Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/Single/2014-09-24

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The following is an automatically-generated compilation of all talk pages for the Signpost issue dated 2014-09-24. For general Signpost discussion, see Wikipedia talk:Signpost.

Arbitration report: Banning Policy, Gender Gap, and Waldorf education (474 bytes · 💬)

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Yay for the Arbitration Committee! Some good news after an overall disappointing few weeks! I don't know what will come of this....but I have faith in ARB COM to at least look into a serious issue effecting the entire project!--Mark Miller (talk) 06:27, 28 September 2014 (UTC)

Featured content: Oil paintings galore (1,005 bytes · 💬)

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Just to make it more clear since the feature doesn't mention it, the promotion of Flight Unlimited III resulted in Looking Glass Studios video games upgrading from a Good Topic to Featured Topic. GamerPro64 14:26, 28 September 2014 (UTC)

I don't know what you mean. I think the connection is made perfectly clear now. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 22:10, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

I just love the Signpost, my favorite part about Nexus Learning dot net was Wikipedia! 24.211.179.19 (talk) 15:57, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

In the media: Indian political editing, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Congressional chelonii (7,939 bytes · 💬)

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• Something funny's with the quotemarks here—are tehre supposed to be curly quotemarks? If there are, then “the fetish and totem of the extraordinarily puffed-up ‘nerd’ culture that has of late started to bloom across the United States." is broken. Curly Turkey ⚞¡gobble!⚟ 07:19, 28 September 2014 (UTC)
• Hardly a NPOV discussion of the Neil de Grasse Tyson issue starting straight out from title. Fact is there is a long history of his botching of quotes to make himself look superior. Even the venerated Washington Post indicates that The Federalist has "made a fairly compelling case". [1] and that Davis has been right all along. Responses to criticism like this does nothing to make Wikipedia appear neutral but only adds to the idea that it may be liberally biased.Thelmadatter (talk) 18:18, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

• The language of the title is straight from The Daily Beast. The Signpost covers Wikipedia, thus the article isn't intended to be a discussion of the "Tyson issue", but a discussion of how the Tyson issue affects Wikipedia, so the truth or falsity of the allegations are immaterial. It's not about whether or not Davis "has been right all along", but about how Davis has written about and interacted with Wikipedia. Gamaliel (talk) 18:50, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

• So we copy the Daily Beast? The issue, as it relates to Wikipedia, is whether mention of negative information about the subject is being eliminated by POV-pushers. If they are eliminating information that is being shown to be true by various sources (and if the Daily Beast is worthy fo being copied, we better consider blogs of all political stripes) that is pretty strong evidence of bias. My main jibe, however, was the tone of this article. Lots of straw men and ad hominem attacks on "conservatives" ... certainly not NPOV.Thelmadatter (talk) 20:45, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

• I just went through the talk page on the article, whose discussion is a lot more even-handed and considering of options than this article is.Thelmadatter (talk) 20:55, 29 September 2014 (UTC)
• The Daily Beast is a mainstream media outlet, "In the media" reports on what mainstream media outlets are saying about issues related to Wikipedia. So basically, yes, the whole point of this section is to "copy" what media outlets are saying and add context from the perspective of Wikipedia editors. The Daily Beast and Physics Today aren't writing about "POV-pushers" eliminating information, so it would be adding a POV to adopt that perspective, something which might be appropriate for another Signpost section, but not here. I am willing to accept criticism of my tone, though I suspect what you might be detecting is not political, but my exasperation with Wikipedia critics of all stripes who know little about the encyclopedia's workings and react with WP:IDHT when those workings are explained to them. But if you wish to offer specifics, I am willing to listen. Gamaliel (talk) 21:05, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

• Titling the section "Conservative "war" on Neil deGrasse Tyson reaches Wikipedia" is a bit of a slap in the face to all the editors who have been at least trying to reach some kind of consensus on that topic. It makes it sound as though the only reason anyone might want to add that information to Tyson's bio is because they are a conservative "warrior". Bonewah (talk) 02:04, 3 October 2014 (UTC)

• I think that's a stretch. It's pretty clear from my piece that I'm discussing conservative pundits discussing and reacting to Wikipedia editors, not the editors themselves. I made a point of contacting two individual editors on each side of the divide for comment. Gamaliel (talk) 19:37, 3 October 2014 (UTC)

• I see this article acknowledges Tyson's misremembering when Bush quoted scripture. But fails to note this speech wasn't an attempt to sow division between Christians and Muslims as Tyson claimed. I would agree that misremembering the date is no big deal. But that's quite obviously not the issue here.HopDavid (talk) 04:57, 10 January 2016 (UTC)

in Brief/More articles on Antarctica than Egypt

I do really wonder, why someone starts a study like this, because the results were quite predictable. The comparison "Antartica" (a continent, a topic of relevance for all humans) and egypt, a mid-sized country with few inhabitable lands, which ist not of worldwide interest (at least apart from it history/sites of touristical interest) is questionable. The study seems not to mention, that Wikipedia has no policy of "uniform coverage of all topics" at all. So the results do not mean anything "negative" concerning WP. Its a simple fact, that countries with low internet access with respect to numbers and band with, countries where many people have to work all day for their live support, will create rather few articles. WP relies on reliable sources. In the counties of the "third world" those are often sparse or absent. The personal interest of editing or creating articles tends not to be the same for different developed countries too. - Andy king50 (talk) 19:02, 3 October 2014 (UTC)

It is a natural result of the factors you describe, but studies like this are useful for illuminating accidental systemic bias. You are right about the sparsity of reliable sources for many third world countries, but there's really no excuse for Egypt, which has long been a fascination for the Western world and has been the subject of works by many generations of scholars. For Egypt, as with many of these places, the issue isn't the lack of sources, it's lack of interest, which is why we need to expand our coverage and our pool of editors. 19:37, 3 October 2014 (UTC)

Let's clear up some misconceptions. Egypt is the 15th largest country by population, which means that it has a larger population than any country wholly in Europe. Therefore, there must be a significant amount of habitable land within Egypt. Much of that is along the Nile, the longest river in the world. It is also the 15th largest country by number of internet users.

Egypt has a rich and long history, and has a vital and prominent role in Middle Eastern current events. There should be no shortage of articles about Egypt.

Peaceray (talk) 21:16, 3 October 2014 (UTC)

In keeping with the above discussion, I just saw this: Grants:PEG/User:Samir I. Sharbaty/Egypt Wikimedians User Group/WikiWomen Prize. Maybe we could get translations witten in English when the corresponding article does not exist. Peaceray (talk) 05:58, 4 October 2014 (UTC)

Recent research: 99.25% of Wikipedia birthdates accurate; focused Wikipedians live longer; merging WordNet, Wikipedia and Wiktionary (1,925 bytes · 💬)

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Hey Max, wouldn't a more appropriate statement be that 0.75% of Wikipedia biography dates "do not match" those in standard reference works? I've worked on at least two articles (one was John Latouche - see the talk page) where I'm sure I established the correct dates even though many reference sources provide different ones (I even got the Library of Congress to amend their dates for Latouche). Maybe that's also true for the rest of the .75%. So it's not that WP is wrong, it's just different and possibly more accurate. kosboot (talk) 06:18, 28 September 2014 (UTC)

I have also experienced email exchanges where the referenced party changed their data thanks to Wikipedia and my inquiry. So I would agree that mismatches do not always indicate that Wikipedia is inaccurate. Wikipedia's "blue-link" feature and all of the "checkwiki" bots make it possible for people to quickly realize that a grandson cannot be born before his grandfather and so forth. These basic checks lead to cleaner data in the long run. Jane (talk) 07:28, 28 September 2014 (UTC)

The method used was to find biographies that were both in Wikipedia and 9 reference databases, which are sadly not named due to the wishes of an "anonymous sponsor" of the paper.

This is pretty suspicious, particularly since the exact reason for not naming is not mentioned (a violation of journalistic ethics). Am I the only one who finds this suspicious? (As mentioned in the article, it could be a red flag) Narutolovehinata5 ^tccsdnew 12:34, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

Traffic report: Wikipedia watches the referendum in Scotland (825 bytes · 💬)

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• On a perhaps slightly pedantic note it was not an "election" in Scotland - it was a referendum. You could get away with calling it a poll or a vote but not an election, there was nobody to elect - Dumelow (talk) 10:16, 28 September 2014 (UTC)

I see User:Rcsprinter123 has amended the title, cheers. Didn't want to do it myself - Dumelow (talk) 12:16, 28 September 2014 (UTC)

• Who are what is the collaborator? -- GreenC 16:55, 29 September 2014 (UTC)