Meta:Babel/Archives/2020-12

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2020 Coolest Tool Award Ceremony on December 11th

Hello all,

The ceremony of the 2020 Wikimedia Coolest Tool Award will take place virtually on Friday, December 11th, at 17:00 GMT. This award is highlighting tools that have been nominated by contributors to the Wikimedia projects, and the ceremony will be a nice moment to show appreciation to the tools developers and maybe discover new tools!

You will find more information here about the livestream and the discussions channels. Thanks for your attention, Lea Lacroix (WMDE) 10:55, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

This section was archived on a request by: —MarcoAurelio (talk) 21:51, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

Community Wishlist Survey 2021

We invite all registered users to vote on the 2021 Community Wishlist Survey. You can vote from now until 21 December for as many different wishes as you want.

In the Survey, wishes for new and improved tools for experienced editors are collected. After the voting, we will do our best to grant your wishes. We will start with the most popular ones.

We, the Community Tech, are one of the Wikimedia Foundation teams. We create and improve editing and wiki moderation tools. What we work on is decided based on results of the Community Wishlist Survey. Once a year, you can submit wishes. After two weeks, you can vote on the ones that you're most interested in. Next, we choose wishes from the survey to work on. Some of the wishes may be granted by volunteer developers or other teams.

We are waiting for your votes. Thank you!

SGrabarczuk (WMF)

15:03, 11 December 2020 (UTC)

This section was archived on a request by: —MarcoAurelio (talk) 21:51, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

Possibility of using UTRS / OTRS to handle block appeals

Hello, per this, there is a discussion of the possibility of using UTRS on meta to handle appeals. I don't quite know what the system is but if I think it as OTRS queue, it seems attractive. We had countless users who should have either email / talkpage access revoked but we didn't for either one is due to the fact we wanted to leave them a possiblity to appeal. Currently the framework is that blocked users can appeal on talkpage, if talkpage is blocked they can do so via emailing one of us (typically they will have a link to the blocked admin). This isn't desirable for some who have no decency to keep email secrect, and us replying to them using our emails risks us being exposed by them and subsequently likely outing and etc. There is also another group of users who spam emails and hence got their email access revoked and mostly TPA too. In addition, the emailing of single admins isn't the most transparent ones, no one can track how many admins they emailed, neither can the appeal process being reviewed by other admins. A consolidated system seems attractive to me, and hence, I will suggest we change the appeal process for revoked TPA users to a queue, either via admin mailing lists / OTRS queue / UTRS (?) Camouflaged Mirage (talk) 16:32, 1 December 2020 (UTC)

UTRS is a totally different thing than OTRS. I think both will be ok for the intended task, but please let's not use both for that at the same time. --Krd 16:54, 1 December 2020 (UTC)
I think block appeals should stay as on-wiki as possible. UTRS may come useful however for cases like IP hardblocks where appealing on-wiki would mean publicly disclosing the user's IP address. For everything else {{unblock}} seems to work just fine. Thanks. —MarcoAurelio (talk) 18:38, 1 December 2020 (UTC)
@MarcoAurelio Yeah, I am just thinking of those exceptions, as well as cases where we don't want the user to have onwiki talkpage access as if they appeal, they may continue the libel / etc. I am just thinking of a way (one avenue only, to clarify @Krd point above) to handle appeals for users with TPA revoked. These cases can be very few but at least we have something to give them, although they may not deserve this avenue, rather than needing them to email us individually. Camouflaged Mirage (talk) 18:49, 1 December 2020 (UTC)
Another useful case is handling appeals of global locks. Though here is not the proper place to discuss such issue.--GZWDer (talk) 18:45, 1 December 2020 (UTC)
@GZWDer For global locks, they can already email stewards{{at}}wikimedia.org. There is already this rather than emailing individual stewards, I am just proposing such an infrastructure for meta. Camouflaged Mirage (talk) 18:51, 1 December 2020 (UTC)

Donations - show the editors you care?

I had the misfortune of visiting Wikipedia logged-out the other day, and was struck by the large size of the donation banner, and the odd wording of the appeal. (Something about awkward and humble.) Re-checking now, the "awkward" bit is gone, but the following sentences are still there:

"If Wikipedia has given you $2.75 worth of knowledge, take a minute to donate. Show the editors who bring you neutral and verified information that their work matters."

As an occasional editor I want to know: how do the donations show me that the work matters? Is there some W?F "appreciation fund" that's going to start handing out disbursements to editors? Will the money hire more dev's to implement all the unfinished items from the Community Wishlists? Will funds be used to run better "community consultations" where the communities are actually listened to? Or is it just a big fat cynical marketing lie?

Pelagic (talk) 12:19, 6 December 2020 (UTC)

It's very sad indeed that WMF is telling people that money is the only thing showing that something matters. Maybe it has something to do with the Silicon Valley culture; sounds inappropriate, or even immoral, in many other cultures.
Note that this has nothing to do with Meta-Wiki, so it shouldn't be on Babel. You may try Talk:Fundraising. Nemo 13:40, 6 December 2020 (UTC)
Hello @Pelagic:, I think that you made a fair point: the wording sounds as if the donation go directly to the editors. Would you start this thread again on the page that Nemo mentioned? Kind regards Ziko (talk) 10:49, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

If a user who is blocked from posting on at least one local wiki works on another project, is it all "vandalism"?

It is as the title. For example, a user is blocked on English Wikipedia (Enwiki) because of a sock puppet or vandalism. Suppose the user has been banished from enwiki and has been active on a wiki in another language, for example jawiki or other projects like Wiktionary. In this case, should the user be unconditionally blocked by another project because he is an exiled user from the enWiki, even if the user has not done any vandalism other than enwiki? What if the user makes useful edits without vandalism outside of enwiki? In such a case, should we uniformly and unconditionally regard it as "cross-wiki-vandalism" and lock it globally without asking questions? In my opinion, if you're only vandalizing a particular project, unconditionally blocking or global locking on other projects might be overkill. In such a case, I think that a local block is enough. Of course, I think this is case by case. Even if the vandalism is only for a specific project, it depends on the maliciousness of the vandalism. For example, users who cause serious legal issues such as death threats and defamation may need to be blocked without question. However, I have only expressed my own opinions and views. So I would like to hear your opinions. --Hurants (talk) 14:08, 15 December 2020 (UTC)

This is Meta:Babel where we discuss Metawiki issues, so I will answer only in that perspective with my opinion. I would not block you on this wiki solely due to you having a block on another wiki. Our rules would allow me to block you for vandalism on this wiki alone. Each wiki has their own policy/rules, so I suggest you base an imposition of a rule based on their local rules.  — billinghurst sDrewth 22:31, 15 December 2020 (UTC)

Add Wikispecies.org and Wikimediafoundation.org to w.wiki

Now this sites are unavailable for URL shorting. My proposal is to add them. Фред-Продавец звёзд (talk) 20:19, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

species.wikimedia.org already works. The request for wikimediafoundation.org is filed as phab:T222089. Hope that helps. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 21:38, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

Proposal to move User:Quentinv57/HideButtonsFromNonGsProjects.js to MediaWiki namespace

Hello. Unfortunatelly it looks like Quentinv57 is no longer around but script seems to be used by a number of stewards/global sysops. Xaosflux and myself proposed in October and December 2020 respectively that this script be moved to the MediaWiki namespace for easier community maintenance. Thoughts? —MarcoAurelio (talk) 12:52, 12 December 2020 (UTC)

┌─────────┘
 I went ahead and copied the code at MediaWiki:HideButtonsFromNonGsProjects.js. DannyS712 may want to update links to the new page if they're still interested. —MarcoAurelio (talk) 15:50, 3 January 2021 (UTC)

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