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This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump (miscellaneous).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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Why in the Russian-language Wikipedia is forbidden to raise the issue "Corruption in Wikipedia"?

Misplaced, wrong project--Ymblanter (talk) 19:11, 14 February 2017 (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.

The Russian-language Wikipedia, the theme of "Corruption in Wikipedia" administrators instantly blocked. Why can not understand the fact of corruption in Wikipedia?

Machine translation theme will copy here:

"Friends, how relevant is of corruption in Wikipedia (probability) and what the possible formats, it can be shown? I list some:

1) First User protects point of vision the second participant, instead of wanting to protect the point of view of the first (of);

2) Admins protect someone instead of something of interest. That is to say, administrators involved in the sale of the truth and it will earn a living, see Wikipedia as a source of income;

3) Admins punish someone commissioned by someone;

4) Admins repress (block forever), a number of people who will be able in the future to prevent them in the election to this position again. With this offer a lifetime membership.

The problem is that Wikipedia is not only a platform of ordinary scientists, and sometimes a number of states will try to push through it, some their ideologies, to use it as an instrument of its ideological politics. And for such purposes allocated huge sums from the budget at all times. I fear that these policies will affect and Wikipedia. This includes state-level pressure on the AK, the administrator, and someone else.

I'm not saying that is the case today. But in the future - not excluded.

Please discuss".

Daryanush (talk) 11:41, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

Wikipedias in different languages are independent of one another, so we have no control over anything they do. Britmax (talk) 12:35, 14 February 2017 (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.

Review of initial updates on Wikimedia movement strategy process

Note: Apologies for cross-posting and sending in English. Message is available for translation on Meta-Wiki.

The Wikimedia movement is beginning a movement-wide strategy discussion, a process which will run throughout 2017. For 15 years, Wikimedians have worked together to build the largest free knowledge resource in human history. During this time, we've grown from a small group of editors to a diverse network of editors, developers, affiliates, readers, donors, and partners. Today, we are more than a group of websites. We are a movement rooted in values and a powerful vision: all knowledge for all people. As a movement, we have an opportunity to decide where we go from here.

This movement strategy discussion will focus on the future of our movement: where we want to go together, and what we want to achieve. We hope to design an inclusive process that makes space for everyone: editors, community leaders, affiliates, developers, readers, donors, technology platforms, institutional partners, and people we have yet to reach. There will be multiple ways to participate including on-wiki, in private spaces, and in-person meetings. You are warmly invited to join and make your voice heard.

The immediate goal is to have a strategic direction by Wikimania 2017 to help frame a discussion on how we work together toward that strategic direction.

Regular updates are being sent to the Wikimedia-l mailing list, and posted on Meta-Wiki. Beginning with this message, monthly reviews of these updates will be sent to this page as well. Sign up to receive future announcements and monthly highlights of strategy updates on your user talk page.

Here is a review of the updates that have been sent so far:

More information about the movement strategy is available on the Meta-Wiki 2017 Wikimedia movement strategy portal.

Posted by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of the Wikimedia Foundation, 20:30, 15 February 2017 (UTC) • Please help translate to other languages. • Get help

One page has only been edited by the same guy for two months in over 200 edits

Original poster has been blocked. No need for further examination here. Alsee (talk) 20:55, 17 February 2017 (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.

Isn't this WP:Owning? I'm a bit concerned that the article will just be whatever he wants, since some of his sources are pretty biased. In over 200 edits, he's the only one who has been editing that page for two months. ÞunoresWrǣþþe (talk) 09:18, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

OWNing is when a user insists on his/her version, despite other users disagreeing. A user being the only editor of the page isn't OWNing. If you have issues with some of the text there, feel free to edit the page and see how (s)he reacts. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 16:54, 12 February 2017 (UTC)
I agree with Od. Being a custodian is different from declaring an article your soul baby. As a RCP I have seen plenty of pages that haven't been edited in months, (till I came along and rvv). If someone is the only editor in a time period, they are just working on it. L3X1 My Complaint Desk 21:44, 12 February 2017 (UTC)
Are you referring to Sutton Hoo helmet? There is nothing wrong with only a single editor making most of the edits to an article. OWNing is when an editor gets possessive and rejects any/all edits by other users. Master of Time (talk) 21:49, 12 February 2017 (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.

Invitation to help improve and translate in other languages 16 biographies about African women

In the run up to International Women’s Day on the 8th March, Wiki Loves Women is launching the on-Wikipedia translated drive #16WikiWomen : m:16 African Women Translate-a-thon

The idea is for Wikipedians to take 16 days to translate the Wikipedia biographies of 16 notable African women, into at least 16 languages (African and/or international languages).

The articles to be translated will be the biographies of African women. The list of language can be, but is not limited to:

  • International languages: Arabic, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, German
  • African languages: Akan, Afrikaans, Igbo, Hausa, Wolof, Tswana, Zulu, Xhosa, Shona, Swahili, Yoruba, Sudanese, Amharic, Tsonga, Ewe, Sesotho, Chichewa

The list of the 16 women biographies that will be translated are:

  1. w:en:Malouma, a Mauritanian singer, songwriter and politician
  2. w:en:Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge, a South African politician.
  3. w:en:Cri-Zelda Brits, a South African cricketer
  4. w:en:Anna Tibaijuka, a Tanzanian politician and former under-secretary-general of the United Nations
  5. w:en:Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti, a Nigerian women’s rights activist
  6. w:en:Flora Nwapa, a Nigerian author who writes predominantly in Igbo
  7. w:en:Samia Yusuf Omar, a sprinter from Somalia
  8. w:en:Maggie Laubser, a South African painter
  9. w:en:Fatima Massaquoi, a pioneering educator from Liberia
  10. w:en:Frances Ames, a South African neurologist, psychiatrist, and human rights activist
  11. w:en:Asmaa Mahfouz, a Egyptian activist. The best version is currently in Arabic : w:ar:Asmaa Mahfouz
  12. w:en:Yaa Asantewaa, the legendary former Queen Mother of Ghana
  13. w:en:Fatou Bensouda, a Gambian lawyer
  14. w:en:Martha Karua, a Kenyan politician
  15. w:en:Chinwendu Ihezuo, a Nigerian professional footballer
  16. w:en:Nassima Saifi, a Paralympian athlete from Algeria

Please jump in! Whilst all those articles already exist in English, you may improve them... or you may translate them into another language you know, or you relay the project in other linguistic communities.
If you wish to participate, please feel free to add your name and any comments here : m:16 African Women Translate-a-thon/participants
Results will be tracked on this page : m:16 African Women Translate-a-thon/tracking

Thanks

Anthere (talk) 10:44, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

Language of Articles

I noticed that many of the Simplified Chinese translations use traditional Chinese characters. Why is this?York12321 (talk) 15:54, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

@York12321: Impossible to say without providing an example link. --Malyacko (talk) 13:31, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

Requesting an article re-assessment

Is there an official channel trough which an editor could request a re-assessment of an article? Plaza del Lago, for instance, is an article that was assessed several years ago as a "start-class" article. However, it has long since outgrown such a categorization. Since I originally created this page (it was the first article I created. My learning-curve on Wikipedia largely took place through creating and revising this article), I am obliged to relieve myself from providing a new assessment myself, as I possess a I strong bias towards it. But how/ where could I make a request for other users to do so? Is there a category tag one could add in such circumstances, or a page that a user would need to add the article to a list? Or do no such constructs currently exist on Wikipedia? And shouldn't we have one?

If I am not mistaken no such construct exists, and perhaps one should.
SecretName101 (talk) 23:56, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

Assessments are generally done through the Wikiproject(s) the article is associated with. If there is an active Wikiproject that maintains the article, you can check with them. --Jayron32 13:47, 20 February 2017 (UTC)
So a user should make such a request on the main discussion-page of the Wikiproject(s) it belongs to? Thanks!
As a side-note, steps one could take to request a re-assessment should perhaps be included on the central-page describing the assessment process itself.SecretName101 (talk) 20:05, 20 February 2017 (UTC)
I've bumped it up to C; it's not a Stub and it's way outgrown Start. I'd encourage editors to be bold, at least for classifications up to C. --Tagishsimon (talk) 21:36, 21 February 2017 (UTC)
Yes, please, be bold. And if anyone's interested in doing this systematically, then please see m:Research:Screening WikiProject Medicine articles for quality/Stub prediction table for an example of what could be done to address outdated article assessments. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:08, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

Elections for New Page Patrol/New Page Review coordinators

Voting for coordinators has now begun HERE and will continue through/to 23:59 UTC Monday 06 March. New Page Review and its Page Curation is a core MediaWiki extension. The process of expertly vetting all new articles is a critical issue needing a couple of 'go to' people. The coordinators will do their best for for the advancement of the improvement of NPP and generally keep tracks on the development of those things. Coordinators have no additional or special user benefits, but they will try to keep discussions in the right places and advance negotiations with the WMF.
Please be sure to vote. Any registered, confirmed editor can vote. Nominations are now closed. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:04, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

Request for review of suggested changes to the UNESCO article, also graphics being made available from the UNESCO Science Report

Hi all

Please could someone have a look at the suggested edits made by a UNESCO staff member to the UNESCO article? The request was made over 2 months ago.

On another note, we are currently uploading a few 100 graphics from the UNESCO Science Report to Wikimedia Commons here. Please do keep checking back to the category as I continue to upload images over the coming weeks. Here are a small selection, almost all are .svg files to allow best quality, adaptation and translation.

  • GDP per capita, GDP growth and public section deficit in the USA, 2006 - 2015
    GDP per capita, GDP growth and public section deficit in the USA, 2006 - 2015
  • Gross domestic expenditure on research and development financed by government as a share of GDP 2005 - 2013
    Gross domestic expenditure on research and development financed by government as a share of GDP 2005 - 2013
  • Mutually reinforcing effect of strong government investment in R&D and researchers, 2010–2011
    Mutually reinforcing effect of strong government investment in R&D and researchers, 2010–2011
  • Proportional allocation of federal R&D spending in the USA by discipline, 1994–2011
    Proportional allocation of federal R&D spending in the USA by discipline, 1994–2011
  • Scientific specialization in large emerging economies
    Scientific specialization in large emerging economies
  • World shares of GDP, GERD, researchers and publications for the G20, 2009 and 2013
    World shares of GDP, GERD, researchers and publications for the G20, 2009 and 2013

Thanks very much

--John Cummings (talk) 13:29, 23 February 2017 (UTC)

Do, or should, Category:Fictional characters and Category:People apply only to humans?

Apokrif (talk) 18:13, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

I don't have any particular opinion on whether they should, but Category:Fictional characters certainly does contain non-humans in its category tree (and therefore Category:People, a supercat of Category:Fictional characters does too). Indeed, Category:Fictional characters by species is a direct subcategory of Category:Fictional characters. So in practice at least they don't apply only to humans. Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 18:05, 16 February 2017 (UTC)
The real question for me is why Category:People is a supercat of Category:Fictional characters at all. Not all fictional characters are humans and calling any characters, even if human, "people" is a mis-classification in my mind. A "character" is not a person. Jason Quinn (talk) 17:57, 20 February 2017 (UTC)
@Jason Quinn: What about Category:Mythological characters, many of whom are almost-certainly fictional. The line is not so obvious as even to exist. :D --Izno (talk) 17:28, 23 February 2017 (UTC)

Replacing a patrolled redirect with an unpatrolled article

The above page was created as a redirect to Dr. Phil (TV series) by Gourami Watcher who has the autopatrolled right. The page has been turned into a very weak article. Am I right in thinking that cases like this escape new pages patrol? Has there been any discussion about suitable responses? Johnuniq (talk) 03:36, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

I don't know, but it kind of looks like it bypassed new pages patrol, doesn't it? I have turned it back into a redirect, for lack of notability. Gourami Watcher, you have already been pinged here. If you wish to defend your article, please respond. Bishonen | talk 17:10, 21 February 2017 (UTC).
The whole point of the autopatrolled right is to bypass such events. If a review of an editor's contributions indicates that there's a pattern of inappropriate article creation, then the right can be removed. According to Wikipedia:Requests for permissions#Removal of permissions, that process is usually handled at WP:ANI. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:06, 21 February 2017 (UTC)
The autopatrolled right has not been misused. The problem is that the page was created as a redirect, and the redirect was marked as patrolled. Other editors then came along and changed the page to an article which inherited the patrolled status despite the fact that it was inappropriate. That is a loophole. Johnuniq (talk) 22:46, 21 February 2017 (UTC)
@Johnuniq: I've seen recent discussion related to this particular problem recently though I can not recant where. You/We can summon some of the normal NPP names to see if they know of those discussions. --Izno (talk) 17:27, 23 February 2017 (UTC)
Ah, the discussion I was probably thinking about was Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)#Unpatrol_moved_pages, speedily closed in the affirmative. I would guess first a question at WP:VPT or at WT:NPP would tell us whether the system unpatrols things which are created from a redirect page, and if it does not currently, WP:VPPRO would probably settle in the affirmative for making it do so. Alternatively, maybe Cenarium knows the former question. --Izno (talk) 23:11, 23 February 2017 (UTC)

Ping Kudpung—you have enough work to do in the NPP area, but in case you are not aware of the above loophole you may as well add it to your list of things to be considered. Johnuniq (talk) 06:22, 24 February 2017 (UTC)

  • You're quite right Johnuniq, I don't really want o get involvd in the technicalities - I've got enough onmy plate trying to clear my desk before I hand over the thankless and lonsome task of watching what goes on at NPP all these years. I will however take the opportunity to point out that the section linked to by WhatamIdoing doesn't appear to say anything of the sort; not only does it not address the issue, but that page hasn't even been fully updated to reflect this new user right. Any admin can remove the 'Patroller' flag at any time, and we want to keep it as easy to do as possible without opening it up to the peanut gallery and his dog. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 11:32, 24 February 2017 (UTC)
    • The linked section says, "This is not the place to request review of another user's rights. If you believe someone's actions merit removal of a permission flag, you should raise your concern at the incidents noticeboard." I think that sentence is accurately paraphrased as "that process is usually handled at WP:ANI", don't you? WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:28, 24 February 2017 (UTC)
      • No, WhatamIdoing, I don't. Linguistically it doesn't even come close. There is a difference between paraphraing, making loose interpretations, making sweeping statements, or takimg things out of context. Good thing we're not evaluating. medical symptoms... Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 00:55, 25 February 2017 (UTC)
        • So the page says that if you want to propose having a permission removed from someone's account, then you should go to ANI, but you believe that's not the right page? In that case, I invite you to (try to) update that page with the information that you believe is accurate, then. It would be a service to everyone to know where and how to propose that someone not have a given user right. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:05, 26 February 2017 (UTC)
          • Misuse of user rights are not relevant for this discussion—no one has misused a right in the scenario I outlined. Can we leave the issue of how a right should be removed to another section please? Johnuniq (talk) 06:59, 26 February 2017 (UTC)
            • You asked what the suitable responses were. I am telling you that one suitable response – at least if it's a pattern, rather than a one-off article – is to have the user right removed. According to PERM (but apparently Kudpung disagrees with PERM), the rights removal is usually handled at ANI. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:44, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

Request for comments

Could we get more comments here? [1] --168.235.1.4 (talk) 18:50, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

Abstract images

m:Grants:Evaluation/100 Words Campaign is trying to find images that illustrate intangible concepts, such as "ability" or "constructiveness". Please boldly add your favorites. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:50, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

Contacting sources in the real world

Howdy, I've been working on updating the article Tansy beetle and aim to get it to GA standard. Following my request for peer-review from a fellow editor, they then asked one of the previous contributors to the article, Geoff Oxford, for views on the topic via his talkpage User talk:Geoff Oxford. Geoff is an academic and wrote several of the sources I referenced in the article. Looking at his recent activity I had thought it unlikely he would actually answer via the talk page so took it upon myself to look him up at the University of York and sent him an email directly. He has cordially replied sending through a few open access papers to reference in the article. My question is this - what is Wikipedia's policy about contacting possible useful sources outside of the Wikipedia space in the real world? Have I unwittingly committed some terrible faux pas? Or even bludgeoned myself with a COI issue in my excitement??

Advice/comments appreciated.Zakhx150 (talk) 09:54, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

Good work, carry on! So long as articles are written from reliable sources without undue reliance on a single source, getting information from experts is good. It sometimes is of limited value in that the expert might say that some text in the article is wrong and some other text would be right, but we need to check that with a reliable source. There is no COI because you are working to improve the encyclopedia, not to push a particular line. Johnuniq (talk) 00:22, 2 March 2017 (UTC)
Zakhx150, it's a good idea to contact specialist sources. I've done it several times, and it has always led to improvement. People who care about the topic are often incredibly generous with their time. SarahSV (talk) 00:34, 2 March 2017 (UTC)
Ah good, appreciate those answers. Thanks.Zakhx150 (talk) 07:55, 2 March 2017 (UTC)

Feedback requested on XTools rewrite

Hello! Community Tech is teaming up with Matthewrbowker to address the 2016 top 10 wish of rewriting the popular XTools suite. The first tool Community Tech will be working on is Articleinfo (accessible via the "Revision history statistics" link on history pages). At it's simplest, our goal is to rewrite it to be stable and fully functional. Before we get started, we want your feedback on what you'd like to see in the new version, and what you don't like about the current version. Please review our plans and provide any feedback at meta:Community Tech/Rewrite Xtools/Articleinfo. Thank you! — MusikAnimal talk 00:09, 2 March 2017 (UTC)

Intellipedia, the government's intelligence Wikipedia

Just something curious I'd like to share:

The Government’s Secret Wiki for Intelligence. --bender235 (talk) 23:19, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

Maybe something for Signpost? Certainly the sort of thing they write about. --Jayron32 00:57, 4 March 2017 (UTC)

RFC needs additional opinions to break a deadlock.

See Talk:Chemistry#RFC on the inclusion of a particular passage in the lead of this article. Please contribute if you have an opinion. Thanks. --Jayron32 02:55, 4 March 2017 (UTC)

Calling all editors--revise Columns templates

re: Wikipedia:Templates_for_discussion/Log/2017_March_3#Older_Column_templates 
& Category:Multi-column templates - Older Column templates
& view: Template:Column-generating template families which inserts section-subsections...

I was 'bitten' a while ago by a dog of an Older Column templates unexpected behavior, and upon reviewing the templates usage, Rip-Van-Winkle-like found there are whole families of more modern Column templates we ought be using with often less complexity in application and more importantly, are compatible with newer CSS standards and modern browsers.

Most importantly, they wrap properly in the realm of smartphones, and PAD computer operating systems, whereas the Older Column Templates I list for discussion DO NOT! Since PAD and other portable devices now make up a huge percentage of cases when we are accessed, as a computer engineer it seems silly to let incompatible column templates stay around when most can readily be replaced systematically, at least semi-automatically with, I suspect, a bit of cleaver BOT ops in the proper order.
More importantly the tougher cases can be weeded into nothingness with a small dose of daily editing. Most all need only a new name substituted and formats checked. The trouble will come from style formats and margins, but the new CSS3 families have all the advantages there. The options are listed in Template:Column-generating template families.

So, please Bookmark to do a daily 'Onesie'... fix something on WhatLinksHere check on {{Col-begin}} and clear an old bit of code in favor of a newer better choice. My, it's just technically engaging enough to wake me up while I'm working on opening the other eye and working my way down from the top O'that 'first half-cup' of Morning joe! (Just don't drive and edit at the same time!) // FrankB 22:01, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

This post seems like an attempt to execute the result at Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2017 March 3#Template:Column templates before it is closed. Pppery 02:40, 4 March 2017 (UTC)
YEP! - As I just clarified,we had 'ankle deep blood in the digital streets' about eight years back about whether "D"'s in any 'xFD' were for DISCUSSION or DELETION... the argument seemed to go on for weeks! Alas, TFD seems to have retained the un-PC reputation as of Deletion vice Discussion. (I will admit to trawling here for additional participants, but the discussion does seem apropos THERE!),
and further, ... Apologies, aging seems to have caused me to forget there was (is???) some other templates discussion page too. (Alas, one forgets. The only templates I've worked with since 2009 are on the Commons or Wikibooks projects. If you don't use it, you loose it!)

As far as the 'implementation of the suggested action', many editors of are perhaps unaware one family is of benefit over the other choices, so {{Div col}}... {{Div col end}} OUGHT be used (IMHO, based in my best professional judgment as someone first coding software in 1976) when and where they work and that, as soon as possible. Since anyone seeing such a use can convert the older to the preferable, and superior formatting template (we're mostly talking 1:1 swaps Beginning, middle, and end templates for two column tables, or even three-plus, if the {{div col}} & {{Columns-list}} usage is understood.) [Given the shear amount of time many of us under 40 years-old dive onto smartphones for the least tidbit of information, we'll be doing a favor to a lot of users. I swear to God, some of you in your twenties, like both my boys, have magnets pulling your nose down to your phones anytime you are asked a question!]

So yeah, in general, IMHO (again), we in the community ought be aware there is a better, and less-good alternatives, and ought to update things possibly problematic (where time permits) to the best solution for any given circumstances. I do believe, that is an 'editor's' function, as is understanding 'such circumstances obtain'
 • and so, Pppery, yes indeed, I believe that information that there is a good-better-best choice, ought be promulgated on such news pages like this one. // Best regards FrankB 20:11, 4 March 2017 (UTC)

How to prevent an edit war

See Sargon of Akkad (YouTube), and it's history page. Without pointing fingers to certain parties, it appears that an edit war cannot be avoided if the users continue to edit as they do now. Is there someone out there with a real neutral point of view, who can look at the edits? Or where can I find such a person? I found WP:AN/3, but there I need to accuse certain persons, and I do not believe that is the road that must be taken. Best regards,Jeff5102 (talk) 08:34, 5 March 2017 (UTC)

Jeff5102, you can try WP:3O, WP:DRN, or posting at the WikiProject talk pages listed on the talk page of the article. Other than that, you need to request action against specific users at AN3 as you found or page protection at WP:RFPP. --Izno (talk) 15:12, 5 March 2017 (UTC)

RfC on Napoleon Hill - an obscure guy who wrote a famous book

This RfC on Napoleon Hill just started. This is not a high traffic article so the more eyes the better, if you can spare a few minutes. Thanks. SW3 5DL (talk) 15:29, 7 March 2017 (UTC)

Football/Soccer Goal Keepers

I feel that a football/soccer goal keepers Wikipedia page should include the amount of goals they have conceded for their club/country etc. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Andywooo (talk • contribs) 17:00, 7 March 2017 (UTC)

The question is... is this a statistic that is written about in sources? If so, feel free to add a his information to the relevant articles. If not, then it would constitute a WP:No original research violation to add it. Blueboar (talk) 19:38, 7 March 2017 (UTC)

Overview #2 of updates on Wikimedia movement strategy process

Note: Apologies for cross-posting and sending in English. This message is available for translation on Meta-Wiki.

As we mentioned last month, the Wikimedia movement is beginning a movement-wide strategy discussion, a process which will run throughout 2017. This movement strategy discussion will focus on the future of our movement: where we want to go together, and what we want to achieve.

Regular updates are being sent to the Wikimedia-l mailing list, and posted on Meta-Wiki. Each month, we are sending overviews of these updates to this page as well. Sign up to receive future announcements and monthly highlights of strategy updates on your user talk page.

Here is a overview of the updates that have been sent since our message last month:

More information about the movement strategy is available on the Meta-Wiki 2017 Wikimedia movement strategy portal.

Posted by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of the Wikimedia Foundation, 19:43, 9 March 2017 (UTC) • Please help translate to other languages. • Get help

Looking for non-medical people

I am looking for more comments regarding a page move here: [2]. Any input from more editors would be greatly appreciated! --My Core Competency is Competency (talk) 16:02, 10 March 2017 (UTC)

Hazal Kaya

Hi. Can someone please review all sources of this "prizes" (zB: [3], [4]...). Most of them (if not all) are really crap. Regards. --Ganímedes (talk) 16:06, 7 March 2017 (UTC)

Hmmmm. Sadly nobody cares. Pitty. --Ganímedes (talk) 10:47, 12 March 2017 (UTC)

What percentage of Wikipedia articles are about sports players?

They seem to come up a lot on Special:Random. Same question for municipalities/towns/villages as well. Thanks, Abeg92contribs 02:09, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

We have 1,444,805 biographies [5] and 338,912 are recorded as being sport-related [6]. So. Somewhere north of 23.4% - there will be many sports biogs which are not usefully marked as such. --Tagishsimon (talk) 02:22, 18 February 2017 (UTC)
I use Special:Random a lot too and also notice how disproportionate the fraction of sports players on Wikipedia is. My suggestion to editors is to try not to create articles on very minor players and instead have redirects from their names to things like lists of players for the team. Only those players with clearly established notability should have articles. And when interpreting notability, we ought to be more conservative than liberal. If sports players are kind of borderline in terms of notability, err on the side of non-notable. It makes no sense to create "articles" that basically consist of a sentence giving their name, their team, and what years they played. Jason Quinn (talk) 18:04, 20 February 2017 (UTC)
The problem with that is that the notability guidelines for sportspeople - WP:NSPORT - boils down to "if you've played in one international or professional match, you're notable." Giving rise to a mass of stub articles for not-particularly-significant players of various sports. I guess "Sports Almanac" is not one of those things Wikipedia is not. That's not the call I would have made, but that horse bolted a long time ago. Chuntuk (talk) 17:01, 21 February 2017 (UTC)
What really? Then I'm notable, but I wouldn't dream of anyone creating an article for me on those grounds. Bizarre... Carl Fredrik 💌 📧 16:28, 7 March 2017 (UTC)
Yes, they need to raise the bar to a level equivalent to WP:NACADEMIC. Require them to win "player of the game" in a professional match, for example, or win a major sporting event such as a gold medal at the Olympics. Praemonitus (talk) 21:07, 13 March 2017 (UTC)
I agree about the futility of locking the barn door after the horse has bolted, but it's possible that the community might choose to tighten up its criteria. WP:WHYN might be a good starting point, since it is the official explanation of why it's not usually appropriate for an encyclopedia to include doomed WP:PERMASTUBs (e.g., articles that consist of one sentence giving the athlete's name, team, and years plus we have no rational basis for believing that they could be expanded beyond that point).
Also, it might be desirable for the notability guidelines to be written by both fans and non-fans of X, regardless of whether X is athletes ("any one international or professional match = notable"), actors ("any two named credits = notable"), professors ("almost anyone who did research that some editors think is important") or anything else. But that's harder to do, since editors who are uninterested in "X" are unlikely to stick with interminable discussions about what makes a notable X. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:35, 21 February 2017 (UTC)
I don't think the notability guidelines are watered down, and I honestly believe the sports biographies are useful information. Maybe it's not useful to everyone, but then again is having article on every Linux distribution, or most known objects in the solar systems useful to everyone? Probably not. But it has it's niche. --bender235 (talk) 23:09, 3 March 2017 (UTC)
There are 463,263 transclusions of {{Infobox settlement}}, so there's a rough minimum for municipalities/towns/villages. And Category:Articles with 'species' microformats contains 345,183 articles about species of life. ~21% of Wikipedia articles are either sports biographies, settlements or species. Plantdrew (talk) 18:08, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

Redirect discussion on Wikipedia:NP

The soft redirect Wikipedia:NP is currently discussed at WP:RFD. I invite you to chime in. --George Ho (talk) 19:48, 7 March 2017 (UTC)

@George Ho: What is a soft redirect? SW3 5DL (talk) 13:39, 8 March 2017 (UTC)

From WP:soft redirect: "a replacement of usual or "hard" redirects and is used where the destination is another site—including Wikimedia's sister projects." A soft redirect is intended "for external use" as a hard one doesn't work for such. Also, it can redirect to a special page using "Special:" namespace. You can read more. --George Ho (talk) 13:46, 8 March 2017 (UTC)
@George Ho:, Thanks George, appreciate you taking the time. SW3 5DL (talk) 20:02, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

DMOZ closing

Apparently, DMOZ is closing down on March 14. {{DMOZ}}, a high-risk template, will have to be deprecated as a result. Also, there's a proposal to create a MediaWiki-based, WMF-hosted web directory that you may be interested in. KATMAKROFAN (talk) 04:40, 9 March 2017 (UTC)

Sorry to see that go. Praemonitus (talk) 21:01, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

Wiki 4 Coop

Hello everyone,

I come to you to invite to re-read the submission of a new partnership project between the Wikimedia movement and the Belgian NGOs. The project is titled Wiki 4 Coop and I invite you to discover its submission page on Meta-Wiki. Do not hesitate to endorse the project if you like it and even correct my English if you have a little time. A beautiful end of day for all of you, Lionel Scheepmans ✉ Contact (French native speaker) 11:44, 17 March 2017 (UTC)

Template: Specific

Please see Template talk:Specific#Wording for a suggestion on rewording this template message to make the purpose and meaning clearer, especially regarding the use of secondary sources. —Sangdeboeuf (talk) 02:08, 20 March 2017 (UTC)

On page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Statistics which is accessible from the main page by clicking on the number of articles in English, if you click on "Content Pages", it'll take you to https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:AllPages&hideredirects=1 which the very first article (!) is a redirect and (!! Chess) is just a section of an article. Shouldn't redirects be hidden? Why is this? Thanks, Alex the Nerd (talk) 21:18, 20 March 2017 (UTC)Alex the Nerd

@Alex the Nerd: The filter for redirects was disabled today due to performance problems. See Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Special:AllPages disabled. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:28, 20 March 2017 (UTC)

We invite you to join the movement strategy conversation (now through April 15)

This message, "We invite you to join the movement strategy conversation (now through April 15)", was sent through multiple channels by Gregory Varnum on 15 and 16 of March 2017 to village pumps, affiliate talk pages, movement mailing lists, and MassMessage groups. A similar message was sent by Nicole Ebber to organized groups and their mailing lists on 15 of March 2017. This version of the message is available for translation and documentation purposes

Dear Wikimedians/Wikipedians:

Today we are starting a broad discussion to define Wikimedia's future role in the world and develop a collaborative strategy to fulfill that role. You are warmly invited to join the conversation.

There are many ways to participate, by joining an existing conversation or starting your own:

Track A (organized groups): Discussions with your affiliate, committee or other organized group (these are groups that support the Wikimedia movement).

Track B (individual contributors): On Meta or your local language or project wiki.

This is the first of three conversations, and it will run between now and April 15. The purpose of cycle 1 is to discuss the future of the movement and generate major themes around potential directions. What do we want to build or achieve together over the next 15 years?

We welcome you, as we create this conversation together, and look forward to broad and diverse participation from all parts of our movement.

Sincerely,

Nicole Ebber (Track A Lead), Jaime Anstee (Track B Lead), & the engagement support teams

05:09, 18 March 2017 (UTC)

There's a local page dedicated to this, at Wikipedia:Wikimedia Strategy 2017, if you'd prefer to participate here instead of at Metawiki. Other locations are slowly being added to the tracking page at m:Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2017/Participate. Looking forward to your input. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 20:40, 21 March 2017 (UTC)

Fair use template

Is there a template I can tag articles with that use too many non-free images in them? Thanks. SharkD  Talk  04:31, 24 March 2017 (UTC)

@SharkD: {{Non-free}} seems to do this job. -- John of Reading (talk) 07:28, 24 March 2017 (UTC)
Thanks! SharkD  Talk  04:18, 25 March 2017 (UTC)
@SharkD: You could also just send the images to WP:FFD if they are borderline or remove them and let the automated deletion tagging robot take care of them. Depends on the situation. If you don't mind me asking, what article? --Majora (talk) 04:23, 25 March 2017 (UTC)
@Majora: The article is Action role-playing video game. I'm not sure there are more images than there should be. SharkD  Talk  06:23, 25 March 2017 (UTC)
@SharkD: So I've always been more strict with my interpretation of our fair use policy and to me, that article has way too many non-free images on it. Essentially one per section amounts to nothing more than a gallery of fair use images (just one that is spread out instead of in a nice neat row). A few of those images are so overused on other articles as well that it is severely straining our fair use policy (specifically WP:NFCCP #3) in my opinion.

This is a gray area. Wikipedia purposefully follows a far more strict fair use policy than actual US copyright law. We do that to encourage as much "free" content as possible. We are the "free encyclopedia" after all. In terms of actual US copyright law, those images on that article are probably fine (standard disclaimer: this is not legal advice but my interpretation of the complexities of copyright). I can see how someone would argue that each of those photos fits into our fair use policy. I can see how they could win that argument. I can also see how the opposite can be true. The grayness of our policy allows for both to occur. The only way to be sure would be to put the lot towards FFD as one nomination and see how others interpret it. --Majora (talk) 19:11, 25 March 2017 (UTC)

Blocks in de finite

Nowadays blocks can be indefinite, which means that their expiry has not been set. Was the code word originally "in-finite" as opposed to "in-definite"? In the Finnish Wikipedia there is still in use the translation "forever", which leads me to think that the original wording in English might have been something else than it's now. --Pxos (talk) 11:38, 25 March 2017 (UTC)

As far as I can remember, it's been "indefinite." The idea is that it is not necessarily forever: a person could be unblocked later. Ian.thomson (talk) 12:32, 25 March 2017 (UTC)
Indeed. The idea being that there is no set expiry; the user is blocked until the relevant people decide they should be unblocked. 'Forever' would be incorrect because it implies the result can never be changed. Sam Walton (talk) 20:12, 26 March 2017 (UTC)
As long as I can remember (just over 12 years now) the wording here WP:INDEF that blocks are "indefinite not infinite" has applied. This is quoted quite often at AN and ANI threads about blocks. Translations from one language to another can be tricky things and this may be one of those situations. MarnetteD|Talk 20:18, 26 March 2017 (UTC)
If the intent had been "forever", any native English speaker would have used "permanent", not "infinite". ―Mandruss ☎ 20:20, 26 March 2017 (UTC)
According to WikiBlame, the text in the dropdown list of block reasons was changed from "nfinite" to "indefinite" in July 2005 by Zzyzx11. From their contributions around that time, I can't figure out what prompted them to make that change however. Graham87 10:18, 27 March 2017 (UTC)
It's unrelated to that diff, but there was some interesting early discussion about that here. Sam Walton (talk) 10:51, 27 March 2017 (UTC)
That brings back memories from 12 years ago when we were more relaxed in edit summaries. That was for consistency. Despite what MediaWiki:Ipboptions had at the time, the block log was listing "with an expiration time of indefinite", not "infinite".[7] I knew what and where MediaWiki:Ipboptions was. I didn't know (and still don't really know) what system message is generating the "with an expiration time of indefinite" for the block log. Zzyzx11 (talk) 06:53, 28 March 2017 (UTC)
Zzyzx11, the logs take all their contents from current system messages. If you were to change the wording "infinite" to "a very long time indeed", all the logs would change as well, and it really would read in the logs that in the year 2005 someone was blocked for "a very long time indeed", althoug at the time it would have read "infinite/indef/whatever". So the logs of a wiki are not a reliable archaeological evidence of how things once were. Only diffs are. --Pxos (talk) 13:49, 30 March 2017 (UTC)
Then my memory fails me, sorry. I might have done it because Wikipedia:Blocking policy had more frequent use of "indefinitely".[8]. Or maybe because there was an issue with the MediaWiki software at the time, per the summary of the edit made four minutes after mine (and to whoever I was trying to block, another admin was able to get it through). And I do not think it was an accident that one day later I changed it to match the default formatting at the time.[9] But again, 2005 was a time when admins had more of a luxury of being more bold on the system messages without discussion. Zzyzx11 (talk) 03:30, 1 April 2017 (UTC)
So the word has really been verbatim translated from English to Finnish before July 2005, because the Finnish WP has used "forever", like, forever. Whenever there is a mightily confusing wording, I have learned to go back 10–15 years searching for the relevant term in English. Sometimes the original wording is miserable, sometimes the translator has botched things up. As long as Blame can be placed correctly on a Wiki, things are all right. --Pxos (talk) 12:13, 30 March 2017 (UTC)
All wikis are different. It's possible that Finnish Wikipedia's rules are open to a "forever", permanent ban. Spanish Wikipedia has a permanent block with no avenue to appeal, which has occasionally led Spanish users here to plead with Spanish admins on their enwiki pages. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 19:13, 3 April 2017 (UTC)

Wikipedia logo animation

Hello friends,

Please enjoy this animation my computer took one week to generate. :) --Psiĥedelisto (talk) 10:17, 26 March 2017 (UTC)

Nice work! ―Mandruss ☎ 20:22, 26 March 2017 (UTC)
I agree! I always forget that the globe is actually 3D and has other sides. --Majora (talk) 20:39, 26 March 2017 (UTC)
Excellent! Is that one month of coding and one week of computer processing time? You should add this to User talk:Jimbo Wales where this would be welcome relief from some of the stuff currently going on. Johnuniq (talk) 01:35, 27 March 2017 (UTC)
Support! Jimbo needs the break. 68.233.214.74 (talk) 18:14, 27 March 2017 (UTC)

👍 Like~ ONUnicorn(Talk|Contribs)problem solving 18:53, 27 March 2017 (UTC)

Wow. Really cool. Shearonink (talk) 19:06, 27 March 2017 (UTC)

Arbitration Committee seeking new clerks

You could be the proud owner of this fez!
You could be the proud owner of this fez!

The Arbitration Committee clerks are currently looking for a few dependable and mature editors willing to serve as clerks. The responsibilities of clerks include opening and closing arbitration cases and motions; notifying parties of cases, decisions, and other committee actions; maintaining the requests for Arbitration pages; preserving order and proper formatting on case pages; and other administrative and related tasks they may be requested to handle by the arbitrators. Clerks are the unsung heroes of the arbitration process, keeping track of details to ensure that requests are handled in a timely and efficient manner. Clerks get front-line seats to the political and ethnic warfare that scorches Wikipedia periodically, and, since they aren't arbitrators themselves, are rarely threatened with violence by the participants.

The salary and retirement packages for Clerks rival that of Arbitrators, to boot. Best of all, you get a cool fez!

If you're interested, please read and follow the directions on this page

For the Arbitration Committee Clerks, Kharkiv07 (T) 20:52, 26 March 2017 (UTC)

Discuss this at: Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee/Noticeboard#Arbitration Committee seeking new clerks

Help - can't find the Wikilink to a WP policy/guideline/rule about multiple cites to one reference

The first time a reference appears in an article, it's the full cite. Thereafter, it is supposed to be the <refname="whatever"/> version (and not the other way around with maybe the full cite at the 10th occurrence and then the partial ones preceding it). I am pretty sure that this is a policy/guideline but I cannot find the WP page or shortcut! Help please & thanks. Shearonink (talk) 19:05, 27 March 2017 (UTC)

See Help:Footnotes#Footnotes: using a source more than once. Nothing says the full footnote needs to be first. It can be at any place the reference is used. If it is an Infobox or other template it would be better to have the full reference in the text instead. StarryGrandma (talk) 22:35, 27 March 2017 (UTC)
Also, using named references at all is not required. It would be acceptable for a particular page to use a citation style in which there are no named references, and citations that are used more than once are just repeated in full. — Carl (CBM · talk) 00:39, 28 March 2017 (UTC)
That was just the form I used in this post (re refname, also since that is what the MOS pages use as their example as in WP:REFNAME lol). I know it's not required for a GA etc. At some point today I did find a statement that said the full cite 'should probably be first but that it wasn't a requirement" but now can't even find that WP-page. If anyone knows what I am talking about (I read it somewhere here on WP and I just want to know *where*) please put me out of my misery and post the link etc here. Thanks, Shearonink (talk) 04:47, 28 March 2017 (UTC)
I've never seen that anywhere in any of the reference guidelines so I can't help. After several years of correcting reference problems, however, I can tell you that in practice the full reference tends to be wherever the editor first used the source in an article and is as likely to be several citations deep in the article as at the first usage. It would not be a good idea to require moving the full reference once it is added just because a new use comes in ahead of it. The parser doesn't care where it is. StarryGrandma (talk) 05:48, 28 March 2017 (UTC)

Wikidata editor for Wikipedia

I would like to announce my grant proposal for the development of a gadget for editing Wikidata information (primarily used in the infoboxes) without leaving the Wikipedia page. My goal is to make one simple gadget helpful for all users which cover 80-90% of the needs, even if not everything is available for editing. In simpler terms, it's about creating an editor for "Wikidata infoboxes". Please write your opinion and wishes on the grant page. — putnik 09:52, 29 March 2017 (UTC)

Email throttle

Hi, I accidentally refreshed an Special:EmailUser page a stack of times yesterday. I still seem to be throttled 20 hours later. Is there a time limit before the action is unlocked, or have I triggered some permanent lock? T.Shafee(Evo&Evo)talk 03:47, 30 March 2017 (UTC)

Our mw:Manual:$wgRateLimits in https://noc.wikimedia.org/conf/highlight.php?file=InitialiseSettings.php says:
		'emailuser' => [
			'ip' => [ 5, 86400 ], // 5 per day per ip (logged-out and new users)
			'newbie' => [ 5, 86400 ], // 5 per day for non-autoconfirmed
			'user' => [ 20, 86400 ], // 20 per day for users
		],
ip's cannot actually mail users. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:29, 30 March 2017 (UTC)
Thank you. T.Shafee(Evo&Evo)talk 22:12, 30 March 2017 (UTC)

Talk:Super Mario World/GA2

The reassessment on Super Mario World, Talk:Super Mario World/GA2, is still open. A volunteer may be needed, or the page can be converted to the community reassessment. Comments are welcome either here or there. --George Ho (talk) 09:47, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

Requests for comment on Microscope article

Please comment on a few requests for comments on the Microscope article.

Talk:Microscope#Request_for_comment_on_how_a_scanning_electron_microscope_works

Talk:Microscope#Request_for_comment_on_ultramicroscope

Thank you, --2601:648:8503:4467:F4B3:6D6C:9DCC:DC06 (talk) 21:02, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

What is the status of forced administrator recall?

Where was the last serious proposal for recalling bad or abusive admins, and what kept it from being adopted? —swpbT 18:48, 3 April 2017 (UTC)

In a nutshell, Wikipedia:Perennial proposals#It should be easier to remove adminship. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 19:10, 3 April 2017 (UTC)

Importance of article history

Is there a neat, user-friendly explanation of why we need to keep article histories? I think there used to be, but I can't find it.

I'm dealing with a persistent user who doesn't understand our copyleft obligations at all. Any links to suggested help or project places, or even the meta, would be greatly appreciated.

Places that might mention or link to it you'd think include:

And perhaps I'm already looking straight at it somewhere there. Happens from time to time. Anyway, any help appreciated. Andrewa (talk) 03:19, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

Try Wikipedia:Copying within Wikipedia. I don't know why the page history pages don't explain this. They should. StarryGrandma (talk) 03:28, 4 April 2017 (UTC)
Thanks, that's exactly the sot of thing I am after. But that doesn't go nearly far enough... a link from an edit summary does not show up in "What links here", so there's a danger if this protocol is followed that a page whose edit history is required for attribution purposes will be innocently deleted.
Has this perhaps slipped through the cracks over the years since I became a sysop? A sort of wp:instruction slip (the opposite disease to wp:instruction creep)? Andrewa (talk) 11:11, 4 April 2017 (UTC)
I don't know why putting the information on the talk pages is called "optional". I would think for any substantial copying that Template:Copied should be put on the destination talk page at least. At the moment that template is merge/split specific. StarryGrandma (talk) 16:21, 4 April 2017 (UTC)
Yes, exactly. And under substantial copying I think we need to include anything that might put the free reuse of Wikipedia under threat if not properly attributed. Which could be a single sentence, or in theory even a phrase.
In any case, and at the risk of argument from silence, there seems to be a serious gap in our documentation, IMO. Andrewa (talk) 23:04, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

Now raised at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#Page history. Andrewa (talk) 21:07, 5 April 2017 (UTC)

New essay - NPP and hoaxes

Hi, I've been writing up an essay on spotting hoaxes during NPP and things to watch out for, based on personal experience. I hope it covers some new ground.

I'd be keen to see if anyone has any thoughts or feedback - I'm thinking of moving it from userspace to being an essay if people like it. Blythwood (talk) 11:43, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

Mixed feelings. I enjoyed reading it but I expect most of it is pretty obvious to New Page Patrol regulars, and we risk encouraging hoaxers by publicising their achievements and providing a reference page of techniques for them to use. See wp:don't stuff beans up your nose. Andrewa (talk) 07:55, 5 April 2017 (UTC)

Community notification of grant application

Hi all

I'm applying for a grant from WMF to continue my work at UNESCO from September this year, please take a look, let me know what you think and endorse if you want.

The main goals are:

  1. UNESCO’s publication workflows incorporate sharing open license content on Wikimedia projects.
  2. Support other Intergovernmental Organisations and the wider public to share content on Wikimedia projects.
  3. Support Wikimedia contributors to easily discover and use UNESCO content and the documentation produced.

Thanks

--John Cummings (talk) 20:06, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

Redirect Filter

I am aware that the redirect filter for the page list is disabled due to performance issues. Does anybody know when it is expected to be working again? Thanks, Alex the Nerd (talk) 20:10, 4 April 2017 (UTC)Alex the Nerd

There's no timeframe. You might want to follow along on phab:T160983. Anomie⚔ 20:54, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

Coordinates -- decimal vs. degrees/minutes/seconds

I'm starting to construct a list article, and am finding the coordinates for the locations involved expressed in both decimal form (41.289°S 174.777°E) and degree/minute/second form (57°18′22″N 4°27′32″W). Given that I'm going to have to convert some of them, is there any reason to prefer one form over another? Is there any advantage to a reader, or to other software that might want to make use of the data? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 01:04, 5 April 2017 (UTC)

I suggest mentioning this at Template talk:Coord where people who deal with this sort of thing are more likely to notice. Johnuniq (talk) 03:51, 5 April 2017 (UTC)
Done. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 09:58, 5 April 2017 (UTC)

Wiki Loves Africa best picture Community vote

Is open. 3 images have already been selected by a jury. Please select a 4th winner in the images listed here. Vote now :) c:Commons:Wiki Loves Africa 2016/Community Prize Selection Anthere (talk) 14:34, 6 April 2017 (UTC)

WikiProject assessments vs. external reviewers vs. ORES

Hey folks, I have been collaborating with some researchers who are publishing a dataset of externally reviewed Wikipedia articles (the sample was taken back in 2006). I'd like to take the opportunity to compare the prediction quality of m:ORES' article quality model with these external reviewers, but in order get a good picture of the situation, it would also be very helpful to get a set of Wikipedian assessments for the same dataset. So, I have gathered all of the versions of externally reviewed articles in User:EpochFail/ORES_audit and I'm asking for your help to gather assessments. There's 90 old revisions of articles that I need your help assessing. I don't think this will take long, but I need to borrow your judgement here to make sure I'm not biasing things.

To help out, see User:EpochFail/ORES_audit.

ORES is a generalized machine prediction service that helps catch vandalism, measure the development of articles, and support student editors. The more we know about how ORES performs against important baselines, the better use of it we can make it to measure Wikipedia and direct wiki work. --EpochFail (talk • contribs) 22:04, 6 April 2017 (UTC)

Start of the 2017 Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees elections

Please accept our apologies for cross-posting this message. This message is available for translation on Meta-Wiki.

On behalf of the Wikimedia Foundation Elections Committee, I am pleased to announce that self-nominations are being accepted for the 2017 Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees Elections.

The Board of Trustees (Board) is the decision-making body that is ultimately responsible for the long-term sustainability of the Wikimedia Foundation, so we value wide input into its selection. More information about this role can be found on Meta-Wiki. Please read the letter from the Board of Trustees calling for candidates.

The candidacy submission phase will last from April 7 (00:00 UTC) to April 20 (23:59 UTC).

We will also be accepting questions to ask the candidates from April 7 to April 20. You can submit your questions on Meta-Wiki.

Once the questions submission period has ended on April 20, the Elections Committee will then collate the questions for the candidates to respond to beginning on April 21.

The goal of this process is to fill the three community-selected seats on the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees. The election results will be used by the Board itself to select its new members.

The full schedule for the Board elections is as follows. All dates are inclusive, that is, from the beginning of the first day (UTC) to the end of the last.

  • April 7 (00:00 UTC) – April 20 (23:59 UTC) – Board nominations
  • April 7 – April 20 – Board candidates questions submission period
  • April 21 – April 30 – Board candidates answer questions
  • May 1 – May 14 – Board voting period
  • May 15–19 – Board vote checking
  • May 20 – Board result announcement goal

In addition to the Board elections, we will also soon be holding elections for the following roles:

  • Funds Dissemination Committee (FDC)
    • There are five positions being filled. More information about this election will be available on Meta-Wiki.
  • Funds Dissemination Committee Ombudsperson (Ombuds)
    • One position is being filled. More information about this election will be available on Meta-Wiki.

Please note that this year the Board of Trustees elections will be held before the FDC and Ombuds elections. Candidates who are not elected to the Board are explicitly permitted and encouraged to submit themselves as candidates to the FDC or Ombuds positions after the results of the Board elections are announced.

More information on this year's elections can be found on Meta-Wiki. Any questions related to the election can be posted on the election talk page on Meta-Wiki, or sent to the election committee's mailing list, board-elections(at)wikimedia.org.

On behalf of the Election Committee,
Katie Chan, Chair, Wikimedia Foundation Elections Committee
Joe Sutherland, Community Advocate, Wikimedia Foundation

Posted by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of the Wikimedia Foundation Elections Committee, 03:36, 7 April 2017 (UTC) • Please help translate to other languages. • Get help

Wikipedia Credibility Reputation - Major Media Stories

My concerns about "High-Conflict Subjects vs. Saboteurs," expressed in Wikipedia talk:Protection policy, recently drew this reponse from a senior editor:

"Your assertion that the "credibility of Wikipedia, itself, is at stake" seems a bit alarmist, but I actually wouldn't be surprised if we wind up with egg on our faces a few years down the road..."

I replied:

"It's a bit late for that. The credibility of Wikipedia is not that high in most circles, and its crediblity has been the butt of countless sarcastic remarks, wisecracks and late-night comics' jokes.While I think Wikipedia has merit (or I wouldn't bother with it), Wikipedia's credibility has been in danger for years, now. ... Wikipedia has "egg on its face" every time some visitor reads an obviously corrupted article."

Then I did a little research, to underscore the long history of Wikipedia's tarnished reputation, and found these critiques of Wikipedia, published by the same sources that Wikipedia generally encourages editors to cite as references. If they're credible, then consider these articles they've published about Wikipedia's credibility:

  • 2005-11-29: USA Today:
"A false Wikipedia 'biography,'"
  • 2007-03-29: NBC News
"The word on Wikipedia: Trust but verify", "Popular online encylopedia, plagued by errors, troubles educators."
  • 2009-02-04: ABC News:
"Wikipedia's Woes" "...Wikipedia does have some serious shortcomings, the most glaring of which is its accuracy."
  • 2009-12-15: Wall Street Journal:
"Ron Livingston vs. Wikipedia Editor: The Challenge of Policing the Web" "...an attempt to censor or alter information leads to wider publicity. That’s what happened to Livingston... an anonymous user repeatedly changed the actor’s Wikipedia profile to claim he’s in a gay relationship (he’s straight and married), [so the actor] filed suit... to uncover the cyber-vandal’s identity, [but that] led to a slew of news articles and even accusations that Livingston is homophobic."
  • 2012-04-19: ABC News:
"Wikipedia: Public Relations People, Editors Differ Over Entries"
"1,300 public relations people... surveyed... told her 60% of Wikipedia entries contained factual errors about their clients' companies, ranging from trivial to highly controversial -- and the PR people, being 'interested parties,' felt they could not make corrections."
  • 2014-06-26: CBS News:
"Wikipedia drug entries often inaccurate or outdated, study finds" "Overall, 41% of the relevant Wikipedia entries had been updated within two weeks following an FDA safety warning. Nearly a quarter (23%) took more than two weeks to update, while more than a third (36%) still didn't reference the FDA warning a year after it was issued, the study authors said."
  • 2016-02-01: New York Times:
"On Wikipedia, Donald Trump Reigns and Facts Are Open to Debate" "Wikipedia’s rules generally forbid anyone with a 'conflict of interest' to edit pages, but this rule is difficult to enforce because editors are almost never identified by their real names"
  • (currently) Harvard University:
"What's Wrong with Wikipedia?" in Harvard Guide to Using Sources "...Wikipedia is not a reliable source for academic research..."

We Wikipedians need to be careful about our reputation, and how we earn it, and how we protect it, or Wikipedia will gradually fade into irrelevance, for lack of credibility, and even our most honorable work will be lost in the smoke of our faults. ~ Penlite (talk) 08:57, 6 April 2017 (UTC)

Firstly, I'm not sure that all of these sources actually demonstrate that wikipedia lacks credibility. The "Harvard Guide to Using Sources", for instance, says that wikipedia is "not a reliable source for academic research", but we're not intending to be a reliable source for academic research, we are intending to be an encyclopedia! Indeed, the HGUS specifically says that "In fact, some instructors may advise their students to read entries for scientific concepts on Wikipedia as a way to begin understanding those concepts." That's hardly the statement of an organisation who think that wikipedia lacks credibility.
More generally, reliable sources have been questioning the wikipedia model for more than a decade, as your own list demonstrates. That's pretty much as long as wikipedia has been widely known as the go-to encyclopedia. We haven't faded into irrelevance yet, and I don't see any particular reason to be more worried about that now than we were last year, or in 2010, or indeed any time in the past decade or so... Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 16:28, 7 April 2017 (UTC)
As the young man said: "Well, I got away with it. Must be OK." As the middle-aged man said: "See, I told you I could get away with it." As the dying man said, on his deathbed, "Well, my sins haven't caught up with me yet... so what's to worry?"
~ Penlite (talk) 08:09, 8 April 2017 (UTC)
  • Almost every one of these stories is "Here's this one article here that this one controversial thing happened with" or "Here's these <arbitrarily small number of articles here> that have problems" Yes, we know and accept that we are a work in progress. Also, "Academics say that you shouldn't use Wikipedia to do hard research" is a non-starter. That's never been a goal of Wikipedia. --Jayron32 18:13, 11 April 2017 (UTC)

Read-only mode for 20 to 30 minutes on 19 April and 3 May

Read this message in another language • Please help translate to other languages.

The Wikimedia Foundation will be testing its secondary data center in Dallas. This will make sure that Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia wikis can stay online even after a disaster. To make sure everything is working, the Wikimedia Technology department needs to conduct a planned test. This test will show whether they can reliably switch from one data center to the other. It requires many teams to prepare for the test and to be available to fix any unexpected problems.

They will switch all traffic to the secondary data center on Wednesday, 19 April 2017. On Wednesday, 3 May 2017, they will switch back to the primary data center.

Unfortunately, because of some limitations in MediaWiki, all editing must stop during those two switches. We apologize for this disruption, and we are working to minimize it in the future.

You will be able to read, but not edit, all wikis for a short period of time.

  • You will not be able to edit for approximately 20 to 30 minutes on Wednesday, 19 April and Wednesday, 3 May. The test will start at 14:00 UTC (15:00 BST, 16:00 CEST, 10:00 EDT, 07:00 PDT, 23:00 JST, and in New Zealand at 02:00 NZST on Thursday 20 April and Thursday 4 May).
  • If you try to edit or save during these times, you will see an error message. We hope that no edits will be lost during these minutes, but we can't guarantee it. If you see the error message, then please wait until everything is back to normal. Then you should be able to save your edit. But, we recommend that you make a copy of your changes first, just in case.

Other effects:

  • Background jobs will be slower and some may be dropped. Red links might not be updated as quickly as normal. If you create an article that is already linked somewhere else, the link will stay red longer than usual. Some long-running scripts will have to be stopped.
  • There will be code freezes for the weeks of 17 April 2017 and 1 May 2017. Non-essential code deployments will not happen.

This project may be postponed if necessary. You can read the schedule at wikitech.wikimedia.org. Any changes will be announced in the schedule. There will be more notifications about this. Please share this information with your community. /User:Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk)

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:34, 11 April 2017 (UTC)

Wikipedia:The Core Contest

Right folks, I am setting this up to run May 15 to June 30 again...with the usual Amazon vouchers up for grabs. Cheers, Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 13:35, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

Update 13 on Wikimedia movement strategy process

TL;DR: We hope you will contribute your thoughts to this question: "What do we want to build or achieve together over the next 15 years?" - at either Wikipedia:Wikimedia Strategy 2017 or on metawiki at m:Strategy/Wikimedia movement/2017/Cycle 1, plus continue discussing each others' ideas. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 19:37, 14 April 2017 (UTC)

This message, "April 12: Update on Wikimedia movement strategy process (#13)", was sent by Katherine Maher on 12 April 2017.

Hi all!

Summary: The first cycle of strategy conversations is ending soon. We hope you will contribute your answer to this question: "What do we want to build or achieve together over the next 15 years?"

This phase has been an opportunity to come up with new ideas. The next phase is about refining these ideas to reach some consensus on the most important ones. This means that there will still be opportunities to contribute in the future! It also means that the focus of the conversation will change. If you are interested in generating creative new ideas about the future of our projects, now is the time to share your thoughts!

Participating is easy. Check out the participation page on Meta-Wiki's movement strategy portal for more information. Find online discussions, local meetups, and a survey on Meta-Wiki.

One note: In consideration of the Passover and Easter holidays people around the world are recognizing this week and weekend, we have moved the closing day for this discussion cycle to the end of April 18 (23:59 UTC). That means you have a few additional days to share your ideas - big and small - for Wikimedia's future.

Once this discussion cycle ends next week, we will be gathering common topics from across all the global discussions and posting them on Meta-Wiki. That includes conversations from the wikis, meetups with experts, discussions from affiliates, and anywhere else we have documented.

The next phase of the discussion will begin by May 1. We’ll be working together to prioritize the thematic statements. More information on that cycle is available on Meta-Wiki, and we’ll share more when that cycle gets started.

I have already seen and heard some fantastic ideas from our first discussion cycle these past few weeks. I look forward to seeing what ideas emerge in the final days of this cycle!

Un cordial saludo (Spanish translation: “Best regards”),
Katherine

-- Posting. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 19:37, 14 April 2017 (UTC)

Userbox templates that fail to include "noinclude" tags around their categories

Looking at Category:Political parties user templates recently, I found a number of pages listed that were not userboxes, but rather were user pages that included political party userboxes. It seems that some of the userboxes included the designation [[Category:Political parties user templates]] without including "noinclude" tags around the category, thus placing the pages that transcluded the userbox into the category of Category:Political parties user templates as well.

I managed to identify several of the problematic templates and added "noinclude" tags around the category, so that they would say

<noinclude>[[Category:Political parties user templates]]</noinclude>

However, if this is happening with political party user templates, it could be happening with other kinds of userboxes too. Is there any way to find other userboxes that fail to use the "noinclude" tag around their category designations? --Metropolitan90 (talk) 19:48, 14 April 2017 (UTC)

Search userspace for insource:"category:political parties user templates" -insource:"noinclude>[[category:political". Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 20:49, 14 April 2017 (UTC)

UNESCO Challenge

Dear Wikipedians, Happy easter for those of you celebrating.

Tomorrow, the International Day for Monuments and Sites is celebrated. On that same day, the first edition of the UNESCO Challenge will also commence. The UNESCO Challenge is a challenge co-arranged by UNESCO, the Swedish National Heritage Board and Wikimedia Sverige, with the purpose to improve articles on world heritage sites. UNESCO are going to release a large series of images (in this category), and a lot of open access texts on the sites, which may be used in the challenge.

Write in whatever language you like! You find the page for participation and points registration here.

Best, Eric Luth (WMSE) (talk) 09:59, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

Open letter to Burger King

Please see Wikipedia:Conflict of interest/Noticeboard open letter. This is time sensitive, I intend to send the letter tomorrow. Smallbones(smalltalk) 19:33, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

Ongoing "420 collaboration" to improve cannabis/marijuana articles

Just spreading the word about our ongoing project. If this interests you, feel free to also disseminate the word over social media! It's a wide-ranging topic with all kinds of interesting facets, so even if this isn't your usual area, I invite you to drop in and check out our list of redlinks to see if any of them catch your attention. Thanks! Goonsquad LCpl Mulvaney (talk) 07:41, 18 April 2017 (UTC)

You are invited to participate in the upcoming

"420 collaboration",

which is being held from Saturday, April 15 to Sunday, April 30, and especially on April 20, 2017!

The purpose of the collaboration, which is being organized by WikiProject Cannabis, is to create and improve cannabis-related content at Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects in a variety of fields, including: culture, health, hemp, history, medicine, politics, and religion.

For more information about this campaign, and to learn how you can help improve Wikipedia, please visit the "420 collaboration" page.

I'd particularly encourage more editors to watchlist the article 420 (cannabis culture) since we routinely get a huge spike in views on 20 April, and it'd be great to quickly catch any vandalism. Thanks! Goonsquad LCpl Mulvaney (talk) 05:56, 20 April 2017 (UTC)

Template text inadvertently discourages use of NPOV language

The phrase "Jesus Christ" is a theologically loaded title that Jews and others reject, and that (per WP:NPOV) should not generally be used on English Wikipedia except in very specific circumstances. The neutral, equally recognizable term is "Jesus of Nazareth". I went to Jesus Christ yesterday to see if there were pages that linked to it inappropriately, but before I got to that I saw that the redirect page currently includes the text Please do not replace these redirected links with a link directly to the target page unless expressly advised to do so below or elsewhere on this page. This was clearly meant to discourage editors from piping directly to the article title from pages that use the same "alternate name" as the redirect, but that wording assumes that all alternate names are equally acceptable for Wikipedia to be using in its text, which is not the case.

The template in question, Template:Redr, is apparently deprecated, but I really don't know what that means when the template is permanently "template-protected to prevent vandalism" (even though the odds of extended-confirmed editors engaging in bona fide "vandalism" on relatively obscure template pages that can generally only be seen by clicking noredirect links are next to nil).

Shouldn't the text be changed to Please do not replace these redirected links with a link directly to the target page without a good reason? I don't even know how or where to go about doing this, which is why I'm at the miscellaneous village pump.

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 00:54, 22 April 2017 (UTC)

It looks like there are many thousands of redirects to Jesus Christ, many of which may be appropriate usages. This would be a long-term project requiring manual reading each case for context. Due to the subject, I'd expect you'd get pushback for many of the edits so this is a task that seems ripe for revert wars. I would first create an short, concise, formal argument justifying bypassing the redirect based on our policies and guidelines (like you've started above using NPOV) that properly weighs WP:DONOTFIXIT. Once you are ready, you can make your proposal in the Village Pump's Proposals section (if a better place springs to somebody's mind, please suggest it). If that succeeds with consensus, you can use a link to that discussion when making your edits, which will help explain the purpose and justification for your edits and prevent disagreements. Jason Quinn (talk) 05:56, 22 April 2017 (UTC)

A new project needs you

Please read Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship#Poll candidate search needs your participation.

Please join and participate.

Anna Frodesiak (talk) 00:01, 23 April 2017 (UTC)

Criticism of Walmart discussion

There has been a really great conversation at Talk:Criticism of Walmart and I'm looking for more editors to join the discussion. To summarize: Wikipedians have noticed and have begun attempts to fix the Criticism of Walmart article, which is full of WP:UNDUE and WP:POV content, and is far from encyclopedic in areas. Some editors have suggested throwing out the article and starting from scratch, while others have said the article would take a "massive" effort to clean up properly. The issue is no one knows where to start, which brings me here. Input and advice from additional editors could be a huge benefit to finding a way forward with this. As one of Walmart's representatives on Wikipedia, I have a conflict of interest and I do not feel comfortable making suggestions as to whether the editors should try to correct the existing article or start over by reducing it to a stub, as has been suggested by others. I am, however, willing to help with whatever "grunt" work is necessary to assist other editors in fixing the page (providing references, assisting with identifying inaccuracies, etc.). Any insight is valuable and appreciated. Thanks, JLD at Walmart (talk) 14:32, 25 April 2017 (UTC)

Hi, JLD. What about WP:NPOVN, where you can address the article's bias? --George Ho (talk) 10:05, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

Ongoing proposals at Meta-wiki

There are ongoing proposals, including older ones, to close or delete some language projects, like Beta Wikiversity and Moldovan Wikipedia. Also, there are proposals for new projects, like NonFreeWiki, WikiJournal, Wikigames, and Wikidirectory. --George Ho (talk) 05:08, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

RFC on microscope article

Talk:Microscope#RFC_should_article_focus_on_instrument.2C_microscope.2C_or_technique.2C_microscopy

--2600:387:6:807:0:0:0:C2 (talk) 14:30, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

The strategy discussion. The Cycle 2 will start on May 5

The first cycle of the Wikimedia movement strategy process recently concluded. During that period, we were discussing the main directions for the Wikimedia movement over the next 15 years. There are more than 1500 summary statements collected from the various communities (including 40 from your local discussion). The strategy facilitators and many volunteers have summarized the discussions of the previous month. A quantitative analysis of the statements will be posted on Meta for translation this week, alongside the report from the Berlin conference.

The second cycle will begin soon. It's set to begin on May 5 and run until May 31. During that period, you will be invited to dive into the main topics that emerged in the first cycle, discuss what they mean, which ones are the most important and why, and what their practical implications are. This work will be informed and complemented by research involving new voices that haven’t traditionally been included in strategy discussions, like readers, partners, and experts. Together, we will begin to make sense of all this information and organize it into a meaningful guiding document, which we will all collectively refine during the third and last cycle in June−July.

We want to help your community to be more engaged with the discussions in the next cycle. Now, we are looking for volunteers who could

  • tell us where to announce the start of the Cycle 2, and how to do that, so we could be sure the majority of your community is informed and has a chance to feel committed, and
  • facilitate the Cycle 2 discussions here, on Wikipedia.

We are looking forward to your feedback!

Base (WMF) and SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 16:30, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

Title

Article Autonomous Province of Kosovo and Metohija should be renamed in only Kosovo and Metohija, as has already been done with Autonomous Province of Vojvodina (Vojvodina). --SrpskiAnonimac (talk) 22:53, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

Are you familiar with the WP:Requested moves process? Any editor can start it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:15, 29 April 2017 (UTC)
I think that you accidentally closed the move discussion at Talk:Autonomous Province of Kosovo and Metohija, instead of starting it. I also see that someone else proposed this idea last year, and that there have been no objections so far. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:57, 29 April 2017 (UTC)

Hyphen in this name

Library

This redirect page, Lavonia-Carnegie Library, is about the Carnegie Library in the town of Lavonia, Georgia. Of course, hyphens are used when combining two of the same type of thing, e.g. the Smith-Jones house, the Dallas-Ft. Worth area, but is it correct to use it when one is a town and the other is a person's last name? Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 02:12, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

From their web page,[10] it seems that the name of the library is Lavonia-Carnegie Library, so this would seem appropriate usage. Robminchin (talk) 04:44, 28 April 2017 (UTC)
But the name on the building and the sign in front of the building don't say that. A manual of style says to use hyphens for things that are of equal importance. And neither does the NRHP form. And I checked with a language expert and he stated that there should not be a hyphen there. Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 14:44, 28 April 2017 (UTC)
As there is also a Lavonia Carnegie Library redirect to the same article, I think we have it covered either way. Anything wrong with status quo? The rules are different for redirects, which is why we deliberately keep redirects with spelling errors, etc. ―Mandruss ☎ 23:29, 28 April 2017 (UTC)
The version with the (incorrect) hyphen is also used in line 25 of National Register of Historic Places listings in Franklin County, Georgia and in Athens Regional Library System. Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 01:35, 29 April 2017 (UTC)
  • Wikipedia:Manual of Style, section on Dashes, under "In compounds when the connection might otherwise be expressed with to, versus, and, or between", it says "Here the relationship is thought of as parallel, symmetric, equal, oppositional, or at least involving separate or independent elements. ... " and gives examples: "the Uganda–Tanzania War; the Roman–Syrian War; the east–west runway; the Lincoln–Douglas debates; a carbon–carbon bond". Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 02:11, 29 April 2017 (UTC)
That is overridden for particular institutions etc, where they get to choose their own way of naming themselves. The website page is clear, and enough for us. Why not contact them & tell them they are doing it all wrong? Johnbod (talk) 09:21, 30 April 2017 (UTC)

Linking to non-English Wikipedia?

In this diff user:Ag2gaeh is linking to German Wikipedia instead of clarifying a statement he has made. Is this appropriate? I don't think we should be sending English speaking users to German Wikipedia to seek clarification, when the author can simply explain the thing his or herself. (Note that he has provided a German reference in addition to the interwiki link, which is not a problem. But why can't he simply explain it himself?) He has also been removing all the {{clarify}} tags I've added to the article. His writing style is not very advanced, and I am having trouble understanding the article. SharkD  Talk  12:15, 24 April 2017 (UTC)

It would be helpful, if SharkD would look for an English source instead to remove my link. I have no access to English literature. An explanation in more detail would be an extra article. SharkD has "fortgeschrittene Deutschkenntnisse" and is able to read the German links. So perhaps he may be able to insert a "short" explanation. A long explanation would be not convenient. I intend to translate the German Wiki article "orthogonale Axonometrie". But it takes time. Discussions like this here and there are preventing me from working for Wikipedia. --Ag2gaeh (talk) 13:39, 24 April 2017 (UTC)
It should be mentioned here that SharkD is a disruptive editor, who has never learnt that, in mathematics, many words have an accurate meaning that may differ from their common meaning. It results that he call "grammar errors of a non-native English speaker" many phrases that could be clarified by simply adding an appropriate wikilink, and does not really take into account the posts from other editors who disagree with him (see Talk:Parallel projection and its history for details). This results in the retirement from Wikipedia of a good mathematical editor (they are too few). This could be the object of a notice to WP:ANI, if I had the time for detailing this disruptive behaviour, which is of a minor importance, because the implied article have a very small audience.. D.Lazard (talk) 15:49, 24 April 2017 (UTC)
I don't want to go into too much detail here, but I reverted one edit, and you yourself said the change I reverted was ill-advised to begin with. Since then, I have tried to discuss each of the issues I have found in the articles on the Talk page, and use the {{clarify}} template as I was instructed. (Which have been deleted.) If you would like to participate constructively, why not join the discussion on the Talk page? That is why it is there. That said, I would still like to know what the policy is on directing English-speaking users to German Wikipedia for further info. I imagine the reverse happens a lot, but it still bothers me and seems sloppy. SharkD  Talk  16:26, 24 April 2017 (UTC)
To help clarify, the issue is about partially explaining a topic, and then asking readers to, "Please go to German Wikipedia for more info." SharkD  Talk  01:35, 27 April 2017 (UTC)
It's not ideal, but it might be better than nothing. Have you considered providing the clarification that you want yourself? WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:13, 29 April 2017 (UTC)
I don't understand all of what the author is trying to say. Every grammar error or ambiguity can potentially have a large effect. SharkD  Talk  21:18, 2 May 2017 (UTC)

New Wikipedia Library Accounts Available Now (May 2017)

Hello Wikimedians!

The TWL OWL says sign up today!

The Wikipedia Library is announcing signups today for free, full-access, accounts to published research as part of our Publisher Donation Program. You can sign up for new accounts and research materials from:

Expansions

  • Gale – Biography In Context database added
  • Adam Matthew – all 53 databases now available

Many other partnerships with accounts available are listed on our partners page, including Project MUSE, EBSCO, Taylor & Francis and Newspaperarchive.com.

Do better research and help expand the use of high quality references across Wikipedia projects: sign up today!
--The Wikipedia Library Team 18:52, 2 May 2017 (UTC)

You can host and coordinate signups for a Wikipedia Library branch in your own language. Please contact Aaron.
This message was delivered via the Global Mass Message tool to The Wikipedia Library Global Delivery List.

Introducing the Community health initiative on English Wikipedia

Community health initiative
Helping the Wikimedia volunteer community to reduce the level of harassment and disruptive behavior on our projects.

Hello! Today we'd like to introduce the new Community health initiative, the people who will be working on it, and most importantly how you can get involved.

The Community health initiative

Over the past several years the Wikimedia Foundation has researched and learned how harassment affects participation on Wikipedia[1] and have received numerous requests from the English Wikipedia community for better tools and preparation to deal with negative behavior.[2] In January we received funding via a Newmark Foundation grant to address this problem over the next two years.[3]

We're calling these efforts the 'Community health initiative' and our work contains four equally important parts:

  1. Researching the causes of harassment and workflows of those who report and resolve harassment
  2. Building anti-harassment tools for the MediaWiki platform
  3. Fostering an environment for the Wikipedia community to evaluate and grow their policies on harassment
  4. Identifying and training Wikipedia contributors to properly mitigate reports of harassment

Research

The Research team's Anti-Harassment Research project will aim to understand and model the characteristics of harassment in Wikimedia projects in order to inform the development of anti-harassment tools and recommendations for community-specific behavioral policies and enforcement processes.

Anti-harassment tools

We want to build software that empowers contributors and administrators to make timely, informed decisions when harassment occurs. Four focus areas have been identified where new tools could be beneficial in addressing and responding to harassment:

  1. Detection: We want to make it easier and more efficient for editors to identify and flag harassing behavior. We are currently questioning how harassment can be prevented before it begins, and how minor incidents be resolved before they snowball into larger uncivil problems.
  2. Reporting: According to Detox research, harassment is under reported on English Wikipedia.[4] No victim of harassment should abandon editing because they feel powerless to report abuse. We want to provide victims improved ways to report instances that are more respectful of their privacy, less chaotic and less stressful than the current workflow. Currently the burden of proof is on the victim to prove their own innocence and the harasser's fault, while we believe the MediaWiki software should perform the heavy lifting.
  3. Evaluating: We want to build tools to help volunteers better understand and evaluate harassment cases, and inform the best way to respond. Current processes are time consuming and a high level of proficiency is necessary for an user to be able to analyze and evaluate the true sequence of events of a conduct dispute. We want to reduce the workload on people evaluating cases.
  4. Blocking: We want to improve existing tools and create new tools, if appropriate, to remove troublesome actors from a wiki, or certain areas within a wiki, and to make it more difficult for someone who's blocked from the site to return.

Policy growth

We will work with the community to research and analyze how behavioral issues on English Wikipedia are a) covered in policy, and b) enforced in the community, particularly noticeboards where problems are discussed and actioned. We will provide research on alternate forms of addressing specific issues, researching effectiveness, and identifying different approaches that have found success on other Wikimedia projects. We believe this will help the Wikipedia community make informed changes to existing policies and guidelines.

Training

To help functionary and community governance groups better coordinate their work, we will facilitate in the development of a training platform and will guide the establishment of a modules based around the critical area of addressing harassment.

After consultation with functionaries (stewards, global admins, Arbitration Committees, admins), community members, and outside experts an initial group of modules about Online harassment and Keeping events safe was created and is now available for training.

We will further collaborate with the community to development of future training modules.

The team

The Anti-Harassment Tools team includes five Wikimedia Foundation employees, partnering with members of the Wikipedia community who want to participate. The software we build will be useless if it doesn't address real-world workflow problems for the existing Wikipedia community, so we will heavily rely on your input to make our efforts a success.

You can read about more about the team. We're still searching for two PHP developers for this team, if you're interested apply here!

How to get involved

We're just getting started, and we look forward to your participation every step along the way. As we've prepared for the grant and and on-boarded the new team members we've collated some notes on meta,[5] most of which we've moved here to Wikipedia:Community health initiative. These plans and notes will almost certainly change base on the Wikipedia community's input.

Want updates or learn more about how to participate? Sign up for the Community health initiative mailing list or the Community health initiative Newsletter or follow our progress on the Community health initiative on English Wikipedia page.

We'd love to hear your initial thoughts on Wikipedia talk:Community health initiative on English Wikipedia. There's a lot to discuss and we hope to hear from you. Thank you! — Caroline, Sydney, & Trevor of the Anti-Harassment Tools team. 23:41, 2 May 2017 (UTC)

References

  1. ^ meta.wikimedia.org — Community health initiative#Harassment on Wikimedia projects
  2. ^ meta.wikimedia.org — Community health initiative#Community requests for new tools
  3. ^ meta.wikimedia.org — Community health initiative#External funding
  4. ^ meta.wikimedia.org — Research:Detox
  5. ^ meta.wikimedia.org — Community health initiative
@SPoore (WMF): How do we sign up for the mailing list and newsletter? Both appear to be blank pages; not sure where the mailing list is or what format you want usernames in for the newsletter (the latter might make sense as a MassMessageListContent ContentModel. Sam Walton (talk) 23:53, 2 May 2017 (UTC)
Hi Sam, thanks for your interest. We haven't completely worked out the details for the newsletter or the email list. But I wanted to get them mentioned in the announcement to begin checking on interest. I improved the pages on meta a bit for now to make clearer that it is a sign up page, and will get a more definite plan together in the next few days. SPoore (WMF) (talk) , Community Advocate, Community health initiative (talk) 02:03, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

Voting has begun in 2017 Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees elections

This is a message from the Wikimedia Foundation Elections Committee. Translations are available.

Voting has begun for eligible voters in the 2017 elections for the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees.

The Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees is the ultimate governing authority of the Wikimedia Foundation, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization registered in the United States. The Wikimedia Foundation manages many diverse projects such as Wikipedia and Commons.

The voting phase lasts from 00:00 UTC May 1 to 23:59 UTC May 14. Click here to vote. More information on the candidates and the elections can be found on the 2017 Board of Trustees election page on Meta-Wiki.

On behalf of the Elections Committee,
Katie Chan, Chair, Wikimedia Foundation Elections Committee
Joe Sutherland, Community Advocate, Wikimedia Foundation

Posted by the MediaWiki message delivery • Translate • Get help

19:14, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

?

I make redirects, so I ask what is correctly next to Dunđerski Palace and Dunđerski Castle:

1. Palace of Dunđerski or only Palace Dunđerski
2. Castle of Dunđerski or only Castle Dunđerski

?

Discussion about US representatives articles

I wasn't sure where to start a discussion about the US repesentative articles and the inclusion of information about the American Health Care Act, so I started it at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Politics/American politics#Does one consequence of a bill belong in the article of every politician that voted for the bill?. ~ GB fan 14:37, 5 May 2017 (UTC)

Indo-European (disambiguation)

Article Indo-European (disambiguation) rename in only Indo-European (as was done with English (disambiguation) → English) --SrpskiAnonimac (talk) 16:09, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

and:
Habsburg (disambiguation) → Habsburg
Romanov (disambiguation) → Romanov
--SrpskiAnonimac (talk) 23:45, 5 May 2017 (UTC)

The cause of the Wikipedia block in Turkey

Greetings,

I think everyone has heard about the block on all Wikipedia editions in Turkey. We, the Wikimedia Turkey User Group, have been trying to find out what the perceived issue is and they finally have an answer for us: the following two articles (subsections, to be exact) at enwiki:

I, of course, wouldn't dream of asking you to censor the content of a WMF project, being an experienced Wikimedian of 11 years with several advanced user rights across-the-board. What I only ask of you, the enwiki community, is to review the subsections in question, ensure that they are up to our standards and make sure we have a product that we can stand behind, as always. Both subsections seem to include 40+ references, but I personally think there is room for improvement due to some unsourced statements and claims. Please help us fight this block by helping the articles become as unbiased as possible. Thank you.

Vito Genovese 14:27, 29 April 2017 (UTC)

What makes you think Erdogan's government wants unbiased articles? Shock Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 16:01, 29 April 2017 (UTC)
I didn't suggest that.
Vito Genovese 16:04, 29 April 2017 (UTC)
@Shock Brigade Harvester Boris: This is not Erdogan's government, it's Turkish government. Also all people who live in Turkey are affected. Information and Communication Technologies Authority explained this situation. If en.wiki community doesn't help us, we'll never reach wikipedia. I kindly invite everyone to put aside all possible prejudices about us or our politics and help to make them unbiased.--Sabri76'talk 17:32, 29 April 2017 (UTC)
This is not about Erdogan. Kodvizit (talk) 20:15, 29 April 2017 (UTC)
Let's keep this about the articles ONLY.
Vito Genovese 20:16, 29 April 2017 (UTC)
Like all articles here, if you see a problem please be bold and fix it. However, we aren't about to cave to censorship demands from any nation. Period. We don't do it for the Chinese, we don't do it for the Russians, and we certainly aren't going to do it for the Turks. Sorry. If the Turkish government doesn't like what is on Wikipedia I take that as a sign that we are being neutral and not playing up to their twisted expectations on what they want to see on the Internet. --Majora (talk) 20:22, 29 April 2017 (UTC)
Majora and to anyone else that might be inclined to think this way: the Turkish-language community is NOT requesting censorship here. I do not think they ever will, regardless of the consequences. Let's not let emotions run high about this and use curt statements that do nothing to support a beleaguered community. The request here is for the members of the English-language community to review these pages to ensure that they indeed represent the highest standards of Wikipedia, and are impeccably neutral, well-sourced and well-written, which would strengthen at least the moral position of the Turkish-language community. This is not in any way to imply that these articles in any way violate our standards. It is just a call for editorial support for a community most of whose members have to go through great obstacles even to access Wikipedia at the moment, let alone evaluate and possibly critique content in a foreign language. No more unhelpful comments mistaking this for a call for censorship please. --GGT (talk) 21:19, 29 April 2017 (UTC)
@GGT: The village pump is not really the place to come and request a review of the articles that probably caused the censorship. That is what the article's talk page is for. That is what RfCs are for (which trigger notifications for those that have that featured activated). That is what peer review is for.

I commend those Turkish Wikipedians who are continuing to fight for free knowledge during this situation and will continue to do so. Just like I commend those Chinese Wikipedians who are forced to use a VPN just to be here. However, there are far better venues to request review of something than the pump. As the very first thing I mentioned in my previous post was to be bold and fix any issues you find, I don't see how that should cause any issues. --Majora (talk) 21:40, 29 April 2017 (UTC)

User:Majora "The village pump is not really the place to come and request a review of the articles that probably caused the censorship" is not true. What the editor posted is perfectly fine, and actually commendable. In a situation like this -- a crisis in fact -- making an extremely reasonable and functional request as a higher-traffic forum than just the article's talk page is perfectly reasonable. Let's all thank User:Vito Genovese and help out, or we don't want to let's confine our objections to rolling our eyes at home and not sniping at people. Herostratus (talk) 23:05, 29 April 2017 (UTC)
I just want to extend my gratitude towards the Turkish Wikipedians and especially the user group for their individual work and commitment to our goals. Hope things are resolved for you soon. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 21:07, 29 April 2017 (UTC)
While I'm here, I'd like to throw my voice into the crowd of others commending the Turkish users of the Encyclopedia for their willingness to stand up to oppression and censorship. For consideration: on April 16, a user name Youngysf changed the picture of Erdogan to a cockroach. Here's the reddit thread on r/Wikipedia. –Vami_IV✠ 23:05, 29 April 2017 (UTC)
That edit does not show up in the edit history of the article. Such vandalism does not stand up to Wikipedia standards of neutral point of view and reliable sources and is not at all commendable. Even if we had no such policies, one of the oldest tricks in the authoritarian playbook is to dehumanise your enemies en depict them as vermin. I hope we do not resort to the same methods. Moreover, such things do not help to convince anyone in Turkey to join the struggle for restoring freedom of expression and democracy in general. Instead, it strengthens Erdoğan's position that his critics are hooligans and chapullers. Hevesli (talk) 18:05, 30 April 2017 (UTC)
Yes it does, and here is another "edit" by the same user that replaces the same image with a karyotype of Reeve's muntjac. Thankfully, however, the page now has semi-protection and all vandalism by registered users has been reverted, kind of making this and my previous comment in this thread kind of useless. &ndah;Vami_IV✠ 21:33, 30 April 2017 (UTC)
  • (Lazy) Support a review of the relevant articles and sections. There's no room to get defensive here - imagine if there are actually some poorly cited claims, you'd look pretty silly unconditionally supporting them. Reading through each article/section and taking inventory of the claims/references will give us solid ground to stand on. Brightgalrs (/braɪtˈɡæl.ərˌɛs/)[1] 01:21, 30 April 2017 (UTC)
Yeah. Since the articles are in the media spotlight, there´s no harm in having extra eyes checking if the articles are good from the WP-perspective. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 08:53, 30 April 2017 (UTC)
hmm Foreign_involvement_in_the_Syrian_Civil_War#Turkey looks accurate although slightly outdated since it doesn't cover the TFSA and the Battle of al-Bab. State-sponsored_terrorism#Turkey looks like a reasonable rundown of the accusations although its probably a bit larger than it needs to be.©Geni (talk) 07:22, 30 April 2017 (UTC)
Had a look at both of these. Nothing is wildly wrong here, but some checking of sources and editing/trimming wouldn't go amiss. Obviously the whole thing isn't going to be junked because the BTK objected to it. If it was removed, it would lead to a long shopping list of things that would also have to be removed. The Turkish government denies that it has been involved in backing any of the groups fighting the civil war in Syria and regards these allegations as fake news. However, there is enough material in secondary reliable sources mentioning this aspect of the Syrian civil war to meet WP:5P2.--♦IanMacM♦ (talk to me) 08:22, 30 April 2017 (UTC)
  • Editing Wikipedia from Turkey is very difficult right now, but I am somewhat surprised that no reference to the MİT trucks scandal is made in the State-sponsored terrorism#Turkey section. Can someone look into that? There is also this report by Nafeez Ahmed, a generally reliable investigative journalist. I hope I won't get arrested now for revealing state secrets. Hevesli (talk) 12:25, 30 April 2017 (UTC)
  • This is an absolutely timely and reasonable request, and I do not understand why it can cause any opposition. We certainly want our articles, and, of all, sensitive articles to be based on reliable sources and unbiased.--Ymblanter (talk) 17:36, 30 April 2017 (UTC)
  • Have looked at some of the sections and they are supported by sources such as the NYTs, CNN, ect. I guess the question is what content and sources does the Turkish government have issues with? They claim they have "told Wikipedia" But it does not look like they have. The request for the WMF to open up an office in Turkey and pay "taxes" will not be carried out. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 17:58, 6 May 2017 (UTC)

Question

How many edits a month are needed to be considered "active" on Wikipedia? Was just wondering about this. South Nashua (talk) 19:50, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

According to these statistics from the Wikimedia Foundation, approximately 3500 registered users made at least 100 edits in March 2017. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 06:29, 4 May 2017 (UTC)
It depends upon the statistics set, but generally it's five edits on one (the same) wiki during the last month. And if all else fails, you ask User:EpochFail, who knows the stats classifications inside and out. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 00:59, 6 May 2017 (UTC)
If you look at Special:Statistics, then "active" means saving at least one edit in the last 30 days. If you look at https://stats.wikimedia.org then, "active" means 5 edits within a calendar month to articles that fall into the "countable" definition. See mw:Analytics/Metric_definitions#Countable_pages. For most recent reports, we've dropped the "countable" definition, as it seems to provide no analytical value. However, "5 edits" threshold remains for "active" status. --EpochFail (talk • contribs) 15:01, 6 May 2017 (UTC)

Category:Children's books by year

This category was still missing, but it has just been created. Actually every article about a children's book fits in it. The Wiki ghost (talk) 18:22, 6 May 2017 (UTC)

Regarding global renaming

Not sure where to post this, but I would like some clarity on the matter. A while back I did global name change and after that all links to my old page/chat worked as redirects, but now when someone created a new account with my old name all those redirects was deleted so they link into his account now. I was talking about this on my finnish chat page and seems this is how system has been working from the start (unless you know to request block or create new account with your own old name after name change to mark as dummy). My question is, has there been any attempt to improve the way renaming accounts work to prevent something like this? Can’t imagine this to be super rare issue… --OneMember (Talk) 20:34, 6 May 2017 (UTC)

I don't know the answer but you might want to also post at the Help desk here. SW3 5DL (talk) 03:50, 7 May 2017 (UTC)
In the past there were attempts to create a bot that updates old signatures (for instance, here) but these were rejected. Ruslik_Zero 10:48, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Signpost

Nothing has been published for two months because the editor is absent. These things happen, but it is time to move on.

Does someone else what to have a go at running it, or should it be shut down? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.205.251.27 (talk) 11:33, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

My apologies for my extended absence. Anyone with perspectives on the best next steps, please weigh in at WT:POST. I'm aiming to publish something by the end of this week, and am very open to any offers of temporary or ongoing assistance/editorship. -Pete Forsyth (talk) 04:07, 8 May 2017 (UTC) (Editor in Chief)

Internet Slowdown Day II

Given the success of Internet Slowdown Day and Internet Blackout in protecting a free and open internet, I'm surprised there are no discussions about bringing it back given the danger Net Neutrality is in right now. ηoian ‡orever ηew ‡rontiers 13:33, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

RFC: Birthday Honours articles (lists)

There are a lots of articles that are Birthday Honours lists.

Taking two as examples 100 years apart:

They are copies of the information contained in the London Gazette
  • 1908:
    • "No. 28151". The London Gazette (Supplement). 23 June 1908. pp. 4641–4648.

2008:

Not composite lists

These lists are different from lists like those of the High Sheriffs eg: High Sheriff of Surrey that have been created by extracting one line of information from lots of different issues of the London Gazette among other sources, because a Birthday Honours list copy the structure of the Gazette birthday honours list as well as its content.

Not articles with analysis

These lists which are laid out nearly identical to the Gazette lists. They are not part of articles where there is an analysis of what is specifically in the list that is different from other similar lists. Eg analysis like this:

The first BHL under the New Labour government of 2023 saw a decrease in the number of honours going to members of City firms and an increase in those going to member of the NHS (reliable source). ...

The 1920 Birthday Honours list/article does not mention the selling of honours scandal (see Honours (Prevention of Abuses) Act 1925), nor does the 2006 Birthday Honours list mention the Cash for Honours scandal (at the time I am writing this note even in a See also section).

What can be done to improve them?

Given the tone of Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not and some of its specific comments in it, ought these Birthday Honour Lists (BHLs) be on Wikiepdia, or should the content be moved onto Wikisource? If they are not to be moved, what can be done to improve them?

-- PBS (talk) 13:15, 6 May 2017 (UTC)

Survey

Discussion

1908: first section (GCB Military Division):
London Gazette Wikipedia
General Sir William Gustavus Nicholson, K.C.B., Chief of the General Staff (1st Military Member, Army Council.) General Sir William Gustavus Nicholson, K.C.B., Chief of the General Staff (1st Military Member, Army Council.)
General Sir John James Hood Gordon, K.C.B., Indian Army, Colonel 29th Punjabis. General Sir John James Hood Gordon, K.C.B., Indian Army, Colonel 29th Punjabis.
2008, first 3 entries in the first section (Knights Bachelor)
Gazette Wikipedia
Dr. James Iain Walker Anderson, C.B.E. For public and voluntary service. Dr. James Anderson, CBE. For public and voluntary service.
William Samuel Atkinson, Headteacher, Phoenix High School, Hammersmith and Fulham, London. For services to Education and to Community Relation William Atkinson, Headteacher, Phoenix High School, Hammersmith and Fulham, London. For services to Education and to Community Relations.
The Right Honourable Alan James Beith, M.P., Member of Parliament for Berwick-upon-Tweed. For services to Parliament Rt. Hon. Alan Beith, MP, Member of Parliament for Berwick-upon-Tweed. For services to Parliament.

Copyright is not really an issue partly because of US law on lists and partly because the UK government's new Open licence that is close to Wikipedia's CC BY-SA 3.0 License. However to met the licensing requirements I think that the articles on Birthday Honour's do need to add attribution to the references section:

--PBS (talk) 13:15, 6 May 2017 (UTC)

Survey on Donald Trump talk

Hello, please find it in your hearts to comment on the Donald Trump talk page OPTIONS and SURVEY are HERE regarding how to best state how Trump won the election. Really would appreciate the input so that we might put this to rest, finally. Appreciate it. Thanks. SW3 5DL (talk) 14:31, 5 May 2017 (UTC)

"how to best state how Trump won the election." I think I'd go for "catastrophically." Chuntuk (talk) 12:36, 8 May 2017 (UTC)
@Chuntuk: :) Go ivote for that one. SW3 5DL (talk) 13:58, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

In the template {{views}} I want to add links to stuff like Elevation (view) and Dimetric projection. However, these topics don't have pages of their own. Is it okay to do this? SharkD  Talk  03:47, 9 May 2017 (UTC)

Anchor links are to be avoided in navboxes. I personally take a less-strict view of sidebars, but those also I don't see as needing anchor links. --Izno (talk) 04:16, 9 May 2017 (UTC)
I am trying to create a properly partitioned hierarchy of views. For instance, Elevation is a sub-type of Multiview; Dimetric is a sub-type of Axonometric. And so on. SharkD  Talk  05:30, 9 May 2017 (UTC)

Could a Russian clone of English Wikipedia - free of copyright restrictions - replace the original English Wikipedia

Wikipedia is the fifth most visited site in the world, yet its true potential is hampered by copyright limits.[11]

Wikipedia is also completely open source and anyone can download the entire site, all 4.4 million articles in just over one day.[12][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Database_download

I am an American attorney who lives in Moscow. Russian copyright law is not followed, and in the handful of copyright cases that go to court, there is less than 1000$ fine. If I recall the highest ever Russian court ordered fine is around $1000.

A company in Russia could download all of wikipedia everyday.

All of the links on this English language Russian wikipedia clone would have all of the full original books, articles, and magazines - fully online and open for the world to read and share. The most up to date English wikipedia article would be in one window. The links to the full books would be in another window.

How long before this English language Russia wikipedia clone started to be edited by Americans and native English speakers? There could be two generated tabs at the top of each 4.4 million articles:

  1. the first with the original Wikipedia article and
  2. the second with the Russian English Language clone with no restriction on copyright.

How long before the most comprehensive online library ever created surpassed the original wikipedia as the fifth most visited site in the world?

Moscowamerican (talk) 10:23, 9 May 2017 (UTC)

How long before those servers happen to have "an accident" affecting only pages that make Putin look bad?
Even ignoring that, you're assuming that native English speakers are going to use the copycat instead. It's like suggesting that anyone outside of Russia is going to eat to "Let's eat at home" instead of McDonald's. Ian.thomson (talk) 10:35, 9 May 2017 (UTC)
No problem. We like to eat with forks. --Izno (talk) 11:59, 9 May 2017 (UTC)
"All of the links on this English language Russian wikipedia clone would have all of the full original books, articles, and magazines" how, exactly? Downloading and duplicating Wikipedia is the easy bit and, provided they attribute the work to Wikipedia, our licencing permits anybody to do so. Getting the "full original books, articles, and magazines" that wikipedia references — which may not be easy for a bot to identify from inline citations, could be behind paywalls or not online at all — is not at all trivial. If the Russians did manage to do that, what's to stop us linking to the Russian-published source material on Wikipedia? Chuntuk (talk) 12:53, 9 May 2017 (UTC)
What's to stop us? WP:COPYVIOEL. Jason Quinn (talk) 17:16, 9 May 2017 (UTC)
Of course Russia can copy Wikipedia and use it as a basis of something like Baidu Baika in China. And like China they can then censor it to cut out anything that's a bit awkward for the state or otherwise prettify their image. If like Baika they try to respect the Creative Commons or other licences on stuff they copy Wikipedia has absolutely no problem with them doing that. The Chinese government has put a huge effort into making things good enough so people don't normally think of looking elsewhere and personally I think that is a overall gain even if some important aspects are a loss. Dmcq (talk) 13:27, 9 May 2017 (UTC)
"good enough" really isn't the best translation for chabuduo, which is what most of China does, actually. Ian.thomson (talk) 04:48, 10 May 2017 (UTC)
I'm curious as to the claim that we're hampered by copyright limits. As an encyclopedia, which is not meant to be the only source you use if you are researching a topic, we should be rather top-level and don't need to rely too heavily on copyrighted material beyond contemporary works. (There's 2000+ years of human history that is not covered by copyright, and then you have the rest of time before then...) --MASEM (t) 13:30, 9 May 2017 (UTC)

RfC: Ted Bundy cause of death

Per WP:RFC, I'm publicizing this RfC here, as I'm not sure there will be a neutral response without doing so. The cause of death on the Ted Bundy page is currently listed as "State-sanctioned homicide (execution by electrocution)", which seems to me to be inconsistent with how the cause of death is listed for other executed criminals within the American justice system. (Mostly they seem to say "Execution" or "Execution by insert method here"). I'd appreciate any feedback. Thanks! Rockypedia (talk) 18:04, 10 May 2017 (UTC)

The Cycle 2 of the movement strategy discussion starts on May, 11

2 weeks ago, I posted that the Cycle 2 would start last week. It was postponed though, and the final official date is May, 11 (tomorrow). The end was also moved - to Friday, June 9. You can discuss 5 themes here. (You can also add and discuss your own themes). Any questions? SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 15:38, 10 May 2017 (UTC)

Another update! The Cycle 2 ends on June, 12. SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 12:42, 11 May 2017 (UTC)

How to describe the Emmett Till case in the lead sentence of the Emmett Till article

Opinions are needed on the following matter: Talk:Emmett Till#RfC: Should we include the "accused of showing an interest in a white woman" aspect in the lead or specifically the lead sentence?. A WP:Permalink for it is here. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 03:06, 12 May 2017 (UTC)

Image critiques?

Where can I go to get an illustrations I have created critiqued? I am looking for people who know more about making illustrations than the topic of the illustrations. Thanks. SharkD  Talk  20:25, 10 May 2017 (UTC)

I'm sorry, SharkD. May you please elaborate more about illustrations being critiqued, so I can understand? I think you meant your uploads, correct? --George Ho (talk) 00:16, 11 May 2017 (UTC)
And more of these at Commons, right? --George Ho (talk) 00:17, 11 May 2017 (UTC)
Yes, some of those. SharkD  Talk  02:00, 11 May 2017 (UTC)
To improve your illustrations, go to WP:GL/I, where they can take your requests to improve the quality of your uploads. Alternatively, Commons has commons:COM:GL/I. Commons also has commons:COM:Featured pictures, commons:COM:Quality images, and commons:COM:Valued images processes, where they can comment on the quality of your uploads. --George Ho (talk) 03:39, 11 May 2017 (UTC)
Okay, thank you. SharkD  Talk  20:31, 12 May 2017 (UTC)

Merger of "Infobox song" and "Infobox single" under progress

The merger of {{Infobox song}} and {{infobox single}} is still in progress per recent RfC at WT:SONGS. More at Template talk:Infobox song#Beginning merger proceedings with "infobox single". --George Ho (talk) 15:00, 12 May 2017 (UTC)

It is also discussed all over at Template talk:Infobox song and then Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Songs. --George Ho (talk) 03:10, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

The Mind of the Universe: public broadcaster works with Wikimedia movement

Dutch public broadcaster VPRO and the Institute for Sound and Vision are cooperating with the Wikimedia Foundation and Wikimedia Nederland to make unique footage about groundbreaking sciene available.

The Mind of the Universe is an international tv series and open source digital platform about the rapid evolution of our knowledge. Through interviews with groundbreaking scientists, it provides a glimpse of tomorrow’s world,

The interviews were produced in 2015, 2016 and 2017 by Dutch public broadcaster VPRO for a tv series, VPRO decided from the start that all materials (including footage not used for the documentary) would be made available under an open license.

The platform Mind of the Universe Open Science TV provides access to all this material. It also has transcripts of the interviews, which are searchable by keyword. All materials can be downloaded and re-used, as they were published under a CC-BY-SA license.

With the help of a grant from the Wikimedia Foundation, and working closely with Wikimedia Nederland, the Institute for Sound and Vision will host a series of events to promote use Mind of the Universe material throughout the Wikimedia projects. They will also produce a white paper to share their experiences and promote the concept of CC-BY-SA licensing among public broadcasters worldwide.

For the Wikimedia projects the Mind of the Universe material is a valuable contribution: it is professionally made material, featuring the leading scientists of today explaining the state of research in their fields of work. The material also includes footage of research facilities, including some which had never before allowed cameras inside. SindyM3 (talk) 08:51, 15 May 2017 (UTC) (Wikimedia Netherlands)

On International Museum Day 18 May ,Joint program Between RMNH,Bhopal and Wikipedians

Dear Friends a joint pilot program is underway between RMNH (Regional Museum of Natural History),Bhopal and Wikipedians,details can be seen here, proccedings will be updated periodically.Suggestions invited,Thanks :-Swapnil.Karambelkar (talk) 14:01, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

P. G. T. Beauregard monument in NOLA

The issue hasn't gotten out of hand enough that I think WP:AN needs to be notified, but I'm not experienced dealing with current events and IP editing at P. G. T. Beauregard related to the removal last night/this morning of a monument to the Confederate General in New Orleans is heating up and I would like to ask that a wider set of eyes keep an eye on the article over the next day or two. Smmurphy(Talk) 17:03, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

Join the next cycle of Wikimedia movement strategy discussions (underway until June 12)

Message is available for translation on Meta-Wiki

The Wikimedia movement strategy core team and working groups have completed reviewing the more than 1800 thematic statements we received from the first discussion. They have identified 5 themes that were consistent across all the conversations - each with their own set of sub-themes. These are not the final themes, just an initial working draft of the core concepts.

You are invited to join the online and offline discussions taking place on these 5 themes. This round of discussions will take place between now and June 12th. You can discuss as many as you like; we ask you to participate in the ones that are most (or least) important to you.

Here are the five themes, each has a page on Meta-Wiki with more information about the theme and how to participate in that theme's discussion:

On the movement strategy portal on Meta-Wiki, you can find more information about each of these themes, their discussions, and how to participate.

Posted by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of the Wikimedia Foundation • Please help translate to other languages. • Get help

21:08, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

+ something added manually by a human in the old school wikitext editor

On this subpage of the village pump, on regular basis, the strategy-related posts look like they were ignored. Maybe most users think there's no need to react here? Everything is clear to everybody? I doubt that, but, well. Anyway, I hope someone will notice and appreciate my message: so far, in the first 10 days of the Cycle 2, we've gathered 80k bytes of comments. For comparison, in the Cycle 1, which lasted a month, 119k were saved. Clearly that's a progress, but I'm asking for more. More opinions, more concerns, more questions, any type of feedback. And remember, no such thing as a stupid question :) SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 22:29, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

Normally, we delete images, after they have been transferred to commons...

Normally, we delete images, after they have been transferred to commons...

After uploading what was then the current version of File:Humbercinema.JPG I realized a good faith contributor had uploaded a brand new image over an earlier, properly licensed image.

I uploaded the earlier image to commons, as well File:Humber cinema at night in 2010.JPG and cropped it File:Humber cinema at night in 2010 (cropped).JPG

The problem is that if the local version is deleted, the attribution and original licensing is obfuscated.

I left a longer explanation at File talk:Humbercinema.JPG, and at User talk:SPKx#Humber Cinema photo.

So, what is the best way to preserve the revision history of this image? Geo Swan (talk) 13:47, 22 May 2017 (UTC)

I do not understand how it is different from any other image moved to Commons. Ruslik_Zero 14:31, 22 May 2017 (UTC)
Some Commons transfer tools copy part of the history over as well. Long term, one of many tasks in Phabricator (the Wikimedia development platform) is to allow a plain move that preserves the history. Dunno if it's being worked on or not. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 14:42, 22 May 2017 (UTC)
  • Good news, but it doesn't help me determine the best way to save th
  • How is it different from other images? Other images had just one rights holder, just one license. In this case EclecticEnnui released the original image under {{cc0}}. SPKx confused matters by not only uploading a (different) brand new image, under the same name, but they released their image under {{cc-sa-3.0}}. Once I realized this I manually corrected the licensing on File:Humber cinema at night in 2010.JPG. Without preserving the actual revision history my manual correction is indistinguishable from license-washing.

    This is a major difference from ordinary transfers to commons. Geo Swan (talk) 19:13, 22 May 2017 (UTC)

    Seems like a history split would be warranted here, so that each upload has its own history associated. It'd result in a bogus attribution of the license text at the second time of upload to SPKx, though. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 19:38, 22 May 2017 (UTC)

Nonsense in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C_(programming_language)

This article says:

"Nearly a superset of C, C++ now supports most of C, with a few exceptions."

Guys, what kind of bu.llcr.ap is this? This statement suggests the compatibility improves over time and that it is a design goal of C++.

This may have been historically true, but now the ways of both languages part more and more nowadays! A non-exhaustive list of features of C introduced in C11 or even C99 deliberately not supported by C++: • struct initialization with designators, • restrict type qualifier, • bounds-checked functions, • thread support (C++11 added threading support, but with a different API!), • VLAs, etc, etc!

Also see this thread in the ISO C++ Standard - Discussion mailing list to see how very wrong you were.

Fix this article!, Okay? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.77.194.225 (talk) 12:51, 23 May 2017 (UTC)

The article has a talk page, I'm sure this discussion belongs there. Also, you seem to have put extra periods in the word "bullcrap". --Golbez (talk) 13:08, 23 May 2017 (UTC)

Golbez my thinking was that talk pages are usually abandoned and hardly anyone lookes at them, so I can post a message there and someone will read it in 10 years maybe if ever. So I thought I’d post it here so at least some1 actually sees my message. On a second thought though, talk page for C seems to be fairly active, so I’m pasting my message there. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.77.194.225 (talk) 16:14, 23 May 2017 (UTC)

Unwanted notifications from foreign-language editions fo wikipedia

HELP

I am receiving notifications (mostly Welcome notices I think) from non-English editions of wikipidia. I have no objection to other editions existing, but I have no wish to be involved in them, and no wish to even receive notifications from them. They create a false sense of urgency for something that will never be relevant to me.

How can I block those notifications? Ideally, how can I pre-emptively prevent any future edits on my user pages in the myriad other language editions, as I have no desire to be notified every time a new language I can't read decides to "welcome" me to their edition of wikipedia. Rhialto (talk) 15:31, 23 May 2017 (UTC)

Start of the 2017 Wikimedia Foundation Funds Dissemination Committee elections

Translations of this message are available on Meta-Wiki.

On behalf of the Wikimedia Foundation Elections Committee, we are pleased to announce that self-nominations are being accepted for the 2017 Wikimedia Foundation Funds Dissemination Committee and Funds Dissemination Committee Ombudsperson elections. Please read the letter from the Wikimedia Foundation calling for candidates at on the 2017 Wikimedia Foundation elections portal.

Funds Dissemination Committee
The Funds Dissemination Committee (FDC) makes recommendations about how to allocate Wikimedia movement funds to eligible entities. There are five positions being filled. More information about this role can be found at the FDC elections page.

Funds Dissemination Committee Ombudsperson
The Funds Dissemination Committee Ombudsperson receives complaints and feedback about the FDC process, investigates complaints at the request of the Board of Trustees, and summarizes the investigations and feedback for the Board of Trustees on an annual basis. One position is being filled. More information about this role can be found at the FDC Ombudsperson elections page.

The candidacy submission phase will last until May 28 (23:59 UTC).

We will also be accepting questions to ask the candidates until May 28. You can submit your questions on Meta-Wiki. Once the questions submission period has ended on May 28, the Elections Committee will then collate the questions for the candidates to respond to.

The goal of this process is to fill the five community-selected seats on the Wikimedia Foundation Funds Dissemination Committee and the community-selected ombudsperson. The election results will be used by the Board itself to make the appointments.

The full schedule for the FDC elections is as follows. All dates are inclusive, that is, from the beginning of the first day (UTC) to the end of the last.

  • May 15 (00:00 UTC) – May 28 (23:59 UTC) – Nominations
  • May 15 – May 28 – Candidates questions submission period
  • May 29 – June 2 – Candidates answer questions
  • June 3 – June 11 – Voting period
  • June 12–14 – Vote checking
  • June 15 – Goal date for announcing election results

More information on this year's elections can be found at the 2017 Wikimedia Foundation elections portal.

Please feel free to post a note about the election on your project's village pump. Any questions related to the election can be posted on the talk page on Meta-Wiki, or sent to the election committee's mailing list, board-elections(at)wikimedia.org.

On behalf of the Election Committee,
Katie Chan, Chair, Wikimedia Foundation Elections Committee
Joe Sutherland, Community Advocate, Wikimedia Foundation

Posted by the MediaWiki message delivery • Translate • Get help

21:05, 23 May 2017 (UTC)

Database suggestions requested for The Wikipedia Library

At The Wikipedia Library we want to make sure that you have the resources you need to write great articles. We've got a great collection of resources (including more than 80,000 journals!) from over 60 partners already available, and have some top priorities that we're working on adding, but we want you to tell us which databases we should be focusing on! If there's a paywalled database/publisher/archive that you wished that you could grab a free account for through TWL for your contributions to Wikipedia, please add a request on our requests page. And if the site is already there, add a +1 and any relevant details about the material you need so that we know there's additional interest - it helps us prioritise and also helps when we pitch the program to them! Thanks, Samwalton9 (WMF) (talk) 19:04, 24 May 2017 (UTC)

Peruvian placenames :: use Quechua/Aymara spelling or Spanish spelling?

== New Peruvian Regulations: Spelling of toponyms in indigenous languages ==
Hi Anthony Appleyard. I would like to inform you about recent Regulations of the Peruvian government concerning toponyms in indigenous languages. According to Decreto Supremo No 004-2016-MC (Supreme Decree), published on July 22, 2016 which approves the Regulations to Ley 29735 (Law 29735 of July 5, 2011), the aim of the Peruvian government is a) to keep the naming of toponyms in the indigenous languages and b) to replace the commonly misspelled indigenous toponyms by their adequate spellings according to the normalized alphabets to gain a unified spelling. The National Geograhic Institue IGN (maps of Peru) is therefore involved. (For details see Reference 1 below.)

These Regulations also touch the naming of Wikipedia articles.

I noticed that you are skeptical about the many requested moves of place names from ‘Quechua spelling to Spanish spelling’. However, these are rather moves from 'correct Quechua spelling' to 'wrong Quechua spelling'. The same occurs with articles names in Aymara. It affects quite a large numbers of articles, mainly concerning the categories of mountains, lakes and now also the archaeological sites of Peru.

However, all these moves are in conflict with the Peruvian law. And obviously all these moves from right to wrong are all in vain and will have to be reverted. The government is determined to fight discrimination against indigenous peoples and their languages resolutely. We should take this into account. Thank you. -- CaTi0604 (talk) 19:22, 24 May 2017 (UTC)

Reference 1: “Artículo 20.- Toponimia y el fortalecimiento del paisaje lingüístico multilingüe
20.1. El Instituto Geográfico Nacional realiza las acciones necesarias que correspondan para mantener las denominaciones toponímicas en lenguas indígenas u originarias en los mapas oficiales del Perú, conforme a los alfabetos normalizados para cada lengua. Progresivamente se debe proponer la adecuación de los nombres de municipios, ciudades, comunidades, barrios, aldeas, caseríos, asentamientos humanos, zonas, calles, lotizaciones, parcelamientos, entre otros, a los alfabetos oficializados por el Ministerio de Educación, con la finalidad de uniformizar las denominaciones empleadas por el Instituto Geográfico Nacional y las demás entidades.”


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

  • Google translation: ":: Reference 1: "Article 20.- Toponymy and the strengthening of the multilingual linguistic landscape :: 20.1. The National Geographic Institute performs the necessary actions that correspond to maintain the names toponímicas in indigenous languages or originating in the official maps of Peru, according to the standard alphabets for each language. The names of municipalities, towns, communities, neighborhoods, villages, settlements, areas, streets, lotizations, subdivisions, among others, must be progressively proposed to the alphabets, which have been formalized by the Ministry of Education, for the purpose of Standardize the names used by the National Geographic Institute and the other entities. ". Anthony Appleyard (talk) 04:55, 25 May 2017 (UTC)
We use the WP:Common name in English as always. Rmhermen (talk) 05:39, 25 May 2017 (UTC)
Agree with Rmhermen. We don't care whether a name is in Spanish, Quechua, German, Polish, or any other language. All we care about is how the name is presented in English language sources. While sometimes we use the "official name", we don't use it if there is a more commonly used name in English language sources (although we should always note the "official name" in the lead... along with other non-official names). In other words... If the government of Peru has made a law about the spelling of certain towns, we don't care unless/until the law is reflected in English language sources.
That said, in most cases, such "official" names changes will begin to be reflected in English language sources... eventually - i.e. English language sources will begin use the new name, and the old name will slowly shift to being less "common". And once enough English language sources reflect the change, Wikipedia can change our titles accordingly. There is no need to rush. Our goal is to have recognizable titles, not "correct" ones. It took us about ten years before we changed "Bombay" to "Mumbai", because it took that long for enough English language sources to reflect the change. I don't know how long it will take for the Peruvian law to be reflected in English language sources (or even if it ever will be), but we can wait until this occurs to change the titles of our articles. Blueboar (talk) 11:20, 25 May 2017 (UTC)
The above really only applies if there is a common name in English-language sources. I suppose that remote places in the highest reaches of the Amazon jungle, or remote places in the Andes, might get coverage only in Spanish or Quechua sources. In such a case, we probably ought to go with the official name, if nothing else because official names are more likely to get used by searchers in general. Nyttend (talk) 22:26, 25 May 2017 (UTC)

Orphaned images of simple logos deemed "non-free"

I have been working on file descriptions and then verifying some logos as too simple or unoriginal for copyright. Some examples are File:Accion U.S. Network Logo Small.png and File:AHA New Logo (Stacked).png. There are more at Category:All orphaned non-free use Wikipedia files and Category:Orphaned non-free use Wikipedia files, where images can be thoroughly checked before deletion. Some more volunteers may be needed please. Thanks. --George Ho (talk) 20:11, 25 May 2017 (UTC)

While there's nothing stopping you from doing this, I have to ask - why go to the effort if you're not going to put them back into the articles (assuming they're not orphaned precisely because their articles have been deleted, which is frequently the case)? Even Commons won't take them if they're unused; they'll just get deleted as out-of-scope there. —Cryptic 20:36, 25 May 2017 (UTC)
Some of them are lower-format versions of superior versions. There is the PNG version of File:Accion U.S. Network logo.svg, though the PNG one came earlier. As for others... well, may or may not have educational value, even when there's not one article related to a logo. Commons can be a database of files... as long as they have educational value. That's just my analysis. --George Ho (talk) 21:39, 25 May 2017 (UTC)
– Also, I have to manually transfer such files to Commons, which is... more time consuming. Semi-automated tools to transfer files to Commons... I don't know which ones are more efficient and handier. --George Ho (talk) 21:40, 25 May 2017 (UTC)
– Almost forgot, Cryptic, most orphaned non-free files get deleted after seven days being unused. --George Ho (talk) 22:21, 25 May 2017 (UTC)
Lower format versions should be PROD'ed or sent to FFD as obsolete. That is standard protocol here. Unused logos have zero educational value as logos in general are only used for identification purposes. If a logo is unused it should be PROD'ed or sent to FFD as well. As for non-free logos, all non-free logos that are not used in any main space article for seven days (after tagging) are deleted. That is policy. --Majora (talk) 22:28, 25 May 2017 (UTC)
I already know that, but thanks anyway. BTW, some other files get orphaned due to either vandalism or technical errors. I restructured a file page and then reinserted the image of a boxer. Also, I found out why a film poster got orphaned, so I fixed an infobox template. --George Ho (talk) 22:38, 25 May 2017 (UTC)
Initially, I was thinking just logos when I started this, but now I mention non-logo files. George Ho (talk) 22:42, 25 May 2017 (UTC)

BAG nomination

Please note a nomination for Bot Approvals Group membership is active. Feel free to comment here. ~ Rob13Talk 22:45, 26 May 2017 (UTC)

"Cahen"

On the "Cahen" page the description of one of the people mentioned says: "Cahen Wheeler, (born 15th July, 2000) to Welsh boy (NOT from bargoed), a true mathematician" Is it a vandalism? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 190.174.66.42 (talk) 05:07, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

I wouldn't call it vandalism, but someone added non-encyclopedic content. I've reverted.-gadfium 05:57, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

Translating Ibero-America is back! Come and join us :)

Dear all ,
Hope this message finds you well!
Again this year 2017 the Iberocoop network is launching the editing contest "Translating Ibero-American" aiming to position the Ibero-american culture outside our borders :)
You can find the contest page here
We hope you can join us!
Hugs--Anna Torres (WMAR) (talk) 20:02, 1 June 2017 (UTC)

Merger proposal during AfD

I often see AfDs with lots of !votes for merge or redirect to some other article. If someone proposes a merger while the AfD is happening, what then? It sort of splits the discussion. Has this been discussed? Do we have some guidelines on this? Anna Frodesiak (talk) 03:01, 2 June 2017 (UTC)

Many AFDs end up with "merge" as a result. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Administrator instructions covers how "merge" results are to be implemented. --Jayron32 03:04, 2 June 2017 (UTC)
Hi Jayron32. But what about when AfD and merger discussions happene concurrently and both are going in opposite directions? Anna Frodesiak (talk) 03:18, 2 June 2017 (UTC)

And sometimes there is a concurrent page move discussion and merger discussion.

This example shows that: A May 15, 2016 page move request then a May 16, 2017 merger proposal. They were both ongoing at the same time and it caused a bit of confusion as the page move wanted A --> B while the merger wanted B --> A. Do we need some sort of protocol? Linking to each other so users are aware? Making them subsequent (if needed) and not concurrent? Anna Frodesiak (talk) 03:18, 2 June 2017 (UTC)

The protocol is covered at WP:FORUMSHOP; though not explicitly. Best practice is to merge the discussions in some way. --Jayron32 03:21, 2 June 2017 (UTC)
Some way? Ah, and therein lies the rub. (I always like saying that, but am not sure when it applies.) Anna Frodesiak (talk) 03:22, 2 June 2017 (UTC)

I can't speak about which direction these are going, but Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Covfefe incident and Talk:Donald Trump on social media are happening right now. Anna Frodesiak (talk) 03:22, 2 June 2017 (UTC)

In my opinion: If this were handled soon after the RM discussion opened, a close on grounds of FORUMSHOP, with an explicit link to the AFD, would have been appropriate. However, with this many votes (including 2 admins), it's too late to do this. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 05:02, 6 June 2017 (UTC)
Hi עוד מישהו. Certainly for the example pointed out above, it is too late. But what about some way of handing this in the future? Anna Frodesiak (talk) 08:31, 6 June 2017 (UTC)
If the merge request was madew after the AFD, then simply close the move request with a link to the AfD. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 14:54, 6 June 2017 (UTC)
I like that idea, but would that be allowed? Anna Frodesiak (talk) 19:18, 6 June 2017 (UTC)
I think that we can IAR in this case, considering that it's close to Speedy keep #2 (since forum shopping is disruptive to the processes here), as well as the "wrong forum" rukle (since once the page has been nominated for AfD, merging it should be discussed there). עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 21:33, 6 June 2017 (UTC)
Hi עוד מישהו. I'm thinking of future cases only. So yes? Would one get yelled at for quickly (before too many !votes start to land) closing the second or third item and posting a link to the first item as the centralized/first place for discussion? Anna Frodesiak (talk) 06:31, 8 June 2017 (UTC)
I have seen discussions at WP:AN being closed quickly for reqsons such as FORUMSHOPPING, never seen it at merge requests. The only real test for IAR is to do it and see how others respond - altyhough it won't go beyond yelling and possibly asking you to undo the closure. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 13:24, 8 June 2017 (UTC)
An additional thing you can do is put a note at the top of each requesting a single closer preform a unified close of both. A good closer can hopefully find a reasonable combined outcome, even if the two conflict. Alsee (talk) 11:43, 7 June 2017 (UTC)
Hi Alsee. Wouldn't that be fixing it after it was broken? Anna Frodesiak (talk) 06:31, 8 June 2017 (UTC)
Anna Frodesiak, preventing the problem in the first place is of course best. I was just trying to add an option to clean up a mess that has already formed. Your comment at 03:18, 2 June appeared to suggest two well developed discussions that had effectively formed consensuses in opposite directions. If it is a contentious matter, I can picture a battle breaking out over which of the two discussions should be squashed. Alsee (talk) 12:11, 8 June 2017 (UTC)
Of course dear Alsee. I am sorry. I did not mean to appear ungrateful. Yes, indeed a way to nip it in the bud is best. As for the current thing, discussing how it should be handled here may not be best. Let's let that one happen as it will. You are welcome, of course, to post at one of those pages, but I fear it too late to help that case.
So, the future: Can we, if we see a second item started, quickly close it and send people to the first item? Would that put all heaven in a rage? Would that get us all hiding under the proverbial sofa? (There is no proverbial sofa. Sofas aren't used in proverbs.) :) Anna Frodesiak (talk) 12:33, 8 June 2017 (UTC)
Yes, closing a discussion and linking to the other one normally works pefectly. It's a well established practice for merging a split discussion. The more swiftly you catch&close the second discussion the better.
I'm sorry if I created confusion. I have a habit of considering worst case scenarios. Heh. The idea of "requesting a single closer preform a unified close of both" should only be done as a last resort. It would be an attempt to salvage the situation if you have two large, well developed, conflicting discussions, and people start squabbling over how to fix it. Alsee (talk) 13:41, 8 June 2017 (UTC)
Adding ping for Anna Frodesiak. Alsee (talk) 13:43, 8 June 2017 (UTC)
Hi Alsee.
Hearing "...well established practice..." is music to my ears. Good!
And you didn't create any confusion. I am in a state of confusion that was created at birth. Bad DNA or something. They explained but I was all confused.
Anyhow, now I know what to do (or recommend) in advance. That's good, because, like you said "...the more swiftly..." Best wishes and thank you!!! Anna Frodesiak (talk) 17:01, 8 June 2017 (UTC)
Anna, it's reasonably well-established, but so is the practice of complaining that the "wrong" discussion was closed. And – well, perhaps some editors are perfect, but I think that most of us have accidentally overlooked pointers to other discussions at least on occasion, and if we usually hang out on one page but not the other, then inertia becomes an issue. It can be hard to actually get a discussion moved, even if people aren't upset about it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:02, 11 June 2017 (UTC)
Hi WhatamIdoing. Wouldn't the first discussion be the wrong one to close, and concurrent ones discussing the same thing that were started after be the right one(s)? And if there were 2 !votes, it could seem reasonable, but if there were dozens, should that ever be closed mid-way? Anna Frodesiak (talk) 23:08, 11 June 2017 (UTC)
I can imagine all of these arguments, plus more, in both directions. "Mine was first – close the other one" followed by "Mine is the current one – stop yours!", and so forth. I recommend using your best judgment, being gentle with people who aren't paying attention, and possibly copying/pasting one discussion into the other (ideally so that it pings everyone whose comments you've moved). WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:30, 11 June 2017 (UTC)
Fair enough. I'll take it case-by-case. And I'm not sure about copy pasting being a good plan, and I doubt if it would ping more than a few people, and it may ping nobody. Best, Anna Frodesiak (talk) 23:38, 11 June 2017 (UTC)

Invitation to test and discuss the Echo notifications blacklist

Hello,

To answer a request from the 2016 Community Wishlist for more user control of notifications, the Anti-harassment tools team is exploring changes that allow for adding a per-user blacklist to Echo notifications. This feature allows for more fine tuned control over notifications and could curb harassing notifications. We invite you to test the new feature on beta and then discuss it with us. For the Anti-harassment tools team SPoore (WMF) (talk) , Community Advocate, Community health initiative (talk) 15:25, 2 June 2017 (UTC)

When a WP language version is (mostly) inactive

Prompted by this post to ANI, I looked at the Romani Wikipedia and noticed that it seems to be fairly inactive. What is the best advice to give to people who discover abuse - in particular blatant abuse as reported in the linked post - at an inactive language version? Is it the stewards that step in? (I don't actually know whether there are active admins at rmy.wp, but I'm guessing that there may not be a lot of them given that there is a banner at the top of the project's pages calling for a revival of Romani Wikipedia, if interested speakers of the language can be found.)

Sorry if this question is misplaced, but hopefully there's somebody who can at least point me at a relevant guideline :-) --bonadea contributions talk 09:49, 7 June 2017 (UTC)

@Bonadea: Not sure of the best place, but it's certainly not here, which is solely concerned with the English Wikipedia. Discussion about Wikipedia in other languages (where posting on that other language Wikipedia is impractical) is normally done at meta:, and I think that you could start at m:Talk:Language committee. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 10:00, 7 June 2017 (UTC)
bonadea, global or cross-wiki issues are handled at Meta wiki. Their "Village Pumps" is at Meta:Babel. Meta:Wikimedia Forum is probably the more appropriate page. If Romani is defunct, or admins are unavailable or there is any sort of systemic dysfunction, that's where to raise the issue. Alsee (talk) 11:58, 7 June 2017 (UTC)
I would guess that if you find abuse, especially with inactive or small wikis, you should contact one of the meta:Stewards. --Izno (talk) 12:18, 7 June 2017 (UTC)
Belated thanks to all. I knew that en.wp is not the place to report abuse at other wp versions, obviously, but the IP who made the report did not know it and I thought it would be more helpful to find out where they should go to report it. Thank you Alsee for adding that info to the ANI thread! Cheers, --bonadea contributions talk 18:52, 7 June 2017 (UTC)

The Plot to Hack America and Donald Trump series

Should the article The Plot to Hack America make use of the template {{Donald Trump series}} ?

See Request for Comment, at Talk:The_Plot_to_Hack_America#RfC_about_the_Donald_Trump_series. Sagecandor (talk) 05:37, 8 June 2017 (UTC)

Disambig for topics not covered on Wikipedia?

I just noticed that we have articles on Kaushik Narshibhai Patel and Timil Kaushik Patel, both of whom (if Wikipedia is to be believed -- I've actually never heard of either of them) essentially share a name with a convicted murderer who doesn't appear to be mentioned anywhere on Wikipedia.

I'm a little concerned that crime junkies who don't know anything about cricket might accidentally think that one or the other of the above cricketers, both apparently LPs, is the same person as the child-murderer, also probably an LP. I'm a crime junkie who doesn't know anything about cricket and I quickly figured out what was going on, but I'm also a Wikipedian with above-average knowledge of how WP:NATHLETE and WP:NCRIME work, which probably can't be said for most of our readers.

Is there precedent for some kind of "Not to be confused with such-and-such person about whom we don't have an article" headnote?

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 11:33, 8 June 2017 (UTC)

Well, the guideline says not to (WP:NOARTICLE) so it is actually already covered. Whether it's a good idea is a different question. However, if the alternative subject is not notable enough for inclusion, why mention him at all? Should we place hatnotes on all articles of people with common names because there are certainly enough convicted criminals with the same name ("This John Smith is not a murderer, rapist, arsonist etc. but there is a guy with the same name you might have heard of")? Or can't we trust our readers to assume that the subject of the article is not a criminal if the article contains no information about a crime? Regards SoWhy 12:15, 8 June 2017 (UTC)
I don't think there's much you can or should do in that sort of situation. Writing "this person is not a murder/rapist/pedophile/terrorist" in someone's biography is severely prejudicial. It can consciously or subconsciously plant that idea, where it didn't previously exist. If we were to dig up every name of non-notable every person in history who committed some crime or scandalous act, we would wind up with one or multiple name-matches for a huge number of biographies. Alsee (talk) 12:44, 8 June 2017 (UTC)
Thing is, though, the criminal might well not be non-notable, while the cricketers might well be. NATHLETE is infamously loose, while we are extremely strict about standalone articles on criminals (oftentimes what would essentially be a biographical on a criminal is deliberately written to be about the crime, even when said crime does meet the much stricter standards of NCRIME). BLP also makes it a lot easier to write about athletes who are peripherally notable and have not been the source of any significant controversy than about violent criminals who don't merit encyclopedia articles but whose presence in news media means their names are likely at least as well known as said athletes. You may well be right that writing "Not to be confused with..." could very well create that association needlessly. I'm just putting this out there to see what people think; I'm not actually considering editing the articles to this effect -- if I did I would just do it. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 12:58, 8 June 2017 (UTC)

WP:Signpost's newest issue

News update: The WP:Signpost just published the newest issue after over three-month hiatus. Read it all yourselves. --George Ho (talk) 02:47, 9 June 2017 (UTC)

Curious about "probably good edits"

Hi. Long-term RC patroller here. Along with options showing and hiding registered/unregistered users edits there's a new option on the Recent changes page about hiding and showing "probably good edits". I'm curious about what the difference is that makes an edit a 'probably good edit' compared to one that isn't. Thanks. Minima© (talk) 21:51, 9 June 2017 (UTC)

It was originally called "Hide good edits".[13] See mw:ORES review tool which still uses the old name. Users who enable "New filters for edit review" at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-betafeatures don't see this option but instead get more detailed options. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:49, 9 June 2017 (UTC)
Minima, the edits are examined by a machine-learning system (a simple AI). The strongest factor for a potentially bad edit is simply that it was made by an IP. It also looks for profanity, words like 'gay' or 'faggot', strings of repeated letters, all caps, blanking sections, WP:puffery words, words like "I", various kinds of wikitext-markup changes, and tons of other stuff. I think it can spot if it was previously reverted. Basically a "probably good edit" is one that has lots of good features and no bad ones. For example an edit that contains a <ref> probably gets rated more positively. Cited info, from a user experienced enough to use a ref, is much less likely to be damaging. However the software can't understand the meaning of a sentence, so it can't tell if the info is biased or wrong. Alsee (talk) 08:00, 10 June 2017 (UTC)
Thanks for the detailed reasoning. I understand that it isn't perfect, but it probably is a better option to use to patrol certain edits if Cluebot isn't working. Minima© (talk) 13:03, 10 June 2017 (UTC)

Anon editor making small changes to Hebrew text

212.198.122.22 (talk · contribs) is making large numbers of small changes to Hebrew text. See Special:Contributions/212.198.122.22. There are no edit comments. Someone who reads Hebrew should check these. Could be improvement, vandalism, or some dispute over Hebrew spelling. Thanks. John Nagle (talk) 20:15, 11 June 2017 (UTC)

Volunteer closed RFC and refuses to explain why

Recently I had an RFC which was closed (inappropriately I feel) by an inexperienced volunteer. When I went to the volunteers page and asked (very politely I might add) for an explanation, I was at first told "No - I see no need". Upon further inquiry, the volunteer agreed to explain the reason for his closure, and then promptly disregarded his commitment to do so. Further entreaties were met with radio silence. Here is a link to said discussion - is this how volunteers are supposed to behave when asked a simple question that would take less than 5 minutes to answer? 2600:1012:B068:9A8C:51CA:D45C:30DF:BD0E (talk) 00:03, 12 June 2017 (UTC)

IP, could you please link to the RFC discussion and not just to the user's talk page? Oiyarbepsy (talk) 00:27, 12 June 2017 (UTC)
Please disregard - situation has been handled. 2600:1012:B05A:3A60:CCDD:CB0D:4EA6:40F2 (talk) 00:58, 12 June 2017 (UTC)

Anti-Harassment Tools prioritization

Community health initiative
Helping the Wikimedia volunteer community to reduce the level of harassment and disruptive behavior on our projects.

Good Tuesday, Wikipedia!

I'd like to invite you to participate in a discussion about how the Anti-Harassment Tools team at the WMF is prioritizing our work, and how you can help. Join us at Wikipedia talk:Community health initiative on English Wikipedia#Anti-Harassment Tools prioritization.

Thank you, and I hope to see you all there!

— TBolliger (WMF) (talk) 20:44, 13 June 2017 (UTC) on behalf of the Anti-Harassment Tools team

Two non-English Wikinews proposed for closure

Two non-English Wikinews sites are currently proposed at Meta-wiki for closure: Norwegian and Albanian. You are invited to discuss those separately. --George Ho (talk) 08:18, 17 June 2017 (UTC)

Glimpses of paradise : the quest for the beautiful parrakeet

Does anyone this book (pdf, epub)? @Casliber:? OJJ (talk) 10:46, 17 June 2017 (UTC)

@OJJ: I had it, I read it and I sold it to a second-hand bookshop. The story of the Paradise parrot is too depressing for me I'm afraid...Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 14:59, 19 June 2017 (UTC)
@Casliber: OK. --OJJ (talk) 08:25, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

Pontus (disambiguation)

Move article Pontus (disambiguation) → Pontus--SrpskiAnonimac (talk) 21:05, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

@SrpskiAnonimac: This is the wrong venue, please see WP:MOVE; and if you need to make a formal request, do so at Talk:Pontus (disambiguation) using the method shown at WP:RM. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 07:34, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

RfC about the author credits of first edition in first sentence in book article

RfC about the author credits of first edition in first sentence in a book article.

Please see Request for Comment, at Talk:Trump_Tower:_A_Novel#RfC_about_the_author_credits_of_first_edition_in_first_sentence. Sagecandor (talk) 02:38, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

The main page talk template.

Its confuse (for newbies who go there expecting to be here). It would be more helpful if it followed this structure:


Welcome! This page is for discussing the contents of the main page. It isn't for general questions unrelated to the main page or for the addition of content to Wikipedia articles. For questions about using and contributing to Wikipedia 

   To submit an article or redirect, please use the article wizard
   The Teahouse: to ask your first basic questions about contributing to Wikipedia
   The help desk: to ask technical questions about using Wikipedia (how to edit, images, categories etc.)
   The village pump: to ask questions about Wikipedia policies, guidelines or operations
   The reference desk: to ask questions about subjects other than Wikipedia (including topics covered in the articles contained therein)
   The administrators' noticeboard: to report a problem (vandalism, etc.)
   Question help: to find out more about where to ask questions or make comments on Wikipedia

To submit content to a main page section 

   Main page errors: to report problems about current/upcoming main page content
   In the news candidates: to suggest an item for the In the news section
   Did you know suggestions: to propose an item for the Did you know section
   Selected anniversaries: to add an anniversary to the On this day section
   Today's featured article requests: to suggest a featured article for the Today's featured article section
   Today's featured list submissions: to propose a featured list for the Today's featured list section
   Featured picture candidates: Images appearing as Today's featured picture are selected roughly according to "the order in which they were" promoted to featured status
   Wikipedia languages: to propose a change to the list of Wikipedias in other languages
   Main page FAQ: to learn more about the main page

(Click here to report errors on the main page)

If you have a question related to the main page, please search the archives first to see if it's been answered before:

--Neurorebel (talk) 03:02, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

Exploring how the Edit filter can be used to combat harassment

Hello!

I’d like to invite you to participate in a discussion about how the Edit filter (also known as AbuseFilter) can potentially be used to combat harassment. The Anti-Harassment Tools team is looking into improving performance and adding functionality and we need your input to make our work successful.

Join the conversation at Wikipedia talk:Community health initiative on English Wikipedia#Exploring how the Edit filter can be used to combat harassment. I hope to see y’all there!

— TBolliger (WMF) (talk) 23:17, 21 June 2017 (UTC) on behalf of the Anti-Harassment Tools team

Hacking

Someone from Belgium tried to hack one of my on-line accounts that is associated with my Wikipedia username, a couple of days ago. The account is secure, but I thought it worth mentioning in case this is part of a bigger attack. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 19:27, 23 June 2017 (UTC).

I'm not saying you are wrong to be vigilant, but one of my accounts was attacked 215 times yesterday from every corner of the world, and that's only one of the many channels of attack used. reduced by automatic countermeasures and some quite large permanent blacklists which block entire troublesome nations. That's a fairly quiet day from my perspective; it would need to rise into the thousands before it surprised me. Murph9000 (talk) 19:40, 23 June 2017 (UTC)

Opinions on task forces? (Signpost request)

The Signpost is looking to publish an article on the state of task forces (or subprojects of other projects) and issues they face in 2017. Would anyone here be interested in giving us their thoughts/opinions, to be included in the piece? (It doesn't need to be long – just a paragraph or two will be fine, unless you want to write more.) If so, can you please leave a link to your submission at WP:Wikipedia Signpost/Newsroom/Submissions § The state of taskforces in 2017. Thank you, - Evad37 [talk] 03:04, 25 June 2017 (UTC)

Search results from selected sister projects now active

Today I found out that search results from selected sister projects—Wiktionary, Wikibooks, Wikivoyage, Wikiquote, and Wikisource—are now active. Even I discovered that it happened two days ago. I typed in "singing", clicked "containing" option, and found out the results from selected sister projects. Too bad for other sister projects, like Commons and Wikinews, whose newsroom has articles pending review. But at least we have great news. See more at the archived RfC discussion.

For practice, I went to my own preferences, click "Gadgets" tab, and then clicked "Disable the suggestions dropdown-lists of the search fields". Therefore, I can see the results from sister projects more and more with the "dropdown-lists"/autocomplete system disable. I don't know when I can re-enable the system as it doesn't direct me automatically to see those results.

Thoughts about this? --George Ho (talk) 18:42, 17 June 2017 (UTC)

@Blueboar: As much as a week? The complaints started several hours ago. -- John of Reading (talk) 20:27, 17 June 2017 (UTC)
I made a note there saying that enabling/disabling such feature can be done at WP:VPPR. Pinging Shearonink, BlackcurrantTea, and Lugnuts to this thread. George Ho (talk) 20:56, 17 June 2017 (UTC)
The matter can be also read: Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 154#Sister projects search results. I also posted an announcenment at WP:Community bulletin board. --George Ho (talk) 21:11, 17 June 2017 (UTC)

Right now, the option to disable/opt-out search results from sister projects is proposed. George Ho (talk) 06:13, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

Update: The opt-out gadget option is available per discussion. You may go to user preferences and then click that option. --George Ho (talk) 17:13, 26 June 2017 (UTC)

Note: Per RfC discussion, there was "no consensus" to include search results from Wikibooks. Therefore, I filed a task at Phabricator. --George Ho (talk) 01:01, 23 June 2017 (UTC)

Appropriateness of activity title

The title "Wiki loves Indian defence services" took me a bit aback. It was a project back in March (now archived) with notices delivered by messages like this: [14] . Obviously a multi-cultural activity such as this doesn't want to give the impression of "loving" any one country's military. Is there a policy/guideline/consensus that would govern this kind of thing? - Bri (talk) 00:44, 29 June 2017 (UTC)

The Wiki Loves ... campaigns are done all over the world for all sorts of organizations or groups. I don't see a problem with it myself, and I think it's pretty obviously just branding to whoever is looking. (Also, Wiki not Wiki(m|p)pedia) -- Ajraddatz (talk) 04:42, 29 June 2017 (UTC)

Hello my name is Neurorebel

Moved from WP:VPp

I have been studying English for thirty years... This is much more a technical question but I know that the tecnologic department only worries about informatic issues so im forced to submit this here. Thge question is, can you understand me? As non native English speaker (my mother language is spanish), someone argued against me lack of competence in English [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Beyond_My_Ken&diff=778970258&oldid=778969517}. This user was Beyond My Ken, and possibly he is right but out of messure and unfair as he told me that my English is very bad, i dont feel offended with this though one consequence is im being actually handcoughed in enwiki.. Concisely, Beyondmyken is not lying when he says that I have errors when using (writting specially) the language of the natives but neither is doing fair on me. I myself also notice this errors but BeyondMyken is not fair because they are those that are so silly that deeply embarrass me being that i fail far from bad ortography and bad conjugation, may be you find some typos in this text. Which i point is my domain of this language is rusted besides of being very poor and hence they result from confusion besides ignorance, I use English so often that sometimes I cant notice the difference with spanish and I need to think to know in which language am I reading some text. May be you can note that I dont have the classic errors that a foreign speaker ussually comits, such as misconjungating or adapting words from spanish resulting in uncomprensible and inexistent in English, or a very limited vocabulary. Very at last i represent the group at all when minimally my search for common or uncommon latin roots for unknown words fail and generally those are cases where i take too much risk. Beyondmyken arged thatI dont know to use contractions so if you rather prefer a spanish tilde(´) besides nothing between or the propper appostrophe (is it this? "'") it´s ok for me because I use different keyboards and Imk not always sure where the apostrophe is, when i used windows it was alt+39 but not anymore my case, you will agree that this are minor errors Like writting English besides english, I all my life have written the latter as i was taught. The center of all of this is that I effectively need an intensive course on wikiversity for reviewing conjugation and prepositions, lately "in" and "on" are being the same for me and I have even written "it dont" besides "it doesnt", also confusion with have and do (not with "make" and "do"), as I said, errors are there but they are fruit of confusion rather than ignorance. Learning latin even didnt help me improoving, by the contrary replaced the space that English once occuppied. What I really want is your concensus about my competence in English by means of being able to at least create short articles and edit in the same manner. --Neurorebel (talk) 23:23, 20 June 2017 (UTC) P.D.:I havent used any corrector this time, Im sorry

Neurorebel, I am not a very prominent editor on Wikipedia but, for what it's worth, I (as a native English speaker) have been a professional editor of non-fiction periodicals and school textbooks.
You ask about your level of competence in written English. A feature of the English language is that it's possible to make a great many mistakes and still be understood, while falling far short of the quality expected of a competent writer. This appears to apply to your written English at present.
In your query above, there are so many mistakes in spelling, punctuation, grammar, vocabulary and layout, as well as many typographical errors, that I'm not even going to try to count them; certainly there are many more than one per line of text.
In my opinion (with which others may disagree), you are generally able to make yourself understood, and could usefully contribute material and sources to Talk/Discussion pages so that other, competent English users could add them to articles. However, you are not sufficiently competent in written English as to be able to add text to Article pages without making very many errors. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.9.80.133 (talk) 05:22, 23 June 2017 (UTC)
The problem with posting to talk pages is that a huge proportion of talk page posts never receive a response. This might be a waste of Neurorebel's time, unless they can find someone who would agree to follow-up all their posts. Adrian J. Hunter(talk•contribs) 12:50, 28 June 2017 (UTC)
Thanks for worrying about my time Adrian J. Hunter; discussion pages in enwiki surprisingly work fine when compared to other wikis but dependind on ther kind of article they are more or less dummys--Neurorebel (talk) 13:30, 29 June 2017 (UTC)
Don't worry. I directed him to Wikiversity and Wikibooks, both of which can help him improve his English. I even told him about v:Writing and v:Typing. --George Ho (talk) 05:42, 23 June 2017 (UTC)
Hello Neurorebel ! I'm pretty much like you, or was five-six years ago (my native language is Scanian - Swedish). I read this at ANI (wasn't it ?). Ken had some valid points about your grammar there. But in general was it a bit exaggerated criticism. Especially for a talk-page. However I will begin with first pointing out to you, that written English, including grammar, is different from both understanding and speaking. Professional translation is mostly done from the foreign language to the native one. Keep that in mind. But my main advice to you is - don't use too complicated language too early. And if - be absolutely certain. Keep it simple in the beginning - and as you have 30 years of experience of the English language, I'm certain you will improve and grow here quite rapidly. Perhaps you should also begin with articles related to your part of the word, at least for a while. Good luck ! Boeing720 (talk) 02:45, 28 June 2017 (UTC)
After having read your entire text also here, do I though wonder - do you master Part of speech in your native language ? If not so, perhaps you should begin there for a time instead. I understand what you want to write, but must agree with the IP user as well as with Ken, about your current written English. And don't use so long sentences all the time. Prepositions must often be learned in their contexts, and that's the case with all languages that uses prepositions. Here is English however "kinder" than what for instance German are, just as with articles. And the Spanish grammar on verbs is far more complicated than in any Germanic language, so that part ought to be easy to improve. The real strength of the English language isn't its grammar but the huge amounts of synonyms, often with a tiny difference of significance. Have you really studied English, like been thought the language at increasingly higher levels for a duration of thirty years ? I strongly doubt that, sorry to say. I should say your self rate ought to be "2" - not the required "3". So, stick to a few minor and uncomplicated sentences now and then, while studying English grammar properly. And try new skills at talk-pages initially. Until you not only understand what you read, but also the structure, grammar and spelling for written English. It might be harder than you expect. But see if you can surprise us later someday. Boeing720 (talk) 03:58, 28 June 2017 (UTC)
@Boeing 720: My spanish redaction skills neither are the best, even sometimes i think that i express myself better in English than in Spanish, may be because the more dense gradient of synonyms you mentioned.

Respect to my official academical knowledge of English, I studied English in my college through high school from first year in college to 4th grade high school, that is from my five years old to my fifteen years old, they are ten years of curricular studies in total. Since then i kept using English for music, comics, reading, Intyernet, chatting, watching movies, etc, occasions when I need subtitles for speech are rare.--Neurorebel (talk) 13:30, 29 June 2017 (UTC)

Neurorebel there are many ways to contribute that don't require native-level grammar, such as fixing broken links, fixing links to disambiguation pages, categorizing uncategorized articles, and correcting typographical errors. Adrian J. Hunter(talk•contribs) 12:50, 28 June 2017 (UTC)
That's also correct. Yes. But given thirty years of understanding English very well, perhaps study some grammar might be helpful. Boeing720 (talk) 17:14, 28 June 2017 (UTC)
Surely Boing720, I think its about time and laziness, being that its really time to do a review of basic things I still dont get enough time in which I could be concentrated enough to not messing it even more It is about basic things that I mastered som day and that i lost because of lack of use and also excess of confidence. I dont want that this situation to be detentive (sic) from working here though that is that im carrying the error.

ALSO i WONDER COULD IT BE THAT ENGLISH CHANGED THAT MUCH IN THIS LAST TEN YEARS?--Neurorebel (talk) 13:30, 29 June 2017 (UTC)--Neurorebel (talk) 13:30, 29 June 2017 (UTC)

COH Challenge

Dear Wikipedians,

Between 1 July and 31 July, Wikimedia Sverige and UNESCO co-arranges the second writing challenge of the Connected Open Heritage project, the COH Challenge.

As part of the Connected Open Heritage project a large number of images under a free license have been uploaded, e.g. of world heritage sites and of important archaeological and built heritage sites in Syria, Mexico, Cyprus and Sweden (the images can be found here). The purpose of this challenge is to get as many of these images as possible to be used in Wikipedia articles (however, at most five images – with caption – per article).

You can find the participation page here, where you also register your points. Participate in any language you’d like! The winner receives as well the honor as great prizes.

Best, Eric Luth (WMSE) (talk) 11:25, 29 June 2017 (UTC)

Notification for a survey

Hi English Wikipedia editors. I'm reaching out to you to notify you that we (Wikimedia Foundation Research team) will launch a 3-question survey in 13 languages on Thursday, June 22, to learn more about Wikipedia readers (think of readers as anyone who visits a page on Wikipedia, so an editor reading a page is also considered a reader). The survey will go live on 2017-06-22 and is planned to stop after a week. The current sampling rate for enwiki is set to 1 out of 40. You can track the task at T168197. Some more information about this research: an announcement on wikimedia-l and the list of participating languages. If you're interested to discuss this research further or if you have questions, please ping me. If you're interested to be the point of contact between us and your community, please ping me as well. Otherwise, please know that we have a close eye on the survey and we expect everything to go smoothly from the technical point of view as we're repeating what we have done a few times last year and tested it in a few languages in 2017 as well. Thanks! :) --LZia (WMF) (talk) 09:11, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

Hi all. This survey run for a week and it ended at around 2320 UTC on 2017-06-29. We have received more than 23,000 responses from English Wikipedia and we will start analyzing the results on 2017-07-03. We will update the status when more information becomes available. Thanks! :) --LZia (WMF) (talk) 23:44, 29 June 2017 (UTC)

Would the WIP user page inside of my Sandbox be considered promotional?

I was recently blocked for having a promotional user page, and I wanted to put it back up with some edits so it would less promotional. You can find my sandbox here. You can discuss any changes on the changes on the Sandbox talk page.

Thanks, Upsidedown Keyboard (talk) 16:01, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

I would agree that seems promotional... since it gives the impression that you want Wikipedia users to visit another wiki. It isn't clear whether this "other wiki" exists or not. Blueboar (talk) 16:21, 30 June 2017 (UTC)
Direct quote from first sentience from the introduction: "Wikipædia Internetica is a fictional Internet-based organization used to represent the Wikipedia user Upsidedown Keyboard (formerly Wikipædia Internetica), and any other users he/she may collaborate with." Upsidedown Keyboard (talk) 18:37, 30 June 2017 (UTC)
Clearly WP:NOTHERE applies. Theroadislong (talk) 19:20, 30 June 2017 (UTC)
Arguably WP:FAKEARTICLE could also apply, but it is clearly not acceptable because such "jokes" have no place anywhere on Wikipedia. User:Wikipaedia Internetica is (properly) a redirect to User:Upsidedown Keyboard as a result of a change of username. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 19:44, 30 June 2017 (UTC)
Alright, I guess it wont become my User page. Thanks for your input. Upsidedown Keyboard (talk) 19:55, 30 June 2017 (UTC)
Really, this seems bizarre!? Blocked, for that?! Just ask the user to add a {{Userpage}} and the entire issue goes away. Seems like a major overreaction... Carl Fredrik talk 20:33, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

Join the strategy discussion. We’ll talk about the challenges identified by research

One of many related in-person discussions. Iberoconf, Buenos Aires

Hi! I'm a Polish Wikipedian currently working for Wikimedia Foundation. My task is to ensure that all online communities are aware of the movement-wide strategy discussion.

Between March and May, members of many communities shared their opinions on what they want the Wikimedia movement to build or achieve. (The report written after the first round of discussions is here, and a similar report after the second round will be available soon.) At the same time, designated people did a research outside of our movement. They:

  • talked with more than 150 experts and partners from technology, knowledge, education, media, entrepreneurs, and other sectors,
  • researched potential readers and experts in places where Wikimedia projects are not well known or used,
  • researched by age group in places where Wikimedia projects are well known and used.

Now, the research conclusions are published, and the third round is going to begin. Our task is to discuss the identified challenges and think how we want to change or align to changes happening around us. Each week, a new challenge will be posted. The discussions will take place until the end of July. Literally all of you are invited!

If you want to ask a question, ping me or read the FAQ. SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 22:13, 2 July 2017 (UTC)

WMF logo changed to black [15]

Moved from WP:VPP

There was a short discussion on Jimbo's talk page here, and again, here. Maybe the community does not care? Realityornot (talk) 02:52, 28 June 2017 (UTC)

Off-topic, this page is for discussing policies related to the English Wikipedia. — xaosflux Talk 02:55, 28 June 2017 (UTC)
Realityornot and Xaosflux, may I move the whole thread to WP:VPM please? Thanks. --George Ho (talk) 04:12, 28 June 2017 (UTC)
@George Ho: fine by me. — xaosflux Talk 07:47, 28 June 2017 (UTC)
This is not really a community decision, even remotely; the WMF's policies (branding included) are the exclusive purview of its board of directors and staff. It's an entirely separate entity from any particular Wikipedia or other Wikimedia project and the communities of those projects do not have any say on the WMF's internal processes or the manner in which they present themselves as a charitable organization. There have been times that Wikipedia/project communities have thrown their weight around to protest WMF policies that substantially affect that encyclopedia or project, but there is no such impact here and it would be nothing short of absurd to try to force the issue over something so superficial and manifestly outside our community's scope. The best possible response that could be hoped for would be that, when we're told to take a hike and mind our own business, they do it politely. And I gotta tell you, if I worked for the PR department for a nonprofit corporation, and community volunteers from a project that the corporation helped fund and administer began telling me how to do my business, I'd be fighting the impulse to be less than polite! That said, I too prefer the traditional colorful version. Snow let's rap 06:23, 28 June 2017 (UTC)
Xaosflux, yes you may and thank you. Realityornot (talk) 15:14, 28 June 2017 (UTC)
Snow, I would draw your attention to the very important Rfc awhile back concerning the appointment of a trustee by the WMF board, which was, technically, within the exclusive purview of its board. Realityornot (talk) 15:20, 28 June 2017 (UTC)
Yes, but that only underscores the point; the only reason we are invited to elect a trustee to the board is because the WMF's own bylaws allow for it. Many boards of directors for nonprofits reserve a seat or two for individuals elected or selected from the volunteer communities that the organization works with. But the WMF could technically amend its bylaws at any point to change that. I rather expect there would be a little bit of a furor if that happened, but such a matter would roughly fall into the category which I already mentioned, of more significant policies that could actually affect this community's relationship with the WMF in a substantial way. In contrast to a logo going monochrome--complaint about which would be nothing more than knitpickery on a trivial matter that does not in particular way concern our wishes or priorities as a project community. Snow let's rap 21:17, 28 June 2017 (UTC)
I am referring to the trustee picked out by the board and forced out by the community via an Rfc, about 2 years ago, I think. That event surely negated any validity of strict WMF vs. Community borders of authority. And I think this logo change is more of a long lasting and event of essence than that particular trustee event. Realityornot (talk) 22:47, 28 June 2017 (UTC)
Actually, for some perspective, I do think that the composition of the governing board of the Foundation is more important than the colour of the logo. Thankfully nobody else seems to be hopping on the outrage train over this. -- Ajraddatz (talk) 04:40, 29 June 2017 (UTC)
I begin to suspect we are being trolled here, or are dealing with a sock of someone with an axe to grind. This user's account activity (all 17 edits of it) begins with the first effort they made to stir the pot on this on Jimbo's talk page. They have a pretty substantial understanding of recent Wikipedia history for someone with that degree of experience. It's not, strictly speaking, impossible that they are a long-time IP editor just now registering, but that's a big thing to take as coincidence, considering the tone of the comments and the way this seems as if it is being shopped around as bait. Snow let's rap 07:41, 29 June 2017 (UTC)
Part of the motivation for the change seems to be separating the movement logo (in colour) from the Foundation logo (in black or white). No issues with it myself, and it's certainly not in the community's scope to be dictating what logo the Foundation uses. -- Ajraddatz (talk) 15:24, 28 June 2017 (UTC)
Just imagine if you got up one day and the color of your country's flag had been changed to black, what would you say? Nothing? Because the country's leaders have the technical authority to change it you would meekly go along with it? Realityornot (talk) 22:35, 28 June 2017 (UTC)
False equivalence on multiple levels. In your scenario, you are a citizen of the nation in question, wheras we are not members of the WMF in any sense, nor are we entitled to tell them how to operate their organization--certainly not at the level of such a bizarre attempt at micromanagement. The WMF's logo is not "yours" as a member of the Wikipedia community in the same way that a flag is "yours" as a citizen of the nation the flag is attached to. A much, much closer analogy would be if an aid project was receiving food shipments from USAID and someone involved in the processing of those parcels began to moan because the shipments were suddenly being stamped with a black and white logo of USAID, rather than the fully colorized version. Also: A) a logo for a nonprofit is nowhere near as complex or important a symbol as a national flag, in terms of oversight, significance, and the reasonableness of changing them without popular support, and B) Even were it, there are occasions when flags actually are represented in monochrome in official documentation rather than their usual color versions...
Honestly, I think you're seriously making a mountain out of molehill here, based on a deep misunderstanding of the actual relationship between the WMF and en.Wikipedia (as organizations and partners) and our right and ability as a community to dictate the manner in which the Foundation should approach its own internal business. I strongly suggest you let this one go, because this is unlikely accomplish anything but to create a suggestion of arrogance and confusion to have members of our community behaving as if we think we can berate the WMF staff over something that is so clearly their own business and so incredibly trivial in any event. I mean, there's no real harm in letting them know that you prefer the old logo, I guess. And there's no shortage of ways to do that, but it's not really an appropriate community discussion for this project. And however you approach them or try to aggregate similar views from other Wikiproject volunteers, I'd certainly adjust the way you present the matter--specifically, much farther away from any sense that we are entitled to dictate how they approach their own branding. That's just not the way this relationship works. If you really feel passionately about this, I suggest you email the WMF directly, making your preference known. Or you could even try to get a community discussion started at Meta-Wiki or MediaWiki. Though I would not count on most people being as borderline fired-up about this as it seems you may be. Snow let's rap 23:08, 28 June 2017 (UTC)
Snow, I am going to let this go as you suggest (although I think my analogy is a damn good one). I won't be discussing this further. I was "fired up" because I think its important that the Community be consulted before such a decision is finalized, for a variety of obvious reasons, but if the community (as represented here at Village Pump) sees this event and the process of it as being an ok thing, then so be it. Realityornot (talk) 14:14, 29 June 2017 (UTC)

Question about repurposing a Template redirect

Not sure if this is the right venue, but I wish to take over a Template redirect for a somewhat different purpose. I noted here (link) that for some people, the frequently seen term !vote is completely opaque. I would like to create a template, {{!vote}}, that would simply emit the text, [[WP:NOTVOTE|!vote]] to link what it means, since for years I saw it, and never knew. However, there is already a Template there, or rather, a redirect, which redirects to Template:Not a ballot. Where should I ask if anyone minds if I take over this redirect? Fwiw, the #Redirects section of the doc page for the template lists three redirects, but not that one, so I'm not even clear if anyone is using that one. What's the right way to advertise or ask about this, so I don't step on any toes about the old redirect? Mathglot (talk) 07:45, 1 July 2017 (UTC)

There are currently 103 transclusions of that redirect. You might look through that list to see who has added it to discussions recently to fine people who might mind. Anomie⚔ 11:38, 1 July 2017 (UTC)

Category weirdness

Hi - I notice what I'm hoping is a glitch - that items in categories are in two columns rather than three. If this is a glitch, has anyone any idea what's causing it... or if it's some new attempt to fix something that wasn't broken by making it worse, is there some way of adding a doohickey in my monobook or elsewhere so that I can see them properly again? Grutness...wha? 14:36, 2 July 2017 (UTC)

@Grutness: At least in Firefox 54.0.1, the categories display on one, two or three columns depending on the current width of the browser window. What browser are you using? What happens if you resize the window? -- John of Reading (talk) 15:08, 2 July 2017 (UTC)
Aaaah. that explains it. The same must be true in Safari 10.1.1, but I'd not realised it before. Sorry folks (and thanks @John of Reading:) - that solved the problem! Grutness...wha? 01:37, 3 July 2017 (UTC)
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