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+/- Afrikaans: Die Wikimedia Forum is 'n sentrale plek vir vrae en besprekings aangaande die Wikimedia Stigting en sy projekte. (vir Metawiki besprekings, sien Meta:Babel.) العربية: منتدى ويكيميديا هو المكان المركزي للأسئلة و النقاش المتعلق بمؤسسة ويكيميديا و مشاريعها (للنقاش حول ميتاويكي ، انظر ميتا:بابل.) Български: Wikimedia Forum е основното място за въпроси и обсъждания за Фондация Уикимедия и нейните проекти. (За обсъждане на Мета-Уики, вижте Meta:Babel) Тази страница не е предназначена за въпроси, свързани със софтуера МедияУики; такива въпроси се отправят на MediaWiki support desk. বাংলা: উইকিমিডিয়া ফোরাম একটি কেন্দ্রীয় স্থান যেখানে আপনি উইকিমিডিয়া ফাউন্ডেশন এবং এর প্রকল্পসমূহ সম্পর্কে প্রশ্ন এবং আলোচনা করতে পারেন। (মেটা উইকি সম্পর্কে আলোচনার জন্য, দেখুন Meta:Babel।) Brezhoneg: Wikimedia Forum zo anezhañ ul lec'h kreiz evit eskemm ha sevel goulennoù war diazezadur Wikimedia hag ar raktresoù stag outañ. (Evit kaozeal diwar-benn Meta wiki, gwelet Meta:Babel.) Català: El Wikimedia Forum és el lloc central per a preguntes i discussions sobre la fundació Wikimedia i els seus projectes. (Per a la discussió sobre Meta wiki, vegeu Meta:Babel.) Česky: Wikimedia Forum je stránka určená pro dotazy a diskusi o nadaci Wikimedia a jejích projektech. (Diskusi o Metě vizte na Meta:Babel.) 'Dansk: Wikimedia Forum er et centralt sted for spørgsmål og diskussioner om Wikimedia Foundation og dens projekter. (For diskussion omhandlende Meta, se Meta:Babel.) Deutsch: Das Wikimedia-Forum ist eine zentrale Seite für Fragen und Diskussionen, die die Wikimedia Foundation und ihre Projekte betreffen. (Für Diskussionen über Metawiki, siehe Meta:Babel.) Hier ist nicht der richtige Ort für technische Fragen zur MediaWiki-Software; bitte wende dich hierzu an unser Support Desk. ‪Deutsch (Sie-Form)‬: Das Wikimedia-Forum ist eine zentrale Seite für Fragen und Diskussionen, die die Wikimedia Foundation und ihre Projekte betreffen. (Für Diskussionen über Metawiki, siehe Meta:Babel.) Hier ist nicht der richtige Ort für technische Fragen zur MediaWiki-Software; bitte wenden Sie sich hierzu an unser Support Desk. Ελληνικά: Το Wikimedia Forum είναι ο κεντρικός χώρος για ερωτήσεις και συζητήσεις σχετικά με το Wikimedia Foundation και τα εγχειρήματά του. (Για συζητήσεις σχετικά με το Meta wiki, δείτε Meta:Babel.) Αυτός δεν είναι ένας χώρος για να κάνετε τεχνικές ερωτήσεις για το λογισμικό MediaWiki. Παρακαλούμε κάντε τέτοιες ερωτήσεις στο MediaWiki support desk. English: The Wikimedia Forum is a central place for questions and discussions about the Wikimedia Foundation and its projects. (For discussion about the Meta wiki, see Meta:Babel.) This is not the place to make technical queries regarding the MediaWiki software; please ask such questions at the MediaWiki support desk; technical questions about Wikimedia wikis, however, can be placed on Tech page. བོད་ཡིག: ཝེ་ཁེའི་སྨྱོན་སྦྱོར་གླེང་མོལ་ནི་གནད་དོན་ཞིག་ཡིན། ཝེ་ཁེའི་སྨྱོན་སྦྱོར་ཐེབས་རྩ་ལྷན་ཚོགས་དེ་བཞིན་དོན་ཚན་འཚོང་གཉེར་ལྟེ་གནས་བྱེད་པ་ཡིན། ༼ཝེ་ཁེ་མ་ཁུལ་དང་འབྲེལ་བའི་གླེང་མོལ་གནང་འདོད་ན་པ་པེའར། ལ་གཟིགས།༽ དེ་ནི་ཝེ་ཁེ་སྨྱོན་སྦྱོར་གྱི་འབྲེལ་ཡོད་གཉེན་ཆས་ལག་རྩལ་གྱི་གནད་དོན་བྱས་ན་འཚམ་པོ་མེད་པས་ཝེ་ཁེ་སྨྱོན་སྦྱོར་གྱི་རྒྱབ་སྐྱོར་ཐོབ་པའི་ཞུབས་ཞུའི་སྟེགས་བུར་བློ་དྲི་གནང་རོགས། ཝེ་ཁེའི་སྨྱོན་སྦྱོར་གྱི་ཝེ་ཁེའི་ལག་རྩལ་དང་བཀའ་མོལ་གནང་རོགས། ཡིན་ནའི་ཤོག་ངོས་སྟེང་ལག་རྩལ་འཇོག་ན་འགྲིག Español: El Wikimedia Forum es un lugar central para las preguntas y las discusiones sobre la fundación de Wikimedia y sus proyectos. (Para la discusión sobre Meta wiki, ver Meta:Babel.) Eesti: Wikimedia Forum on Wikimedia sihtasutust puudutavate küsimuste esitamise ja arutamise koht. (Meta-Viki arutelu on leheküljel Meta:Babel.) فارسی: متاپاب محل مرکزی برای سوالات و بحث‌های راجع به بنیاد ویکی‌مدیا و پروژه‌های آن است.برای بحث راجع به متاویکی لطفا ببنید.متا:بابل Suomi: Wikimedia Forum on keskeinen paikka Wikimedia-säätiöön ja sen hankkeisiin liittyville kysymyksille ja keskusteluille. (Meta-Wikiin liittyvä keskustelu löytyy sivulta Meta:Babel.) Français: Le Wikimedia Forum est un endroit central pour des questions et des discussions sur la Wikimedia Foundation et ses projets. (Pour des discussions à propos du Metawiki, voir Meta:Babel.) Ce n'est pas l'endroit pour faire des requêtes techniques concernant MediaWiki; posez vos éventuelles questions au MediaWiki support desk. Frysk: It Wikimedia Forum is it sintrale plak foar fragen en diskusjes oer de Wikimedia Foundation en de projekten dêrfan. (Foar diskusjes oer de Metawiki sjoch Meta:Babel). Galego: O Foro da Wikimedia é un lugar central para preguntas e conversas sobre a Fundación Wikimedia e os seus proxectos, parecido á Taberna dos proxectos galegos. Para as conversas sobre Meta-Wiki, vai a Meta:Babel. Alemannisch: S Wikimedia Forum isch e zäntrali Syte fir Froge zue un Diskussione iber d Wikimedia Foundation un ihri Projäkt. (Fir Diskussione iber Metawiki, lueg Meta:Babel.) Do isch nit dr richtig Ort tächnischi Froge zue dr MediaWiki-Software; bitte wänd di fir des an unser Support Desk. עברית: פורום ויקימדיה הוא מקום מרכזי לשאלות ודיונים על קרן ויקימדיה והפרויקטים שלה. (לדיון על מטא־ויקי, ראו מטא:בבל.) हिन्दी: विकिमीडिया फोरम विकिमीडिया फाउंडेशन और इसकी परियोजनाओं के बारे में सवाल और विचार विमर्श करने का मुख्य स्थल है। (मेटा विकि के बारे में विचार विमर्श के लिए देखिए मेटा बेबल) मीडिया विकि सफ्टवेयर के बारे में तकनिकी सवाल करने के लिए यह स्थल नहीं है; ऐसे प्रश्न मीडिया विकि सहयोग डेस्क में कीजिए। Hrvatski: Wikimedia Forum je središnje mjesto za pitanja i rasprave o Fondaciji Wikimedia i njenim projektima. (Za rasprave o Meta wiki vidjeti Meta:Babel.) Ovo nije mjesto gdje se postavlja tehnička pitanja o MediaWiki softveru. Za takve stvari pitajte MediaWiki službu za podršku. Interlingua: Le Foro de Wikimedia es un loco central pro questiones e discussiones super le Fundation Wikimedia e su projectos. (Pro le discussiones super le Meta-wiki, vide Meta:Babel). Bahasa Indonesia: Wikimedia Forum adalah pusat untuk pertanyaan-pertanyaan dan diskusi mengenai Wikimedia Foundation dan proyek-proyeknya. (Untuk diskusi mengenai Meta wiki, lihat Meta:Babel.) Italiano: Il Wikimedia Forum è il principale luogo dove si pongono domande e si discute sulla Wikimedia Foundation e i suoi progetti. (Per le discussioni che riguardano Meta wiki, si prega di guardare la pagina Meta:Babel). Magyar: A Wikimedia Forum a Wikimedia Alapítványt és projektjeit érintő kérdések és megbeszélések központi helye. (A Meta-Wikiről szóló megbeszélésekhez lásd a Meta:Babel oldalt).) 日本語: ウィキメディア・フォーラム (Wikimedia Forum) はウィキメディア財団とそのプロジェクトについての質問と議論の中心となるページです。（メタ・ウィキについての議論はMeta:Babelをご覧ください。） ქართული: ვიკიმედიის ფორუმი არის კითხვებისა და განხილვების ადგილი ფონდი ვიკიმედიისა და მისი პროექტების შესახებ. (მეტა-ვიკის გაიხილვისათვის იხილეთ Meta:Babel.) ეს არ არის მედიავიკთან დაკავშირებული ტექნიკური საკითხების განსახილველი ადგილი; ამისათვის, გთხოვთ იხილეთ MediaWiki support desk. ភាសាខ្មែរ: មេតាផាប់ (Wikimedia Forum) ជាកន្លែងសំរាប់សួរនិងពិភាក្សាអំពី មូលនិធិវិគីមេឌា និងគំរោងនានារបស់មូលនិធិនេះ។ (ចំពោះការពិភាក្សាទាក់ទងនឹងមេតាវិគី (Meta wiki) សូមមើល Meta:Babel។) 한국어: 위키미디어 포럼은 위키미디어 재단과 그 프로젝트에 대해 논의하는 곳입니다. (메타위키에 자체에 대한 논의는 바벨에서 해 주세요.) Ripoarisch: Dat Wikimedia Forum ess è Sigk öwwer'et Wikimädia on dämm sing Projäckcher ze klaafe. (Övver't Metawiki sällver kallt mer op Meta:Babel.) Lietuvių: Wikimedia Forum yra pagrindinė vieta klausimams ir diskusijoms apie Wikimedia Foundation ir jos projektus. (Apie Meta Wiki diskusijas žiūrėkite Meta:Babel.) Македонски: Wikimedia Forum е централно место за прашања и разговори за Фондацијата Викимедија и нејзините проекти. (За разговори во врска со Мета-вики, видете Meta:Babel.) Ова не е место за поставување на технички прашања во врска со programot МедијаВики; таквите прашања поставувајте ги на Бирото за поддршка за МедијаВики. Bahasa Melayu: Wikimedia Forum ini merupakan pusat pertanyaan dan perbincangan tentang Yayasan Wikimedia dan projek-projeknya. (Untuk perbincangan tentang Meta wiki, lihat Meta:Babel). Malti: Wikimedia Forum hu post ċentrali għal mistoqsijiet u diskussjonijiet fuq il-Fondazzjoni Wikimedia u l-proġetti tagħha. (Għal diskussjoni fuq il-Meta wiki, ara Meta:Babel.) नेपाली: विकिमीडिया फोरम विकिमीडिया फाउंडेशन र यसका परियोजनाहरुको बारेमा प्रश्न र विचार विमर्श गर्ने मुख्य स्थल हो। मेटा विकिको बारेमा विचार विमर्शको लागि हेर्नुहोस् मेटा बेबल मीडिया विकि सफ्टवेयरको बारेमा तकनिकी सवाल गर्ने स्थल यो होइन; त्यस्ता प्रश्न मीडिया विकि सहयोग डेस्कमा गर्नुहोस्। Nederlands: Het Wikimedia Forum is een centrale plek voor vragen en discussies betreffende de Wikimedia Foundation en haar projecten. (voor discussies over de Metawiki, zie Meta:Babel.) Dit is geen plek waar je technische vragen over de MediaWiki-software kunt stellen; stel zulke vragen in de MediaWiki support desk. ‪Norsk (bokmål)‬: Wikimedia Forum er et sentralt sted for spørsmål og diskusjoner om Wikimedia-stifte og dens prosjekter. (For diskusjon om Meta, se Meta:Babel.) ‪Norsk (nynorsk)‬: Wikimedia Forum ein sentral stad for spørsmål og ordskifte kring Wikimedia-stiftinga og prosjekta hennar. (For ordskifte kring Meta-wikien, sjå Meta:Babel.) Dette er ikkje staden for å koma med tekniske spurningar om MediaWiki-programvara; gjer vel og still slike spørsmål hjå MediaWiki-svartenesta. Polski: Wikimedia Forum jest miejscem na dyskusje i pytania dotyczące Fundacji Wikimedia i jej projektów. (Dyskusje na temat Meta wiki toczą się na Meta:Babel.) Português: A Wikimedia Forum é uma central para questões e discussões sobre a Fundação Wikimedia e seus projetos (para discussão sobre o Meta-Wiki, veja Meta:Babel). Română: Wikimedia Forum este un loc central pentru întrebări şi discuţii despre Fundaţia Wikimedia şi proiectele ei. (Pentru discuţii despre Meta wiki, vezi Meta:Babel.) Acesta nu este locul pentru întrebările de ordin tehnic despre software-ul MediaWiki; vă rugăm puneţi întrebările de genul acesta la biroul de asistenţă MediaWiki. Русский: Wikimedia Forum — место для вопросов и централизованных обсуждений, касающихся фонда Викимедиа. (Обсуждения, связанные с Мета-вики, ведутся на странице Meta:Babel) Shqip: Wikimedia Forum është një qendër për pyetje dhe diskutime mbi Fondacionin Wikimedia dhe projektet e tij. (Për diskutim mbi Meta wiki, shihni Meta:Babel.) Slovenščina: Wikimedijin Forum je osrednji prostor za vprašanja in razprave o Fundaciji Wikimedija ter njenih projektih (za razpravo o Meti glej Meta:Babel.) Српски / Srpski: Wikimedia Forum је централно место за питања и дискусије о Викимедијиној фондацији и њеним пројектима. (За дискусије о Мета викију, погледајте Meta:Babel.) Svenska: Wikimedia Forum är en central plats för att diskutera och ställa frågor om Wikimedia Foundation och dess projekt. (För diskussioner om Meta wiki, se Meta:Babel.) ไทย: Wikimedia Forum เป็นศูนย์กลางสำหรับสอบถามและอภิปรายเกี่ยวกับมูลนิธิวิกิมีเดีย รวมไปถึงโครงการของมูลนิธิ (สำหรับการอภิปรายเกี่ยวกับเมต้าวิกิ ดู Meta:Babel) Tagalog: Ang Wikimedia Forum ay isang sentral na pook para sa mga tanong at usapan ukol sa Wikimedia Foundation at mga proyekto nito. (Para sa mga usapan ukol sa Meta-Wiki, silipin ang Meta:Babel) Türkçe: Wikimedia Forum Wikimedia Vakfı ve onun projeleri hakkındaki soru ve tartışmalar ile ilgili ana sayfadır. (Meta viki hakkındaki tartışmalar için Meta:Babel sayfasına bakınız.) Tiếng Việt: Wikimedia Forum là nơi tập trung những câu hỏi và thảo luận về Quỹ Wikimedia và những dự án của nó. (Để thảo luận về Meta wiki, mời xem Meta:Babel.) Volapük: El Wikimedia Forum binon top zänodik ad bespikön eli Wikimedia Foundation e dotis tefü on äsi tefü proyegs valik ona. (Pro bespiks tefü vüki it: Meta, dabinon pad: Meta:Babel.) ‪中文(简体)‬: Wikimedia Forum（维基媒体论坛）是让大家讨论维基媒体基金会及其各项计划或提出相关疑问的地方。（若要进行有关元维基本身的讨论，请移步Meta:Babel） ‪中文(繁體)‬: Wikimedia Forum 是讓大家提出有關維基媒體基金會及其各項計劃的疑問和討論的地方。（而有關元維基本身的討論，請到Meta:Babel。） You can reply to a topic by clicking the '[edit]' link beside that section, or start a new discussion

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A crusader against private VPN?

Hello, I post this here since I don't know where it would belong otherwise. Apologizes if that isn't the correct place. I know the policy about public proxies and I understand it. But I use a private VPN service at VPN Customers and a fr.wikipedia sysop has decided suddenly to go on his own crusade against VPN, banning all individual IP manually. Is this really a new policy in wikipedia or did he take this action on his own? -CobraSA —The preceding unsigned comment was added by CobraSA (talk • contribs) 2012-03-30T08:44:57.

Proposal - complete unified login for all eligible accounts

Tracked in Bugzilla
Bug 35707

See also [Wikitech-l] grouping users - an idea for a new SUL improvement

Unified login is a relatively new feature to the WMF wikis, allowing each user to have a single combined account in every project. Users that only have an account on one wiki would extend that to all wikis, and users that already have accounts on multiple wikis would have them combined. It was initially an opt-in for existing users, but it is now done by default for all new users. This leaves us with three groups of users: those with UL, those that cannot complete UL because of a naming conflict on another wiki, and those with no conflict that have simply not completed the process. I am proposing that account unification be completed for all eligible accounts without requiring the user to take any additional steps. This would make UL the rule rather than the exception that it currently is, and bring us closer to the goals of universal watchlists, recent changes, interwiki page moves, etc. This would be especially helpful on Commons, which has so many images that were originally uploaded at another WMF wiki, enabling better attribution without interwiki links. I propose that it be carried out as a one-time process rather than a continuous automatic software process, allowing users to still adjust ULs as they see fit. ▫ JohnnyMrNinja (talk / en) 00:50, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

I apologize that I was unclear; what I mean by "eligible accounts" was all accounts without existing conflicts, as these can be taken care of by an automated process. Accounts that have conflicts would be unaffected by this specific proposal. Conflicts could not be solved by any automated process, as each case would be different. Hopefully once this proposed process has completed we can look at other improvements that we can make. ▫ JohnnyMrNinja (talk / en) 10:50, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

Oppose Lots of people do not want a unified account. Guido den Broeder (talk) 03:39, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

Support Unifying accounts now will help pre-emptively prevent naming conflicts and the resulting confusion later, and make it easy for users who aren't savvy enough to complete UL to still benefit from it. To satisfy people who (for reasons I don't clearly understand) don't want a UL, have an opt-out list and notify everyone who is affected so they can add themselves if needed. Dcoetzee (talk) 04:17, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

Agreed, and anytime a user wishes their account to be un-merged, this has always been possible using Special:CentralAuth. The users who do not wish to have UL are only the barest fraction. The majority of non-unified accounts are users that have become inactive/less active since UL became possible, and possibly users that don't understand enough about the process to feel comfortable completing it. ▫ JohnnyMrNinja (talk / en) 05:49, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

NO — this notifying-business is a horrible idea. You're gonna spam this cross-wiki unto all sorts of userpages (and pages that don't even exist yet). Nope. Total mess. Seb az86556 (talk) 11:24, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

I didn't think that part through; I think site-wide notices would be acceptable, if less noticeable (as many of these accounts are inactive). But again, any users that miss the notice can request to be unmerged by a bureaucrat steward. ▫ JohnnyMrNinja (talk / en) 11:36, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

Isn't that currently reserved to stewards? --Stefan2 (talk) 11:41, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

You're right, I misread the text at Help:Unified login#Conflict resolution. ▫ JohnnyMrNinja (talk / en) 11:46, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

Support automatic unification for accounts which haven't requested any unification at all. Currently, it is possible to create new SUL conflicts for those user names, which is bad. If some users don't want SUL at all, they could maybe be allowed to request exemption somewhere.

Comment It seems that you also propose automatic usurpation of accounts regardless of the number of edits. This would be very practical for me since I have an SUL conflict on Commons where I also happen to have around 20,000 edits (around 2/3 of my total edits – my user name is held by someone who made 13 edits in 2006 and never returned), but it may risk making some people angry. This would be very practical for many projects not wishing to have local uploads since they could easily forward people to Commons without risking that people can't use their accounts there (see concerns on Danish Wikipedia) and also for other multilingual projects such as Meta. Full SUL would also prevent miscrediting when importing edits from one Wikimedia project to some other project (see concerns on Meta). --Stefan2 (talk) 10:03, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

A single unified database for all user accounts is the eventual goal, but the specific proposal was intended to apply only to accounts with no conflicts, as they can be done by an automated process. Usurping accounts would have to be done on a case-by-case, wiki-by-wiki basis, and that will be much more controversial. I think that should be addressed once this proposed process is finished. This proposal will make any future conflict-resolutions easier, by taking the majority of WMF accounts out of the equation. ▫ JohnnyMrNinja (talk / en) 10:50, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

I see. It was not clear what you meant with an "eligible account". It would be very good if SUL accounts were created whenever possible so that people can't create new SUL conflicts. I think that one of the current problems might be that inactive or semi-active users are unaware of SUL and so they don't know that it is possible to unify accounts. --Stefan2 (talk) 11:28, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

Support I come across spammers who are not unified and so cannot be locked... --Herby ^{talk thyme} 10:53, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

Comment This would be a serious breach of privacy. If this happens, I want my accounts, all my contributions and all mention of my accounts and my name deleted from all the WMF databases. Guido den Broeder (talk) 11:02, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

In what way is this a breach of privacy? Your edits are currently under a free license and can be modified however anyone sees fit. The edits you've made will still be stored on servers in Florida USA, same as before. The only thing that will change is that you would be able to edit other WMF projects without creating a new account. You won't even have new user pages on those wikis. You won't even log in there until you visit the site while logged in. What would be different? Also, there is no way that anyone's edits will ever be erased, unless that person has access to a titanic electromagnet and can sneak onto WMF property. Even then, your name and edits are in countless database dumps, and on countless Wikimedia knockoff sites across the internet. There is a decent chance that someone is selling a book on eBay or Amazon with words that you wrote in it, with your name in plain text. So how is this, in any conceivable way, going to infringe on your privacy any more than you already have yourself, by making edits under a free license under your real name? ▫ JohnnyMrNinja (talk / en) 11:18, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

You can not create accounts unless you known the password and e-mail of the user. However providing this information to any script (and to its operator) would be a serious breach of privacy. In addition how are you going to decide which accounts are related or not related? By e-mails? Passwords? Both? Is not it an incredibly silly proposal? Ruslik (talk) 11:59, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

Technically, you only need to compare hash values of the password and e-mail address. Anyway, all of the accounts are currently on servers at the same location, so I don't see any privacy problem. --Stefan2 (talk) 12:02, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

To create an account you need actual values, not hashes. Ruslik (talk) 12:08, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

I cannot speak to the exact server-side process as I am not a dev. I've left a note at User talk:Brion VIBBER, as he has handled a lot of the SUL process. As it is a WMF-wide proposal, the merging would have to be done by a dev, so there would be no increased access to information; these people already have all of that info, and have already run tests combining everyone's accounts successfully. As I said above, the proposal is not about usurping accounts, but simply extending accounts where no conflicts exist. ▫ JohnnyMrNinja (talk / en) 12:17, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

• Support - makes sense as a step to finishing the unfinished SUL project. As an aside on collisions - is there a fundamental reason that automatically renaming accounts can't be used to help? Renaming old accounts with a handful of edits on one wiki a long time ago to "get out of the way" of an SUL merger ought to be feasible, no? That would leave a relatively small number of collisions between relatively active users to solve (where again renaming might work, but would need negotiation). Rd232 (talk) 12:50, 23 February 2012 (UTC)
  • There is no fundamental reason, but it is my feeling that accounts should be examined before renaming, and that can't be done automatically. This proposal is relatively low-impact, but any proposal that increases account usurpation or automates user renaming would be fairly contentious. So I'm hoping we can pass the easy proposal, and discuss other actions/policies/procedures once/if this one is successful. ▫ JohnnyMrNinja (talk / en) 13:24, 23 February 2012 (UTC)
    • For example, users may be unaware of SUL and use different e-mail addresses and passwords. Many people get lots of different e-mail addresses from different places and might not enter the same one for all accounts. In some cases, the e-mail addresses might also be obsolete. And people are advised not to use the same password at more than one place, and although many people ignore that advice, some people probably follow it. If two accounts belong to the same user, they should probably be merged instead. --Stefan2 (talk) 13:36, 23 February 2012 (UTC)
• Oppose. This is not compatible with the privacy policy. In addition it will lead to the creation of a huge number of unnecessary accounts including old vandalism-only, spam-only accounts and accounts with inappropriate usernames. It may also cause accounts that were oversighted to be resurrected. If implemented it will lead to a tide of spam when user talk pages are automatically created and e-mail notifications are sent. So, it proposal solves no problems but will create significant new ones. It is basically a solution in search of a problem. Ruslik (talk) 14:42, 23 February 2012 (UTC)
  • I don't understand most of this oppose. Do you realize that all new accounts are automatically unified accounts? --MZMcBride (talk) 16:16, 23 February 2012 (UTC)
    • Could you tell where you find the incompatibility in the privacy policy?
    • It only creates new accounts if you visit a different project whilst logged in. As for spam accounts, automatic SUL would improve things since the newly created global accounts could get an automatic global block. Oversighted accounts should maybe remain local unless there is a global oversight which could be automatically applied. As it is now, these users can create new accounts under the same name at any other project and then vandalise under the same name on that other project.
    • User talk pages are only created if there is an account and accounts are only created if you visit the project which you don't have to. Besides, not all projects have welcoming bots and you don't seem to get a mail for the first talk page edit either. --Stefan2 (talk) 16:27, 23 February 2012 (UTC)
      • The proposal is to create local accounts on all projects except where conflicting accounts exist. You should have read this proposal before supporting it. Ruslik (talk) 16:58, 23 February 2012 (UTC)
        • Hm? It sounds as if it would just do the same thing as going to Special:MergeAccount, which does not create any new accounts unless you visit other projects. --Stefan2 (talk) 17:04, 23 February 2012 (UTC)
        • Sorry, I'm not seeing that ("the proposal is to create local accounts on all projects") in letter or in spirit in the opening post. Can you elaborate?

          I agree that creating local accounts for every global user would be a poor idea (particularly as global renames still don't exist). This isn't done for global accounts currently and I don't believe there's any intention to do that here, though perhaps I'm missing something. --MZMcBride (talk) 19:00, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

          • "This would be especially helpful on Commons, which has so many images that were originally uploaded at another WMF wiki, enabling better attribution without interwiki links." You can attribute without interwiki links only if a local account is created on commons. Ruslik (talk) 06:10, 24 February 2012 (UTC)
            • What I meant was the ability to create user pages for prolific image uploaders on WP that had become inactive and whose images had been moved to Commons; even things as simple as a link to the WP user page. There is a particular uploader who has not been around in years, but when he was he uploaded dozens of very valuable hard-to-obtain images. When they were moved to Commons, I realized that any readers searching for his username would find a message "User account is not registered." I cannot even create a redirect to the WP page there, because conceivably someone else could create an account there. It may not seem like a big deal, but it irritates me that someone could register an account and take credit for images or edits they did not create.
            • As far as I know, SUL registers that name and links it to the global account, but the password is only handled by the global login. The individual wikis are only added to that login when the user goes to that wiki while logged in. SUL bypasses the conventional registration/login of the individual wiki. There is only one account under SUL and one password entry, it just has different accesses on different wikis (not separate accounts). ▫ JohnnyMrNinja (talk / en) 06:36, 24 February 2012 (UTC)
              • Good, let's test this: do you have a unified account, yes or no? Seb az86556 (talk) 08:05, 24 February 2012 (UTC)
                • Good idea. It took me a while to find a wiki I have never visited, te:User:JohnnyMrNinja (translated). But since my global account name is locked, no other user can claim that name. I just tried to create an account under that name on that wiki and I was turned down. ▫ JohnnyMrNinja (talk / en) 08:15, 24 February 2012 (UTC)
                  • Yeah, I did the same thing, tried to to create your doppelganger, rejected. Seb az86556 (talk) 08:16, 24 February 2012 (UTC)
                    • Contrast this to sl:Uporabnik:JohnnyMrNinja, where I have visited but never edited. It is the visiting after SUL that adds individual wiki access to the SUL. Until that point the name is locked, but not treated as a created account. ▫ JohnnyMrNinja (talk / en) 08:21, 24 February 2012 (UTC)
                      • I share Ruslik concerns. If this proposal passes locally blocked accounts must be excluded from this process. —Marco Aurelio (Nihil Prius Fide) 14:18, 2 March 2012 (UTC)
• Support: Though I think this is a silly venue. Half-informed or completely uninformed opinions are the best you're going to get here. Unified login for all accounts is the eventual goal. This is why new accounts were switched at some point to automatically be global upon registration, if there were no conflicts. This is really better handled via a Bugzilla ticket. --MZMcBride (talk) 16:16, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

• Support: All eligible non-conflicting accounts should be SULed. Makes sense, pre-emptively prevents problems--Gilderien (talk) 07:42, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

• Support: Per Gilderien Alanscottwalker (talk) 12:20, 24 February 2012 (UTC)
• Support: that would be the only way to prevent abuses where one could steal the usernames on other namespaces. Gentil ♡ (talk) 14:02, 24 February 2012 (UTC)
• Support and then build a global rename tool QU ^TalkQu 18:11, 24 February 2012 (UTC)
• Support I had to make a new account. Would not have been necessary if my old account would not be a homonym. Perhaps a tool can rename it for people with this [roblem e.g. by adding a number or referring to a numer and make a set of osers with the same name on another project --ZeaForUs (talk) 18:51, 25 February 2012 (UTC) (used to be Patio)
• Support This would really solve some work at en:WP:ACC. mabdul 20:19, 27 February 2012 (UTC)
• Support, excellent idea. -- Cirt (talk) 20:22, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

• Support, Nice Idea.98.71.47.189 23:05, 27 February 2012 (UTC)
• Support --99of9 (talk) 01:37, 28 February 2012 (UTC)
• Support --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 03:40, 28 February 2012 (UTC)
• Support It Is Me Here ^{t / c} 21:57, 3 March 2012 (UTC)
• Neutral I don't see an immediate need for this. To me it sounds like blowing up the servers just to have all eligible users unified. --OosWesThoesBes (talk) 16:45, 4 March 2012 (UTC)
• Support Finish it so that a monster doesn't grow too much. ~~EBE123~~ ^talk_Contribs 21:30, 4 March 2012 (UTC)
• Support - moving away from local accounts to global accounts is one of the smartest ideas I've heard in a while. This is definitely a step in the correct direction. Ajraddatz (Talk) 23:02, 4 March 2012 (UTC)
• Comment - Just leaving a note here to prevent archiving while we wait for a developer to respond. ▫ JohnnyMrNinja (talk / en) 20:25, 4 April 2012 (UTC)
• Support The Helpful One 22:08, 4 April 2012 (UTC)
• Question - Ok, just to be clear - this is unifying only those accounts which fall under group #3 - Users which do not have a naming conflict, and who have not chosen to "opt out"? And before this happens, will the "opt out" option be in place for at least 60 (or so) days with watchlist AND sign-in notices to help those who wish to opt out to do so? And finally, is some policy/guideline going to sprout up on how to deal with certain ppl who opt out to be "forced" to opt in? (For example: disruptive situations such as vandalism, etc.) - Jc37 (talk) 22:59, 12 April 2012 (UTC)
• Support [stwalkerster|talk] 13:03, 13 April 2012 (UTC)
• Oppose unless blocked and (especially) suppressed accounts are ignored in this process. Bencmq (talk) 06:26, 22 April 2012 (UTC)
• Support --Meno25 (talk) 14:16, 9 May 2012 (UTC)

Header for Special:Export

How i can use Special:Export for my purposes. I send next header from my app:

string request = "POST en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Export&action=submit HTTP/1.1\r\n"
                 "Host: en.wikipedia.org\r\n"
                 "Content-Length: 32\r\n"
                 "Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded\r\n"
                 "Connection: close\r\n\r\n"
                 "catname=&pages=ukraine&curonly=1";

but it render to me page about error:

• HTTP/1.0 400 Bad Request Server: squid/2.7.STABLE9 Date: Mon, 23 Apr 2012 14:45:12 GMT Content-Type: text/html Content-Length: 3111 X-Squid-Error: ERR_INVALID_URL 0 X-Cache: MISS from amssq46.esams.wikimedia.org X-Cache-Lookup: NONE from amssq46.esams.wikimedia.org:80 Connection: close

I need to create tools to replace inwiki links to help in translation. I'm sure what some such tool already exist, but i want to do it myself.

Your HTTP request is wrong. It should be either "POST /w/index.php..." or "POST http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php...". You should also take a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php Platonides (talk) 15:13, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

How can I add a new entry to an article to add a translation?

I would like to add a Persian translation to one of the articles. Can anybody please tell me how I can do this? My email is gbozorgmehr@yahoo.com

Many thanks in advance

Wiki Quizzes embedded in Wikipedia pages - or on an external site

Like many grateful humans who have used and contributed to Wikipedia over the years, I find that I sometimes search for information to satisfy curiosity or a bet, but other times I read articles to learn.

As memory & cognition research shows, people need repetitive, spaced, and varied engagement with new information so that it can be encoded in long-term memory. What if Wikipedia articles--not all of them, of course, but ones where various metrics would indicate greatest usefulness--carried a button that gave users a few brief quiz questions after reading the article, then sent them those & perhaps a few other questions through email/social media after days / weeks / months?

This feature would greatly enhance the educative potential of Wikipedia articles, and I'm happy to contribute, either through Wikipedia itself or through a website hosted on the domain name wikiquizzes.org, which I've just bought.

Please let me know how this idea sounds (I'm sure it's been considered before), and how I can help!

Kevin kevinmkleinyahoo.com

changing the contents in wiki

TO the wikipedia i am really sorry that i have changed the data in the article called " Time 100: The Most Important People of the Century" it was a mistake done by me in that article and i have deleted some information in that article and it was done by mistake and i dont know how to get back the info so pls tell me wat to do —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Rohitkunchapu (talk • contribs) 2012-05-03T19:59:29.

Convenience features for people who are on many WM projects?

Hi, I am occasionally editing or simply reading or watching WP pages in >15 languages and wiktionary and other projects in addition to that. There is a number of things that would make life easier for people like me:

1. carry over default settings to every new project I login. Adjusting watchlist and diff settings for every single project anew is maddening
2. unified watchlists, notifications when something changed in one of the less busy projects
3. create default user with a link to specified multi-project user & talk pages.
4. default user/talk page linking to an multi-project "home"

-- Richiez (talk) 10:51, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

It seems that it is now possible to get an e-mail notification if a page on your watchlist is changed on any project. Previously, this was restricted to Meta, Commons and a few other projects. However, if someone makes a minor edit to a watched page, you won't get any notice at all for that page until after you've visited it again. --Stefan2 (talk) 11:43, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

Global watchlists, and global userpages are very longstanding requests from the community. An alternative work around would be to merge some wikis, a lot of things would be easier and simpler if we had a single wiki for each language with Wiktionary, Wikisource etc as namespaces in one wiki. WereSpielChequers (talk) 17:34, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

Mobile Wikipedia!

• Where I can edit the main page of Wikipedia Mobile (turkish version)? And where I can translate the interface("Type your search here...", "Content available under CC BY-SA 3.0" and so on...)? Thank you! Emperyan-message/ileti-WMTR 21:34, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

While viewing the source of the mobile version, I saw a link to Mobile Projects/Mobile Gateway. I guess you need to read that page to learn how to configure what goes on the mobile version of your homepage. It would have been nice for someone to alert the smaller wikis about this. Killiondude (talk) 21:44, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

• Do not have a direct link? My English is not too good. :) Emperyan-message/ileti-WMTR 13:37, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

I've asked Tomasz Finc or Phil Chang to speak to this. Hopefully they can weigh in soon. Philippe (WMF) (talk) 18:54, 9 May 2012 (UTC)

• Currently the instructions are not in languages other than English. Sorry about that. We will look into translating the instructions. In the meantime, perhaps a bilingual user can help? Regarding the interface elements such as "Type your search here," those text elements will eventually be translated by our software localization process. You can see the current status of translations on www.translatewiki.net. Hope this helps. --Phil Chang, Mobile Product Manager (talk) 00:10, 10 May 2012 (UTC)

• I can help for translations but there is another problem in mobil verison of Turkish Wikipedia. The main page is empty in term of content. "Today's featured article" is not on the homepage. Nazif İlbek 10:28, 10 May 2012 (UTC)

• I repeat: Where I can edit the main page of Wikipedia Mobile (turkish version)? Emperyan-message/ileti-WMTR 12:11, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

  • The page can probably only be edited by sysops. Based on tr:Özel:KullanıcıListesi/Emperyan, you don't seem to be a sysop, so you can probably not edit the page. Translations should be added to Translatewiki. Consider translating everything here. Once the translations have been added to Translatewiki, you just need to wait until the WMF has downloaded a new copy of Translatewiki's texts. --Stefan2 (talk) 12:57, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

Requests for comment/Disable uploads on smaller wikis

The title is not perfect but gives the idea. Nemo 14:30, 8 May 2012 (UTC)

Please see my proposal there :-) SPQRobin (talk) 22:17, 11 May 2012 (UTC)

Wikimedia Highlights from April 2012

Highlights from the Wikimedia Foundation Report and the Wikimedia engineering report for April 2012, with a selection of other important events from the Wikimedia movement

• Wikimedia Foundation highlights
  • Expanding fundraising and affiliation models
  • Indic language outreach
  • Mobile pageviews target reached
  • Towards a rapid software deployment cycle
• Data and Trends
• Financials
• Other movement highlights
  • "Wikipedian in Residence" model comes of age
  • Wikidata starts working on interwiki links
  • Multilanguage contest from Monmouthpedia project
  • Tamil media contest
  • Database company donates free access to Wikimedians

About · Subscribe/unsubscribe · Distributed via Global message delivery, 15:02, 9 May 2012 (UTC)

Data protection, MediaWiki and watch list

I hope to find some interested parties here: The latest system update introduced a feature, that shows on my watch list which edits happened since my last access to each page. Obviously MediaWiki logs all my accessed pages with a time stamp. I am not happy with that. Not at all! I consider it a serious breach of European data protection law and urge those responsible for this "feature" to disable it globally very, very quick. --h-stt !? 13:31, 11 May 2012 (UTC)

<squeeze>"Data protection" is, I believe a mistranslation, what H-stt means is data privacy. --Neitram (talk) 11:19, 12 May 2012 (UTC)</squeeze>

en:Data Protection Directive is the European law in question. Data Privacy is an American English term, but American Data Privacy laws and European Data Protection laws are not entirely compatible. However the servers are in Florida and the terms of use do warn people that US law applies on this site. WereSpielChequers (talk) 18:39, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

I believe that the feature has been around for years. It just wasn't being used on some projects.

Please identify the exact place in the law that says a website may not record which user loads which pages at a given point in time when that data is necessary to provide functionality to that user that depends on it. I do not believe that you will find any such prohibition. Telling you (and only you) which pages you have read is not generally accepted as a breach of your privacy. WhatamIdoing (talk) 14:31, 11 May 2012 (UTC)

Which functionality would that be? No purpose of any WikiMedia project justifies to collect data on each and every reading access to all pages. I'm totally disgusted by the mere idea of collecting this kind of data. rgds --h-stt !? 14:34, 11 May 2012 (UTC)

Are you sure that it's for all pages and not only watchlisted pages? Besides, it tracks only the last time you visited/ignored the page. Nemo 14:51, 11 May 2012 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure it is every page that a logged in editor looks at. My theory is that this would explain how as a logged in editor my account becomes "active" when I visit Wikimedia wikis that I've never edited before. I could understand if I watchlisted a page on such projects or set my user preferences, but I'm pretty sure there are dozens of wikis where my account has become active merely because I've opened a page there whilst logged in. My reading of the Privacy policy is that it doesn't cover this, and if the WMF is going to do this they should cover it in the privacy policy. Having just checked there there is indeed a slightly dusty thread Talk:Privacy_policy#Browsing_triggers_publically_logged_account_creation_-_violation_of_privacy_policy in which we discussed this and are awaiting WMF comment. Since anyone can check which wikis an account is active at there does seem to me to be a contradiction between what the WMF says about privacy and the way the devs have implemented it. WereSpielChequers (talk) 20:32, 11 May 2012 (UTC)

By now, some colleagues on deWP explained the functionality because I wasn't the only one, who felt disgusted when the function got active there today. As far as I understand the issue works like this: Every entry in the watch list has an additional field for a time stamp. And with each and every edit, the system checks which user watches the changed article. If the corresponding field with the time stamp is empty, the current one is set. Every time any logged in user reads a page, the system has to check whether the page is on his or her watch list anyway, in order to render the blue star in the correct color. If it is a page on his or her list, the time stamp there is deleted.

I'm still not happy with this feature, as it can be used to trace mere reading of logged in users, at least for pages on their watch list. I don't see why this kind of data would be necessary. And is this feature compatible with the wmf:Privacy policy#Reading projects? There we are told, that only the usual server logs are written, but reading will not be connected with individual user, logged in or not. rgds --h-stt !? 15:20, 11 May 2012 (UTC)

I'm very happy about this feature. It's been very helpful to me when I want to know what has changed since the last time I read a page, rather than since I last edited a page. Previously, I had to remember every change I had read, or guess. The data is absolutely necessary to have this feature work.

There are no privacy problems involved in providing your information to you. Privacy only becomes a concern if the WMF decides that they will look at your information. The privacy policy tells you that they will not do this. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:25, 12 May 2012 (UTC)

There are lots of privacy issues around even aggregating this kind of information. And as the WMF has full access to each and any data on their servers, they can look at this information. The privacy policy states, that mere reading will not be monitored. But obviously this feature can be used to determine the times of reading any page on someones watch list. I'd like to hear Geoff on that issue. rgds --h-stt !? 09:21, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

As far as I know, I saw this on Commons: already a few years ago. -- Lavallen 18:12, 11 May 2012 (UTC)

Yes, it's been the default for smaller wikis (like meta!) for years. It still is an interesting thing to think that someone not only knows which pages were accessed but at what times (!). I wonder if this data is ever purged from the system and if anyone has ready access to it or it's one of those things that takes some prying to get to. I asked Philippe if he'd like to comment. Killiondude (talk) 18:37, 11 May 2012 (UTC)

Would it be very difficult to add an item in the user's settings where this feature can be enabled and disabled? --Neitram (talk) 11:06, 12 May 2012 (UTC)

Comment from the Legal and Community Advocacy Team

Hi everyone, thanks for the interest in this feature of MediaWiki. We've seen the above comments and spent the weekend just double-checking our answers, prior to presenting them here. Apologies for the delay. Please note that Geoff is currently on holiday and unable to respond to questions, but has asked that Kelly and I look into this and report back to him - and to you.

To our reading, there's nothing in this feature that's in conflict with the privacy policy: as noted above, providing YOU with YOUR OWN data, at YOUR request when you sign up for (or view) a watchlist, is not a privacy violation. This feature is not available to users who are just readers (since, in order to have a watchlist, you must have a user account). The information used to provide this feature is what is typically collected by all websites when you visit them and is not shared with third parties. Thanks for the great questions. Philippe (WMF) (talk) 17:50, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

Indeed it is a rather nice feature :) Snowolf ^{How can I help?} 18:25, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

Obviously I'm not happy with this reply. My concern is not about my access to my data as it is presented in the watch list, but in the Foundation's retention of data on mere reading. The privacy policy states, that reading will not be tracked. But with this data the WMF can determine the last reading access of users with watch lists. If ones watch list contains articles with many edits, then the time frame of the last access can be deducted pretty well. Certainly the WMF has no intent to do so, but they have the ability. And this is enough for concerns over data protection and discrepancies between policy and actual function of software. rgds --h-stt !? 15:28, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

Although I like the new feature, I can well understand h-stt's point of view. I think, too, it should be left to the user which data is collected about him, so it seems that the only way to implement this feature compliant to European and German data-protection law should be to make it an opt-in feature and leave it switched off by default. The reason is that WMF may only collect and save data after prior consent of a user, i.e., the user must know in advance which data is saved about his actions in a wiki and on which purpose it is collected and how long it remains saved, and he has to agree to that. However, no user has been told in advance that the WMF collects these data before the feature was activated, and no new user is told that the said data will be collected about him in the future. So no one has agreed to the new watchlist feature. This is probably not compliant to European data-protection standards. So it should please be changed accordingly. It does not matter at all who can view the watchlist. The only thing that matters is whether the WMF may collect and save those data about its users. Thanks to h-stt for bringing up the matter here.--Aschmidt (talk) 23:04, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

The Wikimedia servers are located in the United States, so European laws don't apply. Thus, the Wikimedia Foundation is allowed to ignore all European laws as long as no US law is violated. --Stefan2 (talk) 00:19, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

European law applies to everyone within the European Union. Remember the cases against Microsoft and now against Facebook by the European Commission and by German data-protection administration. Remember the case about the Loriot stamps on Commons ruled strictly and exclusively according to German law. But what's more important is that our commitment to privacy and fairness is the only capital we have to make us distinct from other major web-2.0 platforms out there. We must earn our users' trust. And we do have something to lose here. I for one would not like the WMF projects to stand in a line with companies such as Google, or Facebook etc. that do not care about data-protection laws at all. They give a negative example, and public opinion in this country is rather critical about this. We have to respect our users' expectations. These are founded on what they are used to in their usual environment, including local laws. So, this is not only a matter about which laws would apply in a court ruling, but what is fair and good practice towards a user. American standards are known to be very lax, so they cannot in any way serve as a standard for the rest of the world. Users in other parts of the world will not accept this, being used to more strict and more user-friendly laws. I don't accept the current situation either, and be it only because this seems to be a precedent. This is why I strongly recommend to switch it off immediately and make it an opt-in feature.--Aschmidt (talk) 01:13, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

Philippe says above that this kind of information is "typically collected by all websites when you visit them". Your comments about Google and Facebook imply that you agree that this is typical (NB "typical" ≠ "desirable") practice, but I'd like to get your explicit opinion: do you agree that this kind of information is "typically collected by websites"? WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:47, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

Whether data are typically collected by websites is not a matter of my opinion. --Aschmidt (talk) 20:17, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

I suppose that what Philippe refers to is the web server logs. There you typically have at least the IP number and the page visited. The feature is about making the information easily available instead of having to digest the logs (which is trivial in principle, but probably not with this busy a site). Thus the question is not about gathering the information but about how long it is saved and the feasibility for someone (a WMF employee, a cracker or the authorities) to extract information about individual users.

I think the feature is useful, but I share the feeling that the information might be sensitive. WMF should respect the users and take these concerns seriously. If technically feasible I would like the feature made opt-in. If extracting the information from the logs is nearly as easy as from the database, and the feature thus just makes available information available also to the user himself, then it is of course the logs, not the feature, that is the problem, but I doubt that.

--LPfi (talk) 07:42, 18 May 2012 (UTC)

Aschmidt, it's not an idle question. The privacy policy says that the WMF does this: "When a visitor requests or reads a page, or sends email to a Wikimedia server, no more information is collected than is typically collected by web sites." Users are therefore warned and have agreed to this (the Terms of Use require the Privacy Policy). WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:04, 18 May 2012 (UTC)

Philippe, thank you for responding. But I don't think the issues have been fully answered. WereSpielChequers gave an example, where users are reading a WMF page, this is logged and made public by an automated process. This just happened to me, I read a page on ro.wikipedia.org and immediately got a new user page and template on it with a time stamp. You can see it here, but everybody be advised: If you click on this link, I and everybody else can track when you did it. Not editing, but just reading! Why? What about WMF's "page visits do not expose a visitor's identity publicly"[1]? What about the strategic task force recommendation to consider privacy one of the WMFs advocacy concerns? Why has this issue never been answered (since 24 June 2011) or fixed by WMF? It makes me proud that Wikipedia is the only website of the top100 that does not track its readers (Moglen on re:publica 2012). But what about the editors? We agree to an extraordinary public transparency when editing, but not on our reading habits. I'll give you one more example: For every user, WMF software produces a RSS feed of his watchlist. You can't opt out, even though 99% percent of users don't need it and don't even know it exists. Other people can subscribe to the RSS feed of your watchlist, if they know your user name and an automatically generated token. A man in the middle sniffing your unencrypted traffic could retrieve your watchlist token and watch your watchlist forever after. This concern is known since 2009, a bug was filed, concerns about the "random" token in 2011, but nothing happens... --Atlasowa (talk) 22:36, 18 May 2012 (UTC)

Even if it were so, WhatamIdoing, the discussion shows that we have to put the WMF's policy on data protection to the test, and if the WMF does not comply to our concerns we have to make it public in order to bring about a change. Atlasowa is also right. There is absolutely no need for these potential leaks and shortcomings in data protection. We have had a white paperbag movement in German Wikipedia that has prevented the image filter being implemented. I can well imagine another one. Privacy rights is am important matter in German and European politics at present with the Pirate Parties entering parliaments.--Aschmidt (talk) 04:54, 19 May 2012 (UTC)

Creative Commons 4.0 draft--please help answer questions about attribution!

CC is working on version 4.0 of their licenses--in case you haven't seen it, the public draft is up in several different formats at their Drafts page.

Right now their focus is on attribution, and they are asking several specific questions about things to change in the new version. (A few of the open questions: Is there too much flexibility in "reasonable manner"? Or not enough? Is there any information people should be required to provide that they aren't providing? Should you be able to use a shortcut by just providing a link, and if so, what should you have to include?)

The questions and space for comment is on the CC wiki here.

(Ultimately, we hope to be able to use the 4.0 license version as the default license version for Wikimedia projects--either BY-SA or BY, depending on which project you are using. Several Wikimedians are already participating in these discussions, as well as the legal staff and myself, but your input on things that have and haven't worked well in 3.0 would really help the process, especially if you have good examples.)

I will be posting this message around to some of the wikis as well, but please pass this message around where it is relevant, especially if you are active on non-English projects! Kat Walsh (spill your mind?) 22:01, 11 May 2012 (UTC)

Planet Wikimedia page

The Planet Wikimedia page doesn't seem to be watched by anyone who can work on the requests there - I can see that last week someone already asked User:IAlex (who handled some in February) to have a look, but he has not responded. There is at least one request that should be handled ASAP - one of the blogs (http://moulinwiki.org/) has apparently been taken over by spammers, and must be removed from the Planet. --Tokikake (talk) 10:11, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

Deletions by とある白い猫

I considered starting an RFC or requesting a global block, but I wouldn't like it either if someone did it to me for a similar reason/conflict. I really don't like the way とある白い猫 (aka ToAruShiroiNeko) is deleting files on various small wikis. He coordinates using the pages Global sysops/Wiki cleanup (he isn't even a global sysop?) and Local uploads policy/taking stock, apparently together with Seb az86556 (with whom I've had a disagreement as well).

So, today, とある白い猫 requested temporary adminship on frpwikipedia to Barras without formal request or anything. I understand that, in case of boring maintenance tasks you don't need bureaucracy. However, とある白い猫 went ahead and deleted a lot of files on frpwiki with the reason "Unlicensed file that is a copyright violation". I had an IRC discussion with him, and his reasoning was astonishing to me. Summary:

1. He did so without any notice to the admins or community portal or anywhere else. The deletions were his first actions on the wiki. (The admins are inactive, but they may get an e-mail notification when their talk page is edited.) It's very nice if the few contributors on the wiki see that someone suddenly deletes a number of files.
2. If a file is unlicensed, that doesn't mean it is automatically a copyvio.
3. A lot of files did actually mention the source and/or license. Often they referred to frwikipedia, where the license was clearly explained. He said he couldn't understand the information in French, so he assumed it was a copyvio.
4. If the file is unused, that isn't a reason for deletion. Otherwise Commons would only contain a few thousand files.

Now, I looked at a random action on another wiki he acted on: He tagged chr:File:Andy-Payne-hi-image.jpg for deletion. Tagging is much better, because users with legitimate rights (stewards or global sysops) delete them. However, that file said "pd-old", which is perfectly possible and doesn't look to me as "Orphaned, unlicensed, and/or dubiously licensed copyright content".

More generally, I wonder what the advantage is of deleting files like that. Lawsuits? Is there an example of a lawsuit on incorrectly licensed files on small wikis? Can't we just delete them when either they're clearly copyvio or someone notifies us that it's a copyvio?

It's just sad to see that 1) small wikis get unannounced "clean up rounds" of unauthorized users, and 2) you can be lucky and nobody questions your actions, while for other trivial proposals it requires lots of discussion and bureaucracy. SPQRobin (talk) 18:37, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

I don't know exactly what's going on here, but if there is some text on the file information page, I think it would be better if deletions are carried out by someone who speaks the language. For example, s:sv:Fil:Exempel.jpg has no licence template, but the Swedish text on the page tells that it was taken by the uploader and is licensed as GFDL, so if you can read the text, you will know that it is properly licensed. If a file is uploaded to English Wikipedia or to Commons with insufficient information, the uploader would normally get a week to add the missing information before the file is deleted. Shouldn't the same apply to users of frpwiki? --Stefan2 (talk) 19:00, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

If the local wiki has an active community this would be correct. Wiki has no license templates to begin with. -- とある白い猫 ^chi? 19:14, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

My deletions were in line with wmf:Resolution:Licensing policy. Unlicensed files can be deleted without warning if there is no active community. Orphaned and unlicensed files can be deleted faster.

frp.wikipedia had 87 files total of which only 9 files were with templates/licenses on them. The wiki currently has only one license template which is for "Copyright by Wikipedia" which is used on only one file frp:Fichiér:Wiki.png. Some of my deletions were already local copies of files already on commons, sometimes even with the identical file name.

The mentioned local admins in question are

• frp:Spèciâl:Contribucions/ChrisPtDe last edit 19:58, 1 February 2012 which was the only edit since 16:45, 4 June 2011.
• frp:Spèciâl:Contribucions/Akarige last edit 13:44, 26 November 2010

I did NOT say that I did not understand the licensing information on fr.wikipedia. This is a blatant misrepresentation of my IRC remark. What I did say was that I was unable to read the license of one file in question (fr:Fichier:Football-Croix-de-Savoie-74.png) which I assumed and still assume says "fully copyrighted". I could google translate it but I feel it is obvious enough. Since the file was orphaned (unused) I deleted the frp copy without giving it too much thought. SPQRobin restored the orphaned copyrighted frp copy of the file which is the only contribution of SPQRobin on this wiki aside from creating his userpage. I seriously question this users judgement on the restoration of an orphaned fully copyrighted file.

This complaint by SPQRobin is over an otherwise routine clean-up task that is regularly carried out - unfortunately not regular enough.

-- とある白い猫 ^chi? 19:12, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

That file doesn't look "fully copyrighted" at all. According to the license template, it's a trademarked logo that comes under fair use laws of both the U.S. and the country of origin. So it can't really be transferred to Commons on those grounds, but it definitely can't be deleted as being "fully copyrighted". Although of course since you point out it's orphaned, an orphaned fair-use file can be deleted.

I agree with Stefan2 that you really should know what you're looking at (i.e., speak the language and be familiar with copyright laws) before you start going around deleting things. Anything that isn't a clear violation of policies you really should just tag it for deletion to get a second set of eyes on it (someone who speaks the language).

Another thing (and this relates to the other user): threatening local administrators to get something deleted, accusing them of ignoring laws and then subsequently edit-warring with them over those allegations isn't a good way to approach things either. There appears to be some rather obvious mistakes with some of these cases. For example in this case - the work was attributed to another Wikipedia in the upload summary, and is quite clearly a derivitive work, therefore comes under the same license as the original file. For all the time that was taken to edit-war over that non-issue, it would have saved everyone a whole lot of time and grief by just retrieving the license from the original file page. Osiris (talk) 21:32, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

I provide my opinion as requested to do so by とある白い猫. On fr.wp, there is multiple category of copyrighted files. The orphaned files of copyrighted logos should be deleted but most of the time they are not. Multiple reasons, main one is lazyness. Zil (talk) 21:40, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

Fully copyrighted was used in the context that the file is copyrighted and is not available with a free license. In fact the file has no license whatsoever. -- とある白い猫 ^chi? 23:16, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

fr:Fichier:Football-Croix-de-Savoie-74.png has fr:Modèle:Marque déposée which is a non-free template used for copyrighted logos. If the template has been applied correctly, it means that the logo only can be used under fair use conditions. Per wmf:Resolution:Licensing policy, only projects which have an EDP are allowed to host fair use material. Maybe this is why To Aru Shiroi Neko decided to delete the file. I don't know whether frpwiki has an EDP or not. The project is not listed at Non-free content, but I don't know if all projects with an EDP are listed there or not. That said, the image doesn't look like a logo but like a coat of arms. The EDP of French Wikipedia no longer covers coats of arms (see fr:Wikipédia:Prise de décision/Remise en cause des exceptions au droit d'auteur sur les blasons, timbres et monnaies), so maybe the image should be removed from French Wikipedia. --Stefan2 (talk) 22:02, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

Wiki does not even have license templates let alone EDP. The file is no longer orphaned since Osiris used it in an article. File is still not tagged. You do bring an interesting point, I will discuss it with fr.wikipedia community. -- とある白い猫 ^chi? 22:35, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

A project is not required to use licence templates in order to host images; the project just needs a way to indicate the licence status of an image. In this case, frpwiki referred to the French Wikipedia licence template instead, which I suppose is just as fine. The link was broken due to a syntax error, but I corrected this. I can't tell if you are correct that there is no EDP. I can't find any page in the Wikipedia namespace which specifically refers to this, but I suppose that it would be perfectly fine to have a one-line statement in some policy that the EDP of any other project also applies to this project. Thus, I have no idea where to look for any EDP statements. --Stefan2 (talk) 22:53, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

Each wiki should independently establish copyright. Sourcing alone isn't adequate. What happens if French Wikipedia deletes the file for whatever the reason (could simply be a superior version like an svg)? You would have a chain reaction of deletes. That is just an unstable environment.

That is kind of the point. The wiki should have a template that links to the EDP and wiki should also enforce it. EDP should be readily and easily available. If frp wiki wants to enforce French wikipedias EDP, they should enforce it just like Fr.wikipedia. However, frp.wikipedia does not have a community to support this since there is only one user you could consider active. This user has a few May edits which are his only edits since June 2011. I am currently the most active user on frp.wikipedia aside from bots.

-- とある白い猫 ^chi? 23:15, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

New project process and sister projects committee

Hello,

A Sister projects committee is being organized to review proposals to create, merge, or close sister projects, and to help existing sister projects communicate get the support they need. A draft charter has been developed for the group, which already has participants who are active on some language edition of every current sister project.

The related work channels (irc, mailing list, wiki-space) are open to all. Comments on its scope and structure, and on the new project process, are most welcome.

We've updated the new projects process and are working on reviewing the most recent project proposals. Help is needed to work through the backlog of project proposals - and to transfer the best project proposals from the strategy wiki into the format used here on Meta.

–SJ talk  17:15, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

Global custom css

Can I customise my css globally on some special page, or I should create same common(vector/monobook).css at every wiki where I need it? I interested same about javascript settings too. Sorry for my low level of English and if I wrote wrong place. --Base (talk) 18:17, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

Unfortunately there are no global css/js files directly. But there is an indirect way to do so: You can create a Special:Mypage/global.js/css here on Meta, and get in included on all local wikis, see User:Pathoschild/Scripts/Synchbot. --MF-W 19:02, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

Autopatrolled

Does anyone know where to request enabling admin/crat in a project to grant autopatrolled permission? My user rights management page in Wikispecies does not have this option even though en.wp interface has it. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 20:16, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

Sure, the right place to request configuration changes is Bugzilla, namely product = Wikimedia; component = Site requests. However if you take a look at species:Special:Listgrouprights, you'll notice that the autopatroller doesn't exist at all in Wikispecies. So you'll have to request the establishment of that group too. --MF-W 20:48, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

Yep, but before you request that you will need to show some consensus amongst the local community to make the config changes (add the groups etc). The Helpful One 20:50, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

On second thought, is there a way to get rid of autopatrolled (after getting consensus)? There are 2 main reasons for removing it. 1) We never have to worry about someone creating MySpace band pages. The chance of something slipped through the cracks are minimal and damage will not be severe (since the page stands out against the rest). 2) We do not have a lot of active people patrolling and marking pages as patrolled. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 00:38, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

Yes, this is possible too. [Though you won't need to link to that page in your Bugzilla request, as devs will know which settings to change ;) ] --MF-W 00:43, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

Wikimedia Foundation endorsing Access2Research

Hi all,

the Wikimedia Foundation has decided to endorse Access2Research and its petition to make research funded by the US government publicly accessible. This will be done by way of a blog post on Friday morning PST; as it will be indicated there, we are not trying to speak on behalf of the community, but just the Foundation itself. You can read more in the FAQ posted on enwiki, and leave any comments or questions you might have on its talkpage.

Regards, Tbayer (WMF) (talk) 20:01, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

Interesting to say the least. OTRS used to get lots of "please help us in supporting x cause" type emails. I bet that'll increase with public awareness that the WMF leverages its influence in these types of political affairs (the SOPA blackout and now this). Killiondude (talk) 04:54, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

Interlanguage link title change

Is it possible to change an established interwiki title? My question concerns interwikis that link to Uzbek edition wikis, they read O'zbek, but more correct title would be Oʻzbekcha. Abdullais4u (talk) 09:14, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

You should check to see if a bug has been filed at bugzilla using the search "interlanguage links". You can file a bug yourself to request the change. Allen4names (talk) 14:50, 25 May 2012 (UTC)