User talk:Jimbo Wales

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Privacy - Let's not publish the IP address of non-logged-in editors

In this 10 March 2015 thread the point was made that Wikimedia should not publish the IP address of every non-logged-in editor.

In this 23 March 2015 Wikimedia Foundation "office hours" irc discussion (focussed on the NSA and the privacy of our readers and editors), the point was raised again:

• [18:11:26] <Dragonfly6-7>: actually, how does this apply to the NSA's (and everyone's) total access to our database of every edit made by an IP user?
• [18:14:44] <lilatretikov>: Dragonfly6-7 You are right, we are thinking about how to mask that. It is on the radar to address. Not ETA yet.
• [18:15:02] <Philippe>: (Lila, you mean the historical edits by IP, right?0
• [18:15:02] <lilatretikov>: Dragonfly6-7 as it is a community related issue as well. You would need to concur.

Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 04:39, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

Simply open an account with a non-descript user name, disclose no personal information, and your IP address will not be disclosed, and your privacy will be protected. Problem solved. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 04:50, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

Ugh. I forgot to sign in. Would a watching admin or OS (or whoever does this kind of thing) please make my IP address disappear from the history of this page? Cheers. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 05:03, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

Without the IP address, how would we know who was responsible for what edit? It would give the vandals a field day... AndyTheGrump (talk) 05:09, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

As I suggested in the linked thread, the IP address should be replaced by a unique identifier (unique to that IP address). Checkusers would be able to see IP address. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 05:36, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

One possibility is a cryptographic hash function.—Wavelength (talk) 05:44, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

An obvious consequence of that would be that it would be impossible to detect the most common form of IP-swapping (where only the last part of the IP changes) without having to request checkuser. Again, facilitating vandalism. There is also the fact that we require a public means of identifying the source of edits to satisfy copyright requirements. It is arguable whether IP alone actually does this, even now - making it entirely impossible to identify the source of unregistered edits would make a nonsense of the claim that anonymous contributors hold the copyright to their posts, since they would have no way whatsoever to prove that they made them. Frankly, I think that this thread is a classic case of missing the point: if the NSA wants to find out the IP's of anonymous contributors, it has the means to do so regardless of what is publicly visible - all hiding the IP will do is give a false sense of security. A more responsible course of action would be for the WMF to make it clear that regardless of what individual websites do, any action carried out by anyone via the internet is vulnerable to interception - both legal and illegal - and that contributors need to consider the potential consequences of posting accordingly. We aren't going to foil the spooks by hiding data they can easily obtain anyway, and we shouldn't be implying that we can. AndyTheGrump (talk) 05:54, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

• We need more transparency and accountability in editing, not less. Cloaking IP addresses would be a big step backwards. Carrite (talk) 06:29, 24 March 2015 (UTC)
  • I'm surprised people are still making that argument after Eggers destroyed it in The Circle, a fictional work that shows how in the very name of transparency and accountability, a society transforms itself into a totalitarian state. Cloaking IP addresses is a huge step forward. You don't need to see an IP or a real name to know who is shilling what and pushing a POV. Viriditas (talk) 08:30, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

The practical argument I make about the real world of Wikipedia hasn't been "destroyed" by an obscure piece of antiutopian fiction. It seems goofy for me to even have to say as much. Carrite (talk) 17:10, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

I see the merits in both arguments, and so it makes me wonder if there isn't possibly a "third way" that solves all the problems. First let me lay out the two main principles that I think we all agree upon, the problem being that the principles are "in tension" with each other:

1. Improving user privacy by hiding IP addresses would be beneficial, particularly since geolocation is easy and good these days and an ip reveals.
2. but ip addresses provide a crucial form of minimal pseudo-identity that we find, as a practical matter, very useful - we'd like to not use that.

Key to that second point is that it is (moderately) hard to change one's ip address, and often the only means to change leaves one with a "nearby" ip address: x.x.x.123 becomes x.x.x.214 for example, which is enough to give us key information that we find useful

Some potential "middle ground" solutions:

1. Is there a way to "hash" the IPs that preserves the property of "closeness"? I think it deserves some thought. For example, we could hash the first 3 numbers and leave the last digit in the clear. This would give significant locational privacy (since just the last digit is pretty useless for identifying someone) while still preserving what I think is the core value.
2. Should we change the user flow at logged-out-editing to more firmly encourage logging in? This would require the Foundation to do some A/B testing, but I would imagine that if done well, it could increase overall retention rate, etc. (At Wikia, experience across wikis with different policies suggests that forcing login has beneficial effects.)

My overall point here is that I think we all agree on the goals: privacy good, identifying bad actors good. So "hide IP" or "not hide IP" may be too narrow a way to look at the question - perhaps we can (imperfectly) improve both.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 09:04, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

I am not aware of any cryptographic hash function that can't be cracked. Hiding IPs may inconvenience us considerably without ensuring privacy. Jehochman ^Talk 10:25, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

At the risk of lapsing into hyperbole, "Internet privacy" is an oxymoron. The structure of the Internet makes privacy effectively unachievable. Sure we could replace the display of an IP address with a generated hash. We could even replace each IP address with a random account name (so all edits from 83.12.156.32 appear as "Guest Editor Number 12345678") so that we maintain the link between one IP and all its edits but let's not kid ourselves that this ensures privacy. QuiteUnusual (talk) 10:55, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

I think you are both making a common error - perfect privacy isn't possible, but improvements in privacy are very much possible. No encryption is truly "uncrackable" of course - but it can be good enough to deter virtually every reasonably likely attack vector, no? QuiteUnusual's is one example of something that could only be cracked by stealing our database - that's very possible, even our database of encrypted passwords could be stolen - but it's a hell of a lot better than publishing ip addresses in the clear.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 14:03, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

I don't deny we can make it better, which is why I gave an example, but what I really meant was we cannot guarantee anybody's privacy (and therefore shouldn't pretend we can) because privacy on the Internet requires significant effort from the individual to avoid technical and behavioural pitfalls and even then is still vulnerable. This includes the obvious like avoiding social engineering (phising, spearphising, etc.), malware of all kinds, server side attacks (e.g., man-in-the-middle) but also the less obvious but equally exploitable. These exploits may require government level skills and funding, but tracking an individual down is not overly taxing. People use the same username on multiple sites; they write the same text in different places (e.g., on Twitter, on another forum, on a blog). Even for you and me with Google it is often dead easy to link an IP editor here to content elsewhere on the Internet because of the reuse of common phrases. Identifying these patterns is a trivial activity for anybody with a big data analytics capability. In combination, the technical and behavioural challenges of avoiding being traced are huge. QuiteUnusual (talk) 16:35, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

I was once involved in a long-standing dispute that was rekindled by an IP (I forget the topic), and the IP pursued the issue vigorously at an admin noticeboard. One of the issues must have been related to whether the IP was a good-faith editor or a sock of one of the many topic-banned users. The IP was undone when another IP posted an explanation that the first IP was from a VPN service that hid the location of the user, and the second IP posted various links to confirm their statement. In other words, it was the fact that the first IP's address was visible on a noticeboard which allowed someone in-the-know to reveal that the user behind the IP was paying to use a VPN service to hide their location, when that user claimed to be a good-faith user from the location shown by geo-locating the IP, and not a sock of a banned user known to be from another continent. Johnuniq (talk) 11:08, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

This one is a bit tougher than it looks. Certainly User:AndyTheGrump's argument about false security from the NSA is wrong, because that would imply we ought to post IP addresses of logged-in users. It should be clear that we want to allow the logged-in user a measure of privacy, and it is at least conceivable we could give the NSA a headache with sufficiently well-padded encrypted code (though if they don't have instant backdoor access I'd be stunned). More to the point, there's the issue that the NSA and friends continue to pretend they're never really going to use its database to harass, prosecute or otherwise attack random civilians in friendly countries, which hampers at least any short-term use of the data against editors. By contrast, the random MPs, cops, corrections officers, and corporate employees who get caught up in teapot tempests over their silly editing... they're not facing the NSA, but some usually internal investigative process. Then there are people like some Kashmir/Jammu editors who saw a TV broadcast that Syed Ali Shah Geelani was dead, indicated that on Wikipedia, and then were threatened with some kind of consequence, not necessarily "legal" in nature, for doing so. The NSA wouldn't have given them that data, but there might be local spies of some sort who would do as much.

What deeply bothers me about "hashing" IP addresses is that it reifies absolute core bedrock principles of the surveillance society, namely (1) Thou Shalt Never Actually Make It Harder To Track Somebody, and (2) Only The Elite Shall Be Allowed To Do The Spying. It's clear that a lot of NSA wannabes take great pleasure going through Wikipedia IP edits and trying to embarrass some entity they can be linked with. It's hard not to feel like it's a bad thing, but is purifying the monopoly, making it clearer to ordinary people that spying is always done to you, never by you ... is that really something we should welcome?

On the other hand, we really don't want our editors harmed, and they ought to have more control over privacy.

A truer, fairer way to do this is not merely to "hash" the IP data, but to find a pair of big iron cojones and actually delete a portion of the IP data outright. I understand the administrative arguments for keeping track, but ... IPs can jump from one address to the other anyway. The last part of the address can change readily. So would it really hurt vandal-fighting operations that much if we never recorded what the last number was, and chopped out a few bits from the first three numbers, until the address on record was the same for a few tens of thousands of possible computers? We'd have to abandon the use of individual IP blocks, of course; we'd need to have more people checking potentially bad edits from known problematic shortened-IPs instead. My feeling is that the vandal fighters nowadays are vastly more efficient than in the past and that this wouldn't be beyond their capabilities. Also, the IP data would have to be shortened on every single record kept on every single machine - even one notation of the full IP and governments would be parading through your offices threatening to take all your records unless you give them total access without making them ask for a warrant.

But if we don't do that, I'm having a hard time seeing clear to accepting a proposal that would set up yet another difference in power between the People In Charge and the Mere Editors on Wikipedia. Not just because the NYPD is embarrassed, or whoever it is. We keep seeing this gap growing between the information haves and have-nots, between the people who are supposed to discuss and decide everything in private and the people who just see gray lines in the edit history. That's a cancer that already seems out of control. Wnt (talk) 12:52, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

• The more basic solution is simply to make registration mandatory, as I am not sure if masking the only means of identification we have for non logged-in users would satisfy the licensing requirements. Honestly though, if you care about your privacy in that regard, register an account. Resolute 14:12, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

Anyone who edits while logged out sees MediaWiki:Anoneditwarning, which looks like this:

This also - correctly - advises a person to create a named user account if they consider this to be a problem. I think that the current system is broadly OK, as governments already have all the tools they need to monitor a person's use of the web.--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 14:17, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

That's a start. Here's my preferred wording... "You are not logged in... Would you like to start editing Wikipedia? It's easy to register an account at the following link..." Carrite (talk) 17:16, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

• I don't see how IP has anything to do with "licensing requirements". Attribution to an IP isn't much of an attribution, and the CC wording allows for any degree of anonymity. What's the difference between saying "since you didn't specify a username your edit will be attributed to [your-IP]" and "since you didn't specify a username your edit will be attributed to [your-shortened-IP]"? Wnt (talk) 17:56, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

The difference is that it doesn't identify you with anything that can be externally connected with anything at all. AndyTheGrump (talk) 18:01, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

What's the difference between connecting a user with a shared IP that might be anybody at the cable company and connecting him with a shared shortened-IP that might be anybody at a number of cable companies? You sound as if you forget the CC license is supposed to be protecting the writer - it doesn't actually have provisions written into it demanding that someone looking to subpoena or prosecute him be able to do it, when nobody else can. Wnt (talk) 20:00, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

The CC license is there to protect the copyright of the contributor - it has precisely nothing to do with protecting their identity. AndyTheGrump (talk) 02:27, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

Exactly. Which means it has nothing to do with exposing it. Wnt (talk) 11:44, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

There are some situations where knowing anonymous editor's IP addresses are a clear benefit to protecting Wikipedia. Tracking abusive behavior by IP-hopping anonymous editors is commonplace - not just in situations where the IP addresses are similar, but where very different IP addresses can be associated with the same local ISP or geolocated to identical places. There are also situations where clear COI edits have been identified because, for example, a company's IP address was used to whitewash the company's Wikipedia page or where Senate Office IPs were used to make edits to senators' biographies. We offer anonymity/privacy for those who wish to make use of it by registering for an account. It's there for those who want it, so why go out of our way, and to our detriment, to impose it on those who don't care? Deli nk (talk) 19:46, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

If an IP address was masked in the public logs, it would become difficult to track routine IP vandalism without a checkuser request. It is important to keep track of which IP address made which edit. The only other option would be to make registration compulsory, which is a separate debate.--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 05:52, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

@Ianmacm: Do you think it would be much harder for you to track an IP doing routine vandalism if we removed the last number of the IP and, say, the 5th and 8th bits of each of the first three numbers? (i.e. logical OR with 9.9.9.255) Wnt (talk) 12:50, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

It depends, as some of the suggestions here would make it hard to track IP vandals. I still believe that the current system is workable, as anyone concerned about privacy can and should register an account.--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 13:35, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

If the publication of IP addresses is really all so scary, the fix is obvious: make it so everyone must register an account. Of course, many or most of the casual vandals wouldn't bother to do that and would go away... Carrite (talk) 16:21, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

Wikipedia is very unusual in allowing non-logged in edits. The vast majority of newspaper comment sections, forums etc require a user account to be created, which takes only a few seconds.--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 16:34, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

Schools are responsible for a lot of our vandalism, and after a certain point they often receive long blocks. We can only identify schools through their IP addresses. We are forbidden to block certain IP addresses, at least not without notifying the WMF, because they fall into certain sensitive categories, eg government, the Foundation, etc. Dougweller (talk) 16:40, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

Commons, again...

Why are so many senior people on commons willing to take the side of a committed troll and globally locked user over the rest of the project? [1]

Hell might be other people (talk) 20:32, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

I honestly wish I knew. It's been a mystery to me for a long time. The only time I've come across Russavia's images previously is when they've been uploaded to disrupt Wikipedia. I can only assume it's because he sometimes uploads nice images such as the one above.--5 albert square (talk) 23:27, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

He has uploaded lots of seriously wonderful images such as Commons:File:Ours nageant (Musée du quai Branly) (3034045389).jpg. I'm staying out of the debate because my head acknowledges that we shouldn't exempt people from other rules just because they do great work, but my heart is torn because of the great work he has done. ϢereSpielChequers 01:15, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

5 albert square if you look at the front page of Wikipedia right at this very moment, you will see a photo that I not only worked to get permission for, but also uploaded. Also, if you look at C:COM:POTY you will see that the winning photo was uploaded by me, after I worked over a period of days convincing them to CC licence. You'll also see the 2nd place getter was uploaded by me. This was after the photographer changed his licencing to BY-NC, and I worked with him convincing him to change back to BY. Oh yep, so much disruption. (Russavia) 181.198.130.27 (talk) 02:40, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

Why do people reward trolling by commenting on it rather than simply ignoring it? NE Ent 02:05, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

Reading that debate is chilling, as so many flout the WMF openly. I heard today that Guy Kawasaki has been appointed to the WMF board. Perhaps he will have the guts to clear out the vile rat's nest that infects the leadership at Wikimedia Commons. I speak as someone who has donated hundreds of photos there, and who continues to hope for radical reform there. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 07:27, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

I sure hope so. It's IRC channel has also been terrible lately. The sad thing is, most 'normal' people seem to just leave or stop participating in conversation, not willing to step into the drama. Russavia's behavior despises me. And there are a few others who are not far behind, mostly due to the way they choose to cheer him on. sad sad sad —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 07:47, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

I don't want to see Russavia sock-puppeting, frankly it annoys me and I have asked him to stop. But at the same time, if all he's doing is uploading in scope freely-licensed photos I don't see a particular need to stop him. He's proven an ability to work round any ban imposed on him, is it really worth our time to play whack-a-mole if he's not actually being disruptive? The community on Commons has never endorsed such a ban, probably because no one has given a convincing explanation as to why he was banned to begin with. The site ban imposed is problematic on many levels: the lack of transparency, the lack of appeals process, the fact that not even the person who was banned knows why he was banned, and also for being so hideously inept that the process doesn't turn off email notifications. Let the Foundation impose an IP ban if they want, it's their ban, they can deal with the problems it caused. -mattbuck (Talk) 10:38, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

Well, I guess it depends how one defines "disruptive," Matt. Russavia's latest sock is "EcuadorWhores" in Spanish... Do you find that disruptive? If not, why not? It now appears on 999 graphics files in the history as the uploader, easily seen by everyone who opens the file in Media Viewer. Commons is not censored, you say? Why, you yourself deleted my Commons User Page that said simply, "Fuck Commons. Love, Carrite from En-WP." Do you remember doing that, oh defender against disruption? Whoa, I guess Commons really is censored, isn't it? Thanks! What do you estimate my survival time would be, in minutes, if I started uploading encyclopedic, educational graphics to Commons as User:CommonsWhores??? The truth is that Commons administrators are scared shitless of the new SanFranBans being used against one of their own and are attempting to nullify them and render them impotent by ignoring them... Congratulations on your fine work, uh, preventing further disruption of Commons by doing that! Carrite (talk) 16:27, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

@Carrite: You are right that your userpage comment shouldn't have been censored. As I recall, censoring Wikipedia user pages was one of the first steps down the slippery slope, and has helped to create a cold, pro forma, antisocial atmosphere. It's quite the departure when every other major site online wants people to put their whole lives into the company database. Besides, one should never dissuade an opponent from making a fool of himself. :) Every time anybody censors anything we're shooting holes in the bottom of the boat, and we're all in the same boat, and we can only bail so fast.

But as I explained in my "!vote", I was moved by the citation of [2], that Russavia was apparently uploading images from the "Marcha de las Putas", a real event. I understand that not every person shown who was uploaded was necessarily in on it, and you might argue it is a "bad username" for potentially affecting some bystander somewhere, but it's surely not a low-grade troll. You might call it a high-grade troll, but only if you think that calling attention to a social movement to push back against attitudes regarding sexual minorities is "trolling"; I think it can and should be taken seriously, and the content, or at least what of it is potentially useful, therefore should be preserved. Whether for you or Russavia, trolling has its place, because protest has its place. In hindsight it appears even the vandals have a valuable role to play, helping to patrol the admins and keep them out of mischief! In the days when unknown wags did things like code goatse.cx in HTML tables and make it the background for the main page, I don't recall nearly as much hostile contention within the community over ideological battles. Wnt (talk) 19:07, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

"Whether for you or Russavia, trolling has its place, because protest has its place." — On this we agree. Carrite (talk) 21:05, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

Predictable escalation of a conflict about basically nothing that started about 2 years ago. We're now at this stage. Count Iblis (talk) 00:56, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

Regarding Wifione ArbCom case

Three years ago I noticed this thread on your talk page and I wrote: "...this issue should be properly investigated/clarified." Later, I notified you and others watching this page repeatedly about my concerns regarding Wifione's editing, but I was largely ignored. Now I'm letting you know that the case has come to an end, see this. There is a good off-site summary and broader context described in the current issue of the Newsweek magazine. --Vejvančický (talk / contribs) 07:02, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

I consider this one of the worst (slowest) failures to tackle a problematic editor that we've seen yet. It's good that we reached this conclusion in the end, but the question that should give us a sense of desire for change is: why did it take so long?--Jimbo Wales (talk) 09:49, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

No one cared, and I would also say that Wikipedians hesitate to 'take to court' a kind, polite and respected member of the community who has many friends. User:Tinucherian, a WP administrator from India, responded to my questions regarding Wifione in March 2012: "I did also inform some of the members of Arb Com. They feel that there is no credible evidence as such." Well, I presented more evidence at Wikipedia:Editor review/Wifione but the case went to ArbCom only after I repeatedly attacked Wifione and s/he complained at ANI. --Vejvančický (talk / contribs) 12:39, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

So you've raised two points. (1) No one cared. (2) " Wikipedians hesitate to 'take to court' a kind, polite and respected member of the community who has many friends" I think both points are valid but the first one is incomplete. I'm interested in the question of *why* "No one cared". Overall, it isn't true - lots of people care a lot about manipulation and COI editing. So I'm curious why no one cared *enough* and *in this particular case*.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 14:01, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

Jimbo, Vej resigned as a sysop out of disgust at not being able to get this addressed. (Thankfully he has been willing to pick up the tools again, after the case. Not all would have). At the start of the arbitration case there was a chilling atmosphere towards those seeking to provide evidence against Wifione. Only as the evidence was presented, and it started to become obvious that there was a mountain of compelling evidence, did this attitude start to shift. Several of those presenting evidence openly told others that they were afraid to present evidence in case they were sanctioned. They should have had no reason to fear, since they were helping to expose malfeasance, but the culture here is not welcoming to "whistle-blowers". Not at all. Begoon ^talk 14:23, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

I completely agree with the sentiments above. Fear of retaliation is a common problem when dealing with admins on Wikipedia because there are no checks and balances against admins. This case shows it as others have. It's the admins word against everyone else and the admin is given a 10 to 1 offset automatically. The Arbcom purposefully makes the process of addressing admin problems so complex, so long and so burdeonsome that most just leave the project in frustration rather than deal with it. Problems take years to address if they ever are at all. If anyone thinks Wifione is the only problematic admin...or the worst, they are kidding themselves. Administrative oversite of the admins is a very much needed thing in this project and the Arbcom has shown time and time again that they are both unwilling to do it and don't have the skills to do it. There needs to be a higher level of authority, preferably at the WMF, that gives editors a chance for review and allows admins actions to be reviewed and dealt with outside the protected class status they have on the projects. Unfortunately, just like this case wasn't taken seriously for years, the overarching problem with the admin culture and us and them mentality will also not be taken seriously I fear regardless of how much damage it does to the project with editor retention and the longterm success of the project. Not as long as editors have no voice and admins are allowed "broadly construed" discretionary ability to do whatever they want. 138.162.8.57 (talk) 14:49, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

@Jimbo: It was a sophisticated work what Wifione has done for years and I guess that the opaque 'jungle' surrounding his activities on Wikipedia + complicated context of the topic (higher education in India) have discouraged most of editors from doing a detailed research or review the extensive researches made by others. People edit Wikipedia for free and few of them are interested in spending their time on investigating complicated cases of manipulation in areas completely unknown to them. That might be an explanation of 'why no one cared *enough*'. As for your 'why *in this particular case*' - I would say that it was partly because by his friendly and cordial attitude and socializing skills Wifione managed to persuade many of the core community members that his intentions are honest. Wikipedians act often more like members of a group of friends rather than independent editors-encyclopedists. Wifione knew that perfectly and found an ellegant way of how to get to the 'club', in my opinion .... and while I'm thinking about the Indian families potentially misled by Wikipedia and about the inability of this big open project to defend itself against sophisticated attempts to 'game the system', some other editors mourn Wifione's fall on his talk page. --Vejvančický (talk / contribs) 15:46, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

@Begoon:: I would say that good and honest people should follow their own conscience and ethical standards without being afraid of sanctions imposed by a 'culture' of an anonymous online environment. --Vejvančický (talk / contribs) 15:46, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

Indeed, they should, and in this case you and others did. My concern is equally for the occasions we may never discover, where a user has concerns, expresses them, gets a lukewarm or discouraging response, looks at the stress and effort that would be involved in an Arbcom case, and says, basically, "meh - screw that. I've led them to the water - not my fault they won't drink it". If the culture doesn't encourage people to express concerns, and help them through the barbed wire and minefields, we lose valuable input, and people, and serious problems go unaddressed.Begoon ^talk 16:06, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

• Any honest discussion of why it took so long to deal with Wifione, and why a chilling effect exists in examining conflicts of interest, needs to start with the one previous ArbCom case that dealt with the issue. The message from that case could not have been clearer, at least to me. It's not surprising that Wifione thought he could beat the rap by being unctuously polite and by casting himself as a victim of unjust persecution and WP:OUTING, because that exact strategy worked brilliantly for the COI accounts in the previous case. (One of the Arbs even compared the COI accounts to Martin Luther King, Jr., which left me literally speechless).

  The Newsweek article on Wifione is pretty well-done; the quotes from Jayen466 were extremely fair and provided good context. Frankly, if someone wrote up the Transcendental Meditation COI issue, we'd come out looking equally bad or even worse, but that's another story. The bottom line is that the chilling effect is very real, from my perspective as an admin, and it comes from the message sent by ArbCom in its handling of the TM COI case. Vejvančický deserves a huge debt of gratitude (and frankly, so do some of the people who put this material together on Wikipediocracy) for tackling this issue despite the confusing and downright counterproductive direction that the community's leadership has taken in previous COI cases. MastCell ^Talk 16:35, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

Correction: I found the MLK comparison, here, and it was not related to the TM editors. Rather, an Arb compared Newt Gingrich's PR man to Martin Luther King, Jr. I stand corrected, although no less appalled. MastCell ^Talk 17:19, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

• Re: "I consider this one of the worst (slowest) failures to tackle a problematic editor that we've seen yet. It's good that we reached this conclusion in the end, but the question that should give us a sense of desire for change is: why did it take so long?" — I suppose the facile answer is that too many people are obsessed with potty language or copyright violations or having fun fighting with "enemies" about topical topics in order to spin a "win," and not enough are doing the hard, boring work of verification and improvement. There are insufficient boots on the ground to adequately police content of everything or really much of anything... In addition, Wifione was — nice. Carrite (talk) 18:52, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

@ Jimmy Wales. You might also consider ending the ban you've imposed on JN466 from posting on this page. It's hard to hear with fingers in the ears, I have found, and this page is as close as anything Wikipedia has to being a WP version of Wikipediocracy. He can say his piece here or there (or as a contributor to Signpost) but it seems like banning him from this place is counterproductive to WP's ultimate best interests. Carrite (talk) 19:03, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

Banning is always a way to silence criticism one doesn't want to hear. A couple of editors have been banned form editing, costing the project countless edits, merely because the message was a threat to those in power here on Wikipedia. Personally, I really don't feel like Jimbo cares nor do I think he is willing to do anything about this problem so commenting here merely makes us feel better and that we have tried to do our due diligence, but doesn't really do anything to fix the problem. Those that are the problem, got that way, because of the tendency for the community, admins, Arbcom, Jimbo and the WMF to look the other way and pretend they don't see what's going on and anyone who brings it up is banned, blocked, accused of something or other to discredit them or otherwise bullied into place. I could personally name half a dozen admins right off the top of my head (including at least one on the Arbcom) that the project would be better off not being admins and a list three times longer of editors who are a net negative. Stating them openly would lead to a block as a personal attack and not listing them leads to insinuations of "Proove it with links" whereby, once provided, accusations of personal attacks are made and the cycle continues. This is largely due to the lack of oversight of the project, the failure of those in leadership positions to do the right thing and a general attitude, as stated above, of not caring. 138.162.8.57 (talk) 19:35, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

Queries

1. Was the any discussion of Wikpedia Zero (the appropriateness, use of resources, et. al.) on English Wikipedia before roll out?
2. Are article talk pages accessible using the mobile interface? NE Ent 01:57, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

Why no one cared

You say:

I'm interested in the question of *why* "No one cared". Overall, it isn't true - lots of people care a lot about manipulation and COI editing. So I'm curious why no one cared *enough* and *in this particular case*.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 14:01, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

Perhaps you could answer this. I emailed you on 3 December 2013 with a link to this article (which I co-authored). I received no reply. I emailed again on 6 December pointing out the administrators slurs against Mahesh Peri (who I interviewed for the article) were unforgiveable, as was the article he created on Ashok Kumar Chauhan, with the sole purpose of slandering him. I copied the Arbitration Committee, not one reply. I asked an arbitrator later about it, who said “That's not something I'm going to be worrying about I'm afraid, it's not an area that I feel a lot of passion about”. He pointed out that he had won a prize of £25 in the "core content competition", and had also received free Wikipedia T-shirts. “Are these problematic? At what point do you draw the line?”. That, and your failure to act, speak volumes. 81.147.132.55 (talk) 18:53, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

[edit] Oh pardon me, you did mention it later (email of 14 December) when I asked you to comment again. You chided me for "keep[ing] company with other dishonest trolls rather than being respected and appreciated by good people", and accused me of being intellectually dishonest, and as for the Wifione case "It is not generally reasonable to assume that someone not commenting on something is an approval of it, particularly when no one has actually inquired about it in any normal venue." Ha 81.147.132.55 (talk) 19:07, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

[edit] Of course you are expressing concern right now, but that is because it has reached Newsweek, I suspect. But you failed to act in December 2013 because it was not an issue in the mainstream media, and because the offender was a highly placed, well-liked and well-respected administrator, who it was not in your interest to offend. Much easier to accuse me of 'keeping company with dishonest trolls" and not being "appreciated by good people". Who are these good people? 81.147.132.55 (talk) 19:31, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

Personally, I think some do care, but those people are either afraid of reprisal, or they would rather focus on building content than get sucked into a month long mud slinging contest at Arbcom and risk getting banned themselves when Arbcom does their usual punish both sides so there are no winners approach. A lot of the fault lies squarely on the shoulders of the Arbcom and their failures to police the project and the WMF for completely ignoring the problem unless its a piece of new software they want to force onto the community. They make the cases so long and complicated no one wants to do them and then the end result is either nothing happening to the admin in question or the invoke a bunch of penalties all around to make sure that A) no one wants to submit and will avoid it at all costs and B) there are no winners and they can be passive aggressive and not choose a side. Its already a fact that if they choose a case they then they know the person is guilty, so once the case is accepted, the person may as well just leave anyway, unless they are an admin that is because although this admin did get punished, that is an extremely rare exception. 138.162.8.57 (talk) 19:40, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

The real question is why don't we have more editors like Antonín Vejvančický's running and maintaining this site instead of what we have now? Viriditas (talk) 20:51, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

If you want to know why, read the preceding comments from Begoon and MastCell and 138.x.x.x. I know of one very definite recent/ongoing case of COI editing. But I dare not report it, or I'll be accused of outing and being a horrible person in general. Even if I were eventually to be cleared life is too short to have to mess with stuff like that. So I try to minimize the damage and figure what the hell. The quote on my user page sums up the problem as well as anything. Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 02:23, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

I have serious problem on the English Wikipedia

Hello Jimbo! As you can read on the headline, I have serious problem on the English Wikipedia? Are you ready to listen to my problems? I would be very thankful. 91.113.38.199 (talk) 13:02, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

Old saying: don't ask if you can ask, just ask.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 13:11, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

Ok, thank you so much that you will listen to my problems. I tried to contact a German administrator and I told him my problems in German because I live here in Austria and my English is not perfect. So I try to explain you my request but I can't promise if you will be able to understand my English but I try it... The thing is that it is allowed on the English Wikipedia to remove personal informations so that only admins or oversight can see these personal informations. Ok. The problem is that I made contributions with my old User:Morris Munroe to the articles of Osama bin Laden, Starmania (TV series) and Tulln an der Donau. Tulln an der Donau is the hometown where I live and it is totally unconfortable for me that my edit to this article can be seen by everyone of the whole world because I also made contributions to the talk page of the List of administrators where even more people on Wikipedia can see my hometown. That's really as unconfortable as I added my personal informations to the Wikipedia. Another problem is the thing that I made contributions about Osama bin Laden and my hometown and I'm really afraid that my hometown will happen something such as a terror attack because I made a contribution about Osama bin Laden too. After several requests to the Team of the English Wikipedia, these contributions have been marked or crossed out but not removed. I so much wish these contributions to be removed so that only the Oversight Team can see these removed contributions but the English Wikipedia team always tell me that this is against the GFDL License ( I don't know how to call this license...). Now my question is to you if you could solve my problems to hide the marked contributions from my User:Morris Munroe account so that no other user can see it anymore? This problem on the Wikipedia makes me feel so depressed for several years, since 2007 and it is very frustrating for me that my contributions will be saved for the rest of my whole life. Can you please find a solution to my problem that I feel happy and great again? You are the founder of the Wikipedia. Can you please help me? 91.113.38.199 (talk) 13:37, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

• Given the discussion we just had above, this is either an epic example of Streisand effect or a classic example of a troll. Carrite (talk) 16:11, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

• @Carrite: This is neither a Streisand-affect nor a troll! It's a serious request! Just mind your own business and stay away from other's business!! Thanks!

Oh, trust me, it is one or the other. Apologies for assuming the latter rather than the former. Carrite (talk) 18:42, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

@Jimbo Wales. I'd very appreciate that if you would help me with my request. Please don't listen to other users like Carrite what they say... 91.113.38.199 (talk) 17:24, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

I have to say I find this rather silly, as all of those edits were over eight years ago, seemed to be innocuous and were completely forgotten to history. Nobody was ever going to care - certainly nobody was going to attack your home town over some of the trivial changes you made to the Bin Laden article almost a decade ago. So bringing attention to it now is rather counter productive, but also equally unlikely to cause anyone with nefarious intent to care. That being said, the admins who have previously handled your requests are correct. We can't delete your contributions because that would violate the licensing Wikipedia uses. The only thing I can suggest is that you read Wikipedia:Courtesy vanishing. Assuming you can prove you are the person behind that old account, you can request that the old account name be changed to one of our random "vanished user" accounts, which will at least disassociate your name from the edits. Resolute 18:43, 25 March 2015 (UTC)