depending on the context that could be a good idea, though an example doesn't immediately come to mind. Completeness may be sacrificed for clarity if there is sufficient context. my above example is obviously a snippet without context, and as such is quite incorrect on it's own, but would also never occur in practice on its own. All context that I can imagine would make it sufficiently clear, especially since nobody would be thinking that acceleration would be a function of mass alone. It's almost like writing articles is a profession that requires more than stringing words together that are correct.

no equations doesn't mean no math. Equations generally do a pretty poor job in explaining things. I'd much rather read an article containing "because acceleration is inversely proportional to mass" than one containing "because F=ma"

I don't know about that. If wikipedia had kept on growing it could have something like 200m articles and hundreds of thousands of editors. I'd love to be able to get a good or even so-so quality article on every piece of networking equipment. Get a good or even so-so quality article on every command in every programming language. Get a good or even so-so quality article on every major building in the world. How are the almost 200m articles better for me?

It was a direct result on the ~2006-2010 "lolwikipedia so unreliable" what was getting heard more and more (notice how you rarely hear this anymore), for better and for worse.

You can't.

We might. Vast changes will be needed though, and in a manner that is carried by the current community (or else everyone will leave, and the current content will also start to degrade rapidly. Say what you want about the current community, but they are excellent at policing stuff). The idea for a separate draft namespace has been floating around. I don't really mind the idea of making the main mainspace less Wiki, wiki isn't the right model for mature articles anyway. Getting back a 'real' wiki with all its pros and cons where Wikipedia (which will then be a 'fake' wiki; it will run wiki software, but not a wiki philosopy) can cherry pick from isn't so bad. Maybe this could even be its own project. I'm not sure yet. As long as that wiki/namespace is not scared of being called unreliable and won't think they have to respond to that they'll be fine. Being unreliable is fine, as long as you're clear about it, name the pros and cons, and people know where they stand when using the content. Spam might still be a problem. I'm not sure how big of a problem. As long as you're relatively invisible, spammers don't take interest.

Ask anyone who was editing then. The stuff that happened in 2006 / 7 never would be allowed today. I was constantly able to get good quality articles from knowledgeable insiders and later get them properly referenced. Today that's simply not allowed.

This is the important part. I think the Wikimodel is an amazing model at creating content to solidly mediocre to pretty decent levels. To a very good level, not so much. Maintaining a very good level, even much less so. When we started getting more articles across that line (and I'm not fooling myself thinking that a significant fraction is, but a significant absolute number certainly is), the Wikimodel started breaking down, and the community slowly moved away from it. Maybe it will please you to know the jubilant spirit of ~2008-2010 where we felt we were invincible is gone, and many acknowledge we do indeed have a problem with our community. The threshold for joining the community has almost certainly risen. We're working on it though, and to attempt to steer back to the original topic, making at least one hindrance easier to overcome - the arcane editing interface.

With the increased readership and social relevance of Wikipedia, the community started to care more about the overall quality of the project. A bad article was more and more seen as a problem, rather than as a start for something great. It was pretty much the price of success; one could even argue that as much earlier Wikipedia was better for its community, so much better is it now for its readers. How we can get the energy and spunk of the earlier years back, while maintaining the relevance and overall higher quality of the more recent years is the great challenge Wikipedia currently faces.

At the same time, while I agree there is a lot of bad, the situation isn't quite as grim as you make it out to be. I think that your picture of Wikipedia of 2006-2007 is a little too rosy too. Maybe the ugly was already there, or was at least there in part, but you just hadn't really run in to it. I created my account in 2005 and ran for admin in 2008, so I was certainly around during those years. When I look over the history of the Bristol Palin article, I see a prod, which was removed by the very next editor (not you), and an AfD which, well, saying one had to fight ones way to keep it is not really the reality of that discussion.

On the other hand, when an editor has genuine concerns someone might be abusing the system by sockpuppeting, even is misguided, we shouldn't be discouraging them of expressing them, and having someone take a look at that. There should be no consequence on being mistaken, and acting upon it. There is a lot of funny business going on. A problem is that the request for a check in itself feels like an accusation. An apology from the admin in question, or the denying SPI clerk might have been ice though. I'm going to give this some thought, and see if I can come up with something reasonable.

3+ years ago if a person was going to be banned there was either an extensive community process (very rare) or an arbcom ruling. They got due process. Today admins apply indef bans rather freely. I don't mind arbcom doing bans they showed discretion and insured due process, I do mind indef blocks to well established editors under almost any circumstances.

Similarly admins sent stuff to moderation in 2007 they didn't ban people for "edit warring". If an admin was going to get involved in an article they had a responsibility to ensure the process was followed. The number of articles that was locked was like 20-100 not thousands.

I'm not sure what you mean by 'send stuff to moderation'. Also I see no significant difference between ANI in 2007 and ANI now. Also, show me the most recent indef block for edit warring that wasn't repealed on request, and you think shouldn't have happened. I have no metrics for number of protected articles, and sadly, this isn't easily queryable for historical data, but if you do, that would be an interesting metric. Did you get that somewhere, or is that from memory?

In 2007 the assumption was all content was good and the burden was to prove otherwise.

2006 begs to differ Quick anecdotical evidence from AfD logs (looking back to 2004) doesn't show what you are saying.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Size_of_Wikipedia#Annual_growth_rate

Are you using a page that indicates the growth in number of articles is slowing down as an argument against that the readership is still growing? That doesn't make sense.

so... what should I do that can both relief my concerns and not scare away the new editor(s) in case I'm wrong?

agreed

who?

it's slowly turning around, fortunately. Check AfD and compare to say 3 years back.

I still generally find it mop-up-on-isle-5

are you pleading for authority figures now? While ArbCom was given the ability to ban users in case the community can't figure out whether or not to ban, that responsibility lies primarily with the community, not with ArbCom. Letting ArbCom decide on all possible bans is exactly the power that we don't want to give it, but want to retain with the community

No argument from me that we are not going in the right direction, behaviourally. That's basically what I am saying above.

Wikipedia has more readers than ever. An optimist could say it aimed to change the world and it has. But there is a long way to go. Broader inclusion criteria and a better editing climate is certainly part of that.

Would it had helped if the almost legalese of "Lack of evidence has led this case to languish; closing this case without prejudice against the opening of a new one if further evidence should present." would have been phrases differently, possibly something along the lines as "there is insufficient evidence to justify opening checkuser records for this case. A new request can be made, but more solid evidence have to be presented to make it plausible these accounts are connected"? This is almost certainly also how the requesting admin had read it.
This has nothing to do with their position as admin by the way, a non-admin could have done exactly the same, with pretty much the same traction (a very very new user, say, less than 100 edits might be looked at with a little more reserve, even if that is against policy, but a editor with some 1000 edits would have been treated the same as an admin), but the knowledge of the system certainly is an issue.
As far as addressing behavioural issues, we have hardly anything in place, which is an acknowledged problem all round, from admins who get too little feedback on what they are doing wrong, to fringe nutcases who know their way around, but are still fringe nutcases and push all sorts of nonsense. We're unsure how to address the problem, as our system is supposed to be self regulating, but really isn't. What should happen, is that we should stop being scared of telling others in good standing when they make mistakes, without it becoming a lynch mob. That's easier said than done though, and we have unintentionally harbored a situation where criticism on an action is easily interpreted as an attack to a person. That's a culture that is not easily broken.

Federal claims court disagrees, it's in the freedom of panorama link you replied to. I'm not sure why you would think otherwise when it has just been pointed out to you.

The head of the library can give permission all he wants, he doesn't own to copyright to the statue, the artist does (even if the object itself was donated), so his permission is pretty insignificant. Even if he did own the copyright, since stuff on Wikipedia must be freely licensed, he should have released it under CC-BY-SA 3.0 or compatible. Copyright is a pain, and terribly convoluted and complicated to do right, but a basic value of Wikipedia. As simple as possible turns out to still be surprisingly complicated

If you have examples for me, I'll make sure to fix it, and set blind reverters straight.

keeping backend changes backwards compatible (a newer version of MediaWiki should still be able to parse the entire history of an article) is a massive massive undertaking, way larger than this visual editor - and that already took way too long. That said, there has been talk of a hypothetical MediaWiki 2.0. I won't say it's vaporware on forehand, but if it does get serious, it's going to take a long time to deliver. And than it will be just as long before all current templates have been migrated. And then all articles using those templates must be updated. You're still right in principle though.

The problem with this is that the VisualEditor software is a general purpose part of the MediaWiki software, and that those templates are templates used locally on the English Wikipedia, and the VisualEditor doesn't have any knowledge of them (and it shouldn't. If you run your home wiki on MediaWiki, why would you want it to know about the templates used for citations on the English Wikipedia?). I really can't quickly think of a good solution to this.

Disclaimer: I am a Wikipedia admin, and my view may be colored
I have a view issues with your analysis here.

How do you know his motivations?

yeah, not so pretty. While I understand his feeling there might be something fishy going on there (in most cases where an issue is brought up, and new editors show up to join the discussion, there is either sockpuppetry going on, or recruitment of people to join the discussion to support a particular point of view off wiki), I wouldn't have given some more consideration to the decent chance that while it raises some yellow flags, an SPI wasn't immediately needed, especially since there had been 3 months between the start of the thread and your comments. In this case, you said you didn't, there was no further evidence, and this case was closed. I particularly dislike the way he claims it can't be a content dispute because the has been peer-reviewed though, I don't know if that held back in 2009, but it certainly wouldn't now (the SPI is here by the way if anyone wonders).

I understand the distress here. To explain, Wikipedia is very very conservative in accessing possibly identifying information, and we consider the data used in these cases just that. Because there wasn't really any evidence that you were the same people, no check was run to protect the privacy of you and of Annie.barber. I understand how this can feel as the case being left open and could be picked up again at any time, particularly in the light of the comment 'Lack of evidence has led this case to languish; closing this case without prejudice against the opening of a new one if further evidence should present.', but this should actually be read as 'We're not going to dig up possibly identifying information when there is really no evidence. Come back when you have something more solid'. Rather then 'you're off the hook for now but we're keeping an eye on you'.
The discussion thread ended with Annie.barber saying

which was uncontested. This was never done by that editor though (or you). I doubt it would have raised much dust if it had been.

Well, I'm glad you're at least still helping out with that stuff. I can see how that has been an aggravating experience. On the other hand, I want to stress that although an SPI was opened, it was pretty much dismissed as having a complete lack of evidence, and there was no reason from Wikipedias side to block you or want you to stop contributing to that talkpage or article. On the third hand I fully understand that the experience was so disheartening you didn't feel like contributing any more at all.
I'm hoping you can help me out though. Say, I find myself in the same theoretical situation: I think that some accounts are related and vote-stacking. What should I do that can both relief my concerns and not scare away the new editor(s) in case I'm wrong? After being a Wikipedian for quite a long time, it becomes increasingly difficult to properly understand the environment for new users. Your perspective could really help me out here.