Meta:Babel

 ← Index of discussion pages

Babel

archives (latest) →

This is the general discussion forum for Meta (this wiki). Before you post a new comment please note the following:

• You can comment here in any language.
• This forum is primarily for discussion of Meta policies and guidelines, and other matters that affect more than one page of the wiki.
• If your comment only relates to a single page, please post it on the corresponding discussion page (if necessary, you can provide a link and short description here).
• For notices and discussions related to multilingualism and translation, see Meta:Babylon and its discussion page.
• For information about how to indicate your language abilities on your user page ("Babel templates"), see User language.
• To discuss Wikimedia in general, please use the Wikimedia Forum.
• Consider whether your question or comment would be better addressed at one of the major Wikimedia "content projects" instead of here.

Wikimedia Meta-Wiki

• About Meta
• Discussion pages
• Request pages
• Policies and guidelines
• Information and statistics
• Categories
• Help pages

Participate:

• How to edit a page
• Meta-Wiki discussion page

SpBot archives all sections tagged with {{Section resolved|1=~~~~}} after 1 day and sections whose most recent comment is older than 30 days.

How is the Arabic Wikipedia a Wikipedia?

Hello,

The Arabic Wikipedia moderates all contributions by users. If you make an edit in any article, your edit will not appear to unregistered users. It will only appear after some administrator reviews it and approves of it. The review process seems to be complex and multilayered. If your edit is flagged by this icon , this means that it has not been reviewed. If it is flagged by this icon , this means that it has passed only the first layer of scrutiny. It will still not appear for unregistered users. Finally, if your edit is flagged by this lucky icon , this means that it has successfully passed scrutiny and "has been approved by an expert" (they say that literately تم تدقيق ومراجعة الصفحة من قبل خبير).

This approval process is extremely slow and often takes months to complete (if not years in some cases). I am quite unsure that they do really have "experts" qualified for reviewing all the edits.

My question is: how is this whole process consistent with a wiki project? A wiki project means that anybody can contribute. If there will be "experts" reviewing the contributions before they appear on the website, then this cannot be called a wiki project. This is just another encyclopedia of the traditional type. It seems to me quite misleading that the Arabic Wikipedia calls itself a "Wikipedia."

What is most surprising is that they have had this review system since 2009.--HD86 (talk) 20:03, 16 September 2016 (UTC)

@HD86: Has there been discussion at that community about flagged revisions? What has consensus been? —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 20:25, 16 September 2016 (UTC)

I asked them once but they just tried to justify their review system without being able to answer my question.--HD86 (talk) 20:30, 16 September 2016 (UTC)

They basically said the following: there are cultural differences and their review system is necessary in the Arabic culture, because Arabic-speaking contributors are more likely to vandalize than others and are less likely to contribute positively.

To me, this sounds like some racist prejudice; but in any case this does not answer my question. It rather confirms that the Arabic Wikipedia is not really a Wikipedia. It only uses the name.--HD86 (talk) 20:42, 16 September 2016 (UTC)

Just to make something clear -- I do not say that the system is necessarily unjustified. Perhaps it is true that they get too much vandalism (at least in some sections of the encyclopedia), but regardless of the justification -- if you moderate all the edits before they appear on the website, then you cannot call this a "wiki." If what they say about cultural differences is true, then what should be done is to discontinue the Arabic project altogether rather changing its nature to something that is opposite to the original idea.--HD86 (talk) 21:01, 16 September 2016 (UTC) and they cannot let the public

It's a wiki obviously, since anyone can edit. It's also a wiki, because the community has some element of self-governance in deciding how to patrol the contributions made to the site. Sorry if you don't like it, and yes there are some issues with lack of reviewers. You could always step up and offer to help review revisions I guess. – Ajraddatz (talk) 21:35, 16 September 2016 (UTC)

"because the community has some element of self-governance in deciding how to patrol the contributions made to the site."

This is incorrect and does not apply to the Arabic Wikipedia. The definition of the Wikipedia community says The Wikipedia community is the community of contributors to the online encyclopedia Wikipedia. This means that anybody who contributes is part of the community. It is most unlikely that the community of the Arabic Wikipedia have chosen to keep their contributions hidden until they pass the nonsensical review process.

Last month I received the following message via email from an administrator in the Arabic Wiki:

لقد وصلتك هذه الرسالة كونك مسجل على موسوعة ويكيبيديا بالنسخة العربية، وحسب الإحصاءات الأخيرة فإن الموسوعة تعاني من تدني نسبة المستخدمين النشطين مقارنة مع عدد المسجلين وهذا بخلاف الويكيبيديات الأخرى، ولذا نتمنى نحن مجتمع ويكيبيديا العربية أن نراك مساهماً معنا في الموسوعة بما يخدم المعرفة للناطقين بالعربية.

The message asks me to contribute in the Arabic Wiki, because (according to the message) the percentage of active contributors in the Arabic Wiki is low in comparison with the number of registered members, which is unlike the situation in the other Wikipedias. This is what the message literally says.

If most of the registered members are inactive, then nobody can claim that the "community" have decided anything.

I received that message on 8/8/2016. Since that time I have made many contributions to the Arabic Wiki (just because of the message), but guess what? Most of my contributions are still invisible. They are pending review. I do not think that the review process will be finished this year, and frankly I do not accept the principle of that so-called review. Who is going to review my edits? If I want to submit something for review, it will not be on that pity site. I do not believe that the people who are going to "review" my edits are qualified for that.

This is why I am quitting again. I just want to make it clear why I cannot contribute to the Arabic Wiki. I am a native Arabic-speaker but most of my edits have been in the English Wiki, not in the Arabic one. The reason is because contributing to the Arabic Wiki has always been too difficult. It is nothing like the English Wiki. It is not really a "wiki." It is a strictly moderated site that is hardly accessible for the general public.--HD86 (talk) 01:02, 17 September 2016 (UTC)

This is what happened when I tried to rationally discuss the problem with the admins of the Arabic Wiki. One of them got so angry and started calling me names and accusing me with all sorts of unfounded accusations. I will translate what he said. Please note that I am not trying to "report" him or anything like that (so please admins, do not get mad at me because I am doing this).

We do not view the Arabic Wikipedia as bad or as a failure. It is only you who thinks so, and you try to make up unreal problems because you want to make a fuss. The flagged revisions system is implemented in many of the other [Wikipedias] including the English Wikipedia. So why do you insist on portraying it as a bad thing in the Arabic Wikipedia? One of the admins answered you with some facts but you ran away from the discussion and you said "I will not answer you" (sic),¹ and this proves that you are not a positive person looking to solve problems, but you are an argumentative person who wants only to make a fuss and create disorder.² I have dealt with so many people like you and I know how people of your type work, because I am not a fool. I interfered in the discussion initiated by you in order to put an end to that farce which had been wasting people's time, and [in order to put an end to your] creating problems out of nothing. You as a person mean nothing to me and I did not even consider having a direct conversation with you like I did before with other users.³

The message which reached you from [the admin] Badarin⁴ was only meant to encourage old contributors [to come back] in order to increase benefit [to the encyclopedia], but we do not suffer a lack of contributors, because Wikipedia now has much more articles and featured articles than it had years ago, and the number of contributors has multiplied. We do not need your help. Your absence or the absence of any other person will have no effect on the encyclopedia. Wikipedia is not owned by us and we are not employed by it. It is a website open to contributors⁵ for the sake of knowledge, and it is based on volunteering. We welcome contributors, but if they choose to leave, that will make no difference.

To summarize, and in order to settle this issue, I am going to talk to you in the same strict way used by the admins of the English or German Wikipedias,⁶ because it seems that the admins here are too lenient: what you do is trolling. If you continue shouting and creating disorder, you will be banned (and this is 100% legal). If you have a single clear problem you can start a discussion in the appropriate place.⁷ If you want to contribute, the door is open and no one will prevent you. If you view [the Arabic] Wikipedia as a failure, you can leave quietly and you do not even need to read it. Anything else is not allowed. I think that the matter is now clear.

Some people will ask, why do not you talk to him instead of doing this here? The answer is: I did try to talk to him. I posted twice on his personal discussion page, but he basically kept repeating the same things. He says that there is no problem and that I am a troll who is trying to "create disorder," and he keeps threatening to ban me.

1. What really happened was that one admin dismissed my complaint, just like this ones does, and he asked me to "keep following our discussions in order to see how much we care about the encyclopedia," and I responded by saying that I did not want to follow their discussions until they decide to do something about the very serious problem in their revision system which keeps my edits invisible for many months or years.

2. The total number of my posts about this problem in the Arabic Wikipedia is two. Both of them were short posts, but they apparently were sufficient to create commotion and disorder in that very orderly place.

3. It is true that he never wanted to talk to me directly. He interfered in the discussion only to close it, and to call me names, and to ask me to leave the Arabic Wikipedia if I did not like it. Despite his very offensive and arrogant behavior I left a calm and rational message on his personal discussion page, because I was hoping to reach a solution for my specific problem, which is that my edits remain invisible for many months or years because of their nonsensical revision system.

4. It is the message I translated earlier. Note that what he claims about the purpose of that message completely contradicts the actual content of the message.

5. True, it is open to contributors, but the problem is that their contributions will not appear on it.

6. I think he says this because in my original complaint I compared the Arabic Wikipedia to the English one.

7. Which I did, but he closed the discussion, called me names, and asked me to leave Wikipedia if I did not like it. He himself said that in this message.--HD86 (talk) 02:31, 23 September 2016 (UTC)

This is interesting, I didn't know flagged versions. I understand the issue of cultural differences, but this system is foolish, waiting months or years for reviews, without knowing who will reviews the edits, and what are experts, admins avoid discussing... this is foolish!--Luca Polpettini (talk) 23:19, 20 October 2016 (UTC)

Me too, I learn a lot, all thank to you about all of this ! --Evachan39 (talk) 14:00, 5 November 2016 (UTC)

I've now travel a little around this arabic wikipedia and i understand now that it's really different from the english one.

This page [1] (and also this one : [2] ) does not make an exception. --Evachan39 (talk) 14:22, 5 November 2016 (UTC)

Flagged Revisions discusses the matter. w:ar:Special:ValidationStatistics are still quite bad. Nemo 15:37, 5 November 2016 (UTC)

Editing News #3—2016

Read this in another language • Subscription list for this multilingual newsletter

Did you know?

Did you know that you can easily re-arrange columns and rows in the visual editor?

Select a cell in the column or row that you want to move. Click the arrow at the start of that row or column to open the dropdown menu (shown). Choose either "Move before" or "Move after" to move the column, or "Move above" or "Move below" to move the row.

You can read and help translate the user guide, which has more information about how to use the visual editor.

Since the last newsletter, the VisualEditor Team has mainly worked on a new wikitext editor. They have also released some small features and the new map editing tool. Their workboard is available in Phabricator. You can find links to the list of work finished each week at mw:VisualEditor/Weekly triage meetings. Their current priorities are fixing bugs, releasing the 2017 wikitext editor as a beta feature, and improving language support.

Recent changes

• You can now set text as small or big.[3]
• Invisible templates have been shown as a puzzle icon. Now, the name of the invisible template is displayed next to the puzzle icon.[4] A similar feature will display the first part of hidden HTML comments.[5]
• Categories are displayed at the bottom of each page. If you click on the categories, the dialog for editing categories will open.[6]
• At many wikis, you can now add maps to pages. Go to the Insert menu and choose the "Maps" item. The Discovery department is adding more features to this area, like geoshapes. You can read more at mediawiki.org.[7]
• The "Save" button now says "Save page" when you create a page, and "Save changes" when you change an existing page.[8] In the future, the "Save page" button will say "Publish page". This will affect both the visual and wikitext editing systems. More information is available on Meta.
• Image galleries now use a visual mode for editing. You can see thumbnails of the images, add new files, remove unwanted images, rearrange the images by dragging and dropping, and add captions for each image. Use the "Options" tab to set the gallery's display mode, image sizes, and add a title for the gallery.[9]

Future changes

The visual editor will be offered to all editors at the remaining 10 "Phase 6" Wikipedias during the next month. The developers want to know whether typing in your language feels natural in the visual editor. Please post your comments and the language(s) that you tested at the feedback thread on mediawiki.org. This will affect several languages, including Thai, Burmese and Aramaic.

The team is working on a modern wikitext editor. The 2017 wikitext editor will look like the visual editor and be able to use the citoid service and other modern tools. This new editing system may become available as a Beta Feature on desktop devices in October 2016. You can read about this project in a general status update on the Wikimedia mailing list.

Let's work together

• Do you teach new editors how to use the visual editor? Did you help set up the Citoid automatic reference feature for your wiki? Have you written or imported TemplateData for your most important citation templates? Would you be willing to help new editors and small communities with the visual editor? Please sign up for the new VisualEditor Community Taskforce.

• If you aren't reading this in your preferred language, then please help us with translations! Subscribe to the Translators mailing list or contact us directly, so that we can notify you when the next issue is ready. Thank you!

—Elitre (WMF)

17:49, 15 October 2016 (UTC)

I want a lot of kind of Wikipedia Month

Why Wikipedia Month have only Wikipedia Asian Month? I wanna a lot of kind of Wikipedia Month. For example,stub,Europe,Africa,America,Sciences,Art,History,Philosophy,Culture,Technology,Wikipedia:Portal,and ete... --RJANKA (talk) 22:18, 21 October 2016 (UTC)

@RJANKA: There is also w:Wikipedia:WikiProject_Africa/The_Africa_Destubathon on the English Wikipedia. We have a lot of work still to do to improve many topics across all of our sites, so if you want to try to organize more editors, that is welcomed. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 03:04, 22 October 2016 (UTC)

Wikimania wikis

Moved to Wikimedia_Forum#Wikimania_wikis. --Rehman 09:11, 22 October 2016 (UTC)

Scope of #wikimedia-bans

I fail to see the scope of the IRC channel on freenode called #wikimedia-bans. I don't think it is approved by the Wikimedia Foundation but it is managed by a arbitrary committee of specific users. I know it's designed to prevent abuse but sometimes, the abuse that happens in there overflows in other channels that have zero relation to Wikimedia or its network. I'm filing a motion to have that channel shut down. --Brightez (talk) 17:34, 25 October 2016 (UTC)

I am sorry, but the metawiki community has no say on IRC issues. Regardless what we might decide here, it would not be binding. --Vogone (talk) 02:59, 26 October 2016 (UTC)

Adding (spamblacklistlog) to abusefilter-helpers

A proposal to add viewing SBL's to the abusefilter-helpers group open at Talk:Abuse_filter_helpers#Adding_.28spamblacklistlog.29_to_the_package. Please discuss on that page, thank you. — xaosflux ^Talk 16:03, 29 October 2016 (UTC)

Динопедія

Я хотів би створити вікіпроект про динозаврів під адресою https://uk.dinopedia.org . Логотип- https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ceratosaurus_mounted_white_background.jpg . --Боровков Роман (talk) 19:11, 3 November 2016 (UTC)

Making the "NOINDEX" tag work on all namespaces on Meta-Wiki

Tracked in Phabricator:
Task T150245

Hello. I've proposed that __NOINDEX__ works for all namespaces here at Meta-Wiki. Currently, the tag cannot be used on the main namespace as well as on others. Given the nature of this wiki and that we store some pages and archives such as Vandalism reports which get indexed. We've got several requests in the past to hide from search engines some pages and we've found that the only way to do it is by modifying the robots.txt, which requires an admin. Leaving here a note at request of Dereckson. Regards, —MarcoAurelio 23:39, 15 November 2016 (UTC)