User talk:Iridescent

Hello, Iridescent and friendly talk page stalkers. Imagine that I want to add a link to Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not that communicates the concept that you don't get to tell other volunteers what they have to do, while you complain that they aren't doing what you've ordered. (I mean, we had an RFC that formed a consensus that somebody else would do all of this work. Why didn't they do it already?)

How would you phrase that? "Wikipedia is not a place where you get to vote that others do the work"? Surely there are better options. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:23, 17 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

There's something related at Wikipedia:FINDSOURCESFORME. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:27, 17 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

"Wikipedia is not a sweatshop"? Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 20:57, 17 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I like that. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:37, 18 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Don't demand that editors solve the problems they identify? —Cryptic 21:15, 17 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Cryptic, I'm looking for something closer to "Don't complain that other people didn't do what you could do, except you refuse to do it because you don't want to do it yourself". WP:SOLVE advocates for tagging pages when you need help, not when you think other people should do the boring work. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:37, 18 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

WP:YOURENOTTHEBOSSOFME ^Thanks,L3X1 ◊distænt write◊ 16:47, 18 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

This is covered in WP:BOLD – Fix it yourself instead of just talking about it. In the time it takes to write about the problem, you could instead improve the encyclopedia. – but I agree that it doesn't really fit there. I assume it's there for historical reasons as the least inappropriate place back when we only had a handful of policies and guidelines. (I personally am not convinced WP:BOLD is really appropriate as any kind of Wikipedia guideline any more. "We welcome anyone who tries to help, whether or not they're actually being helpful" may have described Wikipedia circa 2003; it certainly doesn't describe any of the WMF projects—except maybe the ultraniche ones who are grateful for any participant at all—in 2025.)  ‑ Iridescent 16:26, 24 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I've heard that back in the day, arwiki chased after vandals with some success, on the theory that they desperately needed contributors, and if you have already figured out how to vandalize an article, then hey – you're already halfway to writing decent content!

I agree that we are more restrictive now, and this may account for some part of our recent decline in low-volume editors. (Yes, after years of telling people that Wikipedia's editor base isn't shrinking, I get to be the person who says that it probably is now.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:57, 24 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

And who should do the boring work? I sometimes wonder if the Wikipedia back office is populated by too many wannabe chiefs and not enough workers (to PC paraphrase a well known expression). Notwithstanding the people who have disdain for some of the more necessary but arduous and soul-destroying tasks like for example relentlessly where the dedicated people in the trenches of NPP's war of attrition are sometimes told by others they're wasting their time, while others do their best to throw a wrench in the works. Anyway, after having tried everything from ACTRIAL to creating a user right, to a complete rewrite of the Page Curation code, nothing will change for them until the WMF's 'Growth Team' grows to understand what being a Wikipedia editor is and a member of the several forces that clean up and/or delete the trash; and new users understand that Wikipedia is not the place to park a paragraph of junk into and expect others to turn it into a respectable article.

And on that, the WMF needs to be told by a higher authority what is needed, how to appoint the most appropriate CEOs and CTOs, how to recognise and delegate development, and how to balance the books. So looking at the lineup for this year's scramble (did I say 'scramble?) for the two community seats on the BoT election, while the contenders all mean well, apart from a couple it's more like a modern quest for takers for Arbcom. I'm sure though that you will all turn out to vote, so if you do, here's my take on it, and I make no apology for canvassing. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง

I generally ignore the BoT elections. WAID will probably pop up to disagree, but the general impression I get is that the WMF will do whatever the hell they like regardless, and participation in elections just gives the pretext to say "well, this is what you voted for" when they do whatever they were going to do anyway. Besides, I'm uncomfortable with just how unhealthy an immersion in the more cult-like aspects of the project elected arbs are expected to have; I can't begin to think how much worse it is for elected trustees. This really is the sort of job where I'd consider being qualified for the role to be inherently disqualifying. ‑ Iridescent 16:37, 24 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

To clarify, having just re-read what I've typed: by This really is the sort of job where I'd consider being qualified for the role to be inherently disqualifying I'm not saying either that we should abolish the trustees and appoint Jimmy Wales as Supreme Commander for Life, or convert the WMF into some kind of workers commune with direct voting on every decision. I'm saying that anyone who gets into a position where they're a viable candidate to be an elected trustee has done so much internal politicking that they pretty much by definition no longer represent the broad editor base—I absolutely guarantee that not one editor in a thousand could even tell you who the current ones are. (I know it's a cliche but it remains true—out of all the functions WMF lists on its website, the only one 90% of editors and 99.9% of readers care about is We maintain the servers, build the software, and design the technology that keep these projects running.)

If I were designing the WMF's governance, I'd get rid of the community elected trustees altogether and have a board made of the Great and Good from big tech, the NGO/charitable sectors, and former senior civil servants and political figures. In place of the token elected trustees, I'd have an ironclad recall mechanism in which a suitable quorum of participants from multiple projects could force a non-negotiable removal vote amongst the members should one of those trustees turn out to be an asshole. (I'm sure you well know the past instances in which I'd have expected this process to be used.) ‑ Iridescent 17:38, 24 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I've got my own views on what makes someone qualified for the WMF's Board, and it sounds like ours are compatible: People are qualified if they know how a corporation's board works. No matter how much social capital you have in some of the online communities, and no matter how many edits you've made, if you don't really know how a board works, then you aren't IMO qualified.

In terms of non-profit board structure, the usual rule of thumb, particularly for service organizations (e.g., a food bank) is that one third of the members should be wealthy donors, one third should have experience with the subject (e.g., people who received services from this or a similar organization in the past), and the remaining third should actually know what they're doing (e.g., experienced business managers). I therefore think that removing the community-focused seats would be considered, within the non-profit world, a departure from the tried-and-trusted format.

I would not agree that the WMF's Board will do whatever it wants regardless. They are constrained by practicalities on one side and by an explicitly imposed fiduciary duty to serve the WMF's charitable purpose (NB: not 'the community' or 'the volunteers') on the other. But within those constraints, doing whatever they think is the best way to promote their charitable purpose is what they're supposed to do. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:45, 24 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Trying to get things done for the editing Community is bloody hard work (been there, done that). There needs to be a solid bridge between the Community and the WMF and the BoT ain't it. The first priority is to ban current and former WMF employees from becoming members of it, and disallow current employees and contractors from voting on the elections. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 18:55, 24 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

In my experience, the few current and former WMF staff who have volunteered to stand for election have done so out of a desire to blow the whole thing up. You might be excluding the people whose goals most closely align with your own. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:02, 24 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

On reading User:WhatamIdoing/Board candidates I think we agree on the broad point, that competence ought to be more important than either popularity or meeting ideological quotas. That said, the WMF is a genuinely global organisation; a rule of thumb that applies in California doesn't necessarily describe the 95% of the world that isn't the United States. Even in the UK—the country closest to the US both socially and in terms of legal structures—one third of the [board] members should be wealthy donors would at best draw a blank stare. I appreciate that the WMF is ultimately a US body and needs to follow US law, but it's always worth bearing in mind that to most of the world "wealthy donors" doesn't signify "successful", it signifies "corrupt". (I assume the WMF are well aware of this, and that's why they make such a big effort with fundraising campaigns even when they don't actually need the money, to maintain the impression that it's funded by small donations from users.) TL;DR, if you don't really know how a board works, then you aren't IMO qualified makes the whole thing US-centric since the way non-profit boards work in the US is very different to most other countries; what you actually want to look for is "capacity to learn how a board works".

I'd argue that people who received services from this or a similar organization in the past is meaningless when it comes to the WMF. Probably upwards of 80% of the world's population have used Wikipedia directly at some point (and most of the remainder have used broadly equivalent products like Baidu Baike), and when you factor in indirectly benefiting from somebody else using Wikipedia it must approach 100%. If one tries to narrow it down to "only the most significant users", then in terms of data usage it would probably be neck-and-neck between the big AI firms and Chinese bot farms, and in terms of editing it would be the crank WBE 1–1000 types, and I'm not sure any of the three are particularly well qualified. (Slight caveat that I do think Big AI should probably have some kind of representation when it comes to strategic planning at the WMF, but I see it more as an ambassadorial thing; I certainly don't think it would be a good idea to put Altman and Musk on the board.)

I agree 100% with There needs to be a solid bridge between the Community and the WMF and the BoT ain't it. From experience, on the one occasion when I genuinely needed a formal ruling from the Board, it was literally quicker and easier to privately hassle Jimmy Wales than to go via correct channels, and I'm someone who at least knows what the correct channels are. If we're going to have community representatives, they should be more along the lines of trade union representatives—as you (WAID) say, making them actual board members legally obliges them to take whatever position they best feel reflects empower and engage people around the world to collect and develop educational content under a free license or in the public domain, and disseminate it effectively and globally, regardless of whether supporting that objective goes against the clear wishes of the people who elected them.

(Unpopular Opinion: if we're going to have community representation of whatever kind, the electoral constituencies should be "English Wikipedia", "Commons" and "Everyone else". However much the WMF may protest otherwise, en-wiki and Commons are the driving forces of the whole movement, and changes which affect them have far more impact than changes affecting any other project.)

I don't agree with ban current and former WMF employees from becoming members of it, and disallow current employees and contractors from voting on the elections, although I could get on board with banning current employees. There's a reasonable case to be made that someone who's worked for the WMF is better placed to know what the issues are—as long as they make any potential conflict of interest clear from the start, I don't see any particular issue. By the nature of Wikipedia, anyone who's in a position where they can get elected to a significant office is going to have a history of friends, enemies, pet issues and crank peeves—what matters is whether they can set their prejudices aside and act neutrally. (If I were tasked with finding potential candidates for the job of English Wikipedia's Ambassador to WMF, my first thoughts would be Fram, Risker, Johnbod and NYB—all of them come with huge amounts of baggage but they're all people I'd trust to know when to set the baggage aside.)  ‑ Iridescent 07:47, 26 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Just had this thread brought to my attention. I'm honoured to have made your list of people who know when to put their baggage aside. I think that the WMF Board of 2025 is really different from those that many of us remember from years past. Today, at least two of these appointed trustees regularly attend and participate in events oriented toward the Wikimedia community (Wikimania, local meet-ups, regional conferences, etc.) and actively interact with "ordinary" editors. They're also participating in committees and groups with what might be called "mixed" membership (those that include board members, WMF staff, and community members). I noticed this change starting in large meetings in 2022 when the WMF restarted a lot of activities post pandemic; perhaps it was because at the time I was part of the MCDC and thus had regular dealings with the Board. I suspect that many of the people they have been talking with aren't really aware that they are Board members.

Some of what has been discussed above, in particular the concept of ambassadors, is similar to the "strategic goal" of a Global Council; however, the emphasis was on affiliates having a say, rather than front-line community members. I don't know how much of that 2030 strategy is still being actively worked on; in part, the world around us has changed too much for many of its idealistic recommendations to be justified, and we're also about to have a change in WMF CEO who will probably propose very different priorities - as they should. I think the current Board is being given lots of information about both external threats and issues for the projects, and also what might be called more internal threats like declines in readership and challenges faced by smaller projects. We're seeing a lot more open communication originating from the WMF staff to all projects (and yes, I think most staff pay a little more attention to English Wikipedia, if for no other reason than that problems on this project are outsized compared to just about all the other ones). It is not perfect, and I don't think that it ever will be, but it feels to me like the Wikipedia of 2025 is a very different place than it was in 2019, and that a lot of the changes in the hierarchy are more positive than some may realize. When I get into a pessimistic mood about the project, it usually focuses on problems with inclusion, or external or governmental threats that are beyond our control, or how we will be able to maintain the project with decreased editorship, financial support, and readership in years to come. Now this could all change in a few months once we get to know the next CEO, but for some reason I am optimistic about it. Risker (talk) 07:46, 18 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The trappings change between countries (the UK doesn't call them "wealthy donors"; it calls them "patrons", and I'd be astonished if the board of the Royal Opera House Covent Garden Foundation didn't have a majority that 'just happened' to be personally wealthy), but the fundamental point that being part of a board means working on a committee stays the same.

What matters most about knowing how a board works is knowing that you have almost zero personal power, and everything is about the group's decision. The main power of being on the board is being able to vote for or against a decision, and the main requirement is that you abide by the group's decision. Board members cannot implement policies, hire or fire people, sign contracts, set budgets, create goals, etc. by themselves; they must convince the rest of the committee to agree with them. And if you hate committee work, especially the logrolling, back-scratching, politicking, human-relationship parts of it, then you really shouldn't join any board. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:45, 26 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Without bothering to look at their donor lists, I suspect something like the Royal Opera House board will be primarily superannuated politicians and formar company bosses, rather than individual donors. The UK model is certainly not ideal—as least when it comes to big organisations, it creates a ruling class of braying public school types who dominate charities and quangos—but the non-stop parade of scandals between 1994 and 2022 means the press are hypersensitive to anything that could possibly be considered a conflict of interest. (The wealthy donors are certainly there, but their payback comes in the honours list rather than as a seat on the board.)

I do agree wholeheartedly that the main qualification for a seat on a board—charity or otherwise—is understanding that the position of the board is to work whatever the agreed objective is. I also agree that most of the Wikipedia community are singluarly unqualified in that aspect. As I think I've already said somewhere in the morass above, rather than community elected trustees I'd much rather have ambassadors who are explicitly there to represent the editor base and the readership and aren't obliged to adhere to WMF objectives if they disagree with them. ‑ Iridescent 17:32, 2 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

For the benefit of the non-British who frequently post on this page I think we should explain that a 'public school' in the UK sense is anything but, and is a very special kind of institution. Not by choice, but I'm a product of one of the oldest schools in the country myself, and while I never became a millionaire patron of the arts or famous for appearances at The Oval or a shareholder in a quango, I possibly benefited from a well-rounded, but sometimes cruel education.

We've had enough of the BoT being the WMF's self-appointed mechanical rubber-stamping machine, and heaven forbid that a present - or former (I might conceed that point, it depends who they are) - WMF employee should be part of its rusty constitution. I certainly concur that while most Wikipedians are probably not suitably endowed with the academic or practical experience for a seat on such a unique board as the WMF's trustees, what is absolutely needed are members who are explicitly there to represent the editor base and the readership and aren't obliged to adhere to WMF objectives if they disagree with them.

The problem is however in finding those ambassadors who can relate not only to the need for financial transparency and necessary fund-raising and raiding, but also to the processes on the factory floor and the morale of the volunteers whose work generates those donations without reward and a luxury life style. It needs an equitable system for (s)electing them - avoiding conflicts of interest - and encouraging them to throw their hats in the ring. The ruling class here on Wikipedia are unfortunately often the ones who try to accrue social capital and climb its greasy pole by talking a lot, being bossy, and interfering with progress, rather than editors who do identify areas for seriously needed improvements to policies and processes and simply do it while faced with resistance from the WMF, and from editors who are obsessed with being Wikipedia's Stasi and live in their bubble of cruel authority like prefects in a British public school. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 20:45, 2 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

When you say things like "the BoT being the WMF's self-appointed mechanical rubber-stamping machine", I wonder whether you are conceptualizing the board as being separate from the WMF. At some level, the Board is the WMF, or at least part of it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:06, 2 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@WhatamIdoing, According to your definition, one could assume that you are suggesting that an independent, non-salaried body is not required at all and that the WMF is perfectly honest, reasonable, and transparent and needs no checks and balances. That said, perhaps you can understand why I do not think it's a good idea to allow present or former WMF staff to be members of the board - or even to vote on elections for it. Perhaps you are not familiar with the way the board functions in reality, or with the challenges the community faces when it needs a reaction from the WMF or its board.

I am on record of having said dozens of times that after all these years there is still no official bridge between the WMF and the volunteer communities, and that the BoT ain't it. The more the WMF grows and increases its staff, the further it distances itself from its major asset, the editing community - the previous WMF administration was a classical example. Things have improved somewhat with the new CEO who has kept her feet firmly on the ground, but this euphoria might be short lived when she leaves already in a few months. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 23:56, 2 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The board is legally required to exist. No board → no corporation.

It doesn't make sense to think of the board as "independent" of the WMF. The board is the WMF. There is no separate entity, "the WMF", that gets to decide what it will or won't do. This is pretty simple hierarchical concept: The board sets the budget. The board hires (and when they believe it is necessary, fires) the CEO directly. The board decides how many staff they want to have. This is the board's job. This is not done by some separate entity that you've decided to call "the WMF"; this is all done by the board. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:21, 3 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

WAID, the way I think of it, it largely comes down to how one measures "success". Experienced editors tend to measure it differently than do WMF paid staff. The latter tend to look for easily quantifiable things, like numbers of new contributors, whereas the former tend to look more at things like quality of content and minimization of disruption. So, the Board is a part of WMF, but experienced editors may want Board members to be concerned with the things that concern us, and not disregard them in favor of staff-preferred statistics. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:04, 3 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It's not "staff-preferred" statistics; it's "Board-preferred" statistics.

I agree that experienced editors, including me, favor the "minimization of disruption". But maybe we also have other values, too. I am going to die one of these days, and since I can follow a basic logical chain to its unpleasant conclusion – Wikipedia is written by editors; editors eventually die; dead people don't write Wikipedia articles; if we want someone writing articles after the existing editors die, we need new editors – I, too, am independently interested in the numbers of new contributors. I happen to think those numbers look a bit weak at the moment. How much disruption (all newbies are disruptive, including me back in the day) am we willing to tolerate now, if the goal is to have editors here when we're not? WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:27, 3 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

If it's "Board-preferred statistics", that's the problem, right there. (I'm actually not going to find fault with the desire for new editors.) --Tryptofish (talk) 00:32, 3 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I don't expect the Board to prefer the things you're interested in. They've got to look at their duty to the mission, which involves things like noticing that 80% of the people in the world don't speak English, and that therefore the Board should consider not devoting all their/their org's attention to the English Wikipedia. Naturally, as a long-time enwiki editor, I have my own preferences, but I can't say that theirs is unreasonable. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:57, 3 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The Board should explicitly consider devoting a significant amount of its time to the English Wikipedia. It doesn't matter if 80% of the people in the world don't speak English, what matters is that 80% of the money is generated by the work of the en.Wiki volunteers, and if they don't get the support they need, of course their numbers will diminish over time. The problem is however in finding those ambassadors who can relate not only to the need for financial transparency and necessary fund-raising and raiding, but also to the processes on the factory floor and the morale of the volunteers whose work generates those donations without reward and a luxury life style. The BoT is the only body that can make the WMF sit up and listen instead of us having to go on the streets and demonstrate like we did ACTRIAL was important because it showed how disagreement between the WMF and the community can occasionally reach proportions requiring the Foundation to bend to the volunteers' consensuses for needed organic changes as they finally did at WP:ACPERM five years later. It shouldn't have to be like that. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 01:10, 3 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Statements like The BoT is the only body that can make the WMF sit up and listen show me that you're still not grasping the fundamental legal and factual reality that the Board is the WMF. There is no WMF separate from the Board.

The US legal system does not agree with your view that a public charity should puts its attention on where the money comes from. The WMF is not a benefit corporation, whose job is to make money while also doing good. Its job is to do good, even if that means focusing on need instead of revenue. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:35, 3 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I want to take a stab at explaining my thinking a bit better than I did above. I gave some examples of things that one might or might not care about, but I meant those only as examples. My more important point is to make a distinction between things that can readily be measured by statistics, and things that cannot, that depend on more in-depth and nuanced examination. It's understandable that the Board, indeed any board, might be attracted to statistical measures. Such measures are easy to present in annual reports and the like. It's easy to argue that something is headed in the "right direction", or that it needs more attention or resources. But I'm arguing that that's deceptive. I have real-life experience as a university faculty member (and universities are nonprofits with goals that somewhat overlap with those of the WMF), and I know from personal experience that some universities have Boards of Trustees (or equivalent bodies) that are focused on statistical measures, and other universities where the boards focus more on the intangibles. (These things are relative, of course, and few if any universities do entirely one or the other.) And I've seen repeatedly that the universities that "treasure what you can measure" tend to become dysfunctional, whereas those that value the intangibles become the academic success stories. I feel very strongly that this is true. So I'm applying that here, as well. Experienced editors learn over time about things that do, or don't, facilitate productive editing, and content that readers will value. That's extremely important knowledge, and it often focuses on intangibles. If the WMF BoT brushes that aside, thinking "we've seen the numbers, and we know better", therein lies the road to perdition. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:40, 3 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Tryptofish, thank you for that. I couldn't have put it better myself. the key is in: If the WMF BoT brushes that aside, thinking "we've seen the numbers, and we know better", therein lies the road to perdition. which I have tried to explain to @WhatamIdoing below. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 22:50, 3 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I think that in some ways, the Board is less metrics-driven than it used to be. Back in the day, the WMF used to have it's monthly all-hands "Metrics" meeting. For years, these were public events, and you can still watch the videos. But eventually the opening "metrics" section was removed, and nobody appeared to notice or complain. AFAIK the metrics are still being presented in a small meeting with a handful of managers and technical folks, so somebody's keeping an eye on it (and should: when participation drops precipitously in a particular wiki/language/country, that can signal a serious technical problem), but mostly it's of less importance than it used to be.

"Less" importance, however, does not mean "no" importance.

(Tryptofish, I'm not sure that experienced editors are good at identifying "content that readers will value". I think we are better at identifying content that other experienced editors will value. For example, readers want more pictures, and we try to limit them with rules like WP:GALLERY; readers want quick access to specific details like MPAA movie ratings and which identity groups a BLP belongs to, and we refuse to make those prominent, or even to include them at all.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:02, 4 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I think it's telling how you make the case about "what readers value". You based it on metrics. You didn't base it on thinking about what makes Wikipedia more respected by the public at large than the average Google hit. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:34, 4 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

What metric did I give for "what readers value"?

I am responding to your claim that Experienced editors learn over time about...content that readers will value, so of course I'm talking about what readers value. If you'd instead written Experienced editors learn over time what makes Wikipedia seem more respectable to the public, I'd have given you a different answer (because there is solid research on this subject, and it mostly involves the general public not noticing that this is 'the encyclopedia that anyone can edit'). WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:47, 4 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

You said that readers want more pictures. That sounds like a survey result. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:55, 4 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

That comes from multiple sources, including unsolicited freeform feedback.

A metric would sound like "Wikipedia articles should average two images". What we have is "Readers say they like pictures and wish there were more of them in Wikipedia articles". WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:25, 4 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@WhatamIdoing, That's neatly side-stepping the topic of this thread, but FWIW, the WMF is actually doing nothing to increase the number of genuine users and new content that has any measurable impact after 3 years of the Growth Team's concenbtration on its pet invention and squandering over $1mio on it. They've been handed a solution on a plate by the community, free of charge, that will increase new, really appropriate content, encourage and help new users to do so, and greatly reduce the burden on NPP (which is another process that WAID once claimed to be superfluous) and AfC. However, since the solution is so simple, hardly needs any coding, and is backed by stats already, the WMF refuse to discuss it because it it not 'their' initiative. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 00:46, 3 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

You know those forced-choice survey questions, where you have to choose the answer that's closest even if you don't like any of the options? I suggest one for you:

Why does the Growth team exist?

1. Because the Board wanted the Growth team to exist, because the Board wants a product team focused on new contributors.
2. Because the Growth team sprang fully formed from the forehead of the staff and has managed to exist and get funding from the Board for many years, despite the Board's objection to it.

As for me telling you that NPP is "superfluous", AFAICT the only time I have ever used that word in connection with NPP is here, and it says nothing at all about NPP overall. You've been making this claim against me off and on, for at least 10 years, and you have a track record of blaming me for things I never said or did, so at this point: diffs, or it didn't happen. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:28, 3 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

What we need is more direct information aimed that those new editors/page creators before they start to make an article but these suggestions either fall on deaf ears or are neatly sidetracked by the stats-obsessed Foundation who at the end of the day appear to care only for increased figures for creations and new editors and not for quality control. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 12:38 pm, 12 May 2013, Sunday (12 years, 3 months, 26 days ago) Are you trying to tell us something has changed? Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:09, 3 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Apparently it has changed. The Growth Team (v. 2014 – there have been WMF multiple teams re-using various names over the years, and this is one of them) now provides "direct information aimed that those new editors/page creators before they start to" edit via Special:Homepage. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:04, 3 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@WhatamIdoing, It might interest you to know that I am right up to date with the homepage and the mentoring projects. I will not be so indiscreet as to reveal to you the most recent exchanges of email with the WMF, but FYI, nothing has changed and is not likely to for another several years when they have used up the money on their current projects and think up something to spend the next budget on - and it won't be on any brilliant ideas that come from the community. And that's why the=y are refusinbg to consider a a perfectly conceived, free solution. They don't want their existence threatened by the better skills that can be found among the volunteers. And to get this Command hierarchy? thread back on track: that's where the BoT should step in. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 05:25, 3 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The point of this thread is that Wikipedia's volunteer editors should not boss around their fellow volunteer editors. Whether the Board should do what you recommend instead of what others recommend is not relevant. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:15, 3 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

You seem to have got the negatives and positives in your claim the wrong way round. Let's correct it: The WMF is a benefit corporation, whose job is to make money while also doing good. Its job is to do good, even if that means focusing on its own needs and salaries instead of increasing new articles and the quality of them and addressing the needs of the people that provide the content. BTW, I'll find that diff, but for the moment I have a full working day ahead of me. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:21, 3 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Quoting from the first sentence of the article at Benefit corporation: "a benefit corporation (or in some states, a public benefit corporation) is a type of for-profit corporate entity.

The Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. is not a for-profit corporation. It is a non-profit corporation. It therefore cannot be a benefit corporation.

Try again? WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:01, 3 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I am not amused. You know perfectly well what I am implying, you worked for the WMF long enough to know what happens in reality, and I am one of the people who moved and shook a few things in my time to get them done. Try again. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 05:11, 3 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I also suspect that your original comment is missing a "not" somewhere. As written, you recommend that the WMF (an entity that includes the Board) focus on the WMF's needs and staff salaries instead of content creators' needs. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:18, 3 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Please read it again. I did not 'recommend' anything. What I said cynically paints the picture of reality. No one on this Wikipedia is in any doubt as to my stance vis-à-vis the WMF. The Growth Team, which is now part of a specific group, 'Contributors', has its 'own strategy for the next 5 years' which they summarise as "We are currently working on a metrics strategy that will define a core metric we’ll aim to move with this product strategy, alongside indicator metrics that will ladder up to." (Could someone translate that into English please? Even in its native German, a very pragmatic language, it does not make an iota of sense). By doing what they 'think' Wikipedia wants instead of taking their cues from the people who know, they are effectively hindering progress and ironically causing the greatest damage to the quality of the encyclopedic content that some of us strive to maintain. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 22:44, 3 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

You wrote that you believe the WMF's "job is to do good, even if that means focusing on its own needs and salaries instead of increasing new articles and the quality".

I disagree. I think the WMF's (both the board's and staff's) job is to promote their charitable purpose. That may, in practice, require some amount of attention to the board's and staff's "own needs", but it has much more to do with helping the general public become more educated. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:51, 4 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Obviously your sense of humour does not stretch to British irony ;) BTW, I found that diff. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 11:41, 7 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I look forward to seeing it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:48, 7 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The threading and indenting have got very confusing. Rather than try to reply inline, I'm going to do a soft reset of this thread and do one big reply. I'll sign each section separately, to allow anyone who wants to reply to a particular point to use the reply tool to reply at that point (and save TPWs from reading replies to points they aren't interested in). I'm sure this breaks some Wikipedia rule or other, but honi soit qui mal y pense and all that—this seems a very legitimate invovation of IAR. ‑ Iridescent 18:16, 3 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Risker, I think the WMF Board of 2025 is really different from those that many of us remember from years past is probably fair—I haven't had enough interaction with recent iterations to judge, but I haven't noticed any particularly vocal protests. That said, Wikipedia's unique nature means it has much more of an institutional memory than comparable websites. (I could make a case that it has more of an institutional memory than actual bricks-and-mortar academic institutions or publishing houses.)

Assuming that you're right that the change happened c. 2022, the generation of editors who grew up with the new and improved BoT will only just about now be moving into Wikipedia/Wikimedia's 'managerial' positions—the vast majority of our administration (both lower-case a and capital A) is currently still going to be people who have memories of the BoT as an unholy mix of tech bros, pie-in-the-sky utopians, creepy obsessives, and outright grifters. As you may remember, six years ago (!) I was the one who made the original comment that triggered what was probably the worst Board vs. Community vs. Management clash since Nupedia days. I suspect for many—probably most—of the people who make the day-to-day decisions in the Wikipedia community, that will have been their most recent interaction with the Board; one can hardly blame anyone who went through that (or Geshuri, or LauraHale, or CBD, or Essjay…) for seeing trustees as something best avoided as much as possible.

Despite my gradual disengagement from WMF projects, I'm generally optimistic about the direction Wikipedia (if not the rest of the WMF) is going. If anything the growth of AI potentially makes Wikipedia more valuable as a resource, not less. I honestly wouldn't be surprised if over the very long term after we're all dead, the archived versions of Wikipedia and Commons from 2021–22 acquire the same sort of reputation we give the 1911 Britannica—they'll literally be the most thorough and up-to-date record both of which topics were considered important, and what was the current state of thinking on those topics, before the LLMs started skewing things. I'm not convinced the WMF are the best people to manage that—both the Board and the staff have always seemed to have an unhealthy obsession with expansion rather than stablilizing and consolidating—but I'll concede that the existing setup is probably the least bad of the alternatives. ‑ Iridescent 18:16, 3 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Kudpung yes, I'm using 'public school' in the British rather than the American sense. (This is decidedly not my area, but my understanding is that a 'public school' in the UK sense is anything but is unfair; they were established before the advent of universal schooling, and the 'public' refers to a school that was open to any member of the public who could pay the tuition fee, rather than exclusively the children of members of a particular religious order or trade guild, or children who lived in a specific area.)

I agree 100% on The problem is however in finding those ambassadors who can relate not only to the need for financial transparency and necessary fund-raising and raiding, but also to the processes on the factory floor and the morale of the volunteers whose work generates those donations without reward and a luxury life style. Risker may remember that way back before the dawn of time, I once proposed that Arbcom grant observer status to a delegate from what was then still called Wikipedia Review provided they were willing to sign as binding a NDA as Legal could draw up. That might not have been workable, but I still think the principle is sound—people don't generally dedicate large parts of their lives to obsessively monitoring every perceived fault in something unless they care deeply about it. I'd trust some of the noisier critics like Fram or yourself to make strategic decisions far more than I'd trust some idealist burbling about "Wikipedia is not for us. It's for them"—even if I fundamentally disagreed with the decisions being made, I'd trust the people making those decisions to explain their reasoning and listen to disagreement. If one is going to see the community trustees as ambassadors rather than management, we don't actually want the wiki-cop types. ‑ Iridescent 18:16, 3 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Kudpung & WhatamIdoing I get the feeling you're talking at cross-purposes over the role of the Board. Yes, the Board is legally obliged to exist and on paper is the ultimate authority, and I don't think anyone disputes that. The point at issue is whether it is (1) a largely ceremonial "Wikipedia Privy Council" which only exercises its oversight powers as a last resort in the event management seriously screws something up, (2) it's primarily an outreach body which does its minimal statutory duties but exists primarily to be the public face of the WMF, or (3) it takes an active day-to-day role in management. As (1) and (2) are by far the most common models in England but (3) is very common in the US, I wouldn't be surprised if the two of you are looking at this with opposing views of what it's appropriate for trustees to be doing. (English charity law is notoriously strict; it's a legacy of the Reformation negating a thousand years of church doctrine on what constitutes 'good works' and how they should be performed, leading to 450 years worth of impenetrable legislation defining exactly what constitutes a good cause and exactly who should do what and when.) ‑ Iridescent 18:16, 3 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I absolutely agree with The Board should explicitly consider devoting a significant amount of its time to the English Wikipedia. It doesn't matter if 80% of the people in the world don't speak English, what matters is that 80% of the money is generated by the work of the en.Wiki volunteers, and if they don't get the support they need, of course their numbers will diminish over time.. Yes I know "empower and engage people around the world" is dogma, but whether or not the WMF likes it, English Wikipedia is the goose that's laying the golden eggs and will be for the foreseeable future—assuming Wikipedia:List of Wikipedias#Edition details is accurate, there is literally not a single metric by which English Wikipedia isn't at least an order of magnitude more active than any other project. (Machine translation is coming on so fast, I suspect that within a decade there will be a credible business case to be made for having just a single Wikipedia and mothballing most of the others, or at least only keeping the largest Wikipedias open and translating to and from other languages on the fly. By my count, there are currently 82 active Wikipedias with fewer than 20 active users—there comes a point when we're not "empowering that girl in Africa to save the lives of hundreds of thousands of people around her", we're wasting donor funds subsidizing the hobby of handful of eccentrics.) ‑ Iridescent 18:16, 3 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

This might surprise all of you but I personally have no problem with the WMF using metrics. It's not ideal, but given that English Wikipedia alone gets 7,576,361,352 pageviews per month from a billion unique devices[1], there's realistically no reasonable way the WMF can meaningfully find out what readers want other than by measuring what they do and don't look at, and analysing the complaints and compliments that come in. All of us here are too familiar with Wikipedia for our feedback to be meaningful. To stick with @Tryptofish's example, we aren't concerned by an apparent lack of pictures because we don't expect them (and we know the reasons why including a lot of illustrations on a Wikipedia article is generally a really bad idea), but I can totally believe that someone who's grown up on social media finds it disconcerting to be reading a website that doesn't have an accompanying illustration for every single point being made. Ultimately we're here for the readers, not the other editors—if it's clear that the readers want pictures, it's if nothing else good manners on our part either to include more pictures, or explain the technical and legal reasons why we're not going to include more pictures. ‑ Iridescent 18:16, 3 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Here's another disconnect between editors and readers:

Articles about businesses get read way more often than experienced editors expect. We (or I, since after all these years, I'm still the top editor of NCORP) spend a lot of time trying to root out "promotional" articles about "non-notable" businesses, but our readers vote with their clicks that these are important articles. This might be mostly (I speculate) because they trust us to have the right website in the infobox/WP:EL section, and thus it's a quick convenience, but I know people (e.g., salespeople) who regularly use these articles for work purposes. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:56, 3 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you so much, Iridescent, for the time you spent providing all those answers and setting them out so coherently, and for your words of wisdom. Although I'm not one of the 'regulars' here looking for every opportunity to leave a comment on every thread, your talk page has always been a source of inspiration despite my old age and tenure on Wikipedia and the nine years I spent as an admin. Like you, I'm not so active these days, but I still care. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 06:40, 4 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Iridescent, I’m looking for an FA mentor for a law-related article that links closely to English parliamentary history: Section 54 of the Constitution Act, 1867. When I saw your name and subject area on the potential mentors list, I thought you might be interested? Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 18:40, 13 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Looks like you're not active, so withdraw request. Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 01:24, 21 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Apologies for that, but probably best I don't commit to anything time-sensitive. If you nudge me when it goes up for FAC, I'll do my best to review it but it will depend on availablity.  ‑ Iridescent 18:18, 3 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Just as a general note to TPWs, if you don't have this script installed I highly recommend it. It enables you at a glance to skim the reference section of any article and see straight away anything cited to a potentially dubious source. (Of course it doesn't actually check the source says what is claimed, but it's worth its weight in gold for spotting the predatory journals with legitimate-sounding names.) ‑ Iridescent 19:23, 3 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

A long while ago, there was a discussion on this foru—er, talk page about the use of U5, and to an extent, non-mainspace CSD templates. One point that at the time stood out to me (and to an extent, still does) was that, essentially, "there's no point" as they these namespaces are noindexed, and so on. This was a pretty informative discussion for me, and it's definitely affected what I tag (I since have ignored a vast majority of user/draftspace page creations that "could've" been speedy deleted, but didn't "need" to be).

Unfortunately, we now live in $CURRENT_YEAR where everything is meaningless and all is fuel for the souped-up Markov chain generators. To be more explicit, it's been extremely clear that LLMs have been trained on data in certainly the draft namespace and presumably userspace pages as well, as seen by the vast amount of instances of hallucinated {{afc draft}} template usages and similar. (It'll even hallucinate decline templates which is hilarious.)

This makes me feel... weird? I don't think this realization has changed how I personally tag things, but it does make me feel differently about what stuff is left to sit and rot in user/draftspace. Is that now not an avenue of promotion for companies? Just make an article in draftspace, touch it every six months to keep it from deletion, and you'll eventually become better recognized by freshly trained LLMs? I mean, that's a shame (if it's even possible to have that much effect on a model from a single page in draftspace), but also do we care? It's not directly impacting the project, after all! (Indirectly it may, as a larger number of drafts are written using LLMs, meaning training on draftspace will end up being regurgitated back out into new articles... ironically this means it's statistically likely to be training on the worst drafts (those that aren't ever accepted), leading to AI citogenesis.)

So I'm curious what you—and the dozens of others watching this—think. Does what goes on in unsubmitted and buried userpages still "not matter" in the grand scheme of things, now that it's evidently a source of data for LLMs? Perryprog (talk) 02:16, 18 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Personally I'd love to see the almost-always-misapplied U5 abolished, and replaced with a G13-like rule that we delete userspace content if, 6 months after its creation, the creator has no live edits to mainspace (with an exception for top-level userpages that are not drafts). This would cover almost all valid deletions under U5, at much lower cost in editor-hours and with much less biting of newbies who made the fatal mistake of using their userpage to tell the world what they do for a living. -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (they|xe|🤷) 08:52, 18 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I'd support that, though I'd probably also support deleting U5 entirely. There's BITING and then there's UTTERLYDEVOURING new editors. I wouldn't be surprised if the number of future editors we lost due to bad U5s was in the triple digits. Perryprog (talk) 13:32, 18 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think that applying the Draft: namespace deadline to userspace is a good idea.

See also Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous)#User:MichaelQSchmidt has died. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:13, 18 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, I was imagining something that would be current-U5 plus the conditions Tamzin mentioned at the least. Perryprog (talk) 23:48, 18 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

No, I think it's better just to make it procedural and no-fault: If you show up here, create something in your userspace, and then wander away without ever touching mainspace (note: not just not touching the page like with G13), after a sufficient period of time let's just presume that that's not a useful thing for the encyclopedia, regardless of what it is. The analysis for U5-like criteria can be conducted at WP:REFUND if necessary, under a standard like "the page is patently unrelated to building an encyclopedia and not otherwise valid userspace material", stressing that even very bad drafts will be restored as long as they don't meet any other CSD. I think this would all be much less BITEÿ: Users aren't made to feel like they've done anything wrong, just that their page is being deleted procedurally, and they're told how to fix it. -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (they|xe|🤷) 00:02, 19 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

So:

• Write a beautiful article in your sandbox, but unexpectedly die before you move it to mainspace: Delete.
• Fill your sandbox with test edits, but fix one typo in the mainspace: Keep indefinitely.

?

I tend to lean towards "who cares?" about the LLMs. For one thing, I wonder whether they hallucinate AFC templates because they're trained in the draftspace, or because they're being prompted with a copy of a declined draft. But mostly: Why should I want to make LLM output better? WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:26, 19 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

How often does that first thing happen? Someone creates a usable article in userspace without ever editing mainspace once, then doesn't publish it? And more to the point, when it does happen, how often does anyone ever come along and salvage the draft, versus it languishing forever? It seems like a rare edge case to justify maintaining a large number of pages that will never become articles and accrue various policy issues. At times I've gone and searched userspace for things like "is a rapist" or "is a murderer" and deleted pages that had been making some kind of allegation for over a decade. The damage done by a single abandoned page in the userspace of someone who's never meaningfully contributed is small, but cumulatively it adds up. -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (they|xe|🤷) 00:33, 19 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

This is still better than how we treat drafts. (Also better than how we currently usually treat userspace pages.) —Cryptic 00:45, 19 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, the way we treat drafts is... rough (though I might be thinking of issues different than what you're implying, but I want to bring up anyway). I do what I can do try to provide a minimum of handwritten explanation as to what's wrong with a draft when I decline it, sometimes just doing a custom decline reason instead, because the walls of templated blue links with no actual explanation of why they relate to anything in the draft is just so, so detrimental to any sort of productivity. Every time I see a draft when a page's worth of decline templates with the same few stock presets and not a single comment, I die a little inside. Perryprog (talk) 00:48, 19 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

(The specific issue I was referring to was, if someone writes a beautiful article in the Draft: namespace but dies without doing anything else, in six months, it'll get meatbot-deleted by one of the admins who run deliberately-obfuscated Quarry queries for old drafts, maybe without a human ever looking at it. Declinations of actually-submitted drafts is another thing entirely. —Cryptic 01:01, 19 September 2025 (UTC))[reply]

Wait, what do you mean obfuscated quarry queries? It's not like that's a complicated query? Perryprog (talk) 01:03, 19 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

They blank the title of the queries, which makes it so you can't click on them from the recent query list - even clicking on the empty-looking table cell doesn't work, though if you look at the raw html output the query number is given so you can still find it if you're really motivated to. An example is quarry:query/65847 by MPGuy2824 near the bottom of that list, currently about 8 hours old. (That's not one of the ones I'm talking about, but is showing the same bug.) —Cryptic 01:14, 19 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Ahh, I thought you meant the actual SQL was obfuscated which would be funny. I mean, the default title is blank, so I don't think it's fair to say that that's deliberate obfuscation. I'll go file a phab ticket though. (If there isn't one already.) (Now phab:T405051.) Perryprog (talk) 01:16, 19 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The default title is "Untitled query #97265". I was sure there already was a bug for it, and just spent the last fifteen minutes searching for it; if it ever existed, it's at least not open anymore. (Aha, it was phab:T375292.) Anyway, off-topic here. —Cryptic 01:29, 19 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, you're correct on both counts. (I found the original bug moments after creating the ticket; classic. It's linked to from the above phab link.) My apologies! Perryprog (talk) 01:34, 19 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

WAID, I think you're misreading what Tamzin's proposing: it's not "A. user subpages, or top-level draftlike user pages, B. whose owner has no surviving mainspace edits in the last six months"; it's "A. user subpages or top-level draftlike user pages, B. that are at least six months old (even if edited more recently), and C. whose owner currently has no surviving mainspace edits". MichaelQSchmidt's drafts would never become Tamzin-version-of-U5-eligible unless every single one of his mainspace edits were deleted (or at least reverted, I suppose).

This is more merciful than the status-quo-as-written, which is something like "A. non-draftlike user pages, B. of any age, C. whose owner has 'few or no' non-userspace edits (essentially always in mainspace)" plus "draftlike user pages submitted to AFC are subject to G13, and usually those and sometimes non-submitted ones get moved to the Draft: namespace besides". It's much, much more merciful than the status-quo-as-practiced, which is "A) any sort of page in userspace, B) that the tagger and deleting admin don't like, C) whose owner is too new to successfully raise a fuss". Which sounds exaggerated and embittered, but I haven't been able to come up with anything less cynical without sacrificing accuracy.

I've been meaning for a while now to start an RFC to see whether the as-written or as-practiced version is closer to consensus. I suspect neither is. —Cryptic 00:43, 19 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, that's my intended meaning. The gap this would leave is, say, someone creating a top-level userpage that really does blatantly misuse Wikipedia as a webhost, like a CV or a work of fiction. I could probably get behind a much more strictly worded version of U5 to cover those cases, something like "Pages in the userspace of a user with few or no edits outside userspace, which consist of only 1) a résumé or curriculum vitae (but not mere discussion of a user's professional life), 2) a work of fiction or persuasive writing unrelated to Wikipedia, or 3) lengthy material about the user's personal life". But honestly I'm not sure it'd be the end of the world just to send all such cases to MfD; I think it'd only be a few a day occurring on top-level userpages. -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (they|xe|🤷) 01:13, 19 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Because I have the weird habit of watching new-user non-mainspace article creations, I can tell you that's probably a lot more articles a day than you think. (I'd probably estimate 5–10 a day conservatively.) Perryprog (talk) 01:15, 19 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

1) a résumé or curriculum vitae (but not mere discussion of a user's professional life) is not a workable criterion. Different people will have very different ideas about how to interpret it. Therefore I think that all such should go through MFD. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:57, 19 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Right now, as we speak, those are valid speedies, under both U5-as-written and U5-as-practiced. As-written even used to explicitly exclude resume-like pages, like it excludes pages that are plausibly drafts, but it was removed. As-practiced usually also deletes "mere discussion of a user's professional life". —Cryptic 02:26, 19 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I remember seeing a dispute over a U5 a few years ago. A participant in a learn-to-edit event was told to put some information about himself on his User: page. He did: I live in ____, I have a degree from Big University in Subject Matter, and I started my own landscaping business. You can reach me on LinkedIn. I'm interested in <things you'd expect a professional landscaper to be interested in>.

In other words, it was exactly the kind of basic summary you'd expect in any professional setting, but we tried to call it "a résumé or curriculum vitae" and want to kill it without discussion. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:29, 19 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

In response to the original question, I'm with WAID. LLM trainers that ignore robots.txt (which doesn't apply to draft- or userspace) and <meta name="robots" content="noindex,nofollow,..."> (which does) and just scrape everything, everywhere, deserve the bad data they get; and if that makes the output that gets pasted back here more obvious and therefore even a little easier for us to deal with, that's a bonus. —Cryptic 02:49, 19 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Well, it's funny—it was only during writing the original post that I realized it was perhaps most likely that training on drafts would lead to an overall detriment to the LLM rather than a benefit (though this could of course be totally wrong). As to whether or not that means things get easier to deal with on our end... I'm not sure. I suspect at the end of the day it's a headache to deal with low-effort drafts regardless of how they're written. My original thought that this could somehow be a backdoor into having various LLMs "know" about you or your business, I'm now thinking, is at best a minor concern. (Though, I do wonder how much impact getting an article in mainspace impacts an LLM's awareness of that topic, and if it's the same as just having the same topic being in draftspace.) Perryprog (talk) 22:34, 19 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The problem IMO isn't low-"effort" articles. It's low-"quality" articles. I've written some articles that, from my subjective experience, I just threw together with a couple of readily available sources. I could almost write articles in my sleep, except for the pesky point about making sure the correct source was spammed at the end of the right sentence (that step requires me to keep my eyes open ;-)). But the fact that some subjects are easy for me to write about doesn't make the resulting articles difficult for other editors to process.

On the opposite site, I see newcomers struggle for hours and days to put together the simplest, most basic things, and what they produce is still mostly bad content. I think we just have to remember that mostly newbies do a bad job on their first try, and it's only by helping them and teaching them that they'll get better. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:42, 23 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Perryprog and @WhatamIdoing, Citogenesis is an age-old problem with sourcing Wikipedia articles. It's fairly clear however, to those of us who know the signs to look for that 'clever' new users are pasting new articles that they have 'created' with an LLM. There could be better ways to address this and some of them involve our own use of AI (which we used to call mw:ORES but is now under new development), while others are to nip fake articles in the bud before they even reach the New Pages Feed. That said, the problem is indeed just as much the low-"effort" articles, thrown together in five minutes plus two barely credible sources as the the low-"quality" ones that might just scrape through at AfD but which contribute extremely little value to an encyclopedia. One-line stubs are dumped on us daily by those who think we have thousands of editors just waiting to pounce on them and turn them into real articles. At the risk of making a sweeping statement, it's my guess that such stubs and starts make up to 25% of the content (Cryptic could come up with the latest stats).

...it's only by helping them [new users] and teaching them that they'll get better, and that's what we do worst, and what we could do a lot better if the WMF and it's Growth team would listen to the voices of experience: namely the recent comments of active participants at NPP in this recent NPP research instead of persistently relying on metrics which do not reflect reality. The bottom line there is that the only way to know for sure what the envelope of new articles looks like is through anecdotal evidence and the way to obtain that is to do a couple of hundred NPP reviews oneself.

WMF tech departments facing the reader and editor audiences constantly create new software-driven solutions of their own creation in order to justify their allocated budget, but whose results have proven to be a mere drop in the ocean - and a waste of time and that money. That's where it becomes self-evident that a robust bridge is required between the Community and the WMF, and the BoT ain't it. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 01:57, 28 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Category:All stub articles says it has 2,320,262 members (essentially all are non-redirect pages in the main namespace); Special:Statistics gives 7,065,020 content pages. So closer to a third than a quarter. —Cryptic 03:52, 28 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It's probably higher than that. Using word counts, the 25th percentile has ~125 words and 5 sentences (and two refs), both of which are half the usual maximum for a stub. The median article is ~350 words and 13 sentences (and four refs), which is not very far above the 250 words/10 sentences maximum. So maybe 40% are stubs?

Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team#Statistics suggests 50%. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:04, 28 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@WhatamIdoing, and that's precisely what the WMF wants: Quantität statt Qualität (It scans better in German) to boast to potential readers, other users, and donors that 7,065,073 articles is impressive. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 05:58, 28 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think the WMF spends much time thinking about the number of existing articles. They seem more interested in the volume of information (think "words", not "separate pages") being added (not "already existing") than in the overall number of articles. I assume that when enwiki reached the recent milestone that they posted something about it on a social media account, but I suspect that we spent a lot more time talking about it than they did. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:18, 28 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@WhatamIdoing, exactly, just as I said: Quantität statt Qualität. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 23:32, 28 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

One hopes that you think a well-developed article is better quality than a two-sentence stub. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:52, 29 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@WhatamIdoing, what's 'hope' got to do with it? (rhetorical question). 'One' hopes that you produce well developed articles. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 01:12, 29 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

 You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (idea lab) § Rethinking CSD U5. -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (they|xe|🤷) 16:46, 23 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I'll try to comment at Wikipedia talk:Speedy deletion#RfC: Replacing U5 with a primarily procedural mechanism before it closes, but I haven't time to read it at the moment so no promises. I totally concur with "who cares about the LLMs"—if they produce shitty output, that's surely a good thing from our point of view as the less trustworthy the LLM output is, the more likely readers are to want to read a real, human-generated website.

@Tamzin, I can think of a genuine (albeit rare) use-case in which "A. user subpages or top-level draftlike user pages, B. that are at least six months old (even if edited more recently), and C. whose owner currently has no surviving mainspace edits" would be met legitimately: pages which are written over a whole semester as part of a class project, where everyone's article is written in draft or user space and only moved into mainspace by the teacher at the end of the project if they're considered good enough. I don't know if the guidelines are still the same, but we certainly used to actively encourage this kind of project to work exclusively in drafts, to avoid the students getting reverted or blocked. (These school projects do occasionally produce something worthwhile. Bog turtle is probably the canonical example.) ‑ Iridescent 18:31, 3 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

(I continue my position that Wikipedia-based class projects should be focused on improving the rating of existing Wikipedia article.) Perryprog (talk) 18:35, 3 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Not necessarily—"Wikipedia doesn't have an article on my home town!" was always one of our most powerful recruitment drivers back in exponential-growth days. Even if the class project is focused on improving an existing article, it's generally good practice for the class project to work in a sandbox rather than live-editing the existing article; if they try to edit the live page, there's a very high chance a whole bunch of them make good-faith mistakes, someone spots a whole bunch of brand-new accounts editing the same page and starts a SPI, and because they all trace back to the school's IP we end up blocking the whole school. ‑ Iridescent 18:43, 3 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Well, fair, however on the IRC help channel I have seen a lot of cases where professors required people to get AfC drafts accepted of all things as part of an assignment, so that's partly where my stance comes from—a good number of those were then for topics that simply weren't notable, and so they were just... never going to get accepted. That was always pretty disheartening to try to explain. Perryprog (talk) 19:36, 3 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

You shouldn't see those kinds of problems for classes sponsored by the Wikipedia:Wiki Education Foundation, but they only work in Canada and the US, and even within those countries, "the encyclopedia anyone can edit" includes any group/class/bold instructor. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:42, 3 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, we usually try to make sure it's not from WikiEdu; typically it's just an independent professor. Perryprog (talk) 23:25, 3 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Your use case wouldn't be deletable under the proposals RFC'd on WT:SD, for what it's worth. At least, not unless it were created at the very beginning of the semester and then left completely unedited afterward. —Cryptic 03:09, 4 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Happy adminship anniversary! Hi Iridescent! On behalf of the Birthday Committee, I'd like to wish you a very happy anniversary of your successful request for adminship. Enjoy this special day! DaniloDaysOfOurLives (talk) 02:57, 20 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Iridescent is now provably an adult! (Unless it's a dread pirate Roberts situation, and the account's been passed on from person to person?) Perryprog (talk) 03:17, 20 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Wait I'm an idiot; account age ≠ adminship age. Well, their mop is an adult now? Perryprog (talk) 03:22, 20 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I can't emphasise how old this makes me feel. To put that in perspective, I remember the celebrations when Wikipedia reached its millionth article (Jordanhill railway station, if you're wondering). ‑ Iridescent 18:37, 3 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Categories you have created have been nominated for possible deletion, merging, or renaming. A discussion is taking place to decide whether this proposal complies with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2025 October 10 § Defunct/disused/former railway stations on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. –LaundryPizza03 (dc̄) 04:57, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hello, Iridescent. This message is being sent to remind you of significant upcoming changes regarding logged-out editing.

Starting 4 November, logged-out editors will no longer have their IP address publicly displayed. Instead, they will have a temporary account (TA) associated with their edits. Users with some extended rights like administrators and CheckUsers, as well as users with the temporary account IP viewer (TAIV) user right will still be able to reveal temporary users' IP addresses and all contributions made by temporary accounts from a specific IP address or range.

How do temporary accounts work?

• When a logged-out user completes an edit or a logged action for the first time, a cookie will be set in this user's browser and a temporary account tied with this cookie will be automatically created for them. This account's name will follow the pattern: ~2025-12345-67 (a tilde, year of creation, a number split into units of 5).
• All subsequent actions by the temporary account user will be attributed to this username. The cookie will expire 90 days after its creation. As long as it exists, all edits made from this device will be attributed to this temporary account. It will be the same account even if the IP address changes, unless the user clears their cookies or uses a different device or web browser.
• A record of the IP address used at the time of each edit will be stored for 90 days after the edit. Users with the temporary account IP viewer (TAIV) user right will be able to see the underlying IP addresses.
• As a measure against vandalism, there are two limitations on the creation of temporary accounts:
  • There has to be a minimum of 10 minutes between subsequent temporary account creations from the same IP (or /64 range in case of IPv6).
  • There can be a maximum of 6 temporary accounts created from an IP (or /64 range) within a period of 24 hours.

Temporary account IP viewer user right

• Administrators may grant the temporary account IP viewer (TAIV) user right to non-administrators who meet the criteria for granting. Importantly, an editor must make an explicit request for the permission (e.g. at WP:PERM/TAIV)—administrators are not permitted to assign the right without a request.
• Administrators will automatically be able to see temporary account IP information once they have accepted the Access to Temporary Account IP Addresses Policy via Special:Preferences or via the onboarding dialog which comes up after temporary accounts are deployed.

Impact for administrators

• It will be possible to block many abusers by just blocking their temporary accounts. A blocked person won't be able to create new temporary accounts quickly if the admin selects the autoblock option.
• It will still be possible to block an IP address or IP range.
• Temporary accounts will not be retroactively applied to contributions made before the deployment. On Special:Contributions, you will be able to see existing IP user contributions, but not new contributions made by temporary accounts on that IP address. Instead, you should use Special:IPContributions for this (see a video about IPContributions in a gallery below).

Rules about IP information disclosure

• Publicizing an IP address gained through TAIV access is generally not allowed (e.g. ~2025-12345-67 previously edited as 192.0.2.1 or ~2025-12345-67's IP address is 192.0.2.1).
• Publicly linking a TA to another TA is allowed if "reasonably believed to be necessary". (e.g. ~2025-12345-67 and ~2025-12345-68 are likely the same person, so I am counting their reverts together toward 3RR, but not Hey ~2025-12345-68, you did some good editing as ~2025-12345-67)
• See Wikipedia:Temporary account IP viewer § What can and can't be said for more detailed guidelines.

Useful tools for patrollers

• It is possible to view if a user has opted-in to view temporary account IPs via the User Info card, available in Preferences → Appearance → Advanced options → Enable the user info card
  • This feature also makes it possible for anyone to see the approximate count of temporary accounts active on the same IP address range.
• Special:IPContributions allows viewing all edits and temporary accounts connected to a specific IP address or IP range.
• Similarly, Special:GlobalContributions supports global search for a given temporary account's activity.
• The auto-reveal feature (see video below) allows users with the right permissions to automatically reveal all IP addresses for a limited time window.

Videos

• How to use Special:IPContributions
• How automatic IP reveal works
• How to use IP Info
• How to use User Info

Further information and discussion

• For more information and discussion regarding this change, please see the announcement from the Wikimedia Foundation at Wikipedia:Village pump (WMF) § Temporary accounts rollout.

Most of this message was written by Mz7 (source). Thanks, 🎃 SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 02:48, 31 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Most of the other wikis already have this enabled and have reported no significant problems. We're a big enough wiki, though, that someone's going to be having a bad day, and the inconvenience of figuring out the new system when they're in a rush/already feeling upset/whatever's going on in their real life will certainly prompt complaints. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:12, 31 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

A discussion is taking place as to whether the article MetCC is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/MetCC until a consensus is reached, and anyone, including you, is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article until the discussion has finished.

Elshad (talk) 17:21, 12 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hello, Iridescent. Please check your email; you've got mail!
It may take a few minutes from the time the email is sent for it to show up in your inbox. You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{You've got mail}} or {{ygm}} template.

- SchroCat (talk) 13:16, 14 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hello! Voting in the 2025 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23:59 (UTC) on Monday, 1 December 2025. All eligible users are allowed to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.

The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.

If you wish to participate in the 2025 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. If you no longer wish to receive these messages, you may add {{NoACEMM}} to your user talk page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:22, 18 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Iri, Per the recent emails, this is just the official note to let you (and any TPSs) know that the above article has been scheduled as today's featured article for 24 January 2026. Please check that the article needs no amendments. Feel free to amend the draft blurb, which can be found at Wikipedia:Today's featured article/January 2026, or to make comments on other matters concerning the scheduling of this article at Wikipedia talk:Today's featured article/January 2026. Please keep an eye on that page, as notifications of copy edits to or queries about the draft blurb may be left there by those who assist the coordinators by reviewing the blurbs. I also suggest that you watchlist Wikipedia:Main Page/Errors from two days before it appears on the Main Page. I've watchlisted it and will nurse it through the day too. Thanks, and congratulations on your work! – SchroCat (talk) 11:26, 2 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

		Io, Saturnalia!
		Wishing you and yours a Happy Holiday Season, from the horse and bishop person. May the year ahead be productive and troll-free. Ealdgyth (talk) 13:48, 19 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

		Season's Greetings
		Wishing everybody a Happy Holiday Season, and all best wishes for the New Year! The Dream of Saint Joseph (1640s) by Philippe de Champaigne is my Wiki-Christmas card to all for this year. Johnbod (talk) 17:36, 19 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

	A very happy Christmas and New Year to you!
	Have a great Christmas, and I hope 2026 brings you joy, happiness – and no trolls or vandals! Cheers SchroCat (talk) 09:23, 21 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

 — Amakuru (talk) 15:15, 21 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

		Hi Iridescent Season's Greetings and all the best for 2026
		Wherever you are and whatever you believe in (or don't), reach out for peace on this little planet of ours! HAPPY HOLIDAYS 🥳 Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 04:38, 23 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]