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<translate> The Wikimedia Forum is a central place for questions, announcements and other discussions about the [[<tvar|wmf>Special:MyLanguage/Wikimedia Foundation</>|Wikimedia Foundation]] and its projects. (For discussion about the Meta wiki, see [[<tvar|meta-babel>Special:MyLanguage/Meta:Babel</>|Meta:Babel]].)
This is not the place to make technical queries regarding the [[<tvar|mediawiki>Special:MyLanguage/MediaWiki</>|MediaWiki software]]; please ask such questions at the [[<tvar|mw-support-desk>mw:Project:Support desk</>|MediaWiki support desk]]; technical questions about Wikimedia wikis, however, can be placed on [[<tvar|tech>Special:MyLanguage/Tech</>|Tech]] page.</translate>

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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) 2012-03-30T08:44:57 (UTC)

Proposal - complete unified login for all eligible accounts

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)

proposal for personal wikipedia service

I always collect the information and knowledge from wikipedia, but most of the time the materials from wiki are not perfect for me. So I copy and paste the orignal article and edit it and save it to my own knowledge database, such as evernote. Why cannot I do this directly on wikipedia?

What is personal wiki service?

Personal wiki service is to use the wikipedia website to store and organize personal collection of knowledge, information, ideas, personal thoughts, or annotation of the wikipedia article. People can choose to make them private, or public to everyone, or only share with friends.

Wikipedia can do this better than other similar service provider because

• The cloud service provided by wikipedia is reliable. The tool provided by wikipedia is powerful. For example, I like the support for latex input, and wikibook export, which I cannot find in evernote.
• It is easier and more convenient to build the personal knowledge database on the public knowledge database. The terminologies are organized in a decent way in wikipedia, and they can be found easily. If I can put my own stuff together with them, then I will have them classified and sorted decently.

Serveral reasons for wikipedia to open this service

• People need a tool to organize personal collection of information & collections, especially a cloud tool. See the success of Evernote. When people read wikipedia articles, they also want to do annotation or raise a different opinion.

• Wikipedia usually stands for the majority opinion, which does not mean it is the truth. So People who have different opinion may want to supplement and improve the original article for their personal purpose or share wahtever they think is right and let others to compare and discuss. Other viewers can choose to read these comments or not.

• Since this is a personal service, it does not have to be free. People can use the basic service for free and advanced users should pay. I believe wikipedia can provide an excellent product, and people would love to pay for it. This can also help to solve the funding problem of wikimedia.

Proposal: Enable WikiLove on Meta

(moved to Babel)

I went to give some stewards some wikilove, and noticed it isn't enabled. How would the community feel about having it enabled?

Am I even asking this in the correct place? --Ryan Lane (WMF) (talk) 22:09, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

Just stewards? and unfortunately I think not, per this pages's header, Meta:Babel would be best suited for this. The Helpful One 22:17, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

Heh. Well, I just had the want to give wikilove to stewards right now, since they helped me out. I'll move this thead to Meta:Babel.--Ryan Lane (WMF) (talk) 22:24, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

Wikimedia Highlights, February 2012

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

• Wikimedia Foundation Highlights:
  • Legal and Community Advocacy department launched
  • Teahouse project kicks off
  • MediaWiki 1.19 deployed
• Data and Trends
• Financials
• Other movement highlights:
  • Chapters and Foundation discuss finances
  • Wikimedians concerned about ACTA
  • German "community project budget" results announced

About · Subscribe/unsubscribe · Distributed via Global message delivery, 07:30, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

Something seriously wrong with this page

when you go to Help:System_message the page is an 'brought to you by ass puss production' overlay. I have no idea how this peace of vandalism got there.--1Veertje (talk) 13:14, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

the same is true for Help:Link where I got to when I followed: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Link#Subpage_feature

Thanks for the heads-up, should be fixed now (it was a simple case of template vandalism). Regards, HaeB (talk) 13:32, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

I have a concern

There is only one moderator in the Korean Wiktionary. He is A-heun. He is often rude to some contributors as there's only a handful of contributors in the Korean Wiktionary. I occasionally make some contributions for it, mainly from contents from the English and Russian Wikitionaries. Most of the times, he unreasonably deletes or reverts contributions back (for example, I expanded 아르바이트 in the English Wikitionary, and this moderator called A-heun reverted some quality contributions back in the equivalent article in the Korean Wiktionary). First of all, there's only ONE moderator who is moderating the Korean Wiktionary and he often scares away new contributors. This does not look good for the Korean Wiki Projects. --KoreanQuoter (talk) 15:18, 10 March 2012 (UTC)

Detecting and fixing broken stats

Occasionally on-wiki stats will get off-track (especially the article count after articles are imported). It seems that this is usually not fixed until someone submits (and someone else fulfills) a bug report (example for vep:) requesting that an appropriate maintenance script be run on the command line (e.g., updateArticleCount.php). My question is this: is there a policy (or at least a convention) about when such scripts are run? It seems silly to have to wait for a bug report to be acted upon to fix this problem that apparently happens every time articles are imported into a wiki. (For years now, apparently, there has been a request to make Special:Import automatically update relevant site statistics, but this has not yet been implemented.) Seeing as how complete site stats (for all WMF wikis) are generated "from scratch" every month based on XML dumps, it should be relatively easy (the different definitions of "articles" across different projects notwithstanding) to compare on-wiki article counts (and whatever other stats are similarly "unreliable") to the dump-derived "official" counts every time the dumps are done. Then if there's any significant discrepancies (say, more than 1% or 2%?), the appropriate script could be run automatically (or, at the very least, a request could automatically be generated to do so). Before I request something like this in a bug report, does anyone have any relevant information I should know or opinions about the matter? - dcljr (talk) 04:18, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

The onwiki stats are almost always an approximation, like all magic words I am aware off. Look at translatewiki:MediaWiki:Historywarning for an example. It does not say that the page has X versions, it says that the page has "approximately" X versions. Since the magic words for page-counting are a little strange on (almost) all s:-projects, I am updating the page-count by help of the API daily. (It at least works on a minor project.) This does not answer your q above, but put it in a little perspective. i.e. Never trust onwiki-stats and magic words. -- Lavallen (talk) 11:44, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

Proposed update for www.wikimedia.org content

In the middle of last year I proposed update text for www.wikimedia.org portal. I think that fits the following structure for describe the Wikimedia community/movement/ownership succinctly:

First Variant	Second Variant	Third Variant
Welcome to Wikimedia <... Vision text... > <... Mission text... > Wikimedia projects: <project logos> <... Wikimedia movement explanation... >	<... Vision text... > Welcome to Wikimedia <... Wikimedia movement explanation... > <... Mission text... > (quoting) Wikimedia projects: <project logos>	<... Vision text... > Welcome to Wikimedia <... Wikimedia movement explanation... > <WMF logo> <... Mission text... > (quoting) Wikimedia projects: <logo1> <logo2> <logo3> <logo4> <logo5> <logo6> <logo7> <logo8> <logo9> <logo10> <logo11> <logo12>
Each paragraph corresponds to own range of issues: Vision text - answer to the question "why?" Mission text - "how to realized our vision?" List of projects - "where, by what means?" Wikimedia definition is explanation of Wikimedia at broader context. Together for the visitor it should make it clear about the place where he was, and his sense of what all these beautiful logos.
See Www.wikimedia.org template/temp2-en as illustration of this point (please click "preview portal" tab to see how it looks). This version used the full texts from "Vision" and "Mission" statements, and summary of Wikimedia movement page. Translations: Russian, ...	See also little refactored version (please click "preview portal" tab to see how it looks). At this version changed: (1) "Vision" is highlighted and raised above the welcome title; (2) Explanation of "Wikimedia movement" made the first paragraph; (3) "Mission" quoted briefly; (4) "title" captions for project logos and their links are taken from Template:Main Page/Sisterprojects/en Translations: Russian, ...	See also more refactored version (please click "preview portal" tab to see how it looks). based on idea of Ruslik

If it is possible here, it would be good to try autodetect of userlanguage and make multi-language translations of these texts (and launch a campaign to translate into all possible languages). But for the first step, I propose to simply replace the English text. Until now, many people do not understand the difference between Wikipedia and Wikimedia, and between Wikimedia and the Wikimedia Foundation (and why things work in general). This update may help someone in this sense.

Suggestions? Objections? Approval? As I heard, require a broad consensus for this change. Let's try to achieve it! --Kaganer (talk) 15:11, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

Hi, the preview portal tab doesn't work for me (I'm using the ancient monobook). The Helpful One 15:33, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

Maybe JavaScript is disabled and/or popups is blocked? Should be open popup window with html-rendered content. I swith to monobook and all is worked... --Kaganer (talk) 16:29, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

Nope, I use Javascript all the time (User:Thehelpfulone/common.js), it does open a popup window but the window is just blank. I'm using Google Chrome. The Helpful One 16:31, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

I also using Chrome. I have also seen this effect in several cases - Ctrl+F5 for Www.wikimedia.org template/temp2 page is helped for me. --Kaganer (talk) 16:50, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, it only seems to work the first time in Chrome for me. I haven't had a chance to poke at it. --MZMcBride (talk) 00:34, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

• I don't think adding a lot of text is a good idea. Can you explain what you see as the deficiencies with the current design? --MZMcBride (talk) 21:49, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

  No deficiencies in the design, there are deficiencies in the content.

  I am once again faced with the problem of perception of the portal during the CentralNotice/May_2011_Update translation campain. See Talk:CentralNotice/May_2011_Update#ru translation and Talk:Translation_teams/ru/English-Russian_Wikimedia_Glossary#CentralNotice.2FMay_2011_Update.23ru.

  This portal - the first site in the search results for the query "wikimedia". At that time there was written only "Wikimedia is owned and operated by the Wikimedia Foundation". Now the text has become a little better. But anyway - this is the first site facing the person who wants to understand "what this strange "Wikimedia" is?". And a brief information (but that will explain the fundamental issues) must be placed directly on the page. To the people passing on further links, in principle, already knew where to hit and what's the deal (and why all this is intended).

  To do this, I suggest using the key laconic texts - Vision and Mission of Wikimedia, and immediately make it clear that the movement is not limited to the Wikimedia Foundation.

  No less important I think to make this portal is multilingual.

  Perhaps there are other ideas for the development of this portal, but I think the current state of abnormal relative to the importance of the role Wikimedia projects, which they occupy.--Kaganer (talk) 22:49, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

Hmmmm, I don't disagree (though I'd like to see translations in place before adding a bunch of text).

See Russian translation example. --Kaganer (talk) 01:17, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

What I think the problem is is that this was a specific design previously. When you throw a bunch of text on top of it, it doesn't work. You need a new design. :-) Maybe make the logos smaller and in a different arrangement? And figure out a way to make that text less overwhelming. It should be as simple and neat as possible. --MZMcBride (talk) 00:34, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

My version is illustration only, no target prototype. I am willing to work with the design, but once we decide what to tell in this page. First - the "what", then - the "how". --Kaganer (talk) 00:51, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

Oh, okay. As page elements, the vision and mission statements are fine. But people should feel free to use artistic license to present them in ways that simply aren't blobs of static text. And I'm not sure about an explanation on the main page... maybe a "learn more" link to somewhere else, if people really want to learn more about the Wikimedia movement? --MZMcBride (talk) 01:10, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

OK, but "Learn more..." - where? This is a problem... I don't know an ideal place for this link.--Kaganer (talk) 01:20, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

See also little refactored version. --Kaganer (talk) 11:56, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

• Seems logical. A front page should provide information, not just links. Lvova (talk) 10:43, 14 March 2012 (UTC)
• The long text shifts logos down. I suggest splitting the page into columns: at the left – smaller logos; at the right in a narrower column – the text under the Wikimedia logo. Ruslik (talk) 18:32, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

  Long texts wrote Leo Tolstoy and James Joyce. This is a short text ;) This version is similar to your idea? (text column is specifically placed on the left instead of right; this my point: text - first, pictures - later). --Kaganer (talk) 22:03, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

  Yes, I meant something like this. Ruslik (talk) 11:33, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

What do you think about more concise text? I made a mock-up here: Www.wikimedia.org template/temp. --MZMcBride (talk) 22:34, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

I think this is a good solution. Maybe add "Vision" text as a footer? As a some postscriptum... --Kaganer (talk) 08:56, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

I added a footer. What do you think? --MZMcBride (talk) 14:12, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

Yes. I just added a dividing line and changed the color. --Kaganer (talk) 16:51, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

I like the line; not a huge fan of the color. I think it's a bit distracting. I refactored some of the code. Maybe a bit more padding is needed above the line?

Personally, I think this is a good enough improvement to put live. I'd be interested in your thoughts on this. --MZMcBride (talk) 17:27, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

OK, so be it. I agree - the interval between the logo and line must be not less than interval between the line and footer text. It is better to be equal. --Kaganer (talk) 18:42, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

I also think it necessary to add more descriptive "title" texts for all logotypes from my version (based on {{Sisterprojects}}). --Kaganer (talk) 18:47, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

I synced it live: <https://www.wikimedia.org/>. The hover-over text (the titles) were all inconsistent, so I switched them to just project name. If you want to update Www.wikimedia.org template/temp with better titles (or let me know what you want the titles to be), I can sync the changes later. --MZMcBride (talk) 19:41, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

Img title texts and alt texts is updated. Please check it (i seen extended popup descriptions). --Kaganer (talk) 21:43, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

Okay, I made a few tweaks and resynced the page. Let me know if anything else needs to be done. --MZMcBride (talk) 21:55, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

The best ;) Now needed delete my works temp pages, or save them for history? --Kaganer (talk) 08:52, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

They're obscure subpages. I don't think there's any issue with leaving them around.

Thanks for all your help with this. I think the page looks much better. :-) --MZMcBride (talk) 12:54, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

Disarmament crisis

I don't know why, but I think this is useful reading right now. :-) Nemo 22:03, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

what about some protections for access to Wiki, Meta and all «vitales» sections ?

hello ; I'm following as I can the problems about <vitales> pages Wiki, Meta and of all other <sections> victims of «vandales» (French word) ; don't you want to do something for protecting these sections, too important in my mind for letting <vandales> make vandalism in these pages ; excuse me for my English, it is tired today ; I hope you will understand me ; with my best salutations, --Buster Keaton (talk) 12:47, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

I'll hazard that you're referring to biographical articles, yes? If so, then you should know that there are many anti-vandalism tools like Huggle and the abuse filter that try to reduce the amount of vandalism that makes it into articles. That being said, some stuff still gets through and though we try to do our utmost to make sure vandalism is reverted quickly, we cannot guarantee it. You might be interested in the Wikimedia Foundation Board's resolution on the issue of biographies of living people. Killiondude (talk) 07:40, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

The English Wikipedia experimented with using the flagged revisions extension. This enables a "reviewed" version to be displayed to the reader, hiding all changes until a Reviewer checks them. QU ^TalkQu 08:25, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

no, not at all, but thanks for your answer/question ; my message was only a new intervention about this message on Editing Wikipedia Forum : I would like to propose that we up the protection for the main page from edit=autoconfirmed to edit=sysop. For a lead entry page, it really should be better protected, and while the COIBot should not be editing here, and we will look to the fix, it may just be safer to tighten the control anyway. billinghurst sDrewth 15:24, 8 February 2012 (UTC), and these messages agreeing this one : Totally agree. -Barras 15:34, 8 February 2012 (UTC) — Totally agree. -Barras 15:34, 8 February 2012 (UTC) — Good decision PS, thx. billinghurst sDrewth 13:23, 22 February 2012 (UTC) ;

I only remembered this question of protection on Wikimedia Forum, but I maybe understood wrongly the 1rst message of User Billinghurst (as I wrote yesterday, my English is sometimes very tired ; I'm now working on several projects of my own work, in French, that will occupy me till next year) ; anyway, I know there are many tools to reduce the vandalism everywhere on Wikimedia Meta-Wiki, and others Wikis ; they work very well ; thanks and best salutations, --Buster Keaton (talk) 13:15, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia -- the ultimate search engine?

To whom it may concern at the Wikipedia Foundation,

Would you please consider competing with Google?

To me it sounds like an utterly logical next step for Wikipedia anyway, and now I'm wondering if it might be our only remaining hope of privacy.

To me, "Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge," while it might mean a world of education, does NOT mean a world of shared knowledge, without privacy protection in a search engine.

Google is a business after all, and any commercial entity simply has a different set of marching orders than "share the sum of all knowledge."

In closing, I'd just like to say that in my personal opinion making a goal of the genuinely free flow of all understanding would actually be the single most powerful thing we could do as a species to shape our own evolution going forward.

Very sincerely,

Katrina V.V Smith Carpinteria, CA

If Wikipedia were a search engine then, under the likely terms of pending United States legislation being developed, we might be required to enforce, on behalf of and at the direction of the Justice Department, the blocking of links to copyright infringing sites. Although it is our policy not to link to those sites, it is quite beyond our mission to undertake this sort of law enforcement role. ~ Ningauble (talk) 18:32, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you're talking about. The same type of legislation that affects search engines + user content also (generally) affects sites such as Wikipedia. --MZMcBride (talk) 14:55, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

Are you familiar with w:Wikia and its search efforts? It hasn't gone very well. There are outside organizations such as w:DuckDuckGo that seek to provide private search. Most rely on the major search engines for their infrastructure/crawling, though. --MZMcBride (talk) 14:55, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

Syntax highlighting of Common Lisp on Wikipedia

Not sure where to put this suggestion, but here we go. IMHO, the theme for Common Lisp syntax highlighting is terrible. Look here, for example. The yellow used for keywords is too light, and the green used for parentheses is so light, it's almost invisible. Both should be made darker. Melikamp (talk) 06:07, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

Hi. Syntax highlighting is done with an external library via the SyntaxHighlight GeSHi MediaWiki extension. I believe it's possible to override the styling on a per-site basis by editing MediaWiki:Geshi.css. You can also file a bug in Bugzilla (Wikimedia and MediaWiki's bug tracker) requesting that the default colors be adjusted, if you'd like. It may be an upstream bug, but it should still be filed in Bugzilla as a starting point. --MZMcBride (talk) 14:58, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

Going ons

Hi. Template:Main Page/WM News is severely lacking in new information about up-coming events. Does anyone know of any upcoming events that could be added? Thanks. Killiondude (talk) 20:45, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

It's not Meta focused, but Wikimedia Conference 2012 is in session right now. :) --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 16:49, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

Win 8; VS 11; HTML 5 and Hacks

I have some concerns here about this Windows 8 with Visual Studios 11 (BETA) which includes HTML 5 (and all the goodies galore) - having had this, not yet reinstalled it - not sure if I will; it is of interest how one can easily override Mac/Apple/Linux/Windows(any version)/et. al. with this simple but powerful feature if it gets into the wrong hands, especially for developers who have other things in their minds.

How does Wikipedia as a WHOLE itself going to protect itself, for once people have attained knowledge, codes to DIY's (Do It Yourself) even if they have been already approved and registered or just registered; they would blow Wiki right off the wall out of simplicity in addition, the ability to lock it down? Are the Techs in Wiki prepared for this is my concern? I certainly don't want a "wrecked up Wiki". But I know enough things getting into the wrong hands is going to wreck everything from financial industries to you name it - under the sun. What concerns me is, not so much as BOTS, but the fact of sooner or later someone is going to realize they can create one that can discern and pick up from a stolen 4G Phone using their DNS/IP - before one knows it, it's already been programmed where web design pages are in a total wreck, leeching to breeches, whereas the entire situation is scary enough to even think about it.

Same way with iPAD 4 which has the near-same capabilities as per se as indicated above.

To make the matters worse, one can already develop something (probably is or are at this current state; that which I cannot answer) - which can easily be transmitted to a Cell Phone right now. Do you realize how many cell phones that have been discarded and there are dumpster divers (people who raid dumpsters by breaking locks or picking locks or those who were left unlocked for garbage trucks to pick up trash) stashing up on phones and reinstating them illegally? Lost phones (it really wasn't lost - it was more or less "pick-pocketed" just like the old days when wallets were the thing they used to pick-pocketed frequently), then smash them and turn them in as "found" at this XXXX location which by reason of serial number on phone can be traced back to the owner. What they do not realize is the database in it has been all erased and so severely damaged is the phone that the owner has no choice but to obtain another phone. (That latter report pertaining to lost phones and being destroyed was provided to me after several customers coming in when I was looking FOR a phone, this caused me to retreat from obtaining a cell phone period, after one had departed and was furious, for he had 32 GB memory card in there and the phone only had 8 GB memory card in it; he accused them of stealing it and he had receipts and proof of purchases. When returned at another date, I made an inquiry about phones, and the Rep merely made a comment of "Oh, we get all sorts of stories all the time. They never called or contacted us that their phone was lost or stolen, so the fault was theirs." However of interest, I must add, just within seconds a very Professional businessman walked in, about his cell; that was stolen, while my mother hung around close by to hear them and I was over on the other side just to hear what was being stated; my mom informed me that the Assistant Manager reported to him that he never called and notified them even though he had provided them the case number, and he could not pull it up; no such case number was found. That man was becoming very angry with the Manager and threatened to call the Police on them, what happened after that is virtually unknown, for my mom walked over and told me "I can't find anything, let's go" and the Rep, who wanted a sale; I didn't feel so comfortable there. Apologized to him and told him there was absolutely nothing my mother or I could find, "Sorry", and we departed quickly. What irritated me was, for someone who drives a nearly $200+k sports car, you would think he would receive better treatment, a "Red Carpet Treatment"; but no. Only then and there I learned from my mother what all went on from there and never again wil I seek for a Cell Phone. In addendum, I must add, I have been to other Major Stores; and inquired within about these things, and the same story was almost like a canned answer, which was far more common than one realizes.)

When I asked about what they did with the old phones, was informed they were tossed into the garbage dumpster. To me personally, it really is stupidity there; for dumpster-divers steal them, restore them, and no one would ever be able to find or locate whom or who did it without any usage of wired or wireless DNS/IP Provider; even the User's to Admin's account could very well be locked out all the way to emails; would Anti-Virus to Security Systems hold up to these types of invasions? That is my question and my answer is a 50/50 coin toss. I have seen phones available and had been offered one through "black market" cheap, unlocked, but I want no part of this; these are fly-by night "morons", but to "catch a thief" is nearly impossible because they are everywhere.

Advanced technology is great - but to leave others in a vulnerable state isn't; doesn't anyone agree? Even the Servers (regardless of what they are - would be in its vulnerable state, even though many keeps them up to par) but .... there is a fine line there as how far one can go.

This is only my humble opinion and concerns having loved Wiki since the beginning, but now, security and safety for all at this point has come to mind.

Anyone else have any comments or say-so on this area? I've been following closely on all the Tech Reports and inclusions of bugs and glitches in the BETA's - that which can easily be reinstated (violation of Microsoft Genuine Product once the Public release has been made).

AwahiliGuni (talk) 01:20, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

I'm having a little trouble understanding what you are saying, but (correct me if I am wrong), I think that you are concerned, essentially, that new hardware devices and/or software tools will make it easier to hack into the servers that host the various projects run by the Wikimedia Foundation. Hacking is not that easy in real life. Compromising a system by exploiting unpatched vulnerabilities is very rare compared to substantially simpler techniques such as phishing and other forms of social engineering in order to obtain credentials that have access to sensitive functions. New operating systems and IDEs such as Windows 8 and Microsoft Visual Studio 2011 are not going to make it any easier to hack into websites than they are now. I personally have found MSVS in particular to be an incredibly well-built and useful piece of software, but it cannot write any substantial code other than basic templates by itself. We (humanity) are probably many, many, many years from being able to create software that can reliably and automatically breach the security measures that are typically used by most websites to prevent unauthorized access. If we were able to do this, we would also be able to write similar programs that deliberately attempt to find these security holes and automatically close them (or at least suggest changes that could be made to mitigate the threat).

Based on what you wrote, it appears that your perception of how hacking is accomplishws may have been influenced by "hacking" attempts as portrayed in films or TV shows. In real life, hacking is utterly nothing like the way it is portrayed in films - if it was, you can bet that all popular websites would be hacked hundreds of times daily. I will admit I know very little about how to compromise website security measures, but I can absolutely guarantee that software such as Windows 8 and Microsoft Visual Studio 2011 and languages such as HTML 5 will not make it substantially easier to do so, nor will devices such as the iPad 4. J.delanoy^gabs_adds 04:01, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

Global user rights on FlaggedRev wikis

As global rollbackers already have the autopatrol right and global sysops additionally can patrol edits actively, I suggest to add the right autoreview-restore, which only marks reverts to a checked revision as checked, to the global rollback user group.

Global sysops should IMHO be granted the rights autoreview, review, unreviewedpages and stablesettings because local administrators usually also have these permissions on wikis where the flagged revisions extension is enabled.

Regards --Iste (D) 18:47, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

Coming from a project with extensive use of FlaggedRevs (en.wikibooks), I concur with the above re global rollbackers.

• I disagree with stablesettings. Which version of a page should be displayed by default and who should be able to configure the stable settings is a content decision and so should be left to the local community. It isn't required in order to deal with vandalism.
• I disagree with autoreview for the same reason - it is a content setting. Unless a Global Sysop is knowledgeable about the project then they won't be aware whether their edits are "good" or "bad" content. This right isn't needed to fight vandalism and who it goes to should be a local community decision. Global Sysops have no expertise on content norms on a project and therefore need their edits reviewed locally.
• I see no reason at all for unreviewedpages.

I see the fact that local sysops have these rights is irrelevant as the role of a Global Sysop is intended to be different. Adding these rights to Global Sysops would make some projects opt out as they hand content controlling capability to people with no knowledge of the local content guidelines. QU ^TalkQu 19:26, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

I don't find it very logical to grant global sysops patrol and autopatrol permissions, but not the corrsponding reviewing rights which have exactly the same purpose. I also can't agree that these rights are unimportant to fight vandalism, as every vandalism revert has to be checked by a local user if a global rollbacker or global sysop doesn't at least have the autoreview-restore permission, so this actually doesn't have much to do with content decisions. By the way, unwatchedpages is a content right that global sysops have, but which is normally not needed for fighting vandalism. Regards --Iste (D) 20:00, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

If you read what I wrote you will see that I didn't disagree with autoreview-restore. Autoreview is very different. With the former this causes a rollback to not need an independent review - fine because it is returning the page to a state where it has already been reviewed by a member of the local community. In contrast autoreview means ANY edit the Global Sysop makes is reviewed. That is, going in and adding new content gets reviewed. This defeats the object of FlaggedRevs as it would allow someone with no knowledge of the content policies to go in, make edits, and not have them reviewed. If a Global Sysop wants to contribute new content to a project then they need to go through the normal process of getting the autoreview right once they have met the quality standards set by that local community. As for having other rights that aren't needed, well, that's not a justification for adding more unneeded rights is it. QU ^TalkQu 20:20, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

Well, then there should be a general discussion considering the evidence of rights such as patrol. If a user can be trusted to mark edits in a language he doesn't speak as patrolled, I see no reason not to grant him the review and autoreview permissions which are definitely useful for "routine maintenance" which is also a purpose of global sysop rights. Regards --Iste (D) 20:34, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

Can't be done. This was already tried in the past (as a test); and the test failed. FlaggedRevs rights won't be assinged to those groups as it's a pure content issue that needs to be addressed by the local community of those projects. Stewards don't have those rights either. Regards. —Marco Aurelio (Nihil Prius Fide) 21:13, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

Anonymous users not allowed on PCP

I've just tried to leave a comment in the comment section of "Proposals for closing projects/Closure of Zulu Wikipedia" but I couldn't get through. The following reason was provided «Anonymous users not allowed on PCP». I do not know if this reason is fair, fishy, scary or just ludicrous but it reminded me one of the reasons why I put down to the very minimum my visits and edits in Meta. I am writing this to let know anyone reading this who did not know about it and to leave here what I wanted to say there (I could have created an ad hoc account but I personally find that option ridiculous). This is what I had written:

«What I have seen for years (especially on Wiktionaries) does not make me think Incubator is really helpful except in very specific cases (these mainly being when highly IT- or wiki-savvy editors start editing in specific language projects). Actually, I think Incubator is rather detrimental for most of the projects it touches and I find it especially damaging to (actual or proportional) minority languages for obvious reasons: if it is already difficult to find editors in those languages, let alone finding editors ready for the Incubator environment where editing is heavily burdened with systematically tagged links. Besides, the Incubator is basically mere top-down imposed and tacitly condoned bureaucracy. If moving projects to the Incubator were helpful by default I would support the idea, unfortunately I do not think it is. Actually, I think a Meta project called something like "Proposals for taking projects out of the Incubator" would make more sense than this "Proposals for closing projects". Regards.» --95.18.128.214 19:36, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

Proposals for taking projects out of the Incubator exists, it is called Requests for new languages. ~~EBE123~~ ^talk_Contribs 20:19, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

It is now possible for IPs again to edit Proposals for closing projects. --MF-W 22:20, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

Proposal: Moderators and their actions must be held accountable

Well, I feel it overtly offensive that so many of these great Wikipedia pages have pejorative or threatening stamps at the top. I understand that Wikipedia is a "social experiment" and thus a socially edited encyclopedia, yet why do apparent Wikipedia staff put stamps that say, e.g.: the page for "Freakazoid!" is Fancruft? Or that on many more wiki pages "if challenged they will be removed"; is this without a warning?

My suggestion would be like YouTube and so many other well done sites to have users be able to log in and vote for or against a moderator's opinion. Furthermore, these mods should post there screen name so that they are not above being questioned or even removed from position themselves.

All these are truly important in the progress of any social-based site.

If your issue is specifically with the English Wikipedia you will need to discuss it there. There are no "moderators" on the English Wikipedia and the tags you are referring to are placed by ordinary contributors whose "screen name" is clearly identifable from the page history. Wikipedia (or Wikimedia) staff do not carry out the actions you are describing. Any other editor is entitled to remove the tag if they feel the issue has been addressed or is not valid. Wikipedia operates by consensus so if a page is tagged as "Fancruft" then that is the majority view of contributors. Every contributor to Wikipedia can express their view on an article talk page to try and influence the consensus. They can also provide feedback on the page via the reviewing system. As such I'm not sure there's a specific issue here that needs addressing. Regards, QU ^TalkQu 12:17, 4 April 2012 (UTC)

Applications for free, full access, 1-year accounts from HighBeam Research officially open

1000 free accounts are available from the internet research database HighBeam Research. HighBeam has full versions of tens of millions of newspaper articles and journals and should be a big help in adding reliable sources--especially older and paywalled ones--into the encyclopedia. Sign-ups require a 1-year old account with 1000 edits. Here's the link to the project page: WP:HighBeam (account sign-ups are linked in the box on the right). Sign-up! And, please tell your Wikipedia-friends about the opportunity! Cheers, Ocaasi (talk) 13:57, 4 April 2012 (UTC)