Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 16:58, 2 December 2020

Jimbo welcomes your comments and updates – he has an open door policy. He holds the founder's seat on the Wikimedia Foundation's Board of Trustees. The current trustees occupying "community-selected" seats are Doc James, Pundit and Raystorm. The Wikimedia Foundation's Lead Manager of Trust and Safety is Jan Eissfeldt.

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Related Articles

@CaptainEek, "Misplaced Pages doesn't use algorithms" is untrue; regular editors often aren't aware of it because we tend to work in the desktop view. When using the mobile version of the site—as more than half our users now do and the proportion is steadily rising—readers are served with algorithmically-generated "you might be interested in…" links whenever they visit an article. (They're not very apparent when viewing the mobile view on a desktop computer, as the links are tucked away below the references, but they're very in-your-face when reading Misplaced Pages on a phone where the body text is mostly collapsed by default so the lead paragraph, a bunch of collapsed sections, and the algorithmically-generated links are all a reader sees when visiting a page.) The algorithm generates some fairly goofy results—e.g. at the time of writing the suggestions on Jimmy Wales are Bomis, Larry Sanger and Nupedia but not Misplaced Pages, on Coronavirus it suggests three strains of coronavirus none of which are the strain 99.9% of visitors are going to be searching for, on Black people it serves up a couple of antiquated racial slurs—but the algorithms are definitely there. ‑ Iridescent 10:36, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

I wasn't aware of that, I will look into it.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 12:32, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

If it's any help, the documentation for this particular extension is here. As far as I know, it was imposed by the WMF rather than anyone asking for it; what discussion there was was at Meta:Talk:Requests for comment/Related Pages. ‑ Iridescent 13:58, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

Iridescent, Oh wow, I didn't know that either, thanks for mentioning it... CaptainEek ⚓ 18:53, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

For what it's worth as a data-point, two of the three "related articles" to my BLP are about people I'd never heard of. They're American lawyers, as am I, but I'm hard-pressed to see what else relates the three of us. (To be fair, the third related article is more sensible, as I'm cited in it a couple of times.) Regards, Newyorkbrad (talk) 21:03, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

Brain dump:

• Foundation project page: MW:Reading/Web/Projects/Related_pages and Flowtalk MW:Talk:Reading/Web/Projects/Related_pages
• Software/Technical page: MW:Extension:RelatedArticles
• I helped the team draft a "feedback only" Enwiki RFC WP:Related_Pages_extension/RfC with responses on the the Talk. The language and style of the RFC is a bit wonky and not very effective. I was trying to get staff comfortable the idea of collaborating with us on an RFC, and I bent over backwards to draft for them whatever they wanted.
• The team's summary of feedback they received from multiple wikis.
• The project initially displayed non-free images. Resolved after objections from various editors, and after I cited the Board Of Trustees resolution on non-free materials. The resolution has a banner explicitly prohibiting staff from circumventing, eroding, or ignoring our limitations on non-free content usage. The PageImage feature can now be configured to include or exclude non-free images, depending on how the images are to be used.
• The project initially had a problem of displaying grossly inappropriate images. If the first image on the page was in a subsection it was often grossly unrepresentative of the article (wrong person or a random place or thing). Largely resolved by restricting PagesImages to only pull from the lead section.
• The project is both redundant-to and inferior-to our human managed related links. This was said by many community members, from multiple wikis. I don't think the team ever meaningfully addressed this.
• The software can select grossly inappropriate "related" pages. Our article for Hard disk drive was given a grossly promotional link to the Seagate Technology brand article. Video card currently displays a grossly promotional link to a specific Nvidia brand chipset. This can seriously undermine public perception of our neutrality. I also know of gross BLP violations and appalling political bias, such as giving a living politician a "related" link to a racist party or racist ideology - even when that person is not remotely aligned with the suggested article. Our NOTCENSORED articles can also pop up anywhere, I recall one of our language articles was given profane Related links. The team responded by creating a {{#related:articlename}} keyword we can use to override the software selections, but I rate this as utterly unresolved. The keyword theoretically allows us to fix any given page, but the software generates these links dynamically. Grossly inappropriate RelatedArticles can appear and change on any page at any moment. The problem is intractable, almost no one knows that it's possible to override it, and basically no one even tries to fix these cases. Noteworthy trivia: The #related keyword was used in the Wikimedia Foundation article, to setting related articles to iron law of oligarchy and Tragedy of the commons. There are over a hundred active page-watchers, and those Related Pages remained on the page 9 months before I found and reverted it. Either the Foundation is even more universally despised than I realized, or no one understands the #related keyword enough to revert vandalism that uses it.

Staff have good intentions but I'd say this is yet another case where they built something we never wanted, where they rolled forwards with deployment after ignoring significant feedback that it's not really wanted. Nobody has opened or suggested an RFC to try and get this shut off, but that might be because it's not visible on desktop. The fact that it's mobile-only means the product (and problems with the product) are pretty much invisible to most editors. I'd say that staff frivolously forking features as mobile-only is itself a problem, but that subject leads pretty far off the current topic. Alsee (talk) 03:23, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

 Comment: I don't want to be pedantic but Misplaced Pages uses algorithms all over the place to do things like convert inches to centimeters. What we are really discussing here is recommendation systems. Mo Billings (talk) 03:44, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

Mo Billings, it may help explain how the discussion became muddled to know that my original topic ( which led to the discussion above, was split off from "related articles, and then subsequently archived ) was Jack Dorsey's referencing algorithms at last week's Senate hearings, as shown below:

:Hi Jimbo Wales, I've been watching a USA Senate testimony of Jack Dorsey and he has said several times that "algorithms" make most of the content and content monitoring and tagging decisions, thus the conversation should focus on algorithms !! What do you think? Justthinking2021 (talk) 17:47, 17 November 2020 (UTC) Also, the senators are not following up on Dorsey's suggestion in this hearing so I'm wondering whether they feel capable of discussing algorithms. And this algorithms tangent that Dorsey suggests strikes me as possibly being a recognition or concern that, as per sci-fi, the "machines are taking over", of course algorithms are not technically "machines". Of course, some would say the person/people who design the algorithms are the "controllers" over what Dorsey is suggesting should be the topic. The whole thing seems unimportant at first glance, but since Dorsey says he thinks it's important, maybe it is? I mean, do algorithms "think"? Do some/they have A.I.? Justthinking2021 (talk) 18:23, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

There definitely appears to be some confusion as to what algorithms are being used in Misplaced Pages and how useful or confusingly unhelpful they are, not to mention the way in which they came to be in the case Iridescent describes. Justthinking2021.1 (talk) 21:37, 21 November 2020 (UTC)

• I've wondered about this feature before; it has very much flown under the radar, so I'm glad to see it being discussed here. Reading Alsee's comment above, the situation comes into focus. I'm not actually too concerned about the quality of the links (there will always be exceptions, but I've actually found them pretty relevant most of the time, and I think readers are very used to seeing algorithm-generated suggestions elsewhere so they aren't too thrown off by them here), but the concern that this duplicates the functionality of see also sections very much deserves a larger hearing, and the lack of coordination with the community is troubling.

One thing I'll add: The second sentence of the MediaWiki page is rather concerning: It aims to drive page views by engaging users by directing them to related content. "Driving engagement" is the sort of goal I'd expect to see at somewhere like Facebook, where the whole point is occupying your attention for as long as possible to serve you as many ads as possible. It doesn't fit for a nonprofit, where the end goal always needs to be actually serving readers. Now, I do think the intended purpose is actually tied to that goal—helping people find content they're interested in fits with our mission—but it's still very disappointing to see the rationale expressed in for-profit corporate-speak rather than in terms of our mission, and it makes me concerned about what other decisions that attitude may be driving. {{u|Sdkb}}  18:28, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

Most concerning to me is the WMF (yet again) implementing a reader-facing change without community consensus. There's a list of things the community wants and a list of things the community doesn't want, and the WMF seems to regularly work on the latter. Why are resources put towards things like "Related Changes" and not towards clearing Phab tickets, for example? Levivich /_hound 20:03, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

Yeah, seeing how many fantastic suggestions are being made for the Community Wishlist, and knowing that only a fraction of them will be implemented, while meanwhile resources get dumped on things like this, is fairly depressing.

It'd be one thing if the technical architecture of Misplaced Pages was in a fairly good place, in which case branching out to try some creative experimental new features would be justifiable, but there are really urgent unmet needs just around the basics. For one example out a gazillion, Jimbo, take a look at T217914, which asks for a simple confirmation dialogue to be shown when you click the logout button. It got overwhelming community support at the village pump but has been open for more than a year. I presume that all it needs is a little developer attention to make it happen, but there doesn't seem to be any since everyone at the WMF seems to be occupied with big flashy initiatives of highly variable merit. {{u|Sdkb}}  23:22, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

I'm also surprised at this. As it is, Misplaced Pages by it's structure as an encyclopedia already drives engagement even for passive users: it is a dynamic click bait. Are the folks at the Foundation so mistrusting how addictive the links we editors create that they need to prime the pump with computer-generated ones? -- llywrch (talk) 20:42, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

Very good point. {{u|Sdkb}}  22:12, 29 November 2020 (UTC)

The Signpost: 29 November 2020

• News and notes: Jimmy Wales "shouldn't be kicked out before he's ready"

• Op-Ed: Re-righting Misplaced Pages

• Opinion: How billionaires re-write Misplaced Pages

• In the media: Relying on Misplaced Pages: voters, scientists, and a Canadian border guard

• Featured content: Frontonia sp. is thankful for delicious cyanobacteria

• Traffic report: 007 with Borat, the Queen, and an election

• News from Wiki Education: An assignment that changed a life: Kasey Baker

• GLAM plus: West Coast New Zealand's Wikipedian at Large

• Wikicup report: Lee Vilenski wins the 2020 WikiCup

• Recent research: Misplaced Pages's Shoah coverage succeeds where libraries fail

• Essay: Writing about women

Hey Jimmy!

The Signpost story (top of this section) came in shortly before deadline, so I didn't have time to check it out with you. But the sources quoted were fine. If there is anything wrong with the story please let us know and blame it on me for rushing it. Also in that case, any comment here or in the story's comment section would also be appreciated, Smallbones_(smalltalk) 19:06, 29 November 2020 (UTC)

Seeking topic ban from American politics, post-1932, the easy way

Almost everything I try to do in this area goes sour quickly, leads to more confusion and controversy. I waste people's time, they waste mine. It's not intentional, but it is disruptive and it does happen. I've tried to quit, but it's hard, I lack self-control and can't resist the temptations of correctable half-truths. I tried asking an admin for intervention (in a somewhat creepy way, no less), but then read a rule saying regular admins don't have that authority, only you can stop me from wasting more people's time without wasting even more people's time through a thorough public hearing. I waive that right, and any others that may hinder your verdict. I would ask for a minimum sentence of four months, but will abide by whatever you think fits the above freely-confessed crimes. Thank you for considering this plea, and once again for creating Misplaced Pages. InedibleHulk (talk) 08:32, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

Dear IndedibleHulk,

I would consider it a great kindness and it would reflect very well on you if you choose not to edit articles in the area of American policies, post-1932. Out of your respect for the process - and for yourself and your own happiness - I hope that you will use this voluntary ban wisely. My suggestions would be to pick some random area of knowledge that you've always had a bit of curiosity about, but have no strong views on, and read a few books about it. Or - and I haven't checked your edit history so I have no idea what the problem has been - perhaps you could find a prominent and well-written book that takes an opposite view of your own, and read it with a sympathetic mind, to try to understand things as those who disagree with you understand them. (Have no fear, you won't brainwash yourself or anything but you are likely to come out the other end with a more nuanced and thoughtful position!)--Jimbo Wales (talk) 14:20, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

Read a book? By one of those people?!? Harsh...but fair. I'll give it my best shot! But I'm telling you, part of me is addicted to chaos, a straitjacket and muzzle might still be in order, should my reading comprehension fail. InedibleHulk (talk) 22:58, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

I think you should both come to my Morris dance class. Bring your own hobnails. -Roxy the inedible dog . wooF 14:56, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

That doesn't seem like a winter activity, meybe later, woof anyway! InedibleHulk (talk) 22:58, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

Maybe you were cyber bullied and didn't have the armor to cope with it. Sounds like you just made honest mistakes. That's a lot better than editors who deliberately mislead. Bob K31416 (talk) 15:18, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

Not even close. The speculation and the assumption, anyway. That last fact's dead on. InedibleHulk (talk) 22:58, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

Signpost article/ Founder's Seat / Makeup of the WMF board

Jimbo, you need to have two votes on the WMF board, not zero. You are the one that can be most trusted for keeping things from going awry. If you've ever made a big mistake, it was in approving that mess of of set By-Laws that the current ones are and which are facilitating the issue described in Signpost. They are basically the Constitution of WMF/Wikipedia. Just imagine if the US had a Constitution that said that congress could unilaterally change the constitution any way any time that they wanted. And that congress could make the rules any way that they want as to the makeup of congress and who gets to be in congress. And one of the rules that they made up is that half of the congressman are appointed by congress, not elected. The by-laws have fundamental problems that prevent self-correction and need repair. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 15:23, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

Fourteen Years

On 03 February 2006, it was reported to the WMF that our CAPTCHA system discriminates against the visually impaired. See phabricator T6845 and phabricator T241921.

This appears to be a direct violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 and leaves Misplaced Pages open to the possibility of a discrimination lawsuit.

In particular, National Federation of the Blind v. Target Corp. was a case where a major retailer, Target Corp., was successfully sued because their web designers failed to design its website to enable persons with low or no vision to use it.

So why, after 14 years of inaction, do we not have a set of software requirements (including a testable definition of "done") and a schedule for solving this?

And no, I will not accept any proposed "solution" that lacks:

• The name of an WMF employee who has been given the assignment of fixing this,
• A budget that says how much the WMF expects to spend on solving this,
• A deadline that says how long the WMF expects it to take to solve this, and
• A way for an independent third party to look at the results and verify whether the requirements were met.

I am left with these known facts:

• For 14 years the WMF has failed to assign a single employee or contractor the task of fixing this problem.

• For 14 years the WMF has failed to budget a single dollar towards fixing this.

• For 14 years the WMF has failed to provide any estimate of how long it is expected to take to fix this.

• For 14 years the WMF has failed to create any requirements for fixing this. (Note: "Requirements" is geek talk for "please define what 'done' is and tell us exactly how how we will recognize that whoever is working on this is done").

• For 14 years the WMF has failed to make a plan for an independent third party (which in this case means "someone with a visual impairment accessing Misplaced Pages with a screen reader") to look at the results and verify whether the requirements were met.

If the WMF is not capable of solving it, why have we not put out a call for proposals in order to find someone who can?

You can expect me to bring this up again when we hit 15 years of Misplaced Pages violating the Americans with Disabilities Act, as I have for the last four years. :( --Guy Macon (talk) 21:06, 1 December 2020 (UTC)

I think this is one of the many reasons why more freely elected community representation is needed in the WMF board of trustees. As this would allow to get the priorities right – for example by making sure that we have indeed a “💕 that anyone can edit” including visually impaired people. --AFBorchert (talk) 22:30, 1 December 2020 (UTC)

What the fun fact? That's the same day I joined Misplaced Pages! I wrote "look better eventually", even. InedibleHulk (talk) 01:09, 2 December 2020 (UTC)

I think it is unfortunate that you have not added "and a pony" to your list of demands -- it would make the unseriousness with which you habitually treat this issue more palatable. --JBL (talk) 01:41, 2 December 2020 (UTC)

This is the first I've "heard" of it. InedibleHulk (talk) 02:38, 2 December 2020 (UTC)

The above snarky "the unseriousness with which you habitually treat this issue" comment (and calling my request that we stop discriminating against the handicapped a "demand" as if I am somehow being unreasonable) is typical of WMF apologists. For years I diligently followed every single "you aren't asking in the right place" or "you aren't asking the right way" suggestion, and the end result was... nothing. If JBL thinks I am somehow approaching this the wrong way, I suggest that they show me how it's done, approach it in what they think is the right way, and see if they can get better results than I can. --Guy Macon (talk) 06:28, 2 December 2020 (UTC)

You are not making requests, you are making childish foot-stamping demands. Ten months ago, you were suggested a particular person to reach out to who could help with the issue. As below, you rejected taking constructive action in favor of reiterating childish foot-stamping demands. People who hope to accomplish something should be reaching out to potential leads and trying to build a constituency of the like-minded; childish foot-stamping on Jimbo's talk-page does nothing to accomplish this goal. --JBL (talk) 13:37, 2 December 2020 (UTC)

Right. Not discriminating against the handicapped is a "childish foot-stamping demand". You are coming very close to crossing the WP:NPA line. Could you please put away the flamethrower and go back to your previous snarky sniping?

Re: "you were suggested a particular person to reach out to who could help with the issue", that person has zero authority to add this to the WMF budget and zero authority to ask any WMF employee to work on it.

Also that person had already volunteered to "look into it" as an unpaid volunteer so it's not like they were not aware of the problem and needed me to tell them about it. as I said before, I played the "you aren't asking in the right place" game for years, dutifully following every suggestion ov a new place to bring it up, and the result was accusations of WP:FORUMSHOPPING.

If you honestly think that there is some different place that this can be asked or some different person who can be asked that will magically fix the problem, do it yourself and prove me wrong. I am done playing Whac-A-Mole. --Guy Macon (talk) 14:21, 2 December 2020 (UTC)

Not discriminating against the handicapped is a "childish foot-stamping demand". No. A person can make childish foot-stamping demands about anything; it happens you are making them in relation to an important issue. If you want to improve the situation, you should drop the ridiculous posturing. --JBL (talk) 16:58, 2 December 2020 (UTC)

In case you missed it there has been recent activity at T250227 and T241921 on this. Sam Walton (talk) 11:46, 2 December 2020 (UTC)

Does any of this activity involve anyone who has the authority to give a WMF employee an assignment, the authority to add this to the WMF budget, or the authority to set a deadline for completion? How about someone who works for such a person and thus might be able to suggest that they do those things? Realistically, does anyone reading this believe that is there a non-zero chance that Misplaced Pages will stop discriminating against the visually impaired any time before the original Phab ticket is old enough to vote? --Guy Macon (talk) 12:33, 2 December 2020 (UTC)

This is a good point by Guy, thank you. Yet it seems Graham87 is doing fine as a top 200 editor (Graham, what is your take on this, anything you'd suggest, or do you know of any tech which the foundation and Misplaced Pages are missing?) and the WikiMedia WikiBlind User Group may be another group of editors who would have an interest. Randy Kryn (talk) 13:28, 2 December 2020 (UTC)

Yes, because I started on Misplaced Pages long before CAPTCHAs were a thing. It's inconvenient but not impossible for blind people to get around CAPTCHAs, either by asking somebody for help or using special programs. Making CAPTCHAs accessible is a very hard problem to fix tdue to the Wikimedia Foundation's (admirable) insistance on using non-proprietary software and the difficulty of making it possible for humans to crack CAPTCHAs while deterring spambots and the like. The current CAPTCHA system doesn't just suck for blind people ... it also sucks for people who don't have English as their first language and probably others. Graham87 13:42, 2 December 2020 (UTC)

Yes, this does appear to be a hard problem. If I saw that the WMF had assigned personnel, a budget, and a deadline followed by a report from those working on it that they tried and could not do it, this would have been a completely different post. --Guy Macon (talk) 13:49, 2 December 2020 (UTC)

Is the problem mainly signing up as a new member with CPTCHAs in place? Asking for help (either in person or through a sent image to the friend, family member, or to the foundation itself) seems the easiest work around. Taking down CPTCHA doesn't seem a viable or recommended option. Randy Kryn (talk) 14:06, 2 December 2020 (UTC)

I am not suggesting taking down CAPCHA or any other specific solution. We already have a boatload of those. I am suggesting that the WMF assign someone to the job of fixing this problem. --Guy Macon (talk) 14:30, 2 December 2020 (UTC)

Graham, I'm wondering if there are access issues with the alternate Misplaced Pages:Request an account process. The ADA doesn't require identical access, it requires reasonable access, so the pertinent question is whether this utility meets that threshold, and if not, how it fails to do so. VanIsaac_WS 14:17, 2 December 2020 (UTC)

Interesting thought. If you find a way to solve this with some sort of alternative, please post it here so that the ticket can be closed. --Guy Macon (talk) 14:30, 2 December 2020 (UTC)

• @Guy Macon:, I'm sorry to say, but I had no idea about that utility until I read the thread from January. This does not speak well to your attitude in this matter. If you care about the actual issue instead of holding a vendetta against WMF (and trust me, I'd completely understand if you did), then you really should be reading to understand instead of reading to respond.VanIsaac_WS 16:10, 2 December 2020 (UTC)

CAPTCHAs don't just occur when creating accounts; they can also come up when non-autoconfirmed/confirmed users try to add external links, which can happen in surprising ways ... and the software seems to be quite finicky about when it thinks an external link was added. The request an account process, which would work for screen reader users, was at the back of my mind when I replied but the last time I'd heard it was infamous for having an incredibly long backlog. That seems to have been pretty much resolved, which is a very good thing. Graham87 14:44/15:50, 2 December 2020 (UTC)

@Graham87; Ahh, I was unaware that you could run into Captchas when adding some content. I'm wondering if there shouldn't just be a link to automatically add an edit request to the talk page when that happens. VanIsaac_WS 16:10, 2 December 2020 (UTC)

The CAPTCHA help text points such users to the help desk, which is probably the most sensible option here. Graham87 16:44, 2 December 2020 (UTC)