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please don´t ask me for a donation if I have already done so

Is it possible to get a cookie or sth. that prevents those donation messages? Or further, thanks me briefly as supporter or s.th.? Because after donating, you get treated like an unscrupulous cadger again which feels...unappropriate. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 93.133.5.251 (talk • contribs) 21:08, 2 December 2012‎ (UTC)

a video I want to contribute

On my user page I put a link to one of my Youtube videos.

Is this allowed?

Because my video was no longer stored on my computer; I only uploaded it to my Youtube channel.

I also don't know if my video would be considered educational enough.

Today's date stamp so this old message will eventually archive: 15:48, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

it.wiki in trouble, once again, this time is worse than last year

Hi, this is just to let you know that the dangerous law that wasn't issued last year, when we blacked-out the site, is once again under discussion at the Italian Senate. This time things seem to be much much worse than one year ago. The act is now harder and contains many more obligations, so many and so dangerous that no sysops would work at such conditions because it would definitely be too risky. Very few among our users would go on editing BLPs or "spicy" topics any more because it could be very costly: up to 100,000 euros! And any legalised troll saying that something in our articles disturbs him, would be entitled to request an addition (inside the article) which actually we are not going to accept because the troll is not required to be honest and tell the truth, any liar would be legally welcomed and we couldn't even comment... (I'm not kidding, it's incredible but true...)
Moreover, this time the approval could more probably be forced by the so-called technical government (headed by Mr. Monti), and all the bigger Italian parties toghether (Berlusconians hands in hands with former communists - both had separately tried to enforce such an act before) are working for strengthening the act. So, this time we need a critical help from anyone, we need it now because the scheduled vote on next Monday could be the last time we can freely work on it.wiki. We need it strong because main Italian media are simply ignoring our protest, and we can't read any news about it outside the web.
So, please, please, please, do whatever you can in order to avoid at least that this can happen in a complete silence. Inform your deputy, call the closest Italian embassy, spam your papers and/or our Senators (open individual files for addresses), use your fantasy and do whatever you think might be strongly helpful in protecting Wikipedia, starting from spreading the news across the WikiWorld.
Any little thing you can do will be vitally important for it.wiki.
Thank you in advance --g (talk) 00:09, 27 October 2012 (UTC)

By the way, this proposed law is not dead yet. There seems to be an end-of-mandate sprint in the next 20 business days for the Parliament to either pass or abandon this law and a few dozens other decrees, so we'll know soon. --Nemo 12:59, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

I thought about suggesting that someone send them an Italian translation of wikisource:Cato's Letter No. 15, but it occurred to me that perhaps the very reason for governments' wanting to destroy freedom of speech is that it's inseparable from public liberty. wikisource:Cato's Letter No. 100 and wikisource:Cato's Letter No. 101 are also pertinent reading. I disagree, though, with the statement, "Wikipedia is already neutral, why neutralize it?" Wikipedia may be moderate (or slightly left of center, as the case may be) but it can never be neutral, if only because of the need to choose which facts are relevant and important (and therefore worthy of inclusion and greater weight, prominence, etc. than others) and which aren't. Leucosticte (talk) 23:07, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

Proposal to change logo from "free" to "community-written", "community-run", "open", "collaborative" etc

Cutting and pasting from the discussion on the English Wikipedia:

w:MediaWiki talk:Tagline

"The community-written encyclopedia"

I'd like to propose changing the every-page tagline "Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia" to "Wikipedia, the community-written encyclopedia". The word "free" has lost much of its meaning nowadays, but "community-written" would give people who land on articles via Google searches a much better clue about what Wikipedia IS, without going as far as saying "anyone can edit" on every article (saying "anyone can edit" might be more inviting of vandalism as well as detracting from aesthetics, but I don't think "community-written" has these problems). Silas S. Brown (talk) 09:00, 7 November 2012 (UTC)

I agree wholeheartedly. I've always thought that "free encyclopedia" only adds to the notion of "this is a service that has been provided by the magic pixies who do their work deep below the surface of the earth, far removed from reality". The feedback feature has only strengthened these views. It's always whinging: "why won't you do this? why are you so shit? why wont you fix this article? i hate you!". The real question is, why wont you.... We have GOT to end this stupid dichotomy. It is not editors and readers. We are one in the same (something that i like to dub "edi-readers"). And as such Wikipedia should not present itself as "this is how cool we are and this is our best work and ooo looky at all the stuff we've done. read and be in awe". We should always try to reinforce the fact that we are all part of a community, working together to achieve something great. One of the few things ever that every single person in the world can participate in. How freaking awesome is that?!?!!! The main page must turn into something more suited to newbies. This is the top editing tip of the day. This is the article collaboration of the day. This is the wikipedian of the day telling you their story and what inspires them to continue. This i the sort of stuff we should be stuffing our main page with... i honestly can't see why everyone has such a hard time getting that. Traditions were meant to adapt and evolve people!!!!!!!!

*stands down from the soapbox*

..sorry about that... i just get very passionate about this sometimes... Now going back to your original point, yes, i think that is exactly what we need to help us on this transformation to a much more poeplefriendly wikipedia, rather than a free service from a mysterious entity that works behind the scenes, known (the legend says) as.......... THE WIKIPEDIANS.--Coin945 (talk) 09:31, 7 November 2012 (UTC)

"Community-written" (like "free") has a distinct problem of definition: of the many ways that people take this, which one is meant? Many people will not even consider the question, but simply presume how ever they conceive of it.

The request here is to change the tag-line, but that is derived from our conception of Wikipedia. (I.e., the slogan.) My preference is "the collaborative encyclopedia", emphasizing the working together ("co-labor"), without implying that anything goes or that everyone has some right to edit. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:57, 7 November 2012 (UTC)

Wrong forum. The tagline "The Free Encyclopedia" is used on all of the Wikipedias and is part of our branding. Since it is cross-wiki, such a discussion should occur at [[Meta:]]. Personally, I suspect it would require the approval of the Foundation and would not expect them to approve such a change. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 09:35, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

I don't know how to start a discussion on Meta. There doesn't seem to be a "Wikimedia village pump" anywhere. Silas S. Brown (talk) 21:57, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

that would be m:Wikimedia Forum. Rd232 ^talk 22:28, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

IMO it's not important who writes it, but the access to it. "Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That’s what we're doing.". It's not important that it's a community who's writing it (well it is, but that's different), but who has the ability to access it. Legoktm (talk) 10:30, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

The word "community" should imply free access, so that wouldn't be lost. But "free" might just mean "our company wants to get more traffic so we put this up". We're missing an opportunity to help people understand at a glance what's really happening. Silas S. Brown (talk) 21:57, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

How does "community" imply "free"? A community can be closed if it wanted to be. I see your point about free, but I don't follow the continuation of it. I think you're just following down a slippery slope. Legoktm (talk) 22:07, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

Depends if you mean a community or the community - the latter phrase was used by OpenOffice etc Silas S. Brown (talk) 11:48, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

This may be an interesting and even fun discussion (how about "the open encyclopedia", in the sense of open source?), but it's mind-bogglingly unlikely to lead to any change in the slogan. Rd232 ^talk 22:28, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

not sure if the person on the street would understand "open" Silas S. Brown (talk) 11:48, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

To the extent the tag-line reflects the Wikipedia slogan, a change implies changing the slogan. And, yes, this is the wrong forum. Perhaps this discussion should be reconvened at [[Meta:]] ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 23:27, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

I suggest the people interested in this discussion to read all archives of w:en:MediaWiki talk:Tagline, its history and all the discussions linked from there. If you want more, come back and I'll link some in other places and languages. After some reiterations, if you're still interested, maybe it will be worth discussing here. --Nemo 11:57, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

See new section below Silas S. Brown (talk) 18:05, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

Our mission is to make the world's knowledge available to everyone for free. Free as in we don't charge access to the site, free also as in we use an open license that lets anyone reuse our work in anyway that they want, providing they provide attribution and don't claim a less free license on the end result. Being written by a community is much less distinctive or important to our mission. I suspect that every Encyclopaedia of the modern era has been written by a community of writers rather than by one person. Being written by a community of volunteers does separate us from some of our older rivals, but we are not unique in that. Of course we are no longer unique in writing a "free" encyclopaedia, as various rivals have been launched that are also free. As far as I'm aware none of the free English language encyclopaedias are yet comprehensive enough that they could be considered an encyclopaedia rather than incomplete encyclopaedias that are being written. If one were to reach a stage where it could be considered a usable Encyclopaedia rather than a draft encyclopaedia with some complete articles then I'm not sure how long we can reasonably continue to use a strapline that promotes a feature that we pioneered but which is no longer unique to us. But it should be obvious that we can't shift to a strapline that isn't true. Perhaps we could shift to ""Wikipedia, a free and neutral encyclopedia"? WereSpielChequers (talk) 12:33, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

"From Wikipedia" and nothing else?

w:MediaWiki talk:Tagline currently gives only "from Wikipedia" in all languages except English. Only English adds "the free encyclopedia". Removing this will (a) make the languages consistent, (b) avoid giving any false impression by trying to summarise what Wikipedia is in 3 words that will inevitably be misunderstood by some. Silas S. Brown (talk) 18:05, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

Interwiki list

I am interested in writing the code to implement the grand scheme for interwiki prefix standardization. What do you think of the idea of hosting the interwiki list on this wiki? It would be a page with all the interwiki prefixes and their urls, e.g.:

wikipedia|http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/$1|1
wikiquote|http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/$1|1
wikisource|http://wikisource.org/wiki/$1|1

The list would include not only Wikimedia Foundation wikis, but almost all the 20,000+ wikis in the wikisphere. The idea is to supersede the current 93-wiki list that is distributed with MediaWiki installations, and allow wikis to poll this list instead every 10-15 minutes for new data, much as they currently poll the spam blacklist using mw:Extension:SpamBlacklist. Leucosticte (talk) 12:31, 11 November 2012 (UTC)

Of course you know that we already host the Interwiki map? --Nemo 13:45, 11 November 2012 (UTC)

No, but thanks for pointing it out. Well, it looks like that takes care of the metawiki~~pedia~~ side of the prefix standardization scheme; now all that remains is to write the extension! Leucosticte (talk) 14:09, 11 November 2012 (UTC)

dumpInterwiki.php in WikimediaMaintenance extension contains some logic you might want to rely on. --Nemo 14:36, 11 November 2012 (UTC)

Eh, I just wrote my own code, relying on siprop=interwikimap. It seems to work pretty well. But I see that the interwiki map we have here won't suffice for the whole wikisphere, because it won't allow wikis to be listed that aren't extensively linked from WMF sites. And Wikiindex didn't seem too interested in helping implement this proposal, although they were supportive of the general concept. Therefore, I propose that the wikisphere use Meta-Inclu as the repository for the central interwiki list, unless someone has a better idea. Leucosticte (talk) 16:40, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

A useful step in this process would be to update the 93 interwiki links shipped with mediawiki with a current snapshot of the meta page. –SJ talk 05:47, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

It wouldn't hurt, but will anyone keep it up to date? Probably a script should be written to auto-generate a new interwiki.list from the interwiki map; then it would just be a matter of pushing an updated version to git from time to time. E.g., maybe monthly, or at least in time for each new major release of MediaWiki. In other words, about twice a year. Leucosticte (talk) 07:15, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

Updating the default interwiki map is definitely useful, in the long-term it has vast effects. I'm not sure, however, that it would be a good idea: we have a lot of interwikis which are useful only to Wikimedia wikis. For the extension it's fine, because those who install it want to have many interwikis.

It's also not a problem to include interwikis which are not useful for Wikimedia wikis but are clearly useful for others and not harmful for anyone; usage in Wikimedia projects is used by default when no other rationale is provided (it's also easier to check thanks to our anti-spam tools). Nemo 08:02, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

commons:Commons:Freedom of panorama campaign

Opened by Kaldari in response to recent freedom of panorama-related DMCA take-downs on Commons. --Nemo 08:53, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

Something similar (banners) is planed on Slovene Wikipedia. We already asked our government if the changes of the current legislation that would enable freedom of panorama in Slovenia would be possible; the proposal was widely supported among the users of the "predlagam.vladi.si" portal, but unfortunately the government did not show any particular interest. It would be of big help (bigger publicity) if the two campaigns could be done simultaneously. --Smihael (talk) 23:51, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

As far as I know, something in this regard has already been organised by the Italian Wikipedia (see commons:Category:Freedom of panorama protests). --Eleassar ^{my talk} 08:47, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

Slovene Wikisource

There's a whole category of the following permissions in the Slovene Wikisource (sl:s:Kategorija:Posebna dovoljenja za objavo - OK), scanned, archived, never confirmed through the OTRS. These were sent to the most notable Slovene authors, received, filled out and marked as OK (Smihael's edit: by the project coordinator). They basically state:

"In the wish that the Wikisource may be completed we ask for permission to choose texts from your oeuvre, retype them and publish them in the Wikisource, where they will be accessible to everyone without a payment, under the condition that they acknowledge the authorship (in the case of a reusage (e.g. in a seminary work) they have to cite the authorship of the original author in the way determined by the original author). For details: CC-BY-SA 3.0 or GFDL.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

I, hereby signed, __, the author/legal representative/heir/publisher (encircle the correct choice) agree that the following may be published (under the conditions listed above) in the Wikisource:

the whole author's oeuvre
the following work:_____
the following works:_____
all the works published before the year _____ and after the year ____.

I also agree that this confirmation will be published in the Wikisource.

Place and date:_____ Signature:______"

So what should be done about them? Should they be regarded as ok or should all the texts be deleted? --Eleassar (talk) 20:39, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

I'm the one who holds the main responsibility for this project and I would like to make certain things clear before further debate:

Precisely due to privacy concerns I applied as an OTRS volunteer and insisted to change the procedure, so that OTRS system is now used for the project. Older permissions are OK, but should be moved on OTRS or archived on other secure place. Unfortunately I was very busy with all kinds of school work and my final exams in the past 2 years, so I couldn't do it by myself.

I would also like to point out that the translation above is not accurate; the full text can be found at sl:s:Wikivir:Posebna_dovoljenja_za_objavo/Vzorčno_pismo (*). An important nuance is that it explicitly mentions that text will be uploaded on Wikisource (which does not mean that the permission is given only for publishment in Wikisource, as one might deduce from the English translation provided above), where it will be available to anyone freely (including derivative works under the similar terms of redistribution). Permissions were mainly granted for commercially not-so-interesting works that were previously published only in low circulations and (mainly) never reprinted or are very unlikely to be reprinted in the near future. An important condition for an author to enter the project (they were generally very enthusiastic and honoured about a possibility to make their work easier to access and contribute into a treasury of freely available content) was that the material rights from the publishers were have already expired.

The question therefore is what would be the appropriate place to store these old permissions safely - OTRS or something else. --Smihael (talk) 21:30, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

The translation I have provided is completely accurate. Where do you see an inaccuracy? The link you have provided displays my (urgent) update from today. Where are the readers warned that it will be available to anyone free for any usage including derivative works and the commercial reusage? What kind of license is the following. "For details: CC-BY-SA 3.0 and GFDL." Where is the explicit statement that the text will be published under a free license? The signed statement does not include it and the sent request neither. --Eleassar ^{my talk} 21:55, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

I was referring to the last version written by me. I added the direct link to this revision. (At the time GFDL was still primarily used at Wikimedia projects; for better clarity we however decided to use CC-BY-SA 3.0 and dual licence works - "oz." is not the same as "or") Smihael (talk) 22:28, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

You provided the link to the last revision, which was done by me.[1] --Eleassar ^{my talk} 22:45, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

Once again, this is the revision I was refering to (written by me and edited by Dbc334 because of smaller grammatical mistakes) and the translation above is not in accordance with it. The link is the same as * above.--Smihael (talk) 07:08, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

And BTW, there are also plenty of rejected permissions, that were invalid or didn't satisfy the above mentioned criteria but were kept as an evidence to precent from contacting the same author multiple times. In my opinion the best would be to move them to OTRS (or other safe storage too) and make a simple overview of permission statuses in a form of table, which would still be publicly accessible for reference. Smihael (talk) 22:03, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

The fact is that the people who received these messages were nowhere warned that they release their work for any purpose and there was no explicit statement about the license under which they do so. As such, it is just impossible to move them to the OTRS. --Eleassar ^{my talk} 22:06, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

It can be clearly seen that the licence was explicitly mentioned; take this file for an example. The problem is with files were only the lower part is scanned. --Smihael (talk) 22:18, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

Where exactly is the statement about the license? "For details: CC-BY-SA 3.0 or GFDL." (in the text) is not the same as "I release this work under CC-BY-SA 3.0 and GFDL". (nowhere in the text) Where is the warning and the statement that they release their work for any purpose and that they do so irrevocably? --Eleassar ^{my talk} 22:21, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

They agree to publish it on such terms that heir works will be published on Wikisource (in introduction it is presented as a source of free texts, in the meaning free as in speech) where they will be accesible to anyone freely (as in without payment), given that in case of modifications (e.g. scholar works) the original author is attributed in the exactly the same way as the original author has prescribed. In other words your work will be available (this is the function of: For details see) under the terms of CC-BY-SA 3.0 or GFDL. ("'objavimo na Wikiviru, kjer bodo dostopna vsakomur brez plačila, pod pogojem, da prizna avtorstvo (pri morebitni uporabi dela (npr. v seminarski nalogi) mora navesti izvirnega avtorja na način, ki ga določi izvirni avtor). Za podrobnosti: CC-BY-SA 3.0 oz. GFDL.") It is true that however they were not explicitly warned about commercial usage (but text doesn't say in any way anywhere that such usage is disallowed). Even if you have look at the other early OTRS cases you will see that they don't go in such details. The reference letter on Commons has also undergone several modifications and was improved over the time. Smihael (talk) 22:41, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

This is not the same as stating "your work may be used by anyone for any purpose" and they never explicitly expressed their agreement to such a publishment. These texts can't be licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0 or GFDL, because these are specially made licenses and can't be just derived from an explanation like you have just provided. --Eleassar ^{my talk} 22:46, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

Clarity of the agreement is problematic, I agree but users were aware of all the implications, and were provided with links with lengthier explanations. I will refrain from commenting here, at least until someone else expresses a constructive opinion on the matter. --Smihael (talk) 07:08, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

Users were not necessarily aware of all the implications, because these were not presented to them in a clear way. They also never made a statement that they publish their work under the CC-BY-SA 3.0, GFDL, or any other free license. As for the constructive opinion, do you want to say that my opinion is not constructive, just because I've pointed out that there could be (and probably is) a legal problem? --Eleassar ^{my talk} 09:18, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

The Wikisources should be mimicking the process Commons:Commons:OTRS as the minimum and as much as possible (local laws may impose extra conditions) as it is an approved and working process; and I know that in enWS that is what we utilise. In these letters if the licence conditions were mentioned, and hopefully linked, and the the approval was returned with that knowledge and the identified works mentioned then it would seem that approval has been granted. That said, if someone came back to us and disputed their approval, then I would think that following a review that a prudent action for a disputed approval is to retract the work (case by case basis). I would think that we would leave existing works as they are currently hosted with the appropriate approval in OTRS ("grandfather"), and that we can improve the process for any future requests. — billinghurst sDrewth 02:00, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

The problem is that the license conditions were not mentioned and not discussed at all (it was only stated: "for details CC-BY-SA 3.0 or GFDL", and this sentence was all about the licensing, no mention what they encompass). The returned approvals do not mention any license explicitly and do not show that the author would agree with the conditions of the license or with publication of his personal e-mail and other personal information online. There is also no reason to assume these permission were really granted by the author; it's quite possible they were made by students themselves if this was needed. --Eleassar ^{my talk} 09:36, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

They were linked and described. Authors agreed on disclosure of this piece of their personal information with "Poleg tega se strinjam, da bo to potrdilo zaradi evidence javno objavljeno na Wikiviru." --Smihael (talk) 19:41, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

As stated for the n-time, there was no statement in the sent or the received letter that the release of their works allows the usage to anyone for any purpose, including commercial purpose and derived works. It's unreasonable to expect people to click the links stating "for details on license see [X]"; most people just don't read details about licensing (perhaps you do). There was also no explicit statement about the license under which they publish their work. Was it published under the GFDL or the CC-BY-SA-3.0 license? Because these licenses differ substantially and the sole sentence was used in the sent letter and stated "for details: GFDL or CC-BY-SA 3.0". Also, even if they gave consent to publish their permission in the Wikisource, they have not agreed to have their e-mail and other personal data published there. --Eleassar ^{my talk} 09:35, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

As per Billinghurst, deletions would be premature at this point in time. Authors clearly expressed their will for works to be published and it would be against their statements to delete works they published under the terms of CC-BY-SA 3.0. To elaborate on "CC-BY-SA 3.0 oz. GFDL":

We have chosen a CC licence as we wanted authors to be informed as precisely and clearly as possible, what it means to publish a work under a copyleft licence (The chosen CC licence is completely compatible to GFDL, which was the only licence used by the Foundation back then, and therefore it is permissible to use CC licensed works on Wikimedia projects against appropriate citation). However, due to the guidelines of Wikimedia Foundation every edit on Wikisource (and other sister-projects) was automatically made available under the terms of the GFDL licence (the usual warning message before saving page - in 2009 it was something like that: "By clicking save button you agree to release your contribution under the GFDL").

To put it more precisely, oz. (short for oziroma) in this case therefore, does not mean "or" but it plays the role of "more specifically" (it means works are given to the project of collaboration between Slovene Wikisource and Pedagogical Faculty in Ljubljana under CC licence with intention to publish them on Wikisource, where they will be published under the terms of GFDL licence).

The licences were briefly described (with additional examples) and authors have been provided with hyper-links, which is in fact lot more than any other user sees when contributing Wikipedia ("By clicking the "Save Page" button, you agree to the Terms of Use, and you irrevocably agree to release your contribution under the CC-BY-SA 3.0 License and the GFDL. You agree that a hyperlink or URL is sufficient attribution under the Creative Commons license.").

I hope this explains the situation.

P.S.: Eleassar, please stop trolling. "Poleg tega se strinjam, da bo to potrdilo zaradi evidence javno objavljeno na Wikiviru." (or in English: I also agree that this acknowledgement will be publicly kept for evidence on the Wikisource.), clearly says the data will be published (personal data - name and email - are obviously integral part of the acknowledgement). Again, we switched to OTRS to handle tickets without disclosure of personal data. I don't see it as a conflict of interests if I confirm (or rejected) a ticket sent to OTRS by someone else for the project where I voluntary (without any payment) helped the participants with technical aspects of digitalisation.

Best regards, --Smihael (talk) 20:43, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

Yes, the e-mail and other personal data are not an integral part of the acknowledgement, unless this is explicitly written and agreed upon. If you disagree, we may also ask the Slovene Information Commissioner. As to your wish to "have the authors informed as precisely and clearly as possible", you've evidently failed if different interpretations are possible and such long treatises must be written post festum to clarify the situation. It's strange that you say the works were given to the Pedagogical Faculty under the CC license and then published in the Wikisource under the GFDL license. I don't understand how this is legally possible. As to your request for me to "stop trolling", you should first understand that I am acting in good faith and don't want to have illegal content published in the Wikimedia projects. Please, assume good faith. Regards, --Eleassar ^{my talk} 10:00, 30 November 2012 (UTC)

Her opinion has no meaning for Wikisource, as it is hosted in the USA. Moreover, at least the name is part of the acknowledgement - without a name how could one give a permission to publish his works. The works themselves were published under CC-BY-SA 3.0 licence (which is also explicitly stated; for example see s:sl:Po hiši praznično diši), but any further edits are GFDL licensed. --Smihael (talk) 16:59, 30 November 2012 (UTC)

The name is part of the acknowledgment, the e-mail and other data are not. The data may be hosted in the USA, but I'm sure there are agreements regarding such issues between the two countries, and the publishers come from Slovenia. So I think the commissioner would have the authority to have a look at this, and if you agree, we may ask her to clarify the situation. What do you say?

After I've had a look at the category containing these works, I can say that the works are sometimes published under the CC-BY-SA 3.0 license, sometimes under no specified license.

How could any further edits be GFDL licensed? What's your opinion that the two licenses are completely compatible based upon? The two licenses are not compatible (see here), so all such material does not respect the sharealike clause and must be deleted. (I actually did not know there was such material, so thanks for bringing this issue to my attention.)

Also, where is the statement that the author agrees with the publication as CC-BY-SA instead of GFDL?

What can we base the good-faith opinion that the signed person is the only copyright holder upon? Until now, there was no statement about this.

And most importantly, these people were never explicitly warned that they publish their work to be available to anyone for any usage, that they do so irrevocably, and they have never stated that they release their work under a specific license, which they have read and understood.

In short, besides the illegal publication of personal data, it's clear that these permissions have no sound legal basis and would not stand a test in any court. --Eleassar ^{my talk} 12:50, 1 December 2012 (UTC)

What do you expect? To censor their names, mails and other data they put into the acknowledgements with black ink? True, they have not been explicitly warned about that (but they have been warned that their work might be altered and shared under alike conditions, which is the main idea of CC licence^*); but is any other user who contributes to Wikipedia or any other sister project warned? All they see is:

By clicking the "Save Page" button, you agree to the Terms of Use, and you irrevocably agree to release your contribution under the CC-BY-SA 3.0 License and the GFDL. You agree that a hyperlink or URL is sufficient attribution under the Creative Commons license.

(with links) and no-one seems to be concerned about that.

The incompatibility case you've mentioned here is irrelevant. Here it goes the other way around - from CC (source text) to GFDL+CC (source text + editorial commits).

As concerned the pages with no header: I already deleted those with absolutely no data (if you go through my deletions, you'll notice there have been quite a lot of such cases), but there are still some remaining pages with no header but OTRS template (with ticket ID). You can help to add/fill headers with the relevant data (title, author, licence).

Instead of trying to find n-excuses to delete the entire project (which of course demands less effort), inform yourself about the project first and help our efforts to tag all pages appropriately.

I also suggest to move this discussion to the local Village pump. You've made some important remarks, pointed out some problems that can be solved without deleting (not at last, we still have the contact data and can contact authors to verify their statements) and I think it would be better, if other active contributes can see them (in our native language) and improve project accordingly.

^* In short: CC is not all about allowing commercial usage. The main idea is remix concept (I suggest reading Free culture by L. Lessig), commerical usage is just one of the implications.

Best regards, --Smihael (talk) 15:54, 1 December 2012 (UTC)

It always seems weird to follow the debates in English on the international forum where only Slovenes participate and where topics that concern Slovenes only are discussed. In a recent similar case when Slovene Information Commissioner restricted searching by names in the national text corpus I have asked my colleagues abroad for their opinion[2] and found out that they hadn't experienced anything similar in their countries, though the jurisdiction there doesn't differ from the Slovene. The strange compulsive deleting passion practiced by Eleassar corresponds to the destroying of basic national linguistic services executed by the obsessive Slovene Information Commissioner, the devastation that has no parallels abroad. An accidental non-Slovene reader of this debate should know that some of my fellow countrymen enjoy extremely in a scribal interpretation of laws. I wouldn't speculate about possible additional personal motifs for such a destructive behaviour, but I would just remark that it is supported by the traditon of scribal, legalistic manner among the population and—above all—by the lack of common sense. The mental basis for such an attitude is far away from the culture that made Wikimedia projects possible and is dangerous for its future. I wonder how Eleassar doesn't realize, in spite of numerous argumented protests on Slovene Wikipedia Village pump (here and here and on Wikisource), that he is advocating for the principles fundamentally different from those shared by the international wiki community and that he is acting hostile towards the very purpose of Wikipedia and its sister projects: sharing information not deleting it.

The fact that nobody else in the Wikimedia community (with the exception of billinghurst) wanted to get involved into this debate shoud be a sufficient sign to return this exotic sub-Alpine scribal case on a local ground and simply vote against Eleassar's cultural sabotage on Wikipedia, on Wikisource, and on Wikimedia Commons. --Hladnikm (talk) 18:38, 2 December 2012 (UTC)

Well, perhaps you should focus on the matter instead of the user. The issues I have exposed have not been appropriately addressed. I'd be glad if some other user besides the two involved comments on this case. It's not an effort to sabotage the "Slovene cultural heritage", but to preserve the principles of Wikipedia (to offer free works and only free works) as well as the principles of the Slovene law. The publication you have afforded yourself is just the opposite of this. I understand that you disagree with the current Slovene copyright act and the decision of the commissioner, but this page and the disrespect of Wikipedia policies and copyright law is just not the right forum and the right way to resolve this. You're more than welcome to publish any work, but only as long as the law and the rules of Wikimedia projects are respected. Regards, --Eleassar ^{my talk} 21:34, 2 December 2012 (UTC)

As I see it, there are a number of components to this matter

There is a permissions system issue. slWS that does not seem to follow the methodology that broader community and the Foundation has established. I would think that it is advisable that all permissions should be in the OTRS system; they do not belong on wiki. OTRS is a record system, and it is overviewed by the whole community. I would suggest that all slWS permissions be migrated to the system.
There is the process issue that one party has said that it is sufficient, and another has said that it is. When two parties disagree, continuing to heatedly debate it back and forth doesn't work. Bring in some knowledgeable and non-partisan people to review and give advice.
The deletions discussion is completely premature. Have the review, see what it reports. It will come to one of three decisions, okay, undecided/seek clarification, or not okay. Only then should we have a deletions discussion, as then it is informed.
Put your philosophical view points aside, this should be managed as a legal issue first.

I think that it is now at the stage that you get this reviewed, and it probably via Requests for comment and move the discussion there and seek that independent comment. — billinghurst sDrewth 23:50, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for your input. I'll do so. --Eleassar ^{my talk} 10:21, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

MediaWiki translation - buryat

Hello! I am an admin of Buryat Wiki. I have transleted everything here, and I want it, to appear in Buryat Wiki. Now you have there:

(user name) * My talk * My preferences * My watchlist * My contributions * Log out

And it must be:

(user name) * Минии хэлэлсэл * Минии тааруулга * Минии хаража байгаа зүйл * Минии оруулһан зүйл * Log out

Can somebody help me? Thank you!--Gubin 18:29, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

Hello, see translatewiki:FAQ#Special:AdvancedTranslate: namespace aliases are not updated daily as everything else, you have to wait more than one week as you did.

However, your problem is that your language is still not enabled for export to/update of MediaWiki, because it has too few translations (only 28 % of core messages): I suggest you to translate more of the core messages [3], then you can request your translations to be made "live" with a request at translatewiki:Support. Thanks, Nemo 18:52, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

Thank you very much! And how many % I must translete?--Gubin 19:29, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

I don't know exactly, I'm not the one who decides. Consider that those 500 most used messages of MediaWiki core are really the bare minimum to make your wiki usable. --Nemo 20:15, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

Secure login

I notice that if I log in using the secure log in I can only edit securely, but if I log in using the unsecure login I can edit both secure and unsecure pages, presumably because of the cookies set on the browser, which either are for "Any type of connection" in the case of unsecure login, or "Encrypted connections only" in the case of secure log in. While there are certainly situations where someone does not want anyone to know about their edits, and wants to edit securely, there are also those who want to log in securely, but do not care about their edits being visible to anyone. If that is the case, would it make sense to make two changes to the secure log in page - one add a box that can be checked saying "Allow edits using unsecure connection.", and second, change the heading "Log in" to "Secure log in", to emphasize that it was a secure log in - the color could also be changed of the background or a gold band added at the top, to make it more obvious. If the box was checked, and I would suggest it be unchecked by default, then the page returned to could be an unsecure, http: protocol, instead of the https: protocol.

Computers are getting faster, reducing the time required to make the encryption. But where I see the change more noticeably is if I do a google search it is going to take me to the unsecure page showing that I am not logged in, when I am, requiring me to add https:// or go through the whole log in process again, even though I was already logged in. If I had left the "edit unsecured" box unchecked, and I went to an unsecure page, one of those options are necessary, but not if I had checked the box. Apteva (talk) 23:04, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

I doubt this is the correct place to ask: you might have more luck at wikitech-l. I don't know anything about all this, but I remember Roan Kattouw mentioning the cookies feature you're describing as quite an important one, so I doubt they'll get rid of it (we're trying to get more secure, not less).

Finally, I'm sure no more preferences or checkboxes will ever be added: interface clutter has huge costs in terms of lost editors etc. Nemo 23:13, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

Чахъу

Can someone from the stewards to delete this because without relevant content? --Kolega2357 (talk) 18:07, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

Adding {{delete}} on any wiki is enough to request deletion (they wait less if there are no local sysops). --Nemo 18:22, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

an Idea to help Wikimedia Fund itself without compromising its purpose.

So...I have an idea about how to provide wikipedia with funding without "selling out" to advertisers etc. Grid computing: If you have been involved in the internet for a while you might have come across a project called Seti@home. Seti@home is basically a screensaver that uses the computer it is installed on to crunch numbers for the SETI project. Seti@home is based on Open Source Software called BOINC. Why not make a similar project to fund Wikipedia? I am no programmer, but here is some parts to my idea: Wikipedia would make a project that used BOINC and the HUGE wikipedia user number to crunch numbers for universities, companies, governments etc.. Either users would install a "wikipedia app" that used the computers down-time (like when a screensaver was being used) OR it perhaps it would be possible to embed an applet of some sort in each wikipedia page.......when an article was accessed the computer would display the article but also process a small amount of information for a wikipedia data project partner. This would allow everyone that uses wikipedia to "contribute their way" to wikipedia. People.....the community would provide the means.....companies would provide the money for the service...there would be no need to have "advertising". Like I said, Im no programmer, but I am an IT repair expert of sorts......when most computers nowadays being sold have FAAAAAR more computing power than the user would ever need....why not utilize that? Would a person with a dual core machine with 4GB of ram and a 12mb connection notice if their computer downloaded 512KB of data and processed it? I highly doubt it. (when I say notice I do not mean that this feature of the site would be secret....im saying they would not notice a performance difference) Michaelagaudio (talk) 08:33, 25 November 2012 (UTC)

strategy:Proposal:Distributed Infrastructure. Nemo 08:36, 25 November 2012 (UTC)

this would be a little different than Distributed Infrastructure though....in that the users would be crunching data for external "clients" of wikimedia---and wikimedia would be getting paid for it.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Michaelagaudio (talk • contribs) .

This is an interesting fundraising model and I can see it working in at least the short term, and possibly for the medium term, but not for decades. With the trend away from desktops and fixed lines to mobile computing the potential donors of such resource may actually be diminishing. More importantly as with any IT outsourcing project you will continually be competing with en:Moore's Law, with clients going in house to do on a £5,000 machine processing that took a supercomputer a decade or so earlier. You'd also be vulnerable both to security issues - this sort of project only works with low risk data such as SETI has, and also to reputational issues - if one of our clients turned out to be doing something that some saw as unethical then this could rebound on us. With computing costs falling each year and our readership still growing faster than the Internet, our current fundraising model looks more sustainable for the foreseeable future especially if we can move donors from one off donations to longer term commitments. However I can see that another charity with different funding needs might be interested in this concept. WereSpielChequers (talk) 11:59, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

The idea of donating

I think Wikipedia is a wonderful, marvelous tool. But with so many worthy causes in which to donate, causes that save lives, heal illnesses, fight against social injustices, I have a real problem with donating to an organization that has an incredibly strong brand and could certainly figure out a viable way to monetize what it does without diverting money from the many worthy charities of the world. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 74.107.105.57 (talk • contribs) .

There are indeed lots of other charities out there, and millions of people who give a higher priority to eradicating AIDS, supporting their local Donkey sanctuary and so forth. Wikimedia only needs a miniscule part of the world's charitable giving, so it isn't a problem that most people don't give to us, and I suspect most who do give to us also give more to other charities. Thus far we have had no difficulty persuading enough donors that our vision of giving the whole world free access to the sum of human knowledge is worth part of their charitable giving. I'd also question your assumption that we are competing with other charities for our money. I'm pretty sure that most people don't have a precise budget for how much they give to charity each year, so in reality we are competing for people's discretionary spend and like all charities we are competing not just against other charities but against everything from nicer seats at the theatre to a new sunlounger for the garden.

As for the idea that we could use our brand to raise money in other ways, yes we could; But can we do that in ways that are compatible with our mission? Unlike say selling ads on Wikipedia we can ask for money directly without compromising the integrity of our mission and dividing the community of volunteers who write the pedia. WereSpielChequers (talk) 11:39, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

Accounts

Is it possible to combine the two global accounts? Tsebeen and Jargal - it is one and the same person, but he can't restore login info for Tsebeen. He asked me to combine under the name Jargal. Can somebody do it?--Gubin 15:24, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

No. See also bugzilla:23459 in case you want to reopen the discussion. --Nemo 15:28, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

A "wikikultur" project ?

Hello,

Excuse me if this is not the right place to talk about this topic, please tell me where to post my message if this is not the relevant place.

So, I see that wikimedia release "new projects" (after months/years of less mediated work, of course), like wikivoyage and wikidata. That's really great, and I want to congratulate all the wikmedia employes and thank all wikimedia project contributors. Now there are still some digital works which can not be published on a wikimedia project, because none of them have the right editorial guideline to host them. Things like original poetry, songs, essays, theses, novels, etc., wether they were already previously published or not.

I would be very happy to see wikimedia launch a project to host this kind of works. Who should I contact for such a suggestion ? Is there some "incubator" for that kind of ideas (as far as I know, the incubator wiki is to test if a language would worth the host) ? --Psychoslave (talk) 14:00, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

There's wikibooks. Other than that, I don't think there's a WMF project that hosts the kinds of works you're talking about; I think they would view original poetry, songs, essays, theses, novels, etc. as original research, which is something they've tended to not want to host. But there are plenty of non-WMF wikis that will host such content, although they typically want it to meet some criteria for being on-topic for the wiki in question. E.g., a fan wiki for a TV show will usually want posted essays and such to be related to that show. Leucosticte (talk) 14:17, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

I understand the no-original-research for wikipedia, which is important of course. Now as it's said in the page you pointed to, what's relevant for an encyclopedia may not feet others editorial guidelines. Wikibooks is too pedagogic works oriented, and wikisource won't accept works which were not previously published elsewhere.

Moreover, to my opinion, it would be a good way to softly evacuate originals works from wikipedia, with a message like "your contribution contains original claims, wikipedia is not the place to publish this kind of content, but you could share your original work on wikisomething". Then eventualy, the wikipedia article could use wikisomething arcticles as references. This would give access to authoring information (eventually anonymous/IP claims), and all avantages of a free work on a wiki. For example, we may have statistics on articles, so we can check if it's not an over represented point of view in an wikipedia article.

On artistics topics, I think it would really help to boost the free-libre culture movement to have a place where every artists can directly experiment what it means to share and build together, with an audience intertwinned with other mediawiki projects. --Psychoslave (talk) 14:53, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

Have you considered doing this at Wikia? You can start a wiki there for just about anything, so they may even have a wiki like this already. There is always Proposals for new projects if you want to pursue this here, but I really don't see a WMF project ever being created for this, considering the scope of the other projects. – Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 15:47, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

No, it looks like wikia is full of ads, which is a no way for what I'm thinking about. But your link to proposals for new projects seems far more interesting, thank you ! --Psychoslave (talk) 15:53, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

I created Wikikultur. Thank for your help ! --Psychoslave (talk) 16:30, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

Using transclusion of an other subpage

Hello,

Translating Wikikultur to french, I meet a technical problem to include Wikikultur/supporters, as in the People interested section of the english version.

This code : {{#ifexist: Wikikultur/supporters | {{Wikikultur/supporters}} | == People interested == <inputbox> type=create preload=Proposals for new projects/supporters-preload editintro=Proposals for new projects/supporters-intro default=Wikikultur/supporters hidden=yes break=no buttonlabel=Add your signature </inputbox> }}

Will result in :

Template:Wikikultur/supporters

Does anyone know what's the problem ? --Psychoslave (talk) 23:30, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

There were have been quite some transclusion problems in the last three days, and some "deployments" of software updates had to be reverted. If this still happens currently and *if* this is a regression (the same code still worked last week) it could be worth to file a bug report in https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org so the developers get aware of it. --Malyacko (talk) 12:03, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

Wikiprocess creation proposal

Hi everybody, I am here to present this project I have in mind for many years, to your judgment :

In our day, Wikipedia has become a primordial vector of extention of Open Source Knowledge ; but, with born of 3D printer and the growing of Home-Made culture, the importance of a wikipedia of procedures and process is become really evident. Because we are all, in earth, creator and productor of things not only buyer nor consommer of it.

The objective of Wikipedia is like any encyclopedia : A complete access of the knowledge, only for the fondamental principe ; but Knowledge is also procedure of production and Open Source Schematics : the classical Wikipedia is not adapted for this and now we need this kind of stuff.

The Wikiprocess project have for objective to create a new Sister for wikipedia ; adapted to the production procedure of all manufactured things and Open Source Schematics.

Production procedure are :

1. Procedure for Chemical Production ; How to make myself Sulfuric Acid or Food Preservative ? (For exemple)

2. Procedure for Manufacturing Product ; like screwdriver, automotive, motor or anything else ; If I want, for any reason, product an electric engine myself, what is the procedure and can I have Open Source schemes ?

3. Procedure for Cooking and Cultivating (Only for the exemple), If I want to prepare anythings, what is the process ?

And all of other process and schemes imaginated and created by humankind.

For more information, go to the Wikiprocess main page. Ordre Nativel (talk) 03:46, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

Ethical considerations of Wikimedia donation methods

Today, while browsing Wikipedia, I saw a banner requesting donations. I clicked through for more info, because I value Wikipedia's contribution to the world's knowledge. I was disappointed to find no option to donate Bitcoins. I searched page after page without an explanation as to why Wikipedia won't take my money. There's no mention of Bitcoin on the FAQ, on the Other Ways to Give page, or on the Donor Policy.

I did finally find an explanation:

The Wikimedia Foundation, as a donor-driven organization, has a fiduciary duty to be responsible and prudent with its money. This has been interpreted to mean that we do not accept "artificial" currencies - that is, those not backed by the full faith and credit of an issuing government. We do, however, strive to provide as many methods of donating as possible and continue to monitor Bitcoin with interest and may revisit this position should circumstances change.

I acknowledge that the startup costs and regulatory risks may dissuade Wikimedia from setting up a wallet and accepting Bitcoin donations themselves (although I bet if they asked their team, many would be willing to receive their wages in Bitcoin.)

But I am not satisfied. Wikipedia can accept my Bitcoin donations through a third party payment processor such as BitPay.

They would receive fiat currency without ever touching Bitcoins.

Doing so would give those without access to bank accounts an easy way to donate to Wikipedia. It would also let users maintain their financial privacy and still support Wikimedia.

Several commentators have written excellent discussions on this topic.

Jon Matonis points out, in his article Wikipedia Accepts 'Enemies Of The Internet' Currencies:

Wikipedia will accept donations in four of the 12 ‘Enemies of the Internet’ currencies ... Bahrain, China, Saudi Arabia, and Vietnam ... But just don’t try to donate safely in bitcoin - it’s not accepted.
... it might become extremely dangerous for some of those citizens to be personally attached to a traceable Wikimedia credit card donation. Accepting anonymous bitcoin in addition to political currencies can be a way of declaring that freedom of speech still does matter.

Erik Vorhees of BitInstant says in a blog post:

Wikipedia doesn’t mind accepting donations backed by a regime that has institutionalized the beheading of women for adultery or “witchcraft,” but it won’t accept Bitcoin, because it’s not backed by such an organization...

[on Wordpress's recent decision to accept Bitcoin:]

Surely, WordPress also has “a fiduciary duty to be responsible and prudent with its money.” What anomaly of WordPress enables it to prudently accept Bitcoin payments while Wikipedia stands idly by? Why was it worth WordPress’s time to integrate Bitcoin payments (which is incredibly easy, by the way) yet Wikipedia refuses to do so, even while they desecrate their own website with an unpleasant yellow banner soliciting donations?

To paraphrase Jimmy Wales's donation plea:

"Commerce is fine - but only if you involve a central bank."

Therealplato (talk) 19:45, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

I can only guess at the reasoning behind the policy, as the information you have quoted about it is not particularly explanatory of underlying reasoning. One such guess, however, is that the Wikimedia Foundation (as a very high-profile supporter of online free speech) may be consciously avoiding acceptance of "non-state currencies" (for lack of a better term) that may draw unwanted attention from state agencies. The technical ease or difficulty of accepting Bitcoin may be irrelevant when there is concern over whether high-profile dealers in BTC may at some point in the near future be targeted by state action to make an example out of those who might choose to bypass state issued currencies. If that is not the underlying reason, though, I have a very difficult time imagining a good reason. (Disclaimer: I used to work for the Wikimedia Foundation, and its well-being has a special place, all its own, in my heart.) - Apotheon (talk) 19:58, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

The en:Electronic Frontier Foundation has clearly articulated three reasons for not accepting Bitcoin; I think these generally apply to WMF as well. See here. -Pete F (talk) 20:30, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

If you want to make an anonymous donation, then you can get a en:money order in the U.S. and mail it to the WMF's office. I'm sure that they and the post office would both prefer that you didn't mail cash, but that, too, is another option. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:15, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

True, but that's not viable for many others (poor/corrupt postal infrastructure, desire to send micropayments, etc.) It's also a hassle. Therealplato (talk) 22:02, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

New namespace on Meta

Moved to Meta:Babel#New_namespace_on_Meta.

Wikimedia Highlights from October 2012

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

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Help request to build Template:Help-translation

The following discussion is closed: No templates please. Nemo 07:48, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

Hello,

In the Wikikultur project proposal, I would like to encourage people to contribute with translations. To achieve this goal I added a list of unexisting subpage links, with a text "help translate" before a list of language iso code. It seems to work since as I'm writing, translations began in Italiano and Chinese (there's also a French translation, but I did this one myself, so it doesn't really count).

So I thought, ok that's seems to be a good idea, what about templating this list, and improve it ? So here it is, {{Template:Help-translation}} will produce: {{Template:Help-translation}}

Improvements are :

a reusable template you should be able to use in any page (it may not work for subpages though, for example for an article Foo/Bar, it may produce links to Foo/it and so on)
a more comprehensive list
links are labeled in the language itself
if a translation subpage exists, it doesn't appear in the list, as it should already appear in the Languages template (those said in my test Chinese translations were given as blue link)

Now, I would like to also localize the Help translate message. So I was wandering if you had suggestions to manage those translations. My main technical problem is that I need to know which language the user would prefer to see. Do you know a way to get this user preference ? The Languages template add a &uselang=xx in the URL, that could be interesting to get it, but the user preferences (if logged) should also be used.

An other problem is that now I have an extremely long list. It would be great to have a box you can extend/reduce, is there any template that do that?

Any feedback is welcome.

Kind regards --Psychoslave (talk) 23:54, 1 December 2012 (UTC)

You mustn't use templates, see talk. Nemo 07:48, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for your feed back. I will look at the prefered process to do that as soon as I can. --Psychoslave (talk) 17:06, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

Can't log on to Russian Wikipedia

Hope this is the right place to report this. I'm having problems with my global log-in in accessing the Russian Wikipedia site. If I go there, it doesn't log me in automatically, and I get an error message (in Russian) if I try to log in manually. I don't speak Russian, but it seems to be some blacklist preventing user names of four words or more. Is this something specific to Russian, or something more general? I need the log-in for automated edits from Commons when renaming files.Optimist on the run (talk) 19:38, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

Your name is on the blacklist. You can take a look here. --Kolega2357 (talk) 21:43, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

I presume you don't mean just me personally - just any user with four words or more. Is there any reason for this? As I said, it screws up global log-in and prevents images I rename being fixed.Optimist on the run (talk) 22:58, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

Optimist, this is just a guess, but on the page linked by Kolega, the "four words" item occurs in a section that says something about "new accounts." I wonder if the four-word limit is only for accounts that are not yet confirmed/autoconfirmed? I don't know what the autoconfirmation threshold is on ru-wiki, but presumably you could try making 10 or 15 dummy edits, wait 10 days or so, and see if you are able to edit.

I realize this isn't optimal -- I'm as mystified as you are, just speculating here. -Pete F (talk) 23:07, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

I can't even log in to make dummy edits :-( Optimist on the run (talk) 07:19, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

Hi Optimist, I am one of bureaucrats of ru-wikipedia. You can create account there with arbitrary name and let me know, I will rename it to your's one. --Levg (talk) 08:26, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

~~Thanks. I'll do that and drop a note on your talk page.Optimist on the run (talk) 08:10, 5 December 2012 (UTC)~~

Curious - I've just gone to ru-wiki and found myself logged in. I'm using a different machine than I was before, so it may be a cookie issue, or perhaps a temporary glitch. I'll try it on my home PC tonight and see if it makes any difference.Optimist on the run (talk) 08:16, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

No misteries, they've removed the rule.[4] --Nemo 08:28, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

And quoted this discussion in the edit summary. Apteva (talk) 21:46, 16 December 2012 (UTC)

WT10

Wiktionary turns ten on 12/12/12. Any chance the WMF will do anything to mark it? It's not nearly as significant as WP10, I suppose, but I don't think it should just be ignored. (Not sure if this is the right forum for this.) --Yair rand (talk) 04:22, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

The facilities in the university library

ICT and Computerization Facilities

The old University library has a Local Area Network (LAN) and Online Public Access Catalogue (OPAC). Now, we are laying a foundation for a bigger platform for automation in the new University library. Structures are in place for an ICT- driven research library to facilitate teaching, learning and scholarship in the University.

Wikimedia Highlights from November 2012

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

About · Subscribe/unsubscribe · Distributed via Global message delivery, 20:01, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

Unsign for translation

I would like to Un-sign for the translation project, but i wasn't able to do it. can somebody please help?--EsB (talk) 11:04, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

If you mean the translation notifications, you have to use Special:TranslatorSignup. Note that if you've had problems with duplicates from Translation Notification Bot (sorry!) you should probably ignore them, this is fixed now. --Nemo 11:13, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

Renaming the Local Embassy

The following is a proposal I've drafted over on the English Wikipedia's Village Pump.

The Local Embassy is an unfortunately-named apparatus designed to facilitate aid to "international users". There are a myriad of reasons why this "embassy" ought to be renamed or wholly remodeled; although this is evidently a Wikimedia project and could be extended to other wikis, change regarding this should be initiated here.

The main page could be of some assistance to users, I suppose, but there is really no introduction to the page or explanation of what precisely it is. All that exists is a blurb that says "this is not a real embassy", but it's written in English and in all probability will be ignored by someone desperately needing consular assistance.
The amount of queries regarding diplomatic services on the talk page, plus an earlier proposal to rename the page, greatly outweighs any requests for assistance.
- Most English Wikipedia editors can speak English fluently, at any rate, and probably don't need a great deal of assistance if they come from countries where the vernacular is not English.
And now to the page's biggest problem—the name. Something entitled "Embassy" is inevitably going to draw the attention of certain persons searching for help with passports, visas, etcetera. They often reveal a load of personal information, as well.
The page receives slight but reasonable amounts of traffic; these rarely extend to the talk page, which receives ery few. Given that the content on the project page itself can be helpful, deleting the entire "embassy" probably isn't the best solution.
The last proposal to rename or to delete the entity never got anywhere because it didn't receive enough feedback, and essentially died on Wikimedia.

Currently, the Local Embassy is in need of a rename and some revisions. I would suggest renaming the page "Interlingual coordination". Although kind of bulky, redirects could be created featuring names more accessible to non-English speakers; as mentioned above, "international editors" on Wikipedia are likely fluent in that particular tongue. At any rate, a change will be preferential to the status quo regarding the project.

Thanks for any comments you may have; I'm most active on en-Wiki, but will gladly respond here to any comments or concerns. dci | TALK 00:52, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

Moved from Meta:Babel. πr² (t • c) 04:38, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

Wikimedia employee salaries

Is it true that the average employee salary at Wikipedia/Wikimedia is $64,000?[5] If not, what is it? Is there a published list of salaries by employee, department or director? Nirvana2013 (talk) 22:56, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

If you count the hundred thousands of volunteers, I'm quite sure the average gets lower than that. ;-)

If you mean the Wikimedia Foundation (you added "/Wikimedia" so let me correct the header too), you can find a list of highest wages by digging forms 990 in wmf:Financial reports and wmf:File:Wikimedia_Foundation_Compensation_Practices.pdf has some details on full employes' conditions uncluding (if I remember correctly) how lower than the industry's average WMF's compensations are.

There've also been some "disclosures"/promotion from employees like [6] and in particular [7] or [8], I spare you the mailing lists discussions on the topic. --Nemo 23:17, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. I, like you, am one of those volunteers. I have been editing Wikipedia and donating to the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) since 2005 (which includes a donation made a few hours ago). It seems WMF is turning into something very different from those early days, for better or worse. From the 2012 accounts; Salaries and wages = $11,749,500[9] and 150 employees[10], which makes the average employee salary $78,000. The directors 2010/11 total combined salaries are $1,000,000; Sue Gardner at $200,000 plus six others in excess of $100,000 each (40 hours/week).[11] Is this right (sounds a lot for a foundation that relies on volunteers and donations)? Jimmy Wales claims to accept no salary or expenses for his 10 hours/week (I find it hard to believe he does not even claim expenses - even I would be happy to grant him this). Nirvana2013 (talk) 23:40, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

I'm not able to judge what's too high or not, but no, your calculation is probably wrong because there are way more people than those 150 getting some form of compensation, the "staff count" includes only fairly-regular employed people. --Nemo 00:06, 16 December 2012 (UTC)

Given that we (as donors) are paying for them, it would be nice to see a complete annual breakdown of wages and expenses per employee as one can obtain for government officials. Nirvana2013 (talk) 00:13, 16 December 2012 (UTC)

Disclosing employee salaries by name (which you don't actually get for government officials; in most places, you only get the pay grade, not each individual by name) hurts hiring. A lot of good workers don't actually want their neighbors to know exactly how much they're being paid, especially if the answer is "not very much". Higher-paid employees for non-profits are disclosed on the Form 990, but surely you can understand the privacy issues involved in disclosing the amounts on individual people's paychecks. Do you really need to know the receptionist's wage? If it's fifty cents higher or lower than you think it ought to be, are you going to stop donating?

I admit that the median salary level is concerning: $64K is more than 10% below the median income for the county where the WMF offices are, and is approximately half what a decent, mid-career coder can expect to get at a Silicon Valley company. The Silly Valley is only one train ride away. How can they expect to attract and retain decent staff if they're paying so little? WhatamIdoing (talk) 07:19, 16 December 2012 (UTC)

In the UK we now have a pretty open disclosure system for MPs.[12] It was not always this way. As for what is the right level of pay, if you are comparing WMF to commercial market rates then I agree WMF is comparable or as you suggest perhaps slightly below average. I guess we differ on what WMF (or Wikipedia, at least) is/was about. It should not need to compete with private or public sector pay scales; it used to be run solely by willing volunteers. OK, I understand that it may not be sustainable to run WMF solely from unpaid volunteers as, if someone is devoting so much time to the project, they still need to eat. In this example I am sure some agreement can be reached (I believe Jimmy Wales says this was the case with WMF's first full-time employee taken on in 2005; Brion Vibber, a volunteer programmer).[13] Personally as a volunteer myself, when I make a donation I would like to see my funds go into technology (servers, hardware, hosting etc) not wages. In 2005 70% of WMF's budget went to hosting/technology,[14] in 2010 48%[15] and in 2012 30% (if I am reading the annual report correctly, now termed WMF Core). As a comparison Internet Archive allocates 88% of their donations to technology.[16] It seems WMF is in danger of losing sight of where they have come from and what they are. They used to be special and unlike any other organization in the world, but they run the risk of turning into just another bloated corporation/charity/government organization which serves themselves more than the public. Nirvana2013 (talk) 09:37, 16 December 2012 (UTC)

BTW, I am not sure that $64,000 is correct. Simply Hired seems to link mostly to third-parties who are asking for people with Wikipedia editing skills, rather than jobs advertised by WMF.[17] I calculated the average pay in WMF to be roughly $78,000 (see above). Nirvana2013 (talk) 11:45, 16 December 2012 (UTC)

Your $78K calculation includes health insurance (typically about a thousand dollars a month per employee), the employer share of Social Security taxes (about 8%), workers' compensation insurance, and several other similar expenses. In other words, unless they have lousy health insurance or have only hired people with no families (because the pay is only enough to eat, and not enough to both rent a family-sized apartment and eat), the average salary is probably a bit less than the reported $64K.

San Francisco is only slightly less expensive than London. Renting the median two-bedroom apartment in San Francisco will require 80% of that average employee's pre-tax income. Another 8% will go to Social Security taxes, and perhaps another 10% will go to state and federal income taxes. That doesn't leave a lot left over for eating, does it? WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:35, 16 December 2012 (UTC)

If the payroll and personal expenses were published, we would not need to do this type of guesstimating. Why would you need to have offices in an expensive area, if 99% of your workers (i.e. volunteers) work from home? I manage to pay rent, eat, have fun, go on holiday and donate to WMF on £6,000 ($10,000) income per year. OK, perhaps not all people are as frugal as me so let's be generous and double a WMF salary to £12,000 ($20,000), which matches the UK minimum wage and is more than the federal minimum wage ($15,000, I believe). Nirvana2013 (talk) 18:28, 16 December 2012 (UTC)

The US federal minimum wage for a salaried employee, rather than an hourly wage earner, is about $24K these days, and that does not include the cost of health insurance, employer taxes, etc., which raise that figure by another 50%. More relevantly, the self-sufficiency wage (the income needed for a sizeable part of the population to pay for themselves, rather than relying on government handouts [like free health care through the NHS], private charity [like cheap rent from your parents], or deals that most people can't access [like scrounging food from trash bins: if everyone did it, nobody would put food in the trash in the first place]) is over $30K for a single adult in San Francisco, and over $60K to support two adults and two school-age (6–12 years old) children. And again, that figure is what the employee receives, and does not include payroll taxes, etc., that the employer has to pay and which are properly considered a salary expense in the budgets you're looking at.

IMO employees should be paid enough to support a family, not a wage that make them reliant on charity. The average WMF employee seems to be paid just enough to do that. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:25, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

Let's not forget that the vast majority of those involved with WMF projects (including you, I presume) willingly work for free. This issue has only arisen in the last few years since WMF started paying salaries up to $200K, whilst continuing to solicit funds from the public. If WMF was a private foundation funded solely by a few large donors, then employee pay would have nothing to do with me, you or the public. But WMF is not one of these but a non-profit charitable organization that continually asks for public donations.

Unless I am mistaken the WMF appeal banner is global and seen in all languages and countries. Andreas below quotes a WMF volunteer from a village in Senegal. Is it right that WMF asks money from those in the third-world to help pay salaries of up to $200K in the developed world? If the Senegalese editor was aware of WMF employee remuneration would he/she still be happy donating or even collaborating on the project? The WMF reminds me of some religious institutions that are active in the developing world. The congregation (of which many are poor and destitute) are urged to donate their money and time to the organization, allowing the clerics to enjoy above average salaries, good healthcare and pension plans.

I find it interesting that the latest appeal no longer shows an easy-to-read pie chart of where one's donation is going. Is this because now only 30% of our donations go into hosting/technology, as opposed to 70% back in 2005? The current banner reads like Wikipedia, a top-five internet company, is running solely on 150 staff. This gives a slightly false picture, Wikipedia is running on thousands of willing unpaid editors, administrators and programmers (including 270,000 active users on Wikipedia alone). Nirvana2013 (talk) 09:22, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

The WMF's CEO gets paid less than a third of what the CEOs at major American charities like the American Red Cross, Goodwill Industries, and United Way are paid. I don't think that a low-income donor would object to her being paid so little compared to other major American charities, especially being paid so little compared to organizations whose primary purpose is to help poor people and therefore might find it awkward to have millionaires in charge. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:01, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

Perhaps comparing WMF's CEO to the "worst offenders" is not a good benchmark.[18] Should we not be aiming to copy best practice, not worst? Just for some further "perspective" the Salvation Army's Commissioner gets a salary of $13,000 (plus housing) for running a $2 billion organization. Nirvana2013 (talk) 18:14, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

I would not want any more than five to get paid more than what we pay our editors - zero. Does anyone know how many employees Berkshire Hathaway has, a company that owns companies that have 270,834 employees? Twenty four. If they only have 24 employees how do we think we need 100? And how about paying the five employees the same salary that Warren Buffet gets? $100,000/year. Surprise surprise. Apteva (talk) 21:28, 16 December 2012 (UTC)

Berkshire Hathaway is a bad comparison as it is an investment company rather than a charity that maintains websites. The 270,834 employees of the companies they own actually do most of the work, and that is far more paid employees than anyone is suggesting that we get. The Internet archive is a better benchmark, but they are IT heavy when compared to us, they archive lots of websites but do they have the same issues of investing in software to make their services available to people in multiple languages? I'd suggest that a better comparison would be the other 9 top ten websites. My expectation is that our total costs compare well with them and that we probably spend less than most of the other 99 top 100 websites or even the other 999 top 1,000 websites. Having said that there is a valid point that San Francisco probably isn't the cheapest place for the WMF to have its headquarters, but any relocation is not just a financial choice, we also need the right legal environment. The US has a particular combination of laws about publishing and privacy that allows organisations such as the WMF to operate there. Many if not most other countries don't have the right legal environment to host an organisation such as the WMF. For example pay rates are much lower in China, but China has been known to block WMF sites. WereSpielChequers (talk) 22:04, 16 December 2012 (UTC)

Berkshire Hathaway also likely employs zero IT people, zero janitors, etc. It's easy to have 24 employees if you outsource everything. "Twenty-four employees" is not the same thing as "only 24 people in the world are paid to do our work". WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:26, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

Whatever they're paid, it's NOT enough. The amount of hostility they have to deal with from the community is simply staggering. The WMF folks are some of the best people I know. They truly understand that our projects are about people collaborating with other people and about helping each other, not about getting your own way. They are the most helpful people on the project and their dedication to the project is inspiring. No matter how much grief they get—and they get a lot—they always have a kind word and offer a helpful hand. They put in an incredible number of hours both on the job and off. The folks of the WMF are the best that humanity has to offer and I personally think they all deserve a raise—and if I had anything to say about it, they'd get that raise. I sincerely hope that Sue, Jimbo and the board read this because the WMF folks not only deserve our praise, but also our support. Unfortunately, I fear this thread will just turn in to another round of WMF bashing, which is all too common. Our community is no longer trying to help each other, instead we are attacking each other and that is why we are failing. ...sigh. - Hydroxonium (T•C•V) 22:16, 16 December 2012 (UTC)
Hear, hear! WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:25, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

I've invited Jimmy Wales, Sue Gardner and Brion Vibber to comment on this thread via email and their respective user pages. The intention of this post is not to bash WMF employees (who I am sure do a great job) but raise awareness and spark debate. My apologies if this discussion has already taken place elsewhere or consensus has been reached (if it has, please post link below). Nirvana2013 (talk) 07:31, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

~~Interestingly Wikipedia's 2012 public appeal yellow banner seems to have been removed this morning. Coincidence or is someone listening… Nirvana2013 (talk) 10:43, 18 December 2012 (UTC)~~

If the community is hostile to an employee, then that employee needs to be immediately fired. They serve us, not the other way around, and if they aren't liked and respected then they really need to go. Ottava Rima (talk) 22:35, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

"The folks of the WMF are the best that humanity has to offer" This surely has to be a joke. The best employee the WMF ever had was Cary Bass, and it is obvious that no one will ever be able to replace him. The WMF has declined greatly when he left. Ms. Gardner and the rest know that. Ottava Rima (talk) 22:37, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

Sorry, Hydroxonium, but I have to disagree with you. Blind adherence that the WMF can do no wrong isn't helpful and really is only damaging your own outlook on life. Things should be looked at critically, because it's only that way that the truth of things can be found. While you can support the WMF overall, as I do, criticism of individual employees and actions are appropriate as needed. Silver seren (talk) 05:50, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

Some figures and spending examples for reference

Wikimedia Foundation financial development 2003–2012

Year	Total Support and Revenue	Total Expenses	Increase in Net Assets	Net Assets at End of Year
2003/2004^[1]	$80,129	$23,463	$56,666	$56,666
2004/2005^[1]	$379,088	$177,670	$211,418	$268,084
2005/2006^[1]	$1,508,039	$791,907	$736,132	$1,004,216
2006/2007^[2]	$2,734,909	$2,077,843	$654,066	$1,658,282
2007/2008^[3]	$5,032,981	$3,540,724	$3,519,886	$5,178,168
2008/2009^[4]	$8,658,006	$5,617,236	$3,053,599	$8,231,767
2009/2010^[5]	$17,979,312	$10,266,793	$6,310,964	$14,542,731
2010/2011^[6]	$24,785,092	$17,889,794	$9,649,413	$24,192,144
2011/2012^[7]	$34,800,000 (prelim.)	$27,200,000 (prelim.)	$7,600,000 (estim.)	$31,800,000 (estim.)

Some recent spending examples:

Wikimedia Germany recently approved €18,000 for the Festivalsommer 2013 project, paying travel expenses and photo equipment for German Wikimedians to attend, enjoy and document pop concerts as "accredited photographers" without paying entrance fees [19].

Another project uses €81,000 to enable Wikimedians to take pictures of members of Germany's regional parliaments, and another €81,000 are allocated to a project designed to study paid editing.

Wikimedia UK recently apparently spent £1,335 on business cards, and apparently spends close to £1,000 a head from donations to train Wikimedians as Wikipedia trainers, enabling them to offer their services on a for-profit basis to GLAMs at a daily rate of £500 or so.

Meanwhile, official Wikimedia fundraising testimonials linked from fundraising pages feature this heartwarming tale:

I'm from Agnam-Goly, a Sahelian village in north-eastern Senegal with a population of 3,143 inhabitants. (...) I used Wikipedia the first time in 2007 for educational purposes while I was studying in Cheikh Anta DIOP university of Dakar. At the beginning, I thought like many other students in Dakar that the Wikipedia articles are all completed work to which I can't add anything- I mean a closed system. (...) But by curiosity, I entered the name of my village (Agnam-Goly) within the Wikipedia search tool, and I noticed that the article entitled "Agnam-Goly" does not exist but I can create it. And I said to myself "wow, how come?!". I was so happy to know that I can be part of the system, I mean becoming an active Wikipedia user and contributor.

(...)

Well, I started elaborating on the article about Agnam-Goly (...) Then I shared worldwide lots of information about my village: its history, tradition, geography, economic, social organization, myths, beliefs, people, architecture, and culture. As I didn't have a digital camera for my first Wikipedia writings, I said to myself that I can use a drawing which I can scan and share. The first image I used for my village was a diagram of its infrastructures: its school, health clinic, borehole and wells, the central market, the soccer field and the mosques. And that idea works quite good as I do not have a digital camera. But it can be hard to convey every reality of my village through drawing and it is time consuming. So I started saving some money in order to buy a digital camera, which took me four months. I bought a digital camera and took more than one thousand pictures related to my village so that I can share them through Wikimedia commons and use some of them to elaborate on the article about my village.

(...)

But what I learnt most from all of that is the fact that the best of the communities is the community of knowledge and sharing and that's what WIKIPEDIA means to me.

(...)

PS: I wish I had money to donate to Wikipedia. I hope to do so one day, after all, I made the digital camera possible!

Personally, my feeling is that a gravy train is developing for first-world Wikimedians – or, expressed in the most positive way imaginable, donations are beginning to be used in various ways to compensate first-world Wikimedians for their contributions to Wikimedia projects.

However, this is not what we tell people when we are asking them to donate: we are talking about third-world children and are telling them they have to donate, or Wikimedia will be required to carry advertising. See e.g. Cash call coming: Jimmy Wales' Wikipedia drive to stay ad-free. This even though last year, WMF took more than twelve times what it took in 2006/2007.

See also e.g. the embedded presentations here, and see en:User_talk:Jimbo_Wales/Archive_119#WP:Communicate_OER_paying_over_$40,000_to_User:Peteforsyth's_company and en:Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2012-04-30/Paid_editing about consultants earning tens of thousands of dollars from on-wiki project advocacy and management (in this case however paid through an external grant rather than WMF donations). Andreas JN466 18:25, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

↑ ^a ^b ^c "Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. Financial Statements June 30, 2006, 2205 and 2004" (PDF). Upload,wikimedia.org. Retrieved 2012-11-26.
↑ "Microsoft Word - {F0900CC7-D37E-4CDF-95E3-B1F38D7DCD03}.doc" (PDF). Retrieved 2012-11-26.
↑ "Microsoft Word - 31935 SFO Wikimedia fs.doc" (PDF). Retrieved 2012-11-26.
↑ "Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. Financial Statements June 30, 2009 and 2008" (PDF). Upload.wikimedia.org. Retrieved 2012-11-26.
↑ "Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. Financial Statments June 30, 2010 and 2009" (PDF). Upload.wikimedia.org. Retrieved 2012-11-26.
↑ "Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. Financial Statements June, 2011 and 2010" (PDF). Upload.wikimedia.org. Retrieved 2012-11-26.
↑ "Wikimedia Foundation Plan - Final for Website" (PDF). Upload.wikimedia.org. p. 54. Retrieved 2012-11-26.

The projects, like Wikimedia Germany, are independent organizations. They are not part of the WMF. You've cited the budget from the WMF and the expenses from separate organizations with separate budgets. The business cards and event tickets weren't paid for by the WMF. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:30, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

I believe the fundraiser takings of Wikimedia Germany and WMUK are included in the overall WMF fundraiser revenue figures. Indeed, this year WMUK is getting its budget financed via the FDC. Andreas JN466 18:32, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

Proposal - I think the Foundation would do far better if they, say, paid me 100 dollars per article for me to write high quality articles for them. Ottava Rima (talk) 18:39, 17 December 2012 (UTC)
There's an effective balance between milking the gravy train and using money to good ends. Companies do tend to cost more money than the uninitiated expect; now I am utterly in agreement that WMF and the chapters should assert new, leaner, models, but when you compare them with other charities they are much less wasteful and significantly less corrupt. Which is a good thing! You are able to scrutineer and put pressure on WM chapters Andreas, could you do this to other charities? Perhaps Wikimedia Germany are wasting money, allowing people to go to pop concerts. Or perhaps those individuals passionately want to improve Wikipedia coverage of that material. I don't think we've quite got the balance right on when to spend money improving content (I prefer the WMUK model which is to help volunteers build skills to provide training and outreach) but if you get your criticism right (and I don't think you are at the moment) you can help bring those models to fruition. --ErrantX (talk) 09:38, 18 December 2012 (UTC)
- All I am doing is drawing attention to what feels like mismatches between fundraising messages and actual expenditure.
  1. We tell Adama Diop's story, and mention children in Bangalore and San Salvador, but we're not (to my knowledge) buying photo equipment for people in third-world countries, but for people in first-world countries, where density of coverage is already good and in far less need of improvement.
  2. The fundraising testimonials present Wikipedia as an ideal resource for children, "free from bias, banter, commercial interests and risky content", but actual reality (and community policy) is that Wikimedia projects are not for children, and may contain anything up to and including hardcore pornography; and the image filter development project was scrapped earlier this year.
  3. We say we need people to donate so that Wikipedia can remain ad-free, but the fact is that the money is used for organisational expansion (because hosting costs are less than 10% of the budget, and Wikipedia was at no risk of introducing ads five years ago, despite revenue being less than a tenth of what it is now).
- There's two ways that mismatch can be addressed: by altering the fundraising message, or by altering spending patterns.
- The bigger issue is that the very structure of the Wikimedia movement is changing: away from unpaid volunteer work to various forms of compensation paid from donations: and as far as I can see, the individual Wikimedians lining up to receive this compensation are not in the third world, but the first. Andreas JN466 14:13, 18 December 2012 (UTC)
  - Well, not to appear callous. Our remit is free and open knowledge, not solving third world poverty. The charity has to spend money where it can be effective in driving those aims. At the moment it appears the focus is on content generation in affluent areas and content access in third world areas. I agree it would be good to see a program to bring some of the grant money to third world individuals such as the one you quote, and would be extremely supportive of any proposal you want to come up with! Your statements seem to imply the WMF and chapters are not focused on the third world at all; but with Wikipedia Zero program and Wikimedia France's work in Africa put lie to that position. All of that said, the bottom line is; if German people have donated to German Wikipedia (which is the funds Wikimedia DE recieve) then it is reasonable to assume they are donating to improve German Wikip/media content. If they wished to donate to third world areas then they could do so. This might include work in third world areas, but not as the main focus. But as I said, when you bring up your proposal to fund third world content creation I will be happy to push for it to be funded, and I wish you luck! --ErrantX (talk) 14:48, 18 December 2012 (UTC)
    - "Our remit is free and open knowledge, not solving third world poverty." Agreed. Through self-education and knowledge people may become aware of other choices and lift themselves out of poverty, but this should remain a possible indirect benefit of access to WMF online projects, rather than a direct aim. Nirvana2013 (talk) 15:09, 18 December 2012 (UTC)
    - I haven't seen any evidence that Wikipedia Zero has cost the WMF millions of dollars in donations spent on staff or technology costs. Has it? And content generation in the third world is actually rather important, because it helps put third-world communities on the global map. Andreas JN466 18:45, 18 December 2012 (UTC)
Proposal - I believe that we should stop asking for money from those in the third world, given WMF's burgeoning payroll. In the future run banner appeals on G8 IP addresses only, or stop banner appeals altogether and rely on wealthy philanthropic donors/companies (such as Sergey Brin). Alternatively shrink the payroll. Nirvana2013 (talk) 15:56, 18 December 2012 (UTC)
- The vast, vast, vast majority of the donations come from the first world. So this would have very little material impact (other than to stop those in the third world with the means and desire to donate from doing so). I'm not sure how it would address your concerns... --ErrantX (talk) 16:01, 18 December 2012 (UTC)
  - Its something at least. Some things make little difference financially, but all the difference ethically. I am not sure anyone can truly alleviate my concerns without going back in a time machine to January 2005, when the terms of the first full-time WMF employee were written, and starting again. BTW I am not proposing to end the option of donating i.e. keep the "Donate to Wikipedia" link on the side bar - even if people only earn $1/week, they should be free to donate to WMF if they so choose. Its just the misleading and ill-conceived banner appeals I have a problem with. Nirvana2013 (talk) 16:08, 18 December 2012 (UTC)
- According to Bloomberg, "For Wikipedia’s current campaign, not every visitor to the world’s largest crowdsourced encyclopedia is being greeted with a plea for donations. The 16-day effort is only targeting eight of the nations where Wikipedia has the biggest user base, said Sue Gardner, chief executive officer of the Wikimedia Foundation, which manages website’s finances. People in those countries tend to give more, she said." the countries mentioned are U.S., U.K., Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, France and Switzerland, although the article also says banners would be tested in some other countries as well. I consider refocusing on first-world countries a good move. Andreas JN466 18:31, 18 December 2012 (UTC)
  - Thanks Andreas; sounds like Sue and Jimmy were one step ahead of me. I am glad we are not begging from third world countries. Nirvana2013 (talk) 18:41, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

Other concern

My concern about the salaries is slightly different than was stated at the beginning of this section. I don't begrudge a ~$100,000 salary for the directors. I mean, they are heads of a company, so that salary makes sense. But why is Sue Gardner paid around $100,000 more than even them? That's a ridiculous increase and one that doesn't make sense to me. Silver seren (talk) 05:56, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

It's certainly a leap, but it's not a massive wage for CE level. So WMF are probably getting value for money. --ErrantX (talk) 09:31, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

Agreed. Andreas JN466 14:14, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

How much was the Wikimedia "developer" who was caught plagiarizing and abusing his ops being paid? Obviously, he was the best they could find - someone who had quite a bit of exposure to Wikipedia and plagiarizes and abuses ops just like a regular. Ottava Rima (talk) 15:26, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

Unattached accounts

case 1

I don't remember me having any edit on kmwiki, but there are edits in my contribs there. I cannot even see the language used and has never heard of it before.

I saw this first when looking at my global contribs where I saw it colored red and saying unattached account. Seeing that, I clicked on the link to go to the page on that wiki which unintentionally made it attached.

Look carefully, the edit was made on 17:01, 11 October 2012 and the account was created on 13:53, 18 December 2012. This is too much!···Vanischenu「mc|Talk」 14:50, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

Case 2

You know, there are some (very few) people who have been brought in such a way that they will always be honest and good hearted. I found such a person and was successful in making them interested to join Wikipedia. And what's next, an account with username parabola was created (at commons) and attempted to merge, only to realize that such an account was already taken by another one in some other wikis here. This is frustrating!···Vanischenu「mc|Talk」 14:50, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

quotes

An IP quoted the following at English wp Help Desk,

You retards need to learn how to run your site properly

Thank you!···Vanischenu「mc|Talk」 14:50, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

Wikimedia Forum

Contents

please don´t ask me for a donation if I have already done so

a video I want to contribute

it.wiki in trouble, once again, this time is worse than last year

Proposal to change logo from "free" to "community-written", "community-run", "open", "collaborative" etc

"The community-written encyclopedia"

"From Wikipedia" and nothing else?

Interwiki list

commons:Commons:Freedom of panorama campaign

Slovene Wikisource

MediaWiki translation - buryat

Secure login

Чахъу

an Idea to help Wikimedia Fund itself without compromising its purpose.

The idea of donating

Accounts

A "wikikultur" project ?

Using transclusion of an other subpage

Wikiprocess creation proposal

Ethical considerations of Wikimedia donation methods

New namespace on Meta

Wikimedia Highlights from October 2012

Help request to build Template:Help-translation

Can't log on to Russian Wikipedia

WT10

The facilities in the university library

Wikimedia Highlights from November 2012

Unsign for translation

Renaming the Local Embassy

Wikimedia employee salaries

Some figures and spending examples for reference

Other concern

Unattached accounts

case 1

Case 2

quotes

Navigation menu

Wikimedia Forum

please don´t ask me for a donation if I have already done so

a video I want to contribute

it.wiki in trouble, once again, this time is worse than last year

Proposal to change logo from "free" to "community-written", "community-run", "open", "collaborative" etc

"The community-written encyclopedia"

"From Wikipedia" and nothing else?

Interwiki list

commons:Commons:Freedom of panorama campaign

Slovene Wikisource

MediaWiki translation - buryat

Secure login

Чахъу

an Idea to help Wikimedia Fund itself without compromising its purpose.

The idea of donating

Accounts

A "wikikultur" project ?

Using transclusion of an other subpage

Wikiprocess creation proposal

Ethical considerations of Wikimedia donation methods

New namespace on Meta

Wikimedia Highlights from October 2012

Help request to build Template:Help-translation

Can't log on to Russian Wikipedia

WT10

The facilities in the university library

Wikimedia Highlights from November 2012

Unsign for translation

Renaming the Local Embassy

Wikimedia employee salaries

Some figures and spending examples for reference

Other concern

Unattached accounts

case 1

Case 2

quotes

Navigation menu

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