Watch T.J. Miller consult a wikipediatrician

[tarantino]

This is great.

https://www.facebook.com/wikiwhat/video ... 719651405/

[Poetlister]

Wikipedia is a grand intellectual experiment being conducted by countless people across the globe ... But crowd-sourcing is not infallible ... so a new series on Facebook called Wiki What? tasks celebrities with editing their own Wikipedia pages.

http://www.avclub.com/watch-tj-miller-c ... 1800013660

[No Ledge]

This has been cited as the rationale for a requested move at Talk:T. J. Miller (T-H-L).

Note the accusations that the comedian and Wikipedia editor, Josh Gondelman (T-H-L) is a paid editor.

[Poetlister]

This has been cited as the rationale for a requested move at Talk:T. J. Miller (T-H-L).

Note the accusations that the comedian and Wikipedia editor, Josh Gondelman (T-H-L) is a paid editor.

This is funny. He can't be allowed to spell his own name in the way he chooses, the way it is spelt in all the available reliable sources, because it would violate WP:MOS. Talk about arrogance!

Accusations of being a paid editor are a modern version of the Salem witch hunts. Logically, under WP:BLP they should only be made against an identifiable individual if they can be reliably sourced.

[thekohser]

This has been cited as the rationale for a requested move at Talk:T. J. Miller (T-H-L).

Note the accusations that the comedian and Wikipedia editor, Josh Gondelman (T-H-L) is a paid editor.

I like how WMF employee Victor Grigas comes lurching onto the Talk page to announce that Miller appeared in a video online, when 70% of everything above Grigas' comment was about Miller's commentary in the video. I also like how Erika then lets Victor know, "Yes Victor. It is noted at the top of this talk page..."

Again, another example of Wikimedia Foundation employees who really don't know how to participate in a constructive way in their top money-making project.

[Midsize Jake]

Moderator's note: Two threads on this topic were merged, just for the sake of being tidy.

Hmm, this sort of thing presents them with a tricky problem, no? People can always lie about themselves and what they've done, so treating one of these videos as a "reliable source" is not necessarily a good idea for the WP folks... but at the same time, how else are people going to correct errors, other than by editing the articles themselves - which they all but forbid?

They can rewrite the article(s) to specify that the subject's claims differ from that of journalistic and other types of biographical sources, but if that works consistently, there will probably be a lot more of these videos put out there by subjects who are fed up with false info about themselves floating around. Or at least, what they consider to be false info...

It's too early to start saying "I told you so" based on this aspect of the problem, but an established BLP opt-out policy would give them cover for this sort of thing - "if you don't like the article we'll delete it for you, but if you don't want it deleted, it has to be our article, not yours." IMO most people would see that as a reasonable position, but as it stands now, a trend-wave of celebrity "My Wikipedia Page is Totally Wrong" videos will only make people that much less confident in WP's overall quality-control, and it also won't help with WMF fundraising or recruitment.

[Randy from Boise]

Moderator's note: Two threads on this topic were merged, just for the sake of being tidy.

Hmm, this sort of thing presents them with a tricky problem, no? People can always lie about themselves and what they've done, so treating one of these videos as a "reliable source" is not necessarily a good idea for the WP folks... but at the same time, how else are people going to correct errors, other than by editing the articles themselves - which they all but forbid?

They can rewrite the article(s) to specify that the subject's claims differ from that of journalistic and other types of biographical sources, but if that works consistently, there will probably be a lot more of these videos put out there by subjects who are fed up with false info about themselves floating around. Or at least, what they consider to be false info...

It's too early to start saying "I told you so" based on this aspect of the problem, but an established BLP opt-out policy would give them cover for this sort of thing - "if you don't like the article we'll delete it for you, but if you don't want it deleted, it has to be our article, not yours." IMO most people would see that as a reasonable position, but as it stands now, a trend-wave of celebrity "My Wikipedia Page is Totally Wrong" videos will only make people that much less confident in WP's overall quality-control, and it also won't help with WMF fundraising or recruitment.

This was fundamentally different than the metal banddudes doing "Wikipedia Fact and Fiction" in that it was a comedian and a subject being smartasses and editing a biography in real time. This sort of thing is going to be prone to leg-pulling and joke telling and is apt to be reverted out every time...

RfB

[Poetlister]

Hmm, this sort of thing presents them with a tricky problem, no? People can always lie about themselves and what they've done, so treating one of these videos as a "reliable source" is not necessarily a good idea for the WP folks.

Take that argument to its logical conclusion, and you could never use an autobiography or a published diary as a reliable source. Maybe even "authorised biographies", or biographies by close relatives, would be suspect.

Edit: Indeed, there is a Wikipedia content guideline discussing this. It talks about writing a Wikipedia article about yourself rather than using a published book, but the issues are not very different.

[Midsize Jake]

Take that argument to its logical conclusion, and you could never use an autobiography or a published diary as a reliable source. Maybe even "authorised biographies", or biographies by close relatives, would be suspect.

Is that the logical conclusion? I was thinking this would only apply to material in which the subject was directly responding to a Wikipedia article about himself/herself and saying it's wrong, whereas a formal autobiography probably wouldn't even contain such material at all, or if it did, only in passing.

Either way, autobiographical material is supposed to be covered in WP:BLPSELFPUB, and on reading that I don't see how (under the current version of rule, as of today) they could summarily exclude "Wikipediatrician" videos (and similar material) from consideration as "reliable sources" - if they did, it would look like they were doing so specifically because the person was criticizing Wikipedia(ns) for getting facts wrong. (Not that this has ever stopped them in the past, but with celebrities it's harder to get away with it, obviously.)

I guess what I'm saying is that they'd have to check each claim on each video and determine if the person is being honest and accurate, which is more work and hassle for them, but ultimately it's what they should do if they want to get things right. Maybe they could have a rule whereby if any one such claim is proven false, then the entire video could be dismissed as unreliable - that might save them some T&E, at least in individual cases.