Wikimedia Forum/Archives/2020-07

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Annual contest Wikipedia Pages Wanting Photos

Wikipedia Pages Wanting Photos (WPWP)
Wikipedia Pages Wanting Photos (WPWP)

This is to invite you to join the Wikipedia Pages Wanting Photos (WPWP) campaign to help improve Wikipedia articles with photos and win prizes. The campaign starts today 1st July 2020 and closes 31st August 2020.

The campaign primarily aims at using images from Wikimedia Commons on Wikipedia articles that are lacking images. Participants will choose among Wikipedia pages without photo images, then add a suitable file from among the many thousands of photos in the Wikimedia Commons, especially those uploaded from thematic contests (Wiki Loves Africa, Wiki Loves Earth, Wiki Loves Folklore, etc.) over the years.

Please visit the campaign page to learn more about the WPWP Campaign.

With kind regards,

Thank you,

Deborah Schwartz Jacobs, Communities Liaison, On behalf of the Wikipedia Pages Wanting Photos Organizing Team - 08:24, 1 July 2020 (UTC)

feel free to translate this message to your local language when this helps your community

Feedback on movement names

Hello. Apologies if you are not reading this message in your native language. Please help translate to your language if necessary. Thank you!

There are a lot of conversations happening about the future of our movement names. We hope that you are part of these discussions and that your community is represented.

Since 16 June, the Foundation Brand Team has been running a survey in 7 languages about 3 naming options. There are also community members sharing concerns about renaming in a Community Open Letter.

Our goal in this call for feedback is to hear from across the community, so we encourage you to participate in the survey, the open letter, or both. The survey will go through 7 July in all timezones. Input from the survey and discussions will be analyzed and published on Meta-Wiki.

Thanks for thinking about the future of the movement, --The Brand Project team, 20:33, 2 July 2020 (UTC)

Note: The survey is conducted via a third-party service, which may subject it to additional terms. For more information on privacy and data-handling, see the survey privacy statement.

Nachdem das Banner für diese unbrauchbare und parteiische Umfrage aus methodischen Gründen abgelehnt wurde, jetzt halt dieser Versuch der Streuung, um für den Schrott noch TeilnehmerInnen zu finden. Statt endlich aufzuhören hinter dem schlechten Geld weiteres hinterher zu werfen, und dieses unsägliche und bislang unbrauchbare Umbenennungsunterfangen gegen den erklärten Widerstand der Community fortzuführen, wird einfach ohne Nachdenken weitergemacht. Auf die Community zu hören scheint keine denkbare Option bei der kleinen Gruppe UmbenennerInnen zu sein. Habt Ihr eigentlich gar keine Skrupel? Grüße vom Sänger ♫(Reden) 20:45, 2 July 2020 (UTC)

Equals sign parser function template conflicts

I just created this page: Equals sign parser function template conflicts. The following wikis are affected: bewiktionary, dsbwiki, dvwiki, enwikinews, hewikisource, huwiki, huwiktionary, hywiki, jawiktionary, jbowiktionary, nlwiktionary, nvwiki, orwiktionary, ruwiktionary, sqwikibooks, ttwiki, ukwiktionary, sourceswiki, frwikisource. If you can help or communicate the issue to the involved wikis in their own language, please do and comment.

I made a separate page for the issue to make it easier to track progress, and I expect this to take a while. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 15:21, 4 July 2020 (UTC)

@Alexis Jazz: This conflict strikes me as something that should be tracked on Phabricator. Would you like me to add a task there describing this issue and referencing your page? I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 17:03, 8 July 2020 (UTC)
@I JethroBT (WMF): You mean a subtask of phab:T91154? — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 17:36, 8 July 2020 (UTC)
@Alexis Jazz: I'm not sure whether a comment or a subtask is more appropriate in this case-- I think your comments and references on the task capture the problem well enough, though. I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 19:58, 8 July 2020 (UTC)
This section was archived on a request by: progression path identified  — billinghurst sDrewth 14:48, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

Where to store this data/information?

fr:Modèle:Plan des tramways vicinaux de Gand au 01/01/1950 It would be usefull if this mapdata now stored in a template on the French Wikipedia would be available to all language Wikipedia's. Its structuraly not for Wikidata. May be a Wikidata item for the whole or the lines individualy as far as it goes. Can this type of data be integrated into the project Abstract Wikipedia? There must be a tool allowing modifications. The licensing is also an issue as this would be mostly own work (tracing) based on other sources (old maps, Google Earth, written sources etc) Maybe look at how the Openstreet community does it.Smiley.toerist (talk) 22:29, 6 July 2020 (UTC)

@Smiley.toerist: you might be able to use mw:Help:Tabular Data#Usage, but you might run into performance issues. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 19:10, 9 July 2020 (UTC)
This section was archived on a request by:  — billinghurst sDrewth 14:49, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

Blocking

Why system detected that I used proxi, if I didnʼt use it (I have having this IP for much time)? 217.117.125.72 16:35, 7 July 2020 (UTC)

Your IP could be in a range together with abusive IPs or your IP may have been assigned to a proxy before it was assigned to you. Which wiki are you trying to edit? — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 17:14, 7 July 2020 (UTC)
Blocking is in past. And assignation was at least one year before blocking. 217.117.125.72 10:07, 9 July 2020 (UTC)
There is little value in discussing this here. Talk to the stewards if you have a global block issue. Even better create and edit from an account so that mitigating any block that catches you is easier.

Either way, you are not currently globally blocked Special:GlobalBlockList/217.117.125.72 so what is the point of the conversation?  — billinghurst sDrewth 22:50, 9 July 2020 (UTC)

This section was archived on a request by:  — billinghurst sDrewth 14:49, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

Wikimedia award ceremony

Lastly on Wikipedia in which was proposed by me that we should award people for their editing in which doesn't stop all other awards but this will be given yearly. This award should be given to all section of sister wiki project rather than wikipedia only. This proposal is going on Wikipedia and is also from wikipedia but I want it to be in all wiki sisters project and joint will be analyzed here.Tbiw (talk) 13:19, 14 July 2020 (UTC)

Where is the link to the proposal? Stryn (talk) 16:57, 14 July 2020 (UTC)
I assume it's en:Wikipedia:Village pump (idea lab)#Wikipedia award ceremony that's meant. As with all such "volunteer of the year" award proposals, I think this would be divisive and distracting, since any editor (on any of the projects) who is active enough to warrant consideration for an award, will also be active enough to have been involved in some kind of controversy or dispute, and for the WMF to be publicly endorsing them will by definition alienate other editors.Iridescent (talk) 06:56, 15 July 2020 (UTC)

Request withdrawn

This section was archived on a request by:  — billinghurst sDrewth 14:50, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

How do I customize this userbox?

Hi, on my userpage here (https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fast_Foe_Comet), I inserted a userbox I borrowed from someone else's page because I liked its design. However, I want to change the "main account" part from Wikitionary to Wikipedia. How do I do that? -Fast Foe Comet

@Fast Foe Comet: Replace "wikt" with "w". --Yair rand (talk) 21:12, 21 July 2020 (UTC)
Thank you so much! -Fast Foe Comet
This section was archived on a request by:  — billinghurst sDrewth 14:50, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

No account can be created on foundation.wikimedia.org

Tracked in Phabricator:
Task T257578

You can't create an account on foundation.wikimedia.org. Very strange, because translated pages like foundation:Naming Convention Proposals Movement Feedback Survey Privacy Statement/de do exist, but you can't change the language of the interface unless you happen to know uselang, but that gets old real fast because it will only last one page. And if you have any other preferences (say, you prefer timeless), well tough luck. No foundation:Special:Preferences for you. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 15:00, 8 July 2020 (UTC)

Yes, limiting user accounts at Wikimedia Foundation Governance Wiki was intentional. Users were told to request edits at FWF and one used to be able to request an account at Request for an account on the Foundation wiki. Killiondude (talk) 16:57, 8 July 2020 (UTC)
I understand it's intentional, but being unable to change preferences isn't nice. This could be made possible by allowing user accounts to be created (even if they can't edit) or somehow allow some preferences to be set without logging in. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 17:32, 8 July 2020 (UTC)
@Alexis Jazz: put in a phabricator: ticket to see what they can free up for languages. That seems to be a reasonable setting for a locked down wiki.  — billinghurst sDrewth 20:49, 8 July 2020 (UTC)
Okay. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 14:09, 9 July 2020 (UTC)

Announcing a new wiki project! Welcome, Abstract Wikipedia

Sent by m:User:Elitre (WMF) 19:56, 9 July 2020 (UTC) - m:Special:MyLanguage/Abstract Wikipedia/July 2020 announcement

Can section links be provided inside the section headers on articles?

I was just talking to one of my friends recently and he remarked to me that the user interface of Wikipedia is not really great when you want to link to a single section of an article. To do that, you have to scroll all the way up to the TOC, and find the specific section you want to link to in order to be able to get the anchor link. What I'd like to request is if it would be okay to have a small anchor link appear next to a section whenever you're hovering over it. That's something a lot of other websites already use, and it seems a bit "2010" to not have this on Wikimedia projects. As an example, GitHub uses such anchor links, and so do other self-respecting wiki projects.

I have read the banner at the very top of this page that tries to deter technical questions, but I believe this is much more a policy question than a technical question. If you want, I can easily make a pull request that implements this, but I'm not sure if that pull request would just be accepted. So my question is: would it be okay to have anchor links added to all (level 2 ==headers==) to appear on hover-over?

I've made an example script to be able to see what it might look like; try running it (if you know what you're doing with JS) to have a look at the effect. Since Wikipedia generally has a fairly simplistic layout, I think the following implementation would already look really well:

$('h2 .mw-headline').before(function() {return '<a class="sectionlink" href="#'+this.id+'">#</a>';});
$('<style type="text/css">a.sectionlink {display: none; position: absolute; transform: translate(-100%, 0); padding: 0 0.2em; text-decoration: none;} :root h2:hover a.sectionlink {display:inline;}</style>').prependTo(document.head)

(some technical details: I've included the :root selector there to make sure the anchor-link does not appear on Internet Explorer versions 8 or lower, since they'll not be able to render the icon properly due to not supporting the necessary transform style)

Joeytje50 (talk) 22:52, 9 July 2020 (UTC)

@Joeytje50: Some people are working on it already :) (and have been for a long time, but hopefully it will move forward, soon?).
See phab:T18691 for many details and further links and open questions.
In the meantime, logged-in users can get these handy links via a gadget; see example of how I do it. Or anyone can do it via a greasemonkey script like this one. (they both work a bit differently, and neither is perfect)
Hope that helps! Quiddity (talk) 18:17, 10 July 2020 (UTC)

This is a new project under discussion.Feel free to discuss and share idea's about it.Tbiw (talk) 12:45, 15 July 2020 (UTC)

:)

i dont know why am alwais rejetd i edit here with so much love--Aracatilar (talk) 23:27, 21 July 2020 (UTC)

@Aracatilar: You have never edited on meta. If you refer to English Wikipedia (different website), see w:en:User talk:Aracatilar for reasons. --Malyacko (talk) 20:06, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

some WMF bans will be appealable

See Talk:Trust_and_Safety/Case_Review_Committee#Relation_with_WMF_Global_Ban_Policy: Once the commitee is set up, it will handle appeals of WMF bans.--GZWDer (talk) 11:16, 28 July 2020 (UTC)

Discussion

Hi greetings, I have started a discussion regarding a new proposal on translations at Meta talk:Babylon#Academy for translations. I humbly request you to participate in it. Thank you.--Path slopu (talk) 11:08, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

OTF v. Pack

I don't think it was reported that Wikimedia Foundation joined this lawsuit to defend the pre-existing CEO of the Open Technology Fund (which gave some grants to NoScript, Tor and others):

EFF, Wikimedia, Human Rights Watch, Mozilla, the Tor Project, and a dozen more groups urged the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C Circuit in a filing to rule that Pack violated the First Amendment right of association and assembly and U.S. law —which both ensure that OTF is independent and separate from the government—when he ousted the fund’s president and bipartisan board and replaced them with political appointees. Government-funded OTF filed a lawsuit against Pack last month to stop the takeover.

https://www.eff.org/press/releases/eff-court-trump-appointees-removal-open-technology-fund-leadership-unlawfu

The Wikimedia Foundation logo also appeared a while ago on https://saveinternetfreedom.tech/ (a letter to the USA House of Deputies), but that wasn't publicly announced yet so we don't know whether it was real or not. --Nemo 06:51, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

Note: They were mentioned at https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/publicpolicy/2020-July/002029.html HTH, Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 00:38, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

Proposed new user group: Global blocker

The local user group have following rights:

  • Lock or unlock global account (centralauth-lock)
  • Make and remove global blocks (globalblock)
  • Block or unblock other users from editing (block) (on Meta only)
  • Block or unblock a user from sending email (blockemail) (on Meta only)
  • Have one's own edits automatically marked as patrolled (autopatrol) (on Meta only; [1])

Main usecases:

  • Fight cross-wiki LTA
  • Allow a bot to global block known open proxies (such bot exists for blocking locally, but this also means it provides a proxy list for cross-wiki vandals; so existing bots should be migrated to global blockers)

Other usecases:

  • Rxy have a script that blocks/locks ISECHIKA sock. As there are concern about Rxy, it is better to move it to a dedicated bot account (either managed by Rxy or another trusted user), in case he will lost his stewardship
  • For local admins accepting an appeal, it can also remove the global lock unless there're other concerns
    • Note global locks happen almost always in clear-cut situations, so if a user successfully appealed a block in some wiki, it is no longer a good candidate for global lock (if there are controversy, global ban should be used)
    • However, compromised accounts, socks of community or foundation globally banned user may not be unlocked
    • Therefore, it will be necessary to make Global locks a policy; Global blocks should also be a policy

--GZWDer (talk) 10:23, 27 July 2020 (UTC)

Do we really have a need for this kind of group? -- CptViraj (talk) 10:45, 27 July 2020 (UTC)
Comment Comment@GZWDer There are more than one lock button behind global locks Spambots and LTAs often use proxies, and they also have to be blocked. This is what stewards do via LWCU. A group that can only block globally doesn't do much. Should such a group be introduced, this group should also be able to carry out corresponding LWCUs. Anything else would only result in locks with little effect.--𝐖𝐢𝐤𝐢𝐁𝐚𝐲𝐞𝐫 👤💬 18:11, 29 July 2020 (UTC)
So at some point we may introduce a global checkuser group (we will have this feature soon), but this proposal is useful even without it.--GZWDer (talk) 18:15, 29 July 2020 (UTC)
We have these groups already, they are called stewards. All the stuff that you require basically is stewards. Been there, done that. About the only limited scope and limited value is global blocking on an IP address (anonymous only, and short term only). I don't see the value proposition in the case presented to further splinter rights.  — billinghurst sDrewth 21:13, 29 July 2020 (UTC)
But Steward_requests/Global_permissions/2020-07#Global_sysop_for_Drmies is not a use case of stewards.--GZWDer (talk) 23:40, 29 July 2020 (UTC)
That matter is a person asking for global sysop and failing. If you cannot global sysop, and I doubt that you are going to get a global (b)locker right. If you have a sub-part of that discussion you would like to unpack, then go for it, but the request itself is not pertinent.  — billinghurst sDrewth 23:53, 29 July 2020 (UTC)
Exactly. If such a group is introduced, it has an equally high requirement and Crosswiki work is necessary.--𝐖𝐢𝐤𝐢𝐁𝐚𝐲𝐞𝐫 👤💬 14:18, 30 July 2020 (UTC)

Looks useless, if at all, the rights should be bundled with GS. --MF-W 14:22, 30 July 2020 (UTC)

  • Support Support great reducing work of admins making other users get a task to do rather than daily edit.Tbiw (talk) 14:26, 2 August 2020 (UTC)
  • Support Support, at least in part. I've long favoured unbundling rights from the steward group. Not everyone needs or wants full access to that toolset, or wants to undergo a month-long vetting process every year. I think making these rights part of global sysop would make sense. – Ajraddatz (talk) 15:28, 2 August 2020 (UTC)
    • This have to be a new local group - global sysop is not truly global and does not work for users mostly active in large wikis like Drmies.--GZWDer (talk) 16:13, 2 August 2020 (UTC)
      • Global sysop can be changed to whatever we want it to be, there are no technical restrictions on who it can be granted to. Even as a separate group, it seems highly unlikely that a user like Drmies would be granted access to globally-reaching tools without some knowledge or experience working at the global level. – Ajraddatz (talk) 16:37, 2 August 2020 (UTC)
  • Support Support per Ajraddatz This would be useful as an extension for Global sysop, since IP addresses could also be blocked globally. Because global sysops work with stewards anyway and are always in contact, the above problem should not arise.--𝐖𝐢𝐤𝐢𝐁𝐚𝐲𝐞𝐫 👤💬
  • Not 100% sure on this, but I don't really like the idea of giving this to GS. When people apply to GS, there is a review and commentary period about how such a candidate will do with the task of assisting small wikis; this would give them access to block every user on every project, and unlike global ip-blocks, local projects would not be able to override this. — xaosflux Talk 20:33, 2 August 2020 (UTC)
  • Local projects can disable global IP blocks locally, and scope of global lock don't allow controversial locks, hardly an account is unlocked by request, in proportion the accounts that are locked. Accounts that would be locked by this group are those whose motivation is clear and uncontroversial, like now by stewards. Rafael (stanglavine) msg 22:44, 3 August 2020 (UTC)
  • Oppose Oppose. Absolutely not. The global sysop proposal passed by explicitly removing from the proposal global blocks. If this got added, then it means global sysops will be able to do actions affecting wikis where global sysops do not have access, radically changing the shape of the group, controversially. While the time has proven that much of the opposition to global sysops was FUD, this is an important addition that completly changes the scope of the global sysops. I also oppose a separate global/local group just for this. Global blocks and locks are the remit of the stewards. Cfr. Billinghurst. Regards, —MarcoAurelio (talk) 20:52, 2 August 2020 (UTC)
    • I don't think stewards are enough for fighting LTAs with cross-wiki presence. The SRG is already overloaded and it may be useful to give the right to some trusted local sysops in some wikis.--GZWDer (talk) 13:05, 3 August 2020 (UTC)
  • Support Support --Novak Watchmen (talk) 23:00, 3 August 2020 (UTC)
  • I thinked about support attributing to GS, but the proposal is for a local group and GS is a global group so we would need to make adaptations, and Marco Aurélio's point is clear and I need to agree. As a separate group, I don't think that only rights to lock and block globally is so practical. Sometimes is necessary LWCU, delete pages in small wikis (spam, vandalism, etc.), so Global Blockers would need to ask for help (stewards or GS) in the same way. Really stewards have many functions, as Ajraddatz said, but they are correlated in day-to-day, so I don't know if splitting would be very useful, except in cases where functions can be performed in isolation, such as global-renamers and abuse filter managers. Rafael (stanglavine) msg 23:02, 3 August 2020 (UTC)
  • Strong oppose. Absolutely not. This would only make matters worse. The ability to coordinate locks with CU and OS is fundamental to it. Your cited case, Drmies, would not benefit from this, or would only make it worse. He'd be able to lock the account, but not to 1) OS the edits and 2) check and block the underlying IP to prevent the creation of yet another account that would continue the abuse. Regarding what you said above, Block and lock are important tool for emergency. LWCU is not emergent at all., that is completely wrong. Locking abusing accounts and doing nothing else to it will simply result in the creation of more and more accounts. To be fair, even doing that, LTAs jump IPs so they can keep abusing. —Thanks for the fish! talkcontribs 23:10, 4 August 2020 (UTC)
  • I wish this centralauth-lock and globalblock to be bundled with WM:ADMIN. Kind regards, — Tulsi Bhagat contribs | talk ] 03:37, 5 August 2020 (UTC)
    @Tulsi Bhagat: I think the wish never comes true. Why should sysops globally (b)lock users / IPs? This is far from the role of local sysops.--𝐖𝐢𝐤𝐢𝐁𝐚𝐲𝐞𝐫 👤💬 14:15, 5 August 2020 (UTC)
    @WikiBayer: Yeah! I think Meta-Wiki is more a global community and sysops here are more than an ordinary local sysops as in they have special actions with global effects. IMO, bundling centralauth-lock and globalblock to sysops here won't be an issue, undoubtedly this is home of LTAs and sysops should responsible as well to combat with them. We neither agree to create a separate global/local group (I personally also oppose to create a new group) nor bundling the rights to GS. Moreover, most of the sysops here are either Stewards or future Stewards or former Stewards. So, the alternative solution i see that the rights to be bundled with WM:ADMIN. This will definitely help decreasing the workload of Stewards. Kind regards, — Tulsi Bhagat contribs | talk ] 16:45, 5 August 2020 (UTC)
    For a short time, global locking was available to local bureaucrats. I would support those access being granted to Meta sysops as well, though I doubt there would be support for it. – Ajraddatz (talk) 16:54, 5 August 2020 (UTC)
  • Strong oppose per Tks4fish and MarcoAurelio we do not need Steward Junior. Praxidicae (talk) 13:53, 5 August 2020 (UTC)
  • Oppose Oppose as proposed largely per Marco. I’m very sympathetic to Ajraddatz’s points, but I think the issue is that as constituted, unless you entirely revamp the global rights system this would throw it out of whack. I might support that revamp (probably would actually), but only doing one piece wouldn’t work. There’s also the problem that SRGP, etc. is kinda a backwater where you have “global” insiders commenting, so there’s no real scrutiny to the level stewards get. To me it seems you’d want substantially more vetting than that. TonyBallioni (talk) 13:55, 5 August 2020 (UTC)
  • Oppose Oppose. I am not convinced that this proposal fills a compelling need (i.e. it's not clear where the stewards have been inadequate to require this proposal), and I am concerned that without other LTA-combatting abilities in the steward/local administrator toolset, such as viewing deleted revisions, this new group may face challenges coming to informed global blocking decisions. Mz7 (talk) 13:58, 5 August 2020 (UTC)
  • Without spilling the w:WP:BEANS, I'd like to point out that some of the permissions listed above have the potential to wreak havoc in a short period of time if used by a rogue or hijacked account, to a substantially greater extent than the permissions currently included in the GS toolkit. (Don't count this as an oppose !vote.) PiRSquared17 (talk) 10:46, 26 August 2020 (UTC)