Thereza Mengs (WMDE)

Welcome!

Welcome to the Wikimedia world :) Lea Lacroix (WMDE) (talk) 10:00, 13 April 2023 (UTC)

Thank you Léa! Thereza Mengs (WMDE) (talk) 10:06, 13 April 2023 (UTC)

@Lea Lacroix (WMDE) test --Thereza Mengs (WMDE) (talk) 10:15, 13 April 2023 (UTC)

Belated translation (QID: geopoints)

Hello, I noted your request on the translation-l very late, and kindly see that you have Japanese translation handy as well. My appreciation to WMDE people, always initiating important features for the wikiSphere (: Arigatow, --Omotecho Omotecho (talk) 04:38, 16 December 2023 (UTC)

Thank you very much for your message @Omotecho. I really appreciate the translation and your kind words. The message has already been sent, but I just used your translation to update the announcement on the japanese wikis. Thank you for your help. Have a great day. Best wishes -- Thereza Mengs (WMDE) (talk) 11:30, 18 December 2023 (UTC)

You are so kind to ”catch up" and go extra miles; reading your messages in our mother tongue would motivate some to speak up... you know, Wikimedia communication pattern has been a inconvenient cookie cutter for some: I have sensed people read messages in en via machine translation, then fighting with their frustration as they are not confident about writing in English. Complaining to peers is only to distance more people from feedback I am afraid.

They are only steps away till they realize they can post in any language, ja or en, or de, if you like. (=

Let's see how many will jump over the fictional ditch or their illusion of communication barriers, and try writing out their feeds. I am thrilled to see. Cheers, have a golden mid-week, -- Omotecho (talk) 12:47, 18 December 2023 (UTC)

Improving reusing of references

Hi Thereza, hoping you won't mind me writing in English. I can't volunteer to be watched due to RL commitments, but I think one thing that would be useful for beginner/intermediate editors like me would be a way to easily reuse references that are called up by infoboxes. At the minute, that's almost impossible to do unless you know far more tech stuff than most people do. Redfiona99 (talk) 16:14, 14 January 2024 (UTC)

Hi @Redfiona99, thank you very much for your message and your comment. We understand your issue and have already become aware of it. We will consider your suggestion during the research of the project. If you know more people who are beginner or intermediate editors, please share the link to the questionnaire with them. It helps us a lot to find out how they work and which problems are particularly in the way so that we can find out what needs to be addressed. -- Thereza Mengs (WMDE) (talk) 10:23, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

Thereza Mengs (WMDE): I also saw your invitation for cooperation on (re)use of sources for citations on several of projects' talk pages. Because it had no date where I saw it, I came to here to see if it is a past project or still of interest - and I see it is still actual.

I see you're proficient in English so I use it here. I also can't volunteer to be watched (I don't edit regularly), but I am a possibly usefull mix of a novice (and also remembering well the problems at beginning) and proficient (had been profesional in informatics before retirement, and still understand formalization, normalization, relations etc. of concept and data modelling, even if it might lack what's new in last decade or so).

I had already tried (with limitted, not consistent success) the trans-language use of Wiki data, and can probably show examples that could be usefull to you

• what are problems I sensed at the beginning - I documented at least part of that with intention to help make instructions for newbies better, when I am good enough)
• what were the problems when I wanted to do data entry in WD (some things that I couldn't enter at first I could later, and for some of those I am not sure if I did it differently or the problem was elsewhere and got fixed).

There is a set - or better, several sets (or categories) of problems.

• One is patrollers (I think not many, but those might be very enthusiastic and prolific, possibly seeking recognition for number of edits) that routinely throw {{cn}}s into articles, and some can also remove good contents as per can be removed after a week or two, instead of trying to get citations themselves.
• Other is where there is no digitized or other easily and nonexpensively accessible sources. In sl a lot of data is not digitized, a lot did not get to the archives, a lot of data is not published in a peer reviewed way. I find that - at least in part - elsewhere too, but we could - and possibly should - discuss this elsewhere

I have just minutes ago been asked to look for digital data, and also help go through papers (certificates, clips from newspapers, some of plans of buildings and situations) about a builder and architect from my town. It seems a historian will be payed to make a monography about that by his grandchildren, and it will be a peer reviewed publication. But a lot of such - IMO as notable as this - info doesn't get money to be processed/researched by a professional, and doesn't get published in a way that is acceptable as W reliable source. For where there are no such sources, W has a systematic blind spot, of which we should be aware (and ware, because blind spots can be dangerous).

I have some articles I think should be created, but can't find reliable sources and can't legally create them; but this - with examples - should also probably be discussed elsewhere.

Another thing I had problem with, was with use of translation support SW. I tried several times (on both articles and notifications), by instructions, but didn't succeed yet, so I am pure newbie at that. For that (both for me to learn and you to spot problems) I immediately have two articles to be translated from de to sl (and when succesfull we can see where I failed, and where help for next newbie with similar problem could/should be provided.

Also recently I had some time and went through several articles where there were insufficient citation templates. In some cases all the citations in the article came through WD and infobox, and I looked into some and some of those directly address info that have cn templates for inline citations. I didn't yet had time to try to add those, but I think I left mention about those sources (and my intentions) on talkpage (so some enthusiastic cleaner doesn't remove contents that was mostly sound). I also spotted a part of article that is confused, but need to be gone through history of the article to see how it got in such state, before it can be corrected.

If any part of such info is useful to you, let me know where to discuss examples (probably a projects' pages and not here).

Side remark: I also see some interesting buttons below editing window while I write this; don't know for all of those what they are for, nor how to get them where I might see them also usefull; but that's also for another day, probably. Regards, --Marjan Tomki SI (talk) 12:32, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

Hi @Marjan Tomki SI thank you for your message! I will look into all the things you mention and will probably get back to you next week. Have a good day. Best wishes, -- Thereza Mengs (WMDE) (talk) 10:14, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

Hi @Marjan Tomki SI, thanks again for your detailed message and the time you took to write this down! Our current focus is on the reuse of references within an article, so your comments are all valuable, but unfortunately not relevant to our project.

However, I have forwarded your comments on trans-language use in wikidata to my colleagues, thanks for your input.

Regarding the edit versions: there are helpful tools such as RevisionSlider or WikiBlame that can make it easier for you to search for specific versions.

Last but not least, your information is of course all helpful. Perhaps you would like to subscribe to the general UX Testing Pool to take part in research projects? If there are any suitable research questions, you will be contacted and can share your experiences. I hope that I was able to help you a little anyway. Best wishes -- Thereza Mengs (WMDE) (talk) 12:21, 18 March 2024 (UTC)

I just had an example of such - reuse of a book for citations in an article, with quirks, too. <nowiki>{{|ill|Bogo Grafenauer|sl|display=y}} - ill template behaved funny, so... For sl:Bogo Grafenauer I had first to find paper book Grafenauerjev zbornik (ISBN 961-6182-14-5, ZRC SAZU) and wrestle with templates to make a named citation (it is used at several places for inline citations, and different parts of the book will be more when contents is added to the article).

I'll need to look into page's history, but I suppose a bot changed the citation so relevant part of the book can be accessed at Internet Archive.

The contents of the first relevant page of the book opens on click, and citation looked now verifiable online, but if I try to go to full screen to be able to read the page in reverts to the TOC and requires logging in. You (personally and the team) mightalso think a bit about;

1. how to let know a novice how to do such a citation, so that others don't need to go the same hassle as me trying to do it (improve help...)
2. how can (and should) I add particular page(s) within the interval of the book shown at click, relevant for different inline citations, so the verifier/reader need not read the whole section (even if the reader SW would let them)?

Regards and best wishes Marjan Tomki SI (talk) 13:33, 18 March 2024 (UTC)

User:Thereza_Mengs_(WMDE): I looked into example I described above. I confirm bot added links to the digitized book in the archive. The presented source by default included front and back pages and TOC, and just first page of interval of pages I gave in citation template.

If I wanted to make that source practically useful for verification, I would have to address every citation to the same book to just that one page, and viewer would open it. It seems it could be done, but with a lot of manual editing and no reuse of named citations. It's not only my (or editor) work, it's probably also inefficient regarding both computer time and data storage, so it probably shouldn't be encouraged for general use. Marjan Tomki SI (talk) 14:54, 18 March 2024 (UTC)