User talk:Cromium/Archive 1

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The following user discussions are archived. Please do not modify them. New comments should be made on the user talk page.

Letter petitioning WMF to reverse recent decitions[edit]

The Wikimedia Foundation recently created a new feature, "superprotect" status. The purpose is to prevent pages from being edited by elected administrators -- but permitting WMF staff to edit them. It has been put to use in only one case: to protect the deployment of the Media Viewer software on German Wikipedia, in defiance of a clear decision of that community to disable the feature by default, unless users decide to enable it.

If you oppose these actions, please add your name to this letter. If you know non-Wikimedians who support our vision for the free sharing of knowledge, and would like to add their names to the list, please ask them to sign an identical version of the letter on change.org.

I'm notifying you because you participated in one of several relevant discussions. -Pete F (talk) 22:07, 20 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Why did you delete my logo ?[edit]

I've use a logo from an entreprise which give me it to do a page on wikipedia. I don't understand the reason because we have the right to use the picture. Can you explain ? It was a French association called Odcvl. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Nicoleon (talk) 10:42, 10 February 2015‎

Answered at Commons. Green Giant (talk) 16:43, 10 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Global user page migration[edit]

Hello Green Giant. I deleted your local user pages on all wikis as you requested via Synchbot. You can see the full log on your archive page. :) —Pathoschild 23:42, 28 February 2015 (UTC)

nonfree wiki[edit]

I just commented in the proposal. It's very obvious to me that what is needed is a structural change, an expansion of the Commons mission. In fact, Commons already hosts many non-free files, both as files with undiscovered copyright problems, and as deleted files. The latter are still hosted there but only visible to administrators.

The present restricted Commons mission causes continual conflict and disruption. What we have found on Wikversity is that by shifting to a concept of organization of content, vs the keep/delete black and white decision process that is common on wikis (and possibly necessary for encyclopedias), we have almost totally eliminated conflict over content. If something seems generally useless or non-neutral, as an example, but might be useful for the education of the user who created it, we will routinely move it to user space. It is very, vary rare that a user becomes upset. The user may improve it and move it back to mainspace, which occasionally happens. Another option is creating "essay" pages in mainspace, but as attributed subpages of a neutral resource.

Deletion gets people upset! Where did my file go? Censorship! We even sometimes will keep problematic material created by anonymous users, if it looks like it might be improved to have possible educational use, and we have ways of handling that. At the same time, we are continually organizing mainspace. So it starts to function much more like the original wiki vision, which, supposedly, would always improve, never slip back for long.

Creating intermediate conclusions, then, reduces conflict, because compromise becomes much more acceptable. Keeping material, but organizing it, improves the wiki, and user energy is not wasted pushing or fighting deletion. When users disagree about content of a standing resource, we often will fork it, as described: top-level neutral resource, linking to attributed subpages. This has, on Wikiversity, created cooperation and collaboration toward deepening resources, where, on enwiki, the same topic led to arbitrations, blocks, and bans. And that cooperation spread to other wikis, which was more than I expected!

So how to accomplish this change? I have this suggestion: a working group is created, in your user space, here or on Commons. Any user may join the group, signing up, but, for process in your user space, you are the "chair," and you may regulate it. I'd be happy to assist, at your request, if it is on Commons, or could host in my own user space there. I used to do this on en.wiki, it was successful, long story, blah, blah. It works. The goal is to create a proposal that already has some substantial support, and that has already incorporated and considered all -- or almost all -- the knee-jerk "impossible" responses, and that is cogently and clearly and simply expressed, before it is presented to the larger community.

That can take a lot of discussion! Doing this in "public space" commonly creates train wrecks that go nowhere. In user space, material can, then, be organized, refactored, and it can go through whatever stages are required to come up with a proposal that has consensus among a hopefully diverse group. That is, if it is your user space, you will not unreasonably exclude participation by anyone who can contribute views from various positions, you would only exclude (or blank) what disrupts the process. This is standard respect for a user to manage their own user space for project purposes. --Abd (talk) 16:42, 28 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@Abd:, I've replied to your comments at NonFreeWiki. Thank you for the suggestions here but I genuinely don't think Commoners will ever come round to accepting unfree files. The irony is that Wikimedia as whole hosts hundreds of thousands of useful unfree files but look more closely and there are pockets of unbelievable confusion. There is an entire category tree of potentially free files including en:Category:Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 files (which alone has 120,000+ files although they might not all be correctly licensed). I don't think I'm wrong in believing these files should be hosted on Commons rather than locally, but for various reasons the uploaders and/or other users have requested that they stay on ENWP. Similarly I believe there are potentially thousands of Commons files deleted for licensing or other problems, which could be undeleted and moved to a NonFreeWiki. As I have stated at the proposal page, I genuinely don't think you'll get a positive response if you propose NFW was a Commons project but I would appreciate any and all help getting the proposal to the lift-off stage. A year after proposing it, I'm still unsure what the next step is. Cheers. Green Giant (talk) 13:48, 6 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Every day I see issues and problems on Commons that would be resolved if this went forward. On Wikiversity, we have mostly stopped the practice of moving files to Commons (and then deleting local copies) because they are so commonly deleted there, but there are also routine problems where a user takes a file from Commons and uses it and it's then deleted on Commons some years later, and it's a mess to handle. Sometimes we can find the original and re-upload it locally, and just claim fair use. It's a hundred times as much work as would be needed if it were all handled on Commons, with us establishing fair use by actual usage. Today, I saw an engraving taken from an Iraqi banknote being discussed. There was an engraving taken from it that is used on *many* articles in ar.wiki, I think. I think there is no question of fair use there. But deleted on Commons? A huge mess to clean up.
The way forward is not to butt heads with Commons, but to develop a serious NFW proposal, in detail. That takes a working group, RfC is not the venue for it, it's too complicated. There needs to be a working document that would detail structure and practices. A small group can easily do this. If it's done in your user space, you can moderate it. (That's okay because anyone else can create a "competing" version, in their user space and it all comes out in the wash. In fact, you will find that good-faith participants will cooperate.)
When the proposal is ready, we can attract some support before proposing it on Commons. The Commons proposal should be skillfully written. It would be offering Commons the opportunity to host NFW, spelling out the benefits to Commons, which are many. If Commons then turns it down (which I cannot predict), this becomes a formal separate project proposal here. By that time, possible kinks with WMF policy will have been worked out. My view is that the WMF policy was poorly designed, but it will take negotiation with the Board to improve it. (Wikiversity feels the impact of that design the most, because on the other wikis, the goal is content (and re-usable content, then); on Wikiversity, the goal is education and educational process, which includes more fair use of content, including fair use in user space (think of student work), than a pure content site would think necessary.) --Abd (talk) 00:21, 7 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Please fill out our Inspire campaign survey[edit]

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Your post on my talk page[edit]

I've answered your question on my talk page (I think). I feel like I'm being outed. EChastain (talk) 15:36, 24 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Agent vs. Volunteer[edit]

Hi, With regards to your change here, I just wanted to let you know that our volunteers are often referred to as OTRS agents, and that is an acceptable "title" for them in their volunteer capacity. Since it's all semantics, I'm going to leave your change as is. However, I just wanted to let you know that you will be seeing "agent" (which is defined as intermediary for certain services, such as for artistic performances or public relations – a fair description of an OTRS agent, I'd say) a lot if you are navigating OTRS-related pages and that is is not inaccurate. (Words are wonderful - Wikimedia has their defined uses for many, such as "bureaucrat" and "oversight"...wtf is a "checkuser"? ;-) Regards, Rjd0060 (talk) 12:25, 4 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Rjd0060, thank you for the message. I'm not opposed to people using the words agent or volunteer interchangeably but I'm wary of the fuss that was kicked up on Commons a few months ago. Unfortunately, in the minds of some people (no names needed), the word agent equates to someone hired to act for the "Evil WMF", like an unpaid contractor, rather than someone volunteering to do something. That's why I thought it would be good to change it in a few key places to avoid the suggestion of being "agents of the WMF", although it is technically correct that we act as agents of the Wikimedia community. I'm not sure if it would be more useful to use "volunteer agents" perhaps? :) Green Giant (talk) 12:42, 4 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
That's why their arguments make no sense. We are the volunteer equivalent of a Customer Service Agent. Immediately below every email our agents send out is a disclaimer which states clearly that we are volunteers. That is often communicated in the email correspondence itself during the course of our discussions with the "customers" (aka anybody who writes us) as well. With regards to documentation that is not on Commons but places where it is actually more official and "meta" (like here at Meta-Wiki) we can of course aim to be accurate. Thoughts? :-) Rjd0060 (talk) 12:47, 4 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with you but you know the old phrase "you can only please some of the people..." There will never be 100% agreement. As far as documentation, I have been spending some time recently, looking at documents and methods on Commons and Meta (and now OTRS-wiki because I got side-tracked) to see if they are being communicated clearly. In particular I'm concerned that our Help Pages (including ones that aren't in the Help namespace) have become more technical than necessary, with insider-jargon and overuse of abbreviations. At the moment I have mostly made offline notes but I'm intending on presenting some ideas for the community to look at (which is one of the reasons I was "snooping around in OTRS documents). There won't be anything shocking or earth-moving but just attempts to make some small and some not-so-small adjustments. I'm not yet confident that some of it will be implementable so I don't feel ready to go online with this yet. So to answer your last question, I think there is a case for reviewing the documents, especially on Commons, and this debate about the terminology can be addressed, although it might take some time to filter through. Green Giant (talk) 14:09, 4 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, where did the discussion happen on the mass-move to subpages of Category:Categories, which semantically doesn't seem to make any sense? --Nemo 08:22, 8 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Hello. I believe @Verdy p: announced it at Meta talk:Babylon/Archives/2014#Why translating categories. I've actually been moving some of these pages manually for a few weeks. I assumed that since nobody seemed to object for over a year since the source categories were changed to category redirects. Green Giant (talk) 20:53, 8 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
16:17, 17 August 2015 (UTC)
13:02, 24 August 2015 (UTC)
21:36, 31 August 2015 (UTC)
17:29, 7 September 2015 (UTC)
16:17, 14 September 2015 (UTC)
18:29, 21 September 2015 (UTC)
15:15, 28 September 2015 (UTC)
18:32, 5 October 2015 (UTC)

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16:28, 12 October 2015 (UTC)
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Cat-A-Lot[edit]

User:Auntof6 said you were able to help her get Cat-A-Lot working in Simple English Wikipedia. Can you help me get it working in Ladino (Judeo-Spanish) Wikipedia? Thanks. StevenJ81 (talk) 19:08, 29 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@StevenJ81: I am not a coder so I can't promise it will work but:
  • Copy and paste the code that begins with window.catALotPrefs and ends with Gadget-Cat-a-lot.css');
}); from my global.js page to your global.js page (i.e. on Meta and not lad-wiki);
  • Save your global.js page and purge your cache;
  • Delete the Cat-a-lot lines from your common.js page on lad-wiki and purge your cache there just as a precaution;
  • If it doesn't work I can only suggest asking a coder. Best of luck. Green Giant (talk) 00:42, 30 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
It works when I'm in Commons, but not otherwise. Not sure why. I'll ask around. StevenJ81 (talk) 17:00, 2 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
16:42, 2 November 2015 (UTC) 17:18, 9 November 2015 (UTC)