Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2016-03-23/News and notes

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The de-sysop on Commons is very disturbing. It perhaps reveals the black hole the Foundation fell into when it started making global bans for secret reasons. For clarity the comment was a perhaps rather unhelpful comment in context by globally banned user Russavia on an attempted de-sysop. There were a number of users involved in removing and re-inserting the comment in what is known as an "edit war". One of them even taunted admins by using in their edit summary "Any user may remove content from a globally banned user and suffer no penalty for doing so." This goes to the heart of an issue that has never been resolved - should good contributions by banned users be allowed to stand? And at the same time there are many on Commons and elsewhere that have deep misgivings over the Russavia ban. Discussions even took place suggesting that we should reject permission release he had solicited from third parties.

The whole thing smacks of guilt-by-association, personal animus, and silencing techniques.

All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 13:20, 27 March 2016 (UTC).[reply]

It looks rather worse than that. I see a not-an-admin taunting an admin not to restore conversation including votes about an issue or the non-admin will have the admin blocked. So this is really a sort of Russian law, where it isn't safe to act against a vandal unless you know who he is and that he isn't well-connected. The worst part is the implication that Commons RfA policy isn't under community control (I commented about that on their Village Pump). Wnt (talk) 17:29, 28 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

"Limited resources"?

Year	Source	Revenue	Expenses	Asset rise	Total assets
2014/2015	[1]	$ 75,797,223	$ 52,596,782	$ 24,345,277	$ 77,820,298
2013/2014	[2]	$ 52,465,287	$ 45,900,745	$ 8,285,897	$ 53,475,021
2012/2013	[3]	$ 48,635,408	$ 35,704,796	$ 10,260,066	$ 45,189,124
2011/2012	[4]	$ 38,479,665	$ 29,260,652	$ 10,736,914	$ 34,929,058
2010/2011	[5]	$ 24,785,092	$ 17,889,794	$ 9,649,413	$ 24,192,144
2009/2010	[6]	$ 17,979,312	$ 10,266,793	$ 6,310,964	$ 14,542,731
2008/2009	[7]	$ 8,658,006	$ 5,617,236	$ 3,053,599	$ 8,231,767
2007/2008	[8]	$ 5,032,981	$ 3,540,724	$ 3,519,886	$ 5,178,168
2006/2007	[9]	$ 2,734,909	$ 2,077,843	$ 654,066	$ 1,658,282
2005/2006	[10]	$ 1,508,039	$ 791,907	$ 736,132	$ 1,004,216
2004/2005	[11]	$ 379,088	$ 177,670	$ 211,418	$ 268,084
2003/2004	[12]	$ 80,129	$ 23,463	$ 56,666	$ 56,666

  revenue
  expenses
  assets

Although I really don't see any evidence of "limited resources" preventing us from doing a first-class job of child protection, if indeed we don't have the resources to protect children we should immediately cancel all Wikimanias and most travel to free up more resources for what should be a higher priority. I'm just saying. --Guy Macon (talk) 22:44, 27 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

By the way, does anyone feel like making a new version of the bar chart above with the legend added so we don't have to tack it on the end every time? --Guy Macon (talk) 22:44, 27 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

And as I've learnt by being niggled by colour-blind readers, consider not both red and green next time. Tony (talk) 02:12, 28 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Also, please note that I have not expressed an opinion one way or the other about the issue Wnt brings up below; I am just commenting about an organization that is cash-rich and and spending more and more each year without really accomplishing much of anything crying "we would like to do more, but our resources are sooooooo limited!". This is stupid whether or not the "we would like to do more" bit is actually worth doing. --Guy Macon (talk) 19:16, 28 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]