Wikipedia:Village pump (WMF)
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The Asian News International vs. Wikimedia Foundation situation
[edit]- The open letter has reached over 600 signatures, for those unaware. Aaron Liu (talk) 17:34, 10 November 2024 (UTC)
Journal article about coverage of native American topics in English-language Wikipedia
[edit]There is a journal article titled Wikipedia’s Indian problem: settler colonial erasure of native American knowledge and history on the world’s largest encyclopedia.
I see a response to this in Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2024-06-08/Opinion and mention of this article in Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2024-10-19/Recent research, so Wikipedia community seems aware of it.
Given that it's recent (May 2024) and it has suggestions directed at Wikimedia Foundation, I was just wondering if Wikimedia Foundation is aware of this article. And I am not asking with respect to editor conduct, but with respect to any potential initiatives (such as partnerships with potential volunteer experts to audit few articles). Bogazicili (talk) 19:12, 4 November 2024 (UTC)
BC government sound file
[edit]Advice please on whether this sound file provided by the British Columbia government, Ministry of Environment, would be considered free and uploadable to Commons for Wikipedia articles about Osoyoos, the town and lake, and sw̓iw̓s Park. It comes from this provincial park website, and would be a useful example for pronunciation. Thanks. Zefr (talk) 15:29, 6 November 2024 (UTC)
- The best place to ask this sort of question is Wikipedia:Media copyright questions, but the answer to your specific question is almost certainly "no". The copyright page of the website says
Copyright © 2024, Province of British Columbia. All rights reserved.
Thryduulf (talk) 15:37, 6 November 2024 (UTC)
Wikimedia Foundation Bulletin November Issue 1
[edit]Upcoming and current events and conversations
Talking: 2024 continues
- Commons Community Call: The first community call with Wikimedia Commons volunteers and stakeholders to help prioritize support efforts for 2025-2026 Fiscal Year will take place on November 21. The theme of this call will be about how content should be organised on Wikimedia Commons. The call will be hosted by Chief Product and Technology Officer Selena Deckelmann.
- Conferencia Justicia climática Perú 2024: Conference on climate justice, indigenous voices and Wikimedia platform will be held in Huaraz, Peru from November 8 to 10.
- Affiliations Committee: Applications for joining the Affiliations Committee is open until November 18.
- Ombuds Commission and Case Review Committee: Applications for joining the Ombuds commission and the Case Review Committee are open until December 2.
- Language community meeting: A language community meeting will be hosted on November 29, 16:00 UTC, discussing technical updates and problem-solving.
Annual Goals Progress on Infrastructure
See also newsletters: Wikimedia Apps · Growth · Research · Web · Wikifunctions & Abstract Wikipedia · Tech News · Language and Internationalization · other newsletters on MediaWiki.org
- Advisory Council: The new Product and Technology Advisory Council (PTAC) was announced. The PTAC will try to publish a set of community-validated recommendations that can serve as a potential 2-3 year blueprint for product and technical success.
- Wikifunctions: The Abstract Wikipedia team is working toward a rewrite of our backend services in a different programming language, likely Rust. More status updates.
- Tech News: The Guided Tour extension, which help newcomers understand how to edit, now works with dark mode; Wikipedia readers can now download a browser extension to experiment with potential features that making it easier for readers to discover information on the wikis. More tech updates from tech news 44 and 43.
- Temporary accounts: Logged-out editors on 12 wikis, including Norwegian, Romanian, Serbian, Danish, and Cantonese Wikipedia, receive temporary accounts now. This new account type enhances the privacy of logged-out editors and makes it easier for community members to communicate with them. Read the new Diff post to learn more about temporary accounts.
- Mobile apps: The Mobile Apps team has released an update to the iOS app’s navigation, now available in the latest App store version.
- Campaign Events Extension: The Campaign Events extension is now live on two more wikis, Wikidata and the Spanish Wikipedia.
- Admin Retention: A survey on Wikipedia Administrator Recruitment, Retention, and Attrition is open until November 11. As part of the Foundation's 2024-2025 Annual Plan, the research team and collaborators are studying recruitment, retention, and attrition patterns among long-tenured community members in official moderation and administration roles.
- Knowledge is Human: The campaign web page, which educates visitors on Wikipedia’s model and why it’s trustworthy, has earned over 140,000 clicks. The campaign has increased pageviews on WikimediaFoundation.org by more than 50%.
Annual Goals Progress on Equity
See also a list of all movement events: on Meta-Wiki
- WikiCelebrate: From making a minor maintenance edit in 2005 to being one of the most appreciated Wikimedians in the Central Eastern European (CEE) region: this month we celebrate Mārtiņš Bruņenieks.
- Wiki Loves Earth: Mountains, Birds and Lakes – Central Asia Edition
- Future of Language Incubation: As part of a new Future of Language Incubation initiative to support language onboarding, Wikipedia is now live for five languages: Pannonian Rusyn, Tai Nüa, Iban, Obolo, and Southern Ndebele.
Annual Goals Progress on Safety & Integrity
See also blogs: Global Advocacy blog · Global Advocacy Newsletter · Policy blog
- Global Advocacy: Reflecting on the anniversary of the EU’s Digital Service Act (DSA), Wikimedians share successes and public policy priorities at digital rights Global Gathering event, and more global advocacy updates.
Annual Goals Progress on Effectiveness
See also: quarterly Metrics Reports
- English Fundraising: The Road to Launch: Wikimedia’s 2024 English Fundraising Campaign.
- Fundraising Report: Our annual fundraising report for the 2023-2024 fiscal year is published. Last year, we had over 8 million donors giving an average donation of m:Fundraising/2023-24 Report0.58. We ran campaigns in 33 countries, 18 languages, and received donations from over 200 countries.
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MediaWiki message delivery 22:33, 7 November 2024 (UTC)
- Interesting note buried in this about how IP addresses are going to be handled in future, thanks for the update on that timely issue. Espresso Addict (talk) 09:26, 8 November 2024 (UTC)
We would prefer not to deploy on English Wikipedia at that time, though.
A knee jerk reaction would be requesting otherwise and have enwiki be onboard as early as possible. – robertsky (talk) 08:48, 9 November 2024 (UTC)- It makes sense to fine-tune implementation on smaller wikis before rolling out to larger ones, but I am a lot more comfortable about this implementation than I was with earlier reports, which merely talked of hiding IP addresses, with all the worries over how we then handle IP vandalism, and did not provide any benefits to the (logged-in) community of editors. Espresso Addict (talk) 08:57, 9 November 2024 (UTC)
- Currently, extended-confirmed editors -200 edits will have access to the ip information. It is a large pool of users (>70k here) who can look that data. – robertsky (talk) 09:12, 9 November 2024 (UTC)
- Indeed, I was very pleased that the ability to look at IPs had been extended to patrollers. Is there somewhere better that we can highlight this useful update, which allayed many of my concerns as an administrator about the upcoming change, as I fear the WMF page is not much read? Espresso Addict (talk) 09:33, 9 November 2024 (UTC)
- I see the option in the Preferences page. It wasn't there before. Enabling now. :D – robertsky (talk) 11:59, 9 November 2024 (UTC)
- How will this change the WP:OUTING policy? For example can I include the IP address or cidr range of a temporary account in the suspected sock list? Would that be considered outing? Because anyone(logged out editors too) can see a SPI report.Ratnahastin (talk) 09:38, 9 November 2024 (UTC)
- Most likely not, as you're required to agree to certain terms when opting in to view IPs (as you already are on this wiki when enabling IP info). It would be a violation of not only local policy but ToS. Nardog (talk) 11:51, 9 November 2024 (UTC)
- I think there should not be a need to include the IP address or the CIDR range in SPI report. Just the list of temporary accounts will do. Any CU, clerks, or patrolling admins will to have updated their checking processes to account for temporary accounts. – robertsky (talk) 12:02, 9 November 2024 (UTC)
- Has anyone seen an indication of how many buttons you have to click to see IP info? In the past, people might post half-a dozen IPs at ANI and someone else would point out that that was a /64 that should be blocked with no collateral damage. At least one template ({{blockcalc}}) can extract IPs from wikitext and show the ranges involved. We will have to see how much hassle will be involved with the new system. Johnuniq (talk) 02:02, 10 November 2024 (UTC)
- You can ask for the permissions and try it on testwiki: or, if you have enough edits, on any other wiki where it's been rolled out. Nardog (talk) 06:23, 10 November 2024 (UTC)
- @Johnuniq: I have the global version of edit filter helper, so I have access on the wikis where it's just been rolled out (plus testwiki). If I recall correctly, it's just one button agreeing to the IP information policy to reveal IPs, but there are more boxes in Special:Preferences that allow for things like revealing IPs in the edit filter and using IP information on contribution pages. There's also a global preference available to CU/OS and certain global groups (global rollback/sysop, and global abuse filter helper/maintainer) to enable IP information cross-wiki. EggRoll97 (talk) 23:32, 10 November 2024 (UTC)
- Temporary accounts can be changed if one clears cookies or uses a different browser, not the same case with a cidr IP range. This will certainly make it a bit of a hassle to list out every temporary account associated with the IP range, anyway let's see how this feature is implemented first. Ratnahastin (talk) 02:06, 10 November 2024 (UTC)
- Has anyone seen an indication of how many buttons you have to click to see IP info? In the past, people might post half-a dozen IPs at ANI and someone else would point out that that was a /64 that should be blocked with no collateral damage. At least one template ({{blockcalc}}) can extract IPs from wikitext and show the ranges involved. We will have to see how much hassle will be involved with the new system. Johnuniq (talk) 02:02, 10 November 2024 (UTC)
- Indeed, I was very pleased that the ability to look at IPs had been extended to patrollers. Is there somewhere better that we can highlight this useful update, which allayed many of my concerns as an administrator about the upcoming change, as I fear the WMF page is not much read? Espresso Addict (talk) 09:33, 9 November 2024 (UTC)
- Currently, extended-confirmed editors -200 edits will have access to the ip information. It is a large pool of users (>70k here) who can look that data. – robertsky (talk) 09:12, 9 November 2024 (UTC)
- It makes sense to fine-tune implementation on smaller wikis before rolling out to larger ones, but I am a lot more comfortable about this implementation than I was with earlier reports, which merely talked of hiding IP addresses, with all the worries over how we then handle IP vandalism, and did not provide any benefits to the (logged-in) community of editors. Espresso Addict (talk) 08:57, 9 November 2024 (UTC)
Open letter about Asian News International vs. Wikimedia Foundation
[edit]If you (the WMF) are not already aware of it there is an open letter here with over 600 signatures. Phil Bridger (talk) 18:46, 10 November 2024 (UTC)
Will you be moving operations overseas?
[edit]Trump has a tendency to cause disruptions in a number of different ways. He seriously interfered with a government directed radio station of some sort when he was in office last time (https://www.npr.org/2020/06/18/879873926/trumps-new-foreign-broadcasting-ceo-fires-news-chiefs-raising-fears-of-meddling). Will it be necessary for you to move Wikipedia operations overseas or is it already handled in some other way? I'm sorry to voice my concern this directly, but: I'd rather this didn't turn into conservapedia mkII and have Trump attempt to re-write history. 75.142.254.3 (talk) 19:15, 10 November 2024 (UTC)
- The Wikimedia community is editorially independent of the foundation and has remained so during Trump's first presidency, so I see no reason to be worried. * Pppery * it has begun... 19:22, 10 November 2024 (UTC)
- Do you mean the users or a part of the body of wikipedia itself? As in, could Trump take over the website or otherwise exert significant pressure that would otherwise be alleviated by relocation? If not, then I guess no action necessary.
- 75.142.254.3 (talk) 19:35, 10 November 2024 (UTC)
- The only thing he could do is hire a troll farm of some sort, which I don't expect us to have much trouble defending against. Aaron Liu (talk) 19:58, 10 November 2024 (UTC)
- Are the servers located in the United States? It's looking like the answer is no, and I'm sorry for being paranoid, it's just that he has done things in this country that we didn't anticipate because we didn't expect anyone to have the sort of character that it would be a problem in that position. 75.142.254.3 (talk) 20:01, 10 November 2024 (UTC)
- The primary Wikimedia data centers are located in the U.S., with caching centers distributed around the globe. I think you'd be hard pressed to find a country with better legal protections for online free speech, but as you note, it shouldn't be taken for granted. Legoktm (talk) 20:13, 10 November 2024 (UTC)
- Yeah, the 1st amendment provides stronger protections than almost all countries have; even if Trump tried he'd be hard pressed to find a court that would agree with Wikipedia censorship (unlike in India...). Galobtter (talk) 04:34, 11 November 2024 (UTC)
- The Wikimedia Foundation, which hosts Wikipedia, is based in the United States, and has to comply with US laws. Unless a relevant law is passed or legal action is taken, there isn't much Trump can do. ARandomName123 (talk)Ping me! 20:17, 10 November 2024 (UTC)
- If Trump goes authoritarian, which at this point I'm not going to rule out, US Law could be changed on a whim. But, I'm going to try to not be paranoid as much on this and WMF may already have evaluated appropriate courses of action given how they've managed to handle a wide variety of different kinds of disruption already. 75.142.254.3 (talk) 20:20, 10 November 2024 (UTC)
- The bottom line is, we just don't know. I'm sure the WMF has contingencies in place for if US law ever becomes prejudicial to the project. Until he actually becomes president, we don't know what will happen. We just have to wait and see. TheLegendofGanon (talk) 20:22, 10 November 2024 (UTC)
- The Constitution of the United States provides protections that would be very hard for Trump or any other president to circumvent, and the consent of 2/3 of both houses of Congress and 3/4 of the states is required to amend it, so I'm not too worried yet. QuicoleJR (talk) 15:24, 11 November 2024 (UTC)
- Not only that, but we already can handle dealing with edits from congress itself. Gaismagorm (talk) 14:15, 12 November 2024 (UTC)
- If Trump goes authoritarian, which at this point I'm not going to rule out, US Law could be changed on a whim. But, I'm going to try to not be paranoid as much on this and WMF may already have evaluated appropriate courses of action given how they've managed to handle a wide variety of different kinds of disruption already. 75.142.254.3 (talk) 20:20, 10 November 2024 (UTC)
- The primary Wikimedia data centers are located in the U.S., with caching centers distributed around the globe. I think you'd be hard pressed to find a country with better legal protections for online free speech, but as you note, it shouldn't be taken for granted. Legoktm (talk) 20:13, 10 November 2024 (UTC)
- Are the servers located in the United States? It's looking like the answer is no, and I'm sorry for being paranoid, it's just that he has done things in this country that we didn't anticipate because we didn't expect anyone to have the sort of character that it would be a problem in that position. 75.142.254.3 (talk) 20:01, 10 November 2024 (UTC)
- The only thing he could do is hire a troll farm of some sort, which I don't expect us to have much trouble defending against. Aaron Liu (talk) 19:58, 10 November 2024 (UTC)