Meta:Babel/Archives/2008-03

- from: Proposals for closing projects/Closure of Volapük Wikipedia -- Hillgentleman 15:43, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

Relevant discussions at

• Proposals for closing projects/Radical cleanup of Volapük Wikipedia

Communication committee discussed this matter regarding to Public relation and concluded the current status was unacceptable. A project basically filled with bot-created stubs and without a real community, that is, Volapuk Wikipedia, shouldn't be listed on the list in the current rank. While everyone agreed the project itself shouldn't be closed in that condition.

During the discussion two solutions were proposed.

1. The list will contain only projects whose size or speaker population, IIRC, is considerably bigger than a certain criteria. It means Volapuk Wikipedia will be removed from the list as a whole until its community reaches a certain size ... or if we use speaker population as criteria, it wouldn't be back to the list concerned.
2. As Pfctdayelise suggested, Volapuk Wikipedia community can remove all those bot creations and stay in an appropriate place on the list.

It is up to the local community - but Volapuk Wikipedia community should realize they choose one of those proposals. --Aphaia 14:57, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Can we see the minutes? Thanks. Hillgentleman 15:17, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

No sorry, the list is confidential. So I am hesitate to show who said what ... However if necessary, I'll urge the people who proposed those ideas to post it to the foundation-l. --Aphaia 22:39, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

How, then, is the communications committee authorised to decide on what to do with a page on meta, bypassing the community discussion? Hillgentleman 23:29, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Do the Communication committee think the same about the other Wikipedias that are filled with bot-created stubs and don't have much of a community ? (lmo.wikipedia 100 060 articles - depth=0, te.wikipedia 37 687 articles - depth=1, new.wikipedia 37 561 articles - depth=2, ceb.wikipedia 33 530 articles - depth=0, bpy.wikipedia 22 092 articles - depth=1, to name the biggest).

The suggestion to remove all bot created articles in order to stay in the list seems utterly silly to me. If an article is useful it is an useful article, no matter who or what created it. To me it seems that the Communication committee are taking this list far to serious. It is just a silly list, not a proper measure of anything and certainly not the meaning of everything. --Jorunn 00:03, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

This has already been discussed. If you object to Volapuk (or any wiki) from ranking so highly by your chosen system of measurement, change your system of measurement. Don't try and artificially skew the results, or ban a wiki that has reached success by your (fairly meaningless) criteria. This has been discussed on this page already, and a good solution has been presented at List of Wikipedias by sample of articles. I think both of the proposals given here are unacceptable. I also think it is somewhat contradictory for a 'communications' committee to be 'dictating' what the community should do, rather than participating in the on-going discussion (i.e. communicating with the interested parties). --HappyDog 09:44, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

Hilgentleman - to answer your question, the page is an important publicity portal for the Foundation, rather than something "owned" by the Meta community (whatever that's defined as - the phrase seems to imply Meta as a separate project, which it simply isn't) - David Gerard 11:07, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

David Gerard, Nor does the communications committee. It is not right that the communications committtee can just simply look at any article, declare that "the page is an important publicity portal for the Foundation" and sieze its control, and does not even bother to ask the community for inputs or explain their discussions. It is analogous to a head of state declaring "State of Emergency", when there really is none, for political purposes. How is communications committee authorised to do such a thing? Hillgentleman 15:26, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

Many have said it. Let me say it again. Long ago some wikimedians decided that they wanted a list of wikipedias. Then at some point people decided to order the list in terms of NUMBEROFARTICLES. Then somebody came in and thought, hey, this is not bad, let us use it for marketing purposes. As time changes, the list has changed, and the marketing folks come in, and say, You list is wrong. Your list is misleading. Please correct it.Hillgentleman 15:32, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

I suggest that marketing folks take heed of what we have said, above and below. The simplest solution that satisfies everybody is:

  LEAVE THE LIST AS IT IS, AND ADD A COLUMN OF MISCELLANEOUS COMMENTS.

--Hillgentleman 15:35, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

Don't you think that we should reconsider the method of evaluating Wikipedias? For example – we can calculate the "real" number of a given Wikipedia's articles by:

• not counting articles created by bots only – if they were not touched later by any human
• not counting ultrastubs – articles with very little text even if they contain infoboxes and other templates automatically added by bots
• not counting articles in "clean-it-up" categories
• other criteria of excluding completely useless articles...

Polimerek 11:20, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

A few comments on some of the above topics:

• (David Gerard): "The list is an important publicity portal for the Foundation". I note that one of the criticisms on the Volapük Wikipedia was "advertising" and "publicity". Are you saying that the whole List of Wikipedias is "publicity" rather than simply raw data? Isn't the foundation violating its own principles then -- just in order to be able to say, "we have 2,000,000 articles" (the overwhelming majority of which are still very, very far from FA -- or even real "encyclopedic" -- quality)?
• The proposals of the communications community: I agree with Jorunn, Hillgentleman, and HappyDog, both solutions are silly, because:
  a. Keeping Volapük off the list takes away the lists usefulness as a purveyor of raw data; one would have to start a new page (say, List of all Wikipedias) to keep this information available; and
  b. reducing its size to its "proper place" (without alternative criteria, isn't that a bit prejudiced?) only makes sense if you advocate deleting all stubs from all Wikipedias so that they all would be reduced to their "proper places".
• Considerations about the minimum size of a community, or of a speaker population, don't seem to me to be of the competence of the communications committee -- isn't this in the area of the languages committee? Anyway, what are the arguments? What is the minimum size? What are the criteria? Shouldn't they be discussed, get perhaps their own page here at Meta, etc.?
• If you want to see the projects occupying their "proper place" (by whatever criteria), you can always start a new page (like the List of Wikipedias by sample of articles, which corresponds better to your expectations -- though without the glamour of "millions and millions of articles"). Use new criteria, indicate them clearly, express your reasons for preferring them (+ criticism of the original List of Wikipedias), and then use this new page for publicity. I'm sure the intelligent people in the public will appreciate your sincerity.

--Smeira 17:03, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

If I remember correctly, List of Wikipedias used to be a purely alphabetical listing. That seemed like a reasonable way to comprehensively list the wikis: the front page links to the list, so people come to there looking for those really small languages that haven't made it onto the front page yet. It must be a pain to have to search through the entire list for such a language. Imagine a library where all the books were arranged by size. That's what we're doing. At least we divide the front page into four alphabetical lists, so you only have to look four places for the language. I have no problem with the by-size list's existence, but it should be at List of Wikipedias by size.

Anyhow, I'm not so much concerned about List of Wikipedias as I am the front page. It's pretty obvious that the list is raw data, but on the front page, appearing high up really matters. A wiki looks quite legitimate if it gets a spot in the very exclusive search box there, as Volapük and Lombard now do. (Users from the Russian Wikipedia wanted all 100,000+ wikis to be placed around the puzzle ball, but the search box was a compromise. Good thing, too.) Unfortunately, the by-size list and front page use the exact same criterion for arranging the wikis. It's a very simple, objective, easy-to-describe-without-words criterion, but it doesn't tell the whole story. I like List of Wikipedias by sample of articles very much, but how in the world do we use it at the front page, where we're not supposed to use any words because you'd have to provide upwards of 200 translations on the same page? Since lumping that many languages into one list would be annoying to use, how do you divide the top 118 (by sample of articles) into manageable lists?

 – Minh Nguyễn (talk, contribs) 10:12, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

In other words the issue is, as far as I understand, if it is good and rational to give a "legitimate look" to stub-covered projects, like Volapuk. While we have a problem of feasibility, I agree with Polimerek generally - a mere count of articles shouldn't be the measure to choose the projects we highlight globally. I have no idea what is different from the things which has happened on Volapuk Wikipedia and what happened once on Wolof Wikipedia - an external organization tried to use it just for advertise themselves. As for "sample of articles" the sample is too much Westernalized and not a good way to evaluate projects. For example, Asian langauge projects which are some of our most accessed projects are underrepresented on that list. --Aphaia 10:25, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

Surely nobody has said Volapuek wikipedia is a mature wikipedia. And it is true that putting Volapuek wikipedia on the front page is not necessarily useful. But do not mix such matters with the list itself. If I read you correctly, Aphaia, when you say the list of wikipedia by number of articles 'give(s) a "legitimate look" ', you are reading too much into it, i.e. putting your own point of view into the list and your interpretation into the raw data. We have seen that many do not read the list in the same way the communications committee do. Hillgentleman 17:18, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

And yes, alphabetical order makes sense. Hillgentleman 17:23, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

Good point. And I would like to offer an apology for my not well-described wording. It is better to separate 1) to have a list of Wikipedia by article number as genuine and raw statistic data and 2) to design portal pages (like http://www.wikipedia.org or each Wikipedia project Main Pages) based on that page. As long as the issue 1 affects the issue 2 directly, and I understand that is the current status, I think my first report from Comcom discussion valid and appropriate. But of course we needn't be bound to that list and can find any other appropriate way to choose projects we display on that page.

Regarding PR effects, and specially psychological ones, I don't think it the best strategy to list all projects in a same way - it should be properly grouped, and the ideal number of elements in each chunks are seven plus or minus two (so between 5 and 9). And as maturity of Volapuk Wikipedia, we all seem to agree that it doesn't reach to the quality which deserves to be featured as representatives of 200+ projects, as interim remedy, is there any problem to remove it from that page? --Aphaia 21:26, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Despite being the main Volapük Wikipedia contributor, I don't in principle oppose this remotion. But I note one problem: in its current form, the front page does mention number of articles; if you remove Lombard and Volapük from it without explicitly changing the criteria, then you fall back into the same "insincerity" problem I mentioned above: the page talks about "the Wikipedias that have reached a certain number of articles" but then excludes some of these Wikipedias without further comments. In order to legitimally remove Volapük and Lombard (which, I agree, aren't as "mature" as the other large Wikipedias), the wording should be changed: the "100,000+", "10,000+" and "1,000+" labels should be replaced with something else, maybe a more neutral wording ("best", "good", "average"; or "A-quality", "B-quality", "C-quality"; or something like that. To me, this would be morally necessary before one could remove any Wikipedias from the front page on grounds other than article count. (Aphaia, could you give me a link to a page that describes the Wolof event you mentioned? I'd like to see how similar they are to what I was trying to do.)

On using the List of Wikipedias by sample of articles: I agree that the sample list (List of articles) is Western-biased; yet the results are better than the mere number of articles for purposes such as Wikimedia portals. If Asian Wikipedians (or any other underrepresented group) complement the list, it will be more representative. As for groupings: (a) the first 6, English to Russian (score > 3 000), (b) the following 12-13, Portuguese to Catalan (and perhaps Chinese; score between 3 000 and 2 000), (c) the following 24-25, Serbian to Norwegian (Nynorsk) (score between 1 000 and 2 000), and (d) all the others (score below 1 000). If finding words in 200 languages to name these categories seems too much, one could use iconic titles: five, four and three stars, or five, four and three exclamation marks (!), or something like that. --Smeira 01:44, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

(A bit off topic) As for Wolof Wikipedia, I don't think there was a discussion on meta at that time (early 2005?). It may have been on IRC and e-mail exchanging but I don't remember which mailing list was used. Relevant discussions may be found on French Wikipedia, since the second language of Wolof speakers is French and those people were trained in French speaking community. But I don't think it was totally compatible with Volapuk Wikipedia - the Wolof project at that time put an advertisement of a certain external non-profit organization (promotion of Wolof language was their cause). They did on a good faith but it was never acceptable from our side. After it was found, they were trained on French Wikipedia to know how Wikipedia works. Anthere may remember where related materials are found ... I mentioned it as only an example "language promotion" became the main purpose of the project community and expect Volapuk project status is far better than that. --Aphaia 05:05, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

(Re-dedenting) I like Smeira's idea of using stars to hint at relative quality. Besides, all the other Web 2.0 guys are doing it. :^) It would work well if we decide to use the "sample of articles" measurement, though we'd still have to come up with a way to divide the list into three or so levels behind the scenes. (Right now we can group by scores – 2 000+, 1 000+, 500+, and 250+ – but I don't know how stable those scores will be.) Coincidentally, removing the front page's numeric headings in favor of icons will solve a technical issue that has some IE users seeing a horizontal scrollbar. We can implement the icon heading as a background image, so that it centers correctly yet doesn't force the scrollbar. – Minh Nguyễn (talk, contribs) 04:51, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

I don't know how stable scores will be either -- they're still ad-hoc. There has been some discussion on the talk page of the List of Wikipedias by sample of articles about language "correcting weights" (since a text in Chinese or Japanese has much fewer characters than the corresponding text -- with the same level of information -- in English, it was felt that these languages were being placed below their actual level of Wikipedia achievement; and indeed that seems to be true). Hm... Is it the case that a decision for the front page has to be final? Should scores be changed in the future, and a few languages change category because of that, then couldn't the page simply be adapted to reflect that? Is it the case that the front page has to be very stable? --Smeira 21:44, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

The decision doesn't have to be final, but we should avoid changing the criteria too often at the front page. Every time we bump a language up or down on the list, we force many of that wiki's users to hunt for the wiki again. The current system is quite stable because wikis' article counts generally go up, not down. Anyhow, I can wait to change up the front page until we come up with a good formula and whatnot. Just as long as Volapük doesn't dethrone English in the near future. :^) – Minh Nguyễn (talk, contribs) 07:35, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

Don't worry, that's a physical impossibility ;^)... Even if I wanted to do that, considering the growth rate of en.wp, my little laptop + python programs simply could not add stubs fast enough (even if I have a sufficiently large database -- say, the en:NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database... Maybe the Lombardians can do it (they're currently adding asteroids, after all...), in case they have more than one computer to use for this purpose. --Smeira 15:30, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

On mixi.jp, the biggest Japanese social network website (imagine sort of Friendstar or Facebook) featured Volapuk Wikipedia in their column (membership required, so no link now). There are a bright side and a dark side. The language Volapuk is known thanks to that article, and originally the featuring on Wikipedia front page (perhaps Japanese in this context), it's the bright side. The dark side is, vowiki was commented "full of too short, less informative articles" "not deserved to be called an encyclopedia" "boosting with a bot and hence feature on the Wikipedia Main page may anger other Wikipedia version editors including esperanto" - shortly the article publicized the language itself but showed Volapuk Wikipedia something not serious. I don't think it is a good advertisement of the project itself and other Wikimedia projects. Also this article mentioned Lombard Wikipedia like "similar type boosted Wikipedia". I hope this trend is not spreading and think we need to remove them, at least Volapuk Wikipedia from the Wikipedia portal, just as Comcom recommended formerly. ---Aphaia 14:47, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

The Brazilian Orkut has also opened a Volapük group, and there's also a Volapük group in Facebook; both are much less negative. Now Aphaia, what you mention is something I had been thinking about since before I started adding stubs to vo.wp: people won't like it (especially those who pay too much attention to article count), and it's not really a model encyclopedia. I've said many things on both topics in the proposal for closure; I'll summarize it here like this: a wiki project for a very small language with very few (effective or potential) collaborators cannot be a true encyclopedia. None of them will ever be like the English Wikipedia. The Volapük Wikipedia -- and about 150 other projects -- will simply never be like the English Wikipedia. Unless thousands of very active collaborators appear out of nowhere, this is simply impossible. Their goals must be different, and the criteria for judging them must be different; or else, if the criteria can't be different, why were they created at all? (Which should these criteria be? I made a few suggestions in the proposal for closure of vo.wp; I'd love to discuss this further with anyone who's interested.) If the Japanese people who condemn the Volapük Wikipedia don't realize that, then they're simply making a wrong judgement, in my opinion. Someone should mention this to them. I would if I could speak Japanese! ;-) --Smeira 15:30, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

"Someone should mention this to them." And it should be someone who were persuaded with your argument. So It cannot be myself. Your argument seems to me pointless and only stick to the idea to place Volapuk Wikipedia on the Wikipedia portal to promote the language, even giving the disadvantage to the Wikimedia project at large. In my observation it is only you to support this idea (in twenty days no support has come from the community to your argument in this discussion), so if no objection is coming in a week, I'm going to remove it from the portal in accordance with the previous recommendation of Communication committee. --Aphaia 08:15, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

What a nonsense. Why do you ignore all the comments above? Personally, I have not added further to this discussion, because there didn't seem to be much more to be said. A list of 'Wikipedias ordered by article count' should contain all Wikipedias. Otherwise it is a list of 'Wikipedias ordered by article count (not including the ones that a small group of people have arbitrarily chosen to exclude by a private vote)'. If you don't agree with the high ranking of Volapuk in this list, then use a sensible method of ranking Wikipedias. It will be a sad day when the Foundation decides to 'spin' the statistics and disown one of its active projects in this way! --HappyDog 23:33, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

Was there ever any proposal or discussion or something about creating own per language Meta-wikis? This wiki is for all Wikimedia projects in all languages and that's a good solution. But I wonder, whether it wouldn't be useful to have per language Meta-wikis too. For example a fr.meta.wikimedia.org for Meta-work regarding the French-language projects. For example, if the French Wikipedians want to give an introduction into the work of the Wikimedia Foundation, this page should not reside on fr.wikipedia, it would be useful for fr.wiktionary too. Of course such a page can be hosted on this wiki, but it would have many advantages, if such a page would be placed in fr.meta.wikimedia.org instead. A user speaking French only can easily get lost in this multilingual, but English-dominated wiki. A French-only environment would be a place where that user would feel much "safer". Or even think of a lesser-used language. Like Sami. A Sami-speaker only speaking Sami or only interested in Sami content will have a very hard time in this wiki. There are very few Sami pages (when there are any, I don't know) scattered in a big m(a|e)ss of English and other language content. If Sami had an own Meta-wiki, even if that wiki would be relatively tiny, that project would be much easier to access for the simple user. I don't want to detract the decision- and policy-making from this wiki, but more static meta content would be in better hands on such local Meta-wikis. So: was this ever proposed? --::Slomox:: >< 17:50, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

I think this would be sensible, although it would take a lot of work to make it happen. Meta was, I believe, the second Wikimedia project ever, and was created in part to allow discussion of issues shared among Wikipedias in different languages. (I may be completely off-base on this; I wasn't around at the time.) The emergence of the second axis of diversity -- viz. Wiktionary, Wikiquote, Wikinews, Wikisource -- has made the exact role of Meta somewhat confused (and confusing). Also, in the past few years, much of the original Meta mandate has been hived off to the Foundation, Mediawiki.org, and others; IMO it is high time that Meta's role was rethought. Restructuring Meta as a set of language communities (perhaps with English remaining as the hub, or perhaps with English-Meta and meta-Meta separated) holds a lot of promise. There is already a considerable amount of content on Meta in various languages, but it remains an overwhelmingly English-driven project, which impairs our ability to serve non-English-speaking Wikimedians. -- Visviva 16:13, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

i writed here: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Translation_requests/WMF/Our_projects/source i have writed: hello. why not to make something like wikimapia.org but not with google because it is not gnu fdl or compatible but with nasa maps which are public domain, but they unfortunately dont have web api, i consider, do they?

Something like that exists. See OpenStreetMap. Angela 13:12, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Hello. Would you please help us. I have several questions and Im getting frustrated coz I cant find help over at meta. I cant get any help from any steward of beureacrat. At metapub, I was asked to find a developer whom I can ask these questions.

I would like to know exactly when was the exact date Meta approved the creation of Chavacano Wikipedia http://cbk-zam.wikipedia.org. I have searched at the archives but I just really cannot determine what specific date it was approved for its creation.

When Chavacano wikipedia started last year, I didnt know how to go about translating the interface and the language file. I was just told by an admin of Spanish wikipedia to ask for admin permission and translate the messages here:

http://cbk-zam.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Allmessages

I got the adminship and translated most of the messages. The interface was indeed translater, but was I on the right track? I noticed a newly created wikipedia http://bcl.wikipedia.org did not translate its

http://bcl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Allmessages

but its interface is translated! So how did it happen?

Another question is, how come cbk-zam or Chavacano is not an option in the language preference of a user in another wikipedia? For example, at the English Wikipedia or here in Meta, if you go to your user preferences, Chavacano is not included as an option for the language interface. How do we make cbk-zam a part of a user language option? In cbk-zam.wikipedia.org, cbk-zam is there as an option, but not in other wikis.

Also, I would like to know where I can have the wikimedia configure the user preference in our Chavacano wikipedia. Whenever we configure the language option in our user preferences in http://cbk-zam.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Preferences cbk-zam is listed as cbk-zam - cbk-zam which is wrong. It should be cbk-zam - Chavacano de Zamboanga. How do I do the correction? I am the sysop of cbk-zam.wikipedia.org. And finally, where will I do the necessary translation of the wikipedia donation to Chavacano that appears on every page? Thanks. I would really appreciate if anyone can help us. Thanks. --Weekeejames 13:32, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Most languages have an own message file which is hardcoded in the MediaWiki installation. You can easily export your messages from Allmessages into a file. I guess you should best ask on Betawiki: for help with this, Betawiki is about translating the interface and they are experienced in exporting messages and committing them to the file repository.

If that message file exists, cbk-zam wil be an option in the preferences on all projects too. --::Slomox:: >< 15:13, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Hi, ah, now I understand that problem regarding cbk-zam cbk-zam, I just tried in cbk-zam.wiki. I am asking in #wikimedia-tech since I don't think that this can be changed at betawiki (there the interface itself can be translated and additionally namespacenames, magic words, skin names and specialpage-aliases). I think for this we need to open a bugreport on bugzilla:, best regards, --birdy geimfyglið _(:> )=| 15:34, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

I was just talking to Siebrand, a developer, who is one of the two devs running Betawiki. He told me that he could change this (since he is a developer), I will leave a message on betawiki:Process/tasks for him, and we do not need to open a bugreport :)

But before I would like to know if it should be "Zamboangueño" or "Chavacano de Zamboanga" because on other wikis it is "Zamboangueño" and in bugzilla:7581#c2 it was asked to change to Zamboangueño -> is it better?

Thanks, best regards, --birdy geimfyglið _(:> )=| 16:02, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the response. Spacebirdy, the formal name would be "Chavacano de Zamboanga", so it should be that way. When I requested the Chavacano de Zamboanga wikipedia here in Meta last year, it was requested by the proper formal name as "Chavacano de Zamboanga". I don't know why everywhere, even here at Meta, I see "Zamboangueño" (which is an informal name for the language and actually kind of ambiguous. see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zamboangueño ). I wish I could and be able to correct all references and interwiki links of cbk-zam as "Chavacano de Zamboanga" rather than Zamboangueño. But alas, I do not know where to start. BTW, I havent gone to betawiki for a full translation language file. I think the Special:Allmessages translations would be good enough for our wikipedia right now. But now at least I know where to go when the need for a full and complete translation arises. Regarding bugzilla:7581#c2, I don't know why Chris had to ask for a change. He is neither a native Chavacano speaker nor an admin or a regular user of the cbk-zam.wikipedia.org. He is only one of those people who supported its creation, but right up till now, he doesnt contribute anything to our wikipedia. I hope cbk-zam will be reverted back to its full proper and formal name, Chavacano de Zamboanga. Thanks and kind regards. --Weekeejames 04:16, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

Hi Weekeejames, thanks for the response, I added Your request for Siebrand here, kind regards, --birdy geimfyglið _(:> )=| 08:13, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

Many thanks for helping out the Chavacano Wikipedia. We appreciate your extended help. I'm keeping myself in touch with the developments on this issue. Kind regards. --Weekeejames 13:20, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

Hi Weekeejames, may I invite You to the discussion there, the reason for changing the interwikilink-name seems to have been a space problem, please feel free to suggest solutions there, thanks in advance, --birdy geimfyglið _(:> )=| 23:31, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

I tried to register but I cannot. It always gives me an error "Login error:Incorrect or missing confirmation code." I tried to register almost 20 times using IE and Firefox. Maybe Betawiki is Bugwiki. It's such a pain. :( please just relay my message:

"Hello Spacebirdy and Siebrand. If Chavacano de Zamboanga is too long, Chavacano will just be fine. Also, please change the interwiki links of cbk-zam from Zamboangueño to Chavacano (if Chavacano de Zamboanga is also too long). Indeed, bugzilla:7581#c2 is invalid. cbk-zam everywhere should be either Chavacano de Zamboanga or simply Chavacano. Muchas gracias. Weekeejames --Weekeejames 13:12, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Wow, I tried again and again to register an account at Betawiki, it still wont allow me in. The math is very simple for that thing against spam, it just wont let me register there. Why? :( --Weekeejames 13:22, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

This should be a temporary problem, I am having problems loging in right now too, Siebrand is not in IRC right now and Nike seems afk, I am quite in a hurry now and can't be online before tonight, so I'll try to contact them then, sorry for the inconveniance, --birdy geimfyglið _(:> )=|

Hi, I could now post a comment there, can You please try again to create an account, it worked for me now link. Thanks, kind regards, --birdy geimfyglið _(:> )=| 18:45, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

done. --Weekeejames 13:54, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

You posted the same question on my talk page, and I answered before I noticed you had also posted it here. Please notify any others you've asked about this discussion, to avoid duplicating work. My answer is quoted below.

—{admin} Pathoschild 18:01:44, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Thank you Pathoschild. I guess, I was too impatient then, I was posting same questions on different areas of meta. I am waiting for Siebrand at Betawiki to help first correct the name of cbk-zam and then from there, I will start working with the translations at betawiki/translatewiki.

Spacebirdy has been giving a great deal of help. Thanks. --Weekeejames 23:07, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Hi, have You seen Nike's response regarding the interwiki-names here? It seems the shortening is not needed.

Please can You redirect the other discussions here, if You have started same threads in other regions, I found 2 :) You know better if there are some left, thanks. Best regards, --birdy geimfyglið _(:> )=| 23:11, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Hello Birdy. I have given my arguments there for Nike and all discussions related to this issue elsewhere here in Meta have been tagged as {{closed}} and have been redirected here. Thanks. --Weekeejames 12:06, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

:) thanks, --birdy geimfyglið _(:> )=| 13:49, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

cbk-zam - update

• Please see [1] and bugzilla:12316, thanks, best regards, --birdy geimfyglið _(:> )=| 13:49, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. I'm in touch with these issues at Betawiki and Bugzilla. I really appreciate your help. After all these minor corrections are done, I will start translating the interface of cbk-zam.wiki at Betawiki. Currently, cbk-zam is using the English interface with translations on its Special:Allmessages page. I will soon work at Betawiki for this, I just have to wait for the interwiki links corrections of cbk-zam as Zamboangueño to cbk-zam as Chavacano de Zamboanga. Gracias. --Weekeejames 09:32, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

Can you also update the donation translation of cbk-zam per http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Fundraising_2007/Text_for_sitenotice#cbk-zam thanks. --Weekeejames 17:39, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

Done, thanks for the translations. Gracias, --birdy geimfyglið _(:> )=| 19:39, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

Thank you. I did a minor correction on http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Centralnotice-counter/cbk-zam Can you please update it? It should be $1 maga persona ya quien ya dona and not $1 personas ya que ya dona. Sorry for the little trouble. Also can you help me create the meter bar http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=MediaWiki:Centralnotice-meter/cbk-zam&action=edit with the text "maga persona ya quien ya dona" ? Thanks. --Weekeejames 05:44, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, we can't create the meter, that has to be done by a dev. Best regards, --birdy geimfyglið _(:> )=| 09:19, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

Ok, but can you please update http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Centralnotice-counter/cbk-zam ? Thanks. Do you know of any developer whom I can contact for the meter bar? --Weekeejames 10:59, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

Jup, I did update it already, or is there still an error? Just let me know then.

@meter: I don't think they will be added anymore. Please read this for understanding why some can't be created. About a month ago I suggested some possible solutions on foundation-I mailinglist but I don't expect anything is going to happen, I am really sorry. Brion Vibber created the existing bars afaik, so maybe You could ask him, best regards, --birdy geimfyglið _(:> )=| 11:21, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

Thank you. The minor correction is now reflected at the Chavacano Wikipedia. Regarding the meter, never mind, if it's causing a lot of troubles. I am patiently waiting for the next software update on cbk-zam.wiki. On its langauge preference option, cbk-zam is still listed as cbk-zam. Also, I am patiently waiting for bugzilla action on the interwiki link of cbk-zam. On http://wikipedia.org cbk-zam is listed a Zamboangueño when it should be Chavacano de Zamboanga. As you see Birdy, that little mistake they did months ago reflected big mistakes everywhere. I hope it will be fixed soon. --Weekeejames 11:43, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

Hi, the portal page I could update, I did not know it was incorrect there also, it takes a while until the changes are shown on the website. Kind regards, --birdy geimfyglið _(:> )=| 12:11, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

Thanks again. Kind regards, --Weekeejames 15:08, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

Why is it taking so much time for bugzilla to correct bugs? --Weekeejames 02:37, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Because there are a lot of bugs (a lot of work) and those people are also volungary workers, You could try to go to #wikimedia-tech and ask if someone can help You, best regards, --birdy geimfyglið _(:> )=| 15:43, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

I think the bug has been reverted back and corrected according to our discussion here. I just have one problem and I have posted this at the support page of betawiki http://translatewiki.net/wiki/Support

Hello. I'm just about to translate the interface of the Chavacano de Zamboanga wikipedia (cbk-zam). I used to do the old way of translating using the special:allmessages page right in our wikipedia, but I was advised at meta to come here and do the translation instead. I have been given translator rights and I have read some of the pages on how to go about. But since I went for a vacation for awhile, I was not able to translate and use betawiki right away. Now when I came back, I noticed that some of our interface have been translated to Tagalog. When I went to http://cbk-zam.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Allmessages I saw that there have been exported translations from Tagalog to our wikipedia. Can anyone investigate how this happened and who did it? I want to have the exports of Tagalog to our wikipedia undone because as I will start working with Betawiki, the page http://cbk-zam.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Allmessages will be my guide (as I used to translate the old way) and I will simply ask some of our already translated messages be imported to betawiki. The problem now is that some Tagalog messages have been infiltrated and exported to our wikipedia, so that what was once English messages are now in Tagalog. :( How did it happen? Who did it? Can anyone investigate and help the Chavacano wikipedia please. I will start asking for imports (and do the translations here) to Betawiki once http://cbk-zam.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Allmessages will be reverted back and Tagalog messages are taken out of our wikipedia. Thanks.

Thanks spacebirdy. --Weekeejames 10:14, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

Oh, I am very sorry to hear this, I hope they can set it back soon :( Best regards, --birdy geimfyglið _(:> )=| ∇ 12:23, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

For the process of reviewing I found a very nice tool to discover typos and formal mistakes. Especially after you read the article 15 times already and 20 persons changed some little contents again, it is very comfortable to use that tool to find easy mistakes like the use of ... isntead of …. My request now is, is it possbile to intigrate that tool into wikiepdia for registered users. If a user is registered and enables the usage of it in his settings, than below every article he is browsing will be a line like this: This article is checked by Autoreview and its grad is 10.5. The aim could be to have all articles at least below 10. There are also "fillwords", I hope thats the correct word in English. The meaning is, that those words are always used without a special content. The toll also finds them and the author can check if they are really without meaning, or usefull at this time. In de.wiki I just found a lot of unuselfull words. Here the tool: Autoreview with "Republic China" example 快樂龍^contentquestion_consequence 04:52, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

It looks very promising :) However, it'd help a lot if it had a proper translation into english. From there it could be translated into many other languages. Waldir 04:57, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

I just realised this fairly important page hasn't been made. Should it be? It's likely to be fairly large, so any help/corrections to the page would be appreciated; info about templates will need to leak in, and PFs, etc. ----Anonymous Dissident^Talk 21:27, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

Made it. Any improvements are very welcome. ----Anonymous Dissident^Talk 06:32, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

I'd like to bring to attention my proposal to merge this with Requests for deletion, due to the little use of the page. Thoughts, Metapedians? --Anonymous Dissident^Talk 06:12, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

Sounds good. —{admin} Pathoschild 06:28:13, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

Supported. --Thogo (talk) 07:51, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

Thirded. --Meno25 09:31, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

Sensible --Herby ^{talk thyme} 10:26, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

Therefore, done. ----Anonymous Dissident^Talk 07:57, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Dear all, we discussed here about changing the page layout for the next steward election (whenever that will be), learning from this year's experiences. This would include a new TOC without the subheadlines, just containing the names of the candidates. To manage this, a change in the common.css file would be necessary (to allow hiding subheadlines from the TOC). Since this is a change in the general surface of Meta it can only be done by community consensus. Thus, please write arguments for or against this change here so that we can find a consensus. --Thogo (talk) 14:50, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

• Note that this change of allowing suppression of lower head levels in TOCs will be useful for more than just this particular usage. I plan to shortly carry this change out (unless someone beats/beat me to it), report on the results here and there, and prepare to revert it back if the community decides it's not a good idea. Support this change. ++Lar: t/c 03:57, 24 December 2007 (UTC)
• I Support..the last format was too "ugly" and did take a lot of space unnecessarily though we could have followed a similar format to the Board elections as well :) ...--Cometstyles 14:27, 26 December 2007 (UTC)
• I whole-heartedly support this plan. The way en.wp's RfA TOCs (enough acronyms for ya?) behave is ideal. This is decidedly non-controversial; can we go ahead and make the change? EVula // talk // ☯ // 17:13, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Any admin here can make it. I'd said I would do it but I've slacked, so haven't gotten to it yet... no one should hold back just because I said I would :) ++Lar: t/c 21:20, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Ok, I made it. The template to use is {{TOClimit}}. But it doesn't seem to work... Stewards/elections still shows 3 levels for me. Cache problem? --Thogo (talk) 20:38, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

Yes, was a cache problem. Works now. --Thogo (talk) 22:09, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

Awesome, thanks for picking up my slack! SO... now we're good to go on the new page format? ++Lar: t/c 16:02, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

Hm, I don't know if we want to let everything else as it was last year. I mean the election modalities. I would think yes. Changing to 6 months (or even permanent election) will probably not get consensus among the stewards. ;o) --Thogo (talk) 16:18, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

With respect consensus among the stewards being the criteria suggests a little too much detachment from the rather more overwhelming number of ordinary users? --Herby ^{talk thyme} 17:14, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Could a Meta-Wiki admin asks to Arnomane stop with their uncivil behavior on Proposals for closing projects/Radical cleanup of Volapük Wikipedia? Asking to him on the mentioned page have produced no results. Thanks in advance. 555 16:07, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

If you come across a personal attack (attacks against the articles of vo.wp ("crap", "junk" etc.) are not nice, but of course not personal attacks), you may call an admin at WM:RFH. --Thogo (talk) 20:27, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

There is no longer need to have this page, since deleted or non-existing pages can be protected directly now. --Thogo (talk) 09:49, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

I'd plan to post on this later. I agree that seems to be the case however I think it may still be worth using WM:SALT for some protections as it allows recording keeping? My thoughts (here too) is that spambot pages for example would be fine for the "new" protection. However I'm still inclined to the record/rationale allowed by SALT? Regards --Herby ^{talk thyme} 09:57, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

Hm, what exactly would be the advantages of WP:SALT in opposite to the log file protection? You can give reasons for the protection and you can specify a protection time there. What do you mean by "recording"? On dewiki we changed totally to the log file protection (I don't know if all pages are already done, but most are.) Grtx, --Thogo (talk) 13:21, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

I'm trying hard to put this in words! SALT gives someone a page with both the protected pages and a history of the activity of those pages and, via history, who put it there. Special:Protectedtitles only lists the page with no other info (sure the protection log is there but in another place)? I don't feel strongly but it might be worth not throwing away SALT for now (but I would certainly use the new way for bot pages). Regards --Herby ^{talk thyme} 14:10, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

Imho Special:Protectedtitles lacks an "acitvity log" and the protection reason (maybe the devs can implement this) like we have it on Meta:Protected against recreation. The next thing that disturbs me is that sysops don't get a warning when creating a preprotected page try [2], I suggest we use both possibilities :) best regards, --birdy geimfyglið _(:> )=| 14:14, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

Hm, but the reason and who protected when, is visible in the log file of every page, and in the general log file. Why do we need that on another page, too? *confused* --Thogo (talk) 17:12, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

Because it would be handy to have it on Special:Protectedtitles, this list is imho not very useful without any further information, best regards, --birdy geimfyglið _(:> )=| 17:30, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

With WM:SALT you can aslo do things like protecting a page periodically in selected time intervals. --82.133.109.205 17:42, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

I'm with Birdy - I shall probably use the new form on all & any spambot pages. It is simple, quicker and needs no explanation. However for other protections the grouping on the SALT page will tell people something as will the history available --Herby ^{talk thyme} 18:24, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

Hm, ok. I'm not convinced, but I can live with that, of course. :o) --Thogo (talk) 22:11, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

Maybe for the spambot thing MediaWiki:Titleblacklist is better (at least for the index.php thing), best regards, --birdy geimfyglið _(:> )=| 14:49, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Please see now also bugzilla:12484, thanks --birdy geimfyglið _(:> )=| 15:23, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

I know I read about the change to have Special:Makesysop and Special:Makebot go away to be replaced with a more streamlined Special:Userrights page. Anyone remember where that was discussed? Reason I ask is that on Commons we have a very customised MediaWiki:Makesysoptext page (see it at commons:MediaWiki:Makesysoptext) which has instructions on what other housekeeping tasks need doing when someone is promoted. It is very handy, so I want to change the corresponding page for Userrights but I am not sure if it is MediaWiki:Userrightstext, or if it has some other name. I'm loath to just go in and start editing pages at random :) Any clues much appreciated! ... Thanks. ++Lar: t/c 16:09, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

Try asking at wikitech-l? The relevant bug is bugzilla:11645. Cbrown1023 talk 16:23, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

Special:Allmessages and Ctrl + F are your friend. I'm not entirely sure what you are asking. Is this what you're looking for? By the way, we need to update the same here. Majorly (talk) 16:52, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

I've added text at the bug itself. To reiterate, for this new rights manipulation interface, I would like to identify a page that stays visible from start to finish, where wiki specific things can be put, the same way that MediaWiki:Makesysoptext is visible from start to finish while using the Special:Makesysop interface. The page that you gave MediaWiki:Userrights-groupshelp isn't visible from start to finish I don't think... it's only visible during part of the process. The commons 'crats all feel that Commons:MediaWiki:Makesysoptext and its counterpart Commons:MediaWiki:Makebot-header have been very helpful at avoiding missing steps when making new sysops or when making bots (respectively), since the process is a bit complex due to local custom. ++Lar: t/c 18:09, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

As I noted in the bug, you want MediaWiki:Userrights-summary. – rotemliss – Talk 19:09, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

There may be a bit more to it than that, as editing that page to paste in what we had before results in a vast blob of text all in a very large font, as if it were all part of the heading, and it does not honor any html or wiki markup. If that is unclear I'll provide a screenshot ... (you'd have to be a commons 'crat to see what it did :) ) Is that perhaps the heading and there is another page that has the body? ++Lar: t/c 23:00, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

Silly me. MediaWiki:Userrights is the heading and MediaWiki:Userrights-summary is the body. All sorted on Commons. I propose to do something similar here on Meta now, moving the old texts for makesysop and makebot over. ++Lar: t/c 23:55, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

Well color me confused, I went to make the same change on Meta and it didn't work. No text showed. So I checked on Commons, where last week it was showing the text of commons:MediaWiki:Userrights-summary at the top of commons:Special:Userrights, and then the rest of the page where you put the name in, etc... this week it is not. Did something change? ++Lar: t/c 22:59, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

Yes. I have now fixed the software to display the message again. Please wait to the software update in Wikimedia sites. – rotemliss – Talk 16:56, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

Thanks! Where can I read about what markup is and isn't supported on those sorts of pages? I'm thinking it might be nice to allow use of show/hide type functionality so that the preface material doesn't swamp the page unless you want to look at it. ++Lar: t/c 17:20, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

Everything that is supported in the wiki articles, is supported in the "-summary" messages (but not in all MediaWiki messages! Some of them are HTML, and some of them are plain text). – rotemliss – Talk 07:45, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

I took advantage of that to use a collapsible table to hide most of the help text so the form should fit on one page. ++Lar: t/c 23:18, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

the punjabi wikipidia is incompatible to Mozzila firefox, but works good on internet explorer. the text don't come out right on firefox. 216.15.104.172 17:42, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

You need to ask for help via the company that made your browser, you probably need to download a new language pack. Cbrown1023 talk 21:40, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

Dear Wikimedians,

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Thanks, Wikimedia Commons Picture of the Year committee

Dear Wikimedians,

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The images are presented in categories, but you can vote for as many as you like, in as many categories as you like. (The categories are just so you don't have to look at hundreds of images at once.) The top 28 images will make it to the final.

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Thanks, Wikimedia Commons Picture of the Year committee

(from RFA talk page)

Hi, I'd like to propose the removal of several bureaucrats. We now have a total of 6 elected bureaucrats, a particularly high ratio for the number of admins we have and the size of the wiki, and so I'd like to suggest removal of bureaucrats that were never elected to the position. The users are as follows: Angela, Anthere, Datrio, Fantasy, Jimbo Wales, Kph, Oscar, RobH, Shizhao, Sj, Snowdog, Tim Starling and Yann. Note in particular that Datrio, Fantasy and Snowdog seem to have been given bureaucrat rights as part of the steward "package", but now they are no longer stewards. I propose we remove them all in one go, but I'd like opinions on this. Thanks. Majorly (talk) 15:59, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

Maybe we can make a confirmation just like for sysops? I would propose to inform all of them *before*. Maybe some of them are interested in keeping the rights (and want to write a statement therefore), most of them will probably be not. --Thogo (talk) 17:38, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

None of them are even active, so I don't see why they'd need to keep the rights. Yes, we should inform them, it's only polite. However, I don't think a sysop-like confirmation would work: none of them were elected, none are active (as bureaucrats), so would surely fail a vote anyhow. Majorly (talk) 17:42, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

Yes, probably you're right. Hm, maybe they (or someone else) give good reasons to keep the access. --Thogo (talk) 17:53, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

I'd like to put forth a radical idea. I feel that what we did with Ausir was wrong. Unelected access does not need an election to be removed and I fear we set a bad precedent (which we should therefore ignore). The stewards should just have removed the CU access, and further should just remove the access of unelected crats ( Datrio, Fantasy and Snowdog ) that got it because they were stewards and are no longer stewards, instead of the community having to have had a vote on it... That's me speaking as a person, not a steward, of course. That said a confirmation process is in general a very good idea but I do think we need to be careful of defining "inactivity" too narrowly... we have some crats here who are active, and who regularly participate in our community, but whose actual number of crat actions is low (points at self, Majorly keeps beating me to EVERYTHING, he's too fast... I wish he'd wait just a bit once in a while instead of hogging all the fun :) )... so we should keep that in mind. ++Lar: t/c 04:06, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

OK, let me put it this way. As a steward, it's good to have log access for checkuser, so therefore stewards will retain log access on Meta. But why have the bcrat access? I can only think it would be useful for renaming if a user wanted to be renamed in a lot of places, and the steward could do it all at once, but they could always request it of another bcrat, or just temporary bcrat themselves to do it. Point is, I don't see the point in any of the above users keeping it. Yeah, sorry if you don't get to do much... maybe I should nominate some more people so I can't close it :D Majorly (talk) 09:35, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

Essentially I agree with Majorly. Furthermore current CU access for the log is pointless as the only log avilable is the Meta one - hardly informative. As such "log access" rights are redundant too --Herby ^{talk thyme} 09:48, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

Oh, I thought the log was global... Majorly (talk) 09:54, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

It was - it ain't! --Herby ^{talk thyme} 09:55, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

I agree with Majorly too; unelected and also unused access should be dispensed with after a certain amount of time, and unelection is porbably not necessary. --Anonymous Dissident^Talk 10:01, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

Oh, so we should remove unelected checkusers too? (I'm in a removing sort of mood today...) Majorly (talk) 10:06, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

So you mean removing all non-elected bureaucrats and checkusers? Hm, would be quite radical, but anyway... --Thogo (talk) 10:19, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

If we had a lack of bcrats or checkusers, it may not be a good idea. But we clearly have plenty, so I don't see it a problem. Majorly (talk) 10:25, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

Given that the log is now not global, I support (as a person):

• removing CU access from most non elected people (there are a few exceptions)
• removing 'crat access from most non elected people (there are a few exceptions)
• removing admin access from most non elected people (there are a few exceptions)
• if the log becomes global, restoring CU access for log viewing purposes ONLY to all stewards and ombudsmen.

The few exceptions are the standard ones you'd expect, Himself, Anthere, Angela, people like that... As a steward I have no opinion, of course. ++Lar: t/c 22:13, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

OK... I don't see why Himself should retain bureaucrat rights here. I might sound tough here, but he doesn't have them on enwiki, and I don't see why he needs them here. OK, Anthere was just reconfirmed as an admin (she's going to be anyway), but why bcrat access? Same with Angela. I don't see them as exceptions. Sysop, well that's different, there's more use for sysops. But as we see above, the current elected bureaucrats are already plentiful. Majorly (talk) 22:57, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

To be clear, I wouldn't give them rights they didn't already have, but those are the few users I wouldn't take any preexisting rights away from, that's all. But I'd be fine with dropping all the exceptions altogether if that was consensus. Any of those people would handily pass an election if they stood. ++Lar: t/c 23:44, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

I hope they'd have the good judgement not to - it's pretty clear that we do not have the slightest need for anymore bcrats. Majorly (talk) 23:57, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

Well yes... because you have been a dervish. your log I've several times wanted to set a flag, promote a user, rename a user, and you always beat me to it. Although I'm glad you're so efficient, and it's a relief to know that requests won't get overlooked, it's actually starting to get a little frustrating, if you must know. There is no deadline, after all. I get the impression, fair or not, that it's almost like you're bound and determined to demonstrate that, yes, we have too many crats here... but as I said when I stood, or whe Herby stood, what if you're hit by a bus? Or just get bored... it happens. I think the "too many crats" argument is specious, really. That's different than whether any of our "special" users would or wouldn't stand for admin or crat, though. ++Lar: t/c 04:28, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

It's frustrating that I am punctual and get the job done sufficiently? I believe in getting tools and using them if the community shows a need for them. I ran for bureaucrat when the changing username backlogs were going back weeks, and the two elected bcrats were both semi active. You and Herby ran, well, I don't know why you did. That's why I opposed Herby. I thought it poor judgement to run for bcrat when the community clearly didn't need another (even admitting it himself). The community only supported him because of all his other hats. Now you are complaining I am getting the job done smoothly and punctually... what do you expect? I get the tools to do the job well. And really, I don't want to sound bitter, but you aren't exactly starved of things to do otherwise (steward, checkuser on 3 wikis, bcrat on commons, admin on several). If I'm hit by a bus, or get bored, then there would be need to elect another bureaucrat. But you're assuming too much. I'm not going to get bored, and hopefully won't get hit by a bus. Instead of getting a ton of bureaucrats before anything happens to me, and causing them to sit around doing nothing and getting frustrated they never get to do anything, don't elect them in the first place. Majorly (talk) 08:33, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Apathy. Just ask them. If they think they don't need the tool, they are most likely to tell you so. Hillgentleman 03:33, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

I am not sure if we can remove Tim Starling and RobH access ... they are Foundation employees (however Tim may have got it even before WMF was founded as a trusted community member or developer). I am quite unsure RobH was elected ... he seems just to have given himself the access for some convenience we are not sure: it would be problematic on other projects, but in regard of meta mission, coordination about foundation issues, I am not sure we claim all accesses should be given with the community support and only. Foundation may also give those accesses to the people they employ to have them do some works on behalf of the Foundation .. --Aphaia 01:50, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

I'd like to suggest that we have a separate right (+audit?) for foundation employees and ombudsmen, for use on Meta, which allows them to view logs globally for restricted-view logs (checkuser and oversight at the moment) from one location. There's a severe lack of overlap currently between "foundation rights" and "community rights" that is starting to cause issues, in my opinion. We have "Foundation Stewards" and "Elected Stewards", people with +checkuser because they're ombudsmen and those who have it for Foundation use. Even better, perhaps, maybe copy a Wikia rights name, +staff, which would do nothing but mark that person as a Foundation employee or ombudsman and therefore beyond consideration by the Meta community? ~Kylu (u|t) 06:45, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

That's an interesting idea. It would save a lot of difficulty by making what we take implicit as explicit. The recent changes to how userrights are done make this a lot easier to implement. Maybe bat this around a bit to firm up requirements and then open a ticket. Probably should be a separate topic. ++Lar: t/c 12:22, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

Requests_for_comments/Wikimedia_Foundation_staff_permissions - Done. :) ~Kylu (u|t) 02:29, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

For information - I have started these off today with two stolen from en Wikibooks! Those who want them will be able to enable them in "my preferences" -> "Gadgets". If you have ever tried to selectively undelete a page you will be impressed with that .js.

The log filter is excellent if you want to find things in logs. It works on the CU log which is great. However it also works with other logs such as delete & upload very well indeed. Those who are curious may like to try it on the rights log - it allows you to be very selective about what you see. Hope these help - regards --Herby ^{talk thyme} 11:37, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Cool! I added something to my monobook the other day for the rights log, and it's great. I'll have a look at them. Majorly (talk) 13:59, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Thank you, Herby. These gadgets are very useful indeed. --Meno25 08:10, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

I added one from enwiki, MediaWiki:Gadget-UTCLiveClock.js. Cbrown1023 talk 03:25, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

I am a graduate student at Northwestern University and have been a regular english wikipedia editor (Madcoverboy) since 2005. I am interested in using article histories on Wikipedia to conduct analyses of the structures and dynamics of social networks. I am particularly interested in how breaking news stories (Virginia Tech massacre, Bhutto assassination, Myanmar protests, London and Madrid terrorist attacks, etc.) emerge and evolve.

However, the constraints of the Special:Export feature on en-wiki and the ongoing failures associated with the enwiki-meta-history dumps have complicated easy access to and parsing of this history data. Likewise, I already know that crawling the namespace is discouraged. What other avenues or tools might you suggest for accessing and downloading complete article histories from en-wiki? 129.105.146.165 20:26, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

I find this very helpful and I know that our Communications Director has used it a couple of times. Cbrown1023 talk 21:28, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for the reference, I will be sure to contact him/her! However, this doesn't reveal the iterated contributions (for diffs) or timestamps that the XML dumps/exports do. Is there any other way to get the whole article histories? 129.105.146.165 22:25, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

Hi there,

This is the first time that I'm trying to collaborate with Wikimedia, but I'm not sure this is the correct place to send my suggestion or comment.

The idea that I would like to suggest is the creation of a database of laws within Wikimedia - a place where anyone can upload laws and the community of users would be responsible to assure the accuracy of those laws.

This idea occurred to me because of my work and my educational background. I'm from Brazil, where I went to law school, but I've been living in the US for almost 5 years. Currently, I work for a tax software company; my position is called Legal Research Analyst (I'm not an attorney in the US). Basically, I research tax laws of 50 different countries, and, in my department, the 5 of us research tax laws of about 150 countries. One of the hardest part of this work is to find the laws - and I always imagine how great it would be if every law was under one database. Also, I know that I could already be working to build such database: since I am already doing this work of finding so many laws, I could as well just upload them in a place where it could be easily available to everyone. I love Wikipedia so much, and I couldn’t think of a better media for such database as I imagine.

I believe that such project would have an EXTRAORDINARY value for DEMOCRACIES around the world, inasmuch that it would give people access to the laws of their countries whenever they want. The organization style of wikimedia would be just be perfect, since you could create a skeleton mirroring the legal system with all its layers - divided by subject (constitutional laws, labor laws, tax laws, etc) and also by authority level (country, state, county, municipalities, international treaties, etc.)

As the database grows by the collective work of the wikimedia community, I believe that, eventually, the authorities themselves (such as city halls or senates) would start publishing every new law in this wiki database - perhaps at some point transforming it into some sort of world Official Gazette, the place where the laws actually become public. I believe this would happen because of the request of the population, since governments have the obligation to make laws public - and because Wikimedia is the only media form that could have the credibility to have such public and official support (because of its non-commercial and volunteer nature). I myself would ask senators, mayors and other authorities to do that. Basically, wikimedia would be doing an immense public service, which I believe would be particularly instrumental in poorer contries, where the governments don't have the means to create such database by themselves.

Of course, there would be a difference between this and other wiki projects, since the content itself is not open for being edited by anyone (since the laws are written by lawmakers). But it would, nonetheless, require the same type of collective and volunteer work of publishing content (the law) and reviewing it (to avoid scams, inaccuracies, or even to notify about changes in the law). Perhaps that would not even be that much different, though. After all, Wikiquotes, for example, should be accurate to what the people actually said or wrote.

Well... what do you guys think?

Thank you,

Diogo

p.s. (since I haven't used this before, how would I even know if someone is replying to my comment???)

New Wikimedia projects are only launched after extensive discussion by the community and the Board. If you would like this project to be part of Wikimedia, please see the information on project creation at Proposals for new projects where you will find instructions on how to propose a new project. Thank you for your suggestion. Cbrown1023 talk</