Wikimedia Forum/Archives/2013-03

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Wikipedia Windows 8 Icon

Is Wikimedia going to change the Icon for Windows 8... In the Windows Store and when you zoom out on the start screen it's a gradient against a white background... Are they going to change it to be plain white? — The preceding unsigned comment was added by 75.97.124.199 (talk) 2013-03-03T00:37:34 (UTC)

This seems to be a question about a Wikipedia article. I suggest that you go to the Windows 8 article in the relevant language edition of Wikipedia, click on "Talk" (or the corresponding localised word) and ask there. --Stefan2 (talk) 11:19, 3 March 2013 (UTC)

Oh no I'm talking about the Windows 8 app... Sorry about the confusion.

I went with the gradient because I didn't like how it looked flat white. One could go either way... --brion (talk) 01:19, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

OK well it doesn't look right when you zoom out on the Start screen or in the Windows Store. Could you change it to plain white just on the small icon and store icon?

Vote for the most exciting research work about Wikipedia

Dear all,

Wikimédia France launched an international research award aiming to reward the most influential research work on Wikimedia projects and free knowledge. After the initial submission of research papers by the community of researchers who study Wikimedia projects, a jury have selected five finalists among a thirty proposals. You can find summaries and full texts below :

It's now up to you to choose the most influential. For that, please visit this page : Research:Wikimedia_France_Research_Award/nominated_papers and vote. Voting will close on Monday, March 11. The announcement of the winner is scheduled for the end of March.

If you have any question, please use the project talk page, thanks !

--CarolAnnO (talk) 10:01, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

Suggestion for new project

Folks, we have received an e-mail at OTRS with a suggestion for new Wikimedia project. Any idea where they should make that request so I can respond.--ukexpat (talk) 17:22, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

See Proposals_for_new_projects#Instructions --MF-W 18:00, 6 March 2013 (UTC)
Excellent, thanks. No idea why I couldn't find that. I will pass it on.--ukexpat (talk) 19:37, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

Interwiki bots and the Wikidata rollout

Notification: Please see Requests for comment/Wikidata rollout and interwiki bots. πr2 (t • c) 03:05, 7 March 2013 (UTC)

Please localize: User:Addbot/Wikidata Summary. This will be used on many (all?) Wikipedias, and must be localized if you don't the bot's edit summaries in English. Cheers. πr2 (t • c) 15:15, 7 March 2013 (UTC)

Request for help to all toolserver users

By WMDE, needs the help of everyone. I've added it to the sitenotice, I've no idea how to otherwise contact Toolserver users other than the "devs" with an account on it. --Nemo 11:28, 7 March 2013 (UTC)

There is tools:~krinkle/TSUsers.php and any toolserver user can be contacted at <username>@toolserver.org. Legoktm (talk) 00:37, 8 March 2013 (UTC)
That was already done, haven't you read the page? :) I also specifically said other than the "devs" with an account on it: I'm interested in what the Wikimedia projects editors care about, and I don't think it's reasonable e.g. to ask Magnus Manske to list all his dozens (hundreds?) of tools on his own. Anyway, not even all TS users are on that list, and some don't even have a forwarding set. --Nemo 10:51, 8 March 2013 (UTC)
  • There might be a way to display a warning in the Toolserver server settings, but you should add a note at status.toolserver.org and agressively target devs with popular tools. FYI I get hundreds of Wikimedia emails in my WM account every day and I didn't even see one regarding TS.  ℳono  05:28, 9 March 2013 (UTC)
    Then you need better filters. :p I proposed the "toolserver sitenotice" too, but it's WMDE's decision. :) --Nemo 07:38, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

Bladed

The project may lose a contributor soon.--Canoe1967 (talk) 07:39, 10 March 2013 (UTC)

Then, good bye, Canoe. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:57, 10 March 2013 (UTC)

Idea: standard import sources

See also bugzilla:15583

It happens from time to time, e.g. currently with SRP#Mabdul@lowikipedia that users on a small would like to import pages, and therefore request the "import" status, which allows importing from predefined wikis & by uploading XML files generated with Special:Export. It is then often suggested by stewards that they should rather get the "transwiki" status, which allows importing from predefined wikis only (the associated right is being had by the sysop group as well, btw). By default, no such wikis are defined for any wiki, so a bugzilla request to set them is always needed. - The current list of import sources for each wiki can be found at [1].
My idea now would be to set some default sources for some more projects (as an example you can see in the config file that currently on every Wikisource that has no specific settings, transwiki import from meta and commons is possible):

  • enwiki for every Wikipedia
  • 'w' i.e. the Wikipedia in the language for every Wiktionary, Wikibooks, Wikiquote

Of course every project will still be able to change that. Any comments, thoughts (especially why this could be a bad idea)? --MF-W 19:27, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

Sounds good. I've been disappointed by the lack of import sources on small wikis on multiple occasions. I think "enwiki" and "w" (for non-WP projects) should be enough by default, though we may consider having Commons and/or Meta, as these are commonly used import sources, and are multilingual (although honestly I don't know why we would need to import from commons, unless it was for some template that doesn't exist on enwiki). πr2 (t • c) 01:07, 5 March 2013 (UTC)
Oh yes, please. Cleaning up small wikis isn't easy, mostly because of the lack of active admins. In my case the transwiki/importewr right would help to clear some mess regarding the copy and paste import of enwp templates. It is very likely that a similar mess was done at other small wikis and ignoring the CC-BY-SA attribution. mabdul 07:36, 5 March 2013 (UTC)
I think even I am guilty of not attributing enwiki correctly when importing templates to small wikis (although I often note it in the editsummary). I think this is a great idea. πr2 (t • c) 14:45, 5 March 2013 (UTC)
Fixed on tnwiki [2] just to be safe ;) πr2 (t • c) 15:16, 5 March 2013 (UTC)
Import is not needed at all for CC-BY-SA and terms of use, nor recommended. The only benefit in using Special:import is that it saves the lazy sysop the cost of writing an edit summary and that you can import multiple pages at once. --Nemo 21:13, 10 March 2013 (UTC)
My opinion is that including by default en.wiki only is a discrimination. I'm not opposed to adding by default the other projects in the same language, and perhaps the fallback languages (but then uk.wiki would surely complain about Russian imperialism etc. so better not). --Nemo 21:13, 10 March 2013 (UTC)
Well, ok, I proposed enwiki only as a "basic idea" because English will probably be the widest-known language for which it is therefore most likely that a project might want to import an article/template for translation. We can surely also take e.g. the ten largest Wikipedias. (In theory I'd like it if there were a function to import from any WMF wiki to any other one, but I don't think it's a good idea to go requesting 700+ import sources for every wiki now). Since any wiki can change the import sources set for them on their own, and is not forced to make imports from wikis which are defined as import source, I don't quite understand your argument that people might complain about "teh imperialism" - they can either find the import sources useful or ignore them. --MF-W 21:39, 10 March 2013 (UTC)
I also don't believe that including the biggest Wikipedia is "discrimination", although I wouldn't object to including a couple of the biggest ones. Each project should also consider customizing the list to include related languages that most of their users could probably make sense of (e.g., Spanish, Catalan, and Italian; Dutch, Bavarian, and German). Overall I think this is a good idea. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:43, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

Learning material on writing in clear English

I was just testing some Translate extension bug and I found some rather big deficiencies in the English source text for the translations, which led to completely wrong translations.[3] What's the deep source of this problem, in your opinion? Is there some effective resource on writing in clear English that we could use here on Meta and elsewhere? --Nemo 10:48, 8 March 2013 (UTC)

I don't think any Wikimedia-translation-centric material like this currently exists, but I would be fine with creating a draft of an essay or guideline. πr2 (t • c) 05:12, 10 March 2013 (UTC)
I'd rather use some existing material than reinvent the wheel. --Nemo 21:17, 10 March 2013 (UTC)
We added something to Writing clearly, we need to improve Translation guide now. --Nemo 13:23, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

Suggestion - Create a Wiki for Space related things

Suggestion : create a Wiki for Space related things, the name could be "Wikispace" or "Wikiuniverse" or whatever, and the articles would be about the space, the planets, the asteroids, the galaxies, and everything else. Jml3 (talk) 08:41, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

Is there anything you miss at en:Portal:Space? Why should there be an special wiki? rgds --h-stt !? 12:41, 13 February 2013 (UTC)
To get rid of tens of thousands of not encyclopedic articles like thousands of irrelevant asteroid articles in Wikipedia. Jml3 (talk) 16:18, 13 February 2013 (UTC)
See New project proposals. -- Ypnypn (talk) 16:43, 13 February 2013 (UTC)
I was unaware of this issue (and am not sure it is really that big a problem?) I did look around, and found lots of stubs like this one: w:en:(180216) 2003 UY9. It seems to me that one is a candidate for speedy deletion, as it has no statement indicating its significance, and does not list multiple independent sources asserting its importance. It seems to me like there's plenty of room for removing these articles from English Wikipedia just by its inclusion criteria alone, without the need for a separate wiki. (There already is a space wiki at Wikia, not sure how well it addresses your needs, but it might be worth exploring.) -Pete F (talk) 16:47, 13 February 2013 (UTC)
There are more than 40 thousand articles about asteroids, the majority of them stubs with very few info. Jml3 (talk) 20:27, 13 February 2013 (UTC)
So this sounds to me like it needs a deletion discussion on English Wikipedia, more than a call to action for a new wiki. They are inependent questions (whether the info complies with Wikipedia's inclusion standards vs. whether the info merits a separate wiki under the Wikimedia umbrella). It's likely that somebody could set up a bot or use AWB or similar to copy contents over to the existing space wiki linked above, if the information is valuable to a more focused project like that. -Pete F (talk) 23:37, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

┌─────────────────────────────────┘
Enwiki has already had this discussion last year; see w:WP:NASTRO. The thousands of stubs are simply awaiting cleanup. Andrew Gray (talk) 12:37, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

Convert complex templates to Lua to make them faster and more powerful

(Please consider translating this message for the benefit of your fellow Wikimedians)

Greetings. As you might have seen on the Wikimedia tech blog or the tech ambassadors list, a new functionality called "Lua" is being enabled on all Wikimedia sites today. Lua is a scripting language that enables you to write faster and more powerful MediaWiki templates.

If you have questions about how to convert existing templates to Lua (or how to create new ones), we'll be holding two support sessions on IRC next week: one on Wednesday (for Oceania, Asia & America) and one on Friday (for Europe, Africa & America); see m:IRC office hours for the details. If you can't make it, you can also get help at mw:Talk:Lua scripting.

If you'd like to learn about this kind of events earlier in advance, consider becoming a Tech ambassador by subscribing to the mailing list. You will also be able to help your fellow Wikimedians have a voice in technical discussions and be notified of important decisions.

Guillaume Paumier, via the Global message delivery system. 20:08, 13 March 2013 (UTC) (wrong page? You can fix it.)

Wikimedia Highlights from February 2013

Highlights from the Wikimedia Foundation Report and the Wikimedia engineering report for February 2013, with a selection of other important events from the Wikimedia movement
About · Subscribe/unsubscribe · Distributed via Global message delivery, 21:22, 13 March 2013 (UTC)
BTW: while the report mentions the current fundraising campaign, The tech report says " The majority of February was spent paying down the more glaring examples of technical debt we acquired during the 2012 English fundraiser, before jumping straight into a whole new round of International fundraising that kicked off on February 27th at approximately 15:00 UTC (7am PST). Due to unforeseen problems with one of our payment gateways, we were forced to scrap our plans for a continuous international fundraising effort spanning March through June, and will instead attempt to raise as much of the remaining budget in March as we are able. All other plans have been precluded by the March fundraising efforts." Does this mean the campaign is scrapped for good or what? Elitre (talk) 10:06, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
As of this time the plan is temporarily on hold. Fundraising tech still hopes to be able to support the plan as originally stated -- however, we are still unclear about our future with our current primary payments processor. We currently in the process of investigating how to integrate with additional processors but so far as yet we are not in a position to deploy them. Basically -- we'll know more about what we're going to do in a month or so. Mwalker (WMF) (talk) 18:47, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

A channel for developers of tools (bots, gadgets, templates, modules) for Wikimedia projects

Currently there are the following Live Chat (IRC) channels:

  • #mediawiki, this is where mediawiki development lives. mostly PHP development discussions. People know the Mediawiki API.
  • #wikimedia-dev, this is where mediawiki developers meet regularly. mostly PHP development discussions. People know the Mediawiki API. (Ideally should be #mediawiki-dev?)
  • #wikimedia-tech, the Wikimedia projects serverops. Server down? IPv6 connectivity issues? Mail server broke? Such questions go here. Mostly networking or otherwise maintenance issues are discussed.

I would like to propose adding a new channel, such as #wikimedia-devel or #wikipedia-tools or any other name you find intuitive, for people to gather, who would participate in things such as:

  • Development of bots for Wikimedia. This generally involves knowledge of any programming language, and Mediawiki API.
  • Development of JS tools for Wikimedia projects.
  • Development of templates.
  • Development of modules (Lua scripting).
  • Development of gadgets (WikEd, Twinkle, others, mentioned on the Gadgets tab at Special:Preferences)

Currently I find it hard to get help with this list of activities; people in #mediawiki occasionally help with the API, but they are mostly occupied with PHP and the channel is intended for development. I would like to ask you for help with establishing an official channel to make it easier to share knowledge between people who develop tools for Wikimedia projects.

Thank you. --Gryllida 05:17, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

Just use #wikimedia-tech. :-) The complementary wiki page is Tech. Problem solved. --MZMcBride (talk) 07:09, 16 March 2013 (UTC)
Well there are quite a few more channels: #pywikipediabot (an italian version somewhere, and #botwiki), #mediawiki-scripts, etc. Legoktm (talk) 07:13, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

Disabling interactive map in Wikipedia

I have begun to put external links on my WikiPedia pages that would direct someone to GeoHack. I noted that using the interactive map feature will popup a map on the current page. How do I go about entering a URL that will only take you to the GeoHack page? The interactive maps are horrible and list only negative information regarding the surrounding area, i.e. assassinations, bombings, massacres, penitentiaries. Best regards, WalterWference (talk) 16:40, 17 March 2013 (UTC)

You have to click the coordinates, not the world logo. Have fun! --NaBUru38 (talk) 14:01, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

Announcing the Wikimedia Iconathon 2013

The Wikimedia Foundation is partnering with The Noun Project to do a public service "Iconathon." The goal of this event is to generate 30-40 icons for the public domain, with the intent of primarily using them on Wikimedia Foundation projects. The event is open to the public in an effort to bring talented designers and civic-minded individuals into the process. The event will be held on April 6, 2013 at the Wikimedia Foundation headquarters in San Francisco.

All icons will be released under a public domain license.

We want your help and input!

For more information, including a list of the icons we're working on, please visit one of three places:

Please stop by one of these pages and share your thoughts and ideas. --Jorm (WMF) (talk) 20:48, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

Again www.wikimedia.org hasty changes

FYI: Talk:Www.wikimedia.org_template#Adding Wikimedia Labs. --Nemo 22:30, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

"Hasty" seems a bit extreme. It was given a few (three?) days and there was only one objection. --MZMcBride (talk) 22:41, 19 March 2013 (UTC)
That's what I call a very hasty change. Anyway, I'm just repairing to the lack of any sort of appropriate notification on your end, so I suggest to avoid complaining about adjectives. --Nemo 22:46, 19 March 2013 (UTC)
Sorry, I didn't realize notification to this page was necessary/encouraged. Please update the header of Talk:www.wikimedia.org template when you get a chance if there's a specific list of places that should be notified prior to a change (this page, wikimedia-l, etc.). I'm happy to send out announcements prior to a change, it's just never been clear to me where they should go. :-) --MZMcBride (talk) 22:49, 19 March 2013 (UTC)
Hint: try the section above the one linked here. --Nemo 22:53, 19 March 2013 (UTC)
Sorry, what about it? People objected to the removal of Incubator and Meta-Wiki, so both of those icons are still included in the design. I don't see how this relates to notification. --MZMcBride (talk) 22:55, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

Vaguely related: proposal to change the www.wikivoyage.org template on Wikivoyage/Lounge#New_Interlingual_Portal. πr2 (t • c) 00:27, 21 March 2013 (UTC)

Now there's a discussion about not having a project portal for Wikivoyage at all: Wikivoyage/Lounge#No_portal. πr2 (t • c) 00:17, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

Proposal to close Wikinews

I propose that we close Wikinews or propel it along its way to becoming an independent project. As a Wikimedia project, it has faltered for years and it seems we do not have the resources to attract the kind of participation necessary. This is not a commentary on the flaws in the Wikinews management, but one on the current state of Wikinews. Thoughts?  ℳono  23:44, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

Wouldn't it be better to improve it than remove it? Also, you should notify the Wikinews projects if you are serious about removing them all. If you're unhappy with the English (or another specific language) version in particular, you should consider reading Proposals for closing projects/Closure of English Wikinews. However, if you want it closed, then you should give more specific reasons than "it has faltered". πr2 (t • c) 03:10, 25 February 2013 (UTC)
As a sysop in the German Wikinews I understand the critics of User:Mono in some parts. And I even more understand it concerning the state of the English language Wikinews. However, the several Wikinews communities do their maximum to keep alive those projects but they do not receive any encouraging, assisting and/or support, how about propagation, making the software more usable or any other kind of help, by neither the WMF nor any of the local chapters. They're only interested as far as the cash cow Wikipedia works as expected and the fund raisers splash enough money on the accounts. Pityfully I must state that the WMF does not have any further interest in any other project than Wikipedia and the Commons. It's a shame. --Matthiasb (talk) 17:57, 26 February 2013 (UTC)
  • No, I'm not serious about simply closing it. But I was hoping for a discussion about the feasibility of the Wikinews idea and the WMF's commitment to it. It is clear that the Wikinews editors are hostile to discussion of the project's flaws and resistant to suggestions laid out in previous discussions.  ℳono  01:03, 28 February 2013 (UTC)
    While I agree that the WMF tends to ignore the "Global South Projects", I'd like to see an example of how you think Wikinews has faltered. Is it the community, the quality of the news stories, the policies, the lack of resources, or the fact that only a few users contribute (or a combination of these)? πr2 (t • c) 01:16, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

Wikinews is flawed by its very definition. Normally, the wiki principle dictates that content with time grows and becomes better by gathering information from secondary sources (or, in the case of Wikibooks, first-hand knowledge). However, this principle doesn't work for Wikinews. News by definition are current and their value diminishes with time. There is no reason why anyone would want to use Wikinews when the big news portals are much more up-to-date and have much more content. Given that we have no correspondents across the world who are able to directly write reports on what's happening, we are forced to copy from the other news portals, which makes us pretty much useless.

I am not saying that a free newspaper is impossible to create, however the approach used by the WMF doesn't work. Without any kind of first-hand reports from the field, Wikinews is never going to become anything else other than a copycat. And writing news reports so they get published while they're still current requires many contributors who are willing to spend their time in Wikinews, however most of our contributors have a real-life job during the day and so are unable to spend much more other than their free time, which usually isn't more than a few hours. We would need dedicated journalists to write reports so Wikinews could serve as an independent source of news, but - who is going to pay for them?

Wikinews across the board has failed completely as a WMF project. It may be relaunched at a later date, but then there would need to be a proper plan on how to get a constant stream of news going so we can establish ourselves as a useful news source. I fail to see anything like that in our current Wikinews projects. -- Liliana • 12:23, 3 March 2013 (UTC)

Well, with newspapers setting up paywalls or lobbying governments into stupid laws like the recently approved Leistungsschutzrecht in Germany there should be a market for free news contents. I don't know how about it is in the English Wikinews, but the German Wikinews does have some "customers" who regularily are using our contents, e.g. c6-magazin.de is republishing each and every German Wikinews article we publish. However Wikinews never gained enough active users for a comprehensive production of news content. --Matthiasb (talk) 22:35, 3 March 2013 (UTC)

Translation

I would like to translate most of Wikiproject medicine's main page into the language of every current wikipedia. Is there a system at Meta for that? --Anthonyhcole (talk) 09:21, 23 March 2013 (UTC)

Hi. I think you want Translation requests#How to request a translation. --MZMcBride (talk) 09:28, 23 March 2013 (UTC)
Thanks. --09:38, 23 March 2013 (UTC)
Am I doing this right, Mr McBride? I've enclosed the page between <translate> and </translate>, do I just sit back and watch now? How do I nominate the languages into which I want it translated? (I'm editing on an Android tablet and it won't let me copy and paste a diff - sorry. It's the last edit to Wiki Project Med). --Anthonyhcole (talk) 14:42, 23 March 2013 (UTC)
I can look it over and mark it for translation if you want. Just make sure the content is ok before it starts getting translated! πr2 (t • c) 22:40, 25 March 2013 (UTC)
Thank you πr2. I think the page is pretty right. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 06:35, 26 March 2013 (UTC)
It can now be translated (e.g., to French). πr2 (t • c) 14:09, 26 March 2013 (UTC)
Awesome! Thank you. Do I need to do anything? --Anthonyhcole (talk) 14:26, 26 March 2013 (UTC)
Not really, but some of the code under "T:29" in section 6 has a strange linking format, and seems to use shortcuts. πr2 (t • c) 14:27, 26 March 2013 (UTC)
Ah. So should I convert links like [[:w:en:PLoS medicine|PLoS medicine]] to [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PLoS_medicine PLoS medicine]? --Anthonyhcole (talk) 05:23, 28 March 2013 (UTC)
No, the http version is worse. I meant to convert links like [[EN:W:CREDO|Credo Reference]] to [[en:Wikipedia:Credo accounts|Credo Reference]] or [[en:Credo Reference|Credo Reference]]. EN:W:CREDO doesn't go to a very helpful page... πr2 (t • c) 14:02, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

Fusio of accounts and lost user

Hi!. As you can see in my discussion, I'm the user Coentor, which is my username in all the proyects of the fundation. Recently, I've registered in Meta with this user, just because I couldn't register with my name. It seems that I tried to register that username long before, but I forgot the password. The problem is that Now if I enter to commons, I do it registered as "TioCoent", which was intended to be a secondary user only for Meta. I know that I can change my user, but it is very annoying to be changing of user each time. ¿There is a solution for me?--TioCoent (talk) 12:05, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

Hi, you can request the "usurping" on the username Coentor on Meta:Changing username (because it has 0 edits here). --MF-W 12:50, 28 March 2013 (UTC)
Thanks.--TioCoent (talk) 15:52, 28 March 2013 (UTC)
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