Wikimedia Forum/Archives/2013-07

This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Should low-notability species be allowed in Wikipedia?

We already have Wikispecies, which is the free directory of species. However, recently there are some Wikipedia editions using bots to create a huge amount of articles about low-notability species. (Please refer to Wikimedia News for details.) That is somehow abusing Wikipedia. Should we force such articles to be moved from Wikipedia to the corresponding lanaguage editions of Wikispecies? -- Kevinhksouth (talk) 13:48, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

I think that we should not let the wikis to have their bots if there is more than fifty percent of the articles is created by bots. --Gabrielchihonglee (talk) 16:39, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

Are you talking about ceb:/war:? I think Lsjbot does a good job with those articles, imho. However, all the info could be available on Wikidata. PiRSquared17 (talk) 16:44, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

Admin activity review

I would love some comments on the talk page of that page on whether it appropriately reflects what was decided in the RFC; and on whether Admin activity review/2013 describes a reasonable way to move forward. I'm thinking that some policy details might be refined later on, after stewards have run the first activity review, according to the experiences there about practicability etc. --MF-W 03:27, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

page under attack

Hello. On this page, [1] we can see that some people are changing the image despite not being allowed to do so under copyright. The individuals do not think that the image is right - and are therefore changing the image to their liking. But they are not allowed to do that under the copyright licensing. Can someone intervene? (184.175.15.30 17:39, 10 July 2013 (UTC)).

Did you understand the copyright license? It says, "Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document". Why do you believe that the copyright license prohibits modifying the file? The license directly gives permission for modifying the file. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:31, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

Lost in translation

I don't know where to say this, so I say it here.
I have many problems with the « new » translation tool (<translate>). It takes me hours to adapt my translations in this format, with poor results. You can see this on Fossé des genres and outreach:Wikipédien en résidence.
As I understand it for now, there's at least 2 problems with this tool :

It suppose that the English version is the "good" one and that all the others languages versions must follow it. I don't agree. Sometimes, others languages can create better version of pages (we can see this in many cases on Wikipedia),
It put all no-translated text in English in the others languages versions. Some English sections don't have to be translated (as an example, the sections "Sample job description" and "Details on specific residencies" on "Wikipedian in Residence" don't have to be translated).

I don't know for the others translators, but for me, it is very frustrating. It takes me at least 2 hours to translate this and I have lose it all in the new version. It also takes me one hour to try to fit my translation in the new tool, with mixed success.
From my PoV, this tool didn't respect the KISS principle. Simon Villeneuve 13:56, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

About migrating old translations to the new tool, you should complain to the translation administrator who sets up pages for translation by the new tool (in this case Vogone). Normally they should do the migration of old translations to the new system (or make it happen).

About your point 2: What is the problem? If some sections don't have to be translated, why should they not appear in English on the translated pages? --MF-W 22:02, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

Hi,
Thank you for the answers.
About point 2, I think that these sections should not appear in English in the translated pages because it cut the reading with irrelevant text in another language. A translated text "larded" with English isn't "fluid". If the reader want information in English, he or she only have to click on the English link.
This tool seems to have been created to "assure" that all the translated pages follow the same format that the one in English, as if the English version was "official". I don't know why it is this way. It's not the wiki way. The Foundation already have his own wiki for the top-down stuff. I think the others wikis must follow the same way as before : let each language set their pages and, when it's necessary, link them with the "official" Foundation position on the Wikimedia Foundation wiki. Simon Villeneuve 11:03, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

WeRelate

Please comment about the proposal for adopting the genealogy project WeRelate. -- Ypnypn (talk) 19:58, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

question concerning User:Wolfigisi and User:Emilie88

Why could user Emilie88 open an user account for User:Wolfigisi? She does have an account but it has been registered just recently. Looks a bit strange to me. Is there a reason for doing it on the german wiktionary? But the main question is: Why could she do it? 178.4.189.250 23:05, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

connection à mediawiki impossible

Bonjours àtous, j'ai installé mediawiki sur mon serveur d'hébergement mutualisé, l'installation c'est déroulée sans problème j'ai télécharge le fichier "LocoalSettings" que j'ai ensuite transféré dans le dossier contenant le site mais lorsque j'essaye d'y accéder via le web il y a ce message d'erreur qui s'affiche: "[3dc58a89] 2013-07-12 13:09:52: Fatal exception of type MWException" svp aidez-moi à résoudre ce problème.

cordialement, — The preceding unsigned comment was added by Sultanb2013 (talk) 13:49, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

Bonjour ! Je recommande que vous demandiez sur le "Support desk". Cdlt, PiRSquared17 (talk) 13:57, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

Minangkabau Wikipedia

Could someone help me work out why MinangKabau Wikipedia (created in ~January 2013) is not listed at [2], which is the data source for List of Wikipedias. ;-( John Vandenberg (talk) 09:47, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

mutante's wikistats is updated manually, but User:RobiH is unable to do so lately (the migration to wmflabs required a lot of changes). Code is at [3] but wikis are stored in the DB, IIRC. --Nemo 09:57, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. I'm not sure who @RobiH: is; a WMF employee? Minangkabau Wikipedia is also missing from stats.wikimedia.org. I hope that the statistics for the first six months of this project are able to be recreated, as min.wp is an example of a new wiki that is doing very well. Why arnt these tools using the same list as Special:SiteMatrix? Thankfully the dumps do exist. John Vandenberg (talk) 02:04, 8 July 2013 (UTC)

@Erik Zachte:, are you able to add Minang to stats.wikimedia.org? John Vandenberg (talk) 05:56, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

New Version of the Flow Prototype Released

A new version of the Flow Prototype has been released. Please read the release notes here. This version has many changes, not the least of which is that it approaches full functionality.--Jorm (WMF) (talk) 21:21, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

Start: Clicking on Save this for next time does not change the state of the checkbox. -- Rillke (talk) 22:26, 13 July 2013 (UTC)
Editing: Warning: You are about to reply to a topic that is older than 30 days. Consider starting a new topic rather than replying to this one. -- This is something the user receiving the message can config? I have no issue with users writing to old sections on my talk page. -- Rillke (talk) 22:32, 13 July 2013 (UTC)
Editing: Editing old posts does not show a formatting toolbar. Editing the source code seems not to be possible. Clicking the formatting toolbar icons does nothing. -- Rillke (talk) 22:38, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

translate

Should we translate this site to foreign languages?

We already have translation of many pages, e.g. Wikimedia Foundation, langcom, Stewards. Of course, "foreign" is relative. PiRSquared17 (talk) 16:19, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

Who finds the badge "Your edit was saved" useful?

appears after saving a page

I was wondering how to turn it off but obviously one can only hide it. Is there anyone, except the developers, who find it useful?

To quote from mw:Post-edit feedback:

The results from the test above showed that new Wikipedians find value in having a straightforward confirmation message after saving an edit; those who were told "your edit was saved" had a statistically significant increase in the volume of edits made, with no associated decrease in quality.

Obvioulsy, for brand new users, but as soon as you made 10 edits or so, you got how it works with MediaWiki? There is a lot measuring at m:Research:Post-edit feedback/PEF-2 but there is no attempt of an interpretation of this data. Why do the group-activity only differs after 50-100 edits? -- Rillke (talk) 19:10, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

The second test (PEF 2) was of a different message, and as we noted I think, there was no statistically significant difference. It was also a test of a different kind and frequency of messages though. Regarding the idea that we might turn if of automatically after a certain number of edits... this a usability anti-pattern. A confirmation message, like this one, should be consistently delivered in the same way unless the user actively gets rid of it. Automatically removing an edit save confirmation when it appeared always before is likely to cause confusion, whether you turn it off at 10, 50, or 100 edits. This feature is now in MediaWiki core, and cannot be turned off. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 19:59, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

The post-edit notice, whether in MediaWiki core or in a MediaWiki extension, can most certainly be effectively disabled by simply hiding it locally using a short snippet of CSS. :-) I don't think any Wikimedia wikis have done so yet, but any wiki community would be well within its rights to do so, should there be local consensus, and a number of users have disabled the notice for their personal account. --MZMcBride (talk) 20:29, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

A dismiss-permanently button would be nice. Self-deactivation after a given edit count is of course not an option. But actually I was curious whether here are people who find it useful and why they do. -- Rillke (talk) 21:30, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

@MZ: Turning it off != hiding, as I think Rillke pointed out. Yes a whole wiki could hide it in CSS, but it's not configurable. IMO, this is such a basic usability enhancement for wiki editing of any kind that adding a config variable to turn it off would be like a config to turn off the Cancel button. @Rillke: I agree the "dismiss permanently" would be the ideal way of enabling a preference to hide it. We haven't yet created a preference for this though, which that would depend on. I just checked again, and a simple userspace search shows that no more than 100 enwiki editors and fewer than 50 dewiki editors have disabled the message in their personal CSS. I don't personally consider that enough demand to add to our currently bloated list of preferences. I'm not ruling it out at all, I just don't think it's justified now. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 00:02, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

61 (gadget [no, didn't create this one]) +10 (user space) at Commons. A user option in the interface is not required, I think: After the user clicked the "X" three times (thus actively dismissed the message), ask them whether they "Would [you] like to turn the edit saved successfully message permanently off?" or try to integrate the message better into the UI. BTW, did you know that mw.notify() is also in core? It doesn't have this 3D effect and also accepts jQuery objects (including images). -- Rillke (talk) 08:22, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

Plus, I think it should be somewhere integrated and not look like a cloud floating in front of the page. -- Rillke (talk) 21:37, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

I'm not sure I'd call it useful or useless. I do find it aggravating that the post-edit notice continues to needlessly obscure the user interface in Monobook for a few seconds (bugzilla:41240).

Are you proposing any course of action regarding the post-edit notice? Given the ability to trivially disable the post-edit notice on a per-site or per-user basis, I'm not sure what more there is to discuss and debate. You may also be interested in bugzilla:16066. --MZMcBride (talk) 20:29, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

Yes, the thing is annoying but you just have to learn not to look at the top of the screen after saving. It's a good evolution exercise, now I never notice it even on the wikis where I didn't disable it. --Nemo 08:34, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

Its annoïng as a fly & completely useleß for me. & I'm too lazy 2 add ðe line 2 my global.css. Definitely ðere šould be a pref. since I dont want it 2 eat any of my .js resources. Base (talk) 09:18, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

annoying & bothering, -jkb- 10:12, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

No one who finds it useful? Don't hesitate to write here! I am still curious. Don't be ashamed. No one can and will condemn you if you like it. -- Rillke (talk) 12:00, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

I don't really care one way or the other normally, but I was a bit relieved to see it two days ago, when everything I did seemed to require an unusually long time to complete. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:14, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

I don't find it very useful myself, although I'm fine with it if it helps encourage new users to contribute. PiRSquared17 (talk) 00:53, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

I think it is awesome. Despite being only a small box, I think it is a very important confirmation for new users and it doesn't bother me at all. However, I like the idea that it could be easily disabled in user preferences if desired.—Teles «Talk to me ˱_{@ L C S}˲» 03:56, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

I agree with Teles' comment above. For me it's ok, but an option to disable it wouldn't harm.--Arnaugir (talk) 12:13, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

I find the confirmation useful. Sharihareswara (WMF) (talk) 17:29, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

wp:id makn linkfun

link to facebook and twitter

Hey, please fix this :) . Thank you, Conny (talk) 07:59, 17 July 2013 (UTC).

Hi. Sorry, I don't understand what you're saying. Please fix what?

For reference, this message is controlled by w:id:Menyunting Templat:AdvancedSiteNotices. --MZMcBride (talk) 14:19, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

I think MZMcBride meant id:Templat:AdvancedSiteNotices. ;) --Glaisher [talk] 16:16, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

Hah, indeed! Thanks. :-) --MZMcBride (talk) 16:18, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

Hello Conny, I understand your concern but last time I asked there was no clear rule about linking to unofficial Wikipedia/Wikimedia/<project> accounts on Twitter, Facebook or whatever from the sitenotice, sidebar or other (prominent) Wikimedia project spaces. (Personally, I don't like accounts owned and controlled by individuals.) You can see similar examples e.g. on ka.wiki and so many others that I don't remember. If you care, you may want to list them on Microblogging handles and Facebook pages.

It's conversely uncontroversial that projects can include features to share their own content on other websites, as happens on en.news and some Asian Wikipedia(s) I don't remember, though of course not everybody like those. --Nemo 17:16, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

Thank you Nemo, no clear rule, ok :( . Greetings, Conny (talk) 07:41, 18 July 2013 (UTC).

Wikimedia Highlights from June 2013

Highlights from the Wikimedia Foundation Report and the Wikimedia engineering report for June 2013, with a selection of other important events from the Wikimedia movement

About · Subscribe/unsubscribe · Distributed via Global message delivery, 16:39, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

Technical problem

Hello I do not know where to turn on the writing here since the night we disappeared buttons for adding interviki look here. thank you. -- Дагиров Умар (talk) 08:34, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

I don't know what caused the problem but now that the cewiki article has been added to the Wikidata entry, the interwiki lang links are now there. And "Edit links" link is also there now. --Glaisher [talk] 09:19, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

The problem was that the SiteLinkWidget was not enabled! Will shortly be fixed! :) ·addshore· ^{talk to me!} 09:49, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

Thank you. We have long since there is no button (Edit links) for chechen language. As I understand you've fixed . regards --Дагиров Умар (talk) 08:44, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

How to elect a Administrator in a project without a Bureaucrats?

In a project without Bureaucrats how the community could choose Administrators or Bureaucrats? --Sahaquiel9102 (talk) 20:32, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

You elect them the usual way and then request the additional user rights at Steward requests/Permissions. odder (talk) 20:34, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks! --Sahaquiel9102 (talk) 21:55, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

Single User Login finalisation

Hi! I have a question concerning the Single User Login finalisation, I hope this is the right place to ask.

I wanted to change my username globally, so some time ago I started to request changing my username on wikis where I had have an account. By now, on many wikis the renaming has been done, but there are still several wikis where it hasn't. So my question is, how will renaming/merging of local accounts work after the SUL finalisation? If I merge the remaining accounts with my old username in a global account, am I able to merge that whole global account with my other global account with my new username?

For example: I have usernames OldName and NewName, which are both global accounts. I have NewName local account on A-wiki, B-wiki and C-wiki, and I have OldName local account on C-wiki, D-wiki and E-wiki - is it possible to remove C-wiki from NewName, and move C-wiki, D-wiki and E-wiki from OldName to NewName?

Sanyi4 (talk) 18:34, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

In my opinion, the first place where I'd ask is the Discussion/talk page of the announcement link that you posted. --89.176.96.40 08:15, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

Pywikipedia is migrating to git

Hello, Sorry for English but It's very important for bot operators so I hope someone translates this. Pywikipedia is migrating to Git so after July 26, SVN checkouts won't be updated If you're using Pywikipedia you have to switch to git, otherwise you will use out-dated framework and your bot might not work properly. There is a manual for doing that and a blog post explaining about this change in non-technical language. If you have question feel free to ask in mw:Manual talk:Pywikipediabot/Gerrit, mailing list, or in the IRC channel. Best Amir (via Global message delivery). 13:31, 23 July 2013 (UTC)