Let's all go to Scunthorpe

[CrowsNest]

Hilarious Wikipedia fails due to the incompetent wielding of technological measures like edit filters and blacklists........

A prolific sock-puppeteer OfficialPankajPatidar evidently wants to create biographies Wikipedians don't want him to be creating. One of them is apparently Anna-Christina Schwartz (T-H-L). This hilariously led to much frustration and confusion on the part of Doncram, who wanted to create Alexander & Anna Schwartz Farm (T-H-L), in his quest to turn Wikipedia into a duplicate of the NRHP. Sadly he is a determined Wikipediot, who knows where to go when angered and confused. So we'll call this a half fail.

[AndyTheGrump]

I don't suppose you could provide evidence of 'frustration' and 'confusion'? Because from what I can see, Doncram found the title blacklisted, asked for help at AP:ANI, and got it all sorted, in under two hours.
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?ti ... =817774037

The title blacklisting generates false positives, certainly. As does most software given similar tasks. If you know of a way to implement such a thing in a manner that it neither ever generates false positive blocks nor permits titles that should be blocked, I suggest you patent it. Because given the nature of the problem, you are onto something that could feasibly earn you a fortune.

[Poetlister]

There's nothing about Scunthorpe (T-H-L) in either of the above posts.

[Renée Bagslint]

It's a meme, referring to the possibly mythical email filter that rejected an email referring to the Lncolnshire town because it contained the substring Corbett.

[Poetlister]

It's a meme, referring to the possibly mythical email filter that rejected an email referring to the Lncolnshire town because it contained the substring Corbett.

I see, like the (I believe genuine) net nanny that refused to allow schoolchildren to view an astronomy website discussing naked eye observing.

[Renée Bagslint]

I can well understand that, but don't see why Wikipedia should not allow itself to have an article about an Autralian art gallery, or a biography of the Dean of Students at University of Southern Maine, or a British bicycle athlete, or ...

[Johnny Au]

Don't forget about Panasonic's native Japanese name, a certain Austrian village, some Thai names, the number 30 in Roman numerals, and all sorts of false positives.

[CrowsNest]

I don't suppose you could provide evidence of 'frustration' and 'confusion'? Because from what I can see, Doncram found the title blacklisted, asked for help at AP:ANI, and got it all sorted, in under two hours.
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?ti ... =817774037

The title blacklisting generates false positives, certainly. As does most software given similar tasks. If you know of a way to implement such a thing in a manner that it neither ever generates false positive blocks nor permits titles that should be blocked, I suggest you patent it. Because given the nature of the problem, you are onto something that could feasibly earn you a fortune.

Evidence of confusion is right there in the ANI report. And if anyone knows Doncram, they know almost two hours of his time being wasted on something that takes him away from duplicating the NRHP in the wiki is going to make him frustrated and angry, especially given the fact that if the system had actually told him what the problem was, he most likely believes he has sufficient Wikipedia status to be trusted to override it himself, and not have to wait for an Admin to do it. But by all means, if you have evidence to the contrary, I'm all ears.

As for knowing how to ensure technological attempts to prevent that name (or likely variants) being created are effective, without preventing titles like the one Doncram wanted to create triggering false positives, I don't think I'd be due a fortune, indeed I don't think I'd even be pulling down an above average IT salary. It's grade school shit. What they did here shows that they weren't even considering the existence of false positives other than people with the same name (and that is enough of an issue to perhaps consider alternative measures, such as allowing creation but simply notify a mailing list for review after the event). Rank amateurism.

[AndyTheGrump]

...grade school shit...

Thank you for confirming your utter cluelessness.
Welcome to my ignore list.

[Renée Bagslint]

I don't think it's quite as easy as CN suggests, but workable filters can be and have been built. Unfortunately what no edit filter will ever be able to do is prevent someone from starting an article about Anna Schwartz the lingerie model while allowing them to start an article about Anna Schwartz the academic, Anna Schwartz the economist or Anna Schwartz the gallery owner -- at least, not just from the name alone.

[AndyTheGrump]

Workable filters have been built, certainly. Infallible ones haven't. I'm sure the Wikipedia article title filter could be improved, but criticising it for not being able to do something that no other filter can do either is just plain stupid.

[Renée Bagslint]

I think the OP was complaining that it was rather poor at doing something that it was supposed to do, namely to permit the creation of an article on a historic building that happened to contain part of the name of a particular lingerie model (for some reason a forbidden article topic) as a substring.

[AndyTheGrump]

Do you really think the filter knows anything about historic buildings? Or about the subject matter of a multitude of other potential articles that contain words matching similar words in previously-blocked article titles? Because without such knowledge (or a complete list of all acceptable article titles - good luck compiling that) any filter is always going to have to rely on some sort of pattern-matching, and accordingly will generate false positives or negatives.

[CrowsNest]

...grade school shit...

Thank you for confirming your utter cluelessness.

Welcome to my ignore list.

Thank you for proving all one has to do to get on your ignore list, is tell you something you apparently can't disprove or even compellingly dispute, but are nonetheless happy to denounce as complete cluelesssness. That truly is grade school shit. I literally give not one tiny little fuck about being ignored by people like you. Not worth my time is an understatement.

[mynameisnotdave]

...grade school shit...

Thank you for confirming your utter cluelessness.
Welcome to my ignore list.

I wish ignore lists extended to 'View Unread Posts', then I wouldn't have to see that Mister has rambled off with more tripe.

[CrowsNest]

I don't think it's quite as easy as CN suggests, but workable filters can be and have been built. Unfortunately what no edit filter will ever be able to do is prevent someone from starting an article about Anna Schwartz the lingerie model while allowing them to start an article about Anna Schwartz the academic, Anna Schwartz the economist or Anna Schwartz the gallery owner -- at least, not just from the name alone.

A grade schooler would probably find it quite easy to develop a filter that could do this, since Wikipedia has a standardised system of title disambiguation, the use of which would all seem to be necessary since the primary topic (gallery owner) has already been identified, and given the current issues it would seem a reasonable measure to move protect that page and any plausible non-disambiguated redirects. As such, it could make predetermined actions for any plausibly correct disambiguated title based on what is known about all the real world people with this name who are likely to be created, either legitimately or by a sock, while deferring any unrecognized ones for further inspection. It wouldn't be able to prevent someone creating an article whose title makes it seem like it's about a person it isn't, but if I had a solution to that particular vulnerability in Wikipedia, I really would be in line for a fortune.

[CrowsNest]

...grade school shit...

Thank you for confirming your utter cluelessness.
Welcome to my ignore list.

I wish ignore lists extended to 'View Unread Posts', then I wouldn't have to see that Mister has rambled off with more tripe.

I wish people would be blocked for failing to prove tripe is tripe, but we can't have get everything.

[AndyTheGrump]

I'm sure Crowsnest could whip up a tripe filter for you in no time.

[CrowsNest]

post_author=AndyTheGrump

I claim my million dollars.

[Ming]

Ming doesn't exactly find it pleasant to be able to categorize you, CrowsNest, but Ming does find a certain relief in being able to more clearly identify you as a member of a certain class of the sort of whiners and people with grudges who show up here. Doncram can't create an article due to a filter, raises the appropriate alarm, someone fixes things but not perfectly, he rings again, and the whole thing is over within a few hours. He's not the one who comes off sounding like someone from Notalwaysright.com; you do.

Ming hasn't been in the habit of mechanically ignoring people here, or else Ming would miss half if not more of the traffic, because sites like this one are full of people like you whose tiresome posts give some idea of why they aren't on the project anymore. But it would simplify matters if you were to own up to who it is exactly that you had a run-in with, and what your ideological ax-to-grind is (though I'm presuming it's medical quackery that you've pushed), so Ming could go to the back button more quickly when you start to run on about how you were treated badly.

[Renée Bagslint]

Do you really think the filter knows anything about historic buildings? Or about the subject matter of a multitude of other potential articles that contain words matching similar words in previously-blocked article titles? Because without such knowledge (or a complete list of all acceptable article titles - good luck compiling that) any filter is always going to have to rely on some sort of pattern-matching, and accordingly will generate false positives or negatives.

No, of course I don't. What it appears to have been intended to do, was to prevent a particular unwanted contributor from adding a particular unwanted contribution. It did that by a rather crude form of pattern matching on the title, which had the effect of blocking another quite different sort of contribution. In other words, this filter failed to do what was wanted. The error was in trying to achieve such a very precise effect by such a broad-brush and crude filter which was rather bviously likely to produce an unwanted number of false positives. And to pre-empt your next question, no, I'm not going to suggest how better it might have been achieved. I'm not the organisation with an eight-figure income, eight-figure reserves, hundreds of employees and tens of thousands of volunteers. Nor, indeed, am I under the impression that Wikipedia is an encyclopadia, nor that it's catastrophically dysfunctional and chaotic model can be fixed by tweaking a few bits of software. I'm the one saying this is the sort of thing you get when you try and do something as hard as this with a bunch of amateurs and layabouts.

[AndyTheGrump]

The thing is, there are really only two ways to approach the problem: 'crude pattern matching', and AI that 'understands' article titles enough to be able to distinguish article subjects in order to decide whether a new title relates to an existing blocked subject. And given the complexity of the task, I'd suggest it would be a humongous waste of money for the WMF to try to create the latter. Instead, they have a filter that sometimes fails, and a means to override it when it does. Could they do better, given more effort? Certainly. Would it be a wise use of resources to do so, given the more fundamental problems with the project? Probably not, in my opinion. But maybe that's because I don't see everything that Wikipedia/the WMF does in black and white, and assume that because they make a mess of some things (many things), everything they do is automatically evidence of incompetence. Evidently you do - which is why your comments, like CrowsNests, seem to add little to this discussion.

[CrowsNest]

Ming hasn't been in the habit of mechanically ignoring people here, or else Ming would miss half if not more of the traffic, because sites like this one are full of people like you whose tiresome posts give some idea of why they aren't on the project anymore. But it would simplify matters if you were to own up to who it is exactly that you had a run-in with, and what your ideological ax-to-grind is (though I'm presuming it's medical quackery that you've pushed), so Ming could go to the back button more quickly when you start to run on about how you were treated badly.

Ming obviously doesn't have the first fucking clue who I am or what motivates me, so Ming should probably either shut the fuck up, or at least make some effort to hold my interest to the point I care whether he reads my posts. At this point, Ming's reaction to this thread reads like someone who is here to cheerlead for Wikipedia, and Ming probably doesn't want that reputation at all, from what I know of Ming.

[CrowsNest]

<snip>

You've added nothing so far. This has nothing to do with the WMF. This fuck up is entirely of the Wikipediots own making, namely that their efforts to use crude filters are so half-assed, so lazy, they aren't even maximising the potential of that limited technology to avoid easily predictable false positives. The very idea that the next level here is to build an AI, is frankly laughable.

[Renée Bagslint]

If it is deemed necessary to prevent articles being added on some particular subject -- an odd requirement on an encyclopaedia that prides itself on not being censored -- then having random people use crude tools to do it ineffectively is evidently not working very well, especially since there seems to be no reason to expect that the same sort of mistakes will be made the next time something like this is deemed necessary. Pointing out that it could be have been done better by an organisation with a high eight-figure income getting a grip and thinking about the tools needed to do this more effectively seems to me a proposal that Mr Grump for one had not considered and so is potentially a contribution to the discussion. But Mr Grump seems allergic to criticism of the WMF.

[CrowsNest]

With the money and resources WMF has, they could make Wikipedia better in every conceivable way. It's not going to happen, not for this or any other content related issue which has no conceivable legal implication, so bringing it up is of no relevance to threads like this. The issue here is not the WMF, it is their incompetent partners, the volunteers, whose deficiencies as individuals and as a group are so obvious, even proponents of Intelligent Design can spot them, as seen in the Everipedia/Sanger thread. So it is quite certain that grade school coders will be laughing their asses off at Andy's contributions so far. He is part of the problem, both for his evident lack of technical knowledge, in addition to his awful table manners. Let's not give him an easy pass by allowing him to be able to hand this problem off to the WMF and their inability to produce AIs to do stuff grade schoolers could be doing.

[Renée Bagslint]

The relevance is that accumulating more and more evidence of things the WMF could and should be doing is ammunition for trying to disenchant the donors and the content contributors by spreading the message that the WMF is letting them down, and mis-spending the money, in so many different ways.

[CrowsNest]

The relevance is that accumulating more and more evidence of things the WMF could and should be doing is ammunition for trying to disenchant the donors and the content contributors by spreading the message that the WMF is letting them down, and mis-spending the money, in so many different ways.

Donors don't give a tiny rat's ass, they barely know the difference between the WMF and Wikipedia, while the contributors already know the WMF isn't focussed on their needs., they need no extra reminders of what they could have won. You are on a fool's errand.

[Renée Bagslint]

If they don't know these things, then perhaps someone should tell them. If only there were a site or blog that existed to shine the light of scrutiny into the dark crevices of Wikipedia and its related projects; to examine the corruption there, along with its structural flaws; and to inoculate the unsuspecting public against the torrent of misinformation, defamation, and general nonsense that issues forth from one of the world’s most frequently visited websites, the “encyclopedia that anyone can edit.”

[Disgruntled haddock]

CrowsNest, what is your intent here? There is little (if any) use in complaining about Doncram going to WP:AN to fix a routine problem. That's literally why the noticeboard exists. Maybe there is a discussion to be had about blacklists, but so far it seems to have been lost in a sea of hyperboles and off-topic tangents about funding the WMF. This site isn't a competition to see who can complain about the WMF with the purplest prose. If that's your endgame, then I think you'll find that more and more people will be adding you to their ignore lists.

[Renée Bagslint]

Perhaps his intent is to point out an instance of blithering incompetence from which it may be possible to derive useful lessons about the systemic incompetence and corruption in the WMF and its projects? You know, like it says on the front page of the site?

[AndyTheGrump]

Perhaps his intent is to point out an instance of blithering incompetence from which it may be possible to derive useful lessons about the systemic incompetence and corruption in the WMF and its projects? You know, like it says on the front page of the site?

So far, nobody has provided any evidence of 'blithering incompetence' in regard to the title block filter. It isn't perfect, obviously, but I've seen far worse software doing similar jobs elsewhere. If people want to obsess about such trivia, fine. They shouldn't however expect others to give any credence to their assertions that Doncram having to make a couple of posts to WP:ANI is proof that the whole edifice is crumbling at the foundations. If they want to demonstrate that, they need to find more convincing proof than 'the title filter bothers Doncram a bit', if for no other reason than even if it bothered Doncram enough for him to engage in a full-blown-Wikipedia-rage-quit, the end result would simply be one less contributor. As to whether this would be a net gain or loss to the project, I'll refrain from commenting...

[CrowsNest]

CrowsNest, what is your intent here?

Do me a favour and actually familiarise yourself with what I've said, maybe then you can tell me what's what, or question my motives.

[CrowsNest]

Donors don't read this site. That much should be obvious to anyone who does. I will repeat, this is a fool's errand.

[CrowsNest]

Perhaps his intent is to point out an instance of blithering incompetence from which it may be possible to derive useful lessons about the systemic incompetence and corruption in the WMF and its projects? You know, like it says on the front page of the site?

My intent was clearly stated....to highlight....

Hilarious Wikipedia fails due to the incompetent wielding of technological measures like edit filters and blacklists........

Your insistence on dragging the WMF into this is completely irrelevant, since they have absolutely fuck all to do with this level of the Matrix. I would appreciate it if you stopped, if only to help people like Disgruntled haddock to figure out wtf is going on.

[CrowsNest]

Perhaps his intent is to point out an instance of blithering incompetence from which it may be possible to derive useful lessons about the systemic incompetence and corruption in the WMF and its projects? You know, like it says on the front page of the site?

So far, nobody has provided any evidence of 'blithering incompetence' in regard to the title block filter. It isn't perfect, obviously, but I've seen far worse software doing similar jobs elsewhere. If people want to obsess about such trivia, fine. They shouldn't however expect others to give any credence to their assertions that Doncram having to make a couple of posts to WP:ANI is proof that the whole edifice is crumbling at the foundations. If they want to demonstrate that, they need to find more convincing proof than 'the title filter bothers Doncram a bit', if for no other reason than even if it bothered Doncram enough for him to engage in a full-blown-Wikipedia-rage-quit, the end result would simply be one less contributor. As to whether this would be a net gain or loss to the project, I'll refrain from commenting...

Look, you make up whatever shit you like, but the contents of this thread will not change because of it. I never said this incident was proof of anything but the fact Wikipediots are incompetent fools, and I have shown quite easily that a grade schooler could do a better job.

[Disgruntled haddock]

Welcome to my ignore list

[CrowsNest]

Welcome to my ignore list

Am I honestly supposed to care? Why would I be bothered that you're not reading my posts? You can't even tell the difference between me and Renee, so what use would your opinion be to me?

[Zoloft]

We don't have to be disagreeable to disagree.

I think we've gone nowhere with this topic, so I'm locking it. I'm not alone in this belief.