Foundation wiki feedback/main/2005

Search issues

I know this was discussed before, but the quality of search is seriously lacking. I was searching for "Moore's Law", but accidentally typed in "More's Law" and no results came up, not even a suggestion. Can we use some 3rd-party independent search engine that doesn't require an ad-supported model?

absolutly correct. But this is not about the FOundation proper.

Help Us Reach our overall goals

"While donations to local chapters may not be directly used by the Wikimedia Foundation they will help us reach our overall goals" How? 149.217.50.208 14:25, 22 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

chapters may participate in Wikimania funding. Or they can participate paying travel costs for people. Or they can help paying for the development of a CD. They can help pay some domain names etc ... Anthere

MoneyBooker links

The page claims "Donate securely online with PayPal or MoneyBookers using the short, encrypted forms linked below." and "MoneyBookers accepts 27 currencies…". However, there are no links or hints on how to actually pay using MoneyBookers, except "The fees for MoneyBookers are lower than for PayPal". So say that I actually wont to pay to MoneyBookers using the currency Norwegian kroner. I cannot find any way to actually do this. Clicking on say "Euro Once" says that the payment will go through PayPal. Stain 17:52, 18 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

It now says "Our account name for MoneyBookers is donation@wikipeida.org." I guess that should be wikipedia, instead of wikipeida? -- Jitse Niesen 19:22, 18 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

By omission, it is implied that you can't set up a monthly donation using Moneyboookers. However, Moneybookers always allows a recurring payment with a set end date, with the options monthly, bi-monthly, quarterly or semi-annually (but _not_ annually). I suggest adding a small note to that effect, e.g. "You can donate once, or automatically every month, bi-monthly, quarterly or semi-annually for as long as you like." I also think the note about the fees should be separate from the list of currencies. -- Kjetil Torgrim Homme 00:04, January 2006 (UTC)

Tax deductablitiy

the Deductability of donations page [1] states that the corporate status was gained almost a year and a half ago. What is taking so long for federal recognition of 501(c)(3)? Perhaps a brief comment on the page as to when such status is hoped to be attained? Thanks, Aaron [2]

Late filing of the forms as far as I know. We should have it by March at the latest. It isn't unusual apparently for this to take a year. Angela

I have been so annoyed at the slowness of the servers for Wikipedia (and Wikinews, which was down for nine hours last night), that I finally feel compelled to look into donating. :)

One question I have is whether Wikimedia is a private or public foundation? Once Wikimedia has that magic 501(c)(3), if it is considered a public foundation, it opens up the possiblity of qualifying for employer matching programs.

Please be sure to clarify this point once you are ready to announce the 501(c)(3) recognition, as it could potentially double your donations if this secondary criteria was met. — DV 20:35, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)

It is now after March and the page [3] still says mid-Feb. Please update the page. 1 Apr 2005

The page has now been updated but it doesn't mention "employer matching programs", whatever they are. Brian j d | Why restrict HTML? | 07:50, 2005 May 8 (UTC)

Tax deductability should be given vastly more prominence than it is to encourage donations. In addition, the section on deductability should be expanded hugely to include information concerning the tax status in other wealthy countries with a high user base outside of the USA. This may mean additional corporate expense of setting up charities outside of the US to cope, depending on the jurisdiction. Perhaps someone can pigeon hole a friendly tax specialist in each of the G7 countries, perhaps, to tell the project how to best acheive tax deductable donations in each of those wealthy and populous jurisdictions. Just a thought.

What are these "employer matching programs"? I have searched the Foundation wiki and Meta with no results. Brian j d | Why restrict HTML? | 09:52, August 13, 2005 (UTC)

This is EXTREMELY important. Tax-deducibility status should be found out for the top-donor countries (I think there's about 10) and explictly specified on the home page. I for one won't donate without knowing my donation is tax-deductible in Australia. And if it did say "tax deductible in Australia" Aussies would notice it instantly and start thinking about donating! --Lisa

In fact, if the answer for Australia or Canada or Sweden or whatever is "not deductible" then Wikipedia should make a request for Wikipedians in those countries to form local chapters to obtain the NGO/charity status. --Lisa

These are two versions of a comment made and modified by anonymous user(s) using two IP addresses:

I would like to recommend the swedish translators to note that there is no way to get tax deductability in Sweden anymore, this should be noted on Insamling. [Unsigned by 86.136.194.98 00:36, September 6, 2005 (UTC)] (I only changed the single brackets to double brackets around the page name.) Brian j d | Why restrict HTML? | 09:24, September 9, 2005 (UTC)

I would like to recommend the swedish translators to remove the note about tax deductability on the page: Insamling. This is very incorrect you can't get tax deductability in Sweden for these things. [Unsigned by 80.216.125.167 12:29 September 6, 2005 (UTC)] Brian j d | Why restrict HTML? | 09:24, September 9, 2005 (UTC)

In the UK registered charities receive an extra 20% of donations from the Tresuary and top-rate tax payers another 20%, this is called Gift Aid and is available on donations of any size and seems very easy to administer (a tick box on donation site). It would need a UK Wikipedia charity, but the extra 'revenue' would be worth the cost. -- Will

We are in the process of setting up such a charity at the moment. See Wikimedia UK for the details. Thryduulf (en,commons) 18:06, 5 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Support us - add other kinds of support, editors, developers, etc.

Now the fundraising is over, I wonder if it might make more sense for the "support us" link in the sidebar to lead to a more general page about helping, which could include donations, membership, sponsorship, and also explain how people can become editors and developers. Currently, the support us link only leads to the fundraising page. Any thoughts? Angela 02:13, 4 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I agree with this entirely. This is basically what the "support us" page on wmf is for. It needs work though before we change the link everywhere imho. Anthere

Fact is, I cant find this "support us" page any more though... hmmmm. But well, I absolutely agree.

I fully agree with the ideas stated above. "Please consider making a donation today, be it time, money or hardware." What about ideas? 1) Why not make a forum for discussion? 2) why limit search in wikipedia to only one language? Most people today speak at least 2. As to me I speak 4 languages. That information could be stored in my profile. And another inconvenience: I have different logins for different languages. (I spent some 20 minutes searching for a more pertinent place to put it, but couldn't find :-)

MoneyBookers currencies

"As for March 2005, MoneyBookers accept 27 currencies:"

Error in Lëtzebuergesch version

First sentence, there is a word from the French original left: "qui". It should be simply removed. (Its translation is the "déi" just after.)

Japanese flag on Wikimedia:Fundraising

It really needs to have some sort of outline or contrast to the background. -Rholton 05:19, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Perhaps the entire column of flags/PayPal logos (each flag/logo pair is a single image) should be inside a grey box. Brian j d | Why restrict HTML? | 10:13, 2005 May 1 (UTC)

Merchandise

The fundraising page on the Foundation wiki says:

"Buy merchandise

Wikipedia merchandise at Cafe Press (http://www.cafeshops.com/wikipedia): US$5 of every purchase goes to the Wikimedia Foundation."

A user who did not sign their post said: is that right? how can $5 go to wikimedia if i buy a button for $1.50?

The Cafe Press page (link above) states: "20% are added to the base price of every item. All proceeds go to the Wikimedia foundation, which operates Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Wikiquote, Wikibooks, Wikisource, Wikinews, and the Wikimedia Commons."
Huh? Brian j d | Why restrict HTML? | 07:20, 2005 Apr 10 (UTC)

But does the merchandise "count"? The breakdown of where the money's come from doesn't include merchandise sales.

-- 64.81.224.247 19:26, 23 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Do we need to donate?

From http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Fundraising:

"... we need your help." (implying that we must donate)

"Donate online with PayPal or MoneyBookers..."

etc.

"Please note that neither this page nor any link on any Wikimedia site pointing to this page should be considered a solicitation to make a donation." (implying that we don't need to donate)

Huh? (original poster/date/time unknown) [modified by Brian Jason Drake 01:55, 9 December 2005 (UTC)][reply]

If MediaWiki would have had a better function to reduce size of database, not this much money would be needed to keep up services on its servers.

ASOCIATIA CARMEN WANT TO MODERNISE AN CENTRE TO PLACE FOR CHILD ABOUT FLOOD AT ROMANIA/OR DONATE AN AUTO OR COMPUTER/CONTACT asociatia.carmen@yahoo.com

List of Wikimedia wikis (Wikimedia:Special:SiteMatrix)

Why are there some rows that consist entirely of red links? Also, why not have the languages (names, not cryptic groups of letters) down the left and a short caption on each link ("link", perhaps?)? What's with the list under the table? Brian j d 10:49, 2005 Jan 24 (UTC)

There is a (probably better) list at Complete_list_of_Wikimedia_projects. Brian j d 10:53, 2005 Jan 24 (UTC)

The red links are for wikis that do not exist. --Daniel Mayer 23:18, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)

At least one red link (Wikipedia, language code roa-rup), points to a wiki that does exist. My other questions still have not been answered. Brian j d | Why restrict HTML? | 07:05, 2005 Mar 26 (UTC)

The same applies for zh-min-nan. Brian j d | Why restrict HTML? | 10:33, 2005 Apr 2 (UTC)

Why is this even in the Special namespace? Shouldn't it be in the article namespace? Brian j d | Why restrict HTML? | 07:24, 2005 Mar 26 (UTC)

On second thought, it should be automatically generated, since manual lists are not working. To give a couple of examples of what's wrong, we have "mediawiki" (http://mediawiki.wikipedia.org/ - it doesn't exist) and "commons" (http://commons.wikipedia.org/ - it should be http://commons.wikimedia.org/). Brian j d | Why restrict HTML? | 06:30, 2005 Apr 10 (UTC)

Bylaws - typos

Note that http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_bylaws has articles I through VIII and then Article XIX (nineteen). Looks like a typo - the last article should just be IX. (en:Pcb21)

In article three, section two, (found at URL: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_bylaws) there appears to be a typographical error in the sentence: ...and submit the application the Secretary along with payment... The sentence should read: ...and submit the application to the Secretary along with payment...

problem of bylaws is that they are officially declared. So, we can't just change the text this way, but only at next bylaws update. But this is noted. Anthere 10:36, 17 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Please add these obvious errors to the board's agenda so they can be fixed and aren't overlooked. mdavis 00:45, 7 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Moved from Talk:Board of Trustees:

Where is the button I push to fix typos in the bylaws? It's "its" not "it's". 4.229.12.24 15:13, 5 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Only users on the Wikimedia Foundation wiki can edit pages there, and those users must be approved. Brian Jason Drake 06:57, 17 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Same answer as above. mdavis 00:45, 7 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Article III Section 4.3: "The Board of Trustees, at it's sole discretion, may maintain or remove". "it's" should be replaced with "its" -lethe@en.w

Quarto Interviews (Cunningham, Lessig)

On the home page today (May 23, 2006), there are links to interviews with Ward Cunningham and Larry Lessig. However, neither interview contains a date of when the interview occurred. On the Cunningham interview there is no date reference at all. On the Lessig interview there is a reference in the header that the interview occurred "at the end of a long December day", but we are left to assume the year. Is it 2005? 2004? I am going to assume December 2004 since it seems to be in the January 2005 Quarto. If someone involved with the interviews could add the dates of when the interviews occurred, it would be most appreciated. Thanks - (Wikipedia user dyork)

That's right; thanks for the heads-up. I've updated the pages appropriately. --Sj

Latest news

Fromer "Removal policy?"

Hi! Is there a policy about removing "old" news? I sometimes translate the news to German and there are about 16 items. Should one remove old news? I'd argue that it improves the usability if there aren't so many items on one page. The German main page looks somehow strange as it becomes very long with so many news. Any opinions? --Padyx 11:40, 25 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I agree on that too many items are not good. So on the site, I pruned some old items and leave information since April 4. But it is currently my personal preferences though I don't know any other editor who oppose this way. Please see Wikimedia:Hauptseite. And sorry for your inconvinience from unsynched version. --Aphaia | Translate Election | ++ 12:38, 25 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Also, the Latest News section covers up the content on the left in my browser (IE). May be a CSS issue.

Do you think that Britain should have troups in Afghanistan & Iraq?

Wikimedia:Wikimedia:Site map

I wonder who is using this page except me and Suisui, who created this page.

Is it more benefical if this page becomes more visible for site visitors, not just an internal page? - just a thought. Any opinion? Aphaia ++ 17:41, 19 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

If it would be modified, navigation on the website would be improved. Already German and Japanese pages were somehow improved thanks to Naviagation template (like Wikimedia:Template:IndexDe) at least I believe so. Some pages like "Board of Trustees" are relatively less visible curently, and it wouldn't be harmful if it appears on navigation box. --Aphaia ++ 21:51, 19 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Membership

Typo?

I'm not sure what this sentence means: "Two other memberships are defined in Bylaws, however, currently both of no such members have yet been specified." 192.152.100.150 16:28, September 3, 2005 (UTC) (signature added by Brian j d | Why restrict HTML?)

Does "none of such members ..." make a sense assumedly? --Aphaia 01:26, 4 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

No, the best version would be removing "both of". I would take out "currently" also, since it is obviously only the current state (hence "have yet been") and once they have been specified, we should change the sentence regardless. --Cromwellt|talk 14:37, 5 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Interwiki link confusion

"For further discussion, please see also Membership." This comes from the Membership page on the Foundation wiki, and "Membership" is a link to the page called Membership on Meta. This looks like it would be confusing for people not familiar with our projects. Brian j d | Why restrict HTML? | 04:27, September 4, 2005 (UTC)

MediaWiki:Sitesubtitle

It says "The Free Encyclopedia". Whilst not relevant, I don't know where to put this: the same problem exists on Meta. Brian Jason Drake 01:58, 9 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

It appears that this has been fixed on both sites on December 22. Brian Jason Drake 07:16, 25 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

GFDL

The Our projects page states in its introduction that the content is licensed under the GFDL. This I know is not true for Wikinews at least. Brian Jason Drake 11:33, 25 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Image problem

The image on http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Deductibility_of_donations isn't showing up for me. -- Beland 15:53, 18 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

fixed. Thanx for your help :)--Suisui 16:01, 18 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Reload it, it's unreadable again... There's more problems..--Suisui 16:12, 18 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

It didn't show up the first time for me but after looking through the history it worked fine. There seems to be a "hidden" revision - click on what appears to be the only revision, then click on the previous link. Brian Jason Drake 07:26, 25 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

WikiCategory or WikiLink or WikiCategoryNet or WikiInternet

Ok, doesn't belong here, i created WikiCategory and added the link to Proposals

regards, Jan Kechel, Germany

213.23.135.102 10:04, 9 November 2005

[signature added by Brian Jason Drake 08:14, 10 November 2005 (UTC)][reply]

Distributing Wikimedia projects

I don't have money to offer, but webspace. If wiki were a distributed database (like DNS or napster), then we would not need huge funds for bandwidth and servers in colocations. It may be tricky to implement that reliably, so servers which go down are detected and replaced with back ups, but it may make the system more stable against attacks from hackers or governments.

This is something you could discuss on the wikitech-l mailing list, but the feeling in the past seems to have been that it would be impractical. Angela

Why does this need to be impractical? There should be many reliable servers available to us. Brian j d | Why restrict HTML? | 07:07, 2005 Mar 26 (UTC)

Aren't we already distributing Wikimedia projects? See Talk:Google_hosting#Centralization. Brian j d | Why restrict HTML? | 04:30, 2005 Apr 7 (UTC)

See Wikimedia partners and hosts. Brian j d | Why restrict HTML? | 09:56, August 21, 2005 (UTC)

Add an API?

Everybody notices that Wikipedia & the other projects are pretty slow. What about creating an API for reading & editing WP? Compared to the web version via http, a API based WP program would decrease overhead dramatically and save up very much resources for the Apache webservers...

Just a suggestion :) Sascha J. 08:13, 19 Dec 2004 (UTC)

That's a creative idea to save money on server resources, but a client-side "wiki plugin" would only make sense if most of the load is coming from the core group of active editors who might be willing to use such a tool.

I would be surprised if most of the load is not from readers, rather than editors, but perhaps one of the Wiki developers could answer this question.

If most of the load is coming from readers instead of editors, the only way to obtain a savings on reading would be a client side browser reader plugin that could access a read-only version of the database and then form the HTML on the client side without using server resources. However, casual readers would not bother with the hassle of installing such a specialized plugin just to read an occassional article, so to avoid potentially losing them, the site would have to allow casual readers to continue using the HTTP protocol.

(Under this model, if a reader decided to edit, then the reader plugin would switch over to the HTTP protocol to enforce the protections against database hacking that are enforced by the current web model.)

The bottom line is that you need to ask a developer to describe what makes up the bulk of the server load before you can judge the merits of this idea.

— DV 20:18, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Coding the client in Javascript would avoid installing a plugin, but with a cache (there is one already, right?) there should not be that much overhead that could be shifted to the client side. Of course, a full fledged gui to access the wikipedia would be still usefull for other reasons.

The cache is supposed to contain the most accessed pages, but I think it's reasonable to suggest that, generally, they are also the most edited pages. Thus, it seems that cache updates generate quite a load. Brian j d | Why restrict HTML? | 13:24, 2005 Mar 28 (UTC)

See Wikipedia Client. Brian j d | Why restrict HTML? | 10:15, August 21, 2005 (UTC)

Warum kann ich mich bei einflogen? Why can't I log in?

ich wollte mich bei http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Home anmelden oder naiverweise gar einloggen, was mir deutliche misslang, woran liegt es denn?

Könnte man nicht langfristig eine Lösung anstreben, dass sich der Wikipedianer nur einmal einloggen muss und dann in allen Wikipedia und Schwesternprojekten bereit angemeldet wäre?

Could it be one day possible to find a better solution, which the "Wikipedia-User" would be able just log in only once - and then they got the same account in all Wikipedia's and in all sister projects? - Ilja 15:16, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Your question is more suitable for Talk:Single login, not here, I assume.

WIKI META WOLRDWIDE STRUCTURE (for level 1 ("="))

mailto:jwales@wikia.com mailto:board@wikimedia.org

Hi

I want to suggest a wiki Meta worldwide Structure (WMWS) for articles.

examle, one keyword is avaialble in english, german and french language and more,

All articles have a different structure for this keyword

/= first level /=/= second level /=/=/=/ third level.

There should be a WMWS board for articles to give them a WMWS - unique structure.

So i suggest to regard only the first level =.

So if in WMWS fo this keyword a "=" headline is created, this headline is shown as well in all language wikis in the board and to edit WMWS, there are then all headline translated

E.g. " 1. Introduction French: Entree german: Einführung "

Then the Headline of level 1 (=) cannot be edited in the language wiki, only in the meta wiki

This should follow to the goal to have in every language a unique structure of the wiki of the first level.

Level 2-3 then can be different in each language.

Thanks

Image:Monopoly.JPG

This (Image:Monopoly.JPG) is a small version of commons:Image:German Monopoly board in the middle of a game.jpg. The image is licensed under GFDL and the copyright owner, Horst Frank, should be credited. Thuresson 08:53, 28 Jul 2005 (UTC)

thanks for the info. Anthere

Anglicismes (french)

Sur la page http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Wikim%C3%A9dia_a_besoin_de_votre_aide Il serait bien de changer "hits" par "requêtes" et la phrase que "la connaissance est le pouvoir" vient directement de l'anglais. Il faudrait retravailler le texte de cette page. --- [[[:b:fr:Utilisateur:Pfv2|Pfv2]]]

j'ai modifié le "hit". Aurais tu une phrase à suggérer pour la traduction ? Merci Anthere 10:42, 27 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Language links

on your budget Ledger 2005, there's links at the top of the page for the same page in like 8 or 9 different languages. At least two of these are missing those same links at the top. Since the other ones do have them, I figured maybe somebody wanted to add them on. I dunno, maybe you want to keep it like that or something. But I figure it'd be best with them on. Just trying a bit of de-bugging or something. 70.70.212.72 05:39, 18 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Why not have a template for language links? Brian j d | Why restrict HTML? | 10:27, 25 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Suggestion: Wiki polls & voting systems

Suggesting a new wiki, where people can create polls and vote in different subjects and questions, like the almighty wiki god would have wanted it.

Petites coquilles et associations locales Wikimedia (french)

Bonjour,
Quelques petites coquilles... :

sur cette page, première phrase du 2ème paragraphe : "Son existance a officiellement été déclarée..." (existence)
sur la page d'accueil, dans la rubrique "Actualités", au chapitre "Désignation d'un Chapter Coordinator" : "Ce poste, défini lors d'une réunion entre le board et les associations locales lors de Wikimania inlut les responsabilités suivantes" (il manque un "c" à inclut :)

Par ailleurs, plusieurs pages concernant les associations locales Wikimedia seraient à mettre à jour : sur la page Nous contacter, l'associaiton polonaise pourrait être ajoutée, ainsi que sur la page À propos de Wikimédia (cette page serait aussi à mettre à jour dans les autres langues).

Merci, Korg 23:11, 25 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Lien mort

Bonjour !

Je vous signale que la page

http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Faites_un_don

comporte un lien mort. Celui-ci est situé dans le paragraphe "Faire un don à Wikimédia France" : lorsque l'on clique sur "cette page", on active un lien vers

http://wikimedia.fr/index.php/Faire_un_don

où il n'est écrit que "No input file specified." 18:00, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

UK press contacts

I volunteered to be a UK press contact a while ago (and will probably be in this role for Wikimedia UK as well). Angela liked the idea, Elian said OK. Details: David Gerard, dgerard (at) gmail (dot) com. I've emailed a phone number too, though email to me is the best way to contact me. - David Gerard 12:43, 27 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Wikimedia staff link broken

The link to Wikimedia staff at http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Home#Corporate_details is broken. The link text is "human resources". 66.159.240.178 00:18, 22 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Fixed. Thank you for your input. --M/ 00:23, 22 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Wikiarticles

Since we have nowsurpassed 800,000 articles on en-wiki, you may want to change the stat to reflect this here. --Celestianpower 11:46, 22 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

"And I need your help"

Make an "OpenWiki" (organized only by the users, no "administrators") in Wikimedia quality, that might even "unload" the other Wikimedia Wikis, especially Wikipedia, maybe even resulting in a smaller "overall" load (less nagging). --Alien4, de.wikipedia

User rating system

This is the only place where i could think to post this, but my idea is as follows. I think there should be somekindof means to rate users for their edits, user pages etc. i'm not really sure how it would work but its only an initial idea, but maybe it would be something on ebay, where you can do something similair. If anyone has any ideas please write them on my user page, and also if anyone knows if anyone knows where i can write this to make it become a reality! 86.129.68.14 19:32, 4 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia getting too complex?

After trying to create a disembiguation page for a term, and giving up because I could not find the correct template, I came to the conclusion that the wikipedia editing/contributing system could benefit from being more straightforward so that casual contributors like me can concentrate more on the content and less on the technicalities. Thank you for making Wikipedia!

Yeah, it would be really nice if there was a link on the homepage to a "key" that people can use to edit pages. - theuedimaster