematic if it were advertising.
    I tried the example from the Search Engine Marketing News. "dog food brands". When you search that in google, at the top is a carousel of corporate logos which are generally famous dog food brands. Above the carousel, it says "Dog food brands mentioned on Misplaced Pages". Clicking those words takes you to our dog food brands category page. Clicking any one of the logos does not take you to the Misplaced Pages page about the brand, nor to the website of the brand, but to a google search for that brand.
    Now, if those logos were there for brands who paid Google, I don't really have a problem with that. If google wants to charge dog food brands for having their logo at the top of a search for dog food brands, hey, that's fine.
    My concern is that this looks like a very easy to (try to) game organic search results page. If I'm the PR manager for a small brand of dogfood which is not mentioned in Misplaced Pages, then I have a new and very strong incentive to get a page in Misplaced Pages, not in order to get exposure IN WIKIPEDIA per se, but to have my logo at the top of the page, linking to a search for my brand, a search for which I'm almost certainly the top result. (Or the 2nd result, after Misplaced Pages, which appears to happen fairly often of course.)
    Of course it's nothing new for brands to want pages in Misplaced Pages, and that's often quite annoying.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 17:59, 13 April 2018 (UTC)
    I too have lots of questions about this, which is why I asked at the more focused WP:COIN Misplaced Pages:Conflict_of_interest/Noticeboard#"mentioned_on_Wikipedia"_carousel_on_Google, but most of my remaining questions are more general, so this is as good a page as any.
    It isn't Google advertising per se, just a colorful search result that could be used by black hat SEOers. And the linked article shows that the SEO folks have already noticed it. This means that we should expect more paid editing - advertising articles - which I find much more than annoying. BTW an annoying aspect is that it seems to take away from similar carousels that link to the reliable source Consumer Reports
    Two big remaining questions are how exactly it works? and how often is it going to show up in search results. My guess is that Google gets the list directly from our categories (the output from the list of ... articles looks a bit different), and ultimately it will show up whenever anybody searches for anything commercial that has the same name as one of our categories.
    @Smartse: is right when he says that we license anybody to use our articles (and categories) this way. But that doesn't mean we can't ask them not to do it in this case. I'm sure they don't want to contribute to the commercialization of Misplaced Pages, and there are other things they'd prefer we do, e.g. screen conspiracy videos and fake news. They've been using us too much as a crutch to deliberately ignore a polite request from us.
    Another question: shouldn't _NOINDEX_ and/or _NOFOLLOW_ stop them from getting info from our categories? This issue seems to go back to at least 2007 and something was implemented to stop indexing and following for the same reasons mentioned in this case. Unfortunately, I couldn't follow all the arguments and the technical detail. Does anybody know how NOINDEX and NOFOLLOW might affect their carousels? Smallbones(smalltalk) 01:06, 14 April 2018 (UTC)