Wikimedia Forum/Archives/2021-05

New Project Proposal - Wikipragmatica

Hello everyone. Noob here. I've submitted a new project proposal that re-indexes Wikipedia, but also does a whole bunch of other nifty stuff. I look forward to our discussion. I've included the description below.

Wikipragmatica

This proposal presents a paraphrase graph database extension to Wikidata. The intent is to create a directed graph of paraphrase nodes and retained context edges initially of Wikipedia content, but ultimately Internet wide. Initially focusing on unstructured data (text), the vision is to be media agnostic harvesting sentence equivalent information. This foundational construct is intended to support a wide range of uses from indexing to misinformation detection to knowledge representation to enterprise work management. — The preceding unsigned comment was added by DougClark55 (talk) 22:44, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

This section was archived on a request by:  — billinghurst sDrewth 00:30, 16 May 2021 (UTC)

Project proposal - Feedback - Youth in IG WikiContest

Hi everyone. First of all, let me introduce myself. My name is Pedro Lana, I'm a member of the board of Youth SIG (also known as the Youth Observatory, a global chapter of Internet Society, which is not incorporated as a separate entity), and of Creative Commons Brazil. I've worked with people from the Wikimedia during these last years, but I myself am not familiar with the community, so I hope I am posting this in the right place.

The Youth Observatory promotes an open perspective of Internet Governance, but recently we noticed that most of our members didn't participate in other communities that we consider essential to promote a more open and inclusive cultural environment. We plan to change this by encouraging our target audience (young people in the internet governance ecosystem) to participate in projects aimed at strengthening an open internet in its multiple aspects.

Our rapid grant proposal for a Contest named "Youth in IG WikiContest" is one of our first steps in this plan, and I would like your feedback to advise us on what we can still improve or ideas for better engagement. Other ideas to engage existing communities in Wikimedia projects are also welcome!

The Youth Observatory also remains available if anyone is interested in our support or partnership in something related to youth in Internet Governance.

Cheers,

This section was archived on a request by:  — billinghurst sDrewth 00:30, 16 May 2021 (UTC)

Closing the gap to and between the base communities

This discussion has been moved to: Requests for comment/Closing the gap to and between the base communities
The following discussion has been closed by Felipe da Fonseca. Please do not modify it.
Related discussions have been opened on the following wikis (translate and open this discussion in your home wiki): Wikipedia.pt English Wikipedia Deutschsprachige Wikipedia Proposal Problem: abysmal distance between Meta and Base Communities What we have today is a star design with Meta in center What we have today is a Meta formed by users who have migrated from their base communities (home wikis) and formed a new community, who decide and impose these decisions on the base communities in a top-down model of governance. In this model, the design of the relationship between Meta and the base communities is a star, with Meta at the center, where each base community has a relationship only with Meta. In the image on the right, Meta is represented by the central green dot. Consequences The negative consequences of these models are several. To name a few: a) the decisions do not reflect the opinion of the totality of the communities, but only of those who form the community on Meta; b) editors and users who do not have the full confidence of their base communities, but possess that of the Meta community, end up deciding and imposing their decisions on the base communities; c) sometimes decisions of the base community are administratively contested by Meta (formed by outsiders in relation to the base communities), overruling the decisions of the base community; d) several editors that don't frequent Meta (for various reasons, such as language, difference of political and technical structure, lack of time and others) end up not participating in the decisions on Meta; e) there is no knowledge and recognition between communities, since they don't interact other than through Meta; f) etc. Examples 1) Concerns about the fundraising banner, which is not at all harmonious with the Brazilian (Portuguese? Others?) society (therefore probably not very effective), and not even with the Wikipedia.pt community (see the discussion at: here) (with participation of: Ppena (WMF) and JBrungs (WMF)); 2) Serious safety problems caused by deficient or non-existent guidelines on how to behave to protect oneself from lawsuits and other abuses (no response from AKeton (WMF), Jrogers (WMF) and JSutherland (WMF) on the topic). Lack of guidelines that should have a clear line for users to access the protections provided by WMF (discussion of the topic can be found at Legal guidelines and intervention. 3) etc. Suggestion: Meta as communication channel and organizer What's proposed is a Mesh design organized by Meta A modification in the function and structure of the Meta wiki is proposed, changing the communication structure between Meta and base communities from Star to Mesh, where the Meta does not function as a centralizer and separate decision maker, but as a communication channel and organizer of discussions. In the image on the right, Meta is not symbolized by any points, but by the edges connecting the points. Meta, in this sense, does not form a separate community, but forms the base communities' communication channels. In practice In practice, this would work like this: every important decision (for example on finance and security) would have to open a page on Meta and immediately, without fail, open a page on the largest Wikimedia communities (x registered editors or other criteria), and could be taken to others depending on the interest and willingness of local users. In this way, in addition to discussions on Meta itself, discussions would take place in parallel on various communities forums and in various languages simultaneously. Furthermore, there will be a link in each of these discussions to all other discussions, so that editors in one base community can easily access the correct discussions in the other base community. It is not necessary that all arguments be brought into Meta, but if decisions are made on Meta, this will then be in a more decentralized way, enriched by diverse discussions. Examples A great example, but with low spread is: Universal Code of Conduct; Another good example, but limited to the pt.wiki is: Meta talk:Babylon#Unite Portuguese and Brazilian Portuguese into Portuguese. Discussion Note: This proposal was made together with Andreas, whom I thank very much for his help.--Felipe da Fonseca (talk) 16:36, 3 May 2021 (UTC) A problem with this is the exclusion of smaller wikis. It is more accurate for your first diagram to include the however many hundred wikis centralized at meta and your second to be surrounded by hundreds of wikis excluded from your new proposal. I feel simultaneous discussions across the select number of large wikis will not only entirely ignore smaller wikis but will themselves be isolated from each other, fracturing the movement. Ultimately, it will result in the WMF pulled in 10 different directions at the same time with no real way to reconcile those directions. There's a reason many editors don't go on meta; they don't really care about WMF finance, or security, the remote possibility of a lawsuit or what have you, they care about editing the wiki. Bringing those matters to the wikis isn't going to engage more people. The people interested in meta-matters will be the ones discussing it, and the rest will mostly ignore it. The only difference is that those actually discussing these matters will be isolated from their peers in other wikis. More communication, more notifications, and more connections between all wikis are certainly valuable, but this fundamental restructuring of meta's structure does not seem to me to be the best solution. Zoozaz1 (talk) 15:28, 4 May 2021 (UTC) Yeah, Zoozaz1, I understand what you mean, but on the other hand, there are often discussions going on in other wikis – like the fundraising discussion over on pt.WP the other day, or last year's branding discussion in en:WP – that the rest of the global community may be unaware of. So people do care about WMF issues, but discuss them in their own wikis, and are thus trapped in silos that don't connect. Now you may say what do I care about the fundraising banners in Brazil, but it seems to me it's often a case of the same issues cropping up in multiple wikis – maybe at different times ... the English Wikipedians moan about the fundraising banners in December, the Brazilians evidently in April, but they are all complaining about the same thing, and because they are only ever complaining for a few weeks in any one place, nothing much changes. So I wonder whether volunteers would have a stronger voice in these matters if they weren't so isolated from each other. And a stronger volunteer community is needed in my view, as a counterweight to the ever more wealthy and ever bigger WMF. You need many Davids working together to counter a Goliath. – Speaking about the branding issue, there was actually a list of community discussions provided here, which was a good thing and could be done more often, and more systematically. Cheers, --Andreas JN466 16:33, 4 May 2021 (UTC) There are certain issues that people really do care about, but most WMF issues aren't as engaging. I agree with you that running misleading fundraising banners and the branding proposal are things that will concern many more editors, and there may be a place for language-specific discussions to engage more editors for those issues. For most things, though, most editors aren't going to care, and meta is the best place to have a discussion. For those more impactful discussions, there has to be a balance; on one hand, a meta discussion is best for uniting the community and engaging smaller wikis, while siloed discussions may bring in more editors participating in their own language. It's not an easy question, but regardless for the majority of discussions meta is the best place. Zoozaz1 (talk) 17:11, 4 May 2021 (UTC) I mean, take the branding issue. You have a situation here where literally over 90% of volunteers have said, No way, we do not want the WMF appropriating the name Wikipedia for itself. But the WMF response was to make clear that they can absolutely do what they like. This no longer feels like a partnership of equals, because if the WMF changed its name to "Wikipedia Foundation" tomorrow, what would you do about it (assuming you are not one of the 7.5% of the core community who thought it was a fine idea)? I do think that at some point volunteers will have to organise, do their own PR work, unionise, or something ... because however disparate the global community may be, there is remarkably broad agreement on issues like the proposed Wikipedia branding. The WMF's traditional approach has been "Divide et impera". Cheers, --Andreas JN466 16:46, 4 May 2021 (UTC) To be quite honest, I don't really care about them deciding to change an m to a p. Is it a good idea? Probably not, and I'm sure there are many reasoned arguments to that end. Will it affect the project in any really significant way? Again, probably not. I'm not on board with the whole "sky is falling" viewpoint here. Every second volunteers organize, do PR work, unionize, or other such things is a second not spent collecting the sum of human knowledge. It's just a distraction from our mission and one that duplicates the efforts of the WMF. Yes, there is a place for pushback, discussion, and disagreement, and the WMF should take that into account, but at the end of the day it best serves our mission to spend time being constructive (by improving content) rather than destructive (by fighting with the WMF). Zoozaz1 (talk) 17:30, 4 May 2021 (UTC) Zoozaz1, thank you very much for your attention to the proposal and comments. If the proposal is consistent and interesting, it should withstand criticism, so these are also welcome. Andreas has arrived before me to answer, but I haven't read your debate yet, so I will concentrate on your initial comment for the moment. There are things in your comments that I agree with and things that I disagree with. I will start my comments with the second of your two paragraphs and then tackle the first, which I find more constructive. Predictable: this is likely to be the speech of those who already know the way "they don't do it because they don't want to". Well, on that, and based only on wiki.pt, I vehemently disagree. We don't do it because we can't. This is, for example, my personal experience: I always had interest in these subjects, but I could never come here, get to know a new community in a language I don't know well, get to know new ways of editing (it took me about an hour to find the template above), find the right places and the right language, etc etc etc. If I come today it is because the need is immense. Note: I'm not talking about editors who just edit... I'm talking about administrators and various user on wiki.pt who are extremely interested in all topics, and who don't come here, because of the above difficulties, and others. Note also that we have 70 administrators on wiki.pt today, and I can guarantee that on a daily basis we have the presence of something like 30 administrators only, or less. We have backlogs to deal with, which take up all our volunteer time, who has time to migrate to Meta? Now to your first paragraph: No! The WMF will not go in ten different directions, decisions will still be made, the direction will still be only one, but it will be that of universal consensus, and not of the consensus of the few meta editors. About the miniwikis, you are right: those wikis that do not have their own administration will not be able to enter the mesh model, and will continue in the star model. But those small ones that have administration, these are fully covered by the proposal. Thanks again. Best,--Felipe da Fonseca (talk) 18:17, 4 May 2021 (UTC) You bring up some valid points, and I think a more nuanced understanding is valuable here. There are barriers to getting on meta, the language one being a big one. But while recognizing that, I think we have to recognize greater barriers exist when we have 10 separate discussions in 10 separate languages. There is bound to be disagreements and differences of opinion in those various discussions, and unlike on meta where it can be worked out and discussed with this proposal such a task is much more difficult. The way to reconcile those two competing priorities is to have discussions on the various wikis for only the most important issues, such as a rebranding of the foundation. That way, we don't get bogged down in the inefficiency of a bunch of discussions that will likely not attract anyone new (as these less significant discussions would only attract the people really dedicated to them, who would already be on meta). It also means the discussions where there are a large number of users who would care but have barriers to using meta can participate. That being said, for the purpose of communication between communities the discussions on each should be subordinate to a meta discussion where users can report and discuss the opinions of their communities (as well as to get the opinion of those on smaller wikis, who offer a different perspective). Zoozaz1 (talk) 18:59, 4 May 2021 (UTC) This is clear and is in the proposal: only the most important issues should be dealt with in this way. Now, what these important issues are should be discussed, because we probably have different opinions about this. I also note an important point: the discussions in the meta will continue to be the central organizer ones, but there will be parallel discussions on the same topic everywhere, so that everyone can have a say and their opinions can be taken into account. On a side note: I am not at all afraid of the WMF becoming a virus (i.e. going against the volunteers), because then they will be killing the only host they could colonize. In other words, either the WMF works together with the volunteers, or it is doomed to extinction. So I don't see this as the main issue here.--Felipe da Fonseca (talk) 19:31, 4 May 2021 (UTC) Then yes, I guess this makes sense if we do it for a limited amount of extremely high important discussions. All I would say is that it should be limited to the most important decisions and there should still be a central discussion on meta. Zoozaz1 (talk) 21:19, 4 May 2021 (UTC) Perfect. We agree then, I just prefer to call the discussion in the meta "organizer" and not "centralizer".--Felipe da Fonseca (talk) 21:26, 4 May 2021 (UTC) I really like the concept of a "mesh" of wikis rather than the "star". It's a good visual/analogy for how I would like to see things be. I think it could produce better progress and cooperation across wikis if it could be made to happen. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 01:07, 5 May 2021 (UTC) Thanks Barkeep49, for the support.--Felipe da Fonseca (talk) 04:53, 5 May 2021 (UTC) Comment The issues that I have with the proposal is that META is the wiki for wikimedia-related and coordinating conversations, that is its sole purpose. Each sister has its family of issues, WPs are encycopaedias, etc. How many places are you expecting conversations to take place? Cherokee Wikipedia? Latin Wiktionary? Russian Wikivoyage? How is that going to work? it seems that you are condensing metawiki and WMF personnel. This wiki is more than just WMF personnel, and has a range of central coordinating functions. You are now expecting everyone to travel everywhere to find anything, or to even know where to find a conversation. I equate your idea with rather than a central set of noticeboards, you are expecting me to run to the 5th floor tearoom to find conversation 1, and the changeroom wall for another. AND you are expecting everyone to know where all the spaces are located. Many of us have not migrated from our home wikis, we are still there. The WMF personnel may not have a homewiki for their WMF accounts, this is their home wiki, or mediawikiwiki is that, depending on their role. Equating fundraising banner with metawiki is a false example; fundraising is solely controlled by WMF. Translations. Each wiki is not equipped for the language translations, either in personnel, nor in systems. How is that going to work? So maybe you can discuss what are the issues that your wiki is missing and how that could be improved. It sounds to me that it is informational and announcing that is what is missing to point people to conversations of interest. Is it some sort of feed of information to a local page(s) of what is happening at metawiki? So rather than jump to your near impossible solutions, create an RFC identifying the issues, and the impediments. If you believe that the WMF staff are not being suitably responsive and attentive, then you should be talking to the community elected board members, they have the role to reflect our opinions back to the board of what is important, and what is and is not working. Where is your "needs" document?  — billinghurst sDrewth 09:03, 5 May 2021 (UTC) Dear @Billinghurst:, thank you for your participation and questions. I reserve the right not to answer one by one of your questions, because almost all of them are already answered in the original proposal and those that are not have been answered in the discussion above. I will only answer some as examples: 1) I am not demanding that you stay riding the elevator there and here, that was never said, you can, of your own free will, go to the other communities, if you want to stay only here on the metawiki, you can, because here will continue to be the organizer of the discussions and from where the decisions will be made; 2) The link will be in the meta discussion, as above in the example; 3) The banner is not a fake example: WMF uses the metawiki for discussions; 4) Translation will only be required for a few larger wikis, the other smaller ones will be done on demand. Best,--Felipe da Fonseca (talk) 10:16, 5 May 2021 (UTC) Question: Dear colleagues Andreas, Barkeep49 and Zoozaz1, billinghurst recommended (see diff) to take this discussion to Requests for comment, as I don't know the intricacies of Meta, I ask if you agree and authorize moving the whole text there, thank you.--Felipe da Fonseca (talk) 16:21, 5 May 2021 (UTC) An RFC is a static page, and single subject. It allows us to link to it from the main page, and seek opinion from other wikis more readily. It will allow you to draft and frame it for better discussion prior to announcing and seeking comment.  — billinghurst sDrewth 16:38, 5 May 2021 (UTC) billinghurst has the right idea with the RfC though it might be worth waiting a few more days. A little discussion beforehand can often help formulate a good RfC. --Andreas JN466 19:54, 5 May 2021 (UTC) Andreas right, next week we evaluate if we need to change the proposal, if yes, we modify it and present it in the RFC. billinghurst did several comments in my UP that I won't be able to handle alone, I think, at least not until next week, in case you want help... but I believe answers for this coments should be posted here, not in my UP. Also, I would like to ask if you are getting my pings, because I don't get a sending-ping notification. Thanks,--Felipe da Fonseca (talk) 20:04, 5 May 2021 (UTC) Andreas Wouldn't it be better to fully copy the proposal on wiki.en and wiki.de as I did on wiki.pt? That way it stimulates the debate on the home wikis as well.--Felipe da Fonseca (talk) 10:09, 6 May 2021 (UTC) I included it on en:WP (in a box), but did not have time to translate it in full for de:WP, sorry (and DeepL produced a few awkward phrasings). Been very busy at work this week. :( --Andreas JN466 13:25, 7 May 2021 (UTC) Andreas do you have any more modifications to make or can we take the discussion to RFC? If yes, do you know any discussion closure template? I will keep this one closed as a record (I will only pass the proposal).--Felipe da Fonseca (talk) 12:12, 10 May 2021 (UTC) No, I have nothing to add, Felipe. For a discussion closure template, see Template:Hidden_archive_top. Best, --Andreas JN466 12:16, 10 May 2021 (UTC)

This section was archived on a request by:  — billinghurst sDrewth 00:32, 16 May 2021 (UTC)

Read only time on 05-May-2021 at 06:00 AM UTC

Hi,

Some services will be in read-only for a short time on 2021-05-05 at 06:00 AM UTC.

During the restart time (expected to be around 60 seconds or so) all the components and extensions that use the x1 database will be read-only.

Things that might experience some issues when creating new writes:

• New short urls cannot be created
• Email bounces from lists might not get recorded
• There might be issues with new translations
• New items on the notification list might fail, some notifications may not be delivered
• Reading lists might not record new items added to "bookmark" or "read it later" feature

Details: T281212 & T281375

A banner will be displayed on all wikis 30 minutes before this read-only time.

-- Kaartic ^[talk] 18:40, 4 May 2021 (UTC)

This section was archived on a request by:  — billinghurst sDrewth 00:32, 16 May 2021 (UTC)

open proxy not allowed fa.wikinews

fa.wikinews.org is blocked by Iran and free proxies are not allowed? Baratiiman (talk) 11:58, 29 May 2021 (UTC)

@Baratiiman: Meaning what? I am going to point you to global blocks/FAQ and SRGP and if you are meaning something else, then a fuller explanation would be useful.  — billinghurst sDrewth 13:55, 29 May 2021 (UTC)

billinghurst No Iranian has been allowed to edit fa.wikinews.org in since 2016. make a global ip exempt for users Baratiiman (talk) 14:17, 29 May 2021 (UTC)

@Baratiiman: IPBE exemptions are not given automatically, while your case would be a valid reason, you need to request for the right at SRGP. Leaderboard (talk) 16:01, 29 May 2021 (UTC)

Leaderboard write a notice on Iranian wikinews so all users can get ip exemption through stewards, update wikinews after 6 yearsBaratiiman (talk) 17:00, 29 May 2021 (UTC)

@Baratiiman: If you mean informing users about the possibility of getting IP exemptions through stewards, I am not a native Farsi speaker; maybe @Ladsgroup: can assist? Leaderboard (talk) 07:20, 30 May 2021 (UTC)

Comment @Baratiiman: Your post, in this forum will go nowhere, there is nowhere to take it. Speak to the sole admin at the wiki, or, if not there, then at User talk:Kasir to get a local block exemption. The admin can also put up a local central notice, that is not something that we can do from this forum, The Farsi community needs to drive this, it cannot be driven from this forum.  — billinghurst sDrewth 14:37, 30 May 2021 (UTC)

• there is a channel chinese https://t.me/wikipedia_zh_help/ but there is not one for iranians Baratiiman (talk) 16:07, 30 May 2021 (UTC)
• https://t.me/wikipedia_zh_n has 18000 members Baratiiman (talk) 16:24, 30 May 2021 (UTC)

@Leaderboard @Billinghurst This user has been blocked in fawiki for sock puppetry (by yours truly). Not sure IPBE is a good idea, no matter global or local. Amir (talk) 17:44, 30 May 2021 (UTC)

• small wiki monitoring must have written in mediawiki:sitenotice this sentence 4 years ago For spam reasons: accounts need ip block exepmtion approval for editing translated to farsi بدلیل اسپم: حساب اکانت باید برای روشن کردن فیلتر شکن برای ویرایش صفحه ها تائید بشود Baratiiman (talk) 17:54, 30 May 2021 (UTC)

 Closed Nothing can be done to assist beyond the advice already provided.  — billinghurst sDrewth 23:00, 30 May 2021 (UTC)

This section was archived on a request by:  — billinghurst sDrewth 23:00, 30 May 2021 (UTC)

The local name of Lombard language (lmo)

It would be better if the name of the Lombard language used for interlingual links were changed. Now it is "Lumbaart" but "Lombard" would be better, as the old spelling is no longer used. According to the spelling most used in in both wikipedia and wiktionary (New Lombard Spelling), "Lombard" should be written instead of "Lumbaart". How should you do to change it?--Gat lombart (talk) 10:25, 14 May 2021 (UTC)

Where is "lumbaart" not used any more? What's the source of this claim?

Usually such changes to the "autonyms" are decided as part of the definition of the locale. It needs confirmation by trusted sources and a consensus among translators/speakers of that language (not just the Wikipedia users). The easiest starting point may be a discussion at translatewiki:Portal talk:lmo. Nemo 15:16, 15 May 2021 (UTC)

We need a bit of backstory of the Lombard Wikipedia. When lmowiki was created, there was a catalanist administration, which created an ortography based on both the work of a Nordic academic of Lombard descent and on the Catalan language. In that ortography, "Lombard" was writter "Lumbaart" but a quick search shows basically every occurence is in some way linked to lmowiki. Today no ortography, except maybe some ortography used in some dialects in Canton Ticino, uses "lumbaart". Basically every Lombard, to say "Lombard", says "Lombard", which may be pronounced as "Lumbard" or "Lombard": Since the two pan-Lombard ortographies today, the historic classical Milanese ortography and the Tiraboschi's phonetical ortography uses "Lombard", I think it's safe to say it's the more used word in Lombard language to define the language itself. --Sciking (talk) 18:23, 17 May 2021 (UTC)

@Gat lombart and Sciking: I am not sure that we can have any valid opinion, and all we can say is that if there is authoritative fixes required on the WMF wikis that it should happen in consultation with Language committee for WMF-controlled spaces. You were also pointed to translatewiki where some holistic discussions around translation take place for general Mediawiki and like issues—so more operational and non-WMF.  — billinghurst sDrewth 03:03, 18 May 2021 (UTC)

Hi @Gat lombart and @Sciking,

You say that there is "old spelling" and "new spelling".

Were the new spelling rules published in some book, article, website, or dictionary? Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 17:38, 22 May 2021 (UTC)

@Amir E. Aharoni The Lombard language has many old local spellings and two Pan-Lombard spellings. One of the Pan-Lombard spellings, the most recent and currently the most used on wiki projects is called "New Lombard Spelling"/"New Lombard Ortography" ("Noeuva Ortografia Lombarda" in Lombard language). The site is https://nol.lengualombarda.eu/ (it is written in Lombard).--Gat lombart (talk) 20:15, 22 May 2021 (UTC)

I also point out this article, written in Italian, about the other of the Pan-Lombard oprtography, called Scriver Lombard (currently less used in wiki projects) https://patrimonilinguistici.it/scriver-lombard-unortografia-polinomico-locale-per- the-Lombard-language / --Gat lombart (talk) 21:13, 22 May 2021 (UTC)

Thanks!

A few other questions:

1. Are there any other websites that are written in several languages, one of which is Lombard? (I can read Catalan and Italian quite well, so I can kind of understand some written Lombard...)
2. More generally, can you give some examples of Lombard websites, in any orthography?
3. Were there any public discussions of the different orthographies? Not in the Wikipedia community, but among the language speakers or writers. For example, in newspapers, cultural or linguistic journals, etc.? Are there any people opposed to this new spelling? I should be familiar with the different points of view before making such a change.
4. Just personal curiosity, feel free to ignore it: Why does your own username end with a -t and not -d? :)

Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 06:56, 23 May 2021 (UTC)

@Amir E. Aharoni

1) The Lombard language exists above all in the spoken form as the Italian state does not recognize the Lombard linguistic minority and because of this reasom most of speakers also consider Lombard a dialect of Italian.

Those who want to learn to write must learn on their own.

Moreover, young people in the lowland areas no longer speak it.

Everyone knows Italian. I don't know any websites written in two languages, one of which is Lombard.

2) http://www.lengualombarda.org/ (website written using the spelling “Scriver Lombard”)

https://medium.com/lombardia-incoeu (Articles in lombard using the “New Lombard Spelling”)

In addiction you can also find some Lombard literature on wikisource https://wikisource.org/wiki/Main_Page/Lumbaart/Lombard (completely written with old spellings)

3) Since the language is mostly spoken, as far I know, there are no discussions about spellings. Anyway i can tell you that, the New Lombard Spelling, born in 2020, is currently mainly used on wikipedia and in some facebook groups and that the “New Lombard Spelling” has many similarities with the classic Milanese orthography, the historical spelling of the Lombard literary tradition.

However, as @sciking already told, I do not think it is necessary to talk about this as even almost all the old spellings use "lombard" to define the language. The most important is the classic Milanes one.

4) The end of my name is just a misspelling that has never been corrected--Gat lombart (talk) 12:02, 23 May 2021 (UTC)

Thanks :)

If you wish, you can easily change your account name at Special:GlobalRenameRequest, but it's totally up to you :)

More importantly, I have one more, probably last question: What is the name of the orthography in which the name is written as "Lumbaart"? For some reason, I though it's the Milanese one, but I guess I was wrong?.. Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 12:53, 23 May 2021 (UTC)

@Amir E. Aharoni

Spelling (Lombard name in New Lombard Spelling)	Spelling (traslated into English)	Way of writing the name of the language	year in which the spelling was born
"Scriver lombard"	"Writing lombard" (Pan-Lombard spelling)	lombard	2014
"Noeuva Ortografia Lombarda"	"New Lombard Spelling" (Pan-Lombard spelling)	lombard	2020
"Ortografia moderna"	"Modern spelling" (Pan-Lombard spelling)	lumbard	1979
"Ortografia milanesa"	Milanese spelling (local spelling of Milan and surrounding areas)	lombard	1630
"Lessich dialetal de la Svizzera Italiana"	"Dialect lexicon of Italian Swiss" (local spelling Italian Swiss)	lumbaart	1995
"Ortografia del Ducad"	spelling of the duchy (local spelling of eastern Lombardy)	lombard	???
"Ortografia insubrica unificada"	unified insubric spelling (local spelling of western Lombardy)	lumbaart	2003
"Ortografia oriental unificada"	"Unified eastern spelling (local spelling of eastern lombardy)"	lombart	???

The policy in wiki projects is this:

Lombard Wikipedia does not prohibit the usage of local spellings but encourages the use of panlombard spellings.

On the wiktionary (in the incubator) the usage of the New Lombard Spelling or the Scriver Lombard Ortograghy is mandatory with the possibility of indicate the other spellings on the page.

First of all we have to consider the Pan-Lombard spellings for wiki projects and the Milanese one for historical reasons. "Modern spelling" is Pan-Lombard but is no longer widely used due to its inconvenience with the Italian computer keyboard. However, many entries in the wiktionary in Italian are written with this spelling (that uses "lumbard" as the name of the language). Instead the wiktionary in Lombard, that is most recent than the italian one, is mainly written with the new Lombard spelling.

--Gat lombart (talk) 14:24, 23 May 2021 (UTC)

@Gat lombart, OK, no one seems to object, so I'm going to do it. Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 07:04, 30 May 2021 (UTC)

This section was archived on a request by:  — billinghurst sDrewth 05:47, 4 June 2021 (UTC)

Bridging chat networks

When bridging networks, it's important to test your bridging solution, and to get permission from the network operators. See eg https://www.hackint.org/archive#20181028_Matrix_Bridging_Sunset for reasoning on a different network. --Kim Bruning (talk) 14:33, 19 May 2021 (UTC)

wikitech:Tool:Bridgebot is used in some freenode + telegram + discord channels. It could theoretically be used to bridge freenode and libera if people wanted. Legoktm (talk) 15:10, 19 May 2021 (UTC)

If we're going to leave freenode for this reason, I don't see a good reason to go halfway with the bridge; My thought is that we should either move completely or not at all. MJ94 (talk) 22:09, 19 May 2021 (UTC)

I'm worried about new users who follow old guides/links and end up in Freenode and find no one or some alternative community than ours. How do we make sure that doesn't happen? We could lock the channels, but I don't think getting a "You're banned from #wikipedia" is a good way to point people to the right place. Legoktm (talk) 22:57, 19 May 2021 (UTC)

I think we can set most channels to +if #wikimedia, which will automatically forward them to #wikimedia. We could then have a join message set pointing people in the right direction. Not sure it's the best solution, but it is a solution. stwalkerster (talk) 22:59, 19 May 2021 (UTC)

I'd recommend caution wrt leaving anything important on freenode. --Kim Bruning (talk) 01:27, 20 May 2021 (UTC)

One channel that migrated had a bot posting "please use <other channel> on <other network>" every couple of minutes; seemed to work fine. Enterprisey (talk) 02:01, 20 May 2021 (UTC)

Nothing important should be left on Freenode. However, redirects to a single +m channel with topics and join messages to go to the new network should suffice. "Old guides/links" should mostly point at the disclaimer page at this point, which we can direct in one shot. There's VERY few links elsewhere, afaik. Waggie (talk) 08:45, 20 May 2021 (UTC)

The consensus after some brief discussion in #wikimedia-ops is to redirect all channels to a single one on Freenode, which has been documented with instructions at Migrating_to_Libera_Chat#Closing_Freenode_channels. Legoktm (talk) 18:03, 20 May 2021 (UTC)

Kim makes a very good point. We need to check that Libera staff are comfortable with our current bridge bots between IRC and Telegram/Mattermost/whatever. I suspect they won't have much bandwidth these days to answer such questions though. Nemo 15:53, 20 May 2021 (UTC)

Matrix is bridged to all Freenode topics. Presumably they will do that at some point for Libera.Chat as well. As for our Freenode channels, they should probably be forwarded to something like #wikimedia-moved-to-liberachat with an appropriate topic, +v, and maybe a bot announcing the changes periodically or to newcomers. (This is assuming the new management won't actively obstruct such practices.) --Tgr (talk) 15:58, 20 May 2021 (UTC)

No such transfers will ever be painless. I've seen some projects attempt to move from EFNet to Hackint and months later most people are still on the "old" channels. Nemo 16:00, 20 May 2021 (UTC)

Parallel paths reach a goal

I am butting in from a non-technical direction: a technical solution is not the only task.

Non-profit foundations exist to serve needs expressed above. I can not point to a current foundation for specifically the purpose discussed, but forty-five years ago several of my fellows used an art foundation (Facets) in Chicago to handle grants an donations for a documentary. They vetted our project, supplied the tax exempt status and trustees, we supplied the work to make our film.

No matter what, money will be involved—and lots of work. And lawyers. We each know one other person who might donate money/time—fungible is better. Given some minimal management structure, any project can get started. Is there an Wikimedia constraints on fund-raising?

Is triage necessary? Is this a golden month coming to a close? I've done some fund raising in the days of snail-mail; it's not that difficult—but a well-established foundation umbrella is necessary. If someone with a sig I know wants further info, email me at my enWikipedia account. — Neonorange (talk) 23:52, 22 May 2021 (UTC)

Internal Ticketing System

Hello,

I read the following presentation that is a presentation out of the tuning sessions. It is very interesting to read this presentations because it is a possiblility to learn more about the Wikimedia Foundation and the Processes and currenct Projects of the different teams. I read the presentation of the Operations Team [1]. And in the Presentation I read that there is intrudoced Zendesk at the Wikimedia Foundation. What does Phabricator or another free Software not offer that is needed in a internal Ticketing System for the Wikimedia Foundation. I think it were good if it is easier to find the presentations of the tuning sessions.--Hogü-456 (talk) 19:56, 17 May 2021 (UTC)

It appears that our hand may be forced soon; Phacility has announced EOL for Phabricator as of August 31. I am curious to know if anyone from Wikimedia is willing to fund or staff the future development and upkeep of Phabricator. It is apparently used likewise by other large installations. Perhaps a consortium could be formed. I suppose the alternative is migrating away to something like GitLab or Gerrit. Elizium23 (talk) 00:22, 30 May 2021 (UTC)

WMF - Value your volunteer community!

Attention! Due to the interest that this message has caused in some members of the community and due to its capital importance for the whole Wikimedia project and also to improve the legitimacy of the WMF and its relationship to the home communities (thus, in order to reach the whole Wikimedia community), I have decided to turn this proposal into a Meshproposal, to be opened here, where it will also be prepared and marked for translation. This current section will be used to prepare the proposal before turning it into a Meshproposal. Join in! If you want to contribute anonymously, send an e-mail to felipedafonseca@gmail.com in this case I will evaluate your contribution and include it, or not, in the proposal.

Extended content
Proposal 1. Acclamation Time spent by Wikimedians with the external community to organize, train, and bring them into Wikimedia projects should be subsidized -- to say nothing of that time spent on administration and translation --. For example: in the case of Edith-a-thons, the time spent by the Wikimedist teaching the community should be subsidized (I understand subsidized here as: paid directly for their time), as should the time spent organizing events and contests. The situation today is the most absurd possible -- words are really lacking to express the distortion of the grant policy in this respect, is it perhaps irrational, inconsequential, crazy, nonsense? -- since the experienced user who works hours as a volunteer can't ask for a grant for his time working with the external community, but, you see, third parties who participate in a photo contest and other hired professionals who have never seen and may never see the Wikimedia projects again, can receive a direct grants for their time. Is this wrong? Of course it is! WMF should value regular volunteer Wikimedians, giving them preference in grants over any third party for their activities, if not the direct administration and translation ones, at least those that involve training and organizing the external community. It is obvious that this complete neglect of the volunteer community is one, if not the biggest, of WMF's legitimacy problems (is there any doubt that WMF is going through a legitimacy crisis? Who cares about its issues? How many participate in its elections?) So long as the WMF comes to home communities to solicit money on their behalf and denies funding from its own community of volunteers, its greatest asset, it is certain that its legitimacy will remain very low. This is a call to the WMF leadership and also a general call to all volunteers! Participate, value your work! 2. Points to be considered Taking into consideration one of the four themes to be developed by the new strategy, namely: Centering equity in all aspects of the relaunch process and the grants program itself. Including a substantial increase of funding to emerging communities. (see Community Resources/Grants Strategy Relaunch 2020-2021/Proposed programs) it is necessary to remember that: grants that do not directly remunerate the working hours of the grantees are extremely unfair (inequitable), in that they enable only those who have significant income elsewhere to participate in the grants. For there to be equity, value must be placed on volunteers who do not have such financial stability; As long as resources are possible only to those who have a regular financial source (and thus can dispense remuneration for their time), it is obvious that they will try whenever possible to harmonize their regular work with their volunteer work, especially when it comes to external actions with non-Wikimedite communities. Is this a problem? No! But it becomes a problem if only this form of grants is given, because then we will have a line of financing that always takes into consideration interests of other institutions, and not interests emerged and developed autonomously by volunteers; Do you have a point? ... 3. Current Regulatory Situation Today the editor's time cannot be financed under any circumstances, the base document is: 3.1. From: Grants:Project/Rapid/Learn 3.1.1. Eligible for funding: "Projects that foster conditions to encourage editing by volunteers (e.g. editor recruitment campaigns)"; Not eligible for funding: "Projects that replace volunteer action by directly funding someone to create content (e.g. editing articles, uploading photos)" 3.1.2. "Wikipedian-in-Residence whose sole focus is to digitize resources and/or personally create content" 3.2. Community Resources/Grants Strategy Relaunch 2020-2021/Proposed programs has several topics aligned with this proposal, such as: 3.2.1. "Acceptance of the inherent knowledge and value grantees have about their communities"; "Outreach to communities that have been left out by structures of power and privilege"; "Embrace diversity and equitable processes"; "Stronger Ecosystem in Emerging Communities"; "Grants for mission aligned organizations and groups that support editor, content, readership growth that are linked to local emerging communities."; etc. 3.3. Which other document is used as the basis? 4. Proposal for a concrete change in regulation Changes in bold: 4.1 (change at section 3.1.1.): Eligible for funding: "Projects that foster conditions to encourage editing by volunteers (e.g. editor recruitment campaigns, classes and training on wikimedia policy and techniques), including direct remuneration for the wikimedian' time in this type of project"; Not eligible for funding: "Projects that replace volunteer action by directly funding someone to create content (e.g. editing articles, uploading photos)" 4.2. (New standard): Setting aside 50% of the total rapid grant funds to grant the time spent by Wikimedians on Projects that foster conditions to encourage editing by volunteers (e.g. editor recruitment campaigns, classes and training on wikimedia policy and techniques). 4.3. (Limit): Only one grant can be requested for each project, but it can be divided between resources and payment for time worked in any way the grantee sees fit, and previously approved by the committee. 5. Regional committees To my request answered I JethroBT (WMF): "Hello Felipe, and thanks for this suggestion to support trainers through compensation for their time through Rapid Grants. I understand that there is substantive work involved in preparing and delivering training at movement events, and can see why this may be important to support through compensation. The main reason we could not support this need in Rapid Grants is because it was not designed primarily to broadly support compensation for a potentially large number of movement volunteers. With that said, because we are transitioning to participatory grantmaking through regional committees and that we expect to continue providing Rapid Grants in this system, these committees will be able to decide on how to set priorities on what kinds of needs are important to fund within their region. Regional Committees, having better knowledge and understanding of local needs, may very well decide to generally support this kind of compensation at their discretion."(diff). But, as we (I and I JethroBT) discussed earlier, the criteria present on the page Grants:Project/Rapid/Learn will not be automatically revoked, so they will at least function as general guidelines, with which they should be modified in the suggestions above. In any case, before sending this proposal to RFC, I look forward to clarification on this specific point from I JethroBT (WMF), since, if the document is in the future (because of the establishment of regional committees) completely revoked, then this proposal loses its object and should be addressed in the future to the Regional Committee. Ass:--Felipe da Fonseca (talk) 18:25, 27 May 2021 (UTC) Discussion Do you have any evidence that "experienced user who works hours as a volunteer can't ask for a grant"? RamzyM (talk) 09:19, 26 May 2021 (UTC) Of course I do. But attention is needed in what I said: I didn't say that he can't ask for grants, but that he can't ask for grants to remunerate his working time. For example, in cases of edith-a-thons, grants are requested only to cover costs, in the most completely irrelevant. What about the time the editor will spend teaching the outside world community? This is not granted. --Felipe da Fonseca (talk) 09:26, 26 May 2021 (UTC) If you have that evidence to support your claim, please do post it. What do you mean by "the time the editor will spend teaching the outside world"? RamzyM (talk) 09:57, 26 May 2021 (UTC) 1) No, I will not post what is not onwiki. But you can search in: Grants:Project/Rapid/Learn 2) I changed for "Community". There is no need to explain, it is absolutely clear. Since you have a lot of difficulty in understanding, I call here I JethroBT (WMF), he can probably explain it in a more didactic way. Thanks for your constructive participation.--Felipe da Fonseca (talk) 11:17, 26 May 2021 (UTC) Felipe, I sure would like to know your explanation of how you came into the conclusion that led into this proposal, but if you need other people to explain it on your behalf, I don't know how to engage further. Cheers, RamzyM (talk) 17:40, 28 May 2021 (UTC) I think Felipe's concern is the rapid grants requirements only cover limited types of expenses related to editor time (like caretaking or childcare services). The proposal advanced would allow direct remuneration of "editor's time @ stipend rate" when helping train new editors (e.g. edit-a-thons), without having to demonstrate childcare or other caretaking services for the time they have dedicated to the grant project. (If that's already possible under Rapid grants, then both Felipe and I have misunderstood the guidelines.) –xeno 18:09, 28 May 2021 (UTC) Xeno Exactly, thank you. But it's not just misunderstanding on our part, because not only are there express indications in the documentation to this effect, as I posted above, but I also received a answer in this exact sense. --Felipe da Fonseca (talk) 18:25, 28 May 2021 (UTC) OK, now I understand. This seems like a good idea in general. My experiences with WMID's Wiki Masuk Sekolah program (spending report), which was funded by APG, is that volunteer Wikipedia in-classroom trainers are not remunerated on per-hour basis; rather, the budget covered the cost of their meals and local transportations. It seems like a step to this direction, although of course this is an Affiliate-run program rather than a grant directly coming from the Foundation. I don't know whether the labor law that applies to the Foundation would allow remuneration of volunteers hourly and fixed to the time they spend, as here in Indonesia there are regulations that automatically consider an individual to be employee of a company if they already work for certain hours a week and be paid a certain amount of money for those hours. I read the Rapid Grants guideline as a very expansive document that could accommodate a diverse set of scenarios of grantees' needs for now, and if the Foundation cannot do it (for whatever reason) there's a lot of individual Affiliates disbursing local grants that may accommodate such model. RamzyM (talk) 19:02, 28 May 2021 (UTC) Ramzy Muliawan Exactly, it is in this sense. It may be that you are right about local labor peculiarities and this has to be adapted for each locality. Well remembered, I think this should go in the proposal, do you have any specific way of formulating it?--Felipe da Fonseca (talk) 20:25, 28 May 2021 (UTC) I JethroBT (WMF) Please, I need the following information: is there any other document that is used as a basis for evaluating the eligibility of rapid grants besides this one: Grants:Project/Rapid/Learn? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Felipe da Fonseca (talk)

As an administrative note, though this is in scope for discussion on the Wikimedia Forum, it is pertinent to remember that no amount of community consensus gained here could directly result in any action. At most, this is a suggestion to the appropriate staff members at the Wikimedia Foundation, whether it be to directly influence the wording of policy, to change how current policy is interpreted, or to have no effect. Consensus on this topic cannot be interpreted, enforced, or enacted; as such it would not be valid at RfC. Best regards, Vermont (talk) 20:39, 28 May 2021 (UTC)

Proposal is above and direction is to the FAQ. Please add further comment to the RFC question.  — billinghurst sDrewth 23:34, 5 June 2021 (UTC)

Proposed further changes of Bot policy

Global bot policy is overhauled in Requests for comment/Refine global bot policy. I proposed some further change:

1. Remove the entire Bot_policy#Automatic_approval section. This is nowadays mostly succeeded by global bots. (Existing bot flags assigned per this policy is not affected.)
2. Replace the second section of Bot_policy#Community_consensus as follow: "If there is no local community and the above does not apply, stewards may grant bot flags at their discretion after a local discussion; the bot flag should usually be temporary".

--GZWDer (talk) 15:07, 15 May 2021 (UTC)

In what sense is "automatic approval" superseded? Are you saying the number of requests decreased? There are a few wikis who may have relied on the existence of the automatic approval process to not have local bureaucrats. It would not be nice to force such communities to either elect a bureaucrat or go through a global bot approval every time they want a local bot.

If the reason is that double redirects and interlanguage links aren't so important any more, maybe that criterion could be relaxed. Nemo 15:19, 15 May 2021 (UTC)

Interlanguage links are handled by Wikidata; I think double redirects can be handled by existing global bots, and if a local bot is wanted, existing process (request flag from stewards after discussion) is enough.--GZWDer (talk) 16:55, 15 May 2021 (UTC)

I am against temporal bot flags. They have never been granted and are unnecessary. Ruslik (talk) 20:37, 15 May 2021 (UTC)

What about removing "the bot flag should usually be temporary" clause?--GZWDer (talk) 15:27, 16 May 2021 (UTC)

OK. Ruslik (talk) 20:54, 16 May 2021 (UTC)

How can "a local discussion" happen if "there is no local community"? Leaderboard (talk) 09:38, 17 May 2021 (UTC)

This is in align with how we grant administrators in wikis without community - stewards may grant them at their discretion, especially if the user is trusted elsewhere.--GZWDer (talk) 16:01, 17 May 2021 (UTC)

What would "a local discussion" mean in that discussion when there isn't any (I get your point though)? Leaderboard (talk) 16:03, 17 May 2021 (UTC)

Steward_requests/Permissions/Minimum_voting_requirements#Temporary_Administrator - "Allow 1 week for discussion", and also see Steward_requests/Permissions#Administrator_access.--GZWDer (talk) 16:24, 17 May 2021 (UTC)

I'd support removing the automatic approval clause. It's very rarely used nowadays, given that the tasks it covers are either served by global bots (redirect maintenance) or are no longer relevant (interwiki maintenance). —MarcoAurelio (talk) 09:46, 15 June 2021 (UTC)