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Wikimedia Highlights from September 2013

Highlights from the Wikimedia Foundation Report and the Wikimedia engineering report for September 2013, with a selection of other important events from the Wikimedia movement
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Help requested on privacy issues

Hi there, I'm a little bit new. I'd like to know where to complain about an unauthorized disclosure of personal information in the Spanish wikipedia. I've been blocked in there claiming I'm a puppet of another user and one of the blockers has disclosed in the "café" the town where I'm connecting. I haven't authorized such a disclosure and want to get some shelter. What can I do? Sincerely --Adolfo Tierno (talk) 08:38, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

CIS-A2K Grant Report September 2012-June 2013

Greetings! As many of you know that the Wikimedia Foundation approved a 22 month grant to the CIS-A2K. The aim of the grant is to support the growth of Wikimedia movement in India.
Please find the Grant Report for the first 10 months period here.
CIS-A2K will be happy to receive your feedback. Please let us know if you have any suggestions, questions and concerns about the report and our work. We would be glad to have this feedback here.
We are thankful to the Wikimedia community in India, Wikimedia India Chapter and the Wikimedia Foundation for actively engaging with our work. We will continue to work upon our deficiencies, failures and successes. Thanks! --Visdaviva (talk) 05:03, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

Individual Engagement Grant Proposal: Patterns of Peeragogy

Peeragogy is a framework of techniques for peer learning and peer production. As pedagogy theoretically articulates the transmission of knowledge from teachers to students, peeragogy describes the way peers produce and utilize knowledge together. We have been working together as a volunteer team since January, 2012 to build a public domain Peeragogy Handbook that communicates practical strategies for successful collaboration, learning, and adaptation. We see Wikimedia as a living case study in peeragogy. In the six-month project we propose, we would use peeragogical methods to enhance Wikimedia as a peer-learning platform.

Further details at Grants:IEG/Patterns_of_Peeragogy. Arided (talk) 22:44, 25 October 2013 (UTC)

en:WP:WikiProject Council is interested in practical strategies for improving collaboration, so they might be interested in this. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:41, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

A way to avoid Autonym font

Tracked in Phabricator:
Bug 56346

Autonym font is buggy, it doesn't render very well in Chrome at least. I've tried by changing the Custom.css without success. This was my modification:

@font-face { font-family: 'Autonym', sans-serif ; font-style: normal; src: local('Arial'); } — The preceding unsigned comment was added by 190.188.226.138 (talk) 06:03, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

See w:Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Interlanguage_links_in_different_font (permalink). PiRSquared17 (talk) 00:13, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

Founding principles optional for smaller Wikis?

en:Tatar Wikipedia uses strict majority principle when voting for adopting or changing rules, which is not exactly in line with 3.The "wiki process" as the final decision-making mechanism for all content..
I initiated the voting procedure to adopt Founding principles (tatar) making them mandatory for all ttwiki participants and harmonizing other internal rules with them, but all current and previous admins and bureaucrats spoke against, key stated reason being these principles are not valid for small wikis like ours. Please comment.- frhdkazan (talk) 3 окт 2013, 14:20 (UTC)

I believe that "all content" means "all encyclopedic articles and similar materials", not "all rule-making discussions". For example, voting is the normal method of deciding who is an admin. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:55, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

All projects may choose to make a decision after normal majority (50%+1), 75% (as Dutch WP does with voting for admin rights) or whatever they find appropriate in certain cases. Many times one can discuss the meaning of the word consensus.  Klaas|Z4␟V:  11:20, 5 October 2013 (UTC)

At the same time, my conclusion above would contradict both:

(EN)

  • Level of consensus - Consensus among a limited group of editors, at one place and time, cannot override community consensus on a wider scale. For instance, unless they can convince the broader community that such action is right, participants in a WikiProject cannot decide that some generally accepted policy or guideline does not apply to articles within its scope. &
  • Decisions not subject to consensus of editors - Certain policies and decisions made by the Wikimedia Foundation ("WMF"), its officers, and the Arbitration Committee of Wikipedia are outside the purview of editor consensus.

(FR) fr:Wikipédia:Consensus#Exceptions - Il y a certains sujets pour lesquels la question du consensus ne se pose pas:

  • Les décisions consensuelles dans des cas spécifiques ne peuvent pas primer sur un consensus établi dans un cadre plus large, du moins rapidement. Par exemple, une discussion dans un projet ne peut pas supplanter le consensus plus large derrière une règle ou une convention qui s'applique à toute la communauté. La règle ou la convention doit s'appliquer à ce projet en question.
  • Les founding principles (English) présentent les principes de base présents dans tous les projets Wikimédia. Ils représentent le consensus le plus large possible à travers tous les projets Wikimédia. Ces consensus sont fondamentaux et affectent toutes les autres décisions wikimédiennes. Ils évoluent donc très lentement.

(RU) ru:Википедия:Консенсус#Исключения:

  • Решения, принятые внутри одного из проектов, не могут изменять более общих решений, принятых на основе более широкого консенсуса. В рамках того или иного проекта не может быть принято решение о том, что на статьи проекта не распространяется то или иное общее правило.
  • Принципы Фонда Викимедиа представляют собой базовые принципы всех проектов Викимедиа и, таким образом, основываются на наиболее достижимом консенсусе в рамках всех проектов Викимедиа. Эти консенсусы имеют фундаментальный характер, и ими определяются все остальные соглашения Викимедиа и Википедии.

, so please advise on how to resolve this contradiction. - Frhdkazan (talk) 18:21, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

Where is the contradiction? Those projects have said that within their own projects, a couple of editors at one page of that project cannot overrule all the other editors at that project. They do not say that rules or ideas that were made outside that project matter at all. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:41, 7 October 2013 (UTC)
  • Thanks for your consideration and comments. The idea that Founding principles are to be enforced in Wikipedia and its sub-divisons seems to be supported by the following:
1)Founding principles are part of Category:Global policies, which states:

This category is for Wikimedia projects wide policies, i.e. projects which apply to each and every Wikimedia project. Policies enforce required practice (as differentiated from guidelines, which document and explain best current practice).

and Wikipedia is one of these Wikimedia projects.
2) Also, referring to the first quote above - I added the missing part from EnWiki (TtWiki users mainly quote RuWiki policies, and the EnWiki statements are scattered in the policy, so missed when copying), and also add the French wiki text (for illustration only, as it's otherwise identical to the quoted from RuWiki). All three seem to refer to the fact that wider global community consensus is more important than local wiki or wikiproject consensus. The difference between French/Russian (Founding principles) and English (Wikimedia Foundation policies) can be explained by the fact that EnWiki community and also its policy system is better developed and thus members of the latter community can find it appropriate mentioning only the Wikimedia Foundation role, as otherwise EnWiki has numerous policies describing each and every aspect of the 6 points mentioned in Founding principles).
3) There is another important consideration related to smaller wikis, which can be illustrated on the example of Tatar Wikipedia, which is just over 50000 articles, with few active participants, and we certainly don't want to loose anyone who is able and might want to contribute. Editing environment there is sometimes getting rough, as admins or ex-admins don't seem to share the above principles, use policy shopping from various Wikipedias to prove own point, neither challenge nor respect the proposed Tatar texts of en:WP:Consensus, en:WP:Five pillars, ignore proposed changes into Tatar twin of en:WP:Criteria for speedy deletion (which currently allows deletion of stubs in the process of creation and thus even ones included into List of articles every Wikipedia should have and its expanded version get marked, not to mention en:WP:Ownership of articles and others). The vote on adopting Founding principles was got their attention rather quickly and got significant opposition, as it challenged the established status quo. Thus, if Founding principles don't stand, small wikis (like Tatar one in this case) can easily be anarchic or democratic battleground.
Any other ideas, comments or recommendations are welcome. - Frhdkazan (talk) 16:56, 8 October 2013 (UTC)
I think we have a language problem.
A "WikiProject" (on the English Wikipedia) is a small group of editors who want to work together as a team to improve articles. This is not the same thing as "a project". "A project" means "the entire English Wikipedia" (or the entire Russian Wikipedia, or the Tatar, or the Russian Wiktionary, or Commons, or Meta, or whatever).
The English Wikipedia rule that you quote is perhaps more clearly expressed this way:
...editors who decided to work together in a small group at the English Wikipedia cannot decide that policies or guidelines written by the thousands and thousands of English Wikipedia editors outside their little group do not apply to the English Wikipedia articles that the small group wants to work on
This has nothing to do with whether the Russian or Tatar Wikipedias must have the same rules as everyone else. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:02, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

Doesn't

1. Founding principles are part of Category:Global policies, which states:
This category is for Wikimedia projects wide policies, i.e. projects which apply to each and every Wikimedia project. Policies enforce required practice (as differentiated from guidelines, which document and explain best current practice).

seem to mean that Founding principles are a must for Wikipedia and its sub-projects such as English, Russian, Tatar or other Wikipedias? - Frhdkazan (talk) 13:08, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

I'm not sure that Founding principles, which is actually Wikipedia-specific, applies to non-Wikipedia projects, like Meta. It is possible that this page should not be in that category at all.
But even if that page does belong there, there is nothing in the Founding principles that says the specific rules in place at the English Wikipedia must be followed at the Tatar Wikipedia, or the other way around. The Tatar Wikipedia is allowed to hold plain majority votes about what their policies and guidelines should say. The English Wikipedia is allowed to do the same, only they don't want to. At the English Wikipedia, they want to require much higher levels of agreement (in practice, usually at least a 70% majority for adopting a guideline, and sometimes even higher; also, the views from some users [often me, for example] seem to count for more than other users'). The Tatar community can choose to use a 51% majority for adopting policies and guidelines if that works better for them. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:07, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
I'm not an expert in Meta. Was I wrong when I assumed that principles, described in Founding principles, apply to all language projects in Wikipedia? If so, are there any Wikipedia/Wikimedia-wide principles one can refer to as a minimum standard? -Frhdkazan (talk) 04:59, 18 October 2013 (UTC)
As far as I can tell (is anyone really an expert in Meta?), the Founding principles were meant to apply to all languages of Wikipedia.
As far as I can tell from your description (I do not understand the Tatar language at all), their use of a strict majority vote to write policies and guidelines is 100% compatible with the Founding principles. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:46, 18 October 2013 (UTC)
Thank you for clearing it out for me. I accept community freedom to set own rules. I'm mostly concerned about 1.Neutral point of view (NPOV) as a guiding editorial principle. and 4.The creation of a welcoming and collegial editorial environment. principles being disregarded by our current admin/bureaucrat, as well as selective application of voted rules (policies). Majority of Tatar Wikipedia folks recently voted that Founding principles don't apply thereto, so it's not something uniquely true for our sole admin, & we certainly have a long way to go :). - Frhdkazan (talk) 12:51, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

Belarusian Wikiquote

Hello! As I understand, the Belarusian section Wikiquote remained without active administrators? --Адмирал Вуллф Юларен (talk) 09:32, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

You are right there is no administrators on be.wikiquote. Ruslik (talk) 19:15, 11 November 2013 (UTC)
Do you need any help with requests there? You can post them on SRM. If you or someone else requests adminship, please post to SRP. Here's a tool I use to tell if a wiki has admins, and if so, how active they are: [1] PiRSquared17 (talk) 02:09, 12 November 2013 (UTC)
How much do I need to get edits to become the admin section? Адмирал Вуллф Юларен (talk) 15:58, 12 November 2013 (UTC)
There's no exact edit requirement. Just give a rationale for requesting adminship, post a request somewhere visible on be.wikiquote (maybe mention it somewhere on another be project, if you want to attract attention). If you have no opposes is a week, just follow the instructions on SRP. PiRSquared17 (talk) 17:03, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

Error: unable to save edit while logged in

Tried several times to save an edit here on meta, in Preview it says, "Your edit has been rejected because your client mangled the punctuation characters in the edit token. The edit has been rejected to prevent corruption of the page text. This sometimes happens when you are using a buggy web-based anonymous proxy service." What does it mean? What's the solution to this? -- ɑηsuмaη «Talk» 11:04, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

Testing.. 14:05, 11 November 2013 (UTC)
Worked once, then again the same issue. Am i really on "anonymous proxy", is this how we get to know? or some other technical issue? How come I face this here on Meta, but not on enwiki? If anybody knows the issue and solution please let me know. Thanks. 14:48, 11 November 2013 (UTC)
@Ansumang: Meta:Babel#Problem_with_editing_-_edit_token. Should I file a bug? PiRSquared17 (talk) 19:22, 11 November 2013 (UTC)
Try to disable all gadgets, it works for me (the problematic in my case was EoMagicalConversion). --KuboF (talk) 01:20, 12 November 2013 (UTC)
Thanks guys, let me check as KuboF suggests, but I don't see a gadget "EoMagicalConversion"! -- ɑηsuмaη «Talk» 09:15, 12 November 2013 (UTC)
I haven't done anything, and it's working for now. Let's see if this happens again, then you may file a bug, PiRSquared. Thanks. -- ɑηsuмaη «Talk» 09:25, 12 November 2013 (UTC)
Thanks PiRSquared, I see now you took care of it by removing that gadget, what was that gadget for? -- ɑηsuмaη «Talk» 10:06, 12 November 2013 (UTC)
It is an Esperanto conversion script. Esperanto uses a few special characters (with diacritics). This script converted (both ways, for easier editing) between "ux" and "ŭ", and similar conversions for "cx", "gx", "hx", "jx", "sx", and their capital equivalents. PiRSquared17 (talk) 13:15, 12 November 2013 (UTC)
Thanks PiRSquared for the info. :) -- ɑηsuмaη «Talk» 12:03, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

Global-Wiki in non-Wikimedia projects

I have proposed a suggestion about using the proposed Global-Wiki in non-Wikimedia projects. That is Global-Wiki#New proposal: Wikibits?.--GZWDer (talk) 09:52, 15 November 2013 (UTC)

Wikimedia Highlights from October 2013

Highlights from the Wikimedia Foundation Report and the Wikimedia engineering report for October 2013, with a selection of other important events from the Wikimedia movement
About · Subscribe/unsubscribe · Distributed via Global message delivery, 18:30, 15 November 2013 (UTC)

Autonym font in the multilingual portals

A few days ago, the developers tweaked MediaWiki's stylesheets to use the new Autonym font for the "In other languages" list in the sidebar. (On the English Wikipedia main page, compare the links under "Languages" with the ones under "Tools".) The font aims to include enough characters to display all the language names in that list. For most people, it eliminates quite a few ☐s. Unfortunately, it's lower in quality than some of the fonts that people are already using for common scripts like Latin; specifically, it lacks hinting.

Still, what do all of you think about setting Autonym as a fallback font at the multilingual portals, (Www.wikipedia.org template, Www.wiktionary.org template, etc.)? It'd be nice not to greet the vast majority of our readers with rows of unsightly boxes. Including Autonym is just a matter of adding this code to MediaWiki:Gadget-wm-portal.css: 

@font-face {
  font-family: "Autonym";
  font-style: normal;
  src: local("Autonym"), url("//bits.wikimedia.org/static-1.23wmf1/extensions/UniversalLanguageSelector/lib/jquery.uls/css/font/Autonym.woff") format("woff"), url("//bits.wikimedia.org/static-1.23wmf1/extensions/UniversalLanguageSelector/lib/jquery.uls/css/font/Autonym.ttf") format("truetype");
}

.langlist a {
    font-family: sans-serif, "Autonym";
}

Unlike the fonts loaded by WebFonts/ULS, Autonym.woff is rather small and won't cause much flashing and jumping around. There are two downsides:

  1. We'll have to update the URL periodically to keep up with version changes, as the 1.23wmf1 bits won't be around forever. If we ever forget to update the URL, you'll see what you see today.
  2. Although this style rule prioritizes your system's default sans-serif font (what it currently uses to display the Latin and Cyrillic text on the portals) over Autonym, it does not account for other fonts on your system. For example, if you have the refined Arabic font Geeza Pro on your system, it'll be replaced with the inferior Autonym for Arabic text on the page. I suppose we could hard-code a few of the fonts that the English Wiktionary specifies on their Common.css in between sans-serif and Autonym.

This proposed change would affect only the multilingual portals, not any projects themselves. I have mixed feelings about this approach due to downside #2 above, but I wanted to see what you all think.

 – Minh Nguyễn (talk, contribs) 05:35, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

AFAIK they are planning to make URLs more stable to improve caching, maybe Ori.livneh has suggestions. --Nemo 10:42, 3 November 2013 (UTC)
The autonym font seems somewhat buggy. I suggest waiting a bit before implementing it on the multilingual portals. --Yair rand (talk) 22:13, 3 November 2013 (UTC)
I agree that this font has problems:
  • It still does not support all characters needed to display all {{#language:code}} (only names of languages namin their native default script, as seen in the language side-bar or in the ULS at top of all pages for selecting the UI language): Sichuan Yi and Church Slavonic are missing some characters. This should be resovled fast.
  • It has very poor hinting (or no hinting at all) meaning that it renders many characters so that they are hard to read on screen (notably with Indic scripts), or will look very ugly (Latin is displayed with strange "stepping" effect at some sizes, I think that instead of using hinting, the font was designed to use bitmaps for a few sizes, and this does not work with lots of displays, we should remember that now displays have a wide range of resolutions an that resolution is also settable in user preferences in the browser, for accessibility, or that users will want to zoom in/out the display in their browser). Proper Hinting hinting is a must have option
The fact that these glyphs may look different from the default font for the rest of the display is a non-issue, as this font is only designed to display list of language names (in their native script) exactly as returned by {{#language:code}} and nothing else so the code for each language should be <span class="autonym"">{{#language:code}}</span> and nothing else within the span. At least this list will have a consistent look by itself, displaying lots of foreign languages in a coherent but correct way. We should not need more. Note that the Autonym font is normally not designed to support additional styles such as bold or italic, however the bold option should be correct to display the language matching on a list of links focusing to translated pages, where the language subpage is selectable by the link: the current page will not be a link but bold text.
Some scripts however are not very friendly with bold and italic styles, so the bold and italic styles should be force-disabled in the autonym CSS class, and the line-height should also be set to normal so that glyphs won't collide on multilpe lines: .autonym {font-family: Autonym, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-weight:normal; line-height:normal; }. And as long as this font does not render correctly at all resolutions, its size should be forced to a supported size not depending on the display resolution (but it will still depend on the zoom level in the browser), so we should add "font-size:13px;" (in pixels and not in "ems") ; note that the block displaying the list of languages should also use "line-height:normal" instead of the default "line-height:1.5" or worse "line-height:1.5em" used by MediaWiki styles. If we want to support bold as well (not really necessary as it's only used to emphasize the language used on the current page instead of a link to another page in another language, for this we already have color distinctions, and the sidebar interwiki language list already filters out the current language, so that it does not need bold), then we would need another font "AutonymBold". In my opinion we don't need bold and italic.
In addition, some other styles should be reset to normal in the CSS class: letter-spacing:normal;; text decorations (underlining for active links) should work anyway and don't need to be disabled (unless we have some script with very tall glyphs where underlining will collide, unless the underline position is moved very low, not very cute for the Latin script).
The content of this Autonym font should be tracked, not by MediaWiki versions (complete non sense) but by the Wikimedia Language Comitee that manages the list of supported languages and decides about their name (used in {{#language:code}}).
You'll note that this Language Comitee includes Michael Everson, who is also a great typographer (member of Unicode Consortium since many years, and that prepared lots of fonts for use in charts of the published Unicode and ISO 10646 standards). He (or some other people he knows, that are also excellent typographers) could provide help to maintain this OpenType font (only for Wikimedia projects, even if there's a separate development branch used by other sites that will want to support more languages or languages named differently and needing more glyphs). Hinting a font requires specific skills that are difficult to find and not a lot of people in the world have the technical skills and experience needed (in fact I doubt that there are such good typographer in the MediaWeiki developers team).
May be Wikimedia will want to support also some other webfont formats (needed for some smartphones or some browsers not supporting the OpenType format). Here also Michael Everson may help building/converting the developed OpenType font into other compatible webfont formats.
So:
  • Move this "Autonym" font project, so that it will be supervised by the Wikimedia Language Comity (and those that maintain the ULS extension used in Wikimedia)
  • And remove it from the MediaWiki software project itself.
This means that the MediaWiki software should make no reference at all to the Autonym font or to the "autonym" CSS class, or that the default styles defined in this CSS class for MediaWiki (or in a portable version of ULS used outside Wikimedia) should be completely empty (leaving other sites choose which fonts they'll want to use for this purpose).
This webfont project may be reintegrated later in MediaWiki only when it will have been improved to work significantly well on a larger set of wikis (outside Wikimedia), with a dedicated support, but still a separate branch for the deployment on Wikimedia sites (only for its own list of supported languages in Wikimedia projects).
verdy_p (talk) 03:01, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

Please move the {{Active Wikipedias}} transclusions to a separate page. --MZMcBride (talk) 04:04, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

OK. Done in Wikimedia Forum/Autonym font test with active Wikipedias (test your browsers). But several users sent me "thank you" notifications about these tests. verdy_p (talk) 04:08, 19 November 2013 (UTC)
Well, I thanked you for your extensive post, as it contributed to the discussion very much. Of course, there's no need to put the list here, but I don't think it really hurts. Maybe if it were in a collapsible box... PiRSquared17 (talk) 04:22, 19 November 2013 (UTC)
My thanks as well. :-) I just added sections to Wikimedia Forum/Autonym font test with active Wikipedias and made a few tweaks. --MZMcBride (talk) 04:25, 19 November 2013 (UTC)
I'll keep it in the separate page (it's easier to refer to it in other discussions or in Bugzilla) because it reduces the renderring code of this page (a collapsible box would still be too long) here. Note: I restored my signature in the sections after the edits made by you, MZMcBride. This is still part of a discussion in this forum, not part of a content page (even if this forum lies within the main namespace). verdy_p (talk) 05:18, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

Why I cannot use merge tool in Wikidata items with global IP block exemption?

RT.--Great Brightstar (talk) 13:44, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

? --MF-W 15:48, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

New Wikipedia critic site

I am setting up a brand new Wikipedia critic site and I need permission to use your logos. The critic site will tell the public how Wikipedia is unreliable (by demonstrating how easy it is to edit) , link to articles with sexual images, etc. So for these purposes it will be highly appreciated if I could use the appropriate logos. Don't worry, all claims will be backed up with due evidence (plus we will store some screenshots should you decide to delete evidence). So, please allow us to do this...InSANITYreTURN (talk) 17:42, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

-> wmf:Trademark policy --Nemo 17:45, 19 November 2013 (UTC)
So am I allowed?

Blyssymbols

ru:Уважаемые!

Как, на Ваш взгляд, такое предложение разумно? Я считаю, что стоит того.--Lublu.literaturu (talk) 08:01, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

en:Hello, dear Wikimedia Users! Can we, Wikimedia users, create templates for Blissymbols?--Lublu.literaturu (talk) 10:10, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

@Lublu.literaturu: I suppose you can, but I don't understand why you would. PiRSquared17 (talk) 01:55, 12 November 2013 (UTC)
Invite me please with the system Egyptian hieroglyphs (WikiHiero). I want to create alternative for Bliss.--Lublu.literaturu (talk) 09:13, 12 November 2013 (UTC)
@Evertype: PiRSquared17 (talk) 17:04, 12 November 2013 (UTC)
This systems must be created for Wikipedia--Lublu.literaturu (talk) 12:57, 16 November 2013 (UTC)
Why not? Evertype (talk) 21:34, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia Klingon

Originally posted on Requests for new languages/Wikipedia Klingon.

Welcome to New Wiki Klingon version! — The preceding unsigned comment was added by 124.117.8.171 (talk)

Even though I'm a fan of Star Trek, I think this is a bad idea. See Klingon for more details about the history of this project. PiRSquared17 (talk) 05:58, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
I think this is a great idea and should be implemented as soon as possible, preferably before the explosion of Praxis in 2293. Cheers, -- Cirt (talk) 22:52, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

On focus and unity (projects concerned : Wikipedia, Wikinews, Wiktionary)

I think Wikimedia is too fragmented.

News : 

- Wikinews [0-2 original articles a day]
- Wikipedia Current events [~10 linked articles a day]
- Updated Wikipedia articles

I think Wikinews and Current events should become one. Wikinews has too few articles to be considered successful, and the project is kind of useless if the goal is to mainly to cite, reformulate and link to professional articles, while the original source is already of good (not to say excellent) quality and integrity.

I also think Wiktionary definitions should be embedded into Wikipedia articles. When searching for information about a keyword (e.g. "cat"), sometimes just a short and concise defition is enough.

We should be able to hide the side pane or even better, be able to compact it like the WordPress side pane, only showing an icon representative of the categories. This would make pages much less cluttered while also saving precious horizontal space on small displays. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 24.203.140.45 (talk • contribs) 16:01, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

(One of the challenges for a Wikinewsie, when reading negative assertions about Wikinews these days, is inability to distinguish between deliberate trolling, and simple ignorance. In the above short, two-sentence paragraph about Wikinews I can readily find four major misconceptions; just explaining them all would be require numerous times as much text as the paragraph itself, which is one of my criteria for when there's no point in trying to respond point-for-point. However, fwiw I'll take the opportunity to 'share with the class' some thoughts on long term direction for the wikimedia sisterhood.)
Non-wikipedian sisters are the growth sector of wikimedia. They accrue both social and technical benefits from specialization; Wikipedia, by contrast, suffers because its focus is too broad to form a community with common goals and its deep technical infrastructure is necessarily generic. In the long run, Wikipedia cannot ever directly enjoy the benefits of narrow focus, and so, if Wikipedia is to prosper in the long run, it must adapt itself to embrace, more and more, integration with its more focused and therefore intrinsically advantaged sisters. One of the biggest dangers to the future of wikimedia (not the only such danger, but certainly one of them) is outspoken generalists (not sure what else to call them) discouraging the more specialized sisters, both by starving them for resources and by discouraging Wikipedia from embracing integration with them. --Pi zero (talk) 17:02, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

Logos on the Wiktionary portal

As many of you know, Wiktionary has a painful history when it comes to logos. Attempts to unify the projects have resulted in three main logo designs (plus a fourth, for Galician). Although the Foundation treats the "tiles" logo as Wiktionary's main logo, 36 wikis, representing a majority of entries, continue to use a "plain text" logo that mimics a dictionary entry. Moreover, translating the plain text logo means creating an entirely distinct logo, so the English Wiktionary's logo has little in common with the Russian Wiktionary's logo.

This fragmentation presents a problem for the portal at www.wiktionary.org, which currently uses the English Wiktionary's logo. Because this logo represents only a small portion of the overall project, I propose a solution based on JavaScript and CSS that celebrates, ahem, our logo diversity.

  1. By default, the portal displays a language-neutral version of the tiles logo that was specifically intended for the portal.
  2. Whenever you mouse over any of the wikis in the "top 10" ring, a more appropriate logo for the wiki fades in. So the English Wiktionary logo fades in if you mouse over the English, Malagasy, or Russian links, and the book logo fades in for the Lithuanian link.
  3. As soon as the page loads, the JavaScript at MediaWiki:Gadget-wm-portal.js currently selects a search language based on your browser's language preference. Under this proposal, the logo also changes according to that language preference, as long as the language is one with 10,000 entries or more.
  4. Manually selecting a language from the menu also causes an appropriate logo to fade in and sets a cookie, so that you continue to see the same logo on subsequent visits.

In practice, #3 means that nothing will change for most visitors (except when mousing over links), because most people use the English version of their browser and relatively few set their language preferences. However, only #1 works in IE 6, which currently receives only 0.30% of hits to Wikimedia servers. [2]

If you have JavaScript enabled, you can see it in action: go to www.wiktionary.org template/temp and click on "Preview HTML" in the dropdown menu between the Watch button and the search bar at the top of the page (or in MonoBook, the tab furthest to the right). So far, I've tested it in Firefox 27, Chrome 32, IE 11, Safari 7, Opera 12.16 (Presto rendering engine), Opera 18 (Chromium), and IE 6, but more eyes are always welcome.

Please weigh in at Talk:www.wiktionary.org template#Logo. I plan to deploy the changes in a couple days unless there are significant issues.

 – Minh Nguyễn (talk, contribs) 00:12, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

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