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This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump (miscellaneous). Please do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to revive any of these discussions, either start a new thread or use the talk page associated with that topic.

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Learn about Russia. Graduates and Mentors

Dear friends,

From January 26 to May 26, 2018, Wikimedia RU together with partners holds an international competition for writing biographical articles — «Learn about Russia. Graduates and Mentors». The competition is dedicated to graduates and teachers of Russian educational institutions from the Middle Ages to our time. The competition has a nomination for articles in foreign languages, i.e. official UN languages: Arabic, Chinese, English, French, and Spanish.

This nomination has 5 prize-winning places, the main prize is 500 Euros!

We invite participants of your section to take part in this interesting competition. JukoFF (talk) 17:26, 14 February 2018 (UTC)

How can I change my user name?

I would like to change my user name in Wikimedia BUT not in Wikpedia, where I'd like to keep my current user name (Pedro Felipe). Is it possible? How can I do it? --Pedro Felipe (talk) 22:45, 15 February 2018 (UTC)

@Pedro Felipe: m:Steward_requests/Username_changes. ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 23:27, 15 February 2018 (UTC)
Great! Many thanks @Koavf: --Pedro Felipe (talk) 00:17, 16 February 2018 (UTC)

Help the Anti--Harassment Tools team pick 2 Blocking tools to build

Hello everybody! Over the past weeks the Community health initiative team took a look at at all 58 suggestions that came out of the discussion about making improvements to blocking tools. Now join the discussion to select 2 to build from the shortlist. For the Anti-Harassment Tools team, SPoore (WMF), Community Advocate, Community health initiative (talk) 19:07, 16 February 2018 (UTC)

Hi,

I wanted to give you all an update about the Compact Language Links feature. The Wikimedia Foundation Language team has been working on it for a couple of years now. The goal of interlanguage links is to make the access to knowledge in different languages possible. The Compact Language Links feature makes this easier by automatically showing the languages that are most relevant to each user while still providing quick access to all the rest.

This feature is already enabled for readers in Wikipedia in all languages except English. In the English Wikipedia it is defined as a beta feature, and as such it is currently used by more than 60,000 editors, making it the second most popular beta feature. Our measurements and tests have shown that this design makes it easier for most people to find the links to the languages they want, and that they use it more than the old style.

Here are some details about which languages are displayed in the initial list, if you're interested:

Screenshot of compact language links
Screenshot of compact language links language screen which also shows a featured article badge
  • Compact language links show those languages most relevant to each user while still providing access to the rest (see image). Up to nine languages are provided initially, and you can quickly search for any other language by typing its name in the search box in any language. For example, if you're interested in reading an article in Japanese, you'll be able to search for it by typing "japanese" in English, "日本語" in Japanese itself, "японский" in Russian, or "ja" (the ISO language code) in the search box.
  • The initial set of languages is selected based on your previous choices. If you frequently switch between a small set of languages, then you will see these languages first, without having to scan a potentially long list each time. The other criteria for showing more languages in the compact list are: languages from your browser settings, languages in your Babel boxes, the languages of the country from which you are connecting (according to CLDR), languages used in the article's content, and languages in which the article has achieved Featured Article status. If after picking all the languages above there is still room in the initial list of up to nine languages, then major languages of the world will be shown.

The team has been collecting feedback from editors in all wikis, and we have added many features and fixed many bugs to make it more useful to readers and editors. Some of the fixes based on Wikipedia editors' feedback include:

  • Showing featured articles in the compact list.
  • Indicating the articles' featured status in the compact list and in the panel with the full list.
  • Showing languages from the user's Babel box in the compact list.
  • Showing articles in languages that are used in the article in the compact list.
  • Removing the division of the language list into sections when it's unnecessary.
  • Making sure that any language can be found in the search box, including languages with variant scripts (like Serbian or Chinese) and languages with different names (e.g., Spanish can be called both "español" and "castellano").
  • Adaptation to screens of different sizes.

After deployment at other wikis, there have been few complaints from editors (who can always opt-out), and all Wikipedias have seen an increase in clicks on the interlanguage links. From June 2016 to June 2017, the percentage of traffic through interlanguage links out of page views has grown by 90%.

If you haven't tried this beta feature yet, you are welcome to try it now. We welcome your feedback about it at mw:Talk:Universal Language Selector/Compact Language Links. Please read the FAQ at mw:Universal Language Selector/Compact Language Links, which gathers responses to a lot of feedback and analysis from the experience of other wikis with this tool.

Thank you!

On behalf of the Wikimedia Foundation Language team, --Amir E. Aharoni (WMF) (talk) 16:00, 18 February 2018 (UTC)

Looking for examples of alternative business models for organisations considering open licensing

Hi all

I'm compiling a guide for UN agencies on the steps to implement open licensing.

The piece I'm really missing is alternative business models to those which require traditional copyright. This include publishing books, images and other multimedia licensing and also data.

If you know of any existing compilations of information and/or any examples of organisations which have working business models please brain dump below and I will organise it.

Thanks very much

John Cummings (talk) 16:16, 17 February 2018 (UTC)

John, are you basically looking for a way for an agency to make money by selling content that people can get without paying for it? Or is it more general, i.e., a new revenue source for an agency that has previously used copyrights as a significant source of revenue, and which now needs something (anything) else to replace that? WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:17, 19 February 2018 (UTC)
@WhatamIdoing:, I'm doing research to be able to present agencies with a range of examples of where organisations have moved towards open licensing and ways they have made up for the loss in revenue from sales of copyrighted material. John Cummings (talk) 22:52, 19 February 2018 (UTC)
So you are looking for examples of things like giving away the material for free, but getting new or additional revenue from training programs or certifications. Have you tried getting in touch with Creative Commons? They might be aware of some real-world examples. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:00, 19 February 2018 (UTC)

Shameless New Page Patrol Advertisement

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  • After a massive push to reduce the New Page Patrol backlog during our recent backlog drive, New Page Patrol is currently struggling to keep up with with the influx of new articles. We could use a few extra hands on deck if anyone has time available.
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  • If you would like to join the project and help out, please see the granting conditions and review our instructions page. You can apply for the user-right HERE. — Insertcleverphrasehere (or here) 08:24, 20 February 2018 (UTC)

Notability of Teachers

I'm not sure if this is the right place to ask this, but I'm wondering where I can find a list of basic education (primary and secondary/highschool) teachers on Wikipedia? and on a related matter if there are any guidelines on what would make a teacher notable? while I have seen some categories of teachers, it appears that most of them are famous for something else (like being a politician) but are categorised also a teachers because they did teaching at one point.

Erin_Gruwell is one example I have found, but I'm wondering if there are any more? Egaoblai (talk) 13:27, 16 February 2018 (UTC)

I assume all we have for teachers is WP:GNG. Many of the people in subcategories of Category:Educators are notable also for other things than being a teacher. Others might not be notable enough for Wikipedia. Helma Trass should probably just redirect to Toronto Montessori Schools, for example. —Kusma (t·c) 13:37, 16 February 2018 (UTC)
Redirected. —Kusma (t·c) 11:04, 18 February 2018 (UTC)
Standards for categorization are different than that for having a stand-alone article at Wikipedia. Wikipedia:Categorization dos and don'ts governs the former, WP:42 governs the latter. --Jayron32 14:04, 16 February 2018 (UTC)
There are 2 relatively straightforward ways that a teacher in a secondary or primary school can be notable: a national level award, or the head of a major national organization. There are also other possibilities--the most likely one that comes to mind is WP:AUTHOR. I notice that very few o fthe presidents of the National Education Association have articles, so that might be a good place to start. (it also might be a good idea to fix the existing articles, which are quite poorly sourced and rather promotional ). DGG ( talk ) 21:05, 20 February 2018 (UTC)

CAT:infobox templates

At Template_talk:Infobox#Deploy_auto-categorization, this talk is going on:

Let's automate filling this Category,
Let's do that by simple template name checking ('those having "Template:Infobox ..." name').

I objected, for being unfulfilling (the promise of being a complete category).

I proposed a better setup: #Let's_define_and_create_a_new_category. Today only few editors are involved, so I want to invite more. - DePiep (talk) 22:47, 16 February 2018 (UTC)

"Better" in quotes indeed, rather. Basically the idea is to automatically populate Category:Infobox templates when possible (e.g. templates located at Template:Infobox Foobar, and take care of the other infoboxes manually. The code has been tested, works, and has no known downsides. DePiep is objecting to this for a bunch of reasons that neither make sense, or don't check out, and is generally being obstructionist. Past discussion is at Template_talk:Infobox#Automatically populate Category:Infobox templates, although there's a wall of text at Template_talk:Infobox#Deploy_auto-categorization for those who care about reading a tempest in a teapot. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 23:51, 16 February 2018 (UTC)
No, "better" is in italics not "quotes". Bad faith? - DePiep (talk) 23:55, 16 February 2018 (UTC)
Bombhead, you are lying. Right here. You edited your talkpage post after I commented, but without taking responsibility. -DePiep (talk) 00:07, 17 February 2018 (UTC)
  • To be claer: I did not "edit" Bombhead's posts, I only reverted. Because: by Bombherad's editing AFTER replies, that makes the reply-er stupid. While, actually, I am not the stupid one. Basic Talkpage behaviour. - DePiep (talk) 00:16, 17 February 2018 (UTC)
To be clear, you objected to a specific wording, which I fixed. But then you reverted it, only to accusing me of 'not taking responsability' and 'lying'. And still after being pointed out several times that my username is Headbomb, not Bombhead nor Bombshell, you still get it wrong. If you look stupid, you only have yourself to blame. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 00:22, 17 February 2018 (UTC)
Your original post was: [1]. And to *that* one I replied. - DePiep (talk) 00:43, 17 February 2018 (UTC)

(ec) To be clear: I did not "edit" Bombhead's posts, I only reverted. Because: by Bombherad's editing AFTER replies, that makes the reply-er stupid. While, actually, I am not the stupid one. Basic Talkpage behaviour. - DePiep (talk) 00:16, 17 February 2018 (UTC)

DePiep, perhaps you could reference WP:TALKNO and specify how your behavior fits in to that sort of rubric? Just a thought. Cheers. Dumuzid (talk) 00:40, 17 February 2018 (UTC)
I'd spend my time on making the dozen of diff's showing Bombhead's PAs, in the talkpage I mentioned. You could have read them by now. What do you actually suggest? -DePiep (talk) 00:49, 17 February 2018 (UTC)
I guess my only other suggestion would be that you not edit other people's comments. Have a nice evening! Dumuzid (talk) 00:51, 17 February 2018 (UTC)
No need for 'dozens of diffs', one will do. But you won't find it since those don't exist. And, again, it's Headbomb, not Bombhead. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 00:55, 17 February 2018 (UTC)
Whatever. Follow the OP link. -DePiep (talk) 01:04, 17 February 2018 (UTC)
Exactly, you can't find even one. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 01:08, 17 February 2018 (UTC)
Just found one of you snarkies: [2]. - DePiep (talk) 01:35, 17 February 2018 (UTC)
With all due respect to all involved, I have but one thing left to say: Happy Friday! Dumuzid (talk) 01:37, 17 February 2018 (UTC)

There's now an RFC on this, see Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#RFC: Autopopulate Category:Infobox templates when we can. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 12:46, 21 February 2018 (UTC)

Hi!

The Language team is planning to change the design of the interlanguage links list for logged-out users, newly registered users, and users who have previously enabled the beta feature. Active users who have not enabled the beta feature will not be affected. The new design will use the searchable Compact Language Links feature. See also the earlier note here: #Compact Language Links update. This is scheduled to be deployed starting on Wednesday, February 28th.

When the feature if enabled, nothing will change for active editors: If you have enabled this beta feature, it will remain enabled. If you have not enabled it, it will remain disabled. Editors will be able to enable and disable it as a normal user preference. The preference will move out of the "Beta features" tab in your preferences, and into the "Appearance" tab. The option's name will be "Use a compact language list, with languages relevant to you".

Our decision to deploy it to anonymous users is based upon user experience research, data showing that a compact list makes it easier for readers to find articles in the language that they need, and a technical review of the tool. For more information, please see the overview and complete data collected in a spreadsheet.

We look forward to your feedback in the coming weeks. If no last-minute technical or functional problems are identified as blockers by the deployment team, we expect to be ready to complete this change by Wednesday, February 28, 2018. Please do let us know if you have any comments, suggestions, or questions. Details about Compact Language Links can be read in the project documentation.

Thank you!

On behalf of the Wikimedia Foundation Language team, --Amir E. Aharoni (WMF) (talk) 13:12, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

Updates in policy since 2014 for a slumbering editor?

Hello! I was a fairly active editor until late 2014, and now it seems I feel like editing a bit again. Given the Kafkaesque bureaucracy of WP :) I wonder if there have been noteworthy changes in policy/guidelines or common practices from late 2014 to now, especially (but not only) in notability, BLP, RS. Of course I could compare diffs, but I'd like to hear the community's opinion also on what is now current practice, trends etc. Many thanks! --cyclopiaspeak! 17:21, 20 February 2018 (UTC)

On most of the big stuff, you've not missed much in the past 4 years. If you're still mostly about doing research, citing your sources, and writing quality text you should notice zero change. --Jayron32 17:41, 20 February 2018 (UTC)
Thanks. As I was active in AFD, I wondered if any relevant news are present in policies concerning that area, for example. --cyclopiaspeak! 18:05, 20 February 2018 (UTC)
Off the cuff, WP:COI has been active and WP:SCHOOLOUTCOMES got kicked to the curb. --Izno (talk) 19:49, 20 February 2018 (UTC)
Yeah, if you're going to be active at AFD, we no longer automatically give a free pass to any page that purports to be about a high school. They now have to meet GNG like everyone else. --Jayron32 19:55, 20 February 2018 (UTC)
Very well, thanks! --cyclopiaspeak! 22:00, 20 February 2018 (UTC)
Jayron32,please read the close of that RfC. It said that there was no consensus to change the practice of keeping all high school articles; it also, confusingly said, that there was no consensus that simply quoting SCHOOLOUTCOMES was sufficient. The reason we keep them is not because of presumed notability, but in order to avoid about the hundreds of disputed AfDs that would essentially yield no better than random results (and, conversely, to merge all primary school articles unless there was some special notability.) cyclopia, read the RfC, and decide for yourself; don't rely on people who wish the result had been less of a self-contradiction. And to see current practice about deletion, look what happens at AfD and Del Rev, not what people say happens. Of the high school AfDs since then, all only 1 or 2 have closed as delete, unless there were problems with WP:V. I think we've all been paying more attention to WP:V DGG ( talk ) 22:50, 20 February 2018 (UTC)
DGG, thanks a lot for your thoughtful comment. It seems nonetheless that the status of SCHOOLOUTCOMES has been seriously weakened, if not totally rebuked. Am I wrong in reading so? --cyclopiaspeak! 23:25, 20 February 2018 (UTC)
It is certainly true that it is less widely supported, and is in enough disrepute that it is not wise to quote it, but to make the argument from the principles. I cannot predict what will be the future direction, but It is possible that we may be in an unfortunate trend to judging only by the GNG. I don;t actually care that much about shigh schools specifically; i do wish we would judge articles as appropriate for WP on the basis of the real importance of the subject. But if we are going to judge by the GNG, I'm quite as prepared as anyone to argue for whatever interpretation of the key sourcing qualifications of substantial , reliable and independent to justify what I think should be done with the article. I've seen very few genuinely disputed afds that I couldn't adapt such arguments in either direction. DGG ( talk ) 04:19, 21 February 2018 (UTC)
I stopped editing more or less in 2007 and returned in mid-to-late 2015. I'm not sure of the entire history of GNG, but it wasn't the central part of AfD when I left and it usually is central now. There is a waxing and waning debate on AfD if subject notability guidelines (SNGs) should be interpreted as sometimes necessary or only sufficient, which also seems to be waxing somewhat overall since I've been back. When I left, I'm not sure if de's Relevanz had taken hold over there, but there are signs that acceptance of a similar approach are growing here. Smmurphy(Talk) 04:40, 21 February 2018 (UTC)
GNG was all the rage back in 2013-2014 already. As an unashamed inclusionist, what I find sad is that already back in the day guidelines such as WP:NASTRO managed to mass remove IMHO perfectly acceptable articles because they were not formally GNG-compliant (you can compile perfectly reasonable articles about celestial objects by collating entries in databases and mentions in academic papers, even if none of them is 'significant coverage'). I am not anymore in the mood to fight much over that, however, honestly. But in case I pop at AFD I would like to feel a bit more prepared about the arguments there. What is the de.wp Relevanz approach? Also, I remember the days of the BLP wars (when BLPPROD came into being, for example) and I wonder if we became even more strict from 2015 on them.--cyclopiaspeak! 08:45, 21 February 2018 (UTC)
WP:NASTRO was a much needed boon to the Encylopedia. Nobody cares about featureless space rock #15239876, who is only interesting as one point out of a dataset of millions if not trillions. Our job was never to replicate databases. Go in your backyard, pick up a random rock. That's about how special a random asteroid is, even though some rocks are clearly notable on their own. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 15:11, 21 February 2018 (UTC)
Headbomb, we agree to disagree. Theoretically, if there were reliable databases and mentions in academic papers for every grain of sand on Earth, I would be happy to have articles about them. --cyclopiaspeak! 20:49, 21 February 2018 (UTC)
German wikipedia's de:Wikipedia:Relevanzkriterien is their version of Wikipedia:Notability. It is stated to be a necessary but not sufficient condition but in practice I understand that it is often considered sufficient (that is, in practice articles are deleted if they do not meet Relevanz). The guideline (Richtlinien) is basically a combination of SNGs with a generall criteria that a subject is considered suitable for inclusion in the encyclopedia if it is of lasting importance (zeitüberdauernd von Bedeutung). I find it very different from our golden rule/WP:GNG in that it is more vaguely/loosely worded, but (I think) as a result it is more aggressively enforced. The issue came to a head in 2009 (see Deletionism and inclusionism in Wikipedia#Other language Wikipedias), but I don't think the culture over there has changes significantly since then. Smmurphy(Talk) 15:33, 21 February 2018 (UTC)
Izno, I don't think that SCHOOLOUTCOMES, or at least the sentiment behind it, has really lost favor. DGG recommended just the other day that we should entirely exclude all schools (not just universities and typical high schools) and sports teams from WP:ORG, as part of a major update there. The RFC respondents so far mostly seem comfortable with this. Presumably things like a for-profit trade school would be covered by the GNG in the future. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:03, 21 February 2018 (UTC)
@WhatamIdoing: SCHOOLOUTCOMES amusingly says that schools are subject to NORG. I saw that conversation at WT:NORG and am concerned about that attempted exclusion. And yes, it has lost favor. Go talk to the closers of the RFC (I've already done that step), or in fact read the RFC closure statement in full, or even just the summary at SCHOOLOUTCOMES (which I believe nails the points in short). That there are some editors who see some things in the closure which are not there is a separate issue, one of whom has already been warned at WP:ANI (I believe it was incidents, not WP:AN) about the circular reasoning of SCHOOLOUTCOMES. --Izno (talk) 21:36, 21 February 2018 (UTC)
It's the same situation with WP:NSPORTS. Wikipedia:WikiProject Religion/Notability guide sends people to WP:ORG as well, for religious organizations. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:10, 22 February 2018 (UTC)
  • I'm not sure of the exact timing but the most significant events that I've noticed in recent years seem to be:
  1. The introduction of draft space and AfC. Draftification and G13 are now a way of stealthily deleting something.
  2. WP:ACTRIAL which stops new editors from creating articles for four days (and so disrupts editathons)
  3. A new restricted privilege of new page reviewing
  4. The WP:WOMRED project which is a model of collaboration and productive energy
  5. Lots of unproductive drama and nitpicking at the mainpage projects -- TFA, ITN, OTD, DYK, &c.
  6. A general decline in attendance and activity at older projects and activities such as AfD
  7. A witchhunt of paid editors, with some changes to the terms of use
Andrew D. (talk) 18:35, 21 February 2018 (UTC)
Is there an effort to document the history of this stuff? I'd really love to know three classes of things. One, when were different guidelines and policies adopted or changed significantly (one way of doing this would be if there is a year in review for RFCs)? Two, what arguments are common at AfD (what are the relative frequency of things like GNG, ANYBIO, V, NPOV, NOR and their spelling variants used in arguments)? Three, what are some of the biggest debates/dramas that have happened over the years (so, what discussions have involved the most editors/admins with the most ink spilled or editors reprimanded, or alternatively what discussions are at cent for long periods of time)? Smmurphy(Talk) 20:25, 21 February 2018 (UTC)
Smmurphy I was thinking the same and it would be an awesome historical effort. And a titanic one, I must say. Given that I remember the list of banned users being deleted -the closest proxy to the kind of history that you describe- I suppose such an effort should take place off wiki. But if anyone is interested in setting it, I'd be happy to participate. --cyclopiaspeak! 20:53, 21 February 2018 (UTC)
I'm not in a place off-wiki where starting such a project would be a good idea, but I could imagine being in such a place in a few months. I've actually been kicking around this idea for a while and might actually try to do it. In that vein, here are a few links that I'll need to look at before getting started in ernest. We have an inactive wikiproject vaguely related to the area: Wikipedia:WikiProject Wikidemia. There are a number of other related pages, including Wikipedia:Researching Wikipedia, Academic studies about Wikipedia, and Wikipedia:Academic studies of Wikipedia. Depending on how it is done, there is also mw:Wikimedia Research/Formal collaborations to consider. User:Cyclopia, If/when I come back to this, I'll ping or contact you, if you don't mind. Smmurphy(Talk) 19:37, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

IP addresses in Wikipedia

Can one find out the IP address of Wikipedia editors who are registered under a user name? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.161.86.40 (talk) 12:48, 23 February 2018 (UTC)

If "one" is just an ordinary editor such as you and me, then the answer is "no", but the information is recorded somewhere, so is available to WP:Checkusers. Dbfirs 13:36, 23 February 2018 (UTC)

Reminder: Help the Anti-Harassment Tools team pick 2 Blocking tools to build

Hello everybody! Reminder that the discussion to select the improvements to the blocking tools is going on. Over the past weeks the Community health initiative team took a look at at all 58 suggestions that came out of the discussion about making improvements to blocking tools. Now join the discussion to select 2 to build from the shortlist. For the Anti-Harassment Tools team, SPoore (WMF), Community Advocate, Community health initiative (talk) 22:44, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

Afternoon, all. This is probably an unsolvable problem, but I wanted to bring it up for ideas. I just tried to share the link http://en.wiki.x.io/wiki/François_Clemmons on Google Hangouts, but the automatic link died at the c-cedilla, leaving me at Fran. Is there anything we could add there to make the original article findable? Obviously, adding François Clemmons would be overkill, but would adding François also be too much? I suppose using http://en.wiki.x.io/wiki/Francois_Clemmons as the link in the first place would also work, as would copying and pasting the original link instead of clicking it. I'm just wondering if there's something we should be doing in the general case, instead of coming up with case-by-case solutions. Thanks. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 20:23, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

Try using http://en.wiki.x.io/wiki/Fran%C3%A7ois_Clemmons. See URL encoding. Killiondude (talk) 21:07, 26 February 2018 (UTC)
Good point. However, while I can figure that out, the vast majority of readers would probably have trouble with it. Should we have a "Share" tab somewhere that offers both of those options? --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 15:16, 27 February 2018 (UTC)
The problem is Google's web editor: while it claims to understand non-ASCII characters it doesn't. When I paste the accented URL into my plain text editor I'm getting the escaped/HTML-encoded version. --Zac67 (talk) 18:08, 27 February 2018 (UTC)

Template:Infobox time zone

Can someone who knows template magic fix this, please? It doesn't seem to work - it's showing UTC-0 no matter what the parameters are, and appears to have done so in every past incarnation (which were at Template:Infobox time zone (North America)). Thanks, ansh666 21:57, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

Template:Infobox time zone (North America) seems to have worked before a lot of edits by BrandonALF last week. I haven't examined the purpose of the edits but have have reverted to before that. This means Template:Infobox time zone is no longer used. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:59, 26 February 2018 (UTC)
Thanks. I looked at the old revisions, but maybe it's still using the new code when it parses the template? Dunno. ansh666 04:11, 27 February 2018 (UTC)
If you view an old template revision which transcludes itself, e.g. via the documentation, then the transclusion will use the current version of the template. But if you preview the old revision by clicking edit and show preview then the transclusion will use the version you are previewing. This can e.g. be seen at [3] where the example from the documentation changes to display [[File:|300px]] if you preview. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:31, 27 February 2018 (UTC)
Ah, okay, thanks. ansh666 19:09, 27 February 2018 (UTC)
Sorry about that, I fixed the issue. I don't know what went wrong. ★BrandonALF★ talk edits 21:42, 27 February 2018 (UTC)

Possibility to snoop someone's geography and browser information without CU?

The question was raised due to some suspicious incidents happened on Chinese Wikipedia. I was trying to find out if such thing happened on the English version but didn't find anything so far.

Suppose user A wants to snoop the privacy informations like IP address, operation system and browser of user B. He posted a link to user B's talk page, where B will probably see and click the link. In the meantime, A actually controls the website that hosts the link. Once B clicked the link, A can easily get B's IP address and system, browser information without B's consent.

The described steps can be utilized by someone to find out that if a user is related to an IP address (or another user). However, it looks like the victims are also responsible for the leakage of his/her privacy (we shouldn't click any unknown links sent by someone). I'm wondering how will the English community respond to such situation.

Thanks in advance. --PhiLiP (talk) 04:56, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

I don’t think there’s anything needs doing that we don’t already do. First, I would hope most editors are experienced enough not to click on suspicious links, going by both the actual link and its presentation, i.e. what is written to encourage them to click on it. Second even if it is clicked on it could be clicked on by any number of readers, possibly including the target. There is no way to know who is clicking on it, making it of very limited use in finding out one person’s IP, which anyway is only of limited use in finding out more about them.
Any editor can remove malicious links, so it’s possible if not likely that it will be dealt with before the links can have their desired effect. See Wikipedia: Administrators' noticeboard/Archive289#magic282 malicious links for one recent case I was involved in. Then various steps can be taken: editors can be blocked, sites can be blacklisted, edit filters can be created for particular problems.--JohnBlackburnewordsdeeds 05:24, 5 March 2018 (UTC)
Thanks for the quick response! The information is very valuable and the reaction is reasonable. Things become a little tricky on Chinese Wikipedia is because the user posted the links in certain seemingly reasonable purposes, for examples, a demonstration of certain operation, or information collecting page for offline meetup in the site notice (and yes he is an admin). It is not necessary to use his own website to host such links. He can upload the demonstration figures to Wikipedia and use a third party service to collect meetup information. The reason that he intended to use links from his own website was off the record and was only reveal by himself in some offline group chat - he can have the benefit to know visitors' IP addresses. --PhiLiP (talk) 05:38, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

Suggestion to modify mass message signature

This page contains signature of mass message. I'm proposing that we uncomment it, by replacing the content

<!-- Message sent by User:$1@$2 using the list at $3 -->

with this

-- [[User:$1|]] ($2, using the list at $3)

This change would make it more clear who sent the 'mass message', which is useful to make it easier to contact them, I think?

--Gryllida (talk) 05:04, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

Results of research about Administrators' Noticeboard Incidents

Hello all,

Last fall, as part of the Community Health initiative, a number of experienced En.WP editors took a survey capturing their opinions on the AN/I noticeboard. They recorded where they thought the board working well, where it didn’t, and suggested improvements. The results of this survey are now up; these have been supplemented by some interesting data points about the process in general. Please join us for a discussion on the results.

Regards, SPoore (WMF), Community Advocate, Community health initiative (talk) 20:31, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

Any WP culture term, and any strategy, for "pages that are only edited by POV editors because nobody else is interested in them"?

Kind of an abstract issue, but is there any customary term here for "pages that are only edited by POV editors because nobody else is interested in them"? Has this issue (and maybe ideas how to address it [or not]) been discussed somewhere in the past that I could read up on?

I ask because in my work I've run across a number of niches where articles are in very poor shape because, to be frank, the articles are extremely important to a narrow range of people in the world, and such groups tend not to have very objective editors nor very experienced editors. And as a result, whole swathes of pages suffer from major POV, terrible or absent sourcing, and constant creeping expansion as an array of novice editors nip in to jam in yet more (uncited) content. And in the majority of cases, nobody comes long who's interested in addressing those problems, so it persists over a decade and longer.

The specific example I always notice is articles on South Asian Sufi saints, namely Category:Indian Sufi saints and Category:Pakistani Sufi saints. To pick just one random example, Muhammad Channan Shah Nuri is not great, though by no means not the worst. I've run across a number of these articles that have extremely POV claims like "he recited XYZ surah of the Quran right as he emerged from his mother's womb" and other such non-academic claims reported as fact rather than legend. Here's one of the "miraculous" ones: Syed Shah Afzal Biabani. Lots of honorifics basically equivalent to "His Holiness, The Honorable Reverend" jammed onto every name, etc. And an absolute obsession with ancestry (since many of these people are claimed to have authority by being direct descendants of Muhammad), and more perniciously often a long list of completely non-notable descendants. The latter being fiercely defended, presumably because some editors have a personal claim to be descended from the figure and so are adamant that "The Purwani family of Gwalanpur is descended from this holy saint" be a part of article.

There are other mucky pockets (Hindu saints are often pretty POV as well), and pockets of articles on ethnic groups that appear to be largely written (and unsourced) by members of the group looking to promote themselves.

In any case, I'm partially venting, but also partially wanting to know if in the bigger picture Wikipedia has any term for this issue, and whether there's anything to be done other than "hope that eventually someone who cares more about Wikipedia values than promoting the subject stumbles across it"? MatthewVanitas (talk) 08:00, 4 March 2018 (UTC)

I've contributed her for over 15 years, & I haven't heard of anyone come up with a "customary term" for this. But I can attest that it has existed for years in the various corners of Wikipedia that lack enough eyes to monitor for quality. And except for "hope that eventually someone who cares more about Wikipedia values than promoting the subject stumbles across it" [the article], the only solution I have, unless I can clean up the article, is to leave the article as ugly & problematic as I found it in hope that the substandard quality warns anyone who reads it that it is not reliable. -- llywrch (talk) 23:25, 6 March 2018 (UTC)

I have a few questions about citations. As citations to online reference material are fundimental to validating Wikipedia articles, are there any plans to preserve these references in some way? The reason I ask, I have noticed on some of the more controversial subjects, not just here in Wikipedia, but on the web generally, reference material, even newspaper archive material that supports articles that link to it has been removed from the web, leaving dead links. Notwidthstanding the possibility that certain actors may persue a policy of removing reference material from the web that conflicts with their agenda, also over the long term as the web gets older, sites and publications change hands, shut down etc we might expect online reference material to dissapear more and frequently thereby breaking the validity of Wikipedia articles that depend on them. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Raven9nine (talk • contribs) 16:38, 7 March 2018 (UTC)

Internet Archive's Wayback Machine. Our citation templates have a section for the Archive link in addition to the original link. Ian.thomson (talk) 18:55, 7 March 2018 (UTC)

Reupping a request for a Greek speaker

A couple months ago I asked about this, and I figure it's worth another shot. We're getting ever closer to finishing the Neelix cleanup, and there are 11 Ancient Greek redirects listed here that need checking. Hopefully it won't take long, and it'd be hugely appreciated. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 15:49, 8 March 2018 (UTC)

Watermarked images

WP:WATERMARK is typically vague so I'm asking what should be done about the two lead images at List of tallest buildings in Karachi (permalink). I guess just revert the recent edits, but what about the images themselves? I suppose they are a Commons problem we can ignore? Johnuniq (talk) 21:46, 4 March 2018 (UTC)

There is nothing wrong with the images. Leave them. Watermarks are acceptable unless they would hamper their free use. The images in question are licensed under Creative Commons, which is our definition of free. And yes, the images are on Commons, so beyond our scope. (WP:CONEXCEPT) Hawkeye7 (discuss) 22:25, 4 March 2018 (UTC)
The placement seems bizarre though, and they both seem to be essentially showing the same scene. Aiken D 22:55, 4 March 2018 (UTC)
WP:WATERMARK doesn't seem vague to me on this point. Those images have watermarks, so they shouldn't be used. Since they're licensed under a free license, someone can crop or edit them to remove the watermark if the editors of that article would otherwise like to include the images. Anomie⚔ 23:13, 4 March 2018 (UTC)
Since it doesn't hamper their use, there is no particular reason to do so. But Creative Commons licence terms are clear: You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor. So no, you cannot remove it. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 20:27, 8 March 2018 (UTC)
I'm with Hawkeye7 on this. The phrase "that would hamper their free use" has meaning. If the watermark does not "would hamper their free use" then it isn't in violation of anything. It's the "that would hamper their free use" that requires us to remove the image, not the fact that it's a watermark. --Jayron32 20:33, 8 March 2018 (UTC)
Creative Commons says You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.[4] We can just remove the watermark. --Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 20:52, 8 March 2018 (UTC)
Note that US citizens who remove watermarks are in violation of the DMCA and can face criminal sanctions. [5] Hawkeye7 (discuss) 21:52, 8 March 2018 (UTC)
That's not true for our purposes. Images under the Creative Commons licenses that allow derivatives explicitly allow such modification. If you did that to an All Rights Reserved image or a non-deriv image then you would be in trouble. --Majora (talk) 21:55, 8 March 2018 (UTC)
Oh, and that image is downloaded from Facebook anyways which raises permission issues. If you really wanted to ensure you were fine (even though you really are) then you could just move the data into the EXIF. --Majora (talk) 22:02, 8 March 2018 (UTC)
Last bit. After looking further, I nominated those images for deletion. The uploader has a history of copyvios and there is significant doubt as to the provenance of the images with the EXIF indicating a Facebook origin. As a side note, moving data into the EXIF is commonly done on Commons and accepted by the community there. For future reference, there is a template that indicates when such things are done: c:template:Attribution metadata from licensed image (for non-public domain images) with almost 13,000 uses. --Majora (talk) 22:27, 8 March 2018 (UTC)
You should read the sentence more carefully. In Free images should not be watermarked, distorted, have any credits or titles in the image itself or anything else that would hamper their free use, the "anything else that would hamper their free use" isn't a statement as to when watermarks are ok. It's one more category of thing that free images should not have, probably intended as a catch-all so someone can't wikilawyer "this isn't a watermark, distortion, credit, or title, so it's not against policy". To have the meaning you want to read into it, that sentence would have to be changed to something like "except when that does not hamper their free use". Anomie⚔ 14:46, 9 March 2018 (UTC)

Update about WMF’s Anti-Harassment Tools team work in 2018: Blocking tools

Hello all, thank you for the input over the past several months about the blocking tools. From all the participation on Blocking tools and improvements talk page on English Wikipedia and on Meta, our discussion with our legal department, and our preliminary technical analysis, the AHT team has decided to a) investigate two projects now, b) next build two small changes, and c) later in the year follow with a third project. The details are below.

First, the team will investigate and decide between:

  • Project 1 - Block by combination of hashed identifiable information (e.g. user agent, screen resolution, etc.) in addition to IP range. We are still defining what “hashed identifiable information” means in our technical investigation, which can be tracked at phab:T188160. We will also need to decide how this type of block is set on Special:Block (likely an optional checkbox) and how this type of block is reflected in block logs.
  • Project 4 - Drop a 'blocked' cookie on anonymous blocks. The investigation can be tracked at phab:T188161.
  • If these projects are deemed technically too risky, we will pursue Project 2 - Block by user agent in addition to IP. User agents data is already available to Check Users.

Next, we will do two feature improvements- adding an optional datetime selector to Special:Block (phab:T132220) and improving the display of block notices on mobile devices (phab:T165535).

In a few months (likely around May 2018) we will pursue some form of Project 5 - Block a user from uploading files and/or creating new pages and/or editing all pages in a namespace and/or editing all pages within a category.

Additional ideas can be added to on wiki discussion pages and user blocking column on Phabricator for future discussions and decisions. For the Anti-Harassment Tools team, SPoore (WMF), Community Advocate, Community health initiative (talk) 22:34, 9 March 2018 (UTC)

Strange reference, looking to me like a disguised spam

(A.S.: I hope I am in the right sub-section… If not, please move this to a more adequate place. —Thanks).
When searching for info about "rebelmouse" (though red, the link works !), I noticed that it only appears in reference sections, among which, 3 or 4 are a reference, repeated in a few unrelated articles, which looks like nothing appropriate to the article or the referred sentence, but rather like a kind of hook, or a discret spam. Other of the seven instances have no meaning (I mean : not to me, but I may be wrong, since I am not a native english speaker). What do think of this ? (I came to en.wikipedia looking for info about this "rebelmouse", about which I found a few blog pages closed and redirected to the rebelmouse webpage, a seemingly CMS, concurrent to Wordpress ; I now have doubts.) --@Éric38fr (come chat & have a drink), Grenoble (France), 02:59, 10 March 2018 (UTC)

An example from 18 September 2017 at Microburst is diff. That was Ost316 using WP:AutoEd. The changes included replacing
<ref>http://news.discovery.com/earth/weather-extreme-events/what-is-a-microburst-140515.htm</ref>
with
<ref>{{cite web|url=http://news.discovery.com/earth/weather-extreme-events/what-is-a-microburst-140515.htm|title=RebelMouse vs. WordPress VIP|date=10 May 2017|website=discovery.com}}</ref>
That is a bad edit due to AutoEd getting the title for the page from the website without realizing that some kind of domain takeover had occurred. In other words, the URL is not not working and has been replaced by a scammer pushing their product. The discovery.com URL now goes to
https://www.rebelmouse.com/wordpress-vip-2401656056.html
I don't have time for more at the moment, but it looks like all mentions of rebelmouse need to be manually fixed with an archive.org link to the now-dead URL. Johnuniq (talk) 04:45, 10 March 2018 (UTC)
An archive.org snapshot of the page before it was taken over by the scammer is [6]. Johnuniq (talk) 06:15, 10 March 2018 (UTC)
I'm (slowly) working through fixing this sort of error, see User:Thryduulf/Domain reselling pages for other terms that are symptoms of the same issue. Thryduulf (talk) 12:32, 10 March 2018 (UTC)

#WeMissTurkey

It is March 2018. Wikipedia is blocked in Turkey. This marks 10 months of people in Turkey having no access to the world’s free knowledge, and people around the world not learning from Turkish citizens. We want to re-energize the conversation around Wikipedia in Turkey and galvanize public opinion to support unblocking the site. To do this, the Wikimedia community are running a week-long social media push to express why #WeMissTurkey. Following from this initial push we would like to run a CentralNotice campaign to further energize the conversation. The campaign will be only be show to users a maximum of two times to limit disruption and show, to between 10-50% of traffic. Banners will be low profile based on the community template with added functionality to expand revealing social sharing options on twitter and facebook for mobile with the possibility of a generic template on desktop. Seddon (WMF) (talk) 20:32, 7 March 2018 (UTC)

If the lack of Wikipedia was really an issue, somebody else would've setup a censored fork—even proxy edits back with OAuth. China's been blocking us for 5+ years now? — Dispenser 00:22, 12 March 2018 (UTC)
I didn't read our article closely enough the first time, so there is what appears to be a live proxy mirror. — Dispenser 00:37, 12 March 2018 (UTC)

Languages section on side of articles now truncated?

I just noticed this today, and am hoping it's all part of some temporary A/B test that I've had the misfortune of being in the wrong group for, but apparently the Languages section over on the left of any article is now limited to like 10 or so languages, with the rest hidden behind a "N more" link. I hate this for a variety of reasons: 1) can't see at a glance if my desired language is there / can't ctrl-F either, 2) the choices for which languages to display seem to be a mystery, and I think this inconsistency across pages makes for a bad user experience, 3) there seems to be no way of disabling this (or at least not w/o logging in, which I don't want to do), 4) the pop-up behind the "N more" link is easy to misclick and close while trying to scroll down it, 5) the links in the pop-up seem to override normal ctrl-click behavior so that instead of just opening the link in a new tab, it also opens the clicked link in the current tab. I was trying to remember the Chilean term for zucchini (it's zapallo italiano, BTW), but the list in the pop-up is terrible, because (aside from not having Español, which I realize is a separate issue), 6) the first category is just a repeat of the languages already listed, but 7) with the Korean link inexplicably on its own separate line within that section, 8) the next section being some vague "Worldwide" section (who decides what's worldwide?), 9) the next section being "America" which I find horribly vague (I'm guessing by its content they meant "Americas") and confusing since Nederlands is there (though I guess that's my fault for not realizing there are a few Dutch-speaking places near the Caribbean). Portuguese is repeated in like every freaking section. God, that layout is hard to scan.

Anyway, I clearly dislike this feature/bug, but when trying to look for something about this change, all my Google searches for things like "wikipedia user interface languages" of course just result in things like the WP user interface article. (If anybody has helpful hints for how to do things like "meta" searches for stuff about WP itself, that would be super helpful!) Given the difficulty of finding meta-information about WP, I'm not even sure I'm posting this in the right place, so my apologies if this should be elsewhere. If someone could point me to more information about this change and/or a better channel for expressing my dissatisfaction with it (unless I'm already at the right place?), that would be great. Thanks! 2601:141:2:8644:5CBA:7EA3:23ED:3A67 (talk) 06:44, 9 March 2018 (UTC)

This is Compact Language Links. "New Wikipedia feature gives you the power to choose whatever language you want" — JJMC89 (T·C) 06:55, 9 March 2018 (UTC)
The ctrl-click issue is indeed a bug. Thanks for pointing it out. It will be fixed soon. See http://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T189582 .
Spanish is not there because there simply isn't a version of Zucchini in Spanish. And that is, indeed, a separate issue. Only one article in another language can be fixed because of how Wikidata works, and Cucurbita pepo is already linked to Spanish.
Scanning the whole list is not really necessary because you can use the search box on top of the panel to find the language you need. --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 12:57, 13 March 2018 (UTC)

Simple guide to uploading a photo taken by yourself

I am thinking of writing to a few serving politicians to suggest that they organise the upload of photos of themselves. (These are all cases where we have either no existing photo of the person, or only poor photos).

I was looking for a simple, concise how-to-guide on this, and the Commons:Special:UploadWizard seems reasonably simple.

Has anyone done a sort of pro-forma letter to use in such cases?

Something along the lines of:

  1. the article about you will be better with a decent pic etc blah
  2. the whole copyright thing is simplest if the pic is uploaded by the copyright owner, who in most cases will be the person who took the photo
  3. Any picture which is uploaded to Commons has to be released under a license which allows reuse. The default license is [[Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en), which requires that any reuse be attributed to the author.
  4. The upload form is at http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Upload
  5. Choose a meaningful filename for the uploaded image
  6. thank you etc

--BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 16:44, 15 March 2018 (UTC)

Pictures in Wikipedia are from Wikimedia Commons. This is at http://commons.wikimedia.org which is where they should be uploaded.
No need going into the complex question of categorization and I guess we can rely on Upload Wizard to guide photographers or someone on the politician's staff. Oh, they must make an account. Jim.henderson (talk) 17:55, 15 March 2018 (UTC)
There are some OTRS templates for people who inquire about getting a picture on their article. You might ping someone on OTRS to see what they have written out. Killiondude (talk) 22:49, 15 March 2018 (UTC)

I am sorry to bother you but I need all your help

Hi I am Jasonnn, from the chinese version of wikipedia. I tried to translate pages like List of Germans and List_of_Danes and same other pages into chinese. From time to time there are people put these pages into "Wikipedia:Articles for deletion", and two administrators @AT: and @Lanwi1: keep deleting these pages. So far they have deleted the chinese version of List_of_Thai_people, List of Portuguese people, Lists of New Zealanders, List of Swiss people, List of French people and 4 more, they are about to delete the chinese version of List_of_Germans and 24 other pages[7].

I made a post about List_of_Thai_people and 4 other pages to "Wikipedia:Deletion review" in 2018.1.31 [8], so far no result. Then I made another post about asking to remove those two administrators[9], cause i think they are being unreasonable and delete my pages on purpose, i @ all the chinese administrators, about 76 people, only two replyed and they are not on my side.

This leaves me no choice, so i post here ask for all your help. I am hoping you could put some pressure on some chinese administrators, so someone could come slove this. Thank you for your help.--Jasonnn~zhwiki (talk) 13:42, 15 March 2018 (UTC)

Please stop doing something like this. Your actions is completely useless as here is English Wikipedia, which is independent from Chinese Wikipedia. The only reason of you "@ all the chinese administrators, about 76 people, only two replyed and they are not on my side" is that your thoughts has problems. In fact, as I could see, nearly no one is on your side. Don't you think that it's your problem? Let me said it one more time in Chinese to make sure no misunderstanding: 請停止這樣的行為，這樣的行為是完全沒有用的。這裡是英語維基百科，其與中文維基百科是兩個獨立的項目，造成你「@ all the chinese administrators, about 76 people, only two replyed and they are not on my side」的原因只有一個，就是你的想法有問題，其實以我所見，幾乎沒有人同意你的觀點，你何不想想這是否是你的問題？--【wopingzisoeng】💬📝 09:56, 16 March 2018 (UTC)
There is a WP:LISTPEOPLE guideline in English Wikipedia, while there is no such guideline in Chinese Wikipedia. As a contributor to both projects, my suggestion is to contribute to pages in category "Lists of people by nationality" here. Did you know... that you can talk to Dingruogu? 18:08, 16 March 2018 (UTC)
In zhwiki,Our guideline is the list should not be simply replaced by categories,provide other information such as comparable information--Zest (Zh-n,En-read-2,En-write-1.5) 01:05, 17 March 2018 (UTC)
@Blueboar: I am sorry that Jasonnn~zhwiki had bothered you with a useless question. Please ignore the dispute happened in the Chinese Wikipedia, thank you. — Sanmosa 01:51, 17 March 2018 (UTC)

So, it used to be that you clicked a redlink of a deleted page and a message appeared saying that a page with that name had been deleted and pointing to the deletion log. Now, it just suggests creating the page, and I can't find any way to get to the deletion log. This has happened to me several times for pages that I knew had been deleted, but I couldn't find the deletion log. To make things worse, is every page has a link on the left said that says "page information". But, bafflingly, page information apparently doesn't include any logs, whether deletion, move, patrol, protection, or any kind of log really. Why doesn't page information provide a link to logs? Oiyarbepsy (talk) 23:40, 19 March 2018 (UTC)

What article are you looking for? ~ GB fan 23:53, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
  • This doesn't really answer my question which is about how, in general, to get to these pages - not to mention that we no longer alert people that stuff has already been deleted. I know that I can go to Special:Log/delete (but not, apparently Special:Deletion log) to find it the ridiculously long and difficult way - but I don't understand why it isn't easy, and why it isn't shoved in people's face before they recreate something they shouldn't recreate. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 23:55, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
    I believe he's looking for a specific instance of this happening. To answer your original problem, I believe some links are formatted so that you end up directly at the editing side and don't see the log. I couldn't reproduce it right now, however. To easily see logs, click the history link and "View logs for this page". Killiondude (talk) 00:04, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
It wasn't meant to answer your question, it was meant to try to understand the problem by looking at one of the articles you believe are a problem. To me EPB6 gives me the deletion log when I click it. ~ GB fan 00:05, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
  • Killiondude, unfortunately, deleted pages don't have a history button. GB fan, I've never once been presented the deletion log when clicking a red link (at least since they changed the editor), so maybe there is something in user settings that give different results? Oiyarbepsy (talk) 01:30, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
Oiyarbepsy when you click EPB6, you don't see that it has been deleted? ~ GB fan 01:54, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
Ah, you don't use the default source editor. You have enabled "Automatically enable all new beta features" or "New wikitext mode" at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-betafeatures. That does make it difficult to find a deletion log. The easiest method I found was removing &action=edit&redlink=1 from the end of the url, e.g. changing EPB6 to http://en.wiki.x.io/w/index.php?title=EPB6. phab:T176070 is about it. PrimeHunter (talk) 01:59, 20 March 2018 (UTC)

Meh, at least someone is working on fixing it. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 02:43, 20 March 2018 (UTC)

Referencing: "passim"

I recently found myself using the word passim in a reference.[10][1] Is this an acceptable form? (I have not seen this used anywhere else in Wikipedia.) My intent was to differentiate the reference from one where the editor had not bothered to consider page numbers. In this case the subject is covered extensively throughout the book and any attempt to give individual or blocks of page numbers would be a mess.

Incidentally, the italicisation of passim does not occur in the article where I used it and I cannot make that change at present as the page is currently protected as it has attracted a lot (!!) of editing in another section.
ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 08:51, 13 March 2018 (UTC)

References

  1. ^ Hellwinkel, Lars (2014). Hitler's Gateway to the Atlantic: German Naval Bases in France 1940-1945 (Kindle ed.). Barnsley: Seaforth Publishing. p. passim. ISBN 9781848321991.
Mentioned at Template:Cite book nopp. This insource search finds quite a few uses of the word.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 12:51, 13 March 2018 (UTC)
I'm not sure about the situation in other English dialects but in my experience it's definitely obsolete in American English. Most American writers are trained to identify and cite specific page ranges, which makes it much easier for a reader or cite-checker to verify the accuracy of a citation. --Coolcaesar (talk) 10:44, 16 March 2018 (UTC)
I'd have thought (as a Brit) that bits of Latin unfamiliar to many general readers should be avoided if possible. Can't you say "various pages" or, better, give a couple of the locations that best support your point and say "p. 245–250, 387–389 and other pages"?: Noyster (talk), 11:04, 16 March 2018 (UTC)
I'd agree with this suggestion. If the whole book sources some statement, then just cite the book without any page numbers at all. If not, cites ranges, chapters etc. I'd tend to avoid passim as non-academic readers, including non-native English speakers, are unlikely to understand it, and there are usually better ways to handle this situation that avoid the whole problem. —Tom Morris (talk) 12:03, 20 March 2018 (UTC)

Wiki Loves Emirates

Next month (April 2018), we will be organising first ever Wikipedia photo campaign in the UAE to get free licensed photos related to country. We will be running a CN banner to publicise the event which will be only be show to users (both registered and unregistered) inside the country. Any concerns? --Saqib (talk) 05:41, 16 March 2018 (UTC)

There is no Freedom of Panorama in the UAE.©Geni (talk) 07:44, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
@Geni: Yes I am aware of that but we're only going to ask people to upload photos of ancient, archaeology and historical sites. Will make it clear that people should not upload photos of modern architecture and of artworks because of restrictions. --Saqib (talk) 13:43, 20 March 2018 (UTC)

Global picture-changer Aavindraa

Is Aavindraa authorized to do it? Russian translator (talk) 11:58, 20 March 2018 (UTC)

Information about the Wikimedia Foundation global survey starting soon

Hello!

My name is Edward Galvez and I work for the Wikimedia Foundation. For those of you who do not know, the Wikimedia Foundation supports you by working on the software and technology to keep the sites fast, secure, and accessible, plus providing programs and initiatives to support free knowledge globally.

In about one week, the Foundation is starting a global survey to learn about the experiences and feedback of Wikimedians. I am writing here, because I wanted to share with you a bit more about the project. The survey is called "Wikimedia Communities and Contributors survey" and is conducted annually. We will send the survey to editors across all the Wikimedia projects, as well as Wikimedia affiliates and volunteer developers. This survey is going to be our way of making sure that we can hear feedback from a significant number of users from across the projects. This research supports editors and Wikipedia’s mission. This is our second annual CE Insights survey, and we look forward to improving it every year.

You can sign up to be notified about the results of the survey, or to learn how you can help with planning the survey next year. If you have any questions or concerns about this project, please feel free to send them to my talk page on meta or email me directly at surveys@wikimedia.org in any language. To see the results of last year’s survey, and to see how your feedback helps the Wikimedia Foundation support communities, you can learn more about this project, or read about frequently asked questions. You can also share your feedback on meta. Thank you! --EGalvez (WMF) (talk)

14:05, 20 March 2018 (UTC)

Rfc regarding the article Taiwan

Block-evading sock –Ammarpad (talk) 11:59, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

Hey, can anyone get engaged in the Rfc currently in Talk:Taiwan. There haven't been enough opinions on this to form a consensus. --Aisakano (talk) 14:42, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

Hello

Please note that Sergei Mavrodi has died on 26 march. Thank you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.185.175.84 (talk) 12:27, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

Twelve Apostles of Ireland Challenge

The Twelve Apostles of Ireland Challenge is an edition competition seeking to create and improve articles on the Twelve Apostles of Ireland. Anyone in any language can subscribe and collaborate on building or translating articles relating to the Twelve Apostles. Medals and real icons will be rewarded to the winners. To participate, one just needs to subscribe here and start collaborating. Dia Duit! Leefeni de Karik (talk) 00:07, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

Death knell sounding for Signpost?

Signpost, our English Wikipedia 'newspaper', began when the project was started by Michael Snow who continues to contribute to the English Wikipedia. The first issue was released on 10 January 2005. Begun as a weekly publication, in July 2016 the official schedule was changed to every two weeks, but by November the issues were already running late with the next issue appearing on 26 November and the following Signpost not being published until 22 December three weeks later.

Signpost appeared on 17 January 2017 with a lead article from editor-in-chief, Peter Forsyth, entitled Next steps for the Signpost. Forsyth's article, which explained some of the concerns surrounding the newspaper, received a significant number of comments from readers including one from Blue Rasberry who suggested that a grant may be worth considering:

If there were a rotating internship program at The Signpost for journalism students then from one perspective it seems controversial to pay for content, but from another perspective for years the international wiki community has major projects with major investment which are almost unknown for lack of journalism. (…)This is wiki's own newspaper of record and if it has problems then I wish we could explore options to support volunteers in maintaining it.

Aschmidt suggested that Signpost could be made a blog, or even a journal, with James Heilman, known for his work on the Medicine project responding with 'Sort of like the Wiki Journal of Medicine? It is a fair bit of work. But could be good.' Stating that other related projects are '...experiencing parallel attenuation (...) Better to have fewer issues with excellent content than to fake along for the sake of hitting a weekly deadline' , Carrite makes a poignant reflection.

From August 2017 that weekly deadline became monthly; now in its thirteenth year, the most recent issue was published on 20 February with a note that the next one would be due out on 27 February (a week later?). We now have 27 March.

Please make any suggestions here Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:46, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

Chronological order

When an article has a "History" section, or a subsection of a subject detailing its progress over time, is there a policy or recommendation for whether the information should be in chronological order? I have failed to find a clear policy on this. AadaamS (talk) 17:09, 24 March 2018 (UTC)

This may fall under “it’s so obvious, we didn’t think we needed a rule to say it”. Blueboar (talk) 17:42, 24 March 2018 (UTC)
Without at this moment wishing to the ongoing talk page discussion, editors are actively arguing in favour that putting things in a random chronological order, by ordering after other criteria. What about reverse chronological order? I have never seen a paper encyclopedia use it, but what about ENWP? I agree that it is obvious, but when there is no policy, guideline or manual-of-style editors of seldomly-edited articles may force other ordering by consensus. AadaamS (talk) 19:31, 24 March 2018 (UTC)
I too would say the obvious order is chronological. Not only is it what one normally thinks of when one thinks of a history, but it allows for the history to flow from one event to another, connected in a straightforward way. If e.g. the history is of a state it might be discussed in terms of the heads of state, then the matter of succession becomes who follows who. A period of unrest might be due to a contested succession. And so on. It’s a matter of good clear writing, which is well within our guidelines for good articles.
I can think of two exceptions. One is a minor one, that a history might note a historic event in a way which requires knowledge of events after it. E.g. in a history of the 20th century you might note that WW II was the last global war, even though this depends on the history after it to the present day. But the overall flow should still be from past to future. The more major one is e.g. on a biographical article there might be an 'early life' section, but this does not have to come before everything else and is often placed after the section on what they are most known for, even though that came later.--JohnBlackburnewordsdeeds 16:37, 25 March 2018 (UTC)
It depends on the details. It is not at all unusual to read "Paul Politician was the Grand Poobah of Parliament from 1842 to 1847. Before that, he also held the posts of..." We normally run historical census information from most recent to oldest. Both of these examples are "reverse chronological order", and they are both easy for the reader to understand.
If the history for a subject has more than one main theme, then it might be sensible to treat each theme separately. One could imagine a timeline like this:
  • Demographics: People mostly lived in rural areas in 1900.
  • Demographics: the country was mostly young in 1925.
  • Economy: There was a memorable depression in 1930.
  • Economy: There was a notable war around 1940.
  • Demographics: The birth rate steadily declined in 1965.
  • Economy: People got used to a higher standard of living in 1970.
  • Economy: Fewer people worked manual labor in 1980.
  • Demographics: Adult children were less likely to live near their parents in 1990.
  • Economy: Rural areas are being abandoned in 2000, because there are few high-paying jobs there.
  • Demographics: The country was mostly lonely old folks in 2010.
All of this adds up to a coherent story (e.g., "Good luck finding a skilled nursing center for Grandma that is decent, affordable, in your local area, and primarily staffed by people born in your country"), but it might make more sense to discuss the two themes separately, even if that seems like it's "random" chronology.
This is fundamentally a question of how to write, rather than a question about history. WhatamIdoing (talk) 07:05, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

Research on Wikipedia community diversity

Hello! I am a researcher at the University of Warsaw, Poland and I'm conducting research on diversity within peer production communities. I want to figure out what makes some of them work better than others - perform more complex tasks, effectively reach their goals, etc. At the moment I'm mostly interested in what makes contributors take on different tasks - for example, some will be more willing to add content, some others to organize content, yet others to organize the work of the team (or clean up the mess that others make...). My idea is that for a community to be successful it has to draw in people with different motivations. I want to check this on the Wikipedia community by analysing how the editors differ in the values they hold - that is, what is important for them. To do that I have designed a list of editor behaviors / traits that can be retrieved from the database; now I need to assess how well these behaviors indicate what is important for editors. While I do have some ideas, I'm aware that I don't have enough experience on the Wiki to make the assessments sensible.

That's why I would be grateful if any Wikipedia editors were willing to help me with this. I have crated a survey here: wikiValues2018.eu which lists the behaviors I have come up with. The task is to assess how well they indicate that an editor holds one chosen value important - each survey is for one value out of ten. It takes about 15 min to complete it.

I have put some more details about the study on my userpage; I'm also very open to critcism and suggestions - if you have any comments about the survey, feel free to leave me a message. I will also be updating my userpage as the results flow in - I hope that this kind of information will be valuable not only for my research but also for the Wikipedia community at large. Allikka (talk) 15:23, 21 March 2018 (UTC)

Survey taken, though I think I outed myself as a fairly boring Wikipedian! Good luck to you in your research. Dumuzid (talk) 16:44, 21 March 2018 (UTC)

Thanks to everyone who took the survey! If you haven't - it will be open for a few more days only, so don't wait! Allikka (talk) 09:29, 28 March 2018 (UTC)

blocked from editing

hello, i am a new Wikipedia user, i have recently been blocked from editing due to a page i edited, it was indeed vandalism of the page but it was intended as a joke and to be deleted before i would of made my actual edits. i was wondering if there was any way to the block lifted as it wont happen again. also is this even how i do this, im realy confused — Preceding unsigned comment added by Gordon Pratt (talk • contribs) 13:56, 28 March 2018 (UTC)

Since you are editing here, the block has expired. ~ GB fan 13:59, 28 March 2018 (UTC)
Well, perhaps it shouldn't have, since the very first edit by @Gordon Pratt: today was this. I've extended the block to indefinite, since it's plainly obvious he has no interest in being useful. --Jayron32 14:17, 28 March 2018 (UTC)

Hy

Romania qualified or no to the 2019 rugby world cup? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.185.175.84 (talk) 17:26, 28 March 2018 (UTC)

Apparently, yes. See 2019_Rugby_World_Cup. Questions of this nature belong at WP:RDE the reference desk. RudolfRed (talk) 19:45, 28 March 2018 (UTC)

Check File:14,5 x 114.jpg

Can some admin check if the File:14,5 x 114.jpg is the same as commons:File:14,5 x 114.jpg and is upoaded by user:Francis Flinch. Because there is some doubt with this Deletion Request wetther Francis Flinch realy published that file.--Sanandros (talk) 20:49, 31 March 2018 (UTC)

The doubt is not really whether this user uploaded the file, but whether it's own work by this user. Jcb (talk) 21:06, 31 March 2018 (UTC)

Character limit on edit summaries

Hi, i remember seeing a discussion here on wikipedia about the new 1000 character limit on edit summaries, But i'm not able to find anything about it. can someone give me a link to that discussion? i just noticed the new 500 charater limit. Thanks. Pancho507 (talk) 07:20, 1 April 2018 (UTC)

@Pancho507: It's at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Turn off extended edit summaries -- John of Reading (talk) 07:29, 1 April 2018 (UTC)

New dns or April fool?

Deskmodder is writing about a new dns. It is real dns or April fool? --94.247.8.8 (talk) 15:50, 2 April 2018 (UTC)

Appears to be real. https://www.cnet.com/news/cloudfare-new-1111-dns-privacy-tool-would-speed-your-internet-too/ --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 17:12, 2 April 2018 (UTC)

Question on Vandalism fighting

Hello, I'm fairly new here. I'd like to get into vandalism fighting. Do you have any tips? Calm Omaha (talk) 02:59, 2 April 2018 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Vandalism. ―Mandruss ☎ 03:08, 2 April 2018 (UTC)
Okay. Anything more specific than that? Calm Omaha (talk) 00:29, 3 April 2018 (UTC)
@Calm Omaha: I confess I haven't read the whole thing, but I suspect that if you read and understand all of it you'll be a better than average vandalism fighter. The most common error is over-interpretation of the word vandalism, applying it to edits that are really bad but whose intent is not solely to cause damage to the encyclopedia. The misapplication is destructive because it grants undue license to the reverter and allows them to sidestep normal dispute resolution process. If you read and understand all of that page AND master this concept, you'll be in the top 20% of vandalism fighters. ―Mandruss ☎ 00:44, 3 April 2018 (UTC)
@Mandruss: Gotcha. Thanks! Calm Omaha (talk) 00:47, 3 April 2018 (UTC)
@Calm Omaha: I would say the "What is not vandalism" section merits particular attention; keep it in mind and you'll be golden. Wikipedia:Cleaning up vandalism and User:Kudpung/Anti vandal centre are other good resources, and personally I believe that Twinkle is a great tool for vandalism fighting. –FlyingAce✈hello 17:35, 3 April 2018 (UTC)

Facebook rolling out feature which utilizes Wikipedia

As we shared on Wikimedia-l in October, Facebook has been testing a new feature that uses English Wikipedia content. When users see news articles in their News Feed, the new feature provides more context about the article's source by pulling information about the publishers from English Wikipedia. Today, Facebook will begin making this feature available to all of its users in the United States.

The Wikimedia Foundation first learned of the integration of Wikipedia content into Facebook’s Article Context feature ahead of its initial beta launch in October 2017. This new feature did not come from a partnership with the Wikimedia Foundation, though we were in contact with Facebook’s product and engineering teams ahead of this week’s launch.

We are going to be tracking the impact of this new feature on English Wikipedia. Including looking at how many people click on the link to Wikipedia and seeing which pages are getting the most traffic. We will continue to keep you updated on our conversations with Facebook and impact of this new feature. JMatazzoni (WMF) (talk) 19:53, 3 April 2018 (UTC)

When you start to bargain with the devil things can turn out differently than expected. Shock Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 00:50, 4 April 2018 (UTC)
@Shock Brigade Harvester Boris: what's that supposed to mean ? Who is bargaining ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:49, 5 April 2018 (UTC)
And what is being bargained for? Very confusing.--WaltCip (talk) 12:41, 6 April 2018 (UTC)

suggesting a possible interpretation to the reader

I have been grappling with including information from different sources that appear in the first instance to be conflicting, but which I think are actually both useful and factual. The result is [11]. The purpose of posting here is to get comment on the idea of pointing the reader at a possible interpretation of the information, but not definitively stating that the suggested interpretation is the case. The sentence at issue is:

Comparison of this route with Schirmer's description of the three lines of march may suggest to the reader that his group started on the northern line of march and finished on the central one.

(bold added)
Does this approach seem useful, over-cautious, or even down-right wrong (or anything else)?
ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 13:43, 6 April 2018 (UTC)

Even though done with the best of intentions and even though flagged as but a possible interpretation ("may suggest to the reader"), unless this very interpretation can be sourced to already published commentary it still appears to fall foul of our policies on "original research" and in particular "synthesis". Maybe it would be OK placed in a footnote – any opinions on that? – failing that it would have to go to the talk page: Noyster (talk), 15:05, 6 April 2018 (UTC)
The problem is that it is an obvious conclusion from the facts available in 2 good sources. I appreciate that there are rules on synthesis, etc, but it seems to make Wikipedia appear stupid not to address the matter in some way or other. (So this is a comment on the rules - does it become a poorer encyclopedia by rigid adherence thereto?)
A solution, though perhaps less than ideal, would be to present the experiences of the one group as recording an exception to Schirmer's classification (and there is no escaping the fact that it is an exception - even though the strictest diehard may feel that was synthesis). Moreover, the article should allow the reader to understand that the overall situation had elements of chaos to it. Fortunately Nichol and Rennell state that "...[Schirmer], while not pretending the evacuations westward were a picnic, nevertheless presented a picture of an orderly and compassionate exodus carried out in difficult circumstances. It came nowhere close to reflecting the true awfulness of the situation on the ground." And the word "chaos" is frequently used in a helpful context throughout this reference, so justifying conveying that point.
I will tackle some further sources to see what interpretations of routes are supported by them - perhaps diluting the problem. Also need to move all this to the talk page at some stage.
ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 21:49, 6 April 2018 (UTC)

How to change my Wikipedia screen font display size?

(I use Firefox.) My Wikipedia screen size has suddenly jumped to a bigger size. Please, how can I quickly change my Wikipedia screen type size or type width? Anthony Appleyard (talk) 22:03, 8 April 2018 (UTC)

If you are referring to the font size, try pressing Ctrl-0 (control + zero). It's Ctrl-Plus and Ctrl-Minus to increase/decrease, where the Plus and Minus are on the numeric keypad. There are other ways of zooming which can easily be done accidentally. Johnuniq (talk) 22:08, 8 April 2018 (UTC)

Institut Nova Història

Hi Institut Nova Història is a foundation subsidized and awarded by the Catalan government, supported by Catalan historians, intellectuals, writers, Important politicians of the main parties of Catalonia, members are parlamentaries of Catalan assembly and they often do conferences in the assembly, according to all there are enough people that considers that as the true history of Catalonia, i though this article should be in the 'See Also' section of the article on the history of Catalonia and related articles of the Catalan independence movement. --ILoveCaracas (talk) 07:13, 8 April 2018 (UTC)

ILoveCaracas added a link to this article (Institut Nova Història) in the "See also" section not just to articles relating to Catalonia, but also to Christopher Columbus, Crown of Castile, Erasmus, El Cid, Hernán Cortés, Don Quixote, William Shakespeare, and many others, including Leonardo da Vinci. I undid all of them and asked him to propose it here to reach a consensus. I don't believe it is appropriate to give any credence to these fringe theories. Maragm (talk) 07:29, 8 April 2018 (UTC)

Oriol Junqueras (second leader of Catalan independence movement, Artur Mas (strong main figure of Catalan movement and many many of catalan important people openly supported these theories (also they give credencies), Institut Nova Història received an award from a Catalan important gala, why this cant be named in this related articles, since are strong convictions of the Catalan people over their history? (read the article)--ILoveCaracas (talk) 07:32, 8 April 2018 (UTC)

I am only talking about the history of Catalonia and Catalan independentism's articles that are related to this article, if I add it in cervantes, shakespeare, ect. I will not do it again. I am debating over the articles that I talk--ILoveCaracas (talk) 07:39, 8 April 2018 (UTC)

The institution give conferences on these theories in the Catalan national assembly since several years ago, you can read it in the article--ILoveCaracas (talk) 07:42, 8 April 2018 (UTC)

The members of the institution lead the 2014 National Day of Catalonia named Via Catalana or V, in the two main avenues - the Gran Vía and the Diagonal - forming a V of 11 kilometers long with the vertex in the Plaza de Las Glorias, with the aim of claiming the "right of self-determination" of the Catalan people, Its founder created the anthem for the independentist referendum. He made these researchers!--ILoveCaracas (talk) 08:02, 8 April 2018 (UTC)

Other main member, Codinas, the president of the Institute, graduate in Contemporary History, vice president of the Fundació Catalunya Estat, secretary of the Associació Catalunya 2014, voicer of the executive board of the Catalan Association of Leisure, Sports and Culture Companies, co-founder of the Platform for the Right to Decide and former voicer of the executive board of the Catalan Business Circle.

Other important member, Cucurull, president of the Fundació Societat i Cultura, member of the national secretariat of the Catalan National Assembly he is very known for the video of his June 2013 conference in Navàs, which has been commented by many newspapers.--ILoveCaracas (talk) 08:18, 8 April 2018 (UTC)

Theses belief is openly supported by Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya (a decisive and very main independentist party and the main sponsor of the independence movement from France and Spain), Jordi Pujol was president of Catalonia from 1980 to 2003, Isabel-Clara Simó, Josep Rull, Alfons López Tena, Carles Campuzano, Antoni Strubell, Jaume Manel Oronich (all deputies and parlamentaries of the Catalan assembly), Ramon Tremosa, Josep Maria Terricabras (members of the European parliament), Núria Cadenas (president of a electoral coalition (the second largest independentist political force in Catalonia), Assumpcio Maresma (politician and journalist), Joan Rabasseda (mayor of Arenys de Munt), Josep-Lluís Carod-Rovira (a leader of Catalan movement and ex-vice President of Catalonia, Muriel Casals i Couturier she died and she was an economist.--ILoveCaracas (talk) 08:18, 8 April 2018 (UTC)

If you want to believe that this institution which claims that Shakespeare, Saint Teresa of Avila, Cervantes, etc. were all catalans and that there has been a centuries' old conspiracy by Castilians that's ok with me. Many of the people you mention above are nationalist politicians, not reputable historians. Let other members of the community decide. Maragm (talk) 08:19, 8 April 2018 (UTC)

The criticisms that appear in the article are from politicians who support Spain, do not mention any Catalan politician or historian denying these theories, and this page was translated from Catalan and Spanish wikipedia, and I translated it completely. and I check the sources--ILoveCaracas (talk) 08:23, 8 April 2018 (UTC)

If you accept the theories proposed by the "historians" in this entity, then go ahead and add a paragraph to the article on William Shakespeare proposing that he was actually Catalan. Let's see what happens. Maragm (talk) 08:27, 8 April 2018 (UTC) ps...and by mentioning all of the Catalan politicians and parties that support these fringe theories, you are only underscoring the fact that this is a politically-driven issue, nothing to do with serious scholarship. Maragm (talk) 08:32, 8 April 2018 (UTC)

Not only propossed by these historians but also propossed by the Centre d'Estudis Colombins, that is an association dedicated to the historical studies not related to Institut Nova Història, this other founded in 1989 that since its foundation until today is totally organized by Òmnium Cultural. See:Centre d'Estudis Colombins (Catalan) and Institut_Nova_Història#Theses_defended_by_the_Institute (Center for Colombian Studies)--ILoveCaracas (talk) 08:35, 8 April 2018 (UTC)

Not only politicians and historians but also Catalan businessmen organizations (unions for entrepreneurs) strongly support these theories and the institute, I mentioned it above--ILoveCaracas (talk) 08:47, 8 April 2018 (UTC)

I'm not going to make a paragraph in William Shakespeare or Da Vinci, but I'm going to add the link to several of the organizations and people who publicly support this theories and institute and in the article of the history of Catalonia primarily, all in the sections of see also --ILoveCaracas (talk) 08:53, 8 April 2018 (UTC)

Then, if you're going to go ahead and add it, this thread is a total waste of time. I thought the idea was to discuss and reach consensus. I was wrong. And if you truly believe these theories, not just cherry-picking, then I don't see why you don't add these great historical discoveries to the articles on Shakespeare, Da Vinci, etc. Maragm (talk) 08:57, 8 April 2018 (UTC)

You know that I do not believe in these theories, but a huge number of Catalans actually believe it, these conclusions are supported practically by all those who represent them politically, businessly and research, and the Catalan government finances it, I think it is coherent that adds more information and what happens today related completely to the articles that I say--ILoveCaracas (talk) 09:03, 8 April 2018 (UTC)

These researchers have often had talks on TV3 (the primary television channel and of Catalan public broadcaster) also on Catalunya Ràdio (owned by the Generalitat de Catalunya and is the major Catalan-language network today), and El Punt Avui TV, etc.'s programs. See: Institut_Nova_Història#References.--ILoveCaracas (talk) 09:54, 8 April 2018 (UTC)

Yes, I know that. They have disseminated these fringe theories in all of their channels to brainwash the population...doing that for many years now. If you want to contribute to spreading these falsehoods by linking this article to Shakespeare and the American flag, you're most welcome. Maragm (talk) 10:06, 8 April 2018 (UTC)

No, but in the articles of politicians from Catalonia that support them and in the article of the history of catalonia I think that it should be add, so people know about it.--ILoveCaracas (talk) 10:20, 8 April 2018 (UTC)

  • My two cents, after a quick look at the edit history... I don’t think the ”See also” links were appropriate, and support the removals. I am trying to assume good faith, but given the extremely tenuous (fringe) connection between the institute and the articles where the links were placed, this comes too close to spam linking for my taste. Blueboar (talk) 11:33, 8 April 2018 (UTC)

and in history of Catalonia It should not be appropriate? knowing that this is an alternating history of Catalonia supported by the main figures of Catalonia today and a lot of Catalan people--ILoveCaracas (talk) 12:21, 8 April 2018 (UTC)

I agree that mentioning Institut Nova Història in articles about people supporting it seems reasonable, as well as in general articles about the history and politics of Catalonia, including History of Catalonia. ILoveCaracas has agreed several times not to re-add the institute to historical figures. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 12:24, 8 April 2018 (UTC)

thanks--ILoveCaracas (talk) 12:29, 8 April 2018 (UTC)

  • The reasoning given for inclusion is a little hard to follow but I think I am with Blueboar on this. It is unclear that this is a noteworthy See Also for politicians, just because they happen to support views championed by this 'Institut'. It seems like an attempt to publicize an organization producing nationalistic POV, fringe, and in some cases nonsense, by using the See Also sections of articles with links that are tenuous at best. Agricolae (talk) 16:03, 8 April 2018 (UTC)
  • Seconding that, with the addition that the See also sections might be misleading to the casual reader and should generally be avoided. An appropriate inclusion in the main text is the right way – if at all. These theories and the instituitions advocating them should only be linked from person or institution articles where the subject very clearly and prominently associates himself with these theories. --Zac67 (talk) 16:57, 8 April 2018 (UTC)

lol it seems to give propaganda to nationalism, or the opposite as I see it, people when see this know more about the society in which the Catalans live, the ideas that they intend to give to the people, and in a way put some them in the head, I do not want to politicize, I want to say with this that information is included that nobody knows, information that is part of contemporary history, and the reality that the Catalans live, under reliable sources, the truth is shown, that is the wikipedia Let people know the truth and do not try to hide the most relevant and important things of a topic, hiding that important article in a corner that has to be spoiled enough to get it, this article is as important as the rest of the information that comes out In the partial "history of Catalonia" that is shown, as you add more truth, the article becomes more complete--ILoveCaracas (talk) 16:54, 8 April 2018 (UTC)

I have nominated this article for deletion: see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Institut Nova Història. --Scolaire (talk) 18:55, 8 April 2018 (UTC)

Deleting them is not the answer. There needs to remain some reference as to who spreads which theories. I'd call it notable fringe, since they attract a sizeable part of the population. In Belgium, we have a bit the same issue with the Flemish. The lesson I learned is that censorship gives them the "victim" label that they crave. It's probably better to engage them and to honestly discuss their points in the clear daylight. Wakari07 (talk) 21:06, 8 April 2018 (UTC)

I am going to tell you an experience, I knew and I am involved by twitter in Spanish politics since 2 months ago, since I am Venezuelan, I live in Venezuela and i cared about Venezuela, however I almost do not twit, I only retwits things, I do not even look for twits of independent Catalans, but of Unionist Catalans since the start, and despite that on February 2, 2018 attacked me a typical Catalan independentist trying to convince a Venezuelan guy like me of these theories that he believes faithfully, with a lot of messages, and giving me that information and other pages that are not from the institute but others (He gave me two pages giving validity and propagating these things: 'Fundació d'Estudis Històrics de Catalunya' and 'Cercle Català d'Història'). Here are the tweets Obviously I did not convince myself but it made me understand how many Catalans think and about what was the famous Institute Nova History and the Cucurull of which many people speak. In Catalonia, it is quite common that they talk about the subject they have mentioned since i know of Catalan politics--ILoveCaracas (talk) 21:46, 8 April 2018 (UTC)

"I ask you to take pictures of these tweets" as they erase things at once when something fails--ILoveCaracas (talk) 22:17, 8 April 2018 (UTC)

I know that this opinion does not go with wikipedia and sorry for that but only for them to see that you have to take evidence of these things, but I personally know that they are experts in manipulating public opinion, they always go from supporters of malcom x, anti-fascists, etc. in favor of everything that loves most of the world, then they send really explosive messages, leaders and university professors, for example, comparing Spaniards descendents of Catalonia with the Maghrebies of France, for example, which they are " followers of violence and hatred in the host country", or of people doing bad things in the street, then that is bad sight and immediately they try to leave no trace of it. I only say that it does that things like this one do not know and other things that they like them yes. I know that I have already gone politically with this last message but my intention is not this )--ILoveCaracas (talk) 22:24, 8 April 2018 (UTC).

Hello ILoveCaracas, any source is a problem, if and only the reliabilityof a source or notability of the subject of an article is in question. What I have read above raises the possibility that the neutrality and reliability of subjects sourced from the institute alone, could cause problems. So care should be taken when dealing with such articles. --Wikishagnik (talk) 10:46, 9 April 2018 (UTC)

ok but I ask you to read this page Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Institut Nova Història and see the sources that are here. I also ask you to review the article Institut Nova Història and that sources posted there. They have good sources, although i think the mass media apparently could have reserved rights to the programs on their channels interviewing these people and at this moment of "internationalization of the process" as they call it, and they took care of deleting many things and I can prove that if someone wants, but in return I left youtube videos and Spanish newspapers showing photos as good proofs of these programs given on tv3 and radio catalunya, the rest of the article gives a lot of Spanish newspapers and a lot of pro-Indepndentist newspapers and pro-independentist sources, I am available and want to help to find more and better sources online--ILoveCaracas (talk) 11:24, 9 April 2018 (UTC)

Librarians, archivists, and information junkies

The reason it seems I use Wikipedia a lot and that you have in fact had my help this Tuesday, is that I'm one of the librarians, archivists, and information junkies and most working days I do my bit for Wikipedia. I'm perfectly willing to donate the price I pay for my coffee (an undrinkable beverage that is too costly to consider getting used to) or tea (provided for free by my employer) and one could indeed consider the time I spend contributing as that donation.

Now, can you stop asking for donations I can ill afford, especially since your request doesn't scale well to my high screen, making it far more in my face than a "humble" request should be. Mysha (talk)

And to that I can add that:

And in my side as well

If everyone reading that would spend two hours each week editing Wikimedia we'd explode. Mysha (talk)

Mysha You may like to go to your Special:Preferences page and select Gadgets | Browsing | Suppress display of fundraising banners: Noyster (talk), 09:55, 11 April 2018 (UTC)
Yes, thank you. The point, of course, is not that I get these messages when signed in; it's that multiple un-asked-for messages referencing a situation that isn't really my own, drive me away rather than motivate me. Mysha (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 10:17, 11 April 2018 (UTC)
Thank you, Mysha for your concern. However, it is important to note that there are people in the world who can afford to donate, and the messages reach them too. The banner, as noted, can be turned off any time you want to, if it distracts you. --Jayron32 10:46, 11 April 2018 (UTC)
I never quite understood the argument of "I was planning to donate to Wikipedia, but now because of the banner, I don't think I will". That to me shows a rather hollow sense of charity, where one's donation is not predicated on the value that an organization can provide, but rather on the momentary (and, as pointed out above, optional) aesthetic nuisance of a banner. That's rather like stiffing the waiter a tip because they have a tattoo.--WaltCip (talk) 12:03, 11 April 2018 (UTC)

Script for viewing diff of all consecutive edits by same user?

I have an idea for something that I really wish I had a user script for, and I'm wondering if one already exists (couldn't easily find one in WP:User scripts/List). When I'm patrolling for vandalism, and I'm looking at a revision (whether in a page's history list or on Special:RecentChanges), the most useful button for me is definitely the "diff"/"prev" button, to show what changed in that one revision. But that's not always quite what I want. If a user has made several edits in a row, then I also like to see a diff of all their consecutive revisions—that is, all the revisions they've made since the last revision by someone else. (If that explanation is unclear, then here's a random example: If I were patrolling 55Sassafras55's edits, instead of just looking at Special:Diff/836020105, I might also want to see Special:Diff/836020105/836016588.)

This diff is possible to access, but it requires: going to the history page, finding + clicking two radio buttons, and clicking "Compare selected revisions" (which is a button rather than a link, so I can't open it in a new tab). Vandalism patrolling is all about efficiency, so this is too tedious for something I do so often. Does anyone know of a script that adds an easy one-click option for getting the diff I want (or do I need to write it myself)? Thanks, IagoQnsi (talk) 14:37, 12 April 2018 (UTC)

@IagoQnsi: The preference doesn't work great on Recent Changes because it moves so fast, but what you're looking for is (mostly) the "Group changes by page in recent changes and watchlist" preference in Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-rc. I think you also need to check the "Expand watchlist to show all changes, not just the most recent" preference in Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-watchlist. --Izno (talk) 15:14, 12 April 2018 (UTC)
@Izno: Thanks for that link. This sort of does what I want, but it's a bit limited. On RecentChanges, it only includes revisions that are on the page—RC only shows like the last minute or so most of the time, so this is not very useful. I think I'm gonna end up writing my own script here. :P –IagoQnsi (talk) 15:32, 12 April 2018 (UTC)
WP:NAVPOPS is your friend. Mouse over Special:Contributions/IagoQnsi, then mouse over each diff. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 00:40, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

@In ictu oculi: I have been asked: "How can I find (including their names) which external website pages link to a particular Wikipedia article?". Anthony Appleyard (talk) 09:13, 12 April 2018 (UTC)

WP doesn't track that but in various search engines you can search for the article URL and then filter out which source pages you don't want:
http://en.wiki.x.io/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Village_pump_(miscellaneous) -site:en.wiki.x.io
--Zac67 (talk) 10:48, 12 April 2018 (UTC)
I would exclude the protocol and search the standard url form en.wiki.x.io/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(miscellaneous). You can also try link:en.wiki.x.io/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(miscellaneous) in Google. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:39, 12 April 2018 (UTC)
link:en.wiki.x.io/wiki/Permanent
but I got "about 49,100,000 results" that were pages that happened to contain anywhere the word "permanent" or the word "wiki" or etc. Anthony Appleyard (talk) 13:35, 12 April 2018 (UTC)
So it doesn't really work? It doesn't find actual links? In ictu oculi (talk) 14:13, 12 April 2018 (UTC)
It gave varying results in the past. Maybe Google has finally disabled it completely.[12] PrimeHunter (talk) 18:25, 12 April 2018 (UTC)
In my experience Google search is getting worse and worse, especially in terms of more sophisticated capabilities like this. I think what has happened is that they are focusing increasingly on the lowest common denominator. Shock Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 18:00, 15 April 2018 (UTC)

WP:ITN priorities

WP:ITN are the news items on the main page. I'm only passingly familiar with this aspect of the project, but I have noticed that roughly 50% of the items are what I'd call routine reporting of very limited or local interest, such as aircraft crashes, minor natural disasters or sports results. I don't think that as an encyclopedia we should be in the business of reporting such matters. Has there ever been a broader community discussion about the ITN priorities or am I just wasting my time complaining? Sandstein 16:57, 15 April 2018 (UTC)

The point of ITN is that it is not supposed to be a news ticker, but to reflect quality WP content that is in the news. Articles on disasters (natural or manmade) tend to be examples of articles that quickly come together or some reasonable quality and a representation of how fast WP can react to these types of events. Sports events also tend to have high quality updates in the events leading to the end. But we also try to keep it avoiding focus in any one topic or geographic area, that we are a global encyclopedia. Mind you, I do think the visibility of ITN also leads to too much coverage of current events per NOT#NEWS, but again, things like disasters and sporting events are generally notable in the long term. --Masem (t) 17:32, 15 April 2018 (UTC)

enwiki has lost the WP:Palestine community

No question asked, OP is clearly not here to actually "discuss" anything. Closing before the borderline PAs turn into a block. Primefac (talk) 21:18, 15 April 2018 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

About 2018 Palestinian Land Claim protests and Israel shooting unarmed protestors.

It also says that Wikipedia:WikiProject Palestine did not even bother to put a {{WikiProject Palestine}} on it s talkpage. It has come this far: enwiki has lost the WP:Palestine WikiProject. - DePiep (talk) 19:04, 15 April 2018 (UTC)

No it doesn't. Good you admit Palestine must be in top. DePiep (talk) 19:30, 15 April 2018 (UTC)
Glad you got the issue! - DePiep (talk) 20:45, 15 April 2018 (UTC)
@DePiep: I'll rephrase - could you not? I appreciate its a heated topic, but name calling isn't going to help move this discussion forward. Please remove it - TNT❤ 20:48, 15 April 2018 (UTC)
What exactly did I do wrong here? DePiep added a duplicate WP Palestine (without the quality assessment), and I removed the duplicate (leaving it on top where they placed it). Am I missing something?Icewhiz (talk) 20:51, 15 April 2018 (UTC)
Done! Now will you reply hiddenname There'sNoTime? Why support a name IPA:'Auschwitz'? What do you care about, at all? - DePiep (talk)
Thank you. I'm entirely confident Icewhiz's username is acceptable, but that's not the topic of this thread. I've reinserted their comment, please do not remove it again - TNT❤ 21:06, 15 April 2018 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Suggestion in this Techdirt article that EU could restrict people's rights to use CC. Is this a potential problem for Wikipedia?--A bit iffy (talk) 11:38, 11 April 2018 (UTC)

@A bit iffy: This law sounds like an all-around disaster, so for now, the best plan of action is probably to just wait and hope that common sense prevails before it becomes law. But even if it did get passed, this wouldn't be terribly disastrous. This limits the ability of a website to give away its content with a free license, but based on the Techdirt blog post, it has no impact on the ability for users of a website to upload content with a free license.
So we would still be able to accept contributions from EU users; it's just that EU users would be technically unable to reuse Wikipedia content in other places—i.e. it's not our problem. Even though the law would say that reusing Wikipedia content is a copyright violation, in reality, we know Wikimedia Foundation is not going to sue people for reusing their content. So it'd just be another one of the many silly things that are technically illegal but no one cares; unfortunate, but what can you do? –IagoQnsi (talk) 14:50, 12 April 2018 (UTC)
@IagoQnsi: The WMF wouldn't and couldn't because Wikipedia content is copyrighted to its contributors (you and me), not the Foundation. See WP:MIRROR. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 16:19, 16 April 2018 (UTC)

I have a few questions regarding Wikipedia:Adding open license text to Wikipedia and Template:Free-content attribution.

I first came across these pages in literacy#Sources because there were three {{free-content attribution}} templates that took up almost an entire screen. I spoke with John Cummings about this since he did most of the recent work for both pages. You can see my initial conversations with him on his talk page.

I've since trimmed the template to bring it in line with other attribution templates, but John and I are still discussing whether it is appropriate to include the additional links about the project.

Is there a general policy or guideline with regard to linking to the project namespace permanently in an article as part of an attribution template? As originally designed, Wikipedia:Adding open license text to Wikipedia and the terms of use will be listed with each transclusion of {{free-content attribution}}. In articles where this template is used multiple times (as it was in literacy), this seems excessive, but I can see an argument to be made for even one link. The content does not relate to the source or the subject of the article and only serve as a way to promote the editing of Wikipedia and adding free content. To be clear, I do support both of those activities and want to make it easier for others to contribute to the project, but not at the expense of article quality. Has anyone seen similar disputes in the past? It wouldn't surprise me if I'm missing something obvious here... Thanks. - PaulT+/C 17:00, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

WP:SELF would seem to provide at least some guidance here, to wit "Self-references are sometimes found in the templates and the categories. Some of these are necessary or intrinsic to the purpose..." of the template in question. If, for example, a template in an article is necessary to direct the reader to some bit of Wikipedia policy, then a link to the project page explaining that policy is absolutely needed. What should never be done is "easter-egg-type" bluelinks which pipe policy pages to what looks like a normal article link in regular text, but linking to Wikipedia policy in a template is sometimes a Good Thing. It really is a matter of separating content from policy; sometimes the reader needs to have a link to explain why we might be doing something, and project links are OK there, but in the "regular prose" of an article narrative, I would not expect it. --Jayron32 17:11, 13 April 2018 (UTC)
That makes sense to me. The disputed text is as follows: To learn how to add open-license text to Wikipedia articles, please see Wikipedia:Adding open license text to Wikipedia. For information on reusing text from Wikipedia, please see the terms of use., which I don't think is "necessary or intrinsic to the purpose..." of the template", but I certainly could be wrong about that. Additionally, I recently added {{essay}} to Wikipedia:Adding open license text to Wikipedia, but is this something that should be reviewed to be an actual project guideline or policy? - PaulT+/C 17:17, 13 April 2018 (UTC)
That page would seem to be a How-to and information page, not an essay. Rmhermen (talk) 04:41, 14 April 2018 (UTC)
Indeed it is. I just changed it to use {{Wikipedia how-to}} instead. To be clear, John Cummings is the principal author of the page, I just added the template at the top. - PaulT+/C 02:00, 15 April 2018 (UTC)


Hi all

Thanks very much for engaging in this conversation. For context, this template is part of a wider piece of work I have been doing as part of my residency at UNESCO to help organisations share their knowledge by being able to directly add open license text into Wikipedia. This template provides attribution and Wikipedia:Adding open license text to Wikipedia provides the instructions, additionally Mediaviews allows metrics to be generated on where text from a source is used and how many people visit those articles, e.g text from UNESCO. I have a draft blog post waiting for a bit of editing that will explain all this in more detail soon. I don't see this template as the end point of this process, more it is a proof of concept to show the value of providing an easy way to reuse and measure the reuse of open license text which would then be developed as part of the editing toolbar.

As @Psantora: has said we are looking for some clarification on how much direction and instruction should be given within the template. Here is the template from Water in Africa which does not appear in the main body of the text, but at the bottom in a sources section:


 This article incorporates text from a free content work. Licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0 (license statement/permission). Text taken from The United Nations World Water Development Report 2016: water and jobs​, UNESCO, UNESCO. UNESCO.


A general issue I have with Wikipedia is the level of easy to use documentation and how connected the processes are with the instructions for those processes. At least 50% of the time I've only worked out how to do something by chance or by asking around rather than being able to follow the instructions, the current situation is not helpful to grow and develop a community....

I really want to keep some link between the text displayed on the page and the instructions to reuse open license text and linking to instructions does happen within templates that appear at the top of the page, e.g AFD. I do accept at the moment that it probably takes up too much space, but I do not want to sacrifice usability and ease of use (something I've spent at least 80 hours on) for saving a line or two of space. I think there are three main things I would like to get out of this discussion:

  1. An understanding of what policy allows templates to display
  2. What is practically possible with the currently template to potentially reduce the real estate the template is taking up without sacrificing usability.
  3. What an ideal solution would look like for a future version of this process ignoring current limitations. e.g I would really like to see a way of having multiple attributions happen in a smaller amount of space.

Thanks

John Cummings (talk) 10:48, 16 April 2018 (UTC)

Thanks John Cummings. I was wondering when you would find time to respond here. I want to reiterate that I think what you are doing is overall a "good thing"™ for the project. I don't think I need to chime in again at length but I just wanted to highlight my concern in the context of your post above.
I think:
A:  This article incorporates text from a free content work. [source information]
Should be:
B:  This article incorporates text from a free content work. [source information]
Or at the very least:
C:  This article incorporates text from a free content work. [source information] To learn how to add open license text to Wikipedia articles, please see Wikipedia:Adding open license text to Wikipedia. For information on reusing text from Wikipedia, please see the terms of use.
And if the instructional text is kept there should be an additional parameter to suppress it after the first transclusion when more than one template is present on the page.
Some other similar templates are here: {{source-attribution}}, {{citation-attribution}}, and there are more in the attribution templates category.
For additional context, this is the version of the template that I saw three times in succession on literacy that prompted me to look into this whole thing in the first place:

This article incorporates text from a free content work. [source information]

To learn how to add open license text to Wikipedia articles, please see Wikipedia:Adding open license text to Wikipedia.
For information on reusing text from Wikipedia, please see the terms of use.

I'll leave it to others to give their opinion of which version is most appropriate for permanent/semi-permanent additions to the source section of articles while still complying with WP:SELF and other policies/guidelines. Also note (and John, correct me if I'm wrong here) these templates are intended to be used in addition to any inline references for the content sourced from these free content repositories. Finally, I don't think anyone has any concerns about using Mediaviews to be able to measure the additional reach of adding free use content from elsewhere to Wikipedia, but I do think it is an important part of the context behind the need for and utility of the template. Thanks for reading, - PaulT+/C 13:39, 16 April 2018 (UTC)
Thanks @Psantora:, the suppression of the instructions when multiple instances of the template appear seems like a very good approach if this is simple to do in Visual Editor. Do you know how to set this up/know of where this could be requested? Or perhaps there is a fancy way to do it automatically?
Yes, you are correct, this template is in addition to adding a normal reference because the text is fulfilling two functions.
Obviously I think C is a better option than B but it does tend to get quite lost at the end of a paragraph. I'm wondering if there is a way to keep it as a separate section but to copyedit the text to be shorter?
Best
John Cummings (talk) 13:53, 16 April 2018 (UTC)
There may be a way to have it be suppressed automatically, but no immediate technique comes to mind unfortunately. I know for sure it could be done with a parameter; something like |how-to=no, which I don't think would cause a problem when using the template with the visual editor. You know more about editing templates with the visual editor than I do.
I don't know if there is another way to include the instructions in "a separate section". Setting aside including the instructions at all, the concern I have with the current formatting is that the bullets don't necessarily stay inline with the rest of the reference. Note how they get unindented above. In theory this isn't an issue when used properly in an article, but that seems like a perfect set of ironic last words before the whole project crumbles into a mess of broken templates ;). More to the point, I can't recall any other similar template (for example any of the citation templates) using newlines like that. Having said that, there may be another approach that would achieve the effect you want without causing formatting issues, I just don't know what it is (or if it is).
I think another approach is to have these instructions on the template page itself, but I know removing the instructions from articles impedes your stated purpose of making it easier for others to contribute by using free content sources. - PaulT+/C 14:22, 16 April 2018 (UTC)
Thanks @Psantora:, I think this might be a question for the technical village pump, I'll have a think about how to phrase it. John Cummings (talk) 15:54, 16 April 2018 (UTC)

Help a typo in need

Wikipedia:Typo Team/moss has just gotten the first fresh batch of spelling errors in a long time, and could use some help if you enjoy fixing typos. The main batch is articles that have a single spelling error. There are also opportunities to add words that belong in Wiktionary but aren't, and to fix common misspellings across lots of articles. -- Beland (talk) 21:22, 16 April 2018 (UTC)

Nobody dares to touch or edit the article Port Arthur massacre

Hello colleagues, I am somehow helpless. I tried to do some wp:cleanup work in the article Port Arthur massacre (Australia). I have asked for help at multiple [14] + [15] + [16] + [17] + [18] corners of this project. Now the thing is somehow stuck, leaving me with the question if this crime-related articles are OK regarding WP:SYNTH / WP:NOR / WP:PTS etc. It just looks like that nobody dares to touch or edit this article. Please read Talk:Port_Arthur_massacre_(Australia)#Discussion and let us read your opinions. Best --Ｔｏｍ (talk) 18:17, 17 April 2018 (UTC)

Google vs Wikipedia

I have no idea as to where I should report this, but try googling:

....and you get the exact same picture for all three. Lol, so all Arab historians look the same?

It is also pictured on the Iraqi dinar, and according to the Iraqi dinar article it is Ibn al-Haytham.

This is outside "Wikipedia jurisdiction", so to speak, but does anyone know how can this be fixed? Huldra (talk) 22:38, 18 April 2018 (UTC)

Help desk posters often blame us for such Google errors. See Template:HD/GKG. Google's Knowledge Graph has a "Feedback" link where anyone can mark a field as wrong. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:47, 18 April 2018 (UTC)

WMF goes Tel Aviv?

What is that Tel Aviv / Wikipedia (WMF) link currently going about? - DePiep (talk) 20:49, 19 April 2018 (UTC)

I haven't seen it but I guess it's about meta:GLAMTLV2018. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:49, 20 April 2018 (UTC)

Edit wars in several Catalan politics articles

PROCEDURAL CLOSE
Discussion has been moved to WP:ANI. (non-admin closure) Erpert blah, blah, blah... 15:15, 20 April 2018 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

User:Filiprino has been constantly deleting information and modifying information without any reliable reference, he has had edit wars with other users, arguing that politicians and organizations against the Catalan independence process have very close affiliations with the far-right, without adding reliable sources, I'm not sure but I think he also used another pet account who did the same edit in the moment of the edit war 37.135.109.62. These edits can be seen in the (1) Tabarnia: Revision history, (2) Societat Civil Catalana:Revision history, (3) Somatemps: Revision history and (4) Jaume Vives: Revision history. What I'm saying is that if he want to hold something like that in these articles that is with reliable sources.

He has already been blocked two times for the same (see User talk:Filiprino).--ILoveCaracas (talk) 13:31, 20 April 2018 (UTC)

Hi, I have used reliable sources but you say they are pro catalan independence. I could say that your sources are pro unionism :S In the article Jaume Vives I have removed unsourced material and added information of his news program. I left a message in the talk page of that article. I don't want to incriminate you. I have just described what I have done, which forms part of Wikipedia encouragement of bold editing. Additionally, another Wikipedia recommendation is to not revert and instead modify or edit the parts of a revision. That is what I have done by removing the unsourced material. I have had to read it and check if it is available or if it is reflecting what the article says. Jaume Vives article did not comply with that. The links I removed are this and this and this. The first one does not talk about Jaume Vives but about TV3. It says that the TV TV3 channel has a campaign against Jaume Vives (questionable). The second link returns a 404 Not Found error. The third link is a redirect to esglesiabarcelona.cat without any related information. Because of that, I removed the line of text which used those sources. Additionally I have used this link and this link as source for the El Prisma collaborations and brings information about Jaume Vives and its relation with Tabarnia as promoter of it. I hope these explanations disipate your worries. Filiprino (talk) 13:59, 20 April 2018 (UTC)

He just added controversial information again with an unreliable source, excusing himself in this above response. Now adding a source with i see a complete radical position, read that url he just post [19]. in the comments of the same page, readers demystify the information of this "media" by saying that the same link that references that page says the opposite. the reference of that link is a blog, which coincidentally ensures otherwise. in summary nothing reliable this source--ILoveCaracas (talk) 14:11, 20 April 2018 (UTC)

The link you refer to is this one, right? Well, "El Triangle" is a known hard paper weekly publication which costs 5 euros in a kiosk and has been under investigation by Mossos d'Esquadra due to El Triangle contacts with Método 3 in their journalistic investigation. Filiprino (talk) 14:19, 20 April 2018 (UTC)
"El Salto Diario" is again a hard paper publication, of monthly cadence and is not linked at all with independentism. It is not controversial. The article just states the unknown origin of Jaume Vives and Albert Boadella positions in Tabarnia. You accepted that same link in Tabarnia's article. See this diff. In that edit you added the article from the digital "El Catalan" which focuses on TV3 rather than Jaume Vives, the same article you wanted to use in Jaume Vives article. Filiprino (talk) 14:24, 20 April 2018 (UTC)

that link is not the page of El Triangle, it is a mask, a false page, there is no any link in the site that move you to the main page of the real one, you click anywhere and it takes you to dead links. This is the real website of that media [20] (of which I did not know)--ILoveCaracas (talk) 14:27, 20 April 2018 (UTC)

El Salto Diario only shows articles of opinion clearly independentists, I have looked at some and nothing else because their titles are radical, I read them and do not show some kind of criticism on the other side, just to one side--ILoveCaracas (talk) 14:30, 20 April 2018 (UTC)

Archive.org is a website which saves snapshots of web pages for archiving purposes. Allows to preserve references. "El Salto Diario" is a well known journal and that article (analysis) in particular summarizes all what has happened with Tabarnia until their first demonstration, including the roles of Jaume Vives and Albert Boadella. Includes events and analyses from other journalists. Filiprino (talk) 14:40, 20 April 2018 (UTC)

Whether or not it is a reliable source that I leave to the neutral administrators that can contribute to this discussion. I only see in the links that you pass me a radical opinion and away from reality, based on references that say the opposite when you access it, and fact is based on references that are mere blogs where fans write to various topics--ILoveCaracas (talk) 14:48, 20 April 2018 (UTC)

the other link is another opinion biased and radical from beginning to end, of a dubious verifiability if it is of that (unkonw by me) newspaper, remember that there are also current newspapers in Catalonia as "vila-web" and hundreds others that behave as a propaganda archive towards the Catalan independence, and who are not interested in their reputation, and not behave like a newspaper that gives neutral information--ILoveCaracas (talk) 14:55, 20 April 2018 (UTC)

Third opinion

Response to third opinion request:
I removed this entry because 3O is for single article disputes. But this isn't the correct venue for this discussion either; if you feel that there is inappropriate behavior across different articles, the discussion belongs at WP:ANI. Erpert blah, blah, blah... 15:08, 20 April 2018 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

question

hi why dump of enwiki is 12 gb but last dump is 13 9 gb — Preceding unsigned comment added by Amirh123 (talk • contribs) 14:04, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

Por que hay una gran diferencia de articulos entre Wikipedia ingles y Wikipedia Aleman, Español , Polaco, Portugues y Frances?

Denoto que entre las distintas paginas principales de wikipedia hay una diferencia entre la informacion entre ingles y español , ademas de una gran diferencia de cantidad de articulos. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kritical Strike (talk • contribs) 17:10, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

Each Wikipedia is independent of every other Wikipedia and sets its own policies, procedures, and standards. The results will, naturally, vary. Regards, TransporterMan (TALK) 17:44, 22 April 2018 (UTC)
Wikipedia articles in other languages are not like a book which has been translated. Sometimes it looks as though the English language Wikipedia article has been translated, but people are under no obligation to do this. They can write a completely separate and different article if they want to.--♦IanMacM♦ (talk to me) 18:05, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

Avicii deceased

Please edit, see WWW & other wiki language versions.--37.250.54.251 (talk) 17:51, 20 April 2018 (UTC)

What exactly are you asking? Erpert blah, blah, blah... 20:16, 21 April 2018 (UTC)
The request was probably to have the biography updated. Reports of his death were being removed by editors during the half hour or so before this request; depending upon which version the user saw, the article might not have mentioned it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:23, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

At National Socialist Party of America v. Village of Skokie, there are, I believe, three other-language Wikipedia articles's links. However, the simple English one is a tiny bit paler. When I clicked on it, instead of being sent to a Simple English article, I got a notice that I was agreeing to something in translating the English article. What's going on? Kdammers (talk) 03:02, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

That's the Wikipedia:Content translation tool. The agreement is at MediaWiki:cx-license-agreement (which should look pretty familiar, since it's very similar to the text you see when you save an edit on this page). The paler link means that the page doesn't exist at that language's Wikipedia. Not everyone will see a link to the Simple English Wikipedia there, by the way; you probably see that because you recently clicked a link to that wiki. I see German, Greek, and Czech at the moment. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:02, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

May I ask a full investigation to a zhwiki administrator?

This zhwiki administrator @AT (his username is AT) recently deleted over 20 wikipages I translated, pages like "Lists of Portuguese people", "Lists of Russian people" and so on, I tried to translate these pages into chinese, and @AT deleted them.

From January 15 to April 15, I post a lot in the zhwiki community, I tried to disscuss with @at but it didn't help. From what I see @AT just make some excuse and pretend to disscuss but actually did not care at all. And @AT got some followers to justify the whole thing for him. In this post[21] I list all the reasons @AT and his followers mentioned, I explain every single reason, but @AT change subject all the time, anyone could see that from that post.

I then post in the zhwiki community ask to remove @AT's administrator job, that pissed off his followers, I got mocked and bullied, my words got twisted, I got blocked 3 times, none is with right reason. @AT and his followers acted like a dictator and his musclemen.

Another thing is this user @Dingruogu, i consider him one of @AT's followers. He is the guy put "Lists of Portuguese people" and "List of Swiss people" and about 20 other pages into the 'Wikipedia:Articles for deletion' then @AT deleted them all. Most recently he tried to delete my another page "Igor Pavlov", known as the creater of the file archiver 7-Zip, I translated "Igor Pavlov" into chinese and he wants to delete it. And just to fit his need, he also changed the enwiki page of "Igor Pavlov" [22]

I know the whole thing happened in zhwiki, and it is indepent to enwiki. but with all the post I did not got much help from othe zhwiki administrators, they remain silence about the deletion, that makes me no choice but ask help from the enwiki and WMF.

If a administrator could delete fine wikipedia pages he doesn't like and other administrators remain silence and the one against him got mocked got bullied got blocked. Then it is not worth editing wikipedia or donate to wikipedia.

With all above, for the good of wikipedia, May I ask a full investigation to this zhwiki administrator?--Jasonnn~zhwiki (talk) 05:35, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

The English-language Wikipedia and Chinese-language Wikipedia are completely separate projects with different communities and standards; asking for help with zh.wp matters here is a waste of time. —Jeremy v^_^v Bori! 06:22, 22 April 2018 (UTC)
As Jeremy indicates above, each Wikipedia-language functions as an independent community with local policies and guidelines. Out of curiosity I did view some of the discussions via machine translation. I didn't attempt to follow any policy&guideline issues, but I see no indication that any administrator acted improperly. This is a questionable type of list, and there is nothing unusual in a Wikipedia community deciding that these lists do not qualify as acceptable. Any new article, whether via translation or not, is subject to local policies and criteria for acceptable articles. Alsee (talk) 08:13, 22 April 2018 (UTC)
acted like a dictator - those types exist in every language Wikipedia but it will depend on the local culture how well they can handle keeping them in check. If they can't be reigned in that is a problem. You may also be followed in hounded. In which case consider change your user ID, work on different types of articles and try to avoid them. Focus on your intent to build Wikipedia and bypass the blockages. -- GreenC 13:44, 22 April 2018 (UTC)
Thanks for your suggestion.--Jasonnn~zhwiki (talk) 14:22, 22 April 2018 (UTC)
I believe that these questions are usually taken to m:Wikimedia Forum – possibly with just as little practical result in the end. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:04, 23 April 2018 (UTC)
Thanks for your suggestion.--Jasonnn~zhwiki (talk) 14:05, 26 April 2018 (UTC)

Is this the right place to ask for help?

Ok, so kinda new to this wikipedia thing. Can we ask for help with articles here? If so, can we have someone who speaks finnish help with the page for FOX Finland? It would be nice to translate some content from the Finnish page to English. CobaltBlue101 (talk) 18:29, 26 April 2018 (UTC)

CobaltBlue101, Wikipedia:Teahouse is the recommended place for "newbies" to ask questions. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 18:57, 26 April 2018 (UTC)

Roy Young died

Please note that Roy Young died on april 27 according to sources. Thank you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.185.175.84 (talk) 16:10, 28 April 2018 (UTC)

Which Roy Young are you referring to? Blueboar (talk) 16:22, 28 April 2018 (UTC)
Throwing caution to the wind, I'm guessing this one. ―Mandruss ☎ 17:21, 28 April 2018 (UTC)

Article life cycle description?

Do we have something which describes the article life cycle? I'm thinking sandbox -> draft -> article -> AfD -> DRV, with lots of loops for editing and discussion at each stage. I can't find such a description, but it seems like we must have one somewhere. -- RoySmith (talk) 12:57, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

I am also not aware of anything that matches your description, but it is not clear what you are looking for, or why. · · · Peter (Southwood) (talk): 16:00, 26 April 2018 (UTC)
Surely the life cycle of most articles consists of just one stage, "article"? The percentage of articles that gets to DRV is vanishingly small. 86.17.222.157 (talk) 09:06, 30 April 2018 (UTC)
The closest I'm aware of is User:JzG/And the band played on... —Cryptic 09:08, 30 April 2018 (UTC)

Someone on Reddit offering $800 to have an article locked

No idea which article (I haven't engaged). Thought I'd highlight this which I assume is against policy. Link: https://www.reddit.com/r/wikipedia/comments/8g30p3/searching_person_with_an_established_wikipedia/ --A bit iffy (talk) 21:34, 30 April 2018 (UTC)

Maybe investigate recently failed/controversial article protection requests. Or it could be the poster doesn't know what "lock" means and is really trying to save it from deletion. -- GreenC 21:47, 30 April 2018 (UTC)
A possible course of action is to lock the article, then take the money and donate it to Wikipedia. Can't imagine a lot of people would do that though. --Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 22:19, 30 April 2018 (UTC)

Page Previews

Hello,

Page Previews is a software feature that allows readers to read an excerpt of a linked article’s lead section without leaving the page they’re currently on, by hovering their mouse over the link. It has been activated by default for logged-out users on all Wikipedias except German and English since August 2017, and numerous further bug fixes and technical improvements have been implemented since. A few weeks ago we announced some updates to Page Previews, published the results of our latest round of A/B testing, and asked for your feedback. These updates resolved all of the issues identified in the discussion held at the English Wikipedia last year. In our A/B tests we found – as expected – that when the feature is enabled, readers will open pages in their browser slightly less often (a decrease of around 3–5% in regular pageviews). But on the other hand, they interact with a lot more different pages when one counts both the seen page previews and the regular pageviews (an increase of around 20–22% in the number of distinct pages interacted with via either method). In addition, the option to deactivate the feature was used very rarely (disable rates were around 0.01%). This leads us to believe that Page Previews is a welcomed feature that is helping readers learn more during their visits.

Based on these results and on feedback we’ve heard so far, we plan on continuing with the next step of rollout here on the English Wikipedia, which is turning the feature on by default for logged-out users.  This will mean no changes for logged-in users. The feature will be off by default for logged-in editors, unless currently enabled. If you would like to enable it, it is available in your Preferences under “Appearance”. If you have the feature enabled already, it will stay on.  We plan on implementing these changes within the next couple of weeks.

In terms of future changes for logged-in users, we have a few options we’d like to request some feedback on:

  • Keep the feature off by default for logged-in users.  
  • Turn the feature on by default for new accounts only. Currently, when users move from being readers to contributors and create an account, the feature will seem to vanish, and that would be confusing.  As a further step in the feature rollout, we plan to change this configuration and enable the feature for all new accounts.
  • Turn the feature on by default for existing logged-in users (Even if it were enabled for everyone, it would still be automatically suppressed for anyone who uses NAVPOPS.)

What do you think the next step should be in terms of behavior for existing logged-in users?

Yours, OVasileva (WMF) (talk) 14:16, 4 April 2018 (UTC) (Product manager, Readers web team, Wikimedia Foundation)

Fantastic, glad to hear it! 20% is huge, that's really great to see, readers must love. In fact, just the other day my wife (who doesn't edit but sees me) said she wanted it turned on for readers; she'll be thrilled. Regarding the next step, I think option 2 is the way to go, it should provide a seamless transition for everybody. I don't use them because I like the advanced features of the Navigation Popups gadget, which is our most popular gadget; as such, given the conflict with popups, option 3 isn't really an option. but I imagine there are people with neither on who like it that way. And, I know from when I'm not editing, having these tools is the #1 reason to stay logged in, so I think keeping it off for all logged-in users will, as you say, be jarring and surprising for them, and in the end, counterproductive. Thanks again for all the work! ~ Amory (u • t • c) 12:19, 5 April 2018 (UTC)
Thank you for a very good product! Sounds like you guys really want to roll this out for all new accounts (option 2). Go for it! I find no fault with option 3 either, but I think it's wise to hear what the community thinks. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 14:56, 5 April 2018 (UTC)
I agree with Amory and Finnusertop that option #2 is a good idea and should be uncontroversial. I'm neutral on option #3. Kaldari (talk) 21:57, 5 April 2018 (UTC)
Option 2 seems best. It will be nice to finally see it launched. Hope that soon we can add reference popups into it, so we can get rid of the other gadgets that do that. Might be wise to give the documentation page another look over, and make sure that people can find how to change the content of the popups, how to turn it off etc. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:00, 6 April 2018 (UTC)
There's currently a consensus against enabling previews by default. Of course consensus can change, so a new proposal on Pump Proposals would be needed. It should contain prominent link to the previous RFC, and of course it should not exclude the status-quo consensus from the list of options. Previews are a very love-it-or-hate-it feature, and for logged-out users it's infuriatingly-hopeless to even attempt to opt out. You know the default is just going keep coming back until up give up anyway. Alsee (talk) 15:29, 6 April 2018 (UTC)
  • It looks as though the OP is aware of that discussion, since they obliquely cite it above, but I agree that any new feature needs community input before enacting. There is the possibility that the community would be against any default enabling (even for logged-out or new users) of this new tool. I'm not sure where I stand as yet, but I do agree that it is not the sort of thing that should be just dropped in, without asking for community input on how it is enabled. --Jayron32 15:38, 6 April 2018 (UTC)
@Jayron32: we're open to getting as much feedback here as possible. We cross-posted to VPT yesterday, but would welcome a wider audience as well. Could I suggest that this discussion be added to the centralized discussion template to get more participation? OVasileva (WMF) (talk) 16:21, 6 April 2018 (UTC)
@Alsee: you say, "There's currently a consensus against". It is my understanding that the result of that conversation from 2016 was "no consensus". A large number of the users voting oppose stated that they were voting oppose explicitly for the behavior for logged-in users. This is why we're here asking on what the preferred behavior for editors would be, as we understand that this needs further input towards consensus. You also say, "for logged-out users it's infuriatingly-hopeless to even attempt to opt out.". The results of the linked research show that folks can find the opt-out feature without difficulty and that the opt-out rates are remarkably low. See above where I mentioned, "disable rates were around 0.01%". That being said, we’re happy to have more discussion about the feature, in any format that people think is appropriate. OVasileva (WMF) (talk) 16:21, 6 April 2018 (UTC)
All I'm saying is that any large change to the operation of en.wikipedia, such as this, should be subject to community consensus. I understand you feel that the objections of the April discussion have been largely ammeliorated, but the only way to know if they have been ammeliorated is to actually seek community input and hold another discussion. Your expectation that those who had voted "oppose" last time have been satisfied could only be determined by actually asking them. --Jayron32 16:29, 6 April 2018 (UTC)
Hi @Jayron32: I agree with you, that's why we're talking about it here. Do you have a suggestion for what else we can do? As I mentioned previously, we cross-posted to VPT yesterday. Our suggestion from here would be to add this discussion to the centralized discussion template so that we can reach a wider audience OVasileva (WMF) (talk) 16:38, 6 April 2018 (UTC)
No, no, you're fine. I just wanted clarification that this was a request for input and not an announcement of a pending feature. There's often some confusion between the two; I wanted to make sure you were asking for comments, and not just telling us this was coming down the pike regardless. I'm good. --Jayron32 16:43, 6 April 2018 (UTC)
Jayron if you check the text here carefully, or check the post at mediawiki.org,[23] the WMF position is (or was) that this feature is being rolled out as a new default. They were only asking for input on who should be included in that default.
OVasileva (WMF) I see two possible disconnects in the conversation. One possible issue is that we're viewing the last RFC as a standing result. Laws, executive orders, and RFC results, are all generally expected to stand as valid until they are actually superseded by a new one. If you think the last RFC result is obsolete, sure, we can have a new proposal which may reach a positive result. If we make it a new proposal and it passes, great, we build a track record of WMF-Community engagement reaching success on a product. There is important value in WMF-Community engagement even if such a proposal were to fail... there is huge value in collaboratively-preempting the same result manifesting from a hostile contra-proposal.
The other possible disconnect may be a lack of clarity on how we view Pump pages and processes? Pump(technical) is for tech-announcements and immediate tech-problems. Pump(miscellaneous) is for random crap, chuckle. Pump(proposals) is for serious decision making. Also the post here essentially declared that the rollout was happening, and your post excluded the status-quo result from the list of options. So it's not on the proposals page, it doesn't look like a proposal, and we're not viewing it as a proposal.
You asked for suggestion for what else we can do. If you're agreeable that this is a proposed-rollout rather than an announced-rollout, I'd be happy to try drafting it more like a proposal. If you like the result then you/I/we can post it to the Pump Proposals page with an RFC|proposal template. Alsee (talk) 18:29, 6 April 2018 (UTC)
Hey @Alsee: thanks for your concerns. I went ahead and posted a link to this discussion at VPP as well. We’d like to avoid duplicating conversation and forking the existing comments from here. We do want to get as many eyes on this as possible - this is why we posted on VPT asking for feedback yesterday as well as a couple of weeks ago. This is the same sort of conversation we had back in 2016 where we listened to the feedback and acted on it to remove any identified concerns (including the ability to turn the feature off easily which you were asking about earlier). We’d like to highlight that none of our plans are set in stone. We appreciate the enthusiasm for the feature we’ve seen so far, but if major concerns arise in this conversation, we’ll pause and make sure we address them. OVasileva (WMF) (talk) 21:12, 6 April 2018 (UTC)

Next Steps

Thank you for your feedback!  It seems the preferred way forward is to deploy Page Previews as on by default for logged-out users and new accounts and off for current editors (the feature can be enabled via user preferences).  As a result, we plan on making the following changes:

  • Deploy as on for logged-out users (off for all logged-in users) now
  • Deploy as on for new accounts in May, 2018

Since we haven’t had any comments over the past few days, we’re planning for making the first change next week.  Let us know if you would like more time for discussion. OVasileva (WMF) (talk) 13:53, 12 April 2018 (UTC)

I am late to this discussion, but a point to consider: opt-in for logged in users is least likely to ignite an explosion, but how much feedback do you actually have from the people who will be most affected - the logged out users? · · · Peter (Southwood) (talk): 16:16, 12 April 2018 (UTC)
@Pbsouthwood: - thank you for asking! This is actually something that we’ve put a lot of focus on over the development of the feature. We have quite a large amount of feedback from readers - all positive. As it’s difficult to find ways to communicate with logged-out users on-wiki, we’ve been gathering alternatives in gauging their feelings towards the feature. First, we did a series of qualitative tests in which almost all participants reported very positive experiences with Page previews. We also tested whether previews were a nuisance or annoying (they were not), and whether readers could turn the feature on and off with ease (they could). We also performed a thorough quantitative test on English Wikipedia. The results of this test showed that logged-out readers used the feature at fairly high frequencies which resulted in them interacting with significantly more pages over the course of their session (we saw an increase of more than 20% of distinct pages interacted with despite a drop in classical pageviews). Also, we looked at disable rates - a high disable rate would indicate people didn't like the feature. These rates were actually negligibly low (less than 0.01%). In addition, we’ve been monitoring mentions of the Page previews on social media and other platforms where we have received overwhelmingly positive reception - it seems a lot of people are excited for this release. OVasileva (WMF) (talk) 16:56, 12 April 2018 (UTC)
As long as your methods are robust: I suspect that a large number of readers do not know that it is possible to set preferences, but have no idea what proportion of them. That group would just have to tolerate anything that was thrust upon them, but most readers are probably used to internet sites arbitrarily changing features all the time anyway. If it is what I think it is I use it all the time, and have been opted in since I first found out it was an option. Cheers, · · · Peter (Southwood) (talk): 17:15, 12 April 2018 (UTC)
Yup - we tested exactly for this case actually. Since the disable rates were so low, we were worried that this was due to people not being able to find the disable option. To verify, we tested this ability qualitatively. Users were asked “can you show how you would disable the feature that you see appearing when you place your mouse over links”. All but one of the tested users were able to disable the feature immediately from the settings cog. The other user was actually logged-in and disabled the feature via their beta preferences. OVasileva (WMF) (talk) 21:39, 12 April 2018 (UTC)
Your conclusion is incorrect. There is no consensus for deploying Page Previews as on by default for logged-out users. Frankly, the above lack of response doesn't show consensus in favor of turning it on for new accounts either. (Even if this thread wasn't started with an announcement of intention to ignore relevant consensus, three users isn't sufficient for this kind of decision.) You can't just announce a change opposed by prior consensus and expect there to be reasonable discussion about what kind of violations should occur. If you want there to be an actual discussion of whether and how it should be deployed, many contributors here (myself included) would be glad to start a proper RfC on it, assuming the result will be respected. --Yair rand (talk) 19:28, 12 April 2018 (UTC)
To be clear: The community considered this feature, and rejected it. A future RfC may yield different results, but present consensus is to reject this feature. --Yair rand (talk) 19:47, 12 April 2018 (UTC)
Hi Yair - thanks for writing -- we haven’t seen as much discussion here as we expected, so it’s good to hear more views.
I don’t believe that we have been ignoring community consensus here. The conversation of April 2016 was closed with no consensus, with a recommendation to open the discussion again later, with more data: “I'm sure this issue will resurface, and when it does, we'll have more data to look at, so it might be easier to deal with next time.” Over the last two years of development, we’ve made a lot of changes to the feature based on the comments in that discussion. We’ve also  run a number of tests to evaluate the impact of the feature.
We’ve come back to the Village Pump a couple times in order to share the new data and feature progress and to request new feedback. We’re here now to have further discussion on next steps. We posted links to this conversation in VPT and VPP to make sure that we can let as many people know the conversation was taking place as possible.
So far, all of the feedback that directly referenced the feature has been positive; we haven’t heard from anyone who thinks that turning the feature on for logged-out users is a bad idea. The folks who have posted here with concerns, like you, have been concerned about process, rather than the feature itself. In terms of process, we think we have been transparent about this conversation taking place in as many forums as we could possibly think of. We are confident that the editors that care about this feature have already seen this discussion and have had ample time to comment.
We suggested wrapping up the discussion now because it’s been a while since we’ve received any feedback. That being said, we’re happy to have more discussion about the feature, in any forum that folks feel is appropriate. This conversation we’re having right now is a request for comments, just with a small r and c. What do you think would be different, in a conversation with a capital RfC? OVasileva (WMF) (talk) 21:34, 12 April 2018 (UTC)
@OVasileva (WMF): Thank you for allowing more time for discussion. I'm confident that if we have a more open-ended discussion there will be much more participation. This is the kind of topic that tends to generates lots of interest; the last discussion on it had about fifty participants. However, presenting the outcome as a fait-accompli makes it very difficult to have a serious broad discussion on what steps to take. --Yair rand (talk) 02:19, 13 April 2018 (UTC)
Thanks for your reply! It seems we’re on the same page. We want this discussion to be as open-ended as possible. We framed the beginning of the conversation based on feedback we received in the past (from the previous conversation as well as from readers). I would just like to confirm that “none of the above options sound like a good idea because X” is also a valid response here. If anybody reading along feels this way - let us know! OVasileva (WMF) (talk) 11:56, 13 April 2018 (UTC)
Hi everyone! Once again it’s been quiet here for the past few days. As we haven’t heard any concerns with the planned configuration so far, we’re beginning to make the first change as I identified above. Once again, we’d like to highlight that no change is permanent and this discussion is still open for any feedback about the feature and its configuration that you may have. OVasileva (WMF) (talk) 13:57, 17 April 2018 (UTC)
As a "logged-out user" who had no idea that this feature existed before it was imposed, and who is now experiencing it for the first time, I can only say that I find it utterly distracting and annoying. Have you considered that people who don't log in may be looking for a "bare bones" experience, without undesired options? 90.255.138.14 (talk) 15:32, 22 April 2018 (UTC)
I second this absolutely and I commend our IP user on their language restraint. Stumbling over it for the first time I find it to be utter shit. Yes I can fart around with dialogs and options until they go away but the whole runaround is appallingly badly implemented. Before it can be on by default it would need a one-time, one-click "No thanks!" option in the preview popup, but I don't see how that can be implemented for a visitor who doesn't accept cookies. In other words, it is desperately important to have this "feature" off by default, even for the poor anonymous visitor. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 17:07, 26 April 2018 (UTC)
@Steelpillow: Imagine how you would feel if this critique was given to you for say, an article you wrote (or a user script, if that's a better example). That wouldn't be very nice, would it? Constructive feedback is of course welcomed but please try to tone it down and not offend the people who have worked on this for many many moons, following thorough research. I'm not involved with Page Previews, for the record, I'm just a developer myself, and I don't think it's fair to treat people like this when the obvious intention was for the greater good. — MusikAnimal talk 15:54, 1 May 2018 (UTC)
Shows how much you know about me. I am equally hard on my own work and I expect others to be. The error was a very basic one in UX quality testing, of shoving a potentially bad smell up somebody's nose before giving them any warning, and in any outfit I have ever worked for it would have received a severe reprimand. There was no way to get my experience across politely, please appreciate that. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 16:25, 1 May 2018 (UTC)

Wrong identification

Hi, We got a mail in OTRS saying that this image, initially claimed to be Augusta Savage is actually Georgette Seabrooke. I don't understand how we got this confusion, as the initial source shows a different image. May be it was changed there? The good news is we didn't have any good image of Georgette Seabrooke. The bad news is that this picture was promoted as Featured picture, and then appeared on the Main page on 2018-02-28. I renamed the picture, and removed it wherever it was wrongly used. What do we do now with the FP nomination ? Already posted here, but no answer. Regards, Yann (talk) 17:30, 29 April 2018 (UTC)

Any comment? Yann (talk) 08:05, 6 May 2018 (UTC)

Cities and towns in Algeria

What is the distinction between a city and a town in Algeria? I have seen several places which are described in English Wikipedia as 'town and commune' (e.g. Khemisti), while in Commons, they are categorized under 'Cities in XY province' - Khemisti. JiriMatejicek (talk) 07:40, 3 May 2018 (UTC)

Algeria only has three different levels of administrative division, Provinces of Algeria, Districts of Algeria, and Communes of Algeria (or Baladiyah). There is no official division called either "city" or "town"; so we're left with the standard, non-specialized meaning of those words, which are basically "city = big settlement" and "town = smaller settlement". Excepting where legal codes specifically codify them as such, their use is rather inexact. In English, there's a general trend that hamlets are smaller than villages, which are smaller than towns, than are smaller than cities, without giving exact dividing lines between the definitions. --Jayron32 12:43, 3 May 2018 (UTC)
Remember that there is a sharp line between city & town on one side, & village & hamlet on the other: the first two have an organized local government that is distinct from the local district/province/county the settlement is located in. (In many countries the civic government is entirely distinct from the local district; AFAIK, the US is unique in allowing the civic & regional governments intermingle, thus leading to any number of conflicts of responsibility.) As for the difference between "city" & "town", I don't see a good objective definition that fits all cases: for example, where an incorporated settlement of 50,000 would be considered a city in one country, in another it would be considered a mere town. Probably the best solution is to look at the usage of the given country; countries refer to their most important settlements as a "city". So if the government of the country labels a settlement a "city", consider it a city; if it doesn't label it as one, consider it a town. -- llywrch (talk) 20:22, 7 May 2018 (UTC)

Misleading warning notice on a config page for a bot

Hi, I see a warning message on the config page for a bot I help run. The warning message is incorrect. That code does not run when the page is previewed, nor do the users have to bypass their cache. It's also impossible for the code there to compromise the user account. The warning message is recent and I'm wondering if I can help tweak it or have it removed from that page. Thanks. -- Niharika (talk) 07:24, 6 May 2018 (UTC)

I think this warning text applies to any .json page (or other) which has Page content model=JSON. .js pages also have a similar warning. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 13:58, 6 May 2018 (UTC)

Request for comment on doing math operations to present data of a source

I requested comments regarding the application of WP:CALC at Talk:List of countries by firearm-related death rate. Please comment. Thinker78 (talk) 05:57, 7 May 2018 (UTC)

New Wikipedia Asian Month Logo Ideation

Hi, I plan to sketch a new logo for the Wikipedia Asian Month, but since I am an asian, I don't want to be too biased to my own culture. What do you think is the best symbol for Asia? Or what can remind you about Asia as an entity, instead of a specific asian country?--燃灯 (talk) 17:41, 7 May 2018 (UTC)

How do I get my account back if is should be hacked

Since the beginning of May, multiple attempts have been made to crack my password. I have a committed identity. I would like to know what the procedure is in case my account should get hacked? How do I get it back? Debresser (talk) 16:11, 7 May 2018 (UTC)

If you use a strong password that's only ever been used for WP the account can't get hacked. --Zac67 (talk) 16:50, 7 May 2018 (UTC)
That's a bold statement. Clients can be compromised, databases can be compromised, and there are other vectors for a unique password. I believe the answer to this question, assuming you are no longer logged in and email is disabled, is to start a new account after getting the old one blocked (using your committed identity). Or nicely bug a dev and pray. Wikipedia:Compromised accounts is a relevant page. -- zzuuzz (talk) 17:14, 7 May 2018 (UTC)

What I see it says at Wikipedia:Compromised accounts is: "A typical result of having your account compromised is to have the account either blocked or locked (a lock is a global block from all Wikimedia projects) to prevent further discruption. Although administrators on Wikipedia may be able to help, the WMF Support and Safety team and stewards may also be contacted." So how would I do this? Debresser (talk) 07:19, 8 May 2018 (UTC)

Looking at Wikipedia:Compromised accounts#After being compromised,
  • If the account was blocked locally, you need to convince local admins that you're back in control of the account so they'll unblock. You'd probably start by posting an {{unblock}} and following up as requested.
  • If the account was locked globally, you need to convince stewards of the same. You'd probably start by following the contact instructions at m:Stewards, and following up as requested.
  • If privileges were removed, you'd contact whichever group has the ability to give the privileges back through the usual channels, e.g. WP:BN.
  • If you need help getting back in control of the account (e.g. because you never had a confirmed email set, or you lost access to the email address and never updated your account with a new one, or the cracker changed the email address), you need to convince someone with the necessary access to reset the email address and/or password on the account for you. Most such people work for the Foundation, so WMF's Trust and Safety team is a good start. I don't see anything on m:Trust and Safety at the moment about how to contact that team; absent future clarification, you might file a task in Phabricator with the team's tag or email a likely team member directly at their @wikimedia.org email addresses.
In any case, part of the process is convincing people that you really are you and not the cracker pretending to be you. The committed identity hash is one way to try to prove you are the same person who originally posted the hash; you'd agree with whoever you were in contact with how to provide them with the data needed to reproduce the hash (e.g. via private email), and then do so. Another method to prove your identity is to have someone trusted vouch for you. To have WMF reset your email/password, that would typically involve the trusted person confirming your identity via an in-person meeting or video chat. Anomie⚔ 13:17, 8 May 2018 (UTC)
Thanks. By the way, even if an email was changed, those changes are logged. Debresser (talk) 14:17, 8 May 2018 (UTC)

Wikipedia needs more compassion for readers

I've been around many years, and I know that there always have been some battles and vandalism on Wikipedia. But it used to still be possible to take them with a dose of humor. (See WP:BJAODN). Now we have reached a state of collective hysteria. The word "has become an emotional label for people, the equivalent to the word "communist" in the McCarthy era. (This is of course not meant to diminish the efforts of the many hard wirking people fighting Wikipedia:Vandalism. Part of the problem is that the term "vandal" allows to replace the very specific matter-of-fact definition of our policy to such an emotionally loaded personal label. McCarthy probably would not have been as successful if he had focussed on a specific definition of "communism", instead of speaking of "the Reds".)

I think we've experienced a similar hardening as has happened in countries under the threat of war, which often ends just with what they dreaded most. Wars often begin with an escalation: Some people act with violence. Others are outraged and feel they must do something against it. An arms race ensues. Specialized warriors come to power, recruiting more and more people and resources. People who question the violence get branded as "unpatriotic", "traitors", or even as non-humans, which solidifies the warrior groups. The warriors on both sides are united in threatening the remaining reasonable people. Eventually, even honest, thoughtful people feel forced to align themselves with one side. I wrote about this regarding an ethnic conflict back in 2007.

A similar situation happened in the last decade here at Wikipedia, between righteous editors and readers who distrust what they read. If someone from the latter group does something rash, the warriors quickly come up with their war cry WP:DENY!, ultimately denying the offendors one of the basic rights of humanity, the right to speak about their needs and grieves. What happened of our cherished ideal and self-image of "The Free Encyclopedia"?

I believe it is the obligation of those of us who are more fortunate to help those who are in a situation of strife, most often due to no fault on their part. Eleven years ago, that was still possible here. But since then, the warrior class here has grown and harded to the point where they question anyone's integrity who tries to reasonably speak with a "vandal", and use all weapons they can to obviate any chance for compassionate communication.

This is what I experienced in a recent case. Apparently a reader got upset about something they read or missed here because it violated some of their core beliefs, in this case apparently something that has to do with genocides they attributed to the white "man". ThEy reacted in ways that apparently made it easy for the warriors to summarily disregard their grievances. The term "vandal" was applied, and from then on there was no way out of the mess. The last thing they was allowed to write was a message on my talk page. It was, just like the angry posts before, a desperate attempt to find someone who compassionally listens. This last message also contained an attempt to understand what was going on. In addition to repeating some of the things they wrote before, the last message contained elements of gratitude, of introspection, and the legitimate question "How is it possible to provide a contratry view in Wikipedia." I saw those as signs of hope, and my plan was to, after calming down the reader, explain to them why they ran afoul with Wikipedia, that it's not because of some conspiracy and, if we get so far, the importance of reliable sources. I've done such things successfully in the past, when I helped some people not unlike this disgruntled reader transform in some cases even into reasonable editors. Sadly, this chance to educate a reader was thwarted by cutting off the only communication channell we had, when the reader was blocked with a punitive block.

If we had a more compassionate way of dealing with disgruntled readers, we would have less problems with them. It would be one way to reduce the problem of vandalism, which the warrior's attempts of the last decade have only exacerbated. ◄ Sebastian 14:56, 8 May 2018 (UTC)

The reality of this case is that you were lured in by a serial sockpuppeteer who has resorted to trolling and vandalism. ​—DoRD (talk)​ 15:23, 8 May 2018 (UTC)
The issue here is that an administrator restored vandalism and a BLP violation to Talk:Main Page after it had been reverted and has insisted on the correctness of their actions (even invoking Jesus and the adulterous woman to justify it. TonyBallioni (talk) 15:59, 8 May 2018 (UTC)
I disagree. Wikipedia is not a forum, it is an encyclopaedia. We are not here to be cuddly to people with crank ideas who wish to push them to the world instea d of improving the encyclopaedia, never mind outright vandals. As for a more compassionate way of dealing with people who have a bee in their bonnet I recently supported the keeping of a Talk:Arguments for page which had no associated article under WP:IAR as mitigating damage, but just allowing damage without having a plan for dealing effectively is II think just wrong. Dmcq (talk) 17:41, 8 May 2018 (UTC)
As an uninvolved visitor to this page and with no special privileges, it seems odd to me that admins are squabbling over an incident whose key evidence has been purged from sight. May I ask you to put your dirty washing back in the laundry basket and focus on the issue raised rather than the still-warm example offered? In general, are we being too harsh on new editors who trip over our rules and regulations before they can find their feet? I know that I am sometimes, although I try hard not to be. Too many of us regard WP:CIVIL as a pillar that others must respect but we ourselves may retaliate in kind against those who don't, and even make pre-emptive strikes against potential disruptors. That is of course untenable, but it is all too often tolerated. I see this issue as a general failure of leadership, from the top down (Jimbo sadly included), to respect WP:CIVIL - followed by a hypocritical intolerance of those unprivileged folks foolish enough to make the mistake of copying the example set by those rotten apples. So I do sympathise with the point raised by Sebastian, though not necessarily for the expected reasons. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 18:55, 8 May 2018 (UTC)
Having looked into the background behind this discussion, I think that it is unfortunate that, in the way the opening statement was made, there are two separate issues being confounded here. One is that, of course, WP:BITE is something that all of us should be careful about. But the other is that references to being kind to editors are not a valid way to cover up misconduct by an experienced administrator. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:16, 8 May 2018 (UTC)

Thank you for participating in the global Wikimedia survey!

Hello!

I would like to share my deepest gratitude for everyone who responded to the Wikimedia Communities and Contributors Survey. The survey has closed for this year.

The quality of the results has improved because more people responded this year. We are working on analyzing the data already and hope to have something published on meta in a couple months. Be sure to watch Community Engagement Insights for when we publish the reports.

We will also message those individuals who signed up on the Thank you page or sent us an email to receive updates about the report.

Feel free to reach out to me directly at egalvez@wikimedia.org or at my talk page on meta.

Thank you again to everyone for sharing your opinions with us! EGalvez (WMF) (talk) (by way of Johan (WMF) (talk)) 09:05, 9 May 2018 (UTC)

Tongan fakauʻa in foreign names

A lot of Tongan names here are written with just an apostrophe rather than a fakauʻa (which is officially formalized in Tonga). I understand that through WP:COMMONNAME the apostrophe might be better because most publications don't use the fakauʻa. However, this is a small change which wouldn't confuse readers so long there are hard redirects from the apostrophe page to the fakauʻa page.

Should the pages be moved or otherwise changed? I'm pretty new here; let me know if I'm just not aware of a policy regarding this. Thanks, – Gormflaith (talk) 13:03, 8 May 2018 (UTC)

Is this a character widely supported by browsers? Rmhermen (talk) 22:08, 8 May 2018 (UTC)
@Rmhermen: I have no idea. I use Chrome, and it seems to work on Firefox and Safari as well. – Gormflaith (talk) 23:07, 8 May 2018 (UTC)

"Evangelization and Wikipedia"

On April 17, I was part of a conference which was held at the Centre Saint-Louis in Rome. Three Catholic clerics, myself included (I'm a priest), presented on the topic of "The Church on Wikipedia." Some French-language articles on the conference gave it the title "Wikipedia and Evangelization," which ended up hitting the French equivalent of this Village Pump and causing a bit of a ruckus. Not being Francophone myself, I didn't see it as my place to jump into that discussion, and frankly most of what I saw seemed to be fuelled by vague panic that a concerted group of Catholic priests might be attempting to skew NPOV on Catholicism-related articles. That was not at all the goal of the conference, of course. My presentation was a layman's introduction to the core content policies and a reflection on how these might be not merely respected, but truly assimilated and appreciated while pursuing editing on Wikipedia as a Christian. (I did conclude that editing can be a form of evangelization, but I was very clear that such evangelization is entirely passive... it's about contributing expertise to theologically-related articles and creating articles for underrepresented topics, not proselytism. If people want to know my thoughts on this matter, I can publish my remarks as an essay within my userspace.) A second presentation was from a priest who is an accomplished linguist, merely attesting to the quality and value of Wikipedia's coverage on what would otherwise be obscure linguistic topics. The final presentation was a friendly introduction to entire Wiki project, aimed at the uninitiated "Christian editor." This last presentation was just recently published in English, which is why I am initiating this discussion — firstly, to make people aware of who the editors involved here are (because in the French discussion of this topic, many immediately assumed, among other things, that we were newbie editors); secondly because I want to be preemptively clear about what this conference presented, especially since a few more English-language pieces on the conference remain to be published; and finally to hone my own thoughts on the matter. If you have concerns I would like to hear them. — AJDS talk 22:44, 26 April 2018 (UTC)

I have nothing of significance to add other than to show appreciation. For both being forward and transparent in clarifying what happened at the event and for your contributions while respecting the polices of Wikipedia. Your post here is an exemplary act of civility and openness. I would be eager to read your further thoughts and encourage the writing of an essay on the subject. It might even make for an interesting Signpost article in the future. Ckoerner (talk) 18:54, 27 April 2018 (UTC)
@Alekjds: I'd be interested in seeing your remarks. I wrote a comparable essay a while back (admittedly so I had gotten tired of repeating the same arguments over and over to fellow protestants). Ian.thomson (talk) 19:05, 27 April 2018 (UTC)
Thank you, @Ckoerner and @Ian.thomson, for your positive comments. This conference was the first time I really organized my thoughts on Wikipedia in a meaningful way and I hope that others will derive some benefit from them. I've posted my remarks from the evening on my user page if you care to have a look. — AJDS talk 10:01, 1 May 2018 (UTC)
Having read your remarks referred to just now, I wholeheartedly endorse them. In particular, "If we believe in the truth of our own position, then we should not be afraid to present the alternative. As believers, we should have faith that the truth, presented objectively and in a measured fashion, has its own power to convince" is a message which all creeds - atheistic as well as religious - should pay more attention to. Also, thank you for declaring your own conflict of interest on the subject, it is important that you do so. However if you read the behavioural guideline on that, you will see that, for example, in creating the article on St. Mark Seminary rather than drafting it at Draft:St. Mark Seminary , you were straying close to the line. This illustrates a real need for caution in such editing and even an experienced editor can open themself to criticism. I would suggest that your presentation would have benefited from an appreciation of the need to pay extra attention to protocol when COI editing. FYI I am not a member of any religion, but nor do I regard the distinction between "religion" and "science" as having any real meaning. We are all the children of our individual knowledge. By which I mean, please carry on, and encourage adherents of all creeds to do likewise. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 11:16, 3 May 2018 (UTC)
@Steelpillow: Thank you for having brought up the issue of COI editing. If I were going to give this presentation again I think I would at least mention that as one of the potential conflicts that might arise (particularly for priests and religious, since we are, in a sense, employed by the Church). Having thoroughly read the COI guidelines, however, I can't say that I understand how my creation and editing of St. Mark Seminary strays close to the line. It is an institution with which I have no personal connection, and my "employer," the Roman Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh, has nothing to do with it. (I put "employer" in quotes because I'm not actually an employee of the diocese. I am something closer to an independent contractor, but that's getting close to hair splitting because of how the practical relationship is constituted.) The seminary falls geographically and administratively under the Diocese of Erie, and Pittsburgh doesn't even have seminarians studying there. Surely you're not saying that simply because it is a Catholic institution that I, as a Catholic priest, have to disclose COI? I don't see how the guidelines imply anything like that. — AJDS talk 07:41, 7 May 2018 (UTC)
Yes, that is exactly what I am saying. It is always necessary to take a broad interpretation of the words in such conduct matters; our Admins tend to take a dim view of logic-chopping. It is transparent to anybody that the Roman Catholic Church provides a strong relationship connecting any Roman Catholic churchman to any Roman Catholic institution. The precise details of any individual relationship are irrelevant, with the status of "employer" being just one such relationship among many "others" that happens to be commonly encountered on Wikipedia. If I might add a more subjective caution, I would suggest that the fact you find this puzzling only emphasises the need to make it clear to your like-minded colleagues. Please take care, a behavioural faux pas could raise unnecessary hostility and restrict your opportunities, while by going carefully you have nothing to lose but a little time. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 09:39, 7 May 2018 (UTC)
After all that, perhaps I should emphasise that WP:EXPERT welcomes subject-matter experts such as yourself. But it does advise caution and I am merely echoing that advice. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 08:12, 8 May 2018 (UTC)
I'm not sure about this, Steelpillow. Sure, it's a really big community, so there's always going to be someone who would be willing to climb the Reichstag over a Catholic priest writing about a Catholic school, and most editors would prefer to avoid that kind of drama. However, I find it hard to believe that the community would encourage Catholic teenagers to create articles about their own Catholic high schools (and even to let them claim community service credit at that same high school for doing so), but we wouldn't let a priest write about a Catholic high school that he has no significant personal or administrative connection to. The situation here appears to be as distant as a YouTube employee writing about Google Life Sciences. The organizations may be connected at the top, but it's really too distant to count as a COI. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:27, 9 May 2018 (UTC)
But we do let him, even welcome him. We merely advise caution and offer some guidelines in that direction. I stand by that. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 18:17, 9 May 2018 (UTC)
It is my opinion that telling him that he shouldn't have created an article in the mainspace is not the same thing as "welcoming him" to create that article in the mainspace. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:52, 9 May 2018 (UTC)

Un/chronological order - over again

Hi, per this edit, a user reverts an article I had rearranged to feature chronological order. As the user comes with various accusations against me, I would prefer a third opinion. This has debated here before, but this time the discussion concerns the practical application of principle. AadaamS (talk) 12:37, 10 May 2018 (UTC)

Except, you didn't just rearrange the information in chronological order, you also made other substantive edits which seems to be the crux of the argument. A simple re-ordering without changing the text would likely have not raised an objection. --Jayron32 13:39, 10 May 2018 (UTC)
Thank you for the input. A simple re-sectioninghas raised objections in the past and the edit comment emphasizes re-ordering. This has also been done in another article I tried to re-chronologize. The end goal is a better article and imho un-chronlogised paragraphs hurts user redability. At any rate a collabrative effort is preferable to an adversarial one. AadaamS (talk) 15:38, 10 May 2018 (UTC)

Rotterdam–The Hague metropolitan area

The name Rotterdam–The Hague metropolitan area is not the correct name for this Dutch metropolitan region. I looked it up on the offical website, where on the English language page they write Metropolitan region Rotterdam The Hague. I have corrected the name inside the article already (including reference), but felt I should not change the article title without consulting the community. Not to offend anyone. --oSeveno (User talk) 10:16, 14 May 2018 (UTC)

Hi oSeveno. To me the name you suggest reads oddly in English, and this Wikipedia doesn't have other article titles quite like it. The common form in such cases is the one we have now, with lots of examples in the U.S. (Baltimore–Washington metropolitan area, Buffalo–Niagara Falls metropolitan area) and some elsewhere (Islamabad-Rawalpindi metropolitan area, Padua–Treviso–Venice metropolitan area). There are few cases where the words "Metropolitan area/region" come first, and when they do, an "of" is inserted, as Metropolitan Area of Porto, Metropolitan area of León, and the only compound one I found Metropolitan Region of Vale do Paraíba e Litoral Norte. As most of the article isn't about the organisation called Metropoolregio Rotterdam Den Haag, but is more generally about the urban area covered, I think we should leave the title as it is, and insert into the article a specific mention of the organisation. Regards: Noyster (talk), 13:02, 14 May 2018 (UTC)
Your suggestion seems a very good solution. Regards, --oSeveno (User talk) 13:17, 14 May 2018 (UTC)

Use the ® symbol to indicate that the Unicode Mark is a registered trademark.

I discovered this on https://unicode.org/policies/logo_policy.html:

Use the ® symbol to indicate that the Unicode Mark is a registered trademark.

Does it mean that most of the usages of the word Unicode on Wikipedia should be replaced with Unicode®? Coeur (talk) 10:56, 14 May 2018 (UTC)

No, see MOS:TMRULES on how various trademarks are dealt with. —Farix (t | c) 11:05, 14 May 2018 (UTC)
OK, apparently there is no legal obligation at all to ever write ®. I got tricked by unicode.org recommendations. Coeur (talk) 11:30, 14 May 2018 (UTC)

Datetime picker for Special:Block

Hello all,

The Anti-Harassment Tools team made improvements to Special:Block to have a calendar as datetime selector to choose a specific day and hour in the future as expire time. The new feature was first available on the de.wp, meta, and mediawiki.org on 05/03/18. For more information see Improvement of the way the time of a block is determined - from a discussion on de.WP or (phab:T132220) Questions? or want to give feedback. Leave a message on meta:Talk:Community health initiative/Blocking tools and improvements, on Phabricator, or by email. SPoore (WMF), Trust & Safety, Community health initiative (talk) 18:01, 15 May 2018 (UTC)

Awesome! :-) ~Oshwah~(talk) (contribs) 18:02, 15 May 2018 (UTC)

A section needs an editor with knowledge

St._Simons,_Georgia#Cotton_production has two paragraphs that seem uncertain. There was some material about slaves but someone went in and called the stories false. I could not determine which edits those were and I don't know what is correct. Is there a way to get someone who knows the history to straighten it out? Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 20:13, 15 May 2018 (UTC)

Hopefully you will get an answer here Bubba73. You might also post at the talk pages for the wikiprojects associated with the article. I don't know how active either of those might be but I am just trying to get as widespread help as possible. MarnetteD|Talk 20:18, 15 May 2018 (UTC)

What are hidden categories and how do I use them or benefit from them?

When I clicked the edit button while not being logged into my Wikipedia account, I was able to see a long list of hidden categories at the bottom.

I prefer to have my username and not my IP address as the editor's identity. So I proceeded to log in but now those same hidden categories have disappeared.

What were they? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Zeldamaniac44 (talk • contribs) 20:26, 16 May 2018 (UTC)

@Zeldamaniac44: See WP:HIDDENCAT and Category:Hidden categories. PrimeHunter (talk) 20:50, 16 May 2018 (UTC)

Translating From Foreign Language Wikis

I keep seeing boxes saying that an article can be expanded by translating content from the same article on a non-English Wikipedia. Initially this looks like an easy win, particularly for a topic where there isn't an article on the English wikipedia yet. However, I keep looking at such pages and finding content that I don't want to translate. Often the articles I see aren't referenced very well, and often don't sound very encyclopaedic to me. In one recent case an article seemed to be full of overly detailed trivia and didn't really give a solid biography of the subject. I'm confident enough to read Wikipedia articles in (sadly only) one other language, but I certainly wouldn't want to offer an opinion on how the articles should be on the non-English Wiki. That's for another community to decide. But, I'm not finding the expected treasure trove of new content for English wiki. It's not all the articles that are bad, but it seems to happen quite often for articles on subjects that I am interested in. So, I suppose I'll keep on writing articles from scratch. This isn't really a question; I'm just curious if other people have had similar experiences or general thoughts on this matter. Ross-c (talk) 10:03, 18 May 2018 (UTC)

It is as you say Ross-c. Each language Wiki is a separate project with its own rules, standards and procedures. Translated content in English Wikipedia, just like any other content, has to conform with our rules on notability, BLP policy and the rest. By our standards referencing may indeed fall short on some of the other Wikis. Of course there is nothing to stop the translator hunting for extra refs in English or, failing that, in the other language, either to support the translated material or as a basis for extra added content: Noyster (talk), 14:07, 18 May 2018 (UTC)

How can we make it easier for Wikimedia contributors to understand Wikidata?

Dear all

Over the past year or so I've been working quite a lot on Wikidata documentation and have been thinking more about the needs of different kinds of user. I feel that currently Wikidata can be difficult to understand (what it does, how to contribute, what issues there are and what is being done to address them etc) even for experienced Wikimedia project contributors. To help address this I've started an RFC to try and collate this information together. It would be really helpful if you could share your thoughts, especially if you find Wikidata hard to understand or confusing, you can just share your thoughts on the talk page and we will synthesize them into the main document.

Wikidata:Requests for comment/Improving Wikidata documentation for different types of user

Thanks very much

John Cummings (talk) 12:54, 18 May 2018 (UTC)

Removal of comment from talk page

Is it customary to remove other people's comments from discourse pages?-Inowen (talk) 01:55, 18 May 2018 (UTC)

Presumably this concerns diff at Talk:Time. Article talk pages are to discuss actionable proposals to improve the article. If someone asks for sources regarding a particular issue, it is not helpful to offer personal thoughts. The situation varies depending on the article and the history of forum-like chatter on its talk. Possibly this article has had an over supply of that so someone thought they would remove the comment. Johnuniq (talk) 03:39, 18 May 2018 (UTC)
Can you source this claim that policy "varies depending on the article" in the talk page policy regarding removing comments from talk pages? Thanks, Inowen (NLFTE) 21:09, 19 May 2018 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Talk page guidelines#Editing others' comments says: "Cautiously editing or removing another editor's comments is sometimes allowed". The removal [24] referred to WP:FORUM which says: "In addition, bear in mind that article talk pages exist solely to discuss how to improve articles; they are not for general discussion about the subject of the article, nor are they a help desk for obtaining instructions or technical assistance. Material unsuitable for talk pages may be subject to removal per the talk page guidelines." It varies what happens in practice. We have millions of articles and thousands of editors. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:36, 19 May 2018 (UTC)
The request for policy citation was to the commenter previous. The policy on talk pages indicates that removal or alteration of others' comments is not allowed, even for reasons of simple grammar, and certainly also applied to less neutral or trivial reasons such as disagreement with comments, and allegations of politics: "The basic rule—with some specific exceptions outlined below—is that you should not edit or delete the comments of other editors without their permission." In any case I am objecting here to this removal based on the below statute in the policy: "Cautiously editing or removing another editor's comments is sometimes allowed, but normally you should stop if there is any objection."-Inowen (NLFTE)) 01:15, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
Wikipedia does not have a precise set of rules. The system is outlined at WP:5P with commentary at WP:BURO. My earlier comment describes what actually happens, regularly. A compelling point is that many people review this page and many of them would have seen the link I gave above which shows the issue in question. None of those people have felt a need to disagree with my comment or with the removal of the comment. Some pages attract a lot of comments that are generally not helping the article (an example is Talk:Speed of light although that has been quiet for a while). On such pages it is common for people to remove anything that looks a bit suspect, whereas on talk pages where discussion is rare, border-line comments are usually ignored and not removed. It's inconsistent, but it works. Johnuniq (talk) 02:10, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
One of the "specific exceptions outlined below" at Wikipedia:Talk page guidelines#Editing others' comments is Off-topic posts. Article talk pages is for discussing improvements to the article and Wikipedia is based on published reliable sources. Somebody specifically asked for sources and you gave an unsourced reply [25] which sounded like original research to me. The same editor DVdm has removed unsourced posts about the article subject before.[26][27] See also "Stay on topic" at Wikipedia:Talk page guidelines#How to use article talk pages. If you have a reliable source for your post then you can post it again with the source. If not then I suggest you let it go. Anyway, the place to object is Talk:Time or User talk:DVdm. PrimeHunter (talk) 02:35, 20 May 2018 (UTC)

Deprossosition

In the article Coast, after the Table of Contents, section 1, 1st paragraph, 2nd sentence, this word appears. Now, I don't claim to know every word in the English language, but I do know how to use a dictionary. I have some facility with search engines. I don't believe this word exists. Furthermore, neither does the OED or Wiktionary. A Google search produces the exact sentence from this article MANY times, from MANY sources, and many of them are otherwise nonesense aggregations of words (lorem ipsum) that I had the presence of mind NOT to open. There is new malware at large which activates as soon as you visit a site or open a PDF. The sentence ends " and areas with lower tidal ranges produce deprossosition at a smaller elevation interval." A Google or other search will find this sentence repeatedly, in articles and sources with no possible relation to coast, tides, erosion, etc.

If you are familiar with deprossosition, please explain something of etymology, derivation, or at least citeable sources. I don't believe the sky is falling, but this article and WP may have been salted with clickbait to facilitate malware. ALERT!

(I have posted this info on the Coast talkpage, but I am sufficiently concerned to repost here. If this is overreaction on my part, o.k. I've had egg on my face before.) rags (talk) 13:17, 21 May 2018 (UTC)

It's a piece of ancient vandalism seems like. Reverted. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 13:28, 21 May 2018 (UTC)
You beat me to it Jo-Jo Eumerus, I was just going to say that. It's been there for six years(!). Richard0612 13:30, 21 May 2018 (UTC)
Wow. That's a unusually long time. Moonythehuman (talk) 14:10, 23 May 2018 (UTC)

Thanks, folks. It's sure spread across the net. rags (talk) 13:41, 21 May 2018 (UTC)

Language switch page

Hello!

Let's look e.g. at https://en.m.wiki.x.io/wiki/Special:MobileLanguages/Crime_Traveller

We see "2 languages" there meaning "2 additional languages" actually (total is 3).

It seems somewhat strangely to see on language switch page that "... is available in 2 languages" whereas "2 additional languages" is correct.

Maybe, for equality of displaying show there all language links (not touching that "Return" link).

Crime Traveller is available in 3 languages.

Return to Crime Traveller. < not remove this link

Languages

English < and display also here the "current" language

polski

русский

I hope this idea is reasonable.

Serge. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.149.44.203 (talk • contribs)

Special:MobileLanguages is part of the software used to run this site and not made at the English Wikipedia. The issue is discussed at phab:T191562: "Special:MobileLanguages shows an incorrect number of language versions". PrimeHunter (talk) 12:21, 24 May 2018 (UTC)
Thank you for explanations and direction to discussion!
Serge. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.149.44.203 (talk) 14:17, 24 May 2018 (UTC)

Enforcement

Editors regularly ignore key policies such as WP:commonname or delete sourced content etc. Is there a speedy way of countering such violations, rather than lengthy RFC's etc.? Thylacoop5 (talk) 12:33, 26 May 2018 (UTC)

Marion Maréchal Lepen

Hi, I dont know how to deal with this being less familiar with procedures on the anglophone Wikipedia. Marion Maréchal-Lepen has been recently renamed to Marion Maréchal, but the contributor who initiated this change (virtually everywhere) has been blocked on the francophone wikipedia, and the change reverted at least on the French version. See here for more details (fr). I also left a note on the article talk page. To me it seems this renaming is a little premature and the page should move back to Marion Lepen-Maréchal.--Nattes à chat (talk) 19:45, 26 May 2018 (UTC)

@Nattes à chat: I have taken care of it by reverting to the longstanding title (see talk page). Editors who wish to move to Marion Maréchal should open a move request in this direction, not the opposite one. — JFG talk 21:11, 26 May 2018 (UTC)

"Short description"

Is there any purpose to this kind of edit? Oh, now I see Wikipedia:Short description--I'm always the last one to get the news. Drmies (talk) 18:47, 25 May 2018 (UTC)

No such thing as bad publicity. See also: WikiProject Short descriptions: Noyster (talk), 19:37, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
First I've heard about Wikipedia:Short description too. After glancing at the page, I'm not convinced this is a good idea. I'm getting a faint Wikipedia:Persondata vibe here. I will have to read the discussions before I get a firmer opinion but my initial reaction is "ugh". Jason Quinn (talk) 07:27, 27 May 2018 (UTC)
A lot of people access Wikipedia with mobile devices where the short description is heavily used. Since navigation is hopeless on a gadget, the description is vital to allow the user to locate which page they want. For example, after searching for "Meghan" in the Wikipedia app, a list of articles is presented and each has a description to increase the chance of you finding the wanted page. It is hard to find the wanted page on a device by trial and error since returning to the list is not easy. The reason people are adding {{short description}} to the top of many articles is because that's where the description appears on a gadget, and because many editors are inclined to ignore what goes on at the end of the page. It's important to monitor the description because a fun way to attack a politician is to change the description—that's why descriptions are being moved to Wikipedia instead of relying on Wikidata. Johnuniq (talk) 08:03, 27 May 2018 (UTC)

Taipei does not belong to China

taipei has been added to China several times. Can any disability be dealt with in relation to this type of editorial activity that is cheap? (for example) Zenk0113 (talk) 16:22, 26 May 2018 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Dispute resolution. ―Mandruss ☎ 16:25, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
It's counterproductive to mistakenly assume another is "making up for the cheapness of other countries" (as if I am a citizen of or acting on behalf of any Asian state to begin with). CaradhrasAiguo (talk) 16:53, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
Using the template of the People's Republic of China, of course, it is necessary to use what the People's Republic of China regards as Taiwan and Taipei Instead of being cheaper than other countries, it is directly linked. At least I did not see this illogical editing behavior in the Chinese version of the wiki.Zenk0113 (talk) 17:26, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
There's some kind of language barrier here because you are not using "cheap" in any way familiar to English. --Golbez (talk) 07:27, 27 May 2018 (UTC)
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