Wikimedia Forum/Archives/2012-09

Help me

I have been 3 times extend global rollback permission. But currently I am blocked on enwiki because spamming and sock puppetry (currently I have 22 account). How to extend the global rollback again? And please lock globally my sockpuppets and blacklist temporarily links which I spammed on English Wikipedia. Thanks. --Dede2008 (talk) 13:36, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

Legal Fees Assistance Program

The Wikimedia Foundation is conducting a request for comment on a proposed policy that could provide legal assistance to users in specific support roles who are named in a legal complaint as a defendant because of those roles. We wanted to be sure that you were aware of this discussion and would have a chance to participate in that discussion. If this page is not the best place to publicize this request for comment, please help spread the word to those who may be interested in participating. (If you'd like to help translating the "request for comment", program policy or other pages and don't know how the translation system works, please come by my user talk page at User talk:Mdennis (WMF). I'll be happy to assist or to connect you with a volunteer who can assist.) Thank you! --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 15:30, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

Wikimedia Highlights from July 2012

Highlights from the Wikimedia Foundation Report and the Wikimedia engineering report for July 2012, with a selection of other important events from the Wikimedia movement
 
About · Subscribe/unsubscribe · Distributed via Global message delivery, 18:51, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

Transcluding old file versions

Some recent discussions on Commons (here) led to the idea that it would sometimes be useful to be able to transclude old versions of files. It should be possible to do this quite easily: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/ URLs can be treated as allowed external images, so that bare URLs pointing to these (no square brackets) will transclude the image instead of link to it. So for example https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/archive/a/a9/20060307155131!Example.jpg would render the image, not the URL (see also mw:Manual:$wgAllowExternalImages for an example of this in action). Bugzilla:40095 requests enabling this. The only downside I can see is a lack of control over image display (especially for size); this might be something to address. Are people on board with this? Rd232 (talk) 10:22, 8 September 2012 (UTC)

Wikidata is getting close to a first roll-out

 

(Apologies if this message isn't in your language.)

As some of you might already have heard Wikimedia Deutschland is working on a new Wikimedia project. It is called m:Wikidata. The goal of Wikidata is to become a central data repository for the Wikipedias, its sister projects and the world. In the future it will hold data like the number of inhabitants of a country, the date of birth of a famous person or the length of a river. These can then be used in all Wikimedia projects and outside of them.

The project is divided into three phases and "we are getting close to roll-out the first phase". The phases are:

  1. language links in the Wikipedias (making it possible to store the links between the language editions of an article just once in Wikidata instead of in each linked article)
  2. infoboxes (making it possible to store the data that is currently in infoboxes in one central place and share the data)
  3. lists (making it possible to create lists and similar things based on queries to Wikidata so they update automatically when new data is added or modified)

It'd be great if you could join us, test the demo version, provide feedback and take part in the development of Wikidata. You can find all the relevant information including an FAQ and sign-up links for our on-wiki newsletter on the Wikidata page on Meta.

For further discussions please use this talk page (if you are uncomfortable writing in English you can also write in your native language there) or point me to the place where your discussion is happening so I can answer there.

--Lydia Pintscher 13:29, 10 September 2012 (UTC)

Distributed via Global message delivery. (Wrong page? Fix here.)

I AM SO EXCITED MY CAPSLOCK IS STUCK. Thanks for the update, Lydia. SJ talk  05:57, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

cross-wiki page search?

This is probably a dumb question, but is there a way to see all the wikis on which a page with a certain title exists or has been created before? For example, suppose there are X wikis on which the page "Foo" exists, and Y other wikis on which "Foo" has been created but later deleted. I would like something that lists all X + Y wikis. You know, something like the SUL equivalent for pages. Thanks. --Ixfd64 (talk) 00:23, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

Can you give an example where this would be useful? The only web tool I can think of is the good old globalwpsearch. --Nemo 02:22, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

Copyleft enforcement is impossible on Wikimedia sites

One problem I have seen with Wikimedia sites is that parts of pages are often taken to create non-free materials illegally. For example, the AFP/Getty picture that was pretty much a screenshot of the Wikipedia main page (and thus a derivative work of our articles) but which was pretty much non-free. (The image was once featured on w:en:Copyfraud but was later huffed out of existence.)

This shows that the current system of users taking responsibility for enforcing their copyrights is impractical on a website as large as ours. On the other hand, contributors to the GNU project assign copyright to the Free Software Foundation so that the FSF can essentially sue anyone that tries to make proprietary software based on GNU.

I don't think we actually need to go that far because then we wouldn't have rights here. But we need a scheme where the copyright of any page that has been edited by more than five users can be enforced by any of those users, the Wikimedia Foundation, or any admin. --68.173.113.106 16:36, 15 September 2012 (UTC)

Petrusbarbygere

Banni en France pour avoir dénoncé le pouvoir des identitaires. On fait Quoi ? Jobertyann (talk) 00:50, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

Your account here doesn't seem to be connected to any other accounts. Were you banned at the French Wikipedia, or is this about another user or another project? WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:27, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

Proposal to add an API/Developer/Developer Hub link to the footer of Wikimedia wikis

Hi. There's a proposal to add an API/Developer/Developer Hub link to the footer of Wikimedia wikis. Further information is available here: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2012-September/063257.html>. Please comment on the relevant bug, as necessary and appropriate. --MZMcBride (talk) 01:08, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

Wikimedia Highlights from August 2012

Highlights from the Wikimedia Foundation Report and the Wikimedia engineering report for August 2012, with a selection of other important events from the Wikimedia movement
 
About · Subscribe/unsubscribe · Distributed via Global message delivery, 19:36, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

Proposal: How to Start a Movement / Revolution Wiki

SpringWiki – May I please hear your thoughts on this idea? --Michaeldsuarez (talk) 18:26, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

A problem on Thai Terms of Use page

Moved to Meta:Babel#A problem on Thai Terms of Use page --Aristitleism (talk) 18:07, 24 September 2012 (UTC)

I oppose tagging; you should too.

Tags such as on 2012 diplomatic missions attacks, 17:06, 24 September 2012 are like spray painting on subway cars, doodling in textbooks, soaping on store windows. The opinions they are putting forth are too obvious to be worth making the page look ugly.--Spectacles (talk) 21:59, 24 September 2012 (UTC)

The use of tags is an editorial decision by English Wikipedia. If you feel that tags shouldn't be used, then you should try to find consensus for this on English Wikipedia. This has nothing to do with Meta-Wiki. --Stefan2 (talk) 22:06, 24 September 2012 (UTC)

new Chapters noticeboard

I have started a Chapters' noticeboard, with an explanation of how it came to be. Cheers John Vandenberg (talk) 22:15, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

Question

I am listed to translate something from english to german. But now I have to do too much within Real Life and wish to delete my name in this list.
Where is this list to delete my name? Dr.cueppers (talk) 18:57, 27 September 2012 (UTC)
There's no unsuscribe button at Special:TranslatorSignup (it has been requested). But if you want to unsuscribe I suggest you to go that page and then uncheck all the checkboxes and set the three languages to undefined and then save the page. I think that'd be enough to stop the system from notifying you. Best regards. -- MarcoAurelio (talk) 19:01, 27 September 2012 (UTC)
If I set all three languages to "undefined", it is impossible to save the page! What now? Dr.cueppers (talk) 19:41, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

Toolserver services will soon be discontinued. See the page for information and add your feedback. Thanks, Nemo 09:24, 29 September 2012 (UTC)