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Follow-up
Regarding this idea of a "COI investigations mailing list" that's been floating around: I know you've spoken in favor of it, and are usually sane :) I have extremely strong reservations about this and am not sure whether those who like the idea have had a chance yet to think through the back-end logistics or long-term management of this system.
- You'd want the WMF to create, host, and oversee a database or archive exclusively dedicated to storing personally identifying material about alleged COI/paid editors. Inevitably, it will include inaccurate identifications, accusations that would be libelous if public, and attempts at taking out wiki-political opponents, as well as garden-variety private information gathered from amateur internet sleuthing that may not have previously been collected in one place. The reality is that stuff leaks sometimes - technical compromises happen, accidental disclosures happen, and occasionally people do "go rogue". This could be much worse than existing archives leaking, because it would consist almost entirely of off-wiki personal information. There tends to be a great deal of moralizing from some quarters about paid editing, but hopefully we all agree that getting doxxed is not a reasonable consequence of having once possibly violated a website's terms of use.
- You'd want a group of volunteers (existing functionaries? a new set?) to receive this private information and then issue public rulings on whether there is or is not a COI/paid relationship. This is personally and legally risky if they get it wrong, and it's highly unlikely that this group is going to end up with any meaningful amount of training or resources to do the investigations. Wikipedians appointing themselves as "sleuths" and organizing private mailing lists for the purpose hasn't historically worked out all that well.
- You'd want someone (arbcom? the WMF?) to oversee the selection of this group's membership, hear appeals of their findings, deal with disputes that arise, and remove people from the group if needed. This is not a responsibility that anyone currently has extra bandwidth for.
It is not at all clear to me that any of this is doable, or desirable, or worth the level of time and effort that would be required. (Frankly, whenever I skim COIN I think the same thing.) Those who are very concerned about paid editing would, IMO, be best served directing their energies toward changing the notability and sourcing expectations for the topics that are most commonly affected. Opabinia regalis (talk) 06:50, 23 July 2016 (UTC)
- Thanks for taking the time to write this very thoughtful message to me. (But don't be so sure about my sanity!) At this point, I'm in the thinking-out-loud stage, so I'm not strongly committed to any particular approach. And having users like you, who are more plugged in to the logistics than I am, give me advice about things that can be deal-breakers is very helpful to me, and you can be sure that I will take everything you say very seriously.
- No matter what you and some other users with advanced permissions may think, simply trying to revise notability and sourcing guidelines will end up in a lot of heat followed by no consensus. And the fact that many community members are correct, that undisclosed paid editing presents a monumental threat to Wikipedia's mission, cannot be wished away. Nor should it be.
- What I'm trying to do is to get something in place that legitimately allows us to have a bright-line outing/harassment policy, a policy that says that it is never, never, never OK to post outing-type information on-site โ but that also allows editors to investigate undisclosed paid editing without having the disruptive user say: you are making a personal attack on me, because you are accusing me of COI but you provide no evidence. There needs to be a private way to evaluate private evidence, that verifies the evidence but makes it credibly possible to never post it on site.
- Taking your points one-by-one, I agree with you that getting doxed is the wrong solution to someone violating the terms of use. I want to prevent that from happening. The way I tentatively see it at this time, such a mailing list would contain information that would not really be a whole lot different in terms of legal liability and risk of doing harm than what Checkusers already do. They call up IP information that can sometimes identify a user as sitting at one very particular computer, and determine the likelihood that two accounts are or are not the same person. To my knowledge, that doesn't mean that a Checkuser can get sued for posting "confirmed" or "likely" on-site, and I think (again, to the best of my knowledge) that Checkusers outing editors has not been a pervasive problem. And I understand that there is a log kept of all Checkuser runs. And I'll make a bet (again, to the best of...) that the Functionaries email list gets stuff that should never be posted on-Wiki, and the ArbCom list even more so. I've had email communication with the ArbCom list in which my real life name is revealed, and I have trusted ArbCom not to go blabbing my name in public. Yes, there was that infamous leak, but I hope that procedures have been improving since then.
- But what you say here gives me the idea that the new whatever that I might propose should be set up in such a way that once a case is dealt with, it gets erased from whatever digital storage there is, not stored or archived.
- To your second and third points, I've been thinking about defining membership on the list as being: those users who are currently on the Functionaries email list who volunteer to participate. It would never be dealing with urgent matters (unlike Oversighting), so there would be no need for a lot of volunteers. If one is already a Functionary in good standing (and I understand that ones in bad standing are kicked off the list), one is already cleared by WMF to have access to private information. And folks who don't have the time or inclination won't have to do anything.
- And here is something very key: under no circumstance should it be permissible to post on-Wiki anything more than that it is "confirmed" or "likely" or "not confirmed" (or something like that) that a COI exists. But not what the COI is (beyond the fact that it pertains to certain pages)! That's not revealing anything even remotely libelous, and the "harm" that could be done to a user would simply be being required to disclose a COI in discussions about a page, something we already ask users to do under the WMF terms of use. I'm not seeing (?) much need for appeals. I don't imagine that any of the Functionary volunteers would be seeing, privately, anything more than what Arbs, Checkusers, and Oversighters already see. I don't think the sky will fall.
- But if you can shoot holes in what I've said here, please do! That's the kind of feedback that I want! And I promise to take it seriously.
- When I have more of an idea of what I think it should be, I'm going to create a draft (with "no index") in my user space, and I'll post about it to Arbs, Checkusers, and Oversighters, and ask for feedback. I'm not going to attempt to make an RfC to the community to adopt a proposal, until after the Functionaries have had a chance to vet it. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:42, 23 July 2016 (UTC)
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- Well, to start at the top, undisclosed paid editing presents a monumental threat to Wikipedia's mission - unshared implicit premises are part of the problem. I wouldn't agree to that at all - paid editing is a nuisance and a timesink, yes, and certainly some people believe there is some kind of clear and present danger, but there's precious little evidence of it. Yes, we have spam, and so does every other website with user-generated content. We're lucky in that ours is often in the form of new articles on crap topics with little traffic; it didn't much bother the 209k people who wanted to know who Tim Kaine is yesterday. The damaging insidious advocacy cases (Wifione, etc) are a) believed to be "paid" by inference, not evidence, and b) not the cases that would ever be usefully handled by this COI investigation process.
- The advantage of approaching this whole problem through notability and sourcing is that the changes work with existing infrastructure and can be done incrementally and reassessed regularly. Sure, there will be no consensus for sweeping all-at-once changes, but the point is to deal with bite-sized pieces of the problem in a flexible way. Possibly this could be coupled with technical improvements like automated classification of new articles to prioritize patrollers' attention. This mailing list is a huge bureaucracy of uncertain benefit that would be extremely difficult to get rid of once it's entrenched.
- I see the temptation, but I think checkuser is a poor analogy here. Checkuser involves the WMF collecting fairly simple routine technical data from everyone, storing it temporarily, and permitting access only under certain conditions to authorized people who are generally familiar with the technical aspects before they start using the tool. The COI investigation process would involve self-appointed third parties collecting random internet flotsam from whoever they decided seemed suspicious, storing it indefinitely on their own computers of indeterminate security, and submitting it to a mailing list for review by people with no particular specialized knowledge. In the CU case the information is provided by the affected users themselves, by virtue of their use of the site; in the COI case the information is gathered from off-site by others only when suspicion arises. Assuming good faith of the reporters, that's a recipe for confirmation bias; taking a more cynical view, it's a good way to try to knock out your opponents in a dispute. (You're much more involved with the GMO topic than I am, and have certainly seen as much of the alt med cluster of disputes, so clearly you know that some editors deploy COI allegations as weapons. Right now they make these claims in public where others can see they're unfounded, but what happens when they gather suggestive tidbits and tie them together with rhetoric, and the report gets read by someone who's just trying to clear the queue and doesn't really understand the subject?) As for legal risk, you're right, nobody gets sued for saying "User:JoeBloggs is technically indistinguishable from User:SpammitySpamSpammer." But that's a completely different claim than "User:JoeBloggs has been engaging in deceptive practices for his own personal profit and in so doing has violated the legal agreement he made by using our website."
- Honestly, it kind of worries me to see comments like I'm not seeing (?) much need for appeals - the question mark must be those cases where the determination is factually incorrect, and thus there is indeed harm being done to the user? The functionaries are reasonable people who would be careful, naturally, but people make mistakes and misjudge evidence all the time, and digging around in editors' off-wiki business is not a skill anyone was selected for, and overall you seem to have a much greater degree of confidence than I do in the likely success rate of this venture. (That, by the way, is the catch-22 of the data retention problem - how would you go about appealing a sanction if the evidence on which it was based has been discarded?)
- So will the sky fall, probably not. But it is an enormously complicated and uncomfortably invasive solution to a problem more effectively addressed through other means. Opabinia regalis (talk) 06:44, 24 July 2016 (UTC)
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- Again, thank you, and again, I very much value this discussion. You've given me some things to think about, which I will, and perhaps I will change my mind about some things. Here are some of my thoughts as of now.
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- Starting with that question mark about appeals, I did that on purpose, because I'm not that confident myself about what I said, and I wanted you to reply critically. I think you are right in identifying a problem about deleting material while allowing appeals based on that material, and this is something I'm going to have to take some time to work on.
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- About what I called the "monumental threat", well, you say tomayto and I say tomahto. I noticed yesterday that your ArbCom colleague DGG commented at the outing RfC in a manner at odds with what you have said to me here, and he did a very good job of making the case. My approach to this is to try to find a way that duly respects both perspectives, and anything I might propose would be premised upon making it out of the question to post sensitive stuff on-site. (But, by the way, another idea that's coming out of those discussions is to have the developers create a simple question that comes up as part of the account registration process, in which a new editor can say yes or no to whether they expect to edit for pay, and a yes would automatically give them advice on their new talk page about how to do things right. I'm going to propose that in the next round of WMF asking for feature proposals, this November.)
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- I have trouble seeing how to revise the notability and sourcing guidelines without creating unintended knock-on effects.
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- It seems to me that "huge bureaucracy" and "enormously complicated" are hyperbole.
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- About individual editors keeping private information about other users on their own computers, they do that already. (Even on mine!) That's not a liability for Wikipedia, and it's not a change. What Wikipedia should be concerned about is what is on WMF servers, etc.
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- About editors using this kind of thing in POV disputes, I agree with you 100%. No bleeping way! Something else that I'm going to push for is that this kind of investigation must be strictly for COI that is strictly defined as monetarily based, as opposed to having an opinion. (No investigating someone because they might be a racist, etc. etc.) I've been arguing for that. I would insist that any email submitted to a COI process should be kicked to the curb if it's about POV and so forth. Otherwise, it's a non-starter for me.
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- Well, in any case, I take it that if it ends up as a volunteer committee, you won't be one of the volunteers. But thanks again for your feedback. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:14, 24 July 2016 (UTC)
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- Uh-oh! Just saw this: [1]. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:46, 24 July 2016 (UTC)
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- Damn, people noticed! Now I don't even have implausible deniability! ;) Opabinia regalis (talk) 01:30, 26 July 2016 (UTC)
- Sounds like you've been disappeared! --Tryptofish (talk) 00:02, 27 July 2016 (UTC)
- Damn, people noticed! Now I don't even have implausible deniability! ;) Opabinia regalis (talk) 01:30, 26 July 2016 (UTC)
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- Uh-oh! Just saw this: [1]. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:46, 24 July 2016 (UTC)
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- I'm continuing to think hard about this, and two more thoughts have occurred to me.
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- You are right about what you said about Checkusers, but I really was only trying to say that, in terms of being authorized to see personal information, there's no difference, and in terms of posting on-site things like "confirmed" there are at least similarities.
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- About appeals and data retention, I've come around to agreeing that there needs to be a procedure for the accused to defend themselves fairly. One way to do this might be to have the Functionary, only if they decide to support the accusation, take the email they received, scrub it of personal information about the filing editor, etc., and forward it to the accused editor (if email is enabled, otherwise, leave a message on the editor's talk page asking to be emailed back). (This procedure would be explicitly stated, so editors making accusations will know that it will happen.) After doing so, the Functionary would delete everything from WMF systems. I think that would enable appeals even with the subsequent deletion, would make the process fairer, and would still minimize retention of sensitive data. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:30, 25 July 2016 (UTC)
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- Yes, I think DGG and I disagree on this - others may yet weigh in. We haven't discussed the paid editing issue as much as last year's committee did, but last year there was a very strong consensus against having arbcom take on that role, and having read those archives I am very much in agreement with that consensus. I'd also say that "comment on content, not contributors" is a long-standing and effective social norm here, as is respect for others' choice to contribute anonymously, and institutionalizing systematic offsite research of other editors' identities and likely motivations is much closer to the description "threat to our mission" than having a backlog of spam to delete.
- I really do think the first thing anyone who wants new processes needs to do is gather some data showing that the types of articles or editors they think are problematic are not being effectively dealt with using existing processes. It doesn't matter so much whether someone uses phrases like "monumental threat" or "chronic nuisance" or something in between; it does matter that we actually understand the scale of the problem at least somewhat quantitatively. In particular, comments on this issue often circle back to the matter of transactions on elance/upwork/fiverr/etc., but my anecdotal experience is that content that comes from these mechanisms is almost always very poor. There is little need for offsite investigations to determine that most of this content is unwanted. The more serious Wifione-style long-term advocacy is not amenable to your system, since there's no evidence of money changing hands. I get the sense that a lot of people think that if they can prove undisclosed paid editing and therefore prove a ToU violation, they've done a better job or caught a bigger fish or something than if they just delete spam for being spam. We should be talking about what the scope of the problem is on a content basis and then designing the best solutions to make sure it gets reviewed efficiently and without wasting volunteer time, rather than trying to design a system based on catching some particular preconceived category of potential violations.
- Another possible issue I didn't think of before is the politicization of the functionary selection process, which has historically been (or tried to be) fairly non-political. Seeding this system with existing functionaries is one thing, but in the future we'd almost certainly see people applying for functionary positions for the sake of joining this COI squad, in addition to (or instead of) doing traditional functionary work. This doesn't really solve the problem of creating a new body because arbcom doesn't have the time/interest/desire/scope/etc., because functionary appointments and complaints are still overseen by arbcom.
- As for anonymized summaries of information as long-term storage mechanisms: better, but I still see this as a disqualifying problem. First, as Fluffernutter posted at length in the harassment RfC, outing problems can be created with long trails of individually non-identifying breadcrumbs. It's really difficult to know in advance what might prove to be a key piece of someone else's puzzle. It's better than storing every detail, but still difficult to justify given the relatively minor nature of the offense. Second, there's no such thing as a summary that doesn't interpret the underlying data. A future reviewer who has only the summary, where the summary was prepared only because the accusation was considered true, can't fully review the matter. Again, you seem very confident that the process would have very few cases of trolling, joe-jobbing, and plain old mistakes. Third, I focused on the data stored by the WMF because that's what we can control, but the existence of such a process necessarily encourages editors to dig and store their results. If the functionary says "not confirmed" but the submitting editor is convinced there is some grave threat to the project, they may well be tempted to publicize what they've gathered. We've already seen examples of similar behavior.
- Now, your new-editor signup idea is smart. The concept of having people deliberately segregate edits so that they have a dedicated and labeled paid-editing account is a sensible compromise... that was suggested, IIRC, by Greg Kohs circa 2006 ;) Opabinia regalis (talk) 00:31, 26 July 2016 (UTC)
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- The sign-up idea wasn't mine, but I'm happily supporting it.
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- As for politicizing the Functionary selection process, the selection process isn't particularly vulnerable to editor lobbying, and I think unqualified applicants will still be rejected. And I'm not asking ArbCom to do anything new.
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- No, I didn't say long-term storage of anonymized data. What I did say seems to me to give the accused a good way to self-defend against trolling, joe-jobbing, and mistakes, and gives them as workable way to present their side to a future reviewer.
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- I'd say anyone who tries to publicize rejected accusations is a prime example of someone who should be blocked or even banned for harassment. But I don't think anyone would be prompted by such a system to research opponents any more than the status quo does, because editors already do that all the time: what matters is what gets divulged on-site. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:02, 27 July 2016 (UTC)
- You're right, sorry, I misread your idea about the anonymized summaries - I think you mean that the functionary and the editor in question retain the summary, but no one else does? I had figured the accused editor, at least, would get to see the un-edited submission if they requested it (without the submitter's name, obviously). But maybe that's a bad idea - if the identification is not correct, you've just handed them a pile of links to personal information about someone completely different. This is a lot more complicated with actual personally identifying information than with CU data or on-wiki behavior, which may be distinctive but rarely is personally identifying on its own.
- Yes, I would prefer to just delete spam as spam. (Similarly, I also see no real need to chase up G5-able content unless there's reason to believe it's bad.) That's why I prefer content-level approaches like raising the requirements for notability and sourcing, and would rather see energy invested in progress on that - even if it's slow - than in creating infrastructure for real-world investigations. I recall a proposal back in the days of Essjay to create a similar process for investigating and (sort of) verifying editors' claimed real-world credentials, which is not really so different in principle and I didn't like it then either ;) Opabinia regalis (talk) 02:32, 27 July 2016 (UTC)
- Actually, my thinking is that the Functionary would retain nothing, once the accused editor has received the anonymized information. What I'm aiming for is: (1) allow the accused to know why they are accused, (2) allow the accused to possess the information they need to appeal, should they want to appeal, and (3) avoid retaining personal information by Functionaries or WMF servers beyond when 1 and 2 have been accomplished. The issue of giving the accused information about someone else is one I haven't thought of, so I'll think about it.
- I'd say anyone who tries to publicize rejected accusations is a prime example of someone who should be blocked or even banned for harassment. But I don't think anyone would be prompted by such a system to research opponents any more than the status quo does, because editors already do that all the time: what matters is what gets divulged on-site. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:02, 27 July 2016 (UTC)
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- You've been around long enough to remember the Essjay thing? I'm glad there is someone who has been here longer than me! Anyway, I get where you are coming from, but I also think that your view about this is not widely held in the community, so I remain pretty sure that editors are going to continue to try to investigate COI, and we need a mechanism to ensure that they don't harass/out anyone in the process. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:47, 27 July 2016 (UTC)
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- Well, I was gone for awhile in the interim... but I was around as an occasional IP editor even before Seigenthaler... holy shit, that was more than a decade ago! While we're on the subject of old but relevant precedents, remember this block and the resulting arbcom case about a prominent incident involving a self-selected group using offsite mailing lists to organize "investigations" of other editors...?
- We already do have a mechanism to stop people from harassing and outing other users: when someone tries, we block them and suppress the edits. Yes, there are debatable borderline cases of "you posted too many breadcrumbs", but most are pretty obvious (including the one that touched off this whole discussion, which surprised me). Opabinia regalis (talk) 00:13, 29 July 2016 (UTC)
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- Nope, I didn't start here until a year after that. See that: fish evolved after whatever organism you are! I looked at the links and it's somewhat tl;dr (and I'm not in the mood for any more depressing reading right now). But I don't think it's comparable to what I will propose. I'm certainly not proposing that editors get any OK to collaborate on investigations off-Wiki and then block based on secret and incorrect evidence.
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- Well, we are going to have to disagree (a lot) about your second paragraph. The case that touched off this discussion? I miss that editor. And you wanna see a borderline case (and one of ArbCom's darkest hours)? Take a look at my block log. --Tryptofish (talk) 01:46, 29 July 2016 (UTC)
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- Sorry, I lost track of this thread over the weekend. Doddering old invertebrates and their lousy memories... ;)
- Not to drag out the unpleasant old reading material again, but I think that's focusing on the wrong things from that episode. The point is that one person, acting in good faith, but subject to motivated reasoning, confirmation bias, and a misperception of the actual frequency of the problem they're looking for, can easily mislead themselves into believing shoddy evidence. And when a trusted source says they're confident in their research, people are liable to not look too closely until it blows up in everyone's faces.
- That's a big reason that I think the missing piece in all this discussion and talk of proposals is data. Describing the problem in as quantitative a set of terms as possible and then designing the mitigation process would be a reasonable thing. If the evidence says that yes, we're drowning in spam that's sneaking through NPP and not getting deleted, and most of it is coming from likely paid editors, then we really do need to figure out a process to deal with it directly. But right now we have no basis on which to judge the scale of the problem compared to the scale of the proposed solution, which is a very large expansion of what has traditionally been considered as actionable evidence. Compare how much difficulty there was last year with off-wiki evidence, and that was for objectively horrible behavior, not the relatively minor sin of spammy editing.
- Nobody looks at block logs ;) While I appreciate your frustration in that situation, I'm not really sure how it relates to investigating paid editing? For obvious reasons I haven't looked at the archives related to the GMO case, but AFAIK that issue wouldn't have been covered by this investigations list anyway. Opabinia regalis (talk) 04:50, 3 August 2016 (UTC)
- No worries, and truly, you have been incredibly gracious and helpful throughout these discussions. And I agree with what you said about my own history; I simply brought it up to reflect what I, personally, have been frustrated over, and how it contributed to my present interests in making the situation better. In some ways, I see the problem less as being about the threat of COI, than about the unsupportable status quo in which good faith editors cannot figure out what will or will not get them blocked. I see you just commented at the outing talk page, and I'm rather amused by some of the replies to what you said. In any case, if you look at WT:HA#Better example, there's an example of something where I'd like the community to deal with it the way that the community did deal with it, but also without anyone risking an unpredictable block, or an invertebrate with advanced permissions telling them that they should have just reverted the spam. About data, I'm the wrong editor to ask about it, but the editors who work at COIN should be able to provide that, and it's worth asking them. In any case, I disagree with you on the more fundamental underlying assumptions of this debate, and I think most members of the community disagree with you too. I've gone ahead and worked up a draft proposal, and I'm going to unveil it very soon, and I think that you will see that I really listened to what you said about the logistics. (And, speaking of doddering, I found myself typing GMO when I meant COI, while I was writing it: [2]. Sheesh!) --Tryptofish (talk) 15:31, 3 August 2016 (UTC)
- FYI, I posted the link to your draft, and this thread, to the functionaries list also. Thank you for the revisions you've made. To be honest, I still see no useful future for this, and dozens of pitfalls, but a good-faith proposal deserves to be looked at thoughtfully. Opabinia regalis (talk) 23:01, 5 August 2016 (UTC)
- No worries, and truly, you have been incredibly gracious and helpful throughout these discussions. And I agree with what you said about my own history; I simply brought it up to reflect what I, personally, have been frustrated over, and how it contributed to my present interests in making the situation better. In some ways, I see the problem less as being about the threat of COI, than about the unsupportable status quo in which good faith editors cannot figure out what will or will not get them blocked. I see you just commented at the outing talk page, and I'm rather amused by some of the replies to what you said. In any case, if you look at WT:HA#Better example, there's an example of something where I'd like the community to deal with it the way that the community did deal with it, but also without anyone risking an unpredictable block, or an invertebrate with advanced permissions telling them that they should have just reverted the spam. About data, I'm the wrong editor to ask about it, but the editors who work at COIN should be able to provide that, and it's worth asking them. In any case, I disagree with you on the more fundamental underlying assumptions of this debate, and I think most members of the community disagree with you too. I've gone ahead and worked up a draft proposal, and I'm going to unveil it very soon, and I think that you will see that I really listened to what you said about the logistics. (And, speaking of doddering, I found myself typing GMO when I meant COI, while I was writing it: [2]. Sheesh!) --Tryptofish (talk) 15:31, 3 August 2016 (UTC)
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- Since I've been mentioned twice, I should explain why I differ from Opabinia regalis (and those of my arb and functionary colleagues who have spoken about this in public) . I am an editor primarily, not a functionary, and I'm on arb com primarily to bring them the perspective of an editor--an editor who works primarily with new articles. Not just some, but most submitted articles on organizations and their executives are press releases--as are many others in many fields. The basic principle of an encyclopedia is subverted when the articles are written on the basis of that the subject wants their article here, and wants it from their own perspective. If readers want that perspective, google does the job of finding their web pages very successfully. The reason for our existence is to fill the need for information not contaminated in that manner. The more fundamental purpose, and the really exciting aspect for many of us, and also to show that volunteers working in a non-hierarchial manner can produce a monumentally useful complex intellectual product. When it's not the volunteers producing the product, we're not justifying our conceptual basis. The world does not need another medium for advertising.
- People who work primarily on process or infrastructure tend to not realize the problems with content and contributors. I doubt there is any experienced person working with new contributions who does not see the extent of the project the same way I do. Protecting privacy is important, but it's not our fundamental purpose. We want to protect the privacy of good faith contributors, not of those who attempt to subvert the project. The key problem in finding a way to deal with COI is to protect those without the COI who may be falsely accused. This is getting increasingly serious, because many good faith editors now copy the work of the coi editors, because they think it's the way to do things here. The only way to protect their privacy is for the investigations to be done in private, once the plausibility of a case for investigation has been raised--it is in this sense exactly similar to SPI investigations.
- The only people available for this are the functionaries, and the genius of Tryptofish's proposal is that it uses existing already vetted people, and does not add an entire new group of people with advanced permissions. It does make our job as functionaries a little more complex, by adding an additional task--I think we basically able to handle it. I cannot see how this adds any security problems beyond what we already have at present--the true security problem is the need to maintain a history for future investigations that determine a pattern,and this applies already. The only additional private information that would be collected is information that someone works for a particular company. While this should be kept private for good faith editors, the results of an failure to protect the information on them that would incidentally be discovered is unlikely to be as personally disruptive as much of what we already deal.
- Anyone who works at AfD and other deletion processes knows how unreliable they are in maintaining quality. They are better than they were when I joined 8 years ago--I'd guess the error then to be as high as 20%, including both directions--I'd say it is now less than half that. I've also learned over the years the difficulty and hazards of trying to change notability requirements. The interpretation of them is subjective, and attempts at changes yield unexpected consequences. It's usually better to leave the text alone, and let the interpretation change gradually. (Not that I think the present way of deciding based on the GNG to be particularly helpful, but that's another matter, though I think we'd have a better way of protecting against POV by adopting more objective criteria)
- The most critical need at WP is the continual acquisition of new active volunteers, as very few of us will be around forever--or can even be expected to make a career out of it,or even a lifelong hobby. Volunteers get discouraged in trying to compete with people who get paid for their work, and in particular volunteers trying to improve articles get very discourage when they realize they are trying to improve the work of incompetent editors who are collecting the money for what the volunteers have done.
- We need a different balance. DGG ( talk ) 00:34, 4 August 2016 (UTC)
- Thank you very much for the kind words and the thoughtful analysis. I agree exactly with your view of the issue. --Tryptofish (talk) 01:05, 4 August 2016 (UTC)
- Thanks DGG, this is a good articulation of your view and you might want to post it (or a summary) somewhere more visible. (Though I do see Trypto has 200 watchers, that's a lot for a fish... ;) There's a couple of things I wanted to respond to briefly here, though. First, I don't really see that there's a correlation between people's focus on "process" or "content" and their opinion on how best to deal with paid editing. Second, I don't think there's any real evidence that the encyclopedia is any more "subverted" by paid editing than it is by editing done by fans (a common problem in pop-culture type articles), editing by cranks and POV-pushers (everywhere in science and medicine), editing done by people with axes to grind (common in BLPs), and so on and so forth. In fact, if I had to rank-order content problems by the extent to which they harm the project, I'd put BLP violations well above spam. The appeal of addressing paid/COI editing by increasing notability standards is precisely that it applies equally to all of these problems and does not require differentiating between them, which is often impossible. (Unless the cranks turn out to be right that telepathy is real... ;) Opabinia regalis (talk) 23:01, 5 August 2016 (UTC)
- Well, hosting an argument between two arbs should be good for my WP:Centijimbos. (And everyone knows that my talk page is where all the cool kids hang out!) I don't think it's a contest between COI and BLP or anything else to be the biggest problem. But if there's a problem and a workable way to reduce the problem, then that workable way is a net positive. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:13, 5 August 2016 (UTC)
- Probably not, nobody watches my talk page... ;) Opabinia regalis (talk) 23:35, 5 August 2016 (UTC)
- Well, you are always welcome here. (In the past 24 hours, I've gone from being called a POV-pusher in favor of GMOs to being called a POV-pusher in favor of pseudoscience. I guess I was in favor of it before I was against it, or something...) --Tryptofish (talk) 23:40, 5 August 2016 (UTC)
- Probably not, nobody watches my talk page... ;) Opabinia regalis (talk) 23:35, 5 August 2016 (UTC)
- Well, hosting an argument between two arbs should be good for my WP:Centijimbos. (And everyone knows that my talk page is where all the cool kids hang out!) I don't think it's a contest between COI and BLP or anything else to be the biggest problem. But if there's a problem and a workable way to reduce the problem, then that workable way is a net positive. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:13, 5 August 2016 (UTC)
- Thanks DGG, this is a good articulation of your view and you might want to post it (or a summary) somewhere more visible. (Though I do see Trypto has 200 watchers, that's a lot for a fish... ;) There's a couple of things I wanted to respond to briefly here, though. First, I don't really see that there's a correlation between people's focus on "process" or "content" and their opinion on how best to deal with paid editing. Second, I don't think there's any real evidence that the encyclopedia is any more "subverted" by paid editing than it is by editing done by fans (a common problem in pop-culture type articles), editing by cranks and POV-pushers (everywhere in science and medicine), editing done by people with axes to grind (common in BLPs), and so on and so forth. In fact, if I had to rank-order content problems by the extent to which they harm the project, I'd put BLP violations well above spam. The appeal of addressing paid/COI editing by increasing notability standards is precisely that it applies equally to all of these problems and does not require differentiating between them, which is often impossible. (Unless the cranks turn out to be right that telepathy is real... ;) Opabinia regalis (talk) 23:01, 5 August 2016 (UTC)
- Thank you very much for the kind words and the thoughtful analysis. I agree exactly with your view of the issue. --Tryptofish (talk) 01:05, 4 August 2016 (UTC)
AE case
It looks like the community has grown tired with some of the recent things we've seen in the GMO topic, so I've opened up an AE case here. I tangentially mention some evidence where you've shown your concern about casting aspersions, etc. so I thought I'd formally let you know. Here's to hoping this finally settles the topic down after it closes. I for one look forward to being able to focus entirely on content. Kingofaces43 (talk) 17:55, 24 July 2016 (UTC)
- I read everything that you presented there, and I've got it on my watchlist. I'm ambivalent about your doing this, because I'm not sure that it is the best way to get things to quiet down. On the other hand, you certainly made a strong case. I'll probably end up commenting there myself, but for now I'm going to wait and see what comes next. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:43, 24 July 2016 (UTC)
- Yeah, I'll admit I've been on the fence on when/if to go ahead with this for quite awhile. I'm still not happy with going ahead on it, but there have been so many warnings that it looks like things won't improve otherwise. The problem has got to be addressed at some point and the process is never going to be that clean either. Now is probably about as good or bad of a time as any. It looks like others have been commenting elsewhere on this issue that aren't as involved in the topic, so hopefully we may get some input from the not so usual folks. Kingofaces43 (talk) 19:12, 24 July 2016 (UTC)
- You doubtless know this already, but I feel like I have to say it. Please be extra careful and cautious in your own editing, so as not to incur a boomerang. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:17, 24 July 2016 (UTC)
- Definitely on my radar. Part of the reason why I went forward on this was because what should be minor situations are getting escalated so quickly instead of the single message or two it would have taken on an article talk page, so I'm very aware of appearances on that on both ends. I won't ramble here anymore though. I have a lot more I wish I could have said with regards to how battleground behavior from other editors can make those attempting to engage in normal editing look bad too, but I'll deal with that if it comes up in the correct venue. Kingofaces43 (talk) 19:58, 24 July 2016 (UTC)
- I'm relieved that it's over, and seemingly well dealt with. I sure hope that things will be peaceful from now on. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:03, 28 July 2016 (UTC)
- Indeed. That was pretty rough, but I guess there was a lot more trouble brewing under the surface than I expected since I went in looking for a lesser sanction than a topic ban to just get the behavior to stop. I was pretty surprised by all that. I for one am hoping to be able to stay away from AE now with all the cases I've had to bring there even though I try to ignore problems brewing for a relatively long time before finally bringing them up there. Hopefully things settle down now since the community/AE has now taken care of most of the issues that didn't get addressed at Arbcom. Hope is the key word. Kingofaces43 (talk) 21:27, 28 July 2016 (UTC)
- Yes, thanks. I hope that this is done with, and I guess I'm cautiously optimistic. What an utter pain it has been, for over a year. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:20, 28 July 2016 (UTC)
- Indeed. That was pretty rough, but I guess there was a lot more trouble brewing under the surface than I expected since I went in looking for a lesser sanction than a topic ban to just get the behavior to stop. I was pretty surprised by all that. I for one am hoping to be able to stay away from AE now with all the cases I've had to bring there even though I try to ignore problems brewing for a relatively long time before finally bringing them up there. Hopefully things settle down now since the community/AE has now taken care of most of the issues that didn't get addressed at Arbcom. Hope is the key word. Kingofaces43 (talk) 21:27, 28 July 2016 (UTC)
- I'm relieved that it's over, and seemingly well dealt with. I sure hope that things will be peaceful from now on. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:03, 28 July 2016 (UTC)
- Definitely on my radar. Part of the reason why I went forward on this was because what should be minor situations are getting escalated so quickly instead of the single message or two it would have taken on an article talk page, so I'm very aware of appearances on that on both ends. I won't ramble here anymore though. I have a lot more I wish I could have said with regards to how battleground behavior from other editors can make those attempting to engage in normal editing look bad too, but I'll deal with that if it comes up in the correct venue. Kingofaces43 (talk) 19:58, 24 July 2016 (UTC)
- You doubtless know this already, but I feel like I have to say it. Please be extra careful and cautious in your own editing, so as not to incur a boomerang. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:17, 24 July 2016 (UTC)
- Yeah, I'll admit I've been on the fence on when/if to go ahead with this for quite awhile. I'm still not happy with going ahead on it, but there have been so many warnings that it looks like things won't improve otherwise. The problem has got to be addressed at some point and the process is never going to be that clean either. Now is probably about as good or bad of a time as any. It looks like others have been commenting elsewhere on this issue that aren't as involved in the topic, so hopefully we may get some input from the not so usual folks. Kingofaces43 (talk) 19:12, 24 July 2016 (UTC)
From the Department of I'm losing my mind due to Wikipedia!
[3]. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:21, 31 July 2016 (UTC)
Recent revert
Hello! Minor thing, but when I look at other articles affected by the RFC (such as genetically modified maize and genetically modified food) the paragraph in question omits the comma I removed in this edit to comply with MOS:REFPUNCT. Is it all right if I remove it again? Me, Myself & I (โฎ) (talk) 23:46, 26 July 2016 (UTC)
- Yikes, the implementation of the RfC language has been a mess. I think the problem arose because, afterwards, editors decided to reformat the references, and the accompanying punctuation got messed up in the process. The required language and punctuation are at WP:GMORFC#Proposal 1. I think the comma in question is there, so it needs to be added back at pages where it got deleted. In any case, your edit is no big deal, and I certainly wasn't finding fault with you for it. I'm just trying to make sure that the RfC results remain stable, after all the work and drama that went into it. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:08, 27 July 2016 (UTC)
- Never mind that, I just looked back and self-reverted. The comma should of course be before the cites, and an extra comma after was indeed the previous mistake. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:14, 27 July 2016 (UTC)
ARCA notice
I have filed two actions at WP:ARCA of which you are named party: action 1, action 2 --David Tornheim (talk) 04:06, 27 July 2016 (UTC)
- Noted and replied. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:36, 27 July 2016 (UTC)
Sad news
Rest in peace, User:Kevin Gorman. Utterly heartbreaking news, about an editor who was very kind to me, and not always well-treated by Wikipedia. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:21, 29 July 2016 (UTC)
Permissions
Hi, Tryp - thanks for offering your help. My concerns are over the degree to which OTRS at Commons feel they need to delve into private information in order to satisfy their own individual concerns over copyvio, much of which is based in their own lack of knowledge about copyright law or perhaps their inability to communicate intelligently with the uploader because of overzealous suspicion. Not to honk my own horn over and above the horn honking of an old coot, I consider myself to be well versed in this issue based on in-court and out-of-court situations for which I have participated as a plaintiff (never having lost a case) and long time professional in the photography/broadcast/publishing industry. Worse yet, I see avoidable issues crop up when the editor who actually uploaded the image and was copied on all the correspondence between permissions and the copyright holder, and then when questioned by permissions, the copyright holder themselves have asked permissions to discuss the issues with me as their appointed go-between. I have always donated my time to ensure that copyright holders provide the necessary documents and releases to permissions; therefore, in most cases the copyright holder copies me on all correspondence with OTRS volunteers. Problems arise when OTRS refuses to discuss the issues with me and suddenly shuts me out of further correspondence despite the copyright holders request that I help resolve the issue and be included, keeping in mind this is all being handled via private email exchanges. Perhaps my issue somewhat parallels your own concerns regarding outing which appears to be the reason overzealous OTRS volunteers seem to give, even though communications are via private email. I want to be particularly careful in this discussion to not name anyone or point to any specific editor or file. Atsme๐๐ง 21:10, 5 August 2016 (UTC)
- OK, then I'd like to ask some questions, while trying not to intrude on the private information, so that I can better understand. Do I understand that the following describes the general nature of the problem? You are trying to help some other people, who want to provide files to Commons, where those other people are the copyright owners for the files. Those people are emailing Commons OTRS directly, and cc-ing you on the emails. The Commons OTRS volunteers are raising some sort of problem, that you are seeing on the email cc's. When you email the OTRS yourself, trying to help the file owners, the OTRS people are refusing to discuss it with you. Is that accurate?
- If I've got that right, then let me recommend this. Get the file owners to send you a new email, saying that they "license this file according to cc-by-sa-4.0". The email should just say that, in those exact words, and not repeat the earlier problems. Then, you upload the file to Commons under your own Commons account, on behalf of the file owners. And you simply forward their email about cc-by-sa to OTRS, and when the OTRS system gives you a number, you post that number on the file page, as evidence that the permission exists. No extended discussion with those OTRS people. Would that work? --Tryptofish (talk) 21:31, 5 August 2016 (UTC)
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- Tryp, the problem I'm dealing with now is very frustrating. I volunteered to help both the BLP and the editor who uploaded the original image. I sent both a sample publishing license they could use to send to permissions and grant publishing under CC-BY-SA 4.0. The BLP sent me a new, higher quality image different from the first and I uploaded it, then added the ticket number when it was sent to me. Everything was IN ORDER. Soon after I added the new image to the infobox, it was tagged for deletion at commons. The first statement in the tag is all that I have to go on: An email has been received at OTRS concerning this file, and can be read here by users with an OTRS account. However, the message was not sufficient to confirm permission for this file. Well, I don't have an OTRS account so I don't know what was insufficient and neither do the copyright holders. The OTRS editors also tagged a couple of my images which were already properly licensed and had ticket#s from months ago but I am now having to go through the complete drill again. The copyright holder also submitted a request to permissions to please let me handle whatever it was they needed to resolve the problem but permissions refused to correspond with me like there's some big secret that I'm not allowed to see. For Pete's sake, Tryp - I've been getting copied on all the correspondence by the copyright holders, one of whom requested that permissions allow me to handle it. To make matters worse, the tag also states: If a valid permission is not provided within 30 days of the first response by an OTRS volunteer, this file will be deleted. Perhaps you can advise as to how this process has been helpful. I'm embarrassed by the way permissions has treated the copyright holders. To what depth is OTRS allowed to dig beyond what reputable academics relay? I can't blame JzG for throwing his hands up on the whole mess after what he went through. Atsme๐๐ง 06:02, 6 August 2016 (UTC)
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- Yes, I can certainly see how that can be incredibly frustrating. One thing I'm wondering is whether, in fact, you want me to suggest workarounds (which I'm happy to do), or whether you've reached the point where you are going to just walk away in disgust. I'm pointing that out because there is no point in me spending time and effort on it, if it's the latter.
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- I'm trying to answer here, with limited information for me to work with. So, if I understand correctly, the problem involves image(s) for a BLP page, and there is an editor working with you on that page, who holds the copyright to the image file(s). My thinking is that, when you have OTRS people who are being unhelpful to you, let's find ways for you to bypass them. And here is what I think you should do. Obviously, the approach of you acting as an intermediate who gets cc'ed on the emails is never going to work. And it sounds like the copyright holder is finding it difficult to deal directly with Commons, which is why they requested that you be authorized to handle it on their behalf. But OTRS does not want you to do it that way. So don't.
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- Let them start the deletion process for whatever they want to delete. That will trigger a deletion discussion, analogous to the AfD process here, that stays open for about a week. As soon as it opens, post an edit to the discussion. Keep it very brief. And ask, please tell me exactly what you need for the file to be kept. Someone will probably answer on-site. And if their answer is unclear, you can follow up like please clarify what you meant by XYZ. Again, keep everything brief, and don't complain about anything being unfair. That way, you aren't dealing with emails, and every reply you get is public.
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- So, one of two things will happen. Either, they will give you a clear and helpful answer about what they want you to do, in which case, just do it. Or they won't. And if that happens, let them delete the file, and don't sweat over it, because you have a Plan B.
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- That Plan B is to start over, with you handling everything yourself, so that there are no complications over you mediating between the copyright holder and OTRS. Get the copyright holder to send a new cc-by-sa email to you. Not to OTRS, but to you. You take a look at it, and make sure it's OK. As far as I'm aware, all they have to say to you is: Dear Atsme, I hold the copyright to this file, and I release it under a cc-by-sa-4.0 license. If that's what they say, I cannot imagine that there should be a problem. So you look at what they sent you, and check if it's OK. If it's OK, yipee, and if not, you get back to them and work it out. You will end up with a good email license from them, without OTRS getting in your face during that time. Then you upload the file, anew, yourself. And as the uploader, you forward your good email to OTRS, and you enter the ticket number on the file page. In all likelihood, that will fix everything. I really believe it will.
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- And if it doesn't, you can ask again at the deletion discussion. If you are getting noise even then, please tell me and direct me to the deletion page, and I'll try to figure it out and maybe intervene myself. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:39, 6 August 2016 (UTC)
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- Thx, Tryp. I appreciate your input. I managed to ring a few bells over at Commons, and attracted the attention of some helpful admins. I'm back in the email loop. What I find rather bizarre is that the subject stated clearly that they were the copyright owner, that it was a work for hire, and granted license per CC-BY-SA 4.0. By not accepting that email, OTRS is basically implying that the subject is lying about the work for hire. It's rather embarrassing, don't you think? But with all that aside, it actually doesn't make any sense for OTRS to drill contributors the way they do then turn around and accept the word of a complete stranger claiming to be the work for hire. And what if the work for hire is a long gone student that snapped the photo in passing? How does OTRS actually verify it was a work for hire unless they see work contracts or employment agreements? Crazy. OTRS could save everybody a lot of time and frustration if they'd simply make sure the provided information includes the language needed, and that the license is clearly stated in order to protect WMF from copyvio. What's happening now is major overreach and not at all helpful. We'd all be much better off if they'd approach it more as helpful volunteers instead of acting like copyright police, know what I mean? Atsme๐๐ง 06:52, 7 August 2016 (UTC)
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- Yes, I very much understand what you mean (and I'm always happy to try to help). Hopefully, you've found some users who will be more helpful to you now. On the one hand, I very much support the practice of taking copyright seriously, because I very much support Wikipedia's mission of making everything here free for the public to make use of, and that only works when no copyrights are violated. But on the other hand, taking it seriously is a far cry from acting like a jerk, and it sure sounds like you had the misfortune of running into some jerks. Well, one thing about editing Wikipedia is that one ends up having to work with all comers, and every position is filled by a volunteer, so sometimes that means encountering a volunteer who does things the wrong way or with bad judgment. For me, that often makes it more interesting, but it can also be a real nuisance. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:59, 7 August 2016 (UTC)
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ARCA archived
A clarification request in which you were involved has been archived at Wikipedia talk:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Genetically modified organisms#Clarification request: Genetically modified organisms (1) (August 2016). For the Arbitration Committee, Miniapolis 13:51, 8 August 2016 (UTC)
Second ARCA archived
A second clarification request in which you were involved has been archived at Wikipedia talk:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Genetically modified organisms#Clarification request: Genetically modified organisms (2) (August 2016). For the Arbitration Committee, Miniapolis 14:37, 8 August 2016 (UTC)