User talk:Jimbo Wales: Difference between revisions

Page contents not supported in other languages.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Content deleted Content added
→‎A beer for you!: new WikiLove message
→‎Some stroopwafels for you!: new WikiLove message
Line 107: Line 107:
|style="vertical-align: middle; padding: 5px;" | [[File:Export hell seidel steiner.png|70px]]
|style="vertical-align: middle; padding: 5px;" | [[File:Export hell seidel steiner.png|70px]]
|style="vertical-align: middle; padding: 3px;" | You've been through more than enough, you deserve a drink! [[User:Whoop whoop pull up|Whoop whoop pull up]] <sup>[[User talk:Whoop whoop pull up|Bitching Betty]] | [[Special:Contributions/Whoop whoop pull up|Averted crashes]]</sup> 21:06, 13 July 2011 (UTC)
|style="vertical-align: middle; padding: 3px;" | You've been through more than enough, you deserve a drink! [[User:Whoop whoop pull up|Whoop whoop pull up]] <sup>[[User talk:Whoop whoop pull up|Bitching Betty]] | [[Special:Contributions/Whoop whoop pull up|Averted crashes]]</sup> 21:06, 13 July 2011 (UTC)
|}

== Some stroopwafels for you! ==

{| style="background-color: #fdffe7; border: 1px solid #fceb92;"
|style="vertical-align: middle; padding: 5px;" | [[File:Gaufre biscuit.jpg|135px]]
|style="vertical-align: middle; padding: 3px;" | Like Wikipedia: crusty on the outside, soft and flexible on the inside! [[User:Whoop whoop pull up|Whoop whoop pull up]] <sup>[[User talk:Whoop whoop pull up|Bitching Betty]] | [[Special:Contributions/Whoop whoop pull up|Averted crashes]]</sup> 21:11, 13 July 2011 (UTC)
|}
|}

Revision as of 21:11, 13 July 2011

(Manual archive list)

Proposal: Moving to new platforms for collaboration

Hello Jimbo: to introduce myself, I'm Nick, and like you I'm also from Alabama (though the other end, Mobile, AL) and also now live in the "big city" (in my case, NYC). I've written for Wikipedia off and on since November 2005, and have frequented the wikipedia-en IRC channel off and on, a couple of times talking with you, the man himself.

During the Wikipedia in Higher Education summit (I was following along on Twitter via the #wihed hashtag) what Sue Gardner said about Wikipedia's coverage of the social sciences and humanities rang true for me. I've been trying hard to get some teamwork and collaboration going to help improve weak history articles (history, especially history outside of the United States and Europe are weaknesses at present) with limited success. With WikiProjects largely abandoned and useless as tools for collaboration, my only success has been through talk pages and the IRC channel. So, I've created this proposal that–extrapolating from the Wikimedia Strategic Plan to 2015's call for more social and collaborative tools–aims to change the way collaboration works on Wikipedia: Proposal: Moving beyond moribund WikiProjects to a new platform for collaboration.

In order to reverse the troubling trend of editors leaving Wikipedia (i.e. improve the recruitment and retention of new writers) it's necessary we move beyond moribund WikiProjects to new platforms for collaboration. This is already addressed, in part, by the "strategy:Attracting and retaining participants" portion of the current Wikimedia Strategic Plan. My proposal deals with how we get from where we are now (in en.wikipedia, littered with moribund WikiProjects) to where the Strategic Plan takes us: the introduction of more social/collaborative tools to the Wiki, including "Users would be able to join topical groups, based on their editing interests (e.g., “18th century American history)". My proposal is about how we get from here to there.

Proposal: Moving beyond moribund WikiProjects to a new platform for collaboration.

It's just a start, but your thoughts are appreciated!

NickDupree (talk) 02:44, 10 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Nick, sounds interesting. I'm going to be offline for awhile right now, so I've loaded up the pages you suggested and I will read them with great interest. I do think there is a strong need to improve various tools and platforms, so I'm eager to learn about new ideas in this area.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 15:09, 10 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Ok, I read all that. I very much support the idea of more aggressively tagging inactive wikiprojects as inactive, but I also propose that it would be cool if we had a way to also try a revival process, i.e. everyone who is associated with any wikiproject (having edited it at least once) is contacted on their user talk page with a proposed "revival day" about a week in the future. Part of what makes Wikiprojects fun and worth it is a critical mass of people - can be just a few but the key is if I ask a question or make a comment, and someone responds to me, that's fun. If no one answers, it is just talking into a black hole - not fun.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 10:12, 11 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I think you hit the nail on the head, Jimbo, and I'd love to see revival days happen. Sadly, shouting into black holes is more common an experience than ever, and leads to questions like "what's broken in Wikipedia's model?" and "when are the new social and collaborative tools mentioned in the Wikimedia Strategic Plan to 2015 coming online? When will us in the trenches get more info?" Any insight into these questions, Jimbo? Very appreciated. –NickDupree (talk) 18:48, 11 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I'm afraid that on the detailed roadmap of software development, I'm just an editor in the trenches like anyone else. I wish that I knew more, but probably other people will be better able to shed some light on that.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 22:38, 11 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Post when you find out something please? NickDupree (talk) 18:13, 12 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
This may be relevant: the Wikimedia product whitepaper is the technology plan as it stands now... it's still very high level, of course. Philippe Beaudette, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 08:51, 13 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Finagling with WP:V

Hi, after some discussion on an article for which the name probably originated there, I set up a poll on nl.wikipedia to get the principles for this issue straight. The statement up for vote is (translated): If an article is on Wikipedia under a title which was (most probably) invented here, and there is another acceptable name for the phenomenon, the article's name should be changed, even if the current name is by now well used outside wikipedia. As this is a straightforward reaffirmation of WP:V and WP:NOR/Wikipedia:Wikipedia is not for things made up one day, I expected this to easily get a majority, after which the concerned article would be renamed. However, the current votes are: Voor (agree) 18; Tegen (disagree) 23. Arguments against include, among others: "You should not have polled a topic this broad" and "The article name should be in uppercase" (preceding are not literal quotes). Because this (V) is one of the true principles of wikipedia, and the overall usefulness of polls is being affected by this kind of vote, I ask for your response/reaction in/to this matter. (Feel free to tell me I shouldn't have put something so self-evident up for vote. If I would have thought this was a possible outcome, I wouldn't have.) -- Buzz-tardis (talk) 03:07, 11 July 2011 (UTC) (Vote lasts till this friday (the 15th).)[reply]

Hi, Buzz-tardis, this is User:Wikid77 here. I'll leave space for Jimbo to answer above, because we had a similar naming problem, where some people wanted to call a word a "neologism" when others considered it a name slur or campaign tactic. Also, as stated in your Dutch WP poll (nlwiki poll on renaming), there was concern the title would bring "schade aan/schande" (damage/shame) to the Encyclopedia. However, remember it is difficult to get an objective poll for a policy issue, when a recent article title has caused a heated POV-bias split. Many people want a new guideline set to enforce their view of just the one article, rather than decide a general principle. Perhaps, policy decisions might be more fair if made by groups of elected leaders who avoid editing specific articles (or titles), while encouraging polls of hundreds of users, rather than risk a "gang of 10 people" who will sway a poll by a 10-vote bias compared to a larger, randomized poll. Try not to get angry at that "gang of 10" because, as a benefit, they have revealed loopholes in policies which allow a handful of people to distort Dutch Wikipedia (nlwiki), and those loopholes can be seen, finally now, as more dangerous, long-term, than the current article being debated. Note, already, that nlwiki has progressed beyond enwiki because the poll in nlwiki lasts 2 weeks (still time for a different vote, until 15 July), while many decisions on English WP are rushed to close or WP:SNOWed within only 7 days. Also, you've answered your own concern, "It is too dangerous to attempt a new policy change to resolve a recent hot-topic dispute". Next time, wait for more people to arrive and decide the issues, later. -Wikid77 (talk) 15:10, 11 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry to intervene, but Buzz-Tardis isn't giving a true and proper description of the discussion on the Dutch Wikipedia. It obviously isn't, as is somewhat suggested here, a poll about WP:V; why would we poll over a guidelines which form the basis of our work? I could provide another translation (a proper one, my POV) of what's going on, but (i) I suspect you got better things to do than to meddle in with minor disputes on all the projects, and (ii) the poll is running properly according to the nl-guidelines: I don't see why we would need external advice on this matter, we are perfectly able to decide for ourselves what option should receive the majority of votes. All the best, CaAl (talk) 07:30, 11 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Well, I expected as much... This person CaAl (a sysop, no less) is one of the persons voting against "because this poll should not have been held"(no lit. quote). I trust you, Jimbo, to form your own opinion. Greetings. -- Buzz-tardis (talk) 14:27, 11 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure I understand the problem here. The hypothetical timeline goes something like this, yes?
  1. A Wikipedia article is created on the subject of foo. For whatever reason, the original authors use the seldom-seen description or neologism bar for the article's title.
  2. The article stays under the title bar for an extended period of time (months or years).
  3. During this period of time, the wider world adopts bar as a synonym for foo. The terms are now used somewhat interchangeably by the public, and/or are seen as equivalent by experts in foo. The relevant literature uses both foo and bar.
The question is, must we rename our article bar to reflect the original term foo, even though both words are now widely used to describe the topic? If that's the question, I'd say that nlwiki has gotten it right in saying no. WP:V and WP:NOR apply to the current state of knowledge, language, and usage. There's no reason to insist that Wikipedia articles now should be altered – and limited – to reflect the state of knowledge months or years in the past. The fact that the title might have been incorrect at the time that it was created doesn't affect the question of whether or not it is correct now. Even the fact that the term might have been originally popularized by Wikipedia doesn't render it invalid if there is now genuine, widespread, independent usage.
If Wikipedia had existed in 1935 and someone had created an article titled World War I, that would have been incorrect. If the title were left unchanged until 1945, it would have been equally wrong for another editor to rename the article to The Great War, even though that would have been the unquestionably correct title in 1935 when the article was created. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 15:06, 11 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Your timeline is correct, except for the fact that as far as can be determined, the term bar was not used anywhere before it was used for the article. (No sources were found before that date at all, hence the most probably in the statement... sources might still be found.) The original term (bar) also isn't used interchangeably; When found outside of wikipedia, many/most mention wikipedia as source for the term. People knowledgeable on the topic mostly prefer foo. Your example of WWI is off in as much that it's more like the article was named The great mishap.
However, the real issue is the poll... when it closes, this friday, I will have to draw a conclusion... At the moment I think it might come out something like this:
I do not think that is a desirable outcome. -- Buzz-tardis (talk) 17:00, 11 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Please do not be discouraged by that type of poll: most people will only apply the poll result to the one article they wish to slant, and it will go no further. Also, in later months, the renaming poll can be re-run with a wider audience, and hopefully, more people will realize the wiki-invented phrases should not be article titles. -Wikid77 20:52, 12 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
That won't be the outcome, the statement on which we are voting is not: "It is forbidden to invent your own titles for articles." I think it's ridiculous that you are bothering Jimmy with this issue now it's clear you are not getting what you want from the local community. It seems like you are hoping he can/will overrule that community. For me personally, it seems kind of childish. Wkr, Fontes (talk) 11:46, 12 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
However, the concerns of Buzz-tardis have seemed valid, and when you invoked argumentum ad hominem, 3 times, with "ridiculous" or "bothering" or "childish" then that totally discounted all your views, and left Buzz-tardis the clear winner in this debate. (I was a formal debate judge, for years.) In general, attacking an opponent will only strengthen their views. -Wikid77 20:52, 12 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
How is Argument from authority ("I was a formal debate judge") any better in a discussion than what you perceive to be ad hominems (even though they aren't, not every uncivil comment is an ad hominem)? Formal debate judges normally don't first comment in the debate before judging someone with an opposite opinion in a formal way. Please stick to the actual discussion instead of trying to "win" it with such tactics. Fram (talk) 09:09, 13 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Perhaps you misunderstood. I was the debate judge. I made the decision. No argument at all. The above topic contains multiple debates, and I was commenting on the debate of whether to mention a topic to Jimbo. Also, I think referring to a person's line of reasoning as "kind of childish" is a clear case of argumentum ad hominem but perhaps that is why debate judges are appointed to decide those issues. People disagree, and the judge makes the decision. -Wikid77 18:01, 13 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
c.f. wp:Argumentum ad Jimbonem and wp:Appeals to Jimbo. Jimbo may offers suggestion or advice, he seldom takes any side or adjudicates, especially on other wiki's affair. -- Sameboat - 同舟 (talk) 09:20, 13 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I'm also not in a debate here with Buzz, I already did that where it was supposed to be done, our home wiki. I only gave my opinion about his actions here. Wkr, Fontes (talk) 10:08, 13 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Your comments related to a "meta-debate" as a debate about whether the renaming debate should have been mentioned here (debating his actions for a venue, not his viewpoints about renaming). I hope that clarifies the difference, as being multiple levels of debates. -Wikid77 18:01, 13 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Unreferenced BLPs - Job almost done

About 17 months ago, after the deletion of long-term unreferenced BLPs by some admins, you said I consider this a valid application of WP:BOLD. You have my support and It sounds like deletion was just the thing we needed in order to finally get these articles into shape. We (that is, a bunch of editors mutually exclusive to those involved in the deletions) have now COMPLETELY eliminated ALL 50,000 articles that were marked as Unreferenced BLPs at that time (3000 have been tagged since then, but they'll be cleared in the next few months).

So, are you going to again praise Scott Mac, Kevin, Lars, Unitanode et al for motivating good contributors to recognize the problem and take action or are you going to recognise those good contributors (see WP:URBLPR & WP:URBLP) who actually spent their time and reviewed each and every one of those 50,000 articles (plus a heap more that were tagged since then) and either referenced or deleted them? Did you ever seriously think we'd actually get it done without another bunch of out-of-process deletions? The-Pope (talk) 15:46, 11 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I will praise everyone who played a role. And I do think it is entirely possible to do things in lots of different ways, and hope that there is no reason to turn this into a squabble about the means. The main thing is that it is important that important things get done, as quickly as possible.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 15:55, 11 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Did someone actually look over all 50,000 articles and check for references for them? You said you "eliminated ALL 50,000 articles". None of them were deemed notable? I did a few of them at various times and found information proving they were notable. CBS medical expert Jennifer Ashton and published writer and notable director Graham Bendel for instance. I recall quite a number of people tagged as unreferenced and sent to AFDs, in the Anime and Manga wikiproject, that ended in keep when a quick search of sources showed they had worked on various notable things and even had news coverage of their work at times. Has WP:BEFORE been followed for all of these articles? Also, unless the information there is slanderous I see no reason to rush to delete it for lack of references alone. Just going through and mass destroying articles isn't something to be proud of. You can't get them into shape by destroying them. Dream Focus 22:52, 11 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Uh, I don't think by eliminated he means only "deleted"; in fact, probably the opposite ;) --Errant (chat!) 23:40, 11 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Frankly, I think it is an insult the people who did the actual work on this by singling out the instigators for praise, especially when several of them spent a lot of time in the BLP RFC's (and later) obstructing efforts to define a better process with their "sod the community", I'll do what I want attitude and resorting to threats when volunteers failed to work at their demanded speeds. That is the kind of attitude that Wikipedia does not need, and should never be held out as a positive example. On the other hand, The-Pope, people who acted in the fashion you did - notifying, organizing and encouraging - deserve the highest praise and should be held out as the example of what this community is capable of. I congratulate you, and I congratulate the people who made a positive change in this regard. Resolute 23:59, 11 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Frankly, the job hasn't been done, the problem has been papered over. The biggest change was weakening the definition of "unreferenced," to the detriment of the encyclopedia. An article used to be "unreferenced" if no fact in it was cited. That was changed a while back, without consensus or appropriate discussion. Now any article that contains an external link is considered "sourced," even if the external link is a wretchedly unreliable as IMDB. The last part of the change was snuck through here [1], after a hopelessly inadequate "discussion" during the (Western) holiday season at the end of last year, with only a handful of users particpating and no high-visibility discussion, or any attempt to notify users who had previously objected to the lowering of standards. The project's approach is best displayed is articles like this one, Alberto Romulo, which I selected at random from a list on the project's talk page. It was created as entirely unsourced, then a single source was added, success was declared, and editors moved on. And the source doesn't even support the claim it's cited for. The sentence including the cite reads "He was Foreign Secretary in the administration of President Benigno Aquino III." Benigno Aquino was elected President of the Philippines on May 10, 2010, and took office on June 30, 2010. The source was published in 2009, which should have been a huge red flag, and refers to events in 2005. The source can't possibly verify the statement it's cited for. (The statement happens to be true, more or less by happenstance, but a true statement with an impossible cite is hardly better than an uncited one). And the rest of the article remains completely unsourced and unreferenced.
There are thousands of articles tagged with a special imdb-specific template which indicates, more or less, that the article has no references, but does have a boilerplate external link to imdb, which to my mind isn't much more than a let's-pretend-it's-sourced tag. There isn't even any guarantee that the imdb bio linked to corresponds to the article subject, although fortunately I've come across very few errors like that.
I don't think this effort has done Wikipedia all that much good. We used to have 50,000 unreferenced BLPs, and that was certainly not good. But converting unsourced BLPs into BLPs whose sourcing is grossly inadequate isn't solving the important problem. It's treating a substantive problem as a PR problem. I suppose it's nice that people don't have an easy easy handle to bash the project with a count showing all those unsourced BLPs, but having 50,000 more badly sourced but not completely unsourced BLPs isn't a whole lot better, especially when it's just the lowest-hanging fruit that's been sourced. Is going from this state [2] to this one [3] (in the first article I had an editing dispute with project members over) really an improvement?
The great majority of my edits deal with BLPs and BLP cleanup. Getting it right is tedious and time-consuming, and I don't want to be overcritical of any efforts to deal with the problem. But too much of this project is putting lipstick on the pig rather than . . . well, I don't know what the appropriate metaphor would be. But if we had a way to keep count of articles that are embarassingly badly sourced, I doubt we'd see very much of an improvement. Hullaballoo Wolfowitz (talk) 02:00, 12 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The real metrics here are, first priority, making sure that our BLP articles don't contain potentially damaging false or privacy-invading information about their subjects, and second (but still important) priority, making sure that our articles are of high editorial quality, which includes their providing interested readers with access to additional resources about the subject-matter. The apparent success of the "all BLPS must contain at least one reference" drive represents incremental progress toward both of these goals. To be sure, it is not a panacea and does not solve any problem; one obvious reason for this is that adding a reference for fact A (or for an article as a whole) does not improve the sourcing of potentially inaccurate fact B, other than to the limited extent of suggesting that at least one editor has looked at the article recently. We should neither disparage the efforts that have been made as no progress at all, nor suggest that our BLP problems have been solved in whole or major part; we have made some valuable progress, which needs to be followed by a good deal more of the same. Newyorkbrad (talk) 02:23, 12 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Hullaballoo Wolfowitz has it substantially right. He's wrong about what unreferenced means, but he's right that the effort has largely been window dressing. Just because a reference has been added doesn't mean that any of those BLPs (or the already-referenced BLPs, or the non-BLP articles that state facts about living people...) has been vetted as accurate, complete, and unbiased. Of those 50,000 articles, I suspect close to half got (or had but were mistagged) a single reference and were re-queued into the {{blp refimprove}} pool. Accomplishment, yes, but goal achievement... probably not. Jclemens (talk) 02:30, 12 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Perhaps reverse that? Goal achieved? Yes. Accomplished much? Probably not as much as some think. Resolute 02:35, 12 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, that. It's been a long week already. Jclemens (talk) 04:31, 12 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I really hope that people referencing BLP's (work I simply could not face, and I doff my hat to those who did the work!) took time with each to check for the most serious problems and for basic accuracy. If not... that's now a major problem because the articles have been de-tagged :S --Errant (chat!) 09:37, 12 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Impose a deadline, and you get the minimum amount of work necessary to save articles from deletion. Now, in the several hundred I took care of, I 1) only ever changed the tags to the new status, which was "refimprove" in 95% of the cases, and 2) never noticed any remaining problems when I did so. But then, I wasn't reading for BLP problems, I was reading to find Googlable facts that could be cleanly sourced. So, bottom line is a lot of articles now have sources that didn't, and editors gave those articles at least a cursory look... but really, in order to provide assurance that BLPs were appropriately sourced, you'd need the level of a GA review at the minimum, which is not something I'm aware that anyone did in the process of cleaning up "blp unreferenced" tags. Jclemens (talk) 05:26, 13 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
In reply to ErrantX - why is it a major problem if the articles have been re-tagged, not de-tagged, into a more appropriate or technically correct clean up cat? Cleanup lists such as this one exist and are available for anyone to work on. Yes, the other cats don't get the profile or attention that uBLPs have had, but there is no reason why another cleanup list can't be targeted next. The-Pope (talk) 15:47, 13 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Don't get me wrong: I wasn't intending to imply this was a disaster, or anything like that. If they have been appropriately re-tagged and checked for libel then that works fine for me :) In, say, a couple of years we could run through and tag "all BLP articles with just one reference" and then cause a mass panic where a new bunch of editors get another reference added. And so on ad-infinitum :) --Errant (chat!) 15:57, 13 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Random note: I hope Alberto Romulo is up to what you expect now. SilverserenC 02:57, 12 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Sigh.
  1. Eliminated doesn't mean deleted, it means removed from the list.
  2. No-one redefined what unreferenced means, in fact many of us want to improve BLPPROD to allow it to remain in place when only self-published sources are added. And you can't possible think that an article with a link to a article from a major newspaper, or a book published by a major publisher or any similar reliable source should be considered unreferenced just because the word before it is External links and not References... or can you?
  3. {{BLP IMDB refimprove}} has survived a TfD (feel free to nominate it again if you don't like it) and allows for the consolidation of the "wretchedly unreliable" IMDB sourced articles into a conveniently locatable single category.
  4. The Alberto Romulo citation was correct and you unfairly attacked the efforts of our project's most persistent and hardest working member. The citation was placed only after the "He was foriegn secretary", which is entirely backed up by the reference. I would have thought you would understand that a citation placed in the middle of a sentence only verifies the section of the sentence preceeding it, not the whole sentence.
  5. No one has ever said that a single source for an article is the solution to the BLP problem. The problem was that 3 admins decided that the lack of any references in a BLP was the primary BLP problem and deleting them was the only solution. Yes a lot have been moved into the BLPreimprove section, but we never said we'd fix the whole wikipedia. We just (correctly) thought that it wasn't a problem that was too big or too hard or impossible to fix using the normal collaborative approach.
I can't guarantee the work of others, but I would bet that the vast, vast majority of the >50,000 articles removed from these lists were checked for libel, contentious statements or vandalism. Of course, some would have been vandalised again since. But over 3400 of the 45000 UBLPs that existed on Feb 7 2010 (the earliest full list I kept) have been deleted (are currently redlinks). A heap more would be redirected to other more notable articles. And of course the BLPPROD system is helping keep the number of new articles to a minimum. Of the 3000 articles remaining, less than a few hundred were created since the BLPPROD was introduced. We have found years old hoaxes, hijacked pages, blatant vandalism that got missed by the huggle users and have made a huge contribution. And guess what. In a few months time, when the entire backlog is gone, we probably won't unplug the keyboard, delete the gnews search link and start playing a sport, we'll probably turn to another backlog, because we now have the systems, tracking bots and lots of other smart things in place to help improve this place even more. The-Pope (talk) 13:08, 12 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
In the fields I have worked on, we are not talking about BLP catastrophes waiting to happen, but often about stubs on people who are notable in their fields, but not necessarily referenced well by typical Wikipedia sources. Typical examples are academics or specialist journalists who write and talk more than they are written and talked about. Some appear regularly on national television or are frequently cited as experts by other academics, but sometimes there is no written, independent source that states explicitly that they are regarded as leading experts in their field, that they have written the definitive book on their subject, etc. In some cases, notability may be disputable, but these are usually not the sort of articles that would damage Wikipedia if it took a little longer to find suitable (often foreign-language) references. For stubs and similar short articles, a quick check for potentially controversial statements and the addition of a single reliable source (possibly changing BLP-unsourced to BLP-sources) may often mean that the ratio of references to text still compares favourably with featured articles; and references are still provided for information that is often not even verified and referenced in featured articles (basic information, such as year of birth, nationality, occupation, and claim to notability, may account for a much larger proportion of stubs). The following articles (currently still flagged as unreferenced, so, anybody, please feel free to fix them) seem reasonably typical of the most problematic unreferenced BLP articles that I normally encounter: Uwe Windhorst, Enzio von Pfeil, Daniel Knop, Sarah Sorge. Perhaps it would be interesting to check how many featured BLP articles actually give a source for the stated date of birth, nationality, occupation, claim to notability, and published works. --Boson (talk) 12:59, 12 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • ← For the "Enzio von Pfeil" article, I noticed the dewiki link, so that quickly reduces notability fears: the German Wikipedia is extremely picky about content (I once submitted translated articles to dewiki, precisely typeset with 20 photos, and they complained the grammar was only 99.5% accurate). For the recent Pfeil article, with the relief provided by a dewiki version, I searched in "Books.Google.com" and found 39 sources, of which I used 6 to quickly verify Pfeil's birthyear & job titles at 3 international firms. I know the result is not like citing a biography written by experts, but when several bio details are spot-verified in Google Books, then let probability suggest the article is fairly accurate, with 7 sources. There are always errors, even by readers seeing "Mikrozoft" and misreading that name (as "Microsoft"), so consider quality to be an issue of Statistical Process Control, where x% of details are verified, so assume that level of general quality. We just need more people to help, to search Books.Google.com and cite those sources. Most hard-working editors know the drill: we need to attract and appreciate more helpful editors, rather than drive them to ANI, terrify them, waste their time debating, and then decree shut-up orders to block their access to WP. I realize some users want to expand source-citing tools, to let each editor update 100 articles more quickly, but it would be so much better to just get more people to help improve articles, in many different aspects. -Wikid77 04:29, 13 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Who's afraid of Rupert Murdoch?

Is Wikipedia afraid of Rupert Murdoch? Note the headlines of every English speaking paper in the free world regarding Murdoch, and then note the utter silence of that on the Rupert Murdoch article. Does Wikipedia fear Rupert Murdoch? - Guy with no account. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.38.208.30 (talk) 19:30, 13 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia is not a newspaper -- we do not ordinarily try to track the hour-to-hour fluctuations of a developing story. One short section dealing with recent events has already been added to the article; there is no doubt that more material will be added as the outcome becomes clear. Looie496 (talk) 20:01, 13 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
You may want to look at News of the World phone hacking affair.--Boson (talk) 20:22, 13 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

A beer for you!

You've been through more than enough, you deserve a drink! Whoop whoop pull up Bitching Betty | Averted crashes 21:06, 13 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Some stroopwafels for you!

Like Wikipedia: crusty on the outside, soft and flexible on the inside! Whoop whoop pull up Bitching Betty | Averted crashes 21:11, 13 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]