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Change in renaming process

Part or all of this message may be in English. Please help translate if possible.

Single-user login (SUL) finalisation's goal is so that every Wikimedia editor has a single, recognized global account with one username across all projects. As you may know, after a long delay, it's now underway as an effort between bureaucrats, stewards, and Wikimedia Foundation engineers. This will also allow for development of cross-wiki tools like global notifications and watchlists. There is no set date for the completion of single-user login finalization at this time.

The process involves changing all rename processes into one global renaming process. The ability for local bureaucrats to rename users on this wiki will be turned off on Monday, 15 September 2014, as one of the first steps. Global renamers are in the process of being created to make sure projects and languages are represented by the time this occurs. I sent a note to every bureaucrat about this process three weeks ago with an invitation to participate and many have begun requesting to be a part of the group. Together with the stewards, the global renamers will be empowered to help editors work through the often difficult process of getting a global name.

In parting, visit Special:MergeAccount to unify your account if you have never done so. If your local pages about renaming still need to be updated, please do so and consider pointing people to m:SRUC for future rename requests, especially if this project does not have bureaucrats that hold global renamer permissions. If you have any questions, you can read more on the help page on Meta. You can also follow the technical progress on mediawiki.org. Contact me on Meta any time with questions as well. Thank you for your time.

-- User:Keegan (WMF) (talk) 9. sep 2014, 18:22 (CEST)

New PlaceBook Wiki Project Proposal

I've just created a new project proposal that I'd really welcome any feedback on.

I recognise that the overall aims are ambitious in scope, but it is all definitely achievable with current web-based technologies, so it's more a question of ascertaining whether there would be sufficient willing and enthusiasm out there to give the idea wings. Obviously, comments favourable and unfavourable would all help to gauge this, so thanks in advance.

How to set-up Huggle

Can somebody show example of Special:MyPage/huggle3.css ?--Ochilov (talk) 11:17, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

I don't think that page is usually edited manually. It's used to store the preferences for the Huggle application for that user, like Twinkle. --Glaisher (talk) 15:23, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

• Glaisher, I exactly need this one, to enable application. --Ochilov (talk) 12:13, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

See mw:Manual:Huggle/Installation. You need to add enable:true to Special:MyPage/huggle.css to enable it. --Glaisher (talk) 12:20, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

Thank you very much! --Ochilov (talk) 13:23, 3 February 2015 (UTC)

Sockfarm user of 200 plus sock accounts going up for admin

1. Brief chronology at q:User:Cirt/Kalki Restrictions.
2. Requesting adminship at q:Wikiquote:Requests for adminship/Kalki (4th request).

Is it appropriate to allow someone to become an admin that has a sockfarm of over 200 plus sock accounts, and has repeatedly refused to stop socking and refused to help Admins and Checkusers identify his socks? -- Cirt (talk) 06:15, 24 January 2015 (UTC)

You have already asked this question before... Perhaps the Wikimedia Forum is more appropriate than the talk page you used last time, but repeating the question/argument is unlikely to produce new findings. --Nemo 07:51, 24 January 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for agreeing this page is more appropriate. If you know of another more appropriate place for this discussion, I'd be happy to discuss it there. -- Cirt (talk) 17:06, 24 January 2015 (UTC)

Yes, it is appropriate that the user who has contributed the most to Wikiquote (11+ years, 100,000+ edits) be made an admin there. Please stop canvassing. ~ DanielTom (talk) 19:48, 24 January 2015 (UTC)

Nope, not canvassing, posting to central noticeboards. Thanks. -- Cirt (talk) 22:58, 24 January 2015 (UTC)

This is not a central noticeboard, the issues are not central, they are Wikiquote business. It is completely up to a local project what standards to apply for adminship, unless an overarching issue arises, which has not been raised above. --Abd (talk) 00:41, 25 January 2015 (UTC)

I would agree that the issue of adminship is a decision for the wiki in question. That said, 200 alternate accounts is a PITA and unnecessary in the wiki world, and is pertinent to the broader community. The conditions set by the local community does seem the means to manage it and I don't see the need for the reiteration and rehashing of a previously resolved issue. Best discussed on your community how you wish to manage it.  — billinghurst sDrewth 03:57, 25 January 2015 (UTC)

I have seen no evidence that the user has socked in the last 4 years. Cirt has been dredging up very old stuff. Looking at past RfAs, I see signs that he has effectively canvassed votes and comments from meta by posting things here. This is not good, but this is primarily for Wikiquote to address. Thanks, Billinghurst. --Abd (talk) 04:20, 25 January 2015 (UTC)

Kalki to date refused to identify all of his socks. As FloNight put it: "... as a neutral person who closely evaluated Kalki's use of multiple user names on this project and others. The use of this many accounts was disruptive and had to be evaluated by checkusers and other people experienced with evaluation socking. And I stand by my assertion that the accounts were used in a deceptive manner." So, in FloNight's words, not mine, this activity was disruptive across multiple projects. And Kalki hasn't even yet to this point in time cooperated in identifying all of his socks. That is a problem. -- Cirt (talk) 04:32, 25 January 2015 (UTC)

• Comment Cirt, I'm gonna have to concur with you all the way. Kalki, whilst indicating himself to be a good faith user, has definitely not proven his innocence to all those involved within the wikiquote society. I believe we're experiencing a crisis so far as trust is concerned, and as far as I am concerned, a sockpuppet "expert" such as Kalki should never regain the admin tools he once had. That's, that's just it. Hope my argument made sense, or at least whatever sense I was able to make out of this. 2601:3:3A00:270:9116:FC91:E69A:2831 08:19, 25 January 2015 (UTC)
• Just out of curiosity, were his sockpuppets appropriately named? :) Wnt (talk) 00:49, 10 February 2015 (UTC)

  Not really. ~ Ningauble (talk) 22:46, 14 February 2015 (UTC)

  At least he had q:User:Vishnu. PiRSquared17 (talk) 22:49, 14 February 2015 (UTC)

tt Wikibooks

The b:tt: project is being used to host material that is meant to be on Wikisource (e.g. 1, 2). Wikibooks is supposed to host open-source textbooks; Wikisource, public domain/similar primary sources. I suggest opening tt.ws (currently closed—see Special:SiteMatrix) and Importing such pages over. It Is Me Here ^{t / c} 15:09, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

Proposals for closure of projects are made on PCP. --Glaisher (talk) 15:14, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

But I'm more about opening tt.ws than closing tt.wb; for all I know, there might be legitimate textbooks hosted there in addition to the ws-type material. It Is Me Here ^{t / c} 11:22, 27 January 2015 (UTC)

Well, Requests for new languages/Wikisource Tatar has been open since 2011.--Glaisher (talk) 11:26, 27 January 2015 (UTC)

Thanks; I've now voted there. On another note, can you locate a Project:Forum page or similar at b:tt:, so as to notify them of this discussion? Because I haven't been able to find one. There aren't any local Admins there either that might have led me to a Project:AN. It Is Me Here ^{t / c} 11:35, 27 January 2015 (UTC)

It doesn't look like they have such a page. So you can just use the talk page of the main page: tt:b:Бәхәс:Баш бит. PiRSquared17 and I worked on a global message delivery list last November and we noticed that many small wikis do not have these discussion pages so we added the talk of the main page in wikis where we couldn't find such a page. --Glaisher (talk) 11:45, 27 January 2015 (UTC)

You could also post about this at other tt language projects too. Not just Wikibooks. --Glaisher (talk) 11:48, 27 January 2015 (UTC)

Czech translation proofreading

Hi, I translated CNBanner:POTY 2014 R1 banner into the Czech language, but it is waiting for proofreading. May I ask somebody to do it, since there is not much time until the end of the first round POTY left? Thank you very much. Jan.Kamenicek (talk) 21:24, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

Or is there anything else that needs to be done so that the English sign could be replaced by the translation? --Jan.Kamenicek (talk) 22:12, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

No idea, but maybe add a note on c:Commons_talk:Picture_of_the_Year/2014#banner_spam. –Be..anyone (talk) 08:10, 31 January 2015 (UTC)

Published. Sorry, didn't see that earlier. --Stryn (talk) 14:52, 31 January 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. Jan.Kamenicek (talk) 16:15, 31 January 2015 (UTC)

Single User Page

I've been more away than around in recent months. Is the concept of a Single User Page still on the radar? Thanks. StevenJ81 (talk) 22:04, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

Yes, there've been progress. In fact, mw:Extension:GlobalUserPage has been deployed to the beta cluster. Tracked on phab:T72576. See also global user pages. --Glaisher (talk) 08:53, 30 January 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. (May ask you some questions about it later on your own user page.) StevenJ81 (talk) 14:21, 30 January 2015 (UTC)

Endangered languages

Hello everyone, I'm not sure if I've come to the right place. I'd like to propose that all Wikipedia articles on languages include their conservation status, in a format nearly identical to that used for animals. While articles on animals get their citations from the IUCN Red List, the conservation status of languages would be cited from the UNESCO Red Book on world languages. Since this is a rather broad idea affecting a large number of articles, I wanted to bring it up somewhere I thought it would be heard rather than on an individual article. At any rate, cheers -- Interlaker (talk) 23:40, 1 February 2015 (UTC)

You could propose a property for it on Wikidata. There's also Ethnologue's Language Status. Maybe we could include all three endangerment statuses (stati?) like multitree does. BTW if you are interested in endangered languages feel free to join WikiLang's IRC channel: #wikilang^connect (which is for discussing anything related to wikis and languages, not just the inactive WikiLang proposal) PiRSquared17 (talk) 23:49, 1 February 2015 (UTC)

How does one go about doing so? My Wikipedia activities have been limited to edits, flags, and the odd article creation. Interlaker (talk) 20:39, 7 February 2015 (UTC)

See d:Wikidata:Property proposal. --Nemo 20:41, 7 February 2015 (UTC)

Thanks very much! Interlaker (talk) 22:11, 7 February 2015 (UTC)

Have I done this right? Endangered languages property proposal Interlaker (talk) 16:08, 8 February 2015 (UTC)

Is there any study that deals with Wikipedia's entries on fiction?

Does anyone know of any research results on Wikipedia entries about fiction? see also here in section "Sought: study on a certain group of entries (fiction)" for previous roundabout answers on en.wikipedia.org thanks, --C.Koltzenburg (talk) 09:09, 2 February 2015 (UTC) --C.Koltzenburg (talk) 14:35, 2 February 2015 (UTC)

Project day Brussels the 4 of February.

Just to inform the community about a Project day in Brussels the 4 of February. Every body Welcome ! Lionel Scheepmans ^{✉ Wiki ou eMail} 14:00, 2 February 2015 (UTC)

Looking for feedback, endorsement and partnerships for project working with UNESCO

Hi all

I’m looking for feedback, endorsement and partnerships for my Wikimedia Foundation PEG grant to be Wikimedian in Residence at UNESCO. I’d very much appreciate if you would have a look, I want to include as many different languages as possible and connect editors in each country with local UNESCO partners.

I would like to know if you would be interested in working with me to match UNESCO staff and it’s partner organisations with skilled volunteers. This would include running in person training sessions and mentoring new users from these organisations who will often be experts in their field.

I ran a pilot project that resulted in the images found in the Wikimedia Commons category Images from the archive of UNESCO, here are a few examples relevant to Wikipedia:

• 
  The Soda volcano, Oromia, Ethiopia.
• 
  Rubble of the cathedral after the earthquake that hit the Capital Port au Prince just before 5 pm on 12 January 2010.
• 
  Young monk, wearing a special costume, July-August 1991, Sikkim, India.
• 
  Sabha, 6, getting ready to walk to school from her house on the borders eastern Gaza strip, where she and her family are still living in tents.
• 
  Not far from Mohenjo-Daro (or Mohenjodaro) - These Mohana fishermen/hunters use lures from real birds to catch more birds. They will either eat them or sell them. Mohenjodaro, Pakistan.
• 
  Priest of rock-Hewn Churches of Lalibela, a high place of Ethiopian Christianity, still today a place of pilmigrage and devotion.

If you think this is a worthwhile project please click this link and then click the endorse button. If you're working with a chapter and would like to help match volunteers with organisations please message me on my Wikipedia talk page

Many thanks

Mrjohncummings (talk) 21:26, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

After seeing the same fund-raising ad on COM:VPP, COM:VP, and now here I think that the official advice to initiate community discussions by posting on random Village pumps is wrong. The linked page offers an endorse button, nothing to express my opinion that I abhor spamming. It's not the fault of the proponent, he's only following the questionable advice. –Be..anyone (talk) 03:30, 7 February 2015 (UTC)

The grant-related programs seem to use a type of "approval voting". If you have any other type of comment, it belongs on the talk page. WhatamIdoing (talk) 07:15, 9 February 2015 (UTC)

WikiGames

I have recently revived and revised the WikiGames proposal (a newer version can be found at my sandbox). I would like to hear some input from the Meta community, as I am unsure with its compliance with the Wikimedia Mission Statement, but hopefully there'll be no problems in regards to that. Any thoughts? George.Edward.C (talk) 18:59, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

Wikia hosts lots of game wikias, I'm familiar with the freeciv wiki and civilization games wiki. Apparently your proposal is not about an escape from Wikia, and therefore I'm not really interested in it. For free games a libregamewiki exists, but I can't tell how good or bad it is. For commercial games I guess that any commercial Wiki farm (not only Wikia) desperately looks for new victims in their wannabe-community adware traps. Unconvinced: –Be..anyone (talk) 03:50, 7 February 2015 (UTC)

Understandable, the proposal is still being worked on. I will continue to work on it and take your advice. I didn't want to host one on Wikia since I want to have some control over it (in the end, Wikia can do whatever they want with your wiki). George.Edward.C (talk) 06:51, 7 February 2015 (UTC)

My server, my rules also affects Wikimedia, no matter how much I wish that the WMF SHOULD be globally replaced by BRION. –Be..anyone (talk) 13:59, 9 February 2015 (UTC)

What I think WMF really ought to have is a wiki for recording and sharing creative ideas and projects - a site where people who feel too small and vulnerable to register for a license to be sued aka patent can at least put out their ideas to the world in an impartial way without being taken advantage in the contemptuous manner of many of the vulture companies that try to get people to give over ideas to them. A site where people can describe the specifications for a video game in great detail in case someone wants to program it, or generate the core program for one pending the work of others to illustrate it. (I understand that last activity is regarded as the property of Sourceforge, but they are no longer so pure) A site where people can propose ideas for cartoons and see if others want to draw them, or draw up some cute cartoon characters and look for someone to write a plot for them. A place for creative writing, video editing, free films, whatever. I know, that's so much of a dream, yet I know the WMF could make it happen if they had the desire. Wnt (talk) 00:44, 10 February 2015 (UTC)

We do have Wikiversity. --Pi zero (talk) 02:07, 10 February 2015 (UTC)

The way of archive

Hello,

Please only archive discussions by only moving pages to a sub page instead of removing sections and copying them into subpages. In this case, history of revisions of a page won't increase and contribution will stay on archive pages and they're easy to track using Special:Contribution. Mjbmr (discussion • contribs) 19:34, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

Your proposal is not consistent with Standard archival system. --Nemo 19:38, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

It's not a proposal, I didn't say that, I'm asking. The link you provided has no community consensus behind it. Mjbmr (discussion • contribs) 19:43, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

I think either way is fine, but I prefer letting a bot manually move the sections, as there may be some new sections and some old. In that case only the old would be archived. George.Edward.C (talk) 19:50, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

AAR

Hello,

Admins with a few admin actions (or edits) must not count as active admins since there are more active people than that admin, any idea what the formula would be? Mjbmr (discussion • contribs) 21:38, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

It's already a policy in its current form. Any edits or actions count. If you wish to change that, see the old RfC and start a new one. PiRSquared17 (talk) 23:15, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

Do you have a formula about it? Mjbmr (discussion • contribs) 23:23, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

What formula? For example 5-5 will do to get 0, which is the criterion, though. --Base (talk) 00:48, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

How to calculate an admin is inactive, per active users an admin with a few edits won't count as active. Mjbmr (discussion • contribs) 00:55, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

Have you tried this tool? Green Giant (talk) 01:04, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

Thank you, that helps a lot but I still need to get a formula out of it. Mjbmr (discussion • contribs) 01:20, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

We don't really need a formula for it. Just some guide like "less than 10 actions or edits". Any number of formulae could be used to compute inactivity. It's pointless unless you already have specific criteria in mind. Do you want to calculate inactivity relative to other editors? How are edits and actions weighted? Where should the arbitrary line between active and inactive be drawn? The current version of the policy is fine IMHO. PiRSquared17 (talk) 01:27, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

A formula is pointless for use with this policy. The purpose of the policy is to help and identify advanced rights holders who are inactive, not lightly active, and we defined a broad scope for what was not inactive.  — billinghurst sDrewth 12:50, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

@PiRSquared17: You're right. I want to calculate inactivity relative to active users.

@Billinghurst: What's the difference between an inactive admin and a admin with only three edits in a year, but there is another active admin who makes 100 edits a week? I just wanna know your opinion on this I don't care about the policy let these people have their access. Mjbmr (discussion • contribs) 13:27, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

You are talking about the policy (your topic), so how else can someone interpret the discussion. Anything else is 'how long is a piece string' measurement and personal opinion. If you want to understand the policy, then please read the RFC from the time that explains what was proposed and the form in which it is proposed. The purpose is indicated in my previous comment.  — billinghurst sDrewth 21:51, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

Are you saying I can't open a new RFC? besides I'm looking for what is good wikis, maybe use that on local policies. Mjbmr (discussion • contribs) 22:16, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

I am saying read the RFC for that discussion that is pertinent to your question, both in why the policy was framed in its current state, and the opinions that people had when seeing the proposal. Otherwise <sheesh> where do you draw your connotations and conclusions.  — billinghurst sDrewth 05:43, 7 February 2015 (UTC)

• +1 to what PiRSquared17 has said. --Tito☸Dutta 09:43, 7 February 2015 (UTC)

Human Right and IP Sock Puppet

Dear Wikimedia, Frankly, I suggest elimination of IP-sock Puppet policy! Because this policy violates one's human right severely. Take me for example, I am a fan of computer science, and I love to contribute my time on talk pages on computer science, such as x86-64, x86, PAE and so forth. I also failed to suggest a .net framework template, but just because the argument between myself and someone else I was trapped and blocked indefinitely. But I have strong passion to contribute on topics on computer science, and I also contribute useful and meaningful talks on the appropriate talk pages. But there are always some people who dislike me and reported me as the sock of Janagewen, and blocked my other accounts too. I think this IP-sock puppet policy is bad and even worse. It could set blocks to the real breaker and also open up doors to the real attackers preventing further contributions from kind people.

Take my experiences on simple.wikipedia.org for example too, people there confused word edition and version, I corrected them there but reverted without reason, then I got angry and made complaints to that editor. Then that editor use this complaint as excuse to block me from editing there, and their fellows even lock my account there too.

Take my shame experiences on zh.wikipedia.org, I wrote many useful things on WPS, Windows XP Professional x64 and windows XP 64-bit and so forth, just because the arguments between me and some administrators there, they blocked me for no reasons and using IP-sock puppet to prevent me from further contributions or maintenance. I feel those behaviours are very dirty.

The IP-sock puppet policy could not help people to make useful contributions but made a lot of enemies against Wikipedia.org, lose their passion and faith in it too. So I do suggest to eliminate this policy.

I am Chinese, I know how to forgive and how to accept. Just because I know Wikipedia.org is a great place for place find the real knowledge rather than something dirty and dark. So I wish keep it clean. My English is not that good, but I've tried my best to express the words in heart for months.

Najagewinnen (talk) 15:46, 7 February 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for your interest, it's noted and appreciated. I've not looked into your history, but from your words it looks like you have a very specialised interest, perhaps with strong personal opinions. Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects are collaborative platforms, but you could perhaps contribute more easily to other knowledge bases which allow more individual points of view: http://superuser.com/questions/tagged/windows (that site is also cc-by-sa). --Nemo 16:00, 7 February 2015 (UTC)

"Human Right"? Haha. That's not how Wikipedia works. Here you are expected to kneel and suck their dicks and then maybe, just maybe, you will be let in on their little circlejerk. But it's not that bad. The fact they recognize you as a sock also means it's very easy to get attention, and that's their weakness they don't want you to know. 91.152.115.72 16:06, 7 February 2015 (UTC)

Improving the search feature on Commons

Follow this link to know more about this discussion I have started. Basically, wiikmedia commons has millions of images, but the search feature yields few results when there should be much more Tetra quark (talk) 03:07, 8 February 2015 (UTC)

...anyone? Tetra quark (talk) 03:07, 8 February 2015 (UTC)

Well, I support the idea but it looks like Nemo and others are already working on it. PiRSquared17 (talk) 01:18, 10 February 2015 (UTC)

VisualEditor triage meeting

As a reminder, the first of a weekly series of open meetings about VisualEditor will be tomorrow: Wednesday, 11 February 2015 at 12:00 (noon) PST (20:00 UTC). These meetings are related to the Engineering team's priorities for the current quarter. We will discuss the release criteria for VisualEditor, jointly prioritise the work of the team, and talk about the bugs and features which are most important to you, including this list of tasks that have been nominated for higher priority.

We particularly welcome the presence of volunteers who enjoy contributing MediaWiki code. The joining instructions have been posted on MediaWiki.org. The meeting will use w:WebEx, which for some computers may require installing a plug-in, so please review the instructions well in advance. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:50, 10 February 2015 (UTC)

All I'll ever see from this beast are small pieces showing up in FLOW or the template data manager. At the moment the latter expects me to click on a [back]-button to save i18n-parameter info. Please tell them, whoever they are, that one contributor thinks that the manager UI used to be better. –Be..anyone (talk) 18:25, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

Knowledge assembly Platfrom Proposal

The knowledge assembly is a web tool which provides a infrastructure to assemble and provide knowledge, mainly focusing on knowledge which may be directly used in tasks. It combines concepts from Wikipedia (data created by users and provided to users for free, donation mechanism) with incentive mechanism of the open sources software community and other innovations of Internet based applications (simple voting functions - the like button - and ranking mechanisms).

I would welcome comments to the proposal. — The preceding unsigned comment was added by Sguenter (talk)

IP Inspection is illegal or not?

Dear Wikimedia,

Please waste some time on this link, here as we know, Jeh is always assisted with other strange wikipedians to report and block other users successfully. And he might have the trend to make advertisement, that might be the very reason for his passion. He also ignore the human right or privacy of one's user, and try to set traps to hook them up and use the complex Wikipedia politics to drive most users away. I believe so many and many innocents Wikipedia users has been harmed buy this guy and his fellows. But in order to protect Wikipedia.org, my dear friends, please pay attention to this topic. Thank you! 103.25.56.68 23:21, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

Global user pages & bulk deletion of local user pages

Bulk deletions by Synchbot

Global user pages will let you edit your global user page from Meta, which will be shown on all wikis where you don't already have a local user page. With the extension finally set to launch on Wikimedia wikis on February 18^th, many users are left with hundreds of local user pages which will hide their global page (you can check yours using the userpages tool). Synchbot is a bot which can delete your user pages on all Wikimedia wikis (subject to any exceptions or criteria you want), but the current practice is to reject such requests because crosswiki sentiment is unclear.

Should Synchbot delete local user pages on all wikis at their owner's request? Are there any cases where a user page should not be deleted (e.g., user is blocked on that wiki)? There will be many such requests when global user pages go live, so I'd like to settle the question before synchbot starts handling them. —Pathoschild 01:37, 13 February 2015 (UTC)

• Finally! Thank you for letting us know. I think the bot should delete local userpages but this might not be viewed positively on all wikis. I agree that a blocked page should be left alone because they often have a message about the block e.g. sock puppetry. [...] Cheers. Green Giant (talk) 01:51, 13 February 2015 (UTC) [Part of this comment was split into a separate section.]

• This is definitely great news. I don't think it should be a big deal to have these pages deleted, upon user requests. --Diego Grez ^{return fire} 03:17, 13 February 2015 (UTC)

• +1, I appreciate synchbot deletions and I believe there is consensus for them. --Nemo 06:54, 14 February 2015 (UTC)

• How will closed wikis be handled? --Rschen7754 06:55, 14 February 2015 (UTC)

  User pages would likely be deleted on closed wikis too, since they participate in global user pages. They can be excluded on request, though. —Pathoschild 07:00, 14 February 2015 (UTC)

• Yay! PiRSquared17 (talk) 07:41, 14 February 2015 (UTC)

• Delete on request by non-blocked owners - a user may want these local pages to override the global ones (and may miss the warning that the pages will be deleted); and in cases of blocked users, there is frequently an administritave reason to keep them. However, barring these cases, I see no reason to not delete them. Note that many wikis (including English Wikipedia) have policies of deleting user pages on request of owner (in English Wikipedia, we call it CSD U1). Note that user talk pages are a different story, since they may have important discussions. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 06:41, 15 February 2015 (UTC)

Global user pages are now live, and letting users self-request deletion of their local pages (within some basic constraints) seems to be uncontroversial. I'll begin accepting requests to do so. :) —Pathoschild 01:12, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

Questions about global user pages

[Topic split from previous section.]

• [...] Is there a possibility of letting a user select which wiki to use as their central page e.g. their home wiki or perhaps a wiki where they spend a lot of time? Cheers. Green Giant (talk) 01:51, 13 February 2015 (UTC) [Part of this comment was split from a separate section.]

  No, global user pages will always use Meta as the central wiki (just like your global.css and global.js pages). —Pathoschild 01:58, 13 February 2015 (UTC)

• What happens if the user page on Meta depends on a page on Meta, for example through linking, transclusion or redirect? For example, my Meta user page redirects to my talk page. Will my user page on other projects suddenly start redirecting to my talk page on Meta, or will they all be turned into redirects to my talk page on the local project? The latter would be less confusing, I think. --Stefan2 (talk) 23:07, 13 February 2015 (UTC)

  mw:Help:Extension:GlobalUserPage explains how global user pages work. There are two rules you can apply:

  • content comes from Meta (including templates, {{int:}} messages, etc);
  • links are local (so links and redirects will point to the local wiki, unless you use interwiki links like [[m:link]]).

  —Pathoschild 03:04, 14 February 2015 (UTC)

  That does not seem to be correct: redirects seem to be relative to Meta, not to the local wiki. If you go to nb:User:Stefan2 (where no local user page exists), then you see my talk page on Meta, not my talk page on Bokmål Wikipedia. Edit links are missing, though. --Stefan2 (talk) 14:46, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

  Thanks, I noticed the same thing. The target of the redirect is rendered instead, so you can use any Meta page as your global user page. That may be a bug. —Pathoschild 15:16, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

  You can also use any Meta page as your global user page by simply transcluding that page on your Meta user page. This redirect feature doesn't seem to add any functionality which isn't already available. --Stefan2 (talk) 17:20, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

• What color will [[User:Example]] and [[User talk:Example]] be, where (a) Example is a user with pages at meta, and (b) without? If User:Example exists locally, the answer would be blue, so my question refers to someone with no local user and/or talk page. Johnuniq (talk) 04:54, 14 February 2015 (UTC)

  The links to the userpage would be blue if a global user page is shown on a local wiki (it only appears if there is a userpage at meta for the global user account) and if it's not shown, the links will be red. However, links to user talk would be red if it doesn't exist locally because GlobalUserPage works on user namespace only, not the user talk. --Glaisher (talk) 05:18, 14 February 2015 (UTC)

• How will requests for having templates transcluded on individual user pages on various wikis being imported to meta be handled? - {{U|Technical 13}} (e • t • c) 15:55, 14 February 2015 (UTC)

  Would it be possible to get Syncbot to import the user selected user page and transcluded templates to Meta (home wiki by default)? - {{U|Technical 13}} (e • t • c) 16:07, 15 February 2015 (UTC)

  That's outside Synchbot's scope, but the Special:Import tool can import a page along with the templates it uses. That said, indiscriminately importing local templates into Meta would be problematic; at the very least you'd soon run into template name conflicts. I think that's a separate discussion for the Meta community. —Pathoschild 16:18, 15 February 2015 (UTC)

• Does this apply to User talk pages and/or subpages of either type of page? (The above linked "userpages tool" lists all of these.) ~ Ningauble (talk) 22:26, 14 February 2015 (UTC)

  No, this only applies to your main user page. —Pathoschild 23:16, 14 February 2015 (UTC)

  Thank you. ~ Ningauble (talk) 23:30, 14 February 2015 (UTC)

• I'll believe that this works at all when I've seen it. Potential traps I'm aware of: Templates available here might be not available on other wikis, or do something more or less different. Wikidata somehow managed a useful interpretation of babel languages (only the display sucks, it sucks everywhere, only here it is decent.) There can be CSS conflicts, what's plainlinks here can be plainlinksneverexpand elsewhere, user box widths vary; I had to adjust a simple substituted user box for each wiki where I used it. –Be..anyone (talk) 21:04, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

  The user page is rendered on Meta before being shown on the local wiki, so local templates aren't used. Local styles may change how the page looks, as mentioned in the extension caveats. See mw:Help:Extension:GlobalUserPage for more information. —Pathoschild 21:15, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

  Not too bad, some of my links work as expected, some are hilarious (nl or ru users won't be interested in my subpages, logs, and abuses here, they'd want to check my crimes on their wiki ;-), pending protected edit requests on meta are also not globally relevant—is there some <noinclude> hack to hide local business?—and the bottom link of the babel box needs love from a translation administrator (red link on nlwiki). –Be..anyone (talk) 09:38, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

  You can use <noinclude>...</noinclude> as in a template. --Vriullop (talk) 11:40, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

• We should really incorporate these answers into Global user pages. --MZMcBride (talk) 20:43, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

  I've been incorporating them into mw:Help:Extension:GlobalUserPage; should global user pages provide an overview and link to that page? —Pathoschild 21:43, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

  I think there ought to be a notice, somewhere that is easily noticed, that if one creates a user page on this wiki it will automagically be displayed elsewhere, because this may not be intended by the page creator. It was certainly not my intention in creating one (subsequently deleted). I am not sure what the best place for such notice would be, because Meta does not seem to have a policy or guideline (or at least I have not found one) specifically devoted to the use of user pages. ~ Ningauble (talk) 16:07, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

  It would be easy for us to set up an edit notice here at Meta (MediaWiki:Editnotice-2). Even better, if we do it directly in the extension itself. --Glaisher (talk) 16:11, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

  I filed phab:T89841 about this. --Glaisher (talk) 16:15, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

  Thanks: an in-built edit notice is a good solution for new user pages going forward. Existing user pages are another matter. ~ Ningauble (talk) 14:01, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

Many sockpuppets

• Many sockpuppets. Megamario1, Tarastumkiv, Ralbert285, Lalala2014, Bonnechance7 is sockpuppets by Lidaz [1] [2] Need global block? — Green Zero обг 17:18, 13 February 2015 (UTC)

Perhaps you are looking for SRG or SRCU? --Glaisher (talk) 17:22, 13 February 2015 (UTC)

Proposal: restore normal editing permissions on all mobile sites

Proposal

As you may know, Wikimedia projects have a mobile version which resides in domains like https://meta.m.wikimedia.org . Some devices are automatically redirected from the normal domains to the mobile ones, which are expected to absorb half of our total traffic by the end of 2015. What few know is that the mobile sites don't follow the standard permission system: instead, they override permissions and prevent unregistered users from editing at all.

I propose to remove this exception to the rule, which was meant to be temporary and looks now technically unnecessary. Unregistered users will be allowed to edit on the mobile subdomain for a wiki, if they are allowed on the main domain.

The Italian Wikipedia community has already decided to do so in October 2014. Thanks to several users who reported issues, as well as some committed developers, most technical issues have been identified and fixed: see phabricator:T55069 for a list. Other users have looked into the data and concluded that the the change was definitely a net benefit, because contributions increased by some percentage point and they were as good as unregistered editing on the desktop site; the Italian Wikipedia community therefore achieved consensus to make the change permanent. See it.m.wikipedia.org for details; if you have any questions, I'll forward them to the users who were involved in this analysis.

While the Italian Wikipedia example may not be representative of the results on all Wikimedia projects, we are currently not aware of any reason to think that restoring normal permissions would do harm. If you know an issue of the mobile site which makes unregistered editing less productive than on the desktop site, please report it with all details you know (you can login with your SUL account) and mention it here.

Process details:

• This proposal follows the standard configuration change process; like many before, it's discussed on the Wikimedia Forum for the sake of all Wikimedia projects. Local communities were not given a chance to discuss the non-standard permissions of the mobile sites; they will now. Local requests for configuration changes will always be possible, as usual.
• I'm going to link this discussion from Tech/News. If there is some support for the idea, I'll send notifications to all wikis and to the various mailing lists. I propose to close this discussion by 2015-03-15 and, if some configuration change achieves consensus by then, have it applied on the live sites by the end of March.

10:14, 15 February 2015 (UTC)

Discussion

•  Support as proposer. We can tweak the above text if needed, to reflect consensus in the discussion. --Nemo 10:14, 15 February 2015 (UTC)
• I agree. Vogone (talk) 11:08, 15 February 2015 (UTC)
• Yup, btw why not use RfC/Request for comment for this?--AldNonymous^Bicara? 11:12, 15 February 2015 (UTC)

what if I create Requests_for_comment/Restore_normal_editing_permissions_on_all_mobile_sites with a redirect here? Is it "correct" enough?--Alexmar983 (talk) 09:44, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

Seems good enough, don't forget to move all comment from this section to there.--AldNonymous^Bicara? 09:49, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

Please don't. As I said, global configuration changes discussions usually happen here. This page is followed more. You can however add a link from Requests_for_comment, of course. --Nemo 10:19, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

the comments on that page were in the form "\topic" see, so I though there was no problem in creating a page with such syntax, but consisting only ina simple redirect here.--Alexmar983 (talk) 10:35, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

• Ok. Alan ^(talk) 15:39, 15 February 2015 (UTC)
•  Support per w:WP:HUMAN. Also per privacy policy; blocking all unregistered mobile edits is hardly a "rare circumstance". PiRSquared17 (talk) 17:16, 15 February 2015 (UTC)
• I think we should wait for talk page links first. --Krenair ^{(talk • contribs)} 17:41, 15 February 2015 (UTC)
•  Support with the caveat that we can always disable it again on specific wikis where vandalism becomes unmanageable. wctaiwan (talk) 21:42, 15 February 2015 (UTC)
•  Support with per-project opt-out option/caveat as suggested by wctaiwan, but I would like to see talk page links first as recommended by Krenair, but it isnt quite a blocker in my mind, as mobile users are going to tend towards quick-edit-and-forget rather than engaged editing. John Vandenberg (talk) 07:46, 16 February 2015 (UTC)
• Comment, mobile uploads on commons were an unmitigated disaster, thousands of low quality selfies etc. without any potential use, description, license, category, source, nothing. From that point of view "permit more mobile contributions" isn't an attractive plan. OTOH those crap uploads all had (single purpose) accounts, commons doesn't permit uploads without login. And determined vandals or spammers have accounts, so that's no valid reason to exclude mobile users without account. Remotely related, phabricator requires a login for editing. –Be..anyone (talk) 21:17, 16 February 2015 (UTC)
  • Sure, but that's entirely unrelated. The mobile uploads were using a specially-made upload software, separate from the standard Special:Upload and UploadWizard, with "calls to action" banners which encouraged random people to add random images in random places. The failure you mention was a failure of such banners (mainly) and of the custom software invented out of the blue. Here we are talking of the editing interface registered users use as well, and we are not talking of any call to action, so the two sources of the failure are eliminated: which explains the good results on it.wiki. --Nemo 08:24, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

in any case, it should be possibile, even if policy globally changes in a less rigid manner, to allow restriction for single project. I have always supported the idea that every community should modulate its own strategy if necessary. --Alexmar983 (talk) 09:29, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

Sure, it would be still possible to change the configuration per-wiki :) --Florianschmidtwelzow (talk) 10:56, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

 Support, tnx for info (above+below). –Be..anyone (talk) 22:44, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

•  Support I have seen no "disaster" on it.wiki, but of course local exceptions are always possible. We are a "medium" wiki in terms of editors, activity and density of users with "flags", maybe for smaller communities specific restrictions are likely, I therefore suggest maximum fexibilty, but in general per PiRSquared17 I think that by "default" no "discrimination" should exists.--Alexmar983 (talk) 09:35, 17 February 2015 (UTC)
•  Support we experimented it coherently with the perennial principle ("anyone can edit"), and the results were even slightly better than expected. Evaluating those anonymous edits we found more or less the same proportions we can see in other series of edits, perhaps a little more useful than the non-mobile editing. So, in our stats and observations there wasn't a "special" problem about vandalism, basically vandals come to WP in the usual proportions, there isn't a sensitive change.
  What is truly different, and to my personal experience is constantly growing in importance, is that many mobile users do not trust enough service providers and software/apps they have on board in their device, so they do not feel safe enough to log in with their credentials for security and privacy reasons. Actually, since mobile traffic is everyday more important for us, I believe that this is going to be a relevant issue and that we should care about it. --g (talk) 11:14, 17 February 2015 (UTC)
• I support any effort that attacks the awful anti-wiki behavior introduced under the guise of a mobile front-end. The MobileFrontend extension should be killed or, at a minimum, scaled back to be only a mobile front-end. It should never have been used to control site permissions. And this is unfortunately one example among many of the extension acting far outside of scope. --MZMcBride (talk) 20:41, 17 February 2015 (UTC)
•  Support – on Wikimedia, the rule is "allow editing," with exceptions made as necessary. I do not see a justification for an exception here. harej (talk) 22:57, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

Which URL shortener to use

Hello. This is a very small request for clarification ... I have tried to include shortened urls in a number of project pages linking out to different relevant sites and the spam filter turns rejects the edit due to the url. Is there a url shortener that is acceptable, or are all banned? It is difficult when you want to get a message across with regards to say, how to structure a specific twitter message to enter a community prize contest. Thought I would ask ... Islahaddow (talk) 08:12, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

• Thanks for asking. The answer is simple: don't use URL shorteners. There is no reason to, on wikis. The example you make, Twitter, probably involves simple URLs (which work on MediaWiki) and doesn't require URL shortening because Twitter handles that. Can you make specific examples where you'd need to post a shortened URL on the wiki? Thanks, Nemo 08:26, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

Hi Nemo, thanks for answering ...! We are about to announce a call for the Community to vote for the last Community Prize for Wiki Loves Africa - we want to include twitter as a way of voting, but need to include the link to the voting page so that others on social media can see the selection and then vote themselves ... and if the 'template' for the tweet includes a shortened url, it saves the poster/voter the bother of having to shorten the link. But if not, then some twitter clients do it automatically, others don't. That's why I was asking ... Islahaddow (talk) 08:57, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

You can test adding the shortened link without the "http://" prefix, IIRC Twitter still hyperlinks such links. As for clients, I don't know how many people still use clients, but most websites I see around link https://twitter.com/intent/tweet and similar for such suggestions, see also https://dev.twitter.com/web/intents --Nemo 09:04, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

Thanks Nemo will look into what you have suggested! Islahaddow (talk) 09:18, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

Wikimedia Highlights from January 2015

Here are the highlights from the Wikimedia blog in January 2015, covering selected activities of the Wikimedia Foundation and other important events from the Wikimedia movement.

• Wikipedia turns 14, receives prestigious Erasmus Prize 2015
• Civility, Wikipedia, and the conversation on Gamergate
• How high school student Jack Andraka used Wikipedia to research a new test for cancer
• Wellcome Library donates 100,000 medical images to Wikimedia Commons
• Senior citizens learn to edit Wikipedia in the Czech Republic
• Try Content Translation: A quick way to create new articles from other languages
• Weekly edit-a-thons help create new articles about women and literature in Sweden

(The Wikimedia Highlights issues from some recent months have not been distributed via this notice, but can be found in the archive.)

About · Subscribe/unsubscribe, 23:17, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

CNBanner:Stewvote-text1/ce

Will work? --Дагиров Умар (talk) 16:04, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

It will work now. I just published it. Glaisher (talk) 16:07, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

Thank you so much. -- Дагиров Умар (talk) 17:12, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

Cannot login to Wikipedia

My IP address is blocked from editing, and, since I created my new account, Bigwill91, I can't login. Instead, I get an error message:

Cannot create account

Account creation from IP addresses in the range 2602:306:CC2E:EFB0:0:0:0:0/64, which includes your IP address (2602:306:cc2e:efb0:1824:5c87:d994:1a05), has been blocked by Elockid.

The reason given by Elockid is Block evasion:

Could someone ask an administrator on Wikipedia (both English and Simple English) to unblock my IP address, because I registered my new account? Thanks. Regards, Bigwill^(History) Timestamp: 00:48, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

You'll need to log into your Wikipedia account and request an unblock via the instructions provided. A checkuser will have to look into your request. Unfortunately the meta community is not able to assist you. Mike V • Talk 01:07, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

Actually, I am having login issues on Wikipedia (both en.wikipedia.org and simple.wikipedia.org). Please unblock my IP address. Regards, Bigwill^(History) Timestamp: 01:14, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

As it was explained in Meta:Requests_for_help_from_a_sysop_or_bureaucrat#Global_account, it is up to the local admins who know the reason for the IP block to evaluate the unblocking. Maybe you are just using an IP from a shared connection (e.g. in a college) which shows a long history of attacks/trolling and en.wiki before exempting you from the block needs to be sure you are not related.--Alexmar983 (talk) 01:23, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

My IP address, however, is still block on enwiki/simplewiki and I still can't login to Wikipedia. Any suggestions? Thanks. Regards, Bigwill^(History) Timestamp: 01:33, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

In that case, you'll need to file a request at UTRS. We won't be able to unblock the IP right away. Mike V • Talk 01:37, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

Actually, you can restore talk page access for my IP address. Could you? Regards, Bigwill^(History) Timestamp: 01:41, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

The talk page access is irrelevant, as you stated you can't log in. Please use the UTRS process. Mike V • Talk 01:48, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

[3] [4] are these shared? Mjbmr (discussion • contribs) 02:19, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

"All IP addresses withing this range are allocated to one customer". That's the reason. My IP address was blocked until next year. If I wasn't evading a block, can I still contribute constructively on Wikipedia? Regards, Bigwill^(History) Timestamp: 02:25, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

You can check where these users who blocked that IP in other wikis there are active using Special:CentralAuth and leave them messages in other wikis you can edit. Mjbmr (discussion • contribs) 02:28, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

• BigWill91/William Pina, you have been blocked on the English Wikipedia for your conduct and you are also globally locked for disruptive editing across wikimedia so its in your best interest to not create sock accounts or else you will be blocked from all wikis for good. ..--Stemoc 03:33, 20 February 2015 (UTC)
• @User:Stemoc: William Pina is my former account. And, since I don't use it anymore, I promise I will not disrupt anymore. So, I can constructive edits now, since I was editing anonymously. I can stay calm, and I will not vandalize pages anymore. Thanks. Regards, Bigwill^(History) Timestamp: 03:51, 20 February 2015 (UTC)