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The Swedish Wikipedia's controversial two-millionth article

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By Gamaliel

The Swedish Wikipedia hits two million articles

The Swedish Wikipedia hit two million articles this week. The Signpost was there in 2013 as well when the project hit one million. Both celebrations have been controversial from some perspectives because both the one-millionth article (Erysichton elaborata, an Australian species of butterfly) and the two-millionth article (Iro, a mountain in south Sudan) were created by Lsjbot, a bot created by Dr. Sverker Johansson (Lsj), a physicist at Dalarna University College and an administrator on the Swedish Wikipedia. A significant percentage of the articles on the Swedish Wikipedia, the Cebuano Wikipedia, and the Waray Wikipedia were created by the bot, which had 2.7 million articles to its credit as of last summer. Lsjbot's focus has been on obscure species such as birds, fungi, and geographical locations. The bot's work has prompted objections, especially from the German Wikipedia, that the articles are largely content-free and of little use. Proponents counter that these subjects are unlikely to receive the attention of human editors otherwise. (Johansson commented on Wikipedia's articles in 2015 saying, "they're mainly written by young, white, male nerds and reflect male interests".) For example, there do not appear to be articles on any Wikipedia about Erysichton elaborata or Mount Iro that were not created by Lsjbot.

Brief notes

  • On September 4, Euryalus announced he would step down from the Arbitration Committee at the end of the year. He wrote, "It's been an entirely worthwhile experience, but it takes too much time away from what I enjoy a lot more, which is the writing of obscure articles on eighteenth century shipping and colonial figures. I have Wikipedia hours for either Arbcom or articles - after a year doing Arbcom I'd like to get back to the topics I left behind." Euraylus was elected in 2014 to a two-year term with 62.76% support. Early resignations from the Committee are not uncommon.


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=== FUD about notifications changes ===

Really?

  • The OBOD died 2 years ago. The orange indicator is still there.
  • There was plenty of notice, an email was sent to wikitech-ambassadors, it was in tech news, and threads were started on mediawiki.org.
  • Regressions are pretty much the top priority for most of the team and are being fixed and deployed rather quickly IMO.

Blah blah disclaimer that I was part of the team that worked on this. Legoktm (talk) 05:26, 11 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Im not sure if this is the right place to type, but I found an invitation to discuss my opinions here. I preferred it better the old way, though it's occurred to me that since I was using CSS all along my "old way" might not have been the same as other people's. I am going to try to find a way in CSS to change it back to the way I liked. —Soap— 05:41, 11 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
On September 10, without notice, the notification indicators at the top of every user's interface changed – not really. There WAS notice at the tech news, which would *giggle* appear in this Signpost :) --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 07:25, 11 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment "...wikitech-ambassadors, it was in tech news, and threads were started on mediawiki.org" - not being a WTA, not being able to understand most of tech news, and being usually too busy to be trawling through mediawiki.org on the off chance, I didn't hear about this thing. I appreciate the thought that has gone into it, but would even more appreciate a way to undo it for those of us who do not embrace change for the sake of change. I can't see the point of having two lists to click on when one will do quite well. If you've only got an incoming message, you've got one click. If only an alert, one click. If you've got both, you used to have only one click to see the lot. Now two. Is that progress? Peridon (talk) 13:11, 11 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    Honest question, if you don't follow wikitech-ambassadors or tech news, where do you expect to (or want to) be notified about changes like these? Legoktm (talk) 16:41, 11 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I've never heard of wikitech-ambassadors before this, and don't know what or who they are. There must be some way of notifying changes that affect everyone without the non-techies of us having to wade through loads of incomprehensible jargon before we reach something that is in English. I'm now unlikely to go to anything on wikimedia, having discovered that I can't work out how to make a new post in a discussion because the only things I can find are 'Edit title' which I don't want to do, and 'Edit' which applies to someone else's post. Peridon (talk) 18:45, 11 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
How much jargon is there actually in m:Tech/News/2015/38? Legoktm (talk) 21:57, 11 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
@Legoktm: The problem is that there's currently no easy way to announce new features that affect every editor. You listed an obscure mailing list and a tech blog that is usually filled with technical details irrelevant to most users (and therefore not watched by most users)- in no way is posting the announcement "somewhere" that <1% of editors will read sufficient as an announcement. If you're changing a feature for every editor, then you need to announce it to every editor- which I guess means one of those announcement bars on the watchlist page, since there's no other easy way to announce something to all editors. The notification widget we're discussing right now could also work, except I doubt it was created with global announcements in mind. --PresN 20:56, 11 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
So the current method of communication has too much information and is overly-communicative? Legoktm (talk) 21:57, 11 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
So the current method of communication mixes together feature announcements (of interest to almost everyone) with a flood of minor technical announcements (of interest to only a small, technically-inclined minority) and then puts it in locations that have to be searched for (at least the first time) rather than the information going to the editors. --PresN 22:05, 11 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Ok, how do we differentiate between things that affect all editors and those that only affect a small amount? What about changes to gadgets that will affect everyone (or a large majority of editors), but only require one editor/admin to fix? Legoktm (talk) 22:18, 11 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
To answer Legoktm's question, in my opinion, changes like this, involving a major change to every user's interface, should be in the main notification bar (where the fundraising announcements go). Less significant changes which still affect the majority of users should be at WP:CENT. For other changes, somewhere like WP:VPR has adequate visibility. Tevildo (talk) 09:47, 12 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
"But look, you found the notice, didn't you?"
"Yes," said Arthur, "yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying Beware of the Leopard."
    — Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Quoted by Ningauble (talk) of Wikiquote 14:32, 15 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Also, I find the black bell and the black balloon on their grey ground tend to draw my eyes up when there is no need. This may get better with time, but I doubt it. Please give us an 'undo'... Peridon (talk) 13:13, 11 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
There are people that like this change, and people that don't. The option to opt-out and go back would easily satisfy both sides. And I feel this is just another example of "disregarding newbies"... poor new editors who dislike this new change and have never even heard of the Signpost... let alone the techie nerdy stuff on mediawiki.org and tech news. Only people that 1. Know about these resources, and 2. Bother to check them, would've known about this change. I, at least, knew about this change, but only because I subscribed to m:Global message delivery/Targets/Tech ambassadors, which delivers tech news to my talk page every week (by the way, Peridon, that might be a good way to stay updated, assuming you look at your talk page on a regular basis). There are plenty of editors here that don't even know what Meta is! How, then, are such people supposed to know about this change? If a city wanted to make an important announcement about how they planned to change the direction of traffic on their roads, it's no defense to say "We updated you!" when a single poster about the change was posted in a subway station. --I am k6ka Talk to me! See what I have done 20:47, 11 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • I have no objection to this particular update but the disappearance of shared notifications seems to have taken my popups and Twinkle headers with it - any particular reason why?--Launchballer 20:21, 11 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    I've helped a few people debug this already, and it has no relationship with the notifications change. Most people have had really broken user common.js pages that had only previously been working due to magical miracles. Legoktm (talk) 22:14, 11 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • I find the comment made to Peridon here by Jdforrester (WMF) not only lacks cordiality (which we have come to get used to from anyone involved on the WMF software development side), but is also yet another classic example of un-asked-for Foundation top-down developments thrust upon us where better use of funds and employee time could be put to addressing some of the far more serious issues of tool performance. It's clear however, that the WMF always polarises with a 'Sorry, not my department' attitude. After 15 years, it's time that the bloated WMF personnel list realised that the content provided by volunteers is ultimately what pays their salaries. And why on earth (per Legoktm) should we be expected to follow dozens of other blogs and other sites in order to know what affects our local daily editing and admin work hee? Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 21:37, 11 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I must confess to being somewhat uncordial about both the change and the operating method of the talk page... Peridon (talk) 10:25, 12 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Revert to single notification for both messages and alerts, please. Right now, it's a wide grayed out area, and visually knocks everything else to the right of it. A grayed out area on the internet usually means something is not functional. And when the Signpost was dropped into my talk page, the grayed out junk stayed there, and nothing within that changed colors or did anything at all. But to the right of it was this big huge yellow lighted sign that said I had an alert. Apparently, the grayed out area with the bell and whatever the other thing is serves no purpose. It's too, too much, and does nothing but sit there like dead gray space. Please revert back to how it was before. Thanks. — Maile (talk) 21:31, 11 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • For this kind of change, I would expect not a mere notification, but an RfC, centrally advertised as most RFCs are, say on VP Proposals, with no change made unless the change gets positive consensus. (If a comparable change had been made with so little discussion to a process page, it would have been promptly reverted and we would be discussing the length of block needed for the editor who made the change.) So far I find this merely makes extra work for me. The bell icon is at least clear, but the "talk ballon" merely looks like a rectangle -- i suspected it was intended to be a scroll. Icons at small scale are often not very useful, particularly in low contrast. Please revert. DES (talk) 15:39, 12 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Would it be too much to ask that actually adhere to WP:CONSENSUS and discuss changes to Wikipedia before implementing them? Its not like its that hard to advertise that you want feedback on a new thing. TomStar81 (Talk) 03:45, 13 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • For me the actual difference between this change and those that happened several years ago, is that I missed the announcement on the technical mailing list, rather than the discussion on a wiki-page. But there is a big psychological and social difference between a community consensus that I missed being part of and an "imposed" solution from the software house.
There's no way we can fault the software engineers who do the development, they are doing their jobs. Nor do we want to fault the "ideas people". What we want is, perhaps, an account manager, who takes our requirements and establishes what they can get implemented - and by all means proposes new product, but doesn't deliver it without a signed order.
All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 16:55, 14 September 2015 (UTC).[reply]
  • Hate to moan but the previous notification system worked fine and didn't need changing, I agree with DES there needs to be RFCs on these as most implementations so far have been a disaster (Look at VE & Flow!), At the end of the day we're not Facebook - We're a collaborative project and we all work together on this site and so we all should discuss these things before they get implemented and then reversed. –Davey2010Talk 22:58, 14 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

It seems that Dr. Sverker Johansson commented on Wikipedia's articles in 2014, rather than 2015 as indicated. --Roisterer (talk) 06:20, 15 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The Swedish Wikipedia hits one million articles in a rather embarrassing way...

"For example, at time of writing, there do not appear to be articles on other Wikipedias about Erysichton elaborata or Mount Iro that were not created by Lsjbot."

That may be because the combination Erysichton elaborata does not and has never existed. The Swedish Wikipedia claims that sv:Erysichton elaborata is the same as Jameela palmyra tasmanicus, and that it got its name from Thomas Pennington Lucas in 1900. In reality, Lucas described Lycaena elaborata, which is indeed the same as Jameela palmyra tasmanicus, or as Erysichton palmyra tasmanicus. It has never been known as Erysichton elaborata or Erysichton palmyra elaborata, until Wikipedia invented it. It has since been added to some "reliable" online resources, like [1] and [2]. The source for the bot seems to be something like this page, which shows that "Elaborata" was a species name in what is known as the "Erysichton" genus. Right, but never at the same time... This is made clear by the species specific page at the same site, [3]. The other source in the first version of the Swedish article, the "Catalogue of life", doesn't list the Erysichton elaborata either[4], it does have the Erysichton palmyra tasmanicus.

To get that as your millionth article is embarrassing, to still have it at that title when you have doubled in size is even worse. I complained about errors on the main page in the DYK section, but this gaffe easily beats those. Perhaps someone fluent in Swedish can contact the sv-wiki, point them to this, and suggest moving the page? And checking the other bot creations for similar inventions (good luck with that!) Fram (talk) 12:39, 15 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I slapped a merge tag on it, but that's as far as I can go with the help of Google translate. I'm still trying to navigate these sources but it seems from this that you are correct. Gamaliel (talk) 14:55, 15 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@Animalparty: @Graham Beards: @Maky: Hello! I was hoping some editors with scientific backgrounds might join the discussion and add their insight. Gamaliel (talk) 16:37, 15 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@Hansmuller: Gamaliel (talk) 16:43, 15 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

It is on Catalogue of Life (which is the source for all these bot generated organism articles), and the CoL link in the Swedish article leads to the record (or you can see it here). CoL attributes it to LepIndex as of 2005, but the LepIndex record was updated in 2011. So, it's not quite as bad as it looks at first, but there are a couple bad practices by the bot. The CoL record is "provisionally accepted", probably because there were problems with the underlying LepIndex record (i.e., Erysichton elaborata not actually existing). Lsjbot shouldn't be creating articles for taxa that are only "provisionally accepted" on CoL. Also, Lsjbot cites/links LepIndex with a date of 2005-06-15. That's the date CoL harvested the LepIndex record. The Erysichton elaborata article was created in 2013, and the LepIndex record was most recently updated in 2011. I think it's really bad practice for Lsjbot to imply that LepIndex was accessed when it really only looked at CoL's outdated copy of the LepIndex record (if Lsjbot had actually accessed LepIndex directly, it would have found the updated record). Plantdrew (talk) 18:27, 15 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks (both). So it didn't originate with Wikipedia, we (well, the Swedes) only propagated the error, which was never accepted definitively in the first place... Like you said, not as bad as I thought, still pretty awful to get this error as your millionth article, widely reported in many newspapers (I have seen mentions in newspapers from e.g. Italy and the UK of this article...). Fram (talk) 18:55, 15 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I don't have much I can add to this since I'm not a entomologist. However, having worked with lemur taxonomy, this isn't surprising. Taxonomy is a mess, even for an infraorder with ~100 species. In entomology, the number of species can be significantly higher (by several orders of magnitude), so errors are bound to accumulate, especially across multiple systems (e.g. CoL, LepIndex, and Wiki). The only thing we can do on our end is be careful and critically review our sources. Personally, I shy away from online indexes for taxonomy since they tend to be outdated and sometimes wrong. But then again, I also have a book that currently acts as one of the leading authorities on lemur taxonomy which is published by many of the leading experts in the field. (Admittedly, not everyone agrees with it, but I address that in the articles I write.) And again, I'm also dealing with ~100 species... not thousands. I wish I could be of more help here... – Maky « talk » 19:30, 15 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I did some searching through my entomology sources, and I couldn't find reference to this name. I'm not a taxonomist in practice though, so there's a chance there's some buried history on the naming here. I tend to be a bit untrusting of online indices without a source. Unless a source with the actual description and naming comes up at some point, I agree with others above that it's probably better to merge it. Kingofaces43 (talk) 04:57, 16 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I have merged the articles due to current knowledge and sources. But I really don't see the embarrassment about the bot creating the article. AHA (talk) 14:38, 17 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Well, if newspapers across Europe have articles on "Swedish Wikipedia has 1 million articles, mainly thanks to a bot", indicating what that millionth article is, and it turns out that it shouldn't have been created as the bot was incorrectly interpreting data (and that it took 2 years and another Wikipedia language version to find this out), then yes, I find that rather embarrassing. "We have loads of articles, but a bot creates them and we don't really care whether they are correct or not"? Not really a headline one would want to see. But thanks for the merge! Fram (talk) 14:46, 17 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
If you could read swedish you would have known that the article told about the complexity surrounding the taxon, and this was much discussed on the talkpage, so in no way we didnt care. And your interpretation Fram of the error was obviously incorrect. Taxonomy is complicated as well as being humble. --AHA (talk) 19:56, 17 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I Google translated the talk page. There was discussion about what the current name was. No one noticed that the article title never was an accepted version in any serious taxonomy, or that Lucas never used the version which the article claimed he coined in 1900, and so on. You seem to be making excuses to hide the fact that the probably most widely publicized article of the Swedish Wikipedia was fundamentally wrong. Taxonomy is complicated, but when you have three acceptable versions throughout history, Wikipedia shouldn't put the article at a fourth one. It took two years and an outside discussion (here) before you finally took some action, so if you did care, you clearly didn't do so seriously enough. Fram (talk) 20:47, 17 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
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