User talk:Jimbo Wales

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Ethical Paid Editing Idea

Main Concerns About Paid Editing (please add more if I left some out)

1. Ethical treatment of content
2. Paid advocacy
3. Paid sock/meat puppeting
4. Commercialized atmosphere on Wikipedia

Ideas for addessing those concerns

Do you think a uniform and templated userbox that is only allowed on the User Page that describes the editor in third person, a brief history, along with suggested contact information might be a useful solution? For example:

Paid Editor Notice for Golding Bird Ethical Disclosure: This editor is interested in paid editing opportunities. The editor's contribution history includes: 5 Featured Articles, 2 Good articles, and the creation of 14 new articles. This editor also participates in the WikiProject Medicine/Nephrology task force. You may contact this editor via email (click here). The notice above does not constitute endorsement of this editor by Wikipedia or the Wikimedia Foundation. All edits and content added or removed from Wikipedia shall be done in a ethical manner and in compliance with the Neutral Point of View policy. Advocacy or promotional material is forbidden.

Paid Editor Notice for Golding Bird Ethical Disclosure: This editor has confirmed their current status as an employee of "Rube Goldberg Machines, Inc." as commisioned for the purpose of editing on Wikpedia. The editor's contribution history includes: 5 Featured Articles, 2 Good articles, and the creation of 14 new articles. This editor also participates in the WikiProject Medicine/Nephrology task force. You may contact this editor via email (click here). The notice above does not constitute endorsement of this editor by Wikipedia or the Wikimedia Foundation. All edits and content added or removed from Wikipedia shall be done in a ethical manner and in compliance with the Neutral Point of View policy. Advocacy or promotional material is forbidden.

Would a userbox formatted with these conditions seem to meet people's concerns and if strictly limited to such userboxes, encourage a modest tone and neutral approach to an editor promoting their own skill in editing? Does this just create another problem to solve? Ideas? Comments? -- Avanu (talk) 01:28, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

Throwing userboxes at the problem is not going to change the essential nature of paid editing. Paid editing is a business with a customer. The customer is the entity that is paying for the editing. To be successful, a good paid editor has to have a set of happy customers. No amount of userboxes is going to change the fact that the needs of the client come ahead of the needs of wikipedia's policies and guidelines. Userboxes with words like "ethical" and "compliance" will have about as much effect as they do on Wall Street. --regentspark (comment) 01:41, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

The problem with that stance is that it assumes an adversarial relationship between wikipedia and a paid editor. That the two would have contradictory objectives. Now in some cases, particularly paid advocacy, this will undoubtably exist. But it doesn't have to. There are undoubtably companies, schools, and even wealthy individuals whose objective would simply be to improve the Encyclopedia. Now they might be interested in doing so in certain silos, but I have zero doubt that given the opportunity, there are people who will be paid who can do so objectively within the confines of wiki-policy.---Balloonman ^{Poppa Balloon} 01:54, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

You're right that there are benefits to advocate editors (paid or unpaid) and that the relationship doesn't have to be adversarial. But, assuming that paid editors and unpaid editors will act in the same way is naive (with apologies). Money has its own logic and an unfortunate reality of life is that we humans like to get our hands on as much of it as possible. Every paid editor will act in a way that is beneficial to the client but not necessarily to wikipedia because those repeat consulting contracts will only come from happy clients. An "ethical" paid editor can, for example, keep within policies through the sin of omission rather than that of commission or by actively pushing policies at the margins, or by simply following a 'you scratch my back and I'll scratch your back' policy with other paid editors. Unethical paid editors will simply delete negative information and leave it to the community to detect and add it back in again. We can't just assume that a userbox and a disclosure or two is going to make this conflict of interest go away. Instead, we need to think about how to make this work in a way that allows paid editing to be done in the open but with minimal damage to the free spirited ethos that we have here. Jimbo's suggestion of restricting paid editors to the talk page is one such idea since every edit will then be appropriately whetted. That doesn't mean that underhand paid editing will disappear but that we'll have the tools, and the right, to deal with it if it is detected. --regentspark (comment) 02:18, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

This looks like a very useful suggestion, per reasons expressed here. Also, because per COI there should be some way of indicating an editor accepts pay. There should also be a place, in the userbox or somewhere, where an editor can share a list of articles which they have been/are being paid to edit, as shown, since this is the information most relevant to the community. But the contact link may be too much. B^e——C_ritical 02:50, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

It would be rather easy to put in a pull down list with a show link. We can do that manually with our current coding anyways. Silverseren^C 02:57, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

Paid editors should be restricted to the talkpages. They can argue their case and if they are good at that they will get their edits included. But the hard part is changing the policy to reflect any choice we as editors make. It's been a while since I registered but I would assume that during the registration process there would be a number of direct questions all in regards to paid editing and advocacy to filter out those that are specifically being paid to edit by a specific company and there will probably need to be some way to discourage the misuse to both the editor and the company hiring, perhaps even a task force and a notice board to deal directly with reporting specific behavior similar to 3RR. I agree with RegentsPark however, we need the tools to deal with it and I don't see a box being the answer. I think Wikipedia may have to add a new user lever like "users", "Autoconfirmed Users" and now perhaps - "Confirmedpaid users". Perhaps this is something that only the company itself would be able to register for as the "payer for" and not allow the individual to do. In fact this would allow the company to even make a direct donation to the Wikimedia Foundation and I think rightly so.--Amadscientist (talk) 03:36, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

FYI: I changed the style of the box just a little bit, changed the icon also. -- Avanu (talk) 03:49, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

"This editor is interested in paid editing opportunities" is not a disclaimer...its a classified ad. It sounds like a request becuase you worded it as a simple "interest". Something you would see on a userbox, but being paid is a "professional" decision and therefore the disclaimer would be more along the lines of "This editor has been confirmed as an employee of "Company name" as commisioned for the purpose of editing on Wikpedia".--Amadscientist (talk) 05:30, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

I would assume that it might say "interested" if you are not being paid by anyone yet, and your "confirmed" text or something if they were actually being paid. -- Avanu (talk) 05:35, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

That would not be allowed as promotional in itself. Are you serious...? You want people to declare they are just INTERESTED in getting paid to edit? And you think that will be acceptable?--Amadscientist (talk) 05:43, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

I don't particularly care or want any specific outcome, but the idea that they might declare such an intent seems to be one of the possibilities being discussed, so I made that example to demonstrate such a possibility. -- Avanu (talk) 05:47, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

By the way, the fictional company named above, Rube Goldberg Machines, Inc., has a fantastic fictional motto: "Accomplishing simple things through complex means since 1914." I'd love to see how Wikipedia might adopt some of Rube's fantastical approaches to getting a task done. Seemed to fit considering how the debate on this has gone so far. Hope you don't mind me interjecting a bit a lame humor. :) -- Avanu (talk) 06:12, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

It is probable that paid editors will eventually be made to declare such. I just do not believe an infobox is the answer as it only appears on the user page. The user should also be a seperate user level and be green linked like a red linked user with no userpage and be limited to discussion on the talk page.--Amadscientist (talk) 06:19, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

I'm not sure I'm completely following you. My thought was that this would be front and center on their User page (especially if they ARE being paid). I'm not quite following the 'separate user level' comment and the red link, green link part. -- 06:24, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

He's essentially saying that we should make paid editors a different class of user in terms of actual abilities with their accounts and that are exhibited by green usernames, thus marking them forever as a lower class of editor on Wikipedia. Silverseren^C 06:35, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

Sounds good to me. Surely each company time edit made by a paid editor can be marked as such in some way so that it can recieve extra scrutiny for NPOV. Like edits marked minor (m) paid editors' edits could be marked with p, linking to the wikipedia's policy page on paid editing. Their paid editing should be part of a COI statement, with no solicitation for email enquiries. SkyMachine ⁽⁺⁺⁾ 06:39, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

Then we need to do that for everyone else who has a COI and add a little "c" next to their edits. Since everyone has a COI with only a very small amount of exceptions, we should probably take the necessary steps to just have the little c implemented for all user accounts. Silverseren^C 07:15, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

The trouble is that money talks just about louder than anything else, even pride & ethics. Only reputation is as powerful an influence on our behaviour, which is why there is a market for paid editing in the first place. SkyMachine ⁽⁺⁺⁾ 07:29, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

The thing is, I don't agree with that. If you are being paid, you are being paid to get your content onto Wikipedia and to make sure the content stays there. It being deleted kinda ruins the point and just upsets the client. Therefore, the best way to make sure the content stays is to actually follow the rules. Thus, paid editors are much more likely to follow the rules of Wikipedia than other people who have other kinds of COI are. The zealous fan only cares about getting their way in an article and don't care if the content is removed, they'll just put it back in. And it's the zealous fans that turn into the sockpuppeteers. Silverseren^C 07:34, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

While it is great if professionals can follow the rules, it is even greater if they can follow an even more thorough rule set designed to mitigate foreseen problematic ethical dilemmas they may face. If a p marked edit is deleted for poor reasons it can be restored by pointing out the poor reason and outlining good reasons to keep it. SkyMachine ⁽⁺⁺⁾ 07:50, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

What would be the point of marking content that is often not an issue? We would be much better off marking users who are actually a problem to the encyclopedia, like most of the users who edit in the Arbcom sanctioned areas. Silverseren^C 07:53, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

People are more likely to act ethically if under social pressure to do so and if they are likely to be found out if they have done wrong. They are more likely to act unethically if it is unlikely their behaviour will be discovered for what it is. Marking the edits fulfils this transparency role. SkyMachine ⁽⁺⁺⁾ 08:08, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

The thing is, you're relying on people to state that they are paid editors. And that admission, in itself, would imply acting ethically and would, thus, be entirely useless for stopping or deterring the unethical ones. It would be much easier to just stick with the current process we have, which is talk page usage, though paid editors are allowed to make uncontroversial edits, such as grammar fixes. Silverseren^C 08:17, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

Sorry, not happening. No talk page restriction, no badge of shame. That's not the policy, nor is it the practice, nor likely to be. Not that if you can't even get an ad off Cla's page, you are very unlikely to get people to go along with your proposition that at present paid editors are restricted to talk pages.--Wehwalt (talk) 08:24, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

I don't like the idea of pre-making the templates to cite certain statistics. The FA game can be tough enough already without making it a tangible financial asset of paid editors according to an enforced rating scheme. I think that there's already a certain amount of cliquishness in terms of people working together to get certain sorts of articles through, and if this sets in ... it's going to be a very political "you scratch my back I scratch yours" sort of process for groups of paid editors looking to increase their banner stats. This only makes it worse. There's a real risk that the FA status, and therefore, Main Page content, will become more or less property of paid editing groups, guarded jealously. Wnt (talk) 07:45, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

It seems like a good idea to get paid editors on board with a branding kind of concept - wearing a scarlett letter, if you will, that indicates exactly what they are. Some may like it, some may not - the whole point is to get paid editors on board with our culture and our policies. I don't think the "marking all edits with a p" is at all feasible or even likely, so there's no point in talking about that. At least there would be a category attached to the template which would list all paid editors as such.-Stevertigo (t | c) 08:30, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

As I said, badge of shame. Nonstarter. What I think you are not getting is that there's really no incentive for paid editors to compromise and allow restrictions when the Cla68 userpage dramah has shown the paid editing police have no guns.--Wehwalt (talk) 08:39, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

Though it would admittedly be amusing to see the crucifixion Wikipedia would get in the media for fabricating its own Star of David. Silverseren^C 08:51, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

mixing your metaphors there. SkyMachine ⁽⁺⁺⁾ 09:01, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

Somewhat purposefully. Silverseren^C 09:10, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

"You shall not press down upon the brow of editors this crown of thorns; you shall not crucify Wikipedia upon a cross of gold." That's self promotion, that is. Advertising.--Wehwalt (talk) 09:10, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

Marking the Nazis might be prudent though, so that you can know them when you see them. As for the media you don't really need to gift them a headline, they can always just go and make one up. SkyMachine ⁽⁺⁺⁾ 09:32, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

Let me be clear on this. Anyone making the argument that requiring disclosure of paid advocacy is somehow equivalent to the racist practices of the Nazi Germans cannot ever be taken seriously. Such argumentation is a disgusting insult to people who have real concerns about this issue. I think more than anything else, this kind of desperate rhetoric shows how weak the support is, and the total lack of coherent arguments in favor of allowing paid advocacy.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 11:54, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

Jimbo, you can't disallow paid editing any more than the government can disallow drugs or file sharing. The choice is to let the community know who's a paid editor, or to disallow such knowledge. B^e——C_ritical 13:40, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

I never ever said that requiring disclosure is the same, I fully support disclosure. I said that marking them in some way (adding a p to their edits in this case) and making them use a user account that has less actual priviledges than a normal account is similar to the practices of a badge of shame like the yellow badge. Quite a bit of difference there. Silverseren^C 14:00, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

As I say, this is an absolutely morallly reprehensible statement - disgusting. You should be ashamed, and you are hereby formally invited to stay off my talk page until you apologize.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 18:20, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

About yellow badge: Anyone unaware, of what Jimbo is noting, should read the 2 articles "Yellow badge" and "Yellow triangle" and consider the prior analogy. -Wikid77 23:36, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

Quite a bit. Anyway, it's not going to happen. Considering the level of revulsion toward paid editing, very few paid editors, if rational, would declare themselves. But disallowing such a declaration by the few honest ones (who should be congratulated) is just burying the communal head in the sand. B^e——C_ritical 14:07, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

It wouldn't be a badge of shame but a badge of begrudging tolerance. We would rather they not be here, but they are, and you can not control them if they remain underground. Create a realm of tolerance where they declare their COI in a highly visable way so that they are under scrutiny of the community to ensure proper professional ethics and core wiki policies are maintained. There needn't be any tolerance for paid editors outside this monitored realm, the rules are the rules. SkyMachine ⁽⁺⁺⁾ 15:47, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

And they are somehow breaking some ephemeral, non-existent rule by merely existing, I presume? Silverseren^C 16:02, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

I think that the idea of engaging constructively with paid editors should be explored further, but carefully. For example, as I said above, I'm concerned about paid editors accumulating FA count as a tangible asset. That said, there are tangible assets paid editors could accumulate that would not be so disruptive - i.e., a portfolio of the actual paid editing work that they've done. Since a company presumably is less interested in the ability of an editor to work on an easily featured topic than on his ability to do the sort of paid work they're hiring him for, I think a portfolio would make a better asset, and it happens to have the advantage that it doesn't require the paid editor to try to win games that were meant to be good-natured competititons among volunteer editors. Wnt (talk) 16:18, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

My concern is that this is being seen in terms of the editor and not the company using cold, hard cash to WRITE any information into a Wikipedia article. Not just influence or advocate NPOV. This issue has brought up a few other issues such a COI, advocacy, blocking policy and implementation as well as POV, OR, and synthesis concerns etc.. I can't help but wonder if this is REALLY NOT about editors alone and that we are not addressing the other half of the situation. The Company. Right now we only have a discussion of concerns but I see few major problems. The barbarians are not at the gates...the gates are open as they have always been and any control of content has been through the application of policy, guidelines and any applicable brightline rules. Clearly there are some who want some kind of change to policy but we need to discuss the current policy as written and how, or if it is a roadbloack at all to advancing the discussion so that concerns can be addressed. We have paid editors. We need to define as a community what a confirmed paid editor is. We may or may nor need to adjust the prose in a particular guideline but the question of whether a fundamental change such as "Greenlinking" JUST the user name. That wouldn't mark their contribution IF the community agreed that confirmed paid editors are restricted to arguing their cases on the talk page. Actual information going into the article would be done as a reguest. Greenlinked users would essentualy be blocked from contributions to article space, etc. and also limited or excluded from policy consensus. Now this is just the editor as I said, perhaps the suggestion of even allowing a company to register with Wikipedia may be controversial and I am not sure if it could even be implimented, but yes....the Company WOULD have to register themselves AND the editor they are paying for and individual editors would NOT be allowed to register themselves to avoid BLP issues of false claims of payment from any named company that isn't doing so. If this sort of thing (or something similar) could be implemented with current policy it could be a discouragement to companies to do this without full disclosure, by editing in the open as restricted by whatever community consensus.--Amadscientist (talk) 18:34, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

I can see the point if the point is cash paid to "manage" a WP article and delete unfavorable information. But let's say the Baseball Hall of Fame, concerned at how few HOFers have FA, decides to hire a noted FA writer with experience in sports articles to get 5 HOFers to FA for, say, $10,000. Problem with that? What if they are called HOF Wikipedian in residence and get to go to Cooperstown for their annual baseball history conference in May and get a photo pass for the big ceremony in August? What if they have to repay any portion of the salary, oh, let's call it stipend, that they fall short on? Short of a bright line no cash for editing nohow (and, I think, that fortress has fallen), the endless nuances of a situation makes it impossible to draw a bright line. The editor is certainly entitled to trumpet it on his userpage, and perhaps to link to stories. In the final analysis, I think people will avoid or evade any restrictions on paid editing or the advertisement thereof, and we may as well accept it's going to happen and start working on managing the very real effects that will have on Wikipedia.--Wehwalt (talk) 10:09, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

You speak of writing to "get to FA" as if it were purely a quality issue, but I think there is a lot of politics involved. Long, highly encyclopedic topics on broad scientific issues tend to fail because there is always something to add or argue about. What succeeded, for a long time, were articles about specific video games, usually related in some way to a game about to be released on the market. The argument being that because every last scrap of data possibly available about the game had been wrung from the industry magazines and game designers' comments (playing it, that is - Wikipedia never expects people to understand how to make or market one), the article was comprehensive. It got to the point where video games were one of the major categories of Wikipedia features. During all this time, editors who don't otherwise believe in the Easter Bunny or the Tooth Fairy were entirely willing to believe that these were being written by devoted fans. Now, you can say that the video game articles really were Wikipedia's best work, but I don't believe it - I think the goalposts were moved to make them FA quality, and I think the same will happen whenever people are paid to bring things to FA. But what really makes me wonder is --- anyone see video game articles featured on the front page recently? What happened to all those "fans"? Wnt (talk) 15:05, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

I don't disagree with you which is why I will not tread that path until it is worn smooth by the slippers of other pilgrims.--Wehwalt (talk) 16:14, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

@Jimbo, saying that one editor going Godwin means all editors advocating the same viewpoint have weak arguments is itself quite weak. If support was as weak as you seem to indicate, wouldn't Wikipedia_talk:User_pages#Request_for_comment_-_Advertising_on_user_pages have snow closed by now? Nobody Ent 20:16, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

If I may butt in, I'd say I can't decide which is sillier, pretending that paid editing does not exist on wikipedia, or punishing the tiny portion of paid editors who want to be open and honest about it.

Is the objective here to make sure all paid editing is hidden away and hard to identify by discouraging integrity ?

Personally I'd say give them a break, I'd certainly prefer someone who says 'hey I'm a paid editor, you should check WP:COI, you should check my POV, you should check this and this and this,' rather than the sneaky subversive sockmasters who cause no end of grief to so many and make editing and using an article talkpage such a headache. But hey, let's all escape to fairyland where paid editing doesn't exist, it's such a lovely place and going through our day to day activities on wikipedia in a delusional state is going to be easier somehow ? Penyulap ☏ 02:32, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

MyWikiPro

Since I know someone is going to make a section here at some point, I might as well be the one to do it. I think we can firmly say that MyWikiPro is an example of how not to do paid editing. The setup of the site is very obviously designed to hide information so that we don't find out who it is or the clients. It is most definitely this sort of thing that we need to be discouraging, not the people who are open about their affiliations. I don't know if it's completely accurate, but it does appear that User:Bernie44 is the account in question. Not sure if he's a sockmaster or not. Considering the site says that it has the resources of a "confirmed Wikipedia contributor", I would have expected someone a bit more...not newish? Though I guess the idea was to be able to hide behind the scenes.

There's also a Wikipediocracy thread about this, which I will not link to here, per Jimbo's desires.

I will note though that, more or less, the subjects the account has been working on do appear to be notable. The user just doesn't seem to know how to format pages entirely proper yet or what references one is supposed to use.

I will also add that the retaliation AfD made on him seems kind of petty. Extremely petty, actually. But, whatever, not like I expected any less in that regard. Silverseren^C 06:49, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

On a separate note, can people please learn that if you add a non-descriptive tag to an article (like a NPOV or COI tag), you have to also explain on the talk page what exactly in the article violates NPOV. Otherwise, the tag is completely useless, because no one else knows what you're talking about. Just because you have a COI on a topic doesn't mean you can't write neutrally, which is why we have the Connected contributor template for talk pages. It's just annoying having to switch all of these out. Silverseren^C 09:04, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

I believe Jimbo has re-iterated his viewpoint ad naseum. If a person edits ethically and in line with the NPOV pillar/policy, then it doesn't matter if they are paid for that. If, however, they become an advocate, continually introduce promotional or biased content, and use unethical methods to prevent normal Wikipedia processes from occuring, they shouldn't be here, again regardless of whether they are paid, but if they are paid, it is that much worse. In the end it is about editor behavior, not where they get their paycheck from. -- Avanu (talk) 09:09, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

Agreed. If they had been open about all of this, it would have been fine. The articles they write are rather nice, like the Chicago Jewish Star. The issue here is that they were purposefully trying to go under the radar (more or less) on this and therein lies the problem. Of course, if they are up for doing this out in the open now, not that they have much of a choice, we can move on from this and they can keep contributing good content. I should probably go let them know about the Wikiproject. Silverseren^C 09:19, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Admin's Barnstar
	You're awesome man! Thanks for making this site! I love bad movies. I just love them. (talk) 23:30, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

two policies in conflict

At Wikipedia:Village pump (policy) #Fundamental problems with MOS:IDENTITY I've raised a concern that two important wikipedia guidelines: that we use the most common name found in secondary sources to determine an article title, and that we prefer titles that reflects the names that people and groups use for themselves. Current policy offers no clear way to determine how to handle a case where the most common name is not the name used by the person or group. So far I've seen this conflict arise in two articles on controversial subjects, Arab citizens of Israel, where it was resolved in favor of using the term preferred by the group, and Bradley Manning, where it appears that editors prefer the term used most commonly in the media (although there is some dispute over how Manning chooses to identify himself). I've proposed a solution to this inconsistency at the Village Pump and I would appreciate editor feedback. GabrielF (talk) 06:22, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

Global editor counts rise after 5 years

The other-language Wikipedia editor counts have been posted for March 2012, and the total active global Wikipedians was 81,986 active editors (>5 edits per month), rising slightly (+2%) for the first time in 5 years:

• 81,986 = 34,372 +4212 +4120 +6860 +4546 +5092 +2860 +1508 +1538 +1934 +1428 +456 +822 +652 +632 +618 +707 +360 +596 +770 +650 +546 +836 +293 +307 +284 +310 +284 +417 +161 +146 +258 +224 +110 +161 +159 +75 +156 +124 +59 +34 +62 +26 +74 +109 +95 +51 +96 +51 +62 +44 +28 +44 +80 +20 +25 +20 +51 +17 +67 +38 +73 +60 +26 +35 +14 +89 +31 +13 +26 +12 +11 +9 +4 +16 +2 +17 +14 +7 +4 +14 +5 +7 +9 +27 +19 +14 +1 +5 +5 +4 +7 +2 +8 +6 +7 +18 +3 +11 +14 +5 +7 +2 +13 +2 +15 +12 +6 +2 +4 +7 +9 +20 +7 +8 +8 +5 +3 +3 +6 +7 +3 +5 +4 +3 +3 +2 +2 +3 +3 +2 +11 +1 +5 +2 +6 +4 +8 +10 +16 +10 +5 +3 +3 +4 +7 +2 +42 +26 +1 +3 +35 +5 +3 +1 +11 +2 +3 +1 +3 +4 +5 +1 +6 +1 +1 +2 +2 +4 +2 +6 +3 +1 +3 +3 +3 +4 +4 +4 +2 +3 +2 +2 +2 +1 +2 +4 +2 +1 +1 +1 +3 +1 +3 +1 +2 +3 +1 +3 +2 +3 +1 +3 +6 +1 +2 +20 +1 +1 +5 +2 +2 +1 +7 +1 +2 +1 +2 +2 +2 +2 +1 +1 +1 +1 +1 +1 +2 +6 +1 +1 +2

Although March 2012 was the first springtime in 5 years for the global editor total of all-languages to exceed the previous year (March 2011), the past 12 months have shown solid strength which indicated that the trend for the year was to grow higher, rather than lose editors, as in the prior 4 years. While the editor counts for the English, German, and Swedish Wikpedia have been sluggish, the overall global increase came from growth in several other languages: Japanese, Chinese, Spanish, Korean, Italian, Armenian, Hebrew, etc. I will refrain from any humor about this strong support from worldwide editors, due to frustrations which some editors might still be experiencing. However, the increased active-editor count, as a wide-spread global trend, indicates that the world is writing Wikipedia, with a steady interest. -Wikid77 (talk) 06:48, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

RMS Titanic in Top 10 April articles

As expected, the pageviews of article "RMS Titanic (and related articles) were very high for April, with the centennial date centered on 15 April 2012. In fact, for several days during April 2012, the pageviews of "RMS Titanic" (Titanic-stats) even exceeded views of "Wiki" (which has been viewed 65,000-105,000 times every day). The high pageviews of RMS Titanic were similar for the other-language Wikipedias, with peaks on both 11/16 April, one day each after the anniversary of the departure and sinking, except in Spanish Wikipedia (es-Titanic-stats), where curiously, the peak pageviews included the exact day of the departure and sinking, rather than 1 day after, as in other languages. Anyway, this reader interest is a real tribute to all the dedicated work that numerous Wikipedians, in all languages, added during recent weeks, and the detailed coverage in various related articles was amazing. Meanwhile, all during April, the overall English Wikipedia readership was steady, with "Main_Page" viewed nearly 7.3 million times every day (Main-Page-stats), similar to the March 2012 readership. Hence, the elevated interest in RMS Titanic did not affect viewing of the enwiki Main_Page. Wikipedia continues to be a steady, general resource for a vast array of topics. -Wikid77 06:48, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

Just Had To ...

... post you personally, Mr. Wales, and THANK YOU for this incredible project known as Wikipedia.

In addition to my beloved and incredible stepdaughters (Beth and Somer :-), this project has (a) given me a reason to keep on living, (b) allowed me to create things that are WORTH passing on to future generations, and (c) made it possible for me to - in a weird way - "pay back" encyclopedias for "what they have done for me".

NOTE AS TO (C): My parents bought me a set of World Book Encyclopedias WHEN I WAS BORN, and let me access them constantly FROM BIRTH. Consequently, I was WAYYY ahead of my peers in reading skills and knowledge FROM DAY ONE, which gave me great self-esteem (and an ability to win a lot of bets - lol).

@#$%^& World Books would never let me edit them, though :-O So THANK YOU, SIR!

Your fan: Cliff (a/k/a "Uploadvirus") (talk) 07:47, 6 May 2012 (UTC)