Talk:CentralNotice/Archive 3

Central notice in en on cywiki

Once again, no notice was given to me of the English-only banner on the top of all Welsh Wikipedia pages. I've received several emails from the community who are very offended. I've also spent two hours searching where to translate it. What a waste! I'm now going to suggest that NO banners to be placed on Wicipedia Cymraeg. Llywelyn2000 (talk) 18:45, 15 March 2016 (UTC)

Hi, Llywelyn2000. If it was the Wikimania banner — you can now translate it. Have no idea why it wasn't made translatable from the start, I rather share your state of mind. If it was some other one, please point which one. --Base (talk) 19:43, 15 March 2016 (UTC)

Thanks Base; yes it's the Wikimania Banner. Any idea where can it be translated? Llywelyn2000 (talk) 05:56, 16 March 2016 (UTC)

It now has the "help with translation" link in it. Here [1]. --Base (talk) 07:23, 16 March 2016 (UTC)

Many thanks. How can we ensure this never happens again? Any ideas? Llywelyn2000 (talk) 11:24, 16 March 2016 (UTC)

If the link isn't compulsory per CentralNotice/Usage_guidelines, maybe you could start a related thread on the talk page (and maybe link it from other more prominent discussion venues). --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 11:38, 16 March 2016 (UTC)

Just for reference, the banner did not just lack the link (or mor precisely it did have it but the code responsible was commented), but the text strings were hardcoded in it, so just providing the link by itself would do nothing. The guadilenes actually already do have requirement of not setting English banner to people who user non-English project/UI. --Base (talk) 12:26, 16 March 2016 (UTC)

Banner overload - update guidelines?

Our original guidelines weren't intended for so much activity. I believe these guidelines should be revised and have more structure. They are too vague in certain aspects. We can categorise them depending on who requests them, and keep certain annual events like wikimania permanently on calendar and plan accordingly.

There seems to be a banner overload that happens intermittently. And people requesting these campaigns, don't usually have an idea of the impact and reach of their own requests. I am currently in a country with a population of over 1 Billion, a high or even normal priority is serving up way too many views than it should. In times of multiple campaigns running concurrently, this is becoming a really pestering issue. It will certainly affect future campaigns and fundraising plans, if we burn these views out so quickly. We get several million views more in large countries than we should. We need a guideline that takes in to account the size of the country and the number of ongoing or planned campaigns - If 2 or more banner are supposed to be run, lower banner weightage should be considered, or we can limit certain community campaigns in a month to a certain number. We need some solution here, this is going to be an issue sooner or later. The staff should take a look here. If no one comments, I am going to propose and make some changes here. Theo10011 (talk) 18:31, 3 June 2016 (UTC)

Agreed. These banners should be the exception, not the rule. It might be worth creating some other space in the interface for smaller campaigns to be displayed - maybe a line of text under the user links, for example? But the current overload of banners is getting a bit ridiculous. Ajraddatz (talk) 18:34, 3 June 2016 (UTC)

(Moved from RFH) Basicly yes, the problem is brightly there, and I as a user executing some of the banners putting in recent months am not very happy about that. But. What I am not sure is how to make rules more strict without scaring "clients". What I mean is that it is already not uncommon for people rather than meet the requirements we set here on Meta to just put a banner locally in SiteNotice where they can do whatever they want (links to third party sites unwarned, third parties' trademarks as the most blatant abuses from my POV but not the only ones). While for some communities we can appeal with the fact that we have geolocation and SiteNotice does not, in case of many other languages that is not really a problem (my native Ukrainian including), as most of the language's speakers live in a single country anyway. Another good thing we have is banners' rotation, but this is performable via scripts locally too. I think a reform would be a go only if we adopt some global rules concerning any banners, rather than just CentralNotice. --Base (talk) 20:50, 16 June 2016 (UTC)

I propose some amendments -

• Limit community campaign number to 3 (or 2) in a month
• Strictly enforce a limit of 2 geolocated campaigns
• Staff campaigns won't be affected so any community limit has to take any ongoing or planned staff campaign in to consideration
• Better calendar and scheduling - update calendar with annual campaigns like wikimania, elections, fundraising months marked off
• lower visibility/weightage of campaigns - 50% or lower for geolocated
• avoid high visibility all together
• Most campaigns originate from either chapter request or commons - better co-ordination with both
• Avoid large, bold and bright banners in lieu of more direct smaller banners

Some thoughts to start thinking along. Theo10011 (talk) 21:05, 16 June 2016 (UTC)

Speaking only for the campaigns I run for IdeaLab like the current one, I think it's a good idea that these centralnotices are limited to 50% or lower, and I'm always OK with deferring to a banner for a community event or program to be shown more often than one for Inspire. I think a calendar is a great idea as well to help plan and negotiate conflicts ahead of time. I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 22:37, 16 June 2016 (UTC)

I think WMF and Community has to find balance, instead of requiring community to sacrifice for WMF. — regards, Revi 15:21, 17 June 2016 (UTC)

Most WMF campaigns can be suppressed without damage. Nemo 21:40, 17 June 2016 (UTC)

I think we should ban CentralNotice usage altogether outside of the annual fund-raiser. I'm very sick of the constant use of "leaderboard A" to advertise discussions that I don't care about (harassment campaign, picture of the year, etc.). Nobody is saying these aren't worthwhile projects, but they don't need to be advertised to every user in such a prominent place. Try MassMessage or e-mail or something less annoying. Stop abusing a tool designed to be as in-your-face as possible.

Alternately, we could implement opt-out/unsubscribe lists for CentralNotice, similar to what horrible companies who won't take "no" for an answer do. You would end up requiring users to opt out of specific categories of notices they don't want to see (e.g., surveys, contests, fund-raising, elections) rather than doing the right thing of not spamming users with noise they didn't ask for. --MZMcBride (talk) 12:58, 18 June 2016 (UTC)

It's not a bad idea, but I think we should try to prevent overload in the first place, rather than letting people opt-out. There is the occasional interesting/important one for them to see; we just need to figure out a rate at which they are not too painful and disruptive. Ajraddatz (talk) 07:46, 19 June 2016 (UTC)

Agree that we should prevent banner overload. Especially for banners which are enabled for logged out users we need unmistakable restrictions, we shouldn't set too much banners for logged out people (of crouse for logged in as well). --Steinsplitter (talk) 07:39, 19 June 2016 (UTC)

Agree for banner that have an impact extensively in several languages and projects and countries and absolutely for banner put for very long time, but open to a more rational use for some banners that have an impact in limited regions or for limited projects and limited with the timeline. I have seen banners put on centralnotice for several months and the worst banners have been that of the community (some banners put on projects for three months). About Inspire campaign I am in the IEG too and I would also bring here the other positive aspect of this campaign and basically that some people (not being member of the community) apply for a grant thanks to the banner. The biggest benefit is that these are people not member of the wikipedian community and they bring a valuable "different" point of view and new blood. It's difficult to do outreach with other tools (like mass-message), because it's an "out"-reach. --Ilario (talk) 09:07, 19 June 2016 (UTC)

No problem with taking a lot more consideration to banner overload etc., but would objects to any suggestion that limit CN to fundraiser only. MassMessage or emails etc. are suitable for certain type of users and campaigns but totally unable to reach out to certain type of editors/readers that CN would. One additional suggestion I would add is minimal scheduling notice. There's rarely any campaigns that are truly unforeseen and urgent. Seeing repeats requests for CN by 24 hours time or even NOW on RFH is not unusual but definitely should be. -- KTC (talk) 10:53, 19 June 2016 (UTC)

Thanks guys. Reading through the comments here - 1) I agree we need an alternative to CentralNotice. But as admins here, we answer the requests and turn-on most of these campaigns ourselves, so it's a bit of our responsibility to be good caretakers of it. 2) Banning all CentralNotice usage doesn't seem like something we can just do ourselves? There are certainly more stakeholders than just us - chapters, committees, annual projects, groups - I imagine a lot of people will have an earful to say if we just unilaterally initiate something like that. It's going to need a bigger discussion and consensus than just admins here getting together and deciding to ban all community usage all together. 3) We can't really do anything about WMF campaigns, they built this originally and are the primary users of it, and honestly, I don't want another round of staff vs community faceoff that go nowhere - These are all bigger decisions that require wider community input and consensus. If anyone wants to pursue that, they should start an RfC. However, the intention here is far simpler, we as admins here, can tighten up the guidelines for centralnotice usage and try to discourage longer, more visible campaigns - I think that is an achievable goal that won't require a lot of consensus. All the comments so far above seem to be in agreement to a certain extent about limiting usage.

So, Here are some ideas/suggestions to add to the guidelines and for admins to keep in mind -

• Exclude Meta, campaign only on content projects - The campaigns include Meta a lot. Meta isn't a content project, all other projects are. There isn't likely to be a lot of views generated through meta. How about adding a guideline to limit campaigns to content projects only? (Also mention there that project-specific campaigns should use site notice or local banners)
• Soft-limit/hard-limit - Set a monthly limit on campaign number to 2.
• Campaign length - 1 week, maximum 2 weeks. Month-long campaigns should be really avoided.
• Banner weightage/priority - High priority should never be used by community campaigns, Medium for important and short campaigns (1 week or less). Low <50% (~30%) is the ideal priority for community campaigns.
• Better calendar/scheduling - We need a better scheduling system, wikimania scholarship, elections, fundraising should be permanently on an annual calendar and should be given priority. (this is a project one of us has to undertake to make a better scheduling system, any takers?)
• Smaller banners - perhaps we can suggest smaller banners or text based messages. The loud, colorful, persistent banners really detract from common usage of the projects. They make reading articles difficult with a distracting banner. They should be much less distracting. More Suggestions to achieve this are welcome.
• Alternative - Admins themselves and guidelines should suggest alternative communication methods, massmessage and email are alternative that should be suggested to people requesting these campaigns. If WMF staff or any community member, wants to come up with a new way for Mediawiki where local solution can pick up the slack for these banners, it would be appreciated.

Those are a few from the top of my head. Please offer feedback and finalise these soon. This is turning in to a real problem. The wle campaign has been running for a month, and I remember dismissing it at least 2 dozen times in the last weeks - I can't even imagine how those banners would seem for regular logged-out users. I really hope we can avoid situations like this in the future. Any others suggestions? Theo10011 (talk) 16:13, 19 June 2016 (UTC)

June 31st?

Not found in my calendar.--Tekstman (talk) 19:42, 3 June 2016 (UTC)

Requests process

I might have missed something but did we have a vote approving that new process? It seems to be more than just changing the venue where the requests are proceeded so it requires it, IMHO.
It is not very clear as well in my opinion. If I am going to create a campaign on behalve of some project I am active in how should I proceed? I am more than welcome to have it reviewed, but as I do not need another Meta/CN admin to actually create it some steps a little bit not adapted to it. (e.g. It might be much easier to actually create a banner and link it than to specify what are the landing page and stuff). It also removes some of the flexibility in terms of creating banners for approved campaigns in short time. E.g. on Wiki Loves Earth some countries provide data needed for the campaign for their specific country just several minutes before the start, while WLE campaigns as whole were known to be expected to run. On CEE Spring I had been creating new banners for Ukrainian campaign on very short notice like several mins before the week (wasn't able to get new banner text from the other local orgs faster), though the campaign itself was approved. Actually in such cases when the review was going on on other pages (there are such for WLM, WLE, Wikimedia Ukraine campaigns) even if with shorter time, I can probably just apply IAR and proceed as usual, but I'd rather we have some common exceptions to the process written in its page itself. I do not want to have a feeling that what I am doing is an abuse. --Base (talk) 14:44, 28 June 2016 (UTC)

Hey Base. You haven't missed something, there wasn't a vote approving the process. I reached out to the CN and Meta admins who use Central Notice to get some input. What was fed back was that generally having some sort of formal but lightweight approval method was a good thing. What we have is fairly basic but the current form isn't something we are stuck with. It most definitely can be improved with time and feedback and by more people than just myself. I would like to find ways we can provide additional things such as regular banner metrics etc. as part of the process. What this is deliberately meant to do is to make project leads think about their use of CentralNotice more than just a last minute thing. We need to use CentralNotice in a more efficient and effective manner. People need to think in advance about how they are going to use it. It's such a powerful tool than people need to start seeing it as such.

For the time being there are three campaigns with exceptions relating to their organising for this process. WLM, WLE and Fundraising. For these, approval will simply be broad approval for the campaigns since they have such complex setups. If project leads get campaign approval then I see no issue with any CentralNotice or Meta admin dealing with last minute changes or campaign setup whatever their relationship. I see no issue with you assisting with the CEE spring banners all I would ask is that they request the banner more than a week in advance which is not a particularly strenuous requirement. You do some excellent work with CentralNotice and I definitely want to support you in doing that as much as possible. Jseddon (WMF) (talk) 08:58, 29 June 2016 (UTC)

Hi, Curious about the request process. I requested a banner for the international LGBT writing weeks and did not get respons yet. Do I need to wait a little longer? Can I place it in the calender? --Denise Jansen (talk) 07:47, 4 July 2016 (UTC)

French WikiCon

Hello,

I don't see the banner for the French WikiCon. It is mentioned in the calendar. Could someone look at it? It's very important to publicise the registration as it's the first time that a WikiCon is organized in French!

Done Jseddon (WMF) (talk) 17:21, 7 July 2016 (UTC)

Thanks @Jseddon (WMF): but I don't see the banner. I've tried with different accounts and on different browsers. Pyb (talk) 14:31, 8 July 2016 (UTC)

It is now disabled so that is not strange. Jseddon (WMF), I would have enabled it but I am not sure about having that link to a non-Wikimedia site without any explicit notice about it and its ToU/PP. Well and also that pointer cursor and translatable message for alt text of the close button look a little bit weird but are much less concerning things. --Base (talk) 16:32, 8 July 2016 (UTC)

Emergency request based on community processed request for sitenotice

Hey All,

Just want you all to be aware that I have processed an emergency request due to an issue with the korean wikipedia not showing sitenotices to mobile users. It was based on a request on the local wiki as well so as far as I am concerned the need for local involvement has been met. I've logged the request and marked as completed for transparency CentralNotice/Request#Emergency_-_KoreanWikiConference. Currently this process is not designed for such requests so I was bold and felt this was the best way to handle such a request. Jseddon (WMF) (talk) 17:47, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

We should have a formal guidelines for these 'urgent' or 'emergency' requests - they should have prepared in advance, so I tend to say NO to any future "emergency" requests. (Though I'm not a CN regular.) — regards, Revi 09:16, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

So in this instance they actually weren't after a central notice banner in the first place and were in fact only after a sitenotice which they requested through their own wiki. This got enabled however there was a technical limitation they discovered whereby sitenotices hadn't been enabled on mobile webviews on the minerva skin front end. In this instance the mobile banner was only created to supplement a community decision in lieu of the technical issues. Jseddon (WMF) (talk) 10:08, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

I do agree however that if Central Notice banners are the main intention then they should in fact go through the 7 day process. Jseddon (WMF) (talk) 10:09, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

Of course I know that the sitenotice is there by myself being kowiki admin. However I believe all CN request (regardless of their previous status) must be held for '7 days community consensus' period, regardless of their excuses. I already know the requester was told about mobilefrontend's ability to show sitenotice (wgMFEnableSiteNotice), and it should've been done this way, not using CN. If they wanted to use CN, they should have used CN at the first place, through correct process. — regards, Revi 11:36, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

Usage Guidelines - New Draft

Could all CentralNotice admin's review the new draft of the CentralNotice Usage guidelines. For comparison: CentralNotice/Usage_guidelines. Much of this is simply either a rewording or codifying of existing best practices. Comment here, let me know if any of you have any issues. Jseddon (WMF) (talk) 21:28, 29 July 2016 (UTC)

I will leave this open for comment for two weeks before adopting the new draft. Jseddon (WMF) (talk) 03:13, 1 August 2016 (UTC)

Hi Joseph, the guidelines are good but in my opinion it penalizes smaller communities where the use of the centralnotice may be crucial to consolidate geographically spread users. Probably an easier guideline for banners impacting on smaller communities makes sense. In my personal context I run banner for Italian Switzerland and this banner has an impact in more or less 1 million of potential readers, but the use of the centralnotice for me is vital because I cannot use Italian Wikipedia because I will impact on 80 millions of potential readers to inform only 1 million, it doesn't make sense to apply so strict rules. In addition the rule per geography penalizes the Switzerland where we have four different communities and sometimes four different banners. Applying the rule of 2 banners per geography, we will fill the limit quickly. Probably using the terms of "campaign" instead of "banner" and giving easier rules for smaller communities or for low impact campaigns may give more efficiency to the banner and may help smaller projects and communities to reach out their potential users. --Ilario (talk) 09:12, 2 August 2016 (UTC)

Hey @Ilario, so I have modified this particular guidance. The limit now only applies for any one language + country + ***NEW*** project combination. This wording allows much more flexibility and lessens impacting smaller communities. Seddon (talk) 17:51, 5 August 2016 (UTC)

I would separate here this other comment because related to another topic. It's good to give a notice to the community but some chapters run some campaigns following the annual plan which has been approved by the FDC. In this case there is already a top-down approval, if we include also the chapters agreement that some chapters have signed and allows them to use the Wikimedia projects to communicate their initiatives, this new rules would generate a worst impact in the realization of the annual plans. In my opinion there should be a second option beside the approval of the community and it could be, for instance, a banner related to the activities indicated in the annual plan of a chapter or approved already in the chapters agreement because they already have a top-down approval. For instance recently in Wikimedia CH we will run a "call for projects" to invite people to submit their proposals, but this initiative is part of the annual plan and agreed with the FDC. The chapters for instance plan to run at least one survey per year, but the approval is already included in the annual plan. I think that, if included there or if supported by the agreement with WMF, there is no sense to ask for a second approval. At the moment the centralnotice seems to be a good option to run campaigns by wikimedia affiliated, by these rules invite them to use more the sitenotice of any single projects. This will create an overlapping of competencies and for some countries also two banners at the same time from two different sources. --Ilario (talk) 09:20, 2 August 2016 (UTC)

Hi Joseph. Thanks for opening the conversation about this draft. I have a few questions and comments to share and look forward to your feedback.

re:Banner requirement
How do you define “Wikimedia Owned”? Does this also affect surveys done via the WMF Qualtrics account? What about other service sites a Chapter might have a contract with, like portals to attract new editors or to generate project ideas.

re:Campaign requirement
We think “Limit - Hard limit of 2 campaigns for any one language/geography/project combination.” needs more clarity. You might want to add “2 campaigns at the same time”.

re:Approval
We’d like to second Ilario here: Please let us not over complicate or duplicate approval processes; especially not those that are already covered via the annual plan grants process or the chapters as well as the fundraising agreements. A good coordination is essential, of course, but I would advise against introducing a double approval.

We are also worried about having just one point of contact for survey approval. We are, for example, consulting with your Learning & Evaluation team when it comes to survey design and would prefer not to introduce an additional step into this process.

That “advocacy requires explicit community approval” is already current practise and should be followed without exception. So thanks for making this so clear. --Nicole Ebber (WMDE) (talk) 13:28, 22 August 2016 (UTC)

Hey @Nicole Ebber (WMDE)::

Wikimedia Owned - I have changed this to Wikimedia Controlled. Domains do not have to be controlled but the landing page content must be controlled by a Wikimedia Entity.

Campaign requirement - To be honest this wasn't a rule created by myself and stemmed from the central notice admins. I think the limit applying per month was missing and was a key part of the guideline.

Approval Currently central notice usage isn't, as far as I am aware, actually something thought about by the FDC and until very recently usage not considered as a "resource" by the grants staff. I have put in specific exemptions for fundraising by the WMF and Chapters based on Ilario's feedback. With regards to survey approval, this approval should be sought from Learning & Evaluation in all cases. I have no issue in survey signoff being sought directly from chapters.

Jseddon (WMF) (talk) 16:49, 1 September 2016 (UTC)

Thanks, Seddon! Sounds good; we appreciate your thoughtful response. Cheers, Nicole Ebber (WMDE) (talk) 13:27, 5 September 2016 (UTC)

The new process has clearly failed, as evidenced by the lack of transparency in what campaigns have been run after June 2016: CentralNotice/Calendar/Archive#2016. --Nemo 08:51, 27 June 2017 (UTC)

21 days approval timeline

To add this 21 days time period to the 7 days of "community discussion" is way too much. Such a simple process of approving campaign, especially if it related to affiliate one (such as local events and conferences, writing contests and such) should not take more than 3 days. 28 days process to approve each banner is not effective work in anyway we will look on it. We should make process proccess easy, while we keep them under regulations - but not to make them too bureaucratic --Itzike (talk) 14:27, 22 August 2016 (UTC)

Too many centralnotice banners for logged-in users

I am receiving centralnotice banners for both the FDC and the CC 4.0 change. In my opinion a single banner is already a bit pushy, and two is over the line. I propose that after a logged-in user dismisses a centralnotice banner, that campaign is never to appear again for that user, even after the user logs out and clears cookies and then logs back in. --Pine^✉ 19:00, 20 October 2016 (UTC)

While I deeply value being informed about ongoing editing campaigns through centralnotice banners, lately I have become frustrated with the persistence and number of notices. I second Pine's suggestion to limit banners for logged-in users. In the meantime, in Preferences under the Gadgets tab (on en.wiki), you can check the box for 'Suppress display of CentralNotices'. gobonobo ^{+ c} 19:48, 26 November 2016 (UTC)

• Thanks for the comment Gobonobo. I am hoping that eventually the Newsletter Extension will allow for more announcements to be nicely organized in newsletters, and that fewer notices will appear in CentralNotice banners and watchlist notices. --Pine^✉ 21:44, 27 November 2016 (UTC)

Please be diligent with HTML authoring

Tracked in Phabricator:
Task T123314

Tracked in Phabricator:
Task T151480

I'm looking at this WAM banner, and I notice that it doesn't use the default close button, causing it to not have a label that can be used by screenreaders etc.. It also includes an image, without specifying it's width and height (this causes reflow problems in the DOM structure). The images used also don't specify alt attributes... (either empty alt to ignore the image or an actual descriptive text for the image). This happens again and again with central notices, the Special:CentralNoticeBanners/edit/WMNL_register_WCN_2016 and the CC4.0 banner have similar problems... Please take better care of authoring and reviewing the HTML of the banners.. This code deploys to virtually ALL pages and should be of the highest quality. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 12:42, 7 November 2016 (UTC)

And using the unsupported <center> tag... Useless transparent tags... There are better ways to do this. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 12:45, 7 November 2016 (UTC)

+1. Helder 09:28, 12 January 2017 (UTC)

CentralNotice/Request#Czech_Wikiconference_2016

Hello, what else needs to be done to get CentralNotice/Request#Czech_Wikiconference_2016 running? It's now a few days past its scheduled start date and I do not know if anything is missing in the request or whether the reason it has not yet been approved is simply the missing attention by a central notice admin. Experience from previous year suggests that the banner would greatly help Wikimedia Czech Republic to attract participants for its annual conference which is about to start in merely two weeks. I will greatly appreciate the help of whoever is able and willing to assist. Regards, --Blahma (talk) 13:15, 19 November 2016 (UTC)

(uninvolved) And another banner using the deprecated hideBanner() function... Please make a change similar to this. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 12:42, 27 January 2017 (UTC)

Request vs. approval

Hi, do I need to fill out a request if I don't need approval for a campaign (under "online Fundraising Banners run by affiliates") and I don't need help to set up the campaign (as I am a CN admin)? Thanks. -- Samat (talk) 21:21, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

@Seddon (WMF): Samat (talk) 21:09, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

Wiki Loves Uniformed services (India)

There is no response from the central notice admin even after repeated pings for the part 25 days. I request @Seddon (WMF): to put in his views. All the requested changes have been made. The banner request can be referred at CentralNotice/Request/Wiki Loves Uniformed Services (India). Regards, Krishna Chaitanya Velaga (talk — mail) 10:25, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

Geo-targeting states

It does not make sense for people in San Francisco to see events from New York City, 3,000 miles away (4800 km). The geo database has State level detail so I filed T152297 for exposing this information. Dispenser (talk) 19:03, 22 May 2017 (UTC)

Calendar disjunct from reality

The calendar has become useless: most campaigns which are currently enabled (wikimaniareg2017, WMDE_twl_voting_2017, CelticKnot, FoP_ZA, wle 2017 tw) did not bother to update the table. I'll update the header, which does not conform to best practices and guidelines.[2] --Nemo 08:40, 27 June 2017 (UTC)

The process involves too many actions now. Recently I was enabling a campaign for WMUA which went through standard for them (well, us, I am a member) internal approval on chapter wiki. This required me to create the banner, create the campaign, create the Request page here for the sake of logging, list the Request page, add an entry to Calendar. I think we would very much benefit if someone were to write a script which could update banners/campaigns/Request subpages and listing of them/Calendar one from another (and we also have Phabricator..) . Now it is not hard but very tedious to spend more time logging what you are doing than doing. You are working with gsoc and such guys -- perhaps it could be an entry-level project for some JS guy. --Base (talk) 02:43, 22 August 2017 (UTC)

Or just remove the requests page so we have at least one place which actually records reality. --Nemo 07:43, 13 November 2017 (UTC)

Is someone taking care of the request?

I write a request at July 29. But no one has reviewed it. --Sahaquiel9102 (talk) 04:21, 21 August 2017 (UTC)

That's a fair question, in fact CentralNotice administration currently lacks in manpower badly. Enabled the banner you requested. --Base (talk) 02:36, 22 August 2017 (UTC)

country

In this page, it mentions "You can simulate loading a wiki page from any country (to test campaign geotargeting) by adding ?country=<countrycode> to the end of the URL. (Use the 2-letter ISO 3166-1 code.)" - I tried this today, but the results are very unreliable at best, and I don't have the impression it actually works. Could you confirm this is still valid practice? Effeietsanders (talk) 14:39, 3 September 2017 (UTC)

Which page? --Base (talk) 14:34, 4 September 2017 (UTC)

Help:CentralNotice#Campaigns_2. (Feedback is redirected :) ) --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 14:37, 4 September 2017 (UTC)

Central notice to raise awareness about a RfC

Some have requested a central notice for this RfC to address impersonation / misrepresentation by paid editors. Not sure if it would count for one? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 19:28, 18 September 2017 (UTC)

User:Seddon (WMF) thoughts? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 18:21, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

Not before making it clear how a wiki might be affected by this proposal, or you'll just confuse users. If the proposal was clear and enjoyed broad support it could be ok to run a 1-impression centralnotice for users with more than 10k edits for a week. Let's continue at [3]. --Nemo 20:02, 13 October 2017 (UTC)

Wiki Science Competition

I don't see the extraordinary consensus required to run a banner for 1 month for unregistered users. At very least it should be limited to 1-2 impressions over 4 weeks and to the projects most interested to it, otherwise each user will have to dismiss the banner a hundred times. --Nemo 07:50, 13 November 2017 (UTC)

Additionally, I see MediaWiki:Centralnotice-template-WSC Translations has a link to http://www.wikisciencecompetition.org/contest/ , which does not seem to comply with the guidelines requirement that link targets be Wikimedia-only (and it doesn't even have a privacy policy). I recommend linking the Wikimedia Commons page, which also has additional translations. --Nemo 08:01, 13 November 2017 (UTC)

Short notices want to be noticed

I do understand that three of four requests on CentralNotice/Request page are short notices but I believe they have right to be commented on, right? --Ата ^(talk) 05:56, 13 December 2017 (UTC)

You are free to comment. Feel free to remove any indication that discussion is discouraged. --Nemo 13:43, 26 December 2017 (UTC)

CentralNotice/Request needs better staffing

I sometimes handle a couple of requests for CentralNotice, but it's not my main area of work here. In any case I feel CentralNotice/Request needs either better staffing or a better process or both. Any ideas how to make this more efficient? To mention one: I myself find the CN/C rather unhelpful TBH. Not being able to see, visually, the clashes between campaigns is rather unhelpful and I'd go with either a Google Calendar or a Phabricator Calendar view. Regards, —MarcoAurelio (talk) 10:07, 26 December 2017 (UTC)

I think it would be easier to suppress the subpage and instead focus on the one tool for collaboration that has a tangible ROI, i.e. CentralNotice/Calendar. It's easier to watch and maintain and has direct benefits for all CN admins, but the new request page has damaged it greatly (some rogue CentralNotice administrators don't schedule their banners as expected, or even remove content from the calendar without archiving it). --Nemo 13:42, 26 December 2017 (UTC)

Special:CentralNoticeBanners/edit/wm2018scholarcfp

Messages for Nynorsk [4] shows up as Bokmål [5]. Message for Bokmål is corrected from the previous version with spelling error and wrong year.[6] The Nynorsk message (nn) should be "Det er no ope for søknader om stipend til Wikimania 2018." and "Sjå hovudsida for meir informasjon". The word "hovudsida" should probably be "søkesida" or "søkesida på Meta" at Nynorsk and "søkesiden" or "søkesiden på Meta" at Bokmål. — Jeblad 15:20, 2 January 2018 (UTC)

Dead link in the CentralNotice interface

Please click [7], search for "Selector logic". Clicking the link leads you to https://github.com/wikimedia/mediawiki-extensions-CentralNotice/blob/master/modules/ext.centralNotice.bannerController/mobile/device.js and that’s a dead link. Dont know where to fix it … Regards --Schniggendiller (talk) 00:17, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

Biography

Mutalep Islam Mutalep Islam (talk) 12:27, 7 August 2018 (UTC)

India Mutalep Islam (talk) 12:27, 7 August 2018 (UTC)

How is this supposed to work?

Hi everyone: I fill a CN request to setup a banner for a Wikimedia Chile contest, but none have taken the task (and now the contest is almost over), so, is there any way to fill the request or I'll just to ask to any CN administrator to setup the campaign? I don't know if I forgot something or leave a message, but a "101 - Requesting a CN banner" (or "Requesting a CN banner for dummies") is needed(?). Thanks in advance. Superzerocool (talk) 12:42, 24 September 2018 (UTC)

banner categories?

Is there a list somewhere of the banner categories and what they are used for? Thanks --Jeremyb (talk) 18:02, 2 January 2019 (UTC)

WikiFranca_MC2019_call disabled

@Benoit Rochon: I disabled your CN, possibly prematurely - but it does not seem to be following the guidelines. Your banner is only in French and is displaying on every WMF project in every language. Was there a prior discussion to put this out in this manner? — xaosflux ^Talk 14:36, 5 January 2019 (UTC)

From the CN Calendar looks like it was only supposed to go to French projects for logged in users. Feel free to re-enable after adjusting to those parameters. — xaosflux ^Talk 14:42, 5 January 2019 (UTC)

Hello Xaosflux, thank you for your message and I wish you an happy new year!

WikiFranca is displaying a banner since 2013 for the International Francophone Contribution Month. It was discussed during WikiConvention francophone/2018. I will follow the guidelines and if you can suggest me the best practices, it would be really appreciated : should it be in English too? Should I remove some projects ?

Thank you in advance! Benoit Rochon (talk) 14:45, 5 January 2019 (UTC)

Wow, I just realise I put all languages. Sorry about that. Benoit Rochon (talk) 14:47, 5 January 2019 (UTC)

@Benoit Rochon: no worries, once I started looking at it, it appeared to just be an oversight. It has stopped appearing on the other sites now, feel free to reactivate it when your parameters are good. Best regards, — xaosflux ^Talk 14:51, 5 January 2019 (UTC)

setBannerLoadedButHidden

@Kai Nissen (WMDE):, @Seddon (WMF): is setBannerLoadedButHidden the current way to record a banner is delivered to a user but then not displayed? where is this documented? Thanks --Jeremyb (talk) 14:48, 7 January 2019 (UTC)

I see phab:T45250 hasn't been touched in 17+ months. is that out of date? how does sampling work now? is there any batching? --Jeremyb (talk) 14:51, 7 January 2019 (UTC)

@Jeremyb: you might run into race conditions when using `setBannerLoadedButHidden`. You can request CentralNotice to delay recording an impression. Please have a look at phab:T176334#3793602 for an example. -- Kai Nissen (WMDE) (talk) 15:14, 7 January 2019 (UTC)

stewnoms_mobile is throwing JavaScript errors on mobile

`stewnoms_mobile` banner throws an exception on mobile due to accessing `this.log` which does not exist. return this.log( 'could not locate #stewnoms' ); This may be contributing to the error spike we are seeing on mobile.

Please let me know when the edit to Steward Elections Notice has been resolved. Thanks in advance! Jdlrobson (talk) 17:45, 21 January 2019 (UTC)

@Jdlrobson: Thanks for the message. The banner has a in-banner JavaScript so it is only displayed to administrators. If you have any ideas how to fix that issue for mobile and you're willing to help in resolving it, please be my guest. If I can help with anything too, please let me know. Thank you, —MarcoAurelio (talk) 18:22, 21 January 2019 (UTC)

You'll need to use mw.user.getGroups() to locate admins. The log line needs to be removed asap though! I'm not sure what that's trying to reference. Jdlrobson (talk) 18:36, 21 January 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for reporting this! The mobile banner has been disabled. I've also fixed the JavaScript, but it should be tested on a test mobile campaign (for example, on aa.wikibooks) before being re-enabled. Please see T214330. Thanks!!! --AGreen (WMF) (talk) 21:35, 21 January 2019 (UTC)

Security Notification: Malware creating fake Wikipedia donation banner

mailarchive:wikitech-ambassadors/2019-January/002064.html --Jeremyb (talk) 15:46, 24 January 2019 (UTC)

Blocking All Banners

How do I, as a user, block all banners? They interfere with the function of the site.—Chbarts (talk) 00:39, 10 February 2019 (UTC)

Redirecting pointers from Meta:RFH

With the separation of CN rights and Meta administrator rights, it seems appropriate to remove links that point to Meta:RfH. To where would like such pointers by made? CentralNotice/Request? or maybe a subpage of that where there are specific requirements, eg. stewards' elections translations. Thanks.  — billinghurst sDrewth 12:22, 13 February 2019 (UTC)

Permissions for cloning

Hello, I'm trying to see how I can create a banner that I could later use for a campaign, since 'Clone' button here https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:CentralNoticeBanners/Edit/Community_banner_templatev2 or https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:CentralNoticeBanners/Edit/Community_banner_templatev2?withJS=MediaWiki:CentralNotice_Banner_Template_Intro.js seems inactive for me. Should I request any permission? Thanks! --Toniher (talk) 20:47, 18 February 2019 (UTC)

Hola Toniher. Those buttons will only work for central notice administrators . However you can copy/paste the contents of MediaWiki:Centralnotice-template-Community banner templatev2 and amend it as desired to test how it'd look. Notwithstanding to see how the banner will look you'll need to ask a centralnotice admin (me, for example) to create the banner in the interface. You could also request centralnotice admin access, but currently it is restricted to people that does work with centralnotice regularly. Seddon (WMF) could provide further help if needed. Best regards, —MarcoAurelio (talk) 20:55, 18 February 2019 (UTC)

"Preview all approved translations" broken?

is "Preview all approved translations" broken? e.g. Special:CentralNoticeBanners/edit/public_domain_russia_2019 and Special:CentralNoticeBanners/preview/public_domain_russia_2019

I don't see any banners appear at all there. --Jeremyb (talk) 21:32, 22 March 2019 (UTC)

For years indeed. I believe the corresponding special page was disabled since it took too many resources or something. There was a phab task about this fact of the broken link somewhere since I remember creating one, but I doubt it will be resolved unless one of us does it. My suggestion was to link to the message group stat instead. --Base (talk) 22:43, 22 March 2019 (UTC)

Help: cannot skip to correct defined anchor

According to => https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Topic:V888vjhhcd047hip
it is not possible to access a defined anchor due to use of CentralNotice which provokes a forward section skip when accessing this anchor - leading thus to misalignment. Has anyone an idea of how this issue is tracked (if so) ? Thanks.

Christian Wia (talk) 15:23, 29 September 2019 (UTC)

X button on Maintenance_window banners

A dewiki user recently complained that some of the CNs lack a button to hide. - Regards, --MBq (talk) 07:11, 15 October 2019 (UTC)

Time string

Time format string in active banner [8] {{#time:j xg|2019-10-15|{{PAGELANGUAGE}}}} should be {{#time:j F|2019-10-15|{{PAGELANGUAGE}}}}, since 'xg' inserts the month's full name in genitive form, like 'Oktobers' in German. ('Oktober' would be right in this banner). See mw:Help:Extension:ParserFunctions/de##time. Greetings --MBq (talk) 07:44, 15 October 2019 (UTC)

wikiscience_2019

This banner displays in French "Concours Wiki de photos de science 2017 – participez maintenant!" No need to speak French to spot the wrong date. It is visible publicly. I can't find the string to fix it. This banner is not set like others, where it is possible to directly access the translations on the banner page.

Could admins check this? I can't find the request for this banner anywhere. Trizek ^{from FR} 17:53, 15 November 2019 (UTC)

It has apparently been solved. Trizek ^{from FR} 13:21, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

@Trizek: Looking at the banner code we discover it's reusing an old banner text (WSC_Translations) from some years ago. It needs to be re-translated. Regards. —MarcoAurelio (talk) 14:18, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

Thank you MarcoAurelio! I've fixed the translation. Trizek ^{from FR} 14:50, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

Proposal about RTL

Hi,

I made a proposal about RTL banner policy. See Talk:CentralNotice/Usage guidelines#Right to left languages. Mentioning it here because this talk page seems to have more traffic than that one.

Thanks! --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 09:29, 7 February 2020 (UTC)

Broken Wiki love folklore banner

Hi,

Related to the previous point, but more focused on one banner: The current "Wiki loves folklore" banner is severely broken in RTL wikis. Here's how it looks like:

I set it to explicit dir="ltr" so that at least it won't be totally broken on RTL wikis, but it needs a few more wikis that I prefer not to make myself because I'm not very experienced with the intricacies of Central Notice, and I can break it even more :)

In particular:

• The element <div class="wll-logo">Wiki Loves Love</div> doesn't actually show any text in the LTR banner, but it shows the text "Wiki Loves Love" incorrectly in RTL wikis. I'm not sure what is it for. I'd just delete it, but it may have a function that I am missing.
• I couldn't find where can the text "Photograph your local culture, help Wikipedia and win!" be translated.

If anyone can fix these things, I'll be very thankful.

If anyone can make boilerplate for future banners that will prevent bugs of this kind, I'll be even more thankful! :) --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 09:45, 7 February 2020 (UTC)

Message to readers from Wikimedia Foundation

Given the unfolding global events, the Wikimedia Foundations feels it is important to reassure readers across the globe.

We'll be displaying a short message at the top of the projects reaffirming our commitment to keep Wikipedia and the Wikimedia projects online, open and free for all. Readers often turn to Wikipedia for neutral information in times of stress. This is a critical moment for students who can't go to school, people who have to stay home with their families, and anyone who needs a trusted source of unbiased information.

We also want to take a moment to acknowledge the invaluable work of all the medical contributors on Wikipedia. Thank you for keeping a close watch and keeping misinformation at bay. Coronavirus topics have received tens of thousands of edits by thousands of editors since the start of the pandemic. The article has been read more than 30 million times, in English alone.

The message will be displayed just once to readers, and you can preview the banner. The draft is in English but we want this message to be multilingual. If you have a moment, please help translate this banner into your language. Thank you all, for your work and efforts.

Stay safe, and wash your hands! Seddon (WMF) (talk) 20:13, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

The above message is duplicated from Wikimedia_Forum#Message_to_readers_from_Wikimedia_Foundation. --Yair rand (talk) 20:40, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

Change of contact

Hey all, I've just started a planned secondment to the Product Department. Queries relating to Fundraising and CentralNotice that would normally be directed to myself should be directed to User:Quiddity (WMF). Seddon (WMF) (talk) 16:23, 24 March 2020 (UTC)

Now ended. Please contact Seddon again. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 18:15, 13 July 2020 (UTC)

Where does one leave comments about a current centralnotice?

Since there's no talk page associated with the special namespace it seems unclear. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 22:20, 23 August 2020 (UTC)

FWIW I left a comment on the page a current banner points to here: Talk:Wiki_Loves_Sport/Editions/2020#CentralNotice_seems_premature? — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 22:22, 23 August 2020 (UTC)

Text of wlm_2020 banner is hidden on Arabic

RTL languages on mobile, including Arabic and Hebrew, don't display the current wlm_2020 banner properly.Uziel302 (talk) 16:05, 27 September 2020 (UTC)

Slovakia's request

Dear all. Not sure what is going on but I have not see any movement on the request. What should be done? Thanks!--Jetam2 (talk) 12:05, 28 September 2020 (UTC)

Date formatting in central notices

Trizek (WMF) directed me here from MediaWiki talk:Centralnotice-template-read only banner#Hardcoded date format. Actually I don’t know how widespread the issue is, but no central notices should contain hardcoded date formats, since they will provide ugly to incomprehensible results in some languages. We need a system that can localize dates correctly. More-or-less complete collections of date formats can be found in Module:DateI18n/Module:I18n/date (mirrored from Commons), language messages files of MediaWiki ($dateFormats variable), and probably quite a number of other places, but I don’t know what resources central messages can access. Please help create a standard way to localize dates (preferably server-side). Thanks in advance, —Tacsipacsi (talk) 19:07, 29 October 2020 (UTC)

Incorrect Finnish translation for Steward elections banner

Could someone please fix the incorrect Finnish translation in the Central banner. I fixed the translation page [9] but I don't know if the banner fixes itself automatically and I can't reproduce the banner for myself in fiwp to check. -kyykaarme (talk) 13:25, 17 January 2021 (UTC)

The issue has been fixed. kyykaarme (talk) 19:30, 17 January 2021 (UTC)

Case of campaigns targeting newcomers on wikis using Growth team features

Dear fellow CentralNotice admins,

The Growth team has deployed on several wikis (list) some features that help newcomers to make their first steps.

If the banner you create:

• targets one of the wikis where Growth features are deployed and
• the campaign invites people to create an account to participate to the event,

then you need an extra step to involve newcomers.

On these wikis, new users will automatically be redirected to their personal homepage. To help them finding back the campaign, you have to create or edit MediaWiki:Growth-homepage-banner locally for the time of the campaign.

This message uses wikitext. Be careful though to keep it short, and with a small image if you use one. The message can be something like "You want to participate to [name fo the campaign]. Click here!". Images used in the local message must have 52px as max size and be frameless.

This has been documented there.

If you have any question, please ping me!

Trizek (WMF) (talk) 19:01, 20 January 2021 (UTC)

Elaborate explanations on user preferences

On MediaWiki:centralnotice-user-prefs-intro this (subject) page is linked, by default from all wikis, if opening Special:Preferences #mw-prefsection-centralnotice-banners.

There are “types” or categories listed, but I fail to imagine which kind of issues will be filtered.

• MediaWiki:centralnotice-campaign-type-advocacy ― I do know wikt:en:advocacy and w:en:Advocacy but I wonder which kind of activities is meant in WMF context.
  • Both receivers of the banner and senders need a common understanding what is covered by that umbrella to set the preference accordingly.
  • Who is the group, who is arguing in favour of, or supporting something? A WMF campaign to influence the world where the pizza guy comes from? Or WMF internal procedures and structures?
• Same for MediaWiki:centralnotice-campaign-type-governance ― what is wikt:en:governance under conditions of a (global) WMF community?
• Both keywords need an enumeration of illustrative examples.
• My mental horizon is limited to article writing, events and photography, with fundraising out of area anyway.

Greetings --PerfektesChaos (talk) 15:17, 16 April 2021 (UTC)

Banners on cawiki

Last year, Catalan Wikipedia users held a request for comment to decide which banners should appear there. It was decided that only banners which have been translated into Catalan could appear if they were:

• led by, or had participation of, the Wikimedia projects in Catalan
• funding-related
• extraordinary health-related situations or emergencies

Nonetheless, we have been seeing a Wiki Loves Earth banner in English, which links to a website that is not available in Catalan. Could you please remove this banner from the Catalan Wikimedia projects? Thanks, --Townie (talk) 09:18, 6 May 2021 (UTC)

Campaign type

Hi,

Can we add information about the new campaign-type settings here as well? I'm working on a request for a Wikidata-event, but I'm not sure in which category I should link this one.

Best, Ciell (talk) 18:40, 4 June 2021 (UTC)
(ping Steinsplitter maybe?)

Hi, Yes. Maybe we should create a subpage and a a bit of text to explain what it is and then we add a link to this page? Or what do you suggest? :) Best --Steinsplitter (talk) 13:51, 5 June 2021 (UTC)

Depends on the amount of information I guess? Wouldn't just a new paragraph under Help:CentralNotice#Campaigns suffice? Just so we all do the same thing right? Ciell (talk) 18:58, 5 June 2021 (UTC)

Sounds reasonable :) --Steinsplitter (talk) 07:06, 6 June 2021 (UTC)

"2019-09-24_Maintenance..." campaigns

Tracked in Phabricator:
Task T284650

Hello fellow Central Notice admins

I just unarchived some banners that I plan to reuse for a read-only time. This campaign targets multiple wikis and languages, about 900 of them. Recreating the banners would be a real burden.

Campaigns starting with "2019-09-24_Maintenance..." will be reused. So do now worry if you see the wrong date on a enabled maintenance template. I would have renamed the banners but it is not possible.

Trizek (WMF) (talk) 14:19, 16 June 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for the notification, I'll keep my broom in the closet for a bit. ;)

Any idea when the maintenance will happen? Ciell (talk) 21:12, 16 June 2021 (UTC)

Trizek (WMF) can we archive all the maintenance messages again? Combined with al the singulair campaigns for WLE is is getting quite difficult for me to spot conflicts and coordinate different banner settings when complaints come in, because of the long list of (mostly finished) campaigns. Ciell (talk) 10:35, 1 July 2021 (UTC)

Ciell, thank you for the ping! I just archived the banners. I'll try to find a way to rename them, since we will certaine reuse them. Trizek (WMF) (talk) 11:18, 1 July 2021 (UTC)

Next steps for the Board of Trustees Voting opens

Hi there! What are the next steps for the banner request the Board of Trustees election? Thank you for answering my questions as this is my first time in the process. Best, JKoerner (WMF) (talk) 14:05, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

@Ciell: @DerHexer: @Ата: Could you provide any updates on this please? The time is getting closer and I want to resolve anything that needs to be resolved. Best, JKoerner (WMF) (talk) 23:15, 15 July 2021 (UTC)

@Ата: Since you approved the request, this means you will create the banner and the campaign?

@JKoerner (WMF): please fill out the rest of the request template: what languages, countries. Maybe give us as link to the previous campaign you are mentioning? Please also correct (I think?) the calendar for your request. Ciell (talk) 19:22, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

Hi Ата and Ciell, Thank you for moving this forward and for the guidance. I will look for what banners have been used in the past Board of Trustees elections. I am new to all of this so thank you for your patience. Best, JKoerner (WMF) (talk) 20:17, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

@Ciell, my apologies, I'm on wikibreak, and have scarce access to meta, I won't be able to set this campaign. Ата ^(talk) 08:52, 17 July 2021 (UTC)

@Ciell and JKoerner (WMF): This is the 2017 campaign, this one the 2017 banner (mobile). I think that both can be cloned and adjusted.
However, it does not seem to me that the banners will only be shown to eligible users. A JavaScript could be created which limits the distribution to editors with more than 320 edits or the like. Usually, this is provided by the proposer and not by CentralNotice administrators. I might be able to include a minimum editcount into the banner source code but the WMF should have way better coders than me which handles all requirements. Best, —DerHexer (Talk) 16:02, 17 July 2021 (UTC)

Hi there all and @DerHexer: The goal is just to clone and adjust as needed. We do not want to interfere with community practices regarding the election without discussion. I think the banner is clear and works well. Do you know if the banners have been limited to eligible voters in the past? I do not see anything hinting at that, but perhaps I am missing something. Best, JKoerner (WMF) (talk) 18:42, 20 July 2021 (UTC)

JKoerner (WMF) As everything evolves, so do the option for our banners. This might not have been possible back then, but it is now. Because there is no sense in showing the banner to users that are not eligible to vote (preventing overuse of the banner as much as possible is one of the key considerations for a campaign - we already have a lot of banners running most of the time), this would imho be a very good addition for this year. Ciell (talk) 14:20, 21 July 2021 (UTC)

Hey there, Ciell! I brought this back for the facilitation team to talk about. Because we are all Wikimedians, we had a lot to discuss and say. <smile>

Targeting logged in users make sense. The Central Notice settings can be configured for a specific edit count to target the right audience for the banner (eligible voters and we don't disturb others).

But not all eligible voters may be logged in all the time. People who heavily use tools or automated scripts may not be directly login to their accounts (this happens a lot on Wikidata). So we might be losing voters in such cases.

If we choose an open notice without any restriction, a lot of non-eligible voters will see it as well. They might get frustrated to come and see they are not eligible.

Suggestions from the facilitation team: set up two different campaigns for logged in and not logged in users. For logged-in users, the campaign diet (it is a configuration setting) to 100% and for not logged in the campaign diet can be 50% or so - this way we can get a balance between not losing eligible not logged users and less frustrated non-eligible voters. What are your thoughts on this? Best, JKoerner (WMF) (talk) 15:16, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

@Ciell: @DerHexer: @Ата: I am a little concerned because time is short on this. Perhaps we should make this year simple and do any targeted updates for 2022. What do you all need from me/the facilitators? Best, JKoerner (WMF) (talk) 20:09, 23 July 2021 (UTC)

Hey, I wanted to create campaign and banner tomorrow morning (CEST). Best, —DerHexer (Talk) 20:34, 23 July 2021 (UTC)

@JKoerner (WMF): Just FYI. —DerHexer (Talk) 20:35, 23 July 2021 (UTC)

Thanks so much, DerHexer. Please let me know if there is anything I need to do. Thanks for being so understanding and kind during this process. Best, JKoerner (WMF) (talk) 00:33, 24 July 2021 (UTC)

Continued here: CentralNotice/Request/2021 Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees Election —DerHexer (Talk) 11:57, 24 July 2021 (UTC)

Old Wikimania banner running?

I currently see in many wikis the old Wikimania banner that talks about program suggestions. Those are closed, I think? When you click the "Help us translate" link, you go to the newer, the Registration banner translation page. Shouldn't the new banner run in English, if there is no local translation? kyykaarme (talk) 14:16, 11 July 2021 (UTC)

Hi Kyykaarme thank you for noticing and alerting. It should be fixed now, could you please check? Ciell (talk) 14:51, 11 July 2021 (UTC)

@Ciell I wasn't able to get it to show up in my homewiki (Finnish WP), but I saw the new (English) version in dewiki and svwiki. But what happened to the translations? There was a German translation here, but now the translation link in the banner points to a new translation page [10]. kyykaarme (talk) 16:33, 11 July 2021 (UTC)

I've translated the Finnish banner twice, but I still see it in English. kyykaarme (talk) 07:30, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

Every translation needs to be double checked - a second user who approves of your translation. I did notices some strange behavior of the translation service in another campaign, so thank for bringing this to my (our) attention, I will reach out to the developers for this. Ciell (talk) 07:46, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

I guess I'll translate with my sock in the future and review with my main account. kyykaarme (talk) 09:26, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

Please don't take it personal Kyykaarme, it's only a safety measure. Ciell (talk) 11:18, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

I could be wrong, but from what I gather, the translation doesn't have to be reviewed (if that's what you mean by being double checked/approved) to be published, and being reviewed also doesn't necessarily mean that it's going to be published any time soon. Do you have any advice how someone like me (autopatrolled here and an admin in my homewiki) could get the translations published as soon as possible? kyykaarme (talk) 20:55, 24 July 2021 (UTC)

Hi Kyykaarme, I forwarded your question to the Translatewiki team. Do you have an account on Translatewiki? Ciell (talk) 09:03, 26 July 2021 (UTC)

Yes, I have the same username there. kyykaarme (talk) 09:34, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

Floating button

Can someone fix the BoT banners to not use z-index:999 on the .cnotice-button class ? It causes it to float on top of things like the Timeless skin floating bar, Notifications dropdown etc.. Not sure why it's there, but likely z-index:1 is plenty... unless someone knows why that line is there specifically —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:37, 18 August 2021 (UTC)

Banner agreement on Catalan Wikipedia

Hi,

The Catalan Wikipedia community decided to apply banners from the Central Notice only in the specific following cases and only if they have been fully translated into Catalan:

• Events and campaigns only promoted or with direct involvement from the Catalan community
• Donation campaigns
• Exceptional health and emergency notifications (in Catalan speaking countries or global)

There has been so far no respect from the Meta CentralNotice to this guideline since it was approved in 2020. An ongoing example is the Asian Month 2021 banner, for which in our main page we already have a direct link to our contest. However, this current banner overlaps our space in the main page and redirects to the general page on Meta (for which there is no Catalan version or translation), which is a no-go. Please, I ask this official consensus to be applied in every banner that is deployed in our language. Thank you. Xavi Dengra (MESSAGES) 09:21, 4 November 2021 (UTC)

This issue was previously notified here, but there was no answer. Let's hope we get something this time. --Townie (talk) 11:40, 4 November 2021 (UTC)

IMHO it is crucial to respect the decisions of every community, so please don't ignore this request. --Pau Colominas (talk) 18:04, 4 November 2021 (UTC)

I'll add more to the general topic once I got back from my photo project. However, did you notice that in the WAM banner, there is a link “Ajudeu-nos amb les traduccions!” which takes you the translation page where you can change both, text and link? Furthermore, your WAM contact should update Wikipedia Asian Month/CentralNotice. Best, —DerHexer (Talk) 00:30, 5 November 2021 (UTC)

Hi @DerHexer. Indeed, we noticed the link “Ajudeu-nos amb les traduccions!” and that was of course taken into account in our consensus. However, it is not that Catalan wikipedians (or from any other language) must re-adapt or re-link our works constantly by keeping always pending to -sometimes- intrusive or overlapping banners that appear all over our wiki, without even prior notifications in our Village Pumps. But instead, that from Meta it is finally taken into account that CentralNotice cannot act as a kind of ad deployment in wikis where official policies have come up as a result of debated community decisions. Thanks for the understanding. Xavi Dengra (MESSAGES) 23:02, 5 November 2021 (UTC)

Besides, taking the sentence Furthermore, your WAM contact should update Wikipedia Asian Month/CentralNotice you are presuming that the notifications of contests should be prioritised via a banner. Why this and who decides that the usage guidelines are adequate for simultaenous foreign wikis? That really contradicts the Goal 3. Be consensus-driven and respect our principles and all the Campaign implemenentation principles from the CentralNotice/Usage guidelines. In the case of WAM it is already announced quite big in our main page in Catalan. That's why we display our contests as a result of former consensus. By deploying an intrusive, overlapping banner that has not been notified, translated and adapted in other projects we just throw away volunteer work done by wikipedians in each linguistical context. As we found this such a bad practice and criteria behind CentralNotice was unclear, that's why we defined our own policy. Xavi Dengra (MESSAGES) 23:08, 5 November 2021 (UTC)

Request doesn't show up in automatically updated list of requests

I crated Central Notice banner request for fundraising on behalf of the Wikimedians of Slovakia User Group, however, it doesn't show up in the automatically updated list of requests on this site. Would you please help me how to ensure it shows up (not sure if I did something wrong or omitted some step).--Lišiak (talk) 21:45, 9 February 2022 (UTC)

@Martin Urbanec: Could you, please, lend a hand with this issue? It's quite urgent for us.--Lišiak (talk) 14:12, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

Hey @Lišiak, you need to add the banner to the list of requested campaigns . Just a friendly reminder: Considering this is a tax fundraising campaign, it will need WMF signoff (as Julia Brungs helpfully noted already in the campaign request itself). All the best, Martin Urbanec (talk) 14:16, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

Oh, I see. Thanks a lot! And sorry for my mess-up. Lišiak (talk) 14:41, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

No problem – errare humanum est. Martin Urbanec (talk) 14:47, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

Another request (for Russia) doesn't show up

This. The idea is only sketched, sorry, but seems quite urgent to me. Further details here. --Nicolabel (talk) 09:15, 8 March 2022 (UTC)

Global impression limit

Admittedly, this user story is somewhat niche, but it seems that I visit a differing variety of Wikimedia wikis regularly enough to become sufficiently bothered to write it! Because the 'diet' is not shared between wikis, I have been impressed by the same banner perhaps 100 times now. Sometimes, I see it a dozen times in a row when comparing category structures or template implementations between languages of Wikipedia. This is certainly a higher level of intrusiveness than intended for the campaign.

Another user previously mentioned this issue, and there is the stale task phab:T139684.

Currently the only remedy is to disable the CentralNotice category of the bothersome campaign, but it is then possible to forget to re-enable it once the campaign is over. Perhaps, for registered users, impression data can be stored on the server? Another measure to reduce intrusiveness would be a Don't show this again button (which I suppose would apply to individual banners when a campaign has multiple banners). This month is nearly over, but maybe future campaigns could consider users of multiple wikis when setting impression limits? I don't see an easy solution, though, since the vast majority of users do not regularly visit multiple wikis.

More remarks: The lead section of a page is the first thing I look for when it loads, so CentralNotice banners, which displace it unpredictably (with banner bump, too!), honestly could not be much more intrusive. Something I've noticed is that a less-than-100% traffic limit actually seems to increase the conspicuity of repeated banners by preventing the brain from becoming accustomed to skipping over them. This minimizes banner blindness, but naturally is also maximally irritating! ;)

 — wqnvlz (talk · contribs) 09:33, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

How to see who translated a banner?

E.g. the Dutch translation of the current CentralNotice contains a small mistake and I'd like to suggest an improvement to the translator. How do I find out who that is? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Bdijkstra (talk)

@Bdijkstra: What I would do is to search for a part of the translated text here on Meta (check all namespaces). That way you can find the translation and see the usernames in the history. Some banners have a direct link to the translation extension and you can find the history there as well. Pretty much anyone can do translations so you can do corrections yourself if you manage to find the right place. Then the translation still needs to be checked by someone before it gets published. In an urgent case I would use for example this talk page to ask if someone with appropriate userrights could fix the banner. -kyykaarme (talk) 10:51, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

@Kyykaarme: that's a bit counterintuitive, the admin interface seems to suggest that the texts are configured there. Anyway, I found 4 pages with the Dutch banner text, 3 of them protected. Are you saying that someone should notice my change on the non-protected page and update the 3 others? It's not urgent. bdijkstra (talk) 18:01, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

Hi @Bdijkstra, translations of CN banners happen through translatewiki: the meta pages kyykaarme is referring to are merely the local output of the translation in translatewiki. As far as I saw yesterday we do not have any banners running for Dutch at the moment, but if you could give me the topic of the banner, I can give you the direct link to the banner text on translatewiki where you can correct the translation. Ciell (talk) 12:02, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

This is about DesktopImprovements, which is still running for Dutch as far as I can tell. And specifically about this correction. If I had known the text would be on translatewiki, I would have corrected it there myself as I am an editor there. But now I cannot find the text there. bdijkstra (talk) 12:09, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

Yes, I've just found it. Here is where you can find all existing translations for this banner. I can push the translation to published for you if needed, feel free to ping me. Ciell (talk) 12:13, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

Ah, so it doesn't go through translatewiki but through the local Translate extension? Yes Ciell please push the change. bdijkstra (talk) 14:59, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

Done. I assumed this extension is linked to Translatewiki in some way (since the same dev is behind it as well), but I take your word on these kinds of technicalities bdijkstra. ;-) Ciell (talk) 16:13, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

Thanks. I hope the next time I will remember this, or that the documentation has improved such that it's easy to figure out how to proceed. bdijkstra (talk) 08:53, 12 April 2022 (UTC)

@bdijkstra Apologies, my reply was probably not all that helpful. But the search is how I would find a particular translation as I don't know how to find a translation fast in the Translation tool. I don't think it matters if you do the fix by using the tool or editing the wiki page directly, unless the page is protected, of course. It seems you edited the wiki page and it was the right translation. The challenge with central banners is that the translations can't go live right away (because anyone can translate) and banner admins don't understand most of the languages. There is a reviewing system, but smaller languages don't have enough users who are willing to do the translations in the first place, let alone that someone would come along and review translations/fixes made by others, and then the correction might just be left to linger. So it doesn't even have to be an urgent case: if you want the correction to go live soon, then probably your best chance is to ask for help on this page. kyykaarme (talk) 18:21, 13 April 2022 (UTC)

Question about campaign request

Hello @Ciell, DerHexer, Martin Urbanec, Romaine, Steinsplitter, and Ата:, I submitted my request following the explanation on the homepage but I'm not sure I did it right because the application does not appear with the others? Did I miss a step or is it normal because the addition on the homepage must be done by an admin? Thank you in advance for your help !Sarah Krichen WMFr (talk) 08:56, 21 April 2022 (UTC)

You will hear an answer to that in my presentation today. ;D Just kidding, it has to be added manually on the Request page by you. Best, —DerHexer (Talk) 09:04, 21 April 2022 (UTC)

Ohhh okay thanks, it's added ^^ Unfortunately I wasn't able to attend the presentation, will there be a new session? --Sarah Krichen WMFr (talk) 15:37, 21 April 2022 (UTC)

Hi again @Ciell, DerHexer, Martin Urbanec, Romaine, Steinsplitter, and Ата: Do you have any questions about my request? When do you think it can be processed? All the best, Sarah Krichen WMFr (talk) 17:06, 27 April 2022 (UTC)

Done, thanks for handling this DerHexer. Ciell (talk) 09:30, 2 May 2022 (UTC)

Banner not centralized in Vector 2022

The banner isn't always centralized when one uses the Vector 2022 layout. Here's what I see:

• WLM banner/Commons, the content is on the left and the whole right half of the banner is white space on my laptop screen (except for the X)
• Talk pages project banner/dewiki, same as above
• Board of Trustees election banner/enwiktionary is centralized: the text is in the middle and the other content is spaced out to the left and right ends of the banner

I don't know if the fix is in the banners or in the layout, and it's not a huge issue, but it does look a bit off when the banner text is not centralilzed on the page. kyykaarme (talk) 11:37, 2 September 2022 (UTC)

Hi @Kyykaarme, the Wikimedia developers use Phabricator for bug reports like this, could you please file your observation there? Bug reports are filed in a "task"; more directions on how to file a task in Phabricator can be found here. Ciell (talk) 15:38, 4 September 2022 (UTC)

@Ciell Thanks for the advice. I might look into it when I have more time. kyykaarme (talk) 14:54, 6 September 2022 (UTC)

Why is Wiki Loves Monuments ad so annoying

I have closed that notice like 100 times still shows up after ~5 mins. बडा काजी (talk) 18:18, 23 September 2022 (UTC)

How to block all of these annoying adverts and advocacy banners?

Tracked in Phabricator:
Task T331671

Tracked in Phabricator:
Task T332306

I already unchecked all boxes in user preferences :

Banner types to display: Advocacy Article writing Photography Event Fundraising Governance

But still I am forced to see endless banners. None of these banners should be allowed on wikipedia Bitternis (talk) 03:56, 4 March 2023 (UTC)

@Bitternis have you checked your global settings? unchecking banner in your local settings does not affect your settings in other wiki projects, which might be one reason why you still see some banners. Johannnes89 (talk) 07:01, 4 March 2023 (UTC)

Hello, thank you for the tip. I have unchecked all options in "global settings", I hope it will be effective. You would think it would be enough to change the settings in wikipedia. If global settings do indeed overwrite user preferences, then this should possibly be noted on the user preferences page. At least, all these advocacy banners show the real political nature of the organization behind wikipedia, and I hope it will stop people giving any money as a result. Bitternis (talk) 13:19, 4 March 2023 (UTC)

As with all settings, changing something in one wikipedia language version does not affect your settings in any other project. You always need to turn to global settings if you want changes to be effective everywhere. Johannnes89 (talk) 16:26, 4 March 2023 (UTC)

Unfortunately it did not work for me. I set both local and global settings set to not display the spam banners. They still appeared. Then I clicked "remove all global preferences" so that only local settings would apply. Banners still appear, not only once but many times on different pages.

It is very bad that even users who bother to make an account and find out how to change user preferences are still subjected to this political advocacy. What about the many more users who do not do this / do not know how to do this? It is disgraceful behaviour by Wikimedia. Bitternis (talk) 17:08, 4 March 2023 (UTC)

@Bitternis: Some banners will be displayed regardless of our user preferences as they're "special". However, you can add:

#siteNotice {display: none;}

to your global CSS page and you won't see any banners anymore. Hope that it helps. —MarcoAurelio (talk) 17:37, 4 March 2023 (UTC)

Or, just a random suggestion, a constant stream of spam banners could not be sent to everyone Bitternis (talk) 21:52, 4 March 2023 (UTC)

It's pretty likely that there are severe problems with banner display right now, please check phab:T331671. Best, —DerHexer (Talk) 21:36, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

Not the least of which is that, for people who edit across multiple projects and languages, we have to set Preferences at each and every individual project, or else use the exact same settings across all projects. --EncycloPetey (talk) 03:03, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

@EncycloPetey you could disable banners via global settings and then set a local exception in the settings of your main wiki(s) if you want to see some banners, but only in select projects. Johannnes89 (talk) 15:26, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

For someone who works on Wikidata, where I am coordinating works that exist in translations in multiple languages, and so have articles on multiple language Wikipedias, and multiple language Wikiosurce editions, as well as editing Wikispecies, and cross-linking that all-over, I visit a LOT of projects. Individually setting banners means I am likely to just turn them ALL off rather than try to individually have banners how on every relevant project individually. If the object of this change to banners was to make people want to turn them ALL off, then it has probably succeeded.

But I can't turn them all off, so I see banners on Meta, and have to close them, then I see the same banners on Commons, and have to close them again, then I see the same banners on Wikidata, and have to close them again, then I see the same banners on Wikisource, Wikispecies, and so forth. It is a LOT of noise and irritation to have to close the banners over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over. --EncycloPetey (talk) 00:01, 16 March 2023 (UTC)

I've filed task T332306 to request that we be allowed to deactivate "no type" banners. —MarcoAurelio (talk) 12:10, 16 March 2023 (UTC)

Kann vielleicht mal ein Tag vergehen ohne dass ich mit Bannern genervt werde, die ich schon wiederholt weggeklickt habe? Und ja, ich habe in meinen Einstellungen alle Kästchen abgewählt. Ihr übertreibt es echt in letzter Zeit. --Mapmarks (talk) 15:14, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

@Mapmarks danke für die Rückmeldung, der Fehler wird bereits in phab:T331671 untersucht und lässt sich hoffentlich bald beheben. Falls die überhöhe Anzeigezahl zu sehr nervt, kannst du bis zur Behebung den Tipp von MarcoAurelio befolgen und über deine globale CSS page sämtliche Banner abstellen. Johannnes89 (talk) 15:32, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

Countries / Regions

It seems possible technically to show a banner only for specific regions of a country. I know that it's not perfect. But I didn't find any campaign with that restriction. Is it still doable? Pyb en résidence (talk) 11:18, 7 April 2023 (UTC)

@Pyb en résidence there are quite a few geotargeted banners, see Special:CentralNotice, e.g. [11]. Johannnes89 (talk) 11:51, 7 April 2023 (UTC)

@Johannnes89 yes, for a specific country, but nothing for a specific region inside a country? Pyb en résidence (talk) 11:59, 7 April 2023 (UTC)

Ahh sorry I misunderstood your question. Don't think it has been used much, but there are some banners targeted at a specific region as well, e.g. [12] (Berlin) or [13] (Baden-Württemberg) Johannnes89 (talk) 12:12, 7 April 2023 (UTC)

@Pyb en résidence: It differs per country how detailed we can target. In general, the software relies on the ISO list of country codes, though the list has not always been kept up to date in our Mediawiki back-end. We can however (since I think 2 years now?) target individual states of the USA, which was a great improvement already.

It is important to realize that this kind of targeting is always a 'guesstimate' - it's very difficult to be exact in determining where an internet connection originates from. I think that is why we will not go down to deeper levels than simply the country and, in some cases, the state level.

I hope that makes sense. Ciell (talk) 16:33, 7 April 2023 (UTC)

Ah, I see that for some other countries we can indeed do the level per province as well - but still, it's a guess! Ciell (talk) 20:01, 7 April 2023 (UTC)

Cannot submit a banner translation

Here is the page I'm trying to use.

I am unable to submit a translation because the only button I'm given is to Publish, not Save, and since I'm not a translation admin, I wouldn't be publishing in the first place, nor can I anyway since I don't have permissions in CNBanner.

Am I doing something wrong here? Garrettw87 (talk) 03:00, 19 April 2023 (UTC)

No, it's a bug: phab:T308614. I've published your translation. Best, —DerHexer (Talk) 17:47, 19 April 2023 (UTC)

You were able to see what I was trying to submit?? If so that's great, but I just want to make sure you got the right text. It should be:

La Fondaĵo Vikimedio aktualigas niajn Kondiĉojn de Uzado.

Vi povas legi pri ĝin kaj sendi komentojn ĉi tie.

How should I go about this in the future? Garrettw87 (talk) 00:08, 20 April 2023 (UTC)

Fix in WLE-DE Banner needed

For the WLE-DE banner we copied the code of the WLM-DE banner and thereby forgot to change the logo for the mobile version. The file link https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9d/WLM_Logo_Deutschland_(Typo_rechts)_negativ.svg/216px-WLM_Logo_Deutschland_(Typo_rechts)_negativ.svg.png has to be replaced with https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/39/WLE_Austria_Logo_(text_right).svg/216px-WLE_Austria_Logo_(text_right).svg.png. Thanks! GPSLeo (talk) 07:01, 12 May 2023 (UTC)

Guidelines & Process not respected

Dear admins @DerHexer and Martin Urbanec:,

The organizers of the Wikimedia Morocco Writing Contest 2023 did not respect the guidelines and did not inform the Arabic community on the banner, as suggested in step 5. We, Arabic users, were surprised today with a discussion opened 2 hours before the banner appears in Arabic Wikipedia. The problem is not with the contest, just in that the guidelines were not respected.

There is ongoing discussion in Arabic Wikipedia on this subject.

Please note that the objective is not to remove the banner, this will harm the contest and is not good for anyone. But it is important to draw the attention to the importance of respecting the guidelines, if they will not respected, why do they exist in the first place?--Michel Bakni (talk) 19:53, 26 April 2023 (UTC)

Pinging admins again, @DerHexer and Martin Urbanec:, it has been more than a week with no answer. Could you please look into the case?--Michel Bakni (talk) 16:50, 6 May 2023 (UTC)

Hi. For this campaign there has also been a grant request which was open for discussions for a while. With the exact wording of the guidelines which has “should notify” and not “have to”, I didn't ask for another discussion because there had been a discussion about the campaign and it didn't seem controversial to me (and as you are saying, I was right with this interpretation) as it is good practice among CentralNotice administrators. Next time I will probably ask once more but we as CentralNotice administrators have some margin of discretion and you have probably notified the requester so that they will also be more transparent. So what else is needed here now? Best, —DerHexer (Talk) 18:56, 6 May 2023 (UTC) PS: This edit didn't trigger a ping, btw., because it didn't come along with a signature in the same edit. You should have got a message that your pings have failed. Please check. :)

@DerHexer and Martin Urbanec: Fair enough, but for the next time, please make sure that the process is respected, especially with mega-wikipedias.

@Reda benkhadra: kindly, be aware of this disscuion, and that you “should notify” the Arabic community next time.--Michel Bakni (talk) 11:16, 17 May 2023 (UTC)

cannot translate root message not in EN

I try to translate in FR -> https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Translate&group=Centralnotice-tgroup-10thAnniversary_Uiquipedia&language=fr&filter=%21translated&action=translate but I dont understand "Wikipedia n'asturianu celebra'l so 10u aniversariu," . The root msg should be EN. -- Christian 🇫🇷 FR (talk) 06:37, 18 August 2023 (UTC)

You know that this banner is 9 years old, don’t you? While CentralNotice indeed doesn’t support translating from any language other than English (in contrast to page translation, which could be configured to be aware that the original is Asturian rather than English), I see no point in fixing the banner years after it ran. —Tacsipacsi (talk) 10:29, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

Broken image in notice

@DerHexer/@Martin Urbanec/@Vermont: No idea where is the correct place for central notice admin actions. But whoever created the wmcz_wikigap_2024 banner (by copy-pasting from Czech Wiki Photo 2023, I guess), included https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/2/20/CloseWindow19x19.png as the image for the close button. But it either was wrong or became broken somehow in the meantime; anyway, it now leads to a 404 page, leaving the banner with an ugly blue-on-violet Hide text instead of the close button. The image URL might be changed to https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/20/CloseWindow19x19.png, I think. Mormegil (cs) 09:09, 27 March 2024 (UTC)

Hi @Mormegil, that's kinda strange, because it works in the preview. I have now change the link destination to the one on Commons as you suggested: does this solve the issue you see? Ciell (talk) 09:45, 27 March 2024 (UTC)

Yes, it seems to have helped, thanks. If it works for you, maybe you have the image cached in your browser? If you go directly to https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/2/20/CloseWindow19x19.png (and possibly force refresh?), do you see the image, or “File not found: /v1/AUTH_mw/wikipedia-foundation-local-public/2/20/CloseWindow19x19.png”? --Mormegil (cs) 10:04, 27 March 2024 (UTC)

Oh, and apparently, the same issue is at other templates as well: wikilovesfolklore2024_banner (which was shown for me just now) has the same problem. And possibly any other from [14] which are still running (no idea how to find them). I guess somebody has changed something recently regarding the Foundation wiki which made the image inaccessible? --Mormegil (cs) 10:54, 27 March 2024 (UTC)

I have now fixed the other one as well and requested a redirect to be put in place on the foundation wiki, otherwise I'll need to review all live scripts manually. Ciell (talk) 11:21, 27 March 2024 (UTC)

I fixed it for all running banners, and WMF temporarily restored the image on Foundation wiki while we decide on the best way to make sure this doesn't happen again. Thanks for flagging, @Mormegil! Ciell (talk) 11:55, 27 March 2024 (UTC)

Approval?

Dear @Martin Urbanec @Vermont,

Please forgive if I am too pushy! I can see there are other requests pending for approval as well and you obviously have a full calendar here in every sense of the phrase. Still I wanted to ask if the one I wrote (Coordinate Me) is alright. It may be a bit tricky with the 16 countries and the banners and landing pages in five different languages. So if there is something unclear I would love to clarify it in time. Best, Manfred Werner (WMAT) (talk) 18:14, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

Hi! I'm unfortunately too busy until 10 May. Vermont (🐿️—🏳️‍🌈) 20:00, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

Marking translations as "published"

Who marks translations as "published" in case of CN? I just realised that I couldn't mark Urdu translation despite being a TA. _signed, Aafi ^(talk) 15:49, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

*sigh* 'they' always assured me that TA can do this. Could it be it's only your own translation you cannot set to published, @Aafi? Ciell (talk) 16:27, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

no @Ciell, Its just "Mark ready" (that I seem to be allowed to do, whether my own translations or not) and not "published". It doesn't allow to click on published elsewhere for translations done by others as well. _signed, Aafi ^(talk) 09:06, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

Although the load shouldn't be on TA's to verify the translations and hit published button but they should be allowed to set their own translations as published. _signed, Aafi ^(talk) 09:07, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

I previously proposed a solution for the problem before in phabricator:T341414, I see you have engaged there before as well. Ciell (talk) 12:35, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

Dark mode

I don't know who to ask, but can we please stop doing this? It ruins the whole idea of the dark mode. — putnik 14:52, 30 July 2024 (UTC)

Currently most banners are created by copying (and slightly changing) previous banners or using one of the few templates and so far no one has adapted any banner/template to work in dark mode. As long as no volunteer finds the time to do so (or the WMF supports us with that) it likely won't change... Johannnes89 (talk) 16:24, 30 July 2024 (UTC)

Link in WMDE_challenge_2024 broken

The link in the WMDE_challenge_2024 banner is broken leading to a 404 page. Removing the "?campaign=WMDE_challenge_2024_banner" solves this. GPSLeo (talk) 06:23, 17 August 2024 (UTC)

Mentioned it at CentralNotice/Request/Wikipedia Challenge 2024. Looking at the banner code the string seems intended, so I don't want to mess with it myself. Johannnes89 (talk) 08:56, 17 August 2024 (UTC)

 This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. Johannnes89 (talk) 12:35, 24 August 2024 (UTC)

WMDE fundraising banners

@Kai Nissen (WMDE): you've got mail. if there's someone else I should be mailing about WMDE banners I can forward it. --Jeremyb (talk) 16:21, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

CentralNotice documentation

TL;DR: we need better documentation.

I recently suspected that API requests from a banner should be avoided. I followed the recent site-wide instability pretty closely and many other outages/incidents over the years. I also have experience configuring Varnish instances unrelated to MediaWiki. But someone wanted help with a banner and I couldn't find another way to get what they wanted.

So next I checked the banner guidelines and saw nothing about API usage. or even performance. Then I was still hesitant and asked for thoughts on the hackathon telegram channel. maybe not the best place to ask but I haven't been on IRC much recently. no one said not to do it. I was given stewvote as an precedent of API requests from a banner. That was logged-in only and mine would be anon too but mine would be cached in Varnish and the query wouldn't vary by user. and then banner was turned on and I flooded logs interrupting the weekly deployment train. That was not caused by the API request but now that more people noticed the API request there appears to be a consensus that it's not a good idea. (the same way I was leaning to begin with)

there's a decent chance this search matches all banners that have used the API. looks like none were for anons except maybe in a clock handler. insource:/[^A-Za-z0-9](mw\.(Foreign)?(Api|Rest)|api\.php)[^A-Za-z0-9]/ intitle:centralnotice

so anyway back to documentation:

• looks like a handful of stewvotes did API requests and a handful of other banners. we should document API expectations and definitely needs a link to mw:API:Etiquette.
• where are mixins configured? I found $wgCentralNoticeCampaignMixins in the extension but I couldn't see where that was set to anything e.g. not in CommonSettings § Banner notice system
• alterImpressionData() was commented as legacy 9 years ago. does that mean I need to use the legacy mixin to use it? is there any documentation about what to use instead?
• different but related failCampaign() (formerly cancelBanner()) also seems to be rather undocumented? a comment says call it from preBannerMixinHook() but I can't find anywhere on codesearch or in banners on meta (via special:search like above) that references that hook. (failCampaign seems most appropriate for my use case if it can be used from a banner. among other reasons I would want aborted impressions to not count against impression diet.)
• I found another banner using mw.centralNotice.bannerData.hideResult and mw.centralNotice.bannerData.hideReason and I copied that but I don't know if that actually accomplished anything.
• Banner editing page says Check each mixin that you want to be included during banner delivery. (See Banner mixins for more information.) and then there's no checkboxes. link goes to a page which redirects to add a (deprecated) suffix. mixins are now on campaigns instead of banners but it seems like there's no corresponding documentation page like there was for banner mixins.

That's it for now. now I'm off to file a bug. :) Jeremyb (talk) 04:41, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

also how do we get access to that impression data? WMDE recently had a banner link to a page with a form for the user to submit. so they should see how many opened the form and definitely can see how many filled the form. then based on form submission counts they ended the campaign a bit early.

I could see possibly having a similar use case for ending a campaign early but also other uses for this data. It can be used to give a better idea what the implications are for certain diet and other settings. --Jeremyb (talk) 16:40, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

If I'm not mistaken wikitech:Data Platform/Systems/Turnilo can be used to get impression data on CN banners. But I don’t think there are any volunteer CN admins with access?

I agree that we should either get access or at least get some data from the WMF to get more insights on our banner actions, currently banner impression diet is mostly based on past banners and gut feeling instead of actual numbers. Johannnes89 (talk) 17:26, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

What share of clients support compression a la Content-Encoding: gzip? what share of actual requests are served with compression? (I bet this last one could be had with public grafana data. working on some other things now, maybe later.) --Jeremyb (talk) 20:01, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

Wikifunctions and Incubator

Just noticed that there is no way to target Wikifunctions and Incubator via Special:CentralNotice. Does anyone know the reason? Both communities probably would like to recieve global banners such as the ones inviting to the Board or U4C election? Johannnes89 (talk) 12:42, 24 August 2024 (UTC)

I see a list of project names on https://noc.wikimedia.org/conf/highlight.php?file=CommonSettings.php (search for $wgNoticeProjects), probably that needs to be expanded? —Tacsipacsi (talk) 23:02, 24 August 2024 (UTC)

I guess incubator is included by "Wikimedia"? a banner is for sure running there now, I just got it. --Jeremyb (talk) 18:01, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

Indeed. From InitialiseSettings.php:

// For CentralNotice project pickers
'wgNoticeProject' => [
        'advisorywiki' => 'wikimedia',
        'apiportalwiki' => 'wikimedia',
        'default' => '$site',
        'commonswiki' => 'commons',
        'testcommonswiki' => 'commons',
        'foundationwiki' => 'wikimedia',
        'incubatorwiki' => 'wikimedia',
        'mediawikiwiki' => 'mediawiki',
        'metawiki' => 'meta',
        'outreachwiki' => 'wikimedia',
        'usabilitywiki' => 'wikimedia',
        'strategywiki' => 'wikimedia',
        'sourceswiki' => 'wikisource',
        'specieswiki' => 'wikispecies',
        'testwiki' => 'test',
        'wikimania' => 'wikimedia',
        'wikidata' => 'wikidata',
        'wikifunctionswiki' => 'wikifunctions',
        'wikivoyage' => 'wikivoyage',
],

So wikimedia seems to be a catch-all for small wikis that don’t deserve their own project? (On the other hand, Wikifunctions did get its own project here in 6b9f666a6b9f3a33f9d3c6c943203949c87efc68 but not in CommonSettings.php, so I fear it may be impossible to show banners there at all. That should definitely be fixed.) —Tacsipacsi (talk) 18:51, 22 September 2024 (UTC)