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• WT:FAC

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Image or source checks pending

• Misplaced Pages:Featured article candidates/Werner Hartenstein/archive1: Source spotcheck needed. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 11:39, 29 March 2012 (UTC)
  • Note that the sources are all in German, apart from The Enemy We Killed, My Friend and a book on the recipients of the relevant medal. - Dank (push to talk) 11:55, 29 March 2012 (UTC)
    • Archived. - Dank (push to talk) 19:11, 25 April 2012 (UTC)
• Misplaced Pages:Featured article candidates/Rwanda/archive2‎: Source spotchecks needed please. Graham Colm (talk) 14:13, 31 March 2012 (UTC)
  • Done; Clay_Clay 09:14, 4 April 2012 (UTC)

• Misplaced Pages:Featured article candidates/Atlantis: The Lost Empire/archive3 – spotcheck needed. Ucucha (talk) 11:53, 5 April 2012 (UTC)
  • Was archived. --Laser brain (talk) 14:52, 25 April 2012 (UTC)
• Misplaced Pages:Featured article candidates/Battle of Radzymin (1920)/archive2 – spotcheck needed. Ucucha (talk) 11:53, 5 April 2012 (UTC)
  • Note that all but a handful of the sources are in Polish. - Dank (push to talk) 12:21, 5 April 2012 (UTC)
• Misplaced Pages:Featured article candidates/Dan Leno/archive1 - Spotcheck needed. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 23:03, 5 April 2012 (UTC)
  • I think Laser brain has got this. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 23:12, 12 April 2012 (UTC)
• Misplaced Pages:Featured article candidates/Edmund Sharpe/archive1 -- Ditto. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 04:52, 9 April 2012 (UTC)
  • Checked one source and asked nominator for a few other pages. --Laser brain (talk) 15:41, 25 April 2012 (UTC)
• Misplaced Pages:Featured article candidates/Ahalya/archive2 -- Ditto. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 13:07, 10 April 2012 (UTC)
  • Looking at this one myself. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 23:12, 12 April 2012 (UTC)
• Misplaced Pages:Featured article candidates/Steamtown, USA/archive2 -- Spotcheck needed. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 23:12, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

• Could we archive these instead of hatting them, so we don't have screenfuls of white space next to the sidebars? - Dank (push to talk) 12:57, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

JSTOR

Over the last month, I've been in talking with the people at the WMF about JSTOR access and I have some news I'd like to report. They've identified a Foundation that may might be interested in funding JSTOR access for Wikipedians. They're in the process of working that out now, but it will take some time to work that out. In the meantime, the WMF is willing to pay out-of-pocket to provide two or three Wikipedians with JSTOR access. What we're looking for are people who don't already have it through their university, but who do featured article quality editing in areas that would benefit from JSTOR access.

I'd also like to single out Steven Walling for special thanks for his help in making this possible. Raul654 (talk) 16:49, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

I don't have it through my university, but I can get it if I drive an hour to go to a local university. While I'd love to have it at home... I'm not going to demand it in place of someone with zilch way to access it either. Ealdgyth - Talk 16:54, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

(ec) Hi Raul, this kind of donation is highly sought after, so can I suggest you (or whoever is organizing it) open a page for it, and allow people to sign up within a certain time frame? We did that for the Credo donation last year. We gave people a week's notice, requested certain criteria, then left the sign-up page open for a week. At that point it was first-come, first-served for people who met the requirements within the time frame. Ocaasi is currently organizing a similar distribution of Highbeam accounts: see Misplaced Pages:Highbeam/Applications. SlimVirgin 17:00, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

Yes, when accounts are ready and depending on how many there are, we were definitely wanting to open a page like the Credo accounts system. In this case, I might prefer some kind of combination of "first come, first served" and consideration of people's activity in FA/GA. In any case, I just wanted to emphasize that we're still in talks with another foundation for more systemic support, so if the consensus is that the process we used for Credo works best, then that's great. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 19:48, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

I'd be interested in access, but past experience suggests that by the time I find out what's happening, everything's already gone ): Jimfbleak - talk to me? 17:42, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

Wow, what an incredible opportunity. Thanks for spearheading this effort. --Laser brain (talk) 17:47, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

Yes, thanks for organizing it, Raul, and thanks to Steven too and anyone else involved. SlimVirgin 17:50, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

Yes indeed! I'd be interested, but I agree a "pitching" page is a good idea. By the way I can offer a free one year postal subscription to the excellent London Review of Books to anyone in the UK who has never had one before. Contact me by e-mail. Johnbod (talk) 18:56, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

I'd love access to JSTOR, but with only two or three available initially I'm sure there will be others who could make better use of it than me. Malleus Fatuorum 19:11, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

I too, would love to have access to JSTOR to assist in finding and citing sources, and in expanding article content. Binksternet (talk) 19:31, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

I support this idea. I have access via uni already. Casliber (talk · contribs) 20:33, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

I could get access at my old university (which I left more than 30 years ago), but it's almost 200 miles away. I know that's probably just a routine day trip for some in the States, but it's completely impractical in the UK. Malleus Fatuorum 20:39, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

If there are only two or three available, one way to proceed would be to draw up requirements, make sure there's wide notification, open the page for names for a week, have someone uninvolved check eligibility, then get a bot to choose two or three of the names at random. SlimVirgin 20:50, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

Perhaps clarify: is it two or three people, or two or three slots? If the latter, they could be awarded for, say, three-month periods to indivduals, and more editors would benefit. At present I beg and borrow JSTOR where I can, from other helpful editors (take a bow, Tim), from my daughters' universities etc, but access from home would be fantastic, even for a short time. Brianboulton (talk) 17:11, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

I could benefit from JSTOR access. I take it, from what is not said above, that JSTOR does not offer a "group" subscription which can be shared by a handful of individuals? For example, if JSTOR offered a, say, maximum-10-person corporate account, WP could purchase several of those to be used by specifically named WP contributors. --Noleander (talk) 17:18, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

Steven emailed me last night to say that a group rate is exactly what they are currently trying to work out with JSTOR. Raul654 (talk) 17:30, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

I'd love JSTOR access - at the moment I have to request everything via the resource exchange - which isn't too bad, so far everything I've asked for has been supplied by someone. But it means I have to really want the article if I'm going to request it; usually I hit the paywall and go look somewhere else. Simon Burchell (talk) 20:14, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

I have JSTOR access for the foreseeable future, but was quite unaware of how significant that seems to be, judging from the replies here. If anyone wants to make use of my access (not sure how this works), you're welcome to get in touch with me. But congratulations for securing this opportunity for other members! MasterOfHisOwnDomain (talk) 15:50, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

From reading the above discussion, it looks like a JSTOR sign-up page should be created in anticipation of a large-scale acess to JSTOR become possible. And we can use such a list for picking which two or three people get first dibs (which I would prefer to see done on the basis of need and merit, without having to do it randomly) If no one else does it within a week or so, I'll create it myself. Raul654 (talk) 18:33, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

Yes, that is a great idea. Thanks Mark. :) Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 16:30, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

Just wanted to add my name to the list of candidates for this. I have needed to retrieve JSTOR articles on numerous occassions but only have partial access. SpinningSpark 20:24, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

IMO, the offer should also be extended to people who do lots of citation work, such as User:Rjwilmsi, and bot coders, such as myself (via User:CitationCleanerBot and User:Bibcode Bot) or User:Smith609 (via User:Citation bot). Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 21:06, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

Why do bot operators need access to the full database? Surely only the citations are required by bots. SpinningSpark 21:41, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

For troubleshooting purposes mostly. It could also lead to bot improvements, although that would highly depends on the exact nature of the database in question, and the quality of its metadata. It could also lead to the development of new bots, such as those checking for WP:COPYVIOs which would benefit from full access. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 22:36, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

JSTOR has full text searching, even of documents the user cannot access. All a copyvio bot needs to know is that the database has a match, there is no need for it to actually access the document. I really cannot agree that bot operators should be put in front of content providers for this - the content of Misplaced Pages is what we are all about. SpinningSpark 10:05, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

The JSTOR signup page is up: Misplaced Pages:Requests for JSTOR access Raul654 (talk) 17:52, 4 April 2012 (UTC)

This would be an extremely valuable resource, thanks to Steven and Raul for taking the initiative on this!♦ Dr. Blofeld 20:27, 4 April 2012 (UTC)

Perhaps the user group rights could be extended to include groups such as "JStor" and "HighBeam", which would grant users in those groups access to resources at the respective archives. This may make it easier to dynamically update the list of users, though it would remove control from the providers of the data, which may not be keen about this. Mindmatrix 01:10, 7 April 2012 (UTC)

I just wanted to check - does everyone here know about the resource exchange? If you don't have access to sources, someone else likely does and will be willing to share. SmartSE (talk) 10:11, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

10th anniversary of FAC

If my investigations are correct, then next year we are coming up on the 10th anniversary of the creation of the WP:FAC page: June 24, 2003. That might be worth celebrating with a little horn tooting and retrospective commentary. Milestone celebrations are nice for building community and teamwork. I'm not one for organizing such things, but I thought I'd mention it. Thanks. Regards, RJH (talk) 16:10, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

No interest at all? Okay. RJH (talk) 02:32, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

Well it is more than a year off. But it does make me feel suddenly old. Raul654 (talk) 02:33, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

Too true. Thanks. RJH (talk) 16:40, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

I think it's an excellent idea to celebrate the anniversary; there's time enough to think about how. The Signpost would surely be interested in covering it. You might mention this to Crisco and Mathew Townsend, who write Featured content nowadays. Tony (talk) 13:32, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

Subscription required and access templates

Is anyone here able to point me to where the stuff about 'subscription required' tags is documented? There is Template:Subscription required, but I also found the paired templates Template:Closed access and Template:Open access. Is this something covered by the Manual of Style? Carcharoth (talk) 10:03, 7 April 2012 (UTC)

I can't find where it is documented. It doesn't seem to be discussed in WP:CITE or the MoS anywhere. --Laser brain (talk) 14:48, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

Spotchecks

Hey, I was just wondering if there was a page detailing precisely what a spotcheck entails, or if someone could explain it to me? I'd be interested in helping out, but I wouldn't want to miss something significant. I appreciate that a spotcheck involves checking cited sources to see if, firstly, they say what the article says, and, secondly, to make sure that the article has not paraphrased them too closely. Is this all there is to it? Typically, how many sources would we be looking at checking? Thanks. J Milburn (talk) 14:18, 8 April 2012 (UTC)

I don't know if there is a dedicated page but Misplaced Pages talk:Featured article candidates/archive56#Source spot-checking gives some info. Simon Burchell (talk) 16:02, 8 April 2012 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:Wikipedia_Signpost/2009-04-13/Dispatches might be helpful, or there's my own effort. Nikkimaria (talk) 16:10, 8 April 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the links! J Milburn (talk) 16:43, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

I wonder if it would be beneficial to have a brief glossary section for FAC terminology on the WP:FACR page? Regards, RJH (talk) 16:42, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

What would such a glossary include, other than "spotchecks"? Nikkimaria (talk) 17:47, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

High Quality Reliable Source? Fifelfoo (talk) 13:27, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

FACs with mostly non-English sources

I just want to point to this FAC and this one, and also this one that was just archived today. Many nominators are putting considerable time into FACs that are heavily based on non-English sources, so I'm sure a little clarity would be greatly appreciated by everyone. WP:V, one of our three core content policies, says "Because this is the English Misplaced Pages, English-language sources are preferred over non-English ones, assuming English sources of equal quality and relevance are available." There will, of course, be many sources on an event of historical importance to a country that are written in that country's native language(s); these sources are likely to cover some topics and express some points of view not found in English sources, so in articles on historical topics at least, it's hard to see how prohibiting foreign-language sources at FAC would be consistent with WP:V. On the other hand, it's hard enough to get consensus on "big" questions, such as questions of notability and undue weight, when all the sources are in English; in practice, it's going to be very hard to know what to say when sources in different languages come to different conclusions. Also, more often than not, for FACs mostly based on non-English sources, we haven't been able to find a variety of objective, knowledgeable reviewers who can read the foreign language(s) and have access to the sources, particularly if the nominator(s) don't already belong to a community of Wikipedians that can regularly provide the reviewers. Should we perhaps add some explanatory note somewhere so that people will have more realistic expectations of what it's going to take to get these articles through FAC? - Dank (push to talk) 17:30, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

Speaking as someone who uses a lot of Spanish-language sources, trying to prohibit or reduces foreign-language sources is just going to reduce the amount of world coverage and increase the systemic bias already present on Misplaced Pages, and pretty much kill coverage of non-English speaking countries. Simon Burchell (talk) 17:41, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

The general problem of how to get, say, Italians and Americans to believe in the same political and historical realities is a tough one. (Or Americans and Americans!) Not impossible ... it depends very much on the nominators, languages, articles and reviewers involved. If I could have one wish for the FAC community, it would be that, when we see some kind of pattern where things are much harder than they should be, where a lot of time is being invested without a lot of gain, we make an effort to at least describe the general outline of the problem and offer some pointers on how to get things to work out. - Dank (push to talk) 18:20, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

The key words are "assuming English sources of equal quality and relevance are available". There are topics, like the May Revolution (of the second FAC pointed) that have full bibliographies in their non-English native countries, but generate low interest abroad. Not all authors that write about history are the same: there are real historians (who investigate documents, other author's investigations, investigate the accuracy or validity of the content of primary sources, filter the bias that may be present in other works, etc.), there are mere divulgators or "parrot" historians (who just explain history to the mass public, merely re-telling the work of real historians), and there are some works of such divulgators that explain topics worth of several books in just a 5 pages summary or less (the worst sources). I guess that nobody will deny or discuss that featured articles should work with just the first type of authors, or at least have the core of the article referenced in them. The problem of the third type of works can be easily seen here: that was the state of the May Revolution article before I began working in it, and the state it would stay if we used just what we may find in books in English (because I did search for them, several times, and any coverage of the event was even smaller than this). And the problem of "parrot" historians is that they are often inaccurate: if they have to choose between explaining the complex modern historian knowledge, or just repeat common assumptions as if they were the truth, they will do the later. There are historians who make investigations about the May Revolution, but (no surprise) they are all here in Argentina and work for the people of Argentina, in Spanish. Avoiding such authors would make the article outdated and unreliable. Cambalachero (talk) 01:41, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

Hmm. I'm noticing a predominance of 2 digit page refs in the notes, suggesting many short books are being used; the main exception is Abad de Santillán, who was published in 1965 I think. Johnbod (talk) 02:20, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

If works are solely about the entire subject, then I'd expect a 40:30:30 split between i-99, 100-199, 200+ given that most monographs seem to end up around 300 pages in English in current publishing. If the works are about a period, with the subject occurring at the start (or end) of the period I'd expect similar movements. I'm sorry I've not been reviewing history articles, but I've got way too much on IRL. Fifelfoo (talk) 02:29, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

We could kindly let nominators of specialist articles based primarily on non-English scholarship that they may have a long wait until someone with discipline expertise and sufficient language skills is available. It is regrettable, but it is honest. And it in no way impugns their choice of sourcing basis. Fifelfoo (talk) 02:29, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

Maybe we could set up a subpage with a list of editors by language who are willing to help out with source checks? Simon Burchell (talk) 08:45, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

Me, Spanish (and by the way, I sometimes find that when text is added to Venezuelan articles based on Spanish-language sources, the text is trivial to undue-- important content is almost always covered in English-language sources, and that text is often omitted or overlooked as folks who don't speak English don't read and add those sources ... however, that is an issue not at the FA level). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:33, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

I've just set up a page User:Simon Burchell/FAC foreign language reviewers to list those reviewers with foreign languages, feel free to do whatever you want with it. Simon Burchell (talk) 15:03, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

Full disclosure of paid editing?

In view of the dramatic events over the past few days involving User:Cla68's $1000 invitation to use his services to prepare and presumably nominate FACs, the time has come to consider addressing this issue in the instructions. It's highly probable that some FACs have already been shepherded through by paid editors who've not declared their status; I'm not banking on honesty in every case, but don't editors think FAC should at least require a declaration? Then, failure to declare becomes an ongoing liability for both paid editor and client. Possibly a new fourth instruction under Nomination procedure, making six instructions in all, could be this:

4. If you have received or may receive a monetary or other reward—aside from social esteem—for your contribution to a nomination, you must disclose this on the nomination page.

Tony (talk) 07:55, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

Although it's impossible to effectively prevent someone of charging to edit here, Misplaced Pages (and thus, the FAC) should have a zero tolerance regarding this kind of behavior. Its will be a matter of time until we have paid editors with paid supporters. Editor A charges $1,000 and he has Editors B, C and D giving their "support" to his nomination, perhaps by giving them part of the money, I don't know. All I know it's that it will run out of control eventually. --Lecen (talk) 17:34, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

If it's to be permitted (and I'm still firmly in the 'no it should not be' camp for reasons explained here) then yes, the instructions should absolutely require that such a conflict of interest be disclosed. Raul654 (talk) 17:41, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

I haven't formed a proper opinion about the whole issue (not yet, anyway). I've read your post at Sandy's page. What bothers me is that most of your points are in relation to the surface, the disclosed, and fall apart when you consider the amount of UNdisclosed paid editing that surely goes on. Are you being practical? I note that Sandy has said she'd rather know who's doing it than encourage an environment of total subterfuge. Tony (talk) 08:36, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

I generally agree with Tony's proposal, though the currently wording may give the impression that the community thinks it's OK for there to be paid editing. I'd suggest strengthening it to reference WP:COI and/or WP:NPOV or similar. While I support Cla's right to do what he's done under the current rules, and think that this has lead to a useful discussion, it's fair to say that his next FAC will attract a lot of attention! Nick-D (talk) 10:15, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

(ec) I think Tony's proposal is about right on the money (pardon the pun). We already request that WikiCup participants disclose, and the bot automatically tags them. Points for a FA in that contest are a form of "reward" or "payment", so why not hard currency? I trust editors with established track records to omit minor compensation (an organization involved merely bought lunch or supplied photocopies/scans of requested research materials at no charge) when that action didn't substantively affect the article, if there's a general culture of disclosure for the larger compensation or less established editors. I'd be more worried about reviewers being compensated to go easy on an article and support it improperly than an editor that said they're getting something other than bragging rights and social esteem for the nomination. Imzadi 1979 → 10:23, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

Perhaps unfortunately, I have already ranted and raved elsewhere (quite briefly, by my standards) about this pay-for Misplaced Pages-editing thing.. just in the past week or so. Even more unfortunately, not only did my rants fall on deaf ears, they fell on remarkably smug, self-satisfied, almost arrogantly deaf ears. Whatever is not proscribed for all is glorified by some... I think we have seen the trickle before the flood. This is much like the "should we hand out condoms in our high schools?" dilemma: if you do it, then it gives the All Clear for the behavior; if you don't, people will be doin' it anyhow. Me personally, if Sandy did say she'd prefer it out in the open, I disagree with her. I'd prefer it proscribed. Put it in the open, and we will be overrun by paid editors in about 2 years or less. It's almost Free Money; all you have to do is write a report. So Color Me Opposed to permitting paid editing, though I doubt it will help. Ling.Nut3 (talk) 12:50, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

If it weren't for the impossibility of policing what happens under the surface, I'd be for an outright ban. I do worry about the possibility that volunteers will feel deflated if some people are on the pay. But on the other hand, if we know who's on the money-drip, their work will certainly come under scrutiny for neutrality and quality in all other respects. We are hampered by the fact that paid editing is currently not proscribed.

And perhaps we're overstating the size of any trend towards payment that might touch this forum: the blanket $1000 fee that Cla68 has specified seems rather paltry for the amount of work involved (unless it's a very short nom) ... it's preparation, shepherding it through the nom process, and looking after the article for at least a while afterwards, I guess. Cla hasn't specified any of the details I'd regard as part of the deal with a client if he were going to do it on a professional basis. If editors are going to approach paid editing in a shambolic way in commercial terms, it won't be a threat. You'd need to make a whole lot of things clear to a client, and you'd probably need a contract spelling out a few things. Anyway, is FAC really the best way to go for a client, considering the high level of scrutiny and of failure? Just having an excellent article attract a high google ranking is worth much more.

I just think FAC should make its insistence on openness about financial reward quite clear, if nothing else to encourage anyone who does accept payment to disclose it here and to ensure that their client knows that neutrality and high standards of sourcing are required. Tony (talk) 13:29, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

• Shambolic now; super hurricane later. My first Geocities page was kinda hot crap about a million years ago. If it came out now it would be.. crap. Same dynamic here. Because we do not proscribe paid editing, two years from now, paid editors will be a very substantial minority, maybe a majority. Ling.Nut3 (talk) 14:20, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

Paid editing—at least the kind we're wary about—is unlikely to manifest itself here to any substantial degree. A person paid to edit Citibank is doing PR and damage control, not going anywhere near FAC. However, would you really care if a biologist was paid to bring sloth to FA standards? Additionally, such a requirement is creating a layer of control beneath one (WP:COI) that already suggests that editors should disclose conflicts of interest. --Laser brain (talk) 18:28, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

Cracker Barrel is an interesting case. As I understand it, a user was paid to improve their article, and apparently his contract expired but he kept working on it--it's now at FAC. (It could use some reviews too, if anyone reading this is interested.) Mark Arsten (talk) 00:16, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

I think it's about to happen. Watch this week's Signpost. Tony (talk) 06:56, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

I'm the COI editor responsible for most of the Cracker Barrel article, and co-nominator for FAC—a fact we disclosed at the outset. Mark Arsten's description of that project is correct; the FAC was going well for awhile, however there hasn't been any discussion around it for a few weeks. I plan to start pitching in on other reviews this week, in hopes of getting more help with ours. Also, the discussion Ling.Nut3 alludes to above was with myself and User:Qwryxian on the GPG Talk page; others can look at that discussion to form their own conclusions. If I came across as smug, this certainly was not my intention. And I should note: while I have researched, written and proposed new material for inclusion in the mainspace, my activity has been confined to userspace and discussion pages since Jimbo first laid out his "bright line" concept earlier this year. And I'm more than happy to discuss any aspect of this, if there are questions. Cheers, WWB Too (talk) 21:48, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

Remember, Jimbo's "Bright line" is simply Jimbo's idea. It is not policy or even necessarily generally accepted among Misplaced Pages's community. Just follow the editing policies, which you appear to be doing, and there is no need for you to be apologetic about having been paid to edit any articles. Cla68 (talk) 22:57, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

This is true, I am well aware that it's contested—and that it is contested is reason enough for me to stay out of the mainspace on COI subjects. Until very recently, I would occasionally make direct edits following WP:COI#Non-controversial_edits, but controversy found me nonetheless (long story). I don't wish to be controversial; I do wish to find areas of agreement between Misplaced Pages's goals and those of my clients, and focus on that. Direct edits may be fine for others, but until there is consensus, I prefer to be more cautious. WWB Too (talk) 01:00, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

the reasons why one should continue to be a real Wikipedian keep dwindling.....Ling.Nut3 (talk) 04:24, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

I've begun to regard it much like a Cloud backup system, until something better comes along. Without all of the bullshit and administrative hypocrisy. Malleus Fatuorum 04:29, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

Today's featured article, May 1, 2014: The Exxon Valdez Environmental Reclamation Project was a massive restructuring of the ecosystem of Prince William Sound, Alaska, on March 24, 1989. In order to rebuild the ecosystem from scratch, the Exxon Valdez, a baby-otter-friendly rub-a-dub-dub ship bound for Long Beach, California, deployed 260,000 to 750,000 barrels (41,000 to 119,000 m3) of organic, all-natural material in Prince William Sound's Bligh Reef. This is considered to be one of the largest and most successful environmental reclamation projects in the history of mankind, with beneficial economic spillovers that will last for generations to come. Ling.Nut3 (talk) 05:06, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

I'm not really sure what you're after, Ling, however I wish you could see that my goal for Misplaced Pages is very much like your own: that Misplaced Pages continue to develop as an encyclopedia, first and always. The difference seems to be that I know outside interests wish to have input in making sure that Misplaced Pages portrays them fairly and accurately. That's what I try to do, and I wouldn't be writing this comment if my intentions were otherwise. WWB Too (talk) 07:33, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

Today's Featured article continues: Reminiscing about his days at the helm of the Project over a nice cup of General Foods International Maxwell House instant coffee with ExxonMobilWikipedia textual engineers WWBToo and SilverSeren, Captain Joe Hazelwood said, "Above all, I love baby otters. At ExxonMobil, it's all about the baby otters." – Ling.Nut3 (talk) 23:48, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

So, essentially, you're on a vendetta and aren't going to listen to anything anyone has to say, so there's really no point in bothering to discuss anything with you? Silverseren 02:17, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

Hmmm, product placement. I can see some mileage in that Ling.Nut. Malleus Fatuorum 03:00, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

• I see Ling.Nut's point—no problem there—but the larger issue is that it's been happening for some time now. Why relinquish any of the community control, accountability, expectations that openness would bring, just to let the submarines have a monolopy on paid editing? Please be practical. Tony (talk) 02:27, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

I strongly agree with Ling Nut. Tony, you say the problem is that paid editing isn't proscribed. Well, if that's the problem, let's proscribe it and say clearly that paid entries are not permitted at FAC. Adding to the criterion that it's allowed if declared, is announcing to the project that the content process at the top of the tree permits it, and that will help to open the floodgates elsewhere.

A major problem with paid editing is that you're asking volunteers to review the work of people who are not volunteers, and that is one of the things that will kill Misplaced Pages. People will do the review work at first -- to do their bit to make sure paid articles are neutral -- but they'll soon realize it's a mug's game to do for free what the guy right next to you is doing for pay. And so the volunteer review processes will grind to a halt, here and elsewhere.

Presumably, we would all be stunned if our favourite newspapers were to announce that their journalists were now allowed to take money from the companies they were writing about, so long as they declared it. We wouldn't listen to arguments about how "it's probably happening under the radar anyway, so we thought we'd try being open about it." SlimVirgin 03:56, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

Except, we know newspaper reporter's real names. Cla68 (talk) 04:20, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

I don't follow. How is knowing a reporter's real name relevant? (Does knowing a reporter's real name, as opposed to not necessarily knowing a Misplaced Pages user's real name, change whether it would be appropriate for the reporter to take money from subjects that he or she covers?) --MZMcBride (talk) 04:31, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

Routine in this country. Journalists are supposed to disclose who is paying them (in addition to, of course, the media company), but often they do not. Hawkeye7 (talk) 04:59, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

I don't know whether you've all been following the Leveson Inquiry in the UK into dodgy relationships between government and other authorities and Rupert Murdoch's News International -- relationships that might never have come to light without the work of several reporters, mostly notably from The Guardian. Now imagine the Guardian's editor solemnly announcing that, because the inquiry has shown Murdoch's influence was pervasive, the newspaper has decided to allow several of its reporters to be directly funded by Murdoch, in the interests of transparency, because the fear is it was happening anyway. But not to worry -- The Guardian is confident that its review processes will catch any lack of neutrality, and articles written by those reporters will have "sponsored by Rupert Murdoch" added to the byline.

That's in effect what's being suggested here and elsewhere on Misplaced Pages, and it's actually significantly worse than that, because unlike The Guardian we have no professional review processes in place, and our volunteers will get increasingly fed up being expected to make up the shortfall.

I realize that people's intentions here are good, but the problem is that each case is being examined in isolation, rather than stepping back to consider the effect paid editing will have on the project as a whole. The bottom line is that volunteers will slowly drift away from a two-tier system that will make them feel like fools, and we'll lose the credibility with our readers that those volunteers spent years trying to build up. SlimVirgin 06:33, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

So, basically, if a paid editor has ever worked substantially on an article, then that article can never, ever be featured for the rest of time, is that what you're proposing? Silverseren 05:44, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

I'm arguing against Tony's proposal to add to the FAC criteria that paid articles may be nominated if flagged. I oppose it because it would create a new fact on the ground (I mean no disrespect to Tony when I say that; Tony is an editor I have a huge amount of respect for). My hope is that reviewers will not review any such articles that are nominated and/or that the director and delegates will not promote them -- because this is a volunteer project and our readers rely on that, and FAs are supposed to represent the best efforts of this project.

If there's consensus that something does have to be added to the criteria, I would like to see us state that no article will be promoted to FA status if the director or delegates have reason to believe that the article has been sponsored by outside interests.

We could add a caveat that by "sponsored," we don't mean that the editors went to lunch with someone, or that someone sent them a review copy of a book. We would leave it to the director's and delegates' discretion to decide what level of external involvement might constitute "sponsorship" in any given case. SlimVirgin 06:55, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

You haven't answered my question. Does that mean any article that is substantially edited by a paid editor is then forever not allowed to be submitted to FAC? Silverseren 07:16, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

I hope I can dissociate myself for a minute from my role in reporting the facts in The Signpost to respond to my good friend, Slim, and others—and let me say now that I remain open to changing my mind. If it were feasible and realistic, I'd ban paid editing altogether. But the pragmatist in me says that this is a pipe-dream. By superficially banning the phenomenon or pretending it doesn't exist, we'd continue to allow the submarines to operate without let; that is what bothers me, and it's rife as we speak. We need to be smarter about creating effective infrastructure for assisting and monitoring the edits and requests of BLPs and company/PR people. The absence of such infrastructure is one of the main complaints of the outside professionals (see last week's Signpost). So at the moment we have the worst of all worlds: no encouragement of people who are paid or affiliated with their subject to do their stuff openly, honestly, above board, and in the cold light of our extra scrutiny. It's the reverse: we make it attractive to indulge in subterfuge, in the project as a whole and at FAC. As Sandy says, we'd rather know who's doing it. And I'd rather enjoy poking holes in the work of someone who's paid, would you all?

I'm interested in your point that volunteers might find it a downer to have to rub shoulders with those who are paid. This is something I've raised, but I've not seen it taken up and discussed until now. Perhaps there would be multifactorial psychological and social effects on volunteers of making the current binary system open. What do people feel about reviewing the Cracker Barrel FAC? Feels the same as any other review to me, except I'd be inclined to come down harder on it in terms of balance than I normally would.

Slim, why will an openly two-tiered system make us volunteers "look like fools"? At The Signpost we write as volunteers, except that the foundation pays someone to do most of the preparation and writing of one article a month, and to provide us occasionally with technical advice and support: User:HaeB (Tilman Bayer). Elsewhere we work side by side foundation employees on the money drip: the Teahouse project for newbies is run by the paid foundation contractor SarahStierch, but couldn't exist without volunteers (it's made for volunteers); Pete Coombe, a foundation summer fellow, is about to start paid work with volunteers on en.WP to revamp the help space; the foundation's technicians often commune with community technical volunteers; and the new WMF project Wikidata is largely being prepared for launching as a pilot by the German chapter's full-time employees, in collaboration with many volunteers. I have the distinct impression that the WM horse has bolted from the stable as a wildly successful part of human knowledge, but that volunteers alone are struggling to manage the beast nowadays. Perhaps my experience in gnoming has made me hyperaware of the proportion of articles that are pretty lousy stubs, too, and likely to remain so without concerted efforts to improve them.

I also want to throw into this debate the fact that in some countries the sharpest scrutiny of politicians and public policy is by public broadcasters; in Australia, in particular, the ABC is funded from federal tax revenue—its journalists and commentators are in one way civil servants. Yet they are the ones to ask the hard questions of their paymasters, and sometimes to trash them in public. I don't believe there's a simple, one-way connection between financial reward and spin. Indeed, we're more likely to end up with spin from submarines. While on that topic, new rules are being introduced to get tough on Australian radio talk-back shock-jocks who don't declare payments by outside interests (the Cash for comment affair); for so long the public has been taken for a ride. Openness is the obvious antidote, I believe.

What we do need is a boilerplate rule for paid editors to use in their contracts with clients making it abundantly clear that if there's dirt, it's probably going to have to be included in the article (I express this very loosely here; you know what I mean, and it could be written more formally). I see dirt in the Cracker Barrel FAC. It makes me recoil, but I'm comforted that it's there. Tony (talk) 08:07, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

• However, if you work to improve the Cracker Barrel FAC, you are voluntarily leaning over the greasy sink washing someone else's big stack of dirty dishes, while that person is sitting back and collecting a cold hard cash paycheck for the copy editing work that you actually did. Frankly, it's mildly disgusting. If I am gonna shove my arms up to my elbows in greasy dishwater, either I get paid, or no one gets paid... And all of this is in addition to the COI and commercialism objections that the Exxon Valdez Ecological Reclamation Project raised above. – Ling.Nut3 (talk) 08:35, 2 May 2012 (UTC)
  • You've raised what I think is an important point here. As a community, we are pretty good at dealing with the blatantly problematic COI edits - we either delete the content or the article. When things become more problematic though - i.e. content is sourced and the subject is notable - it is much harder for volunteers to deal with COI edits. Artie04 (talk · contribs) and Expewikiwriter (talk · contribs) (both socks) are a good current example of this - most of the articles they wrote have been deleted, but ones such as Gregory Scott Cummins and Young Entrepreneur Council are much more difficult to deal with. I agree that it is not exactly rewarding to clean up a paid editor's mess - it feels like you should be being paid yourself. It's pretty similar with the rest of the articles tagged for COI review. To be certain that all the content is neutral and accurately represents the sources, a volunteer needs to check every source. For an FAC that's nigh on impossible. Jimmy's WP:BRIGHTLINE is kind of useful, but not if it just encourages people to think we'll do half the work for them, and all they need to do is request it. If our founder thinks that this is a suitable way to request content being added, then I have little hope for BRIGHTLINE working. SmartSE (talk) 08:52, 2 May 2012 (UTC)
  • Again I have to ask, Ling, would you have the same problem if a chemist was paid by a foundation to make Boron an FA? Is it just that Cracker Barrel is a commercial entity that bothers you? I personally have no interest in reviewing it—because I have no interest in the topic, not because the editor was paid. I've not looked at the article, but if it's a "big stack of dirty dishes", then it shouldn't even be at FAC and Cracker Barrel ought to see about getting their money back. --Laser brain (talk) 14:15, 2 May 2012 (UTC)
    • late reply to laserbrain: Right at this moment in my thought process, I have 3 probs w. paid editors: COI (Exxon), commercialism (coffee in Exxon), and they get paid for stuff that is done with huge helpings of collaboration from unpaid editors. If an ichthyologist is paid a non-eye-popping amount of money (though i suppose i would never know the details) to bring a rare species of fish to FA, then issues 1 and 2 would be irrelevant. As for 3... the ichthyologist brings an expertise to the table that I do not and cannot. I think it's fair, especially if she/he spreads the non-monetary love aorund by acting gracious etc.. The prob with 3 is when the only thing the editor brings to the table is his/her Misplaced Pages editing and/or copy editing skills. Then it is patently unfair. – Ling.Nut3 (talk) 14:52, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

• The problem with the Cracker Barrel article is that it's written as a PR piece. A more encyclopedic treatment of Cracker Barrel would be considerably shorter for one thing, and might go into more detail about the alleged racial segregation (note: not only discrimination in employment practices and lack of diversity, but actual segregation of customers into black and white areas; see USA Today, May 2004). There is no mention of the segregation allegations in the lead, just a couple of sentences at the end of a 2,270-word article, though the lead does mention the discrimination in hiring.

  Maybe that's the right approach, but to find out whether it is someone would have to do a fair amount of unpaid research to edit someone else's paid work, which is a bit much to expect. But at first glance there seems to be a lack of balance, given the attention to detail about other aspects of the company, and given that issues that are both chronologically and logically dependent on the segregation allegations (i.e. the company's response to them) are treated higher up in the article. SlimVirgin 00:26, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

• I agree with Tony that the problems from paid editing can never be solved by banning. In terms of editor motivation, there will never equality between the moralistic non-commercial spirit and the paid commercial contributions, especially where there is big money involved. We sometimes see them at work in articles about politicians, and occasionally scandals ensue. Fortunately, these do not seem to be problematic per se, unless we loosen the definition of the opposing sides of the 'global warming' debate. What seems to be a greater problem, however, is the perennial issue of disputes involving religious zealots, whether they be Scientologists, Falun Gong, or others – here few dare to declare an interest, probably because of past intervention of Arbcom. Past experience would suggest that blatant advocacy is more likely to lead to topic-bans, and making a declaration would be like raising one's head above the parapet. But we know who they are by how they see the world in binary terms, and by the way they behave – there's often little or no moderation of their advocacy or their stances; the assault is unrelenting. Soldiers that fall are replaced by a newer generation of more sophisticated warriors. It is this unrelenting advocacy that should be targeted and stamped out. These advocates are not driven by money but something potentially more sinister. They now adopt editing behaviour more like a "normal" volunteer. They edit more widely to disguise their allegiances; they also appear to be more willing to engage in dialogue, even if they are merely engaging in a charade with stale arguments. They no longer disrupt by simple edit-warring. The advanced armoury includes increasingly esoteric debate that tends to drive "unconflicted" editors away (whilst mouthing platitudes about welcoming wider editorial participation), "lawyering", filibustering, mock consensus-generation. We need to accept that COI-editing takes place on a huge scale on wikipedia. Whilst requiring declarations as suggested by Tony may work for some cases, it is ultimately unenforceable for religious orders – membership to these groups is notoriously difficult to prove. We also need to toughen up the behavioural rules and the policing against the "barbarians at the gate", but I've got no solution to propose on that front yet. --Ohconfucius 04:34, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages's brave new world: volunteers as the guardians of values in a binary system

Perhaps the real think-tank was always going to be on this page rather than at the RfCs, MfD and user talk-pages that have recently hosted rather cranky discourse on paid editing and on-wiki advertising/disclosure of such. After all, for years FAC has set the highest standards for articles. Here, the battle has been won over professionalising our best articles in every possible way. The standards I see here sometimes trump those of professional academics. We can afford to be proud, although never complacent.

But now the whole project—not least FAC—faces a new challenge. Six years ago, WP's extraordinary freedom of access and the "anyone can edit" idea were still novel, and WP was expanding at a speed that stunned everyone. However, people are no longer stunned, and our very success forces higher benchmarks. WP is so big and powerful that, like the internet itself, the world has come to rely on the site (witness the success of the one-day outage over SOPA, which if nothing else made many people realise that no WP can be like no lights).

This sheer size and complexity now threatens the volunteer-only model that has characterised WP since its inception. Everywhere the strains are apparent: thousands of volunteers have not a hope of servicing the site's needs of the site, and the satisfaction we gain as individuals remains dependent on defining ourselves in relation to one tiny part of it. It's not just properly policing copyright, plagiarism, and CoI, and turning two million lousy little stubs and another half a million indifferently translated dumps from other language WPs into something we can be satisfied with. The pressure to perform like paid professionals—and our aggregate shortfall as busy volunteers—can be felt all over the place. The copy-edit drives we routinely run are laughably inadequate. Many WikiProjects are moribund. Admins are run off their feet. Arbitrators say they put in a full-time effort just for arbcom. Ask Raul and Sandy and the other delegates at featured content forums how much pressure they feel; observe how short of reviewers we often are. The Signpost is somehow published to a weekly deadline on a bare thread. Many of our policies and guidelines need rationalising and are not properly implemented.

This scenario has crept up over years, ironically as we've triumphed; but the paid-editor imbroglio has brought it to a head, and it's only comments from Slim Virgin and other editors above that have forced me to think through the longer-term picture, at least in my own terms. I put it to you that WP cannot succeed by continuing to conceive itself through the volunteer-only model; that the time has come to accept that a new model is going to evolve—not over weeks or months, but certainly over the next few years.

It's not as though new components will be introduced to our labour force; but the future will involve changes in the status, emphasis, and interactions between the three components:

1. the volunteers;
2. the foundation's (and the chapters') salaried and contracted input, much increased over the past year and likely to increase further; and
3. paid editors, until now largely occupying a twilight zone and barely acknowledged.

Let's look at 2 and 3. The movement, with its sudden increase in funding and the introduction in July of the FDC (funds dissemination committee) is likely to supply sharply increasing job-specific input to fix aspects of projects that are crying out for improvement and that volunteers find themselves unable to address (through no lack of their own skills). This is already happening beyond the purely technical remit that Sue Gardner told The Signpost will be the main contribution of the foundation to the projects.

We need to dismantle this idea that there's a hard-and-fast nexus between CoI and money. Volunteers have driven CoI in the past, and always will. Paid editors under the radar have indulged in CoI, but they've also done sterling work that would do any of us proud in terms of balance, neutrality, and sourcing. We cannot do without their input if the project is to come to grips with its own size and the demands of readers; better to have paid editors as collaborators we know than submarines we don’t. Indeed, it’s our moral responsibility to know them.

The root of the angst about the inevitable normalisation of paid editing is a fear that volunteers will lose control and the whole social texture of the project will change for the worse; but if we're smart about it, neither will occur. I want to suggest that the natural role of volunteers in the emerging system will be at the top. This is because, of the two engines of WP—social trust/esteem and the one we're not acknowledging, financial reward—volunteers have a monopoly on the first. It is they who’ve built the system and it is they who’ll run it, not only for historical reasons but because they have a permanent moral and practical claim as the judges of standards; critically, this includes the maintenance of neutrality, balance, and quality. Editorial clients certainly can't occupy that role, and while paid editors themselves need to aspire to those values, it's only volunteers through their disengagement with clients who will set and police the standards.

The three labour components will reorient themselves, and in doing so will experience dynamic stress and drama (so what's new?). Volunteers will continue to do everything they've always done; the difference will be their gradual adoption of new responsibilities, in being the guardians among others of everything we hold dear about the project. In this role, the relationship between volunteers and paid editors, yet to be shaped, will be crucial. We need to plan systemically how that relationship can play out to everyone's benefit. Tony (talk) 15:31, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

• It would take me days to draft an appropriate response to this. As a quick response: the bolts of pure sunshine emanating from this essay can only be viewed safely from behind the shelter of a pair of rose-colored glasses as big as Elton John's.
• The reason Misplaced Pages still functions at all is explicitly because paid editors are skulking in the twilight. What happens if they come out into the daylight? They blink a bit first. They quietly celebrate their win, and fantasize a little how they will spend their paychecks . They follow the rules like good little boys and girls. But... then they get used to being in the daylight. They get used to having a voice. They wake up one morning feeling a strange new emptiness in the pit of their stomachs: they want more. They start associating together more and more, and exercising their voices. They make Paid Editor barnstars (and templates, please see example at User:Cla68). They form a Wikiproject of paid editors. They accumulate a mass of paid editor admins. They edit various policies etc. to make them not only paid editor friendly, but paid editor favoring . Bit by bit, they will leech the center of gravity away from volunteers. Their numbers will grow, because money will attract them. Numbers of pure volunteers will continue to shrink, only at an increasing rate. Formerly pure volunteers will flip and become paid editors (please see ref: User:Cla68). The siren call of money will win. It will win. It not only will win, it must win. It is a pincer attack push-pull dynamic of resources and incentives: paid editors will have more of both. Thus armed, they will slowly but surely peel apart the volunteer-driven culture of Misplaced Pages and supplant it with a paid model.
• It won't even be 100% intentional: to a very large extent, the paid model will simply attract more resources, create new resources, and grow by itself. Rather than revolution, it will be a process of one model supplanting another.
• I know people will fault me for resorting to military symbolism. They will say I'm combative & fear-mongering. Perhaps you would be more comfortable if I said it this way: Darwin would agree with me. This is simply competition. Having a culture of paid editing is like having an opposable thumb: multiple dynamics will conjoin to guarantee that your volunteer-only competitors will recede into the shrinking rain forests. Eventually, volunteer editing will disappear. I give it 3 years at most, but perhaps less than that. – Ling.Nut3 (talk) 00:34, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

One of the things missing from the analyses above by Tony1 and Ling.Nut is that those volunteering their time to edit and build and maintain and administrate Misplaced Pages do so to varying degrees, many because they participate in their spare time, or as a hobby, and many of those have full-time work already and/or have established careers, or have retired. Then there are students who can have more spare time than those in full-time work, and those who are retired who can have more time still. Then there are those who are unemployed, can't work, or don't need to work, who can (in theory) edit Misplaced Pages practically full-time. All of these types have various forms of economic pressures working on them (if only because time can be money). And then there are those who edit full-time (or for large amounts of the day) because they are paid to do so, or because they get an indirect source of income from it. The latter point is worth making because there are more ways to 'leverage' Misplaced Pages experience than merely just paid editing. The skillset of competent Misplaced Pages editors, or the contacts built up, can be used to gain paid employment, short-term contract work, and consultancy work (you can even publish books about Misplaced Pages, though those don't tend to make much money). The most obvious route to paid employment is with the Wikimedia Foundation, though there are other routes as well (e.g. employment with the chapters if they are hiring, or application for grant money). Then there are those who start off either as students or in some other job, and are prompted by their editing of Misplaced Pages to change direction and retrain and become a writer, or historian, or librarian, or archivist, or museum curator, or some other occupation (often GLAM-related). The Wikimedian-in-residence roles are relevant here. More cynically, some may just use Misplaced Pages as a stepping stone to other things, or to accrue power in the surrounding frameworks (chapters and foundations). The point being that there is a difference between those who switch between editing Misplaced Pages in their spare time and working for pay in their 'day job' ; and those who make editing Misplaced Pages a full-time occupation (whether paid or not) . A small matter of perspectives. Carcharoth (talk) 01:26, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

I'm not happy with any of the analyses yet presented. To the extent that we change our labour process from one of personal freedom and satisfaction, to one of meeting valorised output targets—then we've fucked the volunteer project, we've fucked the encyclopaedic project and we've fucked ourselves up. The key difference between FA editor (or could we consider FA reviewer or FA delegate?) who takes pay for their work, and the encyclopaedist who skives time off the side is the production of surplus value. The apparent quality of the content may not change for our user base, but, by inflicting wage labour on a portion of our editors, we'll taint the creative and productive process of volunteer work of the rest of them. Turning FooBar into a paid worker, turns me into an unpaid worker. I'd rather remain a free volunteer. Fifelfoo (talk) 01:50, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

Ling.Nut, it took about 90 minutes to write, but a considerable time in the hours before mulling over the issues, piecing together the opinions of senior WPians I've been exposed to privately over the past few days.

Slim, pointing out the omission of the race thing in the Cracker Barrel FAC is tops; we need to show them they can't get away with it, whether they're paid or unpaid, and in doing so to force the culture. Keeping paid editors on the straight and narrow, poking and picking where called for, should actually be regarded as a high-status activity. We have the moral, social, political, and technical high ground in what should be an upholding of the values that volunteers have worked for among paid editors.

I don't give a toss, actually, that they're paid and I'm not. I've never got the shovel out and directly helped to fix FACs; I've just visited nom pages and niggled by example, prodding nominators to be more self-critical about their text. I could earn more by taking on more paid work (I don't mean paid WP work) instead of doing unpaid work for WP, but I'd be a total slave to money then and my life would be reduced. Also, the pay I'm seeing bandied about is kind of low: I wouldn't do it for that little <nostrils flare open in snobbery>. Tony (talk) 04:25, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

I've often "got the shovel out and directly helped to fix FACs", but if I had reason to believe that the nominator was being paid I most certainly would not have done so without a cut. Malleus Fatuorum 04:52, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

I can see that companies and some individuals might find it worth their while to pay for articles on themselves and their products, and we are seeing now the first paid wikipedians in residence, but beyond that I don't see how there is any real market for editing for the vast majority of articles, especially to FA level. Johnbod (talk) 04:29, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

To Tony's three groups of editors, we should add students and their teachers. They also have different motivation and goals and their collaboration can distort the more random consensus we get naturally. The issue, Malleus raises of helping a paid editor for no gain is also relevant to student work: at what point does the help you give to a student distort the grade they get for their work.

We have a paid-for situation with photographers on WP, to a small degree. Some pro/semi-pro photographers upload to WP, and advertise themselves on their user pages and also on the photograph's description page here and on Commons. Often such images are greatly reduced in size for WP compared to the version that can be purchased. Generally, a less restrictive licence (that doesn't require attribution) can be purchased. Sometimes, the licence chosen (GNU 1.2) is specifically picked because it is nearly impossible for commercial reuse. I'm not criticising these things here. We end up with pictures that we wouldn't otherwise, and many of them are fantastic. It does distort the FPC system a bit (mainly because these size-reduced pictures look so darn good compared to pixel-peeping the original) but overall it appears to be a net benefit. It does rub a bit against the principles of giving stuff away, however. And uploading photographs isn't as collaborative an exercise as writing articles.

Would an editor polish one section of an article as a teaser, and post a request (possibly off-site) that the rest of the article could be upgraded to that standard for a fee. Would an editor replace mediocre but sourced body text with brilliant prose that was completely unsourced (because their employer doesn't pay them to cite sources, just to write words). Would an editor replace existing text merely because they need it to be in their own words? Why would the paid editor help the unpaid editor, and vice versa? Would you have to pay to get your article peer reviewed? What if nobody reviewed your FAC? The temptation to canvas/bribe would be large. -- Colin° 09:39, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

Where have all the reviewers gone...?

I notice that a number of FAC nominations near the top of the list have few significant comments, though some have been on the page for a week or more. In particular:-

• Banksia oblongifolia: nominated 21 April, sources review 27 April, nothing since
• Courageous class aircraft carrier; nominated 24 April, no comments since 27 April
• William Jennings Bryan presidential campaign, 1896 nominated 26 April, no comment since 29 April
• Paul McCartney: nominated 29 April, awaiting first significant comments.

Maybe some of the pages's regular watchers could help to keep things moving? Some of the attention given to the above thread could surely be diverted towards keeping the system healthy and operative. Brianboulton (talk) 14:02, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

I'll endeavor to review the first three in the next day or two. I was trying to knock off the urgents list first. --Laser brain (talk) 14:38, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

What we really need is a couple more copyeditors ... of any skill level ... who make a list on a new nomination of some simple things that need fixing (if there are any). Some nominators, for various reasons, sit back and wait to see if someone else will fix problems for them ... and you can't necessarily tell if the nominator is one of those guys just because they haven't responded to a complicated review ... maybe they disagree and they're waiting for the cavalry to come riding over the hill, or maybe they're waiting on more sources to back up their position. (That's one huge benefit to what Nikki does, getting in quick with an easy-to-digest source review ... on top of the obvious benefit, it's a good way to find out if anyone's home.) I'll go see if I can get a recruit or two from GOCE. - Dank (push to talk) 15:45, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

Agreed and, more to the point, the copyeditor can make a statement if the prose is too messy to be ready for FAC. We need to remember that articles should be ready when they get here. If they need too be pulled up to FA standard, they should be opposed early and advised to withdraw. --Laser brain (talk) 16:20, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

(ec) Depending on what you're saying, I might disagree, a little bit. If someone has clearly stumbled into the wrong place, or if they have a habit of nominating FACs that soak up a lot of reviewer time, then yes. But I don't think that there's any consensus among reviewers that bad copyediting is a mortal sin, while other sins deserve forgiveness and months of patience. Some outstanding writers just can't spot misspellings, and don't always use the perfect word, but otherwise write authoritatively and beautifully, and support other writers in a variety of ways. I guess what I'm saying is ... if someone volunteers from GOCE who's good at spotting misspellings but otherwise has no experience at FAC, I don't want to give them the message that it's their job to decide whether the FAC lives or dies ... that takes some seasoning. - Dank (push to talk) 16:40, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

This time of year is by far my busiest in real life. After submitting my own FAC, I always review at least one other article to balance the load I placed on the FAC system, but I have not been able to put together long stretches of quality time to analyze and consider more than one other FAC. The last ones I worked on were Stephen Hawking in March and Birth control movement in the United States in February; both of these during times when I had Santa Maria de Ovila up for consideration. I will be able to take on more reviews in July when the pace of my real life work slackens. Binksternet (talk) 16:35, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

Me too - juggling a lot :/ Casliber (talk · contribs) 21:09, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

Subject matter experts and reviews

Note, since I'm dumber than the average bear: SME = Subject matter expert. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:28, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

After the FAC RFC closed earlier this year, I said I wanted to give everyone a break and let the drama level go down a bit. Now that it's been a few months, there's an issue that was brought up in that RFC that I'd very much like to revisit.

One recurring complaint about FAC is that reviews focus too much on stylistic/presentational issues, while content issues (completeness and accuracy) that are ultimately more important tend to get overlooked. Now from where I sit, the reason for this isn't too hard to understand -- FAC reviewers are not subject matter experts, and don't have the subject matter knowledge to produce such a critique. The answer, then, is that we need to start actively soliciting outside reviews from subject matter experts. I've done this a few times on an ad hoc basis for articles I was interested in, but I think a more organized approach is warranted.

Here's what I'm thinking:

1. I'd like to designate one or a small number of individuals to be our points of contact with subject matter experts. The job would entail (A) recruiting subject matter experts (on all subjects), (B) maintaining a database of such contacts, (C) asking them to review articles on an as-needed basis, and (D) collecting their feedback. A wikiproject spin-off might be the best way to do this.
2. The creation of a standardized subject matter review form for outside expert reviewers.
3. Once we've got a system in place, I'd like to bring in the WMF to help advertise and solicit such reviews.

What does everyone think? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Raul654 (talk • contribs)

I applaud it. I think we can get a good core of people from WP:ASTRO; people there have proactively taken that approach in the past, and it has had positive results, eg. Epsilon Eridani at FAC. Iridia (talk) 03:28, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

Crap, beat me to it... Oh Oh Oh Oh Oh. (Was that a less-than-dignified response?). Oh I wish that could be me doing that. Oh. Oh. maybe next year. But I Support this idea.– Ling.Nut3 (talk) 03:30, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

I'll ask at WT:Milhist. - Dank (push to talk) 03:37, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

I also support this, though I see a two-fold issue potentially cropping up in the future. 1) A fair amount of the subjects that go through FAC are in very specific fields, such as Numismatics, that I don't find it likely for us to be able to get a subject matter expert on. And what about various biographies? You could get a historian, sure, but what if it's on a more recent person or a still alive person? 2) A fair amount of the subjects that pass through FAC are ones that...you wouldn't really have a "subject matter expert" for, because they're not exactly a field of study. How do we deal with this two-fold issue? Silverseren

I think it is an excellent idea, although I also think it will be very difficult to find the full range of expertise. The more expert people are, the more the area they are happy to comment on often narrows. There can also be an issue of individual experts having a very decided opinion that does not represent the general view; some find this easier to put aside than others I think. Johnbod (talk) 04:36, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

To me, the first set of experts to ask are most often the ones who write the documents that are being cited. I wouldn't see this check as a requirement in the same way as it is in academic-publishing peer review, but as something that could be run for an article after it is fully checked in prose/copyvio/images etc. Plus this contact-the-expert desk could build relationships with the editors of journals, who are in very similar positions, to improve the chances of being able to find relevant people. Iridia (talk) 04:56, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

I like this idea a lot, but first could we agree that stylistic issues should not be focused on so much? Introducing expert reviews and retaining the focus on style will place yet more burden on FA writers -- rather than switching the burden from style to substance, which is what we should be aiming for.

Secondly, I share Johnbod's concerns. Finding experts to do this will not be easy. Finding experts who are able to be neutral will be even harder, because academic experts spend their lives learning how to advance positions, not be neutral. SlimVirgin 04:58, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

Yeah. How would we deal with a subject where there are two major viewpoints (if not more) and we're able to contact the academic behind one of the viewpoints and he feels that the other viewpoint should be marginalized? Silverseren 05:03, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

How about, for example, the Intelligent Design article (which is currently featured even though it has some NPOV issues)? Who should be asked to be a subject matter expert for it, an academic who is critical of theistic science, or a representative from the Discovery Institute, who are the ones marketing the concept? By the way, I think the WMF should pay subject matter experts for their time, mainly because it appears that the WMF currently has enough funds to do this. Cla68 (talk) 05:07, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

Cla68, are you now advocating paid reviewing? That will convince even further to never bring any article up to FA status. Why do all the really hard work unpaid while the easy task of half-a-day reviewing is getting paid? Nageh (talk) 17:22, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

Sounds like a great idea. Hawkeye7 (talk) 05:32, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

@SilverSeren & Cla68: Don't throw out the baby with the bathwater. Sure, there are a number of controversial topics (numerous genocidal massacres, hot-buttons in the US culture wars, etc.) that would require some deep thought & preparation, and may not even be amenable to this approach. However, since non-controversial issues vastly outnumber controversial ones, the benefits vastly outweigh those few exceptional cases. I think the time is now for this to happen. – Ling.Nut3 (talk) 05:53, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Pile-on approval for a really good idea. If we are all aware of folks' interests and positions, and engage in open discussion, I think this can be a good thing. Casliber (talk · contribs) 05:56, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

• Please forgive this gratuitous clip dating myself.. but.. this is how I feel when i think that i can't be the one doing this project: oh the pain. – Ling.Nut3 (talk) 06:02, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

I'm going to put my hand up with a just-finished doctorate on security sector reform, mostly focusing on Africa (see Armed Forces of Liberia and Military of the Democratic Republic of the Congo for my professional work areas). I know of a couple of other real military and security experts on-wiki, as well as the expertise the WP:MILHIST team has. Anyone needs input on those areas, please ask. Buckshot06 (talk) 07:26, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

Bravo! --Anthonyhcole (talk) 08:44, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

Some food for thought, as you/we formulate ways to improve reviews by subject matter experts:

1. I agree that we should find a way to accomplish this, but disagree that we should throw out what folks have come to refer to as "sytlistic" issues as well. "Stylistic" issues are also part of the formal, professional presentation of "Misplaced Pages's best work". It's not an either–or proposition: folks who focus on the professional consistent presentation of articles are not the same folks as content review experts; there's no reason we can't have both.
2. In addition to or besides whatever outside review is accomplished, I'll reiterate something I insisted upon (or tried to, sometimes folks just wouldn't review) before passing any FAC: independent review from uninvolved editors (that is, people who didn't know the subject area and could check for things like jargon and comprehension to the layperson) as well as review from editors with expertise in that area. In many cases, that meant I went out and solicited review from editors who specialize in a given area. As an example, I wouldn't pass a medical article without a serious review from both our top docs and non-medical editors or in the case of Native American articles, I'd go ask editors knowledgeable in that area to come over and look at a FAC. Whatever is done wrt external review, this should still be a part of our regular review process, because ....
3. The biggest problem that I see is that (depending on the subject matter) it can be hard for professionals unaware of Misplaced Pages policies wrt to primary, secondary and tertiary sources, original research, synthesis, and NPOV to understand Misplaced Pages writing. The biggest example I encounter is in the realm of psychology and neuropsychology articles, where professionals in the area constantly put up original research based on primary sources-- they aren't interested in regurgitating what secondary sources say. They like to publish orginal syntheses of primary sources, because that's what professionals do. If we invite outside reviewers, this could be become an issue, and their review should be weighed exactly as we would weigh any other review (that is, delegate discretion applies-- these external subject matter experts do not have the final word-- they are one more factor). As an example, when weighing reviews, if MastCell or Casliber (established knowledgeable medical editors) pointed out problems with an external reviewer's feedback, I'd be inclined to give more weight to Cas or MastCell.
4. In terms of specific implementation, (A) recruiting subject matter experts (on all subjects)-- in some cases, those folks will be established Misplaced Pages editors, we already have them, and we need not go outside of Misplaced Pages; Once we've got a system in place, I'd like to bring in the WMF to help advertise and solicit such reviews, UGH, double ugh, triple ugh. I've not seen the WMF evidence any understanding of or respect for content review issues or any ability to effectively coordinate something like this. We Do Not Want The WMF mucking up one area of Misplaced Pages that works: FAC. It is my not so humble opinion that if you let the WMF in the FAC door, it's a short path to Very Bad Outcomes.

My bottom line is, in terms of implementation, make sure the FAC process is not undermined by external input or meddling by WMF staff, many of whom have no expertise whatsoever in producing or evaluating top content: leave the process as it is and where it has always worked with respect to delegate discretion to weigh commentary and judge consensus. A further summary of the likely issues with letting WMF in the FAC door:

1. Recall the Jbmurray (talk · contribs) WP:MMM FAs that resulted from one good knowledgeable involved professor working with disproportionate numbers of FAC's best people via WP:FAT to produce a lot of top content. The WMF extended this non-scalable experience to the ill-conceived Education programs that have been controversial at best. But, because it's "their baby", they (WMF) defend it, the content produced, and the editors involved, to the point that concerns about off-Wiki coordination have been raised, and consensus on many discussions is now determined by folks affiliated with these off-Wiki programs. We don't want to see off-Wiki consensus muck up FAC.
2. Once these "off-Wiki experts" are contacted via WMF advertising, if we go by what has been seen on the Education programs, those folks take on more importance than our regular knowledgeable reviewers because the WMF backs them and consensus is affected.
3. Transparency. Big issue. FAC has always functioned well because it is on-Wiki, delegates have insisted it stay on Wiki and there are extremely rare situations where off-Wiki feedback is a factor. Once you let the WMF in the door, processes move off-Wiki to email, mailing lists, etc as they favor the contacts that resulted from their advertising-- contacts whose first point of contact may be WMF staff.

I hope we can find a way to bring in outside experts without involving WMF. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:05, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

• May I summarize?

1. Just Say No to the WMF. They have their stuff, we have ours, 'nuff said.
2. Outside people may not speak our language, and need to be dealt with accordingly.

• Is that a fair summary? – Ling.Nut3 (talk) 14:09, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

Yep. Kind of the opposite of "don't throw out the baby with the bathwater"; don't bring in dirty water if we want a cleaner baby. Keep control of the consensus process in house with delegates as we go outside to solicit external peer reviews, keep the parts that work (the buck stops with the delegates, don't contaminate that). Colin (talk · contribs) got an external review on Ketogenic diet, so I've pinged him for feedback, and I've also pinged CJLippert (talk · contribs) and Awickert (talk · contribs) who I used to ping in for Native American and Geology reviews. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:15, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

Also pinging in Rif Winfield (talk · contribs) who is a published MilHist author. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:50, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

• I applaud and encourage this initiative, but I will also warn against marginalizing "stylistic" concerns. They should not be "the" focus but they should continue to be "a" focus. Quality of prose and MoS compliance are part of any fully professional content production process. It sounds like the process would evolve to become something more akin to a proper academic peer review (although not as rigorous)—a process where your manuscript doesn't even get considered if you haven't followed style and submission guidelines. Examination of prose should occur after the SME review. --Laser brain (talk) 14:20, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

• Prose yes, and I would never include good writing as a "style" issue. But MoS compliance, no, that drives people away, especially as we don't know what the MoS says half the time because it keeps changing. But the worst of the style problems is that reviewers ask for things that no guideline requires (requests for ISBNs and a preference for certain citation styles are two bugbears of mine, but there are others). SlimVirgin 03:46, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

Comments from Tony. (e.c. with the last bit of Sandy's post) While agnostic about the notion of inviting in expertise when indicated, I strongly endorse Sandy's whole post. Here are my further comments about a few things that have been written in this thread:

• The problem is vaguely expressed. I'm not convinced this is a significant problem. It needs examples, a survey, to assess whether systemic action is required. I haven't picked up a significant perception either within or outside Misplaced Pages that featured content suffers from problems of completeness and accuracy. Aren't we supposed to be more accurate and complete that Britannica? And yes, sometimes FAC slips up, but so do so-called content experts out there in academic journals.
• Non-expert review typically probes more deeply than you think. There's a claim above that "completeness and accuracy ... tend to get overlooked", and sheets this home to the fact that usually "FAC reviewers are not subject matter experts". Yet "non-expert" professional editors do sniff out from the surface of the language and the patterns of citation whether there might be deeper ("content") problems. I often see this at FAC, even when a reviewer doesn't realise they're doing it.
• Quid-pro-quo standard swapping? The notion of lowering the benchmark for other well-accepted standards in presenting information to enable a new emphasis on expert opinion doesn't cut any ice. Why is there a link? If anything, as I've argued above, the two are complementary. If the complaint is that there have been unreasonable (actually, downright nasty and personal) reviews, that's a separate matter that's worth dealing with. Reviewer challenges of those during a nom is the way to go, not soft-pedalling on one set of criteria to compensate for additional scrutiny on completeness and accuracy.
• Trusting and finding so-called experts. Writing a PhD lit review chapter or a review article for a journal soon teaches you that researchers in many fields boost their career opportunities by taking adversarial positions. This can be frustrating when you see in retrospect that progress has been held up for want of extracting and conflating the good from multiple positions ("grains of truth in both"). To some extent, this adversarial culture seeps into the peer-reviewing of journal articles, where there are many instances of unhelpful, unfair, or personally motivated criticism (and the opposite: a turning of the blind eye). When it comes to the peer-reviewing of competitive grant applications, I have to assist clients in responding to scores of peer reviews every year, a good proportion of which are unhelpful to optimal decision-making by the authority: problem 1 is that grant bodies have difficulty in finding enough of the right people to do it (the pay is non-existent or paltry, and career benefit from saying you do it is marginal); problem 2 is that even when a reviewer is spot-on in the right area, they can get things badly wrong. I'm in a good position to see this when I deeply probe my clients' draft rejoinders (and thus the criticisms they face).
• Logistics. How would one get so-called experts to put the time in? How would you find them systematically for every topic in the Dewey decimal system? Three experts would be better than one.
• Citizendium has failed. And would invited experts be privileged over us normal reviewers if we disagreed with them?
• Nominators are meant to be the experts. It's not a perfect system, but having to run the gauntlet with non-expert reviewers is quite a good system. I'm a professional non-expert in my RL career. It's a subtle and complex interaction that brings its own discipline. In some ways, one's very distance from a topic is an advantage (as well as a disadvantage where it's very very technical, like DNA science or polymer chemistry).
• The foundation. It doesn't have the right skill-base for organising expert reviewing in this context. They have an important and increasing role in improving certain aspects of the project, but not this.

BTW, I take issue with just a minor one of Sandy's points: outsiders, with warning, could probably adjust to the idea of secondary sources only as the basis. You'd have to be very very careful, though. Tony (talk) 15:08, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

So, taking off on Tony's post, and noticing that Cla raised a controversial topic, I'll offer up a lesser well known example of a controversial topic so we don't have to revisit the personalities etc involved in that example :) :)

First, let's remember this whole issue was raised by TCO in what was a pretty pointy excercise in destabilizing FAC with faulty data and criticism. Before we rush to endorse this entire notion that FAC is somehow failing to review content seriously, we should consider the downsides and heed Tony's post as to whether there is actually a problem. I wonder in the cases of problems if articles were promoted without the kind of review I mention (both content expert review and uninvolved review) above and how much of that is because reviewers are lacking, and whether we'd better focus our efforts on bringing in more reviewers in general, rather than content experts? That's a question, not a statement. What really is the biggest problem facing FAC? In the cases where some POV FAs might be on the books, will bringing in outsiders change that or exacerbate it?

Second, let's avoid the controversial Intelligent design, and consider another real world controversy, PANDAS. Misplaced Pages processes can handle that controversy (due weight to secondary reviews, almost all of which agree). But if we were to bring in outside experts, are we going to give weight to Susan Swedo, undeniably an expert since she originated the failed hypothesis and is able to keep it alive via NIH taxpayer funding, or are we going to give weight to almost every single private researcher who disagrees with the hypothesis? This work is already done in secondary journal-published reviews: what happens if an editor with a POV brings in Swedo, for example, to defend her work and POV, but the private researchers wisely stay out of the Misplaced Pages process, since their funding depends on the NIH and they aren't going to tangle on Misplaced Pages ?? By introducing external review, we risk bringing off-Wiki POV battles into our content review processes, when we already have sourcing policies that guide us. I'm not saying bringing in those off-Wiki folks is necessarily a bad thing: I'm saying outside experts have POV and we don't give them any more weight than we give any other reviewer, so we'd best think of all of the consequences of this proposal in terms of how we will implement it to avoid the kinds of issues that might occur.

I'm not completely convinced yet that external review will be a net positive. I'd rather we spend our efforts finding ways to engage more reviewers in general, and on that score, keeping "stylistic" issues is a good thing, because checking those sorts of things can be done by anyone as they grow their expertise and confidence to review in other areas. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:24, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

As I think I've seen you say somewhere, I don't really see this as an FA issue at all. If an expert review is felt to be needed – and I'm not altogether convinced that it would be beneficial in the overwhelming majority of cases – then it should be done pre-FAC, perhaps at peer review. The idea after all is that articles taken to FAC should already meet the criteria. Secondly, speaking from the benefit of having experienced an expert review while working on the Donner Party article, I can say that it's not an altogether easy road to navigate. What happens is that the expert has a view on the facts of the case as reported, the likelihood of those facts having been accurately reported, the plausibility of the accepted story, and at least one alternative explanation for the events, probably as yet unpublished. As I think Tony says, experts don't make their reputations by regurgitating "what everyone knows". Having said that, I think there is a relatively small subset of articles where an expert review might be helpful. Medical articles have already been mentioned, but Misplaced Pages already has medical experts, and mathematics articles are two that spring to mind. Malleus Fatuorum 15:51, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

I'll write something about my experience with expert review tomorrow. But picking on Malleus's point. We actually have very few medical experts on WP and fewer still who engage with articles at FA level. Being "medical" doesn't really qualify someone to assess whether a specialist topic like ketogenic diet is balanced, comprehensive, accurate, or up-to-date, and these certainly aren't things a layperson unfamiliar with the subject would know either. I know a cardiologist who would be hard-pressed to list more than a few anticonvulsants, let alone describe that diet. And I know an adult-neurologist who has barely heard of it. Our best medical editors are good at identifying if our sources are being used correctly, or assessing if medical scientific studies have the power to prove something like the efficacy of some therapy. But they aren't a substitute for real subject-experts in areas outside their speciality or in very general medicine topics. And not all experts are academics trying to "make their reputations" by being awkward sods. Colin° 21:34, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

I think those are reasonable points. I have a friend who is very severely epileptic, and I'd bet good money she knows far more about epilepsy than 99.9% of medical specialists do. In many of the subjects taken to FAC, and even GA, I think the Zulu Principle applies. Malleus Fatuorum 21:42, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

I think SME input could be great, if properly managed. All constructive criticism is good, after all. But I think MF has a good point here: an editor preparing an article for FAC should be able to get the SME input before coming to FAC, that way they don't get blindsided and, more importantly, they meet the requirement that the article be ready before coming to FAC. Thus, I think editors should have the option of obtaining SME input during the Peer Review process. Of course, some editors may choose to forego that and wait for the FAC to get SME input, but that would be the editor's choice. --Noleander (talk) 16:23, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

Just chiming in with whole-hearted support for the notion of a database of SMEs.

On the touchy subject of pay, there's an overly-simplistic answer, but not unreasonable: preference for free, (and experience shows we can get a lot for free,) pay only if we have to, and then only in areas identified as high priority. However, there is more than enough to do in the free area, so sort that out first.

My brief musings about logistical issues made my head swim, so there's a lot to sort out, but start in less controversial areas first - no ID, no Palestine, no climate change,etc. Build a model, then we can ease into the challenging areas.--SPhilbrick(Talk) 17:00, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

(od) Some good points made above; the ones that stood out for me are:

• Per Malleus (echoed by Noleander), I agree that if SMEs are to be brought in it should probably be before FAC, either in PR or, where applicable, Wikiproject A-Class Review -- the latter makes sense for say MilHist, where content is the major consideration at ACR, rather than stylistic issues. This point leads logically to...
• Per Sandy (echoed by Laser Brain and others), prose and style should continue to be major (though not the only) planks of the FAC process -- in MilHist, one of our editors described A-Class Review as "like FAC, but more forgiving", the main area of "forgiveness" being MOS concerns.
• Per Tony, agree that the value of wise non-experts at FAC should never be underestimated.
• To summarise, I share the concerns expressed re. SMEs' possible agendas and/or lack of familiarity with WP practices, which is another reason I think that if we use them, it should be pre-FAC, where such issues can be ironed out before nominating for the bronze star. From my own field of interest, namely Australian military aviation (primarily biography), I've never been particularly tempted to bring in outside experts for review because a great deal of relevant primary, as well as secondary/tertiary, documentation is freely available and I think I've been able to effectively distil it into articles using WP's 'house' style without outside assistance, knowing that it'll get reviewed at ACR by diligent MilHist editors (including, often, at least one professional military historian). Also, from reading so many sources, I've seen plenty of instances where experts in a field can report things without apparently taking into account all the available information, and the number of times I've seen close paraphrasing or outright copying of source material in military literature is head-spinning... That said, I'd still be happy to have some expert scrutiny -- just outside the FAC process. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 23:57, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

I generally agree with Ian; by the time articles reach FAC they should have received attention from an uninvolved SME as FAC isn't really the place for this. MILHIST's A class review process is a good example of how this can work (though it's obviously dependent on having a large pool of motivated editors). However, for articles which cover a wide range of topics - such as biographies of senior politicians or articles about countries or cities - there's a lot of value in people who know a lot about certain parts of the topic commenting on those elements of the article. For instance, when articles about countries are nominated for FAC I normally comment on their coverage of politics, economics and military matters as I think that I'm generally well-informed about these topics (or at least know where to look to educate myself on them so I can pretend to be well-informed!). Nick-D (talk) 00:50, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

I, too, think SMEs should have injected their influence before FAC; peer review seems to me the ideal spot for SME involvement, since PR can occur anytime before GAN, before Milhist A, or before FAC. At FAC, reviewers should only be performing fine tuning. Binksternet (talk) 03:20, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

A couple of points:

• (1) It would be a good idea to look at how this has been done in the past and list examples. By this I mean both some of the examples already mentioned here where external peer review (my preferred term for this) was sought and obtained, and also cases where the quality of Misplaced Pages's coverage was assessed in the various studies that have been done (e.g. that Nature study and more recent ones). What approach was taken in those cases?
• (2) I agree that getting a review from subject matter experts (SMEs) before FAC is probably a better approach in many cases, and I also agree with some of the reservations expressed. You may also get some SMEs willing to review, but only on condition of anonymity. Whether to accept such conditions or not is something to consider.
• (3) Something akin to external peer review took place recently at Talk:Circular permutation in proteins#Open Peer Review. That is more reviewing an overview article submitted via journal to Misplaced Pages, but may be of interest here. For more details on the background to that, see the wiki-en-l mailing list post here and the links there. See also the comments by me and another editor here (back at the beginning of April).

I hope something workable for such reviews can be set up and maintained. One thing to be wary of is contacting living authors whose books or articles are used as sources for an article. Some will be flattered and willing to do such reviews. Others will feel (rightly or wrongly) that some articles (especially if on obscure subjects) are competing with their articles or books on the subject, and may (rightly in some cases) object to overly detailed coverage when a more normal approach would be to direct the reader to the more lengthy book sources for further reading. It is possible that SME review may work better for broader articles than for narrower ones. Where possible, input from more than one SME would be ideal (if not always possible). Carcharoth (talk) 05:42, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

SME with topics like Medicine and Military History seems all well and good, where getting hold of a subject matter expert might not be too difficult. I tend to be narrowly focused on Mesoamerica, so how narrowly would you be focusing expert opinion? Would I need to bring in a Mesoamerican expert? Or would any archaeologist do? And if so, what makes an external expert on, say, Roman archaeology any more qualified than an intelligent on-wiki reviewer. I have had some, limited, contact with Mesoamerican archaeologists (more as a result of FA, than leading up to it) and they tend to be rather busy, even when they have a particular interest in the subject. And the vast majority of Mesoamerican archaeologists that I have tried to contact have not responded at all. So would you say, no SME, no FA? Simon Burchell (talk) 08:59, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

• On timing: If we can find proper experts we won't be able to control how long they take to do a review - peer reviewed journals typically allow periods of some months I think. I doubt our normal reviewers will be at all intimidated from commenting on the sort of issues they normally concentrate on; in fact in my experience expert reviewers (and I've had a number) rarely stray into MOS territory. Personally I normally only get an expert review after the FAC is complete, on the grounds that the article will be improved during it, and I'm pretty confident there are no major issues (and, frankly, that if there are, no FAC reviewer will spot them in my subject area). For my last two I was fortunate enough to have discussed the objects concerned with their curator at an early stage, and then got a review of the passed FA, which I naturally acted on for a few points. The big benefit of early involvement is that they can point you to the best sources, and sometimes advise on issues with some of them.

On another point, I suspect (and this has been my experience with GLAMs) that reviewers will be happier submitting off-wiki reviews, and a requirement to review on-line will put many off. I usually get marked-up print-outs, sometimes with a face-to-face meeting, which is of course ideal. That is how academics are typically used to working. We may need some intermediary figures, perhaps formally made into delegates, who receive the review and convey its contents to the FAC page. On specialization, Simon's MesoAmerican stuff should absolutely have a specialist, as should Roman archaeology etc. It will be difficult to find specialists in many areas, but if there is time available, GLAM and chapters now have a wide range of contacts with specialist academic societies and institutes, who will produce very high level reviewers if they produce any at all. See for example this World War I editathon next month at the British Library. I'll try to see if any of those academics can be recruited. Johnbod (talk) 14:29, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

Hi everyone! I'm going to avoid talking about specifics, which can often derail efforts, and say that I am in broad agreement with the evolving consensus here.

In addition to the solicitation of outside opinions, which brings in some complications that the above discussion is moving towards solving, I would also say that there are lots of people on Misplaced Pages who are subject matter experts. These folks are often also very willing to help, even if their scope doesn't cover the entire swath of topics. Something I could envision would be a general solicitation to Wikipedians to enter their information into a big table of (1) name, (2) "expert" subject area(s) , and (3) their qualifications . Communities built around WikiProjects do this already, which in lots of cases makes our articles be very factually accurate without outside opinion, but a one-stop place to find subject matter experts who are already familiar with Misplaced Pages could be helpful and expedite the process, especially as an alternative to going through a more-awkward external review.

Into a few more specifics:

• If we solicit outside expert help, we should have a very attractive web page (like the new Misplaced Pages mission statement one), that advertises the importance of WP in advancing broader worldwide knowledge (and more - basically to pull on the heartstrings of the subject matter experts and show how what they do here can really matter) and has very simple instructions of how to contribute. My initial thought is to direct subject matter experts that we find towards this page as their introduction, but it could also have instructions for joining Misplaced Pages, adding their names to the list I mentioned in the previous paragraph, and/or adding their names to a database of people who would be willing to review articles but who aren't part of Misplaced Pages.
• I think that no WP reviewers should be paid. This goes against the entire idea of what Misplaced Pages is, and I believe that for most good reviewers, the feeling of spending a few hours doing something that will matter in the world will be all it takes. External reviewers should be bound by the same rules as internal editors.
• Even if the subject matter experts prefer to do their reviews in an off-wiki way, I think that the reviews must be posted on-wiki, and that this should be expressed clearly (see first bullet - web page). Keeping things off-wiki can be a recipe for drama and feelings of exclusion, and I think that the badness of this outweighs the goodness of having external individuals involved. Also, knowing that their reviews will be posted for the world to see may provide further incentive for subject matter experts to be extra sure that what they say aligns with the mainstream in their fields.

That about sums up my thoughts that have developed over the past day. Mostly, I would like to see material provided to make it very easy for interactions between subject matter experts and article writers, with the idea that reducing the legwork to as close to 0 as possible increase the attractiveness of review options. These are just the best ideas I've come up with in a little bit of thinking, but I'm sure other/better ideas exist as well. Awickert (talk) 18:06, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

SME review form

Following up on my second point above, I took a swing at putting together a review form to be used by outside experts. I've taken care to avoid, as much as possible, using Misplaced Pages-specific jargon.

Misplaced Pages article review form for subject matter experts

Article title:
Current revision URL:
Permanent revision URL:

(1) Is the article complete? Does it adequately describe all major aspects of the topic?
Rating: Complete (No significant omissions) / Mostly Complete (Some omissions) / Not complete (Many omissions)
Comment:

(2) Is the article accurate? Are there any factual errors (objectively wrong statements)?
Rating: No factual errors / Minor factual errors / Major factual errors
Comment:

(3) Is the article neutral? Does the article fairly describe all significant viewpoints that have been published by reliable sources, in proportion to their significance?
Rating: Neutral / Some neutrality issues / Many neutrality issues
Comment:

(4) Is the article well-written? Is the writing professional, with correct grammar and spelling, and images and citations where appropriate?
Rating: Excellent / Good / Fair / Poor
Comment:

(5) Overall, how would you rate this article?
Rating: Excellent / Good / Fair / Poor
Comment:

(6 - Optional) What are some ways that this article could be improved?
Comment:

What does everyone think? Raul654 (talk) 15:26, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

It's good in that it doesn't give external reviewers too much leeway to go off on non-Misplaced Pages tangents, but I would worry that non-Wikipedians are qualified to state an opinion on:

• images and citations where appropriate (they might not understand our policies and guidelines in those areas), and
• even on neutrality-- do we believe most outside experts understand neutrality in a Misplaced Pages context?

On the other hand, as long as experienced Wikipedians are weighing the feedback from these experts, we should be able to handle external POVs coming in to the processes. Perhaps more effective at the peer review level, as Colin did on ketogenic diet, so that we don't end up with lengthy FAC discussions as we educate outside reviewers on Misplaced Pages practices. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:33, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

On q 4), the normal reviewers can judge the general use of language ok; here we should be asking if the use of terminology and specialized language is correct, and if the language generally shows a good understanding of the subject. No 2) is too narrowly phrased, it seems to me. There are tons of things that may not be "objectively wrong statements" but show an inadequate understanding of the subject. Johnbod (talk) 15:42, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

How would you suggest rephrasing #2 and #4? Raul654 (talk) 15:45, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

(2) Is the article factually accurate? Does it show good understanding of knowledge and concepts relevant to the subject?

Rating: No errors, good knowledge / Minor factual errors and lapses of knowledge / Major factual errors, poor knowledge
Comment:

(4) Is the article well-written? Is the writing professional, with use of language and terminology that is appropriate for the subject? Are the images well-chosen and described? Are there citations where appropriate?

Rating: Excellent / Good / Fair / Poor
Comment:

Googling "exam marking scheme" will find thousands of examples of actual marking schemes, mostly at school level, for other wordings. Johnbod (talk) 21:25, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

I think that having some kind of form is over-complicating things. If we're going to go down this path, I'd just ask editors to demonstrate that a subject matter expert has looked at the article - this could be done by providing evidence that the article has been peer reviewed, gone through an A class review (where applicable) or been GA reviewed by an editor who's knowledgeable about the topic. The less bureaucracy and paperwork the better. Nick-D (talk) 00:58, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

Raul, it's good, except that I wouldn't mention images, given that WP's image requirements are complex. SlimVirgin 03:54, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

@Nick-D. It's not for nominators to demonstrate anything at all, it's for reviewers to look at what's there. Malleus Fatuorum 04:02, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

I take your point, but it's certainly helpful for nominators to demonstrate how they've developed the article, which is why I always note any peer, GA and A class reviews articles I nominate for FA class have been through. Passing a project-specific review goes a long way to demonstrating that editors who specialise in this field think that the article is accurate. Nick-D (talk) 04:16, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

Perhaps. But hardly anyone turns up at most peer reviews and the quality of GA reviews depends very much on who turns up to do the review. As for A-class reviews, they may work for MilHist articles, but I'm unconvinced even there after all the plagiarism I've seen in ship articles. Malleus Fatuorum 04:38, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

Let me put it another way. Would you send an unassessed article you had just created to FAC? Hawkeye7 (talk) 04:56, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

Yes, and I have done several times. I generally only bother with the intermediate steps when I'm a little uncertain about an article. Malleus Fatuorum 05:00, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

Let me add to that an example of the Zulu Principle I mentioned earlier. When I was writing about the Halifax Gibbet I contacted the local museum where the axe head is on display and asked if one of the curators would take a look at the article, and if they had any further information. But by that time the Misplaced Pages article was more comprehensive than their own information pamphlet; in many cases the editor of the Misplaced Pages article is the expert. Malleus Fatuorum 13:06, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

Crap! And to think I put myself through moderate layers of hell getting my PhD. What a waste of time :/ – Ling.Nut3 (talk) 13:36, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

Ah, yes, Malleus -- reminds me of the time I was contracting and went to a conference at RAAF Williams, Victoria, with one of my team; I suggested we drop in at the nearby RAAF Museum and get someone to show us around. Thought I was just being enthusiastic about the displays and how they fit into the history of the Air Force and so on when our guide turned and said, "I reckon we'd better swap places -- you should be showing me around". I think he meant it in a nice way... ;-) Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 13:53, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

Applying these concerns to the SME question: There will be times when the SME's input should be disregarded (because they don't understand WP policies; or they are biased; or their input is too focused & not encyclopedic; etc). Therefore the SME process must have a way for nominators to say "I'm sorry SME, but I have to reject your suggestion because blah, blah". It is hard enough to say that to a fellow editor – saying it to an officially-dubbed SME could be intimidating for many nominators. This is yet another reason the SME process should allow the SME review to happen before the FAC (so that kind of give-and-take can get resolved beforehand). --Noleander (talk) 14:12, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

SME input can be invaluable, such as User:Vsmith's work on the geology part of Yogo sapphire. However, I was going to bring the very points Noelander has mentioned; when these concerns come to fruition, the article can actually end up worse and bring massive drama with it.PumpkinSky talk 14:53, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

A PhD is perhaps very good example of the Zulu Principle in action Ling.Nut; no doubt you now know a very great deal about something so obscure that there are only six other people in the world who care about it.;-) My wife probably knows as much as anyone else alive about sexual dimorphism in one small area of the rat's brain as a result of her PhD. Malleus Fatuorum 16:06, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

Offer of support

I hope this doesn't seem too presumptuous - by odd coincidence, I've spent quite a bit of time recently thinking about a similar idea, and was planning to write it up and suggest it to the community sometime in the coming week! It was quite a delight to open my watchlist and see this discussion...

Some background: I've just started work as the Wikipedian in Residence at the British Library, working with the AHRC. A large part of the remit of the post is to "encourage and support" specialists & academics who are interested in Misplaced Pages. In most cases, this means helping them get started editing, etc., but one thing I've been considering is finding ways to engage with experts who are interested in supporting Misplaced Pages in some way but unwilling to actually edit. One of the possibilities I was considering, among others, was working out up a mechanism to support experts providing reviews and feedback on articles - ie, more or less analogous to this proposal.

I had been thinking in terms of a purely content-oriented review (ie, not stylistic), parallel to but not affecting the WP rating process; it would not be presented as "validation" or "control" of the content in any way, or as "formal" peer review. Reading over the discussion above, I think that's quite similar to the sense of the discussion here, which sees a potential use for reviews in various stages of article development and as feedback for a "finished" article, but doesn't want their results to be binding on FA status or seen as privileged in an editorial context over the views of community members.

I really don't want to seem like I'm hijacking this discussion - that's not my intention at all - but it seemed too perfectly timed not to throw my oar in and offer to help facilitate it :-). If there's a consensus here in favour of having some kind of external-review process, and the rough form it should take, I am happy to volunteer myself to go out and try to recruit a group of initial reviewers - I'm already going to be talking to a large number of experts interested in Misplaced Pages over the next few months, after all! I'd also be happy to help with the legwork of helping run the organisational aspects of it, at least for the first few months while it gets underway. Do please let me know if you think this would be helpful, or if there's any other way I can support it - I'd love to see something like this up and running. Andrew Gray (talk) 17:54, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

YouTube as a source

I have been the primary editor of Justine Ezarik for some time and have consistently tried to eliminate use of YouTube as a source. This includes, citing its pageview statistics as a source for popularity. I have recently been involved in a pair of popular viral videos (Kony 2012 and Cat Daddy) and am now wondering if it is Kosher to cite YouTube for number of pageviews and upload date.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 08:24, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

Although I agree that for the most part youtube should be avoided as a source there are exceptions. For example, the Wikimedia software has a 100MB upload limit so it has been necessary in the past to load some freely distributable video's to Youtube so that they are available. A good example are a large number of the videos that have been made available through the Fedflix project.Kumioko (talk) 13:03, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

Another good example are Videos like this one about the Washington Navy Yard Gun Factory that was made by the Government. Kumioko (talk) 13:07, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

There is a bit of OR to say "ok, this video has x million views, therefore it is popular." If noted by a third-party, that's fine - that takes the OR out of our hands into theirs (this I've done with several OK Go music videos). One problem is we do that is then that would create an implicit line that if any video gets over x million views, it's popular and ergo should have an article on it, which is not always the case. --MASEM (t) 13:12, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

Maxim, you seem to be saying we need secondary sources to point out pageviews. So in this case, we have the original Cat Daddy video with over 66.5 million views and a later posting with over 4 million views (see talk page) have a lot of page views but no RS mentioning their popularity, making the popularity non-notable. Meanwhile the follow up video with less than 2 million views has tons of RS talking about it, making it more notable. It is correct to omit mention of the 70 million pageviews from the Cat Daddy article because it is not notable, but we should mention the 1 million plus because it is notable.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 13:26, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

If there are RS's talking about the topic to make it notable but they just don't happen to mention pageviews, that's fine. That's just a piece of data that you shouldn't include. Note that you've already established notability of the original video so you don't have to re-establish that for the followups - as long as they are noted by third-parties, they can be discussed in the same article as the notable video(s). What I'm not clear on is what video the "1 million" views you're looking to add applies to. The Kate Upton one appears to be readily sourced to how fast it collected views, so that's fine, but I'm not sure wehre the 1million applies to. Remember: notability != popularity - just because something has a lot of sources talking about it may not make it popular, nor does its popularity necessarily imply that it is necessary facet of something being notable. If no RS that make it notable indicate its popularity, we don't include that ourselves. --MASEM (t) 14:21, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

One source said 750k in less than 24hours before being banned and 200k in the first two hours after being reuploaded. I am having trouble finding that at the moment. I have to make sure the article points to the right source on that.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 14:56, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

If those exist and are RSs, sure, they can be included and its not SYNTH to add them to say "nearly 1 million views" if you want to include that. --MASEM (t) 15:05, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

 Done.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 18:19, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

Getting a TFA rescheduled

There are only 5.5 hours left before South Side, Chicago goes on the main page. I left a message at Raul's talk and WT:TFAR. I don't see any responses regarding rescheduling. What should I do?--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 18:29, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

I'll take care of it. Raul654 (talk) 18:47, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

Although for future reference, if I'm not around and you want some TFA rescheduling, user:Dabomb87 would be the best person to contact. Raul654 (talk) 18:52, 4 May 2012 (UTC)