Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2020-12-28/In the media


 * Much kudos to Michael Perry for an amusing, constructive and successful way to correct a Wikipedia article about yourself. I've been musing recently on a recurring trend: people arrive at Wikipedia articles about themselves and try to change incorrect but reliably source content; when this fails, they begin attacking unpaid volunteers for repeating a factual mistake made by somebody who was paid to know better. Hardly fair to us, but one can see how it would be frustrating to be unable to correct something which causes continued misinformation about you (in the public sphere or in things future journalists write about you). Smallbones' suggestions of YouTube and a press release are plausible, but a Tweet might be the most successful if we encouraged such people to do so. However, if the issue is with online news content that was wrong rather than simply outdated, it seems to me that the real solution is to contact the newspaper which published the incorrect material and get them to change it. I don't know how likely that is of succeeding, but if newspapers decline to make such changes then this is a serious fault in their editorial practices. As for Twitter, their latest move is a good step in speeding up the death of Wikipedia, as they encourage thousands of SPAs and COI editors to act maliciously in any form possible in order to chase a blue tick that doesn't care how badly they behave on here as long as the end result is an article still standing at the time a Twitter employee installs the tick. Did they consult the WMF over this decision? If not, how dare they act with such entitlement? At least when YouTube sends us flocks of climate change deniers and neo-Nazis (videos on climate change and contemporary fascist ideas now sometimes highlight a link to a Wikipedia article) it could plausibly have the effect of reducing misinformation, though each decision was made in bad faith by tech companies looking to outsource their moderation responsibilities to unpaid, unappreciated volunteers and to pretend that they care about the disinformation which they profit heavily from deliberately promoting. — Bilorv ( talk ) 11:41, 28 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Thanks . Part of our paid editing problem is that our rules are so complicated - so somebody like Perry (especially if they are not in the media) usually don't have a clue of what to do, so turn to paid editors who don't really want to follow our rules. When I see something in the news about somebody who seems to have solved their particular problem on their own I try to put something in this column, e.g. Mark Davis of the Las Vegas Raiders. The video method could work if our editors were looking out for it - or the article subjects let us know about the videos on talk pages. The "What did Wikipedia get wrong about me" genre has been around for at least a decade on YouTube and radio broadcasts. Loudwire has a long series of videos mostly about heavy metal bands. See the article on Ice-T for my favorite example.  The funny thing is that they usually pretty much agree with the facts as presented on Wikipedia, but have some minor quibbles with the interpretation of the facts - fair enough! And most people (or companies) that are really notable have the resources to make and post such as video. Publicity agents should take note here - this would be one type of paid editor I would not mind at all - if you've got a client who is complaining about the article - just make a video of you and the client talking about the facts. I'll suggest giving the date of the article version you're talking about, and giving the agent's email (or at least the agency's name) so that we can be sure of the person being interviewed without original research. License the video CC-BY SA, so we can use it in the article, or we can use the external link format if necessary.  What are these agents getting paid for anyway? Just to get the facts out!  While they're at it, please send a good, freely-licensed photo to Commons. As I wrote above, it's questionable whether folks who don't have a publicity agent, or know how to make their own video, or find a reporter to talk to, are really notable.  Writing a press release won't be as effective, but it is better than the current situation - at least we'll have some evidence that the person making the complaints are who they say they are.  Smallbones( smalltalk ) 14:59, 28 December 2020 (UTC)
 * While they're at it, please send a good, freely-licensed photo to Commons. Seconded! I imagine a lot of figures look at the article about themselves and go "why isn't there a picture?" I can't really imagine anyone in the entertainment industry, for instance, who'd prefer not to have a recent picture in the infobox. Most news sources are happy to license one or use one under fair use (not quite sure how it works for them) but we need something free. If they came here to ask we'd be very happy to tell them how to go about things. — Bilorv ( talk ) 15:21, 28 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Or even simpler for them, make some of their images on their webpages Creative Commons compliant. Motivated volunteer editors will find the images & do all of the skut work themselves. (And putting a CC-BY image available on the Internet is far simpler for all involved than relying on an unpaid & possibly inexperienced volunteer take a picture of a public figure/place/organization that may not be flattering!) -- llywrch (talk) 23:02, 29 December 2020 (UTC)
 * makes a good point, that If they came here to ask we'd be very happy to tell them how to go about things. But I wonder if that's expecting too much? (Where, even, is "here"? Certainly not this Signpost comment thread.) Perhaps this is an opportunity for some proactive dissemination of information. Something like, say, a notification template at the top of BLP article talk pages. (You know, mixed in with the 3-20 other ones already there.) Some kind of message that's addressed directly to the article subjects (and their agents), rather than Wikipedians, with specific instructions on both the requirements and process for submitting a photo of the subject for use in the article. They'd still have to find that, which is still asking a lot, but I figure it's the most likely place they might visit other than the actual article. (If it became established/reliable enough, external howtos / coverage could also raise awareness by explaining that any person who's the subject of a Wikipedia article can go to the article's Talk page to find information on photo submission.) -- FeRDNYC (talk) 11:53, 30 December 2020 (UTC)
 * FYI, the Northern Territory is not an Australian State. It's only a self governing internal Territory, and is heavily dependent upon the largesse of federal taxpayers. We Australians also know that the Northern Territory Government is little more than a comedy show. So, eg, in the 2015 Country Liberal Party leadership spill, the Deputy Chief Minister tried to overthrow the Chief Minister, but the latter simply refused to resign, and eventually persuaded the Deputy that the Deputy wasn't clever enough to lead a government. Not surprisingly, both later lost their seats in the 2016 Northern Territory general election, which was also the worst defeat ever suffered by a sitting government in Territory history. Sadly, that government's replacement is not much better. Bahnfrend (talk) 14:41, 28 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Thanks, I've made the change to "territorial". Of course similar (or more serious) problems happen in much larger places as well. (I'll plead the 5th amendment if you ask where!) Smallbones( smalltalk ) 15:08, 28 December 2020 (UTC)
 * By FAR my favorite entry on that "most read article for each day of 2020" list is April 21, when for just one day it was Category:Unified Modeling Language stubs' time to shine. Surely bot activity, but nevertheless probably the driest topic to ever make a yearly round-up list. -- FeRDNYC (talk) 03:26, 29 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Twitter: *wants to use Wikipedia to decide on who gets a blue tick* Me: Quick! Let's nominate Donald Trump for deletion! He'll lose the tick mark! :-P
 * Seriously though, if Twitter does this, I propose that we demand 1 American Dollar per month for every person who gets a blue tick because they have a Wikipedia article, and Twitter should pay for it since they are the ones insisting on using Wikipedia. Twitter's decision is simply terrible for Wikipedia (as an aside, this reminds me of a joke. If YouTube, Twitter and Facebook merged, we would have YouTwitFace! :-D ) 45.251.33.98 (talk) 05:55, 29 December 2020 (UTC)


 * Regarding the Farrukh Dhondy article on origins of words, I tried searching Wikipedia for the hindi m**c** word, but no success. Closest I got was chinese grass mud horse. Pelagic ( messages ) – (09:58 Sat 02, AEDT) 22:58, 1 January 2021 (UTC)