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Meta:Babel/Archives/2008-12

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Latest comment: 15 years ago by Luxo in topic Global user contributions

Visitor counter request

Latest comment: 16 years ago7 comments5 people in discussion

Hello,
especially for smaller wikis it is very interesting how many visitors are attracted daily/monthly!

WikiCharts was/is a nice idea, but figures have been wrong for the last months, and the last weeks (like several times, now) it just does not work!

I have made a JavaScript script which will do similar for combined use with an external (Wikimedia or own) server.

My script eventually will only count the number of visitors/IPs, and it will not expose sensitive referrers, except a given meaningless address!

External (non-Wikimedia) server? Please read wikt:als:Benutzer:Melancholie/monobook.js carefully!

Here my question: Is this idea conform to our Privacy policy? If not, will you allow projects to expand their privacy policy a little bit towards this feature? --- Best regards, Melancholie 02:58, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

You may be interested in user:midom's statistics at http://dammit.lt/wikistats/ .Hillgentleman 21:32, 16 February 2008 (UTC)
Thank you very much for this link! It's better than nothing, but it is not really a Visitor Counter but a Hit Counter! My suggested counter will be a pure visitor counter! The "problem" with Midom's hit counter is that it is based on the squid access-log stream, and thus probably most bots, reloads, crawlers etc. are counted, too! --- Thanks, Melancholie 06:06, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
P.s.: Furthermore (like so often) only Wikipedia, Commons and Meta have been considered for that stats, yet!

It would be great if every article would display history of visits.--Piotrus 14:56, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia users and editors have been asking for this for ages. Everyone wants a timestamped visitor counter for each page. The problem appears to be twofold: First, coding time and second, computation resources. -Kslays 21:23, 25 February 2008 (UTC)
I don't think the first one is a problem! Huji 07:50, 27 February 2008 (UTC)
See THEwikiStics: Current Page Hits toplist (compare traffic | searches) by the way. --Melancholie 21:35, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

RFC: Suffrage for local elections on Meta-wiki

Latest comment: 16 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

This is one of my assignments. What a lot of different comments. Babel is a good name for this.

RfC — rethinking the list of the top ten wikipedias

Latest comment: 16 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Please comment on the discussion at Top Ten Wikipedias. Waldir 19:05, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

Cross-wiki hoax? Greek letter "Yot"

Latest comment: 15 years ago31 comments17 people in discussion

Hi. I am an administrator in the Esperanto Wikipedia. I have noticed that across several Wikipedias, the article "Yot" (or the equivalent) was created by an anonimous user across several Wikis. It claims it as a separate letter than Iota, with seemingly flimsy evidence. Because the evidence seemed flimsy, we are in the process of deleting it at Esperanto. However, I noticed a mass of anonymous creations of this article across many wikis, and they were trying to use evidence of its presence in other wikis to prop itself up as a legitimate article. (It was not created in the English wikipedia, but a mention of it on the discussion page of Iota seems to laugh it off as flimsy as well.) Also anonymous changes were made to our template of Greek Letters, eo:Ŝablono:Grekaj literoj. I have similar concerns about the greek letter heta which was created in several wikis by anonymous users and added to the template at about the same time.

I wanted to alert people in other languages about this. -- Yekrats 19:30, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

I also thought this was suspicious. I’ve left a note on it:Discussioni_utente:F_l_a_n_k_e_r#Greek_yot, the talk page of the user who uploaded Image:Yot uc lc.svg. — H92 (t · c · no) 22:17, 24 June 2008 (UTC)
Hi! Yes, I'm the author of the SVG, but it was requested by an IP (87.96.53.60), you can find the request in my archived talk page: it:Discussioni_utente:F_l_a_n_k_e_r/Archivio_4#Yot uc lc.svg. I'm not an expert in ancient greek letters so I've followed the instructions. It was also a little discussion about this letter here: en:User_talk:Future_Perfect_at_Sunrise/Archive_10#Greek letter Yot. Hope this helps. Bye, F l a n k e r 23:02, 24 June 2008 (UTC)
From the discussion I've seen, It's not a letter that is actually in either modern or ancient Greek, but a proposed letter not currently (and never before) being used. This sounds suspiciously like a violation of "No original research". -- Yekrats 23:58, 24 June 2008 (UTC)
The user seems to be [1]. By the way, "het" is not so bad (it did exist), but I'm not sure what form of article it requires (and whether it was a letter or just a sign). Maybe everything about it should be in eta, maybe not. — Svetko 14:18, 25 June 2008 (UTC)
What annoys me about it is, there seems to be a fair amount of bullying and screaming going on if someone dares to challenge the assertion that it's a letter despite the lack of evidence showing it used. We experienced it in the Esperanto, and they point to its existance (and "acceptance") in other Wikis as evidence that it really exists. -- Yekrats 14:28, 25 June 2008 (UTC)
There's a background story to this. The "Greek letter Yot" is not really a hoax, but an object of irrational fixation by a problematic user on en-wiki, most recently known as w:en:User:CBMIBM, who is very likely the originator of all these spin-offs. "Greek Yot" is an actual, existing character in Unicode; it's a glyph clone of the normal Latin letter J, to be used for certain technical linguistic notations in modern linguistic treatments of (pre-literary) ancient Greek. So, it exists in modern computer encoding, but it was never part of actual Greek orthography. For some reason I don't really understand, Unicode opted to encode it separately as part of the Greek code block.
Now, this user on en-wiki is pursuing an irrational campaign of promoting an OR interpretation that projects some kind of maximum systematicity onto the Greek alphabet, apparently linked to some semi-religious ideas about Greek and/or Proto-Indoeuropean as the primeval languages of mankind or some such. It's pretty confused, but somehow he gets fixated on having these Yot and Heta thingies and some other marginal characters upgraded to full-fledged members of the Greek alphabet. He's done all sorts of weird things on en-wiki, including sockpuppetry. Other than that, it's not that he doesn't act in good faith, he's just confused. I suspect he might suffer from some mental condition like some mild form of autism that makes it difficult for him to communicate in a meaningful way, and at the same time gives him these idées fixes. Fut.Perf. ☼ 14:30, 25 June 2008 (UTC)
I noticed that our anonymous user has added these eight archaic letters to absolutely all wikis having the article "Greek alphabet", even to those not using alphabets from Europe. It seems to me that its aim is to promote the first ever solution in the history of linguistic - both in the sphere of language and script, which as first have emerged for humanity, while these solutions are fully compatible with Catholic faith. He is completely healthy, but he is very extreme Ultracatholic. 89.149.244.184 15:47, 25 June 2008 (UTC) moved up from header below by me Finn Rindahl 22:57, 25 June 2008 (UTC)
Hm, is he healthy? I've answered him in Polish and he says now he doesn't know Polish. It's already a sign of mental insanity. — Svetko 20:05, 27 June 2008 (UTC)
This is not obsession. This is my Ultracatholic inquisitorial fanatism to fight for preserving of heritage of my Catholic Faith. God obliges me here: http://www.giftstor.org/tomkiel05fst.html in general to fight for His Catholicism, especially against stubborn sinners who perform removals of Catholic Heritage in part or in whole. 87.96.32.168 09:21, 28 June 2008 (UTC)
Wow, just wow. Well, CBMIBM/Wikinger/whoever, given this profession of disruptive POV-pushing intention, you are now indef-blocked on en-wiki, and I strongly recommend every other project should do the same. Fut.Perf. ☼ 15:49, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

@CMBIBM (IP-adress): I sincerely believe that you have not done this with malice, and that you believe giving witness of the Truth is for the benefit of all. It is not our place to judge your convictions as "obsession" or "confusion", and descriptions such as "hoax", "forgery" and "vandalism" may not be adequate for this situation. But the purpose of Wikipedia is not to bring witness of anyones convictions, we don't exist as a project to tell the truth. Our purpose is to cite facts, to summarize, organize, present and make avvailable human knowledge in the form of referenced facts that represent a neutral point of view. Wikipedia should not present your convictions, neither should it present mine. It should account for the variuous convictions held by humans, and the history of those convictions.

As CBMIBM has spread their convictions throughout the wikiworld, by editing/creating articles and templates about the ancient Greek alphabeth in many different language projects, we have some cleaning up to do. It is of course the responsibility of every individual project to verify that their articles are factual and neutral, not every projects have contributors with solid knowledge of ancient Greek though, and many of us has been fooled by verifying new articles by checking interwiki's. It is not as easy as simply reverting all IP-edits to articles about Greek letters from the last six months, CBMIBM has contributed information which can be verified as neutral and factual. But it would be a very great challenge if every single projects would have to do these verifications based only on their own human resources. If we could use this page at Meta to somehow account for the basic facts of what has happened, where the relevant discussions are, and what resources and sources are avvailable for verification and rewritng of these articles I believe that would be of great help to many wikipediaprojects. Finn Rindahl 12:10, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

Please consider these sources:
They provide both history and implementation of each Greek letter, including those introduced by me, especially on their subpages, and can serve as reference to Greek letters disapproved by you. You disapprove them, but they exists both in real history and Unicode. For example Yot dates back at least to nineteenth century, and when you don't name younger IPA from twentieth century as fiction, similarly should be with Yot. 87.96.32.168 12:28, 28 June 2008 (UTC)
While if anything this history has reminded us that we should be very careful with using Wikipedia articles as a reference for Wikipedia articles, I still would recommend en:Greek alphabet with subarticles as a starting point. These articles give a solid account - with references - of the Greek alphabeth, and also accounts for the letters that got obsolete and their development. en:Template:Table Greekletters gives an example of a table with the 24 letters of the Greek alphabet with the 4 obsolete letters mentioned under, another solution may be the la:Formula:Abecedarium Graecum which lists the 24 letters and then the numerical system. An entry in the unicodesystem does not give evidence that such a letter have been in use in the ancient Greek alphabet. For the interrested reader I would also recommend la:Disputatio_Formulae:Abecedarium_Graecum (it is in English). Finn Rindahl 13:59, 28 June 2008 (UTC)
Many IPA symbols are existing totally outside of any orthography, but they exist and are mentioned in Wikipedia. Similarly should be for example with Yot. I am specifically promoting PIE as first ever human language, and Greek as first ever human IPA-equivalent alphabet. All is explained here: http://www.wikinfo.org/index.php/Adamic_language PIE-language and Greek-alphabet are different things.
Please remake in Commons Yot image fully compatible with Unicode definition, and it will be replaced anywhere to proper version automatically. Image must still have name Image:Yot uc lc.svg, because otherwise wikicode used in this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Table_Greekletters and similar templates will not react on Yot file, because treats "uc lc.svg" string as constant. This solution will purge original research from this file. More here: http://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brukerdiskusjon:Finnrind
Reliable sources - especially on subpages:
87.96.32.168 16:39, 28 June 2008 (UTC)
Not sure if this helps, but I found a mention of a letter "yot" in this patent: US 2,170,668 "Printing Method and Apparatus Therefor" (Aug 29, 1939) [2]. Hippopotamus 21:06, 28 June 2008 (UTC)
I hope that this patent will convince you. 79.162.50.18 07:15, 29 June 2008 (UTC)
@IP: It's a bit confusing with all this different ip-adresses, please register an account or at least sign with a nickname. @Hippotamus: Thanks for your help. Unfortunately, that patent concerns Hewrew letters, and yot there is a variant spelling of Yodh. Regards, Finn Rindahl 10:35, 29 June 2008 (UTC)
It is worrying if the existence of an article on one wiki could justify its existence on another. Surely you should never quote any WMF site as a reliable source in itself, although you can point to reliable sources cited in another article.--Cato 12:01, 29 June 2008 (UTC)
I too noticed that this patent is about Hebrew letter Yodh. 91.94.146.118 13:31, 29 June 2008 (UTC)
Oh dear, so it is... Hippopotamus 21:33, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

As we had the same story in de-WP (de:Portal Diskussion:Griechenland#Jot): the "greek yot" ist nothing than the latin "j", used within Greek to indicate a phoneme /j/ in pre-classical Greek, as the Greek alphabet never had an own letter for this phoneme. Example: *Δjεύς as a proto-form of Ζεύς (Zeus). The name for this letter is the German one: Jot, transcribed in Greek as "γιοτ". The use of latin "j" in Greek words started in 19. cent. around German and Greek graecists. But it has never been a Greek letter. It's Unicode policy to give different codes to the same letter in different writing systems – that's the reason for a "letter" named "GREEK LETTER YOT", as an "additional letter" of Greek alphabet. Obviously there's just a minuscule form - it's never been used outside scientists’ word recontrucitons. See here. --Pitichinaccio 08:31, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

P. S.: You can still find the "Jot" in the Greek-alphabet-templates of some WP’s, mostly with the wrong Image:Yot uc lc.svg: an, bs, cs, de, en, fi, fr, it, ja, ms, nl, pt, ru, simple, sk, sl, sv, tr, uk. Japanese article ja:ヨット (ギリシア文字) has no deletion request yet. --Pitichinaccio 09:13, 30 June 2008 (UTC)
Thanks to Finnrind, I've now requested deletion of the article on Japanese wikipedia (ja.wp). --Peccafly 01:30, 1 July 2008 (UTC)
IPuser from Polish address comes to ja.wp and behaves very anoyingly to stop the deletion. The user shows Latin Wikipedia as a source of the information of Yot. --Peccafly 14:43, 1 July 2008 (UTC)
This is one of his proxies. 91.94.42.40 16:13, 1 July 2008 (UTC)
This is of course all the same guy. I just love it how on Japanese wiki he attacks me as an evil arrogant westerner ([3]), on Swahili wiki as an evil European slave hunter ([4]), on tr wiki as an evil "anglican" (and "not a Turk"), and on en-wiki he tells me to "repent or perish" for breaking "God's property" ([5]). Priceless. Can everybody please just try and get him banned on their home wikis? There's obviously no point of trying to rationally debate this guy. Fut.Perf. ☼ 08:24, 2 July 2008 (UTC)
Hm, you're getting much more interresting feedback than I do [6]... As for cross-wiki ban that may not be so easily achieved, given than the user mainly contributes from different ip-adresses. AFAIK the only projects with registred accounts are en: and simple: Finn Rindahl 13:03, 2 July 2008 (UTC)
And he finally did this, pointing at his blog: http://pingwinojad.blog.pl machine translated to English. His real nick is "Pingwinojad", what means "Penguin Eater". I noticed that his blog is very radically targeted against Wikipedia and Free Software. See this: http://pingwinojad.blog.pl/archiwum/index.php?nid=12717425 He as fanatic Windows believer attacks Free Software and Wikipedia with full force of his propaganda. 91.94.220.71 20:28, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

(outdent)

The Yot hoax was only a symptom apparently. The Yot hoax derives from the editor's obsession with en:Anne Catherine Emmerich and of her visions of a unifying language. Accordingly, that editor has been interwiki upchucking on various "Adamic Language" and "Proto-Indo-European language" articles as well.
Obviously Emerich neither uses the word "Adamic language", nor "Proto-Indo-European" (both would be anachronistic), but our Yot friend obviously didn't really care about correctness anyway.
En.wiki seems the most affected, and "en:Adamic language" had to be semi'ed earlier today. A superficial check of the ref sections shows that the en, fr and pl articles on "Adamic Language" still contain the editor's own take on the Emmerich primary sources.
de was previously borked too but is presently ok (German admins may wish to review de:Spezial:Beiträge/Vikingar. That editor is not blocked there btw).
The editor has also found at least one regular to translate his screed ( here).
Editors looking to cleanup may wish to check whats links to Emerich (e.g. en, pl). -- (cypsy) 18:51, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

warning: Yot related vandals are coming again on Japanese wikipedia.--Peccafly 14:28, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

Cross wiki distortion that isn't vandalism per se

Latest comment: 16 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

"This is Meta's general and policy discussion page" the header states, I suppose the discussion above concerning the cross wiki campaign for the letter "jot" and revising the understanding og the greek alphabet doesn't really belong on this page. Is there a different page suitable for such things? That such a discussion belongs on Meta should be evident, as this is really something that concerns a number of wikimedia projects and having to examine and debate the issue at every single project is rather complicated and inefficient. Finn Rindahl 14:53, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

Latest comment: 16 years ago8 comments3 people in discussion

We get a large number of image uploaded which are proposed to be a logo for one of the WMF projects. Some time ago I created Category:Proposed logos in an attempt to better organise this files and have now created Template:Proposed logo which I would welcome comments on. Clearly when these images are uploaded they can't be available under a free license, this would prevent it from being considered as a WMF project logo since the free license couldn't be revoked if it was chosen as an official logo. We can therefore presume that the creator of any proposed logos agree to grant the WMF an exclusive license to use the image. If we are able to agree about this template then I'll use my bot flagged account to add it to each of the images currently in the category and I'd also suggest that it be added to MediaWiki:Licenses so that it can be selected via a drop down box on the upload page. It might be appropriate to add some of the other license templates there also. Adambro 18:51, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

Support. I am not clear whether we need so many different logos (I would prefer all Wikipedias, all Wikiquotes, etc. to use the same logos) but if we do, the proposal is eminently sensible.--Cato 11:57, 29 June 2008 (UTC)
Since there has been no opposition to this but rather little discussion altogether I'd just like to ask that anyone who would disagree with the use of this template makes this known as soon as possible before I run through the category with my bot flagged account and possibly ask for this template to be added to a drop down box on the upload form. Adambro 16:42, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

I'm not convinced actually. I think the uploader could only be implied to have agreed to grant the WMF exclusive rights were the logo to be actually used for a particular project. If the logos were unsuccessful I expect that the uploader would expect to retain the rights to them, subject to the fact that they released them under the GFDL by uploading them to this project. I think the images should be presumed to be GFDL and tagged with {{GFDL-presumed}} rather than presumed copyright WMF. WjBscribe 17:02, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for your comments. The problem there though is at what point does a logo stop being proposed? I would presume that even if it was dismissed previously, there would be many instances where the creator would maintain that it would make a good logo. Therefore I don't think it is possible to treat images that have failed to become a logo after being considered once to no longer potentially become a logo later. Whilst we state that "all contributions to Meta are considered to be released under the GNU Free Documentation License" this is difficult to maintain where a proposed logo is concerned and the creator is implying they want it to become an official logo which wouldn't be GFDL. I can't see a point at which we can definitively say the image becomes GFDL. Adambro 17:12, 13 July 2008 (UTC)
We do have the problem that GFDL is supposedly irrevocable. So if we say any of these logos have been released under the GFDL, that prevents the WMF from being able to assert copyright over them at a later date. Mmm, tricky. It seems to me that most of these images will never be used as logos and that the uploaders are likely to believe they were GFDL releases. I think it unlikely that many realised that they needed to give copyright to the WMF, I certainly see no notices to that effect. I have difficulty presuming an intention in retrospect that I doubt the uploaders had and whilst one can presume GFDL release based on the conditions of posting to meta, presuming that the WMF has copyright when there is no statement to that effect is rather problematic. The problem comes with whether these are historical images - failed logo candidates - or current ones - possible future logos. Ideally, we should ask the uploaders to clarify, but sadly many are no longer around to comment. WjBscribe 18:31, 13 July 2008 (UTC)
Perhaps it would be safer to assume, notwithstanding anything else, that the creator has not agreed to release the image under the GDFL or other free license and they retain all rights to the image but that they would agree to grant exclusive rights to the WMF if it is selected. Adambro 20:44, 20 July 2008 (UTC)
I've updated this template based upon this feedback and so would invite all to take a look and comment on its current state. Adambro 17:52, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

New "right" required - IPblock exempt

Latest comment: 16 years ago29 comments16 people in discussion
The following discussion is closed:   Done by JeLuF (here)..--Cometstyles 12:34, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

I'm starting this to seek community approval for the developers to "switch on" an extra right to be used here.

A number of you will be aware that we have had ongoing vandal attacks over long periods where the vandal has switched IPs each time making CU less effective. I am not, & probably never will be, a fan of range blocks however they have proved effective in dealing with people some persistent vandals. The problem with such blocks is that they may affect innocent users.

Currently we have a wiki wide vandal in the form of Grawp. After exchanges on the CU list a number of wikis have placed range blocks to deal with this persistent vandal (I have done so here as others have for example). Thanks to the CU list I was pointed to a "right" I was not really aware of which is implemented on en wp - IP block exemption.

It seems perfectly reasonable to me to "exempt" valid users from being accidentally blocked by any IP blocks that are placed. I would see this as "If you have a problem ask & we will look into it. If you are a valid user you will be exempted" and I can't see it as controversial or needing massive "paperwork". I see on en wp that admins have the right automatically - that is not something I think is that relevant in our case so I'm not suggesting it (now would I be against it if others felt it important).

If there is no obvious problem to others I'd like to see this switch on very soon. I have no problem with 'crats or admins being able to give IP exemption though I guess such issues will usually be tackled by the project CUs in the case of range blocking. Personally I find the en wp page fairly comprehensive & would see little need to change much of it for here on Commons so maybe we can steal it & make any minor amendments that are necessary. It would be good to get some feedback with any "support" or "oppose" as soon as we can. Thanks --Herby talk thyme 13:17, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

Thanks all - bug request submitted (bugzilla:14733). It would be good if folk could vote for it or even better try and get something done about it (the same Commons request has been outstanding for some time now :(). Cheers --Herby talk thyme 12:30, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

Re. the bugzilla, what is the consensus here regarding who can grant it? CUs or bcrats? Majorly talk 14:04, 5 July 2008 (UTC)
As I said above, I think it should be CUs handling this. As to whether consensus exists on that, I think people are either ambivalent or don't see the need to restrict it to CUs (though I disagree). So unless we work something else out (which I think we should) perhaps a note on the bug to include crats is needed.  — Mike.lifeguard | @en.wb 16:30, 5 July 2008 (UTC)
I'd say bureaucrats is best. I don't see the need to restrict it to checkusers when regular sysops are allowed to give it out on a wiki as large as enwiki. Cbrown1023 talk 16:54, 5 July 2008 (UTC)
As nothing has happened to the Commons one yet I'd say there was time to decide :)
Commons the req is for CU & 'crats as a backup. Wouldn't worry me here but almost anyone can be a 'crat here so I could go either way. CUs are likely to be the ones who know who should be blockexempt. --Herby talk thyme 17:30, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

Why checkusers, not admins? Assigning ipblock-exempt is a part of unblocking, and unblocking is a part of administrators' rights — VasilievV 2 18:23, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

However, an improperly applied IPExempt can all but disable a CU's ability to run, so there may need to be some co-operation with the CU's -- Avi 05:53, 10 July 2008 (UTC)
It works OK on EnWP, though I take it there is some CU collaboration there (though probably not for every case). I agree with Herby that 'crats and CUs is probably a good compromise. —Giggy 06:21, 10 July 2008 (UTC)
No comments in this section for a while and consensus seems to favor the group and assignment by checkusers and bureaucrats. Kylu 20:55, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

bugzilla:14733 updated (trimmed): 

Group rights assignment for bureaucrats:
Was:

 $wgAddGroups['bureaucrat'] = array( 'bot', 'sysop', 'bureaucrat');
 $wgRemoveGroups['bureaucrat'] = array( 'bot', 'sysop', 'bureaucrat');

Requested:

 $wgAddGroups['bureaucrat'] = array( 'ipblock-exempt', 'bot', 'sysop', 'bureaucrat');
 $wgRemoveGroups['bureaucrat'] = array( 'ipblock-exempt', 'bot', 'sysop', 'bureaucrat');

Group rights assignment for checkusers:
Was: (none)
Requested: 

 $wgAddGroups['checkuser'] = array( 'ipblock-exempt' );
 $wgRemoveGroups['checkuser'] = array( 'ipblock-exempt' );

New group request:

$wgGroupPermissions['ipblock-exempt']['ipblock-exempt'] = true;
Kylu 21:10, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

EveryonesHome

how do I make each page in a defined wikipedia category a database record containing pre defined elements to provide location based search?

I want to format the data here [7] as an example into something searchable by postcode, whilst still having wikipedia pages that are editable by everyone.

Thanks, it would help a very fresh London homelessness charity provide an even more useful open source service in time... would appreciate anyones experience on the wiki also... Many thanks! info@everyoneshome.org.uk — The preceding unsigned comment was added by JohnMonday (talk) 03:34, 6 July 2008

N.B. I found everything I wished for and more using Semantic-Mediawiki...

Need for checkusers and oversights on Meta

Latest comment: 16 years ago16 comments10 people in discussion

As many of you may well be aware, some of the same vandals that have assaulted the English Wikipedia and other projects have discovered Meta, and the Meta administrators have been quite busy working to minimize the influence of these malicious users. With many pages approaching "bigdelete" size, preventing us from deleting specific revisions, and the rise in multiple sockpuppets on Meta, a few of the local bureaucrats have expressed (in private) the need for more trusted users with the Oversight and Checkuser permissions. Two of each should be sufficient at this time, though the number may vary depending on consensus. Please note that if approved, we will need a minimum of two oversights to satisfy oversight policy.

This posting is an attempt to gague community consensus regarding this need and to determine who would be both interested and qualified for these positions.

Please note that all candidates would be required to submit identification to the Foundation, be 18 years of age or older, and familiar with the privacy policy and the specific policy applicable to the permission applied for: Checkuser, Oversight. Thanks. Kylu 23:47, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

I don't think anymore CheckUsers are needed. Spacebirdy, Herbythyme, Pathoschild and Drini are very active admins with this right, and I think it's well covered. However, oversights would be a good idea. I've seen recently stuff that could do with oversighting, and it is probably better local people are elected to handle it. Majorly talk 23:52, 6 July 2008 (UTC)
That's fine, though I'd rather personally like to make sure that the Stewards aren't prohibited from assisting in either matter, regardless of local-specific oversights (or checkusers, if we elect more). Kylu 23:56, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

Well I'm always eager to find other ways to help out on meta. I expect that checkuser work on meta is fairly similar to the work on commons where I've been a checkuser for some time. Meta seems to be cruising along quite nicely these days, as is commons. A lot of the checkuser activity that is going on lately is cross project collaboration. In any case, if there is an need to adding privileged users for whatever purpose, keep in mind that we have a wealth of people with the rights elsewhere and many of them, like myself, would be glad to help out on meta. --Gmaxwell 01:12, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

I was just going to say about the same thing. There are users who can be recruited and are already trusted if we need more for either CheckUser or Oversight. I wonder if we could get the opinion of some active CUs here (Majorly mentions the ones who spring to my mind) on whether they would like the workload distributed? If they say so, I'd agree with them. Some names also spring to mind for already-trusted users we could ask, though I'm of course not opposed to new blood. At this point (when we're discussing whether more are needed in principle rather than discussing who those people might be) I think it is premature to be naming names, or otherwise discussing such possibilities.  — Mike.lifeguard | @en.wb 01:26, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Drini, Lar and Spacebirdy are the 3 elected steward and checkusers on Meta and apart from them, Herbythyme is the only other elected non-steward CU whereas Tim, Midom, brion, have it since they are developers and I'm sure they never use it anyways and the rest of the stewards assigned it to themselves except Hei-ber who was given the right as a member of the Ombudsman commission..so we don't need anymore Checkusers, though it will be nice to remove it from those stewards not using it anymore..and Meta has no oversights and we probably need atleast 2 and probably one should be a non-steward :) ...and like everything else on Meta, we would prefer "active" editors to be oversights or Checkusers (if needed)....--Cometstyles 01:38, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

My thoughts regarding checkusers was mostly to not count "functionary" checkusers (that is, ombudsman, stewards, and developers) and focus solely on the checkusers who have the permission in the service of the local community. I'd suggest to the Ombudsman that with the global ombudsman permission containing checkuser rights, they should remove the local rights as they're redundant and only serve to confuse the permissions list more. Likewise, I'd prefer to see a global "Developer" group (a duplicate of the Steward global group, perhaps) and assign it to those currently with developer or steward who perform development tasks. As one of the prior uses of +developer was to assign it test permissions, they can do this easily now through the global rights interface and have little use for local permissions. This all, however, is extraneous to this discussion. I'll throw it on RFC sometime. :) Kylu 01:50, 7 July 2008 (UTC)
Requests for comments/Special global permissions There, now to continue with this discussion. :) Kylu 02:19, 7 July 2008 (UTC)
Extra Checkusers are not (IMO) required on Meta. With "front line" staff in the shape of birdy & myself little is likely to get by :) People can see I use the rights in my Meta confirmation data. There are then three backup CUs. We are all (I'd like to think) fairly experienced in cross wiki issues.
Oversight - maybe. However I would strongly resist the idea of elected anyone other than genuinely active Meta people &, in my mind, there are few of them. (& no I am not interested). --Herby talk thyme 07:08, 7 July 2008 (UTC)
I also agree with what most of the people have said here. I think we already have enough CUs on meta; about Oversighters, I also share the same concern Herby has: we need to care a lot about choosing the right people (and in agreement with Cometstyles, I think non-Steward users should also be in the team). Huji 17:05, 7 July 2008 (UTC)
Meta:Requests_for_oversight#Requests_for_Oversight_access Two current nominations, we'll need two passing nominations to qualify for oversight. Anyone else want to toss their hat into the ring? Kylu 00:23, 8 July 2008 (UTC)
Hmm. Just to step back for a moment, OverSight exists to remove from the wiki information that we do not trust our sysops to see. I am, bluntly, sceptical that there is very much of this at all. If the only driver for this is pages with > 5000 revisions, surely it would be more sensible (and more to the benefit of the community not only here but more widely) to ask the devs to speed up analysis of the now two-(three?)-year-old "new deletion mechanism" so that individual revisions could be deleted by sysops?
James F. (talk) 06:27, 8 July 2008 (UTC)
To be fair, it is far, far easier for us to adjust how we distribute user rights than to wait for the developers to make modifications to the MediaWiki system for our benefit. EVula // talk // ☯ // 15:06, 8 July 2008 (UTC)
Correct me if I'm wrong, but if you're talking about revision deleting (which lets deleting a revision from an article which is too big to be deleted completely and then restored partially) it is already there (but perhaps not activated on Wikimedia wikis). If the only reason for having Oversighters on meta is this, we can ask this to be turned on only for Meta! And tell me if that really is the only reason for trying to have Oversighters or not, because if it is, I'm gonna say a "big" no to the whole thing. Poor idea... :( Huji 14:50, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

I've seen material here that, in my considered opinion, required oversighting, not just bigdeletion, and after some consultation, I oversighted it. I support the notion of improving the ability to delete a single revision and agree that oversight should not be a substitute for it. But the two things are seperable. ++Lar: t/c 14:58, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

There's been concern from a couple fronts that with local checkusers and oversights, stewards will be less inclined to perform these sorts of actions on Meta. A very rough draft of a proposed policy for Meta is up at Meta:Meta-Steward relationship for approval, polishing, recreating from scratch, or smearing with mud followed by burning and burying the ashes in a stygian abyss. Kylu 05:05, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

Locking of Moulton's talk page

Latest comment: 16 years ago21 comments8 people in discussion
The following discussion is closed: Handled. Cbrown1023 talk 13:24, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

Yesterday, Majorly fully protected Moulton (talk • contribs • count • logs • page moves • block log • CA • email)'s talk page, saying "Meta-Wiki is not for socialising like this. Please take your discussions elsewhere". See User_talk:Majorly#Locking_Moulton.27s_talk_page for some additional discussion. I'm not a fan of Moulton (a user who is currently indefintely blocked on en:wp) and am not sure that carrying on the sort of discussion he and User:WAS 4.250 were carrying on is completely within scope. But it's a judgement call, because a case could be made that this wasn't just chit chat... (as well as a case being made that even if it wasn't, it doesn't belong here) I would ask that we reach a consensus either endorsing this lock, or overturning it, as Moulton has now moved on to Wikiversity. (see en:v:User talk:Moulton)... it seems to me that deciding this here might be useful, so the overall community doesn't chase him from place to place. Either allow it here, or set the precedent that it's not allowed, which other communities can draw on, is my thinking. ++Lar: t/c 15:45, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

I would like to thank this community for helping Moulton and myself to find an appropriate place for our discussion on the Ethical Management of the English Language Wikipedia. Any consensus you guys come to on this is moot because 1) We found a better place; we won't be coming back even if you want us back 2) A consensus here has no effect on other projects 3) A consensus now on this has no effective force on another issue at another time because cases differ and consensus can change. Spin your wheels all you like, but I for one see no point. Anyway, it is all for the best. We found a better venue. Thanks again. WAS 4.250 17:21, 9 July 2008 (UTC)
Well, I would tend to say that things here sometimes do set a precendent... if something is out of scope here for being not sufficiently related to WMF projects, it often will be out of scope everywhere else. Including Wikiversity. But in this case perhaps not, and perhaps I was wrong. I wish you the best of luck with your discourse. I'm ambivalent about whether this was a good lock or not, but the issue is now moot I guess. I'd suggest that the page either be unconditionally unlocked, or be unlocked again after the material was archived, to allow for use to discuss routine administrative matters, with the understanding that the prior topic continue at wv and not be repeated here (Moulton would need to agree to that). Unless we are moving to saying that Moulton is a user not in good standing here, that is. Which case I am not sure has been made yet. ++Lar: t/c 11:31, 10 July 2008 (UTC)
WAS 4.250 18:09, 10 July 2008 (UTC)
It had occurred to me that WAS and I were dialoguing here appropriately within the scope of the Wikimedia Foundation Mission and Vision Statements.
I regret if I am mistaken about that.
Moulton 17:32, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

I don't see anything particularly offensive or out of line. I have a negative bias with Moulton, I'll disclose that. However, locking the page was incorrect. I   Oppose it. NonvocalScream 17:33, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

Users that treat the site like a social networking site should be prevented from doing so. Neither Moultion or WAS 4.250 edited much outside of that talk page. Granted, the talk was related to Wikipedia, but it's still not appropriate. Anyhow, I think it's probably fine to unlock the page now, regardless. Majorly talk 17:36, 13 July 2008 (UTC)
Thank you. We should be careful of causing the Chilling effect our page protections and blocks can have. NonvocalScream 17:46, 13 July 2008 (UTC)
I think it's fair to say that WAS and I were gobsmacked to find our discussion about The Future of Wikipedia summarily shut down, without warning and without prior discussion of applicable policy. I also think it's fair to say that Lar and NonvocalScream were perplexed and dismayed, as well. In any event we understand that our conversations are not welcome here, and we have moved our work to Wikiversity, where we find a more collegial, congenial, and receptive culture. —Moulton 18:18, 14 July 2008 (UTC)
Please, leave off the hyperboles Moulton, it's not going to have any effect on anything except yourself. Have fun on Wikiversity. I stand by the protection. Majorly talk 18:27, 14 July 2008 (UTC)
Would you care to disclose the "effects" you have in mind? —Moulton 01:41, 15 July 2008 (UTC)
"Anyhow, I think it's probably fine to unlock the page now, regardless." (Majorly @ 17:36, 13 July 2008 (UTC)). "Have fun on Wikiversity. I stand by the protection." (Majorly @ 18:27, 14 July 2008 (UTC)). What gives? I don't see what damage is being done by the discussion of issues for which Meta is here, regardless of which page it takes place on. Protecting it because Moulton and WAS don't edit "much outside of that talk page" is silly - there are many users on Meta who mostly edit one particular page. We don't protect that page/block them for that reason. I suggest unprotecting. —Giggy 05:01, 15 July 2008 (UTC)
"I suggest unprotecting." (Giggy @ 05:01, 15 July 2008 (UTC))" - er, it's not protected. Majorly talk 10:09, 15 July 2008 (UTC)
@Moulton: using hyperboles in your comments will only impress an English language examiner. People here prefer to listen to facts, rather than exaggerated emotions. Perhaps it was a mistaken protection, but I have reversed myself, and there is no need to be so upset about it. Majorly talk 10:20, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

Protection

  • Majorly; If you stand by your protection, even after a few good editors on the meta wiki and other projects brought to your attention your error... and you continue to stand by your protection. I think it may be time for you to reconsider your tenure as an administrator here on the meta wiki. If you do not see your error and you are averse to change that is. Best, NonvocalScream 05:51, 15 July 2008 (UTC)
It wasn't an error. Thanks for your opinion, but I don't believe it was. I'd never resign over something like this anyway, you're making a massive deal over one little thing. I've worked hard on this project for over a year and a half now, and I'll thank you, you of all people, not to ask me to stand down over one action, which wasn't even wrong. Okay, people disagreed, but there's no policy or guideline regarding this. Since people didn't like it, I reversed myself. Why are you still going on about it? Do you enjoy making drama over nothing? If you do, I'd rather not be involved. Majorly talk 10:09, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

OK, perhaps it was a mistaken protection. I was within my rights to protect it, and perhaps it was the wrong thing to do. I do find, however, the comments from Moulton and Scream most inappropriate. Moulton, you should not get so upset about this. It's a talk page. I didn't block you. And I reversed the page once it seemed most people disagreed with me. Using hyperboles will get you nowhere here though. Scream, asking me to stand down over this is frankly ridiculous. I'm honestly shocked you'd ask me to. I'm not going to, but I think you should rethink some of the things you say and do before commenting on others. Anyway, I apologise for the fuss that has been caused here. As I said, I have worked hard here for over 18 months now, and I'm in the top 12 most active admins. I was at one point the most active bureaucrat, before I suggested that every admin could share the work. I've done a lot of good work here, and I'm pretty surprised you'd even bring up resigning. I'd rather not go there. Majorly talk 10:28, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

Ahh I'm in agreement with Majorly here and very soon I would have locked that page myself because a couple other admins do disagree with Moulton and WAS4.250 is doing on meta, this isn't their Personal Blog or Forum and people like them are not welcomed here or on any other wiki, Meta doesn't discriminate, i.e people blocked on enwiki or another bigger wiki are not necessarily blocked here but if they continue to do what they were banned in another wiki for doing, they will be blocked for disruption and NonvocalScream, I really didn't expect you to make such a harsh comment against Majorly and asking him to resign...and probably this is the reason why we do things differently here, I'm not sure who these "few good editors" are since apart from Moulton/WAS, the only other editor to comment here is Giggy. We probably will be updating our policies in the coming weeks regarding everything and hopefully get rid of all the trash we have ;) ...--Cometstyles 12:15, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

I really have to agree with both Majorly and Comets here. Also, it seems this thread is over. Cbrown1023 talk 13:24, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

I think I should have phased myself a bit differently. Majorly, I was not asking you to resign... I was suggesting that you reconsider your tenure if you are averse to change and not seeing what I believe was an error. I apologize for the harshness, I believe the protection was a bit much, and protections of talk pages in this context have unexpected or unrealized consequences. Reconsidering tenure = reevaluating oneself and one's goals. This did not equate a request for Majorly's resignation. I apoligize for the disclarity. (if there was such a word.) Best, NonvocalScream 01:16, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

Babel extensions or Babel templates?

dear Metapedians,

I'd like to point out a dilemma which has some local project hanging on for a solution: Babel templates or Babel extension?

There's an ongoing discussion on Babel extension, and a new modular system here on meta. I worked hard to have it.wikipedia, it.wikisource syncronized with hundreds of babel templates, and I have been longing for a simpler solution for years. A babel system is recently requested on la.wikisource (a very multilingual environment) and I was asked to set it up. But before creating another flood of templates and categories I'd like to use the most recent and practical solutions, which are either the rather complex system currently used on meta, or the future babel extension. What's the current state of the matter and is it perceived as important? Thanks in advance for any kind reply. - εΔω 15:42, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

It looks like the babel extension probably will not be enabled in the near future. However, it would not be difficult to set up a bot that automatically creates and maintains a copy of Meta's user language system (with appropriate customizations like template name and default text). If this would be useful, I'll set one up sometime. —{admin} Pathoschild 17:13:50, 12 July 2008 (UTC)
Thank you for your kind reply. I'll begin to study the user language system to adapt it to la.source. - εΔω 08:52, 14 July 2008 (UTC)
Latest comment: 16 years ago13 comments13 people in discussion

as we all know, a few days ago, a new feature was enabled in MediaWiki which allows sorting of the sidebar, so with that I moved the search box up a bit and interchanged "community" with "beyond the web", giving community a priority since Meta is for the community, if anyone disagrees, they can change it around or even move search to the top like commons.. :) ..--Cometstyles 11:07, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

Let's not split the sidebar, how about we move it to the top like commons? (you suggested this on Babel too). Cbrown1023 talk 13:54, 11 July 2008 (UTC)
I prefer it in the middle to be honest... Majorly talk 14:29, 11 July 2008 (UTC)
I'd prefer the top.--Cato 15:48, 13 July 2008 (UTC)
I prefer bottom — VasilievV 2 17:28, 21 July 2008 (UTC)
It seems fine at the bottom page - so I'm with VasilievV on this one. Dark Mage 18:28, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

What happened with cross wiki check?

Latest comment: 16 years ago3 comments3 people in discussion

The IP 88.253.108.26 vandalized this afternoon some 15 to 20 projects. Just about 15:00 I checked it with cross wiki check and I saw it. Now when I do the same I get nothing to see. Is it a bug? -jkb- (cs.source) 18:35, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

Ask Luxo, or someone in #wikimedia-toolserver if it may be a server error.  — Mike.lifeguard | @en.wb 22:27, 11 July 2008 (UTC)
Are you sure you got the ip right, and if you did, did that anon create new pages and if he did, then all I can say is that a steward has probably deleted all the pages and deleted pages doesn't show on Luxo's tool...--Cometstyles 23:44, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

Bugzilla concerning user rights log

Latest comment: 16 years ago3 comments3 people in discussion

Please see bugzilla:14800 - this is regarding user rights logs. Thanks, AP aka --Kelsington 19:26, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, I do not understand why you are notifying us about this.  — Mike.lifeguard | @en.wb 22:00, 12 July 2008 (UTC)
yeah saw it, I din't notice it has changed, caps letters and the extra 's' in the end is some sort of a mediawiki fix ..I hope they change it back, it looks weird...--Cometstyles 23:58, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

Administrators

Latest comment: 16 years ago7 comments4 people in discussion
The following discussion is closed: Solved privately. NonvocalScream 04:19, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

When you see a string of judgment errors in a meta admin, what is the process to discuss them, if the administrator does not see the errors? Best, NonvocalScream 19:57, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

I would probably first talk to the admin and tell him his errors (depends on the error) and ask him not to repeat it, best regards, --birdy geimfyglið (:> )=| ∇ 20:01, 13 July 2008 (UTC)
Discuss with the admin, then with the community if the errors continue. Majorly talk 20:02, 13 July 2008 (UTC)
I believe the administrator knows already, however, I intend to take it to the user talk page again (as I see it was taken there already). I just wanted to know where the venue is if I bring it to the community. NonvocalScream 20:06, 13 July 2008 (UTC)
You can always bring it to Meta talk:Administrators and if its a serious problem, it will be dealt with accordingly.....--Cometstyles 00:05, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

Resolved. NonvocalScream 04:19, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

Meta

Latest comment: 16 years ago3 comments3 people in discussion

What is there to do here on meta I wouldn't mind helping out more - I was a wikipedian by this username on Wikipedia, but left permanently due to the increase in vandalism and other reasons, I am generally a recent changes patroller however is there something else which I could do part from translation - I did started to help out, but only temperory which was awhile ago. Terra 18:58, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Personally, I'd suggest doing research for Talk:Spam blacklist requests and popping on RFC to offer useful advice. Always make sure you check Metapub and Meta:Babel for things needing assistance, and if you speak other languages visit Meta:Babylon. After helping out there, you're likely to have found a niche and other things to do, so that should be good to get you started. :) Kylu 02:45, 17 July 2008 (UTC)
That's what I'll do then, later once I'm properly active I'll re-read the meta Policies again - just to be on the safe side. Dark Mage 07:59, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

Reverted edit

Latest comment: 16 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion

I've just reverted this edit here not sure whether or not it was vandalism, due to it being in some language though it did look like vandalism though when viewing the actual article and section which the IP had wrote - and it did remove a number of lines, have I done the right thing in removing the edit on the article. Dark Mage 19:56, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

Yes, thanks.--Patrick (talk) 23:36, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

Global bots on Meta

Latest comment: 16 years ago16 comments13 people in discussion
The following discussion is closed: See clarified discussion below.

Hello. The standard bot policy was updated to allow global bots, which are now technically possible. These are trusted bots that will be given bot access on all wikis that allow global bots (the local policy or request page must explicitly allow them, or they won't get access on this wiki). The current requirements for global bots are:

  • the bot must only maintain interlanguage links or fix double-redirects;
  • the bot must already be active on several wikis, with long-term contributions to back up its trustworthiness.

Does anyone object to allowing global bots on this wiki? I'll update the local policy in a week if there are no objections. Thanks. —{admin} Pathoschild 01:35:35, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

No objections from here. I don't believe Meta has interlanguage links, so it would just fix double redirects, right? —Giggy 02:20, 27 July 2008 (UTC)
Yep. —{admin} Pathoschild 05:14:02, 27 July 2008 (UTC)
  Support - BTW, do we already have a double-redirect bot?  — Mike.lifeguard | @en.wb 12:32, 27 July 2008 (UTC)
Yes, White Cat's タチコマ robot. (The policy is already implemented on Meta; only the global bots portion is proposed.) —{admin} Pathoschild 15:18:54, 27 July 2008 (UTC)
  Support - Seems fine as described above, the intended bots will have already been vetted a bit. Cirt 16:36, 27 July 2008 (UTC)
  Support very good idea --Mardetanha talk 19:59, 27 July 2008 (UTC)
  Neutral I'm perfectly fine with global bots, though if I'm correct there was an issue with certain bots which have begun to annoy certain people, and started to turn against the policy - like what happened over on the Wikipedia's Administrators' notice-board at one stage with one of the bots which caused a massive argument - as such I'm sticking to neutral in this matter though it is a good idea. Dark Mage 20:00, 27 July 2008 (UTC)
The problems you're referring were caused by replacement bots (a recent case being BetacommandBot). Interlanguage-linking or double-redirect-fixing bots are normally uncontroversial. —{admin} Pathoschild 00:05:57, 28 July 2008 (UTC)
BetacommandBot is an enwiki bot, not a cross-wiki bot so I don't think it will even be added to the list
  Support - Excellent idea, but we might have a problem of "opt-in" for some wikis, such as a bot will not be appreciated on a wiki or the community/crat of that wiki has rejected the bot being active there, so if given the global right, will the community accept it since there is no way a global right can be assigned for a bot independently i.e a bot can not choose the wikis, all bots will have the global rights in the same wikis...--Cometstyles 00:58, 28 July 2008 (UTC)
  Oppose does Meta-wiki need more redirect fixing bot?--Kwj2772 03:04, 30 July 2008 (UTC)
Double-redirect fixing is now built in to the MediaWiki software. --Dschwen 03:16, 30 July 2008 (UTC)
Please see Talk:Bot policy#Double redirects - it is not a complete fix; bots are still required.  — Mike.lifeguard | @en.wb 15:05, 30 July 2008 (UTC)
oh, thanks for the pointer, I wasn't aware of that. In any case, it is a dying task now. Shouldn't the existing bots be able to finish it? --Dschwen 17:11, 30 July 2008 (UTC)
Most of bot operator run interwiki bot. so botstatus on Meta is unnecessary to most of them. If someone needs flag, requesting locally may be better than global bot on Meta. --Kwj2772 14:09, 31 July 2008 (UTC)
Seems fine to allow global bots here. --MZMcBride 21:30, 30 July 2008 (UTC)
  Oppose There are *different* bot policies in many wikis include don't accept standart bot policy. --Ficell 13:42, 31 July 2008 (UTC)
Meta already uses the standard bot policy, and global bots are opt-in; if a wiki does not want global bots, then global bots simply aren't enabled on that wiki. If you mean something else, could you explain how your comment is relevant to enabling global bots on this wiki? —{admin} Pathoschild 14:24:16, 01 August 2008 (UTC)
support —DerHexer (Talk) 21:58, 31 July 2008 (UTC)
  •   Oppose for now; we should make sure there is a way for each wiki to "override" the global bot permission for the accounts of their interest. Huji 09:18, 1 August 2008 (UTC)*:
    If a bot is controversial, it should not have global bot access. That is the reason the requirements are so strict. —{admin} Pathoschild 14:24:16, 01 August 2008 (UTC)

Clarified discussion

Some of the responses above show that my explanation and question were very unclear, so I've explained it better below. Please comment on this instead (sorry, I'll only do that this once!).

MetaWiki currently uses the standard bot policy, which is also used on many other wikis. It was recently updated to allow global bots, which are now technically possible. (These are trusted bots that are given bot access on wikis using the standard bot policy that allow global bots; they are subject to strict requirements described at Bot policy#Global bots.) However, local policy always overrides the standard bot policy, and we can choose to prohibit global bots (so they won't have global bot access on MetaWiki).

So, the clearer question is: should we continue to use the standard bot policy without changes (including global bots), or should we now override it with a local policy that prohibits global bots on this wiki? —{admin} Pathoschild 07:15:34, 02 August 2008 (UTC)

Question

Latest comment: 16 years ago4 comments2 people in discussion

I would like to propose a software change that would affect every Wikimedia project, where would be the best place for that? JohnnyMrNinja 18:50, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

If I understand it correctly it would probably be either on this page (i.e. babel, Metapub.) or it maybe on the actual mediawiki site, though other's who have been on meta longer may know exactly where to go. Dark Mage 19:00, 27 July 2008 (UTC)
Ok, thanks. I will start a new section for clarity (once I finish working it up). JohnnyMrNinja 19:09, 27 July 2008 (UTC)
Image:Localisation2.svg (above) doesn't appear to be properly tagged. How ironic. JohnnyMrNinja 05:16, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Proposal to disable hotlinking

Latest comment: 16 years ago67 comments25 people in discussion
See also discussion on foundation-l and Erik Moeller's conclusions ([Foundation-l] discussion about banning external hotlinking).

I am proposing disabling hotlinking for every Wikimedia project, aside from (possibly) the Commons. There are several reasons for this, which I will explain -

  1. We are not a free image host - Money and server power is being wasted on hosting millions of images for websites that are completely unrelated to the Wikimedia project. Here is an example of a search for en.WP images that do not mention Wikipedia, [8] over 2 mil. We should not be using our servers for this, as I doubt anyone donated money with this in mind. Copying of free images is obviously fine, just as it is with text, but we don't (as far as I know) host the text for any other site, I don't see why we should do this for images.
  2. We should not host non-free and fair-use images for anyone to use without reason - Wikipedia hosts many non-free and fair use images for use within the project, but we can not limit usage of hosted non-free images on other sites. Ethically and legally is not a good idea to host copyrighted works for anyone to use with any purpose.
  3. We bog down Wikipedia with uploads of nonsense photos - en:Category:User-created public domain images has tons of pictures of completely non-notable people, logos, etc. many of these were uploaded for articles that got deleted, or for user pages. Many were also loaded for no apparent reason, other than to be located on the internet. the L section seems particularly rife. This makes useful content much harder to find.

I do not feel that the projects benefit from allowing people to hotlink full-resolution 15mb+ images to be used in their blogs or fansites. There are numerous free image hosting sites available, such as Imageshack.us or photobucket.com. If hotlinking is allowed, I do not think it should be allowed past the Commons, as the Commons allows only free images, and this would create a centralized location for dealing with any issues.

In other words, I don't think we should be spending our resources to make sure this guy can write a better blog. JohnnyMrNinja 19:59, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

In response to your first point, they don't legally have to say anything about Wikipedia, Commons, or any other Wikimedia project, just the author (or authors) of the image. However, you do have a point that there may be load issues related to this; perhaps we should ask the dev.s?
James F. (talk) 20:20, 27 July 2008 (UTC)
I must agree that we should disable hotlinking of our images but I'd go as far as saying all projects rather than excluding Commons. In response to James F.'s first point, I think the point that Johnny is trying to make is that because Wikipedia isn't being mentioned the use of the image doesn't relate to our activities as opposed to the license conditions not being complied with. Adambro 20:26, 27 July 2008 (UTC)
Yes, the first point was simply to show images hosted by EN that are not used on EN, -intitle:Wikipedia is an easy way to do this using Google. I was hoping to find out what consensus is on the subject before talking to the devs. And for the record, I would like to disable hotlinking for every project too, but if we do keep it, it should only be on Commons. JohnnyMrNinja 20:31, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

It would be very curious to see what percentage of, say, last month's total WMF bandwidth for all projects was "hotlinking". It may be worthwhile to do this, or to redirect all requests to a lighweight, low KB size image that identifies the WMF. rootology (T) 21:02, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

I'm with Rootology. I know Commons gets a bunch of crap every day (that we delete), and I've always suspected that it was used for hotlinking - but really - how much of it is? If say less than 10% of all image GETs are Hotlinked - does it really matter that much? And yes, I realize it is still a drain on the bandwidth. --ShakataGaNai ^_^ 21:07, 27 July 2008 (UTC)
Does anyone have any evidence that a) a large fraction of the hotlinked images are being done in ways that violate their copyright or b) that the hotlinks are taking up a lot of server resources? Without one of those, I'm disinclined to support. JoshuaZ 21:11, 27 July 2008 (UTC)
[9], [10] - add ROM to the above search, you can see how fair-use images are being used to promote illegal downloads of games. This is just one type of illegal usage. JohnnyMrNinja 21:43, 27 July 2008 (UTC)
Or add download MP3. This violates fair use and is illegal, why would we support this, no matter the bandwidth? JohnnyMrNinja 21:48, 27 July 2008 (UTC)
Because it isn't clear what fraction of the images are actually this sort of situation. I agree that illegal or questionable uses exist. I have no idea what fraction of the image uses in question these are. There's no need to throw out the baby with the bathwater. JoshuaZ 05:03, 28 July 2008 (UTC)
Well, like James said, any hotlinked image (blog, forum, etc.) that doesn't cite the author is apparently a copyvio. We'd need the devs to give us bandwidth numbers. Anyone asked them yet (I don't know where to do that)? rootology (T) 21:15, 27 July 2008 (UTC)
Bug 14948 - I hope this is the correct way. JohnnyMrNinja 21:23, 27 July 2008 (UTC)
I think, though, that even if hotlinking is less than 10% of image usage, there is no harm to the project to disable it, and the above points would be in no way less valid. JohnnyMrNinja 21:28, 27 July 2008 (UTC)
Why the arbitrary 10% threshold? We still have to pay for that bandwidth, but what benefit do we gain from it? rootology (T) 21:31, 27 July 2008 (UTC)
I agree entirely. No matter how big a drain on our resources this is the fact that it is a drain at all should be enough for us to put it to a stop. Not only is it wasting our bandwidth, it is allowing for our projects, particularly Commons, to be inundated with useless content. For example, for media files to be useful on Commons we need to have an idea what they are. Far too often we get images uploaded with no information about what they are and of questionable usefulness to WMF projects but because they have the required source and license information no one notices and they just continue to flood in. Adambro 21:55, 27 July 2008 (UTC)
As far as when an image is hotlinked, I was thinking of a small png with Image:Logo colors wikimedia.png and message to the effect of "The Wikimedia foundation no longer supports hotlinking of its images. To view the image, please visit the appropriate Wikimedia project." Or maybe just "Hotlinking is disabled" in a ton of languages. OR maybe each project should have a specific hotlinking image. JohnnyMrNinja 22:32, 27 July 2008 (UTC)
  • Agreed. I think any solution is premature until the devs tell us what percentage of traffic is offsite linking. After that its probably a Foundation thing, since it's lost money for each such load, on the bandwidth. rootology (T) 22:51, 27 July 2008 (UTC)
Isn't Wikimedia hosting illegally-used copyrighted images a problem? Though I agree that the technicalities are best left to the foundation. JohnnyMrNinja 23:09, 27 July 2008 (UTC)
We have very strict policies throughout the Wikimedia projects about what fair use we will allow. That doesn't mean that people using images more generally are not engaging in valid fair use. One would need to look at the image uses in detail to establish that there was a genuinely serious copyright issue here. Simply using images in ways that we would not does not mean they are being used illegally. JoshuaZ 23:14, 27 July 2008 (UTC)
Using copyrighted images to promote illegal copying and downloading of the subject's material is illegal. Fair use images should not be hosted for anyone to use as their use cannot be controlled and kept "fair". Which is why I mentioned that if hotlinking is kept, it should only be for Commons. JohnnyMrNinja 23:18, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

Well, I don't know if allowing hotlinking from Commons is even a good idea. How does Commons/the WMF benefit from giving away free bandwidth and image hosting? How much money are we spending on hotlinked images and content? rootology (T) 23:20, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

I was merely pointing out that no matter what the bandwidth (which I don't think we'll hear about for a while), hosting fair use images for other websites is a bad idea, ethically and legally. As Commons does not allow fair use, it is exempt from this argument. JohnnyMrNinja 23:29, 27 July 2008 (UTC)
  • Many people copy parts of wikipedia pages into email to pass on to others. They sometimes combine parts from different Wikipedia pages into email and pass them on. I don't want to discourage this. It makes Wikipedia popular. Such emails are boring without the images. I don't see the need to disable hotlinking for thumbnail images, or images in infoboxes. Such infobox images can be up to 300 pixels wide. So if there is to be any disabling of hotlinking, then I suggest starting with images over 300 pixels wide. But first let us see how much bandwidth is being used currently. Then we can watch how bandwidth is effected as levels of disabling are put in place. --Timeshifter 23:38, 27 July 2008 (UTC)
I fully support point 1 and 2. Servers should cut off leechers (hotlinking is also known as "bandwidth theft" ;-)
The problem of point 3 should actually not exist. Why aren't those pics on Commons? --Melancholie 00:04, 28 July 2008 (UTC)
I have been moving many, but many are useless, or not actually PD. en:Image:Bobby Valen.jpg should not be moved to Commons, as it is clearly not PD. en:Image:L a52308ea3ce487013591352950f22df6.gif should not because it is a low-resolution poorly animated picture of a non-notable person (i.e. clutter). Disk space may be cheap, but time and effort are not. Just because something is in the public domain does not (always) mean it it useful. Not to mention that many of the uploaders have a very nebulous grasp on what {{pd-self}} actually means. Just because something is labeled as pd doesn't mean it is, and there is no reason to take chances with images of no value. JohnnyMrNinja 00:21, 28 July 2008 (UTC)
  • This proposal to turn off hotlinking makes sense. I like the idea of replacing the image with a simple one that has a link to the Wikimedia source. This way we can turn all the images into links that bring people to the project. It is one thing to upload a copyright protected image and label it as fair use for use within Wikimedia's projects. We should not allow the rest of the world unfettered use of protected images. -- Sam 00:28, 28 July 2008 (UTC)
    • I have a couple of questions. Everyone here is talking about understanding PD. What is PD? Also, would disabling hotlinking cause any problems if I were to, theoretically, hotlink from Wikisaurus to Wikipedia but not to a photo? 01:48, 28 July 2008 (UTC)
      • "PD" means "public domain", which means "free of copyright". New users sometimes make the mistake of saying that something is in the public domain because it was found in a public place, such as a public web site.
      • Disabling hotlinking would just restrict the ability to include Wikimedia images on non-Wikimedia sites using the Wikimedia servers. You are always welcome to use the images, but it's common courtesy to host your own copy on your own server. —Remember the dot 02:56, 28 July 2008 (UTC)
    • I agree that disabling image hotlinking would be a good idea to save money, discourage using Wikimedia as a free image host, reduce the amount of time and effort spent deleting images uploaded but not useful to us, and limit the ability to use our fair use content outside of a legal context. —Remember the dot 02:56, 28 July 2008 (UTC)
  • Quite. I was rather infuriated at the thought of other sites both abusing our bandwidth and using us to store illicit material. Let's plug this hole. Has anyone drawn sysadmin attention to this matter as of yet? Kylu 03:19, 28 July 2008 (UTC)
There is another bug listed [11] I just found. I don't know how to draw attention from the devs on things like this. JohnnyMrNinja 04:50, 28 July 2008 (UTC)
I support disabling hotlinking for both reasons 1 and 2, and partially 3. On #3, I don't think that most stuff sticks around long enough for it to be advantageous for anyone to make use of anything uploaded as junk. However, with regard to points 1 and 2, if I donate money to Wikimedia, I, personally, don't want a commercial site stealing the bandwidth I help pay for. Mind you, bandwidth is probably the most expensive cost in running the project, so every little bit counts. We're here to create free encyclopedias/dictionaries/whatevers, and we gladly provide database dumps for our content for people to host on their own sites. --slakr 05:10, 28 July 2008 (UTC)
Maybe I wouldn't support disabling hotlinking in general, but I strongly support disabling hotlinking from sites that do it for clear bad purposes as I have shown in bug 14829. This isn't just a problem of bandwidth and cost, nor copyright and attribution, but people who act in bad faith and introduce their site as Wikipedia, gaining users who mistype the address or they are just computer illiterates and never have visited Wikipedia before. There is no reason to make it easier for them to harm wikipedia and wikimedia. So if hotlinking is to remain allowed, I strongly support to disable it on a case by case basis. Geraki TL 08:28, 30 July 2008 (UTC)


Statistics

I analysed the last 10M lines in the 1/1000 sampled log, which is a period of 4.3 days. I found 107736 requests with non-blank, non-Wikimedia referrers out of 4338150 upload requests. So hotlinking is 2.5% of image requests and 1.1% of all requests.

The scripts used were hotlink.awk: 

$9 ~ "^http://upload\.wikimedia\.org" &&
 $12 ~ "^https?://" && 
 $12 !~ "^https?://[a-zA-Z0-9.-]*(wikipedia|wiktionary|wikibooks|wikiquote|wikisource|wikinews|wikimedia|wikispecies|wikiversity|wikimediafoundation|mediawiki)\.org(/|$)" {
	split($12, parts, "/")
	print parts[3]
 }

And hotlink-baseline.awk: 

$9 ~ "^http://upload\.wikimedia\.org" {
	print $12
 }

The top referrer domains were: 

 2949 tunergarage.blogspot.com
 2924 moviedish.blogspot.com
 2012 profile.myspace.com
 1960 www.de.map24.com
 1909 videostic.com
 1895 66.102.9.104
 1742 www.familyguynow.com
 1678 images.google.com
 1466 www.megamoviezone.com
 1359 onclickvideos.com
 1229 www.google.com
 1076 www.mestextos.com
 973 64.233.179.104
 875 www.nationmaster.com
 861 wikipedia.sapere.alice.it
 841 www.fastpasstv.com
 773 jiten.biglobe.ne.jp
 745 www.channelsurfing.net
 663 videoonclick.com
 654 74.125.39.104
 642 www.taringa.net
 592 209.85.135.104
 555 www.sidereel.com
 553 209.85.175.104
 490 11.gmodules.com
 480 www.start2enjoy.com
 479 www.emule-box.com
 459 209.85.215.104
 397 www.cinetalkies.net
 386 127.0.0.1:4664
 365 forum.kooora.com
 362 72.14.235.104
 356 forums.fark.com
 351 www.onclickvideos.com
 351 64.233.169.104
 350 musicistheheartofoursourl.blogspot.com
 341 familyguynow.com
 339 megastic.com
 338 64.233.183.104
 336 blog.naver.com
 331 www.wikipedia.es
 324 ztopmovies.synthasite.com
 324 wpedia.search.goo.ne.jp
 317 blog.daum.net
 307 toolbar.google.com
 297 kin.naver.com
 297 bollystic.com
 295 www.skyscrapercity.com
 289 images.google.de
 281 www.youtube.com

The number next to each domain is a count out of the same sample.

I'll save my comments on the bulk of the proposal for later, but I'll say this now: it's certainly not worth my time (or that of any other system administrator) to deal with these sites on a case-by-case basis. Bandwidth may be valuable, but staff time is also valuable. -- Tim Starling 06:28, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for looking that up. Just out of curiosity, if a "blanket" ban were put in place, how much would that 1%-2.5% or so save the WMF per year in bandwidth costs? rootology (T) 06:29, 28 July 2008 (UTC)
Also, I would like to say that the proposal was not to ban individual sites, or particular images, but to disallow all hotlinking from any site. Would this be complicated? JohnnyMrNinja 06:37, 28 July 2008 (UTC)
Ok, I've just noticed one flaw in the plan, which is linking from search engines such as images.google.com. I'm assuming that this can be fixed by allowing the major image search sites to hotlink, and by placing the text in the hotlink image "If a search brought you here, click Reload to view the image," or somesuch. JohnnyMrNinja 06:51, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

The total bandwidth bill (that the Foundation actually pays, not including donated bandwidth) is on the order of $300k p.a. So assuming the objects are all about the same size, the saving would be around $3k. -- Tim Starling 06:56, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Well, that doesn't seem worth it, for that. I always assumed it was far more of the annual budget... assuming that images tend to be larger, it might top out at what, $10k? I don't know if thats worth it. rootology (T) 06:59, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

This is an awful idea. Was that bold enough? You couldn't buy off the negative publicity that we'd be getting from flatout disabling all sites, including legitimate ones, from hotlinking. You certainly couldn't buy it off for $3,000-$6,000 dollars a year. No, absolutely horrid idea. We're about getting information and content OUT to people, not finding ways to prevent that for a pittance in savings. Swatjester 07:01, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Note that there is a CPU cost to disabling hotlinking, especially if you have lots of exceptions. For every request, squid has to run the relevant regexes, which might take hundreds of microseconds. Previous calculations on this effect, in the context of individual abusive sites, implied that the CPU cost would be of the same order of magnitude as the bandwidth saving. So I think the debate about hotlinking would be more meaningful on the level of social, rather than financial, costs. -- Tim Starling 07:33, 28 July 2008 (UTC)
We do not need the additional CPU costs and delays. I have been noticing many more delays lately in getting pages loaded. Are the servers melting down and maxed out already? I suggest we start allowing users to choose optional ads so we can buy more servers and pay more staff. See w:Wikipedia:Advertisements. End of plug.
Plus the paid staff time to deal with this over time is not worth it either. That would easily add up to the $3000 per year in bandwidth costs.
Finally, consider the $3000 per year to be advertising for Wikipedia. Kind of like YouTube is considered to be free viral advertising by many TV and movie companies. And think of the negative reaction if people couldn't paste parts of wikipedia pages with thumbnail images in them into email to pass around to their friends. --Timeshifter 15:08, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

Oppose - what he says. I do think more aggressive new image patrolling with "shoot on site authority" would be nice for admins. // FrankB 00:39, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

Zemanta

This looks a bit like an answer in search of a question, really. I haven't seen any evidence that large numbers of people (or anyone, really) has successfully used Commons as a "free image host".

Note that many external uses of image thumbnails may serve as gentle advertising for our projects. For example there is a blog plug-in called Zemanta that "suggests" links and images for bloggers to use, as they write their blog post. It uses images from Wikimedia and Flickr, among other sources. For example Lar uses it on his blog. If we disabled hotlinking entirely I imagine Zemanta would have to stop using our images as sources. Now what kind of way is that to get our content out to the world?

I don't see the benefit of a witch-hunt on bloggers using 200px-width thumbnails. If it's good enough for Flickr... --pfctdayelise 07:02, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Watermarking

Rather than disabling hotlinking (which is probably a very bad idea), might I suggest adding a watermark to hotlinked images. We could place something like "From Wikimedia.org" in one corner, etc. It would take a bit of resources to detect hotlinking and add watermarks, but the resulting watermarked version could be cached like everything else. I've used something like this on one of my wikis for a long time. Dragons flight 07:10, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, this is a bad idea, sounding worse and worse the more I read. We discourage content creators from watermarking their images and now you suggest we put a wikimedia stamp on them? Where is the gain here. Looks to me like this is wasting more resources than the original hotlinking. The statistics speak for themselves. A big portion is google. The legal argument for fair-use hotlinking has been refuted below. But this section suggests watermarking fair-use images. This is worse than having them hotlinked. --Dschwen 22:26, 28 July 2008 (UTC)
In case I was unclear, I mean watermarking only the hotlinked images. Hotlinking usually deprives the reader of any information that the image came from Wikipedia (assumming most readers don't look at HTML source). A free content image hotlinked on another site could easily be mistaken for proprietary content. We want to identify our content to provide our authors the recognition they deserve and expect, and to help others know when content is free. For me watermarking is far more interesting to identify hotlinked free content then it is for identifying fair use images. Dragons flight 06:11, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

Disable hotlinking for Wikipedia - fair use images

It has been clearly shown at this point that disabling hotlinks from the Commons is neither worth it or an all-around-good-idea. This still leaves the issue of fair use images on other projects, which brings me back to my original idea of disabling hotlinks for projects that are not the Commons, or at the very least, for Wikipedia. Ideally, Wikipedia should not contain free images, as these are moved to the Commons. The idea of hosting copyrighted images to which you do not own the copyright is that they are used responsibly. The bandwidth issue seemed to have overshadowed my other point, which was that allowing free access to copyrighted images is not responsible, and certainly goes against Wikimedia's policies of copyright protection. To go back to a search I've used already, these illegally-used copyrighted images are hosted by en.wikipedia.org. That particular search only brings up 232,000 images, but how many instances of copyright violation are too much? I cannot know the exact number of these images that are used outside of fair use, and that's the point. Nobody can know what is happening to these images that we are hosting, which means we are violating our own fair use policy, and copyright law. Clearly it has been shown that Commons, a repository of free images, should be left to host images for public use. There is no reason to allow the same of Wikipedia, as long as Wikipedia continues to use non-free copyrighted images. JohnnyMrNinja 07:31, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Still a bad idea

Seriously. Also, I just saw the justification for this and about dropped my jaw.

We are not a free image host - Money and server power is being wasted on hosting millions of images for websites that are completely unrelated to the Wikimedia project. Here is an example of a search for en.WP images that do not mention Wikipedia, [10] over 2 mil. We should not be using our servers for this, as I doubt anyone donated money with this in mind. Copying of free images is obviously fine, just as it is with text, but we don't (as far as I know) host the text for any other site, I don't see why we should do this for image

No we are not a free (as in beer) image host, but we do host free (as in beer and liberty) pictures. The vast majority of these images are not actually hotlinked anywhere, and take negligible amounts of bandwidth. On the other hand, by keeping free (as in liberty) images on our servers (preferably commons) we allow them to be used to benefit future Wikimedia projects. And the completely irrelevant ones should have some sort of deletion criteria if they are not being used. I don't see the need to block hundreds of legitimate sites from hotlinking, and swarm us with negative publicity for this point.

We should not host non-free and fair-use images for anyone to use without reason - Wikipedia hosts many non-free and fair use images for use within the project, but we can not limit usage of hosted non-free images on other sites. Ethically and legally is not a good idea to host copyrighted works for anyone to use with any purpose.

We don't. Non-free images that are not being used, are supposed to be deleted. What people do outside of the project is their own concern if our uses are legitimate; and furthermore it's not within our scope of concern to be policing external use. Blocking hotlinks is not the solution to this problem either. The legal argument is fallacious. Do you think the New York Times is sued every time someone hotlinks a Corbis or Getty image that the NYT legitimately uses on their own site? No.

We bog down Wikipedia with uploads of nonsense photos Statistics show that they're less than 2% of bandwidth. $6,000 a year, tops. Ignoring the blanket statement that the photos are "nonsense" (because really, who's spent the time to check every one of these millions of photos and make a qualitative decision on them?) they don't really hurt us.

Now, lets sum up the bad reasons: 1. Minuscule benefit. Implementing technical procedures for minuscule benefit is usually a bad thing, especially if there are problems and they don't go well. See below. 2. PR - We are all about getting free content out to people. What kind of message does it send when we suddenly start restricting that content? The second this gets picked up on any major news media outlet would be the second that there is a backlash and petition against the WMF, and we lose face everytime we say "the sum of all human knowledge" or "bringing free content to the world" and get the response "unless it's hotlinked, right?" Honestly, I wouldn't think it unforeseeable that we'd lose more money in lost small donations than we gain in saved bandwidth. 3. Hurts potential business agreements with partner organizations. With this enabled, NOBODY would be able to hotlink images from us. Not Google, One Laptop Per Child, not anyone. This potentially hurts our ability to make business deals with partner organizations. 4. Outside our scope. It's simply not our primary, or even secondary concern what other people do with our content, but rather what we do with our own content. 5. Hurts legitimate users from reusing our content to say good things about us.

Some of these concerns may be slightly overstated, but any one of them outweighs the lack of benefit from enacting this change, and in the aggregate they completely outweigh it.Swatjester 07:40, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

because really, who's spent the time to check every one of these millions of photos and make a qualitative decision on them? Me actually, or least I'm working on it. And if you like, you could also help with the backlog at en:Category:User-created public domain images, en:Category:Copyright holder released public domain images, and the rest. Once these are done, there will be no more free images on Wikipedia, which brings me to my revised proposal. You seem to be responding to the initial post, and not to the one that you've placed a response under, which is about abuse of fair-use images. Why is it not our concern if we support copyright violation? Respect of copyright is one of the strongest driving factors in Wikimedia, but its violation is okay as long we didn't actually type it? The pictures are still on our servers. JohnnyMrNinja 08:01, 28 July 2008 (UTC)
fair enough about you doing it, but you'll never finish. 2 million plus pictures would take years to go through, even with multiple people. I don't think you've thought this through very well. Swatjester 04:49, 29 July 2008 (UTC)
Please understand that I am not insane. Obviously I will never finish, even with a lot of help it'll be ongoing, but that is no reason not to do it. Each time a free image is moved to the Commons from EN it becomes available to more people and projects, and each time a nonsense photo is deleted it makes useful photos that much easier to find. Clearly my efforts will only make a dent, but that does not mean that I should stop. In this same way, Wikipedia will never be finished, but I'm pretty sure that most of people who edit don't mind that fact. Slow and incomplete progress is still progress. Not to mention, I am very easily distracted. JohnnyMrNinja 08:17, 29 July 2008 (UTC)
Geez, maybe because we're not the copyright police of the whole world?? Some people may be infringing copyright but others may not. (PD, or just supplying the correct attribution and license info) To lump everyone together is a big disservice. --pfctdayelise 09:16, 28 July 2008 (UTC)
I tend to agree with Swatjester. I don't at all buy the argument that by allowing hotlinking, we violate our own fair use policies. By that logic we shouldn't host images at all. Does it really make a difference if its hotlinked vs. downloaded from Wikimedia then uploaded to another server? The image is the same, the usage is the same, the source is the same; the only difference is physical location of the file. Also, Wikipedia doesn't have exclusive rights to use images as fair use, other people can do it too. The "copyvio" argument assumes every use of a non-free image is a copyright violation. But actual fair use laws are much less restrictive than Wikipedia's policy. Mr.Z-man 22:31, 28 July 2008 (UTC)
Any proposal that hopes to dictate how non-Wikimedia websites handle WMF content (generated, hosted, whatever) is bound to go down in flames. At the end of the day, the most we can say is "please don't do that", but trying to force that is incredibly futile. The Wikimedia Foundation has jurisdiction of Wikimedia Foundation websites, and nothing more. EVula // talk // ☯ // 05:59, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

This discussion doesn't make much sense to me since I've always believed the Foundation wanted to encourage use (and discourage forking) of its content. The development of $wgForeignFileRepos not only allows hotlinking but encourages it by making using images from Commons as simple as using a local image (see Erik's blog post on this). This tool has the massive advantage of making sure that wikis using images from Commons are properly licensed, whereas if you force people to upload the image locally, there is rarely any hope they will even link to the source, let alone mention the authors or license. Even hotlinked images are preferable to local copies since you can tell from the URL that the source is Wikimedia and therefore find the author (though not easily enough). A much better solution would be to show the author information when someone clicks an image, even if it's used externally. This image should redirect to a page that includes information from the image description page. If the cost was an issue, which I don't believe it is, I'm fairly sure you could find sponsorship from companies willing to support this sort of reuse of the content. Angela 10:22, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Hmm, you have a point. Sites copying our files without attribution also present a problem (wasted time and energy trying to determine who copied who), so as long as hotlinking isn't consuming significant bandwidth, and especially since disabling hotlinking will probably cause problems for search engines, it's probably best to just not worry about it. —Remember the dot 03:11, 29 July 2008 (UTC)
The problem with "clicking on an image" is that you really can't do that with hotlinking. When a person hotlinks, they just show the picture on their website exactly as it is. Clicking is really only something that happens automatically on a WM site. We have no control over how they code the image. We could provide a code on the image description page, as most sites that provide blog content do (see this image on imageshack) and ask that they please use that link code instead of just hijacking the picture (and making no link). Would this be desirable? On the one hand it would make clear attribution more likely, on the other it might encourage more "image host" uploads. JohnnyMrNinja 08:11, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

In summary

It is almost humorous how drastically the conversation switched after the statistics were put up, which is not to say that it was necessarily the cause. Regardless of bandwidth, disabling hotlinking on the projects as things stand is a bad idea, especially for Commons. My proposal was based on the pictures found in the PD categories of EN, assuming that those reflected the whole of the projects. A few kids uploading pictures of themselves kissing their girlfriends for their MySpace page is no reason to not allow access to the many images which are on the projects to specifically to be accessible. Keeping images for use on our servers prevents the need to download and copy, breaking the history and license. Allowing other sites to use our images (even when we are not credited) just increases attention to our projects, even if it's just someone seeing that the URL leads here. Hotlinking costs us (currently) at most 10k a year, which is cheaper (and more useful) than many other forms of global advertising. Not to mention the technical problems associated, and the possibility of losing readers from image searches. I am very glad and thankful that so many people offered their opinions on this, and that it was explored so thoroughly. I have seen the topic of hotlinking brought up a few times in my year at WP, and I'm sure many other people have wondered about it. Now this conversation can be a reference point for any future questions on the topic. I completely withdraw my proposal. JohnnyMrNinja 07:55, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

Don't stress on it Johnny. For what it's worth I agree (in essence) with Swatjester above, but it was a good idea to have this discussion, I think. —Giggy 14:00, 29 July 2008 (UTC)
Yes, discussion is good. And these things can always be reexamined from time to time. NonvocalScream 03:39, 30 July 2008 (UTC)
This discussion completely reversed my opinion which is sort of an awesome experience. I still feel that WP (not Commons) would have been better off having disabled hotlinking at the beginning, due to the nature of the copyrighted material. However, as much of the image content there is also free, at this point it is not reasonable. At some point in the future, once more of a concentrated effort has been made to move the free media to Commons, I might rehash that aspect (assuming I wasn't killed in the ant-people invasion). JohnnyMrNinja 04:24, 30 July 2008 (UTC)
refactored down

... Didn't realize the sectioning was still continued

Comment/query - I just voted on deleting one junk image JohnnyMrNinja gave above here && this gem and This junk image), and this kind of stuff and half a dozen other pages I viewed on en.wikipedia images for deletion on the August 1st log are just trash.
So I wonder... would it be possible to disable an uploaded image on the pedias, at least, so that one has to goto an admin with a request for it to be enabled... might just cut down on the pranks/trash inflow—most kids around here these days have camera phones, and that will only get worse—and would be easy enough for most page building needs. More, the reviewing admin can verify the thing has a proper category or two and confirm it's really got a use... or nominate it himself for speedy disposal by a concurring other admin. (I can wait for a few hours if necessary. Half the time the patrolling bots are telling me my image is orphaned before I've finished the related article edit on the wikipedia side.)
To clarify my meaning above: "by disable the image", I meant there would be a permissions bit or bits so that
A) the uploader and anyone would be able to directly look at the page, edit it and so forth,
B) but it would "not present" (as a doctor might say about symptoms) as anything but a bluelink on it's targeted page, unless and until it's been vetted.
C) Hotlinking of course would be prevented to it as well, as I Infer from Tim Starling's post hotlinking prevention is indeed possible—this would distribute it's implementation to the many more admins given such a hypothetical control bit set.
OR Might even have a trusted user permission ability/feature. IIRC, page moving capability doesn't on en.wikipedia doesn't kick in until 500 (?5000?) or so edits? Another image I voted on the user had four total edits, two of which were image uploads, one already deleted. Not a serious editor, I think. So... Tie auto-enabling of images to that or the like. (I'm just brainstorming here... I wade through maps images on the commons constantly, and these junk images would drive me nuts if I were patrolling new images. I know the image specialists are always overworked... Got to be some way to ease the burden on image specialist editors and spread it out. // FrankB 00:39, 3 August 2008 (UTC)
Am I wrong, or doesn't Commons have a similar time-frame policy, that doesn't allow a new user to upload images right away? JohnnyMrNinja 10:15, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
No, we don't.  — Mike.lifeguard | @en.wb 14:21, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

Do we SNOWBALL on Meta? Should we? Why?

Latest comment: 16 years ago7 comments6 people in discussion

  Translate this page with Google into: Afrikaans (af) · azərbaycanca (az) · Bahasa Indonesia (id) · Bahasa Melayu (ms) · Jawa (jv) · bosanski (bs) · català (ca) · Cebuano (ceb) · čeština (cs) · Cymraeg (cy) · dansk (da) · Deutsch (de) · eesti (et) · English (en) · español (es) · Esperanto (eo) · euskara (eu) · français (fr) · Gaeilge (ga) · galego (gl) · Hausa (ha) · Hmoob (hmn) · hrvatski (hr) · Igbo (ig) · isiZulu (zu) · íslenska (is) · italiano (it) · Kiswahili (sw) · Kreyòl ayisyen (ht) · Latina (la) · latviešu (lv) · lietuvių (lt) · Māori (mi) · magyar (hu) · Malti (mt) · Nederlands (nl) · norsk (no) · polski (pl) · português (pt) · română (ro) · shqip (sq) · slovenčina (sk) · slovenščina (sl) · Soomaaliga (so) · suomi (fi) · svenska (sv) · Türkçe (tr) · Tagalog (tl) · Tiếng Việt (vi) · Yorùbá (yo) · Ελληνικά (el) · беларуская (be) · български (bg) · македонски (mk) · монгол (mn) · русский (ru) · српски / srpski (sr) · українська (uk) · հայերեն (hy) · ქართული (ka) · नेपाली (ne) · मराठी (mr) · हिन्दी (hi) · বাংলা (bn) · ਪੰਜਾਬੀ (pa) · ગુજરાતી (gu) · தமிழ் (ta) · తెలుగు (te) · ಕನ್ನಡ (kn) · ไทย (th) · ລາວ (lo) · ភាសាខ្មែរ (km) · 한국어 (ko) · 日本語 (ja) · 中文（简体） (zh-hans) · 中文（繁體） (zh-hant) · ייִדיש (yi) · עברית (he) · اردو (ur) · العربية (ar) · فارسی (fa)

Folks, en:WP:SNOWBALL is a custom, tradition, rule or policy on the English Wikipedia. It says

If an issue doesn't even have a snowball's chance in hell of getting an unexpected outcome from a certain process, then there is no need to run it through that process.

-i.e. we could close a discussion if we can see a clear consensus. At the moment we don't do it - I have tried to summarise the reasons in meta:snowball. Recently snowball clause and ignore all rules have been imported from the English Wikipedia. User:MZMcBride has been advocating that Meta adopt them as rules, guidelines or policies (correct me if I am wrong).

So folks, What should we do on Meta? Hillgentleman 02:47, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

Well I will give it some more thought but the immediate reaction is that Meta is not en wp (fortunately). Does the community on Meta want or need such policies/guidelines at present?
Personally I think those of who work here do a fair job of ignoring things that should be ignored & respecting each other.
There seems to be some element of "rush" about this. I'm not sure I see the benefit to Meta of that. en wp people tend to edit at a fast a furious rate - it is quite possible that consensus or otherwise can be established there quite quickly. Meta is a place that is visited less frequently by many.
Playing the devil's advocate the global sysop thing probably would have got through ok had it been rushed to the extent that en wp folk did not get time to turn up & vote.... Meta by its very nature needs to allow time for consultation. --Herby talk thyme 08:10, 1 August 2008 (UTC)
I agree with Herby; I don't think snow closures are conductive to the way Meta does things. —Giggy 15:57, 1 August 2008 (UTC)
Hm, is that really needed, to have a policies for every slightest sense of common sense. I don't even quite understand the problem here. Best regards, --birdy geimfyglið (:> )=| ∇ 16:15, 1 August 2008 (UTC)
I think the "policies on everything" seems to be a holdover from when the users worked on enwiki, where (frankly) there are a great number of editors who lack common sense. I'd prefer we not have to deal with that on Meta, of course, but there's a slow, steady trickle of common-sense-lacking users visiting this project. Comme ci comme ca. Kylu 04:24, 8 August 2008 (UTC)
"Commons Sense oriented" operation is principally contradict with "Diversity oriented" one, Birdy. And the culture of meta is diversity: diversity of culture, etc. You may remember the recent vote on how to deal with Poles. I know many people with their good sense don't like it, but I don't know why though, many (not all) Poles love this kind of sarcasm. Imagine, if you close that vote with SNOW, what would happen next, with raged Polish? That is the virtue we don't have SNOW here at least for voting. --Aphaia 06:46, 8 August 2008 (UTC)
You can't gernerally say "Poles like it" when You look at that page You can see reverts from Polish IPs, but however as I said I don't think we need snow here, so are we not practically saying the same :) Best regards, --birdy geimfyglið (:> )=| ∇ 11:06, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Attribution of a translation

Latest comment: 16 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Hi all;

I have translated a short story on Wikisource [[12]] from English to Arabic, shall I refer that I am the translator or to just attribut it to Wikisource?

HaythamAbulela 10:55, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

The original was French, so you're babelfishing the translation a bit unless you're referring to the French to make sure it's an accurate translation. (sorry!) Questions like that really should be addressed at Wikisource though. Sorry for the non-answer. :( Kylu 04:22, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Interactive animation

Latest comment: 16 years ago3 comments2 people in discussion

It seems to me that interactive animations would be a very useful feature in many Wikimedia projects for helping readers to understand how things work. It would add greatly to the richness of the user experience. This is technically possible using scripted SVG, which is supported by most modern browsers (Firefox, Opera and Safari and Internet Explorer with the Adobe plugin). SVG as a static format is encouraged in Wikimedia but that exploits only a small part of its potential. Animations using SMIL can be uploaded and accessed from the image page, but this type of animation is not interactive, and is not practicable where complex motion needs to be calculated. Currently, security concerns mean that SVG images containing script cannot be uploaded.

Where do I go to explain and advocate, without wasting my breath, the desirability of aiming towards support for this format? Globbet 23:57, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Commons might be interested. However, this page is the wrong location. Metapub would be better, this page is for local issues for this wiki. Majorly talk 00:09, 6 August 2008 (UTC)
Thanks. I think Commons might be interested, but impotent. I'll try it at Metapub. Globbet 00:34, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Rename Wikimedia News

Latest comment: 16 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

I have proposed renaming Wikimedia News to Recent milestones. Since this is a major page and linked on the sidebar I thought I would bring it up here. Comments to Talk:Wikimedia News. Regards, the wub "?!" 07:50, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Wikimania websites

Latest comment: 16 years ago11 comments5 people in discussion

There currently are 5 websites dedicated to various wikimanias.

I think having a single http://wikimania.wikimedia.org or http://www.wikimania.org would work better. I do not know if there was a discussion over this before but I really think it isn't wise to have one website per year.

-- Cat chi? 19:33, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

I like the idea. I'm not sure how the information from existing wikis can be ported to the single unified wiki. I think each Wikimania can have its own Namespace in wikimania.wikimedia.org Huji 21:23, 7 August 2008 (UTC)
I was thinking of having article namespace subpages instead. -- Cat chi? 07:32, 8 August 2008 (UTC)
No I think one website a year works best. That way it's easier for each new team to start from anew without having other people's old stuff there that's not needed. Additionally, all the pages would need updating, which would be a pain. Majorly talk 21:37, 7 August 2008 (UTC)
I agree with Majorly. It's a lot easier to have it all on different wikis and move on to a new one after the conference has ended (also easier for people to find things). Also, wikimania.wikimedia.org and wikimania.org already redirect to the current site. We have the private Wikimania Team wiki which has all the different Wikimanias and it definitely doesn't look as nice or as clear. Different wikis works better for both the end user and the team (at least, IMO). Cbrown1023 talk 03:30, 8 August 2008 (UTC)
Seconded. It reduces many overhead, anyway. --Aphaia 06:40, 8 August 2008 (UTC)
All that would need to be updated per year would be the side bar and the main page (two edits per year to make a switch). Everything else could be under a sub page. Something like "2005/Registration" rather than Registration and the "Registration" link on the sidebar would go to the current wikimania registration. For this year that would be 2009/Registration.
How is managing tens of websites rather than one reduces overhead?
  • It makes finding things a lot harder. If you hit search, you wont be able to search all past wikimanias.
  • It makes local teams job much harder because they would need to recreate stuff that otherwise would be already there. I am working on EuroWikimania thing and it would help if I had a site and relevant wikimania related templates and such. I do not feel having different sites make my job any easier. Just because you think a problem does not exist doesn't make it purely fictional. :)
  • It is not nice to devs. :P
Having one website would save a lot of workload. For example... This would make recycling old stuff much easier. Right now what is done is a mere copy paste of the older stuff which typically fails to copy the History of that page and the discussion behind it which can be useful at times.
  • Templates would not have to be recreated each year.
  • Accounts would not need to be recreated each year. With sul this became easier but you still would need to manualy grant adminships and such...
  • It would let us build a larger more organized wikimania community. I cannot talk about http://wikimaniateam.wikimedia.org/ as it is a private site. The difficulties you mentioned are on that site probably because it isn't an "anyone can edit" wiki and instead a private one.
Most international conferences have one website I believe.
-- Cat chi? 07:32, 8 August 2008 (UTC)
We don't manage them all. Once the conference is over the site is normally locked after a period of time... like an archive I suppose. Stuff can be imported from the last wiki quite easily with regards to templates and stuff. It's not difficult to grant new adminship rights... and also, by starting a new site, it ensures we don't have anyone with admin rights who doesn't need them. Majorly talk 11:52, 8 August 2008 (UTC)
Oh right... Start an entire new site rather than de-admining inactive people. That makes a lot of sense... Importing is a difficult task. It is a long an painful process. If the intention is archiving one archive website would do the trick better. -- Cat chi? 14:04, 9 August 2008 (UTC)
The format you propose is the exact same that we have on the Team wiki and I find it a little disorganized. :-) Cbrown1023 talk 14:34, 8 August 2008 (UTC)
I am sure I can reorganize it properly with little effort. We could start a joint wikimania wiki to test my approach without shutting down other wikis. If it doesn't work we can keep on using the smaller sites. -- Cat chi? 14:04, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

Basic fair use on Meta

Latest comment: 16 years ago8 comments7 people in discussion

If there are no objections, I'm going to take a stab at writing some basic fair use guidelines for Meta. IMO there's no particular reason why Meta needs to exclude any and all fair use: There are fair use scenarios here which are perfectly reasonable, such as:

  • Manuals incorporating screenshots of non-free software (PGIP being an example where a manual is currently ridiculously torn into two parts because of concerns about fair use screenshots)
  • Pages like Trophy box showcasing photos or logos of awards
  • Pages featuring logos of partners and benefactors, for whatever reason.

The Licensing Policy allows for that -- the only place that has to be absolutely free of fair use is Commons. Note that I'm not suggesting to prescribe anything, nor is this an official WMF action - I'm simply proposing a change through the normal consensus process.--Eloquence 21:31, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

In all three of those situation I would agree that the use of unfree images can be acceptable. There was some discussion a little while ago about creating Meta:Exemption doctrine policy but nothing much came of it. One of my main points was that we should define situations where unfree content can be used under a claim of fair use rather than allowing claims of fair use in any circumstances. Considering the nature of this project I don't think we need to have such a broad EDP. I would therefore agree with Eloquence's comments and would like to move forward with the creation of an EDP based upon the concept of a whitelist defining where claims of fair use can be made on Meta. I would note that currently, as we don't have an EDP, according to the Foundation licensing resolution we shouldn't actually have any unfree content. Adambro 22:31, 7 August 2008 (UTC)
Yes, that's right - though "EDP" is really just an umbrella term; we can call the policy anything we want, as long as it serves the purpose specified in the licensing policy.--Eloquence 23:29, 7 August 2008 (UTC)
If the system here turns no different from English wikipedia it would make this place unbearable. I do not exactly oppose you but I dislike the concept of additional b'cracy. A reasonable solution would work. En.wikipedia does not have such a system. There are only 1,965 files on meta and some of those are probably freely licensed so it isn't that big of a deal. All freely licensed images on meta should be moved to commons.
-- Cat chi? 07:53, 8 August 2008 (UTC)
Very limited fair use is acceptable on Meta in my opinion, but good rationales are needed. For Commons to be absolutely free of fair use, WMF is not fully aware of how American non-acceptance of the rule of the shorter term affects images with commons:Template:Not-PD-US-URAA, so admins there like me are wondering what exactly should be done while non-American image repository is not readily available.--Jusjih 01:54, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Are there any current concerns with how Meta:Fair use is written? I've been somewhat involved with it but it looks fine to me. —Giggy 10:20, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Well, I think it's fine, too. Should we ask for the EDP to be extended?
James F. (talk) 19:26, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

I agree that we can go ahead with the version as written. I personally preferred one that set a criteria by which to assess whether the use was appropriate rather than setting out specific categories of image. That said, I concede that should the present text miss out images that we later feel we need to keep, it can always be expanded. Do we need a community vote on the proposed fair use policy or is the page now "live"? WJBscribe (talk) 13:04, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Wikimedia Japan and talk page attacked

Latest comment: 16 years ago5 comments3 people in discussion

I'd ask as many admins as are able to keep a watch on these pages, as they are currently the subject of continual disruption by a single, account-hopping attacker. --Anonymous DissidentTalk 08:15, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

The accounts are almost a year old, too :/ Anything from checkuser? - Alison ❤ 09:00, 9 August 2008 (UTC)
Allie - please...:) Long since done and on list! (And watching for the next FWIW). --Herby talk thyme 09:04, 9 August 2008 (UTC)
Duh, of course, and I have access to that, too :) Hey, it is 2am here! - Alison ❤ 09:06, 9 August 2008 (UTC)
Yeah - thought it might be something like that - bedtime :) --Herby talk thyme 09:08, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

Flood flag proposed to replace temporary bot flags

Latest comment: 16 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

The Flood flag proposal would replace temporary bot flags. A straw poll to gauge consensus before further discussion is taking place on the talk page. All users are invited to cast a vote and to make comments on the proposal.  — Mike.lifeguard | @en.wb 15:30, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

Posting New Posts

Latest comment: 16 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion

I am sorry that you think I am vandalising your site/pages, I have tried everything I know to do the right thing and add a post to this site. What can I say, I guess I just don't have what it takes to do this. My apologies if I have caused you any consern. Le Loup. If I can find a place to cancell my registration, I will do so.

The problem is that what you are posting is not appropriate to Meta. It is possible that it would be more appropriate on Wikipedia. Thanks --Herby talk thyme 07:53, 12 August 2008 (UTC)
Please do not "cancel your registration" (this is not possible, anyway); your activity here may be appreciated if you learn what Meta is about. --Anonymous DissidentTalk 12:40, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Global deleted revisions

Latest comment: 16 years ago3 comments3 people in discussion

I think it would be useful for OTRS volunteers to have the ability to view deleted revisions. Just putting it out here for thoughts. NonvocalScream 04:34, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Discussion for that would go on Metapub, where this was discussed fairly recently and chucked out. Majorly talk 10:34, 13 August 2008 (UTC)
It might be worth trying again if you can build a strong case the way it was done with Commons deleted image review. —Giggy 13:19, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

Why Wikimedians edit poll

Latest comment: 16 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Why Wikimedians edit - help in developing a poll for this would be very appreciated. I think we should really extend this, see if we can get it to as many Wikimedia projects as we can. The data we could receive if we broadcast this enough could be quite useful. —Anonymous DissidentTalk 10:14, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

Updating Meta's tagline

Latest comment: 16 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Discussion is on the talk page.  — Mike.lifeguard | @en.wb 09:23, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

Server problems

Latest comment: 16 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

What was the reason for meta to have a service problem - this was the message which I've been having

503 Service Temporarily Unavailable

The server is temporarily unable to service your request due to maintenance downtime or capacity problems. Please try again later.

Is this just a normal routine maintenance by the Developers or just a glitch in the software. Dark Mage 17:01, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

Meta:Image use policy

Latest comment: 16 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Please discuss this proposed policy at Meta talk:Image use policy. Thank you, Cirt 19:16, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Template:User1

Latest comment: 16 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Template:User is taken so calling this Template:User1 - It is from w:Template:User on English Wikipedia. Cheers, Cirt (talk) 00:41, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

Latest comment: 16 years ago14 comments8 people in discussion
 
Metawiki

I really dislike the use of the Wikimedia Foundation logo for meta. It had been bothering me for quite some time. I want to see the the image get used as a site logo exclusively on Foundation related wikis such as the official Wikimedia wiki, chapter wikis and etc. I think like commons we need a seperate distinct logo. I do not care too much about the design at this point. -- Cat chi? 15:22, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

I do think that Meta deserves its own dedicated logo, but considering it's the consolidated location for a lot of Foundation-wide things (blacklists, interwiki map, steward elections, etc), the use of the WMF logo isn't so wildly inappropriate. EVula // talk // ☯ // 16:03, 30 August 2008 (UTC)
I agree the current logo is suitable, but wouldn't be against a redesign if people think it's had its day. Majorly talk 16:19, 30 August 2008 (UTC)
All that "Foundation-wide" things (blacklists, interwiki map, steward elections, etc) is interwiki related content. This is for our (editors) convenience not because it has to do with the Wikimedia Foundation the non profit organization. We should have a competition for the new logo. Old one could be reelected but I am willing to bet we want a fresh new logo. -- Cat chi? 17:34, 30 August 2008 (UTC)
There is nothing to stop a competition for a new logo. Whilst not unhappy with the status quo, I would also not be unhappy to consider alternative options. WJBscribe (talk) 03:46, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

I actually don't mind the current logo, but would love to see some new ideas. Cirt (talk) 04:11, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

 
Wikimedia community logo
If the goal is to get rid of the official Wikimedia logo, then we should probably use the community logo ; but please, don't start a new competition, they never end. guillom 07:58, 31 August 2008 (UTC)
I like the design of it and would vote for it but thats a PD image. It cannot be copyrighted by foundation. :/ -- Cat chi? 11:09, 31 August 2008 (UTC)
Why should it be copyrighted by the foundation? Meta is the wiki of the community. guillom 14:56, 31 August 2008 (UTC)
I am not sure. All logos had been copyrighted to date. We could and perhaps should make an exception in this case given the very nature of this wiki. -- Cat chi? 15:15, 31 August 2008 (UTC)
Should we have a vote over it? -- Cat chi? 15:17, 31 August 2008 (UTC)
I guess we could have a poll here on Babel, and advertise it on wikimediameta-l. guillom 15:21, 31 August 2008 (UTC)
Shouldn't it be trademarked rather than copyrighted? However, is it permissible for a non-profit corporation like the WMF to own trademarks? -- Tonymec 22:04, 28 September 2008 (UTC)
Yes it's possible, considering we own a few trademarks already... but I think we decided that it didn't need to be trademarked or copyrighted. Cbrown1023 talk 22:07, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

Metawiki logo poll

Latest comment: 16 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Please participate in the Metawiki logo poll. Thanks. -- Cat chi? 15:30, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

I've called the validity of the poll into question on its page, in analogue of a voter doing the same at the start of a physical vote. Curiously, someone removed it, being of the opinion that this page here was even more suited. So here we go: Regarding the poll mentioned above:
I call the validity of this poll into question. It tries to resolve at the same time whether (1) we should move away from the WMF-logo and, if so, (2) what other logo to use. As a result, different people interpret the votes, and possibly outcomes, differently. I suggest we void this one, and start Meta:Babel/Metawiki foundation logo poll, to simply determine whether we want to divorce the WMF-logo. Aliter

Making "Special:ListGlobalRights"

Latest comment: 16 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Wikis have Special:ListGroupRights but don't have List of global rights. List of *local* rights show description of rights. Should we have Special:ListGlobalRights?--Kwj2772 03:09, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

bugzilla:15030. Werdna 08:35, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
Latest comment: 16 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion

This sub-page documents the Poetlister/Cato matter.

FT2 (Talk | email) 08:30, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

Now at Requests for comments/Poetlister and Cato, with an ongoing discussion. Giggy 06:49, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Page Protection

Latest comment: 16 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Could an Admin fully protect all of my userpage and talkpage - I'm leaving Meta-Wiki. Dark Mage 21:58, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

I don't think it was necessary, but it's   Done anyway. Drop me a line if you change your mind. EVula // talk // ☯ // 22:59, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Meta-wiki structure

Latest comment: 16 years ago21 comments8 people in discussion

There are some issues with the structure of some internal Meta-wiki pages. First of all, this very page is used way too often instead of Metapub. It could be that people are confused, as the names are similar sounding, but people unfamiliar with meta don't often realise Meta is actually the project namespace here. I think we should change the name of the Metapub to something that sounds less to do with this project's administration. Additionally, I think this page should be renamed something more useful. I think it was named Babel due to this project's multilingual nature, but let's not kid ourselves, 99% of discussions are in English. Commons has noticeboards that have English names, and that's a multilingual project. I was thinking of something along the lines of Meta:Village pump. This is less ambiguous than Meta:Babel. I'm not sure what Metapub should be renamed to, but right now, the name is really confusing.

Another problem is, while we have a page for immediate admin help (here), we don't have an admin noticeboard for long term general issues. Such things tend to get discussed here, and causes this page to get very large very quickly. Additionally, that page needs renaming to something less complex (how about Meta:Requests for help?)

So in all, four things:

  1. Metapub needs renaming, removing the word "Meta" in the name, to remove any association with this project's workings.
  2. This page needs renaming, to something less ambiguous than Babel.
  3. The current admin issues page, which isn't used an awful lot (mostly because we have very dilligent admins) should be renamed to something more simple.
  4. We need an admin noticeboard, for ongoing issues, to relieve the pressure on this page being used for everything.

Cheers,

Majorly talk 21:08, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Item #1   Done in diff 1192592. NonvocalScream 21:20, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Item #2   Not done I have no move tab. NonvocalScream 21:21, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

I did expect a little more discussion before doing anything... and I don't like the name Pub at all. Majorly talk 21:23, 20 September 2008 (UTC)
All changes undone. NonvocalScream 21:25, 20 September 2008 (UTC)
I think we should move Metapub to something more generic and that makes more sense. Meta:Forum? —Anonymous DissidentTalk 00:27, 21 September 2008 (UTC)
In regards to an admin noticeboard, we already have Meta:Requests for help from a sysop or bureaucrat. We should just put more weight on requests going there. —Anonymous DissidentTalk 00:28, 21 September 2008 (UTC)
AD, you've fallen into the trap! :-) We need to get rid of Meta in the name, people are confusing it with our project namespace. It's something entirely separate from meta... Forum on its own would be better. Majorly talk 00:51, 21 September 2008 (UTC)
Sorry, that was a slip of the mind. Just Forum then. —Anonymous DissidentTalk 01:09, 21 September 2008 (UTC)
  1. 1, sure; #2, I disagree. Babel is fine, it's not that ambiguous; #3 Yeah, it should be renamed... I can't even get to it easily; #4 I don't think so, I think it's fine to use it here or on the request page. No need to make even more pages. Cbrown1023 talk 00:54, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

Proposal to rename Metapub to Forum

Support
  1. —Anonymous DissidentTalk 08:39, 21 September 2008 (UTC)
  2. NonvocalScream 14:46, 21 September 2008 (UTC)
  3. Support as proposed. "Pub" doesn't convey the purpose of the page as well as Forum. Majorly talk 14:50, 21 September 2008 (UTC)
Oppose
  1. Oppose now. At this moment it doesn't sound a sensible proposal: at least for me it doesn't look improvement. Pub and its synonym (Bistro, Bar ...) are a common name for VP equivalent in European language wikis, so a pair pub/metapub is intuitive enough for them I think: local ones and Wikimedia-wide one. Renaming to Forum may fade this comparison away. So it doesn't look me an improvement. Btw was this proposal better placed on Metapub itself? --Aphaia 09:53, 21 September 2008 (UTC)
    Just because it is used in magnitude doesn't make it right. I think Forum is inherently more informative as a name than "Pub". Oh well, you're entitled to your opinion. —Anonymous DissidentTalk 09:59, 21 September 2008 (UTC)
    In my opinion Forum is too generic name to be renamed. As Majorly said, it should be distinct from meta own discussion page (now Meta:Babel), indicating it is concerned about Wikimedia wide issues (and only). As for your point, being widely understanedable is a virtue, even if it is a certain-culture centric. I have been asked frequently what Village pump stood for when I asked Wikimedia wide community to forward info to "their local VP", and learnt it is not understood by all the community at large. But I won't argue it should be renamed just in the same reason it is used in magnitude for en speakers. --Aphaia 10:34, 21 September 2008 (UTC)
    Okay. But isn't such a common purpose page good when it has a generic name? Metapub is a forum, therefore Forum is most sensible. Metapub also has very few real criterion for its topics, therefore generic is best. —Anonymous DissidentTalk 12:00, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

Comments

A new name should contain the word "wikimedia" to indicate its scope. Otherwise, be it "pub" or "forum", people would still be confused. Hillgentleman 16:08, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

Wikimedia Forum? It simply needs Meta removing from the name. Majorly talk 18:00, 21 September 2008 (UTC)
That sounds fine to me.  — Mike.lifeguard | talk 15:54, 1 October 2008 (UTC)
  • I used meta.wiki for a while and I still find the community page names confusing. They use terms that are English but not explicit English words ("Metapub" vs. "Babel" vs "Babylon"). I guess "Babylon" is supposed to bring up Tower of Babel images so you somehow relate it to translation. "Babel" is a not so common English word for talk. "MetaPub" is a reference to talking in a bar. I have yet to look up what the "Village pump" metafor is. I think if you really want to have people put their discussion in the correct talk page you need non-metaforic names like "WikimediaForum". My two cents. --MarsRover 19:43, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

List of WP policies

Latest comment: 16 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Can someone help me find a list of all essential policies of the Wikipedia projects? I don't know how to make myself clear, but I remember I once saw a list of Wikipedia essential policies, indicating what policies each Wikipedia already has and which ones it doesn't. can someone give me a link to that list, if you understood what I'm looking for? It'd be greatly appreciated. Diego pmc 20:20, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

Uncategoriezed Pages

Latest comment: 16 years ago2 comments1 person in discussion

I've been finding a lot of uncategorized pages on Meta-Wiki some of them date back since 2005 and 2006 and no activity was detected recently - do meta have a template for any inactive pages which is kept for historical interest, if we do I could go back to those which I've found and replace the uncat template with the historic template since the articles haven't been edited or has been forgotten. Dark Mage 12:30, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Never mind - found one. Dark Mage 12:36, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Books about Wikimedia projects

Latest comment: 16 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

I was talking on my en-wikipedia-talk page to en:user:Phoebe, about books on Wikipedia, and she said: "Offhand I can tell you that our book [How Wikipedia Works] & John Broughton's are the only books about the English Wikipedia that have been written. There's a book in German, one in Polish, and one forthcoming in Swedish. There's also a book about MediaWiki that was published. Andrew Lih's book, about the history of Wikipedia, is forthcoming next year. Then there's the collections of articles: WP 1.0, WP for Schools, and the German Brockhaus collection. I think that's about it..." - is there a list of such things here on meta? The closest thing I could find was Wiki Research Bibliography and Research, but maybe I missed something. Over on en-Wikipedia, there is the rather good resource: en:Wikipedia:Wikipedia in the media, which includes en:Wikipedia:Wikipedia in books. There is also en:Wikipedia - The Missing Manual, and en:2006 Wikipedia CD Selection and en:Truth in Numbers: The Wikipedia Story (hadn't heard of that before!). But I haven't followed up the other things Phoebe mentioned. I also don't know where to put the list (maybe a new page needs to be created?). Can anyone help? Carcharoth 05:55, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Dumps in russian

Latest comment: 16 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Good Morning. I would like to ask u about dumps in russian. The thing is that my company used them regularly, but since June Wiki has stopped making them. Is there any service, that could produce them for us (maybe for some money)? We don't need everything - only ruwiki and tables. Lizukin 07:29, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

You'll get the best answer on wikitech-l.  — Mike.lifeguard | talk 15:55, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Unauthorised use of Wikipedia trademark

Latest comment: 16 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion

I understand that "Wikipedia" is a registered trademark. I spotted that a large Luxembourg daily newspaper opened a new wiki, but has apparently problems with the MediaWiki software, as references to wikipedia can be found here and there, which is quite confusing for visitors who happen to think that this newspaper wiki is related to Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Foundation. After first complaints, they removed the donate to wikipedia link, but they still use "wikipedia" in the about link and in the project namespace. As they do no longer react at all, not even by responding to simple user questions, I thought it might be an idea to post my concern here, maybe a steward can have a look and help to unblock this situation. --Otets 12:44, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Try e-mailing mgodwin wikimedia.org Cbrown1023 talk 21:48, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Protection of all Meta Main Pages

Latest comment: 16 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Just a note about a discussion here. If more people could way in/voice their opinion, it'd be appreciated, because this is quite a big action and it would be optimal if we have consensus amongst as many people as possible before it is made. —Anonymous DissidentTalk 13:10, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Wikibooks

Latest comment: 16 years ago4 comments4 people in discussion

I think Wikibooks should be merged with Wikiversity. They are too similar, otherwise please explain me why Wikibooks' content shouldn't be on Wikiversity. Ecapa 00:49, 3 October 2008 (UTC)Ecapa

You're a few years too late: Wikiversity was part of Wikibooks for a long time, but after a long and well thought-out discussion involving the entire community, it was decided that the two projects needed their own space to grow and flourish. For a project to truely be successful, it has to have focus, and it has to specialize. In the end, Wikibooks can be a great world-class open-content book project, or it can be a mediocre general education wiki where everybody does their own thing in their own way. It's through specialization that we have strength and through which we can make a name for ourselves.
The two projects are only similar if you consider that they're both using wikis to create educational content. Wikibooks focuses on textbooks which are very strictly defined and relatively rigidly structured. Wikiversity is more freeform and more experimental. They specialize in group learning projects that utilize concepts like original research, or projects where building the resource is just as big a deal as the final product.
In short, the focus of each are different, the methods of each are different, the communities of each are different, and the content from each are different. There really isn't any reason why the two would be combined together again. --Whiteknight (meta) (Books) 02:10, 3 October 2008 (UTC)
Indeed. This is going nowhere.  — Mike.lifeguard | talk 02:43, 6 October 2008 (UTC)
I agree with Whiteknight. Wikiversity hasn't had the time to dig out its own direction. The potential for a completely different scope to Books is there. —Anonymous DissidentTalk 08:06, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

Make Meta a "internal image repository"

Latest comment: 16 years ago12 comments6 people in discussion

I have an idea that will pretty much be a compromise for all the "{{Copyright by Wikimedia}} shouldn't be on Commons cause its non-free, and I don't care about your exceptions" people. I think Meta should become a sort of "internal repository" for Wikimedia related images instead of Commons. It makes more sense, since Meta is supposed to be the "Wikimedia Project co-ordination wiki". From what I heard, we can have multiple repositories now, so its not impossible.

Basically, Meta would host all images related to and depicting Wikimedia sites (including the logos of them all), and Commons would be for everything else (that is freely licenced). Anyone agree this is what we should do? ViperSnake151 02:09, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

Uh... to the best of my knowledge, if an image is only hosted on Meta, it can't be used elsewhere. With some 700+ WMF sites, we'd have to do a LOT of image duplicating.
A simpler solution would be for the aforementioned people to just get over it. :) EVula // talk // ☯ // 02:38, 6 October 2008 (UTC)
uhh, this is why I proposed giving Meta similar abilities to Commons. ViperSnake151 11:35, 6 October 2008 (UTC)
Uhh, this is why I pointed out that to the best of my knowledge we can't. :P EVula // talk // ☯ // 14:27, 6 October 2008 (UTC)
And wich would be the problem of hosting the unfree wikimedia logos at Commons? The Wikimedia Foundation won't sue itself. Belgrano 16:16, 7 October 2008 (UTC)
In my view, its out of scope. Our (recently overhauled) project scope says says (which is official policy, emphasis mine):

Uploaded files are within scope only if they comply with all of the following conditions. Every file:

  • Must be a media file
  • Must be of an allowable free file format
  • Must be freely licensed or public domain
  • Must be realistically useful for an educational purpose
  • Must not contain only excluded educational content.

Also, check this out

The following licensing terms are not allowed:

  • Non-commercial or educational use only
  • Restrictions on the creation of derivative works (except for copyleft)
  • A requirement for payment or for notification of use (these can be requested but not required)
  • Restrictions on where the work may be used (e.g. use allowed on Wikipedia only)

Licences with these restrictions are allowed as long as the work is dual-licensed (or multi-licensed) with at least one licensing option that does not include such a restriction.

"Licences" which purport to allow fair use only are not allowed. (Fair use is not a right that can be licensed by a copyright owner, and is in any event never accepted on Commons).

The scope makes no exemptions for Wikimedia project logos. Pretty much the only one that could "legally" be hosted on there is the Meta logo cause it is in the public domain. This is all in direct conflict with their mission as "a freely licenced media repository that makes available public domain and freely-licensed educational media content to all". We just dumped them all on Commons because at the time it was only possible to configure 1 shared repository. I believe we can have multiple repositories now, and it would make better sense to put the Wikimedia related stuff on Meta just because of this site's purpose. ViperSnake151 19:09, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

Let's fix the scope of Commons. That was a mishap of omission, not deliberate, everyone I have ever talked to seriously about this already knew there was an exception for WMF. ++Lar: t/c 22:14, 8 October 2008 (UTC)
"I believe we can have multiple repositories now" Why do you believe that? As I've said several times, to the best of my knowledge we can't, and as it's the entire crux of your suggestion, it'd be important to verify that it's even a possibility. EVula // talk // ☯ // 19:59, 7 October 2008 (UTC)
To the best of my knowledge, using multiple shared repositories is currently technically impossible. However, it may be possible to change the software to allow it. – rotemliss – Talk 09:32, 8 October 2008 (UTC)
Perhaps this idea should be revisited once that capability has been added? ++Lar: t/c 22:14, 8 October 2008 (UTC)
Considering the concern that WJBscribe pointed out, where such functionality would simultaneously allow Fair Use images to be used just as easily, I think this proposal will sink then. I'm also really hazy about what actual benefit it would grant... EVula // talk // ☯ // 01:45, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Another issue is that I don't believe there's a way for a project to be host some images locally and act as a repository for others. Foundation copyrighted logos aren't the only unfree media on meta - there are also fair use images for Wikimania bids, for example, which should only be used on this project (and not shared with others). WJBscribe (talk) 16:30, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

Meta:Meta-Steward relationship

Latest comment: 16 years ago4 comments2 people in discussion

This proposal seeks to describe the relationship between the Meta "local" community and Stewards. Please take a look and comment on the talk page - we'd like this to be approved soon.  — Mike.lifeguard | @en.wb 16:21, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

I see no reason to make this policy, although it may be useful as a descriptive page. In its current state it mostly summarizes current policies (like the steward and bot policies), and what little it adds could neatly be covered elsewhere, such as Meta:Bureaucrats or on request pages. I also disagree with limiting stewards' participation in editing the global spam and title blacklists; being a global task, this is more suited to stewards than to Meta administrators.
I think this would be useful as a descriptive page, but not as a binding policy. —Pathoschild 18:23:04, 09 October 2008 (UTC)
That's why I didn't use the word "policy." And you'll note, I'm sure, that it specifically mentions Title blacklist and Spam blacklist as acceptable tasks for stewards.  — Mike.lifeguard | @en.wb 20:45, 9 October 2008 (UTC)
The page explicitly describes itself as "a proposed Wikimedia Meta-Wiki policy", and steward editing of the blacklists is unnecessarily limited to "urgent or uncontroversial cases" (with no elaboration on "urgent" or "uncontroversial"). If it's not intended to be a policy, in what form do you seek approval? Descriptive pages don't require approval. —Pathoschild 01:09:04, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
Additions are really only ever made in urgent or uncontroversial cases (or at least, that should be the case).
I meant "approval" in the sense that it should have some people look at it and say "Yes, that's how we do things." It doesn't prescribe much of anything; if this were enwikibooks I'd tag it as {{useful}} instead of a {{proposal}}. However this is all largely irrelevant to the point of me bringing this here, which is the page itself.  — Mike.lifeguard | @en.wb 02:52, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
I've corrected the page's description accordingly. —Pathoschild 03:14:17, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Hm, I don't see a need for the last point (sysop+crat access during stewardship). Why should they have it? Most of these rights like block, delete, editprotected, renameuser and so on are assigned to the global steward group anyway. --Thogo (talk) 17:57, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

www.wikipedia.org

Latest comment: 16 years ago5 comments4 people in discussion

Hi, recently I noticed that on www.wikipedia.org the link to the Dutch wikipedia is no longer featured. I do not understend why. If the links over there are ordered by number of articles then the Dutch wikipdia should be there (it has more articles than Spannish, Russian, Portugese or Chinese). If the wikis are ordered by the number of speakers it is also not consequent (in that case Bengali, Arabic and Hindustani are missing). Personally I think wikipdia should look at the importance of wikipedia itself, and I think the article count is a good measure. Who can I ask about this (gitaarfreak from the Dutch wikipedia) 88.147.40.163 22:42, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

www.wikipedia.org is controlled from Meta-Wiki. After a poll that was widely announced, it was decided to feature the 10 most popular Wikipedias at the top of the page (by number of hits). You can give comments about the current portal on talk:www.wikipedia.org template. Cbrown1023 talk 16:05, 12 October 2008 (UTC)
Well, honestly, I think it is my fault that I used alexa.com stats. More real stats that I saw somewhere (on stats.grok.se perhaps?) quite differs from those — vvv 19:30, 12 October 2008 (UTC)
It's okay, there's a discussion now to fix that on talk:www.wikipedia.org template. :-) Cbrown1023 talk 20:15, 12 October 2008 (UTC)
Wikimedia now has a more accurate source for pageview statistics than Alexa, so we're thinking about rearranging the Top 10 editions yet again. Please take a look and let us know what you think. – Minh Nguyễn (talk, contribs) 05:31, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

Trademark notification

Latest comment: 16 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion

All Wikimedia logos currently do not have any trademark signs SM,™ and ®. If it is a registered trademark, why isn't there any TM or registered logo to prevent any misuse of the logo. Diagramma Della Verita 17:23, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

It's clutter... and looks icky. :-) For a better reason, e-mail mgodwin wikimedia.org with legal questions. Cbrown1023 talk 22:35, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

WikiMiniAtlas problem

Latest comment: 16 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

I was just looking through w:Alabama, because it was the first page linked from the Coordinates template, and clicked on the WikiMiniAtlas icon. The only non-geographic article on the map, w:Nigger, was linked at the bottom left. I don't know how something comes to be included in the atlas, so I don't know how remove it. Given the random way I found it, I suspect there is a much wider problem. Cygnis insignis 16:38, 18 October 2008 (UTC)

On Betawikiversity:

Latest comment: 16 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Hello. Would people please review this proposal. It has gone on for quite a while and has not gained enough support. It has been suggested to close the request on the corresponding talk page. Hillgentleman 01:38, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

Vandalism on meta

Latest comment: 16 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Sorry, couldn't find it anywhere else - how do i warn vandals on Meta? Is there a en:WP:WARN for meta?

See for example this: User talk:84.228.134.205. --Amir E. Aharoni 20:26, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

I'd say that's good enough. Meta is far more obscure than Wikipedia, so we don't need to handle vandals with kid gloves here. EVula // talk // ☯ // 21:30, 23 October 2008 (UTC)
Latest comment: 16 years ago3 comments2 people in discussion

Members and contributors of Wikimedia projects are requested to comment and give ideas about the reactivation of the legal department. Click here for more information. Diagramma Della Verita 17:47, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

As I think I've told you before, this is not the proper way to get the department restarted. :-) Please contact Cary Bass (Volunteer Coordinator) at cbass wikimedia.org and Mike Godwin (Legal Coordination/General Counsel) at mgodwin wikimedia.org. (Contacting them both at once is probably the best bet.) Cbrown1023 talk 20:29, 24 October 2008 (UTC)
Well I didn't receive any of your messages about that. There wasn't any written guidelines but I will take your word. Diagramma Della Verita 06:10, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

steward elections 2008

Latest comment: 16 years ago3 comments3 people in discussion

I have created Stewards/elections 2008 using Stewards/elections 2007 as a decent basis. I'm not aware of any problems with the thresholds set for last year for either suffrage or candidacy, so I have left them as they were - if they can be improved, .. its a wiki :-)

The most important aspect is deciding when the election will start, and end. Cheers, John Vandenberg 11:02, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

If I may propose something: Not before January. (The translators have to do with the fundraiser stuff until that thing ends probably.) I don't know if the steward application statements should be translated to other languages by hand or not, but I would prefer this and I'm certainly willing to do that for German. --Thogo (talk) 18:03, 26 October 2008 (UTC)
I think some consideration for those doing translations is in order. I don't think there's any rush for the election; IIRC there was a question as to whether we were going to have a steward election at all. Waiting until the translation stuff for the fundraiser is done seems wholly sensible to me.  — Mike.lifeguard | @en.wb 20:28, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

Have the criterion to list the top ten of wikipedias been changed?

Latest comment: 16 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion

The top ten at main page has changed.[13]Don't it use the using rate as the criterion [14]? Should the Chinese Wikipedia(zh.wikipedia.org) listed at the ninth place？right?......-白布飘扬 16:30, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

See talk:www.wikipedia.org template#most_visited_wikipedias, unfortunately the stats show a different order than was originally thought. Cbrown1023 talk 20:36, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

Page to post ideas

Latest comment: 16 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Is there any place to post new ideas for all wiki-pages?
Thanks for helping --D-Kuru 19:56, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

Proposing a new MediaWiki extension : Global Context Variables

Latest comment: 16 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

This discussion has just started yesterday on French Wiktionary, but is more general, it was transfered to Wikimedia Forum, but may interest you as well. I have initially copied the initial discussion on the Wikimedia Forum for my initial proposal and some comments (in French) for a specification (before writing code). Transltion of the proposal into English is available, and further comments and discussions are welcome. Most of this large discussion is now included in another page, separate from the Wikimedia Forum : Meta:GlobalContextVariables Extension. verdy_p 21:08, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Latest comment: 15 years ago3 comments2 people in discussion

I've got an idea about keyword search of wiki contentes, using nothing other than running categories, search engine and a simple bot work. The major problem about keywords using present serach engine is, to let it know that a word is a keyword: this can be obtained prefixing keywords with a standard prefix (i.e. kw: I tested "kwCavallo" and "kwAutoreDante" as keywords to "cavallo" and "author is Dante"). Another big problem is the user attribution of a consistent set of keywords to every page. It's almost impossible to teach any user to this complex job. But, imagine to assign keywords to categories, and then to edit categorized pages adding category-related keywords to the code: the "human consistency problem" would be solved automagically, and if you think about, is really simpler to add a set of keywords to a category than to a page. There's a problem: how to edit keywords on pages, if keyword list is edited into category page. This could be done if the bot would write on the pages both the category name and the related keyword set: something as

  • Category:Poems kwPoems
  • Category:Works by Dante Alighieri kwAuthorDante kwItalianWriters kwMedioevalLiterature

As you see, such a simple keyword set allows you to find exactly any intersection like the poems of Dante, the medieval poems... and so on. --Alex brollo 07:02, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

As you said, the problem is the consistancy of keywords, and the fact they they will be difficult to manage (the only tool we have for this is categories).
I think it's much simpler to add a page in another category related to some keyword, and think about implementing a way to make searches on pages belonging to several categories (this already works with Google search, but not directly with subcategories that are there to avoid the multiplication of both the parent and children categories in pages).
The other problem to handle is the fact that categories can have only one name (not necessarily the most obvious one), excluding common synonyms (redirected categories don't work as expected, in fact we should never use the "#redirect" magic word in the wiki code of their page), and the fact that some category pages with simple names are still just there to exhibit this ambiguity and will drive users to several unrelated categories : there's no explicit way to mark a category as an ambiguity page that requires a precision (other than listing each precised category in the ambiguous category, but this pollutes the categorization of these subcategories, and those ambiguous category names create many categories without parents or whose parents are unrelated, breaking the logical hierarchy of categories. If you don't super-categorize the precise categories, the ambiguous category page needs to contain specific links, that are not directly indexed in a easily searchable way.
Your discussion is highly related to the other discussions that want more meta-data in pages (other than just the unique page's title, the immediate parent categories, the list of pages pointing to the page, the list of templates and images included, the list of interwikis and the page's history), with freedom in their modeling (that should be enforcable and browsable in a datamodel specifying the list of acceptable values for each meta-date type, or listing all the values already used for this meta-data type), other than just the too simplistic category system. verdy_p 13:25, 16 November 2008 (UTC)
Thanks for reply. I've to read it again and again, not so simple to understand. Well, talks about acegorization are alwais very hard and exoteric. I think better to run a try; I'm presently working into it.wikisource. I'll tell you good or bad news from my tries. --Alex brollo 15:27, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

Proposed redesign of wikimedia.org

Latest comment: 15 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

See Talk:Www.wikimedia.org template#Redesign. Please comment there. :-) Cheers. --MZMcBride 02:53, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

Special:UnusedCategories

Latest comment: 15 years ago2 comments1 person in discussion

This was last updated 11:39, 25 November 2008 - and yet it is showing a bunch of categories that already have parent categories. Any ideas as to why? Cirt (talk) 18:48, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

Nevermind, I was looking in the wrong place. :P - Cirt (talk) 07:22, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

$wgBlockAllowsUTEdit = true for Meta

Latest comment: 15 years ago27 comments20 people in discussion
The following discussion is closed.

Consensus to do this clearly exists. Requested on Bugzilla.  — Mike.lifeguard | @en.wb 22:27, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

Setting $wgBlockAllowsUTEdit=true would allow blocked users to edit their own talk page to contest their block. Currently we have no mechanism to review blocks on Meta which is public. Many other wikis such as Commons and English Wikibooks allow users to edit their own talk page while blocked, and cases of abuse have been found to be easily handled with either full protection of the talk page or disallowing user talk editing specifically in the block settings. (An additional block setting becomes available to disallow user talk editing for the blocked user - please also note we no longer have to unblock to re-block a user). Thanks for your consideration.  — Mike.lifeguard | @en.wb 04:41, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

WHAT? They can't edit their talk page when blocked?? Why has this only just been noticed?! Strong support implementation... Majorly talk 15:51, 27 November 2008 (UTC)
It's off by default. The vast majority of wikis have not allowed users to edit their talk page while blocked.  — Mike.lifeguard | @en.wb 18:28, 27 November 2008 (UTC)
I support this. I've worked with it on ruwiki, and it hasn't caused any major problems yet — vvv 12:07, 30 November 2008 (UTC)
I strongly support that, by default, blocked users should be allowed to edit their talk pages everywhere, unless a wiki specifically opted out, or the blocking admin decided not to let the blocked user have it. --Purodha Blissenbach 10:24, 1 December 2008 (UTC)
I too would support this. James F. (talk) 22:06, 1 December 2008 (UTC)
Tag-along support: I'd think this should be the default for all Foundation projects, actually. Kylu 23:45, 2 December 2008 (UTC)
I did too... but some small wikis wouldn't be able to manage {{unblock}} abuse, since there are not really active admins. OTOH, such abuse is confined to a single page. I wonder what others think of the tradeoff there.  — Mike.lifeguard | @en.wb 00:39, 3 December 2008 (UTC)
Support changing this on Meta. We have the manpower to deal with it. Support further discussion on whether the global default should be changed, but not a change just yet, as there are pros and cons, and further discussion would be of benefit to clarify. ++Lar: t/c 12:33, 3 December 2008 (UTC)
Strong support. Daniel (talk) 02:49, 9 December 2008 (UTC)
Support enabling it here and on all wikis by default.--Werdan7T @ 02:56, 9 December 2008 (UTC)
What Werdan7 said. I don't understand the current default... --MZMcBride 02:57, 9 December 2008 (UTC)
  Support I think even it would be good that we could have this on all wikis by default --Mardetanha talk 02:59, 9 December 2008 (UTC)
  Support Agree that it should be enabled by default. J.delanoygabsadds 03:10, 9 December 2008 (UTC)
  Support - per Majorly, LOLWUT?? .I never noticed it weirdly ....--Cometstyles 03:34, 9 December 2008 (UTC)
  Support, both here and by default. – rotemliss – Talk 13:59, 9 December 2008 (UTC)
  Oppose by default: it.wiki choose with a large consensus to do in the opposite way, each project must be free to decide indipendently--Vituzzu 14:18, 9 December 2008 (UTC)
So, would you support enabling this on Meta?  — Mike.lifeguard | @en.wb 16:43, 9 December 2008 (UTC)
For Meta I let you (you community) the decision: I'm not enough active here to judge what is better, by the way Meta has an greater ratio of "admin/potential users" and this this new feature should be easy to handle--Vituzzu 22:55, 10 December 2008 (UTC)
  Support Blocked user should be able to edit their talk pages, unless an administrator prevents them from editting. Ruslik 20:24, 9 December 2008 (UTC)
  Support for Meta. I guess having it turned on should be the default, but I haven't spent enough thought on that. --Erwin(85) 21:30, 9 December 2008 (UTC)
  Support for all wikis. Local sysops will decide if user should be able to edit own talk page.--Kwj2772 12:31, 11 December 2008 (UTC)
  Support for Meta (I support it for other Wikis but that should not be discussed on this page). I am amazed that Meta does not have this already, everywhere else does as it has proved to be useful on this project. Anonymous101
  Support agree with above by Mardetanha (talk · contribs) and also Majorly (talk · contribs), in addition to many of the others. Cirt (talk) 07:23, 12 December 2008 (UTC)
  Support tried this here on Commons & it works fine. --Kanonkas 16:27, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

Done

Rob has done this for us. Just a reminder that blocking talk page editing should be only for cases where we know ahead of time the user will abuse it (I'll give you three guesses who I'm thinking of...) As well, note that one no longer has to unblock then block again to change block settings - there is a checkbox to override previous block settings. I'm unsure whether previously-blocked users will be able to edit their talk page currently & I will ask shortly.  — Mike.lifeguard | @en.wb 22:49, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

OK, I've confirmed that this applies to all users, regardless of when they were blocked. I will put together some unblock templates etc shortly.  — Mike.lifeguard | @en.wb 20:32, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Global user contributions

Latest comment: 15 years ago3 comments2 people in discussion

Hi. My guc-tool is translated in many languages and it's pretty expensive to provide them all. so I think it would be practically to automate that; I think I will create for each language a (protected) wiki page, which will be read by the tool some time; eg.

What do you think, can I create such pages in the meta wiki? at the moment it gives +- 45 pages. --Luxo 14:30, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

I personally don't mind, but I think if you put all the translations on one page it would be easier to protect and maintain it — vvv 14:41, 29 December 2008 (UTC)
that's right, after a good deal of thought I think that's also possible (and easier). I think I will do it this way. simply one page Global user contributions translations.--Luxo 14:54, 29 December 2008 (UTC)
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