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Wikimedia Forum/Archives/2013-05

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New project launches demo on Meta

See WikiLang - here's the demo: WikiLang/Main Page (old version). PiRSquared17 (talk) 17:54, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

[en] Change to wiki account system and account renaming

Some accounts will soon be renamed due to a technical change that the developer team at Wikimedia are making. More details on Meta.

(Distributed via global message delivery 03:54, 30 April 2013 (UTC). Wrong page? Correct it here.)

Ah, I see...Can they, at least do a little bit of quirking to slightly change the results.--Apidium23 (talk) 20:15, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

You should tell "them" on the corresponding talk page on Meta instead of here I'd say. --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 08:49, 3 May 2013 (UTC)

Wikimedia Hong Kong's official statement regarding the recent decision of FDC

Wikimedia Hong Kong (WMHK) opposes the recent decision of the Funds Dissemination Committee (FDC) of Wikimedia Foundation. The FDC has rejected the proposal submitted by WMHK.


Wikimedia Hong Kong, the Hong Kong local chapter of Wikimedia Foundation, has the mission to promote Wikimedia projects and free cultures among local community in Hong Kong. WMHK achieves the mission through several outreach projects, which are funded by the grants from Wikimedia Foundation. The rejection of funding from the FDC makes WMHK having difficulties to continue achieving its mission.


We note that the FDC is concerned about WMHK’s internal governance, financial management capacity, and capacity of its volunteers to manage future projects. The FDC also mentioned that past activities do not sufficiently demonstrate a record of high impact. The problem is that WMHK is run by volunteers who have limited time. WMHK itself also has limited resources. To increase such capacities and impact mentioned by the FDC, WMHK has the necessity to recruit full-time staff in order to handle daily operation of WMHK as well as manage the projects. However, the recruitment cannot be done as WMHK lacks funding.


Another reason why FDC rejected WMHK’s proposal is that WMHK is out of compliance with its previous WMF grants. It is incorrect to say that as all the previous WMF grant projects were already submitted before the submission of the proposal to FDC. It is also incorrect to mention that WMHK mismanaging the previous funds, as there is no clear guideline on what to do if there is money left.


We believe the decision of the FDC is inappropriate. The decision is totally harmful for the development of WMHK, as well as the development of free culture in Hong Kong. The Wikimedia Foundation has the obligation to promote Wikimedia projects and free culture around the world. The rejection of funding makes the promotion of those projects in Hong Kong more difficult. The rejection of funding also makes the volunteers in WMHK think that their work is totally denied by the Wikimedia Foundation.

Rover Wong@WMHK (talk) 12:10, 4 May 2013 (UTC)

I want to translate to Turkish

Hey guys,

the Wiki of Freestyle Motocross is not available in Turkish. I want to translate it. Please advice how.

Regards from Turkey Khan

http://tr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vikipedi:%C4%B0lk_maddeniz probably has the information you need about creating a page on the Turkish Wikipedia. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:48, 5 May 2013 (UTC)

Requests for comment/Scope of Ombudsman Commission

Opened 6 May 2013. PiRSquared17 (talk) 13:07, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

IRC office hours about Flow on 9 May

In #wikimedia-office on 9 May, 1800-1900 UTC, Brandon Harris (senior designer at WMF) will lead a discussion of Flow, an upcoming change in the wiki discussion interface.

Flow involves replacing user talk pages.

He will be showing an interactive prototype so you can try it out, and we want to hear your feedback. Please come! If that time doesn't work, please let us know what times will work.

Please spread the word to your communities! Thanks. Sharihareswara (WMF) (talk) 21:52, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

I'll try to be there for the last twenty minutes, but may be able to attend the whole time. -- Ypnypn (talk) 22:16, 7 May 2013 (UTC)
I can't make it. Will the log be posted at IRC office hours#2013 as usual? WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:36, 8 May 2013 (UTC)
Meeting log available. I'll format it to put it into IRC office hours#2013 now. Sharihareswara (WMF) (talk) 19:17, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

Crosswiki SPAM

Sorry. Where can I denounce crosswiki spam? For example this: [1]. --. HombreDHojalata.T A L K 09:56, 10 May 2013 (UTC)

On SRG. --MF-W 11:23, 10 May 2013 (UTC)
I am going to use "denounce" more often now. Killiondude (talk) 18:02, 10 May 2013 (UTC)

A user should have only one user page, dashboard and dicussion page across all the projects.

Hi, I wish a user participating across many projects like commons.wikimedia.org, en.wikipedia.org, en.wikibooks.org, en.wikinews.org, en.wikiquote.org, en.wikisource.org, en.wikiversity.org etc could have only one user page, one dashboard and one dicussion page. if so, it would be easy to manage accounts. Shivajivarma (talk) 07:08, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

This is already on the list of planned improvements, but it will not happen any time soon. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:35, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

Dysfunctional toolserver.org

So let me get this straight. Wikipedia gets millions of dollars in donations and shows record surpluses, and yet they're not able to ensure basic long-term functionability of toolserver.org? [redacted] Everytime I click any coordinates, it's 50:50 that it won't work. Add to that the fact that in a Wikipedia article they're difficult to copy and you piss off a lot of people. And this is not a temporary problem, it's been happening for a long time now.--Warenford (talk) 12:33, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

Future of Toolserver - it's not going to be here very much longer. PiRSquared17 (talk) 17:40, 13 May 2013 (UTC)
Toolserver doesn't belong to the Wikimedia Foundation; it belongs to a separate German organization. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:36, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

Reusing content outside Wikimedia from Commons

There are the possibility to use content of commons in projects outside of Wikimedia. This is a good idea to get also for Wikimedia projects more images coming from regions. But I never found a possibility inside of Commons or in the strange Wiki to find out later a listing of used files in the wiki. So it's very hard to maintain the system. If there a renaming of file, nobody can find out it simple. Also there are not a control of success of a file, which is used outside of Wikimedia projects. Perhaps sombody knows a solution. -regards from Austria, where are used many hundreds of files in strange wikis - but nobody knows exactly more ;-) --Karl Gruber (talk) 14:16, 10 May 2013 (UTC)

This is a discussion that would more properly belong on Commons than Meta, I think. Perhaps try commons:Commons:Village Pump? As I understand it, you should be able to click through from the file to Commons, and if file has been deleted or renamed, you should see the log entry there explaining what happened. As for tracking uses of Commons files outside of the Wikimedia-verse, I suspect that it isn't possible, but the results would certainly be interesting if it is! – Philosopher Let us reason together. 01:03, 15 May 2013 (UTC)

Non-staff admins and crats lose their wmfwiki rights

See wmf:Special:Log/rights and wikimedia-l. Killiondude (talk) 00:25, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

Just saw this. There's more information at wmf:User talk:Gyoung#Users stripped of rights? – Philosopher Let us reason together. 01:06, 15 May 2013 (UTC)

For a couple of weeks now, the Min Nan Wiktionary has been missing its site logo (upper left-hand corner of every page). A comment on the Main Page talk page has gone unanswered. None of the admins have edited the wiki in the last 6 months. Anyone know what's going on over there? - dcljr (talk) 15:59, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

I wonder if it's related to the recent logo localization project(s)? See this for more on that. If so, perhaps User:Nemo would know how to help you? I'm afraid that I don't know how to help you myself. – Philosopher Let us reason together. 02:30, 15 May 2013 (UTC)
Hi. Thanks for posting here. In the future, please file a bug at <https://bugs.wikimedia.org> (cross-referencing with any relevant discussions, as necessary and appropriate) and someone will investigate the issue and see that it gets resolved (eventually). In this case, I've gone ahead and filed bugzilla:48494 for you. --MZMcBride (talk) 04:57, 15 May 2013 (UTC)

Translation marks

Hi all,
could someone set the translation marks in Step-by-step_chapter_creation_guide? Having done this, we could translate it easier with the translation tool. Thanks. --Jcornelius (talk) 17:23, 15 May 2013 (UTC)

Sure. Can you help copying all the old translations to the new tool, after it's enabled on the page? --Nemo 18:12, 15 May 2013 (UTC)
Of course. --Jcornelius (talk) 22:25, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

Translation of pages on wmfwiki

Could someone set translation marks in this year's WMF resolutions? –SJ talk  04:50, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

You should probably get staff to do that. Muahahaha. odder (talk) 10:50, 16 May 2013 (UTC)
And first of all you should get them to fix bugzilla:44871 (hoping there's someone tasked with approving such decisions)... --Nemo 11:16, 16 May 2013 (UTC)
In addition I'm waiting for a response from the communications staff with regards to how we want to handle translations on WMF wiki and what we want translated. I followed up with them earlier this week after my initial email in February but I'll chase them up again today. Thehelpfulone 12:02, 16 May 2013 (UTC)
As for the pages which have traditionally been translated here on Meta already, I believe that's superseded by recent facts. [2] [3] [4] --Nemo 12:33, 16 May 2013 (UTC)
Doesn't the WMF wiki drama only apply to adminship, not copying translations? Unless you want to use Special:Import on them, how does this change things? PiRSquared17 (talk) 02:57, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

For what it's worth, bugzilla:44871 was marked resolved/wontfix. --MZMcBride (talk) 04:03, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

About your kind message

Hello there!

Thank you for your polite message. Sorry because we delay on our answer.

We'd like to translate to another languages like english, chinese or arabian, some of our articles.Example: Eduardo Waghorn, Eduardo Valenzuela, Hugo Moraga...they are chilean song-writers. WE'd like and apreciate tp receive your guide about that, thank you very much for that!


Artistaschile

I see that you wrote several articles at the Spanish Wikipedia. This particular wiki (called "Meta") does not have encyclopedia articles. Instead, it talks about how to operate or coordinate the many wikis. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:52, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

Tech newsletter: Subscribe to receive the next editions

Latest Tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes.
Recent software changes
(Not all changes will affect you.)
Future software changes
  • The next version of MediaWiki (version 1.22/wmf5) will be added to Wikimedia sites starting on May 27. [15]
  • An updated version of Notifications, with new features and fewer bugs, will be added to the English Wikipedia on May 23. [16]
  • The final version of the "single user login" (which allows people to use the same username on different Wikimedia wikis) is moved to August 2013. The software will automatically rename some usernames. [17]
  • A new discussion system for MediaWiki, called "Flow", is under development. Wikimedia designers need your help to inform other users, test the prototype and discuss the interface. [18].
  • The Wikimedia Foundation is hiring people to act as links between software developers and users for VisualEditor. [19]
Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by Global message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Unsubscribe • 20:55, 20 May 2013 (UTC)
Important note: This is the first edition of the Tech News weekly summaries, which help you monitor recent software changes likely to impact you and your fellow Wikimedians.

If you want to continue to receive the next issues every week, please subscribe to the newsletter. You can subscribe your personal talk page and a community page like this one. The newsletter can be translated into your language.

You can also become a tech ambassador, help us write the next newsletter and tell us what to improve. Your feedback is greatly appreciated. guillom 20:55, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

My Proposal

Here is my proposal of a new wikimedia project here. I hope you'll accept. Cmach7 (talk) 22:40, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

What would the project be used for? Also, why doesn't the section header display? --Stefan2 (talk) 22:47, 20 May 2013 (UTC)
Everything from Wikipeida. Cmach7 (talk) 23:02, 20 May 2013 (UTC)
@Stefan2: Probably because of Guillaume's "Important note" box? PiRSquared17 (talk) 23:36, 20 May 2013 (UTC)
I see that the proposal has been deleted. --Stefan2 (talk) 12:39, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

Foundation statement regarding the situation in France

The WMF has posted a statement at the French Wikipedia regarding the situation in France. Those who are interested may wish to read it. Philippe (WMF) (talk) 02:54, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

Adding link to where now located w:fr:Wikipédia:Bulletin des administrateurs/Avril 2013#Wikimedia Foundation elaborates on recent demand by French governmental agency to remove Wikipedia content. — billinghurst sDrewth 00:48, 19 April 2013 (UTC)
"The situation in France", for those who didn't know, is that a French intelligence agency demanded the deletion of an article about a military radio station in central France. They assert that it contains classified secrets, but nobody can figure out what could possibly be a secret, since it's all been published before, e.g., in television interviews with the French military. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:07, 6 April 2013 (UTC)
Yes, their objections are very puzzling. It would be one thing if the issue were clear, as for example the situations with UK publicity bans associated with court cases. But here, it's utterly unclear what the French intelligence agency could even be objecting to. My speculation is that someone mistakenly thinks that something which has been declassified, is still classified. But since they won't say what the problem is, their mistaken thinking can't be corrected. -- Seth Finkelstein (talk) 18:14, 7 April 2013 (UTC)
  • Here's the quote from Wikimedia France.

    the DCRI summoned a Wikipedia volunteer in their offices on April 4th. This volunteer, which was one of those having access to the tools that allow the deletion of pages, was forced to delete the article while in the DCRI offices, on the understanding that he would have been held in custody and prosecuted if he did not comply. Under pressure, he had no other choice than to delete the article, despite explaining to the DCRI this is not how Wikipedia works. He warned the other sysops that trying to undelete the article would engage their responsability before the law.

    This volunteer had no link with that article, having never edited it and not even knowing of its existence before entering the DCRI offices. He was chosen and summoned because he was easily identifiable, given his regular promotional actions of Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects in France.
    — Christophe Henner, Wikimedia France

    This is certainly concerning. 64.40.54.111 21:06, 6 April 2013 (UTC)
This is a very serious threat. --NaBUru38 (talk) 16:06, 7 April 2013 (UTC)
Restored, with a note from WMF to contact them if anything like this happens again. The article in question has been restored and is also on 28 other wikis. The controversy caused it to be the most read article on the FR wiki. Note to anyone else who wants to make something disappear: That did not work out very well, and backfired hugely. Apteva (talk) 16:36, 22 May 2013 (UTC)
The en:Streisand effect (fr:Effet Streisand) ought to be required reading for the French security staff. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:16, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

Thread

How can I create the space "thread" to appear here (moving pages on hebrew wikivoyage). Thanks, Dekel E (talk) 13:58, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

Could you elaborate? I have no idea what you're requesting. --Jeremyb (talk) 17:34, 22 May 2013 (UTC)
I want to create a new space (as space paes, the categories and the templates). This space will be called 'Thread'. I'm sorry if you don't understand my English. Dekel E (talk) 07:58, 24 May 2013 (UTC)
space = namespace = he:עזרה:מרחב_שם? Is the "Talk" namespace enough, or do you want another? PiRSquared17 (talk) 15:00, 24 May 2013 (UTC)
You need to request this on Bugzilla. -- Ypnypn (talk) 16:09, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

Wikimedia Highlights from April 2013

Highlights from the Wikimedia Foundation Report and the Wikimedia engineering report for April 2013, with a selection of other important events from the Wikimedia movement
 
About · Subscribe/unsubscribe · Distributed via Global message delivery, 17:33, 26 May 2013 (UTC)

How to embed a Google Doc in a Meta.wikimedia page?

I've constructed the Wiki Project Med membership application form at Docs.google How do I embed it in a page here? The form says "Paste HTML to embed in website" and gives a string of HTML, but when I paste it into a wiki edit box here, nothing happens. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 13:16, 25 May 2013 (UTC)

I don't know whether that's possible (probably not), I would suggest just adding the external link pointing to the form.--Arnaugir (talk) 14:41, 25 May 2013 (UTC)
Allowing any and all HTML would pose a security threat (think of vandals and misuse). See Help:HTML_in_wikitext#Permitted_HTML for what's allowed. Killiondude (talk) 19:10, 25 May 2013 (UTC)
If we did permit arbitrary HTML then adding the google docs form embed would violate the site's privacy policy. So definitely not happening. --Jeremyb (talk) 13:59, 26 May 2013 (UTC)
Thanks all. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 03:25, 27 May 2013 (UTC)

Announcing the Meta-Wiki Flow Portal

Hello!

As many of you know, the Wikimedia Foundation is now actively engaged in designing a next-generation discussion and workflow system called Flow, initially slated to replace user talk pages. Flow is an ambitious project (on par with the VisualEditor) and will touch nearly every aspect of the Wikimedia experience.

We need your help and input. We have started a portal for information and discussion. You can find it on meta at Flow, at Wikipedia:Flow on the English Wikipedia and at Flow Portal on mediawiki.org. At the Flow portal, you can read about what we're doing and why, as well as play around with an interactive prototype.

We're desperately interested in your feedback and thoughts. There are things that we know, and things that we know that we don't know. But there are also things that we don't know that we don't know. And we want to reduce that lack of knowledge.

We will also be conducting additional office hours for a variety of timezones - as many as we need to - and will also be open to having conversations via Google hangouts and/or Skype as need be. I am always around on irc (freenode, username "jorm") and am willing to answer any questions you may have.--Jorm (WMF) (talk) 18:17, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

The link for English Wikipedia does not currently work: en:w:Wikipedia:Flow. I am here quite by accident. I rarely come to Meta, the wiki where ideas come to die. So I am unlikely to see your response, or the corrected link. Very few people look at the Meta watchlist for long.
But putting a discussion page on English Wikipedia is a good idea. Maybe put a working link to it at the top of the English Wikipedia watchlist. There are other requests for comment there, and so one for Flow would be seen by many, many people. --Timeshifter (talk) 02:16, 27 May 2013 (UTC)
This message was likely published to many wikis. Meta and Commons are a bit different in handling interwikis since they are multilingual. That is, en: points to the English Wikipedia already (on the two aforementioned sites) so the address it takes you to is w:Wikipedia:Flow. You want en:Wikipedia:Flow. Killiondude (talk) 02:48, 27 May 2013 (UTC)
"en:w:Wikipedia:Flow" is just a typo for w:en:Wikipedia:Flow. --MZMcBride (talk) 02:50, 27 May 2013 (UTC)
I fixed the link in Brandon's post. --MZMcBride (talk) 16:24, 28 May 2013 (UTC)

Adding content to a page currently listed for translation

Hi. I want to put a link to Wiki Project Med's member application form on our main page, Wiki Project Med, but it's presently being translated and has things like <!--T:8--> scattered throughout the source code.

Can someone explain how I do that, so that I don't mess up those translation tags (or do it for me)?

I want to make this the 4th section (after "Projects")

==Join==
Membership is free for active participants in another Wikimedia project (such as Wikipedia) or in an organisation whose mission aligns with Wiki Project Med's. Membership application form

--Anthonyhcole (talk) 18:40, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

Be careful. Anthony's text has been significantly altered, which is not correct. --Nnemo (talk) 19:06, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

save items on the page - polish

Jak można zapisać elementy na stronie na Wikimedia w sygnaturze? Sielpia

Może zapytaj na https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Kawiarenka ? --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 10:59, 30 May 2013 (UTC)

"Colognian"

I just noticed that the translation list template used for the 2013 elections, which I assume is the template used for everything else as well, interprets the language code "ksh" as Colognian. This is incorrect, the language is called Ripuarian. Please fix this.--Newbiepedian (talk) 23:15, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

The "ksh" ISO 639-3 code refers to Kölsch (i.e., Colognian). The Ripuarian language does not have any language code other than ksh (Kölsch dialect). See Language_issues#Ripuarian_.2F_K.C3.B6lsch. You can make a request to ISO to create a macrolanguage code for Ripuarian, or you can ask CLDR to set the name to "Ripuarian" (please wait for a response from User:Nemo bis before doing so). I don't think there's much we can do about this. Ask User:Purodha. PiRSquared17 (talk) 23:23, 2 May 2013 (UTC)
The above analysis is correct. There is no "Ripuarian language" as such - Ripuarian is a group of about 100+ dialects, which are in part only partially mutually comprehensible, in part practically incomprehensible. Thus the formally correct way to go was to ask SIL for an ISO 639 code for a Ripuarian macrolanguage, and probably at least a dozen of the more prominent and well documented Ripuarian languages. --Purodha Blissenbach (talk) 08:10, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

Move, not merge, Meta to the Commons

Please see discussion here:

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