MER-C

Welcome to Meta!

Hello MER-C, and welcome to the Wikimedia Meta-Wiki! This website is for coordinating and discussing all Wikimedia projects. You may find it useful to read our policy page. If you are interested in doing translations, visit Meta:Babylon. You can also leave a note on Meta:Babel or Meta:Metapub (please read the instructions at the top of the page before posting there). If you would like, feel free to ask me questions on my talk page. Happy editing!

--Herby ^{talk thyme} 09:43, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

Admin?

Hi MER-C. Ever thought of requesting admin rights to edit the spam blacklist yourself? Regards, Trijnstel_talk 21:01, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

I don't meet the adminship criteria. MER-C (talk) 01:44, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

Hmm, that's too bad. Can't we make an exception for active people on the spam blacklist like you? 'Cause we desperately need them imo. :) Trijnstel_talk 10:37, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

It might be possible with some sort of temp-adminship, with rights restricted to SBL. I think there's a precedence for that. Finn Rindahl (talk) 22:37, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

Top40 fails

Gday MER-C. When I try the linksearch tool for the top 40, I get

Request timed out
This is probably because you searched a domain with too many links, surveyed a user with too many image uploads or did not specify a long enough prefix.

I don't think that is just a hate of me, as it works for the top 20 okay. Thanks if you can look at it. — billinghurst sDrewth 06:58, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

1) Which domain did you search?

2) Google App Engine allows only 60s per request and if I can't make 80 complete linksearches (HTTP+HTTPS for each wiki) in that time then it dies. The usual cause is the WMF servers not being fast enough. MER-C (talk) 03:25, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

I cannot even get a top20 sites search done at the moment. :-( [1] and this isn't the only site for which it is failing for me. I would even be happy if it gave me a per wiki count, and the potential to drill down, my guess is that a count is not readily doable anyway. — billinghurst sDrewth 11:14, 16 April 2013 (UTC)

Works for me (3 links on en, nl: 1, es: 2, ru: 2, ja: 3, zh: 1, no: 2). I have looked at the logs, which weren't that informative. Time to blacklist some bots for not following robots.txt. MER-C (talk) 12:52, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

Done. Guess who's to blame? These idiots. MER-C (talk) 13:27, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

This should be fixed for real now. MER-C (talk) 12:50, 10 May 2013 (UTC)

Letter petitioning WMF to reverse recent decitions

The Wikimedia Foundation recently created a new feature, "superprotect" status. The purpose is to prevent pages from being edited by elected administrators -- but permitting WMF staff to edit them. It has been put to use in only one case: to protect the deployment of the Media Viewer software on German Wikipedia, in defiance of a clear decision of that community to disable the feature by default, unless users decide to enable it.

If you oppose these actions, please add your name to this letter. If you know non-Wikimedians who support our vision for the free sharing of knowledge, and would like to add their names to the list, please ask them to sign an identical version of the letter on change.org.

• Letter to Wikimedia Foundation: Superprotect and Media Viewer
• Letter on change.org

I'm notifying you because you participated in one of several relevant discussions. -Pete F (talk) 22:14, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

Superprotect letter update

Hi MER-C,

Along with more hundreds of others, you recently signed Letter to Wikimedia Foundation: Superprotect and Media Viewer, which I wrote.

Today, we have 562 signatures here on Meta, and another 61 on change.org, for a total of 623 signatures. Volunteers have fully translated it into 16 languages, and begun other translations. This far exceeds my most optimistic hopes about how many might sign the letter -- I would have been pleased to gain 200 siguatures -- but new signatures continue to come.

I believe this is a significant moment for Wikimedia and Wikipedia. Very rarely have I seen large numbers of people from multiple language and project communities speak with a unified voice. As I understand it, we are unified in a desire for the Wikimedia Foundation to respect -- in actions, in addition to words -- the will of the community who has built the Wikimedia projects for the benefit of all humanity. I strongly believe it is possible to innovate and improve our software tools, together with the Wikimedia Foundation. But substantial changes are necessary in order for us to work together smoothly and productively. I believe this letter identifies important actions that will strongly support those changes.

Have you been discussing these issues in your local community? If so, I think we would all appreciate an update (on the letter's talk page) about how those discussions have gone, and what people are saying. If not, please be bold and start a discussoin on your Village Pump, or in any other venue your project uses -- and then leave a summary of what kind of response you get on the letter's talk page.

Finally, what do you think is the right time, and the right way, to deliver this letter? We could set a date, or establish a threshold of signatures. I have some ideas, but am open to suggestions.

Thank you for your engagement on this issue, and please stay in touch. -Pete F (talk) 18:38, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

2015 Community Wishlist Survey

Thanks for helping to reply to proposals at 2015 Community Wishlist Survey. It is much appreciated! Ryan Kaldari (WMF) (talk) 22:45, 9 November 2015 (UTC)

Admin 2?

MER-C, as you are regularly adding requests to the meta-spam-blacklist (which often just get added without question), I would suggest that you try for a run for adminship here so you can just add them yourself. Your help there would be greatly appreciated. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 12:04, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

I'll give it some thought. MER-C (talk) 12:54, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

+1 :-) Syum90 (talk) 09:00, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

Harassment workshop

Greetings! You are receiving this message because, at some point in the past, you have participated in a discussion around the topic of harassment. The Support and Safety team is holding a series of consultations gathering feedback on the best potential solutions to the problem. The next stage is a workshop where we hope to narrow the focus to individual actionable ideas and explore how to bring some of these ideas to life.

• Please join us at the Harassment workshop!

Best regards, the Support and Safety team via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:35, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

Survey on content curation & review Inspire Campaign

Thanks for your participation in IdeaLab during the Inspire Campaign focused on improving content curation & review processes from February to March 2016. I'm interested in hearing your feedback about your participation during campaign, so if you're able, I invite you to complete this brief survey to describe how you contributed to the campaign and how you felt about participating.

Immediate results of the campaign can be found here. Please feel free to review them and let me know if you have any questions about the campaign or the survey. Thanks! I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 02:31, 26 May 2016 (UTC)

(Opt-out instructions)

IRC office hour for Wikimedia Foundation copyright strategy

Hi there - thank you for your participation in the copyright strategy discussion so far! In addition to contributing on-wiki, you may be interested in an upcoming IRC office hour the Wikimedia Foundation legal team is holding to discuss the copyright strategy. It will be on September 15 at 14:00 UTC. More information is available on Meta-Wiki. Thanks! Joe Sutherland (WMF) 00:48, 8 September 2016 (UTC)

Have you considered contributing to MediaWiki?

Hi,

I was looking through the community wishlist survey proposals and noticed you had created quite a few. I also know that you're a reasonably technical user - have you considered submitting patches to MediaWiki to fix your bugs? (that's actually how I got started - fixing AbuseFilter bugs). If you need some help, I'd be more than happy to help out. Legoktm (talk) 05:16, 10 November 2016 (UTC)

Chances are that I'll be learning PHP some day for an unrelated reason and get around to it then, but not for the foreseeable future. For now, I prefer Java servlets :) MER-C (talk) 12:45, 10 November 2016 (UTC)

Adjusted text

There has been a request to inform all who voted in the RfC about interlinking accounts involved with paid editing about the following adjustment in the "statement of issue" on Sept 18th, 2017.

It was clarified that this effort will help deal not only with impersonation of specific Wikipedians but also claims of being in good standing made by those who are not.[2] Thanks. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 19:59, 26 September 2017 (UTC)

Wishlist voting

Heya there! Re Special:Diff/17485797: If you intend on supporting, you must use the {{support}} (or similar) template or the vote won't be counted. I could not tell here whether or not you truly wanted to support, so I left it be. Just letting you know! Thanks for participating, MusikAnimal (WMF) (talk) 18:45, 30 November 2017 (UTC)

Global preferences ready for testing

Greetings,

I am contacting you because of your support for Global settings in the 2016 Community Tech Wishlist. Global preferences are now available for beta testing, and need your help before being released to the wikis.

1. Read over the help page, it is brief and has screenshots
2. Login or register an account on Beta English Wikipedia
3. Visit Global Preferences and try enabling and disabling some settings
4. Visit some other language and project test wikis such as English Wikivoyage, German Wiktionary, the Hebrew Wikipedia and test the settings
5. Report your findings, experience, bugs, and other observations

Once the team has feedback on design issues, bugs, and other things that might need worked out, the problems will be addressed and global preferences will be sent to the wikis.

Please let me know if you have any questions. Thanks! Keegan (WMF) (talk) 20:14, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

Next steps for the wish “confirmation prompt for the rollback link”

Hello, a while ago you participated in a feedback round about a proposal how accidental clicks on the rollback link could be avoided. Thanks again for sharing your thoughts and ideas!
Looking at the feedback and the rollback situation in different wikis, the development team decided how to approach this wish: As a default, most wikis won’t have a confirmation. But users who wish to have one, can enable it in their preferences, which will add a confirmation prompt to the rollback link on the diff page and on the list pages. The prompt won’t be a pop-up, but an inline prompt like for the thanks confirmation. You can read more about the planned solution and what influenced this decision on the project page. -- Best, Johanna Strodt (WMDE) (talk) 09:42, 16 July 2018 (UTC)

The Community Wishlist Survey

Hi,

You get this message because you’ve previously participated in the Community Wishlist Survey. I just wanted to let you know that this year’s survey is now open for proposals. You can suggest technical changes until 11 November: Community Wishlist Survey 2019.

You can vote from November 16 to November 30. To keep the number of messages at a reasonable level, I won’t send out a separate reminder to you about that. /Johan (WMF) 11:24, 30 October 2018 (UTC)

"Who Wrote That" project update

Hello. I'm reaching out to you as you participated in the 2017 Community Wishlist proposal for "Who Wrote That" project (previously known as "Blame Tool"). The Community Tech team is kicking things off on the project and we have an early-stage mockup available for you to look at. I invite you to follow that project page, where I will be posting periodic status updates for the project. You are also welcome to provide your thoughts on the talk page. Thank you. -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 22:57, 21 February 2019 (UTC)

Community Wishlist Survey 2021: Invitation

The 2021 Community Wishlist Survey is now open! This survey is the process where communities decide what the Community Tech team should work on over the next year. We encourage everyone to submit proposals until the deadline on 30 November, or comment on other proposals to help make them better. The communities will vote on the proposals between 8 December and 21 December.

The Community Tech team is focused on tools for experienced Wikimedia editors. You can write proposals in any language, and we will translate them for you. Thank you, and we look forward to seeing your proposals!

SGrabarczuk (WMF)

18:25, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

Community Wishlist Survey 2021

We invite all registered users to vote on the 2021 Community Wishlist Survey. You can vote from now until 21 December for as many different wishes as you want.

In the Survey, wishes for new and improved tools for experienced editors are collected. After the voting, we will do our best to grant your wishes. We will start with the most popular ones.

We, the Community Tech, are one of the Wikimedia Foundation teams. We create and improve editing and wiki moderation tools. What we work on is decided based on results of the Community Wishlist Survey. Once a year, you can submit wishes. After two weeks, you can vote on the ones that you're most interested in. Next, we choose wishes from the survey to work on. Some of the wishes may be granted by volunteer developers or other teams.

We are waiting for your votes. Thank you!

SGrabarczuk (WMF)

16:09, 11 December 2020 (UTC)

Deleting

Hi! I'm really enjoing that in creation by a blocked or banned user in violation of block or ban gives the right to delete page in en wiki without nomination or discussion. What rules come here to play? Thanks for giving some hits on implementing this principle in other wikis. --Anntinomy (talk) 19:10, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

en:WP:G5 and en:WP:BMB. G5 is present on a few wikis but not enough. MER-C 19:24, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

Moderator Tools

Hi MER-C! I saw your comments at Talk:Apple iCloud Private Relay about the need for better anti-abuse tooling. I'm starting work on a Moderator Tools project at WMF, through which we're aiming to build better tools for admins and patrollers. We're still early in that project, figuring out what our priorities should be, and want to give some priority to smaller Wikimedia projects who may not have the established processes or technical tools/contributors to operate effectively. That said, my hope is that whatever tooling we end up building or improving is beneficial to all Wikimedia projects. I wondered if you could elaborate on the biggest priorities you're seeing - what functionality is missing or underdeveloped? If you could have us start work on something tomorrow what would it be? Thanks, Samwalton9 (WMF) (talk) 09:00, 22 October 2021 (UTC)

UX, bulk operations (both GUI and API functionality) and CAPTCHA. Some of Twinkle shouldn't exist because should be part of MediaWiki instead. But yes, everything is bad. MER-C 11:55, 22 October 2021 (UTC)

@MER-C: Thanks for sharing your thoughts! I've been wondering the same thing about Twinkle - which parts do you think should just be MediaWiki features? Samwalton9 (WMF) (talk) 12:39, 25 October 2021 (UTC)

The UX, add "delete redirects to this page" and "delete subpages" to the delete form default ticked, batch deletion/nuke that deletes things properly i.e. deletes the associated talk page and redirects, batch undeletion, batch (un)blocking, batch protection. None of the wiki-specific stuff and all part of core, of course. I also want the UX of the undelete search to be much better, as well as this functionality being made available via the API so I can detect spammers better. MER-C 16:42, 25 October 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for noticing my investigation on Goo3 and Wikibusiness

I'd like to thank you and ask, whether I can help you right now? --Arsen Petrov (talk) 08:32, 5 November 2021 (UTC) I'm not sure if Goo3 still work for wikibusiness farm, however their previous cooperation is quite obvious. Unfortunately, no one has desire or attention to put the puzzles together. I tend to think that Goo3 works for himself and not so noticeably as it was 1-3 years ago. --Arsen Petrov (talk) 08:35, 5 November 2021 (UTC)

Bodiadub, СтереПашка, МаринаОльховик

Hi, thanks for blocking СтереПашка as a sock puppet of Bodiadub. My check of this account showed that user МаринаОльховик is another sock puppet with identical technical data. Goo3 (talk) 18:24, 7 July 2022 (UTC)

Thanks. @Goo3:: Do you have anything to say about the unblocked accounts at Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Bodiadub and Wiokewa (CA · xwiki · sc · COIBot report), Javierel (CA · xwiki · sc · COIBot report), Morpho achilles (CA · xwiki · sc · COIBot report) and Korozia (CA · xwiki · sc · COIBot report)? MER-C 18:46, 7 July 2022 (UTC)

Hey @MER-C, none of them has any edits in the Ukr Wiki so I can't say anything regarding them. What was the reason for them to be firstly blocked and then unblocked? Sorry but the link you've provided won't be found Goo3 (talk) 11:24, 12 July 2022 (UTC)

I never blocked the accounts at the SPI apart from the three listed in the comments. MER-C 19:48, 12 July 2022 (UTC)

@MER-C, I see, thanks. Could you block МаринаОльховик and СтереПашка as sock puppets plase? Goo3 (talk) 12:36, 18 July 2022 (UTC)

MаринаОльховик never created an account on en.wp, so I can't block them. I already blocked СтереПашка. Both accounts are globally locked, which also makes it a moot point. MER-C 19:24, 18 July 2022 (UTC)

Commons

Hi, maybe you have a word to add for VTRS team here, to raise their awareness, hopefully reduce abusing Anntinomy (talk) 12:20, 27 January 2024 (UTC)

Reminder to vote now to ratify the Wikimedia Movement Charter

You can find this message translated into additional languages on Meta-wiki. Please help translate to your language

Dear Wikimedian,

You are receiving this message because you previously voted in the 2021 Movement Charter Drafting Committee (MCDC) election.

This is a reminder that if you have not voted yet on the ratification of the final Wikimedia Movement Charter draft, please do so by July 9, 2024 at 23:59 UTC.

You can read the final text of the Wikimedia Movement Charter in your language. Following that, check on whether you are eligible to vote. If you are eligible, cast your vote on SecurePoll.

On behalf of the Charter Electoral Commission,

RamzyM (WMF) 15:24, 5 July 2024 (UTC)