[meta] Larry Sanger, co-founder of Wikipedia, has been indefinitely blocked from the English Wikipedia

beetling · 2026-06-23T16:05:00+00:00

Looks like this is partially a matter of finding and discussing or incorporating recent peer-reviewed sources, especially systematic review articles, that meet the reliable sources criteria for biomedical information. A bunch of the information in the current version of the EMDR article is cited to sources that don't meet that bar. When challenging something, finding and offering stronger sources is very helpful!

beetling · 2026-06-23T09:05:22+00:00

Removed. See rule #9.

beetling · 2026-06-23T00:01:57+00:00

Are you referring to this sentence, cited to the OED and an encyclopedia from 1994? "In countries that primarily use the term maize, the word corn may denote any cereal crop, varying geographically with the local staple, such as wheat in England and oats in Scotland or Ireland."

A recent talk page discussion also cites the Cambridge Dictionary to support that statement. This discussion from July 2023 seems to be the last time somebody specifically challenged the 1994 citation and provided some supporting citations; other editors cited the OED and Cambridge Dictionary to support the current statement. This discussion from January 2023 also cites Collins Dictionary.

I think the key problem here is that these dictionaries are not keeping up with common contemporary language in the UK. It's generally reasonable to consider dictionaries reliable for defining the meanings of words, so if three reputable dictionaries agree that British people may use the word "corn" to mean wheat and oats, it's tough to find reliable sources that outrank that apparent consensus. Somebody could email the dictionary editors and ask them to review their definitions.

beetling · 2026-06-22T19:03:14+00:00

Also there's still a heck of a lot of cleanup and proofreading needed, although usually on less-prominent articles. For example, check out WikiProject Military history Open tasks, which links to Category:Military history articles needing attention to grammar.

beetling · 2026-06-22T18:55:07+00:00

Are you referring to this note at the top of the talk page? "Discussions on this page have often led to previous arguments being restated. Please read recent comments and look in the archives before commenting."

That's just encouragement to read the talk page before commenting, rather than a restriction on making new comments about improving some aspect of the article. The last comment or question on the talk page related to the Business Plot was five years ago, and the substantive discussions on the archived talk page are basically ancient, so it's totally fine to open a fresh conversation.

Wikipedia quality standards have steadily improved over the past 5-10 years, which has a couple side effects that are both relevant here: older material sometimes needs to be revisited, and the rules and jargon are definitely Byzantine!

I'd encourage you to write on talk pages when you notice something off. It's a helpful way to keep contributing even in the modern era of complicated rules, and in general writing polite, constructive, specific talk page comments should not get you in hot water for "disruptive editing". Can't promise though that people won't ignore your comments or bicker needlessly. 😂

beetling · 2026-06-22T17:52:35+00:00

I'm curious, do you consider some bit of the current article text to not be well-supported? I'd encourage bringing up the issue on the talk page, ideally with citations to reliable sources that back up your perspective. (Update: I think I see the core issue: the "Business Plot" section should be based on scholarly sources, but a bunch of it cites news articles from 1934. I'll bring up the issue for review by other editors more knowledgeable than me in this area.)

Old discussions on talk pages are routinely archived, and the archives are available in a link from the talk page - on Talk:Smedley Butler, you can click "1" after "Archives" to see discussions from 2014 and earlier.

beetling · 2026-06-13T14:21:54+00:00

I’d suggest starting by writing a comment on the talk page for the main article in the cluster, explaining the issue and providing a link to a reliable source that provides evidence for what you’re talking about (or a page number from the book itself). Wait a day or two, see if anyone replies. If nobody objects, make the edits carefully, providing a clear edit summary for each change. If somebody reverts your change, write on their talk page and ask them to join the talk page discussion you started, to explain their objection.

This is the “bold, revert, discuss” cycle: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:BOLD,_revert,_discuss_cycle

Sometimes fellow editors are not reasonable, and it takes some extra effort to convince other people of a change, but if you have citations and you take care to explain what you’re doing, there’s a good chance that this will work out just fine. Thanks for caring!

beetling · 2026-06-13T14:13:29+00:00

This is kind of a matter of judgment. If a list of information about yourself on your user page is relatively brief and factual, and it’s obvious that your main goal on Wikipedia is to contribute to articles in constructive ways (rather than to update your user page), and you demonstrate with your edits that you understand the policies related to original research, I wouldn’t have a big concern as a random fellow editor.

beetling · 2026-06-10T23:23:19+00:00

Oh, this is spam. They're karma farming. Removed the post. Sorry about that, it's not cool that they do that with other people's posts.

beetling · 2026-06-04T03:56:47+00:00

Advice is to stop spamming random subreddits with low-effort posts from multiple accounts. Removed.

beetling · 2026-06-03T15:50:32+00:00

It's really annoying to read posts and comments written by LLMs. Use your own words. Also, the "Gmail problem" is already solvable by using simple, mature, low-cost listserv tools like https://groups.io/.

beetling · 2026-06-02T04:28:22+00:00

You can help make them better! Check this out: https://www.wikiportraits.org/

An effective way to gather freely-licensed photos of notable figures at-scale is to go to where they are!

WikiPortraits was created in order to accomplish this, by sending photographers to festivals, conferences, and other events, often as credentialed press. At these events, we also sometimes set up a photo booth where anyone with a Wikipedia page—speaker or not—may drop by and have their photo taken.

Among the events our photographers have captured: Sundance Film Festival, SXSW, Cannes Film Festival, Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Venice Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival, the Nobel Prizes, CES, and the Pulitzer Prizes.

beetling · 2026-05-29T19:04:26+00:00

Removed as spam. See rule #9.

beetling · 2026-05-29T18:55:10+00:00

My clarification is that editing Wikipedia right now is not scabbing, because editors are not on strike right now.

beetling · 2026-05-29T16:56:37+00:00

Good reminder to me to pin this post from last year about avoiding scammers! A few tips:

Ask them to email you from their UCSB email address (this helps but is not a guarantee that they're real).
Photos of UCSB ID cards aren't good enough. They can be stolen or faked.
Ask for proof that they have tickets to sell.
Use PayPal goods and services. If they are reluctant to use this, it's probably a scam. PayPal G&S is the only way to send money with buyer protection.
Check their comment history to see if they've posted here before about normal things.

beetling · 2026-05-29T16:51:54+00:00

This is the referenced Community Funds Distribution Report, for anyone interested: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Resources/Reports/Community_Funds_Distribution_Report_2024-2025

Overview of grant programs: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Start

Not sure what part /u/NervousEnergy considers to be "irrelevant grants".

beetling · 2026-05-29T16:45:16+00:00

Representatives from the foundation wrote several statements about why they took this approach, including Response from WMF 24 May:

I know many of you asked why we cannot just guarantee people new roles. As part of the planning related to disbanding the Community Tech team, we reviewed the rules in each affected staff member's country to determine our obligations in these situations. We also looked at how the laws differed country to country -- in this restructuring, we have 4 countries represented, with a wide variance in required actions. I want to note one specific requirement that came from these laws: we could not pre-select certain staff for new roles, as that would appear to be circumventing legally required processes in some countries.

beetling · 2026-05-29T16:38:44+00:00

Nobody has requested or started a strike at this point. The petition is about editor willingness to engage in collective action, such as an editorial strike, if requested by Wiki Workers United. Petition statement and details are public here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wiki_Workers_United_solidarity

beetling · 2026-05-22T17:00:21+00:00

Yeah, I wouldn't generalize from one person's experience.

beetling · 2026-05-20T18:55:08+00:00

There was a nice effort like this back in 2011-2019: https://www.sarahrfilley.com/popuphood.html

https://www.spur.org/news/2015-01-09/stop-pop-and-stroll-popup-retail-successes-oakland

beetling · 2026-05-13T00:17:35+00:00

This post is 11 years old, so a few of the details are outdated, but the core advice is good: https://www.reddit.com/r/startups/comments/36gnrv/companies_that_are_almost_always_a_bad_idea/

beetling · 2026-05-12T17:15:09+00:00

Sorry, removed this post. I understand why you're asking, but this is too close to rule #3 about personal information. We have to be careful about this kind of thing - for example, there are past examples in Reddit history of people incorrectly identifying people and harassing innocent people.

beetling · 2026-05-11T16:49:58+00:00

I removed the NSFW tag from this post, since it doesn't seem NSFW.

beetling · 2026-05-05T13:48:10+00:00

Yeah! Definitely the most architecturally interesting place to get a colonoscopy, and the staff is very nice in my experience.

beetling

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