Wikimedia Forum/Archives/2020-09

Technical Wishes Asking for Feedback on Template Prototypes

In the 2019 WMDE Technical Wishes Survey, "Make working with Templates easier" was chosen as the focus area for the project for 2019-2021. Over the course of this year, the Technical Wishes team presented various prototypes on this topic and further developed the ideas with the initial feedback.

The first phase of prototype development is now complete and the team would be delighted to receive feedback on the ideas. To make giving feedback easier, you can now also share your opinion on-wiki with just a few clicks: a QuickSurvey per prototype on the project page.

Feedback - whether via the QuickSurveys, or by posting on the talk page - is welcome! The earlier feedback is received, the better. It will be incorporated into the planning of features to be implemented, and technical implementation is planned to begin imminently.

This section was archived on a request by: DannyS712 (talk) 20:55, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

New project: Probabilistic Reasoning System utilizing Bayesian Networks

Let me introduce the already implemented and functional proof-of-concept PROVA Reasoning System. It is based on provareasoner.org I hope it will be a good addition to Wikimedia projects. WikiProva

This section was archived on a request by: DannyS712 (talk) 20:55, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

Start Wikipedia 20

Wikipedia turns 20 next year! We need to prepare! — The preceding unsigned comment was added by Another Wiki User the 2nd (talk)

This section was archived on a request by: DannyS712 (talk) 20:56, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

A new project idea

I have a idea for a new project: a free cookbook. I am surprised that something like that doesn't exist yet. SuperGoose007 (talk) 01:03, 3 September 2020 (UTC)

SuperGoose007 , it does. There is a section on this on Wikibooks. For English one see b:Cookbook:Table of Contents. But if you do want to sumbit a new project proposal, there is also a page for doing that: Proposals for new projects (or rather that seems to be the first step in doing that). --Base (talk) 01:08, 3 September 2020 (UTC)
This section was archived on a request by: DannyS712 (talk) 20:56, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

Wikipedia Kids

I have proposed a thing called WikiPedia Kids, a version of WikiPedia for children. See my proposal: Click here Eshaan011 (talk) 02:00, 7 September 2020 (UTC)

This section was archived on a request by: DannyS712 (talk) 20:56, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

Help! Do you know this name?

Help please, and sorry if I am in error. Are you familiar with this name: User:Operator873? See

I was terrified: It is 03:00 o clock here, and it started deleting pages from our Speedy-Delete Category: but we always check them. We do not know this name at all, never seen it. Terrifying userpage too. He claims he is global sysop. But i blocke it.Thank you and sorry again if it was my mistake. Sarri.greek (talk) 00:09, 16 September 2020 (UTC)

Hi! Yes it was me. No I wasn't hacked. But yes, I missed there were active sysops on the above project so I do apologize to the local sysops for stepping on their toes. Mia culpa. I'm standing ready to authenticate if required. Operator873talkconnect 00:12, 16 September 2020 (UTC)
(copy+paste from your talk)Hi there Sarri.greek! As a steward (verify at Stewards#List_of_current_stewards, or, alternatively, at my CentralAuth), elected on this year's election, I am able to confirm that Operator is not a hacker, and is indeed a Global Sysop (verify at Global_sysops#Users_with_global_sysop_access, or, alternatively, at his CentralAuth). If you have any questions, please let me know. Best regards, —Thanks for the fish! talkcontribs 00:12, 16 September 2020 (UTC)
Yes, thank you all for confirmation at User_talk:Sarri.greek#elwiktionary, and sorry to bother everyone. Beg your pardon. Sarri.greek (talk) 00:19, 16 September 2020 (UTC)
This section was archived on a request by: DannyS712 (talk) 20:56, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

New Wikipedia Library Collections Now Available (September 2020)


Hello Wikimedians!

 
The TWL owl says sign up today!

The Wikipedia Library is announcing new free, full-access, accounts to reliable sources as part of our research access program. You can sign up for new accounts and research materials on the Library Card platform:

Many other partnerships are listed on our partners page, including Adam Matthew, EBSCO, Gale and JSTOR.

A significant portion of our collection now no longer requires individual applications to access! Read more in our recent blog post.

Do better research and help expand the use of high quality references across Wikipedia projects!
--The Wikipedia Library Team 09:49, 3 September 2020 (UTC)

This message was delivered via the Global Mass Message tool to The Wikipedia Library Global Delivery List.

My new account password won't work

Hi. I changed my account password on Meta, but when I tried to use my new password, it kept saying it was incorrect. What should I do?

You should be able to reset your account if you have an email address set. Please do make sure that you are accessing your account, including checking the case used in the account name. Nothing else that anyone can do but you.  — billinghurst sDrewth 21:51, 19 September 2020 (UTC)
This section was archived on a request by:  — billinghurst sDrewth 21:55, 13 October 2020 (UTC)

Approval process for unsolicited global message delivery

Currently, anyone with the massmessage userright on Meta can send out messages to very large numbers of discussion pages and user talk pages on any Wikimedia wikis, without requiring any sort of approval process. Often, messages are sent out without sufficient proofreading, translations, or discussion on the content, the list of targets, and whether to send out the notice at all.

I propose the creation of an approvals process for unsolicited MassMessages sent from Meta. ("Unsolicited" as in, nobody specifically signed up to receive the category of messages. Regular newsletters and such would not require this.) It would require a certain amount of discussion time (say, minimum seven days), and translations could be gathered during the process for messages with targets in multiple languages. With translations gathered in advance, we could even have the option, for certain classes of messages, to only send out the message to languages that have translations available, thus avoiding clogging discussion areas with English-language text.

Users would not need the userright in order to start a request for a massmessage. (Perhaps even when the proposer has the userright, it would be best to have someone else actually send it out.)

Thoughts on this? --Yair rand (talk) 06:18, 14 September 2020 (UTC)

I doubt this would be helpful. Even for the CentralNotice discussions, there is often no definite conclusion, other than the CentralNotice admins' decision to no or not do something. The concept of "approval" is dubious, when nobody is tasked with the responsibility to approve something. There's a risk of adding a mere exercise in checkbox-ticking and rubberstamping which divorces the responsibility of the decision from that of the sender, making the MassMessage senders more ruthless.
I suspect it would be more effective to specify some guidelines of behaviour in the policy about the user right. Maybe something about respect for consensus and collegiality, in addition to the guidelines in MassMessage (which prominently features multilingualism)? We could then more easily start improvements simply by having people talk with the senders about their concerns; then if no agreement is found the issue can be escalated with a request for deflag by the usual processes.
Nemo 06:32, 14 September 2020 (UTC)
P.s.: Full disclosure, I have in the past sent rather large mass messages. Sometimes a clear precedent seemed to waive the need for discussion (e.g. thank you messages and invites to WLM participants); in others, I tried to have a discussion in the relevant wikis and to give people an opportunity to comment on the text.

Link to following Accessibility features on the top of home page

There should be an accessibility shortcuts to the following items on the top of the first and foremost page of all Wikis

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Multilingual_support , Font and rendering support, IPA, Braille etc.
, 2. https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Universal_Language_Selector
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Spoken_articles
4. Wiki markup language support. (What is a markup language?, what is the Wiki markup language, its List of codes, cheatsheet etc.)

This is a keen request. This should be added on top of all pages, as an accessibility hyperlink. Even this should be added in all other Wikis and as well as Wikipedia home pages. Thank you in advance.

RIT RAJARSHI (talk) 22:28, 13 September 2020 (UTC)

@RIT RAJARSHI: You are proposing a solution without defining any underlying problem to solve. See XY problem. Furthermore, no matter what the problem is, adding more and more and more and more links to pages that nobody will read or find anymore often is not a solution. --Malyacko (talk) 09:24, 15 September 2020 (UTC)
@Malyacko: Many mobile phones and some computers does not show these special characters. They render as some question marks or boxes etc. Font and rendering is the basic way of communication. It would be great to get some easily accessible resources about why some fonts render this way, and how to troubleshoot it. People will be able to easily find and download and install necessary fonts.

I "felt" it as important. I am sorry if it isn't acceptable by the community. RIT RAJARSHI (talk) 14:49, 15 September 2020 (UTC)

Help for complete new language request

I have opened Requests for new languages/Wikipedia Vai 2 , but I am unable to add in the page Requests for new languages. Can someone add the request? Thank you!!! --Gatto bianco (talk) 15:37, 16 September 2020 (UTC)

How much freedom do specific wikipedias have in choosing their policies?

E.g., if a particular wikipedia has consensus to disallow editing by unregistered users, is it within their remit to implement such a policy, or does Wikimedia have a global policy requiring that all wikipedias have the majority of articles editable by unregistered users? --5.22.135.112 13:16, 18 September 2020 (UTC)

The purpose and principles of WMF should guide the wikis in their policies and procedures. https://wikimediafoundation.org/

I doubt that a wiki choosing to limit editing to registered accounts would be allowed without a robust RFC process and a clear demonstrable reason and purpose for that action. Would never say never, though think that it would be hard to demonstrate that it is required, so many controls exist to manage problematic IP editing.

To other aspects of freedom there are already many implementations of rules and the basic premise is practicable and reasonable to allow the principles to be achieved.  — billinghurst sDrewth 01:09, 19 September 2020 (UTC)

Thank you billinghurst; where on https://wikimediafoundation.org/ (or elsewhere) can I find a list of policies and procedures that should apply for all wikipedias? --5.22.135.112 11:38, 19 September 2020 (UTC)
There is no such list. This wiki contains the base information about roles, and has the base requirements for roles. I was talking about the principles of the organisation.  — billinghurst sDrewth 13:34, 19 September 2020 (UTC)
There are of course the wmf:Terms of Use and wmf:Privacy policy  — billinghurst sDrewth 13:36, 19 September 2020 (UTC)
This topic might to be related to phab:T261133 which provides pointers to some policies and procedures. --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 18:51, 22 September 2020 (UTC)

Strong Preservation of Wikipedia (& Wikimedia) contents for the far future.

I am afraid my proposals may sound funny but I do not mean an overnight implementation. For a Noble project like Wikipedia (and Wikimedia) that revolutionised the world, we have to make the site as much indestructible as possible. This can be achieved by

1. Establishing more servers in more countries: Currently Wikipedia has servers in only few servers USA and one server in Singapore. If one or few of the server is affected by any accidental damage, it will be a huge loss on cumulative human knowledge. So we have to establish more servers in more countries and continents, designated for the purpose of backup.

2. Establish some satellite servers in collaboration with Space agencies.

3. Using more physically strong hardware architecture: Thicker and stronger materials, better mechanical architecture, better Building architecture, underground data vaults, Thick Iron-made data vaults.

4. Using an admixture of Hard Disk and Solid state drive. Keep complete backup in hard disks as well as keep complete backup in Solid state drives.


At any point of Earth's timeline; the servers may face: 1. Natural calamities/ disasters like Earthquake or fire etc, 2. Man-made disasters like war or bombing, 3. More unpredictable disasters like Meteorite. It is necessary to have a plant to think ahead protecting Wikipedia servers from physical threats (and implementing them, gradually).

With Regards and best wishes.

RIT RAJARSHI (talk) 22:01, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

@RIT RAJARSHI: For the list of datacenters, see wikitech:Clusters. Content gets mirrored. It sounds rather unlikely that five datacenters get completely broken at the very same time. I don't know what "satellite servers" are. --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 18:54, 22 September 2020 (UTC)
However, as the managing organization and its board are subject to US law, if the US government claimed that some of the data was being manipulated by an anti-US terrorist group, like the notorious "ANTIFA", and required some contents are classified and removed, they would be.
Surely that's correct? -- (talk) 19:08, 22 September 2020 (UTC)

Is there any policy anywhere that explicitly says anti-Semitism is bad?

I have encountered a Wikipedia editor who is intent on keeping an archaeological image and caption, which imply a connection to Judaism, in a seven-paragraph-long article which as far as I can tell is about a Christian religious practice that is pretty much exclusively Christian—its sources only mention Christianity, at least.

I think I've gone far beyond due diligence, explicitly citing a variety of Wikipedia policies and compiling a Wikidata entry on the subject of the image on Commons so that I'm certain I understand exactly what it is. However, rather than coming up with any sourcing to prove their desired material belongs in the article, this editor almost immediately claimed that some unspecified U.S. political interest is served by removing the content from the article, somehow connected to the recent death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg (who was Jewish.) They are now alleging that I'm trying to "cover my tracks".

I linked to Wikipedia's article on anti-Semitic canards and quite sternly told them not respond to Wikipedia content disputes concerning Judaism by vaguely alluding to political interests connected to high-level Jewish figures in government, because even un-knowingly repeating anti-Semitic canards like that is harmful.

I said this thinking that if they dismissed the importance of avoiding anti-Semitic tropes about Jews, I would at least be able to find some Wikipedia or Wikimedia policy at some level to cite before trying to get noticeboards and admins involved.

Unsurprisingly, instead of saying anything like "I'll be careful about implying anything like that when it comes to Judaism" this user has offered no policy basis or sourcing for their edits but is instead trying to fault my conduct in this matter. (Correction: while I was writing this they pasted in a circular reference, a web article which links to the Wikipedia article we're editing as proof of its claims.)

And so I have been frustrated and flabbergasted to discover that there doesn't seem to be anything I can cite, apart from some non-official Project-namespace pages, that specifically takes a position on anti-Semitism... I'm not sure I've even come across anything about racism in general being bad, just statements about treating others fairly along racial and ethic lines and avoiding insults or offense. According to Google the word "anti-Semitism" appears only once on wikimediafoundation.org, in a donation-related sub-page in which a donor is quoted saying that they learned something about WWII-era events by reading Wikipedia.

Even in the Universal Code of Conduct/Draft review I'm seeing here on meta the words "racism", "sexism", and "anti-Semitism" do not appear, though one line in it pledges that Wikimedia projects and spaces will "participate in a global community that will avoid bias and prejudice" and there's something about hate speech which arises in the course of vandalism. It all seems rather milquetoast and inadequate to the situation I'm in, which I am suspecting is not all that uncommon.

I'm not Jewish and hence am not personally offended by the invocation of anti-Semitic canards in my interactions with this other editor. I will continue condemning anti-Semitism and racism but under Wikimedia Foundation policy am I in the wrong here? Should I officially be taking a softer approach towards anti-Semitism in this case and not proactively challenge an editor the way I am doing, but sort of passively build a case involving insults and offensive remarks to others and insufficient avoidance of bias, sort of like with disruptive editing, to take to a noticeboard or an admin? --Struthious Bandersnatch 14:41, 24 September 2020 (UTC)

New feature: Watchlist Expiry

Hello, everyone! The Community Tech team will be releasing a new feature, which is called Watchlist Expiry. With this feature, you can optionally select to watch a page for a temporary period of time. This feature was developed in response to the #7 request from the 2019 Community Wishlist Survey. To find out when the feature will be enabled on your wiki, you can check out the release schedule on Meta-wiki. To test out the feature before deployment, you can visit Mediawiki.org or testwiki. Once the feature is enabled on your wiki, we invite you to share your feedback on the project talk page. For more information, you can refer to the documentation page. Thank you in advance, and we look forward to reading your feedback! --IFried (WMF) (talk) 15:31, 24 September 2020 (UTC)

Wikipedia landing page

Is there a place on Meta to discuss content and presentation of the Wikipedia's landing page https://www.wikipedia.org/ ? —⁠andrybak (talk) 15:59, 25 September 2020 (UTC)

In the past, that would have been Talk:Www.wikipedia.org template. The source code for www.wikipedia.org used to be updated via the Meta-Wiki page Www.wikipedia.org template, but now it's all handled via Phabricator/Gerrit. So you could try posting on the talk page, which seems to be inactive since 2016, but if it doesn't get any responses then take it to another venue (probably Phabricator). PiRSquared17 (talk) 16:05, 25 September 2020 (UTC)

I'm not very familiar with wiki web pages structure and how updates are tracking there. But it seems that on the Landing page small update required about the total number of articles created. And Portuguese link has to be replaced with Ukrainian, because for that moment number of created articles slightly bigger in Ukr version. Moreover, some script with the scheduled check inside could track updates about the count of articles or other numbers. If somebody experienced with such updates on the Landing page, please verify if my statement is correct. Максим Т17 (talk) 20:45, 25 September 2020 (UTC)

See phab:T128546/phab:T125528. I think it's updated automatically on a regular schedule. If not, then leave a comment on the Phabricator ticket asking for an update. PiRSquared17 (talk) 23:02, 25 September 2020 (UTC)

Will wikitext editing be restricted/abolished within the framework of the Desktop Improvements?

Hello. I'm an editor at Russian Wikipedia. Yesterday, the 25th of September, a thread dedicated to the Desktop Improvements has been started at our village pump. An IP-user has noticed that the first animated illustration to the Diff Wikimedia blog post about the Desktop Improvements has images displaying the interface for IP users with the edit button (i. e. the button you press to edit an article) circled, ans asked if they are going to leave the Visual Editor only. In addition, all the wikis in the illustration except the Russian Wikipedia have only one edit button.

On the MediaWiki, the FAQ page for the Visual Editor says that there are no plans to remove wikitext editing, while the FAQ page for the Desktop Improvements contains no mentions of wikitext editing. Besides, both pages say nothing about restricting wikitext editing.

Sorry if this is the wrong place, but could any Wikimedia Foundation employees and other official representatives make an official comment about the future of wikitext editing, removing or restricting which could force many Wikipedians which don't use the Visual Editor to "retrain" for it, and possibly negatively impact editor retention which the Wikimedia Foundation considers to be an important issue? --Синкретик (talk) 14:49, 26 September 2020 (UTC)

I'm not a WMF employee, but this is obviously not the case. You can see exactly what the Desktop Improvements look and feel like by going to French Wikipedia which has already switched over to the new system, and still has the "Modifier le code" button exactly where you'd expect it to be. I don't like the alleged "improvements" and think they make Wikipedia virtually unreadable on larger monitors, but they don't affect editing in any way.Iridescent (talk) 20:24, 26 September 2020 (UTC)
Excuse me, but why are you so optimistic? The Desktop Improvements are currently being tested until the end of next year, so the fact that there currently are no restrictions on wikitext editing doesn't mean they cannot be introduced in the future. That is why I'm asking for an official comment about the Wikimedia Foundation's plans. --Синкретик (talk) 08:53, 27 September 2020 (UTC)
+1. As far as I understand, there is currently only one "improvement" deployed on frwiki, namely the collapsible sidebar. 𝟙𝟤𝟯𝟺𝐪𝑤𝒆𝓇𝟷𝟮𝟥𝟜𝓺𝔴𝕖𝖗𝟰 (𝗍𝗮𝘭𝙠) 13:39, 28 September 2020 (UTC)
Hi @Синкретик: - thanks for your question! To confirm - we will not be removing the wikitext editor from the default experience on any of the wikis. The images that you refer to are just some sketches that we've made to illustrate a few of the changes we're introducing. Their goal is to begin conversation on the things that are changing (rather than the ones that are staying the same). This means that we might have overlooked some of the details on common functionality. These images are in no way a complete reflection of the final product (which is yet to be created, based on feedback and iteration). In fact, we are committed to keeping all of the functionality currently on the page. While some things will be moved around, no functionality will be removed. Please check out the principles section of our project page for more details. Hope this is helpful and let us know if you have other questions! OVasileva (WMF) (talk) 07:13, 29 September 2020 (UTC)
Hello. Thank you for your detailed reply! I have no further questions, and if I have others, I'll ask them at the appropriate pages. --Синкретик (talk) 15:37, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

Wiki of functions naming contest

20:53, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

Question on project policy pages for WMF pages on here

For these pages:

should something be added to include Beta Cluster wikis (mentioned on Wikimedia wikis) such as http://meta.wikimedia.beta.wmflabs.org and http://en.wikipedia.beta.wmflabs.org since they do not have the same SUL global login as on here and are, effectively, separate, sandbox wikis?

I'm checking because these pages are protected, and there may be some users who could think "It's not a Wikimedia project, more a testing sandbox, so I'm OK", when obviously, the wikis are for beta-testing.

What do you think of a paragraph to include these? --Chelston-temp-1 (talk) 09:05, 30 September 2020 (UTC)

CS1 module - Global

Hello everyone!

I'm an admin at SqWiki. I've been collaborating for a long time with Trappist the monk on EnWiki to deal with the needed periodical updates on the CS1 module in our project. During this time I've seen that a whole lot of Wikipedia-s (and other projects - I have implemented CS1 in SqQuote where I'm also an admin) rely on that particular module to deal with their citations. From my point of view, that's the "de facto software" regarding citations and references on Wikipedia. Can something be done to make it at least technically the de jure one too? What I mean is to have a global approach regarding it. With specific pages here in Meta coordinating and tracking updates in different projects, in different languages maybe even with global bots helping to solve some of the problems that are related to it (for the moment being, I have a pywikibot that serves exactly that purpose on SqWiki which could easily be globalized) or making the needed updates to the module (even creating the needed categories?). Global notifications regarding new updates could also benefit the idea. A global "fully de jure" approach could be the ideal solution, making the module part of the MediaWiki software itself and not having to manually/bot update it periodically site per site but maybe that's a thing for a distant future.

Even though Trappist has worked hard to make the update and internationalization process as easy as he can, updating it without ruining the whole code still feels very tedious and is usually followed by work disruption for 2-3 days in the projects where the update is happening. Another problem is that small wiki-s have it really hard to keep up with the technical side of updates and their specific language-related needs because of the lack of tech-savvy users and usually end up with a one-time-copy-pasted-outdated version of it OR they end up relying in one specific user which they burden to do everything related to it (if they're lucky enough to have that user).

I've talked with Trappist about the idea of having the module metafied and globally tracked in a more "official" way and he did agree with that but he didn't want to deal with the needed bureaucracies of setting up a project like this so I thought I could help with that.

What are your thoughts on the initiative, what are some points I may be overlooking in my logic above and would anyone want to be involved in the said initiative?

Please keep in mind that in the above written text, although I do talk about the module, I mean the system as a whole: templates, categories and help pages included.

Thank you in advance! :)

PS: I am aware of the Phabricator task about supporting global modules (and more). Maybe that would solve this problem and other ones similar to this. I just think we can find a "temporarily" (?) solution about this one given that we're talking about a crucial point regarding articles (references) and that that task isn't really moving forward technically that much. - Klein Muçi (talk) 12:27, 27 September 2020 (UTC)

Not getting any reply on this for quite some days now, as a last try I'm giving below some detailed info as a brainstorming tool for the aforementioned project.
The CS1 module (and its subpages) is the module responsible for references and citations in many different Wikis around the world. It is currently mostly maintained by user Trappist the Monk in EnWiki. Given that it is used in many different Wikis and that it requires periodical updates I think it would be wise to have a table of all the Wikis that use it here and track their progress. If they have the most updated version or no. The module requires many categories to run successfully. These and their interconnections on Wikidata can also be tracked here. We could also notify users en-masse globally when a new update is available and hopefully some of all that updating process can be made by a bot in the future.
Not wanting to press hard in something there might be no interest, this will be my last notice on this subject. :) - Klein Muçi (talk) 10:39, 5 October 2020 (UTC)

As I added my blog for inclusion in June and nothing happened at all since then - may some responsible person take a look. Thanks a lot! -- southpark (talk) 17:33, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

Just to keep this alive. I've seen in the meantime there was a next request. Or does anybody here happen to know who can add these blogs? Thanks! -- southpark (talk) 10:18, 9 October 2020 (UTC)