CentralNotice/Request/Wiki Loves Monuments 2020

Wiki Loves Monuments 2020[edit]

Romaine (talk · contribs · page moves · block user · block log), primary contact (Requested at 18:43, 22 August 2020 (UTC))[reply]

Central Notice Settings

What is the campaign duration?

1 September/October/November 2020 → 30/31 September/October/November 2020

Which projects will you be targeting?

WP/WM/C/D/VOY

What languages will you be targeting?

multiple

Do you wish to show banners to Logged In users, Anonymous Users or Both? Do you want to target users with a specific number of edits or average monthly?

all

What countries will your campaign target?

list of countries

Banner/Campaign Diet:

To be determined by Central Notice admin

What is the purpose of the campaign? How will you measure the success of the campaign?[edit]

Description - the annual photo contest for heritage monuments

Metrics -

What banner(s) will you use? What will be your landing page?[edit]

Banners -

Landing Page - multiple

Is this project grant funded? Please provide a link[edit]

Type of grant -

Link to grant -

Discussion[edit]

Thread about this notice at en-WP: w:Wikipedia:Village_pump_(policy)#Request_to_stop_non-encyclopedic_self_advertising. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 01:57, 6 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]
In addition to the very disgruntled thread above (probably best articulated by BD2412's comments), there's been more complaints recently on the en-WP Discord about the fact that the most recent banner keeps on popping up again and again every time you load a new page, even after you try to dismiss it. Since it doesn't seem to have gotten through before, I'll be more direct: consensus for this banner to appear at en-WP appears highly dubious at best. I'm not too familiar with the banner process, but this seems like the page where there's supposed to be discussion to find consensus to display the banner, and I see no such discussion here or documentation of any such discussion elsewhere. If such discussion does not exist, the banner should be taken down, at the very least on en-WP and probably everywhere outside of Commons. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 18:04, 17 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Courtesy pinging admins @Benoit Rochon, DerHexer, Ilario, Itzike, Mardetanha, Matiia, Martin Urbanec, NahidSultan, Romaine, Samat, Steinsplitter, Trijnstel, Shanmugamp7, and Vituzzu:. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 19:48, 17 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Sdkb: The banners should (like all banners) disappear after they have been clicked away. If that is not the case, there is likely a bug in the CentralNotice system if this happens to many people. If this only happens to one or a few individuals, this is likely a cookie issue in the computer of the user.

If I look on the English Wikipedia page I only see a very small number of people replying there. If that is taken as size for a contest that (for en-wiki) currently mainly runs in the US and Canada to shut down, such request is disproportional. And then also thinking that the a few English users can decide on their own to shut down a banner that runs in various countries and languages. Also, this contest in the US is organised by users from the English Wikipedia, has this discussion been addressed to them? Because the photo contest is organised by the communities on Wikipedia, it is shown on Wikipedia. It is not really organised by Commons users, nor the community from Commons. Commons is used as that is Wikimedia's central repository for images. Nevertheless I will inform also the international team about this matter. Romaine (talk) 03:18, 18 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Romaine: There is a very straightforward question here: Is there a discussion that established consensus for this banner, and if so, what's the link to it? You have not answered. Instead, your argument, if I'm understanding you correctly, is that a discussion among more than a dozen editors at one of en-WP's most highly trafficked centralized noticeboards should just be ignored because it's a very small number of people? Sure, it wasn't a formalized RfC, but if your view is that that's not a strong enough consensus to action a removal, I would certainly hope you have a stronger consensus to point to that authorized the addition of the banner in the first place.

Pinging the village pump discussion participants: @Spinningspark, Jo-Jo Eumerus, Nosebagbear, NatGertler, King of Hearts, Yair rand, WhatamIdoing, Effeietsanders, BD2412, Johnbod, Isaacl, Alanscottwalker, and Zezen: feel free to weigh in. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 04:02, 18 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Here's my most specific peeve about banners: when I go to my watchlist and see something happening that I want to investigate further (like an IP edit to an often-vandalized article), and I go to click on that link, the appearance of the banner during the page loading process pushes everything down, and suddenly the link I am clicking isn't the one I meant to follow. In the worst case scenario, I might be clicking a "rollback" link for a completely different page. Beyond that, this is one of a handful of oddly specific things we have banners for, rather than some other advertising process. BD2412 T 04:08, 18 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

As one of the pump commenters, I have no objection to the banner or the contest (not saying that any objection is wrong, just not something I'm emotionally invested in) beyond the "Wiki :Loves" phrasing... and that objection is not only not specifically to this instance, but less to this instance than certain others. (A prime example:: as much as I love Pride, there are people who do not love Pride and yet should not be made to feel that they are not part of the Wiki effort.) --NatGertler (talk) 04:16, 18 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]
- There are other issues specifically with monuments, in our current social milieu where many are found to be objectionable because society has raised many for people who did very bad things. That aside, why not "Wiki Loves Judges" or "Wiki Loves Footballers" or "Wiki Loves Burundi", or anything else for which article improvement is possible? BD2412 T 05:22, 18 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  - Please, don't give them more ideas for banners :) Spinning Spark 08:57, 18 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]
    - Quite a lot of similarly named projects exist: Wiki Loves Earth, Wiki Loves Africa 2020, Wiki Loves the Olympics, Wiki Loves Pride, Wiki Loves Women, even Wiki Loves Love. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:48, 19 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I don't want it, I've dismissed it, that should be the last I hear about it. But it isn't; it pops up again on every wiki I visit. A few weeks later it all starts over again. Plus, if I delete cookies (which nowadays is more or less essential to do now and again) my dismiss is completely forgotten. That should not rely on cookies, the record of who has unsubscribed should be held on the server - this is equivalent to unsolicited emails which in my jurisdiction are required to unsubscribe on demand. Spinning Spark 08:57, 18 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I agree that a large part of the annoyance is the "wiki loves" style of promotion. Just the facts please. Spinning Spark 08:57, 18 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I see two unrelated complaints here. One is about the name, and the other is about the banner's behavior. (Your "local consensus" is irrelevant.)
1. The name: Some people don't like the name. The project, however, has been running for eleven years now, and they are hardly likely to rename it at this point just because some guys feel uncomfortable talking about L-U-V, or because "monument" is being used in the news media this year mainly in reference to statues of disreputable dead white men, and instead of in reference to the w:Monumento a la abolición de la esclavitud or the w:Monument to innocent murdered. We solve that problem by adding the good stuff, not by worrying that there's only bad stuff.
2. The banner: I ~~complained about~~ asked about this banner several years ago. The problem is that navigation on the wikis is difficult (unbelievably difficult for new folks, and most WLM photographers are new). If the banner goes away forever for me, then it goes away forever for the (hundreds or thousands of) people who actually want to see that banner so they can find the link to upload their photos. The question, then, is whether the two seconds you spend dismissing the banner at least once a week is more burdensome than the new person's frustration and despair. I don't think it is. But you can make it go away forever for yourself very easily. Just go to w:en:Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-gadgets and click on "Suppress display of CentralNotices". I haven't seen any of these banners at enwiki since clicking that button, and I've been very happy with the result. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:04, 19 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@WhatamIdoing: Item 2 is actually three items: The first is the concern about process/consensus I articulated above (which, shockingly, no one has addressed), the second is about whether or not a banner is warranted (I'm still not persuaded that it's the most worthy use for readers' limited tolerance for promotions), and the third is about the fact that it's not dismissable as it's supposed to be (myself and it seems many many others are encountering it with every single page load, not just once a week). {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 07:35, 19 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]
(1) The general process for a new banner proposed by community project (e.g., not the WMF's fundraising team) is that you post your request on a page (e.g., this one). Interested people are welcome to comment, and the relevant admins either decline or post the banner, using their best judgment, their knowledge of the usual conventions, and the written rules (=in that order of importance). (2) Whether it's worthy of readers' attention is something that any interested person is welcome to comment on. The proposers and the closing admins obviously thought it was, in this case, but of course reasonable people might disagree. (3) If you can't dismiss the banner, maybe something's wrong with your browser. I can see the banner when I open an article in a private/incognito window. There is a gray X on the right-hand side of the banner, and when I click it, the banner disappears. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:57, 19 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Central Notice admin comments[edit]

Hi @Romaine:, There's another request for a global banner for the same period, and there are 2 fundraiser banners planned for September as well: I take it you will coordinate with the others about this? Ciell (talk) 13:27, 26 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]