Meta:Babel/Archives/2023-06

Wikimania 2023 Welcoming Program Submissions

Do you want to host an in-person or virtual session at Wikimania 2023? Maybe a hands-on workshop, a lively discussion, a fun performance, a catchy poster, or a memorable lightning talk? Submissions are open until March 28. The event will have dedicated hybrid blocks, so virtual submissions and pre-recorded content are also welcome. If you have any questions, please join us at an upcoming conversation on March 12 or 19, or reach out by email at wikimania@wikimedia.org or on Telegram. More information on-wiki.

This section was archived on a request by: —MarcoAurelio (talk) 10:02, 23 June 2023 (UTC)

What to do with wikis with non-free files but without an EDP

I like to check wikis that have local upload of files and make sure they have a good management of files. I also like to move free files to Commons.

I have found many wikis that have problems and I try to help them. Sometimes it takes really long time because local users do not know about copyright, do not want to spend time help or they do not like to delete files. In some cases files were not deleted 10 years after I nominated them for deletion. So I started to ask global sysops for assistance (they are awesome so thank you for that). But they can only work on the small wikis.

Anyway the reason I'm here is that some wikis have non-free files but no Exemption Doctrine Policy (EDP) / en:Wikipedia:Non-free content. Of course I try to get local community to either implement an EDP or delete non-free files. But in some cases nothing happens. It could be a language issue or simply because no local admin would like to mass delete files.

So my question is what could be done?

Can we have a global rule/policy that all wikis must be added to Non-free content and that they must link to a local page like en:Wikipedia:Non-free content and if they do not then all non-free files are deleted unless it is fixed within 3 months or whatever?

On some wikis the problem is that they have no tools to find "bad files". So it would be great if there were global bots that

1. Tag files wihout a license
2. Tag orphan non-free files
3. Tag non-free files that are too big
4. Downsized non-free files that are too big
5. Tag non-free files with old revisions
6. Delete old revisions of non-free files

That would ofcourse require that someone is willing to run the bot and that all wikis have templates like en:Template:free media / en:Template:non-free media etc. or another way for the bot to find out if files are free, non-free or unlicensed.

This is not a vote or formal suggestion (yet). I'm looking for ideas/tips/guidance etc. --MGA73 (talk) 15:47, 3 June 2023 (UTC)

Abusing of "fair use" make such wikis nonsense by themselves. Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 23:35, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

Announcing the new Elections Committee members

You can find this message translated into additional languages on Meta-wiki.

More languages • Please help translate to your language

Hello there,

We are glad to announce the new members and advisors of the Elections Committee. The Elections Committee assists with the design and implementation of the process to select Community- and Affiliate-Selected trustees for the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees. After an open nomination process, the strongest candidates spoke with the Board and four candidates were asked to join the Elections Committee. Four other candidates were asked to participate as advisors.

Thank you to all the community members who submitted their names for consideration. We look forward to working with the Elections Committee in the near future.

On behalf of the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees,

RamzyM (WMF) 17:59, 28 June 2023 (UTC)

Aftermath of ToU updates

With the 2023 ToU updates implementing, interfaces and policies of many wikis should be updated accordly. Large wikis like enwiki or zhwiki could organize to tackle the issue themselves, but for other smaller wikis, it could be difficult to compile a list of affected pages that need to be updated. Are the Foundation able to help those wikis complete the transition (maybe setting up a Meta or Phabricator page as portal, just as the VRT migration process did with T280392), or at least give some sort of guide on what kinds of pages that should be changed? Just want to be sure, since copyright on Wikimedia sites has always been an important issue, I hope the Legal Department take this seriously. —— Eric Liu_（Talk） 02:39, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

Great suggestion. We're trying to balance the fact that the community has the agency to make the changes with the reality that if help pages and policy pages are updated, then it will ensure a good transition. Here is what is currently planned by the Legal department:

For CC 4.0, we intend on adding a page to Meta that reiterates the mechanism by which the 4.0 switch took place. It will feature some helpful links to find errant 3.0 messaging, for example, this is useful to find where CC BY-SA 3.0 appears in MediaWiki code. On English Wikipedia, there are some obvious places, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reusing_Wikipedia_content ...

1. w:Wikipedia:Copyrights
2. w:Wikipedia:Multi-licensing
3. w:Wikipedia:Userboxes/Large/Licensing
   • w:Template:DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Future
4. w:Wikipedia:Adding open license text to Wikipedia

But you're correct to suggest that it's not the largest projects that will need the most help, it's the smaller ones. In addition to suggesting areas to update, the Meta page will also encourage the communities themselves to put together lists of where they see pages that need updates.

Finally, in about 2+ months, we intend to do an "audit" of what still hasn't been changed that needs to be, and do targeted messaging to those communities. The hope is to get a handful of staff members who speak multiple languages together to do an audit that we can publish to alert community members of the most important pages that have not changed. There's no urgency from the Legal department since the way that volunteers add material to the projects has been changed Wikimedia-wide to acknowledge the 4.0 change. As a result, most of the "functional" and "legally required" work is already done to ensure that the proper licensing. That said, we'll be doing the audit since it's also useful to get those nice-to-have pages updated as well.

Finally, there's this Phabricator ticket which might at least be helpful for historical purposes.

For the DSA changes, much of that is affects the Foundation's role as host of the projects. I imagine changes due the DSA or other new regulation will unlikely change the day-to-day of many projects. If these issues do affect volunteers or community policy, it will come up on a case by case basis. SSpalding (WMF) (talk) 22:39, 21 June 2023 (UTC)

I love the idea to help the smaller wikis! And I wonder if it would be possible/helpful to include other areas in the copyriight-update-project.

Example of possible things to fix/point out (the examples are related to upload of files):

• Illegal licenses like non-commercial or no-derivates
• Discouraged licenses like GFDL or old versions of cc (1.0 or 2.5)
• Licenses without a metadata (File_metadata_cleanup_drive/How_to_fix_metadata)
• Non-free files but no Exemption Doctrine Policy (EDP) / en:Wikipedia:Non-free content
• Etc.

Ways to fix/point out:

• Make the relevant changes
• Leave a notice on the wiki about the specific problem
• Make a general notice on all wikis that there are some things the wiki could check + where to find more info or to ask for help (link)

It is just examples. Feel free to add more. If you think it is better to make that another project or if you think its a terrible idea thats okay too :-) --MGA73 (talk) 13:53, 27 June 2023 (UTC)

In my opinion, you should not write too much information in any wiki, as there will be no one to update it later. For example, some small wikis «use» GFDL in 2023. In addition, such questions are of interest to a few of participants, others will not understand anything Proeksad (talk) 22:45, 28 June 2023 (UTC)

Proeksad Yes there are probably many wikis where only a few know and care about copyright. But I think a notice on "Village Pump" with a short text could be a good way to inform all wikis. For example: "Notice about copyright etc.! Wikimedia Foundation have updated the terms of use [see link to page on meta]. As a part of that the general license was updated to latest version of Creative Commons. We strongly encourage you to update the license too. You can find more help on what to check and how to update here [see link to page on meta]."

I checked and the wiki mention GFDL but the bottom of the page mention Creative Commons :-) --MGA73 (talk) 15:58, 29 June 2023 (UTC)

Not only on this page, but in six (?) other places [1][2]strange fork[3] + q:pt:MediaWiki:Copyrightwarning+q:pt:Wikiquote:MediaWiki. I used search tool for this. Also the bottom of the page mention Não Adaptada, but must be Internacional  :-).
These licenses can be in anywhere (main: Copyrights, About, Disclaimers, Policies), and interlanguage links can be uncorrect. According to my observations, the help pages in small wikis are low quality and outdated, many links go nowhere Proeksad (talk) 21:51, 1 July 2023 (UTC)

It’s example, certainly. The license GFDL is listed in dozens of small wikis, in my view. Their editors themselves do not know where and when it was written --Proeksad (talk) 13:32, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

And by the way, isn't Wikinews still stuck on CC BY 2.5? Maybe it is time for the Foundation to update the Attribution to CC BY 4.0 altogether as well, or it could be increasingly outdated. —— Eric Liu_（Talk） 16:04, 27 June 2023 (UTC)

We (as in any or all Wikinews editions) just never went ahead and switched to 4.0. And we will make that decision and implement it ourselves. The WMF can make requests, but it doesn't need to make that decision for us. Heavy Water (talk) 00:22, 28 June 2023 (UTC)

Heavy Water you write "we" does that mean English Wikinews only or do you mean that you will inform the other Wikinews editions too? --MGA73 (talk) 15:58, 29 June 2023 (UTC)

I meant all, but I meant the second sentence as a hypothetical for what all would do in the future. Sorry. Heavy Water (talk) 22:32, 29 June 2023 (UTC)