The following is an automatically-generated compilation of all talk pages for the Signpost issue dated 2015-06-17. For general Signpost discussion, see Wikipedia talk:Signpost.

This article should probably refer to last week's media report, which addressed some of the real world aspects of this case: Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2015-06-10/In_the_media. --TS 15:55, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for the report, Tony. It looks like there will be a column to write for next week's issue, too. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 21:04, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

Good idea, I've added one. Thanks. Gamaliel (talk) 21:22, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

I can't help but think that The Guardian has been doing a poor job with articles involving Wikipedia and ArbCom lately. The fact that this isn't the first time they've in the midst of things this year has me worried about The Guardian's coverage in the future. GamerPro64 20:59, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

Yup. The popular press is not very accurate which is why we do not allow it to source medical content. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 04:59, 20 June 2015 (UTC)

The Guardian is one of the most highly respected newspapers in the English speaking world. There is nothing in this story or in the Arbitration Committee's investigation to suggest that The Guardian's reporting is at fault or that its practices are in any way questionable. --TS 08:55, 21 June 2015 (UTC)

Except there is. The Guardian contacted WMUK staffers in private to make a mudsling story during peak election campaign that turned out to be completely bogus. The same journalist had run a similar story already in 2012: [1], although there was no actual sock-puppet investigation on it that time either (this declined SPI was opened after the story). Apparently Chase me had cooperated with the journalist already back then. No SPI or CheckUser would confirm that GS was in control of those accounts, yet they decided to run the stories. Incidentally, The Guardian backed LibDems in the 2010 election campaign and Chase me described himself as a "LibDem activist" on Twitter. That's some butched up "investigative journalism". --Pudeo' 04:56, 22 June 2015 (UTC)

There is no reason to believe that any of the several Guardian stories about this affair over the years have been bogus. My report is very carefully limited to the conduct of a Wikipedia functionary and Wikimedia UK employee. Do not draw inappropriate inferences from this. Journalism necessarily involves contacting sources, and the same path is open to any other member of the public who suspects there is something wrong with Wikipedia. There is no reason to impute anything but the most ethical conduct to the journalists involved. --TS 22:22, 22 June 2015 (UTC)

@Tony Sidaway: Just as a minor correction, we noted but specifically did not endorse the portion of the AUSC report which stated no major breach had taken place. The article makes it sound like we endorsed that portion of it as well. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 21:56, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. I'd like to see that fixed. I invite others to edit the section in place. It's a wiki, after all. --TS 23:28, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

[2] --Andreas JN466 07:15, 20 June 2015 (UTC)

Note that Contribsx (talk · contribs) was unblocked shortly before the case closed. To me it seemed that the main purpose of that non-standard block, made two weeks after the account had last edited, was to provide a hook for the Guardian story – which was already written and published at the time the block was made. Hence the case and its result. Andreas JN466 22:00, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

The report is deliberately restricted to relevant details of arbitration. Last week's media report covered external matters. The Signpost doesn't normally carry bulletins about who is blocked and who is unblocked. If it ever started doing that I'd probably suggest that we stop permitting its publication on the wiki.

I could not possibly comment on particular interpretations of this case. I don't have the luxury of making up stories. --TS 23:41, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

Has there been a Wikimedia UK response? Doesn't blatant political activity during the course of employment by a non-profit using the non-profit's equipment, time and position usually warrant some type of response? Dif they issue a statement? --DHeyward (talk) 05:31, 23 June 2015 (UTC)

The Arbitration Report, at least under my current conception, is exclusively about English Wikipedia's Arbitation Committee rulings. Having said that, to the best of my knowledge Wikimedia UK has been silent on the topic since a brief response reported by the press in late April shortly after the original Guardian headline, at which time the focus was on the MP. A series of "everything" searches at their wiki for relevant information shows only a list of links to press stories about Wikimedia UK under the title "Contribsx story", in Stevie Benton's sandbox. Stevie Benton is head of external relations at Wikimedia UK. I also searched under the names "cavalry", "Symonds" (Chase me's real surname) and the surname of the MP mentioned by Symonds. I suggest that this shows that Wikimedia UK is acquainted with the First Rule of Holes. I am unaware of any investigation by the Charity Commission.

The Audit Subcommittee found no evidence of "political activity" in this case, though I concede that it described a situation that came close enough to raise eyebrows and make Chase me's role as a trusted volunteer on Wikipedia untenable. His staff role at Wikimedia UK is in the finance department. --TS 15:46, 23 June 2015 (UTC)

• Idea for some "ground rules" for the mailing lists. No behavior that violates US law, WP:BLP, or any of the WP:CONDUCT policies (that would apply to a mailing list). Grognard Extraordinaire Chess (talk) Ping when replying 21:05, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

This admin [3] may be being impersonated on Elance. I have asked Elance to delete the account their that is claiming to be them and an admin. But have not heard back from them yet.

Yes it is a serious issue. And I have seen it a few times. One much thus be very careful when people bring off wiki evidence that X is Y. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 05:07, 20 June 2015 (UTC)

There is this code you can ad to a page for yourself that makes all user privileges visible next to their names. I forget what that is....Dennis Brown set it up for me and for the life of me I can't fathom what that was.--Mark Miller (talk) 05:29, 20 June 2015 (UTC)

Tomas Kozlowski's username is odder not Tomasz Wachowski... Nathan ^T 14:06, 20 June 2015 (UTC)

The story on "Impersonating an admin" does not mention that the user who wrote the initial Draft:New Net Technologies and submitted it for Articles for creation review was also indefinitely blocked at the same time as the user who contacted Sarah-Jane, but, unlike the latter one, remains blocked. I do not see that he has given cause for the block in the first place; submitting a draft article for review that fails to adequately establish the subject's notability does not constitute a breach of policy and does not warrant an indefinite block.  --Lambiam 19:35, 20 June 2015 (UTC)  Update: That user has also been unblocked now.  --Lambiam 19:44, 25 June 2015 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2015-06-17/Featured content

• Yesterday I emailed all 54 Spanish MEPs asking them to vote against Cavada's proposal. It's easy to do and better than just standing still while Freedom of Panorama is being attacked. B25es (talk) 05:26, 20 June 2015 (UTC)
  • How did you find their emails? I thought about emailing Polish ones, but where are the tools to help us get such information? --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 02:35, 21 June 2015 (UTC)
    • @Piotrus: The Parliament's MEP search engine might be your friend :o) — OwenBlacker (Talk) 11:31, 21 June 2015 (UTC)

This map is factually wrong, Hellas should be green like the UK, there is full freedom of panorama in Hellas, there are no restrictions in what or who you can photograph in public and no restrictions in publishing or selling the resulting photos or videos for any non-commercial use (editorial/journalistic or artistic). Joxi Szriasztista (talk) 20:50, 20 June 2015 (UTC)

If you mean Greece, then you are wrong, because as you say yourself, there are non-commercial restrictions. Which, among others, mean that Wikipedia cannot use those pictures. Limited freedom is not freedom. Also see commons:Commons:Freedom_of_panorama#Greece. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 02:35, 21 June 2015 (UTC)

Then it should be yellow on the map, not red.--213.220.230.51 (talk) 10:41, 21 June 2015 (UTC)

Seems legit. WP:SOFIXIT - I suggest you contact the image authors and see what they say. Or just upload your own version. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 02:32, 22 June 2015 (UTC)

Borrowing heavily from this article, I've just written about this on Medium: "Freedom of Panorama is under attack". UK residents can contact their MEPs for free really easily through WriteToThem (a site I helped set up): www.writetothem.com. It's not quite so easy for other EU citizens, but the Parliament's MEP search engine does provide email addresses for MEPs. — OwenBlacker (Talk) 11:31, 21 June 2015 (UTC)

Nice article! --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 02:32, 22 June 2015 (UTC)

@OwenBlacker: Thanks for the article - just a remark: I think the text "lighter green countries protecting only images of buildings" in the FOP map caption may be misleading resp. depend upon the interpretation of "protecting" - what the lighter green colour in the map means is that these countries have freedom of panorama for buildings only (not for other works of art in public spaces). So they're not "protecting" the images of buildings in the sense of granting protection to the building's copyright owner. You probably meant that they're "protecting" the building images from copyright claims, but, well... maybe it could be phrased differently? Gestumblindi (talk) 19:15, 23 June 2015 (UTC)

@Piotrus: Thank you!

@Gestumblindi: Ah, thank you. I've amended the caption to clarify that.

— OwenBlacker (Talk) 21:55, 23 June 2015 (UTC)

Idea: Use images with blank-out, king of used in this signpost article, in high-visible wikipedia articles, such as appearing on the Main page or pages with high traffic. This will bring much wider attention than Signpost. Staszek Lem (talk) 02:03, 22 June 2015 (UTC)

@Staszek Lem: This is being discussed at commons:Commons:Freedom_of_Panorama_2015. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 02:32, 22 June 2015 (UTC)

The German-language Wikipedia shows a black banner since today: de:Wikipedia:Hauptseite. --Túrelio (talk) 10:57, 25 June 2015 (UTC)

Further discussion is at:

• Two weeks to save freedom of panorama in Europe on the English Wikipedia
• Commons:Freedom of Panorama 2015 on Wikimedia Commons

There are also discussions on the various Wikipedia language versions of languages spoken in Europe. Romaine (talk) 04:49, 23 June 2015 (UTC)

In German-language Wikipedia (German-speaking countries currently have freedom of panorama), there's currently a lot of activity regarding this matter, including a survey on possible actions to make the public aware of the issue (e.g. blacking out images, banners), and an open letter to the MEPs, already signed by 377 community members. Gestumblindi (talk) 19:02, 23 June 2015 (UTC)

Currently, there are 740 signatories, and the number is steadily growing. I can't really remember any kind of Wikimedia-related open letter or a similar thing with that many supporters - and it's not even on English Wikipedia... Gestumblindi (talk) 19:57, 24 June 2015 (UTC)

The MediaViewer letter penned to the WMF drew over a thousand signatures. ResMar 01:13, 25 June 2015 (UTC)

Well, the freedom of panorama letter is now at 862; I think it will also reach more than thousand :-) Gestumblindi (talk) 10:37, 25 June 2015 (UTC)

Now at 1580 :-) Gestumblindi (talk) 20:50, 25 June 2015 (UTC)

There are now nearly 3000 signatories altogether - split into daily subpages to reduce page size; 1663 in total at de:Wikipedia:Offener Brief an die Mitglieder des Europäischen Parlaments zur Erhaltung der Panoramafreiheit/23. Juni 2015, de:Wikipedia:Offener Brief an die Mitglieder des Europäischen Parlaments zur Erhaltung der Panoramafreiheit/24. Juni 2015 and de:Wikipedia:Offener Brief an die Mitglieder des Europäischen Parlaments zur Erhaltung der Panoramafreiheit/25. Juni 2015, and additionally 1310 at the main letter page. However, as the banner deployed in German Wikipedia now contains a large button linking to the letter, and is displayed to all users (also those not signed in), the letter has somewhat changed its focus, which I'm not sure is a good idea: It was originally presented as a letter by "authors of German-language Wikipedia" and is still undersigned with that phrasing, but due to the banner's appeal to the general public, it contains now lots of signatures by people who aren't Wikipedians. That's a bit misleading, I think - of course, there's nothing to say against a letter by the general public, by Wikipedia readers, but these kinds of open letters should be clearly separate. I'll post on the discussion page ther regarding this matter. Gestumblindi (talk) 17:52, 26 June 2015 (UTC)

There is a Petition to European Parlament "Save the Freedom of Photography!" on Change.org, but cannot be linked due to blacklisting of change.org. --Túrelio (talk) 19:35, 24 June 2015 (UTC)

MEPs have to consider the best interests of Europe as well as of their countries and regions of origin when making decisions. Tourism is an important and increasing part of the economy in most European regions. And in the international competition for visitors, images and videos are the most important tools available. Just look around to see what kind of imagery airlines, hotels, tour organizers and others in the tourism and conferencing sector tend to use. Photos and drawings of famous structures are everywhere. The official tourism boards of cities and regions—as well as large corporations—might be able to take the time and effort to contact every copyright holder to get permission, but for small and medium-sized businesses, it will be easier to just drop the use of photos of anything but really old buildings. This will be bad for the overall marketing of the cities and regions that the MEPs represent. And it is worth noting that many small tourism-oriented business use precisely Wikipedia as a source of information and images to use when promoting their local surroundings.--OttoG (talk) 12:47, 2 July 2015 (UTC)

Then should we promote the destruction of the public buildings that prevent us from freely taking photographs of the landscape ? The Millau Viaduct is an example of this, if I want to take a photo there, this thing in the middle is preventing me from doing so. Sometimes laws become really stupid! Or maybe we have to post-process the photos and replace the buildings with the faces of the people voting these laws. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.212.114.60 (talk) 14:59, 4 July 2015 (UTC)

It's not just public buildings! It's *any* buildings still under copyright. If your photo of a landscape includes just one house whose architect's heir's copyright agent has not granted you a license, you are in trouble. For example that concrete building behind the London Eye in the first example photo is probably also under copyright by a different legal entity. Jbohmdk (talk) 22:40, 4 July 2015 (UTC)

A few years ago, copyright holders of the little mermaid statue (omitted in picture above), sued a porn publisher who used a photo of it on the cover of one of their movies. The family of the sculptor routinely collects royalties etc. from 3D copies of the statue, but I have heard of no other case where they sued over 2D pictures. Jbohmdk (talk) 22:40, 4 July 2015 (UTC)

AFAIK, the family routinely collects royalties from newspapers and other publishers that publish photos of the sculpture, see "Den lille havfrue" section on the "ophavsret" article in the Danish Wikipedia and links. Note that there are FoP in Denmark wrt. to buildings. There is also FoP for "non-building" works of art when the object is not the main motive and it is not use commercially. — fnielsen (talk) 17:16, 7 July 2015 (UTC)

Today the European Parliament voted about the copyright report, including the subject Freedom of Panorama.

• The negative text by Cavada (Freedom of Panorama only non-commercial in whole EU) was dropped by 502 to 40.
• The positive text by Schaake (full Freedom of Panorama in whole EU) didn't pass by 228 to 303.
• The report as a whole was accepted with 445 to 65 with 32 abstentions.

Thanks everyone, we almost manage to achieve a full swing, which is a very tough feat to get done in 3 weeks.

What is next?
Autumn 2015: European Commission planned proposal on a renewed EU Directive.

Romaine (talk) 14:29, 9 July 2015 (UTC)

@Romaine, thanks—I was looking for numbers on the Schaake amendment vote. Can you link your source? – czar 02:29, 10 July 2015 (UTC)

@Czar, sorry for the delay, there was a vacation/conference in between.

The voting was about the Implementation of Directive 2001/29/EC on the harmonisation of certain aspects of copyright and related rights in the information society. The text what the European Parliament voted about is A8-0209/2015 (pdf). There you see it is paragraph 46 which is about Freedom of Panorama.

The results can be found on the website of the European Parliament via this page in this document. Go in the document to section 9: Harmonisation of certain aspects of copyright and related rights. It is § 46. There you see the original text was rejected: 40 for, 502 against, 12 abstentions.

The line above is amendment 3: The page A8-0209/2015 shows on top the various amendments. Amendment 3 is from Schaake (pdf). The Schaake amendment got 228 for, 303 against and 24 abstentions.

Romaine (talk) 15:12, 22 July 2015 (UTC)

• If I were commissioned to put a work of art in a public place affected by these laws, not only would I have the power to charge money for the visibility of my work, but to restrict the visibility of the surrounding environment. If I were really clever, I could join a society of artists with the power to manipulate the production of media for the sakes of political bias. Of course, that situation would only achieve the height of its effectiveness when all the public works of art had been bought out by corporations. Doesn't sound likely at first, but this freedom of panorama thing is only starting, whereas corporate power acting just like that... ~ R.T.G 08:29, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2015-06-17/In focus/ca

• Regarding printing out Wikipedia, I wish the 'Download PDF' control on the page could be put right. Its been pretty well a year since is was altered to print text in double column, and cut all tables and infoboxes. These are an integral part of many articles, and the inability to do it cannot do Wikipedia's reputation much good Apwoolrich (talk) 12:51, 20 June 2015 (UTC)

@Apwoolrich: That issue is on the agenda of the developers, although sadly not as a high priority. See the linked tracking task on Phabricator. Regards, HaeB (talk) 06:45, 23 June 2015 (UTC)

"Printing out Wikipedia" – See also: WP:Size in volumes. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 13:33, 22 June 2015 (UTC)

• A very impressive and moving article! All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 23:14, 19 June 2015 (UTC).
  

• This is a superb article. I'd also like to note that Peacemaker67 has played an important role in the transformation of Wikipedia's coverage of Balkan military history from being a highly problematic area to one with high standards of accuracy and civility. Nick-D (talk) 11:03, 20 June 2015 (UTC)
  • Thanks, Nick. Regards, Peacemaker67 (crack... thump) 02:28, 22 June 2015 (UTC)

• Great article, perhaps editors who were once involved in other conflicts could make that kind of interviews.--Catlemur (talk) 21:16, 20 June 2015 (UTC)

• This is one of the best articles I've ever seen on The Signpost. If not the best. --Dweller (talk) 10:52, 24 June 2015 (UTC)

• Thanks Dweller, Ed deserves all of the credit. He was the one that came up with the idea and approached me, and had to navigate the WMF politics to get it published. Regards, Peacemaker67 (crack... thump) 10:59, 24 June 2015 (UTC)
• Thanks, Dweller. It means a lot! Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 22:33, 25 June 2015 (UTC)

• Great article. Very insightful. Oz Cro (talk) 15:21, 30 September 2015 (UTC)

Clandestine work with the KSK and others on location there was psychological hell. Thanks for sharing your experiences...they mirror many who served there. --Obenritter (talk) 08:19, 12 October 2015 (UTC)

• Thank you for covering our Sunshine Sachs paid editing piece. An additional note -- this morning, the firm identified three additional accounts that have engaged in paid editing on behalf of their clients. (More coverage forthcoming on our blog.) -Pete (talk) 00:06, 20 June 2015 (UTC)

Well done, Pete. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 03:25, 22 June 2015 (UTC)

• Regarding Fabrice Florin's departure from the WMF: his stewardship of the Wikimedia blog is only his most recent role; before that, he was product manager for the notifications feature ("Echo") and the Media Viewer, among (I believe) a number of other products. -Pete (talk) 00:06, 20 June 2015 (UTC)

"One of our challenges is that since most articles should be GAs before they're FAs, the huge queue at GAN…" – I respectfully disagree. I haven't kept any reliable statistics, but it seems to me that most of the FACs I have had anything to do with as nominator or reviewer are B class, peer reviewed and taken straight to FAC. I don't think it is axiomatic that "most articles should be GAs before they're FAs". Indeed, if the techie wizards can run an analysis, I'd risk a modest bet that most FAs have never been GAs. (Perfectly willing to nibble a bit off my hat if shown to be wrong on the stats.) Tim riley talk 21:56, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

I am discouraged from reviewing GAs and participating in the GA project by two things. First, some people nominate GAs that are not *nearly* B class. What a huge waste of reviewers' time. Secondly, some people nominate articles for GA that they have never been involved in editing, and/or when they do not intend to do the research involved in editing the article to satisfy the GA reviewer. What's that about? I suggest that the first thing to do is to require that when people nominate GA articles, they must state that: (1) after reading the GA criteria carefully, they believe that the article satisfies all the GA criteria; and (2) they personally intend to do research and put in whatever work is necessary to satisfy the GA reviewer and elevate the article to GA quality. That would greatly reduce the backlog and let reviewers concentrate on articles that have a reasonable chance of promotion. -- Ssilvers (talk) 22:25, 22 June 2015 (UTC)

@Tim riley:: Of the 4,540 Featured Articles (67%), 3,056 were Good Articles, while only 1,484 (33%) were not. Gary, George and Matt would like you to whip up a delicious dish using your headgear as the key ingredient. Your time starts - now! Hawkeye7 (talk) 22:39, 23 June 2015 (UTC)

Fortunately my grandmother was apprenticed to a milliner and got into trouble for putting real fruit on some of the hats. I shall follow grannie's recipe. Tim riley talk 22:44, 23 June 2015 (UTC)

I took two articles to GA status: Asteroids (video game) and The Downward Spiral. Asteroids was a Start-class one before its GAN review, but Downward Spiral was categorized B-class before receiving promotion to GA one year ago. I was not involved in 1007D's failed GAN attempt at the latter article because I did not create my only Wikipedia account (Mr. Gonna Change My Name Forever) until 2013, and before 2013 I never edited Wikipedia. Since June 16, 2015, "Mr. Gonna Change My Name Forever" is now "Gixce93". }I6ixce93IxI{ 20:43, 25 June 2015 (UTC)

I hope someone is addressing the user experience flaws in the current new VE features, prior to rolling it out. So many extra steps now for basic citations with the new "automatic citation" feature. New editors will not notice the issues since the system is producing this data and most likely this will go unnoticed. Jooojay (talk) 09:34, 20 June 2015 (UTC)

Hi Jooojay, yes, it's a little different now that the mw:Citoid service is available to automatically fill in citation templates for you. It used to take two clicks to get to that place (one on the 'Cite' menu, one on the Basic item), and now it takes three (one on the 'Cite' button, one on the 'Manual' tab, and one on the Basic item). Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:04, 20 June 2015 (UTC)

Whatamidoing (WMF) yes, I get that two clicks was the goal. But unfortunately the reality of editing with this new automatic VE citation tool now has proven it does not meet it's goal, some major design issues. I have used this tool many times only to find that it never ends at only two clicks because websites are not parsing data in a way that is compatible with this tool and I have to now do four clicks and carefully check everything to properly cite. Designing new tools needs to also address all types of UX issues including tool failures, this tool definitely needs some more work! Jooojay (talk) 23:09, 20 June 2015 (UTC)

Maybe we're talking about different things. The "Basic" citation still exists and hasn't changed. ("Basic" is a free-form citation field; it was the last item before Re-use in the old menu.) The only change for "Basic" is to its location, which now requires three clicks to reach instead of two. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 01:10, 21 June 2015 (UTC)

I am specifically talking about the mw:Citoid service, it is not working as it should. Jooojay (talk) 02:44, 21 June 2015 (UTC)

@Jooojay: - If you're hoping for a process where one click starts the Citoid citation process, and then, after pasting a URL, a final click completes the process, then yes, that's not how VE works, and it's never going to work that way. Citoid depends on the Zotero translation server; lesser-used sources are likely to lack Zotero translations. In those cases, the "automatic" citation process is likely to generate, at most, a page title and an accessdate. So the standard citation-generating process must include an editing step, to review which parameters of the cite were correctly created, and which are wrong or missing. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 20:55, 25 June 2015 (UTC)

• The June 17 pageview statistics at stats.grok.se/ did not compile. I have just noticed the June 17 Labs outage, but the underlying data seems to be uncorrupted. Please join the discussion at Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)#June_17_Labs_outage_effect_on_still_missing_June_17_pageview_stats if you can help us understand the issue. I am not watching this page.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 10:39, 30 June 2015 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2015-06-17/WikiProject report