Please do not post any new comments on this page. This is a discussion archive first created in February 2017, although the comments contained were likely posted before and after this date. See current discussion or the archives index.
Request for MassMessage sender rights
Hi, I'm the global coordinator of the Wikipedia Library. I look after global outreach, reaching out to coordinators of the Wikipedia Library on non-English Wikipedias. In that role I wish to send global mass messages to coordinators and I'd like to have the MassMessage sender rights. Thanks—UY ScutiTalk18:44, 6 February 2017 (UTC)
@Framawiki and MarcoAurelio:: it's not a spelling mistake, can you auto-revert, MarcAurelio, pls? There is 1 "politique", not 2. Explanation in french for Framawiki : il s'agit d'une part de la politique de confidentialité (elle est unique), et d'autre part des conditions d'utilisation (qui sont au pluriel). Reformulé, pour bien te rendre compte qu'il n'y a pas de faute, cela donne : « Le site fun-mooc.fr est soumis à sa propre politique de confidentialité et à ses propres conditions d'utilisation. » ;-) Jules WMFr (talk) 10:09, 7 February 2017 (UTC)
Hi, I'm a coordinator of Whose Knowledge?. Being able to mass message folks who participate in our user group activities across wikis would be really helpful. I've used Mass Message (and global message delivery before that) from my former User:Siko (WMF) account without breaking anything. Possible to have this right added to my volunteer account? Thanks! Siko (talk) 02:11, 8 February 2017 (UTC)
Ah or not, the one for which I published is the Inspire know banner, not Inspire knowledge. Looking into it, though the knowledge one is now disabled it seems. --Base (talk) 20:41, 13 February 2017 (UTC)
There's indeed something strange, as I have marked the Finnish CNBanners as published as well, but the texts are still shown in English. Stryn (talk) 13:43, 13 February 2017 (UTC)
By the way are you sure you don't see the Inspire know banner? Inspire knowledge campaign seems to be sisabled since 31 of January if I am not misreading those hard to grasp CN logs. --Base (talk) 20:44, 13 February 2017 (UTC)
Oh I see Inspire know has link to Inspire knowledge banner translation that must have caused the commotion, heh. --Base (talk) 20:47, 13 February 2017 (UTC)
Ukrainian and Suomi should be fine now I want to believe, I've copypasted the translation for the latter one. But there are still like two dozen of other languages with the same problem meh meh meh. --Base (talk) 20:56, 13 February 2017 (UTC)
Thanks for the help. I wonder who's idea was to create 2 different banners (or same, I don't understand anymore) with the same texts... Stryn (talk) 20:58, 13 February 2017 (UTC)
I wasn't aware. Oh it is just wonderful. Not only we have several dozens of misplaced translations because of the wrong link but some of them are characterized as bizarre.. I guess I will move all the translations anyway, if some of them are found to be bad they can be deleted, though the situation really sucks :/ --Base (talk) 21:26, 13 February 2017 (UTC)
Ah I see so the problems were technical, that is ok then. I was afraid it was a comment about translations quality. I am going on then with clear conscience. --Base (talk) 21:29, 13 February 2017 (UTC)
Yeah. Sorry about the trouble, and thanks for calling my attention to it. Seddon and I have agreed that standard language for these campaigns going ahead will be better so these sorts of translation issues can be avoided. I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 21:33, 13 February 2017 (UTC)
I've moved I think all the translations from the old banner, approved those where first message was translated. I am done with this, if someone wants to approve some more they are welcome :) --Base (talk) 22:10, 13 February 2017 (UTC)
Protected edit request on 14 February 2017 – Talk:Spam blacklist/Archives/2007-08
Hello. AN Oversighter has been accused and removed access. See this link. However on Oversight policy in Metawiki, this user is still on the list of local Oversighter of Chinese Wikipedia. Please remove this user from the list on Oversight policy and several translated pages. --Techyan（Talk） 05:27, 14 February 2017 (UTC)
I am among the editors active on Marathi (MrWp) Since I am confused where to ask for help in the matter please guide me if I am wrong. I wanted 2 bots for the MrWp 1=sinebot for signing pages and 2=A bot which will catagorise untagged (unlicensed) pictures on the Marathi Wikipedia. Do assist me with the same.--Tiven2240 (talk) 13:11, 14 February 2017 (UTC)
@Tiven2240: hi, this page is intended only to request administrative actions to be performed on this wiki, Meta. If you want to request the bot flag for any bot to perform actions at the Marathi Wikipedia you should go to mr:विकिपीडिया:Bot. If you want to request the asistence of any bot to perform actions at the Marathi Wikipedia you can request it at the village pump on the Marathi Wikipedia or at the Wikimedia Forum. You can also request the asistence of any bot at the talk page of its controller. Regards.--Syum90 (talk) 11:49, 18 February 2017 (UTC)
I have just blanked user:Frank Dambe and received a vandalism warning for my pains. If I had seen the page on Wikipedia I would have zapped it instantly as a fake article. If you allow such here on meta, feel free to revert my edit. RHaworth (talk) 12:34, 17 February 2017 (UTC)
Thanks revi, probably he is referring to these warnings. As revi says it's better to add the template {{Delete}} instead of blanking the page in order to avoid activating a filter. Regards.--Syum90 (talk) 11:57, 18 February 2017 (UTC)
inspire campaign banner has unset image dimensions
Hi, the Centralbanner for the inspire campaign has (once again) no dimensions for the image that it includes. This is HUGELY disruptive during the loading phase of the pages. Please fix immediately.—TheDJ (talk • contribs) 20:12, 22 February 2017 (UTC)
@TheDJ: I've never noticed this issue before, so thanks for bringing it up. The dimensions are defined, but I never saw an instance where a full image would be plastered all over the page when the banner was loaded. I've reduced the size of the source image. I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 00:45, 25 February 2017 (UTC)
This happens whenever the JS is loaded before the CSS is loaded (pretty common in low connectivity situations). If you don't set the width and height of the img element, it will take the default size (and SVGs can have a rather large default size). You should NEVER EVER have an img element without specifying the width and height attribute or alternatively a width and height in the inline style attribute of the img element. We enforce this pretty strictly in MediaWiki core and WMF extensions, but unfortunately the CentralNotice system has HTML and CSS that isn't properly linted, nor code reviewed. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 22:42, 25 February 2017 (UTC)
I'm failing at 2FA
Having had three broken cell phones in the course of a few weeks I have managed to lose both my authenticator app and my scratch codes (or at least I have yet to find them in what backups I managed to make). I'm hoping there is some way I can regain access through other means of verification. Any help would be greatly appreciated. VernoWhitney (talk) 21:53, 28 February 2017 (UTC)
Since I cannot due so on my own talk page I will request here. I request my account, Reguyla be unblocked. I cannot request there because it has been restricted to admin only. 138.162.0.4120:34, 28 February 2017 (UTC)
I would indeed rather have you editing with your account than with changing IPs, but I think Stemoc has made clear that his unblock might have been the last one. Why do you think that you deserve yet another chance to make use of editing privileges on this wiki? --Vogone (talk) 22:36, 28 February 2017 (UTC)
It's been years of this nonsense, and unfortunately my willingness to listen probably caused it to go on longer than it should have. Reguyla has repeatedly shown that he's here primarily to whine and harass. Even today, he was accusing me of blocking him just so he couldn't oppose my steward confirmation (because I have so much difficulty at those, I guess?). The bad faith lies just continue without a blink. Let's just stop that cycle. Revert, block, ignore. – Ajraddatz (talk) 22:50, 28 February 2017 (UTC)
Just in case anyone isn't aware, I've been reverting further edits by Reguyla here. He has appealed the block - any admin can comment on that or overturn it, I don't care. But so long as the indef block remains, I will continue to enforce it. – Ajraddatz (talk) 18:57, 1 March 2017 (UTC)
Removal off file mass message rights
I would like to request the removal off the mass message sender rights off EGalvez (WMF). There is a lack of competence and he uses the rights for unwanted spam and persist.
There was the reference-issue which had to be fixed and caused a lot of trouble
Complaints from NL-wiki because there is spam. The mailbot even had to be blocked.
Now there is spam at Wikimedia Commons and because blocked and locked users were included an admin blocked the bot.
The opt out function is terrible (only by mail). EGalvez knows that several users find that his message which is merely a reminder is spam and yet he continues to spam wiki’s.
Please revoke his access since randomly sending people messages in foreign languages can hardly be called in scope. Any volunteer who would do this would likely be warned after the first spam run and have his access revoked after the second spam run. The same should apply to WMF-staff who are not volunteers and therefore should know better. Natuur12 (talk) 14:20, 24 February 2017 (UTC)
Support removal. Mass messaging should be used cautiously and is a right that should be limited to appropriately experienced community members. The multiple complaints have not been addressed, and this has gone on so long it seems obvious that community complaints are being ignored. There should be no different expectation for competence, or at which stage action must be taken, whether someone incorrectly using their granted rights is a volunteer or a WMF employee. @JSutherland (WMF): as granting admin may wish to comment. --Fæ (talk) 15:05, 24 February 2017 (UTC)
EGalvez (WMF) could you provide any input on this please? Unless I receive a confirmation that you are not going to message users who haven't opted-in anymore I am afraid I would indeed need to remove your MassMessage sender flag as communities blocking MediaWiki message delivery bot as the last resort led to a hugely disruptive state of affairs leaving interested users without important things such as Tech news. I suggest you also try to have MassMessages translated before sending it out, so that speakers of languages with many active translators do not get unnecessary posts in English. You can ask any active translate admin for help, and guys from the staff managing afore mentioned Tech news know how to send such messages out in pretty way. I am also pinding Jalexander-WMF and Mdennis (WMF) as dealing with staffers' userrights to be aware of the situation. Just in case it helps anyone, one can also force reject indiscriminately all MassMessages from his talk page by categorysing it into category mentioned in Mediawiki:Massmessage-optout-category ([[Category:{{int:Massmessage-optout-category}}]]). In case there's no improvement to the situation I am going to execute the removal and suggest to other admins to do the same if I am not around. I am not doing it right away only because a staffer can just as easily get rights restored so the communication way is more positive solution prone I believe. --Base (talk) 22:52, 24 February 2017 (UTC)
Hi Base! I appreciate you giving me a chance to share what is happening on my end. I also didn't realize that the message delivery blocks also blocked other messages - which makes me feel terrible and I am sorry. I have just spoken with Jalexander-WMF about this as well. We are not sending any more messages about this survey this year and I acknowledge that we must figure out less intrusive ways to send out the survey next year. We are going to be reaching out for feedback to those who opted in about how the survey went for them and how we can improve. I also want to reach out to those who posted on my talk page (and other spaces) about the survey to have individual conversations for feedback. About translation, I did work with the folks who send out Tech News messages to help me and I did translate the message into 12 languages (since the survey was translated into 12 languages). This is the first time we have done the survey in this way, and we are learning, and we plan to make improvements based on feedback next year. Again I really apologize for the disruption this has caused. Thanks --EGalvez (WMF) (talk) 00:05, 25 February 2017 (UTC)
"I also didn't realize that the message delivery blocks also blocked other messages - which makes me feel terrible and I am sorry." - it is concerning that a holder of the right does not know this, and if it were entirely up to me I would suggest removal. We expect better of our volunteers (any volunteer who did this would have had the rights removed by now), and even more so for WMF staff.
I've just skimmed User talk:EGalvez (WMF), and so far it seems to be the classic pattern of WMF doing something controversial -> the community gives constructive criticism -> WMF minimally addresses the concerns -> the community complains louder -> WMF doesn't do anything -> the community gives up and asks WMF to pull the plug on the whole thing.
For what it's worth, I might have been interested in participating in the survey too but did not as I felt uninvited. There must have been a better way than randomly spamming people. --Rschen775401:32, 25 February 2017 (UTC)
@Natuur12, Fæ, Base, Rschen7754: I really understand your reasonable anger, but please re-think who you are attacking. Edward (EGalvez) is not a volunteer like we are; his actions are not done in his free decision. That he did a kind of messaging he was not properly prepared to do is very annoying for us volunteers, but he has done this on advice of his disciplinarians, and they are responsible for giving him the advice and (not) the knowledge how to do so. That WMF failed again in teaching their staff basic principles of Wiki communication is an urgent issue, but has to be addressed otherwise: @Jimbo Wales and Katherine (WMF): please answer our questions if and how you are planning to improve your staff's on-wiki abilities to avoid such frequent controversial clashes with volunteers in the future? --.js[democracyneeded]15:02, 25 February 2017 (UTC)
WMF needs to know they should always do things on "opt-in" basis, not "opt-out" basis or sending messages randomly. (Well, that messaging behavior is perfect "unsolicited bulk messages".) That being said, I fully support the removal. — regards, Revi13:22, 2 March 2017 (UTC)
Hello all - my apologies for the lack of response on my part. As you can imagine, this was not a situation where I wanted to make a public statement before making sure I understood the whole context. This is a complicated situation, since Edward's role really does depend on alerting the projects to ongoing efforts to engage the communities with Wikimedia Foundation activity. Edward has acknowledged that he made mistakes in his use of the tool, and I do think he's genuinely willing to improve his processes going forward. As he’s indicated, there are no plans for more outreach related to this annual survey. He's working with his higher-ups at the Foundation to help with next steps regarding future mailouts. I don't think his actions constitute abuse of the tool - there is no manual for the use of this tool at this time, and those of you who have used the tool in the past will know how easy it is to make mistakes with it. I think that the clarification of expectations for all mass message tool users is something that needs to be improved going forward - not only for the benefit of staff who might be inexperienced with using the tool, but for everyone else as well. It’s an intimidating tool. Joe Sutherland (WMF) (talk) 22:17, 7 March 2017 (UTC)
WMF financial development So you generally blame it on the evil tool and a little bit on your fellow co-worker, but you @JSutherland (WMF) and Katherine (WMF): refuse to take any responsibility for not creating any procedures educating your staff how to communicate with the global volunteers. While that approach was already sloppy in the mid-2000s, it is really desastrous in 2017 with $ 92,000,000 in your cupboards. --.js(((☎)))15:05, 10 March 2017 (UTC)
Done --Az1568 (talk) 05:54, 14 February 2017 (UTC)
![[2]](https://i.snag.gy/Js54vi.jpg){kind=link}