Meta:Babel/Archives/2015-08
This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Discrimination complaint
At Talk:Wikimania 2016 bids Hammersoft raises points about Wikimania 2016 being inaccessible to people with mobility constraints. This person has gotten no reply. In most nonprofit organizations, concerns about discrimination of this sort would be specially addressed by staff of the organization. Is there someone in the Wikimedia Foundation who would either like to address this concern, or otherwise state clearly the recommended communication channel for voicing concerns of this sort? Blue Rasberry (talk) 13:30, 17 June 2015 (UTC)
- Generally, questions for specific persons or entities should go on their talk pages. --Nemo 13:46, 17 June 2015 (UTC)
- I think the question here is which specific person or entity should receive the complaint. harej (talk) 13:47, 17 June 2015 (UTC)
- It's not hard, comments go on the talk of the page they reference. --Nemo 14:22, 17 June 2015 (UTC)
- Thanks to Bluerasberry for bringing this here. I do appreciate it. That said, it's post facto now. The bid has been confirmed by the WMF and it will go ahead as planned. I think at this point the WMF needs to figure out a response to media when asked why they chose a location so distinctly against people with mobility constraints. Answering "Well, we supplied a van..." isn't going to cut it. A van isn't capable of driving people into the main meeting hall for the event (and this is just the tip of the iceberg, there's accessibility issues in multiple locations of this event). Without a coherent, previously thought through answer as to why the WMF chose to not provide an accessible event, the WMF will get raked over the coals in the press. For a non-profit that lives on donations, this could be deadly. --Hammersoft (talk) 14:15, 17 June 2015 (UTC)
- Thanks for caring about the WMF's health; OTOH it already survived hundreds of negative press coverages for Wikimania 2011 by Arab press. :) --Nemo 14:22, 17 June 2015 (UTC)
- Perhaps, but it would be nice if the WMF would care about accessibility issues. --Hammersoft (talk) 18:40, 17 June 2015 (UTC)
- I think the question here is which specific person or entity should receive the complaint. harej (talk) 13:47, 17 June 2015 (UTC)
- @Hammersoft: matters for the Board can be raised on Meta at the Wikimedia Foundation Board noticeboard. (Isn't that just the WMF way -- there's always another page to refer you to) It is possible that you may get WMF Board attention there, a Board member replied to something on that page less than a fortnight ago. Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 16:17, 28 June 2015 (UTC)
- What sort of help is specifically needed? I have just returned from Mexico. One attendee was being pushed around by wheelchair by another. And a blind person was being lead around by an assistant. Both those can be provided in this venue by the looks of it. The best people to answer would likely be the event organizers who now the town very well. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 21:59, 23 July 2015 (UTC)
- The specific question being asked here is, who in the WMF takes responsibility for accessibility issues and how do members of the community engage with that person or team. So far that question has not been answered. The context was the decision of the WMF to approve the accessibility arrangements for Wikimania 2016, which they have done: the WMF have thus taken some measure of responsibility as an organisation for the accessibility arrangements at that venue, and the specific question in that context is thus, who specifically in WMF is tasked with ensuring that WMF is able to and does indeed succeed in the responsibility it has taken on? Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 21:56, 25 July 2015 (UTC)
- One could ask the organizers what they plan to do to accomodate people with disabilities. For those with disabilities who plan to attend it would be good to make arrangements before hand. I know the organizing team is looking at putting together first aid services. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 16:11, 3 August 2015 (UTC)
- The specific question being asked here is, who in the WMF takes responsibility for accessibility issues and how do members of the community engage with that person or team. So far that question has not been answered. The context was the decision of the WMF to approve the accessibility arrangements for Wikimania 2016, which they have done: the WMF have thus taken some measure of responsibility as an organisation for the accessibility arrangements at that venue, and the specific question in that context is thus, who specifically in WMF is tasked with ensuring that WMF is able to and does indeed succeed in the responsibility it has taken on? Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 21:56, 25 July 2015 (UTC)
Proposal to repeal and modify some sections of Meta:Deletion policy
- The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.
Hello. In order to perform a right cleanup of unsourced and unlicensed files here, I propose the we modify the deletion policy as follows:
- Point §1.2 (2) (RFD#Special cases for images and media). Repeal "orphaned". Should be as follows:
Images placed in the categories "Images with unknown source" or "Images with unknown license" for more than 7 days, regardless of when uploaded.
- Point §2.3 (2) (CSD#Images). Repeal "orphaned", and also include unlicensed files. Proposed new:
Unsourced or unlicensed files for more than seven days
That will allow us to clean both categories of unsourced/unlicensed files, tag the remaining ones and start a complete overhaul of the image system here IMHO. Thanks. —MarcoAurelio 15:31, 21 July 2015 (UTC)
- Support, won't oppose better wording or other ideas though. —MarcoAurelio 15:31, 21 July 2015 (UTC)
- Support There are many images that need to be cleaned.--Syum90 (talk) 16:24, 21 July 2015 (UTC)
- Support It sounds good to me. Matiia (talk) 16:32, 21 July 2015 (UTC)
- Support - makes sense. Green Giant (talk) 16:52, 21 July 2015 (UTC)
- Comment Currently we do allow one category of non-free images on meta and other WMF sites, these being the ones the WMF owns. Some of the pages on meta are used to host collaborations between Wikimedia entities and other organizations. It is a little one sided if the WM side can use our logos without releasing them under an open license while the other side cannot. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 22:14, 23 July 2015 (UTC)
- Support, but I'd recommend not to mass delete the old files but to check them with some care just in case there is one or another situation that needs special attention. (I could offer to assist the cleanup if welcome.) --Krd 07:41, 24 July 2015 (UTC)
- This point should be highlighted. Prior to deletion, there must be an effort made to contact the uploader. This is common sense to me, but maybe the policy page should be explicit about it? And in general, we should try to move images to Wikimedia Commons instead of deleting them, I think (which actually is easier as it doesn't require user notification). There are a lot of important historical images on Meta-Wiki given how old this wiki is, so we need to be careful not to delete anything of value. This is true, even if some of the images uploaded here are insufficiently sourced or licensed under today's standards. --MZMcBride (talk) 23:20, 26 July 2015 (UTC)
- @Krd and MZMcBride: Of course. The idea is to unblock the situation where doubtful files cannot be deleted because they're not orphaned, but not by any means. Uploaders should be contacted and files that can be moved to Commons should be transferred. I have been doing some
{{information}}
tagging and metadata cleanup prior to moving files to Commons in the last months. I support making it explicit into policy that uploaders should be notified.{{no source}}
and{{no license}}
do have notification templates that we can use. Thanks. —MarcoAurelio 08:25, 28 July 2015 (UTC)- Hi MarcoAurelio. Cool, thanks for clarifying. :-) --MZMcBride (talk) 00:03, 29 July 2015 (UTC)
- Support Per above.--Infinite0694 (Talk) 13:21, 26 July 2015 (UTC)
- Support sounds reasonable. --Steinsplitter (talk) 13:59, 26 July 2015 (UTC)
I have implemented these changes into the policy (see [1], including something about the uploaders' notification. I find it weird btw that we have the same deletion criteria once used for "special cases" and once for speedy deletions. Maybe we can sort that out at some time as well.), as there was unanimous consent here. --MF-W 02:37, 10 August 2015 (UTC)
- The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.
Pages for WMF teams and departments
I think it a good principle that WMF teams and departments each have a page here on Meta even if they have their main portal somewhere else, such as mediawiki.org. I would also suggest that the community-facing teams such as the Community Tech team and the Community Engagement department and its consituent teams should in general have their portals here. However, that leads to an interesting point about page names. Some WMF teams have (modishly) adopted titles which are themselves broader topics that we might wish to have a page on, such as Technology, Communications, Advancement. So I would suggest that the uniform style should be WMF Technology. Or would a uniform title ending "team" or "department" be clearer? Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 11:45, 26 July 2015 (UTC)
- Perhaps something like
[[WMF departments/Technology]]
so they are linked at the top of the page? Green Giant (talk) 12:25, 26 July 2015 (UTC)- There is no need to create more team pages. Engineering teams already have their pages on mediawiki.org, which are linked from mw:Wikimedia Engineering. --Nemo 12:31, 26 July 2015 (UTC)
- Good point. I've made an interwiki redirect in case someone searches for the term on Meta. Green Giant (talk) 13:18, 26 July 2015 (UTC)
- The main reason for having pages here, even if, as I said, the main pages are elsewhere, is so that people can find them. Meta is the site for interproject discussions across projects, and WMF teams are often involved. Mediawiki.org is the site for development of the Mediawiki software. It is by no means obvious to someone working here to discuss, for example, a grant request, that if they need information about what some WMF team is responsible for, they should go to mediawiki.org. Hence my suggestion. Meta is used by WF teams for consultations on strategy, major and minor, regularly and frequently. Hence the specific suggestion that community-facing teams should have their principle presence here, where much of their community engagement, and the related community discussions, will be carried out. Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 16:10, 26 July 2015 (UTC)
- MediaWiki contains mostly working import and export tools, of course. I think centralizing on Meta-Wiki is a decent idea, but executing it properly will require appropriate planning. We want to make sure we're not making a bigger mess in the process of moving pages from mediawiki.org (and wikimediafoundation.org and wikitech.wikimedia.org and probably other places) to meta.wikimedia.org. But as a long-term goal, centralizing here seems reasonable and prudent to me. --MZMcBride (talk) 23:15, 26 July 2015 (UTC)
- I approve of planning, hence these preliminary discussions. I'm not suggesting copying all the pages lock stock and barrel, but having enough information here on Meta that users, who are perhaps not completely familiar with the internal organisation of the WMF and of the numerous wikis and other sites that they use, can get the information they are most likely to need quickly and pointers to where further information or engagement can be found. Community-facing departments probably should have their main pages and portals here, though. Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 06:20, 27 July 2015 (UTC)
- Cool. So maybe the next step would be making an index here at Meta-Wiki of all of the current pages across the wikis so that we can evaluate what makes sense to move, what makes sense to use interwiki redirects for, what should stay put, etc. An index might help us make better-informed decisions. It sounds like perhaps a Wikimedia Foundation departments page would be a good start? From there, you could sub-divide into teams, I suppose. --MZMcBride (talk) 02:12, 29 July 2015 (UTC)
- I agree that page would be a good start and volunteer to help get it started to begin mapping this all out. --Varnent (talk)(COI) 14:05, 29 July 2015 (UTC)
- Cool. So maybe the next step would be making an index here at Meta-Wiki of all of the current pages across the wikis so that we can evaluate what makes sense to move, what makes sense to use interwiki redirects for, what should stay put, etc. An index might help us make better-informed decisions. It sounds like perhaps a Wikimedia Foundation departments page would be a good start? From there, you could sub-divide into teams, I suppose. --MZMcBride (talk) 02:12, 29 July 2015 (UTC)
- I approve of planning, hence these preliminary discussions. I'm not suggesting copying all the pages lock stock and barrel, but having enough information here on Meta that users, who are perhaps not completely familiar with the internal organisation of the WMF and of the numerous wikis and other sites that they use, can get the information they are most likely to need quickly and pointers to where further information or engagement can be found. Community-facing departments probably should have their main pages and portals here, though. Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 06:20, 27 July 2015 (UTC)
- As for "so that people can find them", assuming we're talking of people doing searches here, we have a very simple solution which probably just requires a switch to be turned by the sysadmins: T87632: Enable interwiki search on Meta-Wiki. --Nemo 05:27, 27 July 2015 (UTC)
- That would be nice too. After all, this isn't a simple problem with a single technical fix, it's about finding as many ways as possible of improving the community/WMF relationship. Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 06:20, 27 July 2015 (UTC)
- MediaWiki contains mostly working import and export tools, of course. I think centralizing on Meta-Wiki is a decent idea, but executing it properly will require appropriate planning. We want to make sure we're not making a bigger mess in the process of moving pages from mediawiki.org (and wikimediafoundation.org and wikitech.wikimedia.org and probably other places) to meta.wikimedia.org. But as a long-term goal, centralizing here seems reasonable and prudent to me. --MZMcBride (talk) 23:15, 26 July 2015 (UTC)
- The main reason for having pages here, even if, as I said, the main pages are elsewhere, is so that people can find them. Meta is the site for interproject discussions across projects, and WMF teams are often involved. Mediawiki.org is the site for development of the Mediawiki software. It is by no means obvious to someone working here to discuss, for example, a grant request, that if they need information about what some WMF team is responsible for, they should go to mediawiki.org. Hence my suggestion. Meta is used by WF teams for consultations on strategy, major and minor, regularly and frequently. Hence the specific suggestion that community-facing teams should have their principle presence here, where much of their community engagement, and the related community discussions, will be carried out. Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 16:10, 26 July 2015 (UTC)
- Good point. I've made an interwiki redirect in case someone searches for the term on Meta. Green Giant (talk) 13:18, 26 July 2015 (UTC)
- There is no need to create more team pages. Engineering teams already have their pages on mediawiki.org, which are linked from mw:Wikimedia Engineering. --Nemo 12:31, 26 July 2015 (UTC)
- This email discussion is also relevant. Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 21:25, 28 July 2015 (UTC)
- Upon more closely reading the opening post here, I'd strongly prefer that we avoid abbreviations in page titles. As redirects, titles such as WMF Technology are probably fine, but the full phrase "Wikimedia Foundation" should be used in the content (i.e., non-redirect) page title.
In general, I agree that having clarification about what the "Technology" team does versus the "Engineering and Product" team would be helpful. Pages such as wmf:Staff and contractors don't explain the distinction. --MZMcBride (talk) 02:18, 29 July 2015 (UTC)
- A good point. Incidentally, the wmf:Template:Staff and contractors list could usefully link to the department and team pages, which it currently only does in a handful of cases, as could wm:Org chart, which currently links into into wmf:Staff and contractors. Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 06:44, 29 July 2015 (UTC)
- I think this is a great idea whose times has more than come. :) It would also be great to get all of the department/team pages setup on Translate and also clear up mix use of "departments" and "team". My understanding is that there are limited "departments" which each have several "teams". I agree if WMF is added to the names, it should be the full Wikimedia Foundation and not WMF. --Varnent (talk)(COI) 14:04, 29 July 2015 (UTC)
- Update: The main departments page has been set up. It seems most of the Engineering and Technology teams are primarily housed on MediaWiki.org. I believe duplicating those efforts will be unmaintainable over time. However, I agree that something should exist on Meta-Wiki. Perhaps soft redirects? In any case, here are the departments and teams without a Meta-Wiki presence (that I could find when this departments page went up anyway - feel free to add them if you know they exist - obviously).
- Foundation and Major Gifts
- Fundraising Operations
- Online Fundraising
- Partnerships and Wikipedia Zero
- Discovery (has a page on MediaWiki.org)
- Fundraising tech (has a page on MediaWiki.org)
- Infrastructure
- Reading (has a page on MediaWiki.org)
- Finance, Administration, and Human Resources
- Administration
- Finance
- Office IT
- Team Practices
- Counsel (perhaps not yet needed until Legal has more teams?)
- Legal interns and fellows (again - not sure that is needed)
- Office of the Executive Director (perhaps just point to main ED page?)
- Technology
- Architecture
- Performance (has a page on MediaWiki.org)
- Research (has a page on MediaWiki.org)
- Security (has a page on MediaWiki.org)
- Thoughts?
- --Varnent (talk)(COI) 16:39, 5 August 2015 (UTC)
- Thank you for starting this page. I might be wrong but I think you've covered all of the departments. Green Giant (talk) 11:50, 10 August 2015 (UTC)
Unable to make a suggestion that spans Wikipedia
I could not find a way to make suggestions that span everything. I think a Main Page link for 'Suggested Improvements' would be a good Idea even if it's an email link. For example:
·I would like to see definitions support a mouse-over brief and a link to the more detail presentation. ·I would also like to hear pronunciations of places and especially names. The phonetic presentation is good but not as good as an audio voice.
—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Javaknight3 (talk) 13:46, 30 July 2015
- @Javaknight3:, assuming you are talking about the English Wikipedia, you can make suggestions at the specific village pump on that wiki. For mouse-over stuff, please log in and go to any page on that Wikipedia. At the top there should be some links such as your user name, talk page etc. Click on the
Preferences
link and it will take you to a dashboard with several tabs. Here you can change your settings so I would highly recommend testing the different options (click on theSave
button at the foot of the page to see the effect). Now if you click on theGadgets
tab near the top right, and then look under the "Browsing" section, you should see an option for navigation popups. Select the radio button next to it and then click the save button at the foot of the page. Now go to any English Wikipedia page that has an internal wikilinks and hover your mouse over it; you should see a popup box with a short overview, and some other links. As for pronunciations, this is a set of ongoing projects, but many articles still don't have a pronunciation file, so if you see one that you'd like to hear, you can make a suggestion on the associated talk page. We can't guarantee that anyone will respond but it is a start. I hope this is the advice you were looking for but if not, please do ask for more help. Green Giant (talk) 11:38, 10 August 2015 (UTC)
Question on {{proposed logo}}
Since Wikimedia logos have been freed, I wonder if {{proposed logo}}
should be updated as {{CopyrightByWikimedia}}
have been? Best regards. —MarcoAurelio 20:09, 8 August 2015 (UTC)
- Agree update needs to occur. WRT
{{CopyrightByWikimedia}}
, why do we have a "requires permission"? The whole point of a CC BY SA license is that it does not require permission for many uses. (p.s. legal says they will clarify for me) Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 04:26, 9 August 2015 (UTC)- So license and trademark are completely different. While it is freely licensed it is not freely reusable due to trademark law. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 03:36, 10 August 2015 (UTC)
- Agree update needs to occur. WRT
- Support it should be updated. The difference between the two is that copyright is about expression and trademark is about identifying a service or a good. Whilst anyone is free to reuse and modify the licensed Wikimedia logo(s), they could not use the logo(s) to identify themselves or their goods/services in a way that customers could confuse them with Wikimedia. So I could set up a website called Trickymedia and offer the same services as WMF but I couldn't have a similar enough logo that could be mistaken for WMF. However, there is nothing to stop me having an article about Wikimedia and using their logo to identify them. The only way that I could be prevented from offering the same services is if, for example, the whole concept of wikis had been patented by someone (highly unlikely as it is). Green Giant (talk) 09:53, 10 August 2015 (UTC)
MediaWiki messages: old translations and outdated stuff
Hello. I've detected that we have translations of MediaWiki messages, for example. Do people object to deletion of those? Also, it'd be good if we could search for all modified MediaWiki messages so we can have a review of them. Mass deletions have been performed by User:MediaWiki default in the past (IIRC operator has been @Krinkle: or @Legoktm:, I do not remember). Thoughts? —MarcoAurelio 21:22, 9 August 2015 (UTC)
- Maybe I'm wrong but there doesn't seem to be consistency in these translations. The example given above is the Basque translations but look at the French, German and Spanish lists and they all seem to cover different messages. I'm guessing that they were done ad hoc, so it worth expanding them or would that be creating unnecessary work? Green Giant (talk) 12:00, 10 August 2015 (UTC)
Heading
Hello, how can i contact people who unblock names in Wikipedia? I would like to edit one with new real info.
Thank you.
- Not sure what you mean? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 09:58, 13 August 2015 (UTC)
Global.js not working?
My global.js file just stopped working on Meta. Still seems to work elsewhere. StevenJ81 (talk) 02:43, 13 August 2015 (UTC)
- Same here. —MarcoAurelio 10:07, 13 August 2015 (UTC)
- My global.js is working perfectly at all wikis, Meta included.--Syum90 (talk) 10:25, 13 August 2015 (UTC)
- This morning (North American EDT) it's working. Maybe the server had something off to eat last night ... StevenJ81 (talk) 13:15, 13 August 2015 (UTC)
- It's working for me again too. —MarcoAurelio 17:51, 13 August 2015 (UTC)
VisualEditor News #4—2015
Read this in another language • Subscription list for this multilingual newsletter
Did you know?
Since the last newsletter, the Editing Team have been working on mobile phone support. They have fixed many bugs and improved language support. They post weekly status reports on mediawiki.org. Their workboard is available in Phabricator. Their current priorities are improving language support and functionality on mobile devices.
Wikimania
The team attended Wikimania 2015 in Mexico City. There they participated in the Hackathon and met with individuals and groups of users. They also made several presentations about VisualEditor and the future of editing.
Following Wikimania, we announced winners for the VisualEditor 2015 Translathon. Our thanks and congratulations to users Halan-tul, Renessaince, जनक राज भट्ट (Janak Bhatta), Vahe Gharakhanyan, Warrakkk, and Eduardogobi.
For interface messages (translated at translatewiki.net), we saw the initiative affecting 42 languages. The average progress in translations across all languages was 56.5% before the translathon, and 78.2% after (+21.7%). In particular, Sakha improved from 12.2% to 94.2%; Brazilian Portuguese went from 50.6% to 100%; Taraškievica went from 44.9% to 85.3%; Doteli went from 1.3% to 41.2%. Also, while 1.7% of the messages were outdated across all languages before the translathon, the percentage dropped to 0.8% afterwards (-0.9%).
For documentation messages (on mediawiki.org), we saw the initiative affecting 24 languages. The average progress in translations across all languages was 26.6% before translathon, and 46.9% after (+20.3%). There were particularly notable achievements for three languages. Armenian improved from 1% to 99%; Swedish, from 21% to 99%, and Brazilian Portuguese, from 34% to 83%. Outdated translations across all languages were reduced from 8.4% before translathon to 4.8% afterwards (-3.6%).
We published some graphs showing the effect of the event on the Translathon page. We thank the translators for participating and the translatewiki.net staff for facilitating this initiative.
Recent improvements
Auto-fill features for citations can be enabled on each Wikipedia. The tool uses the citoid service to convert a URL or DOI into a pre-filled, pre-formatted bibliographic citation. You can see an animated GIF of the quick, simple process at mediawiki.org. So far, about a dozen Wikipedias have enabled the auto-citation tool. To enable it for your wiki, follow the instructions at mediawiki.org.
Your wiki can customize the first section of the special character inserter in VisualEditor. Please follow the instructions at mediawiki.org to put the characters you want at the top. In other changes, if you need to fill in a CAPTCHA and get it wrong, then you can click to get a new one to complete. VisualEditor can now display and edit Vega-based graphs. If you use the Monobook skin, VisualEditor's appearance is now more consistent with other software.
Future changes
The team will be changing the appearance of selected links inside VisualEditor. The purpose is to make it easy to see whether your cursor is inside or outside the link. When you select a link, the link label (the words shown on the page) will be enclosed in a faint box. If you place your cursor inside the box, then your changes to the link label will be part of the link. If you place your cursor outside the box, then it will not. This will make it easy to know when new characters will be added to the link and when they will not.
On the English Wikipedia, 10% of newly created accounts are now offered both the visual and the wikitext editors. A recent controlled trial showed no significant difference in survival or productivity for new users in the short term. New users with access to VisualEditor were very slightly less likely to produce results that needed reverting. You can learn more about this by watching a video of the July 2015 Wikimedia Research Showcase. The proportion of new accounts with access to both editing environments will be gradually increased over time. Eventually all new users have the choice between the two editing environments.
Let's work together
- Share your ideas and ask questions at mw:VisualEditor/Feedback. This feedback page is now using Flow instead of LiquidThreads.
- Can you read and type in Korean or Japanese? Language engineer David Chan needs people who know which tools people use to type in some languages. If you speak Japanese or Korean, you can help him test support for these languages. Please see the instructions at mediawiki.org if you can help.
- If your wiki would like VisualEditor enabled on another namespace, you can file a request in Phabricator. Please include a link to a community discussion about the requested change.
- Please file requests for language-appropriate "Bold" and "Italic" icons for the styling menu in Phabricator.
- The design research team wants to see how real editors work. Please sign up for their research program.
- The weekly task triage meetings continue to be open to volunteers, usually on Tuesdays at 12:00 (noon) PDT (19:00 UTC). Learn how to join the meetings and how to nominate bugs at mw:VisualEditor/Weekly triage meetings. You do not need to attend the meeting to nominate a bug for consideration as a Q1 blocker, though. Instead, go to Phabricator and "associate" the main VisualEditor project with the bug.
If you aren't reading this in your favorite language, then please help us with translations! Subscribe to the Translators mailing list or contact us directly, so that we can notify you when the next issue is ready. Thank you!
—Elitre (WMF), 22:28, 14 August 2015 (UTC)
Asking for endorsement for “Wikipedia Treks Kalindi Khal”
Dear my fellow Wikipedians,
Greetings from Kolkata, India.
I am pleased to inform you that we are going to organize a expedition project “Wikipedia Treks Kalindi Khal” under “Wikipedia Treks Mountain “in September 2015.
This is a high-altitude trekking expedition from Gangotri to Badrinath in the Garhwal Himalayan region of India, targeting all language editions of Wikipedia, Commons, Wikspecies, Wikivoyage and other WMF projects.
The overall purpose of Wikipedia Treks Kalindi Khal is to increase the material related to Himalayan Range with a free license in Wikimedia Commons and improve the quality and increase the amount of articles about diversifying Himalayan mountain range and other respective variety in different languages in Wikipedia. Reaching out to the majority of Himalayan mountain range during this trekking program will not only raise awareness among various community chapters, but also motivate them to contribute to the Wikimedia projects and organize this kind of trekking expedition in future.
I just need an endorsement from all of you for this unique project
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:PEG/Sujay25/Wikipedia_Treks_Kalindi_Khal
Feel free to discuss about the project in the discussion page.
Thanks in advance,
With warm regards,
Sujay25 (talk) 19:37, 18 August 2015 (UTC)
Categories
Since today I'm seeing aditions and removals of pages in categories in Recent Changes. What's the reason for this? Do you feel this is useful? —MarcoAurelio 19:23, 19 August 2015 (UTC)
- See phab:T9148. It's actually one of the most wanted features by users (but as usual there will always be users who do not like some features). --Glaisher (talk) 11:32, 21 August 2015 (UTC)
- Even bot edits such as those from COIBot are now notified on RC.... Any way to disable this? —MarcoAurelio 19:36, 19 August 2015 (UTC)
- Found that on Special:Preferences#Recent changes, you can disable this. —MarcoAurelio 19:38, 19 August 2015 (UTC)
- I feel this should be optional to show. I don't see much value on notifying all pages added and removed from categories. —MarcoAurelio 20:01, 19 August 2015 (UTC)
- Now that option to hide this silly changes from watchlists and recentchanges has been removed from preferences. —MarcoAurelio 19:26, 20 August 2015 (UTC)
- The feature was completely reverted for the time being. --Glaisher (talk) 11:32, 21 August 2015 (UTC)
- Thanks! —MarcoAurelio 11:38, 21 August 2015 (UTC)
- The feature was completely reverted for the time being. --Glaisher (talk) 11:32, 21 August 2015 (UTC)
- Now that option to hide this silly changes from watchlists and recentchanges has been removed from preferences. —MarcoAurelio 19:26, 20 August 2015 (UTC)
New Gadgets namespace
Hi. I notice that new Gadget, Gadget talk, Gadget definition and Gadget definition talk namespaces have been added to the Wikis, but I can not find any instructions on what it is suposed to be there on mw:Extension:Gadgets. Any idea? Thanks. —MarcoAurelio 09:09, 27 August 2015 (UTC)
- Apparently it's to do with gadget management (whatever that means!). It's surprisingly poorly documented. A bit of extra info (and some links) can be found in the archive of the enwiki Village pump (technical) - New "Gadget:" and "Gadget definition:" namespaces?.
Doesn't look like anyone has access to edit the new namespaces yet. WJBscribe (talk) 14:13, 27 August 2015 (UTC)- Hi, thanks. I've asked here at mediawiki for some info and told me that it's still work in progress. Checking the permissions page, I see that new edit rights are required to edit such namespace. —MarcoAurelio 20:20, 27 August 2015 (UTC)
Being blocked
Hi Meta Wiki Apparently I have been blocked for long term abuse by a person called Ruy Pugliesi - and I do not understand why. I think it must be a mistake. I have only written two wiki-texts in my life, long time ago, and apart for a few missing notes I have not been accused of abuse. So why now? I hope you can solve this problem, because I have a small correction to the wiki-texts I have created. Best, Mette Olsen — The preceding unsigned comment was added by Mette Olsen64 (talk) 13:02 28 ago 2015 (UTC)
- Hi Mette Olsen64. Your IP address was globally blocked, so you should make a request here, and a Steward will add to your account the global IP block exemption permission :) Matiia (talk) 16:14, 28 August 2015 (UTC)
IP Addresses
How can one find an IP of another user? --Skyllfully (talk | contribs) 04:01, 29 August 2015 (UTC)
- Only users with checkuser rights are allowed to check other users IP per CheckUser policy. --Glaisher (talk) 08:25, 29 August 2015 (UTC)
General discussion on allowing or rejecting fair use at Meta
- The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.
On 30 April 2013 I nominated a lot of unfree files for deletion, following previous unfree file deletions, as per wmf:Resolution:Licensing policy. Meta does not have an EDP so fair use material isn't allowed here. This RfD stalled and was put on hold in August 2014. As of today and in spite of several attempts of having that discussion closed and a result enacted (#1, #2 and #3) this is still pending. Trying to unlock the situation I think that we should first decide if Meta-Wiki wants to allow fair use here. If that option passes, then we can start discussing about different EDP proposals. Meta:Exemption doctrine policy is an advanced draft, but has some discussion. It serves nothing however, IMHO, discussing it if we decide not to allow fair use here. —MarcoAurelio 15:12, 21 July 2015 (UTC)
- Oppose fair use. This wiki is not and has never been very interested on multimedia maintenance. Looking for example at Category:Images with unknown source and Category:Images with unknown license one can guess that (the deletion policy does not help too). The upload restrictions we enacted a couple of years ago have demonstrated that Meta can and has survived without the need of local uploads, and chapters and other organizations here started to use the central repository making files avalaible for everyone. However the cleanup of remaining images is still pending, because simply nobody seems to be interested or feels overwhelmed by the ammount of file problems we have, unresolved since a lot of years and with no signs of improvement in a near future. If we ain't able or not interested to solve past problems, I feel that we should not take additional responsabilities in mantaining hypothetical new images which needs careful control (check if the file is used, if it's properly licensed, has a fair use rationale which is valid, etc.). Thanks. —MarcoAurelio 15:12, 21 July 2015 (UTC)
- I Support a very limited scope of fair use on this wiki, as outlined in the proposed Meta:Exemption doctrine policy. In particular, chapters that do not have their own website may need to upload financial audits and the like to this wiki, even though the documents are not released under a free license for whatever reason. I would be very interested to hear from chapters or other affiliated groups, to see whether or not they would make use of this provision - if they say it is not necessary we can forgo it.
As for the no-FoP images mentioned in that proposed policy, I am not sure why we need such images, but I once again defer to the knowledge of others. Other than those two narrow cases, I do not support the upload of other other non-free media here as I don't see why free media cannot suffice. This, that and the other (talk) 15:21, 21 July 2015 (UTC)
- Oppose I agree with MarcoAurelio. Matiia (talk) 16:38, 21 July 2015 (UTC)
- Oppose fair use. No need. --Krd 16:45, 21 July 2015 (UTC)
- Oppose fair use on Meta. If any files are needed for use on Meta, they should be free-licensed and uploaded to Commons. I would also like to draw attention to the hidden categories for no machine-readable author, description, license, or source, which do overlap but contain 1400+ files between them. Green Giant (talk) 17:00, 21 July 2015 (UTC)
- Oppose fair use. In addition, I think that Commons is a much better place to mantain and manage files, there are many users with much experience and practice for do it there; so, in my opinion all files should be moved to Commons and removed from here.--Syum90 (talk) 16:55, 21 July 2015 (UTC)
- Oppose No need for this on Meta. Jianhui67 talk★contribs 17:07, 23 July 2015 (UTC)
- Oppose non-free images here. I respect This, that and the other's statement, but think narrow cases such as financial audits can be handled outside of this project. --Hammersoft (talk) 17:36, 23 July 2015 (UTC)
- Support As I mentioned below we should allow low quality logos on pages pertaining to collaborations we have with other entities without the other entity having to release their logo under an open license. We can already use WMF logos even though they are not under an open license here. Thus we are already making this exception for us. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 22:19, 23 July 2015 (UTC)
- Support per Doc James. I note that Wikimedia logos are available under a free license now, but I think a specific exemption for logos of partnering organizations is appropriate. harej (talk) 22:22, 23 July 2015 (UTC)
- Does that include the Wikipedia logo User:Harej? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 22:27, 23 July 2015 (UTC)
- Yes. harej (talk) 22:30, 23 July 2015 (UTC)
- Does that include the Wikipedia logo User:Harej? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 22:27, 23 July 2015 (UTC)
- Oppose, there's no need to have non-free files at Meta. --NaBUru38 (talk) 15:47, 28 July 2015 (UTC)
- Support limited fair use per Meta:Exemption doctrine policy. I see at least three cases where files cannot be hosted elsewhere and need to be on Meta: firstly, official letters and documents (e.g. support letters for Wikimania bids, audit reports of Wikimedia chapters: they are often copyrighted but are necessary for use on Meta pages), secondly, images in NoFoP countries (otherwise countries without freedom of panorama would have a strong disadvantage bidding for Wikimania, as they will either have to choose pre-1940s venues or have bids without photos), thirdly, logos of partners of Wikimedia events (less necessary but sometimes requested by partners). All of these uses are clearly within scope of Meta and cannot be hosted at Commons — NickK (talk) 12:19, 29 July 2015 (UTC)
- I think that official documents by third parties involved with Wikimedia activities should be released under free licenses. And most trademarked logos aren't an issue, since they are simple geometry. --NaBUru38 (talk) 23:27, 30 July 2015 (UTC)
- That's quite a good dream (that all documents received by Wikimedia organisations and free and all logos are simple geometry). However, it is not that true. For example, we have File:HKTB support letter - wikimania 2013.pdf, a support letter for Wikimania clearly within scope. If this organisation releases the letter under a free license, we will have a free alternative to en:File:HKTourismBoard.svg, something they will clearly disagree with. Another example: File:DomOmladine.jpg, logo of a key partner of Wikimedia CEE Meeting 2012. Should we tell them that they should change their logo if they want us to display it as it is too complex? I would be glad if all third-party Wikimedia partners would release their logos and letters under free licenses, but we must manage to live in a world where such miracle did not happen — NickK (talk) 15:58, 31 July 2015 (UTC)
- I think that official documents by third parties involved with Wikimedia activities should be released under free licenses. And most trademarked logos aren't an issue, since they are simple geometry. --NaBUru38 (talk) 23:27, 30 July 2015 (UTC)
- Support I don't see the need for such rigid rules in this project. We are not in Commons. Banfield - Reclamos aquí 12:35, 30 July 2015 (UTC)
- Agree :-) We are here to promote Wikimedia projects and the Wikimedia movement in general. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 16:14, 3 August 2015 (UTC)
- Oppose Fair use, that's no-no. Maybe yes in Contents project (Wikipedis, Wikinews, etc) but not for backstage meta-wiki. — regards, Revi 19:51, 3 August 2015 (UTC)
- The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.
The consensus is that fair use should not be allowed on Meta. Therefore, there will be no EDP. --MF-W 22:12, 28 August 2015 (UTC)
- @MF-Warburg: Could you please tell where we should host non-free working documents like Wikimania support letters? I see that for 2016 Wikimania bids they were uploaded on Commons under fake licenses (like File:Letter of suppor to Wikimania Esino Lario by the Comunità montana della Valsassina Valvarrone Val d'Esino e Riviera.pdf or File:2016 Wikimania Letter of Support by Mensa Philippines.pdf containing clearly non-free logos), is that what we should do? — NickK (talk) 11:01, 30 August 2015 (UTC)
- Using fake licenses is of course not a good thing to do (niether here nor on Commons). Maybe some chapter wikis or so can be used. --MF-W 21:35, 30 August 2015 (UTC)
- Well, the solution would be to put these documents into the scope of Meta fair use. In this very case both Esino Lario and Manila teams would not be able to publish support letters: Wikimedia Italia website is not a wiki, and Manila bid was made by volunteers but not by a chapter. Yes, they have found a turnaround solution (i.e. publishing these documents on Commons under a fake license), as the only other option would be not publishing these documents at all. But I do think we need a more obvious solution — NickK (talk) 23:13, 30 August 2015 (UTC)
- Using fake licenses is of course not a good thing to do (niether here nor on Commons). Maybe some chapter wikis or so can be used. --MF-W 21:35, 30 August 2015 (UTC)