Talk:Tezos

Was reading the article - would it make sense to move some text in the intro to more specific sections? Thoughts? @Nick Number: @SchreiberBike: @RandomWalker:

Moving this to design for instance:

• The Tezos network achieves consensus using a liquid proof-of-stake model. Tezos features an on-chain governance model that allows the protocol to amend itself when upgrade proposals receive a favorable vote from the community.^[1] This feature allows Tezos to avoid forks that other blockchains have to contend with.^[1]

And these sections to history:

• Tezos was first proposed in a whitepaper published in 2014.^[2] Its testnet was launched in June 2018, and its mainnet went live in September 2018.^[3]

• Tezos received media attention for its large initial coin offering in July 2017, which raised $232 million, and subsequent public disagreements between its founders and the non-profit Tezos Foundation that was set up to manage the raised funds.^[4] Those disagreements led to delays in the deployment of Tezos, which caused investors in the project to bring lawsuits against its founders and the Tezos foundation.^[4]

Blockchainus Maximus (talk) 19:16, 4 November 2020 (UTC)

I dispute the "Advert" tag applied to this page and ask that it be removed. The content is entirely factual and substantiated with credible sources.

So far no specific evidence of the claimed "content written like an advertisement" has been provided. I ask that anyone supporting the tag provide such details so that we can judge whether the tag is justified or not.

Fredcy (talk) 14:26, 1 July 2021 (UTC)

on the advert tag, i felt like the article had some issues with structuring that make it come across like someone has been trying to slightly bias the article? in particular having a list of major business deals the network has made before the actual description of how it functions feels like a more direct positive lean, and beyond that there's odd wording that just comes across like someone tried to fit marketing phrases in without fully factoring in how they affect the article. the line in the lede:

• Tezos has received attention as a blockchain platform for Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) due to its Proof of Stake energy efficient algorithm which became a popular topic amid concerns of the energy requirements of alternative Proof of Work platforms

stands out a lot to me, though maybe i'm reading too far into it.

apologies for not getting back for like a month, i'd intended to actually address it here as opposed to making some major structural change but i forgot to follow up on it at all. dh (talk) 03:07, 24 July 2021 (UTC)

I am opening a consensus discussion to find proper solutions to the edits brought to this page from the last few months. This is a summary of changes from December 2021:

1. Removal of corporate usage history of the blockchain.
2. Removal of protocol upgrades history.
3. New paragraphs focused on personal life of the creators.

Dispute: While I may agree that several parts of this article could be considered as spam/advertisement, I disagree with the extreme removal of texts by Citing. Removing such large parts without consulting the original authors is not ethical and does not help fostering cooperation towards good Wikipedia pages. Some of the changes have been reverted a few days ago by Mjs00001, then re-reverted again by Citing. As this thread is open, I would ask the authors to stop committing changes to the page until a consensus has been reached. @Citing: @Mjs00001:

My personal opinion:

• Fact 1. I don't really understand why corporate usage history has been completely removed and I am not in favor this change as it is. However, I agree that it may sound like spam. I think the best to be done is to rephrase that whole section into a single big paragraph.
• Fact 2. Same here. Instead of completely removing the whole section, it should be rephrased into simpler and less detailed paragraphs. From what I understand from Tezos, it is a blockchain with evolving capabilities so having a paragraph on the upgrades made to the blockchain makes sense to me.
• Fact 3. We need to find a balance. The changes you have brought Citing are very focused on the personal lives of the creators of the blockchain. While these information are relevant, I believe that a balance is required between tech and personal. Focusing the article on personal matters and scandals makes the article look like tabloid, which Wikipedia is not.

Psaxl (talk) 10:03, 14 March 2022 (UTC)

One of the unique aspects of Tezos is its self-amending governance model. I believe that those changes (reverted in https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tezos&diff=1076343160&oldid=1075956485) should be brought back as they are descriptive, technical and relevant to the article. I think bringing that section back, and rephrasing the history as proposed above by Psaxl, would bring a good balance of technology and history to the article. AnilMadhavapeddy (talk) 09:53, 16 March 2022 (UTC)

Mjs00001, Please assume good faith about my edits. Nobody owns this article and it is not "unethical" to edit it.

The lists of usage are arbitrary and are borderline press release material. They don't add anything to the article other than to inflate a topic's importance and quickly become unwieldy.

I rewrote the article with the intent of making it understandable to the average Wikipedia reader. The earlier versions were full of impenetrable technical jargon that were much closer to a developer's notes than an encyclopedia article. Some sections are still fairly unreadable for most people, but the patch notes struck me as especially excessive. Tezos already has extensive documentation, which people can find on its own wiki. As it stands, the article is already about 50% technical details.

The earlier versions of the article also had very little context on the creation and history of the project. Given that an ideal article should be comprehensive, and that numerous reliable sources have extensively covered the various ups-and-downs and legal disputes—and in turn, the backgrounds of the people involved—it made sense to include that material. This recent revision was quite sloppy; it doesn't describe who some of the people are, where they came from, or why they made their decisions. Wikipedia readers are not just interested in technical minutiae of a topic -- they also want to know how something came to be. Citing (talk) 16:01, 16 March 2022 (UTC)

There seems to be consensus on bringing back the upgrade history. I think this is a really important and useful aspect of the Tezos article that has been dropped, since it documents a rather unique property that none of the other blockchains have, and also backed up with real data (7+ live upgrades, many of which incorporate elements of other blockchain technologies brought into Tezos over time).

If there are no objections, I'll bring back and edit the dropped upgrade history, and refine it with more technical details.

Regarding the lists of usage, I have no strong opinion on corporate usage. However, it would be nice to document interesting communities that developed on Tezos such as Hic et Nunc (and the corresponding rebirth https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2021/11/16/founder-of-hic-et-nunc-pulls-the-plug-on-the-leading-digital-art-marketplacebut-its-half-a-million-nfts-live-on). AnilMadhavapeddy (talk) 14:58, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

Based on that source, there's not much to say about communities aside from that Tezos is being used for NFTs, though the article should probably mention that.

If there's something unique about it having different versions then that'd be worth mentioning in the prose with some sourcing. A more-technical version history won't do much for readers—as it was, the notes were full of vague jargon-laden and non-NPOV phrasing, e.g., " Allowing liquidity baking and incentivizing large amounts of decentralized liquidity provision between tez and wrapped bitcoin. Substantial improvements to performance have been made, which in turn result in dramatic reductions in gas consumption." Citing (talk) 15:54, 24 March 2022 (UTC)

Thank you for the consideration to my suggested edits. I always assume good faith with edits being proposed and welcome the open discourse on this. Please note my thoughts below:

1 - I believe there is too much emphasis on the stories of the founders, which i find distracting; this is not the case with other popular blockchain projects and makes the page read a lot like a tabloid article. As a reference, with other blockchain projects like Cardano or Ethereum you do not see this focus on the founders' lives even as new books and articles are published about such things daily. These details matter as contextual/historical references but certainly should not warrant such a focus in the article; my recommendation would be to move such references to its own History section, which i attempted to do so in order to consolidate information in a more organized fashion. This is how the Ethereum page is organized, and it makes the most sense (and it is much more organized that way).

2 - Tezos as a blockchain touts its ability to evolve as one of the key reasons for existing. To remove the protocol upgrade section, which outlines the feature upgrades that were done (and provide really valuable information to readers about each upgrade) is doing a disservice to readers wanting to learn about Tezos. With other software or hardware (like iPhone etc) it is appropriate to include the upgrades done - in my opinion, technical jargon is not a valid reason to remove technical upgrade history; technical upgrades are technical in nature anyways, and such information is still relevant. I wouldn't expect the wikipedia page on Quantum Mechanics to be stripped of technical jargon because i'm not a quantum physicist; i think a similar consideration should apply here to some extent.

3 - I believe some of the general commercial adoption information that is happening with Tezos is pertinent to readers who are trying to identify use-cases for this technology; although i can understand the point of reducing such mentions for brevity; in this i think we do agree and i appreciate the edits that were done to simplify. Mjs00001 (talk) 15:04, 29 March 2022 (UTC)

Which parts sound like a tabloid? I wrote the history section to reflect the sources I found and to answer basic questions about the topic: who was involved? how did this project come about? what happened? when, where, why did it happen? etc. The earlier revision skipped over a lot of relevant details, like how the project began, or even who the relevant people are — for example, the Tezos Foundation is never described and Gevers' last name is casually mentioned as president but it's not clear who he is, why he's president, what the "dispute" is about, or that he's in Switzerland.

The version notes were generally either unclear or not providing useful information. Example: "Baking accounts were proposed in an alternate Florence proposal but that implementation didn't make it past proposal due to some potential interruptions to some contracts in place today." On top of the jargon, that looks more like meeting minutes than anything useful for readers. If you want to include them, they need to be cleaned up and simplified. Citing (talk) 15:52, 1 April 2022 (UTC)

This edit request by an editor with a conflict of interest has now been answered.

Hi, I work for Tezos and would like to help improve the page's encyclopedic value, reliability, and clarity.

• The first paragraph of the history section includes a lot of personal information about Arthur and Kathleen Breitman which is irrelevant to the topic of the article. I'd like to ask that the following sentences be removed according to WP:COAT, as their relevance to Tezos is unclear:

1. "husband-and-wife team"
2. "Arthur was the leader of an anarcho-capitalist group in New York, and Kathleen was a libertarian Republican who became interested in politics after listening to Rush Limbaugh at age 5; the two of them met at a crypto-anarchist lunch in 2010. Arthur was a follower of Patri Friedman, the founder of The Seasteading Institute, and he learned of Gevers when Friedman hired him for a project to build a libertarian city in Honduras."

• The mention of the Tezos Foundation in the first sentence of the section disrupts the flow of the section and the relevance is unclear to the reader, so I suggest removing it, as the foundation was founded in 2017 and is included later on in the proper context.

• In the second paragraph, the sentence "In 2015, he registered Dynamic Ledger Solutions Inc (DLS) in Delaware with himself as chief executive" feels random. To clarify the relevance, I suggest changing it to read: "In 2015, with the goal of developing Tezos, Arthur Breitman registered a company called Dynamic Ledger Solutions Inc" and replacing the existing reference with reference 6, as the current source does not reflect the information. Done

Thanks for your time, Marko at Tezos (talk) 17:49, 19 September 2022 (UTC)

Hi, normally we remove things or change things based on sources. Could you please add sources for this, or review the content from the existing sources and note if it is not covered in the sources. Removing things just because you dont like them or it doesnt fit Tezos PR strategy is normally not feasible. The background of founders would normally be included on an article, especially if the founders themselves dont have an existing article. Jtbobwaysf (talk) 20:22, 6 October 2022 (UTC)

@Marko at Tezos: The husband and wife info and the bio of both founders is properly sourced. As @Jtbobwaysf: points out, since they have no article, this is the only place to include their info. I agree that the article is a bit schizophrenic, jumping between the crypto, the company, the foundation and the founders. It might make sense to split the info into new sections, which gives us the possibility of creating a content fork with new articles about the founders and the foundation in the future. I'm also not sure that the ICO and lawsuits warrant a combined section. It seems to violate WP:UNDUE. Perhaps something like this would make sense, with the ICO and lawsuit info merged into the history?

• History
  • Tezos Foundation
• Design
• Token standards
• Reliability
• Founders

In the meantime, I made the requested change about DLS, adding the missing context. Let's see what others think about a restructure. TimTempleton ^{(talk) (cont)} 00:05, 7 October 2022 (UTC)

@Timtempleton: I am not opposed that approach as well. I am not super well versed on this article subject, it is just one of many in my watch list. Could be due to some PR edits earlier, or some interesting news (I follow and edit a lot of crypto articles). I somewhat jumped on this request by the COI editor since it seemed like a request to remove controversy, and often controversy is encyclopedic. Some of these crypto articles (some might be generous ;-) are more notable for their misdeeds than their deeds ;-) Jtbobwaysf (talk) 09:04, 7 October 2022 (UTC)

@Timtempleton: Also not opposed to a restructuring. The article was a spammy mess before I stumbled upon so I did as much as I could to clean it up and add sourcing and content/context. As suggested above, I included the personal histories of the founders because they don't have articles themselves (and I didn't think they would pass WP:NBIO). For what it's worth I initially separated the ICO and lawsuits into a subsection because virtually every reliable source about Tezos mentions that aspect of the organization/currency. Citing (talk) 17:58, 7 October 2022 (UTC)

Thank you Jtbobwaysf, Timtempleton, and Citing for your thoughtful suggestions and for the edit that has already been implemented. The restructure would be helpful to the flow and clarity of the article, and I would be grateful if you would make those edits. While the Breitmans probably do not currently meet notability standards, the excessive detail regarding their political positions and how they met does not seem relevant to an encyclopedic article about Tezos specifically, nor does it seem to adhere to WP:COAT and WP:TMI guidelines. If there is reluctance to entirely delete the last two sentences of the first paragraph in History, please consider rephrasing them in a more concise manner which is also further in line with the source: "Arthur and Kathleen were both interested in politics, and met at a crypto-anarchist lunch in 2010. Arthur followed Patri Friedman's project to build a libertarian city in Honduras and met Gevers during that time, as Gevers had been employed at the project." Again, thanks for your time and review of the suggested edits. I look forward to your feedback and continual collaboration. Marko at Tezos (talk) 18:42, 10 October 2022 (UTC)

For inclusion in an existing article we use WP:DUE, notability is a test to see to see if they are notable enough to have their own article per WP:GNG. While the two concepts are similar eventually, they policies are different. I think the content is DUE for inclusion but probably not enough for a stand alone article (which would also be linked to from this article, if/when it is ever created). I dont think your push to remove the historical content from this article will be successful, it seems that most are opposed to that deletion (including me). Sometimes a good way to propose changes is to do so in your sandbox and then we can copy paste over to the main article. It is necessary to keep in mind that wikipedia is an enclopedia and we cover history. The colorful past of Tezos are part of the article subject's history and will likely remain on the article Jtbobwaysf (talk) 19:49, 10 October 2022 (UTC)

Citing Marko at Tezos Jtbobwaysf I took a shot at restructuring the article. I added subsections for the foundation/ICO and founders. I think it flows better now and this may address some of the concerns about the bio info cluttering up the rest of the article, but everything should still be there. I'm also wary about removing properly sourced info that may be considered negative. I also went through some of the sources to make sure the links were still good, and tried to standardize the ref date formats. If I updated the access date to October 10, 2022, that means I checked the link, and it's good. If I kept the old access date, or there's no access date, that means I didn't check it. TimTempleton ^{(talk) (cont)} 21:32, 10 October 2022 (UTC)

Thank you @Timtempleton:, I think the article is quite improved. I also just read though wired on the two founders and the story. It is very in depth and a powerful source. The article could probably be expanded based on this article. Jtbobwaysf (talk) 03:38, 11 October 2022 (UTC)

Yes, thanks for your hard work. Citing (talk) 19:48, 12 October 2022 (UTC)

Timtempleton, Jtbobwaysf, Citing, thanks for your work on this! My apologies for the delay, I've been offline for a few days. I greatly appreciate the effort you've put into improving the article.

I'd like to follow up on the "follower of Patri Friedman" line- according to the current source, Arthur was "friends with Milton Friedman's grandson, Patri". Would it be possible to revise the language to more accurately reflect the source?

As for Jtbobwaysf's idea of expanding the article based on the Wired source- thanks, I'll look into this and propose some relevant suggestions shortly. Looking forward to continuing the conversation.

Thanks again, Marko at Tezos (talk) 14:54, 19 October 2022 (UTC)

It appears to me that she was more interested in the famous Milton rather than the non-notable grandson. My suggestion is to add more content to explain more of the story around this. We cant rely entirely on this one Wired source, that will be a different wikipedia policy violation. But we certainly can add a bit more. Jtbobwaysf (talk) 21:31, 19 October 2022 (UTC)

Jtbobwaysf Thanks for your input. I checked again and Wired seems to be the only source that mentions Arthur's relationship with Patri Friedman. The article refers to Arthur as both a "friend" and a "fellow traveler" of Patri's. Therefore, I'd like to propose rewording the beginning part of the sentence as follows, to more accurately reflect the source:

"Arthur was a follower friend and fellow traveler of Patri Friedman, ..."

As for adding more content, I plan to review the Wired article more carefully to check for more content which can be added. Many thanks, Marko at Tezos (talk) 12:58, 20 October 2022 (UTC)

The source also refers to her interest in the grandfather right? Jtbobwaysf (talk) 21:29, 20 October 2022 (UTC)

Jtbobwaysf Thank you. I have been offline for a while and I apologize for my delayed reply. I have reviewed this and will open a new request to explore this and other aspects of the article further. Marko at Tezos (talk) 14:08, 7 November 2022 (UTC)

This edit request by an editor with a conflict of interest has now been answered.

After further review of the article and following the above discussion, I would like to propose a few more suggestions to help improve the article:

• In the second sentence of the lead, replace the parenthetical "Abbreviation" with "ISO 4217", leaving in the wiki link, as this is the more accurate term to represent XTZ. XTZ is also not an abbreviation of Tez, as both are the same length.
• In History, in the sentence "The Breitmans contracted French firm OCamlPro to help develop the software", replace "The Breitmans" with "He", as the source clearly specifies that it was only Arthur who was working with the firm (as stated in the current reference #5^[1] - "Arthur had developed Tezos in a functional programming language that had emerged from French academia, and had been working with software developers at OCamlPro,...").
• Relating to the discussion in the previous edit request, please move and rephrase the last sentence of the Founders section ("Arthur was a follower of Patri Friedman...").

Its only relevance to Tezos, the subject of the article, is to offer context on Breitman's relationship with Gevers. This information would therefore be more appropriate as an introduction alongside the first mention of Gevers in the article, in the subsection entitled "Tezos Foundation and initial coin offering", as follows:

"In 2011, Arthur Breitman first met South African cryptocurrency entrepreneur Johann Gevers through his friend Patri Friedman, the founder of The Seasteading Institute, who had hired Gevers for a project which Breitman had followed closely."

(As seen in the current reference #5^[2]: "Breitman was pleased to report that he was friends with Friedman’s grandson, Patri,..." and "Gevers and Arthur had first encountered each other in 2011 as fellow travelers of Patri Friedman, who had employed Gevers on a project to build a libertarian-­minded charter city in Honduras. Arthur followed the project closely,...")

In light of this change, the sentence which begins "In 2016, the Tezos Foundation" should have the now redundant words "South African cryptocurrency entrepreneur Johann" removed.

I would be happy to hear the community's thoughts on these proposed changes and would be grateful for help implementing them. Thank you,

Marko at Tezos (talk) 14:11, 7 November 2022 (UTC)

I am having trouble checking if your requested edits are supported by sources. I think it would be better if you made the source you are referring to, as well as the direct quote from the source(s). This will help us to understand if your requested edit is supported by the source. Thanks! Jtbobwaysf (talk) 00:19, 8 November 2022 (UTC)

Thanks, Jtbobwaysf. I have specified the relevant sources and included the direct quotes which support the requested changes. Please take a look. Thanks again, Marko at Tezos (talk) 16:04, 8 November 2022 (UTC)

Please add the actual references in standard wikipedia format here and you can add the Template:Reflist-talk template down below your signature. Jtbobwaysf (talk) 21:18, 8 November 2022 (UTC)

Jtbobwaysf Done. Marko at Tezos (talk) 15:30, 9 November 2022 (UTC)

Note: I've tried to engage several editors with no success, and have implemented the above edits. If anyone would like to discuss any of the content, happy to do so. Marko at Tezos (talk) 14:51, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

This edit request by an editor with a conflict of interest has now been answered.

.

Hi, in a continued effort to ensure the article's accuracy, I am suggesting the following edits:

• In History, in the fourth paragraph under the subsection Tezos Foundation and initial coin offering: Please change the sentence "Gevers refused to give the Breitmans their payout, which was valued at around $70 million in cryptocurrency" to "Gevers controlled the assets held by the foundation which stood at $820 million by December, including the Breitmans' share", which is more in line with the source. Then, delete "By December" at the beginning of the following sentence, as it is now redundant.

• In Design: Please change "XTZ" to "Tez" each time it appears within the section, since that is the proper terminology for the currency.

• In the third sentence under Founders: Please remove "who became interested in politics after listening to Rush Limbaugh at age 5" - it is evident that this description is written in a facetious manner and it also comes from a bio on a political blog which is not a valid source.

Citing and GR86 I thought you may be interested in this as you have edited the page in the past. I would appreciate the community's assistance in implementing these suggestions and am happy to discuss further. Thanks, Marko at Tezos (talk) 05:57, 9 December 2022 (UTC)

This edit request by an editor with a conflict of interest was declined.

Hi, I work for Tezos and will be taking over from where Marko at Tezos left off.

I have a few more suggested edits to ensure the content accurately reflects the sources:

• In the last sentence of the lead, change "testnet" to the more accurate term, "betanet".^[1]
• In the last sentence of History, before the subsection, change "The firm" to "Strange Brew" for clarity. Remove current [ reference 5] as a source for this sentence, as the information is not found there.
• In History, in the subsection Tezos Foundation and initial coin offering, change the second sentence as follows, to more accurately reflect the sources: "In 2016, the Tezos Foundation was established in Zug Switzerland by Gevers and Swiss law firm MME, with the help of Arthur and Kathleen Breitman, to support an initial coin offering (ICO) and benefit blockchain technologies, with a focus on the Tezos platform."

I'd appreciate the community's feedback and assistance in implementing these changes. Thank you, Lauraattezos (talk) 10:08, 26 January 2023 (UTC)

Lauraattezos (talk) 10:08, 26 January 2023 (UTC)

 Not done: Due to past COI edits made in violation of policy, as well as a lack of sourcing, I am declining this request. Quetstar (talk) 13:09, 28 January 2023 (UTC)

I have disclosed my COI as did my colleague, Marko at Tezos, who previously worked on improving the article. He consistently put up edit requests, including references where relevant, in an effort to openly and properly engage with the community. As I have now taken over for him, I am happy to discuss any points in this or any prior request. Thanks, Lauraattezos (talk) 11:19, 1 February 2023 (UTC)

• I find these PR related edits a bit tedious on this article. I recognize you are being paid to make these edits so you are hoping to put Tezos in the best possible light (since you are paid to do that). However, note that all the PR edits on this article have caught our (volunteer editors) attention and now you might want to focus on substantive issues and not play around with small changes as we are just going to oppose those more or less because it is a hassle. Jtbobwaysf (talk) 06:59, 2 February 2023 (UTC)

Jtbobwaysf Thanks for your message. My edit request is really focused on ensuring accuracy within the content of the article and proper reflection of the sources. That being said, I will be sure to keep your advice in mind going forward. My next edit request will aim to expand the article and improve its structure. Regards, Lauraattezos (talk) 10:49, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

Sounds like a good approach. Please be sure to remember we are only using top shelf sources for crytpocurrency articles, such as NYT, WSJ, bloomberg, fortune.com, etc. We are not using blogs, coindesk, theblock, etc. Thanks! Jtbobwaysf (talk) 08:03, 7 February 2023 (UTC)

Hi. As discussed above, I'd like to help improve the article by proposing a restructure. Currently much of the content is compiled together which seems to hinder clarity and readability. I've created this userspace draft with my suggestions for your convenience, in which I've reorganized the existing content into new sections and subsections in an effort to address this. It's important to note that I have not made any changes to the content itself besides clarifying a date or two, or breaking up/combining sentences when appropriate. All information and sources remain as they currently are in the live article. I would appreciate the community's thoughts. Thank you! Lauraattezos (talk) 12:50, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

• I am pretty ignorant on the subject, but IMHO the new version is somewhat closer to the desired shape of an encyclopedic article about a project, where, in my opinion, the timeless elements (features and their evolution, influence on other projects) should prevail over the ones that are usually short-term ones (like history of funding or principals' squabbles). I have also added an article on open-source blockchains that can potentially put things into a proper perspective.

Викидим (talk) 22:41, 27 February 2023 (UTC)

Thank you Викидим for taking the time to review the draft. The way in which you described it is exactly what I was aiming for in restructuring the article. I have just implemented the new version. Of course, if anyone has any concerns, I am happy to discuss here. Lauraattezos (talk) 12:11, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

Викидим and Quetstar I'm sorry if I overstepped. I thought that since the new version was approved, I could go ahead and implement it myself. Seeing as that is not the case, would one of you be able to put up the new version? Please be sure to include Grayfell's most recent edit, as it's not included in the draft. Thank you, Lauraattezos (talk) 10:49, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

I don't think this change is unambiguously an improvement. Section titles should be neutral and consistent, and breaking-up info on the history of the project into different sections seems more confusing than helpful. Grayfell (talk) 21:42, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

Grayfell The article currently reads like a company page when it is actually a blockchain. I looked at pages of other blockchains and tried to structure the article in a similar style. It also doesn't seem to flow well in its current layout and breaking it into clearer sections seemed to resolve that. Can you explain what you mean by keeping section titles neutral and consistent? If you think my version doesn't address these issues, I'd love to hear alternative suggestions you may have. Thank you, Lauraattezos (talk) 13:09, 2 March 2023 (UTC)

I don't know which other cryptocurrency articles you were looking at, but Wikipedia's coverage of this specific topic is dreadful, so that is not a good precedent.

The problem is not that the article reads like a company page, it's that the lead reads like a blockchain page. The goal of the lead is to summarize the body, and the goal of the body is to summarize reliable, independent sources. The lead fails to summarize this history, so refactoring this without fixing the problem is, at best, busywork.

Sources are mostly about the company, or at least they do not treat the company and the cryptocurrency/blockchain as completely separate. The article must reflect sources. 'History' is a neutral way to describe a company's history. Breaking this up into smaller sections and placing those sections out of chronological order is less neutral. Since your goal is to promote this project, I don't think it's a stretch to say that your goal with these edits was to move the critical content about the company's founding further down the article. This company's controversial history (what Wired called "the Crypto World's Biggest Scandal") is well sourced, so this is what the article will reflect.

Again, if most reliable, independent sources on this topic are about the company's history, then the article well functionally be about the company and its history. That's just how Wikipedia works. Grayfell (talk) 21:24, 2 March 2023 (UTC)

Yup, I agree with this. As i previously said, this article has a history of COI issues (for example, @Marko at Tezos proceded to edit the article after one of their ERs sat in the queue for around a month. The COI request queue is very long, which means it can take months for ERs to be processed by volunteers.) Therefore, I hereby declare my intention to decline any future COI requests concerning this article. Quetstar (talk) 00:36, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

I carried out most of the initial rewrite when the article was mostly sourced to press releases. During that process, the vast majority of reliable sources I found consisted of news media or law journals talking about the legal issues around Tezos or the tumultuous history of its key people. Like most other blockchains/cryptocurrencies, there is relatively little said about the tech or its applications--and often, when I do look further into those articles, we either wind up in the same situation where most of the content is poorly sourced except for some coverage of legal issues, or the article is listed for wholesale deletion. Citing (talk) 01:07, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

The article was dramatically improved by your edits. It's a shame that money is changing hands just to try and undermine all that hard work. Grayfell (talk) 07:38, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

Thank you all for the input. Citing I recognize all your previous work on the article and your reply here. Grayfell I appreciate your input and thorough explanation. While I obviously do have a COI as I work for Tezos, I am truly looking for ways to improve the encyclopedic value of the page and am doing so within Wikipedia policy. I thought that restructuring would be beneficial to the flow of the page and did not change any of the content in that process. I recognize now that adding more technical information about the project would be the greatest addition, and I plan to work on gathering this content using quality sources. Of course, I am happy to hear if anyone has any other suggestions or advice.

Regarding Quetstar's declaration; I (and my colleague Marko at Tezos) have disclosed COI and have been transparent throughout the process, while engaging with other editors. I hope that each future request is evaluated based on its own virtue and is not declined by default, as per Wikipedia policy. Lauraattezos (talk) 13:24, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

IMHO there are three layers of information here:

1. the design and features of Tezos. This area is the least controversial, and many reasonably good sources can be found, written by people disconnected from the project and published by reputable institutions like ACM, IEEE, Springer - and some preprints. While necessarily dedicated to specific aspects of Tezos, with titles like "Defending Against Malicious Reorgs in Tezos Proof-of-Stake", these research articles, as is de rigueur in academia, typically contain plenty of generic information about the protocol design. Cf. an online preprint with section 3 containing the details of the Tezos design (the authors try to actually break it). These sources can be used to flesh out the most important part of the article answering the readers question "what is Tezos?";
2. Tezos as a get-rich-quick scheme (or investment, depending on the reader's PoV). This section is inevitably controversial, but the events are by now reasonably old and thus can be described based on solid publications in the law journals, like (p. 439), (p.145). These (and many other) publications deal with Tezos dispassionately and can be used as a base of the "what is the controversy?" section. The serous lifting here belongs to the not-yet-written article on ICOs done via Swiss nonprofits (cf. ).
3. the founders and their conflicts. This aspect generates surprisingly little interest in the quality publications other than their names and pseudonyms and involvement in the lawsuits. I suggest to kill the section altogether and instead (lightly) springle the names and circumstances in the text.

Викидим (talk) 14:28, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

If reliable sources are on a spectrum, preprints would be near the bottom.

Lauraattezos said adding more technical information about the project would be the greatest addition. I reject this. What the article needs first is better sources. If those reliable sources indicate something is important, so be it, but otherwise it's trivia. Further, COI editors are not a neutral judges of which information is important and which is not. The article must summarize reliable, independent sources in proportion to due weight. The existence of flimsy journals, conference proceedings, and other fluff is not sufficient. If anyone must dip into primary sources, stick to reputable peer-reviewed journals. Grayfell (talk) 23:33, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

Thank you Викидим, Grayfell and Quetstar. Based on my understanding of the above, I will continue looking for coverage in reputable sources including peer-reviewed journals. If any of the above journals referred to by Викидим meet the required standards, please let me know how I can be of assistance. Lauraattezos (talk) 17:37, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

I would not expect to find a thorough independent review of Tezos in all its aspects, from lawsuits and questionable renumeration practices to the technology, in any of the major scientific publications; Tezos is simply not that important. So we will have to figure out the WP:WEIGHT between the history, technology, and law ourselves, on this talk page, IMHO. That said, finding sources of reasonable quality on particular aspects of Tezos is not hard; I am currently trying to do just that in a very low-intensity way; I have just added to the sources a HarvILJ article that is not dedicated to Tezos by any means, but provides sufficient details and numbers to flesh out the ICO section. Викидим (talk) 06:06, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

Lots of legal articles that can be of use turn out to be in the grey area: reputable author and institution, not peer-reviewed. Here is one source that I would love to use, for all to comment:

• Usha R. Rodrigues, Embrace the SEC, 61 Wash. U. J. L. & Pol’y 133 (2020),

Викидим (talk) 16:05, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

I agree with Grayfell in that the article needs good sourcing. It might be unfortunate to the folks who work at tezos, but most of the mainstream press was mostly due to the controversy, company, founders, etc. If today it is now a notable blockchain (it is barely inside the top 50 as ranked in terms of marketcap, if that means anything) and editors want to refocus on tech we need good sources. We have seen this whitewashing issue on many articles, and some blockchain related. I dont support removing the historical elements of this to promote 'the tech' (aka the token). Thanks Jtbobwaysf (talk) 08:49, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

Scandals are good for clicks. Therefore, I do not think that we should determine the WP:WEIGHT based on the "mainstream press" alone. I think that the encyclopedia should prefer the scientific sources per WP:SCHOLARSHIP. Викидим (talk) 13:50, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

For the avoidance of doubt, I do not propose removing the historical elements, I am simply suggesting the use of sources more appropriate for encyclopedia, that by now became available, like publications in law journals to describe the lawsuits and governance issues. Some researchers actually use Tezos as an illustrative case for the thesis that the governance problems cannot be solved exclusively by technical means, as the side that loses technically can always resort to the real-life courts). It is also about time to describe the actual design using the publications not sponsored by Tezos. Викидим (talk) 22:13, 12 March 2023 (UTC)

This edit request by an editor with a conflict of interest was declined. [see below]

Hi, as per the discussion with Grayfell, Викидим, Quetstar, Citing and Jtbobwaysf in the previous edit request, I have gathered some information to expand on the technical aspects of Tezos.

My suggestion is to update the Design section as follows:

• After the first sentence of the second paragraph, add:

First, a proposal is submitted on-chain. A vote then takes place, and if agreed upon, the proposals are deployed on the blockchain testnet for a predetermined span of time. After the allotted time, a final vote takes place.^[1]

At the end of the paragraph, add:

This process enhances transparency and reduces the time it takes to implement protocol updates.^[1]

• I'd also like to assist with sourcing for the first paragraph in the section. Perhaps this conference paper can be used?

Additionally, I have made a list of some additional journals which may offer useful information in the event that the publications referenced above are not sufficient:

Mattia Landoni and Abraham Sutherland. Dilution and True Economic Gain From Cryptocurrency Block Rewards. 168 Tax Notes 1189, August 2020.

Shaanan Cohney, David Hoffman, Jeremy Sklaroff, and David Wishnick. Coin-Operated Capitalism. Columbia Law Review, Vol. 119, p. 591, 2019.

María de la O González, Francisco Jareño, and Frank S. Skinner. Nonlinear Autoregressive Distributed Lag Approach: An Application on the Connectedness between Bitcoin Returns and the Other Ten Most Relevant Cryptocurrency Returns. MDPI Mathematics 2020:8, 2020.

Najaf Iqbal, Zeeshan Fareed, Guangcai Wan, and Farrukh Shahzad. Asymmetric nexus between COVID-19 outbreak in the world and cryptocurrency market. International Review of Financial Analysis 73, 2021.

I appreciate any input from the community. Thanks, Lauraattezos (talk) 09:00, 24 April 2023 (UTC)

No, I don't think this is proposal is an improvement. Saying it "enhances" transparency isn't saying much of anything at all. What does it enhance it compared to? Likewise, it reduces the time compared to what? All of this sounds vaguely impressive, but doesn't tell readers anything of significance. The Khan et al source is very weak for such broad and vague claims. Grayfell (talk) 11:08, 24 April 2023 (UTC)

I agree Grayfell (talk · contribs) in that we tend to shy away from these type of sweeping statements "enhances transparency" unless we have a lot of good sources for it to say in WP:WIKIVOICE. However the first part of your two part proposal to add "First, a proposal is submitted on-chain. A vote then takes place, and if agreed upon, the proposals are deployed on the blockchain testnet for a predetermined span of time. After the allotted time, a final vote takes place" seemed neutral and non-controversial to me though and I wasnt opposed to adding that. Grayfell what do you think about that? Jtbobwaysf (talk) 07:00, 25 April 2023 (UTC)

I do not think it is neutral enough in this context, although it is at least less clumsy than the current paragraph. For one thing, where's the source for this? For another, once again it isn't really saying much of anything. Wikipedia has a problem with this kind of superficial pseudo-explanation of cryptocurrency systems being used to imply a level of significance and legitimacy which is not supported by any reliable independent source. Similar to what I said above, before, this proposal appears to be an attempt to drown-out the controversial content by padding the article with unsourced inanity.

To put it simply, it's not good enough to list all the ways this blockchain is supposedly different from every other blockchain. We need to use reliable sources to determine which details are important. Not every detail which is mentioned is automatically important according to that source. Details which are not important according to sources do not belong in this article. Figure out what sources say is important. Start with the best sources available. Grayfell (talk) 08:12, 25 April 2023 (UTC)