Talk:Diff (blog)
Add topicThis page is for discussions related to the Diff (blog) page. Please remember to:
|  |
Requesting to add Iban language into Diff
[edit]Hi, I would like to be able to write Diff posts in the Iban language. This is the detail of the language:
Native name: Jaku Iban ISO 639-2: iba
Thank you in advance Song GK (talk) 23:45, 27 July 2025 (UTC)
- @Song GK, I just saw this request and apolgoize for not responding sooner. Is this something you would still like us to add? Happy to do so if the desire is still there! :) Chris Koerner (Wikimedia Foundation) [he/him] (talk) 17:07, 5 January 2026 (UTC)
- Yes, would really love it if you add it. No worries about the late response :) Song GK (talk) 23:48, 5 January 2026 (UTC)
- Great! I have added Jaku Iban to Diff. You can now write in (and translate to) Jaku Iban. Look for the Language menu on the sidebar when writing a post. :) Chris Koerner (Wikimedia Foundation) [he/him] (talk) 15:17, 7 January 2026 (UTC)
- Yes, would really love it if you add it. No worries about the late response :) Song GK (talk) 23:48, 5 January 2026 (UTC)
Traffic stats
[edit]In a Discord discussion about the ongoing Wikinews controversy, I was told about Diff. How much traffic does Diff get? How many people visit, and what are the most popular posts? AtUkr(talk to me) 20:05, 30 November 2025 (UTC)
- In 2025 Diff saw about 256,000 visitors with 590,000 views. For context, our primary audience are folks involved in the movement. The top 5 most viewed posts in 2025 are:
- How crawlers impact the operations of the Wikimedia projects
- New User Trends on Wikipedia
- Get ready to rock 'n' scroll: Here are the English Wikipedia's ten longest featured articles [We really need to write a new one of these!]
- Meet the Wikimedians of the Year 2025
- Making sure AI serves people and knowledge stays human: Wikimedia Foundation publishes a Human Rights Impact Assessment on the interaction of AI and machine learning with Wikimedia projects
- These stats should be taken with a grain of salt. We've seen an increase in automated traffic that (AI crawlers and the like) in the last calendar year that has skewed some of these statistics. We don't track people, so these stats are devices, which means they're not a 1:1. There's also a very long tail of blog post, in which many posts see traffic, but do not make the "popular" list. For additional context, in 2025 we published nearly 2,000 blog posts from hundreds of individual authors across the movement. Chris Koerner (Wikimedia Foundation) [he/him] (talk) 17:06, 5 January 2026 (UTC)
Blogpost Credits
[edit]- The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
- Dr. Muzammil raised concerns regarding proper author attribution for WMF blog posts, a position that was endorsed by five fellow Wikipedians. The Diff blog team responded promptly by correcting the anomaly and encouraged the blog post author to continue and expand his efforts in studying Wikimedia communities and high-profile community members across the world.
Dear @Asaf, @Chris Koerner and other members of the blog team!
Over the years, I have written 35 blog posts for the Wikimedia Foundation. Except for the India Community Consultation post, which was genuinely co-authored by me and Asaf, none of the other blogs were authored or coauthored by anyone else.
I really appreciate people like Carlos who helped me with my work initially.
During the period when my only focus was to contribute WMF blogs, Samir Sharbaty—who was hired later—primarily edited blog posts that were researched and written entirely by me. However, in several instances, his name was placed before mine, and in some cases after mine, as a co-author. Subsequently, Ed Erhart also followed the same pattern. This attribution does not accurately reflect the nature of contribution.
Additionally, prolonged delays in editorial responses significantly constrained my ability to profile other Wikipedians and Wikimedia communities in a timely manner.
I therefore respectfully request that the unnecessary authorship credits—specifically the names of Samir Sharbaty and Ed Erhart—be removed from my WMF/Diff blog posts, where their role was limited to editorial assistance. It was I who spotted high ranking contributors, events, projects, prepared questionnaires and writeups based on the questionnaires.
It is also shameful that the WMF staff did not shy away from claiming coauthorship of even obituary blogs I wrote!
I also request you to provide details to any person I can reach out to in publishing some of the important blogs which remained unpublished because enormous delays such as my blog on WMF-NIH Collaboration.
Appended: List of my blogposts and along with those blogposts where needlessly blog team members (Ed & Samir) added their names:
Dr. Muzammil (talk) 06:50, 27 December 2025 (UTC)- This is very weird. I thought such co-authoring used to happen only in the broken academia. @Mayur-WMF/@RAdimer-WMF/@AAlikhan (WMF)/@RASharma (WMF); @Hindustanilanguage is one of the very trusted members of the Urdu language community, and has formerly been an admin and a bureaucrat on Urdu Wikipedia. Playing around with him to give credits to others isn't anyway appropriate and should be investigated. signed, Aafi (talk) 03:40, 28 December 2025 (UTC)
- In the capacity of a Teacher, a Trainer and a Wikipedian, I attribute this absolute attiude of pilferage,by the psuedo and easy going Co contributors, as an act liable to be admonished. In long run it may even termitize the basics of the noble concept of Wikimedia Foundation, besides bringing the morale of @Hindustanilanguageto the nought level.It is also alarming as Admins, Observers please intervene Drcenjary (talk) 14:39, 31 December 2025 (UTC)
- I agree with the concern raised above. This is also standard practice in reputable news portals and editorial platforms, where the original writer is credited as the sole author, while subsequent editorial input is acknowledged separately as ‘Edited by’ or ‘Updated by’. Co-authorship is used only when multiple individuals have substantively written the piece. Khaatir (talk) 08:22, 1 January 2026 (UTC)
- @Hindustanilanguage Faranjuned (talk) 13:40, 2 January 2026 (UTC)
This is absolutely weird and should be investigated. How a user can claim the editorial rights id the sole word was done by the actual author.it should be investigated and the appropriate action should be taken by the concerned team.Faismeen (talk) 07:27, 1 January 2026 (UTC)
- Muzammil Sahab @Hindustanilanguage is a senior, active, and experienced member of the Wikipedia community. Especially on Urdu Wikipedia, countless users have benefited from his scholarly contributions and guidance, which are truly commendable.
- Such actions regarding credit in the blogs and articles written by him are unacceptable. We strongly urge the Wikipedia community to stand with Muzammil bhai in this matter, because if this can happen to him today, it can happen to any other contributor tomorrow.
- With a sense of responsibility, we are raising our voice and formally registering our protest so that such practices are stopped and do not continue in the future. Faranjuned (talk) 13:48, 2 January 2026 (UTC)
(Moving Chris' Comment below for clarity in communication)
- Hi Dr. Muzammil, I'm sorry for the upset this has caused. I have looked into this. The most recent post with co-authors was over 7 years ago, and these were all published on blog.wikimedia.org. That site shut down in 2018, and its post archive was included in diff.wikimedia.org, where you see them now. There’s a note at the bottom of each clarifying that they were published under different editorial standards.
- On spot-checks via the Internet Archive, it appears the staff editors' names were indeed included at the time of publishing. This is not a recent change and was not done to take any sort of credit from you! This is how the posts appeared when they were first published between 7 and 11 years ago.
- I'm seeing that these broadly fall into two types of posts: community digests where you wrote a section of the post and Ed/Samir wrote other sections of the post (where we should not change the authors, as the sections are distinct), and interviews where the article text notes that you did the interviews and Ed/Samir worked on the post.
- For example, the most recent such article includes at the bottom: "Interview by Muzammiluddin Syed" and "Profile by Samir Elsharbaty". If this does not accurately reflect their contributions, we'd be happy to change this, and we likewise want to emphasize that this was by no means an intentional change in who receives credit. These are how these posts appeared when they were first published years ago.
- Going forward if you have any questions about Diff, the current active community blog, please leave them on the talk page for Diff. I almost missed seeing this after coming back from the new year break! Chris Koerner (Wikimedia Foundation) [he/him] (talk) 15:08, 7 January 2026 (UTC)
Dear Chris Koerner,
Thank you for your comment, “If this does not accurately reflect their contributions, we'd be happy to change this.” I appreciate that openness.
What affected me most was, first, the issue of authorship credits, and second, what felt like an unnecessarily elitist approach—such as the response that “we are busy with other projects”—which led to avoidable delays in publishing several of my research-based blog posts. As a frustrated volunteer, this ultimately led me to abandon my pledge of showcasing 100 of the Wikimedia Foundation’s most dedicated volunteers.
With no ill feeling or bad blood, I respectfully request the removal of Ed’s and Samir’s names from the blog posts where they are currently listed as authors. Based on my review, this applies to blog numbers 13, 14, 21, 22, 23, 24, 26, 28, 29, and 30 above.
Any support provided by Ed or Samir in terms of editing or posting is comparable to the assistance you yourself offered in posting my obituary blog post on Muid Latif, and does not, in my view, constitute authorship which is showcased on the top of the writeups.
Additionally, I have a few unpublished blog posts such as the one on the NIH–WMF collaboration, which I had mentioned earlier. I would appreciate it if this could be published without any authorship dispute.
Thank you for your consideration, and my thanks to you and all your team members—including Ed and Samir—for their support.
--Dr. Muzammil (talk) 18:36, 7 January 2026 (UTC)
- Dr. Muzammil, No worries. Let’s get this figured out.
- I’ve removed Ed or Samir’s names from the following blog posts you’ve identified. The few other posts do have contributions from other authors in the by line. As they are digests with contributions from Ed or Samir (or others); in the form of collecting and assembling those parts. Your name remains in the by line and in the section you were the sole contributor to.
- https://diff.wikimedia.org/2016/08/08/ozkan-poyraz/
- https://diff.wikimedia.org/2016/10/31/remembering-khalid-mahmood/
- https://diff.wikimedia.org/2017/01/23/basak-tosun/
- https://diff.wikimedia.org/2017/04/12/ashish-bhatnagar/
- https://diff.wikimedia.org/2017/08/31/t-sujatha-sri-ramamurthy/
- https://diff.wikimedia.org/2017/12/22/community-digest-wam/
- https://diff.wikimedia.org/2018/02/15/kyi-phyo-htet/
- https://diff.wikimedia.org/2018/06/04/ted-yoo-profile/
- As for any unpublished blog posts you are working on, we're happy to help you thorough the submission process. It's been a while since we last worked together on publishing something! As a reminder you can log in and submit your posts directly. Chris Koerner (Wikimedia Foundation) [he/him] (talk) 22:01, 8 January 2026 (UTC)
Dear Chris Koerner,
Thank you for addressing most of my concerns. There are two more blogposts which need remedial action:
I request you to kindly review the editing history of this draft blog post: I switched to Ido Wikimedia because it’s a language that goes into several fundamentals of thinking by Marc Venot (draft, editing history).
Please compare this with the published Diff blog post as it exists now: Digest: Marc Venot — potential pivot language.
Based on this comparison, do you see any evidence of co-authorship? The published article substantially retains the original author’s ideas, structure, and narrative, while later edits appear to be editorial in nature.
For your reference, I am sharing an analysis conclusion generated by Microsoft Copilot:
| “ | Someone who merely edits a Meta draft for publication on Diff is not entitled to claim coauthorship. They can be acknowledged as an editor, but authorship remains with the person whose words and ideas form the article. Coauthorship would only be appropriate if the editor contributed substantial new content or analysis. | ” |
Similar conclusions have been reached through other online analysis tools and plagiarism-detection software. In light of this, I respectfully request that this anomaly be corrected and that my name be retained as the sole author.
Another blog post that requires correction is: Urdu Wikipedia reaching 100,000 articles [1].
For your information, the primary inputs for this post were drawn from:
- the commemorative page on Urdu Wikipedia ([2]),
- related talk pages, and
- social media posts by Urdu Wikipedians.
Producing a blog post for such a milestone requires proficiency in Urdu, sustained engagement with the community, and the ability to synthesize dispersed inputs into a concise narrative. This approach is consistent with my earlier Diff blog post on the completion of 50,000 articles on Urdu Wikipedia: Unleashing the latent potential.
That post was based on my self-initiated Skype call with Urdu Wikipedians ([3]) and a fixed agenda ([4]).
In addition, my long-standing engagement with the Urdu Wikipedia community includes:
- interviews of Urdu Wikipedians on Diff:
- representing Urdu Wikipedia at WikiConference India 2016 ([5]);
- raising technical concerns such as the autocorrection of numbers on Urdu Wikipedia ([6]).
- Status as 9th highest editor (including 4 bots) and occasional highest statistical performer such as 303 articles out of 1,067 articles in the recently concluded Wikipedia Asian Month 2025 on Urdu Wikipedia.
Given this background, and considering that my very first Diff blog post followed a similar community-digest format, I do not see a basis for co-authorship in this case. I therefore request that the authorship of the blog post Urdu Wikipedia reaching 100,000 articles be corrected accordingly, because it was actually authored by me only.
Thank you for your time and consideration. --Dr. Muzammil (talk) 11:19, 9 January 2026 (UTC)
- @Hindustanilanguage: Both posts you link (this from 2015, this from 2016) are community digests and include more than only the content that you wrote. There is no question that you wrote your section: your name appears under the relevant section as its sole author.
- In both posts, however, there is a second section titled "In brief". This section was written by Ed, whose name is listed under it. Because the post includes are two sections written by different people, both names are included in the overall post byline. The content of the post specifies who wrote what.
- There are many such community digests from this era and authors of all sections, not just the first section, are credited in the byline. We cannot remove the editors of other sections from the byline: all authors are listed. RAdimer-WMF (talk) 16:29, 9 January 2026 (UTC)
- Thank you Chris Koerner and Rae Adimer for your instant support and encouragement. --Dr. Muzammil (talk) 15:27, 10 January 2026 (UTC)
- Thank you Chris Koerner and Rae Adimer for your instant support and encouragement. --Dr. Muzammil (talk) 15:27, 10 January 2026 (UTC)
- The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.
Adding links to recent article
[edit]Dear all. I would like to ask for help. I need to add links to my article being recently published on DIFF. How can I proceed please? Thanks for your kind help. Pavel Bednařík (WMCZ) (talk) 17:01, 28 January 2026 (UTC)
- Hi Pavel. I love this blog post. Such a great initiative and outcomes. :) Let us know what words you want to be links, and what the links are, and we can make updates to the post for you. You can email us (diff
wikimedia.org or reply here). Chris Koerner (Wikimedia Foundation) [he/him] (talk) 20:20, 28 January 2026 (UTC)
English Language filter broken
[edit]When I try to select English language, it keeps switching me to https://diff.wikimedia.org/eo (Esperanto) Shushugah (talk) 19:18, 5 April 2026 (UTC)
- Edit: this is now fixed. Shushugah (talk) 21:18, 5 April 2026 (UTC)
- How strange. Was it a cookie or browser setting? Chris Koerner (Wikimedia Foundation) [he/him] (talk) 14:53, 7 April 2026 (UTC)