User talk:Piotrus

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Reasons for my raising wikistress:

Some general observations on Wikipedia governance being broken and good editors trampled by the system

Wikipedia is a kawaii mistress :)

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Gediminas Žiemelis

Hi again Piotrus. I am writing this as a gentle reminder for you to take a look at an edit request I posted at Talk:Gediminas_Žiemelis#Addition_to_Biography_section. I wrote to you a few days ago, but the page has since been archived, and I am a little worried you may have forgotten about it. This is the link to my previous post to you:User_talk:Piotrus/Archive_69#Gediminas_Žiemelis Thanks again. Agne for ASG (talk) 18:33, 28 May 2024 (UTC)

@Agne for ASG Dear Agne, I am afaid I am just too busy with other items to devote much time to this. Have you asked for help at WT:LITHUANIA and/or WT:WPBIO? _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 01:50, 29 May 2024 (UTC)

Thanks so much for the suggestions to help find another editor, and for letting me know that you are busy! All the best, Agne for ASG (talk) 09:55, 29 May 2024 (UTC)

DYK nomination of Oxford (toy company)

Hello! Your submission of Oxford (toy company) at the Did You Know nominations page has been reviewed, and some issues with it may need to be clarified. Please review the comment(s) at your nomination's entry and respond there at your earliest convenience. Thank you for contributing to Did You Know! Generalissima (talk) (it/she) 02:57, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

Stuff of no relevance to the community

I assume this complaint is about the m:Knowledge Equity Fund. I think the WMF has struggled to articulate the purpose of the Knowledge Equity Fund. Perhaps I will be able to do better.

• The problem statement is: "Academic and mass media representation of marginalized communities remains insufficient, which in turn limits citations and primary/secondary sources for us to build from".
  • Relevance to Wikipedia: Wikipedia editors can't always write the articles we think are important (e.g., we should have articles like Gender inequality in the United States for every country), or we feel like our articles are weak (e.g., examples in articles are all from the US and UK), because enough reliable sources don't exist. This is particularly true for developing countries, where people's everyday sources are often WP:SPS or WP:QUESTIONABLE sources like social media or oral knowledge.
• The action is: Give money to groups that write more formal reliable sources, in the hope that they will write more.
  • Example: Give money to Arab Reporters in Journalism, which trained Arabic-speaking journalists in how to do investigative reporting around inequality, promote free press, and stay safe.
  • Immediate result: Their journalists wrote reliable sources such as these about how sexism, racism, disability, etc. affects people in their countries.
  • Hoped-for long-term result: These sources will inform and inspire other sources. The journalists will produce better sources for the rest of their careers.
  • Relevance to Wikipedia: Wikipedia editors will have more reliable sources for articles like Xenophobia and racism in the Middle East.

I don't know if you remember the kerfuffle around the article about Donna Strickland. The short story is that we didn't have the sources, so we deleted the article. When she won the Nobel Prize, the Twitterverse lit up with journalists complaining that Wikipedia was so biased that it didn't think she was worth an article. The WMF's Katherine Maher rather pointedly asked these journalists how Wikipedia's volunteers were supposed to write an article about Strickland if the journalists hadn't provided the sources that editors need for BLPs.

The situation is complicated. We might begin with wondering how the journalists came to notice that there was no article about Strickland. The likely answer is: the journalists use Wikipedia as their own source, and they were upset that, with no Wikipedia article, their "quick" article on the award was unexpectedly going to require more time and effort. We can't write the article until they give us the sources, but they can't write the sources unless someone gives them the money.

I believe that this incident is the source of the Knowledge Equity Fund. To get the Wikipedia articles, we need sources. To get the sources, someone has to pay for them. IMO the Knowledge Equity Fund should be viewed, especially from the POV of the English Wikipedia, as a way for the WMF to – ethically, at arm's length or more distantly, with no obligation for the journalists to produce sources we can use, and absolutely no obligation, or even encouragement, for us to use anything that is produced – exactly the kind of sources that the English Wikipedia frequently claims to want. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:02, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing I appreciate you taking the time to talk to me about this. Your argument about creating sources is interesting. However:

• I do remember that kerfuffle, and I find your criticism of journalists interesting and insightful. However, my conclusion differs. The journalists are paid-for professionals working for paid-for companies. I know that many news sites are struggling with their income due to issues such as folks increasingly consuming free media and blocking ads, etc. However, I do not think it is our responsibility to rescue their businesses (some of which are doing well and are profitable). In addition to new business models (ex. Bellingcat) we have Wikinews). If WMF wants people to write up news stories - fine, throw money at Wikinews first. Wikipedia (Wikimedia) volunteers work for free, we get donations to improve our infrastructure (code, etc.). To send this money to paid-for professionals at media companies sounds just... wrong. And if we send it to volunteers at some NGOs, well, why not invest more in Wikisource? We could brainstorm how to revive this, for example by hiring some interns who are often terribly treated and underpaid at traditional workplaces.
• now, I might be more amenable to support KEF and like (i.e. outside NGOs) if the outcome (in terms of "Relevance to Wikipedia", because other points are simply not relevant for us as a movement or organization, i.e. mission creep) was better. You point out to [1]. Let's take a look. The first thing I noticed is "All rights reserved © ARIJ". So the content they produce is not compatible with us. Why WMF cannot require that recipients of our grants produce freely licensed content? Where on that website is acknowledgement of our support? Also, which of the articles there were produced with our grant? I.e. how are we tracking if we are getting value for our $ spent? Usage of this source is very small. ARIJ received $250,000. I am counting NINE uses of this website in our mainspace articles. So, we paid roughly 25k for a single reference? Sorry, but I am not sold. If ARIJ is the showcase example, that I stand by my view that KEF was terribly designed, has been a total waste of money, and needs to be stopped ASAP.

_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 03:20, 3 June 2024 (UTC)

It's very tempting to nitpick this, but I don't think that the details are the big issue.

I think there's a lot of room for people to disagree about whether this was the best use of the money. What I'm concerned about is this persistent myth that a grant program that produces reliable sources has nothing to do with Wikipedia.

IMO you are free to believe that it was a bad idea. That's a matter of opinion, and everyone's entitled to their own opinions. If you had said it was a completely misguided effort, I wouldn't have cared in the least. But you have made a claim of fact (i.e., that it is irrelevant to Wikipedia), and that claim is not true. Getting more sources is relevant to Wikipedia. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:47, 3 June 2024 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing Getting more sources is relevant, but so is educating people, or promoting more births (more births = more people = some of them will create reliable sources). I.e. the relevance of the KEF for us is not zero, but is is abysmally low. I asked you: how can you justify spending 25k on a single reference? This is not nitpicking, it is a serious question of mine, related to the fact that I can think of many ways we can get better sources for less money. Realistically, you can commission academic-level research for less than those newspaper articles ARIJ created, i.e. we could sponsor a creation of academic article on a topic - "Xenophobia and racism in the Middle East", for example - for much less than 25k. Just to name a random topic: science fiction in South Korea does not exist; it is a notable topic. We cannot commission people to write an article for Wikipedia due to our community's culture, but we surely could get someone to write it up SFE where it is just a placeholder [2], and license it under CC-BY-SA (I am familiar with the editors and I am sure they'd agree), then we could use this to create a Wikipedia article. So instead of playing 25k per ref as the ARIJ grant did, we could pay something like 2.5k to someone to create a SFE article which would result in a Wikipedia article. (And if you say 2.5k per Wikipedia article is overpriced, run it by me how 25k per a single ref isn't). _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 09:39, 3 June 2024 (UTC)

I disagree that each source cost $25K.

First, I'd say that "number linked via this website at the English Wikipedia" is the wrong measurement. That website is linked about 175 times across all the wikis, and it could be linked many more times in the future. Also, the sources could be cited without a link, and they could be cited in copies on other news sites, which would be missed by this search method. This method also misses future uses. If we treat all links as "uses" (e.g., because chatting about it on the talk page is still "using" it), and if we assume that all the money paid for sources, then the cost per source could be somewhere around $1500.

Second, I think you have incorrectly assigned all the funding to source creation. The report summarizes their work this way:

"Over the course of this one year collaboration, from August 1, 2021 until July 31, 2022, ARIJ has successfully published 70 investigations (EN/AR), 48 in-depth reports (EN/AR), 45 podcasts (EN/AR), 3 policy papers (EN/AR), 1 study (AR) and 1 manual (AR). Executed 61 workshops, 44 webinars, one data journalism diploma (39 training sessions), one Edit and Verify Lab (9 training sessions), 497 clinics, of which 142 were digital, 91 were physical safety, 229 were psychosocial support, 21 legal support and 14 career counseling (510 attendees of which 247 were females (48%)), and 22 total Forum sessions, in which ARIJ trained virtually 658 (48.17% females) and physically 85 (55.29% females)."

We could say that they "paid for" 70+48+45=163 news sources plus 61+44+39+9+497=650 training events. If, in a quick back-of-the-envelope calculation, we treat each source and each event as equal, then they paid $300 for each source.

BTW, Wikipedia:The Wikipedia Library gave me access to a source recently that sells for twice that amount on Amazon. $300 per source is IMO expensive, but it's not entirely unreasonable.

Third, I'd say that your timescale is short-sighted. What's the long-term benefit of training? If you support someone through the creation of a single investigative report, you get that one source, but you also get dozens or hundreds of sources in the future. What's the long-term benefit of the original sources existing? These sources lay the groundwork for future sources. It will be easier for the next journalist or scholar to write about discrimination against disabled people in that country if they have this article as a starting point, instead of needing to do the basic work themselves. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:26, 3 June 2024 (UTC)

Tnx for teaching me about the global link search feature. You are right we should look at the use of their sources outside English Wikipedia. However, did you account for sources that were published before and after collaboration? If not, the cost for the source seems to be less than 25k, but more than 300. As for time scale, this is, like I said, very hard to measure - we could invest that money in any educational activity and say the same - that raising education level somewhere in the world is good for us. Sure, it is, but I can think of many ways to invest money that would be strictly better and more efficient, I gave you a particular example above that you did not engage with. Still waiting to hear how you justify WMF not getting them to publish their stuff in open access, not doing all of this under aegis of Wikinews, while at the same time denying badly needing funding for (to cite one example I am familiar with) WikiJournal initiative (which is falling apart because we do not have enough volunteers to run it, and there are no funds to hire someone to manage it properly or compensate the volunteers for their efforts there - and WikiJournals do produce reliable content we could use on Wikipedia, too, and at higher level of quality than what ARIJ does (referenced, etc.)). I would be less annoyed with KEF if we were in a situation where all requests for support from the community were filled and WMF would say that we have money community does need, so we will support long term affiliated educatonal projects. But we are not in such a situation, there are plenty of things we need money for but we are not getting from WMF. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 02:14, 4 June 2024 (UTC)

All sorts of things "could" be good for Wikipedia, but encouraging the development of exactly the kinds of sources The Community™ says it wants for Wikipedia is, at minimum, "relevant". Remember, you didn't say that it was a bad idea or that it was inefficient or that it was worse than other options; you said that it was "of no relevance".

I don't think the WMF has an inherent obligation to make journalism an unprofitable enterprise. The goal is for us to have a news article to cite in an encyclopedia article, not a news story to import and pretend that it's an encyclopedia article. Do you want to have something like "Fatima and seven others continued to work on a farm for two consecutive months awaiting a wage of just JOD 1.25 ($1.76). She ended up being denied her pay, and was told to go and “complain if you can prove you have a case”. The same is true for Um Muhammad, Karim, Ali and thousands others of those who are exposed to people trafficking in its modern sense" in the mainspace?[3] Or Rawan is also a mother of a child suffering from the disease. She resorted to the internet to gather information, and determine ways to handle her child’s illness, and started treating him herself. She made contact with Um Samir through a group on social media, and compared their experiences. She says, “When I gave birth to my child, as soon as the doctors held him his foot was injured. And after a few tests it was determined that the newborn was suffering from this rare disease.”[4]? If not, then why would a free license be relevant to Wikipedia?

If they did this under Wikinews, our policies would not allow us to cite the sources. Since the relevance is "get sources that Wikipedia can cite, on subjects the community claims it struggles to find", then putting it on Wikinews would have made it truly irrelevant.

Again, I have no objections to anyone saying that it was a bad idea. I just don't want to hear people pushing the myth that getting sources for Wikipedia has nothing to do with Wikipedia. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:43, 4 June 2024 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing Fair enough. It is not of "no relevance". It is of "extremely little relevance", and while getting more sources is a good idea, the way KEF does it is indeed extremely inefficient, making it a "bad idea", effectively a waste of WMF's money, and as I said, KEF is a classic example of mission creep (which is not a good thing). _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 10:26, 4 June 2024 (UTC)

DYK for Game board

On 3 June 2024, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article Game board, which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The fact was ... that scholars disagree on whether the earliest-known game boards (example pictured) date to the Neolithic or the Early Bronze Age? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Game board. You are welcome to check how many pageviews the nominated article or articles got while on the front page (here's how, Game board), and the hook may be added to the statistics page after its run on the Main Page has completed. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to suggest it on the Did you know talk page.

Z1720 (talk) 00:02, 3 June 2024 (UTC)