Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2010-07-26/In the news

Customer satisfaction
I notice that the consistency of the user interface is regarded as one of the reasons for Wikipedia's popularity and wonder whether experts such as those who were responsible for the recent catastrophic skin change will ever get a clue that most users don't like interface changes? Yngvadottir (talk) 02:40, 27 July 2010 (UTC)
 * "Catastrophic"? You mean the totally inconspicuous skin change that most people barely noticed at the time and have already forgotten about? +Angr 06:07, 27 July 2010 (UTC)
 * I mean the skin change that broke the site either totally or in important ways (like . . . search) for users of several popular browsers and that was promptly rejected by most registered editors, that turned out to have been beta tested in a manner that did not take into account the needs of unregistered users (i.e. users as opposed to editors) and large minorities in use patterns (such as regular switching between different language wikipedias) or, apparently, quantify how many "tried beta" and promptly rejected it, and that has lost us an unknown number of users and been reverted by a very large number of registered editors - see next comment. How is breaking the site and driving people away not catastrophic? (And the number of negative comments that piled up in at least 4 different places afterwards, despite it being very difficult for nonregistered users - again, these are our customers, this site does not exist for those of us who edit - to find where to leave a comment, speaks to the depth of dissatisfaction with the change.) A story that the Signpost utterly failed to cover, BTW. Yngvadottir (talk) 19:42, 27 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Signpost coverage of Vector/UI rollout:1 - (2009 prelim), 2 - (interwiki links), 3 - (search box), 4 - (logo), and 5 - (current user stats). So, yes, there could have been more, but there certainly was some. I do agree that we should have publicized the link to Requests for comment/May 2010 skin change better, but there were links to it from a variety of places (Talk:Main page, Village pumps, etc). So, not ideal, but not utter failure either. -- Quiddity (talk) 00:08, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

What is really frightening is the 82 score for Fox News... As far as skin changes go, I went back to Monobrook and tend to forget Vector exists until I have to re-login.. Resolute 13:50, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

Phoning up 250 people doesn't sound like a very large sample, I remember from the recent UK general election that a site which rounded up the various polls weighted heavily against any using less than a thousand! Lee&there4;V (talk  •  contribs)  19:07, 27 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Lee, you're right. In many situations, 250 would be fine for a sample. But here, it's very tricky. No mention in the original of the demographic, the geographical area(s). Hard to tell. Tony   (talk)  03:53, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia, Google Translate and Wikimedia's India strategy
There is also a current thread on Foundation-l (Is Google translation is good for Wikipedias?) which has more interesting information. Regards, HaeB (talk) 12:32, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

Citizendium
As SJ and DG point out, at http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Citizendium#Growth_and_decline there are some potentially insightful infographics (and snarky commentary). -- Quiddity (talk) 00:17, 28 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Indeed. Some are also at citizendium:CZ:Statistics. And for my own talk about Citizendium at last year's Wikimania (abstract, slides) I prepared another graph showing the interesting development of the median article length (in words), which has been steadily decreasing since 2007. (That graph ends a year ago, but the trend has continued.) This has to be taken into account when examining the number of articles.
 * Regards, HaeB (talk) 01:18, 28 July 2010 (UTC)
 * (Follow-up question and reply at commons:File talk:Lessons from Citizendium.pdf.)
 * Regards, HaeB (talk) 17:23, 29 July 2010 (UTC)
 * The THE article is also discussed in a thread on the Citizendium forums - it appears that some Citizens were surprised to learn about Sanger's plans from the media.
 * A glimpse at the work on the Charter, still ongoing after one year, can be had here.
 * Regards, HaeB (talk) 17:24, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

Jimbo named as 47th most powerful person in media
Three cheers for Jimbo!  Kayau  Voting  IS   evil 01:26, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

Removed section
The Wikipedia Signpost have decide that you should not be able to read commentary on the problems with censorship. This is the first time commentary has been censored from the Wikipedia Signpost, however, evidently, speaking out against Jimbo Wales' actions in the recent Commons debacle is too controversial.

Since I started editing Wikipedia, I've created literally hundreds of Featured pictures, a dozen or so Featured articles, a couple Featured portals, a featured list, and various other things.

What has my reward been?

I've been harassed, bullied, and generally treated like dirt. An arbcom case was opened by Charles Matthews, then a sitting arbitrator, to punish me for not immediately agreeing to his request to reconsider a block, with no additional information than "I think it's a good idea". I instead sought opinions on ANI, and so Charles Matthews got his friends in the Arbcom to harass me for three months. After two months, they decided that they really should have sought other means of dispute resolution, and opened an RfC... which came out firmly in my decfense. This wasn't what they wanted, so they ignored it, attacked those who spoke out against me, and did what they wanted

It took a year for the Arbcom to finally agree to withdraw the case, replacing it with an apology, and detailing the many procedural and ethical lapses.

More recently, I've been blocked for having an arbcom statement slightly over the limit - while I was in the middle of a lengthy rewrite. The other user I was in dispute with also had a statement over the limit throughout that time... and was never so much as warned.

Wikipedia treats its users like shit, but, ironically, only the long-time experienced users. If you ever begin to become jaded, your upset at Wikipedia will be used to implement more injustices.

Here we see an example. At the start of the news cycle, I wrote an editorial, following the Signpost's stated guideance for such. When it was done, I was told that they no longer publish editorials, and, instead of raising a fuss, I offered to simply publish it as a comment to stories, and the thread discussing it was closed.

Two hours before publication, the editor of the Signpost deleted the comment, without telling anyone. I objected; he had participated in the discussion, and the discussion had been closed for nearly a week, with the comment ready for publication throughout that time. I had dropped my insistence on publication of editorials, or any attempt to revise the article into a non-editorial overview, based on what I had seen as the agreement.

Now, not only is talking about censorship censored, but even a private complaint about at the [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia%3AWikipedia_Signpost%2FNewsroom&action=historysubmit&diff=375694073&oldid=375693486 editor making grossly inaccurate personal attacks against me, based on patently false allegations, has been censored.

I quit. Both the Signpost, and Wikipedia.

Adam Cuerden (talk) 09:22, 27 July 2010 (UTC)


 * With no real knowledge of the issues you speak of, I have to point out: the Signpost isn't the venue for this. This week's story regards only his mention in The Guardian, and complaints about the recent scandal aren't particularly relevant. That's not to say that your point of view should be extinguished, but an essay, RfC, or the Village Pump would be a better approach; the Signpost is a community newspaper and not a blog or political organization.  bahamut0013  words deeds 13:01, 27 July 2010 (UTC)
 * [Moving my comment to the newsroom talkpage.] -- Quiddity (talk) 02:17, 28 July 2010 (UTC)